Comparative Counter-Factual Cases

It would be great fun to speculate about the way the Punic Wars might have turned out if Hannibal had possessed a machine gun company. I think, however, that such an exercise would have little practical value.*

Ludwig Ritter von Eimannsberger

In the very near future, The Tactical Notebook will post several pieces on the subject of ‘comparable counter-factual case studies’, works of alternative history that begin with the addition of units of newer types to the orders of battle of older armies. In particular, we will, in the next few days, describe a study in which Gustav Ponath examines the role that a motorized machine gun battalion might have played in the Tannenberg campaign of 1914. Later this fall, we will publish a series about Ludwig Ritter von Eimannsberger, an Austrian artillery officer who imagined what the great tank battles of the First World War might have been like if they had been fought with the armored and motorized units of the 1930s.

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