In other words, what is one event in your country’s history, that could plausibly have gone differently than it did, and you think would have made your country a better place?
Inspired by Frederick III of Germany:
His premature demise is considered a potential turning point in German history; and whether or not he would have made the Empire more liberal if he had lived longer is still a popular discussion among historians.
Comments
Sweden didn’t let Norway buy Volvo shares in exchange for Norwegian oil shares, some kinda deal along those lines.
That quote brought back memories of watching BBC’s Fall of Eagles (1974). That TV drama is full of these types of moments.
Cathtrine the Great’s son, and the next tsar of Russia, was against partitioning Poland. Poland was partitioned in 1795, Cathrine died in 1796. If she only died one year earlier, or waited a bit longer, Poland might have never disappeared from the world map, because Prussia and Austria probobly wouldn’t be able to defeat Poland without Russia
Hungary here. We joined the EU and instead of building a modern country, we opted to create a Russian-style oligarchy instead.
I guess not really a missed opportunity but if only our Parliament would have been allowed to rule effectively in 1907-17 by St Petersburg, we would surely have avoided a very bloody and traumatic Civil War in 1918. There were lots of reforms voted for but vetoed by that imbecile Nicholas II and his government.
Vorarlberg wanted to join our Federation after WWI, but our government declined because they didn’t want to shake up the german/french:reformed/catholic balance. For similar reasons, we have no Chablais and no Valtellina.
There are legends that there were secret discussions for a federation between Bulgaria and the Ottoman empire, after the liberation.
The traitorous maffia band of Orbán Viktor in the past 20 years has completely fumbled the opportunity that the European Union provided.
I guess that would be the proposal to elevate Ruthenia to an equal partner within the Commonwealth in the 1600s. Because we did not do that fast enough, the Cossacks revolted against Poland, Russia backed them, Sweden attacked as well and Poland lost a third of its population in the ensuing war, most of which were burghers, noblemen and Jews, so the most productive and educated people. We had never really recovered from that population loss as it was directly it that led to foreign powers meddling in Polish affairs which led to the Polish succession war which led to a downward spiral that ended up with the Partitions.
If only Polish elites managed to secure the Cossacks’ loyalty through concessions instead of blind suppression, we could’ve kept Russia firmly on the other side of the Dnieper and avoided all the misery that befell Eastern Europe because of Russian expansionism.
I think that instead of pushing for Czechoslovakia, Czechs during the WW1 should have pushed for a Central-European Federal Republic, or something like that. I understand that Slavic population within the Austro-Hungarian Empire felt suffocated under the Habsburg rule. Austria-Hungary sucked, my father’s family is still hilariously obsessed with hating Franz Joseph, but I think that the solution didn’t need to be the creation of smaller, weaker countries and dissatisfied population along the borders. Get rid of the Habsburgs, create a federation, something like a more connected mini EU with stronger and deep historical ties. Don’t call it anything that makes any nation feel slighted. Get rid of discrimination. Make the languages equal. Not everyone would want to stay, sure, it wouldn’t be the same borders as the empire, but if it was a different model of a country, it could have worked. Perhaps Czechia, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary would have stayed in one federation as an interesting counter-balance to other big countries in Europe. I think it could have been a better model for a prolonged peace.
Poland is a country of missed opportunities throughout history but to pick one I will go with:
Elected king Stefan Batory who not only reformed Winged Hussars into a proper heavy cavalry, but also properly reformed Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s infantry into a modern (at the time) conscription and equipment system and managed to make nobles listen to him. His plan was to rally both nobles and cossacks in order to lead an invasion against the Muscovites, however his too early death led to abandonment of such plans and unrest among cossacks as they were promised payment and expansion of the cossack registry (which was kinda like a merge of citizenship [simplification term] and being considered officially employed as PLCs soldier for them); this unrest further strained relationship between PLC and cossacks.
The death of the Catholic Monarchs’s only male child, Juan, his posthumous daughter, and then their grandson, Miguel de la Paz, between 1497 and 1500, giving the Iberian kingdoms to the Habsburgs.
Then the proposals to replace the continental American colonies with four or five “independent” kingdoms united by dynastic alliances in the 1780s-1800s.
And Espartero turning down the Crown in 1870. Even if it just led to a foreign king being invited after his death in 1879, it may have solidified the system established after the 1868 Revolution and avoided the III Carlist and Cantonalist wars.
The Warsaw Uprising, still controversial topic to this day. It did achieve literally nothing, except of total destruction of Poland most populous and most important city. It was poorly organized, conditions for it’s success weren’t met, it was badly coordinated with the allies and with the government in exile (stationed in London). It relied naively on possibility of cooperation with the Soviets, while their goal was to completely take over Poland, install puppet government and physically exterminate whole opposition. Uprising forces were terribly understaffed and under-equipped. We lost around 200,000 people, including many of those who should have become elite of the country in next years. Most of those killed were civilians and it was well known, given previous conduct of Germans that it will go this way. More than half milion were exiled and forced to live in terrible poverty. Rebuilding of Warsaw required tremendous amount of labor and costed country massively in poverty ridden post-war years. The decision was literally in hands of very few men, who very easily could have chosen not to start it.
did someone mention wrexit?
and how we (we were brits once) missed the opp to investigate what Carole said…
Cadwalladr exposing the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Her reporting revealed how Meta/Facebook allowed the harvesting and misuse of personal data by the political consultants linked to both the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit referendum
I guess for my country it would be that William 3 had no kids a personal union between Britain and the Netherlands would have made interesting history
For Ireland, I guess it would be the collapse of Home Rule in 1914.
There was a lot of support for it in 1914 from Nationalists and even the British parliament as a Home Rule Act was passed in 1914. There was opposition from Unionists in Ulster though.
Had Home Rule been passed then Ireland might have avoided a decade of violence and bloodshed in the following years – from the Easter Rising, to the War of Independence, to the Civil War, to the Army Mutiny, to political assassinations such as of Kevin O’Higgins as Minister for Justice.
Johann Georg Elser almost succeeded with his assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. On November 8 1939. The bomb worked just fine, but Hitler left the hall fifteen minutes early.
During the interrogation after his capture he was tortured and beaten so severely that the local head of police later stated that Elser wouldn’t have been physically able to confess even if he wanted to. Elser was executed at the Dachau concentration camp just weeks before the end of the war.
The Gestapo was so impressed by the design of his bomb that they later copied it for their own use. Elser, who had been a carpenter, had taught himself how to build it.
I am not sure if it could’ve ever gone well, but the Russian revolution of 1917. If Bolsheviks didn’t take power in the end, there could’ve been a chance for a less radical parting with the absolute monarchy without this insane Soviet experiment, like in several other European empires of that time, and perhaps even a chance of a democracy in the end. And the consequences of communism gaining so much ground and the USSR being established have been so destructive for the entire world, that we’ll continue to reap the results for decades to come. This might have been one of the worst single events in the history of the humanity in general, not Russia specifically.
One of the biggest missed opportunities in Danish history has to be how we gave up most of the North Sea oil to Norway. During the negotiations in the 1960s, our foreign minister Per Hækkerup supposedly gave away a large portion of the potential oil fields, and the long-standing rumor is that he was drunk at the time. He denied it later, but it’s become part of Danish political folklore. Meanwhile, Norway struck oil and built the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund. Denmark? We got a modest share and a lifetime supply of regret.
The description of our flag (well … coat of arms) says it all:
(Sorry neighbors, still love you)
On a more serious note: Becoming a neutral country could have been big, but as with every Austrian solution we just made a half-assed attempt at being a neutral diplomatic center for the rest of the world…
I guess for Belgium it’s how we federalized the country. Our institutions are far too inefficient and cumbersome. We have six governments for a country that’s 30000 square kilometers and has only 11 million inhabitants. On top of that we have 3 official languages, but most people only speak one (including politicians). It has become one big mess.
Us just selling the gas we found and spending it all instead of investing it and such
We even got an economic term out of it named after us
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
That Denmark chose to use the Median Line principle when negotiating North Sea boundaries with Norway. Hence missing the opportunity that Ekofisk etc could have been Danish. We were quite ok anyway 😉
Two things: We could’ve screwed Norway out of a metric dickton of oil if we’d had a sober foreign minister, and also we could’ve not sold our Caribbean possessions to the US, if we hadn’t been ideologically fucked in the 1800s and thereby lost the stupidest war of our history.
Ireland has a lot of those
Battle of kinsale in the 17th century were the Irish and Spanish alliance nearly destroyed the main English army and broke their power here
the Bantry bay landings in the 18th century where thirty thousand French soldiers under General Hoche nearly landed and destroy the ascendency
The Monster meeting of clontarf in the 19th century where nearly a million protesters could be have called Britains bluff
The Anglo Irish treaty of 1923 and death of Michael Collins killed our unified national movement and competent leadership
TK Whitaker and Sean Lemass reforms in the 60s to actually make domestic industry and skills using FDI instead of reliance on EU and MNC investment that’s crippled our economy in the long run
A whole lot in other words
While Norway used its North Sea Oil wealth to create its Sovereign Wealth fund now worth trillions, the UK used it for tax cuts for the rich.
Poland, oh Poland… there are already three or four comments as I write it.
Poland has a rich history of bad decisions, mistakes and misplaced trust. Piast dynasty decided to split their small country between sons of a king, essentially creating small weak states. One of those small states invited Teutonic Knights, the same Poland had later fight against after unification with Lithuania.
Poland had several chances at reformation of their broken system of ruling by unanimous vote (ekhem, ekhem, EU please take notes) but didn’t use any of those chances until country was already on it’s knees and partitioned (3rd of May constitution). There were several elective kings who had charisma, reputation and respect to challenge the broken system, but they either died before consolidating power or had other problems to deal with.
Poles sided with Napoleon, bad choice as his “restoration of Poland” was nothing more than Russian invasion base later turned into Russian puppet. In fact he even sent Poles to fight other people who wanted independence from France. Irony.
Many armchair historians question alliance choices in the years that led to WW2. Alliance with UK and France was largely symbolic and Danzig region was already not loyal to Poland before Hitler demanded it. Several failed uprisings during WW2 caused more harm to Poland than good.
Probably WWI.
There was a lot of scepticism or downright opposition towards interventionism when WWI broke out, especially from the socialists (like the editor of the Socialist newspaper Avanti, a certain Benito Mussolini).
We weren’t bound to any obligations, since the triple alliance with Austria and Germany was defensive and Austria had the bad idea of attacking Serbia first.
Without the carnage brought about by WWI and the almost famine that followed it, Italy wouldn’t have had the wave of dissatisfied war veterans and poors that fuelled the rise of the fascists, and without fascism we might have been able to remain neutral like Spain or Switzerland.
It might have even been possible to acquire Trentino and Trieste with the implosion of Austria Hungary anyway.
The biggest missed opportunity in German history was the rejection of the imperial crown by King Frederick William IV. of Prussia under the constitution that had been approved by the Paulskirche assembly in 1848.
Finishing the Teutonic order at the beginning of the XV century after winning a great battle and having them basically on knees.
It resulted in them holding land in Northern Poland and Western Lithuania for many years which later changed into Prussia which was even a bigger problem for us.
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Sigismud III Vasa had an opportunity to make his son the Tsar of Russia. That would essencially make Poland into a superpower
Everything, basically
-Finish off the Teutonic Order after annihilating their army in the 1410 Battle of Grunwald. King Jagiełło wanted to besiege Malbork, but Grand Duke Witold wasn’t convinced. Therefore the conflict dragged on for the next few decades
-Icorporate the entirety of Prussia into the Polish Crown after defeating the Order. Without Ducal Prussia, there wouldn’t be a Kingdom of Brandenburg-Prussia, and therefore Prussia, partitions, militarism, and maybe even united Germany, Gdańsk “corridor” problem and ww2
-Have Zygmunt Vasa be a bit more tolerant of protestantism and keep the Polish-Lithuanian-Swedish Union
-Make it possible for Hetman Chodkiewicz to continue his campaign in Livonia. The Polish-Lithuanian hussars literally won an impossible, decisive victory against the 3 times larger professional Swedish army and broke it, but the Commonwealth didn’t conquer the rest of Estonia because the fucking nobles in Sejm didn’t feel like funding the war
-Grant Cossacks their priviledges and split Ruthenia from Crown of Poland to create the Commonwealth of Three Nations. That way the Commonwealth could have survived and there wouldn’t be Chmielnicki’s Hetmanate uprising or the Deluge (most devastating conflict in Polish history)
-Force Władysław IV Vasa to accept the goddamn orthodoxy and remain the Tsar of Muscovy, making Russia a subject/union partner of Poland
-Use the famous battle of Vienna victory in some way. Sobieski tried to continue the campaign against the Ottomans, but was eventually defeated. With hindsight though, he should probably have allied with the Turks and taken Vienna himself…
-It’s believed that the Polish Army was well-disciplined and strong enough to actually win the November Uprising, and that the revolt failed because of chaotic, abysmal leadership and lack of participation of the peasants (which was a fault of the abysmal leadership)
-During the Polish-Bolshevik war, whip the imbecile traitorous nationalists (Roman Dmowski’s ND) into submission and have the peace delegation be led by Piłsudskites (socialists and federationists). If the negotiations aren’t led by russophiles who negotiate as if Poland lost the war, then Poland gets the entirety of Belarus and more Ukrainian lands on day 1 (bolsheviks were really desperate for peace). Of course a pro-Intermarium delegation wouldn’t exclude Ukrainian delegates from the talks, so I believe it would have been possible to then press Russia to recognise Ukrainian People’s Republic.
If Russia didn’t want to, then break the talks, muster the army for a one last offensive and capture Kyiv again. Then resume the negotiations, now with independent Ukraine as a status quo. The intermarium alliance/federation of Poland, Ukraine and Belarus (and potentially Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia) that could be created after a successful peace conference would not only have less ethnic problems that Poland had, but it would also be a military hegemon in eastern europe instead of a secondary power that the ND nationalists delegated Poland into because they were scared of Jews…
-This one is France’s fault, but in 1930s Piłsudski proposed a joint preemptive invasion of Germany to remove Hitler from power, because he was clearly a threat and disregarding the treaty of Versailes. France refused. Which is a shame because ww2 could have been avoided
-This one meanwhile is Czechoslovakia’s and USSR’s fault: leaders of Poland and Czechoslovakia signed a treaty that stated that after ww2 the two countries would form a Polish-Czechoslovak federation. Everything was set in stone, the only things left were to negotiate the details and, obviously, finish the war and set both countries free. But then Stalin noticed and sent a strongly-worded letter to the Czechoslovakian president, who folded immediately and withdrew from all deals and treaties with Poland, killing the idea of the cordial federation… and immediately after the war ended Czechoslovakia tried to invade Poland (again) to annex the Kłodzko region in Lower Silesia
So yeah, Poland is basically the champion of winning impossible wars and glorious battles and then not being able to benefit from it in any way, most of the times because of shitty politicians
If things had gone a bit better in our sea war with England, I’d be writing this in Ditch and you’d all understood it.
Second comment – I appreciate that my fellow countrymen (me included) are the most numerous in the comments here.
We are truly keeping up our national tradition of complaining and this is k*rwa beatiful.
Hungary had way too many missed opportunities.
The Battle of Kressenbrunn (1260): The future Stephen V fucked up big time by attacking the forces of Ottokar II prematurely (before all Hungarian forces crossed the Morava river). A victory here could have secured all of Austria and Styria for the Árpáds.
Nipping the Ottoman threat in the bud: John V Roman Emperor came practically begging Louis I of Hungary to attack the Ottomans and drive them out of the Balkans. During their initial meeting, John managed to offend Louis by not descending from his horse. Maybe in relation to this, Louis tied his help to the condition of John mending the Schism with Rome. John agreed but not much came of it. In the end, Louis’ armies did fight the Ottomans on two occassions, but these were very small scale conflicts, so much so that historians can’t even agree on their outcomes.
Had Louis actually put in the effort to muster a large force against the Ottomans, he probably would have had no trouble of clearing them from Europe. (Later on they could have come back, but maybe not.)
Charles II reign: Charles II was murdered by the supporters of King Mary and her mother Mother-Queen Elisabeth of Bosnia. This set off a chain reaction that destabilised the country for decades, severely weakened royal power and also led to the long-term loss of Dalmatia. Had the assassination attempt failed and the perpetrators got caugh, Charles II could have solidified his reign, keeping the strong royal authority of Charles I and Louis I’s kingdom intact. Maybe he could have also managed to unite the two Anjou claims via a marriage between his son, Ladislaus (of Naples) and the daughter of Louis I, Mary.
This not only would have secured strong royal power in Hungary (and maybe create the foundations of a long lasting ruling dynasty), but also would have meant the establishment of a personal union between Hungary and Naples. This union would have been strong on both land and sea, and could have fought the Ottomans (and also Venetians or anyone else) very effectively.
Peace of Szeged (1444): It was a very favourable peace deal with the Ottomans which was broken by Vladislaus I (III of Poland and Lithuania) as a result of the urging of the Papal legate present in the country. If Vladislaus would have kept the peace, he could have reaped its benefits, he could have solidified his rule in his realms, and maybe also manage to secure his succession before dying like a moron.
Battle of Varna (1444): Had Vladislaus not charged into the bodyguards of the Sultan, the battle would have been won by Hunyadi. Vladislaus could have lived, secured his realms and established his dynasty. On top of this, the war could have resulted in the restoration of Bulgaria (maybe with John Hunyadi as its new king). This would have been a serious setback for the Turks (with maybe more to come).
Matthias Corvinus: Had this man actually married someone who could produce him a legal heir, who would have properly carried on his legacy, Hungary might have remained strong enough to keep the Ottomans outside Hungary’s borders permanently. Also, Matthias or his successor could have secured a hefty sum in exchange for the return of Austrian lands to the Habsburgs and the sale of Bohemian lands to Vladislaus of Bohemia.
Royal election of 1490-’92: Had Maximilian von Habsburg been elected King of Hungary, he could have made Buda and Hungary the centre of his empire. He also would have had the means to combat the Ottomans and keep them outside of Hungary.
Battle of Keresztes (1596):
The Crusader army practically won the battle but began to plunder the Ottoman camp prematurely. While the Habsburg army lost cohesion, the Ottomans managed to recover and turn the tides of the battle. Had the Christian army been just a little more disciplined (or lucky) and won the battle decisively, then that could have set of a chain of events resulting in the early liberation of Central Hungary from Ottoman occupation and the reunification of all of Hungary. Hungarian elements in the Christian army were much more prominent in this war than during the Great Turkish War (a century later), so the circumstances would have been much more favourable. The country would have also been spared from another century of constant warfare and plunder.
Battle of Szentgotthárd (1664): It was a remarkable victory against the Turks which was followed up by a humiliating peace treaty. The Habsburgs feared a French attack, so they wanted peace with the Ottomans ASAP. Like so, a perfect opportunity to liberate Central Hungary from the Turks was completely abandoned. (This had some serious ripple effects down the line.)
The 18th century was pretty unremarkable from a Hungarian POV in terms of missed opportunities, but maybe the country’s tariff policy could be mentioned. The way it was set up, it hampered the growth of industry and solidifed Hungary as a primarily agricultural country.
1848: Relations with the Court and Austria could have been handled better. Letting Jelačić get away at Pákozd was certainly a mistake. The war with Austria could have been averted.
1849: Kossuth’s “declaration of independence” was a huge mistake which made negotiations with the Court and Austria impossible. It also gave a casus belli for the Russian intervention.
It’s a very extreme what if, but if Kossuth could have been shut up and exluded from military decisions, and then Görgey was allowed to follow the strategy of fighting the Austrians and Russians separately, then maybe (just maybe) the Hungarian forces could have defeated first the attacking Austrians, then the invading Russians too in separate battles.
The era of Dualism: The Hungarian leadership should have done more to properly and honestly address the grievances of the ethnic minorities. It could have gone a long way to keep all sections of society remain firmly loyal to the country even in hardships such as a defeat in a world war.
1900s: All those goddamn squabbling between the government and opposition and also with the Austrians sid a real number on the defence budget of Austria-Hungary. Had investment into defence been higher, then defeat in the Great War would have been much, much less likely (and disintegration even moreso).
Everything since 1989 (especially since 2004, the ascension to the EU): Others already wrote about it, so I won’t go into detail, but holy shit, how can a country fumble such an unprecedented opportunity!? It’s quite honestly infuriating!
King Willem II of the Netherlands and his father King Willem I who had such a terrible polici that the kingdom of the Netherlands fell apart if they didn’t miss there opportunity the history of Europa would be complete different
Seeing the “central European” ultranationalist comments, it is to be expected that if it had not been for the succession of terrible misfortunes, Poland should be colonizing Alpha-Centauri right now.
Destroying the computers in Bletchley at the end of WW2 and sending all the programmers and admin people home with strict instructions not to talk about anything for 30 years. The US took everything they had legitimately learnt from Bletchley and created the computer industry. It could have been the second Industrial Revolution that Britain had dominated and we’d probably still have an empire and be far richer as a country now. So on balance a huge change with mixed morality.
Count Aranda plan in 1783.
In Spain, after helping the 13th colonies to gain it’s independence with France this count in a show of pragmatism and lucidity foresaw that the independence of the spanish viceroyalties in America where a matter of time and thus presented a plan.
Just do not try to avoid the inevitable and push to the independence of those territories, in a peaceful manner an maintaining the influence of the spanish crown over them.
It would mean split those territories in three independent kingdoms, one in Mexico (new Spain) other in the north part of South America (Tierra firme) and the south cone (río de la plata) sitting heirs of the royal Spanish house in their thrones and keeping Cuba and Puerto rico as provinces The metropoli Spain.
The monarch sitting in Spain would take the title of emperor being the new monarchs obligated to maintain trade privileges and defense help between them.
This plan seeked to limit the foreign influence, specially the British one to block their access to the Hispanic American markets.
But as we know pragmatism and lucidity never where traits of the bourbon house, this plan was introduced to one king ( Carlos III) and a similar one to the successor ( Carlos IV) the first one dismissed it, blind to the criollos aspirations problems saw the independence as the worst case scenario possible, the second king was too busy with napoleon and probably would have done the same as the later.
A lot of people in Spain and Hispanic America would see this as the dream of a “Hispanic empire nostalgic” but just think for one second what would have mean for the Hispanic hemisphere maintain a power and influence on the world in the likeness of the nowadays Anglo saxon alliance of the five eyes (USA, UK, Canada, new Zealand and Australia) and how might be translate to the standard of living of the population of those areas and how the present might have been, the face of the whole western world would have been different.
Belarus, I think I don’t need to explain that. It was richer than Poland in 1991
Poland, already a ton of comments here, my vote would be on liberum veto. But who remembers that of course, so now we’ll get to see the whole EU finding out why this idea is bad, actually. Yay!
The fact Northern Ireland was created to be a “Protestant state for a Protestant people”.
Had Catholics here been given the same rights and cultural freedom as Protestants up here then the violence, sectarianism and hatred that went on for decades and decades might not have happened. We’re still suffering from how NI and its society was created today.
Northern Ireland was basically destined to become what it did when almost 40% of its population was treated as 2nd class citizens for decades.
For Germany I’d say it’s the 1848 revolutions. If they had managed to establish a German nation state on democratic foundations without making mortal enemies of France in a war – a lot of the causes of the major conflicts in the 20th century are removed.
For Bulgaria – not starting the Second Balkan war…
There is no guarantee that would have prevented the participation in WWI and WWII, but would have prevented the first national catastrophe, which might have swayed the participation in WWI.
Tl;dr – let me dream.
1768-1772. J.F. Struense was the mentally ill king’s personal doctor, and more or less took over as regent.
He made laws that were inching towards to human rights and democracy.
The nobility cut this short, and in 1772 he was beheaded for high treason.
The 1657 war against Sweden that Denmark itself started, which led to losing Scania.💔 But Sweden would probably have attacked us, or we would have attacked them at some other point. We were always at war.
In any case, it was a stupid war started by a stupid king.
France invented the Minitel in the 1980’s: A cheap terminal consisting of a screen with a folding keyboard attached to it. It used the user’s phone connection and made it possible to chat, look for dates, book train or concert tickets, check news… It was like a basic Internet that was available to many people even with zero computer knowledge. I wasn’t living in France when the Internet arrived and the Minitel became obsolete, but basically, France could have been 10 years ahead in internet access.
Freeing ourselves on our own during the Ottoman rule period. If we had done so, we might have been free from the toxic russian sphere of influence and might have been ten times the country we are today.
Then we missed on building a progressive, fair and European state after the fall of socialism. Instead we let former socialist leaders take over our institutions and sink us into an even deeper crisis of mafia rule and corruption.
Chatham, Battle of the Medway. We burned the British ships or took them back to the Netherlands. If we would have burned the wharfs too the UK would be like Sudan or Haïti right now.
If we didn’t allow communists to take over after WW2. Our economy potential has always been super high but the communists ruined it and chained us to Eastern block.
Even 30 years after the revolution, it’s still not where it could have been had we have been part of Marshall’s plan and the EEC.
For Hungary, we were in the best scenario after the fall of Communism.
Our regime wasn’t nearly as brutal as East Germany’s or Romania’s, we didn’t have a bloody civil war, like Yugoslavia, and we joined NATO and the EU relatively easily. We could’ve built a country like Slovenia, or Czechia, yet we became a rump puppet state of Russia.
If Finland or the Finnish goverment at the time wasn’t so paranoid about debt, we could have armed and trained ourselves properly for the Winter War. One historian has estimated that 100k more troops could have been trained and equipped. That’s almost the size of the army that defended the Karelian Isthmus and eventually ran out of strength.
This could really have changed the course of the history, more favourable peace treaty could have kept us away from the Continuation War / Operation Barbarossa, not having to resettle the 400k Karelian population and not having to pay the war reparations could have made wonders for our economy after the Second World War ended.
I am from Sweden. when Norway found oil they offered to share it with us, i. exchange for half of Volvo and I believe saab.
we turned that down, and the bloody norwegians has not and will NEVER let us live that down.
Maybe losing our overseas territories. If not we could have had places with nice weather in the winters by like the Dutch do. France, you have your riviera, you don’t need Guadeloupe 😆
we could have rallied around common sense and rationality and kicked trump to the curb as soon as he stepped into the political ring, but no. we have to tear it all apart and lose everything instead.
Like with most country that gets into oil/gas not investing in other branches/industries. Norway at the forefront in computers in the 70s/80s. Delivering stuff to places like CERN etc… and there was also norwegians that invented the GSM etc.. Though few if none were willing to invest money. With all the knowledge etc. We could probably had a norwegian version of nokia or ericcson.. Were also into electric cars before it got big.
UK – not creating a Norwegian style state wealth fund from Scotland’s huge oil reserves. Country could have been veeery diffferent today