POLL:How should "Manstein in Africa" be written?

How should "Manstein in Africa" be written


  • Total voters
    44
Okay as it says on the tin how do you think BlairWitch749's TL be written?

1- Manstein focused with many chapters in Africa and a glaze over the eastern front
2- Rommel focused with many chapters in Russia and a glaze over in Africa
3- Exploring both POD's fully (intimidating based on the potential amount of writing and research required plus as readers from his Manstein changes the world tl will attest to I have a hard time keeping the chapters in order)
 
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"There are only four types of officer. First, there are the lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm…Second, there are the hard-working, intelligent ones. They make excellent staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered. Third, there are the hard-working, stupid ones. These people are a menace and must be fired at once. They create irrelevant work for everybody. Finally, there are the intelligent, lazy ones. They are suited for the highest office."

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“In a man-to-man fight, the winner is he who has one more round in his magazine.”


 
Either one or three.

East has been done, though I would like to see it with Rommel, I haven't seen nearly as much with the African Campaign.

I would prefer both, but given time constraints I would say 1.
 
the previous portraits
the manstein one i dont know a buddy of mine emailed it to me i had never seen it before
the rommel one was just after he got the diamonds on his knights cross i think its march 1943


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"The general verdict among the German generals I interrogated in 1945 was that Field-Marshal von Manstein had proved the ablest commander in their Army, and the man they had most desired to become its Commander-in-Chief. It is very clear that he had a superb sense of operational possibilities and equal mastery in the conduct of operations, together with a greater grasp of the potentialities of mechanized forces than any other commander who had not been trained in the tank arm. In sum, he had military genius." - BH LITTLE HEART

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"In the absence of orders, go find something and kill it."
 
One of the hard things to do with the personalities in that story is to consider how much a product of the general staff manstein was.

halder clearly told rommel that africa was a backwater and his only job was to keep the italians in the war and not to draw away troops from the east.

hitler took a keener interest in the theater from time to time and rommel proved to be an excellent propaganda tool. rommel also lacked the formal staff training to run an army above division or corps level without driving his staff officers crazy.

a telling conversation in that was when halder asked rommel what kind of reinforcements he would need to capture the suez canal in 1941. rommel replied another two panzer corps should do it. halder then asked how they would be supplied. rommel said that wasnt his problem

manstein was far more worldly and not so antagonistic or ego driven. so i am unsure if he would just keep to the general staff's aims of just doing a holding action or if he would drive into egypt like rommel with more general staff support... at this moment i lean towards the later he was extremely bold in 1940 and 1941 in corps command.

i also think rommel would perform better in the east than otl. having a strong command structure under guderian and not having to deal with the german and italian high commands will not zap all of his mental energy... he might emerge as the best corps commander in the russian campaign
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As a joke, Manstein's pet dachshund, named Knirps ("Midget"), was trained to raise his paw in salute on the command "Heil Hitler!"

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"Messages can't be intercepted if they aren't sent, can they?"
 
However Blairwitch decides to write the TL will be fine and whatever "front focus" he chooses will be fine too.

I'd like to address another issue however: POV writing in timelines.

Putting it bluntly, most TL writers absolutely suck when it comes to POV writing and, despite that fact, far too many TL writers include POV sections in their work.

Otherwise serviceable timelines are dragged down by cringe worthy POV posts crammed full of anachronisms, modern slang, modern thought processes, and other completely avoidable idiocies. No matter how good the idea and the POD and no matter how well the events themselves are handled, the inclusion of wretched POV posts cannot help but destroy the timeline as a whole. I can't count the number of times I've stopped reading a timeline after the jarring effect of a wretched POV post.

Making matters worse, it seems lately that more and more timelines consist of nothing but POV posts. People who can barely even compose a coherent sentence in prose now somehow think they can write descriptive dialogue.

Reading POV posts within a timeline is like being subjected to karaoke night. Just because a few people can actually sing and a few writers like Jared or Blairwitch can craft POV posts, it doesn't necessarily follow that everyone should step to the microphone or that everyone should write POV posts.

A series of events presented in descriptive prose works just fine and has always worked just fine. There's no reason to add POV posts unless you're an accomplished writer and very few of us here are accomplished writers.

Here's two tricks you can use to determine whether that POV post really belongs in your timeline.

First, if you're asking the question of whether it belongs or not, it doesn't belong. Second, read the passage aloud. If it sounds bad out loud, it will read just as badly if not worse.


Bill
 
Bill thank you... POV writing is extremely difficult especially if you haven't done a lot of historical reading on the characters in question.

I have read Manstein's memoirs cover to cover and two other biographies translated from Germany on him. You only just get a taste of his personality... I mean all the military stuff is there you can get that from any history book but the reflections of personality that can create serious pod's if you insert him in different places are hard to come across.

The fact that Rommel died before he could write his own papers makes this kind of writing about him nearly impossible. There are a couple of excellent books that had first hand info and experience with him by Bayerlin and Nehring but they are written so long after the fact that some of the information in them isn't believable. You end up with the feeling they wanted to please all the historians that had fallen in love with the character of Rommel
 
Bill thank you...


BW749,

You're very welcome. Your various efforts here have provided me with lots of pleasure over the years.

... POV writing is extremely difficult especially if you haven't done a lot of historical reading on the characters in question.

Agreed. POV writing is very difficult for two different reasons; form and content.

First, there is the aspect of form. This refers to actually writing the dialogue, the "nuts and bolts" as it were. Dialogue is a fiendishly difficult form already, yet many here who can't even write coherent prose persist in attempting to write dialogue.

Second, is the content of the dialogue. You touch upon just a bit of the historical research needed to produce that content. You need to "think" like the person in question, to "think" in their voice, to "think" like a person of their means, education, era, upbringing, etc. As hard as the dialogue from is, the content historical dialogue requires is even harder.

And yet too many here who can't even write coherent prose continue to persist in attempting to write historical dialogue.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Authors like Jared, yourself, and a few others should feel flattered that so many "typists" and "keyboard commandos" here attempt to imitate your POV posts. The trouble begins when the rest of us have to read those imitations. ;)


Bill
 
I'd like examples of bad POV writing...far too often people complain about stuff but do not produce concrete example or evidence...


Maverick,

You want me to name names? Sorry, but no.

I of course know that what he is talking about its absolutely true, But I would still like to see it directly...

You know it's true, but still want evidence?


Bill
 
there is no need to disparrage any aspiring ah'ers. We can't all be Rast and pump out literary genius on a daily basis... my only qualm comes when people choose a pod they can't work out

the Hube Stalingrad time line is an excellent example of this. Hube is a very interesting character if you have ever read up on him and at a very early point in the battle he had a pivotal chance to change the outcome at Stalingrad maybe even the whole war.

Rubicon by choosing a POD as late as November 1942 lost the opportunity tell a really interesting story. There is nowhere to go at that point... you can't change anything significantly the army was spent.

By moving the POD earlier to when Hube first reached the Volga there was a great chance to write a compelling story. And his detail in the writing is decent and suggests a good amount of reading...

I suffer from this myself from time to time if you have read my Manstein changes the world TL .... I ended up writing something too broad so it became impossible to keep my ideas in order therefore the chapters got confusing

I will try very hard to keep this TL focused and I will respond based on the polling tonight
 
and the winner is an equal mix of both

stay tuned....

i have one chapter nearly finished on my manstein changes the world tl that should post tomorrow then ill get cracking on sending him to africa
 
Well, I'd like more examples, I know a couple but I don't really remember well, since I don't really bother with newb's Timelines...otherwise it just looks like you're making shit up...

My own POV parts in TL's are awful if you want to check them out :p

From now on I've decided only to do TL's descriptively from now on.
 
only the manstein portion of my tl will have pov's ill try to avoid them with rommel since i dont have much take on his personality
 
i wrote my senior paper on him in college

nobody did more with less... plus the inovation factor with him was very high. he wrongly isnt included in the discussion of great european generals, napolean, wellington etc.

my father was a staff officer to spedel in the bonn government and was of the opinion that manstein's operational grasp of combined arms doctrine would have been successful into the 1970's

he was considered for africa in otl but hitler later decided that rommel would be a more useful propaganda tool. he was also considered a possible replacement for jodl when he and hitler were on the outs

the range of his successes as a general staff officer, staff planner, corps commander, army commander and army group commander are hard to find in any other officer of any period

i dont know if that explains it but i just find him an interesting figure
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"A war is not lost until you consider it lost."
 
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