AHC: Prevent 9/11 From Happening

[Colonel Zoidberg]

East Prussia, are you serious? You would have to ethnically cleanse the area of Poles as well as Germans for that to work. Historically they around number 3 in antisemitism behind Nazi Germany and Russia. That is about it.

Ehh, they live next door to people who threaten to drive them into the sea OTL. Jews as a people are pretty thick-skinned about that sort of thing. They kind of have to be.

That and I was thinking more along the lines of “incentivize Poles living in East Prussia to move.” Telling a Pole living in East Prussia, “Hey, we know your homeland just got the hell beaten out of it, but we’re moving a bunch of beleaguered Jews here. But take this amount of cash and move eastward and maybe have a better life” will get a lot of Poles to say, “eh, what the hell” and take the cash. Especially if they didn’t already own property.

For me, the real wrinkle would be that the new Jewish State would probably be behind the Iron Curtain or divided.

 

[Johnrankins]

Obviously, you could prove that Polish Antisemitism, which "Poles sucked with their mothers' milk", was well above Lithuanian, Latvian,Ukrainian or Hungarian level?

Around that is a good estimate. It is a country long known for it. All countries have their strengths and weaknesses and that is one of its weaknesses historically. It is less true today.

 

[Jan Olbracht]

Around that is a good estimate. It is a country long known for it. All countries have their strengths and weaknesses and that is one of its weaknesses historically. It is less true today.

History of Poland is quite long, and being known for something does not mean it is accurate. Before all, Poland is also known for cavalrymen charging with sabres and lances against tanks.

 

[David T]

Obviously, there are all sort of ways to kill bin Laden at various times, and that stops the specific attack. But the idea of using hijacked planes to attack well-known buildings had occurred to other terrorists before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_8969 For that matter, "In a foreshadowing of al-Qaeda and 9/11, the success of aeroplane flight suggested these new planes as weapons. SR terrorists considered flying a dynamite-packed biplane into the Winter Palace, so the Okhrana in 1909 ordered the monitoring of all flights as well as people learning to fly and members of aero-clubs. It is a mark of the Okhrana's excellence that in 1909 it was imaginative enough to envisage a crime that was beyond the scope of the FBI and the CIA in the twenty-first century." Simon Sebag Monterfiore, Young Stalin, pp. 86-7. https://books.google.com/books?id=kouXUFhmodEC&pg=PA86 https://books.google.com/books?id=kouXUFhmodEC&pg=PA87

 

[Duke Andrew of Dank]

Among other options, have either Clinton or Bush assassinate Bin Laden in 2000 or August.

 

[UCB79]

Obviously, there are all sort of ways to kill bin Laden at various times, and that stops the specific attack. But the idea of using hijacked planes to attack well-known buildings had occurred to other terrorists before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_8969 For that matter, "In a foreshadowing of al-Qaeda and 9/11, the success of aeroplane flight suggested these new planes as weapons. SR terrorists considered flying a dynamite-packed biplane into the Winter Palace, so the Okhrana in 1909 ordered the monitoring of all flights as well as people learning to fly and members of aero-clubs. It is a mark of the Okhrana's excellence that in 1909 it was imaginative enough to envisage a crime that was beyond the scope of the FBI and the CIA in the twenty-first century." Simon Sebag Monterfiore, Young Stalin, pp. 86-7. https://books.google.com/books?id=kouXUFhmodEC&pg=PA86 https://books.google.com/books?id=kouXUFhmodEC&pg=PA87

And IIRC, earlier in 2001 a movie was in development in which Jackie Chan was tasked with trying to stop terrorists from blowing up The World Trade Center. Said film of course was later shelved.