Most Evil/Powerful Societies in AH

[treefreak32]

Two-pronged question:
What do you believe is the most powerful civilization/society in the genre?
Who is the most evil?

Just a fun question I thought people may want to discuss.

 

[xie323]

Draka for both honestly if we mean strict alternate history. But this is due to plot armor and nonsensical nat20s and realistically a state like draka would collapse violently the moment it has to consolidate power over its conquests.

 

[Aghasverov]

Draka for both honestly if we mean strict alternate history. But this is due to plot armor and nonsensical nat20s and realistically a state like draka would collapse violently the moment it has to consolidate power over its conquests.

This is why I could never bring myself to check out any of the Domination stuff... calls for too much suspension of disbelief...

 

[Lalli]

Most evil:

Nazi Germany in several Axis victory AHs.

TL The Footpring ot Mussolini sees some worst nations/regimes in AH. Soviet Union (second holocaust, waging wars and ethnic cleansing), United Arab Republic (extrme antisemtism, waging of wars, totalitarism), Islamic State of Arabia (mass slaughtering of people, slavery, extremely luddite, even keeping of glasses is worth of death penalty), South Africa (extremely racist).

Soviet Union in Twilight of the Red Tsar is really terrible place.

CSA on TL-191. Firstly slavery and its final stages it has really genocidal politics.

 

[sampleswift]

What Madness Is This NUSA or RU. It is comparable to some Warhammer 40,000 societies in how bad it is.
Most powerful: Any of the world- states?

 

[treefreak32]

This is why I could never bring myself to check out any of the Domination stuff... calls for too much suspension of disbelief...

I'm actually reading it as research for a pet project. It's pretty bad imo.

 

[SIngemeister]

Ooh, I was making a list of an AH Rogues Gallery

North America
Judson Hammond’s USA (Gabriel over the Whitehouse)
Buzz Windrip’s Corporatist America (It Can’t Happen Here)
Jake Featherston’s Confederate States of America (Southern Victory series)
Republic of Gilead (The Handmaid’s Tale)
The Oligarchy of the Iron Heel (The Iron Heel)
The Organization (The Turner Diaries)
Northwest American Republic (Northwest Front)
Northern Confederation/Republic of Victoria (Victoria)
Nazi-Occupied America (The Ultimate Solution, The Divide, The Man In The High Castle)
U.S.S.A. (Back in the USSA)
Confederate States of America (C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America)
United States of Mexico (For Want of a Nail)
Pacific States of America (The Man In The High Castle)
Christian States of America (The Mirage)
Lindbergh’s Fascist America (The Plot Against America)
United States of America (Decades of Darkness)
New United States of America (What Madness Is This)
Rumsfeld’s States of America (Rumsfeldia)

South America
Europe
Airstrip One (1984)
SS-Organised Great Britain (SS-GB)
Norsefire United Kingdom (V For Vendetta)
Ordensstaat Burgund (Hearts of Iron IV: The New Order)
L’État Soleil (Hearts of Iron IV: Red Flood)
Victorious Nazi Germany/Greater German Reich/Grosdeutches Reich (1945, Hearts of Iron IV: The New Order, The Ultimate Solution, Hearts of Iron IV: Thousand Week Reich, An Englishman’s Castle, Fatherland, In The Presence of Mine Enemies, It Happened Here, Small Chance series, The Anglo-American Nazi War, Swastika Night, Clash of Eagles, ‘I, James Blunt’, ‘We, Adolf I’, Turning Point: Fall of Liberty)
Weber’s Greater German Reich (Weber’s Germany: The Totalitarian Veterinarian)
Revolutionary France (Look To The West)

Africa
Domination of the Draka (The Draka)
Nazi-Ruled Afrika (The Afrika Reich)
Nazi-Ruled Madagaskar (The Madagaskar Plan)

Asia
Republic of Greater East Asia (Battle Royale)
Mao Yang-Jin’s People’s’ Republic of China (Fear, Loathing and Gumbo on the Campaign Trail '72)

Oceania
Australian Republic (Kelly Country)

 

[BrockSampson]

Soviet Union in Twilight of the Red Tsar is really terrible place.

I’ve only ever read summaries of that TL and it sounds pretty awful. Did the author ever give an idea of the total death count? The summaries made Russia sound like it should be all but depopulated by the end of everything.

 

[spoonzandforkz]

Nazi Germany in the Man in the High Castle (book, haven't watched the show) is definitely a contender.

There is discussion in the book of using African ankle bones as triggers for cigarette lighters. (After the entire continent was exterminated of course)

 

[Emperor of Pennsylvania]

I’ve only ever read summaries of that TL and it sounds pretty awful. Did the author ever give an idea of the total death count? The summaries made Russia sound like it should be all but depopulated by the end of everything.

Most of Stalin's atrocities were either directed at the non-Russian SSRs or at China in that timeline.

However, by the time the timeline stopped updating, Stalin's empire was a mess, with refugees flowing out of the country and the country engaged in a nuclear civil war.

 

[Gukpard]

South America

Integralist brazil from REDS! would fit here

 

[DJjablonski]

The "One State" from red flood belongs here i would think

Hyperborea and Taboritsky's Russia too, for some other horrific Russian states

(Man what is it with popular hoi4 mods and russian warlordism)

 

[Jedi Dragon]

What Madness Is This NUSA or RU. It is comparable to some Warhammer 40,000 societies in how bad it is.
Most powerful: Any of the world- states?

The scary part is that the TL isn't even over yet, so they're definitely going to get worse.

Oceania from 1984 is probably one of the more powerful ones, along with Eurasia and Oceania, considering the amount of territory they all hold. (Probably, if we can trust the narrator.)

 

[shearsforest]

The scary part is that the TL isn't even over yet, so they're definitely going to get worse.

Oceania from 1984 is probably one of the more powerful ones, along with Eurasia and Oceania, considering the amount of territory they all hold. (Probably, if we can trust the narrator.)

Would Oceania from the now-defunct America's Stepbrother thread serve as a fair combatant for "most evil AltHist countries"?

 

[Polish Eagle]

Draka for both honestly if we mean strict alternate history. But this is due to plot armor and nonsensical nat20s and realistically a state like draka would collapse violently the moment it has to consolidate power over its conquests.

Realistically, the Draka would have been smacked down by Britain at some point in the 19th century. This has led to two different schools of thought on the Drakaverse, Watsonian and Doylist. The Watsonian view is that the entire world, even outside the Domination, is more brutal than IOTL, so mass impalement and brutal enslavement just don’t phase people as much (a view I’ve admittedly grown more sympathetic to). The Doylist view is that Stirling ignores these issues.

For maximum over-the-top evil, “The Ultimate Solution”’s Nazi Germany.

 

[Aghasverov]

Realistically, the Draka would have been smacked down by Britain at some point in the 19th century. This has led to two different schools of thought on the Drakaverse, Watsonian and Doylist. The Watsonian view is that the entire world, even outside the Domination, is more brutal than IOTL, so mass impalement and brutal enslavement just don’t phase people as much (a view I’ve admittedly grown more sympathetic to). The Doylist view is that Stirling ignores these issues.

For maximum over-the-top evil, “The Ultimate Solution”’s Nazi Germany.

Geostrategically speaking, the southern tip of the African continent is a terrible place to start out, if one wants to create a global Space-Filling Empire

 

[treefreak32]

For maximum over-the-top evil, “The Ultimate Solution”’s Nazi Germany.

That book seems insane. I haven't read the whole thing, but I remember people posting excerpts. It seems like an exercise in out-dystopia-ing MITHC, and it seems like it achieves it.

 

[A Piece of History]

This might be a strange choice, but the Soviet Union from The Iron Dream. The Soviet Union is not really the focus of the book, which is about a science fiction story written by a alternate Adolf Hitler who moved to America and became a science fiction writer. In the book's background, the Soviet Union has taken over Europe and instigated it's own version of the Holocaust.

For maximum over-the-top evil, “The Ultimate Solution”’s Nazi Germany.

That book seems insane. I haven't read the whole thing, but I remember people posting excerpts. It seems like an exercise in out-dystopia-ing MITHC, and it seems like it achieves it.

It is alternate history at it's utmost edgiest. Man in the High Castle at least knows when to be subtle when discussing Nazi ideology.

 

[treefreak32]

It is alternate history at it's utmost edgiest. Man in the High Castle at least knows when to be subtle when discussing Nazi ideology.

High Castle is also just really well written, and shows the utter depravity of actual Nazi ideology. The Ultimate Solution seems to just be an attempt to create the most over-the-top misery porn possible, with either disregard for or ignorance of Nazi ideology.

 

[treefreak32]

I completely forgot about these guys until now, but Sliding Albion from The Authority were one of the things that got me into Alternate History, and these guys were evil and powerful to the extreme.

For those not in the know, Sliding Albion were a hostile parallel Earth where contact had been made between humanity and aliens during the renaissance. England and the Italians both became allies and trading partners with the alien visitors, and the Italians interbred with them to create a hybrid nobility, and eventually took control of Britain after World War IX(!). They ended up destroying the environment of their world with bacteriological and chemical warfare, and caused fertility issues among the alien hybrids, leading them to invade China, kill its entire male population and do pretty unsavory things to its women.
They also have multiversal travel capabilities, having fighter craft capable of travelling across reality, and the main plot of their arc involves them launching a full-scale invasion of The Authority's Earth in order to transform it into a "rape camp". (Gross)
So yeah, these guys might take the cake in my book for "greatest AH bad guys". It's entirely subjective, but as a 14 year old they helped get me interested in the genre, and they impress me by not just being like generic Nazis or whatever in-terms of AH villains.