But could witnessing the horrors of Nazi rule reawaken trauma in these soldiers from the days of Japanese rule? And, like a lot of people, would these soldiers be crestfallen seeing a civilized European state sinking so low into such barbarity?
The Anglo/American - Nazi War - The on-going mystery
- Thread starter CalBear
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But could witnessing the horrors of Nazi rule reawaken trauma in these soldiers from the days of Japanese rule? And, like a lot of people, would these soldiers be crestfallen seeing a civilized European state sinking so low into such barbarity?
It will horrify any Allied soldier from different countries. Probably no different from the Japanese atrocities.
But remember: a plot point toward the end of the story were veterans of the Pacific War quitting as the final stages of the European War reached a cresendo of violence, with one officer stating "I can't be a party to another massacre of innocents."
So how many East and Southeast Asian soldiers must've felt the same way.
Probably millions suffered equally as severe PTSD regardless their homecountry. They saw more horrors than uusal human can even understand and yet spent many years on front lines seeing their friends dying at battles. And keep in mind that this war has lasted basically two generations. Many youngest soldiers are fighting very same war what their fathers were fighting on early 1940's. For example at Battle of Berlin was participated by young privates who weren't even born when Hitler invader Poland.
That part of your post floored me and underscored how much TTL WW2 impacted the globe.
You could've been born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1940, with the war already being around a year old, and by the time you graduated high school in 1959, you'd be fighting the same war your dad, older brother, or uncle fought. This wasn't a generational defining event but an even greater turning point in world history than WWI or the rise of Napoleon.
And as of the TTL 2020s, the men who fought in that war are still alive. And if medicine and technology are improved more than OTL, then the memories of that dark chapter in human history will still be around to tell their great-grandkids about for a long, long time since that kid born in 1940 could live into the 2030s, or even 2040 if his diet is good enough.
OTL American society views WW2 as a proud moment: in the more simplified and glorified historiography, America fought for freedom and the liberation of millions, all walks of life united to support the nation, and the day was saved.
But how does TTL view the altered WW2: is there just instead an incredible trauma and guilt? Guilt not only for those who died but frustration that America didn't do more to stop the Nazis sooner?
And in OTL people were happy when war was over and could look towards new future hopefully and expect better world.
But ITTL even if absolute evil of nazism was defeated people were just too scarred and traumatised that they could watch to future. They were just angry, traumatised and bittered and wanted just ensure that Germany can't be a nation again. Whole post-war identitet was built just for ensure that Germany stays down and not even bother to construct Europe.
And when liberated people in OTL were just happy that nazi occupation was over and now they could build their nations ITTL liberated nations just weren't able to recover and try watch to future. In many nations majority of population was killed, many cities were destoryed and whole historic heritage was gone. Speciality East Europe had re-create themselves from nothing. And survivors would see nightmares for rest of their lives and probably suffer from severe alcoholism.
But could there be movements within the devastated countries toward trying to build a better future, or will those countries have a national mood in which they lament how all the goods they had were destroyed by totalitarianism?
Well the postwar posts and Calbear himself have stated that they've generally been moving towards national conciliation in some places and slow but steady growth in the positive direction (economically, culturally, etc) but some places are just powderkegs waiting to explode (mostly in Africa though...)
IMO they should let other countries into the A4, provided they get unanimous approval from current A4 members and can meet appropriate criteria regarding human rights/democracy/etc.
And them should allow non-military spaceflights and launching of non-military satelites and probes. It is just right that few countries can do whatever want but others are told that they can't.
The author said many times that they allow non-military space flights. “India was effectively denied the orbitals, although the A4 was truthful when they promised to provide civilian lift at comparable costs to "do it yourself", that wasn't seen as viable, not in competition with A$ companies with massive government support (pretty much everything used in space is "dual use" so government labs provide a lion's share of the research).”
“The A4 maintains the only access to the orbitals. That is one of its absolutes. It will loft satellites for anyone (once they inspect them to be sure they are not going to become a threat to "safety"), at lower costs than if a country tried to do it themselves, but the A4 will not allow anyone else to gain the capacity for space based weapons or ICBM weapons. The A4 WILL go to war, all the way, to ensure that monopoly. The best way to win a rock throwing contest is to be sure everyone but you has to throw theirs up from the bottom of the well while you stand on the surface and throw yours down.” - CalBear.
Not sure if this question has been asked before, but in the AANW universe did the Nazis build their massive ego projects ITTL? Considering that they had around a decade of peace (1946-1954), Hitler and his cronies planned on building massive projects IOTL and after their victory over the USSR and the stalemate with the Anglo-American allies ITTL, i'm sure they'd try to build them (ofc off the backs of enslaved non-German Europeans).
So in the AANW-universe, was Nazi ego-projects like Welthaupstadt Germania (more detailed layout here), the Fuhrer-Museum, the German stadium, the Fuhrer cities, and the assortment of many other Nazi-ego projects completed by 1954 ITTL? I can only imagine how creepy these monoliths, if built ITTL, would look like after the fall of the Reich, especially in the exclusion zones of Berlin and Nuremburg.
Welthauptstadt Germania, a renovated Berlin as envisioned by Speer and Hitler
The Fuhrer Museum, to be located in Linz
The German Stadium, to be located in Nuremburg
So in the AANW-universe, was Nazi ego-projects like Welthaupstadt Germania (more detailed layout here), the Fuhrer-Museum, the German stadium, the Fuhrer cities, and the assortment of many other Nazi-ego projects completed by 1954 ITTL? I can only imagine how creepy these monoliths, if built ITTL, would look like after the fall of the Reich, especially in the exclusion zones of Berlin and Nuremburg.
Welthauptstadt Germania, a renovated Berlin as envisioned by Speer and Hitler
The Fuhrer Museum, to be located in Linz
The German Stadium, to be located in Nuremburg
They might have gotten part way done but they only had about six years peace to work on that sort of thing. Also at least in the case of Germania an experiment by Speer in the early 1940's proved the ground was to marshy to take the weight. If it had been built I suspect the ruins of Germania would be badly subsided by the present day.
I honestly think the creepiest part was that the material and the building involved exterminatory labor. The greatest "monuments" of the Nazis were literally built on the dying corpses of their victims.
The Nazis seem like a huge deconstruction of the very concept of empire, taking everything about imperialism and showing how horrible its aspects are when taken to the extreme:
1. Belief in your superiority over the "others" leads to tremendous atrocity.
2. The beautiful palaces and monuments the king builds are not only a sign of extraction and predation of others, since the people building them aren't sharing in the bounty, but reflect the king's deep insecurity over his power.
3. Conquest and plunder turns you into a parasite.
4. Patriotism is a glorified cult in which a population becomes nothing more than slaves to a maniac whose "love" is that of an abusive and self-deluded boyfriend.
5. Authoritarianism leads to your leader getting drunk off his Kool-Aid, thinking his own successes will continue indefinitely.
Remember, the ITTL Nazis managed to get away with a lot of horrifying and stupid shit, their victory over Soviet Russia convincing them that their Aryan superiority is an entirely justifiable belief and anything Big Brother says and does is right.
OTL Hitler never stopped compromising his ideology, even when doing so could've gotten his regime a degree of prestige and respect. Either Germany must be a superpower built on the corpses of inferiors, or the Germans are a weak people who don't deserve to live. TTL, his and his goons have even less of a reason to think their actions through, having achieved their desired victory over the "Judeo-Bolsheviks."
ITTL, reading a history textbook must provoke nothing but contempt for European society in the 1920s and 1930s: the people their allowed an untalented and homicidal maniac to rise to power and didn't put in the effort to build a coalition to stop him until he had committed so much evil.
Yup, its the extreme logical and ridiculous conclusion of the supremacist ideology
I also find irony in the fact that the kind of human and mentality the nazis wanted to create with their ideology doesnt resemble "Old Europe" at all even though it embodies it's worst aspects
But instead it resembles...the Fey
Because thats what Nazi Ideology was going for, to turn humanity into proud sadistic creatures of uncanny beauty(according to their standard of beauty) with a inhuman "perfect" physiology created by eliminating the "defective" and letting "the strong"(read - the most evil, ruthless manipulative bastards) rule that allowed them to reign over and torment the weak for their own amusement
Thats the Aryan Ideal
Its like the sins of the europeans turned them into the mythical monsters that tormented them in their folk beliefs, with their leader going by "The Wolf" and everything
And they didnt replace their children as it was feared, the Fae are their children
I wonder if ITTL historians might consider Nazism to be totally different from Western civilization.
Yes, the pre-1914 Western Empires were not paradises of chivalry and valor. They did terrible things to racial minorities, but Westerners at that time weren't utterly devoid of empathy for minorities and sought to uplift "others" from their savagery. Even during the Jim Crow era, you still had people like Julius Rosenwald and Stephen Wise who wanted to help the black community. In Africa, while colonialism could be brutal, many Africans liked the message and ideas spread by missionaries who, for all their flaws, still left behind positive legacies like education and hospitals.
Gandhi made this observation about Nazism: it was the West's cruelty and barbarity without a humanitarian veneer. But again, Western colonialism and imperialism, for the damage it did, had some positive legacies. Nazism's social code and ethics feels so barbaric and monstrous that it does feel as if the Nazis are just something aberration of humanity.
But I don't like the idea of calling Nazis subhuman because....I feel that gives them an out. It makes them out to be animals who don't necessarily understand how terrible their decisions were.
The Nazis were very, very, very human. They had organs, sights, smells, dimensions, the whole nine yards.
But humans with an inability to ever perceive themselves in the wrong.
CalBear has stated that him has not plans to continue this TL.
You can find TL on previous thread (link on first post). Unfortunately it is not threadmarked so you have just scroll to next update.
Reminds me of Changeling: The Lost. Humans having been abducted by the Gentry and then having been subjected to atrocious treatment before managing to escape, forever scarred and always on the run from their former masters, knowing that returning to their former lives is impossible.