historical reverie
Jul. 16th, 2003 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
herewiss13Am listening to "A Short History of World War Two" by James L. Stokesbury on tape. It's really not that short.
I love this book. I've listened to it 4-5 times now in the past few years. It is a clear concise outline of the entire span of the conflict and the entire scope of the globe, with just enough dry wit and anecdotes to keep it from desiccation and boredom. I want to take this book and use it as the basis for a year-long class on WW2. Maybe an AP HS course.
...of course, I'd need to be a teacher, first.
Something that's jumping out at me during this reading is that Hitler was really his own worst enemy. Time and again he'd take direct control of the military away from his generals and make exactly the _wrong_ decision at exactly the _wrong_ time. Go when he should stop, stop when he should go. Point the army off in the wrong direction entirely. Then he'd rant, rave, miss key strategic openings, lose thousands of troops to the russians, fire competent generals, promote incompetent ones and do the whole thing over again.
Minor early case-in-point: he actually _halted_ the Germany Army (routine maintenance was the rationale, IIRC...since they'd just overrun France) and allowed the Dunkirk Evacuation to proceed unharassed. About 600,000 British and French troops escaped across the channel.
Major late case-in-point: Refused to commit troops to counter the D-Day invasion because he was sure it was all a diversion for the _real_ Allied Invasion. Persisted in this delusion for days.
Many, many many similar instances in between.
Obviously, the man was insane. Politically savvy, perhaps, but evil, insane and militarily idiotic.
But suppose he wasn't?
I can almost see this AU story playing out in my head. Hitler survives an assassination plot early on, before Poland, IIRC (really true). Only the Hitler who comes out of the hospital/explosion/chaos (have to check my facts) is an impostor from the future. A historian/operative charged with changing the past.
Only history is stubborn and fragile. You can't bend events too strongly or they'll shred. So Hitler _can_ lose, but WW2 has to happen (insert various temporal theory musings here)...and there's a lot of inertia to overcome.
So you've got this poor man trying to dismantle the tiger while he's riding it...and there's only so much he can do. So he still has the rubber-stamp the Holocaust (not an original idea by Hitler, IIRC...just one he liked a lot), keep his weeping to himself, and the only way he can defuse WW2 to "safe" levels (our history' level) is to make stupid "mistakes" and kill lots of germans and russians, etc.
By the time Germany actually loses, committing suicide was probably an attractive option, just to get a little _peace_ and blot out all that death he was responsible for.
A quiet, sad personal ending to a historic victory (multi-historic, really).
The beauty of this is that you still get Evil!Hitler, the demagogue and politic genius who annexed Austria, stole Czechoslovakia out from under Europe's nose and hated the Jews. It's ok to hate him. This isn't historical revisionism.
But then you have this other guy, shoved into his place and forced to be the evil little git, to give all the evil orders...just to do his small part and make things better in the end.
Someday I may actually write this story. The amount of historical research I'd need to make it convincing scares the crap out of me, let alone the alternate history that needs changing and the theory of timelines that allows the change. But the arc of it and the emotional resonance seems to clear.
I've got about four or five story concepts I've been playing with for years now, mulling over in my head, writing and rewriting a scene here or there.
...I think I have six now.
I love this book. I've listened to it 4-5 times now in the past few years. It is a clear concise outline of the entire span of the conflict and the entire scope of the globe, with just enough dry wit and anecdotes to keep it from desiccation and boredom. I want to take this book and use it as the basis for a year-long class on WW2. Maybe an AP HS course.
...of course, I'd need to be a teacher, first.
Something that's jumping out at me during this reading is that Hitler was really his own worst enemy. Time and again he'd take direct control of the military away from his generals and make exactly the _wrong_ decision at exactly the _wrong_ time. Go when he should stop, stop when he should go. Point the army off in the wrong direction entirely. Then he'd rant, rave, miss key strategic openings, lose thousands of troops to the russians, fire competent generals, promote incompetent ones and do the whole thing over again.
Minor early case-in-point: he actually _halted_ the Germany Army (routine maintenance was the rationale, IIRC...since they'd just overrun France) and allowed the Dunkirk Evacuation to proceed unharassed. About 600,000 British and French troops escaped across the channel.
Major late case-in-point: Refused to commit troops to counter the D-Day invasion because he was sure it was all a diversion for the _real_ Allied Invasion. Persisted in this delusion for days.
Many, many many similar instances in between.
Obviously, the man was insane. Politically savvy, perhaps, but evil, insane and militarily idiotic.
But suppose he wasn't?
I can almost see this AU story playing out in my head. Hitler survives an assassination plot early on, before Poland, IIRC (really true). Only the Hitler who comes out of the hospital/explosion/chaos (have to check my facts) is an impostor from the future. A historian/operative charged with changing the past.
Only history is stubborn and fragile. You can't bend events too strongly or they'll shred. So Hitler _can_ lose, but WW2 has to happen (insert various temporal theory musings here)...and there's a lot of inertia to overcome.
So you've got this poor man trying to dismantle the tiger while he's riding it...and there's only so much he can do. So he still has the rubber-stamp the Holocaust (not an original idea by Hitler, IIRC...just one he liked a lot), keep his weeping to himself, and the only way he can defuse WW2 to "safe" levels (our history' level) is to make stupid "mistakes" and kill lots of germans and russians, etc.
By the time Germany actually loses, committing suicide was probably an attractive option, just to get a little _peace_ and blot out all that death he was responsible for.
A quiet, sad personal ending to a historic victory (multi-historic, really).
The beauty of this is that you still get Evil!Hitler, the demagogue and politic genius who annexed Austria, stole Czechoslovakia out from under Europe's nose and hated the Jews. It's ok to hate him. This isn't historical revisionism.
But then you have this other guy, shoved into his place and forced to be the evil little git, to give all the evil orders...just to do his small part and make things better in the end.
Someday I may actually write this story. The amount of historical research I'd need to make it convincing scares the crap out of me, let alone the alternate history that needs changing and the theory of timelines that allows the change. But the arc of it and the emotional resonance seems to clear.
I've got about four or five story concepts I've been playing with for years now, mulling over in my head, writing and rewriting a scene here or there.
...I think I have six now.
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Re: If You Show Yours, I'll Show Mine
Date: 2003-07-17 08:17 pm (UTC)series.
Once I get the ecology down, it ought to be ok. Evolution in general is going to be supercharged on Darwin. And the colonists will have traveled back in time to get there. Right now I'm thinking 3000 years (with psi being a latent trait already present), but I can extend that if it still seems too sudden. After some time, they're going to start their own primitive eugenics programs to speed things up (ala Spock's World, only more so).
And no worries about a Darkover clone. These puppies are _much_ more supercharged. Think 'He-Man and the Masters of the Universe'. The whole reason for developing psi was first to sense the Monsters and then later to blow them into hamburger. And on a hyper-Venusian (Old Style) planet, there are _lots_ of monsters. The phrase "God-like" pops to mind every so often and I have to figure out how to tone them down.
;-)