Keynes' Cruisers Volume 2
- Thread starter fester
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It's why I find alternate endings to World War Two so difficult to read, even well written ones. The thought of those people being victorious is just too painful to contemplate. The same with the American Civil War. The thought of evil triumphant is just not something I want to read about, think about, discuss.
I see this the same way you do. I can enjoy a different outcome for World War I, but the American Civil War and World War II, to me, are both about stopping the spread of evil.
The Holocaust post here is VERY well done. I think that, if more people felt the impact of it, the world would be a better place.
I also personally like to name WW1 "Europe's Vietnam", not just for the bloody attrition warfare and use of chemical weapons, but the new generation of anti-war activists and pacifists that it produced.
At least outside of a few whack jobs, nobody thinks the other side winning WWII would have been a good thing and alternate histories (realistic or otherwise) tend to be rather dystopian. The sad things WRT the ACW, to this day their is a disturbing subset of the US population that views the CSA's loss as one of history's great tragedies.
Some people enjoy reading about a dystopia; I'm not one of them, usually. As for the disturbing subset, I live in Floriduh, so I see them all the time.
All of us, in general, even with all sorts of bad things going on in the world, do tend to believe that the world we live in is the best one compared to what we could have seen. "Better" worlds, fusion power, flying cars etc, tend to be seen by the AH crowd as wanks etc - some of the less savory things like Nazis or the CSA winning or other negative but less obvious changes are for that reason more "plausible". In many cases, either a bad guy victory was possible without Skippy the ASB even if implausible, and some outcomes like the US/UK/Nazi cold war as opposed to the sea mammal could have happened.
Here things are going better for the "good guys", and it may happen fewer innocents will die - but done well and not a wank.
Here things are going better for the "good guys", and it may happen fewer innocents will die - but done well and not a wank.
BarbaraChandler
Banned
Nazis die in horrible ways and will continue to die in horrible ways for some time yet. That’s all the comfort I’m taking here.
I agree completely. Your story reminds me of Herman Wouk's novels the "Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance" in that both have that similar epic sweep to them. And while Keynes' Cruisers is of course an alternate history story I think it's a honest and decent thing that you have included an account of the Holocaust.
Indeed. That episode reminds me of some of the more poignant sections of Schindler's Arc. Very well done, @fester.
What the two sages quoted here said, great writing about an awful subject.
Those two post coming back to back make each so much more. in the first a beautiful seen of a loving husband and wife spending just a little time together before he will be gone again and could lay down his life to protect his wife and children. For them there is just the now, they both know what could come but are enjoying the time they have now and will let what happens tomorrow happen. In the second you have a young woman who know what will happen and goes willing to her own death just to give children, and children that are not hers what little comfort she can. She know she can't save them, she know she might safe herself but she takes the coarse to give what little comfort she can to children she doesn't know to make there last minutes on earth a little less scary. Coming back to back these two chapters both powerful and well done are some of the best written on this board.
Eep! Wasn't Auschwitz where Dr. Josef Mengele was in the original timeline, or have he and his child experiments been excised from this timeline?
iOTL Mengele did not arrive at Auchswitz II (aka Birkenau) till after January 1943
However several other SS medical staff were already performing "experiments" on selected prisoners at that time.
For over a year Mengele was a relatively minor figure, supervising the small "Gypsy Camp" as well as monitoring the prisoners with medical expertise conscripted to work on their fellow inmates. Eventually he was given more authority. His various programs includes horrific "triage" methods that sent any patient that required more than 2 weeks in the hospital to the gas chamber and several decontamination exercises during the many epidemics that broke out. These involved killing the occupants of one hut so that it could be sterilised adequately to make make room for others shuffled across.
Mengel's own particular studies were granted approval and money only in 1944. A special lab was built and an Austrian Jew, a genuine expert in genetics and pathology, forced to act as his assistant.
Mengele was by no means the exception or lone wolf that the German propagandist prefer to portray him as being.
Other Nazis were experimenting on inmates before, during and after he left Auchswitz in early 1945.
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I like the facts of this but like others have discussed, the discussions of the Shoah, are tragic and painful at best, especially for family's that lost generations.
True ... but my point in posting was in my last paragraph
I am deeply saddened by the number of folk who can quote verse 1 of "In Flanders Fields"
and have never seen let alone understood it's real meaning as shown in verse 3 (my bold)
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
We have lost the veterans of 14-18 and are losing those of 39-45,
we no longer have to continue their fight directly as Macrae intended
but we do have to keep faith with them by keeping the truth in front of our neighbors and our children's eyes
(however tragic and painful that truth may be)
Lest we forget applies in more ways than one
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Donald Reaver
Donor
I understand the feeling behind that, feel conflicted as well as giving it a like. The importance though to me is acknowledging the horror that was the holocaust, and supporting the author in his showing that to us. The like system is good but limited, comment at times is required.
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