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I said "more honorable"; I did not mean honorable in an absolute sense here. I can likewise say that the Soviet Union was more honorable than the Nazis even though both of them were extremely shitty and murderous totalitarian monster regimes.

So, the Partisans were more honorable than the Chetniks were? And Serbia was a Nazi protectorate rather than an actual independent state like, say, Slovakia or Hungary or even Croatia, right?

And John Wilkes Booth's brother Edwin once saved Abraham Lincoln's son Robert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Booth#Robert_Lincoln_rescue

Yep, Japanese believed that the Protocols of the Elder of Zion were real when they first found out about them lol! Yep; he was a hero. :)

Even so, over half of Germany's Jewish population did get out. Even if the comparable figure for the Polish Jews would be, say, 20%, that would still be an improvement over real life.

And from there, they would have moved to Britain, France, the Benelux countries, the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa, or Palestine, all of which were safer for Jews during the Holocaust relative to Poland.

Here's another really controversial take: Had Poland expelled all of its Jews during or even after the Polish-Soviet War, then it could have ironically done them a blessing since much more of them could have subsequently ended up surviving the Holocaust. This would have, of course, depended on...

Their common folk can also move to Russia.

But beneficial for Russia since it gets even more people!

Orthodox Christians who won't like Catholic rule could simply move to Russia. It would be a win for both them and Russia!

Losing the Balkans is a small price for Russia to pay for avoiding what it actually suffered during the 20th century in real life.

Yeah, sounds reasonable. Anyway, off-topic, but Russian Tsar Nicholas II should have thrown Serbia under the bus in 1914, similar to what the Anglo-French did for Czechoslovakia in 1938, what a surviving JFK would have likely done for South Vietnam in 1965, and what Joe Biden did for...

Gwern actually argues that the Americans supported the wrong side in their revolutionary war: https://archive.ph/zne9P

Can you imagine that the events of the short 20th century (1914-1991) were sparked by a Serbian teenager with a gun who got two lucky shots? :(

I think that had the Byzantine Empire permanently survived with its 1180 borders or even without its Anatolian possessions (minus Constantinople), it could have become the Austria-Hungary of the Balkans. I see a map of Europe in 1914 and I see three giant states: Germany, A-H, and Russia, and a...

Except Russia, who destroyed its 20th century potential future as a result of it trying to prevent A-H from ravaging Serbia, and failing at even that.

Vojvodina is still a part of Serbia today. But Tito could have easily given the Serb-majority parts of Bosnia to Serbia and yet chose not to do so. :( So, the West respected Bosnia's (and Croatia's) territorial integrity but not Serbia's territorial integrity after the end of the Cold War. :(...

Well, not in the long(er)-run, at least.

Here's another controversial (not contraversial ;)) take on history: A lot of what the Bolsheviks did (the mass murder, the millions of deaths through famines, the totalitarian tyranny, the economic stagnation, the prohibitions on emigration) was extremely vile and evil, but the Bolsheviks did...

And also strategy wins wars as well. For instance, Vladimir Putin was hailed as a tactical genius after his victories at Ilovaisk in 2014 and Debaltseve in 2015, but he failed to translate these tactical victories into strategic victories since they failed to alter the course of Ukraine's...