People don't know how the read I guess, but it really sounded like you two were confused before, during, and after the reading, the video even says it all
On the anti-Hitler coup: Hitlers successful annexation of the Sudentenland was a major building block in his reputation as the chancellor who just always won. Back then, the military was also considering a coup, had he failed and plunged the country into war. So it makes sense this happens here. In fact, having that happen in 1938 might have formed the basis of a better, more sensical book series.
There were two coup attempts. The first was after Germany invaded Chezchslovakia when you thought they should have, but it failed. The one mentioned in this video is the equivalent of our timeline's attempt that failed
@@brianlance8263 They're alluding I believe to the general sentiment of powerful people in the German Army of 1938 at the time. Apparently one of the generals even just had a gun on him to shoot Hitler in case it came to a war, but it didn't, so they didn't. Whether this coup would succeed one can wonder of course, but it's substantially more likely really. For instance the country had been under Hitler less long and so other thought was still more prevalent, the Czechoslovakian army was actually quite powerful and had defensive positions they were ready in. In original WW2, rather then having to fight that army, Germany got to merge it in to their own as well as gain the arms industry that fed it. A rather big deal weapons wise. Meanwhile the German army was much smaller in 1938 compared to 1940 and lacked the experience and retraining they did from the 1940 war. Which means things would probably not look good, a good chunk of the army leadership would probably make a pretty good try to kill and replace Hitler... and who knows what happens from there. Because now you replace crazy militarist in Germany with more sane militarists. It could indeed make for a pretty interesting story, because what would they have plotted instead?
@@Quickshot0 yea in reality the war probably would have ended really quick, with Germany quickly losing ground to the British and French and Czechs on all sides and such a bad situation definitely wouldn’t make the poles want to join them, if anything it would encourage the poles to join the allies. I think the Germans got really lucky in skirting around the Czechs. French and Czech armor was just better than the Germans in 1938 and would have easily beaten them, the air force was primitive still, and the was navy old or in its infancy. Without the knowledge Germany gained from annexing the Czechs and invading Poland I seriously doubt they would pose any threat whatsoever. the only way I can see Germany holding out is if they had help from a Italy not under Mussolini, but that would pose even more problems in itself. overall this would probably end extremely anticlimactically with the first 2 books.
@@DAKOTA56777 when I say cursed I mean extremely cursed. For example if this was a Hoi game the UK and France would have had to deny the sudetenland, go to war, push Germany to 50% capitulation, white peace, then join the axis, then civil war out of the war, then re-declare the war against Germany and get military access from the Soviet Union.
I'm guessing the USSR eventually randomly switchs sides and helps Japan against the US for no reason, then gets bored halfway and goes back to being allied with the US
@@Sceptonic Then fascists rise up in the UK and establish the Order-State of Britain, pulling out of the war immediately. Ireland annexes Northern Ireland in the chaos. Meanwhile, utter chaos ensues in East Asia as China continues to collapse into an utter mess of warlord states, and the Soviet Union’s military breaks down as mutinies occur, allowing Japan to conquer vast swathes of the region. The USA also falls into civil war, somehow having the exact same factions as in the HOI4 mod Kaiserreich. I don’t know, absolute Turtledovian insanity ensues across the entire globe.
@@farkbett699What's worse is that in 1984 it is at least justifiable, since the whole war is a fluke designed by the three states in order to more easily keep their populations under control, otherwise Eurasia would have at least tried to invade the british isles in order to eliminate Oceania's toehold on the European continent. Here, we are meant to believe that it is an actual serious world war despite all the incoherent, barely explained, side switching.
Realistically the war wouldn't last very long if it had begun one year earlier, considering the fact that Germany wasn't fully prepared yet. Turtledove could've just had a two or three book series, and it would've been better.
@@mayukhmitra5819 that’s right the allies didn’t just give Hitler half of Europe because “LMAO just give it to him it’ll be funny” but because they were buying time since the axis were to an extent more prepared than the allies and there’s also the fact that no one wanted war especially on the allied side and especially the populace
Feels like as Turtledove gets older, his stories keep getting more crazy. And not in a good way. Especially right now feels like he’s running out of ideas and getting way too political with his stories. And if you thought this series was disappointing, wait until you read the Hot War trilogy.
The unfulfilling end is the biggest turn off for me in this series. I love how Turtledove describes the slow, largely boring life of a grunt and the life behind the front line but I would have sacrificed all the "slice of life" chapters for a tied up Pacific War.
It's tied up for all intents and purposes. Japan can't hold out against the United States, Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom, China, the Netherlands, and probably Australia at the same time. They would probably surrender pretty quickly after the Soviet Union attacked. Or maybe there was another military coup or a Czechoslovak sniper killed the Shōwa Emperor or something, but that's just too much.
I am referring more to the post war situation rather than Japan winning. With the changes in Europe and a much more involved USSR in the Asian continent, the post war environment should be quite different. Now it just seems unfinished
@@maxthexpfarmer3957 at this point, one of those Korean Revolutionary Plots succeeds in assassinating the Japanese High Command and re-establishes the Korean Empire
He may have been a drunk, but he was a functional alcoholic with a chauffeur-driven car, and with a daily life involving a small number of relatively secure places not very far apart. Even if he's the victim rather than the perp, drunk people aren't randomly driving around central London in wartime at speeds fast enough to lose control in a way a trained driver can't attempt to evade. I don't get how this would happen.
@@RFEM520 And paying by the word. So HT had to pad a mediocre short story into six oversized novels and it "Jumped the Shark" with the first line of book two. Oh sorry that was the 292 timeline. Stopped reading HT when the US sent a spaceship to the Alien home world in that invasion series, but this sounds like more hack writing from him.
Ghost Rider 6 I agree with you to a point (you really want hack writing look up Kevin J Anderson and Tom Clancy after Rainbow Six or even after his death with the conga line of authors penning under that monicker) but I think Hack is a rather subjective term in all honesty.
I feel like the Switch in Book Three could have been justified by the same reasoning that ended the war; a military coup. If the German Army took over the Government, and made concessions to the Allies, it wouldn't be too unbelievable to have the Alliance go against the Soviets
exactly, instead of doing the ole switcharoo in book 3, have Germany peace out the Allies (by Rudolf Hess or by coup, but USSR starts to go "land grab go brrrrrr" during the peace negotiations, forcing the 3 stooges to to make an uneasy alliance against the reds.
@@Josep_Hernandez_Lujan the British combative spirit don't just rests on Churchill, sure a change of PM will have an impact on Britain's act in the war, but not so much as they just change sides on a whim or stops fighting altogether
Horace Wilson was a senior civil servant, it's impossible that he could've become PM after Churchill's death. He was neither an MP nor member of Churchill's ruling political party (albeit there was a wartime coalition). I wonder if Turtledove doesn't understand key differences between how the US and UK governments work.
Either that or assumes his mostly American readership neither knows nor cares. Particularly as there were other anti appeasement figures like Archibald Sinclair or Anthony Eden who would make interesting alternate PMs in their own right.
@@TheBespectacledN00b The UK constitution is definitely hard for outsiders to understand but I do think HT should have made more of an effort since he's usually good at historical detail.
@@alanpennie Oh I agree about the British constitution (particularly as on level there is an argument about whether it actually exists). I don't know about the detail per se as I haven't read him for years but will take your word for it. I saw it as more laziness regarding where his readership is and wasn't worried the British political stuff would catch him out.
“Confusing, perplexing, and kind of a letdown…” how I’d describe a HOI4 non-historical game… which I’m fairly sure the guy stole most of his ideas from.
Agreed, my favourite went on like this (With the Mod "Road to 56" enabled): WW2 starts in 1936 because France declared war on Japan for no apparent reason, then Japan joins the Allies. France goes communist, forming its own faction. As allied japan goes on to declare war on the Soviet Union, Chiang Kai-Shek joins Comintern. Hitler does Hitler things and declares war against poland and it's friends - France, Fascist Spain and the newly reformed Ottoman Empire. It ended with Brits and Germans fighting together on the eastern front, my latvia being untouched by anything.
The British coup (you know, the event that the book is titled after) happens offstage. We do have a viewpoint character who is involved in planning it, but he’s arrested right before it happens. A short while later one of his co-conspirators shows up in his prison to set him free and announce that the coup went off without a hitch, but doesn’t go into much detail. It’s very exciting storytelling.
Honestly I would've just written it to where the Soviets managed to force industrialization surprisingly quick and force a scenario where the Allies would sort of be forced to work with the Axis as part of a temporary Cease-Fire to push the Soviets back. I would say the UK would likely have a Coup still because Winston likely would've ran for election before his death still, so the UK Populus would still likely be harboring Churchillian opinions on the Nazi thing. But it would make more sense and be less wishy-washy than the current story. As for how I say this timeline would end, with no nukes, Japan likely would end up sort of in a East/West Germany situation with Russia coming in from the North and the U.S coming in from the south. South Japan would likely somewhat resemble modern day Japan, especially if they get Tokyo under their Territory. North Japan would likely fall apart quickly and maybe be in a state of gurella war due to the culture at the time, and especially with them seeing the U.S actually helping rebuild the South versus the Soviets in the North. WW3? Ehhh, I say the dictatorships would likely collapse around the same time making it so the powers most likely to trigger WW3 are sort of dealing with their own problems, the Soviet Union likely collapsing sooner due to the whole Japan thing wasting their time and resources further.
I would disagree with you on the occupation of Japan. I haven’t read the books, so forgive me if I’m wrong here; it seems like the war in the pacific is a lot less brutal than in our timeline. Military occupation was the last resort for a nation. I could see the Soviets occupying Hokkaido for a bit, like the French, and the Saarland, and maybe the U.S occupying Tokyo for a corresponding amount of time. Most likely, Japan would lose their gains in China and the Pacific, and would maybe see a civil war, a or a coup.
@@luckyman9457 I can see where you're coming from, and like I said, I don't see it exactly resembling E/W Germany. We both do seem to agree that Soviets wouldn't have a deadlock on their territory in Japan. Although again, I do feel at least the part of Japan the U.S is involved in would likely resemble our timeline, and maybe them with the adversenes to war from ours as that came moreso from their defeat in general rather than the nukes.
Northern Japan under Soviet occupation? Mm I'd say no. The Red Army and Navy didn't have the amphibious capability to do such massive operations on Anglo-American scale like D-Day, Okinawa or potential Operation Downfall. Even IRL, their advance into Manchuria was sustained by supplies coming in by American ships through Vladivostok as the Japanese didn't attack ships heading to the USSR in fear of provoking them, many of their units ran out of fuel and had to airlift fuel within a few days and pretty much all their Landing craft were US made while many of their amphibious units were US trained in Alaska. This timeline's Japan ain't gonna be that soft, they've already gone to war just a while ago and will probably be adamant on stopping such shipments. Even if Japan did allow such shipments, USSR lacks ports and railway to carry such supplies since Vladivostok is in Japanese hands and there's no railway going to the Pacific coast in 1940 if USSR lost that. The IJN as well, even after getting blunted by USN would be much stronger than Red Pacific Fleet.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022, essentially, the Soviets seize the Primurye and Manchuria, Korea at most, and the US just bombs the sh*t out of Japan until they finally decide to throw in the towel.
No offense, but your scenario is a more absurd than the original. A more industrialized USSR will not make France and the UK join sides with Nazi Germany. It's just physically impossible. The military will literally shoot their politicians if they force them to work together with the people that they were just shooting at before. It will be like if Ukraine suddenly declares war on NATO a week after Russia invaded them. It doesn't make any sense. If people really want world war 2 to be about the world coming together to beat the Soviets' crap into themselves (which is fine by me), there are many ways to do it without creating absurd scenarios. For example, a coup takes place that overthrew the Nazis and the new government wants to sign peace with everyone. The Western Allies wants to accept the deal but the Soviets didn't and they just keep moving west. This would prompt the Allies to go in and defend Germany from a Soviet invasion. Which brings them into the war.
So, seriously. Tigerstar has been on the platform for a decade. Is there any chance we could do a GoFundMe or something for him to get a mic that doesn't make it sound like he is recording with a cardboard box on his head?
This series sort of sounds like it was ghostwritten by a different author each book…glad I skipped the series! The Southern Victory series remains his basic Magnum Opus, so we still have that…
Publishers: "Alright, contractually you need to give us 6 books." Turtledove, already sweating nervously: "Uh, sure... yeah... I can draw this out for 6 books."
I never read this seres and it sounds like I didn't miss much. I like the Southern series where the South won and the follow ups seeing the U.S. civil war continuing through WWI and WWII.
I'd like to see a more realistic take on a war in 1938 where the war only lasts until September 1939 because Germany gets defeated due to A. A smaller military (the allies were ironically better geared for an early war relatively speaking) and B. The Oster Conspiracy. The book would be told in the hybrid style of something like the Moscow Option and end on the ominous note that another war is on the horizon as Italy, Japan, and the USSR largely stayed neutral in the war. If I were to write it I'd call it Chamberlain's War to riff of/dab on Turtledove.
Yeah, I'd say his only really exemplary book is guns of the South. He just can't help himself from writing 4-12 main characters, so everything is unfocused and impossible to get invested i. Also, he's weirdly sex obsessed and it's uncomfortable to read.
@@GabrielUngactaIf that's the case then he's a terrible worldbuilder if this is the scenarios he comes up with. I mean, seriously in what universe would France and UK switch sides to fight alongside the people they were just shooting at to fight an enemy that they have no direct border with? Do they just expect their soldiers to smile and nod along as they boarded trains that takes them into the territory of their enemies? If someone tries that in real life they'll be shot in the head or arrested by the military. The only time where nations switch sides in war or start defecting is when they are losing.
So after the Big Switch, we just get Big Switch 2: Electric Boogaloo? Lol. Yeah, like the Germans would just let those French and British divisions up and leave only to fight them later.
If I remember correctly the Brits were a bit sneakier about it, and took ships from the White Sea over to the North Sea back to Britain, while France does the same but with small skirmishes occurring between them Yeah it didn’t make much sense and I listen to that book series a loooong time ago
I feel like if Turtledove wrote one book on this without the Big Switch then wrote a sequel about how the Cold War would be different would have been recieved far better.
This is like if 2/4 of the Allies just saw a ton of of "Italy switching sides" memes and both said "yeah, let's do that, but even *more* ". But the most unrealistic part, is Germany giving up, and somehow UK and France just say "Eh. Fine, keep your gains, but DON'T do it again"
This was the only Turtlerdove series to disappoint you? Then I guess you haven't read The Hot War series. USA uses nukes in Korea, 1950. USSR responds. So USA uses more nukes. And USSR responds. And on and on. Its severely dumb.
Are you familiar with talkernate histroy. As they are doing a podcast on fan submission alternate history (two of which i wrote) can you two review them all when it comes out. I could take a few months though and the contest ended in June.
"It's 1943, already? Christ, someone call Blasko already. I know he's already been to Wolfenstein like, eight times by now, but seriously... Tell him to go to Berlin and put an end to these alternate timelines already!"
i feel like with most turtledove series the longer it goes on the groggier it feels and to make a series about a groggy war in general ugh i wouldve just kept making it wackier at that point
Britain and France: join Axis Powers after a long stalemate Also Britain and France: redeclares war on Germany Paradox Entertainment: write that down, write that down
You two could do an hour long rant about Turtledove and his atrocious characters who are not direct historical figures but the most cliched, trope cardboard cutouts even toddlers would call awful
I sort of enjoyed the prose in the series, it certainly made the books less tedious, but they could have done away with most of the war action descriptions (most of which ends up sounding all the same no matter what stage of the war it is). And, perhaps my biggest gripe, maybe Turtledove could have kept the salient events, the ones that the volumes are named after, on-stage. I hate how a coup in UK is just mentioned in a pub discussion, and I don't even want to touch on the fact that Churchill getting run over and killed by a Bentley is revealed at the end of a very awkward passage on two teenagers (Jewish kids who are one of the POVs in the book) being sexually intimate with each other. Also, it's odd how covers seem to be made to get the reader's expectations up, except nothing of it is found in the story. It's as if the cover designer didn't even read the book's draft when making them. One of the medals used is a medal of honor for defending Leningrad, but to my knowledge the Germans didn't even go that far into Soviet territory. Another one has some D-Day like landing that doesn't happen in the Two Fronts volume. The last volume has the Eiffel Tower still standing, when it's mentioned since the first book that it had the top blown off (again, like any remotely exciting events in this series, off-stage) during the first German attempted invasion of France. With that said, it would be really interesting to imagine how the world would come out of it. - As said, UK and France switched sides two times. One thing to point out though is that in France's case they don't even have a coup toppling the previous pro-German government involved to justify it: they were literally fortifying the Maginot Line and preparing to strike Germany in the back while still allied with Germany, so the switch-around literally happened on a whim. This is mentioned explicitly in the book. Even if they come out as the "victors" side in the war, they would still be seen as sneaky and unreliable by the whole global community, which would perhaps make them half-pariah, and surely enough accelerate the fall of their colonial empires even harder than IRL. - At the end of the day, Germany is paradoxically enough going to be the nation that made itself look most respectable in the war. Even in terms of the Holocaust, be it because of their war alongside France and UK, or later because they were with too much on their hands, they never got around to oppressing the Jewish population anywhere as much as in our universe. There's a mention of the concentration camp of Dachau to house dissidents, as if it's common knowledge among civilians, but mass deportations and mass killings never happened. With all due respect, it's almost cute how the best the Nazis could come up with in this scenario is giving extra names to Jewish citizens to "differentiate" them from the other Germans ("Moses" for men, "Sarah" for women. Did anything like this ever happen IRL?) I'm afraid that for this reason in this post-WWII world, Nazism would only end up seen not as a genocidal ideology, but just as dumb short-fuse guys who got Germany into another unnecessary war. - On the other hand, Japan is probably going to be seen as the bigger moster in the war for the decades to come. One thing that isn't mentioned in either of the videos is that Japan tested their germ pathogens on captured Russians first, and captured Americans later. Rats infested with plague-carrying fleas were later released in Hawaii, but vaccinations were promptly carried out. While IRL the Unit 731 experiments remained mostly a (thorny) Asian affair between China and Japan, one can imagine how bad this would turn out to be since Russians and Americans were subjected to it, making word get out much easier in the West. - This world's WWII never had any watershed battle to bolster national spirit, be it a big defeat or a big victory. No Stalingrad, no Kursk, no Midway, no Battle of Britain, just a half-baked Barbarossa that stops at Smolensk at most. How does it affect patriotic mentality, that there is no battle to pin one's national pride to, would be another interesting subject to think about.
I enjoy his works, but Turtledove has a fairly bad habit of telling and not showing major events. With regards to Germany, I get the feeling it's only a matter of time before war errupts again. The whole "stab in the back" myth that was prevalent after the first world war will probably be propagated further after losing a second war without conflict on German soi. Not to mention politically it seems that Germany will become either a dictatorship or junta, and the post-war tension between Germany and the Soviet Union. As for the Holocaust, historically the perspecution and killings ramped up after 1939 with the occupation of Poland. Because Nazi Germany never has access to the Jewish population that it did historically (from Poland, the Balkans and the USSR) the apparatus for industrialised killings isn't in place and so Jewish persecution is at a lower level than it would reach in reality. And yes, historically the Nazi German government required all Jews with "non-Jewish names" to add the last name of Israel or Sara (for men and women, respectively) The war against Japan will also be much more bloody than in our timeline. Not only because of Japan's use of bioweapons but also because the US doesn't pursue atomic weapons research. So either Japan will be invaded (much like the planned Operatiion Downfall) or the US will impose a blockade and starve Japan into surrender. I think there are watershed moments, it's just that Turtledove fails to mention them in more detail than in passing. For example the British and French stalling the German advance, or the Soviets doing the same at Smolensk. There's also the Japanese attack on the US Asiatic Fleet and their repulse of the first American counteroffensive. They might seem small due to how Turtledove depicts them, but I think historians looking back on these events will see these as high (or low) points of the war.
Yeah. The Nazis absolutely did inflict new first names on Jews. They delighted on devising pretty persecutions in addition to the better known mass murder. The diaries of Victor Klemperer are good on this.
Interesting that Germany is arguably the big winner of this alt. WW2. In addition to Austria and Czechoslovakia they can probably get Danzig back by persuading Poland to cede it (since they're now best buds with The Poles) and they can probably control Hungary and Romania via the German minorities in those countries.
This just sounds like a HoI4 game when you turn off historical accuracy and watch the AI go at it. All we need is some border gore, then it would completely accurate!
There were several times I almost started this series on Audible, but didn't because of how many reviews said the narration sucked. Nice to know I wasn't missing out on much.
The big switch just sounds like Turtledove realized that Germany would lose hard if the allies declared war with Czechoslovakia, even with Poland on their side, but promised his publishing company six books.
Have you read the story of Wendell Fertig, the American colonel who promoted himself to Brigadier general and whose adventures read like a wacky hollywood alternate history series? Alternate history is weird, but history is weirder. It includes the story of him building a radio with a man who had taken correspondence school lessons, a traveling salesman who once sold radios, and a man who once listened to a radio.
British troops on the eastern front: hey I know we’ve been fighting together for a while but we are now enemies again. Can we go home? Germans: oh yeah sure go ahead
I know there's numerous issues, but the one that particularly bothers me is Japan still attacking the US. Assuming they made decent gains against the USSR they should've gained access to oil and other natural resources and not really had any reason to attack the US.
The Big Switch almost sounds like Turtledove was readying to end the series with just three books to have the war end early as well, and then realized "Oh god, I have to actually write 6 for this book deal." So he just hastily cobbles together the idea of Britain and France joining the Axis to extend things, before then realizing that he was stuck writing with that as an actual plotpoint, and then trying to undo that and reach some kind of conclusion.
Thanks for the patience! It's finally here! Part 1 is linked in the description and on AlternateHistoryHub's channel.
What happened to the first part
What happens the first part???
@@thomaspaine3394 It's in the description.
People don't know how the read I guess, but it really sounded like you two were confused before, during, and after the reading, the video even says it all
@@EmperorTigerstar Thanks :)
I like how Britain and France change teams in WWII like its dodgeball on a 3rd grade playground.
Yeah
Honestly I haven’t seen so many side changes since playing hoi4
Basically when the gym teacher suddenly joins a team.
Soo true
@@nova5303 it doesn't, but they changing back to fight Germany again is ridiculous
"Herr Gorring, you're wife is pregnant and Stalin is the father."
I don't know how to react to that
Goring would probably eat the baby when the baby is born.
@National Fascist Party CRAWLING IN MY SKIN
Its like a rom com lol
Sta sta Sta-alin
lover of the wife of Goering
soviet love machine
Stalin walk in: You mean our wife
Soviet anthem plays
On the anti-Hitler coup: Hitlers successful annexation of the Sudentenland was a major building block in his reputation as the chancellor who just always won. Back then, the military was also considering a coup, had he failed and plunged the country into war. So it makes sense this happens here. In fact, having that happen in 1938 might have formed the basis of a better, more sensical book series.
There were two coup attempts. The first was after Germany invaded Chezchslovakia when you thought they should have, but it failed. The one mentioned in this video is the equivalent of our timeline's attempt that failed
@@brianlance8263 wasn’t the second one on Christmas that involved Franz Halder? Or was it another General
@@brianlance8263 They're alluding I believe to the general sentiment of powerful people in the German Army of 1938 at the time. Apparently one of the generals even just had a gun on him to shoot Hitler in case it came to a war, but it didn't, so they didn't. Whether this coup would succeed one can wonder of course, but it's substantially more likely really.
For instance the country had been under Hitler less long and so other thought was still more prevalent, the Czechoslovakian army was actually quite powerful and had defensive positions they were ready in. In original WW2, rather then having to fight that army, Germany got to merge it in to their own as well as gain the arms industry that fed it. A rather big deal weapons wise. Meanwhile the German army was much smaller in 1938 compared to 1940 and lacked the experience and retraining they did from the 1940 war.
Which means things would probably not look good, a good chunk of the army leadership would probably make a pretty good try to kill and replace Hitler... and who knows what happens from there. Because now you replace crazy militarist in Germany with more sane militarists. It could indeed make for a pretty interesting story, because what would they have plotted instead?
@@Quickshot0 yea in reality the war probably would have ended really quick, with Germany quickly losing ground to the British and French and Czechs on all sides and such a bad situation definitely wouldn’t make the poles want to join them, if anything it would encourage the poles to join the allies. I think the Germans got really lucky in skirting around the Czechs. French and Czech armor was just better than the Germans in 1938 and would have easily beaten them, the air force was primitive still, and the was navy old or in its infancy. Without the knowledge Germany gained from annexing the Czechs and invading Poland I seriously doubt they would pose any threat whatsoever. the only way I can see Germany holding out is if they had help from a Italy not under Mussolini, but that would pose even more problems in itself. overall this would probably end extremely anticlimactically with the first 2 books.
Honestly this series sounds like a really cursed hoi4 game.
It honestly sounds like one of Bo's HOI4 Multi-player in a nutshell videos
Even in HOI there's at least not the crazy wartime side changes, you usually have to defeat who you're fighting first.
Because it is…
@@DAKOTA56777 when I say cursed I mean extremely cursed. For example if this was a Hoi game the UK and France would have had to deny the sudetenland, go to war, push Germany to 50% capitulation, white peace, then join the axis, then civil war out of the war, then re-declare the war against Germany and get military access from the Soviet Union.
Sounds like one of those classic "Alex the Rambler started a war not being able to do anything afterward" scenario
Imagine if you were a historian in this alternate timeline and you had to study this wacky version of WWII.
I'd imagine a very high suicide rate among historians just to escape this nightmare.
And then some guy writes a 6 book alternate history series about our timeline
@@SpiffoGaming Assuming nukes were still made. Then people would call the nuking of Japan twice to be ridiculous.
Sooner take some pills than try to be a historian in this timeline.
Weed would never have been outlawed because students would have to be high to get through their history classes.
I'm guessing the USSR eventually randomly switchs sides and helps Japan against the US for no reason, then gets bored halfway and goes back to being allied with the US
@@Sceptonic This sounds like a dumber version of 1984 with the three superstates constantly switching sides
@@Sceptonic Then fascists rise up in the UK and establish the Order-State of Britain, pulling out of the war immediately. Ireland annexes Northern Ireland in the chaos. Meanwhile, utter chaos ensues in East Asia as China continues to collapse into an utter mess of warlord states, and the Soviet Union’s military breaks down as mutinies occur, allowing Japan to conquer vast swathes of the region. The USA also falls into civil war, somehow having the exact same factions as in the HOI4 mod Kaiserreich. I don’t know, absolute Turtledovian insanity ensues across the entire globe.
@@farkbett699 We've always been at war with-hang on *checks notes* ...Monaco? Seriously? Alright then...
@@farkbett699What's worse is that in 1984 it is at least justifiable, since the whole war is a fluke designed by the three states in order to more easily keep their populations under control, otherwise Eurasia would have at least tried to invade the british isles in order to eliminate Oceania's toehold on the European continent. Here, we are meant to believe that it is an actual serious world war despite all the incoherent, barely explained, side switching.
"Herr Meyer, your wife is pregnant and Stalin is the father (father...father)...."
I spat out my lunch LOL
Pay your bills instead of watching this (yes this is a Sam joke)
"Herr Gorring, you're wife is pregnant and Stalin is the father." this most definitely would be an episode of Maury on interdemensional cable.
BRING OUT THE 🫒O🫒L🫒I🫒V🫒E🫒S🫒
I am profoundly dismayed and disgusted by the fact that show is still on the air. It is entertainment at its very lowest and most insipid.
@@MrQuinnzard *Frightened German screaming*
"Hermann Wilhelm Göring? You..."
"are not the father!"
(crowd gasps)
(Stalin comes in)
"I am!"
(crowd cheers)
@@knighthunter1791 turns into WWE and they start wrestling
Cody: "Go watch part 2"
Me: "ok"
so me as well
Same
I wasn't paying attention
Wait, Cody told me to be here?
Huh. Well, I was coming here, anyway.
Realistically the war wouldn't last very long if it had begun one year earlier, considering the fact that Germany wasn't fully prepared yet. Turtledove could've just had a two or three book series, and it would've been better.
But Democracies and Soviets weren't also prepared. Although I think it should have been a 4 part series. Removing the big switch and coup deteat.
@@mayukhmitra5819 that’s right the allies didn’t just give Hitler half of Europe because “LMAO just give it to him it’ll be funny” but because they were buying time since the axis were to an extent more prepared than the allies and there’s also the fact that no one wanted war especially on the allied side and especially the populace
@Cali Boy It is set after WW1.
Feels like as Turtledove gets older, his stories keep getting more crazy. And not in a good way.
Especially right now feels like he’s running out of ideas and getting way too political with his stories.
And if you thought this series was disappointing, wait until you read the Hot War trilogy.
What happened in there?
@@Sammmmmmmm617 The Korean War escalates into WW3. And just like Korea, WW3 ends in a stalemate.
@@Sammmmmmmm617 Korean War escalates in ww3
Was nukes involved?
@@dennisz1252
Nukes were definitely involved yeah, but not nuclear armageddon
The unfulfilling end is the biggest turn off for me in this series. I love how Turtledove describes the slow, largely boring life of a grunt and the life behind the front line but I would have sacrificed all the "slice of life" chapters for a tied up Pacific War.
It's tied up for all intents and purposes. Japan can't hold out against the United States, Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom, China, the Netherlands, and probably Australia at the same time. They would probably surrender pretty quickly after the Soviet Union attacked.
Or maybe there was another military coup or a Czechoslovak sniper killed the Shōwa Emperor or something, but that's just too much.
I am referring more to the post war situation rather than Japan winning. With the changes in Europe and a much more involved USSR in the Asian continent, the post war environment should be quite different.
Now it just seems unfinished
@@maxthexpfarmer3957 at this point, one of those Korean Revolutionary Plots succeeds in assassinating the Japanese High Command and re-establishes the Korean Empire
"Your wife is pregnant and Stalin is the father."
*"WAIT... STALIN IS CHEATING ON ME? WITH THAT WOMAN?!"*
well silly little german man, that isn't YOUR wife, that is OUR wife
That awkward moment when the plot from Nazi Zombies makes more sense.
This is such a weird book series.
I think the author was high when he wrote these.
Well, Stephen King wrote Kujo while he was high on cocaine.
who is his dealer because i want some of that.
I wanted to write a good beook, but then I got high, then I got high, then I got high. Damn, I just dated myself here
@@hemidas What was Steven King on when he wrote It?
Sounds he was on Valium tbh
All you need to know about alternate histories vid.
Winston churchill got into a f***ing drunken car crash
Truck-Kun's Little Brother is learning some Isekai Skills.
@@conradojavier7547 "I was trying to become the Prime Minister of the UK and instead I became a monster hunter" is a great series.
Isekai and got an harem of Princess as a young lad lol
@@kadiliman3022 i wanna watch this. Some comedy slice of life isekai
He may have been a drunk, but he was a functional alcoholic with a chauffeur-driven car, and with a daily life involving a small number of relatively secure places not very far apart. Even if he's the victim rather than the perp, drunk people aren't randomly driving around central London in wartime at speeds fast enough to lose control in a way a trained driver can't attempt to evade. I don't get how this would happen.
This story feels like what would happen if you set the AI in hoi4 to non historical focus and max speed
It's a series of relatively long books so it's more like a slow speed. These two videos are the game at max speed.
Feels like a writer started with a simple yet interesting concept but had no guidelines but promised 6 books on it
More contracted to six books. Del Rey kinda has a habit of doing this to known writers.
@@RFEM520 And paying by the word. So HT had to pad a mediocre short story into six oversized novels and it "Jumped the Shark" with the first line of book two. Oh sorry that was the 292 timeline. Stopped reading HT when the US sent a spaceship to the Alien home world in that invasion series, but this sounds like more hack writing from him.
Ghost Rider 6 I agree with you to a point (you really want hack writing look up Kevin J Anderson and Tom Clancy after Rainbow Six or even after his death with the conga line of authors penning under that monicker) but I think Hack is a rather subjective term in all honesty.
I feel like the Switch in Book Three could have been justified by the same reasoning that ended the war; a military coup.
If the German Army took over the Government, and made concessions to the Allies, it wouldn't be too unbelievable to have the Alliance go against the Soviets
exactly, instead of doing the ole switcharoo in book 3, have Germany peace out the Allies (by Rudolf Hess or by coup, but USSR starts to go "land grab go brrrrrr" during the peace negotiations, forcing the 3 stooges to to make an uneasy alliance against the reds.
But Churchill's dead
@@Josep_Hernandez_Lujan this is alternate history, un-dead him
@@freewyvern707 I'm not Turtledove
@@Josep_Hernandez_Lujan the British combative spirit don't just rests on Churchill, sure a change of PM will have an impact on Britain's act in the war, but not so much as they just change sides on a whim or stops fighting altogether
Horace Wilson was a senior civil servant, it's impossible that he could've become PM after Churchill's death. He was neither an MP nor member of Churchill's ruling political party (albeit there was a wartime coalition). I wonder if Turtledove doesn't understand key differences between how the US and UK governments work.
Either that or assumes his mostly American readership neither knows nor cares. Particularly as there were other anti appeasement figures like Archibald Sinclair or Anthony Eden who would make interesting alternate PMs in their own right.
@@TheBespectacledN00b
If he wanted a pro - Nazi PM Halifax, who advocated making peace in May 1940, was right there.
@@TheBespectacledN00b
The UK constitution is definitely hard for outsiders to understand but I do think HT should have made more of an effort since he's usually good at historical detail.
@@alanpennie Oh I agree about the British constitution (particularly as on level there is an argument about whether it actually exists). I don't know about the detail per se as I haven't read him for years but will take your word for it. I saw it as more laziness regarding where his readership is and wasn't worried the British political stuff would catch him out.
“Confusing, perplexing, and kind of a letdown…” how I’d describe a HOI4 non-historical game… which I’m fairly sure the guy stole most of his ideas from.
Agreed, my favourite went on like this (With the Mod "Road to 56" enabled):
WW2 starts in 1936 because France declared war on Japan for no apparent reason, then Japan joins the Allies. France goes communist, forming its own faction.
As allied japan goes on to declare war on the Soviet Union, Chiang Kai-Shek joins Comintern.
Hitler does Hitler things and declares war against poland and it's friends - France, Fascist Spain and the newly reformed Ottoman Empire.
It ended with Brits and Germans fighting together on the eastern front, my latvia being untouched by anything.
This series was wrote before Hearts of Iron 4
@@kaiserreichmapping805 I'm well aware, was meant to be a joke.
@@hyenafur Alright
axis leaders:exist
Czechoslovaks: And i took that personally
france: remember when italy switched sides
britain: yeah
france: what if we copy them
Britain: That's really stupid.
Let's do it.
This series is a certified bruh moment
That or it feels like Vince Russo wrote it.
Especially the third one
@@theicelandicnationalist2.023 "I'm telling you it's going to be ratings gold, bro" Vince Russo.
@@joshnolen2675 lol
@@joshnolen2675 Sudetenland on a Pole Match?
I think Turtledove has been playing too many Paradox games.
It very much sounds like a Paradox AAR that would've been written on the forums
If He's still around maybe he could write a Stellaris Story instead of a disaster save of HOI4.
@@Trekpanther In the Shadow of Certain, Painful Doom is better than this series, though it may be nearly as long.
The British coup (you know, the event that the book is titled after) happens offstage. We do have a viewpoint character who is involved in planning it, but he’s arrested right before it happens. A short while later one of his co-conspirators shows up in his prison to set him free and announce that the coup went off without a hitch, but doesn’t go into much detail. It’s very exciting storytelling.
Is it supposed to be sarcastic?
@@dragon_ninja_2186 Oh no not me, I would never resort to sarcasm.
@@aperson22222 sounds like an idea I had about a story where the protagonist always misses out on everything interesting that happens in the story
@@connorh2215
It's like those Ancient Greek dramas where messengers keep reporting the exciting events which are happening offstage.
@@aperson22222If I write something like that people will be clowning me for it.
And it will be justified.
This story feels like tripping on LSD
Very Boring LSD
Someone should have told Turtledove to not eat the brown acid.
Must've ate a really mild weed brownie.
Honestly I would've just written it to where the Soviets managed to force industrialization surprisingly quick and force a scenario where the Allies would sort of be forced to work with the Axis as part of a temporary Cease-Fire to push the Soviets back.
I would say the UK would likely have a Coup still because Winston likely would've ran for election before his death still, so the UK Populus would still likely be harboring Churchillian opinions on the Nazi thing.
But it would make more sense and be less wishy-washy than the current story.
As for how I say this timeline would end, with no nukes, Japan likely would end up sort of in a East/West Germany situation with Russia coming in from the North and the U.S coming in from the south.
South Japan would likely somewhat resemble modern day Japan, especially if they get Tokyo under their Territory.
North Japan would likely fall apart quickly and maybe be in a state of gurella war due to the culture at the time, and especially with them seeing the U.S actually helping rebuild the South versus the Soviets in the North.
WW3? Ehhh, I say the dictatorships would likely collapse around the same time making it so the powers most likely to trigger WW3 are sort of dealing with their own problems, the Soviet Union likely collapsing sooner due to the whole Japan thing wasting their time and resources further.
I would disagree with you on the occupation of Japan. I haven’t read the books, so forgive me if I’m wrong here; it seems like the war in the pacific is a lot less brutal than in our timeline. Military occupation was the last resort for a nation. I could see the Soviets occupying Hokkaido for a bit, like the French, and the Saarland, and maybe the U.S occupying Tokyo for a corresponding amount of time.
Most likely, Japan would lose their gains in China and the Pacific, and would maybe see a civil war, a or a coup.
@@luckyman9457 I can see where you're coming from, and like I said, I don't see it exactly resembling E/W Germany.
We both do seem to agree that Soviets wouldn't have a deadlock on their territory in Japan.
Although again, I do feel at least the part of Japan the U.S is involved in would likely resemble our timeline, and maybe them with the adversenes to war from ours as that came moreso from their defeat in general rather than the nukes.
Northern Japan under Soviet occupation? Mm I'd say no. The Red Army and Navy didn't have the amphibious capability to do such massive operations on Anglo-American scale like D-Day, Okinawa or potential Operation Downfall. Even IRL, their advance into Manchuria was sustained by supplies coming in by American ships through Vladivostok as the Japanese didn't attack ships heading to the USSR in fear of provoking them, many of their units ran out of fuel and had to airlift fuel within a few days and pretty much all their Landing craft were US made while many of their amphibious units were US trained in Alaska.
This timeline's Japan ain't gonna be that soft, they've already gone to war just a while ago and will probably be adamant on stopping such shipments. Even if Japan did allow such shipments, USSR lacks ports and railway to carry such supplies since Vladivostok is in Japanese hands and there's no railway going to the Pacific coast in 1940 if USSR lost that.
The IJN as well, even after getting blunted by USN would be much stronger than Red Pacific Fleet.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022, essentially, the Soviets seize the Primurye and Manchuria, Korea at most, and the US just bombs the sh*t out of Japan until they finally decide to throw in the towel.
No offense, but your scenario is a more absurd than the original. A more industrialized USSR will not make France and the UK join sides with Nazi Germany. It's just physically impossible. The military will literally shoot their politicians if they force them to work together with the people that they were just shooting at before.
It will be like if Ukraine suddenly declares war on NATO a week after Russia invaded them. It doesn't make any sense.
If people really want world war 2 to be about the world coming together to beat the Soviets' crap into themselves (which is fine by me), there are many ways to do it without creating absurd scenarios.
For example, a coup takes place that overthrew the Nazis and the new government wants to sign peace with everyone. The Western Allies wants to accept the deal but the Soviets didn't and they just keep moving west. This would prompt the Allies to go in and defend Germany from a Soviet invasion. Which brings them into the war.
Turtledove is a master of the butterfly effect. The Southern Victory series begins with a master plan by Lee that DIDN'T fall into northern hands.
While that series turned out great, this not so much. Seems Turtledove failed with this.
Yeah, but it had time travel!
@@JohnDoe-ns5su no it didn't guns of the south and southern victory are 2 different series
“Master”
So, seriously. Tigerstar has been on the platform for a decade. Is there any chance we could do a GoFundMe or something for him to get a mic that doesn't make it sound like he is recording with a cardboard box on his head?
As brutal as this assessment is, I had the same impression. I wasn't sure if it was my speakers or his mic that were the issus.
The lack of a decent mic is the only real thing preventing me from getting into his content
This series sort of sounds like it was ghostwritten by a different author each book…glad I skipped the series! The Southern Victory series remains his basic Magnum Opus, so we still have that…
You know the alt history is bad when its impossible to re-create in hoi4
Took me 60 hours and three attempts to take over the world as Republican Spain... So, I guess this is possible.
Probably not a good idea to try.
And here we have mods
“It is a sin to waste the reader’s time”
-Larry Niven
“If it’s a sin, then just call me Satan, baby!”
-Harry Turtledove
Publishers: "Alright, contractually you need to give us 6 books."
Turtledove, already sweating nervously: "Uh, sure... yeah... I can draw this out for 6 books."
"Your wife's pregnant and Stalin is the father" had me chuckling for a while.
Harry Turtledove has had aliens and time travel in his stories. Somehow THIS is less believable, more insane, and dull as paint >
I like how the world leaders are just randomly picked off by people, totally not like they have bodyguards lmao
Tbf there plenty of political assassinations in the 1930s, though fewer in the 1940s.
I had suppressed my memories of reading this series. Thank you for the return of the nightmares. 😺
"Herr Goering, your wife is pregnant, and Stalin is the father!"
I haven't felt whiplash like that in ages...
I never read this seres and it sounds like I didn't miss much. I like the Southern series where the South won and the follow ups seeing the U.S. civil war continuing through WWI and WWII.
I'd like to see a more realistic take on a war in 1938 where the war only lasts until September 1939 because Germany gets defeated due to A. A smaller military (the allies were ironically better geared for an early war relatively speaking) and B. The Oster Conspiracy. The book would be told in the hybrid style of something like the Moscow Option and end on the ominous note that another war is on the horizon as Italy, Japan, and the USSR largely stayed neutral in the war. If I were to write it I'd call it Chamberlain's War to riff of/dab on Turtledove.
The key to alternate history is to choose an outcome and make changes to achieve it. Or make a single change and write how things would play out.
Has anyone ever considered that Harry Turtledove isn’t actually a good writer?
Yeah, I'd say his only really exemplary book is guns of the South. He just can't help himself from writing 4-12 main characters, so everything is unfocused and impossible to get invested i. Also, he's weirdly sex obsessed and it's uncomfortable to read.
*exemplary of those I read
He's more focused on world building, not writing characters.
@@GabrielUngactaThat is the complete opposite of reality. He *should* be more focused on world building, but he isn't.
@@GabrielUngactaIf that's the case then he's a terrible worldbuilder if this is the scenarios he comes up with.
I mean, seriously in what universe would France and UK switch sides to fight alongside the people they were just shooting at to fight an enemy that they have no direct border with? Do they just expect their soldiers to smile and nod along as they boarded trains that takes them into the territory of their enemies?
If someone tries that in real life they'll be shot in the head or arrested by the military.
The only time where nations switch sides in war or start defecting is when they are losing.
Imagine shower curtains with maps of the Iron Curtain
So after the Big Switch, we just get Big Switch 2: Electric Boogaloo? Lol. Yeah, like the Germans would just let those French and British divisions up and leave only to fight them later.
They probably were all killed by the Germans.
If I remember correctly the Brits were a bit sneakier about it, and took ships from the White Sea over to the North Sea back to Britain, while France does the same but with small skirmishes occurring between them
Yeah it didn’t make much sense and I listen to that book series a loooong time ago
Someone had the contractual obligation to deliver six books to his publisher, the true goal of the series.
I feel like if Turtledove wrote one book on this without the Big Switch then wrote a sequel about how the Cold War would be different would have been recieved far better.
Can we appreciate the fact that both youtubers spent so much time reading this book?
This like a fanfiction version of world war 2.
It literally sounds like turtle dove had a "Wacky" game of Hoi4 and then decided to write a story about it.
Ah yes, Harry Turtledove. The father of alternative history and cursed Hearts of Iron game sessions at 3am
This is like if 2/4 of the Allies just saw a ton of of "Italy switching sides" memes and both said "yeah, let's do that, but even *more* ".
But the most unrealistic part, is Germany giving up, and somehow UK and France just say "Eh. Fine, keep your gains, but DON'T do it again"
Harry Turtledove is losing his touch.
your a genius
How it feels to turn off Historical AI
Turtledove, aka the founding member of the "monkeys with typewriter" trope 🤣
This was the only Turtlerdove series to disappoint you? Then I guess you haven't read The Hot War series. USA uses nukes in Korea, 1950. USSR responds. So USA uses more nukes. And USSR responds. And on and on. Its severely dumb.
How the hell uld the ussr retaliate? They had six nukes and no long range bombers.
@@gimzod76 Unlimited numbers TU-4 bombers, unlimited numbers of nukes, and a willingness to sacrifice crews on 1 way missions.
I said it was dumb.
Are you familiar with talkernate histroy. As they are doing a podcast on fan submission alternate history (two of which i wrote) can you two review them all when it comes out. I could take a few months though and the contest ended in June.
I like how they just put the spot light on the Czechs for killing leader/diplomat in this series.
He's seems to tweaking the story of Hershel Grynspan and The Krystallnacht.
How cheeky is it to put "the master of alternative history" on your own book
Thanks for the video!
"It's 1943, already? Christ, someone call Blasko already. I know he's already been to Wolfenstein like, eight times by now, but seriously... Tell him to go to Berlin and put an end to these alternate timelines already!"
Finally another collaboration between alternative history hub.
Love u all.
Harry Turtledove really tried to write Game of Thrones in a modern setting
🗿
So this series is basically WW2 meets the League of Cambrai.
Thanks for letting me to know to watch Alteranate History Hub's video first, thank you
I hope you guys will cover more of Turtledove's work in the future; especially The Guns of the South.
Read the first two glad I stopped save from disappointment. Cheers for the review.
i feel like with most turtledove series the longer it goes on the groggier it feels and to make a series about a groggy war in general ugh i wouldve just kept making it wackier at that point
"What was the point of having the big switch if it ended up not mattering at all?" - to sell more books, obviously.
Came from Cody’s video to see part 2.. and Uh, it’s something alright.
Britain and France: join Axis Powers after a long stalemate
Also Britain and France: redeclares war on Germany
Paradox Entertainment: write that down, write that down
You two could do an hour long rant about Turtledove and his atrocious characters who are not direct historical figures but the most cliched, trope cardboard cutouts even toddlers would call awful
Of course I see these videos as soon as I've sunk my saved Audible credits into the whole series
If I had a dollar for every flip flop of alliances in this series, I'd be a millionaire
Yes we needed this
i feel like every turtle dove series is just a hoi4 game he throws a story to
Turtledove's Risk games must've been nuts
I love how this is just actual World War II but with extra steps.
This is world war 2 if the UK and France have a mid-life crisis in the middle of the war and then they got over it.
I sort of enjoyed the prose in the series, it certainly made the books less tedious, but they could have done away with most of the war action descriptions (most of which ends up sounding all the same no matter what stage of the war it is). And, perhaps my biggest gripe, maybe Turtledove could have kept the salient events, the ones that the volumes are named after, on-stage.
I hate how a coup in UK is just mentioned in a pub discussion, and I don't even want to touch on the fact that Churchill getting run over and killed by a Bentley is revealed at the end of a very awkward passage on two teenagers (Jewish kids who are one of the POVs in the book) being sexually intimate with each other.
Also, it's odd how covers seem to be made to get the reader's expectations up, except nothing of it is found in the story. It's as if the cover designer didn't even read the book's draft when making them. One of the medals used is a medal of honor for defending Leningrad, but to my knowledge the Germans didn't even go that far into Soviet territory. Another one has some D-Day like landing that doesn't happen in the Two Fronts volume. The last volume has the Eiffel Tower still standing, when it's mentioned since the first book that it had the top blown off (again, like any remotely exciting events in this series, off-stage) during the first German attempted invasion of France.
With that said, it would be really interesting to imagine how the world would come out of it.
- As said, UK and France switched sides two times. One thing to point out though is that in France's case they don't even have a coup toppling the previous pro-German government involved to justify it: they were literally fortifying the Maginot Line and preparing to strike Germany in the back while still allied with Germany, so the switch-around literally happened on a whim. This is mentioned explicitly in the book.
Even if they come out as the "victors" side in the war, they would still be seen as sneaky and unreliable by the whole global community, which would perhaps make them half-pariah, and surely enough accelerate the fall of their colonial empires even harder than IRL.
- At the end of the day, Germany is paradoxically enough going to be the nation that made itself look most respectable in the war. Even in terms of the Holocaust, be it because of their war alongside France and UK, or later because they were with too much on their hands, they never got around to oppressing the Jewish population anywhere as much as in our universe.
There's a mention of the concentration camp of Dachau to house dissidents, as if it's common knowledge among civilians, but mass deportations and mass killings never happened.
With all due respect, it's almost cute how the best the Nazis could come up with in this scenario is giving extra names to Jewish citizens to "differentiate" them from the other Germans ("Moses" for men, "Sarah" for women. Did anything like this ever happen IRL?)
I'm afraid that for this reason in this post-WWII world, Nazism would only end up seen not as a genocidal ideology, but just as dumb short-fuse guys who got Germany into another unnecessary war.
- On the other hand, Japan is probably going to be seen as the bigger moster in the war for the decades to come.
One thing that isn't mentioned in either of the videos is that Japan tested their germ pathogens on captured Russians first, and captured Americans later. Rats infested with plague-carrying fleas were later released in Hawaii, but vaccinations were promptly carried out.
While IRL the Unit 731 experiments remained mostly a (thorny) Asian affair between China and Japan, one can imagine how bad this would turn out to be since Russians and Americans were subjected to it, making word get out much easier in the West.
- This world's WWII never had any watershed battle to bolster national spirit, be it a big defeat or a big victory. No Stalingrad, no Kursk, no Midway, no Battle of Britain, just a half-baked Barbarossa that stops at Smolensk at most. How does it affect patriotic mentality, that there is no battle to pin one's national pride to, would be another interesting subject to think about.
I enjoy his works, but Turtledove has a fairly bad habit of telling and not showing major events.
With regards to Germany, I get the feeling it's only a matter of time before war errupts again. The whole "stab in the back" myth that was prevalent after the first world war will probably be propagated further after losing a second war without conflict on German soi. Not to mention politically it seems that Germany will become either a dictatorship or junta, and the post-war tension between Germany and the Soviet Union.
As for the Holocaust, historically the perspecution and killings ramped up after 1939 with the occupation of Poland. Because Nazi Germany never has access to the Jewish population that it did historically (from Poland, the Balkans and the USSR) the apparatus for industrialised killings isn't in place and so Jewish persecution is at a lower level than it would reach in reality.
And yes, historically the Nazi German government required all Jews with "non-Jewish names" to add the last name of Israel or Sara (for men and women, respectively)
The war against Japan will also be much more bloody than in our timeline. Not only because of Japan's use of bioweapons but also because the US doesn't pursue atomic weapons research. So either Japan will be invaded (much like the planned Operatiion Downfall) or the US will impose a blockade and starve Japan into surrender.
I think there are watershed moments, it's just that Turtledove fails to mention them in more detail than in passing. For example the British and French stalling the German advance, or the Soviets doing the same at Smolensk. There's also the Japanese attack on the US Asiatic Fleet and their repulse of the first American counteroffensive. They might seem small due to how Turtledove depicts them, but I think historians looking back on these events will see these as high (or low) points of the war.
Yeah.
The Nazis absolutely did inflict new first names on Jews.
They delighted on devising pretty persecutions in addition to the better known mass murder.
The diaries of Victor Klemperer are good on this.
Interesting that Germany is arguably the big winner of this alt. WW2.
In addition to Austria and Czechoslovakia they can probably get Danzig back by persuading Poland to cede it (since they're now best buds with The Poles) and they can probably control Hungary and Romania via the German minorities in those countries.
This just sounds like a HoI4 game when you turn off historical accuracy and watch the AI go at it. All we need is some border gore, then it would completely accurate!
I imagine with Brits and french turning against Germany you would definitely get border gore on the the eastern front
There were several times I almost started this series on Audible, but didn't because of how many reviews said the narration sucked. Nice to know I wasn't missing out on much.
Hey, Turtledove's Great Britain:
*You can't just take back your declaration of war... TWICE!*
going by the summery, it sounds like this series could have been edited down to 2 or 3 books and not lose much
The video that came early
00:01 me and the war have something in common
I think Turtledove just got really full of himself and thought he could make any theory book work
I would love to see more historical fiction book/show reviews and summaries. Cynical Historian did a great video on Good Lord Bird
The big switch just sounds like Turtledove realized that Germany would lose hard if the allies declared war with Czechoslovakia, even with Poland on their side, but promised his publishing company six books.
Imagine if those map curtains were animated that would be amazing
Have you read the story of Wendell Fertig, the American colonel who promoted himself to Brigadier general and whose adventures read like a wacky hollywood alternate history series?
Alternate history is weird, but history is weirder.
It includes the story of him building a radio with a man who had taken correspondence school lessons, a traveling salesman who once sold radios, and a man who once listened to a radio.
Pretty sure that's not the most insane thing he did.
IMAGINE being an alternate history author who writes c h a r a c h t e r focused books 😵💫
British troops on the eastern front: hey I know we’ve been fighting together for a while but we are now enemies again. Can we go home?
Germans: oh yeah sure go ahead
I know there's numerous issues, but the one that particularly bothers me is Japan still attacking the US. Assuming they made decent gains against the USSR they should've gained access to oil and other natural resources and not really had any reason to attack the US.
This seems less like a real alternate history book series, and more like a multiplayer hoi4 game with historical focus turned off.
I swear I can't stop laughing, this is legit a Hoi4 game in book form.
The Big Switch almost sounds like Turtledove was readying to end the series with just three books to have the war end early as well, and then realized "Oh god, I have to actually write 6 for this book deal." So he just hastily cobbles together the idea of Britain and France joining the Axis to extend things, before then realizing that he was stuck writing with that as an actual plotpoint, and then trying to undo that and reach some kind of conclusion.
The reason the UK troops got to go home is because they were Exiled Divisions, and have to return to home borders before being able to fight
I hate it when that happens.
How many times did Britain and France hit the switch team button exactly?
"It was the first Turtledove series to disappoint me"
I see you haven't read Supervolcano.
I forgot that existed! That's another series that should've been edited down to a single book.