Alternate History General Discussion

[Catalunya]

Thanks for this thoughtful piece, and too @Stikfigur for yours also.

I think that comparisons between genocides is rarely helpful, as while for example Mozambiquans would doubtless agree that yes, the Nazis killed more people in the Holocaust than the Portuguese did at Wiriyamu, that doesn't really change anything for those who lost their families at Wiriyamu. Perhaps an exception to that is where a scholarly approach is taken to genocides by the same state, such as Prof Lushaba's analysis of the Herero genocide in Namibia and the holocaust?

I think the matter of history and geography is interesting, but there is still much to be said where the current nation is the same state that committed the genocide, or is legally the successor nation or sees itself as such. To me it is not only time, but the view the nation takes of the genocide event - denial, obfuscation, apology, denunciation, or something else. So to me Gorbachev is different from the moral culpability of Stalin, not only due to the passage of time but because of the denunciation of (some of) Stalin's actions in Khruschev's Secret Speech*. I think the nature of Putin's embrace of Stalin places him in a different position morally than Gorbachev was.

Similarly, I see a moral difference in the position of the UK with respect to Kenya since the 2013 apology and acceptance of guilt vs the position prior to that vs an alternative UK government that maintained that British atrocities during the counter-insurgency were the work of a few "bad apples", or one that argued it was justified by the nature of the war.

However where the only connection is ideology, I don't see a moral relationship between a modern-day Italian communist and Stalin's actions, just because the person is a communist - no more than I would expect a moral relationship between an Italian capitalist and the actions of Union Carbide at Bhopal, just because the person is a capitalist.

As for the Nazis, even without reference to historical uniqueness of the Holocaust, an alternate history of a surviving Nazi state would more or less cease to be a Nazi state if it denounced or apologised for the Holocaust. They simply wouldn't be Nazis - so a surviving Nazi state in alternate history would ipso facto be one that still supports / accepts / justifies the Holocaust.

*I am not sure this applies to the Holodomor, though?

I think the biggest difference between the Nazis and Confederates on one side, and the likes of the USSR, the US, and Turkey is that the latter’s myth of creation wasn’t based on a deeply reactionary and hateful ideology. The US, Turkey and the USSR all committed genocide (or in the case of the latter politicide) during the revolution that created those nations, and said genocides were fundamental for creating those nations as they are/were, but unlike the Nazis and Confederates, their case for fighting the war was not at heart to commit such atrocious acts out of a reactionary belief.


It’s also why I think a Nazi Germany cannot fully liberalize, it will always be Nazi Germany, electing a moderate chancellor that apologizes for the Holocaust won’t stop that. You need some form of revolution to create a national myth that isn’t based around a fundamentally hateful and reactionary ideology like Nazism.

The closest equivalent of OTL is South Africa. The Boer-dominated regime of 1948 onwards was created with the intention to take away people’s freedoms on the basis of their skin color. It adopted a new flag, and broke away from the more moderate British Empire (more moderate in the sense that white supremacy wasn’t as central of a piece of its national myth). The only way that South Africa ceased to be the reactionary Afrikaner nation, and became the rainbow nation as it is known OTL is through a revolution that created a new national myth.

 

[Avian Overlord]

(I have seen this in the other place which veers into outright apologia at times)

I mean, it almost became the editorial line here.

 

[Stikfigur]

I mean, it almost became the editorial line here.

Can I ask the context if you don't mind?

 

[JesterBL]

Can I ask the context if you don't mind?

Individual named as blog editor (not publishing editor, mind you, blog editor) used the occasion of being named as blog editor to pen a letter in which they rather uncautiously revisited and reiterated arguments from this very thread about Nazism, historical revisionism and colonialism within alternate history in a way that veered very close to apologism although I believe was not in any way meant as apologism. They then rescinded their candidacy as blog editor.

Just bog-standard forum drama and probably best not dregged up much more. The website was in no danger of becoming Stormfront.

 

[OwenM]

Thanks for this thoughtful piece, and too @Stikfigur for yours also.

I think that comparisons between genocides is rarely helpful, as while for example Mozambiquans would doubtless agree that yes, the Nazis killed more people in the Holocaust than the Portuguese did at Wiriyamu, that doesn't really change anything for those who lost their families at Wiriyamu. Perhaps an exception to that is where a scholarly approach is taken to genocides by the same state, such as Prof Lushaba's analysis of the Herero genocide in Namibia and the holocaust?

I think the matter of history and geography is interesting, but there is still much to be said where the current nation is the same state that committed the genocide, or is legally the successor nation or sees itself as such. To me it is not only time, but the view the nation takes of the genocide event - denial, obfuscation, apology, denunciation, or something else. So to me Gorbachev is different from the moral culpability of Stalin, not only due to the passage of time but because of the denunciation of (some of) Stalin's actions in Khruschev's Secret Speech*. I think the nature of Putin's embrace of Stalin places him in a different position morally than Gorbachev was.

Similarly, I see a moral difference in the position of the UK with respect to Kenya since the 2013 apology and acceptance of guilt vs the position prior to that vs an alternative UK government that maintained that British atrocities during the counter-insurgency were the work of a few "bad apples", or one that argued it was justified by the nature of the war.

However where the only connection is ideology, I don't see a moral relationship between a modern-day Italian communist and Stalin's actions, just because the person is a communist - no more than I would expect a moral relationship between an Italian capitalist and the actions of Union Carbide at Bhopal, just because the person is a capitalist.

As for the Nazis, even without reference to historical uniqueness of the Holocaust, an alternate history of a surviving Nazi state would more or less cease to be a Nazi state if it denounced or apologised for the Holocaust. They simply wouldn't be Nazis - so a surviving Nazi state in alternate history would ipso facto be one that still supports / accepts / justifies the Holocaust.

*I am not sure this applies to the Holodomor, though?

I think the biggest difference between the Nazis and Confederates on one side, and the likes of the USSR, the US, and Turkey is that the latter’s myth of creation wasn’t based on a deeply reactionary and hateful ideology. The US, Turkey and the USSR all committed genocide (or in the case of the latter politicide) during the revolution that created those nations, and said genocides were fundamental for creating those nations as they are/were, but unlike the Nazis and Confederates, their case for fighting the war was not at heart to commit such atrocious acts out of a reactionary belief.


It’s also why I think a Nazi Germany cannot fully liberalize, it will always be Nazi Germany, electing a moderate chancellor that apologizes for the Holocaust won’t stop that. You need some form of revolution to create a national myth that isn’t based around a fundamentally hateful and reactionary ideology like Nazism.

The closest equivalent of OTL is South Africa. The Boer-dominated regime of 1948 onwards was created with the intention to take away people’s freedoms on the basis of their skin color. It adopted a new flag, and broke away from the more moderate British Empire (more moderate in the sense that white supremacy wasn’t as central of a piece of its national myth). The only way that South Africa ceased to be the reactionary Afrikaner nation, and became the rainbow nation as it is known OTL is through a revolution that created a new national myth.

I was reminded again of @Thande's vignette set in an explicitly post-Nazi Germany but where the Holocaust continues to be treated as a conspiracy theory even if sure, there were pogroms and that was bad and they may well have been worse than the official line of the regime that replaced the Nazis.

 

[Von Callay]

I was reminded again of @Thande's vignette set in an explicitly post-Nazi Germany but where the Holocaust continues to be treated as a conspiracy theory even if sure, there were pogroms and that was bad and they may well have been worse than the official line of the regime that replaced the Nazis.

The generals do away with Hitler after a failed Sealion and so he's just another '1930s strongman who whipped the nation back into shape before he ended up in a box' that lots of otherwise respectable countries have in their history?

 

[JesterBL]

Total change of subject but I find it fascinating that the Bolsheviks DESPISED income taxes, and the Soviet Union basically avoided them till the era of Gorbachevian reform. I'm reading a book which points out that Prohibition in the US was really only feasible after we had an income tax (and the excise tax on liquor was rendered far less important) which is of course an interesting parallel to the Soviet Union- like the Tsar before them, hugely dependent on sales of spirits to the masses, despite the economic and human toll.

It's one of those things which is, I feel, underexplored in alternate history. Taxation can shape culture and history, and it's really just a slider in a lot of TLs. You have Prohibition in the US and the failure of Prohibition in the Soviet Union and ex-Soviet Union, but you also have stuff like the entire cultural heritage of Belgian brewing being shaped and defined by taxation. You don't see a lot of alternate taxation systems either- IOTL the Georgists at least got Taiwan- and very little exploration of what could happen with those sliders adjusted this way or that.

 

[Steve Brinson]

Total change of subject but I find it fascinating that the Bolsheviks DESPISED income taxes, and the Soviet Union basically avoided them till the era of Gorbachevian reform. I'm reading a book which points out that Prohibition in the US was really only feasible after we had an income tax (and the excise tax on liquor was rendered far less important) which is of course an interesting parallel to the Soviet Union- like the Tsar before them, hugely dependent on sales of spirits to the masses, despite the economic and human toll.

It's one of those things which is, I feel, underexplored in alternate history. Taxation can shape culture and history, and it's really just a slider in a lot of TLs. You have Prohibition in the US and the failure of Prohibition in the Soviet Union and ex-Soviet Union, but you also have stuff like the entire cultural heritage of Belgian brewing being shaped and defined by taxation. You don't see a lot of alternate taxation systems either- IOTL the Georgists at least got Taiwan- and very little exploration of what could happen with those sliders adjusted this way or that.

You should check out Anna Ivanova’s thesis on changing attitudes towards income in the USSR - I have a PDF copy I can send you.

 

[Von Callay]

I'm reading a book which points out that Prohibition in the US was really only feasible after we had an income tax (and the excise tax on liquor was rendered far less important)

And it wasn't just replacing the alcohol excise tax with income tax, but also the fact that while the alcohol excise affected basically everyone, the original federal income tax was paid only by something like one percent of the population, and it only rose to something like 15 percent when it was broadened and expanded in WW1. For comparison, today something around half of all Americans pay income tax now. It's a statistic I can't cite, unfortunately, but I remember reading that the first year of federal income taxes after 1913 had something like 40% of all the returns being filed just by residents of New York. It adds another dimension to the income tax and Prohibition as populists in the south and west looking to soak the rich in the east, basically.

 

[Coiler]

It adds another dimension to the income tax and Prohibition as populists in the south and west looking to soak the rich in the east, basically.

There's the unconfirmed (by me) but plausible story of a southern congressman boasting after the 16th Amendment that no one in his district would qualify to pay it.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Alternate Historian on whether slave revolts in America could have lead to an abolition of slavery:

 

[lordroel]

Silly sports WI: Super Bowl halftime shows never progress beyond the novelty acts and marching bands they started off with.

Would the million dollar commercials during half time still exist as well.

 

[MAC161]

Just a random thought, prompted by recent reading set in roughly the same era: Are there any TLs or published works revolving around Ford winning a term in his own right in the 1976 election, and how it might've happened/turned out, esp. with regard to the '79 oil crisis, the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? Would Carter have been the challenger again in 1980, or Ted Kennedy, or someone else altogether?

 

[Von Callay]

Just a random thought, prompted by recent reading set in roughly the same era: Are there any TLs or published works revolving around Ford winning a term in his own right in the 1976 election, and how it might've happened/turned out, esp. with regard to the '79 oil crisis, the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? Would Carter have been the challenger again in 1980, or Ted Kennedy, or someone else altogether?

There is one in the Mike Resnick Alternate Presidents anthology, I will have to go find my copy and see what it was about.

 

[MAC161]

There is one in the Mike Resnick Alternate Presidents anthology, I will have to go find my copy and see what it was about.

Yeah, "Demarche to Iran"; the different pardon bit sounds plausible on the surface, but the Iran-related actions sounded "whut?"

 

[Von Callay]

Yeah, "Demarche to Iran"; the different pardon bit sounds plausible on the surface, but the Iran-related actions sounded "whut?"

I think it is meant to be kind of dramatically ironic alternate history? Ford stumbles through the crisis on the advice of his Serbian masseur, Darko, and wildly escalates things by threatening war and then (accidentally) nuclear war against Iran, and then when it works and the hostages are released, it's considered a huge blunder of his foreign policy, alienating a US ally with his insane threats while the hostage crisis is only a detail of how he did that and not the defining episode of the breakdown in US-Iran relations.

 

[Marius]

The closest equivalent of OTL is South Africa. The Boer-dominated regime of 1948 onwards was created with the intention to take away people’s freedoms on the basis of their skin color. It adopted a new flag, and broke away from the more moderate British Empire (more moderate in the sense that white supremacy wasn’t as central of a piece of its national myth). The only way that South Africa ceased to be the reactionary Afrikaner nation, and became the rainbow nation as it is known OTL is through a revolution that created a new national myth.

Because I am a pedant I need to point out that the old SA flag was already adopted in 1928, it was not a creation of the NP regime. If it had been there would have been no Union Jack.

And I am not sure there was any material change in the living circumstances of black, coloured, and Indian South Africans after the 1948 election.

 

[MAC161]

Just a random thought, prompted by recent reading set in roughly the same era: Are there any TLs or published works revolving around Ford winning a term in his own right in the 1976 election, and how it might've happened/turned out, esp. with regard to the '79 oil crisis, the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? Would Carter have been the challenger again in 1980, or Ted Kennedy, or someone else altogether?

Just re-discovered this TL, which at least opens with a Ford victory; haven't had the chance/time to read it all the way through, however, so not much idea as to its quality.

 

[lordroel]

Well one thing i did today, tried to see what ChatGPT could do with AH, my first attempt was not what i toughed would roll out of ChatGPT.

In this alternate history, the year is 1938 and Adolf Hitler has just suffered a heart attack, leading to his untimely death at the age of 49. With Hitler gone, the Nazi party is thrown into chaos and infighting as various factions jostle for power.

The vacuum left by Hitler's absence is quickly filled by a young, charismatic politician named Ernst Rohm. Rohm, a former rival of Hitler's, had been sidelined and nearly killed during the Night of the Long Knives purge in 1934. With Hitler gone, Rohm sees an opportunity to take control of the Nazi party and reshape it in his own image.

Rohm quickly consolidates his power and sets about implementing his vision for Germany. He believes that the Nazi party should be more inclusive and welcoming to all Germans, regardless of their background or beliefs. He also believes that Germany should focus on building strong alliances with its neighbors rather than trying to conquer them.

Under Rohm's leadership, the Nazi party becomes less ideologically extreme and more focused on improving the lives of average Germans. Rohm implements policies that prioritize social welfare and infrastructure development, and he works to build alliances with neighboring countries such as France and Britain.

The world watches in astonishment as Germany under Rohm's leadership becomes a beacon of hope and prosperity. The tensions that led to the outbreak of World War II never materialize, and instead, Europe enters a new era of cooperation and peace.

Rohm's leadership style is popular among Germans, and he is re-elected several times. His policies lead to a golden age of German prosperity and innovation, and his legacy lives on long after his death.

Today, Germany is known as a bastion of democracy and tolerance, and it owes much of its success to the leadership of Ernst Rohm. The world can only wonder what might have been if Adolf Hitler had suffered his heart attack just a little bit earlier.

Seems that it the AI replaced one monster for a other monster.

 

[Time Enough]

Rohm's leadership style is popular among Germans, and he is re-elected several times. His policies lead to a golden age of German prosperity and innovation, and his legacy lives on long after his death.

Today, Germany is known as a bastion of democracy and tolerance, and it owes much of its success to the leadership of Ernst Rohm. The world can only wonder what might have been if Adolf Hitler had suffered his heart attack just a little bit earlier.

Ewww, hate this. That being said, imagining a Rohm/Strasserite Germany is interesting, even if it would likely collapse incredibly quickly under the wait of its own contradictions.