Meta-Alternate History Theory: Excesses and Atrocities

I've been reading some nifty Kaiserreich AARs, and realized something: so much of AH seems semi-sanitized, even if when they contain massive amounts of war. In even the most elaborate of online timelines, there aren't many that mirror the stupidities, excesses, and atrocities we can easily see in the last few centuries. While you get all sorts of wars, including nuclear ones or bloody revolutions, it's usually equal opportunity evil. In contrast to real world history, with all of its mass race-based killings or colonialist-induced famines.

Am I under the wrong impression, or do most online (and otherwise) AH tend to shy away from those concepts? I usually do indeed tend to see this in 1900 timelines, namely the alt-WWI ending ones. And if I'm not wrong, then what is the cause of this? Is it because of squeamish of depicting alt-pogroms and fictional Unit 731's? Is it because the difficulty in imagining the improbable wretched stupidity of Ceauşescu's regime or of modern North Korea?
 
I wouldn't compare the Victorians to the 20th century in terms of atrocities, with the possible exception of King Leopold's Congo. However you are partially correct though there are some of TL's where things are worse than OTL in that respect, e.g. Shattered World. Though they are genearlly Nazi victory tl's.
 

mowque

Banned
Oh, I think I get it now. And Yes, I get squeamish. My only rule going into my TL was 'No Holocausts"
 
I wouldn't compare the Victorians to the 20th century in terms of atrocities, with the possible exception of King Leopold's Congo. However you are partially correct though there are some of TL's where things are worse than OTL in that respect, e.g. Shattered World. Though they are genearlly Nazi victory tl's.

I don't mean their scale or racial attitudes are comparable, but both cases are examples of "terrible senseless death caused by societies more primitive than the modern day and utterly shocking to our sensibilities here in the developed world." Shattered World is indeed worse, but I think most AH's don't mind worse war. It's other sources of mega-deaths that make people squeamish. Genocide, manmade famines, ethnic cleansings, etc. Understandably, people don't like imagining those things. However, it does cause one to wonder if the Holocaust was the natural procession from pre-1900 pogroms to industrial society.
 

Quatermain

Banned
I think it might be partly because if someone were to write a time line (or a book) that focused on the genocide of a particular race and/or ethnicity they would quickly be inundated with accusations of 'secret racism' or of writing 'wish-fulfillment.'

Or they might just get 1,001 quibbles about how 'un-realistic' and 'improbable' an organized and specific campaign of genocide would be, much like people did about the actual Holocaust in the late '40's(because they couldn't/wouldn't believe it) and still occasionally do today(from other, darker motives).
 
I think, or at least I like to think, that this is largely because most people who write AH don't like to dwell on genocide and other mass slaughter of defenseless people. Therefore, people either write timelines where there was less of this than in OTL, or if they do feel it necessary to include it based on what they consider likely, they mention it fairly briefly and it is not the main focus of the timeline.
 
In my long-term Union of Britain TL, the Mosley years are going to get pretty nasty in terms of civil liberties and 're-education camps'. But there'll be no mechanised slaughter or genocide - none of the countries that exist have any reason to do it (Mitteleuropan Imperialists are patronising but not mass-murderers, Syndicalists are committed Internationalists who would sooner execute dissidents than foreigners and Democrats don't exactly have a history of genocide).

As the TL goes on I may have to touch on some of the more loony bits of the post-war world, and I won't rule out some Khmer Rouge style regimes getting set up in some of the more disparate parts of the planet once the dust settles on the Second Great War.

If I were writing a TL about, say, Nazi analogues or indeed the Nazis, I really don't know where I would draw the line about making up genocidal atrocities. I think I'd be too squeamish.
 

Germaniac

Donor
I think it's more along the lines that a reasonably intelligent person can't wrap their head around the idea of murdering millions of people.

Plus, no one wants to be the person who's time line kills off an ethnic group. Most people just stick to killing off religions.
 
I don't like holocausts, or more appropriately I don't like the unbridled idealism which brings them about.
 
My vote goes for a combination of discomfort about going into painful details about an act of mass murder, to some extent, doing it would completely derail the timeline as well. It'd be a tough experience too, imagine writing an entire narrative based on a Janjaweed attack on a refugee camp in Darfur (because the villages are pretty much dead after all that effort on their part), imagine having to write that children and their parents would be manacled to poles, doused in gasoline and set on fire. That would not only horrify most of the readership, but it would also be nearly impossible to change subjects after such a narrative.
 
And if I'm not wrong, then what is the cause of this? Is it because of squeamish of depicting alt-pogroms and fictional Unit 731's? Is it because the difficulty in imagining the improbable wretched stupidity of Ceauşescu's regime or of modern North Korea?
There is also the Moderator [Ian's Hammer of Doom] Factor. So whe don't write graphical depictions of Slavery, War,Torture, etc.
And no graphical Sex/Sexual POD's. Despite this being one of the most basic, and central Human activity's.
This applies also, to other AH boards, and their Moderators.
 
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