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[TamerVirus]

Oh look, so many post while none reference Hitler!

SO WHAT IF

WHAT IF HITLER

[mainiac]

Let Hitler be the proposition "P".
P->P
There ya go.

[Guardian G.I.]

Oh look, so many post while none reference Hitler!

SO WHAT IF

WHAT IF HITLER

What if Hitler passed his entrance exams and got enrolled into the Vienna Art Academy in 1907?

[WealthyRadish]

May not have changed anything, since he might still join the German Army later with the outset of WWI. Though maybe not, if he hadn't have moved to Munich. At any rate, without Hitler and the Nazi party, it's still unlikely that the Weimar Republic would've survived the depression, and it probably would've been replaced by a (still fascist) military dictatorship instead that would've also launched a war to at least overturn Versailles (if not conquer new territory). May have delayed WWII by a decade or so, though, since Hitler was quite the impatient little bugger, and the antisemitism probably wouldn't go as far as genocide.

[Digital Hellhound]

Idea for an alternate history novel: the Norse colony on Vinland survives, and Cnut hangs onto England.

I have to run to class now, but maybe tonight I'll have better ideas...

Not quite what you were looking for, but this thing here has America be empty of people when Europeans find their way there. It starts with a successful Vinland, but plenty of nations colonize 'round the place and butterflies take the world in a very different direction. Will stretch your belief at various points, but it's very enjoyable overall.

[Guardian G.I.]

What if the Umayyad Caliphate's invasion of Southern Gaul in 719 was successful?

[mainiac]

It wasn't?  Oh so that's why the conservatives accuse us islamo-fascist liberals of hating the west.

But that's a bit far back in history to really say.  Maybe the western world goes islamic.  Maybe there is a backlash and Andalusia collapses in 900.

[Culise]

They run into the same logistics issues that eventually scuppered almost every other attempt at a trans-Pyrenees empire after the Visigoths - the Pyrenees themselves.  Even today, these are rather inhospitable; it's not for no reason that the primary thoroughfares are at the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, as several of the central passes tend to be closed in the winter to snows.  This was a critical factor in the independence of the lords of the region, in that they were disconnected from Neustria by the Central Massif, from Iberia by Pyrenees, and from Italy by the Alps; by the bye, the fact that one of these three is not like the others in degree is also a significant geographic factor in which of the three the Provençal and Languedoc lands ended up dominated by, politically and culturally.  The Franks themselves ran into the same problem with the Spanish March, which they had difficulty in extending against both Christian and Muslim opponents in Iberia and which itself eventually became independent under such lords as Barcelona and Andorra due to the same inability to exert central control, and much of the Umayyad conquest of Septimania was reliant on coming to terms with local lords as well as their military forces under arms.  Just as what historically befell Septimania, Muslim control of the Languedoc and especially Aquitaine would not have been likely to last beyond the Berber Revolt in the 740s, which historically was a critical distraction that cost them their Septimanian conquests (lost to Pepin of France) and Cantabria, Galicia, and León (to Alfonso of Asturias), as well as contributing significantly to the effective disintegration of central authority as a consequence of how the Al-Andalusians were forced to deal with the remnants of the Syrian army that helped them crush the Berbers (to wit, the Syrians were too powerful to defeat militarily, but too weak to displace the Al-Andalusians entirely, forcing a political compromise that granted them their own fiefs/junds and essentially fragmented the Arabs' political power).  This trend was only exacerbated by the decline of the Umayyads in the east and the conflict between the local Fihrids and Umayyad exiles fleeing the Abbasids, and wouldn't really reverse itself until 779-783 when the first Umayyads to rule from al-Andalus finally defeated the last of the Fihrids' partisans and thoroughly crushed the lords of the Upper March in Zaragosa, significantly behind the borders of even the historical 720s.

Likely, the biggest end result is that we'd think of Charles the Great (that is, Charlemagne) instead of Charles Martel when we think of France's formative heroes.  And maybe Pepin the Short, though he really ended up as the Phillip to his son's Alexander even in our history.  Given that Charlemagne is already one of the great giants of France's formative heroes, that's really not that much of a change; the biggest is that Martel goes the way of Odo of Aquitaine in popular history.

[Sheb]

Well, we'd need to change all those islamophobic graffiti referencing Poitiers.

[FearfulJesuit]

OK, I have something of a Vinland-survives-sketch.

In 1001, Erik the Red brings his company of 160 men to L'Anse Aux Meadows and settles there. The early days of the colony are precarious and marked by conflict with the Beothuk, but by 1030 or so a dozen or so villages, comprising about 1500-2000 people, dot the Newfoundland coast. The Norse mainly live on fishing and cattle-raising. By 1100 the Norse colonies, including a largish minority of Beothuk-Norse creoles, are about as big as Iceland population-wise and have started to expand to Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, which are warmer and allow agriculture (mainly rye and some wheat).

At this stage, the impact on North America is small and the impact on Europe virtually nil. Some contact with Norway and Denmark is maintained, but since expeditions are expensive and the Vinlanders don't really have much to pay in the way of tribute, it's sporadic. The government, so far as there is one, consists of a "governor" at L'Anse Aux Meadows with no real power, appointed by Copenhagen, and the smaller singr (parliaments etc.) of the individual villages.

It probably isn't until 1300 or so that the situation starts to bear any fruit: the last Greenlanders, faced with a cooling climate and pressure from the Inuit, migrate to Vinland, and the expeditions from Denmark become even more infrequent. About 150,000-200,000 Vinlanders and creoles occupy Newfoundland, PEI, and Nova Scotia; smaller Norse settlements are found as far away as Cape Cod and Montréal. In the absence of a central government, Newfoundland, PEI and Nova Scotia have founded the Ausing, a central parliament and court. It doesn't (and can't) do much other than settle disputes between villages and occasionally send small expeditionary forces against hostile Native Americans, and even those have limited scope. The ethnic situation is becoming much fuzzier, as European grains and cattle raising have spread among the Native Americans. (Smallpox may not be an issue. It wasn't introduced to Iceland until 1241, and may never have hit Vinland at all; and of course cowpox confers some sort of immunity).

I have to get going, but I'll continue this train of thought...