while this has a POD pre-1900 all the fall out (at lest 90%) is post 1900, what if Theodor Herzl never came up with Zionism, and the idea of a Jewish state was never popularized?
The Middle East obiviouly is radically different. It is much more peaceful and much less the focus of world attention. There is still a Suez crisis, with France and Britian still attacking Egypt and still pressured to back off by the President Eisenhower. Saddam Huessian ( I think the history of Iraq is still the same) still invades Kuwait and is still kicked out in Opearation Desert Storm. He is still in power because there is now international Jihadist terriorist campaign aimed at the US, so there was no 9 11. George W Bush has no political cover to invade Iraq. Although in this the days of the Arab Spring Saddam is in trouble like his neighbor the dictator of Syria.
with a POD of 1897 I think the butterflies would undo much of the future.
with a POD of 1897 I think the butterflies would undo much of the future.
I wouldn't be that butterfly-happy. A PoD doesn't just create new randomness as if the trajectories set in the prior several hundred years didn't exist. France and Britain would still be the basically same Imperial powers vying for dominance in the middle east. There is no particular reason to believe there would not be a WW1 and WW2 with the same nations involved and same outcome. Zionism is not an earth-shattering movement like Communism or Fascism. It was a minor social movement that affected only a few major nations, one ethnic group, and only a few nations in the near east in a direct way. There would still be conflict between western imperial powers and Arab nationalism. The west would still first colonize and then curry favor with oil-rich Arab kingdoms to secure oil reserves. No Zionism would have no real effect on the rise of Nazism and the eventual holocaust - these events were little, if at all, influenced by Zionism. To me, the most interesting possibility would be a widely different relationship between the US and Arab nationalists. The USA has always been the world's strongest supporter of Israel, and absent a Jewish state the US felt obligated to protect and preserve, America might take a much more flexible view regarding Arab nationalism. Also, absent an Israel supported by the US as a supposedly "crusader" outpost, anti-western Islamic fundamentalism might not develop, or at least be more muted, more to the fringe, and not particularly anti-American.