To wonder what the World would look like if WWII had never happened?

[sparta]

What do you think? Do you think we'd be as technologically advanced? Do you think power would have shifted to the East as is happening?
Would the European Empires still be going?

I certainly think that Europe would be physically much much prettier than it is now. Many great cities of Europe would have their historic core intact rather than decimated.

I wonder if I would live in the UK, WW11 paved the way for people from Asia moving to the UK.

Well, we might not have the wars in the Middle East.

Women might be in a worse position. The sad loss of so many young women meant women had to take on new roles.

Well we probably wouldn’t have the convention on refugees (although then again that may have happened in response to other genocides). Fascism and nazism might still be going strong. Antisentism wpuld definitely be a bigger problem than it is now. Eugenics might be mainstream. The EU almost definitely wouldn’t exist. Europe would probably be poorer and even less liberal. There would probably be more inequality between the sexes. War strategy, war law and investment in war would be lesser. Knowledge about nuclear power would probably be lesser. The Cold War would have been very different or may have not been cold at all.

@mimibunz the foundation for wars in the middle easy was laid long before World War Two by European interference (shifting power from turkey to the Middle East in an attempt to curb the threat to European supremacy) and by schisms in Islam and the existence of Islam itself (more religions/sects means more to fight about).

It's difficult isn't it. Regarding women, some countries were certainly moving towards "liberating" them and there was a strong movement towards women completing all jobs in society. However, then Nazi ideals were for women to stay at home.

I'm not sure Europe would have been poorer. In fact, I would have thought Europe would be much richer and would have held on to their Empires. Remember that war is hugely expensive.

Not sure what you want to have happened instead?

Robert Harris wrote Fatherland which proposed a Europe in the 1960s dominated by Nazi Germany, ignored by an isolationist USA, ruled over by a corrupt and creaking Third Reich, with Edward VIII back on the throne as a puppet and the Princess Elizabeth defiant in Canada.

Yes but what if the war itself hadn’t happened but Nazism remained just in Germany. Would Germany have been a manufacturing giant with whom noone would trade due to its human rights record? Would It just have been like Russia and China were in the 50’s and 60’s. Without the war would we have had more money to develop nuclear weapons faster and a bigger desire to use them?

Well the world would be massively more over populated.

Ooh ooh I know this.

Yes Europe would be so much prettier, OP, and bonus - we’d have lot fewer pesky Jews and gypsies and other ethnic and racial minorities polluting our lovely white Aryan spaces and gene pool; women would know their place (at home in Stepford, churning out babies and having dinner ready on the table when Father gets home); homosexuals unresponsive to conversion therapy would be in prison and disabled people wouldn’t exist because Big Eugenics would take care of all that AND we’d all be able to speak fluent German!

Or, in other words, a white supremacist’s wet dream.

Fortunately, WWll did happen because it had to and, while the world is still far from perfect, it’s still a much better outcome than the Nazi vision of a 1000 year Reich.

Or OP might have meant "what would it be like now if WW2 hadn't happened because Hitler never existed?"

But OP didn’t say that did she? A rather crucial point to have left out, ifthat’s what she meant, which I somehow doubt given her concern seems to be more for the pretty buildings that were decimated rather than the millions of people who died.

BogglesGoggles Yes, but I think the Partition at the end of WWII increased frictions and got the Allies involved. And since then we have seen moderate governments turn radical.

It's the fact she focuses on buildings and doesn't mention Nazis at all that made me think she means what if the whole thing had never happened, Nazis and all. I don't think she's some kind of white supremacist troll.

However, then Nazi ideals were for women to stay at home.

OP put this in her second post. I'm agree with you Speck doesn't sound to me that OP was saying no Nazism.

Are you still including the rise of Nazism because Hitler's foreign policy was centred on lebensraum and the reversing of the Treaty of Versailles making war all but inevitable ?
If the Weimar Republic has thrived then European history could have looked very different however, Europe's recovery after WW1 was dependent on US loans so Weimar's position was always precarious.

WWI made WW2 all but inevitable, another discussion could be what the world would have been like if the Great War had never occurred. Three royal families did not survive it - German, Austrian, Russian. Would we have seen the rise of communism still ? Would the great powers and empires of Europe continued to exist ? Would women's suffrage have occurred in 1918 ? Would we have seen the same advances in medicine and technology (blood transfusions and early plastic surgery being direct consequences of battlefield injuries for example).
WW2 led to the establishment of the NHS and welfare state - would that have happened ?