DBWI: Technocracy doesn't rise?

In interwar Germany, the Technocrats were the first party to achieve a half-stable minority in the Reichstag since the abdication of Wilhelm II. Once they were in power, they clamped down on their main opposition, the National Socialists and the Communists, (very easily) pitting the two against each other. After the Emergency Laws were repealed in 1969, and certain elements of democratic rule were restored, tensions amongst the democrats, fascists, and communists began to ease up slightly, with the Cold War being declared officially over in the 1977 Zurich Treaties.

However, I was just watching the CBC (I know, I know, propaganda machine directly controlled from London:rolleyes:...) and they reported the recently appointed Tech-Kommissar Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking a bit of a hostile stance to what he labels "Western Imperialism". However, Entertainment Tonight has also reported rumours of a relationship with La Duce Alessandra Mussolini. This is probably bullshit, but German-Italian relations aren't suffering the same strain as German-American/Canadian/Newfoundland/British etc.

So are we in for another Cold War? Or a second Great War?

EDIT: Sorry I strained from my original topic...

What would have happened to Germany and the world without the Technocrats?
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
Perhaps you would have Technocracy Inc in the US come to power under Howard Scott without the bogeyman of German technocracy. It would probably actually work there too, as the self-sufficiency presumed in technocracy had a North American Technate in mind, something the US could achieve militarily much more easily than the Germans and their futile goal of a European technate. Technocracy was never designed for a continent as resource depleted as Europe, just as communism was never designed for a less industrial power like Russia.
 
Perhaps you would have Technocracy Inc in the US come to power under Howard Scott without the bogeyman of German technocracy. It would probably actually work there too, as the self-sufficiency presumed in technocracy had a North American Technate in mind, something the US could achieve militarily much more easily than the Germans and their futile goal of a European technate. Technocracy was never designed for a continent as resource depleted as Europe, just as communism was never designed for a less industrial power like Russia.

The typical excuse for why an ideology went down the tubes, blame the landscape.:rolleyes: Not the corruption and the murdering and oppression.

And I think we've been over this a few times: technocracy, like communism, can't just 'happen' in the US. There have to be really, really good reasons. If the crap that happened in OTL couldn't break democracy in the US, it's really hard to do.

Minus technocrats (where do they go?), Germany is going to be a fight-out between the aforementioned National Socialists and communists. If the National Socialists stick to their game, and swing their alliance with the Catholic Center Party, the communists lose. They were astonishingly intransigent about forming an alliance with the mainline socialist party, which is to be expected when Stalin's calling the shots from Moscow.
 
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The typical excuse for why an ideology went down the tubes, blame the landscape.:rolleyes: Not the corruption and the murdering and oppression.

And I think we've been over this a few times: technocracy, like communism, can't just 'happen' in the US. There have to be really, really good reasons. If the crap that happened in OTL couldn't break democracy in the US, it's really hard to do.

Schwarzenegger may be a prick, he may be a despotic tyrant, but in a sense, during the Technoreich's golden era, Germany was paradise. According to a German teacher of mine, German citizens were (relatively) free, they could vote in the Reichstag post-69, and the government was quite efficiently and competently run.

Most of the propaganda we see in the media today, much like that directed toward communism and fascism, is just that, propaganda. The "corruption and the murdering and oppression" have always been exaggerated, but most of what you hear about the Technoreich occurred during the Depression and the late Weimar era, when illegal militias still roamed the streets, and political extremists still brawled in public. It wasn't until 1935 or so that power was fully consolidated. And that was also the year the German economy started to turn around.
 
Schwarzenegger may be a prick, he may be a despotic tyrant, but in a sense, during the Technoreich's golden era, Germany was paradise. According to a German teacher of mine, German citizens were (relatively) free, they could vote in the Reichstag post-69, and the government was quite efficiently and competently run.

Most of the propaganda we see in the media today, much like that directed toward communism and fascism, is just that, propaganda. The "corruption and the murdering and oppression" have always been exaggerated, but most of what you hear about the Technoreich occurred during the Depression and the late Weimar era, when illegal militias still roamed the streets, and political extremists still brawled in public. It wasn't until 1935 or so that power was fully consolidated.
They could vote post 1969. That's still more than 30 years under an unelected government. No matter how free or efficiently administered they may have been, dictatorship is dictatorship. Countries that ban mainstream political parties, and then arrest people for having formerly been members of said parties, and send them off to work camps in East Prussia, they've already lost out on being part of the good-guys section, exaggeration or no exaggeration.

I'll go ahead and quote Goldwater on this one: "No paradise has secret police."

They bought the silence of the people by getting economic growth (by hook or by crook or by blunt-force trauma to smaller neighbors), but we all know how well that worked out in the end.
 
In interwar Germany, the Technocrats were the first party to achieve a half-stable minority in the Reichstag since the abdication of Wilhelm II. Once they were in power, they clamped down on their main opposition, the National Socialists and the Communists, (very easily) pitting the two against each other. After the Emergency Laws were repealed in 1969, and certain elements of democratic rule were restored, tensions amongst the democrats, fascists, and communists began to ease up slightly, with the Cold War being declared officially over in the 1977 Zurich Treaties.

However, I was just watching the CBC (I know, I know, propaganda machine directly controlled from London:rolleyes:...) and they reported the recently appointed Tech-Kommissar Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking a bit of a hostile stance to what he labels "Western Imperialism". However, Entertainment Tonight has also reported rumours of a relationship with La Duce Alessandra Mussolini. This is probably bullshit, but German-Italian relations aren't suffering the same strain as German-American/Canadian/Newfoundland/British etc.

So are we in for another Cold War? Or a second Great War?

EDIT: Sorry I strained from my original topic...

What would have happened to Germany and the world without the Technocrats?

OOC: No Second World War? Sorry, but that's ASB at any point after 1914, I'll have to ignore that part.

IC: Maybe not in Germany, but the Second Great War still happened, although it was mainly Japan vs. Tsarist Russia.

Also, I don't know what you've been watching, but that isn't what I've heard from the CBC; you must have been listening to one of those pirate stations, they're all over Newfoundland these days, most of 'em pro-British at that.

The CBC has actually said that German-South Italian relations have been extremely strained as of late, and that trade embargoes have been considered by both sides.
Oh, and we're not friends with the Germans, either: One of their generals actually threatened to nuke New York if we decided to back the Communist overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship in Syria back in '84(which we didn't. God, Reagan was such a damn coward).....and again in 1993 after we stopped the Likudniks from overthrowing Israel's government(thank you, Chelsea Clinton!).
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
OOC: No Second World War? Sorry, but that's ASB at any point after 1914, I'll have to ignore that part.

OOC: Well, that's where I'm confused. He said 'interwar Germany' and 'second great war' so I assume Germany was in a second war, but it wasn't a war which qualified as 'great'.
 
They could vote post 1969. That's still more than 30 years under an unelected government. No matter how free or efficiently administered they may have been, dictatorship is dictatorship. Countries that ban mainstream political parties, and then arrest people for having formerly been members of said parties, and send them off to work camps in East Prussia, they've already lost out on being part of the good-guys section, exaggeration or no exaggeration.

I'll go ahead and quote Goldwater on this one: "No paradise has secret police."

They bought the silence of the people by getting economic growth (by hook or by crook or by blunt-force trauma to smaller neighbors), but we all know how well that worked out in the end.

The same Goldwater who helped secret police himself?

After all, the US Anti-Techocrat and Anti-Communist movement is little better, if not worse, than the technocrats in Europe, or the Communists in Asia, what with that whole martial law for twenty years in the USA, from 1960 to 1980, where tens of thousands were purged by the FBI for, "dissident activity," to the point where the US became little better than the Fascist movements of Europe until the democratic movement of the 1980s.

But these things are too often conveniently forgotten.

OCC: Sorry, but I'm sick and tired of the US going the same way in these threads as OTL, i.e., not getting significantly harmed by the Cold War or its equivalent.
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
The same Goldwater who helped secret police himself?

After all, the US Anti-Techocrat and Anti-Communist movement is little better, if not worse, than the technocrats in Europe, or the Communists in Asia, what with that whole martial law for twenty years in the USA, from 1960 to 1980, where tens of thousands were purged by the FBI for, "dissident activity," to the point where the US became little better than the Fascist movements of Europe until the democratic movement of the 1980s.

But these things are too often conveniently forgotten.

OCC: Sorry, but I'm sick and tired of the US going the same way in these threads as OTL, i.e., not getting significantly harmed by the Cold War or its equivalent.

OOC: I was going to imply a second 'red scare' about technocracy in reply to Georgepatton's reply to mine and claim a similar nipping in the bud of the US technocracy movement until CaliBoy implied Russia didn't have a revolution.
 
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