Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread III

ferdi254

Banned
When it comes to such matters we are left guessing. We know where most of us active in this thread and PM lean but we are 50 years further in a totally different world.

TTL has no UNO, no declaration of universal human rights (Germany still having capital punishment as one consequence of that), the RCC most likely will not have seen the movement leading to the second council (no shame for centuries of preaching antisemitism plus making the Konkordat with Hitler being part of what made Ausschwitz possible), the aristocratic, military and reactionary elites never having been exposed as they have been after 1918…

so as much as I would like this Germany to be a better place compared to the OTL FRG (which was as homophobic and sexistic as many people today can hardly imagine)

in science and economy I agree but in other areas this Germany might be much more conservative. No Vietnam war and no protest against it, no real student revolution no civil rights movement in the USA… no need for Germany to prove itself in being democratic…

PM has thankfully set up the environmental movement to a 2 decades head start but in other broadly spoken civil rights matters I see TTL Germany (from our point of view) easily more backwards than OTL Germany.
 
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so as much as I would like this Germany to be a better place compared to the OTL FRG (which was as homophobic and sexistic as many people today can hardly imagine)
I can kind of imagine - when I learned that Communist East Germany, land of the Stasi, was a better place for gay rights and women in the workplace than West Germany, it was quite the eye-opener for me as to just how conservative West Germany must have been.
in science and economy I agree but in other areas this Germany might be much more conservative. No Vietnam war and no protest against it, no real student revolution no civil rights movement in the USA… no need for Germany to prove itself in being democratic…

PM has thankfully set up the environmental movement to a 2 decades head start but in other broadly spoken civil rights matters I see TTL Germany (from our point of view) easily more backwards than OTL Germany.
Well, it's obvious this Germany is much more militaristic :p

I see where you're coming from, though OTOH we see that ITTL Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute is still open and doing a brisk business so it can't be too conservative. Then again, it does get mentioned by IIRC Zella that Berlin's a fairly liberal city, compared to other parts of the country.

From what's been said so far, I'd guess it's a bit like the OTL Netherlands in TTL's Germany - Berlin, Hamburg and some of the other cities are fairly liberal, like Amsterdam in the Netherlands, but then you can have solidly conservative areas to the South and elsewhere.
 

ferdi254

Banned
holzfan sorry it was not. With the famous exception of Margot Honecker there were no women in power in the east. And homosexuality was large seen as existing in the liberal and morally decadent west.
 
holzfan sorry it was not. With the famous exception of Margot Honecker there were no women in power in the east.
Well yeah, but women were allowed into more careers than in the West from what I've read (police and army esp.)
And homosexuality was large seen as existing in the liberal and morally decadent west.
It was legalised in East Germany before West. Plus, heck, IIRC the East German government literally had a state-run gay disco.

Obviously not saying it was perfect or even that great, just that it wasn't hard to be better than West Germany in that regard.
 

ferdi254

Banned
Oh and btw the Chilean commander of that army should be shot for total incompetence.

If you are sitting on one side of a mountain pass and the army you have to give fire directions tois on the other… direct radio signals can be easily jammed and signals via satellite… well you know exactly when a satelite is on the right position and then some 10.5 cm shells would stop all communication .
 

Paternas

Donor
PM has thankfully set up the environmental movement to a 2 decades head start but in other broadly spoken civil rights matters I see TTL Germany (from our point of view) easily more backwards than OTL Germany.
Really? TTL's Germany is a lot more progressive than OTL's Germany at the same time. The early West-German Republic, particulary the Adenauer years was very conservative and autocractic. A lot of ex-nazis were still in charge, especially in the judiciary. Woman's rights received no attention, as it was felt that social changes after WW1 helped cause the Nazis. They only appointed a female Minister of Health in 1961 after CDU-women mounted a sit-in in front of the cabinet meeting room. Anti-semitism was still very much alive after the Nazis, but more hidden. The death penalty in Germany was mainly abolished to save Nazis from hanging. OTL that only changed in the late 60s/early 70s when a number of scandals and a new young generation changed things.

In contrast, in TTL you have women as party leaders in the 1960s, able to hold all positions in the Armed forces(decades ahead of OTL). Workforce participation and other areas are also decades ahead(helped by lack of Nazi anti women policies as well). As for the death penalty, a lot of progress there came because of the cold war and European cooperation and human rights treaties. Despite being banned here there is actually a surprising amount of popular support for the death penalty in Europe.
 

ferdi254

Banned
Holzfan

that is (sorry to say) a bit like Hitler being more progressive in women‘s rights. If you lack the workforce to run your country calling women to do double shifts as house wife and workers is just asking them to do double choires.

Well it was not that hard to be nominally better than every western country at the time. But realistically do you really think all hhat beautiful young female „translators“ were seen above Monica?
 

ferdi254

Banned
Paternas actually I stopped reading your post after the line that the capital sentence was stopped to keep Nazis from hanging. Read up about Kurt Schumacher.
 

Paternas

Donor
Paternas actually I stopped reading your post after the line that the capital sentence was stopped to keep Nazis from hanging. Read up about Kurt Schumacher.
Iirc the initial proposal for abolition in the constitutional convention came from a convention member for a far-right party who wanted to gain (ex)Nazi votes by criticising Nazi trials and Denazification. It later got taken up by the SPD for presumably moral reasons and passed with partial support from the CDU. Shortly after the foundation of the BRD both CDU and SPD leaders then protested the execution of Nazi criminals because of the new ban in the constitution. While it is impossible to say how much of the right-wing support for the abolition was genuine for moral reasons, it was certainly convenient for anti-denazification politics.
 
Paternas actually I stopped reading your post after the line that the capital sentence was stopped to keep Nazis from hanging. Read up about Kurt Schumacher.
Why? He is at least partially right. The first one in the Parliamentary Council to actually demand to ban the death penalty and to add this to the Basic Law was no other than the very right-wing Hans-Christoph Seebohm (Deutsche Partei - German Party). And he wasn't really what you would call a liberal humanist. His and his party's main goal was to make sure that no more Nazis would be executed. The other parties, mainly the SPD and CDU didn't really want to talk much about the issue at all or were of the opinion that the death penalty shouldn't be regulated by the Basic Law but by regular criminal laws.

But after Seebohm started talking about the issue others like Carlo Schmidt (SPD) and Friedrich-Wilhelm Wagner (SPD) started campaigning for it as well. Those two and others didn't care about the Nazis but were opposed to the death penalty on moral grounds and because of the all to frequent use of the death penalty by the Nazis during their reign (the Nazis handed out about 16.000 civilian and 33.000 military death sentences).
 

ferdi254

Banned
Because the claim that the stop of death penalty was done to save Nazis from hanging is preposterous to start. Yes in that congregation some (even a sizable minority) might run around that line (even though many of the CDU members would have been willing to ask you for your weapons of choice and your second for such a claim)

but without the votes of the SPD who had had (again look up Kurt Schumacher) a final say on that matter that would not have feasible and even remotestly assuming any SPD member of the time was willing to have any Nazi murderer off..

edited

is just simply wrong.
 
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Part 125, Chapter 2118
Chapter Two Thousand One Hundred Eighteen



25th January 1972

Tempelhof, Berlin

While Kiki was traveling back to Kiel, she had been forced to detour through Berlin on personal business. Namely picking up a few weeks’ worth of mail that had been sent to her address in Plänterwald after it had been sorted to weed out the cranks. However, it was an opportunity to talk to the one of the few people on the planet who Kiki knew would understand everything that had happened over the last few days to put it in perspective, or at least wasn’t afraid to tell her that she was acting like an idiot. That last bit was something that Kiki was finding more important as time went on.

“Anencephaly is rare, mercifully I’ve only seen it twice over the course of my career” Nora Berg said, “Both times it devastated the parents.”

“That sounds correct” Kiki replied, “Victoria being Victoria had planned this out the same way she had with Max and… That was her reaction too, devastated.”

“How are her partner and her husband taking this?” Berg asked. She was aware of Vicky’s arrangement, how Vicky and Franz were in a marriage of convenience entirely to keep up appearances in Bavaria, stronghold of the Zentrum Party. Fortunately, Berg regarded patient confidentiality as one of the pillars of her profession. That included whatever she had discussed with one Kristina von Preussen.

“Badly” Kiki replied, “This came at a difficult time, Franz had a breakup recently, got tired of having to sneak around with him. Anna and Vicky have had to engage in a lot of handholding with him because of that.”

“And Victoria’s son?”

“Max is only three, so he isn’t quite aware of what is going on” Kiki replied.

“Small children are more aware of what is going on than you give them credit for” Berg said, “Even if it just that all the adults around them are upset”

“I felt bad for Max” Kiki said, “He has this orange plush toy dinosaur that he says is his friend and he takes it everywhere with him.”

“I seem to recall that you have said that you had a doll you named Sarah” Berg said, “Which you had a similar relationship with.”

“That is beside the point” Kiki replied, “An actual sibling would have been good for him.”

Berg said nothing in reply to that, she didn’t need to.

“Growing up in a royal household is a lonely, terrible experience” Kiki said, “Surrounded by more or less indifferent adults, people making terrifying assumptions about you, layers of security to contend with, everyone being suspect… My siblings were the closest thing to friends I had until I convinced my mother to let me attend school.”

“I understand where you are coming from” Berg replied, “But is that whole of it? Your being worried about your nephew is entirely understandable, and it would be foolish to assume that you don’t have the same concerns about your daughter.”

Kiki knew that Berg was correct, she had hit upon something that had bothered Kiki the entire way back from Munich.

“I see how Marie Cecilie dances between raindrops and that many think I do too” Kiki said, “All while Victoria gets soaked. It all seems unfair.”

“You’re an Emergency Physician, Kristina” Berg said, “You know as well as anyone how unjust the outcomes can be at times.”

“I walked halfway across South America while pregnant with Nina and she turned out fairly normal” Kiki replied.

“You were extremely lucky” Berg said, “Do I need to remind you again of the consequences of ignoring your health, particularly when you are show symptoms as you apparently were during the months leading up to that?”

“No, you don’t” Kiki replied, though Berg just had. It was something that Berg had brought up often in the months since Nina had been born. She had said on prior occasions that it needed to be repeated often with someone who tended to be as pigheaded as Kiki could be.

“In an ideal world you would have gone to Bavaria this week to see your new nephew” Berg said, “Instead, you were there to help your sister through a situation that no parent should have to face. There is also one other thing for you to consider, in an ideal world you and Marie Cecilie can continue to dance between raindrops, as you out it, to your heart’s content.”

“Oh” Kiki replied as she poked at her lunch, and they sat there for a long moment in silence.

“I understand that Benjamin decided to come with you to Kiel?” Beg asked changing the subject.

“He told the University and the Luftwaffe that he was writing a book about his experiences in Korea and Argentina, and they are granting him a leave of absence to complete it” Kiki replied, “He said that made that excuse up on the spot because he is a bit worried about what I might get up to while we are apart. You know what happened the last time. The trouble is that he needs to produce a book now.”

“And normally you are the one painting yourself into a corner” Berg said, clearly amused. “This way you get to have him help out while you learn to handle ships, though you don’t really need to.”

“You sound like Zella” Kiki replied, “She asked me if I understood that there was a reason why a ship typically has a crew.”

“That is the general understanding” Berg said.

“It is about more than that though” Kiki said, “I like having the freedom that it gives me, the independence.”

“Here I was thinking that it was something that you did because it was fun” Berg replied, causing Kiki to pause for a few seconds.

“That too, I guess” Kiki said.
 
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ferdi254

Banned
Well those kind of ships are normally run by a crew of three (in a fully professional mode with loading and unloading of freight).

Typically a married couple where the male is also the owner and one apprentice.
 
Chapter Two Thousand One Hundred Eighteen

25th January 1971

Tempelhof, Berlin
Another great installment @Peabody-Martini . A superb reminder for Kiki, that no matter her birth, her position in life and all she's achieved and how she thinks the world sees her, some of the people she's let get close to her and feels comfortable around can read her like a book and tell her the unvarnished truth. Particularly Dr Berg and Zella. We all need people like them in our lives to keep our feet on the ground and not engaged in too much self-pity.
 
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Wouldnt be surprised if that book Ben's writing for the military, gets published in the public with the title, From the Imjin to the Andies; with a detour to the stars.... would encompass everything in his life tbh
 
Ben's Book title could be "Flug zur Hölle und zurück über den Mond." if that is 'bad' German please blame Google! in English it is- Flying to hell and back via the Moon.
This version did not translate so well? Wie man über den Mond zur Hölle und zurück fliegt.
 
Whatever the title, I'd pay good ITTL Reichsmarks (or Dollars/Pounds, etc) to read the English translation. Would also pay some good coin to read the companion piece by his long-suffering backseater Wilhelm ‘Wim‘ Franke - Squire to the Black Knight. The title would have to be the aircrew equivalent of the saying that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but "Backwards and in high heels".
 
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