Talk:Second World War

From Acw

How do people feel about getting rid of Hitler? I can't really see things slowing to an entente with him still in the picture.

Possible deviations:

  • Georg Elser's assassination attempt succeeding in 1939.
  • A coup by Franz Halder, head of Wehrmacht General Staff, sometime in 1941-2.
  • A White Rose Society assassination attempt in 1942.
  • Moving the events of the July 20 plot (1944) forward a year or two.

I was thinking he survives the war but is relatively insane. Perhaps he is taken ill witgh a stroke in 1946 and while bedridden and insensate Doenitz and Hess coem to the negotiation table?

I was also thinking that after he is dead, while racist policy remains, the Final Solution stops, and they prefer deportation to murder. Make it his personal mania.

However, Himmler and the SS still effect genocide in their territories (as a polycratic state-within-a-state).Boots 00:48, 29 June 2006 (EDT)

It can't be assassination, if you want them to shut down the policy so closely associated with him so quickly. You can't question the word of a martyr. Most AH "Nazi's survive" fiction I've read has him go barmy, or pop an artery in heart or head either pre-Barbarossa or right before the end of the war.

--Konstantin Sovietyevich 00:13, 1 July 2006 (EDT)

I would prefer for Hitler to not only survive the War but to hang around competently. I don't know my WW2 history that well, but I think going down the insanity or quick death track is a cop out. It is far more unsettling if he ably administers Germany for a decade or so (provided this is remotely reasonable behaviour from Hitler) before retiring from public office due to illness or infirmity, but still holding vast influence until his death. For instance with imperial ambitions on Earth now and likely forever out of reach, does he turn his attention to space?

He should be a national hero of the Grossdeutschland, their should be a public holiday in his honour. There should also be Germans who do think he is a meglomanical tyrant best forgotten. We have four centuries to undo anything he does we don't like. --Shaun 22:52, 2 July 2006 (EDT)

I'd say a competent Hitler post-1945 is unlikely, given he appeared to become increasingly unstable and ill from 1943 onwards. Suggested causes include Parkinson's, amphetamine abuse, and syphilis. The actions of the historical Hitler aren't compatible with a negotiated armistice in 1946 - I can't see him accepting anything less than total victory or defeat. I think we should go with Boots' idea of an incapacitating stroke.

Another option is that we write his 1943-44 instability as part of some subtle poisoning plot that is discovered and stopped, or as a prolonged psychotic episode/intensifying drug addiction that ends in a nervous breakdown, after the treatment of which he reverts to his maniacal but mostly competent pre-43 self. On the other hand, from the very start his career, he's a real death or glory type character, and I don't see anything but a radical character shift allowing him personally to make peace. Possibly the war is concluded by Goering during the months of his convalescence, and after ordering the Big G's execution, Hitler coolly decides that he might as well make good use of this "ceasefire" to prepare for the next big push - it just happens that the right moment never arises, what with the continual rebellions in the east, the massive rearmament of the USSR and the beginning of the space-race...

--Konstantin Sovietyevich 00:16, 3 July 2006 (EDT)

Okay, it looks like it is inappropriate to have a competent/sane Hitler. Might I then suggest we have him offed (either killed or permanently injured beyond recovery ie has a stroke or wahtever) during early WW2. That way the decision to mass produce the mescherschmits (or however you spell it) comes as one of a number of results of Hitler no longer being the sole power. Hitler remains as a figurative leader for many years and very influential, but the responsibility and power is wielded by others. --Shaun 00:49, 3 July 2006 (EDT)

Materiel supply in Nazi Germany was remarkably messed up - the warring fiefdoms under Hitler were continually jockeying to have their projects assigned higher and higher priority. A favoured trick was to create a new priority level above the current highest level, then put your projects in the new category. I don't think we need any significant change in history to explain why the production of the Me262 was prioritised within what amounted to a bureaucratic crapshoot (although Fritz Todt surviving past 1942 might be one). We do need to explain where the fuel for all these Me262s comes from.
With regard to Tom's Big G scenario, a breakdown in control, combined with a power grab by Goering would explain why Germany are unable to capitalise on the N2 and their air dominance. (Speaking of which, the V2 wasn't capable of carrying a WWII nuke - it had a 1000kg warhead, vs. the 4000-4600kg of Little Boy and Fat Man. It also had a distressing tendency to fall apart in midair. I'd say any 1945 nuke missiles would be custom built, and probably based from mobile launchers, although Hitler was pretty insistent on using bunkers.)

V2 tech could improve dramatically over the later stages of the war (1945-1947) particularly after successful nuclear weapon testing. Anyway, you do not really need it to actually work. The idea is for the potential for N2 deployment to act as deterent to continuing the advance into German controlled territory. The threat is still very real irrespective of actual statistical results. Remember in this reality fatboy didn't work, nukes aren't a final weapon. As for fuel, i have nfi.

There's no question that they could have reached the 4000kg payload (the V2 was actually the A4 in Von Braun's system - he apparently had plans all the way up to A12, which later became the Saturn rocket.) I'm just musing on what a Nazi nuke would be like.

Fuel can come from Turkey. They were always a very suspect neutral in the mid-war period, and it would explain why the British would create Kurdistan afterwards to punish them. They're also the most industrialised and independent Middle Eastern power of the period - and have a greater ability to get their fuel to Germany than Iraq or Iran should their respective Nazi coups have been successful. All they really need is a slight shift of power, or some kind of diplomatic blunder from the allies to shunt them over from the Allied-sympathising Neutrals to the Axis-sympathising Neutrals. Alternatively, Baltic Sea oil-rigs, though not really technically feasible at the time, would be a more sci-fi way around the problem. Bio-fuels, though they existed, are probably unfeasible because of Germany's worsening food supply issues in the period - though some kind of political prisoner -> biofuel design would be tremendously pulpy fun.

--Konstantin Sovietyevich 03:17, 3 July 2006 (EDT)

Biofuel is only feasible if the V2 project was cancelled earlier, which I'm loath to do due to the general space focus (although it would mean Von Braun and his team would go back to working on larger rockets, albeit with diminished resources). I had it in my head that the Me262 also ran on alcohol, but that isn't right (I was thinking of the somewhat nutbar Me 163) - the 262 ran on standard B4 petrol. Turkish petroleum sounds like the way to go, and it'd be easiest if we assume they could also supply tungsten and chromium for the engines.

OK, I can see that German jet-powered air superiority (which they presumably don't share with the Japanese) could have held up Allied advances until after the atomic bomb drops in Japan, but I'm interested in what happens to Japan post-war in this new scenario. Since they still have an ally in the West, their situation isn't nearly so dire as in reality (A-bomb or no A-bomb), so do they surrender immediately, switch sides, Italian-style, or hold out for a good deal? What part will they play in the Yalta conference, and what happens to the East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere if they manage to negotiate their way out of abject defeat? I have little doubt that they will, in some form or another, become a US puppet state for a good long time, but what form will this take? We haven't dealt with Asia much yet, and I'm curious as to why China and Japan in particular aren't among the great space-faring nations.

--Konstantin Sovietyevich 03:14, 3 October 2006 (EDT)

China and Japan

I was thinking about what to do in relation to China and Japan.Here are some ideas:

  • During the Cultural Revolution Zhou Enlai does something that the Gang of 4 use to oust him from Premier of the People's Republic of China.
  • Without his moderating influence there is too much destruction and anarchy, which leads to distribution of food problems. and famine in some parts of the country ensures.
  • The Republic of China and Japan both see this as an opportunity (independent of each other).
  • Mainland china ends up being split between: People's Republic of China, Republic of China, and Japan.
  • Because of the problems with China in 1997 Hong Kong is re-leased to Britain (someone needs the money).

More ideas later.

--Randall Sakai 21:26, 23 December 2006 (EST)

The trick, as I see it, is to establish how the Chinese Civil War ends with an only partially defeated Japan (If that's where it's going). Everything else in East Asia flows from that, essentially, and it's already in progress by the time our timeline splits from reality, so we can't work it backwards, really.

In terms of Japan, the biggest wildcard in the Civil War scenario - I don't see them retaining an uncontested foothold in China - both the Kuomintang and the Communists would simply continue to fight, were they to try and hold onto Manchuria, potentially for decades. However, what I see as more likely is that Japan negotiates their pull-out with one party or the other, theoretically giving them a leg-up over their rival. I can't decide who would be prepared to do the dirty with the Great Aggressor, though - both the nationalists and the Communists hated the Japs with a forehead-vein-popping passion; and both were fragmented, warlord-operated and ideologically-driven enough that such a decision would almost inevitably shatter the movement into a thousand pieces. Japan, I expect, would prefer to negotiate with the Kuomintang than Mao, but it's not really up to them at the point we're talking about.

I guess the question in such a scenario is: Do we want a semi-Fascist China or a Communist China?

Contingent on that, we can talk Korea, Manchurian Communist independence vs. Taiwanese Nationalist independence vs. other scenarios, Vietnam & SE Asia, India, Hong Kong & Macau, etc.

--Konstantin Sovietyevich 00:03, 3 January 2007 (EST)

Write whatever you want, but China needs to be at least the equal in power to the USSR/UISA after the dust settles. We have plans. Boots 05:54, 12 February 2007 (EST)

Moved further discussion to the Talk:China page. --Randall Sakai 07:24, 13 February 2007 (EST)
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