How does the War impact on Poul Anderson's fiction? See:
War In Art And Life
War In Art And Life II
Continuing Consequences Of World War II In Life And Fiction
"Operation Afreet"
The War II
After The War
Post-War Crime II
Defender Of Two Worlds
Etienne Fourre II
As ever, there was more already here than I had realized before I started to search for it.
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
My view is that WW II makes no sense unless we consider it a sequel or continuation, after a 20 years truce, of WW I. Absent the catastrophe of the Sarajevo crisis, the world we have now, for good or ill, simply would not have EXISTED.
In his three Shadowspawn books, it was the secret manipulation and forcing of human gov'ts who DIDN'T want to go to war in 1914 which brought the Shadowspawn to de facto domination of the world (acting thru human puppets). Science fiction for the paranoid as I called these books.
Sean
Sean,
About the only sensible statement in Heinlein's TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE was the description of WWI as "Terran Planetary War, Phase One."
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree! WW I was catastrophic enough all by itself, but its dismal consequences, including the Russian Revolution, an embittered Germany, the breakup of Austria-Hungary, the Versailles Treaty, etc., made another, even more disastrous conflict very likely, if not quite inevitable.
Sean
WW1 was a necessary but not sufficient precondition for WW2.
Nearly everyone in Germany resented losing WW1, and nearly everyone wanted to break the restraints the treaty of Versailles had laid on Germany and to recover the territory lost.
The thing is that the German elites, the generals and others, were -very afraid- of another general war because they thought Germany would lose, for the simple reason that its likely opponents grossly outweighed it in population, resources and industrial production. They were fine with rearming, but didn't want to risk actual confrontation with the WW1 victors.
Hitler only broke this opposition -- there was a serious conspiracy by the German military to overthrow him in 1938 -- by scoring a series of dramatic diplomatic successes; rearming in violation of Versailles, reoccupying the Rhineland, annexing the Saar, annexing Austria, and getting the Western powers to force Czechoslovakia to give up the Sudetenland.
This validated his argument that the Western powers were led by "worms" (his term for Chamberlain and Daladier) who could be intimidated and bluffed into making concessions by threats which Germany couldn't actually back up.
The generals knew how relatively weak Germany was and thought that Britain and France would use their superior power to block German expansion; they didn't appreciate how demoralized and frightened their potential enemies did... and Hitler did realize it.
In 1939, he argued that even if they -declared- war, Britain and France wouldn't actually -make- war. The entire German army was sent to fight Poland; the French could have walked across the Rhine, and the German army knew it... but just as Hitler predicted, the French did nothing.
Then in 1940 Germany overran Scandinavia and then beat the French and occupied Paris.
At this point, the German military leadership gave up and decided that Hitler really was the supreme genius he said he was -- and didn't reconsider until 1943.
But only someone of extreme force of will could have carried them along in 1938-40. Not only did the generals not want to risk a new world war, many top Nazis agreed with them -- Goering, for instance.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I agree! I knew of both the nearly universal anger and resentment within Germany at the victors of WW I and of how most of the German leadership elites feared another war with the UK and France. For the reasons you gave. Yes, only the combination of weak leaders in the UK/France plus Hitler's daringly successful bluffing could have overcome the opposition of the German elites to him.
I even of how Goering hoped war could be avoided in 1939.
Sean
If Hitler had been assassinated or dropped dead in early 1939, there would have been no WW2 -- or at least not WW2 as we know it. And Hitler would probably be remembered as a 'great leader' with some faults.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
And if Hitler had died in, say, April 1939, would his successors have quietly dropped the ugly and counterproductive anti-Semitism he had advocated? Many writers have tried their hands writing speculations about "alternate Hitlers."
I recall reading in Churchill's history of WW II how he argued the war could have been so easily prevented if the French and British leaders had only called Hitler's bluff at any of the cases you listed. Then, yes, I can easily see the German generals, despite their reluctance to interfere in politics, overthrowing Adolf.
Sean
Antisemitism was very common in Europe at that time. Plenty of European governments, Poland and Rumania, for instance, had antisemitic laws and practices.
But only the National Socialists actually tried to kill every Jew they could reach, and a lot of that was "working towards the Führer", the process by which Nazi actions became radicalized as various groups competed for Hitler's favor by pushing things they knew (or guessed) he wanted.
I strongly suspect that there would have been no Holocaust if Hitler had died before the war started. Persecution, yes; attempts to make the lives of Jews in Germany so miserable they all left, yes; mass killing, no.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Yes, I knew of the stupid and idiotic dislike or even hatred of Jews to be found in many European nations, not just in Poland or Romania. Yes, but only the National Socialists SYSTEMATIZED and extended this dislike to deliberate extermination. I also agree there probably would have been no Holocaust if Hitler died in 1938 or 1939 before WW II broke out. Persecution and oppression of the Jews, yes, but not extermination.
Sean
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