What if an anonymous billionaire fan bankrolls a revival of Doctor Who in 2001, on condition that it has Emma Bunton as the title character and features at least one actor or actress from India in a major role? (Assume that the BBC are offered so much money that they find it impossible to say 'no', and that Emma Bunton, following the break up of the Spice Girls, is interested when sounded out.)
Miscellaneous >1900 (Alternate) History Thread
- Thread starter RMcD94
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This is related to Back to the Future pt II getting made eariler, but Geekhis Khan’s comment about BttF being made in the 70’s got me wondering about a version being made then.
So whom would star in a 70’s version of Back to the Future and what make would the Time Machine car be?
Not sure of the actor. But I want the time machine to be a Bond bug.
"Smokey And The Time Bandit" starring Burt Reynolds in a Pontiac Trans Am.
With Jackie Gleason as General Buford T. Justice, who's in hot pursuit of the "goddamn germans" and their super car weapon, and Jerry Reed as Doc Snowman who invented time travel mostly for the money.
Peter Cushing is still appearing in films in the 1970's and might be available maybe?
How would US politics (1920s-1990s) change without the Soviet Union? (The 1990s are old enough not to be current politics...)
Driftless
Donor
The cynic in me thinks we would find another group to be xenophobic about, other than the godless Comma-nists.... Mexico and the other Hispanic countries to the South of the US have always been useful standbys for that role.
Prohibition lasts longer? But that's just a guess. Once again, less of a Red Scare to divert attention.
Maybe we work up an anti-colonial Empire fever, but I think that ones a reach.
It would depend. How does Wiemar Germany turn out. Do the Nazis still take absolute power without the fear of Soviet communism? Is there still a WWII in Europe? A Pacific war? etc.
The Royal Exchequer would make an investigation if they're doing money laundering with such outstanding ideas...after finding the person is serious, after a quick laugh, they give the BBC the greenlight, like is a cheap money sink, if the series bombs the franchise stay dead and if this is a success, they can swindler doctor who from that random bloke
'Most Monstrous Red Germany Possible, Post-WW1'.
I'm sure it wouldn't be a great place to live, given the German communists' thuggish behavior. At the same time, though, it'd be a tall order to rival the Nazis for sheer depravity, unless you somehow got some German version of Pol Pot that came to power and went Khmer Rouge mode across Europe. Maybe even a far-left version of Hitler himself would lead the charge, depending on exactly how far the PoD goes and how drastically his outlook is shaped over the years.
I'm sure it wouldn't be a great place to live, given the German communists' thuggish behavior. At the same time, though, it'd be a tall order to rival the Nazis for sheer depravity, unless you somehow got some German version of Pol Pot that came to power and went Khmer Rouge mode across Europe. Maybe even a far-left version of Hitler himself would lead the charge, depending on exactly how far the PoD goes and how drastically his outlook is shaped over the years.
Germany creates the Mitteleuropäisch Räterepublik (Greater Germany merged with Brest-Litovsk satellite nations in Eastern Europe alongside the post-Austria-Hungary states) that just so happens to engage in Holodomor-style targetted famines against "nationalists", in particlar the Poles? And these anti-nationalist campaigns along with anti-religious campaigns target the Jews due to Zionism being a banned ideology. Dissidents against the regime are sent to labour camps to perform forced labour under brutal conditions until their release--or more likely, death.
Maybe a lot of this happens during a World War II analogue brought on by the Mitteleuropäisch Räterepublik's series of annexations, in which case as the war turns worse (maybe against the USSR, once an ally now turned enemy in some great schism in global communism) they become increasingly desperate for labour and increasingly paranoid about enemies. Here I could see things like the "stab in the back" legend take a prominent place where the "Zionists" are blamed for why Germany lost not only the Great War, but this war too. Like in the Soviet Union, Jews would be targetted because perhaps some purged communists in the Mitteleuropäisch Räterepublik were ethnic Jews and the belief the USSR is ran by Jews who perverted true communism. Some analogue to the Doctors' Plot would occur except in Mitteleuropa, would actually be carried out in full, and the Jews would all be sent to labour camps. For "efficiency", prisons who become too weak to work in the declining conditions are exterminated at newly built death camps. Hostile nationalities like the Poles are similarly deported to the ever increasing number of labour camps, and closer toward the frontlines in France and Belgium, entire towns (mostly of French speakers) are massacred or deported to the camps. Many perish in these camps of disease and starvation.
It's difficult to make a monstrous Red Germany without it just being another take on Stalinism in terms of atrocities, although this take on German communism would be fused with Prussian militarism in the same manner Stalinism inherited many traits of Tsarism. I think either of the Strasser brothers, TTL turned communist, would make good "German Stalins" (or otherwise wind up as German version of Trotsky or Bukharin).
Interesting outline you’ve sketched out, though I don’t have many comments to add, given that I’ll be off to bed soon.
Not that I was too convinced it’d happen to begin with, but I wondered if a Red Germany that takes Marx’s “primitive communism” ideals too far and enacts Year Zero would be ludicrously ASB. Plus, given how uniquely evil the Nazis were, I suppose it’s hard to think of an alternative, non-Nazi German state that’s similarly consumed by demagoguery and calculated cruelty. Otherwise, I suppose a form of “Germanized Stalinism” taking hold makes the most sense, so long as plausibility is our guiding principle here.
Happy July 4th, by the way. I know it’s really late to say it, but so long as I’m replying at this time of night, might as well wish it.
I think a "Year Zero" would have to be some sort of fusion with Ariosophy and other sorts of Himmler-esque esotericism/occultism. I think there would be fertile ground in a communist Germany for something like Lunacharsky's "God-Building" to emerge and then slowly absorb the nationalists and esoteric types until someone from that part of the KPD takes control and ends up doing de-industrialisation programs and other insanity.
Maybe a Heinrich Himmler who became a communist TTL?
Red Himmler seems like a possible candidate, though whether the primitivist elements of Red Germany wrest power from the “Stalinist expy” establishment strikes me as more dubious. Unless, of course, the Khmer Rouge-like faction he leads swells to massive levels of support and/or scares the hell out of everyone else, to the point where no one can challenge him and his followers. Which I rather doubt, given Germany’s preexisting tradition of high-quality science and engineering—all of which a Pol Pot equivalent would have to burn to the ground in a mad rampage.
On the off-chance something like this does happen, though, then I think we’ve finally found a communist Germany rivaling the Nazis in the “evil department”, especially if they plan to cull the Soviet population in a manner similar to Generaleplan Ost. Not exactly a desirable honor, though certainly in line with the premise I offered here.
We have so many threads where the OP thinks one change for the Wehrmacht that is highly unlikely to work in the first place (Axis invade Malta, no Dunkirk halt order, something something Barbarossa, Germans spam U-Boats from 1935, something something BoB etc), would a common WW2 Germany POD's thread similar to the Sealion thread be worth it so members don't have to rehash those same things and more on a weekly or less basis?