In the genre of "What if Hitler's early life turned out differently?"

September 23, 2023 7:28 PM

Clarkesworld short fiction post
posted by Mr. Gunn (33 comments total)

We hate this. Western culture hates the idea that, if, we could pivot a single person to a better path, then history itself would improve. It implies so many things. Don't ignore eduction. Don't ignore poverty. Don't ignore tribalism. Don't allow multiculturalism. Boo!
posted by metametamind at 9:34 PM on September 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

My criticism of the tale rests more on the idea that an alternate history person will nonetheless run into luminaries like Ernest Hemingway and Charles De Gaulle.
The counterfactual divergence point is theoretically the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, a ripple point before the birth of all three of those individuals. And it posits a Bonapartist France ascendant over the Hapsburg Austria.
De Gaulle was the son of a professor, a family of Burgundian gentry, born in Lille. He was a historian and a French nationalist. Why would he be running a cafe?

If you're going to do counterfactual science fiction, at least do the bother of researching your characters.

Me, I'll stick with the Love Death and Robots episode where Hitler dies after a prolonged session with four Vienna prostitutes who turn out to be hyper-feminist sex vixens from the future. I find it slightly more plausible than this story.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 10:07 PM on September 23, 2023 [10 favorites]

I am a sucker for the genre, and it succeeds within its own limitations, but "what if Hitler would have been pre-emptively rehabilitated by his mean dad being scared into loving him more and a Jewish woman young enough to be his daughter falling in love with him" does feel like the AH equivalent of a sort of "why don't women simply tend and befriend Nazis away in advance" incel rhetoric that feels gross.
posted by Earthtopus at 10:12 PM on September 23, 2023 [16 favorites]

Nope, this is not for me at all. I couldn't finish reading.

I mean, we are in the middle of a similar time in history.
Americans, if Donald Trump had been an honest guy who never became a reality TV star, do you think the trumpists would all be nice liberals and keep their guns locked up? True, there would probably not have been a storm on Congress on January 6 2020, but there would definitely be something else. Those millions of racist white people with grievances would still be here.
Brits, you may agree that David Cameron was an idiot for calling the referendum on Brexit, and that individuals like Boris Johnson took that opportunity for personal gain, but the tradition of blaming the EU for destructive Tory policies goes all the way back to Thatcher herself, and hundreds, if not thousands, of politicians, pundits and journalists have been involved in building that myth, a myth that was believed on both sides of the aisle.

Hitler definitely played an important part in European and even global history. But the part was there for him to play. Many Germans were aggrieved by the Treaty of Versailles, the right was systematically undermining the Weimar government, and that included what we could call the "moderate" conservatives, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Russia were stuck in Germany on their way to the US because of harsh and anti-semitic US refugee policies and finally, the Great Depression hit Germany very hard.
posted by mumimor at 1:14 AM on September 24, 2023 [15 favorites]

I liked the story. Sometimes I want to dream of a better world.

Muminor, without Trump, Trumpists wouldn't necessarily be nice liberals, but they might have been mere right-wing talk show fans. Trump did a lot to energize his fans.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:10 AM on September 24, 2023

Another story by Scholes: Making My Entrance Again with My Usual Flair. Very charming and doesn't involve Hitler.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:37 AM on September 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

Say what you will about Hitler, but he did kill Hitler.
posted by talking leaf at 3:45 AM on September 24, 2023 [27 favorites]

I'll stick with the Love Death and Robots episode where Hitler dies after a prolonged session with four Vienna prostitutes who turn out to be hyper-feminist sex vixens from the future. I find it slightly more plausible than this story.

By Metafilter's Own (TM) John Scalzi. And here it is.
posted by dannyboybell at 6:04 AM on September 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

For alternate-history-Hitler, I rather liked Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream, which is set in a world where Hitler became an artist, came to the US, did cover art for scifi pulp novels, and end up writing a novel of his own that has some familiar themes seen through a distorting mirror. The book includes in-universe critique of that novel.
posted by rmd1023 at 6:06 AM on September 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

I don't like the obsession with singular figures of history. I think it's a flaw in the way we tell stories and frame history with language we use. The background sentiment and the rabble-rousing that wasn't solely Adolf Hitler's doing is as much a part of that history; same for Brexit and Cameron/Farage/Johnson or Bannon/Carlson/Trump.

Would Friedrich Hayek have founded the Mont Pelerin Society that begat UK's Institute for Economic Affairs and USA's Atlas Economic Research Foundation (and international think-tank network The Atlas Foundation) ... had Hayek lived a different life when younger?

(Would the policy wonks writing for Atlas Foundation entities pick other things to do so that the USA might have universal healthcare, broad public transit and investment in infrastructure? I imagine the individualist thought of 'f___ you I've got mine' drives the cognitive dissonance of 'there but for my feudal lords' grace and favor go I'.)

Would ... also ... Rupert Murdoch have created something other than a global media empire?
posted by k3ninho at 7:20 AM on September 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

yeah, I noped on this for the same reasoning as mumimor

The Germans actually won WW I, well, except the last 3 months of it and everyone (left, middle, right, and Nazi) were incensed about the final peace terms after the armistice, especially having to part with a significant chunk of Prussia in the re-creation of a Polish state, plus Alsace-Lorraine, and their African colonies...

I got on a Wochenschau (the weekly German propaganda films) binge last decade, and the raw crowd emotion captured in the filming of the Berlin victory parades after their WW2 victories in Poland and especially France were really impressive.

Hitler and his form of national socialism was really delivering the goods, until it all started unraveling in late '41. Even Stauffenberg was fine (more or less) with the wider Nazi program, up to the Einsatzgruppe operations offended his sensibilities.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:44 AM on September 24, 2023

The story also mentioned Libera being successful and the US not being anti-Semitic so..lots of changes there.

Hitler and Trump both have/had unique qualities (an ability to pull other people into their hateful worldview and make them feel good about it, mostly) that made/make them what they are. Abusers are often weirdly charismatic that way.

If either of them were neutralized first, things would be different but as long as humanity has our weakness for the rush of hating and controlling others, people like them would exist.

My questions are: is inspiring others to good really just a flip side of inspiring them to genocide? Are we positing that in this universe Hemingway was not a shit also?
posted by emjaybee at 7:49 AM on September 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

Long time back, I went to the Art Institute in Vienna, to see this Bosch painting they have. As we were leaving, I suddenly realized that years before, this young man also was leaving the institute because he failed to get into the school because he couldn’t paint people, though he could competently paint buildings. Hence, I slightly felt that art professors caused WWII and the Nazi Party as this young man was you know who. There is probably a lot of big time history caused by someone else’s decisions.
posted by njohnson23 at 10:54 AM on September 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

This story is obscene. "Hitler would be admirable if..." a thought that should have stopped the writing process. I wish I hadn't read this.

If you'd like to read a good parallel universe story today I recommend Ted Chiang's Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:08 AM on September 24, 2023 [8 favorites]

That kiss.... oh, that was the perfect hinge on which Mein Kampf and this story both are hinged.
posted by Jane the Brown at 11:15 AM on September 24, 2023

Stephen Fry's Making HIstory took on the idea of "what if Hitler hadn't existed." He also took into account the overall trends at the time. His answer was "what if the world was even worse?" It was quite a read.
posted by rednikki at 1:12 PM on September 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

Pretty gross. Why did they feel the need to write in a teenager to fall in love with old Hitler? Why have her be brutally raped as the spark of Hitler's revolution? Why write him like some heroic figure destined to impact history one way or the other. The role he occupied in history had little to do with him as a person or his personal history, without him another would fill the spot, it was a collaborative failure of humanity ongoing since the dawn of civilization. Nobody is special or important in history, each of us is a component of the other and those what came before and myriad other factors outside the individual.

I also hate the absurd conclusions of "If Hitler wasn't rejected from art school --" line of thought concluding he'd not be a monster. As if artists can't be monsters too. He would've became a Nazi making Nazi art if he had finished art school at best.
posted by GoblinHoney at 4:00 PM on September 24, 2023 [5 favorites]

The Germans actually won WW I, well, except the last 3 months of it

They really didn't

This is just post-war propaganda
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:09 PM on September 24, 2023 [4 favorites]

I also hate the absurd conclusions of "If Hitler wasn't rejected from art school --" line of thought concluding he'd not be a monster.

Well said and agreed. in Holocaust studies, we devoted one class to just the persona/life of Hitler. the question arose, what moment of time most affected him and his decisions. let's start with August Kubizek the only person to remain friends with Adolf Hitler from his youth until his death. Kubizek wrote a book and dreading the upholstery business, persues music and according to him it was Hitler, age 18, who convinced Kubizek father to let him go to school while he was rejected twice. The moment that stands out, They were about 15 and saw 'Rienzi' and after the performance, Kubizek wrote:
"My friend, his hands thrust into his coat pockets, silent and withdrawn, strode through the streets and out of the city. . . . Never before and never again have I heard Adolf Hitler speak as he did in that hour, and we stood there alone under the stars. . . . It was a state of complete ecstasy and rapture, in which he transferred the character of Rienzi . . . with visionary power to the plan of his own ambitions.''

If one believes this story, the years of destitute and then the war, it's quite difficult to believe we would not be monster even if he succeeded in Architecture.

as to Rienzi, "based on the life of Cola di Rienzo (1313–1354), a late medieval Italian populist figure who succeeds in outwitting and then defeating the nobles and their followers and in raising the power of the people. Magnanimous at first, he is forced by events to crush the nobles' rebellion against the people's power, but popular opinion changes and even the Church, which had urged him to assert himself, turns against him. In the end the populace burns the Capitol, in which Rienzi and a few adherents have made a last stand."
Cola di Rienzo, "After having nourished his mind with stories of the glories and the power of ancient Rome, he turned his thoughts to restoring his native city. Cola wanted to restore Rome, then in degradation and wretchedness, not only to good order, but even to her pristine greatness."

The Monster educated himself enough to have ambitious hate and contempt.
posted by clavdivs at 6:03 PM on September 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

There's a lot to unpack here but, yeah, I tend to agree with those who've said this is kind of obscene for a whole bunch of reasons.

I'm trying to look at it objectively, ignore the Hitler factor (difficult given that it's Hitler and that he's the protagonist of the story) and decide if it's even a good story. Maybe I'm being extra judgey because of biases that are hard to overcome but, content aside, it doesn't even seem particularly well written.
posted by asnider at 10:59 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Canada being part of the US, grateful to be made independent of Britain in the 1700s? No.
posted by joannemerriam at 12:18 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

joannemerriam - Oof. I skimmed right over the part. It's hard to tell exactly where the timeline branched off from our own in this story, with things like that being included. This goes beyond a thought experiment about "what if Hitler had a different set of life circumstances" and instead posits a world so different from our own that it kind of defeats the point that I think it's trying to make.
posted by asnider at 12:37 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

While the story is questionable (can we be done with rape for drama and a man's trigger to action yet? Please?) I think the larger point stands.

We like to belive in a sort of negative Great Man theory so we can blame the evils of the world on a few monsters.

But no.

The conditions that gave rise to Hitler would have given rise to SOMETHING. Absent Hitler some other movement or demigog or dictator would have arisen.

The Holocaust was merely the continuation of over 2,000 years of European antisemitism and genocide. It was unique only in its scale.

We cannot know what, exactly, would have risen up. But the existing social pressure and history of bigotry in that place, in that time, was going to reach a critical mass and do something big. Maybe a different person might have risen and directed it in a different direction. Maybe the conditions were such that only a person preaching nationalism and antisemitism could harness the moment.

The same applies to any great villain in history. Could Andrew Jackson have organized the Trail of Tears if white people in America at that moment had not supported it? Could Napoleon have formed an Empire and conquered much of the world if the the broad social pressures of France at that time had not been pushing that direction?

If you traveled back in time and killed baby Hitler I am sure that someone else would have risen up.

We, rightly, reject the Great Man idea of history for good things, it makes us uncomfortable to reject it for bad things because that means that people in general have a great capicity for evil in the right circumstances.

It is comforting to blame individual bad actors. But it is wrong.
posted by sotonohito at 12:44 PM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

On the story... Yeesh.

I don't like the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope under the best circumstances, but then using her as fodder for rape as drama AND as the instigating event that pushes a man (of course) into action is just... Ugh. Really? Like really? In 2023 someone wrote that?

The part where the man was alternate Hitler and she was Jewish added its own separate layer of awful, but the whole concept for her character was bad from start to finish.

Serioulsy, how many 19 year old girls just run up to random old men, kiss them, then run away becasue they're just so spontaneous and full of joy? Like how often in all human history has that hapened? Twice?

I like alt history, but yeah I'm also not so fond of the tossing in famous people with different lives just for the sake of funsies. The story would have worked better either with Hemmingway and Chaplain as themselves and in Paris for whatever reason, or as different characters entirely. As in any fanfic, using popular characters is a quick and easy way for the audience ot know the character without work on the author's part.

The author was trying for a sort of Picassio at the Lapan Agile vibe, but by turning them into not-Hemmingway and not-Chaplain it lost the utility of putting in historic characters.

The concept isn't entirely bad. But the execution left a lot to be desired. It seemed clumsy, heavy handed, and just clunky.
posted by sotonohito at 12:56 PM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

We need to return to Great Man theory not because any particular man is “great” but because events are far more unanchored and capricious, than we would like to believe. One man can change everything because that’s how easy and volatile change is.

We know from their correspondence and eye witness testimonies that Hitler’s key lieutenants were in every way that counts at best mediocre and venial. There is no reason to believe that anyone else of them could have articulated the NSDAP’s strange brew of revanchism, anti-communism, anti-semitism, germano-mythicism, anti-capitalism, and anti-royalism into the Bundestag plurality they needed to take power.

Something like this is true for pretty much every inflection point of history. One person or a few in the right place at the right or wrong time and boom! There is no reason to believe you’d get the same boom had those people not been there as they were.
posted by MattD at 1:40 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I mean, the notion that Nazism and the Holocaust would still have happened without Hitler, as someone else would have filled that role, is reasonable and the one good idea the story has going for it. Hitler was a monster, but there was an entire historical and systemic context that allowed him to rise to power and do what he did. Rejecting the "great man" theory and saying that it would have happened anyway, but differently, is a good thing, I think.

But I think the way this story did it is kind of gross because it uses a lot of lazy tropes, plays extremely fast and loose with historical figures and the points at which the timeline deviates from our own (to the point that world history is different enough to call into question if it would have played out so similarly, despite these major differences) and, to be blunt, it just isn't especially well-written. The last point is subjective, though, so I won't defend it too strongly.
posted by asnider at 2:50 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

One man can change everything because that’s how easy and volatile change is.

Yeah, look at Trump.

I couldn't finish reading the story, it just got too.... much.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:51 PM on September 25, 2023

*palette
posted by Occula at 9:34 PM on September 25, 2023

International Association of Time Travelers: Members’ Forum

Subforum: Europe – Twentieth Century – Second World War
posted by chmmr at 3:38 AM on September 27, 2023

This was just awful, thanks. I hate female characters being used as--what is the term for it? Mere plot devices? With absolutely unbelievable behaviour? What nineteen year old girl kisses a stranger old enough to be her grandfather and then walks away? ('You were so beautiful'--come on.) And the description of her breasts, ugh. And of course she sticks around long enough to be raped and thus provide our main character's motivation. Ugh again and again.
posted by jokeefe at 12:23 PM on September 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

The Germans actually won WW I, well, except the last 3 months of it

They really didn't

This is just post-war propaganda

Because this apparently needs to be repeated after yesterday's Waffen-SS cockup: regarding the Nazis, you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to them"
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 1:04 PM on September 28, 2023 [4 favorites]

My favorite alternate history/time travel/how-should-girls-fight-nazis book is Kate Atkinson's Life After Life.
posted by mittens at 1:42 PM on September 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

My favorite and most jaw-dropping anticipation of Hilter's gas chambers comes from a letter DH Lawrence wrote to his girlfriend in 1908:

…If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a cinematograph working brightly; then I'd go out in the back streets and the main streets and bring them in; all the sick, the halt, and the maimed; I would lead them gently, and they would smile me a weary thanks; and the band would softly bubble out the 'Hallelujah Chorus'.

As sotonohito points out, this stuff was in the air, and it would have condensed out somewhere.

If not in Hitler, perhaps in someone more competent and lacking the flaws which allowed a war effort as half-assed as the Allies managed to mount to defeat him.
posted by jamjam at 5:34 PM on September 28, 2023 [4 favorites]