What's your favourite published Axis victory AH in any medium?

Rush Tarquin

The Axis victory timeline. We spend a lot of time on this site arguing about the ways in which it could not have been achieved, but let's consider for a moment those published pieces of fiction with an Axis victory as a premise. The end product if you will. Love it or hate it, Axis victory AH is perhaps the most readily identifiable and internationally relatable staple of the genre.

As the thread title says, what's your favourite piece of published AH set in an Axis victory timeline? The definition of victory here can be stretched to include a timeline depicting the survival of any of the Axis powers. It can be in any medium, so it doesn't matter whether it's a book, movie, TV series (or an episode thereof), video game, etc. Please explain what about your choice makes it your favourite.

EDIT: I'll be turning the most popular choices from this thread into a poll.
 
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Color-Copycat

I think the Block 109 series is my favorite. Instead of a straight-up Axis victory, it's a pyrrhic Axis victory, which I thought was an interesting take on the genre. The Axis outlasts the Western Allies by a good number of years and outlast the USSR by a couple of days before nuclear armageddon consumes the world.

But typical of French bande-desinee, it is pretty implausible and heavily laden with cliche tropes and very stereotypical plot arcs (Normandie-Niemen aviation arc, gritty noir arc, colonial conflict arc, zombie outbreak arc, etc).
 
The Director

The Director

Banned
Wolfenstein TNO, because THERE ARE NAZIS ON THE GODDAMN MOON! :p Seriously though the only bad part about that game was Da'at Yichud crap, which could have only resulted from a writers room were everyone was stoned off their rockers.
 
Petike

Petike

I don't care much about WWII AH fiction, but I'd say Fatherland I found more interesting than most.

Because it's not "nazis pwn the entire world", as most works do it, but offers one of the more plausible scenarios. And the plot behind the novel's story is something of a redemption quest, even if it's put into motion by only one individual. A man who had had his doubts about post-war nazi-dominated society before, but has those doubts solidified once he uncovers evidence that, yes, concentration/extermination camps really did exist. As ambiguously as the novel ends, you do kind of keep up hope that März will perhaps survive, he'll perhaps manage to get abroad and he'll bring some evidence that those insane atrocities happened. Even if he doesn't succeed and the world just keeps going on in its cruel, cruel ways, he at least gave it a try. He at least knew, in the end. At least one person who revealed the truth and dispersed the dark net of self-comforting lies.

Fatherland is sort of the Downfall of AH novels: It makes the nazis more monstrous not by making them cartoonishly evil, but by depicting them and their ideology in a very frank way, and depicting how that style of thinking affects and ruins lives and sanity. In both, the hardcore nazis and their obedient followers are depicted as people who know they're living in a world of lies they created for themselves, in the vain hope that inconvenient truths about their conduct will just go away or never be revealed by an internal or outside party of less gullible or less easily intimidated people. That's what makes both works so powerful. It's not about nazi techwank nonsense, it's about an effort at digging out the truth that the whole atrocious regime tried to bury.

The Man in the High Castle, while still being based on the "Axis wins" premise, isn't really about the premise, I feel. It's instead a characteristically Dick-ian novel, as much about the genre and concept of alternate history, contemplating the two, and about human perception, as it is about its characters and depressing (if deliberately ASB-ish) setting. If Fatherland is the Downfall equivalent, I feel The Man in the High Castle is like "the Inception of 'Axis wins' novels", for lack of a better term. A story about questioning human perceptions of the real and the unreal.
 
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theg*ddam*hoi2fan

theg*ddam*hoi2fan

Hmmm... Of serious works, it's a toss-up between Fatherland or Dominion by C.J. Sansom. Both feature believable Axis victories, with an increasingly unstable and precarious situation for the Nazi regime.

ASB... Making History by Stephen Fry. I liked that book a lot. And I liked how it actually recognised that no matter if Hitler was born or not, conditions at the time meant someone like him would emerge...and it could have been someone even worse.
 

Nerdlinger

Petike said:
I don't care much about WWII AH fiction, but I'd say Fatherland I found more interesting than most.

Because it's not "nazis pwn the entire world", as most works do it, but offers one of the more plausible scenarios. And the plot behind the novel's story is something of a redemption quest, even if it's put into motion by only one individual. A man who had had his doubts about post-war nazi-dominated society before, but has those doubts solidified once he uncovers evidence that, yes, concentration/extermination camps really did exist. As ambiguously as the novel ends, you do kind of keep up hope that März will perhaps survive, he'll perhaps manage to get abroad and he'll bring some evidence that those insane atrocities happened. Even if he doesn't succeed and the world just keeps going on in its cruel, cruel ways, he at least gave it a try. He at least knew, in the end. At least one person who revealed the truth and dispersed the dark net of self-comforting lies.
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I think it's fairly well implied that March doesn't live much longer past the end of the novel. However, the evidence of the Holocaust will become public when Charlotte gets to Switzerland and then back to the US.
 
Petike

Petike

Nerdlinger said:
I think it's fairly well implied that March doesn't live much longer past the end of the novel.
Click to expand...

That's why I call it ambiguous. It doesn't give you much hope that he'll survive, because in the end, he probably didn't.

Nerdlinger said:
However, the evidence of the Holocaust will become public when Charlotte gets to Switzerland and then back to the US.
Click to expand...

Yeah, there's also Charlie going back abroad, true.
 

AdA

The man in the high castle. It's very limited in terms of AH, but its wonderfully well written (its P.K.D. after all) and it plays well with the social implications.
 

zoomar

My favorite, in terms of its attempt at realizing a believable "Nazis win" world is "Fatherland" (book and movie)

The most enjoyable plot involving "Nazis-win" is "The Proteus Operation" (Book)

The most interesting is "Man in the High Castle" (Book)
 
Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf

Donor
The Dr Who one was 'Timewyrm:Exodus' by Terrance Dicks, I realised I was sitting next to it whilst watching him talk about The Krotons on that DVD's extras

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

Garrison

Donor
zoomar said:
My favorite, in terms of its attempt at realizing a believable "Nazis win" world is "Fatherland" (book and movie)

The most enjoyable plot involving "Nazis-win" is "The Proteus Operation" (Book)
Click to expand...

Also enjoyed 'The Proteus Operation', years ago, must see if its on Kindle.

If we can go really out there then 'Thor Meets Captain America' probably gets my vote.
 
Cire

Cire

The Divide, by William Overgard

The Divide, by William Overgard - 1980, is an interesting book, although a little bit slow moving by today's standards.
 

The Gunslinger

Fatherland is a classic novel. Nazi Germany really shone through in all its heinous glory. All the lies, deceit and corruption arrayed against one man trying to find the truth was extremely bleak.
 
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