Rather then clog up another thread on an off topic discussion I shall reply here.
My core idea came from me reading about this murder in 1971. His name was John List and he had this nice house, smart kids, pretty wife, mother was cared for... seemed perfect. Man was a sunday school teacher. A veteran in WWII and the Korean War. He was the Vice President of the bank. Lived in a 19 room house. Everything about this guy seemed perfect. He lost his job, wife was a drinker, kids hated him, and more.
One day he murdered all of them. Hid out for 18 years until arrested. Go look it up. Good crime story.
Now what attracted me to this story, beyond all the blood and social ills at its core, is this is a guy who lived a life in hiding. Every time he was pulled over for a speeding ticket. Every time a cop walked by. All of these mundane events must have made the man fall into panic attacks.
So I thought of this thing. A murderer. A man who did a crime. A man who got away with it. But I put him in the USSR and the panic is more intense. So I started thinking and settled on the Nazi-Victory TL.
The core to me was an evil man in an evil world.
There is something just wickedly wonderful in evil people not being punished.
Yet to get to this I needed to show the guy was just bad. Like objectively awful. So you had no sympathy for anything. I got to writing out the world he lived in and that helped me show how broken, and lazy, and just dumb he was. Yet I had fun developing this world. Slave labor with shock collars on them. German WWII vets looking fondly back on fanta which has not been made since the Reich got access to Coca-Cola.
One thing I focused on a lot is how I saw no reason for the America of a Nazi-Victory TL to be awful. Oh sure, slavery, a genocide clearly occured, war crimes, oppression, and so much more. But at the same time folks got jobs, and stores are full of goods, and everything is all bright and shiny.
Something just seems so much more horrible to me about a world built on death, destruction, and objectively evil principles looking and sounding rather pleasant on the surface. Of course this is via a man who has near total access to the wealth of society and benefits from the system greatly.
I had fun writing it.
I tend to prefer New American Republic over Amerika Reichsprotektorate, or Great Nazi Reich. Oh, and Mr. Cothran, I enjoyed reading your "How Tall is the Grass in Germany?" It was new, see-ing through the eyes of a rich white man the life in 1960's America. A prosperous America; with labour-saving devices, Coca-Cola, apple pie, those big bright cars, "movies", "fries" and burgers. It's only in the corners of Calvin's eyes the labour gangs of black people, the servants who are from former Russia. A Greater German Realm stretching from the American Pacific coast to the Urals certainly is a "Space Filling Empire".
My core idea came from me reading about this murder in 1971. His name was John List and he had this nice house, smart kids, pretty wife, mother was cared for... seemed perfect. Man was a sunday school teacher. A veteran in WWII and the Korean War. He was the Vice President of the bank. Lived in a 19 room house. Everything about this guy seemed perfect. He lost his job, wife was a drinker, kids hated him, and more.
One day he murdered all of them. Hid out for 18 years until arrested. Go look it up. Good crime story.
Now what attracted me to this story, beyond all the blood and social ills at its core, is this is a guy who lived a life in hiding. Every time he was pulled over for a speeding ticket. Every time a cop walked by. All of these mundane events must have made the man fall into panic attacks.
So I thought of this thing. A murderer. A man who did a crime. A man who got away with it. But I put him in the USSR and the panic is more intense. So I started thinking and settled on the Nazi-Victory TL.
The core to me was an evil man in an evil world.
There is something just wickedly wonderful in evil people not being punished.
Yet to get to this I needed to show the guy was just bad. Like objectively awful. So you had no sympathy for anything. I got to writing out the world he lived in and that helped me show how broken, and lazy, and just dumb he was. Yet I had fun developing this world. Slave labor with shock collars on them. German WWII vets looking fondly back on fanta which has not been made since the Reich got access to Coca-Cola.
One thing I focused on a lot is how I saw no reason for the America of a Nazi-Victory TL to be awful. Oh sure, slavery, a genocide clearly occured, war crimes, oppression, and so much more. But at the same time folks got jobs, and stores are full of goods, and everything is all bright and shiny.
Something just seems so much more horrible to me about a world built on death, destruction, and objectively evil principles looking and sounding rather pleasant on the surface. Of course this is via a man who has near total access to the wealth of society and benefits from the system greatly.
I had fun writing it.