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Political and cultural figures who could've had lives/careers in different countries

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This is a trope we see occasionally, but I feel like there's a lot of unmined potential in it.

There are quite a few prominent people who either could have a) been raised in different countries than OTL had their families' circumstances been different ("AH Twins" may come into play here), or b) emigrated to a different country and become strongly associated with their new home (Josephine Baker comes to mind as an OTL example). Almost all big PODs will eventually start to affect migration patterns and so there are many ways for this concept to come into play!

Examples I've seen in AH before include, just off the top of my head:
  • "Jorge Romney Pratt," leading Mexican politico
  • Boris Johnson growing up in New York, or Winston Churchill raised there by his American mother
  • Roem's book The Limpid Stream is full of these figures, what with far less emigration from Russia - I remember AH-twin versions of Ayn Rand and Tom Daschle and I'm sure there were more
One I've never seen used (although I think I've talked about it on this forum) is David Miliband, who studied at MIT and was active in politics while he was there - he got beat up by racists while campaigning for Boston mayoral candidate Mel King. Could he have decided to pursue a political career in Massachusetts rather than Britain? I don't know if that's plausible, but it's the kind of thing I'm thinking of for this thread.

@Nofix might be a source of inspiration here.
 
I once read that Erdogan’s family nearly migrated to Germany, so you could have him as a rising star during the Schrödinger years, and later on as one of those controversial figures that sticks around too long in the NRW or Hamburg SPD or whatever.

I can’t find where I found it though, so it may as well be a lot of bogus, as there are more conspiracy theories, but you can really have any ‘Dark Turk’ migrate to Western Europe. Opposition leader Kilicdaroglu’s uncle migrated to the Netherlands for example.
 
* Iacob Heraclid,also known as Despot Vodă,only went to Moldova out of pure boredom,by 1556 he was already a Palatine Count of the Holy Roman Empire,converted to Protestantism,a accomplished mercenary and academic,killed a random child with a wardrobe and was basically Bronn from Game of Thrones fused with Tyrion. It’s very easy to have him stay in Wittenberg,help his mate Melanchthon and basically just die either of old age or in war,creating a Greek noble family of sorts.

Who knows,maybe the House of Heraclid somehow ends up running Saxony.

* Victor Ponta could have very easily stayed in Paris if he got a bit luckier and become a Valls like figure in the PS/En Marche.

*If the invasion of Egypt went better and Napoleon’s forces somehow ended up near Vallachia,it’s very likely Tudor Vladimirescu ends up being in the French Army than the Ottoman one and it’s quite easily to have him die as a Marshal of the Empire.

*John Turner was born in Surrey and nearly married Princess Margaret and John Tower went to university in London and remained a life long Anglophile-it’s very easy to make a Conservative PM like @Gonzo did.
 
Larry Sanders ,Bernie’s brother, immigrated to Britain in 1969 and was a Green Party councilor. Would be fun to have them be the Mario and Luigi of Vermont.
BClick said:
Boris Johnson growing up in New York
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Methinks he probably would basically be another Joe Scarborough or Rod Blagojevich. Comes into congress in 2000/2002, his appearances on various new shows make him national famous, runs(/wins) for mayor of NYC or governor, and he goes down in a scandal and get gets pardoned by Trump. Or after he retires he gets hosting (which channel if he’s depends pro or anti Trump). Not impossible he falls into the reality tv circuit or podcasts.
 
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Zulfikar Ali Bhutto worked for Helen Gahagan Douglas's Senatorial Campaign in the California Senate Election against Nixon in 1950 because he thought that a woman should win. Had she won who knows maybe he could've stayed in American politics to some degree. From Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan by Stanley Wolpert:

bhutto.png
 
Henry Kissinger's family fled Germany when he was young to escape persecution by the Nazis. In a world where the Nazis never took power you could very easily have Heinz Kissinger be a major player in German foreign policy, though he could also end up being just a professor. I think the funniest outcome would be the Communists taking power after WWI and decades down the line Kissinger is a leading diplomat with the unorthodox belief that you can apply Metternich's principles in a socialist context.
 
lerk said:
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto worked for Helen Gahagan Douglas's Senatorial Campaign in the California Senate Election against Nixon in 1950 because he thought that a woman should win.
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This one's nuts, never would have imagined!

Catalunya said:
I once read that Erdogan’s family nearly migrated to Germany, so you could have him as a rising star during the Schrödinger years, and later on as one of those controversial figures that sticks around too long in the NRW or Hamburg SPD or whatever.
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Yokai Man said:
* Iacob Heraclid,also known as Despot Vodă,only went to Moldova out of pure boredom,by 1556 he was already a Palatine Count of the Holy Roman Empire,converted to Protestantism,a accomplished mercenary and academic,killed a random child with a wardrobe and was basically Bronn from Game of Thrones fused with Tyrion. It’s very easy to have him stay in Wittenberg,help his mate Melanchthon and basically just die either of old age or in war,creating a Greek noble family of sorts.

Who knows,maybe the House of Heraclid somehow ends up running Saxony.

* Victor Ponta could have very easily stayed in Paris if he got a bit luckier and become a Valls like figure in the PS/En Marche.

*If the invasion of Egypt went better and Napoleon’s forces somehow ended up near Vallachia,it’s very likely Tudor Vladimirescu ends up being in the French Army than the Ottoman one and it’s quite easily to have him die as a Marshal of the Empire.

*John Turner was born in Surrey and nearly married Princess Margaret and John Tower went to university in London and remained a life long Anglophile-it’s very easy to make a Conservative PM like @Gonzo did.
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Would love some more of these non Anglosphere ones cause most of the examples I can think of are to or from the US (Senator Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming being hereditary British nobility, coulda been in the Lords, for example is one of those that lots of AH folks know about)
 
lerk said:
It came up later in his life, nearly two and a half decades later, when he became Prime Minister:

View attachment 63651
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Lol this hits with me bc I've also been trying to interview (semi) famous people about an event they consider kind of minor in comparison to the rest of their lives - people block out and forget stuff pretty easily. A lot of folks will just have one pat phrase they'll use to describe an event in their past they don't care about.

(Kind of a pre-emptive plug here, I'm writing a history book about this; this post is not a great advertisement for it so I should mention that some folks do have good memories and are down to chat)
 
Something to look at here is what happened to some prominent figures from Poland during the PRL years. General Maczek ended up working as a barman in Edinburgh for a while.

Also President Aleksander Kwaśniewski. In the late 19760s or early 1970s, before his political career, he lived and worked in London (also pulling pints). What if he'd stayed?
 
Eva Jinek is a pretty big television presenter in the Netherlands, but the catch is that she was born in Oklahoma and raised (until she was 11) in Washington D.C. . She’s also one of the few Dutch people truly a fan of Hillary Clinton, so if she stayed in the US I could see her becoming a member of HRC’s inner circle.
 
Red Scare hosts Dasha Nekrasova and Anna Khachiyan, in a world where the Soviet Union never fell and the Cold War continues, become a famous directing duo of films in the Warsaw Pact.
 
@Catalunya : Making a career that soon after Schröder's government gave many ethnics in Germany the citizenship seems unlikely, even if he is a political animal.

Other than that, I guess that in a "Nazis win" TL, many "Aryans" (and people who could pass as such) from conquered countries might have a career in the Reich.

Which ones? Those belonging to either of three groups:
* People who supported the far right IOTL too
* People who care (much) more for power/money/fame than ethics
* People who are very stupid

Hence I had the idea of an ATL Brigitte Bardot marrying an SS officer, settling in Ukraine or so, and raising German shepherds.

Any other suggestions?
 
Max Sinister said:
@Catalunya : Making a career that soon after Schröder's government gave many ethnics in Germany the citizenship seems unlikely, even if he is a political animal.
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I’m not sure how it went in Germany, but by the early 90s there was already a flood of ethnic Turks being elected on the local level from the Dutch Labor Party, though very few got further than local politics due to them mainly functioning as a way to draw/keep the Turkish vote to the party.

Hakki Keskin and Cem Özdemir first entered the Bundestag in the early 90s, and I could see Erdogan being a part of that generation.
 
In one of history's great ironies early in his life Theobald Wolfe Tone repeatedly tried and failed to join the British army. While in university he tried to join the army and go fight against the American colonists but was prevented by his father. Then in 1788 Wolfe Tone tried to enlist with the East India Company, but enlisted too late in the year so there wasn't a ship to take him. Finally he attempted to get William Pitt's government to fund an expedition to create a military colony in Hawaii, but obviously Pitt wasn't having it. So there's a timeline where Wolfe Tone has a long and fruitful career as a soldier in India, and another where he tries (and probably fails let's be honest here) to create a Hawaiian colony.
 
If you want something like that, you'll also need Erdogan to change his political convictions - or hide them very well. Because most ethnics made their career (like Özdemir) in the more or less leftist parties: Bündnis 90/Greens, SPD, PDS.
 
Max Sinister said:
If you want something like that, you'll also need Erdogan to change his political convictions - or hide them very well. Because most ethnics made their career (like Özdemir) in the more or less leftist parties: Bündnis 90/Greens, SPD, PDS.
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Even OTL West-European centre-left parties have numerous minority elected officials who hold more culturally conservative positions. As long as Erdogan doesn’t become an anti-LGBT culture warrior, he’ll be fine.
 
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