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.
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.
Its not specific to this show but I am getting increasingly sick of heavy handed dramas being the only mirror used for societal messaging, its just all so dull.
Give me some Mel Brooks please I will do anything
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.....
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).
Even if the plausibility of the scenario is a bit far fetched, the atmosphere of this last episode... that was bone chilling - they did a really good job conveying the real tension there
On the German side ? It seems to me that barring an outside attack on the US by Germany or Japan that if the US went to war on the side of one of the WW2 beligerants-especially the Axis- a Second US Civil War becomes possible...
I was pretty disappointed by the ending personally (I just finished) - it seemed to be building to a tad blunt but powerful warning against fascism but instead of it taking the indulgence of fascism to its full political conclusion, all it does is tell us that the United States can just come back and restore itself back to OTL as if nothing happened. I felt like it was trying to keep its political allegory to modern day (if we win this election, it will be right again) but it didn't fuse well with the scale of the violence shown in the show. The military, police, and the KKK were out in force destroying Jewish businesses and murdering political opponents with something resembling approval of the Presidential administration that even descends into martial law, but after the speech of the First Lady it all disappears into smoke and we get a probable Roosevelt presidency.
It would have been a much stronger narrative and political allegory if it showed that cooperation with fascism leads to serious ramifications not just as long as one presidential term lasts, but much farther...
On the German side ? It seems to me that barring an outside attack on the US by Germany or Japan that if the US went to war on the side of one of the WW2 beligerants-especially the Axis- a Second US Civil War becomes possible...
Well, assassinating/kidnapping the US president pretty much is an outside attack. Hoover and Ford could probably conjure up any evidence that they couldn't already produce (and Lindbergh's 1940 election seemed to have a pretty big margin).
I was pretty disappointed by the ending personally (I just finished) - it seemed to be building to a tad blunt but powerful warning against fascism but instead of it taking the indulgence of fascism to its full political conclusion, all it does is tell us that the United States can just come back and restore itself back to OTL as if nothing happened. I felt like it was trying to keep its political allegory to modern day (if we win this election, it will be right again) but it didn't fuse well with the scale of the violence shown in the show. The military, police, and the KKK were out in force destroying Jewish businesses and murdering political opponents with something resembling approval of the Presidential administration that even descends into martial law, but after the speech of the First Lady it all disappears into smoke and we get a probable Roosevelt presidency.
It would have been a much stronger narrative and political allegory if it showed that cooperation with fascism leads to serious ramifications not just as long as one presidential term lasts, but much farther...
I don't think the Roosevelt reelection in 1942 is the probable outcome (far from it).
Someone (Ford or Hoover) has managed to reach into New Jersey and destroy ballots from Democratic leaning precincts (and judging from the past two years, a lot of the state and local NJ police have been suborned). As for conflicting results being reported on the radio, that could just indicate that Roosevelt favorable polls weren't being borne out in 1940 Lindbergh east coast counties.
Since Ford's running, he likely has the support of much, if not, most of American big business.
I don't think the Roosevelt reelection in 1942 is the probable outcome (far from it).
Someone (Ford or Hoover) has managed to reach into New Jersey and destroy ballots from Democratic leaning precincts (and judging from the past two years, a lot of the state and local NJ police have been suborned). As for conflicting results being reported on the radio, that could just indicate that Roosevelt favorable polls weren't being borne out in 1940 Lindbergh east coast counties.
Since Ford's running, he likely has the support of much, if not, most of American big business.
Hmm, I misinterpreted the ending then! I still felt a bit jarred from martial law and political arrests like Bengelsdorff and open racial violence and burning of cities to a fast forward to the Special Election being held after the First Lady's speech. I suppose they had to cram the plot of a book into a mini-series though so naturally some license had to be taken.
Hmm, I misinterpreted the ending then! I still felt a bit jarred from martial law and political arrests like Bengelsdorff and open racial violence and burning of cities to a fast forward to the Special Election being held after the First Lady's speech. I suppose they had to cram the plot of a book into a mini-series though so naturally some license had to be taken.
Well, I think what you described actually was the ending in Roth's novel.
David Simon felt that it* was too trite, though.
*FDR wins the 1942 special election, and lo and behold, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor in December 1942, and the US jumps into WWII. Bobby Kennedy even gets whacked, to complete the butterfly genocide.
