The Anglo/American - Nazi War

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Don Lardo

loughery111 said:
Hey, I like his style.
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Different strokes. Some people like Kool Whip and cheese from an aerosol can too.

And given the insane numbers of books he sells it would seem that quite a few people agree with me.
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Sale =/= Quality. Turtledove sells tons of stuff, so does that mean his formulaic shit isn't shit too?

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's shit.
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It is shit. When an author needs to retcon his technical descriptions because he incorrectly calculated ship masses by several orders of magnitude, it's shit. When an author names a villain Rob S. Pierre, it's shit. When an author routinely insults a reader's intelligence out either laziness or contempt, it's shit.

The series is literary the equivalent of junk food and the series should have been finished years ago if not for the herd of shambling gourmands who keep returning to Weber's buffet line to fill up their plates with more shit.

Anyway, if you need to defend your binky either start a thread in Books or PM me. We needn't derail a thread with good writing and good research any further.
 

Wongo93

Urban fox said:
The Pope isn’t a priest he’s a politician and I’d wager the number of ‘’true believers’’ in the Catholic Clergy decrease drastically the higher up the ranks you go.;)

As for Mussolini, he deeply deeply resented Hitler‘s successes, also the general amount of bad blood between Italian Fascists and their Nazi ''allies'' was incredible. To the degree that the Italians refused German help OTL long after their African campaign had turned into a disaster.

After 20 years of relentless German aggrandizement II Duce might switch sides to bolster his own glory, (I.E wiping out Germanic barbarism as he’d put it) and for the sheer joy of seeing Hitler’s empire burn while his survives.
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Umm, well... I've met a couple cardinals and a few bishops at one time or another IOTL (not that I'm a religious nut or anything), and they certainly came across as committed to The Cause. B16 wouldn't rattle so many cages if he didn't BELIEVE. This isn't Styphon's House.

EDIT: Ooops, several honorable members have already said this. Embarassed now.
 
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Don Lardo

imperialaquila said:
The whole update reminds me of rats fleeing a sinking ship.
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The trouble is that the Germans are holding huge numbers of "rats" hostage and have been spoon feeding the younger generation of rats propaganda for over a decade now.

If France or Italy "flips", hundreds of thousands of French and Italian soldiers will immediately die at the hands of the SS and SS reprisals will immediately kick off in both countries.

Remember that, aside from those unwittingly obsolete transatlantic bombers used in the St. Patrick Day attacks, we've yet to see Germany's own wonder weapons and there's every indication that those weapons include chemical agents up to and including nerve gasses.

Hitting the Allied armies with nerve gasses will be bad enough. Hitting the essentially defenseless European civilian populations trapped inside Germany's continent-sized abattoir with the same weapons is going to make the original Holocaust pale in comparison.

Absent several miracles, miracles which will have to include high ranking Party, SS, and other officials ignoring orders and actively resisting attempts to "punish" the "traitorous" populations, continental Europe is going to resemble central Germany after the Thirty Years War.
 

Hero of Canton

A New Pope! A New Italy! A New Il Duce!

Don Lardo said:
The trouble is that the Germans are holding huge numbers of "rats" hostage and have been spoon feeding the younger generation of rats propaganda for over a decade now. If France or Italy "flips", hundreds of thousands of French and Italian soldiers will immediately die at the hands of the SS and SS reprisals will immediately kick off in both countries.
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CalBear has stated recently that "the Italians have significantly fewer by percentage than most of the other, later "allies" to the Reich thanks to Italy's true junior partner status (not that Italy thought it was junior at the time) and the movement of much of the Italian Army back to the peninsula in reaction to the Allied Invasion of Sicily." Italy will have to pick its moment carefully, but if any member of TTL's version of "The Coalition of the Willing" has a good shot at pulling it off it's Italy.

I'd like to see Italy's "flipping" (when it eventually happens) to somehow also be an opportunity for Old Benito to perish heroically...perhaps by killing the Commander of SS Forces in Italy at a state dinner or some such...at the cost of his own life no doubt. A fatal and redemptive change of heart like DV's.

BTW - The next Pope after Pius XII in OTL was one of the very best the Roman Catholic Church has ever produced -- Pope John XXIII. Perhaps he'd work with the Allies (and even Il Duce) to save Mother Italy before it is too late.

Hero of Canton
 
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Hero of Canton

Pope John XXIII was Vatican Nuncio Giuseppe Roncalli in OTL from 1935 to 1953

From Wikipedia

Pope John XXIII made various efforts during the Holocaust to save refugees, mostly Jewish people, from the Nazis. Among his deeds are:

  • Jewish refugees who arrived in Istanbul and were assisted in going on to Palestine or other destinations by Nuncio Roncalli.
  • Slovakian children managed to leave the country as a result of Nuncio Roncalli's interventions.
  • Jewish refugees whose names were included on a list submitted by Rabbi Markus of Istanbul to Nuncio Roncalli.
  • Jews held at Jasenovac concentration camp, near Stara Gradiška, liberated thanks to Nuncio Roncalli's intervention.
  • Bulgarian Jews who left Bulgaria thanks to Nuncio Roncalli's request to King Boris of Bulgaria.
  • Romanian Jews from Transnistria who left Romania as a result of Nuncio Roncalli's intervention.
  • Italian Jews helped by the Vatican as a result of Nuncio Roncalli's interventions.
  • Orphaned children of Transnistria on board a refugee ship that weighed anchor from Constanza to Istanbul, and later arriving in Palestine as a result of Nuncio Roncalli's interventions.
  • Jews held at the Sered concentration camp who were spared from being deported to German death camps as a result of Nuncio Roncalli's intervention.
  • Hungarian Jews who managed to save themselves thanks to the conversions into Christianity through the Baptismal Certificates sent by Nuncio Roncalli to Hungarian Nuncio, Monsignor Angelo Rota.
On September 7, 2000 the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation launched the International Campaign for the Acknowledgement of the humanitarian actions undertaken by Vatican Nuncio Giuseppe Roncalli for people, most of whom were Jewish, persecuted by the Nazi regime. The launching took place at the Permanent Observation Mission of the Vatican to the UN, with the presence of the Vatican's State Secretary, Cardinal Angel Sodano.


The IRWF has carried out exhaustive historical research related to different events connected with interventions of Nuncio Roncalli in favor of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. Until now three reports have been published compiling different studies and materials of historical research about the humanitarian actions carried out by Nuncio Roncalli


Like I said, one of the best the Catholic Church as ever produced. On September 3, 2000, John XXIII was declared "Blessed" by Pope John Paul II, the penultimate step on the road to sainthood.


Hero of Canton
 

Dan Reilly The Great

Banned
If Italy does flip, I'd love to see some kind of narrative "retro techno thriller" story detailing the events leading up to that fateful day. It could be pretty sweet, you could have British and American special forces working closely with the italians in some cloak and dagger type of action as the OSS/SIS trade assassinations with Abwehr in the streets of Rome. Meanwhile you could have an Italian batallion fight its way out of German captivity in central france or Germany to make it to the Italian border.
 

FlyingDutchman

In this case the German combat efficiency might actually rise by these political machination.

IRL the Luftwaffe groundforces often (not always) were outperformed by much less lavishly equipped Heer/SS formations, not to mention that it was a waste of resources.

Moving large groundformations (especially something like a Panzer division) out of the clutches of the Luftwaffe seems a good idea IMHO.
 

Life In Black

FlyingDutchman said:
In this case the German combat efficiency might actually rise by these political machination.

IRL the Luftwaffe groundforces often (not always) were outperformed by much less lavishly equipped Heer/SS formations, not to mention that it was a waste of resources.

Moving large groundformations (especially something like a Panzer division) out of the clutches of the Luftwaffe seems a good idea IMHO.
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It depends on the Luftwaffe ground division. The divisions formed from the Fallschirmjäger, were as good if not better than other SS and Heer divisions. The ones formed from ground crews, were not. Both declined in quality (like almost all of their divisions did as manpower dried up) as the war dragged on in OTL. That should change somewhat ITTL.
 

Winston Smith

Banned
It's a bit like Italy's got leprosy. Bits keep falling off it!:D! BTW, When is the next update due? And on a related issue, do you have a schedule of updates?
 
thedarkmaster

thedarkmaster

Just a thought but how are the Allies finding the Italian population in Sicily etc, has the years of brain washing propaganda made them sullen and resentfull, or are they more balanced in the year or so they have been under allied ocupation ?
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
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I really hadn't planned to discuss Italy at this point, but it seems to be a popular request. I will put something together for the next update.
 
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