What If They Had Never Existed?

How Would Our World Look Without the Most Influential Historical Figures?

Imagine a world without Hitler.
A world without Newton.
Without Columbus, without Jobs, without Genghis Khan.

It sounds like science fiction. And in a way, it is.
Because alternate history is the art of asking the most provocative question of all:
What if?

Would our world be more advanced? More just? Or perhaps slower, more peaceful... or even more chaotic?

🧠 The Illusion of the Irreplaceable Genius

We love the idea that history was shaped by a few extraordinary individuals: charismatic leaders, visionary scientists, ruthless conquerors.
But is that really true?

The truth is more nuanced.
Many great ideas were already in the air of their time. Revolutions were waiting to explode. The so-called "greats" often just accelerated what would have happened anyway.

They were catalysts, not creators.

⚔️ What If Hitler Had Never Been Born?

Maybe there would have been no Holocaust.
Maybe World War II would have looked very different.
But post-Versailles Germany was a boiling cauldron: humiliation, nationalism, economic crisis. The ingredients were all there.

Someone else could have lit the fuse.

Still... without Hitler, Europe might have avoided its deepest scars. Or just replaced them with new ones.

A different world, not necessarily a better one.

🌌 Without Newton: A Slower Science?

Isaac Newton gave us the laws of motion and universal gravitation. But Leibniz, his rival, was reaching similar conclusions.

Without Newton, the Enlightenment might still have happened—just with a dimmer glow, or a slight delay.

Modern physics?
Still inevitable.
Just... maybe 50 years behind.

🏹 A World Without Genghis Khan

No Mongol Empire.
No unification of Central Asia through fire and blood.
No Silk Road dominance. No westward transmission of Eastern ideas (or plagues).

But also, no devastation of empires, no forced migrations, no collapsing dynasties.

Without Genghis Khan, the world might have been less connected, but also less traumatized.
More stable? Or more fragmented?

🚢 Without Columbus: The New World, Later

Christopher Columbus didn’t “discover” the Americas—he just put them on Europe's radar.
Without him, contact between the Old and New Worlds would still have happened, maybe through the Portuguese, maybe through another route.

But colonization?
That was coming, regardless.

Without Columbus, the geopolitical map would be different, not blank.

📱 No Steve Jobs: Tech Without Charm?

Smartphones would still exist.
But would they look like this?
Would they feel like this?

Without Steve Jobs, our tech might be more utilitarian, less seductive.
More Android, less "Apple magic."

We’d still be addicted to screens—just less in love with them.

🔮 A World Without Them? Not Better. Not Worse. Just… Other.

History doesn’t rewrite itself with a delete key.
It reshapes through speculation.
Through counterfactual history, we discover an unsettling truth:

The so-called "greats" are not always irreplaceable.
But the stories we tell about them? Those are.

And after all...
If you had never existed—what kind of story would this be?

💬 What about you?

Which historical figure would you erase—or protect at all costs?