If it did, people would be calling it cliché and wondering when something new and exciting, like a Confederate victory in the American Civil War, would make it to the mainstream.
"Our Struggle": What If Hitler Had Been a Communist?
- Thread starter The Red
- Start date
If it did, people would be calling it cliché and wondering when something new and exciting, like a Confederate victory in the American Civil War, would make it to the mainstream.
The media never forgets...
There's nothing poshos love more than dressing up as Nazis. You get loads of stories about it, and those are just the ones who are relatively prominent, the Archduke of Wherever or a Tory MP. Who knows how often it occurs with the people who are stinking rich but not seen as interesting by the media. As such, I can't really find it in my heart to single out Harry as particularly bad.
I mean, the guy's an arse, but his arseholish behaviour arguably makes him a bit more human than the born to rule caste he lives amongst. Not more sympathetic, but more human.
Anyways, I'm sorry about the current lull in updates. I'm in Mallorca and I've been trying to do some research on forts used during the Spanish Civil War but I'm afraid the main reason is that even Scottish people need a bit of actual sun during the Summer.
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Did you board the wrong plane and land at the equator somewhere? Because you are flipped by 90°
Did you board the wrong plane and land at the equator somewhere? Because you are flipped by 90°
I hope I'm not leaning to the right!
Indeed not, though possibly listing to the left in a drunken state. Weirdly, you were vertical earlier on my screen.
From the content of the photo and its orientation, it appears you're leaning to the left, having fun and being horizontal.
I completely agree, it's a lot of fun to install unreliable narrators and differing viewpoints. After all, history is rarely objective and the scrapbook allows you to try and portray history as someone ITTL might have developed an understanding of it.
The story parts have been a lot of fun to write as well. I always liked the way that @Dr. Strangelove's No Spanish Civil War combined the scrapbook style with vignettes set amongst the action and I've sort of taken that as my guide. It's a handy stepping stone because I've always felt a bit clunky writing page after page of character driven narrative and I hope(!) this TL has made me a bit smoother.
I can sort of understand why there's a bit of hesitancy about it. GOT is well known for its 'Love to Hate'/'Hate to Love' characters, this is fine in a fantasy setting but it could become problematic very quickly in an AH which covers relatively recent history which stemmed from issues that continue to divide. The knee jerk reaction that it's going to be some sort of love letter to racism is silly but it's never a bad thing to be cautious about these things.
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I have not been able to see Man in the High Castle myself. If it is faithful in spirit to Philip K. Dick's book, it obviously would not be gratifying to people who actually would want to have seen Hitler win, or think they would...or would it? After all, what is horrifying in Dick's book (the oblique mentions of mass murder in Africa; the ability of the Reich to bully every other government left in the world to hunt down and turn over any surviving Jews to them; the horror show that is the Japanese ministry's evaluation of the likely successors to power now that the serving Assistant Fuehrer (Hitler is still alive, but "The Sick One" is in seclusion, too devastated by syphilis to wield power) has died or seems about to die (I forget who that was, Himmler or whoever)--all of this might in fact be very pleasing to some people out there in the American audience, incredible as it may seem to sane persons.
Same thing with a realistic Confederacy survives ATL. To some of us, we might just admire the artistry of working out how the billiard balls break, given the premise, while deploring this or that--but what we deplore, we know there are some people out there who actually like it. This is why I generally do not look at either Nazi victory or Confederate victory TLs on this site or anywhere else. It is hard to tell where the horror leaves off and the fanboyism takes over.
Then too, either a Nazi or Confederate victory holds the prospect of cheap thrills for people who righteously denounce the bad guys' win--we can cheer on a Resistance, an Underground Railroad, as melodramatic heroes without nuance. And what if the authors go for some nuance, if the RR in a Confederate TL turns out to be a bunch of ruthless terrorists and coldblooded killers themselves--in cheering for a mirror image of OTL's neo-Nazi and Klan extremists, do we thus vindicate them in their extremism, or do we wind up sympathizing with ATL moderates who must make their peace with much we deem intolerable?
I personally take comfort in the idea that the Confederacy and the Nazis were playing against the odds of history and were doomed to failure, by their own moral flaws creating pragmatic stumbling blocks--the lack of widespread support among whites as well as blacks in the Secessionist South, the self-inflicted wounds on their finance and command structure due to their misguided worship of States Rights extremism; the brutality of the Nazis turning those they would conquer against them in desperation.
But I get called out on that too. Is Nazi victory as much a sick fantasy as I wish to believe, or was it realistically in the cards after all? Could the Secession have been permitted to prosper? Would slavery be inevitably abolished anyway (a shibboleth among the Confederate-wanking crowd here, possibly because they'd be banned if they didn't claim that) or would it merely be elaborated into more chilling and dehumanizing forms?
I forget if it was Spike Lee or someone else who did a CSA movie about a decade ago or so, in which the Confederacy not only survives but with British aid, turns it around and conquers the Union. The point of this show, if you've never had the chance to see it, was how closely an ATL north American union that has not abolished slavery (an early post CW Confederate reform is rather to mandate by law that all white American families purchase at least one slave, on pain of losing citizen rights) might resemble the USA as it is OTL, culturally and economically. To someone already on the Left, who understands ideas like "wage slavery" and the notion that our popular culture is so much militaristic bread and circuses, fomenting hatred of scapegoats, the close resemblance between an ATL show about tracking down escaped slaves and OTL crime shows is bitterly humorous, as are the ads for tranquilizers to keep your slaves cheerful and obedient, or the recruitment ads for the Confederate Air Force. But I have to wonder, just how many white supremacists are there who take the ATL described as simply comfortable?
So--if MitHC proves to be an icebreaker, opening the way for more ATL shows and movies, I don't necessarily think that those who fear them as vehicles of racism and reaction are necessarily wrong. They might be wrong about the intentions of the artists involved, and overlook that for the simple bigots the shows happen to hook, there are some time bombs and land mines for them ideologically. Well and good, but what if the bigots who either miss the landmines completely or survive them ideologically far outnumber those that nuance enlightens? Meanwhile, if shows like MitHC and "Confederate" pass muster of our cultural censors, will these then fail to see the difference between subtle send-ups of the dysfunctionality of failed absolutisms and outright celebrations of them? And which would prove to be the more popular show, long run--the one that lures people in with daring flirtations with far right wing imagery only to try to play tricks with it, versus the one that truly does affirm the extremist views hitherto deemed too evil to support?
I think it is kind of fun to imagine what would happen if in the midst of AtL craze following GoT mania, someone does a faithful version of Jello Biafra's Reds!. And they are clever enough to hype it with the grim-dark image of "America under Red Stalinism" implied, to bring in the anti-Communist crowd, only to gradually close the trap on the public mind, that actually in this ATL the Communists are the good guys, that iconic OtL right wing idols like Patton and Nixon have gone Red, that the American people are proud of their new Red flags and strangely named autonomous republics and so on, that American boys and girls are GI's in the Russian mud fighting on the Eastern front in all its brutality, that aside from dying in the wars, the Americas are a prosperous and happy place, that there is no more poverty but creativity fountains anyway...now what are the chances of an ATL like that getting shown on American networks, let alone produced here?
I might hope that something like Jonathan Edelstein's Malê Rising can be produced, but it is of course not US centered--a lot of good stuff does happen in the USA to be sure, but it makes little sense without seeing how the rest of the world is being transformed by a revolution in West Africa. Which, can an American production center on?
Or what about Eyes Turned Skyward? A pretty simple premise leading to radical changes but in a limited field--the integrity of their story line would hardly be disturbed at all if the OTL succession of Presidents occurred instead of the ATL slightly butterflied version one finds in that story line. The action is in space programs, and the outcomes are dramatic enough compared with OTL.
But given a choice between this, and TLs in which various reactionary forces defeated OTL (or so it has seemed) are instead victorious, which will American executives fund? Which will publics embrace?
Same thing with a realistic Confederacy survives ATL. To some of us, we might just admire the artistry of working out how the billiard balls break, given the premise, while deploring this or that--but what we deplore, we know there are some people out there who actually like it. This is why I generally do not look at either Nazi victory or Confederate victory TLs on this site or anywhere else. It is hard to tell where the horror leaves off and the fanboyism takes over.
Then too, either a Nazi or Confederate victory holds the prospect of cheap thrills for people who righteously denounce the bad guys' win--we can cheer on a Resistance, an Underground Railroad, as melodramatic heroes without nuance. And what if the authors go for some nuance, if the RR in a Confederate TL turns out to be a bunch of ruthless terrorists and coldblooded killers themselves--in cheering for a mirror image of OTL's neo-Nazi and Klan extremists, do we thus vindicate them in their extremism, or do we wind up sympathizing with ATL moderates who must make their peace with much we deem intolerable?
I personally take comfort in the idea that the Confederacy and the Nazis were playing against the odds of history and were doomed to failure, by their own moral flaws creating pragmatic stumbling blocks--the lack of widespread support among whites as well as blacks in the Secessionist South, the self-inflicted wounds on their finance and command structure due to their misguided worship of States Rights extremism; the brutality of the Nazis turning those they would conquer against them in desperation.
But I get called out on that too. Is Nazi victory as much a sick fantasy as I wish to believe, or was it realistically in the cards after all? Could the Secession have been permitted to prosper? Would slavery be inevitably abolished anyway (a shibboleth among the Confederate-wanking crowd here, possibly because they'd be banned if they didn't claim that) or would it merely be elaborated into more chilling and dehumanizing forms?
I forget if it was Spike Lee or someone else who did a CSA movie about a decade ago or so, in which the Confederacy not only survives but with British aid, turns it around and conquers the Union. The point of this show, if you've never had the chance to see it, was how closely an ATL north American union that has not abolished slavery (an early post CW Confederate reform is rather to mandate by law that all white American families purchase at least one slave, on pain of losing citizen rights) might resemble the USA as it is OTL, culturally and economically. To someone already on the Left, who understands ideas like "wage slavery" and the notion that our popular culture is so much militaristic bread and circuses, fomenting hatred of scapegoats, the close resemblance between an ATL show about tracking down escaped slaves and OTL crime shows is bitterly humorous, as are the ads for tranquilizers to keep your slaves cheerful and obedient, or the recruitment ads for the Confederate Air Force. But I have to wonder, just how many white supremacists are there who take the ATL described as simply comfortable?
So--if MitHC proves to be an icebreaker, opening the way for more ATL shows and movies, I don't necessarily think that those who fear them as vehicles of racism and reaction are necessarily wrong. They might be wrong about the intentions of the artists involved, and overlook that for the simple bigots the shows happen to hook, there are some time bombs and land mines for them ideologically. Well and good, but what if the bigots who either miss the landmines completely or survive them ideologically far outnumber those that nuance enlightens? Meanwhile, if shows like MitHC and "Confederate" pass muster of our cultural censors, will these then fail to see the difference between subtle send-ups of the dysfunctionality of failed absolutisms and outright celebrations of them? And which would prove to be the more popular show, long run--the one that lures people in with daring flirtations with far right wing imagery only to try to play tricks with it, versus the one that truly does affirm the extremist views hitherto deemed too evil to support?
I think it is kind of fun to imagine what would happen if in the midst of AtL craze following GoT mania, someone does a faithful version of Jello Biafra's Reds!. And they are clever enough to hype it with the grim-dark image of "America under Red Stalinism" implied, to bring in the anti-Communist crowd, only to gradually close the trap on the public mind, that actually in this ATL the Communists are the good guys, that iconic OtL right wing idols like Patton and Nixon have gone Red, that the American people are proud of their new Red flags and strangely named autonomous republics and so on, that American boys and girls are GI's in the Russian mud fighting on the Eastern front in all its brutality, that aside from dying in the wars, the Americas are a prosperous and happy place, that there is no more poverty but creativity fountains anyway...now what are the chances of an ATL like that getting shown on American networks, let alone produced here?
I might hope that something like Jonathan Edelstein's Malê Rising can be produced, but it is of course not US centered--a lot of good stuff does happen in the USA to be sure, but it makes little sense without seeing how the rest of the world is being transformed by a revolution in West Africa. Which, can an American production center on?
Or what about Eyes Turned Skyward? A pretty simple premise leading to radical changes but in a limited field--the integrity of their story line would hardly be disturbed at all if the OTL succession of Presidents occurred instead of the ATL slightly butterflied version one finds in that story line. The action is in space programs, and the outcomes are dramatic enough compared with OTL.
But given a choice between this, and TLs in which various reactionary forces defeated OTL (or so it has seemed) are instead victorious, which will American executives fund? Which will publics embrace?
Portrayal of the Nazis is always going to be a bit of a minefiled; there are those who will argue that humanising them will make them too relatable, portraying them as villainous cartoons will detach them from reality, making fun of them will dilute the severity of their crimes, and the list goes on.
I don't think that any of these warnings should translate into dogma, though I also don't think any of them should be dismissed either. I think MitHC gets it wrong now and then but it broadly walks the line between portraying them as villains and portraying them as humans. The American Nazis and Japanese Imperialists who feature as main characters all commit horrible acts onscreen, they're also portrayed as having families. The Resistance are clearly the heroes but more than one sympathetic character questions whether their amorality in fighting fascism is corrupting their higher ideals of democracy and equality. I often feel that it's a bit of a false dichotomy being forced in the audience, but that's me and I know some who disagree. It all works without portraying fascism as overly sympathetic whilst also not implying that people who are seemingly well adjusted couldn't become fascists under certain circumstances.
I guess this TL is a bit more extreme in that regard, given that the world's most loathed fascist has become a communist instead, but I also hope that the reader might begin to question some of their own views as two sides begin to form, neither of which are purely good or purely evil. Then again, that's also a matter of perspective.
Chapter XXXI
"I'll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council, a Labour council, hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers. I'm telling you, and you'll listen, you can't play politics with people's jobs and with people's services. The people will not abide posturing."
~ Neil Kinnock, Speech to the 1985 Labour Party Conference
~ Neil Kinnock, Speech to the 1985 Labour Party Conference
When we consider the current crisis it becomes clear how feckless the bourgeois republic truly is, for in attempting to balance a worship of capital with a pretence of democracy it has revealed its own inherent contradiction.
Indeed, we can go as far as to say that it was revealed the roots of its own destruction!
The architects of the republic believed that they could ignore the underlying contradictions of their regime and for a handful of years they had breifly succeeded. The workers who had brought down the old regime were placated by promises of ever better wages, ever better insurance, even shorter hours. The landed gentry, the junkers, the old aristrocratic elites, were bought off by promises the republic safeguarding their hegemony over large parts of Germany. The British and French were promised that the republic would cooperate with their ludicrous demands for reparations in the wake of the great imperialist slaughter.
By the events of last year it has become clear that their attempts to placate all these groups have failed, they can no longer pretend that capital and worker can co-exist together in harmony, nor that we can fulfill the impossible demanda imposed upon powers by foreign powers!
As the breadbaskets have become too small for the larger and larger bundles of meaningless banknotes, it is now clear to the German people that this republic can do nothing but cause them further misery. It is time to end this charade!
~ Adolf Hitler, Our Struggle
---
Although Robert had once yearned for home, he had to admit that his life stateside was beginning to bore him.
Working at this new institution wasn't at all lacking in achievement but the library of Bluefield college didn't quite compare to the Palace of Mirrors. A few years beforehand he had been helping to shape the new world, now he could only tell his students about the world as it once was.
Nonetheless, it was a job, and there weren't many of those going for Democrats in this adminsitration so he could be blamed for going further afield. Warren Harding had boasted of a 'return to normalcy' as he had swept into office and it seemed to be working, America had turned it's back on the world and was being awarded for it. The thought made Robert's stomach turn.
Harding had ignored the League of Nations, choosing instead to strong-arm the Japanese into a secondary status in the Pacific whilst giving the go-ahead for some jumped up demagogue to take power in Italy. The American people had put an illusion of stability before a long-term peace and now he could already see how the world was setting itself up for further bloodshed. He wondered whether there had been any point of going to Versailles at all, when his phone rang he suprisingly got an answer on the other end.
"Professor Oaks? I have the White House,"
"Ah...alright?"
The switchboard voice he was used to was replaced by a more formal one.
"Hold for the President"
Wait, what?
Robert wasn't entirely sure what was going on
"Professor Oaks?"
"Mr...President?"
"The very same! I must admit it's a great relief to be speaking with you. A problem has been troubling this office, well, my office, these last few hours and I think that you might be the man to help us get our heads around it."
"Sir, I am honoured to serve my country in any capacity but I'm not sure what problem you're speaking of?"
"Well naturally you wouldn't, it probably hasn't been on the radio yet but we've just had three telegrams in quick succession from our embassies in Berlin, Brussels, and Paris."
Robert remained ignorant, but the three of those capitals being used in conjunction had already begun to subconsciously turn his stomach.
"It appears that French and Belgian troops have entered the Ruhr."
Robert sat in hurtful silence as President Harding continued to talk, keeping a jovial tone the entire time, as if he couldn't decide what picture to go and see tonight at the movies.
"Now I believe that you predicted that this would happen?"
"Not so much predicted as suggested Mr President, Marshal Foch seemed to indicate that France would act unilaterally to keep Germany in check if they felt that other countries didn't have the willingness to do so."
He could still remember that conversation, it wasn't often that you met a man of such esteem and simply forgot, but Robert believed that the Frenchman's manner would have stuck with him even if the man had been a frozen Charleston Chew vendor. The cockiness, the determination, the bitterness, these were emotions that couldn't be summed up via diplomatic language. But he was a diplomat, or had been at least, and he had tried his best.
"Do you believe that the French have a case?"
"Germany isn't my area of expertise Mr President, but I'd wager that it doesnt matter whether or not the Germans won't or can't pay. This is a point of pride."
"And how do you believe the situation will proceed now that your suggestion has come to pass?"
"I don't think this is a stunt Mr President, if the French truly are wary of the Germans trying to avoid their reparations payments then they are likely to believe that intimidation has failed. Instead, they're probably going to show that they can extract those reparations themselves until the Germans agree to play along."
Through the static murmur of the telephone, Robert thought he could hear the President thinking aloud, it took a moment for him to reply,
"How long do you believe the French would be willing to keep this up Professor? If the Germans do not "play along" as you say?"
"That's hard to speculate on Mr President, by all accounts Versailles has already been damaging to France's economic recovery, their trying to rebuild by economically hobbling the country that was previously their largest trading partner. We can't rely on rational thinking here."
"And the Belgians?"
"I'm afraid that they aren't my area of expertise either Mr President, revenge against Germany hasn't been part of their political culture in the same way it has been in France but their country was under German occupation for four years and by all accounts they suffered greatly for it. I wouldn't be surprised if they were in this for the long-term as well."
The President began muttering again, "No...no, this won't do...", Robert couldn't help but feel rather sorry for him, here was a man out of his depth in foreign affairs coming to terms with the idea that some problems in life couldn't be solved on a front porch with a glass of lemonade. Perhaps something stronger might have sufficed, another reason the bored Professor yearned for a return to Europe.
"Will the Germans fight this?"
"Again Mr President I'm afraid that my knowledge is very limited but given the state of their army after Versailles I wouldn't say so. The French army is the most powerful in Europe and if they now occupy the heart of the German war machine then it's unlikely the Germans can evict them by force."
"Would there be any chance that the Germans might see this is a wake-up call? Start taking their responsibilities seriously?"
"I can only hope so, sir. But I can assure you that you would be better with someone else to get a better picture of the German perspective."
"Yes...yes. Yes." Came the sound from down the line, it was clear by the sound that Harding was adressing someone in the room with him.
"Professor Oaks, I would like to thank you very much for your help this afternoon."
Robert couldn't help but smile, the administration that had discarded him in the trash was now raking around in it the can like a man who had accidentally dropped his watch.
"Anything I can do in the service of my country Mr President."
"I believe that there is more that you can do, why don't you go out to our embassy for a while, see what sense can be made of the situation from there?"
Robert had already begun dreaming that this was where the phonecall had been going but he had tried to ignore it as a flight of fancy, now it really was so, working in the embassy, Paris in Summer, the boats on the Seine, the myseteries conceiled with the Louvre, the small cafes where so many wonders could be..."
"Hopefully your time in Berlin will allow you to see the situation from both sides,"
The line went dead, just as Robert's head slammed into his desk. A hurtful silence descended as he was once again alone in his office.
He was beginning to fear that he might soon miss his boring life, a job in Berlin was the wrong type of excitement.
---
The painting is Before the Performance by Edgar Degas
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Beautiful misdirection there at the end. Robert can't catch a break.
Are you sure you didn't mean "I wouldn't say so" in response to Harding's question on whether the Germans would fight back? The sentence there was a bit muddled and could have gone either way with a little nudging.
Are you sure you didn't mean "I wouldn't say so" in response to Harding's question on whether the Germans would fight back? The sentence there was a bit muddled and could have gone either way with a little nudging.
Blacker still, IOTL, next updates going to be an especially important one.
Nice catch, thanks!
Robert seems to be able to access a large amount of intrigue but he really has the worst luck. One day he'll write an amazing autobiography which no-one will read because he's ended up as the American ambassador to Tannu Tuva.