• Hi Guest!

    The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress

Least favorite alt-history story?

Can't tell if Metal Gear, HOI4, or TNO is to blame, but depictions of historical characters have become very iffy. One story I've read had freakin Rommel as a "reluctant" Nazi in the TNO/Metal Gear crossover-verse who hates slavery and feels helpless against the Nazi institution because he can't do anything significant against it but follow his duty as a soldier.

Also, other thing, but it also had Rommel and freakin Heydrich as mentors to one of the main character's rivals.

When asked about it, the author just said that this isn't the real historical figures anymore, but more hardened and wizened figures.

I have no idea what to say about that.
I can say without question that from it's start, everyone on TNO fucking hated Rommel.

Speer? Different story, but I can say that absolutely everyone now on the team all fucking hate Albert Speer
 
I've also seen Speer being redefined as a voice of moderation in the Third Reich. There was an instance of that at the other place just a couple of days ago.

Compared to Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, Höss and the likes? Less bad maybe. But when did he actually put pressure on one of them to prevent them killing Jews or such?

(I'll really have to dig out my notes about that Speer book, it was pretty good.)
 
i assume this is mostly because it's generally pretty difficult to run a regime focused on genociding minorities if people higher up in said regime have things like basic human morality and sympathy, and also if you're a dictatorship murdering people is quick, easy and free
 
i assume this is mostly because it's generally pretty difficult to run a regime focused on genociding minorities if people higher up in said regime have things like basic human morality and sympathy, and also if you're a dictatorship murdering people is quick, easy and free

Pretty much so. Even if you weren't 100% horrible, you'd become horrible because of all the things you'd have to do to rise in the ranks.

Chris
 
i assume this is mostly because it's generally pretty difficult to run a regime focused on genociding minorities if people higher up in said regime have things like basic human morality and sympathy, and also if you're a dictatorship murdering people is quick, easy and free

There's no reason to tolerate or promote people to high rank in a personality focused absolute dictatorship who aren't on board with that personality's program, and the program was so all-encompassing that it was hard to even just be off in a corner doing some little part of it without interacting with the atrocities. Being 'reluctant' in high office in Nazi Germany meant something like you thought Hitler was an ambitious little weasel who didn't know what he was doing, but you'd wanted to blow up Poland and burn down France even before he came along, and once he did you really liked the way he paid off your divorce settlement from that secret government slush fund, so Heil Hitler and fire up the panzers.
 
i assume this is mostly because it's generally pretty difficult to run a regime focused on genociding minorities if people higher up in said regime have things like basic human morality and sympathy, and also if you're a dictatorship murdering people is quick, easy and free
I'd say so. The hesitant people got got on the Night of the Long Knives or wound up in July 20. Schacht comes closest to those in neither group but I mean, he wasn't particularly reluctant until he started losing.
 
For All Mankind.

Controversial, I know — but I feel like it has … really jumped the shark this season.

Season(s) 1 and 2 were fun, and good alt history fun. But Season 3 is like the show has become a parody of itself. (I have VERY negative feelings around the entire President Wilson coming out plotline combined with how Moore’s neoliberal politics are kinda ruining the show for me.)
 
Rommel as a reluctant Nazi as described has a long history, and that pernicious myth has a very strong hold over the Wehraboos that infest the genre.

Recently I read something about him... it sounds sheer unbelievable, but I can't refute it.

What he did? At some point, he suggested to the "führer" that it might help the Reich if they demonstrated that a Jew could become a gauleiter(!!!).

Hm. Not so much "in the know, but reluctant" but "totally naive about everything not related to making war" maybe?
 
Recently I read something about him... it sounds sheer unbelievable, but I can't refute it.

What he did? At some point, he suggested to the "führer" that it might help the Reich if they demonstrated that a Jew could become a gauleiter(!!!).

Hm. Not so much "in the know, but reluctant" but "totally naive about everything not related to making war" maybe?
He almost certainly knew that he had been ordered to murder prisoners, that his labour supply were slaves, that his soldiers shot black POWs and that there was an SS unit supported by his command attempting to with mixed success to carry out the Holocaust in Africa and certainly in France.


If I was being cynical about a Nazi general who shamelessly took advantage of connections with Hitler to further himself the Gaultier episode was to try and get some distance between himself and the regime's most appalling crimes.
 
Last edited:
Recently I read something about him... it sounds sheer unbelievable, but I can't refute it.

What he did? At some point, he suggested to the "führer" that it might help the Reich if they demonstrated that a Jew could become a gauleiter(!!!).

Hm. Not so much "in the know, but reluctant" but "totally naive about everything not related to making war" maybe?

It might have been a sick attempt at a 'joke'.

The man commanded Hitlers bodyguard. He was well aware of what the SS/Einzetgruppen got up to in North Africa. If he ever had any personal mistaste or disagreement with Hitler, he never let it show.
 
For All Mankind.

Controversial, I know — but I feel like it has … really jumped the shark this season.

Season(s) 1 and 2 were fun, and good alt history fun. But Season 3 is like the show has become a parody of itself. (I have VERY negative feelings around the entire President Wilson coming out plotline combined with how Moore’s neoliberal politics are kinda ruining the show for me.)
Has the tone really shifted?
 
For All Mankind.

Controversial, I know — but I feel like it has … really jumped the shark this season.

Season(s) 1 and 2 were fun, and good alt history fun. But Season 3 is like the show has become a parody of itself. (I have VERY negative feelings around the entire President Wilson coming out plotline combined with how Moore’s neoliberal politics are kinda ruining the show for me.)
Isn't the whole point of S3 about how neoliberalism isn't actually that viable and it's only through state controlled organisations like NASA that we can actually reach the stars
 
Back
Top