A long time ago, we did an assignment on the beginning of World War One. Even though there have been historians studying the causes of the first world war for- oh, I don’t know, 104 years, we had to come up with our own theory. How did World War One start? It’s a convoluted question, and the answer is just as messy.
Luckily, World War Two’s causes lend themselves in a much more understanding way. Essentially, you can tie it back to the consequences of the first World War. Lingering anger, disappointment, and fear came back on a European scale and slowly went global. Old alliances stayed the same, old enemies fought again.
But what if they didn’t? A million causes fed into the full-blown fighting spirit of the war, and just one change could have tipped everything to end up differently. We can take a key event- say the Munich Agreement, and twist it on its head, tracking where it might end up. Would we end up here, again? In the case of my reimagining of the agreement between Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain, the answer is no.
Our story starts with the Munich Agreement. In 1938, the prime minister of Britain met with the chancellor of Germany. These two men, Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler, signed a very loose agreement heavily implying that Britain and Germany have no intention of ever going to war against each other again, although never doing so much as to promise it. Britain was trying to protect themselves, but at the same time, they were not looking to condone the behavior of Hitler and his regime. In a balance between these needs, the Munich Agreement came to be.
But what if it didn’t?
When coming up for options for Britain, I thought of one that is so opposite of history that it fascinated me. In a desperate effort to protect themselves from another devastating war, Britain allies itself with Germany. This is a decision that doesn’t include France. I made this a Britain-only historical change because it’s out of my realm of belief to even pretend there is a world where 1930’s France and Germany could have become friends. However, I do not find it unbelievable that a fearful Britain would abandon their morals in place of safety. Even after the First World War, Britain still had a “Britain First” international policy. Despite their unsettlement with Hitler’s actions, I don’t doubt that there is a reality where an Anglo-German alliance would exist. To show how this would have changed from the actual Munich Agreement, I took an old New York Times article from 1938, and altered it to reflect my alternative history.
