Meta: genocide and other atrocities in TLs

On a related note, is there any sort of general consensus as to how far is too far when it comes to having a real person do something considerably more reprehensible, or at least more controversial, than they ever did IRL? I've been trying to find the right approach to this with my V for Vendetta-inspired British scenario, where I have rogue KGB and CIA agents arming and funding violent extremists in the UK. On the KGB side, I did use two RL participants in the failed hard-line coup against Gorbachev, but on the CIA side, I ended up inventing a fictional character, since I wasn't sure if even some of the shadier characters in the agency's history would have done that if Britain were the target.
 
I'm working on the timeline Sand and Steel, and I'm currently on WWII, which involves the Middle East as well, and I plan to do some things regarding the Holocaust and a genocide against Middle Eastern minorities (similar to the one that occurred under the Ottomans in WWI).

Also:
I plan to have WWII end earlier due to Iranian support on the eastern front and an allied invasion of Spain, resulting in Anne Frank's survival and causing her to become an influential figure who eventually becomes prime minister of (a more egalitarian) Israel and leads the country through a major conflict in the 1980s. Is that insensitive, or is it a nice tribute showing the potential of those who were killed? (For context I am myself Jewish).

Beyond even Anne Frank there are millions of others to consider. There are individuals who might have gone on to do major things, their children and grandchildren. Those are a whole lot of butterflies.
 
Should authors self-censor or should they write? What should be censored, and why? How should different subjects be approached, and why?
These are the relevant instant Ban offenses:

- Support of Nazism
- Holocaust denial
- Advocating genocide

If you approve these beliefs you should ideally seek professional help, dont post on AH or at the very least maintain strict self-censorship.
If you are writing about AH people with such belief, be sure it does not come across as your own beliefs.
It may additionally be necessary to justify the writing of such matter in the context under discussion, but if that Can be done there is no need for censorship. IMHO
 
Yeah like there was one Greater Israel timeline that was all fine and dandy until there was one part where all of the Arabs in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan were sent to a tiny state carved out in northwest Jordan and the writer tried to act like it was a super generous thing. Just don't make it pro-genocide.
 
I try to avoid genocide where ever I can, and if genocide does happen I don't mention it or make it clear I do not support it. By trying to avoid it I mean make it possible for relocation to occur rather than actual killing, which I think we can all agree is the lesser of two evils.

For example, in my timeline Nazi Germany wins the world war, but the Holocaust is avoided. Instead, the Nazis create a fascist puppet state in former British Palestine under the control of the Lehi (a group of Jewish fascists). The Nazis are far nicer than they were in real life, with Lebensraum goals drastically reduced to only west Poland, Czechia and the Baltics, and even in these areas the majority of Slavs are only Germanised rather than killed or even resettled.

In OTL, the majority of fascist nations were not overly racist, like Nazi Germany was. Fascist Italy, for example, had Jews in top positions of government and made an effort to integrate rather than cleanse conquered territory. Since the other fascist powers had to rely on Nazi Germany, they were forced to work within Germany's goals for Europe. In TTL, the United States becomes a fascist nation, but one that follows the ideology of Italy rather than Germany. Nazi Germany is forced to abandon some of their policies in order to secure allies. The United States and the rest of the European fascists see all European people as equals, including Slavs, so in order to secure any allies the Nazis had to give up their Slav hate.

Even though forced resettlement is bad, it is still better than the alternative.
 
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I try to avoid genocide where ever I can, and if genocide does happen I don't mention it or make it clear I do not support it. By trying to avoid it I mean make it possible for relocation to occur rather than actual killing, which I think we can all agree is the lesser of two evils.

For example, in my timeline Nazi Germany wins the world war, but the Holocaust is avoided. Instead, the Nazis create a fascist puppet state in former British Palestine under the control of the Lehi (a group of Jewish fascists). The Nazis are far nicer than they were in real life, with Lebensraum goals drastically reduced to only west Poland, Czechia and the Baltics, and even in these areas the majority of Slavs are only Germanised rather than killed or even resettled.

In OTL, the majority of fascist nations were not overly racist, like Nazi Germany was. Fascist Italy, for example, had Jews in top positions of government and made an effort to integrate rather than cleanse conquered territory. Since the other fascist powers had to rely on Nazi Germany, they were forced to work within Germany's goals for Europe. In TTL, the United States becomes a fascist nation, but one that follows the ideology of Italy rather than Germany. Nazi Germany is forced to abandon some of their policies in order to secure allies. The United States and the rest of the European fascists see all European people as equals, including Slavs, so in order to secure any allies the Nazis had to give up their Slav hate.

Even though forced resettlement is bad, it is still better than the alternative.

Ah yes Lehi, the Jewish Fascist unicorn of alternate history. Definitely putting your TL on my to-read list.
 
Somebody people approach AH as a fantasy writing experience. Seeing someone's fantasy including a greater than minimally plausible genocide is disturbing.

Other people's approach AH writing as a tool for understanding historical causation. Seeing someone's argument deny commonly agreed or within scholarly consensus beliefs around the facts or causation of historical or potential genocides is disturbing.

We hope authors should wish that the commissar order, action groups and deliberate starvation of Soviet POWs in 1941 did not exist. We however doubt a leadership, party, and ordinary man who is not so culpable is plausible with any POD that allows a Barbarossa to occur.


And then of course there is equatorial pork.

Yours
Sam R.
 
Seems, that genocide in ATL is acceptable, unless someone try to justify it or advocate for commiting it in real world. In AANW there is genocide order of magnitude bigger than Holocaust (Generalplan Ost implemented).
Yeah, but AANW is arguably the exception that proves the rule.
 
Regarding the use of historic figures:

For the dead shwi had a standard of *Name, ie *Karl Marx, to indicate an equivalent historical figure who should not be confused with the Marx we all love hate or find indifferent.

Regarding the living, I am subject to Australian libel law. I speak undesired ill or well only of the dead.

Yours,
Sam R.
 
On a related note, is there any sort of general consensus as to how far is too far when it comes to having a real person do something considerably more reprehensible, or at least more controversial, than they ever did IRL?

Fear, Loathing and Gumbo and its sequel Rumsfeldia give the Historical Villain Upgrade to several real-life individuals, some of whom are still alive:

Mao Yuanxin, the nephew of Mao Zedong, becomes the supreme leader of the People's Republic of China (known as the "Lesser Mao") and transforms the country into a massive totalitarian killing field that would make OTL North Korea and the Khmer Rouge look like amateurs. He also turns China into a narco state, growing opium to produce heroin which is then shipped to the West to weaken China's enemies. As if things couldn't get any worse, the Lesser Mao also destroys a rebelling city with a nuclear bomb. The Lesser Mao's reign leads to the deaths of over 200 million people and the collapse of China into an anarchic, warlord-torn wasteland.

Sanjay Gandhi avoids his OTL fatal plane crash and eventually becomes Prime Minister of India. He imposes an authoritarian rule over India, including draconian population control measures, and he gets the country into a war with Pakistan. India itself collapses into civil war, with Gandhi's government using nuclear weapons against rebel forces.

Magnus Malan becomes the dictator of apartheid South Africa. He turns the country into a fascist regime that oppresses all non-Afrikaner ethnic groups (including non-Afrikaner whites) and uses chemical and biological weapons against its neighboring countries, turning vast swaths of southern Africa into uninhabitable wastelands.

Donald Rumsfeld is elected president of the United States in 1980. President Rumsfeld transforms the United States into an authoritarian police state/corporatoracy. He eliminates social welfare programs, economic regulations, worker protections, and environmental protections, throwing the country back into the Gilded Age. He establishes SS-like paramilitaries called the Liberty Battalions that oppress the masses, burn books that are seen as critical of his regime, and murder dissidents. He rigs elections to keep himself and his cronies in power. He assassinates or "disappears" his political opponents (including a former U.S. president), and he locks up his critics in mental asylums after accusing them of suffering "nervous breakdowns." He engages the U.S. military in countless wars around the world to fight Communism, including sending U.S. troops to support apartheid South Africa in its fight against its leftist neighbors. He presides over the dissolution of NATO after Western Europe seeks a detente with the Soviet Union, and he supports terrorism in Northern Ireland to "punish" Britain for electing a Labour government. He privatizes the U.S. military, and he even orders that wounded U.S. soldiers be summarily executed so the government won't have to pay for their medical expenses. Rumsfeld seeks to privatize the U.S. government, replacing it with a "governing board of corporations" and turning America into an anarcho-capitalist fantasyland. He allows Christian fundamentalists to join his government, and after Rumsfeld is overthrown, the fundies seize total power.

Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye, Douglas Coe, and other leaders of the Christian right seize control of the U.S. government after Rumsfeld is overthrown, with Robertson winning the 1988 presidential election. These fundamentalists turn the United States into a totalitarian Christian theocracy that would make the OTL Taliban and ISIL jealous. A Second American Civil War eventually erupts, which sees the fundies using nuclear weapons on American soil against their enemies.
 
Fear, Loathing and Gumbo and its sequel Rumsfeldia give the Historical Villain Upgrade to several real-life individuals, some of whom are still alive:

Mao Yuanxin, the nephew of Mao Zedong, becomes the supreme leader of the People's Republic of China (known as the "Lesser Mao") and transforms the country into a massive totalitarian killing field that would make OTL North Korea and the Khmer Rouge look like amateurs. He also turns China into a narco state, growing opium to produce heroin which is then shipped to the West to weaken China's enemies. As if things couldn't get any worse, the Lesser Mao also destroys a rebelling city with a nuclear bomb. The Lesser Mao's reign leads to the deaths of over 200 million people and the collapse of China into an anarchic, warlord-torn wasteland.

Sanjay Gandhi avoids his OTL fatal plane crash and eventually becomes Prime Minister of India. He imposes an authoritarian rule over India, including draconian population control measures, and he gets the country into a war with Pakistan. India itself collapses into civil war, with Gandhi's government using nuclear weapons against rebel forces.

Magnus Malan becomes the dictator of apartheid South Africa. He turns the country into a fascist regime that oppresses all non-Afrikaner ethnic groups (including non-Afrikaner whites) and uses chemical and biological weapons against its neighboring countries, turning vast swaths of southern Africa into uninhabitable wastelands.

Donald Rumsfeld is elected president of the United States in 1980. President Rumsfeld transforms the United States into an authoritarian police state/corporatoracy. He eliminates social welfare programs, economic regulations, worker protections, and environmental protections, throwing the country back into the Gilded Age. He establishes SS-like paramilitaries called the Liberty Battalions that oppress the masses, burn books that are seen as critical of his regime, and murder dissidents. He rigs elections to keep himself and his cronies in power. He assassinates or "disappears" his political opponents (including a former U.S. president), and he locks up his critics in mental asylums after accusing them of suffering "nervous breakdowns." He engages the U.S. military in countless wars around the world to fight Communism, including sending U.S. troops to support apartheid South Africa in its fight against its leftist neighbors. He presides over the dissolution of NATO after Western Europe seeks a detente with the Soviet Union, and he supports terrorism in Northern Ireland to "punish" Britain for electing a Labour government. He privatizes the U.S. military, and he even orders that wounded U.S. soldiers be summarily executed so the government won't have to pay for their medical expenses. Rumsfeld seeks to privatize the U.S. government, replacing it with a "governing board of corporations" and turning America into an anarcho-capitalist fantasyland. He allows Christian fundamentalists to join his government, and after Rumsfeld is overthrown, the fundies seize total power.

Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye, Douglas Coe, and other leaders of the Christian right seize control of the U.S. government after Rumsfeld is overthrown, with Robertson winning the 1988 presidential election. These fundamentalists turn the United States into a totalitarian Christian theocracy that would make the OTL Taliban and ISIL jealous. A Second American Civil War eventually erupts, which sees the fundies using nuclear weapons on American soil against their enemies.
So much for plausibility.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I'm not worried or anything. My Anglo-French timeline has a lot of it, e.g. search for the Oswald Perrin story, or search for the word genocide. I'm genuinely curious how other TL writers handle this topic when writing about colonialism, totalitarian states, total wars, etc.

I leave in existing Genocides unless there is a clear reason the genocide is avoided. As to new areas where there is potential genocide, I look for similar circumstances and tend to make sure it falls in the range of OTL outcomes. So for colonialism, I don't put in genocide in the sense of planning. Colonial killing tend to be out of not caring, so you might well get deaths due a famine cause by not planting the crops due to X. Or disease Y spreads faster due to poor sanitation in refugees camps.

IMO, genocide tone should be similar to the rest of the ATL. So say you have an ATL with massive bombing of cities. Did you just focus on lost production in the ATL? If so, then you probably should not mention the genocide unless it impacts war supplies. On the other end of the spectrum, if you put a significant character and showed the suffering from nation X bombing campaign, then you should have a similar character in the genocide area.

Also, you just can't write a major ATL involving a war and not have some war crimes. Wars always have war crimes.

So to get to specific and it has been a few years since I wrote an ATL. I increased the death toll in Serbia from 25% to 50% of the population due to the Bulgarians cutting off the retreat route. Probably one post on this topic. I spent a lot of time on the "soft" Austrian ethnic cleansing in Poland, but this was required because a Austrian dominated Poland is so much different that OTL or even most ATL where Germany wins. To colonialism, I did not spend a lot of time on the African atrocities. I tried to do the commentary here by illustrating a black officer rising to the rank of Major General and commanding multiple corp. And illustrating how his troops became mostly blacks due mostly to non-combat deaths. I sort of assumed the reader would understand that if the armies are taking over 25% annual death rate to disease, the civilians are dying faster.

I started a rewrite that I probably will never finish. Here I was working more on my story telling. I planned to use the slums of Douala to illustrate the issues of suffering. Got a bit into polygamy with some of the characters, sort of assumed you could figure out why there is a surplus of women. i.e. excess male deaths. Also focused a bit on certain tribes rising, and think this implies other are falling. If I would have gotten to the war years, I would have had either the German Army in Nigeria or the German Army in the Congo go a bit rouge. i.e. Classic slaughter of males, old, children. I put in place a Boer character so I could have the option of having a Black officer or a white officer lead the crimes. I vaguely planned a bit of conflict here, but never thought through it much. Probably something like the Boer wanting cheap labor and being appalled at the wasting of prime working age black males and the black leader doing more classical type rape/rob/pillage.

Now the issue is that I can't give you the better details of writing due to skills, but IMO, a genocide should be obvious enough that the reader knows it happens but not belabored, unless your ATL is about genocide. A reader should not have to think hard to know if one army is trying to follow the rules of the day and the other is not.
 
As my current timeline develops, I intend for there to be a number of horrific atrocities, as well as at least one obscure OTL figure becoming a bloodthirsty tyrant. For the former, well, I don't plan to sugarcoat much, and the focus will primarily be on things that are noticeably different from OTL, so probably not the same kind of emphasis on, say, American settlement of the West, despite that still being a thing. For the latter, there'll be a detailed progression explaining how this one guy is radicalized, finds himself in a position of power he didn't occupy historically, and uses it to try and impose his beliefs on his country no matter the cost.

As long as everything is seen clearly and perspective is maintained, I think showing the ugly parts of history is fine. To do otherwise would be negligent, if not dishonest.
 
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