MarshalBraginsky
Banned
I'm not sure if Deseret to the USA would seem to be a parallel to the USSR and the deportation of suspected ethnic groups accused of collaborating with Germany (ie: Crimean Tatars and Chechens).
Non-Parallellism in TL-191
- Thread starter Mr.J
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How about the fact that multiple nations are nuclear-capable by the conclusion of the Second Great War? Refreshing my memory with the Turtledove Wiki, no fewer than four nations deployed superbombs in TL-191 1944, with nine cities destroyed and one bomb detonating somewhere in Belgium.
It seems this would lead to a much more liberal opinion of the deployment of such weapons as a supplement to conventional warfare than in OTL.
It seems this would lead to a much more liberal opinion of the deployment of such weapons as a supplement to conventional warfare than in OTL.
Well, obviously, the US, while socialist, expansionist and more militaristic, is a Soviet Union Lite of sorts. It's also a blend of US, Imperial German and vaguely Soviet-like culture. Unlike the USSR, it grants one of its newly conquered territories independence (if Canada is the US's Eastern Europe, then the Republic of Quebec is wholly unique).
The Freedomites are Nazi analogues, but have British and French gear and have no paratroopers. Also, Hound Dogs are probably more similar to Airacobras than Spitfires (I still like the Spitfire option better though). Featherston is killed on the run, not while cowardly hiding in a bunker. And unlike Hitler, his younger self (from WWI) didn't seem like a bad or bloodthirsty guy (flawed - yes, monster - not yet).
Humourously, in a parallelism-nonparallelism, there is not much aerial fighting in the American theatre of the Great War because the US military doesn't invest that much into planes and a proper air force during WWI, exactly like in OTL. And they were still the ones to invent planes, making it all the more bizzare.
Even more weirdly, while WWI American aircraft were mostly imports or licensed models, the US flies analogues of Mustangs during WWII, not German Messerschmitts (though still I like to entertain the idea of a license built "Curtiss-Wright Bf 109" ).
Nukes are used far more often in their version of WWII. The smuggling of one into Philly by truck is actually pretty believable, since a Southern agent can more easily impersonate a Northerner and both nations speak the same language, albeit with different maneurisms.
The cumbersome American copies of German A7Vs from the Great War are more succesful than the better designed British and Confederate tanks, because... they're powered by magic and because Harry says so !
Molotovs are used already shortly after WWI. Oh, and Mormon suicide bombers... during the inter-war period and WWII.
Also, the Freedomite CSA only exterminates blacks, while the Nazis exterminated everyone they deemed "subhuman" and even conducted inhuman experiments on them.
The Empire of Japan gets away Scot-free with everything it does.
The surprise attack on Pearl Harbour is by Americans against the British.
No prospect of a cold war in the classic sense.
Say it with me : Austro-Hungarian tanks !
No succesful communist revolutions (Congaree put down, Russian commies put down).
The Central Powers are still called that during WWII.
The Freedomites are Nazi analogues, but have British and French gear and have no paratroopers. Also, Hound Dogs are probably more similar to Airacobras than Spitfires (I still like the Spitfire option better though). Featherston is killed on the run, not while cowardly hiding in a bunker. And unlike Hitler, his younger self (from WWI) didn't seem like a bad or bloodthirsty guy (flawed - yes, monster - not yet).
Humourously, in a parallelism-nonparallelism, there is not much aerial fighting in the American theatre of the Great War because the US military doesn't invest that much into planes and a proper air force during WWI, exactly like in OTL. And they were still the ones to invent planes, making it all the more bizzare.
Even more weirdly, while WWI American aircraft were mostly imports or licensed models, the US flies analogues of Mustangs during WWII, not German Messerschmitts (though still I like to entertain the idea of a license built "Curtiss-Wright Bf 109" ).Nukes are used far more often in their version of WWII.
The smuggling of one into Philly by truck is actually pretty believable, since a Southern agent can more easily impersonate a Northerner and both nations speak the same language, albeit with different maneurisms.The cumbersome American copies of German A7Vs from the Great War are more succesful than the better designed British and Confederate tanks, because... they're powered by magic and because Harry says so !
Molotovs are used already shortly after WWI. Oh, and Mormon suicide bombers... during the inter-war period and WWII.
Also, the Freedomite CSA only exterminates blacks, while the Nazis exterminated everyone they deemed "subhuman" and even conducted inhuman experiments on them.
The Empire of Japan gets away Scot-free with everything it does.
The surprise attack on Pearl Harbour is by Americans against the British.
No prospect of a cold war in the classic sense.
Say it with me : Austro-Hungarian tanks !
No succesful communist revolutions (Congaree put down, Russian commies put down).
The Central Powers are still called that during WWII.
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Wolfpaw
Banned
There is definitely a lingering air of partnership between German and the US even at the end of IATTD, but even that seems to be thinning. Turtledove's massive European Blindspot makes conjectures on future relations between the US and Germany even more difficult.
The lack of Leninism alone unleashes a horde of ideological and geopolitical butterflies that HT either ignores or does not make us privy to.
The lack of Leninism alone unleashes a horde of ideological and geopolitical butterflies that HT either ignores or does not make us privy to.
One case of *too much* parrallelism for me in that regard was the fact that Party Guard used rank titles that were litteral translation of the ones used by the SS in OTL which in english sounded rather ackward.
On the other hand, they used insignias that were identical to the CSA army ones unlike SS-specific patches.
In regard to Freedom Party uniform, there was a mention (sorry, I don't have the quote) of a character wearing a uniform which from a distance was mistaken for a CSA army uniform (being butternut) but upon closer look was "different" (didn't specify how). This was when the party was first starting so it could be assume it actualy *was* an army uniform with some slight alteration (FP patches for example).
It sometimes bothers me when people refer to 191 US as "socialist." How so, exactly? They have a major socialist party, but so did Germany, France, and UK in OTL. What they don't have is a comprehensive social safety net, universal health care, extensive publicly-owned enterprises, or central economic planning. Even the rationing laws from the Remembrance era seem to have faded away, and those were hardly "socialist" in nature.
To be fair, one of those nations (the CSA) was dissolved at the end of the war, but otherwise yeah.
You might consider the US' capture of FitzBelmont and the surviving CS nuclear scientists to be a Operation Paperclip analog, but I don't, simply because there was no other nation that the scientists could be captured by/defect to that could feasibly start or help a nuclear weapons program.
You have the Americans fearing that FitzBelmont could be kidnapped by the Russians or the Japanese, which was why they accidentally murdered him.
The founder of the Party
OTL: Anton Drexler
Drexler was eventually eclipsed by Hitler and left the party, only to rejoin later, but without any power.
ATL: Anthony Dresser
Featherston and Dresser's relationship was antagonistic and eventually Featherston purged Dresser from the Party, irreversibly.
OTL: Anton Drexler
Drexler was eventually eclipsed by Hitler and left the party, only to rejoin later, but without any power.
ATL: Anthony Dresser
Featherston and Dresser's relationship was antagonistic and eventually Featherston purged Dresser from the Party, irreversibly.
Snake Featherston
Banned
Joining the party:
Hitler: Joined as an agent of the German military with Ernst Rohm as his superior, being discharged from the army *after* he discovers his ability to speak.
Featherston: Discharged from the army and joins due to one of the members offering him a flyer.
1920s troubles:
Hitler: Launches putsch with heroes of the ancien regime at his side, put on trial, turns justice into a farce and a propaganda coup, gets a wrist-slap of a sentence.
Featherston: Overzealous supporter shoots CS President, Party loses respectability overnight, no coup even planned.
Genocides:
Hitler: Intends primarily to kill citizens of other states, Jews in particular but damn near everybody else in Eastern Europe, razing both Imperial Russian capitals in the process.
Featherston: Kills a third of his own country, not so much in the USA, has his Goebbels in Saul Goldman, is evidently less anti-Semitic than some figures of TL-191.
Hitler: Joined as an agent of the German military with Ernst Rohm as his superior, being discharged from the army *after* he discovers his ability to speak.
Featherston: Discharged from the army and joins due to one of the members offering him a flyer.
1920s troubles:
Hitler: Launches putsch with heroes of the ancien regime at his side, put on trial, turns justice into a farce and a propaganda coup, gets a wrist-slap of a sentence.
Featherston: Overzealous supporter shoots CS President, Party loses respectability overnight, no coup even planned.
Genocides:
Hitler: Intends primarily to kill citizens of other states, Jews in particular but damn near everybody else in Eastern Europe, razing both Imperial Russian capitals in the process.
Featherston: Kills a third of his own country, not so much in the USA, has his Goebbels in Saul Goldman, is evidently less anti-Semitic than some figures of TL-191.
I stand corrected about the Russians & Japanese.
But they didn't "accidentally murder" him. They made it look like an accident, or were going to during the last scene where Dowling was the POV character.
Snake Featherston
Banned
A really, really big one is the restoration of the Romanovs under Michael Romanov, given he abdicated IOTL and precious few of the Whites were monarchists, and the Reds certainly weren't.
The Leader
Reaching out to the masses
Hitler: hated using the radio (didn't even start using it until after he became chancellor), preferred using theatrical oratory in front of a live audience; gradually drifted out of public view as the war went on and used his propaganda chief as his mouthpiece.
Featherston: starts out using live oratory; starts using radio later in his career but was equally comfortable using audiences late into the war; never abandoned personally doing broadcasts and public appearances even in the last year of the war.
Work ethic
Hitler: absolutely hated desk work; had a lazy sleep/work schedule revolving around things he was interested in, including watching movies and having long mealtimes.
Featherston disliked desk work but did it anyway out of sense of duty and power-keeping; often slept and ate as an afterthought.
Personality
Hitler: disliked people who talked just as much as he did; couldn't stand people who told the truth as they saw it and not as he did; was a screamer; was a vegetarian who hated smoking and drank very rarely.
Featherston: liked yes-men but also appreciated subordinates who wouldn't bullshit him; enjoyed his red-meat, Cubans and whiskey and in his younger days would get shit-faced; rarely screamed.
Reaching out to the masses
Hitler: hated using the radio (didn't even start using it until after he became chancellor), preferred using theatrical oratory in front of a live audience; gradually drifted out of public view as the war went on and used his propaganda chief as his mouthpiece.
Featherston: starts out using live oratory; starts using radio later in his career but was equally comfortable using audiences late into the war; never abandoned personally doing broadcasts and public appearances even in the last year of the war.
Work ethic
Hitler: absolutely hated desk work; had a lazy sleep/work schedule revolving around things he was interested in, including watching movies and having long mealtimes.
Featherston disliked desk work but did it anyway out of sense of duty and power-keeping; often slept and ate as an afterthought.
Personality
Hitler: disliked people who talked just as much as he did; couldn't stand people who told the truth as they saw it and not as he did; was a screamer; was a vegetarian who hated smoking and drank very rarely.
Featherston: liked yes-men but also appreciated subordinates who wouldn't bullshit him; enjoyed his red-meat, Cubans and whiskey and in his younger days would get shit-faced; rarely screamed.
Featherston's uniform was basically Confederate Army issue, but his sergeant's stripes were butternut, not the color of whatever branch a real Army man was in. Maybe that's the "almost but-not-quite" Confederate uniform the guardsmen in their early days wore.
I know. "Accidental murder" is an oxymoron.
Snake Featherston
Banned
Confederate economy:
The TL-191 Confederacy is on an all-out war economy from the first of the war.
German economy: Hitler finally moved to a war economy in 1942, with his peaks in production happening due to this in 1943-4.
Slave labor, Axis: The Germans ditched their reticience to use Slavs and Jews as slave labor on German soil the worse the war got for them from simple desperation.
Slave Labor, CSA: Featherston refuses to do this in any sense of the word when it comes to blacks. Politicals are used instead, a very different pattern from the Nazis.
Political militias, Axis: The Waffen-SS were used from the first in the war, and were the beneficiaries of better weaponry and production than the Wehrmacht.
Political militias, CSA: The Party Guards appear relatively late in the war and are nothing in the sense of advanced armored formations that their Nazi counterparts were.
Mechanized warfare concepts, Axis/Allies: The Soviets had their own, pre-war mechanized concept focusing on the operational level, the Germans on the tactical level, Soviets tweaked Deep Operations to fit with wartime reality instead of pre-war theory.
Mechanized warfare concepts, Turtledove: The USA pulls a giant case of copying the Confederacy's tactics, Morrell admitting in some segments he did not have any ideas of his own in this regard, the exact opposite of what happened with the USSR.
Strategy/logistics, Germans/Axis: It did not exist as a concept that the Axis treated as worth exploring in and of itself.
Strategy/logistics, TL-191: Both the USA and CSA are focused on it from early in the war, and both pay careful attention to it, particularly the CSA, the exact opposite of what happened with the Germans IOTL.
US Western strategy, Civil War, OTL: Evolved as a result of Grant's Pittsburg Landing victory and Halleck's fumbling, involving the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, derailed by a CS victory at Chickamauga, the Atlanta Campaign a strategic success and tactical failure, the March to the Sea and Franklin/Nashville Campaigns improvised.
US strategy, TL-191: The USA invades over the Ohio but crosses through Tennessee to Chattanooga, then encircles Atlanta and finishes splitting the CSA in two. Nashville and the Mississippi are not the focus of US advances, there is no Chickamauga, and the USA wipes out the CS Army in the sustained attrition advance through Kentucky and Tennessee, the CS Army unable to sustain any major resistance after the fall of Atlanta. A deliberate strategic plan, strengthened by modern weaponry.
Barbarossa: 1) Defeat Soviets at border. 2) ????? 3) Profit and Russia-as-India. Result is a strategic failure after initially grand tactical victories and a pattern of winning battles but perpetual inability to accomplish any strategic aim. Germans fumble at the last stretch and wreck themselves for the war.
Blackbeard: Cut the USA in two in a strategic offensive designed to cut the USA in half and steadily impair its economy, fostering uprisings and sabotage to thwart US counteroffensives. A clear strategic goal and concept, fully achieved. CSA does not wreck itself until Pittsburgh, a year later.
The TL-191 Confederacy is on an all-out war economy from the first of the war.
German economy: Hitler finally moved to a war economy in 1942, with his peaks in production happening due to this in 1943-4.
Slave labor, Axis: The Germans ditched their reticience to use Slavs and Jews as slave labor on German soil the worse the war got for them from simple desperation.
Slave Labor, CSA: Featherston refuses to do this in any sense of the word when it comes to blacks. Politicals are used instead, a very different pattern from the Nazis.
Political militias, Axis: The Waffen-SS were used from the first in the war, and were the beneficiaries of better weaponry and production than the Wehrmacht.
Political militias, CSA: The Party Guards appear relatively late in the war and are nothing in the sense of advanced armored formations that their Nazi counterparts were.
Mechanized warfare concepts, Axis/Allies: The Soviets had their own, pre-war mechanized concept focusing on the operational level, the Germans on the tactical level, Soviets tweaked Deep Operations to fit with wartime reality instead of pre-war theory.
Mechanized warfare concepts, Turtledove: The USA pulls a giant case of copying the Confederacy's tactics, Morrell admitting in some segments he did not have any ideas of his own in this regard, the exact opposite of what happened with the USSR.
Strategy/logistics, Germans/Axis: It did not exist as a concept that the Axis treated as worth exploring in and of itself.
Strategy/logistics, TL-191: Both the USA and CSA are focused on it from early in the war, and both pay careful attention to it, particularly the CSA, the exact opposite of what happened with the Germans IOTL.
US Western strategy, Civil War, OTL: Evolved as a result of Grant's Pittsburg Landing victory and Halleck's fumbling, involving the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, derailed by a CS victory at Chickamauga, the Atlanta Campaign a strategic success and tactical failure, the March to the Sea and Franklin/Nashville Campaigns improvised.
US strategy, TL-191: The USA invades over the Ohio but crosses through Tennessee to Chattanooga, then encircles Atlanta and finishes splitting the CSA in two. Nashville and the Mississippi are not the focus of US advances, there is no Chickamauga, and the USA wipes out the CS Army in the sustained attrition advance through Kentucky and Tennessee, the CS Army unable to sustain any major resistance after the fall of Atlanta. A deliberate strategic plan, strengthened by modern weaponry.
Barbarossa: 1) Defeat Soviets at border. 2) ????? 3) Profit and Russia-as-India. Result is a strategic failure after initially grand tactical victories and a pattern of winning battles but perpetual inability to accomplish any strategic aim. Germans fumble at the last stretch and wreck themselves for the war.
Blackbeard: Cut the USA in two in a strategic offensive designed to cut the USA in half and steadily impair its economy, fostering uprisings and sabotage to thwart US counteroffensives. A clear strategic goal and concept, fully achieved. CSA does not wreck itself until Pittsburgh, a year later.
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