r/HistoryWhatIf

What if Hồ Chí Minh liberated the whole of Vietnam? What conditions have to be met? What would be the implications of Vietnam and the World?

After crushing multiple different empires including the mamluks, ottomans, Golden Horde and Delhi sultanate, Timur set his sights on China. The Ming emperor had demanded tribute from different central Asian rulers including Timur which he saw as an insult.

Timur ultimately went through with the invasion of China during the zenith of the Ming dynasty, he allied with the northern yuan dynasty beforehand and it is said his army was 200,000 strong. The army set out in the harsh central Asian winter and unfortunately (or fortunately) Timur fell ill and eventually succumbed to his death at Otrar at the age of 69 with the army never reaching China and his empire being thrown into a civil war due to succession dispute between his sons and the Timurids would never threaten China again.

My question is what if Timur hadn't died at Otrar? What were Timur's goals? Did he intend to conquer all of China? And were the odds in their favour/would the timurids have succeeded?

My understanding of this time period is that shortly after the Tripartite Act, there were fairly serious discussions about the Soviet Union also joining the Axis with the intention of trying to expand their influence south. Stalin seems to have been open to this, as well as some within Germany, but Hitler is opposed and prefers to invade.

Lets say at some point during (or around the same time as) these discussions, Hitler's life is taken, removing a major obstacle to this becoming a reality.

Does the Soviet Union join? If they do, what does the war look like from here?

This question is inspired by this Reddit post.

I've been to both Kyoto and Hiroshima. I've enjoyed both, but Kyoto is clearly a city with extreme cultural significance, while Hiroshima is a modern industrial city (plus culturally significant sites like Itsukushima remain because the nukes weren't big enough to damage the nearby areas).

Had Kyoto been nuked, where would Japanese culture be now? Would Japan utterly resent the USA (as in its attitude towards the USA is more akin to the bitter resentment that Serbia has, as opposed to the friendly attitude that OTL Japan or Vietnam have)? Or would modern Japanese culture be even more westernised, as they have lost a major pillar of historical Japanese culture?

Would Japan even become the powerhouse of pop culture and soft power that it is today? Or would it become the butt of jokes about cultural sterility (like how we Australians are the butt of jokes like "What's the difference between Australia and yoghurt? The yoghurt has culture").

According to Emmanuel Todd, the nuclear family was developed by Roman civilization, or the idea that people should live with their nuclear family rather than their extended clans.

During the fall of Roman Empore and rise of Christianity resulted in the the nuclear family structure being split into three:

- Egalitarian structure (inheritance is split equally among siblings, influenced Latin countries)

- Absolute structure (inheritance is split based on what parents say, influenced places where Anglos come from and later settled)

- Authoritarian structure (inheritance is given all to the eldest son, influenced primitive areas in Europe)

So basically, what if the Roman Emoire never developed that family structure? how would the world look like today?

In the OTL, China didn’t side with Hussein during the Gulf War. At least, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence he did.

Your objective is to give China a plausible casus belli to support the Iraqi takeover of Kuwait.