Balmung on Jun 21st 2018 at 10:06:13 PM
Last Edited By:
Balmung on Jul 12th 2018 at 3:22:02 PM
Page Type: trope
In a normal What If? story, it is asked "What if something went differently?". For example, "What if the South won the Civil War?". In a Double-Blind What-If, it is asked, from the perspective of people in the What If? scenario, "what if things went they way they did historically/canonically?", which can produce a scenario that, while seeming plausible to the people of the What If? and superficially similar to the real outcome, also very different than the real course of events despite the key event turning out as it did historically.
Much like Alternate History as a whole, Double-Blind What-Ifs can be employed to try to assess just how likely our own history was without hindsight making the history we know seem nearly inevitable.
- In The Man in the High Castle, wherein the Axis won World War 2, there is an In-Universe book entitled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy that asks "what if the Allies won World War 2?", and even concludes that it would be followed by a Cold War... between the USA and UK, the latter of which has become an incredibly racist dictatorship.
- Star Trek: Enterprise: In "In a Mirror, Darkly", the Mirror Universe version of Captain Jonathan Archer recalls to T'Pol the First Contact between Earth and Vulcan, where Zefram Cochrane killed the Vulcans and stole their ship, and idly wonders if things might have turned out differently in the universe if it had been peaceful (which is what happened in the prime universe and is actually shown in the film Star Trek: First Contact).
- In Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg, wherein Germany won the Weltkrieg, events about In-Universe novels present two reversals of its initial what-if of "What if Germany won World War One''.
- In the first, Erich Maria Remark (known to many in the west as Erich Maria Remarque) writes a book entitled A Third Reich, which asks "What if the Entente won the Weltkrieg?". Among the first differences is that, since it is common knowledge in Kaiserreich that Woodrow Wilson was a staunch isolationist who would never get the United States involved in a European war, it has Theodore Roosevelt, a well-known interventionist, win the 1912 elections and bring the United States into the Great War on the side of the Entente. After its defeat, Germany eventually is taken over by an extreme nationalist party called the Valkists headed by a (fictional) Great War veteran named Adam Dressler, who are much more socially progressive and inclined towards neo-paganism than their historical counterparts and in which Adolf Hitler (who died in Kaiserreich's timeline) is a mere economic minister of dubious competence. Furthermore, since Huey Long wasn't assassinated in Kaiserreich and Franklin Delano Roosevelt died of polio in 1921, Long is still a prominent politician in the United States, while Roosevelt's rise to power hasn't been quite as rapid as in our timeline and he is making his first presidential bid in 1936. Also, without Wilson's insistence on national self-determination, Italy was able to claim the spoils it wanted from the Great War and doesn't feel it has suffered a "mutilated victory" as it did in our history, thus preventing the rise of Italian fascism. The book has also been defictionalized as the mod Führerreich: Legacy Of The Great War, named after the title of Remark's book in an earlier iteration of the event.
- In the second, The Red Flood by Lithuanian author Ignas Ã…Â einius, the What If? is reversed instead as "What if Germany lost the Weltkrieg?". In its course of events, Russia overperforms history in the Brusilov Offensive and France launches a massive attack at the same time. However, the French offensive fails and the losses mount on the western front, even though Russia manages to avert revolution. With no end in sight on the western front and no hope of American entry to revitalize the lines due to Woodrow Wilson's well-known isolationism, France and Germany in fall to revolutions at home, with France being taken over by ultranationalists and Germany by socialists. With the largest players in the war removed by way of revolution, the war ends with no real victor. Come 1936 and the French nationalists are itching for a rematch and the German socialists and their Hungarian allies want to spread the revolution around the world. Russia, having sacrificed so much in the Great War for no real gains, has subscribed to a national myth similar to the Italian "Mutilated Victory" myth and has seen Admiral Alexandr Kolchak assume dictatorial power of a new ultranationalist government that seeks to reclaim Russian glory and the spoils it feels it was denied. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom wants to maintain the balance of power and hold on to its colonial empire. Like A Third Reich, it is being defictionalized as the Game Mod Red Flood, which adds the additional points of divergence of Japan underperfoming at Tsushima Straits and Dmitri Bogrov missing his shot and shooting Tsar Nicholas II instead of prime minister Pyotr Stolypin, contributing Russia's increased endurance in WWI and giving more room for different outcomes in the far east, which isn't detailed in the event.
- Double-Blind What-Ifs are a moderately common genre on Alternate History boards, such as AlternateHistory.com and the older Soc.history.what-if. It is often phrased as "DBWI [historical event]?" (eg. "DBWI Rome defeated Carthage?") without a specific pre-existing What If? work, inviting responders to create or imagine their own What If? setting from which to write the double-blind what-if.
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