Philip K Dick and Len Deighton have the Germans winning. Harry Turtledove has alien invaders interrupting. SM Stirling has the Draka coming out of Africa, into what they call the Eurasian War, and conquering Eurasia. I am still reading about the Draka colonization of France.
This is the briefest possible summary. I know that there are other versions with the Germans winning. British television had a serial set in German-occupied Britain where a TV playwright said, "Well, I can't rewrite history!" He could but, in that timeline, it would not be advisable. Fortunately, our writers are free to consider any possibility, however horrific, as Stirling demonstrates.
The Draka loot: art from the Louvre goes into private mansions in the new territories. Jannisaries, serf soldiers, are allowed to loot and rape. Such privileges keep them loyal. In one scene, Citizen officers watch the rape of a nun and Cohortarch Tanya von Shrakenberg merely reflects with mild contempt on the impoverished erotic imagination of the infantryman. In peace time, serf women cannot refuse Citizen teenagers. Citizens brought up like that will continue to support the Domination which, however, makes so many enemies that I continue to question its viability. But this is a timeline in which the worst probabilities happened...
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I actually read the first four or five of Harry Turtledove's WORLDWAR series became dissatisfied with it. And I have a copy of HITLER VICTORIOUS, an intriguing collection of stories on the theme of a victorious National Socialist Germany. I thought Turtledove's contribution, "The Last Article," very good.
Poul Anderson briefly touched on that theme in OPERATION CHAOS. The book begins near the end of an alternate WW II in which the enemy was a caliphate ruled by a heretical form of Islam. But we get only a glimpse.
You should have said that Sister Marya was NEARLY raped by the Draka soldier. The thug was interrupted when Polish resistance fighters attacked the Draka camp.
Yes, I agree on the improbability of EVERYTHING going wrong and causing events to occur in such a way that something Domination could arise (we both know this was an experiment in dystopian SF by Stirling). But the point I want to stress is that the Draka were COMPETENT tyrants. They managed to avoid the types of mistakes which helped bring down both Nazi Germany and the USSR.
Sean
'Philip K Dick and Len Deighton have the Germans winning.'
As does Robert Harris in his novel 'Fatherland'.
Thank you, Ketlan, and I would like to hear of any more German victories in WWII. One was in DC Comics. Justice League members from Earth 1 and Justice Society members from Earth 2 crossed to Earth X where Uncle Sam led a superhero team called the Freedom Fighters as an underground resistance to world-conquering Nazis. DC Editor Julius Schwarz saw the draft of the cover where the new Earth was called Earth (swastika). Schwarz said, "That symbol will not appear on a cover of a magazine edited by me." He crossed off the side bars, changing the swastika into an X.
Kaor, Paul!
Interestingly, Rudyard Kipling used to be fond of the swastika symbol and had his publishers make sure it was stamped on the covers of his books printed before 1933. I even have his two JUNGLE BOOKS in pre-1933 editions (with the swastika stamped on them). However, Kipling was so disgusted by the Nazis that he instructed his publishers to no longer have the swastika stamped on his books from 1933 on wards.
As for "Hitler Victorious" stories, I recommend the collection of the same name, giving good examples of that sub-genre. Norman Spinrad's THE IRON DREAM also comes to mind.
Fortunately, the Nazis were not as competent as the Draka!
Sean
"Hitler Victorious" includes "Thor Meets Captain America" by David Brin.
Brin thought the Nazis were such incompetents that it was fantasy that they could win. So he had them win by postulating that the holocaust was an exercise in necromancy that worked.
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