The only problem is, how do you make a show about a anti-Semitic President go on for more than one season, without resorting to the 'Holocaust in America' cliché?
HBO's The Plot Against America
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The only problem is, how do you make a show about a anti-Semitic President go on for more than one season, without resorting to the 'Holocaust in America' cliché?
The answer is simple: who says they won't resort to that? If they really wanna milk this series thinking it can be their Man in the High Castle, HBO very easily could just make Plot Against America a Holocaust in America story-it would not be original or all that good in all likelihood (I could see them doing the Holocaust-in-America plotline while still having the Walter Winchell 1944 presidential bid plotline still happen), but it's very possible.
The more I think about this the more I realize I am less confident in this adaptation being good than I am in the Steins;Gate live-action adaptation being good and the latter is an anime live-action adaptation.
I know in the book, as a result of Lindbergh's conservative government, there's a uptick in anti-Semitism, but I highly doubt Americans would stomach anything like the Holocaust (concentration camps and all) happening on American soil. I've heard arguments that IRL concentration camp guards could've easily passed a psychological exam for the US Army or the Kansas City Police, but still, I would be very interested in how Lindbergh's government will turn from 'I want America to return to it's core values' to 'I want the Jews either exterminated or separated from the rest of the population'.
In the book, the closest Lindbergh gets to an American Holocaust is an 'Americanization program' that sends young Jews to live in Christian households in the American heartland for a few months. It's kinda voluntary I think (albeit having the goal of weakening the Jewish identity of American Jews) and the narrator's brother gets sent on that program and comes back with a fondness for bacon, a southern twang in his dialect and a disdain for his family's 'insular Jewishness' or something like that.
Yeah, but that's not really a 'Holocaust'. Sounds more like what Canada and Australia did to their Aboriginal children. It's a cultural genocide, certainly, but it's not the Holocaust we're talking about.
No yeah I know that.
It’s just I expect the series to go beyond the book for ‘resonance’/shock and horror
Same here. If they are able to avoid the cliché and somehow make this Americanization program stick in the minds of the viewer, then I'll be happy.
Interestingly, it also has another precedent in the US: it was common for certain ‘patriotic’ organizations to round up Irish immigrant children and ship them west for ‘Americanization’ in the early 19th century.
Whether Lindbergh would execute a local Holocaust is a difficult question, but I lean on ‘no.’ The OTL Holocaust stemmed from the intersection of Nazi racial thinking and military failure against the Soviets. The US has no analogous strains—Lindbergh was a racist shithead, but there’s no Red Army putting a time limit on his efforts.
If they want to extend the show past the source material, they could follow up on the conspiracy theory mentioned in the end of the book, that the Nazis has kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby and raised him in the Hitler Youth. Make that come true and you might milk a season out of him.
You'll have to find out in Episode 3 or read the novel. But, with Japan particularly, the answer stretches plausibility like a rubber band.
It seems good so far. I haven't seen anything too heavy handed, but we are only 3 episodes in. I can't really judge the show until I've seen the whole thing. The Young Americans program seems ominous. I can't help but get the feeling that sending Jewish kids to 1940's Kentucky won't end well.
SPOILER ?
The Just Folks program was just the opening salvo and the forthcoming Homestead 42 act is much more ominous for Jewish Americans in general. Im wondering where the series will go with it -if the intent is to just do a run off of the novel putting everything into six hours makes sense however as if the wanted to spin things off they would likely need more time-at least 2 or 3 seasons. This would be my preference so as usual Im not holding my breath...
I haven't read the novel, so it's all new to me. I'm interested to see where things go. There's something about it that gives me The Man in the High Castle vibes, probably the idea of a fascist America.
I'm getting major McCarthyism vibes off of Lindbergh's antics, especially with him using the FBI and other state organs to harass enemies of the administration. It's all a lot more slow moving and quietly insidious than what I thought would happen, which was the USA turning into Germany 2.0 practically overnight. You know things are bad when Walter Winchell is a welcome sight. I'm not sure how they're going to wrap it all up in only one more episode, unless there's a cliffhanger and we end up getting another season somewhere down the line.
As for the war, the show is leaving it just vague enough that I can't completely tell if anything is very different from how it went in real life, even without Lend-Lease. There's reference made to the Russians stabilizing their front somewhere short of Moscow, and the British holding on in North Africa. I'd assume they're making heavier use of colonial troops ITTL. Also no mention of Imperial Japan getting involved in the war. I can only assume that Lindbergh's administration didn't see fit to embargo them. Maybe that convinced them to hold off on invading Allied possessions in the Pacific for a little while?
Also, I've been surprised to find myself feeling a little bit of pity for Rabbi Bengelsdorf, who behaves a little bit like an affection starved puppy when he's around the Lindberghs and seems genuinely unaware that them being outwardly civil to him does not in fact mean that they're not bigoted, Nazi sympathizing monsters all the same. That being said, he deserves whatever's coming his way in the finale. Evelyn too.
my worst fear is that it exactly follows the arc of the novel and ends with Roosevelt jumping in out of nowhere and righting the ship with minimal fuss
As for the war, the show is leaving it just vague enough that I can't completely tell if anything is very different from how it went in real life, even without Lend-Lease. There's reference made to the Russians stabilizing their front somewhere short of Moscow, and the British holding on in North Africa. I'd assume they're making heavier use of colonial troops ITTL. Also no mention of Imperial Japan getting involved in the war. I can only assume that Lindbergh's administration didn't see fit to embargo them. Maybe that convinced them to hold off on invading Allied possessions in the Pacific for a little while?
Also, I've been surprised to find myself feeling a little bit of pity for Rabbi Bengelsdorf, who behaves a little bit like an affection starved puppy when he's around the Lindberghs and seems genuinely unaware that them being outwardly civil to him does not in fact mean that they're not bigoted, Nazi sympathizing monsters all the same. That being said, he deserves whatever's coming his way in the finale. Evelyn too.
So the series ends without confirming who won the special US Presidential election of 1942.This seems to acknowledge that the book ended a little too abruptly and restored OTL history a little too neatly. It makes one wonder what things would look like in 1962 ITTL.....
I just realized some fridge horror.
Given how darn good the FBI was at counterintelligence in OTL, J. Edgar Hoover is probably going to come across the MI-6 assassination plot against Lindbergh after the November 1942 special election, if he hadn't already. And there's a pretty good chance that the Ford-Taft ticket won that election, since we were treated to scenes of goons (presumably Ford's or Hoovers) destroying ballots from heavily Democratic Newark, New Jersey (as well as screwing with the voter rolls). And that :conflicting reports from heavily Lindbergh counties" radio report could very well be about how November 2 polls that favored FDR in those places are instead favoring Ford instead (sure, MI-6 and the Democratic Party machines could put their finger on the scale, but Hoover and Ford's business bodies can pound those same scales with a fist).
We might just get American entry into WWII....
Given how darn good the FBI was at counterintelligence in OTL, J. Edgar Hoover is probably going to come across the MI-6 assassination plot against Lindbergh after the November 1942 special election, if he hadn't already. And there's a pretty good chance that the Ford-Taft ticket won that election, since we were treated to scenes of goons (presumably Ford's or Hoovers) destroying ballots from heavily Democratic Newark, New Jersey (as well as screwing with the voter rolls). And that :conflicting reports from heavily Lindbergh counties" radio report could very well be about how November 2 polls that favored FDR in those places are instead favoring Ford instead (sure, MI-6 and the Democratic Party machines could put their finger on the scale, but Hoover and Ford's business bodies can pound those same scales with a fist).
We might just get American entry into WWII....