Alternative History: what if?

[SigniferOne]

If you can find a copy, Alexander Demandt's book, "History That Never Happenend: A Treatis on the Question, What Would Have Happened If...?" is worth checking out.

(For those German speakers, it was originally published in German under the title "Ungeschenene Geschichte: Ein Traktat uber die Frage: Was ware geschehen, wenn...?")

Demandt discusses both the pros and cons of thinking this way, and then goes off and gives some examples of 'counterfactual' history and does mention Sandrus' scenario--Varus Victorious--Demandt's opinion is that Germany would have ended up Romanized, and the "Crisis of the 3rd Century" would not have happened (or have been anywhere near as bad) and likely Europe would still be ruled by Roman Emperors.

I'm curious: how does Demandt trace the crisis of the 3rd century to the presence and invasions of the German tribes?

I mean, what they made worse was a problem that was already there -- namely the tyranny of Septimius Severus and the de facto conversion of the Roman constitution from the principate to the dominate. Once Severus demonstrated that all you needed to rule was to be a knave with armies behind you, other knaves, with other armies, were clueless as to why they shouldn't rule either. And that's basically the crisis of the 3rd century in a nutshell; Germanic invasions seem to me to be subsequent and ancillary to that.