Killing the Past: Can Assassins Change the Course of History?

On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth and died the next day. Roughly 150 years later, Benjamin Jones and Benjamin Olken published an opinion piece in The New York Times asking whether assassins really can change the course of history. The two academics looked at data from both successful and failed assassination attempts from 1875 to 2004 and discovered that while assassinations do have a better chance of causing significant change in autocracies, robust democracies on the other hand are better able to survive the death of their leader. If this is true, suddenly The Interview is a much smarter movie than anyone realized.

Although the article was not alternate history, plenty of alternate and counterfactual historians jumped on the findings. And why not? As Evelyn Leeper pointed out in 2001, alternate histories focusing the assassination of JFK remain one of the most popular topics in alternate history. Both Stuart Schneiderman and Gavriel Rosenfeld commented on the article and while they both approached it from different directions, they generally reaffirmed the power of human agency while criticizing the study for not considering the changes caused if someone survives their assassination (like Lincoln or JFK).

What do I think about the power of assassins to change history? I am going to give a very lawyer answer and say: it depends. For alternate history, it certainly matters. The untimely death of powerful men and women (whether by assassins or other causes) is one of primary means of creating a point of divergence and without it we wouldn't have some of our most influential works (i.e. The Man in the High Castle and "For All Time"). Human agency, however, matters in alternate history because the story needs it to matter. Alternate history has always leaned toward the "rule of cool" thus we often stretch the limits of plausibility so we can tell the story we want to tell.

For counterfactual history, however, things get a little more complicated. Changing the actors on the stage doesn't necessarily change the outcome of the story. For example, assassinating Lincoln in 1861 when the American Civil War was just beginning won't provide the Confederacy with the strategic thinkers, industry, railroads or manpower it would have needed to defeat the Union. Thus the Confederacy still loses the war, but Lincoln's successors (Hannibal Hamlin and whoever comes next) could make enough different decisions during and after the war that in the long-term we may see a vastly different present from the one we inhabit now.

Honestly whether you believe assassins can change the course of history is really a matter of opinion. If you believe in the power of human agency, then yes killing a world leader would create a vastly different history from the one where he or she is still alive. If you believe in the ultimate power of the intangible forces governing history, than no, killing a world leader only changes the names we write in the history books, but not the actual outcome of history. The weakness to both sides, however, is that we will never know for sure. Until someone invents a time machine that allows us the spin off new timelines for study, we are stuck with the history we know, along with the same hypothetical questions on who would you kill/save if you could travel through time.

Which brings me to my final point, I generally find arguing whether killing/saving someone of importance in the past will make a "better" world, is pointless. There are just so many variables it is nearly impossible to predict what may happen and, if Jones and Olken are to be believed, the chance that nothing will happen if your target is the leader of a democracy is rather good.

To sum up: its fun to speculate whether an assassin can change history, but whether they actually do is still up for debate.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a blogger on Amazing Stories. Check out his short fiction. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter.

Op Ed: Priorities

A Mother's Wish

A hundred years ago this week, Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole. However, he had been to the continent earlier (1899), being trapped in the ice over the winter. But this was the beginning of a life of adventure that would lead to his death half-way around the world in Arctic waters several years later. We can ponder what would have happened if he had kept his promise to his mother after she died. She had kept him from life on the sea and insisted that he become a doctor. He promised to go to school towards that goal but left school soon after she died.

If he had honored the promise, he may well have been a doctor in Norway rather than an explorer setting records. He may have saved lives instead of losing his own. But what if his lack of leadership had caused an international failure to dare to reach the poles when they did? Would the British have pursued the task a few years later? And without lessons learned earlier, would they have succeeded anyway?

The Butterfly Effect is a hard one to figure, of course. And the decisions of a pioneer are not always as far reaching as one might think. But the fact that a man chose to defy what many would consider a "sacred" trust in the search for fame, fortune or just curiosity, is one that shows that priorities are sometimes skewed. Someone else would have taken up the challenge, most likely, and history would not have changed much at all. But the lives of hundreds back home may have turned the tide of European history a generation (or two) later.

Again, this is the opinion of just one writer, but when we consider the many lives lost climbing mountains "just because they are there," and going "where no man has been before" for dubious benefits from the efforts, we should step back and consider our priorities. Is the urge for discovery the unknown always worth it?

Such 'second guessing' in alternate history helps us to explore with the imagination without risk of life. We go where no one can go - a reality that is possible and even probable, but never happened. The way things are have come about for reasons we cannot fully understand. On the other hand, when we venture with our informed imaginations, we can learn lessons more easily applied to decisions we make every day. In that way, we can make a difference where we are for the time we are in the present. We can leave the future of this world in the hands of others when we "control" the world of our imagination!

Op Ed: FDR's Dilemma

I present to you a new column for Alternate History Weekly Update, "Op Ed" with Henry Martin.

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Seventy years ago today the United States declared war on Japan after a devastating surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. However, it was not a total surprise, for US Secretary of War Henry Stimson had discussed with US President Roosevelt concerning the escalation of the war in China and Southeast Asia. It was expected that Japan would attack US fleets and the president and his advisers were considering ways to maneuver Japan into firing the first shot.

What if, instead of moving the fleet to Hawaii in early 1941, FDR had deployed the fleet to actively patrol the Pacific between Hawaii and the Philippines? This would have been a 'moving target.' This would have been provocative enough to cause Japan to move on the fleet, but the 'first shot' they fired would not be as devastating.

Better writers than I have written variations of this, I am sure, but the point of this essay is to demonstrate that we can learn perhaps as much from considering alternatives as we can from actual mistakes. This is a function of the alternative history genre that is not often appreciated.

Knowing what we know today, we can backtrack days or even moments from a disaster such as the one on that Sunday morning in 1941 and consider what 'could have,' indeed maybe what 'should have' been done to prevent what many 'knew' was inevitable. In this case, for example, FDR and his advisers took the chance that Japan did not have the means to strike half an ocean away, and they lost that 'bet.' If however, they had taken different measures, such as I supposed above, the US would have begun the war in the Pacific on a stronger footing.

With a intact fleet on the water and ready for battle, Japan may have opted for a different move, perhaps even agreeing to some concessions in French Indochina as requested in November. The war in Europe would have most likely lead to an eventual declaration of war there anyway, and that would have drawn Japan into the war with the US as well. There are so many different twists and turns to consider that a student of history would have to do some intense research to understand the strengths and weaknesses of various campaigns in Europe in 1942 that may have gone differently if the US FDR had planned his Pacific strategy different.

As one works through all the myriad of changes in an alternate history of this magnitude, he becomes aware of the interactions of things far removed from each other. The butterfly and the domino become players on opposite ends of a long string of possibilities and probabilities. Luck and logic coalesce to activate the imagination to perhaps produce a better decision the next time we are faced with a dilemma.

In honor of the 2466 killed that day (including 64 Japanese warriors), we can imagine 'what if' the US president had not taken the chances that he did in 1941. How many lives would have been saved if the attack on Pearl Harbor had been avoided? Perhaps more people would have died in the long run, but not the same ones. There is no way of knowing. But what we can know is that we, with the gift of hindsight, can learn from both fact and fiction.

Toward a better alternative,

Henry Martin