Great Men's Alternate Lives

Tetsu

A lot of people complain about people from OTL showing up in alternate history, performing the same roles they did in our world. [POTUS Herbert Hoover in Turtledove's books, for example]

What I find more interesting is when people from OTL show up in alternate history in different roles... has anyone made any interesting changes to famous people from our world?

In a Confederate timeline I'm working on, for example, William Bonney [Billy the Kid], finds himself in the CSA's Arizona territory and eventually becomes a general in the Confederate Army, fighting Union troops in the Southwest during the Great War. In the same timeline, Alphonse Capone is a famous Socialist politician/revolutionary, who never moved out of his native New York City.
 
NHBL

NHBL

Hitler...

I'm working on a story set in the 1920's after a German victory in the Great War. A certain sargent Hitler may well make an appearance. I can envision him as staying in the army, and doing quite well--the sort of non-com that soldiers remember. A fearless leader, one who's men will follow to hell in the colonial skirimishes leading up to the next Great War--but also with a trace of megalomania that can get his men into deep trouble.

Any ideas how Hitler would make out as a decorated soldier in a victorious Germany?
 

Shope

Banned
I'm working on an AH set in modern times with a 1924 POD. Hillary Rodham (nee Clinton) is an aging exotic dancer/prostitute in Chicago; Bill Clinton is a poor illiterate hillbilly out looking to avenge his little brother's murder at the hands of the Chicago mob.
 

Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy

Banned
I don't use the great men from OTL unless they've already taken their babysteps into greatness before the POD. I figure it's quite likely the butterflies would change their choices and the world around them in ways which would not lead them that far. Of course they might not, but I don't want to risk it without thoroughly researching their lives and characters. I figure OTL is full of people who could've been great under slightly different circumstances.

What I do is I create people who are as interesting as the people I'm not including: US president Sands (1905-1917), a Haitian emperor, a Swedish politician who starts the unification of Europe, Napoleon V, a brilliant Hungarian immigrant to the US who turns out to be as prolific as Edison and Tesla.
 

Rabbit Scribe

From a post of mine in the Cross-Time Scooper thread on the ASB board:

Habeas Papem- we have a Pope... and he's American! ​
In a move that shocked Vatican insiders, enormously popular addiction recovery writer Miami Archbishop Unger has been elected Pontiff on the second ballot. Unger is perhaps the best-known American Catholic since John F. Kennedy. However, most felt that the lifestyle he led before his conversion in 1976 after suffering a near-fatal cocaine overdose en route from Miami to Las Vegas would prove an insurmountable obstacle to an increasingly conservative College of Cardinals. He was not considered a serious candidate for the Papacy.

Online sales of Archbishop Unger's latest book, Twelve Steps Past Emmaus, co-authored with fellow former substance abuser and Catholic convert Hunter S Thompson, are up sharply. Developing.
 

Forum Lurker

I recall one Turtledove short story which had just enough divergence to make it halfway plausible; it involved American isolationism in WWI, leading to outright race wars in the fifties, and a League of Nations intervention. The leaders of the American resistance were "Tricky Dick" and the black separatist John Calvin King.
 

ktotwf

If Napoleon Bonaparte had not gotten the chance that came along with the revolution, he most likely would have either ended up a no-name Artillery officer with the French Royal Army, or he would have gone to Turkey and been the artillery engineer for the Sultan as he planned.
 

Dobermann

Banned
Malcolm Little spent much of his early adulthood as a domestic servant to a wealthywhite man. Among his duties was the task of "sprinkling him (his employer) with powder and then bringing him to orgasm". Whether this service was oral or manual has not been determined, though I'm sure someone could help me out here. Supposing he just outs himself, lives a normal life as a homosexual and dies of AIDS in 1990s. Hence no Black Panthers and no black militancy. He just gets by as a rent boy and later pimps out young black boys to a wealthy white clientele.

Martin Luther King was apparently caught, and this is confirmed by the FBI, in flagrante by a bug in his room having sex with a white prostitute the day before his "I have a dream speech". Among his furious moans were the claims "I'm not a Negro tonight" and "I'm fucking for God!". He was married with children at the time. Supposing a more malicious FBI broadcasts parts of these tapes to Black community leaders. Perhaps MLK would be less fanatically idolised than he is now. He would probably have withdrawn from leadership of the civil rights movement, never been assassinated, and live the rest of his life in ignominy, possibly with syphilis.
 

Mayhem

Dobermann said:
Malcolm Little spent much of his early adulthood as a domestic servant to a wealthywhite man. Among his duties was the task of "sprinkling him (his employer) with powder and then bringing him to orgasm". Whether this service was oral or manual has not been determined, though I'm sure someone could help me out here. Supposing he just outs himself, lives a normal life as a homosexual and dies of AIDS in 1990s. Hence no Black Panthers and no black militancy. He just gets by as a rent boy and later pimps out young black boys to a wealthy white clientele.

Martin Luther King was apparently caught, and this is confirmed by the FBI, in flagrante by a bug in his room having sex with a white prostitute the day before his "I have a dream speech". Among his furious moans were the claims "I'm not a Negro tonight" and "I'm fucking for God!". He was married with children at the time. Supposing a more malicious FBI broadcasts parts of these tapes to Black community leaders. Perhaps MLK would be less fanatically idolised than he is now. He would probably have withdrawn from leadership of the civil rights movement, never been assassinated, and live the rest of his life in ignominy, possibly with syphilis.
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The phrase "scurrilous rumours" comes to mind...

Otherwise, in the only near-complete (and utterly crap) TL I've written, Stalin and Rasputin hook up in Siberia Ca. 1919, and lead a revolt against German-occupied Eastern Russia... Did I mention it was a crap TL?
 

Dobermann

Banned
Not at all scurrilous but well-founded on FBI data. By all, means feel free to check it out on a number of reputable sources. Thatz the Amerikan PUBIC edumacation system that has taught you to selectively filter out any negative information regarding its so-called heroes.
 

Faeelin

Banned
Dobermann said:
Not at all scurrilous but well-founded on FBI data. By all, means feel free to check it out on a number of reputable sources. Thatz the Amerikan PUBIC edumacation system that has taught you to selectively filter out any negative information regarding its so-called heroes.
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You are as eloquent as you are wise.
 

Faeelin

Banned
ktotwf said:
If Napoleon Bonaparte had not gotten the chance that came along with the revolution, he most likely would have either ended up a no-name Artillery officer with the French Royal Army, or he would have gone to Turkey and been the artillery engineer for the Sultan as he planned.
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He almost served with La Perouse, in his expedition to Australia.

Hmm....
 

Nicole

Dobermann said:
Not at all scurrilous but well-founded on FBI data. By all, means feel free to check it out on a number of reputable sources. Thatz the Amerikan PUBIC edumacation system that has taught you to selectively filter out any negative information regarding its so-called heroes.
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Post your FBI data and reputable sources, then. And again, must you be so offensive? If you have data, post it, don't just insult the school system.
 
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