ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
The aristrocracy was also a serious problem in the later years of the republic - their treatment of Caesar was unwise, to say the least, and their treatment of Sulla incredibly short-sighted.
Chris
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Least favorite alt-history story?
- Thread starter Resurgam
- Start date
The aristrocracy was also a serious problem in the later years of the republic - their treatment of Caesar was unwise, to say the least, and their treatment of Sulla incredibly short-sighted.
Chris
- Location
- Visiting BWBs.
Especially for Caesar.
I remember when For All Time was a new series.
This section intrigued me:
Mostly for George Miller parts in this script. Whomever made this is just shooting threes like an ice cold 2017 Steph Curry.
Spoiled the ending for myself by coming here to ask the question, but I have only me to blame . . .
In any event, it seemed to me that the characters were very aware of Nazi concentration camps earlier than they were in OTL. Was it really the case that Americans in early 1942 were well-informed about that aspect of the Nazi regime?
Death's Companion
General Ugg Apologist.
Someone on AH.Com posted an ISOT where modern Germany went back to WWI and won it and then everything was great forever in Europe whilst America turned into a racist reactionary failed state that hated the Europeans for being so modern and enlightened where even Hitler marries a Turkish woman and becomes a model citizen.
Honestly everything I've heard about the Bundeswher and seen of German politicians and my bug bear of ISOTs just ignoring famines and the loss of physical infrastructure combines for me to think what would have actually happened was they are crippled by mass hysteria and the political nightmare of all nightmares and if they do engage in combat with the allies in say November 1918 it sees the latter kick the shit out of them but suffer localised setbacks and someone tries to crown the Crown Prince Kaiser as a tax dodge whilst multiple people try to find Hitler to either kill him or swear loyalty and everything goes massively to shit for a few years and any peace treaty involves trading a lot of tech.
...
Come to think of it has there ever been an ISOT TL or Story where the uptimers actually outright lose and the ramifications are the looting of their tech and know how? Guns of the South kinda fits I guess but not really because those were individuals rather than a state.
Honestly everything I've heard about the Bundeswher and seen of German politicians and my bug bear of ISOTs just ignoring famines and the loss of physical infrastructure combines for me to think what would have actually happened was they are crippled by mass hysteria and the political nightmare of all nightmares and if they do engage in combat with the allies in say November 1918 it sees the latter kick the shit out of them but suffer localised setbacks and someone tries to crown the Crown Prince Kaiser as a tax dodge whilst multiple people try to find Hitler to either kill him or swear loyalty and everything goes massively to shit for a few years and any peace treaty involves trading a lot of tech.
...
Come to think of it has there ever been an ISOT TL or Story where the uptimers actually outright lose and the ramifications are the looting of their tech and know how? Guns of the South kinda fits I guess but not really because those were individuals rather than a state.
- Location
- Visiting BWBs.
Poul Anderson (of course, it had to be Poul Anderson) in The High Crusade.
It's not quite an ISOT. A Medieval English village preparing for the 100 Years War is visited by an alien spacecraft, and high jinks ensue.
I Saw A Red Sky
He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but 🤓
Humans always get the jump on aliens in these stories, vs. future humans not so much.
- Location
- Albany, NY
- Pronouns
- She/Her
People knew about the concentration camps from 1933 on, there were lots of rumors about the Einzatgruppen, there wasn't much in the way of gas chambers until later.
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
I always had the impression, to be honest, that 1918s Hitler was within Imperial Germany’s borders, so if modern Germany overwrites it Hitler would die or at least vanish along with everyone else. By the end the war, the Germans had lost most of their gains in France and Hitler himself had been wounded and remanded to Germany. If that’s the case, there’s no need to worry about him. On one hand, the 1918s Hitler hadn’t committed any of the atrocities of 1945 Hitler, but on the other hand he isn’t around anyway.
Modern day Germany would be in serious trouble anyway. The economy would collapse. Their military might be much more advanced than 1918-level, but there are very real questions about how long they could maintain any sort of military operation. Their war stocks were very low, although they may have rebuilt slightly since President Trump and the crisis in Ukraine. If they do get into blows with the Western allies of this timeline, they could easily wind up losing despite their tech advantage. If they don’t, they could offer technology in exchange for essential supplies and raw materials. They would also be much more aware of the USSR problem, as well as the various decolonisation problems. A glimpse into the future would be very helpful for just about everyone, including Lenin and Imperial Japan.
An alternate possibility would be the Western allies invading Germany on the grounds that they don’t trust the history books, they think the Third Reich will happen anyway, or even fear of what might happen if super-Germany manages to overcome its shortages and builds up a modern military. They will have a very big head start.
It would be interesting, but hardly paradise for anyone.
Chris
Von Callay
Getting Grilled by Special Agent Nixon
The Proteus Operation by James Hogan sort of does this, but not exactly. It's difficult to explain without spoiling the whole thing, of course, so beware below.
The First World War really was the War to End All Wars and by the 2020s the world is universally at peace under a great League of Nations promoting tolerance, understanding, and the universal brotherhood of mankind. Some people who are opposed to things like peace, democracy, and corporate income tax build a time machine and go back to support this guy they read about in a history book called Adolf Hitler who tried to take over Germany in 1923 and pass him guns and money and future knowledge, enabling his rapid rise to power. When Hitler finds out about the real future timeline these people come from and how they're using him, he blows up his end of the time machine and uses the tools taken from them to conquer Western Europe and nuke the Soviet Union. The novel is about the aftermath of this, where in the 1975 of this timeline, as the Nazis and Japanese gear up for the final apocalyptic confrontation with North America, a team of American scientists build a time machine and try to go back and avert what they understand only as their own original history, with no knowledge of the original manipulation.
I Saw A Red Sky
He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but 🤓
Are there books about countries going back in time? The fun schlock is always random guys doing it.
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
I did think about a timeline in which a jumbo jet fell back in time and crash landed somewhere in 1800s Britain. There would be several hundred passengers, none of which really want to stay in Britain fighting Napoleon. Some would be American and want to go back to a country that would be very strange to them (particularly if they were black and/or female); some would come from countries that simply didn’t exist in the modern form in 1800s.
I can’t think of any ISOT/GOTS/RoF story in which the uptimers lose as you suggest (unless you count the ship that fell into Soviet hands in Axis of Time). It would definitely be interesting story if Grantville was actually overwhelmed as soon as it arrived and was still trying to figure out what was going on. Perhaps it could be a British town instead, where there are very few weapons in private hands and the only people who have firearms officially would be the local police. The police are tight-lipped about just how many weapons there are stored within police stations; I’ve been told there is a weapons locker in many places and others are apparently unarmed. A great deal depends on basic training and stuff.
If we assume an English town fell back in time to meet Queen Elizabeth, the town would probably be discovered and overwhelmed very quickly. It will be hard to organise any sort of defence unless the town as a military unit assigned to it and even that would be difficult because they would rapidly run out of supplies. I suspect, in this case, the nobles who were battling for influence, if not control, over the Queen would try to take advantage of the gift from the future. History books would be read to see what happened after the Queen died; technical books would be examined to see if Elizabethian England could produce basic steamships and other technological wonders, at least by their standards. There might be a kind of amnesty for uptimers who aren’t strict Protestants - even if we assume a largely white Christian town, they won’t be the same religiously as the contemporaries.
What I think would happen here is that any future development would take place by contemporary standards rather than modern standards. Even the most liberal monarch, by contemporary standards, was a tyrant. They were held in check by technological limitations, not basic decency. An era that saw nothing wrong with storming cities wouldn’t see anything wrong with nuking them. Elizabeth would see nothing wrong with trying to build the British Empire ahead of time, despite the atrocities this would work on the Native Americans and India. Instead of uptimers bringing the ideals of the modern world to the past, the contemporary world will expand far faster than OTL. We might see a population boom in England, thanks to improved healthcare, but we might also see biological warfare used quite deliberately against the Native Americans. The nobility would also very keen to head off the impending Civil War, perhaps by limiting Parliament as much as possible or by keeping their own armed henchmen as long as possible.
It would be a fun world to write about, but not so much fun to live in.
There are other possibilities, of course. A French town going back to meet Napoleon. A German town appearing in 1919, offering the new government a chance to escape the worst of the sanctions and develop new technology well before Adolf Hitler starts his climb to power. Indeed, they might just assassinate Hitler before he has a chance to become more than a simple rabble-rouser (or deport him on the grounds he’s Austrian).
What do you think? I’ll give this one some thought.
Chris
Poul Anderson also subverted readers' expectations in the awkwardly-titled story The Man who came early, which involves a Cold War-era US soldier who finds himself teleported back to Norse Iceland. He discovers that his 20th-century knowledge is virtually useless in a medieval setting, and so is his handgun once he runs out of ammunition, so he fails to make any lasting difference.
It's not quite a whole country, but Eric Flint's 1632 involves a whole town being transported in time.
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
I wrote Second Chance nearly 15(?) years ago - 2019ish UK goes back to 1940 - and Iain Bowen wrote 'Dislocated to Success,' which sent Thatcher's Britain back in time to 1730.
I keep thinking i should rewrite Second Chance, but I've never got round to it.
Chris
- Location
- Visiting BWBs.
I have read it. Well, the first 100 or so pages of it.
I don't know which is worse, the god-awful writing or the fact that it is basically a paean of praise to the titular character.
Talwar
Well-Known Sword
- Pronouns
- he/him
We get people and whole countries punted through time; how about random areas that include a chunk of country A, a slice of country B, and a big ship from country X?