WI: Protracted WWII and Counterculture

Let us say Nazi Germany puts up a competent fight (before you immediately say 'ASB: Hitler has no Shit in his head!'), or Imperial Japan had struck California instead of Hawaii, or perhaps even HT's Scenario of stronger Werwolves, and USA's war in Germany and the Pacific drags on, taking more casulties.

Would such a protracted WWII create a counterculture movement?

Berdache/Two-Spirits and Hippies are primarily the result of people avoiding a strict and cruel world by living in 'another one' (Two-Spirits by becoming the opposite gender, Hippies by avoiding a 'normal Life').

Would such a lengthened WWII create another countercultural movement, and if so what would it look like?
 
Let us say Nazi Germany puts up a competent fight (before you immediately say 'ASB: Hitler has no Shit in his head!'), or Imperial Japan had struck California instead of Hawaii, or perhaps even HT's Scenario of stronger Werwolves, and USA's war in Germany and the Pacific drags on, taking more casulties.

Would such a protracted WWII create a counterculture movement?

Berdache/Two-Spirits and Hippies are primarily the result of people avoiding a strict and cruel world by living in 'another one' (Two-Spirits by becoming the opposite gender, Hippies by avoiding a 'normal Life').

Would such a lengthened WWII create another countercultural movement, and if so what would it look like?

To get something resembling OTL counterculture you need prosperity. ATL counterculture will be less spoiled.
 
To get something resembling OTL counterculture you need prosperity. ATL counterculture will be less spoiled.

Yes - check out the "Why were the 50s so idealized?" thread, for instance.

Lengthen WWII and it will be more damaging for everyone involved, including America. The war probably ends with five or even ten nukes instead of two, and if it drags on into the Fifties I think even America will be fatigued enough from the war, even if it doesn't get attacked at home beyond the initial Pearl Harbor (or equivalent) and its infrastructure remains largely intact.

You'd still perhaps get some comparative postwar prosperity - the Great Depression would have ultimately ended had WWII and the need to rebuild Europe not kick-started the economy - but the longer the war, the more time it will take to rebuild, and OTL counterculture did, indeed, require prosperity to thrive. (The presence of a large generation who had not known the hardships of the Depression and WWII helped with this.)
 
Bluntly its hard to live hand to mouth off poetry readings when unemployment is 15% and welfare scarce. Therefore no counter-culture as they have to get jobs rather then be "alternative".
 

Technocrat

Banned
Then they just do what people did before then and continued to do in repressive or impoverished areas, form groups and publish pamphlets while living and working within the system they hate.

Right?

Radical political parties, radical unions, lots of illegal entertainment and hidden debauchery in red light districts...or to be less dramatic, any urban subculture. Punks had jobs didn't they?

I mean, without the postwar boom you might not have the suburb boom and thus everyone might be in the cities as the population grows. Crowded urban people spreading radical pamphlets and having wild underground entertainment of some kind (rock concerts, subversive cabaret, nonproc, etc.).
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Then they just do what people did before then and continued to do in repressive or impoverished areas, form groups and publish pamphlets while living and working within the system they hate.

Right?

Radical political parties, radical unions, lots of illegal entertainment and hidden debauchery in red light districts...or to be less dramatic, any urban subculture. Punks had jobs didn't they?

I mean, without the postwar boom you might not have the suburb boom and thus everyone might be in the cities as the population grows. Crowded urban people spreading radical pamphlets and having wild underground entertainment of some kind (rock concerts, subversive cabaret, nonproc, etc.).

That, basically.
Weimar Germany had an economic crisis from hell on its hand and it still had a counter culture, including pretty much the birth of queer rights activism in the west when you look at people like Magnus Hirschfeld, it had avant-garde art, Bauhaus, anarchists, communists, poetry, literature. If anything this probably means a more politically active, more aggressive and probably darker counterculture.
 
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To get an earlier/stronger counterculture you need, unintuitively, a shorter WWII. Nazis either are defeated either in '38 when they attempt to invade the Sudetenland by a joint British-French-Polish coalition, or later in '39 when Germany invades Poland and is checked by Britain & France.

Japan is slowly bled dry by the US & British-led trade embargo, and finally with no allies and the Soviet Union looming large next door they agree to peace with China for limited territorial gains and certain trade rights.

Of course, than you still have a large & powerful Soviet Union lead by Stalin looming large on the world stage, and with its main rivals on the either side the German-Czech/German-Polish War is regarded as a minor flare-up, and WW3 starts when the Soviets roll across Eastern Europe and land forces on the Japanese home-islands, so you'd have to come up with some way to peacefully fragment the USSR.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
To get an earlier/stronger counterculture you need, unintuitively, a shorter WWII. Nazis either are defeated either in '38 when they attempt to invade the Sudetenland by a joint British-French-Polish coalition, or later in '39 when Germany invades Poland and is checked by Britain & France.

Japan is slowly bled dry by the US & British-led trade embargo, and finally with no allies and the Soviet Union looming large next door they agree to peace with China for limited territorial gains and certain trade rights.

Of course, than you still have a large & powerful Soviet Union lead by Stalin looming large on the world stage, and with its main rivals on the either side the German-Czech/German-Polish War is regarded as a minor flare-up, and WW3 starts when the Soviets roll across Eastern Europe and land forces on the Japanese home-islands, so you'd have to come up with some way to peacefully fragment the USSR.

Who are you and what did you do with the real Stalin?
 
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