Alternate History General Discussion

[Charles EP M.]

And we know the real reason for Nazis Won stories: everyone knows about Nazis and that they're bad, so everyone knows what's going on in a story, so MONEY!!!

 

[Delta Force]

And we know the real reason for Nazis Won stories: everyone knows about Nazis and that they're bad, so everyone knows what's going on in a story, so MONEY!!!

It's definitely the case that most popular alternate history settings are about reactionary movements succeeding. To be clear, not conservatism succeeding, but outright reactionary movements. You don't see many in which Napoleonic France or communism win. It's not even an issue of realism since the situation was so dire for the Confederacy and Axis powers that not losing would amount to victory for them.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Part of that's going to be ultra-reactionary regimes are the easiest to have as despicable baddies.

 

[Jared]

It's definitely the case that most popular alternate history settings are about reactionary movements succeeding. To be clear, not conservatism succeeding, but outright reactionary movements. You don't see many in which Napoleonic France or communism win. It's not even an issue of realism since the situation was so dire for the Confederacy and Axis powers that not losing would amount to victory for them.

Since this seems to come up a lot:

Popular alternate history is based on what the general public know about history. Which in the Anglosphere can be summed up as “WW2 plus what happened in my lifetime”, with maybe a side helping of “biggest national war in my country” (ACW for Americans).

And the easiest way to make a big change is to reverse the outcome of that war.

Personally I find such settings incredibly stale since they’ve been done so many times, unless there’s a truly original take on it. But for a casual reader of AH, that’s always going to have a lot of appeal.

 

[Delta Force]

Since this seems to come up a lot:

Popular alternate history is based on what the general public know about history. Which in the Anglosphere can be summed up as “WW2 plus what happened in my lifetime”, with maybe a side helping of “biggest national war in my country” (ACW for Americans).

And the easiest way to make a big change is to reverse the outcome of that war.

Personally I find such settings incredibly stale since they’ve been done so many times, unless there’s a truly original take on it. But for a casual reader of AH, that’s always going to have a lot of appeal.

Soviet communism was within recent memory. So was the Vietnam War. The PRC and DPRK are still communist. However, in many settings the Soviet Union isn't portrayed as particularly evil, not even in fiction created during the Cold War. You only have to worry about Ultra-Nationalist Russia, and it's odd just how often that popped up before recent events.

 

[Christian]

SMH, everyone always wanks Emperor Bonaparte, but why not First Consul Hoche, eh? Where’s my republican military savant/dictator?

Bit more serious, but Hoche is one of my favorite figures in the French Revolution. He, and no one can convince me otherwise, was just as brilliant a general as Napoleon, and does seem to have been a genuine republican, though perhaps he might not have actually been as we might have said the same of Napoleon had he bit the bullet in Egypt or the end of the Italian campaign, but I digress.

It would be interesting to see what he could have done had he had more luck. An Irish Vendee, or the liberator of Ireland from British oppression, maybe the French Cincinnatus or Scipio, so many possible results.

 

[Geordie]

An interesting thread I found from a far-right Twitter account about why people make “What if Nazis win” alternate history, even in liberal fields such as the movie industry: Secretly liberals are bored, have no imagination, and want the hard right to win:

By the same token, are all these right wingers who complain about the wokerati "changing their pronouns" and "rewriting history" secretly yearning for such ideas to triumph?

What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the enby assigned gander at birth.

 

[ChrisNuttall]

It's definitely the case that most popular alternate history settings are about reactionary movements succeeding. To be clear, not conservatism succeeding, but outright reactionary movements. You don't see many in which Napoleonic France or communism win. It's not even an issue of realism since the situation was so dire for the Confederacy and Axis powers that not losing would amount to victory for them.

Napoleon is much less well known than he should be, while the flaws of communism make it harder to believe it could have realistically taken the globe. The USSR didn't get crushed; it fell apart on its own. The Nazis, by contrast, are history's greatest villains, as far as the average person is concerned, and there's a perception they could have taken the world if they hadn't been stopped (yes, i know this isn't true.) It's easy to root for people standing against them.

That said, there's plenty of room for a cool story set in 1830s Napoleonic France.

Chris

 

[Geordie]

Quite possibily. There are right-wingers who are much more socially liberal than you might expect, when it comes to such things as gay rights or abortion rights, but fear the slippery slope and where an endless series of concessions will eventually take them.

Chris

That's. That's not the same thing.

This nutter is saying that, for all their liberal, inclusive, pro-lgbt trappings, progressives constantly imagine far-right victory scenarios because they secretly yearn for the taste of leather jackboot on their tongue.

What I'm saying is that the far right make up these wacky sceneries about schools trying to teach kids to be gay, vaccines causing great replacements and pronouns following people into bathrooms and sexual assaulting them. By this rent-a-tweet's own pop-psychology nonsense justification, I'm pointing out that the take from his own views and those of his fellow travellers is that they're all closeted gay, trans, Islamists who want the woke thought police to send in the black helicopter to re-educate then with woke mind viruses.

 

[monroe]

No, it's not.

Although you're right about one thing - this guy is a nutter, which means that any attempt to discuss the great contradiction within modern-day conservatism is probably doomed to go down in flames, just like his twitter thread.

I would simply not play (what I hope is just) a devil's advocate when talking about NeoNazi's justifying their violent worldview

 

[Charles EP M.]

Soviet communism was within recent memory. So was the Vietnam War. The PRC and DPRK are still communist. However, in many settings the Soviet Union isn't portrayed as particularly evil, not even in fiction created during the Cold War. You only have to worry about Ultra-Nationalist Russia, and it's odd just how often that popped up before recent events.

There was a bunch of fiction where they're just cackling villains or serious antagonists if not that (one interesting one was Secret Army where the threat of communist infiltration or revenge tactics is just as big a threat for the Belgian resistance group in S2/3 as the Nazis finding them), but there's a few things they have against them:

- Publishers and studios might be reluctant, then and now, to go "this real country that exists now is bad" - so 2000AD hurriedly changes the invading Soviets into the invading "Volgans" at the eleventh hour because someone worried they'd get complaints from an embassy

- The Cold War saw a lot of dirty deeds done by the West and shifty countries 'on our side', and waves of 'can't we just get along' sentiment. That makes it harder to do Goodies and Baddies for a lot of people, while leading itself to stories of the other side being not too different or everyone working together. (Dirty deeds and shifty allies was also true with WW2 but the Axis were invading places so people don't care)

- Communist ideology wasn't too far removed from what a lot of people in the West thought who weren't anti-democracy. That makes it easier to see fictional communist characters as having some sort of point or good ideals or a code, especially if you are a left-wing writer. The ultra-reactionaries traditionally have been further from the mainstream and easier to dismiss: the ideology is Give Me Your Stuff, These People Should Be Dead etc.

- There was a war with the Nazis that threatened the countries producing AH and the shooting wars in the Cold War were 'over there', the North Vietnamese could never threaten US territory but the Nazis were bombing Britain.

- Several communist countries were in Asia and those are the ones still here, and to be frank, a lot of people would be uncomfortable if your evil implacable bastards were Asian but nobody is bothered if they're white. And they'd be right to worry, a lot of older stuff was racist; this is why you see a lot less stories with Imperial Japan as the enemy and you won't see a black comedy film where a hero character says his men "owe me one hundred Japanese scalps", they were monstrous but a lot of older material smacks of going "this entire group of people are subhuman" (in old war comics, they're drawn as beast men).

 

[Ciclavex]

An interesting thread I found from a far-right Twitter account about why people make “What if Nazis win” alternate history, even in liberal fields such as the movie industry: Secretly liberals are bored, have no imagination, and want the hard right to win:

MODERATOR POST

This isn’t just some ‘interesting thread’, this is just straight up uncritically and without commentary posting content hostile, far-right talking points which are demonstrably and obviously uncivil and inherently create a hostile and uncivil environment in the thread. This shows, at best, a thorough lack of judgment on your part; I will assume, in your favor, that this is what has happened.

For this clear violation of rule one, you are kicked for a week. Please endeavor to avoid this in the future.

Thank you.

 

[Masteroftheuniverse]

I mean, Soviet victories aren't as common as nazi victories (what is?) but they're far from absent. Off the top of my head, there's Turtledove's The Gladiator, one of the GURPS Infinite Worlds scenarios, the short story The West is Red, an episode of Sliders and I'm sure there must be others.

 

[Catalunya]

There was a bunch of fiction where they're just cackling villains or serious antagonists if not that (one interesting one was Secret Army where the threat of communist infiltration or revenge tactics is just as big a threat for the Belgian resistance group in S2/3 as the Nazis finding them), but there's a few things they have against them:

- Publishers and studios might be reluctant, then and now, to go "this real country that exists now is bad" - so 2000AD hurriedly changes the invading Soviets into the invading "Volgans" at the eleventh hour because someone worried they'd get complaints from an embassy

- The Cold War saw a lot of dirty deeds done by the West and shifty countries 'on our side', and waves of 'can't we just get along' sentiment. That makes it harder to do Goodies and Baddies for a lot of people, while leading itself to stories of the other side being not too different or everyone working together. (Dirty deeds and shifty allies was also true with WW2 but the Axis were invading places so people don't care)

- Communist ideology wasn't too far removed from what a lot of people in the West thought who weren't anti-democracy. That makes it easier to see fictional communist characters as having some sort of point or good ideals or a code, especially if you are a left-wing writer. The ultra-reactionaries traditionally have been further from the mainstream and easier to dismiss: the ideology is Give Me Your Stuff, These People Should Be Dead etc.

- There was a war with the Nazis that threatened the countries producing AH and the shooting wars in the Cold War were 'over there', the North Vietnamese could never threaten US territory but the Nazis were bombing Britain.

- Several communist countries were in Asia and those are the ones still here, and to be frank, a lot of people would be uncomfortable if your evil implacable bastards were Asian but nobody is bothered if they're white. And they'd be right to worry, a lot of older stuff was racist; this is why you see a lot less stories with Imperial Japan as the enemy and you won't see a black comedy film where a hero character says his men "owe me one hundred Japanese scalps", they were monstrous but a lot of older material smacks of going "this entire group of people are subhuman" (in old war comics, they're drawn as beast men).

I also think it helps that it’s both much easier to imagine a Nazi victory (they somehow win a couple battles and now we have a Nazi vs US Cold War) than a Soviet victory in the Cold War (which requires the US to not just ‘collapse’, but also the USSR to prove that its system is superior).

Even many USSR victory scenarios usually don’t really have the USSR ‘win’, but rather the US lose, with it either somehow collapsing into various countries, or reforming into 90s Russia before a strongman like Putin takes it over. If the USSR really won the Cold War, North America would be controlled by communists, but creating such a scenario is really hard.

 

[varyar]

Some aviation AH articles of potential interest:

https://simpleflying.com/boeing-747x/ (basically a Boeing A380)

https://simpleflying.com/the-boeing-767x-the-inverted-747-which-was-never-built/ (ugly or endearing? you be the judge!)

https://simpleflying.com/boeing-sonic-cruiser/ (partnership/advertising possibilities with Sega?)

 

[Charles EP M.]

I also think it helps that it’s both much easier to imagine a Nazi victory (they somehow win a couple battles and now we have a Nazi vs US Cold War) than a Soviet victory in the Cold War (which requires the US to not just ‘collapse’, but also the USSR to prove that its system is superior).

Even many USSR victory scenarios usually don’t really have the USSR ‘win’, but rather the US lose

That's true too. And if you want them to militarily win, well, nuclear weapons have to be discussed then. The Axis can get to win before nuclear weapons are a factor or when they 'just' mean a few cities incinerated (or can get the bomb themselves to win due to mumblemumble), for most of the Cold War would need Yuri the psychic to avoid mutual extinction.

 

[iainbhx]

I have some notes on a WWII which ends without US entry, they having only gone to war in Asia, where an exhausted USSR finishes of Franco in, checks notes, 1948 and has total dominance over the ruins of mainland Europe with only Portugal with British Boots on the Ground and a sudden tern to democracy to and the Finlandized states of Finland, Sweden and Switzerland are the only bumps in a chain of People's Republics from Brest to Kapıkule, What I was ever going to do with it, I don't know.

 

[monroe]

My dissertation project began as a "what if World War II was averted", using what I felt was a (reasonable) PoD that had a dozen seats landed differently in the July '32 election, this would have allowed an anti-Nazi/anti-Communist coalition to be formed, which in turn would have meant that without the shield the office of Chancellor gave him, Hitler is eventually caught out by the German tax authorities, either going to prison in the disgrace of financial scandal or blowing his brains out in a mass suicide with his cultists in Berghof, which itself leads to the fragmentation of the Nazi Movement, which ultimately recesses as the German economy stabilises in the early 30s.

Most of this got cut in favour of a more manageable 'what if a certain trial went a different way' but it's a fun PoD that I thought was worth sharing.

 

[Catalunya]

I have some notes on a WWII which ends without US entry, they having only gone to war in Asia, where an exhausted USSR finishes of Franco in, checks notes, 1948 and has total dominance over the ruins of mainland Europe with only Portugal with British Boots on the Ground and a sudden tern to democracy to and the Finlandized states of Finland, Sweden and Switzerland are the only bumps in a chain of People's Republics from Brest to Kapıkule, What I was ever going to do with it, I don't know.

I also had a scenario like this in mind where Lindbergh wins in 1940 as a result of greater conservative backlash in the late 30s. With no aid coming from the States any time soon, Cripps becomes PM and cooperates more closely with the USSR, and sends troops to the Eastern front. Of course the Germans start being pushed back after a while and the Russo-British juggernaut waltzes through Eastern- and Central Europe, while the British start a campaign of their own through Portugal and Spain.

By the mid-40s the Allies are close to winning in Europe, but then Lindbergh (who is a mixture of a more competent Trump and it can’t happen here type fascist President) declares war on the Allies and invades Canada. This lasts a couple years before fascist America is finally nuked by the USSR and UK who finally built their own atomic bombs together. Afterwards it’s just Red Alert 3 Soviet March with the UK being a mix of Finland and Yugoslavia.

 

[Coiler]

Some aviation AH articles of potential interest:

https://simpleflying.com/boeing-747x/ (basically a Boeing A380)

Similarly there's the KR-860, which IOTL went nowhere. In Unflown Wings, the authors argue that focusing on the OTL Sukhoi Superjet was the right choice as it was more achievable than the pie in the sky superjumbo. I'd argue that playing to their strengths and making a Russian-built successor to the Antonov monsters primarily for cargo that would fill a rare niche would have been better than making a mediocrity in one of the most competitive market segments.