Alternate History General Discussion

[Christian]

Apparently when Sir Alex Ferguson retired, he had a list of successors that he would like to lead the club, with Pep Guardiola being his preferred option.

Is it possible for Pep to lead the Reds? Would be interesting to see and could be possible, did have some conversations with each other over the phone according to his biography, and Manchester United is an extremely prestigious club.

Wonder if he could prevent the decline that happened after Sir Alex left.

 

[Coiler]

So in Nuclear War Simulator, I simulated this 35 kiloton warhead detonating over London (Birmingham is too puny, sorry Hackett). The result was about 220,000 dead in total, with green being the highest in the area of the initial blast, and blue being the casualties from the fallout wind.

 

[AH Layard]

Apparently when Sir Alex Ferguson retired, he had a list of successors that he would like to lead the club, with Pep Guardiola being his preferred option.

Is it possible for Pep to lead the Reds? Would be interesting to see and could be possible, did have some conversations with each other over the phone according to his biography, and Manchester United is an extremely prestigious club.

Wonder if he could prevent the decline that happened after Sir Alex left.

It's intriguing, if the sequencing had been different it could have happened. Apparently he agreed to go to Bayern not long before Ferguson announced his retirement.

 

[Warthog]

IIRC from the film he's a German but not a Nazi, which is understandably the take when fiction touches on the subject of occupied people falling in love with an occupier. (An exception is Secret Army where it's the main SS villain doing it so the actor gets some different scenes but he's still very much a villain)

My (English) great aunt fell in love with a German POW and moved to Benoni, South Africa.

She was sort of unpersonned, and although one of my uncle's tried to trace her, noone had the bloke's name so

 

[TheKennedyMachine]

Why is it that no one can write a genuinely good Axis Victory TL?

The only good one I've seen (outside of TNO) is probably Alice in Wratheland, but that's a Lovecraft ASB thingy bob.

 

[varyar]

Why is it that no one can write a genuinely good Axis Victory TL?

The only good one I've seen (outside of TNO) is probably Alice in Wratheland, but that's a Lovecraft ASB thingy bob.

Robert Harris' Fatherland and Turtledove's short story (avoid the novel) "In the Presence of Mine Enemy" are both genuinely good. More broadly speaking, the very idea of an Axis Victory is straining credibility. You have to bend history, if not break it, to explain how a combination of the unsinkable aircraft carrier and industrial power UK, the industrial and demographic power USSR, and the unsinkable aircraft carrier, industrial and demographic power USA can't beat Germany.

Works that focus on how it happened suffer compared to those that focus on what it means.

 

[Japhy]

Why is it that no one can write a genuinely good Axis Victory TL?

The only good one I've seen (outside of TNO) is probably Alice in Wratheland, but that's a Lovecraft ASB thingy bob.

Because dystopia porn cannot by definition actually be good story telling.

 

[SpanishSpy]

Why is it that no one can write a genuinely good Axis Victory TL?

The only good one I've seen (outside of TNO) is probably Alice in Wratheland, but that's a Lovecraft ASB thingy bob.

@varyar's In and Out of the Reich is masterful.

I liked Daniel Quinn's After Dachau, Dennis Bock's The Good German, C. J. Sansom's Dominion, and the short story The Eagle and the Bluebird by Jordan H. J. Lloyd.

This SCP, of all things, is probably the best take on the concept I've seen online.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Big support for @varyar 's grubby grim Reich stories, and a short by IIRC @Thande about Nazis who won for a bit and now Germany acknowledges it was a bad regime while denying the Holocaust happened. Turtledove's Shtetl Days was quite strong, and Kim Newman's nasty Slow News Day about the banal celebration of 50 years since Germany 'liberated' Britain.

 

[Coiler]

Controversial opinion in that I think the Axis Victory World parts of In the Presence of Mine Enemies are done well. The end-stage USSR parallel makes it anything but romantic or appealing, the "August Coup" and the way its foiled is a good set piece that shows the reformist Nazis are ultimately still Nazis.

The books flaws come from literary issues (bad pacing, a let's play of bridge, etc...) that could have happened in any genre. But in terms of pure AH, it avoided a lot of the Axis victory pitfalls-and doesn't wallow in pure misery despite its obviously bleak setting and theme.

 

[monroe]

I wrote two fairly contentious articles on this very topic and I keep drawing a circle on the same issue as for when it comes to a third: you have to concede there was something fundamentally workable about these gangster regimes, these death cults, to let them win and keep together longer than five minutes, or some secret nobility within the ranks that would have curbed the worst excesses, and that's the issue, because there was demonstrably nothing workable in any of these regimes and we know it, which is why victory condition narratives come off as hollow at best

 

[OHC]

I wrote two fairly contentious articles on this very topic and I keep drawing a circle on the same issue as for when it comes to a third: you have to concede there was something fundamentally workable about these gangster regimes, these death cults, to let them win and keep together longer than five minutes, or some secret nobility within the ranks that would have curbed the worst excesses, and that's the issue, because there was demonstrably nothing workable in any of these regimes and we know it, which is why victory condition narratives come off as hollow at best

Was there any secret nobility in the chattel slavery regime that persisted for centuries in the American south? Or any number of other horrible, morally bankrupt modes of organizing society that just kept on going throughout history?

We all know an Axis victory was never likely at all because of the inherent vices you mention, but I am very skeptical of the idea that merely imagining a different outcome has to imply endorsement. That's especially the case in a literary context where the author doesn't have to come up with a "plausible POD" the way we do in forum discussions (which is where the apologia you mention usually comes in).

 

[monroe]

Was there any secret nobility in the chattel slavery regime that persisted for centuries in the American south? Or any number of other horrible, morally bankrupt modes of organizing society that just kept on going throughout history?

We all know an Axis victory was never likely at all because of the inherent vices you mention, but I am very skeptical of the idea that merely imagining a different outcome has to imply endorsement. That's especially the case in a literary context where the author doesn't have to come up with a "plausible POD" the way we do in forum discussions (which is where the apologia you mention usually comes in).

I would refer you to the aforementioned articles because I 100% cannot agree with the notion that "merely imagining a different outcome [does not] imply endorsement", as if imagining the triumph of fascism is some innately apolitical action - the starting point for any Axis Victory is the concession that the Axis powers and the bloody churn of a forever war of racial supremacy and material plunder could attain anything close to a win-state, and it is a conscious choice to make that concession.

 

[OHC]

I would refer you to the aforementioned articles because I 100% cannot agree with the notion that "merely imagining a different outcome [does not] imply endorsement", as if imagining the triumph of fascism is some innately apolitical action - the starting point for any Axis Victory is the concession that the Axis powers and the bloody churn of a forever war of racial supremacy and material plunder could attain anything close to a win-state, and it is a conscious choice to make that concession.

Do you really think that all of the SLP participants who have written works set after Axis victories are effectively Nazi propagandists, that there is no other way their works can be interpreted? I'm not sure we have much to say to each other if that's what you believe. I have read your articles; I think we might have irreconcilably different ideas about the ethical responsibilities of art.

 

[Japhy]

Do you really think that all of the SLP participants who have written works set after Axis victories are effectively Nazi propagandists, that there is no other way their works can be interpreted?

Leaping tall buildings in a single bound, this.

 

[varyar]

Leaping tall buildings in a single bound, this.

How else can one interpret "I 100% cannot agree with the notion that "merely imagining a different outcome [does not] imply endorsement"?

 

[Japhy]

How else can one interpret "I 100% cannot agree with the notion that "merely imagining a different outcome [does not] imply endorsement"?

Something can be a political decision and not a wholehearted endorsement?

Also, nuance and context.

 

[OHC]

Something can be a political decision and not a wholehearted endorsement?

Also, nuance and context.

I'm a fan of nuance and context, but we were specifically talking about the word "endorsement!"

 

[M_Kresal]

As the author of both a published SLP short story and a vignette contest winner both set after an Axis victory, I take the implication that writing such things means I have somehow endorsed the Nazis rather dimly. In part given that I had the two articles in mind when I wrote them both, especially Dreamer Exfiltration’s depiction of a victorious Third Reich collapsing under its own weight. If that story or 384,000 can somehow be seen as endorsing Nazism, then the author would like to say you’re certainly not reading them as intended.

 

[Japhy]

I'm a fan of nuance and context, but we were specifically talking about the word "endorsement!"

Its entirely fair to say that Fascism is an inherently contradictory, unstable and chaotic system and that to propose how it survives presupposes that it can somehow change to survive. How is that not a political supposition? It requires a degree of buy in to the project. Fascist victory was forever war in the Urals and against the enemies at home, of endless struggle for power and battles of wills and subjugation and chaos. In the places it did survive it was a world of secret police, court politics and helicopter rides, at best and race war in the Colonies against non-whites toeing genocide in other cases. People on this site have told me that's an incorrect interpretation but I'm just going by what the Fascists said and did.

If you want to disagree on how much that buy in is worth, yeah sure. But the buy in happens and I don't think the pretty livid responses Monroe got to those articles actually provided a counter argument. I'd be interested in hearing them but "Its not that deep" (Not your words just paraphrasing precious discussions) rings pretty hollow to me and doesn't strike me as something that is dealing with the actual situation with any awareness or nuance or more.

Enough TNO Speer Hoodies got sold to show that the buy in matters and it has a cost. If we don't want to be self critical there's no moral point to any of this, we might as well just give in to the folks who want to write Imperial fantasy and who's solution to how the world has changed is dream of killing everyone in China in their wish fulfillment AH.