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!!!
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!!!
Since this seems to come up a lot: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.
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?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:
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.
That's. That's not the same thing.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
I would simply not play (what I hope is just) a devil's advocate when talking about NeoNazi's justifying their violent worldviewNo, 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.
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.
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:
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).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
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.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.
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.Some aviation AH articles of potential interest:
https://simpleflying.com/boeing-747x/ (basically a Boeing A380)