How much do Estonia and Latvia have in common, historically?
EDIT: It is vaguely worrying that the question and the other answers are all anonymous, as if history were something shameful.This might be easier to present in a tabular format, but I don't think Quora supports advanced formatting. Listed below are the principal milestones in the three countries' history (I've had to edit out some of the detail to keep it at readable length... note that a lot of the time there was no distinction between what are modern day Estonia and Latvia and events affecting one country were happening in both).FI13th century --> 1809 Kingdom of Sweden1809 --> 1917 Russian Empire1917 --> IndependentEE1219 --> 1346 Danish rule1346 --> 1561 German rule (Livonian branch of the Teutonic order for connoisseurs of detail), with lots of Swedish settlements on the islands and along the Western coast1561 --> Livonian war; north of Estonia goes to Sweden, south to the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth1625 --> All of Estonia submits to Swedish rule1721 --> 1920 Estonia changes governing power from Sweden to the Russian Empire (and, for a brief but violent period, Soviet Russia)1920 --> 1940 Independent1940 --> 1941 Soviet Union1941 --> 1944 Germany (Ostland)1944 --> 1991 Soviet Union1991 --> IndependentLV1201 --> 1561 German rule (same guys as in Estonia)1561 --> 1621 Parts of Latvia (East and South) are governed by the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth, while the West is a fiefdom to the Commonwealth known as the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia (until 1795)1629 --> 1721 Mostly Swedish rule, except for the Duchy of C&S1721 --> 1918 Russian Empire (with the Duchy of C&S quietly joining in 1795)1920 --> 1940 Factually independent; independence was formally proclaimed in 1918 but it took almost two years of shooting Russians and Germans for the message to sink in1940 --> 1941 Soviet Union1941 --> 1944 Germany (Ostland)1944 --> 1991 Soviet Union1991 --> IndependentIn summary, I think the history of Estonia mimics that of Latvia more closely than that of Finland. Teutonic rule, Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth and the Soviet Union never touched Finland but they are all fundamental influences on Latvia's and Estonia's history, heritage and culture.
How would the world look today if WWII never happened?
If Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party did not start World War II, the world would be more technologically advanced - the idea that war generally benefits technology is a myth, actually it advances some aspects of technology at the expense of other aspects (destruction is benefited, positive progress neglected).Tens of millions of people would not have been horribly killed or maimed (in body and mind) and would have made a positive contribution to human progress. Historic towns and cities all over Europe would not have been destroyed - and not replaced by by ugly concrete blocks - that would have been the obvious physical difference to what Europe would look like, had Mr Hitler and his rabid-dog Nazis not gained power and led Europe into war.The Soviet Union would never have been able to conquer Eastern Europe without the chaos that the Hitler and the Nazis brought, and the Soviet Union would (most likely) have collapsed after the death of “Stalin” in the early 1950s.But we must not forget Asia - just as Hitler and his Nazis were smashing up Europe, so the Japanese regime was smashing up Asia.The most harm that the Japanese regime did was to China - where the the Nationalist (KMT) government of China was undermined by Japanese aggression, and the Marxist Mao took advantage of the chaos to build up his own power - Mao came to power in 1949 and proceeded to become the largest scale mass murderer in human history (see the works of Frank Dikotter on Mao’s China). Without World War II (without the attack by the Japanese regime), China today might well be a democratic country, as Taiwan is. And Peking (Beijing) would still be a beautiful walled city with a central lake - both the wall and the lake were destroyed by the Marxists soon after they took the city.Japan itself would look dramatically different - the concrete, glass and steel cities of modern Japan were built on the ashes of cities destroyed by American bombing. Without the war the attractive towns and cities of Japan would still stand.