the true POD or why I can't understand Alt-history

LadyPoland

Banned
I'm not trying to be a nudge. But I still can't understand how people look at alternate history on this board.

Many people offer PODs that are accepted while others aren't. (AN EXAMPLE ONLY) If I had a story were Pierce was against the Kansas-Nebraska Act or he didn't issue the Ostend Manifesto. Some would be in an uproar saying its not in his nature to do these things. To me alt-history is about things that couldn't happen in an entertaining story. Plus the true POD is not him making the decsion, but way back in his youth that did change his nature to make those descions that would change history and maybe lead to a better America. Once again, I'm using this as an example.

One of the best stories ever on this board had Australia with an almost whole new ecology but we can't accept minor changes in peoples responses.

I asked "what if" Operation Pastorius succeed and the first comment was "How could it go well? It was dropping 8 hardly trained people off with nearly no chance of success." well yeah of course.

Did I have to spell out, "if the Germans had better trained people with a better plan would " ...... I mean come on really.

Maybe I don't understand the rules. I always thought alt-history was why not or what if.

I will agree with you. I saw one where some dude said any stories regarding "President Palin" was an ASB story rather than ALT History since in his opinion, this was impossible. The VP candidate of the GOP 2008 election is certainly ALT history for 2012 even if somewhat unlikely.
 
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To 'us' who are interested in Alternative History - it seems only natural to wonder when reading about a battle/campaign, or a reference book of equipement - how different it would have turned out if ,,,,,,, had happened or ....... been available.
As some have commented it's tempting to want a battle to turn out differently - better or worse, which could mean a change of those involved, e.g. Wever stays alive, or Leigh-Mallory does other things instead of being in 12 Group.
The question then works back to how could that happen, and that change could plausibly have other appartently unrelated changes.
The difficulty though is knowing where your starting point is, if person 'a' makes a different decision than OTL, how far back do you go before this change occurs!??
 
Sometimes people ask those questions because they don't know what kind of specific terms to use, and they are looking for either general answers or multiple scenarios. It gets annoying a lot of times when people don't just give input and complain about the OP's question.

However, what is needed is some limiting factor or defining period. Merely having A-H survive WWI is so general that there are literally hundreds of ways it could be done, ranging from CP victories, to a stalemate, to an early Entente victory. The simple limiting factor of a date- such as 'with a PoD after 1916', or a rough sketch of the general outcome of the war- 'without the Central Powers winning', helps to limit the number of potential options to a more managable discussion.

If the opening situation is too broad, it becomes impossible to know what the OPer really wants to know, and so an answer to the question becomes undefinable.
 
For me it seems that some people have these prejudices about some things.
Like if I´d write "What if Hitler decided to listen to his generals, thus effecting the outcome of the war in the East", I would most likely to get some replys stating something like "Hitler was too crazy" or "nah, the general couldn´t have done anything to change it".

I personally feel, that these people can´t read or understand the matter in a neutral way. Personnally I do know that nazis killed a lot of jews, slavs and so on, BUT I also know that not all Germans were nazis then.

Now if write something that could lead to a nazi victory, I know that someone is going to think that I´m some kind of a neo-nazi, which I´m not.

The problem is, being unable to read AH neutrally, without taking sides, well not too much at least.

And after I had written a TL with nazis almost winning, which is AH, I decide to do a TL about neo-nazis taking power in some place. Now this new TL can be called ASB in my oppinion. I know this is ASB, because I personally feel that these neo-nazis aren´t capable of taking power,because Hitler had actually a plan to do something, and these neo-nazis are just a bunch of crazy dudes, well actually just racist organisation.

Now I am not a fan of nazis, but I know about Hitlers hate towards Üntermenschen, but he actually had a plan, these neo-nazis are just thinking they have a plan, but really they are just gone crazy about the racist thoughts, they don´t have any ideas, AFAIK, about economy and stuff.
 
I personally feel, that these people can´t read or understand the matter in a neutral way. Personnally I do know that nazis killed a lot of jews, slavs and so on, BUT I also know that not all Germans were nazis then.

I don't follow. Because most Germans were ordinary decent people caught in a vortex of ideological insanity, the Red Army is somehow unable to kick seven types of crap out of the Wehrmacht?
 
I don't follow. Because most Germans were ordinary decent people caught in a vortex of ideological insanity, the Red Army is somehow unable to kick seven types of crap out of the Wehrmacht?

What he probably means is that not all the generals were fanatics who would obey Hitler's whim, so its feasible that some of them could argue him round to more reasonable strategy (which some of them did of course so sometimes)

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
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