In the famous science fiction story, "Catch that Zeppelin!" Fritz Leiber describes an alternate history where WWI ended differently, WWII never happened, electric cars and Zeppelins come instead of gasoline-based cars and planes, etc. The protagonist, Adolf Hitler, is a famous Zeppelin designer in that world, although some of his bigotry against Blacks and Jews remains even in this nearly-ideal world.
The chess connection? Aaron Nimzowitsch, the "world chess champion" in this world, is the resident master in the chess rooms aboard one of the luxury Zeppelin, the Ostwald, named after the Nobel-prize winning physical chemist.
The story's point is that there are "inflection points" in history, where a minor change in the past makes significant changes in the future. Did Leiber hear the story that Nimzowitsch considered himself the "crown prince of chess," and saw changing him to world champion such a minor change? It should be noted here that, as Edward Winter points out, the evidence for Nimzowitsch ever making such a claim is at best sketchy.
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