Was WWII....

[Sgt Jasper]

Define 'outcome'.


or example, do you mean simply which side lost? Do you mean where the final front lines and/or the post-war borders were drawn? DO you mean the amounts of death and devastation?

But, in my opinion in general the war was not a one-shot affair. It was a prolonged slug-fest with so many people and so much resources involved, that ultimately the outcome (however we define it) should reflect the balance of some fundamental forces rather than hinging on a particular person, point in time, geographic position and even a strategic decision (no matter how important it may look). So in that sense I am inclined to think that no amount of 'what-ifs' could change the outcome materially.

I disagree. There were any number of possible alternate outcomes in terms of winners and losers, and multitudes of things that could have gone differently. For instance, what if Hitler hadn't called off the Panzers at Dunkirk and had launched Sealion. If the Japanese had followed up Pearl Harbor with an invasion of Hawaii, or even just destroyed the fuel tanks. If Rommel had been allowed to post his reserves close to the beaches in France. If the atomic bombs had fizzled. And perhaps even more important than any of that, if the Germans and Japanese had figured out early on that their codes were cracked, come up with better ones and then changed them often. Nothing is ever inevitable, IMO.