Hypothetical Axis victory in World War II

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Fictional map of a victorious German Reich in 1964, according to Robert Harris' novel Fatherland. While the map is fictional, many of the named regions were real or planned names for parts of the Reich.

A hypothetical Axis victory in World War II is a common concept of alternate history. World War II is one of the two most popular points of divergence for the English language alternative history fiction genre (the other being the American Civil War).[1][2][3][4] Such writings express ideas of what the world would be like had the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan won World War II.[3]

Historical source material

A large selection of written material from a variety of powerful and influential military and political leaders of the Axis Powers has been published since the end of the Second World War, which offers a detailed if occasionally contradictory overview of what the world would have looked like if the Axis Powers had been ultimately victorious. This material can be broken into individual summaries, detailing the potential fate of each contemporary nation state that found itself (or which might have found itself) embroiled in what became the world's most far-reaching and lethal conflict to date, or its potential aftermath.

Finland

In a conversation held in 1941 with the Finnish Foreign Minister, Hitler proposed that the new Finnish border should run from the Kola peninsula to the Svir, and to the River Neva.

India

Japan's long-term ambitions in India are a source of contention amongst military historians: some see the support given to Subash Chandra Bose's Azad Hind movement as a cynical ploy to replace Great Britain's dominion over India with their own, whereas others contend that Japan's purported Co-Prosperity Sphere was ultimately a genuine effort to expel European influence from Asia generally, and would have involved at least a measure of self-determination for each collaborating belligerent nation following the Axis's successful conclusion of hostilities.

Netherlands

National Socialist plans for the Netherlands evolved as the war progressed; some form of local autonomy was originally proposed as Hitler thought very highly of the Dutch people, whom he considered to be fellow members of the Aryan "master race", and - more pragmatically - as a means of protecting Dutch overseas possessions. With the conquest of the Netherlands East Indies by Japan in early 1942 however, the long-term aim of the National Socialists became focused on the incorporation of the Netherlands directly into the 'Greater Germanic Reich'.

Switzerland

Despite earlier assurances that National Socialist Germany intended to honour Switzerland's neutrality, at the zenith of his power in 1942 Hitler made clear to Mussolini his intention to ultimately dispose of Switzerland's independence and partition it between them along its linguistic borders. What would have been the fate of Switzerland's French-speaking population is less clear.

Fiction

Many contrahistorical scenarios have been developed.

In the majority of cases, the National Socialists and the Empire of Japan have conquered most or all of the world, and no major powers remain to confront them, due to the major power of the Allies, the United States or United Kingdom, losing the war and being conquered, or due to domestic political developments within either countries, typically isolationism or appeasement, and impeded economic development and rearmament, or the prominence of domestic Anglo-American fascism as a reason for neutrality. Examples include:

  • Swastika Night, by Katherine Burdekin under the pseudonym Murray Constantine (1937). Published before World War II, when National Socialist Germany still existed, this novel is unique as a "future history" rather than an alternative one;
  • What is probably the first NSDAP-victory alternate history in any language was published in 1945 by the Hungarian László Gáspár (1901–1958) in his novel We, Adolf I - in which a German victory at Stalingrad eventually leads to the victorious Hitler crowning himself Emperor, erecting in Berlin a huge Imperial Palace incorporating elements of the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty and the Lenin Monument from Moscow, and preparing a dynastic marriage with a Japanese Princess in order to produce an heir who would rule the whole world.
  • In 1946, the Revisionist Zionist physician and political activist Jacob Weinshall published in Tel Aviv the Hebrew novel "Ha-Yehudi Ha'Aharon" (היהודי האחרון, "The Last Jew"): Hundreds of years in the future, a completely NSDAP-dominated world ruled by a "League of Dictators" discovers a last surviving Jew hiding in Madagascar. The NSDAP rulers plan to publicly execute this last Jew during the forthcoming Olympic Games - but before this can take place, the Moon moves close to the Earth as a result of the NSDAP's misguided attempt to colonize it, causing the end of human civilization and of NSDAP rule. Weinshall's Hebrew text was never translated to other languages.[5] It should not be confused with Yoram Kaniuk's novel, "The Last Jew" which has been translated to English. [6]
  • The Sound of His Horn, by Sarban (John William Wall) (1952);
  • The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick (1962)
  • The Ultimate Solution, by Eric Norden (1973);
  • December 7, 1941: A Different Path by David L. Alley (1995) and;
  • In the Presence of Mine Enemies by Harry Turtledove (2003).

In some of these scenarios, there may be reasons for hope on the part of Allied supporters. For example, in December 7, 1941: A Different Path, Albert Speer renounces NSDAP principles; and In the Presence of Mine Enemies, a victorious NSDAP regime eventually undergoes reforms analogous to Perestroyka. However, in Swastika Night and The Sound of His Horn, National Socialist Germany's empire has existed for several centuries. Furthermore, in The Man in the High Castle and The Ultimate Solution, a NSDAP/Japanese Cold War of several decades duration may escalate into nuclear war between the two former Axis partners.

  • In the 8th issue of The Multiversity by Grant Morrison , Kal-L Has been raised by Hitler and became Overman.The story is set around a utopia built by this world's Superman after he realizes the evil nature of Hitler, and this Superman "knows his entire society, though it looks utopian, was built on the bones of the dead. Ultimately it's wrong and it must be destroyed."

A less common scenario has the Axis triumphing in Western Europe and/or Russia, but the United States—and in some scenarios the British Empire and/or a rump Soviet state—remain neutral and independent:

In some cases, the NSDAP victory occurs, or is reversed and annulled through the use of time travel (The Proteus Operation, Making History, Timewyrm: Exodus, Philadelphia Experiment II, the two-part Star Trek: Enterprise television episode "Storm Front" and "Rocket Science", an episode of Timecop). In some of these cases, however, the NSDAP victory was itself the result of interference by time travelers:

  • In The Big Time it is a "minor" side effect of a great cosmic war waged throughout all of time and space.
  • In the 1967 Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", Edith Keeler's death is prevented by Dr. Leonard McCoy in 1930 and she goes on to lead a pacifist movement which delays US entry into the war long enough for the Third Reich to win the nuclear arms race and conquer the world. After realizing what has happened (and that Edith — with whom he had fallen in love — must be allowed to die), James T. Kirk notes with sadness that, when taking hold at the wrong time in history, the philosophy of peace and unity that has helped turn the Earth of his era into a utopian society has been disastrous for the human race — producer Robert Justman said later that "of course" the story was intended as a tacit condemnation of the anti-Vietnam War agitation of the time.[7]
  • In "Storm Front", which also casts the divergence as being part of an intertemporal conflict waged by powerful aliens, the murder of Lenin in 1916 (after which witnesses claimed his killer "vanished into thin air") prevents the Bolshevik revolution from ever occurring, and Hitler does not regard the Russia of this timeline as a threat to the Reich. As a result, the NSDAP military is directed entirely at Western Europe, enabling a successful invasion of Britain, and by 1944 Germany (using alien technology) has even conquered the northeastern United States as far south as South Carolina and as far west as central Ohio.
  • In Stephen Fry's 1996 novel Making History, it is the disastrous side effect of an attempt to prevent Hitler's rise to power. A professor (whose father was a German doctor at Auschwitz) and a student at Cambridge send back to 1889 a sterilizing agent, preventing Hitler from ever being born. However, without Hitler, the NSDAP still comes into being, with much more effective leadership, developing nuclear weapons secretly and destroying the Soviet Union during 1938. National Socialist Germany controls all Europe by the end of 1939 (thus the scientist and student are now at Princeton University rather than occupied Cambridge). Germany settles into a cold war with the United States. The sterilization agent is studied and adapted to render European Jews infertile, resulting in a relatively "clean" Holocaust. With Western Europe under harsh NSDAP rule, the Counterculture of the 1960s" never happens, and the resulting advances in civil rights in the United States have been severely curtailed, to the point that even in the 1990s racial segregation still very much exists and homosexuality is still a crime. A gay man from this reality regards our timeline, with gay pride parades and entire gay neighborhoods in some cities, as a "utopian" fantasy.

Some writers depict British and Americans as collaborating with an NSDAP occupation and even facilitating the extension of the Holocaust (It Happened Here, Collaborator, SS-GB, Dominion, The Ultimate Solution), which is often intended as a critique of the actual societies and political systems of these countries. In other cases, an uprising and overthrow of the NSDAP regime is depicted (Clash of Eagles).

Some books concentrate on internal American politics and how they could have produced a pro-NSDAP administration in the US (The Plot Against America), how a homegrown American fascist regime, a natural ally of the NSDAP, might have developed (K is for Killing), and how National Socialist victory might have resulted from American isolationism (The Divide). All of these themes have implications for actual United States politics at the time of writing. Similarly, in The Leader Fascism in Britain is home-grown rather than the result of a German conquest.

Some books concentrate on the Imperial Japanese rather than the NSDAP (The Man in the High Castle, The Bush Soldiers). In some cases, a specific country is the emphasis. Attentatet i Pålsjö skog depicts a successful invasion of Sweden in May 1941 that hastens the eventual Allied triumph by delaying Operation Barbarossa by three weeks, allowing the Soviet Union to prepare for invasion and turn it back; as a result, Hitler is defeated by the end of 1944. Australia is conquered by Imperial Japan in The Bush Soldiers; India is occupied by National Socialist Germany and Imperial Japan in "The Last Article", which constitutes a criticism of Gandhi's policy of non-violence. In others, such as After Dachau, the scenario of an NSDAP victory is used as a means to convey the writer's more general political and philosophical ideas.

One of the elements in Israeli writer Haim Be'er's 2014 novel "Their New Dreams" (חלומותיהם החדשים) is an alternate reality in which Erwin Rommel won the Battle of Al-Alamein and went on to occupy Mandatory Palestine, resulting in the inhabitants of Tel Aviv being massacred by German Einsatzgruppen. In Be'er's book, this is a nightmare constantly haunting the protagonists in present-day Israel.

Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series constitutes a special case, in that the National Socialists remain in control of Germany past 1945 without winning against the Allies, because extraterrestrials invaded Earth during 1942 and forced humans to unite against them (this has the effect of the aliens conquering Poland, closing Auschwitz and saving most East European Jews from the Final Solution).

Some writers use an Axis victory as a background theme, in order to add perspective or contrast to a work emphasizing another topic. Thus, the timeline-hopping protagonist of Michael Flynn's The Forest of Time finds himself in an alternate Philadelphia where Catholic nuns are hanging from lamp-posts and public buildings display a "Swastika and Stripes" flag — and deciding not to investigate further, jumps away before denizens notice his presence, coming to the story's main setting - a balkanized North America where the Thirteen Colonies turned against each other shortly after the American Revolution.

Harry Turtledove's Crosstime Traffic operatives discover a world - described as very unpleasant - where National Socialist Germany won World War II, and other worlds where unspecified Fascists won that war. However, all these remain in the background and the emphasis of Curious Notions is on a world where Imperial Germany won the First World War — with the world under a centuries-long oppressive rule by the Hohenzollern Kaisers. With the NSDAP never existing, much less coming to power, many Jews loyally serve Germany and play key roles in the military and scientific breakthroughs which help their country dominate the world. This also occurs in Turtledove's century-spanning alternate Civil War Southern Victory Series, where Germany and the United States face off against the Britain-France-Russia-Confederacy Entente in both "Great War"s, and that timeline's "Holocaust" is the attempted extermination of Confederate blacks.

In Richard C. Meredith's Run, Come See Jerusalem!, Chicago is destroyed during 1947 by nuclear-loaded Luftwaffe bombers flying out of the occupied Soviet Union, but the Americans do eventually manage to overcome the NSDAP — only to succumb several decades later to a home-grown theocratic dictatorship, which is the book's main concern.

A common motif in the literature is relatively advanced National Socialist technology. Extrapolating from historical wartime German breakthroughs in rocketry and jet propulsion, the story posits a future in which the Reich has far exceeded our own reality in technological prowess. In The Man in the High Castle, for example, the Greater Reich has by the early 1960s begun the colonization of Mars and made suborbital transport common and economical- but the German/Japanese Cold War has also resulted in an accelerated nuclear arms race relative to our own world. This is portrayed ambivalently - one of the central plot elements of The Man in the High Castle is "Operation Dandelion," which Josef Goebbels and associated hardline NSDAP factions endorse, and which advocates a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the Japanese Home Islands.

Entertainment and gaming

The concept has also appeared in many forms of popular entertainment. The UK Misty (comics) series The Sentinels (1978) features two eponymous apartment blocks functioning as a gateway between our universe and an alternate universe where Germany conquered Britain during 1940. People stumble in from both sides, causing terror over unexplained disappearances and worse- mix-ups over parallel world doubles. This culminates in the Gestapo mistakenly arresting a man from our universe and people from both worlds uniting for a rescue mission. Beginning in 1989, wargame publisher XTR Corp. released a series of games centering on a hypothetical Third Reich-Imperial Japan World War III showdown (Tomorrow the World, Mississippi Banzai, Black Gold (Texas Tea)).

In the Alternate Earths supplement to the GURPS role-playing game system, several German-dominated parallel timelines are introduced, the "worst" of which- Reich-5- is similar in development to the world of The Man in the High Castle, though extended to the start of the 21st Century. This reality functions as a looming menace in GURPS's Infinity Unlimited meta-campaign; though uninitiated to the possibility of cross-time travel, Reich-5's technology is in many ways superior to "ours", and the large, well-trained, and better-armed Wehrmacht is said to be able to tear any "Homeline" army to shreds should it acquire the capability for cross-time invasion (in the GURPS 4th Edition update, Reich-5 has acquired cross-time travel capability). As its name denotes, Reich-5 is one of a number of Axis-dominated worlds. In several, however, a resultant German/Japanese Cold War culminated in that timeline's version of World War III, a nuclear holocaust analogous to those foreshadowed in The Man in the High Castle or The Ultimate Solution.

In the 2014 video game by MachineGames, published by Bethesda Softworks, Wolfenstein: The New Order, The Germans managed to acquire advanced technology and defeat the allies in WWII. They spread out over the globe and formed the human race into a militarized civilization. They were more advanced and had created retro-futuristic weapons and technology via the fictional Wolfenstein character "Deathshead", who served as a German General. They had gotten to the moon 18 years before the landing in 1969 and had conquered the earth to become a regime so massive that it could not be stopped.

Cultural studies

Academics, such as Gavriel David Rosenfeld in The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism (2005), have begun the research of this subgenre and its various implications as a subject of full-scale academic research.

Contrahistorical scenarios are also written as a form of academic paper rather than necessarily as fiction and/or novel-length fiction. For example, Greenhill's Alternate Decisions is an entire series written by military historians, academics, and officers without any pretense at the novelistic suspension-of-disbelief.

Works

Literature

Special mention for Harry Turtledove's Curious Notions (second book of Crosstime Traffic series), where the scenario commonly imagined for an Axis victory instead results from a Kaiserreich victory in World War I.

Plays

Games

Special mention for the Command & Conquer: Red Alert series franchise, which offers a paradoxical twist to the "Axis Victory" trope. In a history where National Socialist Germany was prevented from ever existing, the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin take the place of Germany and Adolf Hitler in several wars against the Allies.

Movies

TV

Audio

Doctor Who

Comics

See also

References

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Further reading

  • Rosenfeld, Gavriel David. The World Hitler Never Made. Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism (2005).
  • Tirghe, Carl. "Pax Germanicus in the future-historical". In Travellers in Time and Space: The German Historical Novel (2001).
  • Winthrop-Young, Geoffrey. "The Third Reich in Alternate History: Aspects of a Genre-Specific Depiction of Nazism". In Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 39 no. 5 (October 2006).

External links

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  • ↑ Eli Eshed, "Israeli Alternate Histories" (in Hebrew) published by the Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy, November 2, 2000 [1]
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