Making History summary

The Ambitious Experiment

In Making History by Stephen Fry, we are introduced to Michael Young, a history student at an English university. Young is fascinated by Adolf Hitler's rise to power and his subsequent actions during World War II. His curiosity leads him to propose a counterfactual history thesis: what if Hitler had never been born? Young believes that Hitler's absence from history would have averted the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Young's thesis captures the attention of Leo Zuckerman, a physicist and a Holocaust survivor. Zuckerman, who has a personal stake in the matter, takes Young's hypothesis seriously. Together, they hatch a plan to prevent Hitler's conception, thus altering the course of history. Their plan involves the theft of Hitler's father's semen, a daring act with potentially world-changing consequences.

The Unforeseen Consequences

The duo's plan is successful, and they return to the present to find a world vastly different from the one they left behind. There is no World War II, no Holocaust, and the state of Israel does not exist. Despite these seemingly positive changes, they soon realize that their intervention has set off a chain of unforeseen and devastating consequences.

Without Hitler to unite the German people, the country remains in a state of economic ruin and political disarray. The absence of the war also means that the United States never fully recovers from the Great Depression, leading to widespread poverty and social unrest. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, without the common enemy of Nazi Germany, becomes even more powerful and oppressive.

The Moral Dilemma

As the revised history unfolds, Young and Zuckerman grapple with a profound moral dilemma. They question whether they have the right to play with the course of history and the lives of millions of people. The very changes they hoped would prevent suffering have instead led to new forms of suffering and oppression.

The novel explores the theme of unintended consequences and the limitations of human knowledge. Despite their best intentions, Young and Zuckerman's intervention creates a world that is arguably worse off than the one they sought to change. Their experiment in making history exposes the complexities of human actions and the unpredictability of their outcomes.

The Inevitability of History

As the story progresses, Young and Zuckerman come to accept that history, like time itself, is an unstoppable force. They realize that even if they had succeeded in preventing Hitler's birth, another figure might have risen to take his place. The forces that led to the Second World War and the Holocaust were not solely the result of one man's actions but of broader societal, economic, and political factors.

In the end, Making History offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of tampering with the past. It reminds us that history is a complex web of interconnected events and that our attempts to change it are fraught with uncertainty and unintended consequences. By the novel's conclusion, Young and Zuckerman are left to contemplate the inevitability of history and their own limited role in shaping it.