Vienna Bar Fire, 1913

[lerk]

On another thread, I suggested that this will be a good POD, which while it won't make much of an impact on the world at first, will most likely have a massive impact on the world in the succeeding decades:

Vienna, 1913. Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud, and Stalin all walk into the same bar. A fire breaks out and none of them make it out alive.

Let's suppose that something like this does end up happening in Vienna in 1913. What happens next? When are the changes begin to become apparent from OTL?

 

[Arthur_Phuxache]

The entire 20th and 21st century is completely different, is the best I can come up with.

Comrade Ulyanov says hi!

 

[Yokai Man]

On another thread, I suggested that this will be a good POD, which while it won't make much of an impact on the world at first, will most likely have a massive impact on the world in the succeeding decades:



Let's suppose that something like this does end up happening in Vienna in 1913. What happens next? When are the changes begin to become apparent from OTL?

The main problem is that it’s really unlikely for them to be in the same bar at the same time,given their different social backgrounds. A high class psychologist like Freud would go in bars that a failed unemployed art student like Hitler or a mechanic like Tito wouldn’t be able to afford going to and Stalin is,well,a wanted man and all so he wouldn’t want to stick out for now.

Still though,let’s address some possible changes for fun:

-Hitler’s place is taken by Von Hugenberg,Goering or some other far right figure,with a totalitarian regime still emerging in Germany after 1933,but possibly less likely to start a world war and maybe less harsh

-assuming that the October Revolution still happens in this timeline,Zinoviev or Bukharin takes over after Lenin’s death and runs the Soviet Union less harshly and the Great Purge doesn’t happen,the USSR still remaing however a totalitarian regime

-psychology develops differently,though I’m not sure how as I don’t know much about the history of psychology

 

[Polyphemus]

-psychology develops differently,though I’m not sure how as I don’t know much about the history of psychology

While a lot of Jung's work was developed in correspondence with Freud, he was working at the same time in a different country, so his views might end up more influential.

 

[ShortsBelfast]

By 1913, Freud has already published virtually all his essential theories. We would only be missing a couple of important case studies, his late work trying to reconcile PTSD ("shell shock") with his theories - and the anecdote about "Sometimes Herr Freud a cigar is just a cigar" The historiography would be essentially "Freud and a bunch of nonentities perish in a cafe fire". Hitler, Broz, Trotsky and Stalin would at that point have never appeared likely to make any important historical contribution.
Changes?
Well Martin Freud might be a reasonably important Austrian novelist in this TL, not a minor British one.
The Bolsheviks might never have taken power and almost certainly would have lost the Civil War without Trotsky, he was much more important than Lenin in that regard. Even if a broad left coalition managed to win the Russian Civil War, the immense damage caused by Stalin would be avoided.
German politics would have been much the same up to 1923 and not noticeably different up to 1929. After that, they would have been immeasurably different.
Yugoslavia would have been much the same up to 1941 as Tito was a marginal figure prior to the German invasion. A couple of books on the international Left might have a couple of slightly different footnotes and that would be all. TTL, there probably would never be a German invasion and Yugoslavia gradually evolves into a decentralised Federal monarchy.

 

[Roger II]

The Bolsheviks might never have taken power and almost certainly would have lost the Civil War without Trotsky, he was much more important than Lenin in that regard. Even if a broad left coalition managed to win the Russian Civil War, the immense damage caused by Stalin would be avoided.
German politics would have been much the same up to 1923 and not noticeably different up to 1929. After that, they would have been immeasurably different.

This seems contradictory-a non-Bolshevik Russia or different Russian Civil War outcome almost certainly changes German politics and foreign policy in substantial and important ways post-1917.

 

[ShortsBelfast]

This seems contradictory-a non-Bolshevik Russia or different Russian Civil War outcome almost certainly changes German politics and foreign policy in substantial and important ways post-1917.

Depends, German industrialists and Junkers are going to regard a relatively "nice" Russian Socialist Federation in a similar fashion to the OTL USSR as a potential ally of convenience and are probably prepared to reconcile with Regent Kolchak/Wrangel/Denekin/Yudenich who would have a country to rebuild and letting the Germans have the Sudetenland, Danzig or Austria would be giving somebody else's land to somebody else. I don't mean though that German politics would be identical up to 1929, just that Hitler wasn't a major factor earlier on and that probably pretty much the same political personalities would dominate. There could be "Russia stayed in the war and Erzwald and Rathenau weren't assassinated" butterflies but Germany either way would have been a recovering defeated power.

 

[Arthur_Phuxache]

The main problem is that it’s really unlikely for them to be in the same bar at the same time, given their different social backgrounds.

Maybe they were all killed by a runaway Dreher-Pilsner horse and cart while waiting for a Gemeinde Wien tram.

 

[Roger II]

Yea, I guess my point is mainly "butterfly-netting German politics post-1917 from Russian stuff doesn't make a ton of sense to me"

 

[ShortsBelfast]

Yea, I guess my point is mainly "butterfly-netting German politics post-1917 from Russian stuff doesn't make a ton of sense to me"

No, I agree with you there, I am more thinking that Friedrich Ebert, Wilhelm Marx and Gustav Stresemann would have had some different options and come to some different conclusions/decisions than OTL than that the death of an obscure Austrian street painter would have butterflied completely different chaps into running Germany 1919-1930.

 

[Roger II]

No, I agree with you there, I am more thinking that Friedrich Ebert, Wilhelm Marx and Gustav Stresemann would have had some different options and come to some different conclusions/decisions than OTL than that the death of an obscure Austrian street painter would have butterflied completely different chaps into running Germany 1919-1930.

That makes more sense

 

[OHC]

By 1913, Freud has already published virtually all his essential theories. We would only be missing a couple of important case studies, his late work trying to reconcile PTSD ("shell shock") with his theories - and the anecdote about "Sometimes Herr Freud a cigar is just a cigar"

I'm just half-remembering this from my college notes, but didn't Freud pretty thoroughly revise his theories in 1913 to generalize the Oedipus complex to a general examination of the dawn of our selfhood, and then again after WWI to introduce eros and thanatos?

I think you're right in that his most important contribution to the world at large was providing philosophical and (what was then considered) scientific grounding to the modern idea that our personalities and lives are determined by the consequences of specific events in our lives, rather than by the social categories we are born into. That notion was already out in the wild. But in the smaller circles of psychoanalysis and philosophy I think things might look a little different if he'd died in 1913.

 

[ShortsBelfast]

I'm just half-remembering this from my college notes, but didn't Freud pretty thoroughly revise his theories in 1913 to generalize the Oedipus complex to a general examination of the dawn of our selfhood, and then again after WWI to introduce eros and thanatos?

I think you're right in that his most important contribution to the world at large was providing philosophical and (what was then considered) scientific grounding to the modern idea that our personalities and lives are determined by the consequences of specific events in our lives, rather than by the social categories we are born into. That notion was already out in the wild. But in the smaller circles of psychoanalysis and philosophy I think things might look a little different if he'd died in 1913.

Indeed, I am working largely from memory of a subsidiary psychology course thirty years ago and a module the wife did on Freud where I assisted with the footnotes in her essays! I could well have missed a couple of important details. But essentially Freud was a somebody by 1913 who would have left a significant historical trace whereas the others would have had no significance historically prior to the First World War.