this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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Alternate history is one of my favorite topics, and I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

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[–] Outwit1294@lemmy.today 4 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

I think there is a show about this.

I imagine that we would be more scientifically advanced but more radical, less liberal.

However, everything eventually changes over time. The world has managed to steer towards fascist regimes after the win of USA in WW2. It is not impossible that Hitler would have made us more liberal today.

[–] tyo_ukko@sopuli.xyz 11 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

I imagine that we would be more scientifically advanced

I highly doubt this. The fascist regimes are not really welcoming for open science having scientists with freedom of thought. The science would be more like in the Soviet Union, where science education was great, but the advances were reduced to "government approved" tracks like space, weapons and maybe some medicine. Hard to see something like computational revolution stemming from a repressed regime.

[–] Outwit1294@lemmy.today 0 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Germany made some insane progress under Hitler

[–] 5ibelius9insterberg@feddit.org 9 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah… in optimising weapons and stuff that carries weapons. Imagine what could have been, if the same amount of money/time/whatever would have been invested in medicine or renewable energy.

[–] Outwit1294@lemmy.today -1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

A lot of scientific breakthroughs are made like this. Internet was made by the military. Rockets were made because we were trying to outarm each other.

While it would be best if we didn’t kill each other, the optimised outcome is getting scientific progress while killing each other. The silver lining of concentration camps is the human experimentation which gave solid evidence for solid science.

[–] tyo_ukko@sopuli.xyz 5 points 20 hours ago

The Soviets also made scientific breakthroughs within their military industrial complex. Not much of that trickled down to ordinary people, which then hindered it from being further applied.

The silver lining of concentration camps is the human experimentation which gave solid evidence for solid science.

How much of "solid science" are we talking about? My understanding is that it was not a lot, and its quality was rather poor.

[–] dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de 2 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

I imagine that we would be more scientifically advanced

Much of the scientific advances in the second half of the 20th century were driven either directly or indirectly by the Cold War:

  • rockets were first developed to deploy nuclear warheads, then to deploy spy satellites and eventually to demonstrate technological superiority
  • computers were needed to calculate rocket trajectories
  • the internet was developed to connect defense systems in the event of incoming nuclear missiles, either to launch countermeasures quickly or to stay in contact if the surface gets uninhabitable

Without two super powers of similar strength who have access to both nuclear bombs and rockets, all of this would happen way more slowly and the main reason why the USA and Soviet Union developed rockets at a similar pace was because they both employed German rocket scientists after the war. Without this, there would be no space race, just slow and steady progress of one power who can then keep everyone else from catching up.