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How Tall Is The Grass In Germany

Fenwick

Well-known member
Published by SLP
Rather then clog up another thread on an off topic discussion I shall reply here.

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.
 
Please tell me you have that on the business cards for your law practice :cool:

I should...

My clients, and experience is that low level criminals are actually punished a lot. So much so that to think otherwise is foolish. Yet toss $1 at the problem and you start to see people not only get away with crimes but thrive afterwards.
 
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
That's just making me remember Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo, the Red Ripper of Rostov. In uchronia, known as the last General-Secretary of the U.S.S.R. and C.P.S.D. who brought about the destruction of power blocs all round him.
 
That's just making me remember Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo, the Red Ripper of Rostov. In uchronia, known as the last General-Secretary of the U.S.S.R. and C.P.S.D. who brought about the destruction of power blocs all round him.

Chikatilo is drastically different. He was a serial killer with multiple victims spanning a long period of time. He likewise was part of a system which allowed him the mobility to engage in his crimes. This is not even including his sexual performance issues, childhood neglect, and much much worse aspects of him.

So for that to be a story you need "Nazi party man is a serial killer." Which is.... ehhh? Like I swear even if we have not seen it before we know where it is going to go. Heck if we do that then we should make it about the S-Bahn Killer an actual Nazi Party serial killer brought down by a non-Nazi Berlin police detective.

For my thing it is a guy who does ONE CRIME. One real crime. But that crime is so horrible and so awful you think it would haunt them forever. Yet somehow they function.

For "How tall is the grass in germany" the horrible crime is not that the guy's family was CLEARLY collaborating with the Nazi's or even that mild "mass murder" using his families transportation business to move people around. No the horrid thing this man lives with is that he and his mistress killed his wife.

So the murder itself was not that big a deal. I originally wrote it out as this open thing. He would see a new girl in the typing pool and she has his dead wife's smile and he remembers the night of the murder. Or he is at the newsstand and there is some murder being reported and it reminds the guy of how slippery a bloody knife is to hold. But I had no real fun there. The guy in a SS uniform was there to introduce himself as a new neighbor. So two pages of a panic attack was for nothing.

I do not know why but I like the idea of a murder occurring as something so big and impressive occurs at the same time no one cares about the murder. Like the guy and his mistress had a HORRID plan to cover up the murder. It was not gonna work. Not at all. But Nazi's invading made most police go "holy shit holy shit we are all gonna die!"
 
Chikatilo is drastically different. He was a serial killer with multiple victims spanning a long period of time. He likewise was part of a system which allowed him the mobility to engage in his crimes. This is not even including his sexual performance issues, childhood neglect, and much much worse aspects of him.

So for that to be a story you need "Nazi party man is a serial killer." Which is.... ehhh? Like I swear even if we have not seen it before we know where it is going to go. Heck if we do that then we should make it about the S-Bahn Killer an actual Nazi Party serial killer brought down by a non-Nazi Berlin police detective.

For my thing it is a guy who does ONE CRIME. One real crime. But that crime is so horrible and so awful you think it would haunt them forever. Yet somehow they function.

For "How tall is the grass in germany" the horrible crime is not that the guy's family was CLEARLY collaborating with the Nazi's or even that mild "mass murder" using his families transportation business to move people around. No the horrid thing this man lives with is that he and his mistress killed his wife.

So the murder itself was not that big a deal. I originally wrote it out as this open thing. He would see a new girl in the typing pool and she has his dead wife's smile and he remembers the night of the murder. Or he is at the newsstand and there is some murder being reported and it reminds the guy of how slippery a bloody knife is to hold. But I had no real fun there. The guy in a SS uniform was there to introduce himself as a new neighbor. So two pages of a panic attack was for nothing.

I do not know why but I like the idea of a murder occurring as something so big and impressive occurs at the same time no one cares about the murder. Like the guy and his mistress had a HORRID plan to cover up the murder. It was not gonna work. Not at all. But Nazi's invading made most police go "holy shit holy shit we are all gonna die!"

But not every policeman was running around panicking remember. There was that one who had the time and patience to collect details of Mrs. Reed's death.
 
But not every policeman was running around panicking remember. There was that one who had the time and patience to collect details of Mrs. Reed's death.

That was me tipping my hand that Calvin and his mistress were so obviously guilty of something. Like anyone who looks at it goes "uh wait..." The plane however is a wonderful cover to things.

Like ever see Subrabicon? They do the murder and everyone goes "Hey... wait."
 
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