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Post by johnreiter902 on Jan 22, 2023 11:00:29 GMT
I checked the date, and it was in June of 1941, so about 1 month before Barbarossa
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Post by redsycorax on Jan 23, 2023 23:32:44 GMT
Hmm. So, getting Goering out of the picture before Barbarossa would definitely have had knock-on effects when it came to the invasion of the USSR. Much would depend on who Hitler appointed in his place and whether they had Goering's level of expertise as a former pilot as Air Vice Marshal. Are there any indications that the duration of Barbarossa differed on Earth-MLJ? Perhaps they might have still followed the grand strategy regardless of Goering's assassination, though. FYI, this is why Barbarossa failed OTL: "One of the most important reasons for this was poor strategic planning. The Germans had no satisfactory long-term plan for the invasion. They mistakenly assumed the campaign would be a short one and that the Soviets would give in after the shock of massive initial defeats. Hitler had assured the High Command that 'we only need to kick in the front door and the whole rotten edifice will come tumbling down' But Russia was not France. The shock value of the initial Blitzkrieg was dissipated by the vast distances, logistical difficulties and Soviet troop numbers, all of which caused attritional loss of German troop numbers which could not be sustained."
German military intelligence failures, Soviet tank superiority, effective Soviet resistance, reserve Soviet industrial capacity beyond Nazi reach east of the Ural Mountains and the aforementioned long German supply lines and logistical difficulties also contributed to Barbarossa's failure. www.iwm.org.uk/history/operation-barbarossa-and-germanys-failyre-in-the-soviet-unionHowever, this AU explores what might have happened if Hitler was sidelined due to injury just before Barbarossa and Moscow was captured by the Nazis (and the Japanese win the Battle of Midway in the Pacific). Ultimately, the Axis still loses the Second World War, but there are some slight differences in its denouement. Nuclear weapons are used against Stuttgart and Nuremberg on this world, not against Hiroshima and Nagasaki: David Downing: The Moscow Option: An Alternative Second World War: www.goodreads.com/book/show/391168.The_Moscow_OptionAnd here's why capturing Moscow wouldn't have worked out for the Nazis anyway: www.historynet.com/what-if-the-germans-had-captured-moscow-in-1941/
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Post by dave on Jan 24, 2023 2:15:22 GMT
The German were being welcomed into the Soviet Union as liberators when they first came in. It was the Nai's oppression which was far worse than the Communists that turned the civilians against them. Had the German initially treated them different the outcome could have been one.
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Post by redsycorax on Jan 24, 2023 23:08:34 GMT
It's true that there was certainly a level of cultural anti-Semitism that the Nazis initially exploited, as well as Ukrainian resentment and anger against the CPSU over its role in the Holodomor famine of 1932-33, in which 3.5 to 5 million people are estimated to have starved to death. That was certainly a crime against humanity, and the European Parliament today recognises it as such: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HolodomorWhere it went wrong was (obviously) the Holocaust aspect, deporting Ukrainians to serve as slave forced labour in Nazi Germany, and preserving the execrated collective farms that had precipitated the Holodomor in the first place. There were also war atrocities and reprisal slaughters of entire Ukrainian villages that assisted the resistance.
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Post by dave on Jan 25, 2023 1:50:32 GMT
Jews Gays, and Gypsies were only the first peoples the Nazis wanted exterminated. The Slavs (Pole, Russian Ukrainians, Belorus, Baltic peoples were next)
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Post by dans on Jan 25, 2023 3:04:33 GMT
do you guys think DC put this much thought into their alternate histories? I am very impressed with the depth of this discussion!
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Post by redsycorax on Jan 25, 2023 3:38:14 GMT
Good question, and one which I've explored in the thread above about AUs. I'd have to say I'm not impressed by Earth-X's original formulation- I think Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle is a much more nuanced and complex depiction of an Axis-dominated Earth. I think the more recent iterations of Earth-X/10 are far more cognisant of what an Axis-dominated Earth would mean. Superman: Red Son is quite good, as is Batman Holy Terror, Wonder Woman Amazonia, and Grant Morrison's Earth 2 (Earth-Three!) but Tangent's Earth-9 pulled its punches too much compared to Justice League Animated's Legends two-parter, which did the same divergence point much better.
I quite like the fact that 5E's Earth-Four thread enables some serious thinking about what an alternate Eighties with a longer-lived Brezhnev and more prosperous USSR would mean.
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Post by johnreiter902 on Feb 2, 2023 13:25:57 GMT
I've been reading a little bit of the Golden Age Daredevil stories, and I found a couple of divergences in the Lev Gleason Universe
Hitler did not actually invade Yugoslavia in that universe. The plan to invade Yugoslavia was a trick, false information designed to mislead the allies while Hitler really prepared to strike in another direction.
Also, Hitler did not commit suicide in the Lev Gleason Universe. Instead, he was captured and brought to trial at the end of the war.
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Post by lawrenceliberty on Feb 2, 2023 16:27:45 GMT
More recent versions of Earth X were way too dark for me. Seemed like they robbed the Quality characters of their previously depicted nobility. I prefer the original versions of the alt. earths with their admittedly less erudite analysis of such alt. history details. They are comics and not graduate school papers!
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Post by redsycorax on Feb 2, 2023 23:49:04 GMT
Yes, but some would say that Earth-X's governing scenario, in which the Axis powers won the Second World War, is of necessity a nightmarish context in the first place. The Holocaust would have been worse than it was even OTL, no question, and to be honest to that logical conclusion, the implications of that need to be firmly brought out and not swept under the carpet. As it stands even when it comes to Earth-Two, we should not flinch from dealing with the darker aspects of the Second World War. One wonders what Roy Thomas would have done in this context? To his credit, he did deal with contemporary social issues like Southern US racism when it came to the Amazing Man story arc and controversies like anti-Japanese racism in the wake of Pearl Harbour.
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Post by dans on Feb 3, 2023 2:01:52 GMT
Comic books used to be about escape from reality. I stopped reading them when reality became the escape...
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Post by redsycorax on Feb 3, 2023 2:31:17 GMT
Added to which, the most elaborated variant of alternate history SF is a scenario where the Axis powers won the Second World War, so there's a lot of comparative material available to ground particular aspects of Earth-X and its development. Insofar as the Quality heroes go, there's always the Earth-Q variant where the Allies won WW2 if you want straightforward exploration of the Quality characters themselves per se. However, given the range of alternate history SF stories set in Naziworlds, perhaps it might do to touch on some of the nore prominent AU backgrounds...
1. In Man In the High Castle, Philip K. Dick sets his world on its course when Guiseppe Zangara assassinated FDR in 1933. Thereafter, FDR's fiscal conservative Vice President John Nance Garner was in power, the New Deal was probably abandoned, as was the Manhattan Project research programme, and so was military development. As a consequence, the United Kingdom couldn't fund Soviet efforts on their own and Moscow was probably captured. Added to which, Nazi Germany developed nuclear weapons as well. After finishing off the USSR, Nazi Germany must have launched Operation Sea Lion against the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, at Pearl Harbour, Imperial Japan had a far more effective surprise attack than was the case OTL, meaning the entire US fleet was wiped out. One suspects that Japan's Chinese efforts would have been far more successful in this world, given that in addition to the Philippines and South-East Asia, Imperial Japan was able to invade and occupy Australia (and probably New Zealand) in 1942. World War Two lasts until Capitulation Day in 1948 in this world and like Germany OTL, the United States is partitioned into segments. The Pacific States of America are a Japanese satellite and the "United States" rump is a Nazi puppet state, while the Rocky Mountain States are a neutral buffer zone. As with the USSR and United States OTL, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan are in their own Cold War, and like OTL, both sides have nuclear weapons. Part of the plot is a covert Nazi plan, Operation Dandelion, to launch a surprise nuclear attack on Japan's Home Islands. And in this world, the Holocaust has escalated- one of the characters, Frank Frink, is a Jewish veteran who lives uneasily and covertly in San Francisco.
2. In Wiliam Overgard's The Divide (1980), events diverge OTL in 1940. Nazi Germany defeats France but then launches Operation Sea Lion against the United Kingdom and occupies it. With the captured material, it then launches an enhanced Operation Barbarossa against the USSR, leading it to capitulated. Because a third party Isolationist administration won the 1940 US election, President Burton K. Wheeler bungles the war disastrously and Japan follows its enhanced Pearl Harbour attack with a joint Axis attack on Canada and the United States. Using ICBMs, the Axis powers bombard the United States from Canada, forcing its capitulation and partition into German and Japanese sphere of influence. Wheeler and his Cabinet are executed in 1946. The story begins forty years later. Neither the Axis or United States developed nuclear weapons in this world, which is one of the core plot elements.
3. Eric Nordern's The Ultimate Solution (1972) is probably the most hellish version of an Axis-dominated world available. The Holocaust here wiped out all eighteen million of the world's Jews. Animal cruelty is encouraged amongst children, Slavs and African-Americans are enslaved, police routinely torture people and engage in extra-judicial executions, former death camps are considered 'shrines' and venerated, and a coup in Berlin threatens an all-out nuclear war with Imperial Japan under the second Fuhrer, Reinhold Heydrich. As the novel closes, New York is being evacuated to the Catskills as nuclear war is about to break out between the estranged former Axis partners.
Okay, obviously there are some divergence points with Earth-X's history per se, although possibly some overlaps as well. FDR died early here too, due to complications from his polio. We learn that the balance of power went the wrong way, according to Uncle Sam, which may mean that either Garner shortchanged the military effort and slowed down development at the Manhattan Project or an isolationist Republican Congress hampered rearmament with the same outcome, but the upshot was that the Nazis and United States both had nuclear weapons by the mid-forties. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan remained allies until a Nazi AI took over the world with a mind control device in 1968. In 1973, the events of Crisis on Earth-X occur and end after Red Tornado destroys the Nazi AI in Earth orbit. We're left to fill in the detail here.
I think a series of Elseworlds might be in order exploring various Earth-X scenarios based on the above. One thing that I don't like about the current Earth-10, though, is the existence of a Nazi JLAxis/New Reichsmen. Overman has to have moral scruples, and is horrified at the expansion of the Holocaust. I can imagine there being Nazi discovery of the Speed Force on its own, but would the Guardians of the Universe really consent to a Nazi Green Lantern? Would J'Onn J'Onnz accept this situation? I can accept a darker Batman/Leatherwing, although it obviously isn't Bruce Wayne. Underwaterman's uneasiness about his colleagues is well drawn in the Multiversity Earth-10 episode. There's also the question of Brunhilde's Valkyrie background and what happened to Imperial Japan on this world, although we learn the United States was conquered in 1956, because the Nazis reverse-engineered high tech from Kal-El's rocket when it landed in the Sudetenland here. Instead of Lois Lane, Overman is involved with Lena Luthor in a dysfunctional relationship. Is this a female Lex or an Earth-X Lena Thorul?
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Post by johnreiter902 on Feb 20, 2023 11:07:47 GMT
In the Hillman comics universe, Switzerland is a Kingdom, and it was conquered by the Nazis in World War 2
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Post by dans on Feb 20, 2023 12:01:32 GMT
In the Hillman comics universe, Switzerland is a Kingdom, and it was conquered by the Nazis in World War 2 The Boy King and his stone giant came from a country named Swisslakia but it was essentially abandoned when the Nazis invaded; the entire population was brought to the US by the giant and allowed to become US citizens and King David abdicated. The invasion must have been a boon for the Nazis - acquiring the total resources of a nation without having to fight for them... Certainly that would have prolonged World War II, and very possibly could have led to an early Axis win. There's an inflection point for an alternate history!
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Post by redsycorax on Feb 21, 2023 2:04:44 GMT
Given its mountainous terrain and Norway's contemporary occupation, it might have been difficult to continuously occupy Switzerland's geography, not to mention the headaches that suddenly losing access to Nazi dark financial avenues in Swiss bank accounts might have presented. That may explain why the Nazis respected Swiss and Swedish neutrality in OTL's Second World War whereas the same wasn't true in the case of Belgium and the Netherlands. They had their hands full with Norway and Austria, which also has its share of alpine terrain, as well as Italy in the later phases of the war after the fall of Mussolini in 1943. Not to mention the USSR's prodigious consumption of Eastern Front alpine troops.
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