Archive for October, 2010

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Naziizm and the dangers of hindsight

Saturday, October 30th, 2010

Nazis versus Nazis

Hanna Reitsch gives rise to this post, someone who was amazing in her work, and who showed humanity in her life (offering to take the Goebbels kids out of Berlin) but who was a committed Nazi, a believer in National Socialism.

But to me that is also a key to a proper understanding of Germany 1933-1945. People whose jobs did not take them into the dark side, who heard rumours and stories, but chose to overlook them, probably thinking them exaggerations. They wanted to believe in their country, they wanted it to be strong again, to be proud again – and living where and when I do, I can well understand the pull that that idea would have on a sizeable body of the population. It is after all why many people do not vote – because its just a bunch of self-seeking liars out to get you. But if politics gave rise to a party, or movement, you could believe in, who were something new and offered hope for your country, then would you not want to believe?

That is many people’s problem with looking back at National Socialism, they forget that it was new at the time, that Fascism itself was new. They forget that people wanted hope, that they wanted something that was not the same old failure of regular politics and was not the menace of international communism. Fascism seemed to offer that, and National Socialiam especially seemed to be a new beginning, where the good things were infused with the power of light, and the bad things were necessary evils that people could overlook. After all, is that not the law – if you transgress, you suffer, but if you toe the line you will be fine?

War brings its own problems, its own devastating lows, its own fears, nightmares and beliefs. In the midst of this people will pin their hopes on what they believe in. More than that, they will see their only salvation as being in sticking to the cause, backing those who they gave their trust to. Its why people in the MidWest voted for Bush Jnr in 2004 even though they didn’t want to – I recall interviews where such people said they would back their commander in chief in wartime, even though their politics was not aligned in that direction. How much more so would it be if your country was being bombed every night?

We are good at condemning those who bomb us, at calling them murderers and pulling together for the cause of good, but we forget to give similar feelings to our enemies. German cities were being bombed, German families were being slaughtered. Sure, it was war and it may have been strategically necessary, but that does not get inside the heads of those who believed in Hitler. They saw the Allies trying to destroy them, not trying to destroy the state or the Nazi regime, but trying to wipe themselves out. There was not just a firestorm in Hamburg, or in Dresden, massively destructive bombing happened all over the place, and Rostock was in fact one of the first places to have its city centre obliterated. But night after night, for months on end, German city after German city got pounded by the bombers. The people who lived in the midst of this had a stark choice – hate their enemy, and believe in their government, or despair of life and salvation and look into the abyss.

It is an insanity to expect most people to jump to that shadowy third option, to join or create a resistance to the only force that seems to be trying to defend them against the attacks. Instead, in the midst of despair they will cling to the only thing left they have to believe in, however illogical that may seem to an outside observer.

That people committed to the regime, who believed in its ability to deliver a new future, and a new hope, would continue to believe for want of a palatable alternative should be seen as only natural. We are the ones who are committing a sin by refusing to understand this, by demonising people who continued to believe because they had nothing left, who pinned their hope in an evil man because if it was not him, it was nothing.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

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Posted in History | 1 Comment »

Railway Networks and Companies

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

Transport Networks

The other night I dreamt of a railway company called CCCM which ran trains across the breadth of Great Britain, and stood for Coombs Connor Chambers Marine. The implication was it was 1914 and the Great War had been going on for three years, and that CCCM were newly in the railway business, since the M stood for Marine and they were mainly a shipping company. They had bought up small railways to create a new large company, in the spirit of the Great Central of OTL. But the difference was that unlike the “all routes lead to London” approach of OTL, CCCM had built their system to join West and East.

Now, this dream lasted not very long, even in dream time. A train was coming in to a small town station at night, and lorries were waiting to unload stuff from it.

The moral of this story is that transport networks are not governed solely by goegraphy, or solely by economics, but also by company ambition and the individual needs of companies who take action to secure what they want, even if the over-arcing logic of economics might argue against it.

Because London was out of bounds for cross-traffic, the major stations in London were all termini. King’s Cross, Euston, Victoria, Waterloo, Liverpool Street, Marylebone, the lines all lead in and out the same way. If the rules had been different, and the railway companies had been permitted to build stations in the city centre then the lines would have run in and out in two directions. Their location would have been different, and their names (of course since, apart from Victoria, their names were location-based).

But not only this, the whole of the railway network would have been different if companies could have run through London and out again. The buying up of smaller companies would have made greater sense if they could have been merged into the one name – if the Great Western could have run through London and out again to the East, then it would have had incentive to buy and absorb the Great Eastern.

It may immediately strike one that the Great Western’s name would not make huge sense if it included the Great Eastern also, but the history of name changes in reality reflects this. The LNWR and the Midland Railways both grew out of other longer-established companies with geographical names. The Grand Junction Railway was the largest of those which amalgamated to make the London and North Western Railway, and it in itself had been an amalgamation of other small companies. The name Grand Junction had made sense when it had been all of these smaller companies merged into one, focused on Crewe. But when it in turn merged with others and got a complete North-South presence, the LNWR was the logical name, naming both ends of the new line, one in London, the other in the North-West.

Had the Great Western been able to run cross-rail in London and swallow up the Great Eastern it would have changed its name – quite possibly (and ironically) to the Great Central, which in OTL was a completely different railway coming down the spine of England, Loughborough to London Marylebone.

Another factor to consider is that driving egomaniac businessmen make the accumulation of diverse railway interests into a single company possible. Terms such as ‘The Railway King’ describe individuals who have drive and ruthlessness to succeed, despite ethical considerations. Different individuals in different places would have led to different outcomes, to different collections of lines under a single company, to longevity for some company names, and shortened life for others.

Money of course is another major factor – shares, or owners with lots of money is how companies get to afford their expansion. Shares led to share scandals, to railway bubbles, to spurts of growth then periods of retrenchment. This, though, is pretty much simple economics, and economic cycles.

In any long-term timeline, the rail networks are not going to evolve identically to OTL. At the smallest level, this can add colour to a timeline or narrative – going to catch the Great British sleeper to Aberdeen, or the Pan-Britannic Railway from London to Cardiff. At a larger level different networks and different companies would effect, and be the effect, of greater national issues.

Grey Wolf

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Posted in Discussion, Fiction | 76 Comments »

The Conundrum of Infinity

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

The Conundrum of Infinity

If there is an infinite number of stars, what if we are the only one with life?

Logic would say that if there is an infinite number of stars, then there are many out there with life. Mathematics would say (confusingly) that an inifinite number of stars means that there are an infinite number with life (and an infinite number without life)

But if there is only one then this is a 1-in-infinity chance. If we view ratios of chance as being divisors, then 1 divided a nice 8 lying on its side is…well, it is as close to zero as possible. It is even closer to zero than possible, because infinity is a mathematical construct. It is not a logical number.

Basically we have a conundrum – infinity is a logical concept literally when we talk about unknown size. But numerically it becomes illogical – how can you perform any serious calculations when one factor is everything, despite the fact that the rest of the calculation includes numbers which are NOT part of it?

Grey Wolf

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Posted in Philosophy | 58 Comments »

Statistics and Probability in Alternate History

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

Statistics and Probability in Alternate History

If I want to create a timeline in which some stuff changes, but a lot does not…

It can be argued that some of these events are unlikely – but none of them are any more unlikely than the alternatives.

This is a valuable lesson Rick Robinson taught me – that whilst an option may be statistically unlikely, it won’t be any more unlikely than the alternatives.

Something may have only a 1-in-100 chance of happening, but so could any of the alternative options. If all of them have at best a 1-in-100 chance, then the one that we use for the timeline, to keep it in some way aligned to OTL is no less likely than any other.

A simple way to explain statistical unlikeliness is to shake a dice – there is a one in six chance that a 6 will come up, and a five-in-six chance it won’t. But its EQUALLY as likely as any other option – a 1, a 2, a 3, a 4, or a 5.

The bigger the dice, or rather the more multi-faceted it is, then the better the example – twenty sided dice are popular in role-playing games, so here you have only a one-in-twenty chance of getting a 6, and a 19-in-20 chance of not, BUT any of the other options have only a 1-in-20 chance as well.

Thus a timeline in which we toss our dice and choose the 6 from the list of possible options makes sense.

I’ve always adopted a coin-toss approach to some aspects of alternate history, that something that in OTL was 50-50 could equally go a different way than historically without a direct relation to the POD and its butterflies.

This is the opposite of what I am talking about in the timeline question, but works to the same principle – that chance is chance, and possibilities are what is possible, no matter what the odds. Causality can just as often be chance, or rather the play of chance on the sequence of events.

This is where butterfly fanatics really get excited, but they miss the point. They think that sex a day later, or leaving house ten minutes earlier will change the entire world. But if you reverse the argument about chance – that such tiny changes would change thngs massively are a 1-in-1000 then the 999-in-1000 against it CAN be statistically significant. Funny thing statistics!

So, this stastical summary should hopefully explain the choices that the gremlins of time make in such a timeline.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

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Posted in Discussion, Philosophy | 81 Comments »

Countries Not Immediately Affected by Your POD

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Countries Not Immediately Affected by Your POD

So many times one reads alternate history timelines where the Point of Divergence affects country A, and has knock-on effects only to those countries that country A now does different things towards. Fifty years down the line country B, which never had any conflict with country A, is strangely, weirdly exactly the same as it was in Our Time Line, no butterflies having ever played with its destiny. But this makes no sense at all !

Perhaps the worst example of this kind of writing was Harry Turtledove in ‘The Great War’ series of books. Now, the first books were well-written and well-plotted within themselves but the assumptions underlying the historical convergence was a complete abdication of the role of alternate history. Despite the Confederates winning the American Civil War, despite their being a second such war twenty years later, also won by the CSA, there is STILL the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, and still the exact same alliance systems in Europe. The only difference is that the two American nations are aligned to one and the other, and thus start the war from the beginning.

Now, I will admit that this was an interesting narrative device, and I often see new posters asking on alternate history boards what a Confederate victory would mean for the First World War, but it makes no serious sense at all. The logical answer to that question would be that there would be NO First World War as we know it, and that there may in fact be one a lot sooner.

What needs to be remembered is that country B not doing something does mean it does nothing instead, it will do something else. Where country B is a knock-on from the POD, is affected by what may call second level butterflies this may not be immediately obvious to anyone who doesn’t really know the history of country B and thinks that somehow it exists in a vacuum of its own devising, immune from what everybody else does as long as it does not directly affect them.

Examples

But this is wrong, and illogical. Examples are easy to come by. Let us take Korea, a country that most people regard as the late nineteenth century whipping boy of East Asia. It is not immediately obvious that if there is a world war in 1878 Korea becomes Russian, perhaps. But let us see – if Germany defeats France in 1878, then France is in no position to defeat China in the Sino-French War of the 1880s, and thus Japan is in no position to defeat China in the early 1890s but some clash between China and Japan is likely to occur, with the probability that Japan does not do very well, even if it is able to avoid defeat. Russia’s ambitions in Korea will be strengthened by Japan’s weakness there, and one may well see in 1905 a Russo-Chinese War over Korea, resulting in a limited Russian victory that gains them their objective.

Of course, it may go way, way differently, but that would be alright. As long as there is a causal history then it doesn’t matter what the eventual result is. What does matter is that it is not the default of Japan beats China, Japan beats Russia, Korea becomes a Japanese colony. If France is in no position to defeat China in the 1880s then China will not be so dangerously weakened.

Obviously, if France is not in this position, it does not mean that somebody else may not possibly be taking their place. If Germany has defeated France in 1878 then it is possible that by the 1880s it is coming up against China, resulting in a Sino-German War, and a German victory. But a German victory is more likely to mean that any Japanese ambitions to take territory or influence off China leads to Germany squaring off against Japan, than was the case with a French victory due to French interests in Indo-China. Germany would be viewing a victory against China as a calling card to the Far East, and a ticket to meddle across the greater field of play.

That is only one example, of course, but hopefully it is instructive in some way. A country completely uninvolved in a European war would be affected by the fall-out of that war. It might not immediately notice this in the first ten years, but after twenty there have already been knock-on effects, and after thirty major events concerning the destiny of the country would be going in a different direction.

If we return to the Turtledove example, then we immediately can ask what are the effects of a Confederate victory in the American Civil War, especially bearing in mind how the alliance systems developed by 1914? The first instance is that Maximilian’s Mexico survives, and thus France does not suffer a humiliation in having to withdraw. One can still see the 1866 war between Austria and Prussia taking place, and the formation of the North German Confederation, but would France by 1870 really be so beaten down and paranoid that the Ems Telegramme would drive it to war? In fact, with relative success in Mexico, France would be unlikely even to have engaged in face-saving failed deals with Bismarck over Luxembourg, or even Belgium.

Okay, we could countenance the Franco-Prussian War breaking out, but IMVHO it would have a different beginning, or at least a different legal understanding of such. In OTL Napoleon III saw the Ems Telegram as being the last straw, that if France did not respond it, and he, would be completely humiliated, and in being so his throne would be under threat. But if Mexico was still a live project, and the complete loss of face over Luxembourg had not happened (albeit with Luxembourg still remaining Dutch, simply no attempt being made to buy it) then by 1870 fear of German encirclement would exist, but fear over loss of face and the overthrow of the dynasty would be far less. It may be that as in 1914 it would be impossible for historians to work out objectively where war guilt lay in this alternate Franco-Prussian War, and that legally Germany would look as liable as France.

Maybe none of that matters; if Prussia wins, then the German Empire is formed, but is it so clear cut that the Paris Commune follows upon the defeat? It came to exist because with the empire having lost the last shreds of its legitimacy the radical elements surged into power in besieged Paris. Maybe that happens here, but maybe it does not – France after all still had a field army. The argument over whether to commit it to battle is what lay at the heart of many an argument between Regent Eugenie and the politicos in Paris. Thre Prince Imperial was safely in Britain, and legally the empire could continue in the captivity of its Emperor, especially if he could be abdicated.

Even if the Paris Commune and the dark days of the Germans pressing the siege still happen, it does not follow that the Third Republic would be the inevitable result. Orleanist monarchists had an overwhelming majority in the first assembly and it was assumed that they would restore the monarchy, but the intractability of the proposed king, the Comte de Chambord, scuttled that. Perhaps it is so again, but it need not be – maybe the assembly does not demand the tricolor, maybe Henri d’Orleans can compromise on the Fleur de Lys. One or the other would result in the restoration of the monarchy.

Even if everything in France follows an analogous path, by the mid 1870s things are going to be impacting upon the Third Republic. With an independent Confederacy and a surviving Mexican Empire they cannot do otherwise. If Maximilian and Charlotte do not have any natural children, then his adopted Iburtide heirs are going to acceed to the throne of Mexico. If one assumes that Maximilian and Charlotte’s inability to conceive was due to stress etc then by the 1870s they are likely to have a pregnancy, and if it does not miscarry there will be a child, an heir even if female subject to whatever succession laws Maximilian promulgates and perhaps amends.

Mexican history is never nice and straightforward. If Maximilian only has a daughter he would probably want to marry her to an Iturbide prince, regardless of the semi-incestuos nature of daughter and adopted son, and regardless of the difference in age. If Maximilian’s constitution gives way to the strains it is under and he dies, then an Iturbide may become regent for the daughter, and the daughter may sadly die under uncertain circumstances, or more likely Iturbide attempts to seize power and change the laws of succession. Cue probably European intervention, and also probably Confederate action of some kind.

We can carry on with “If A then B, if B then C” and different values for A,B and C, but the basic principle is what is at issue here. After ten years things may appear the same but the underlying issues have been changed significantly. After twenty years issues of major import have happened in a different fashion from OTL; even if they have not directly impacted they would be but one step away. After thirty years major events are happening in a different fashion as A has affected B and B has now affected C.

I cannot conceive of a realistic situation where after a Confederate victory in the American Civil War, by 1914 the alliance systems are the same as OTL, the rivalries the same, and the impetus for war the same, with the only difference being the existence of the American nations on different sides of the alliance systems.

Turtledove tried an intelligent tactic by having had the German armoured cruisers Roon and Yorck visit the USA prior to the war, but this ignores how even the fact of the US alliance would have changed German High Seas Fleet thinking. Why have a couple of armoured cruisers when you could get a squadron of battlecruisers stationed where they would threaten both CSA warships and British convoys to/from Canada? Even a squadron of light cruisers on permanent station in the USA would be a vastly greater threat, and would make much greater strategic sense.

Even if we swallowed massive convergence and looked solely at the two American nations involvement in the alliance systems, the idea that Europe would continue in the same fashion, down the same road makes no sense at all. North America is not a separate world financially from Europe, and the relationships of OTL are going to be fractured and realigned with two nations and two alliances. The USA is going to be weaker, for having been defeated twice, meaning that people like Carnegie and JP Morgan may well not have the same influence as OTL, and even if they do they would be far less likely to invest in Britain, member of an opposing alliance system, than they would be in the German Empire or in her Austrian and Italian allies. Imagine Carnegie libraries in Austria, or the White Eagle fleet of passenger ships operating out of Naples and Genoa…

If the USA is not able to declare war on Spain, then the position of Spain in the European alliance system becomes an important point. If as Turtledove has it Spain has strangely sold Cuba to the CSA, then it still retains the Philippines and associated islands, and Spain’s role in any Far Eastern front is going to be vital. It is a sad distortion that historians assume that Spain had a rubbish fleet of ancient hulks in 1898 and would not have been able to mount any sort of realistic naval expedition in an ATL 1914. Spain’s ships were not useless, they were just maintained in a relatively poor condition, and nowhere near as good in defence as the Americans proved in attack. By 1914, there would have been a sizeable force of relatively modern cruisers in Manila, especially if we can accept the idea that Spain has sold Cuba to the CSA. Using these offensively, Spain can power-project, it can attack and not defend, and it can make one ship tie down many of the enemy as the German light cruisers did in OTL in 1914.

Now, none of this is what will happen, it is only what could happen, but IMHO the one thing that would NOT happen is for things to go along just as OTL.

Determinations

What is important is that no country is going to remain immune to a change, that one can demarcate temporal boundaries where effects will begin to make themselves felt, even if there is no direct knock-on from the POD, or from its direct consequences.

Countries not immediately affected by your POD are not going to go their merry way down a road of convergence. They are going to be affected, and not a huge amount of research is necessary to see how to rough out a timeline for them where they are affected. It is much easier to accept a timeline where sensible, if low level changes have been impacted upon what might be called third-party countries, than it is to accept dull convergence where this is the less logical of outcomes.

It is of course much easier to accept if the changes and results have been worked through in some detail, rather than with a broad-brush approach. The latter is acceptable as an alternative to no real change at all, but a step-by-step approach to a country makes much greater sense, and provides the story with additional back-stories and topics to dive into than would an attempt to force allohistorical convergence upon a nation.

And it is fun! It may be work, but plotting out how a nation is being affected by the changes around it is fun – or why is the author involved in alternate history in the first place? One would admit that the more countries one has already done, the more complicated it becomes to tie additional countries into the mix, but it is better to tie them into the allohistorical events going on that it is to blithely assume convergence and have them as close to a carbon copy of reality as possible.

For example, if a world war breaks out in the late nineteenth century, one should not assume that Spain pays it no heed and ends up hammered by the USA. Why would they ignore a world war? Why would they not seek to act in their best strategic interests, even if this simply means joining in in the dying months to get the kudos of being on the winning side? And if they did decide to remain neutral, would this not probably mean that they felt free to massively reinforce their colonial forces, build up their garrisons, and take on and destroy rebels that had long been giving them problems? If a world war in the mid 1890s results in a drastically altered Europe, and Spain has remained aloof, might not the price of their remaining aloof be that they have ruthlessly put down both the Cuban and the nascent Filipino rebellions?

Even if we look at a country that tends to hide in the shadows there are interests, worries, fears and hopes that would come to the surface. For example with Portugal, if there is a world war in the early 1890s, to steal the above idea, Portugal is going to have the dual focus of preserving the African empire it does have, and enlarging the claims it maintains on additional African areas. To an extent these overlap, since some of the land that is internationally recognised as Portuguese in this period is actually only claimed, perhaps patrolled by infrequent colonial incursions, but by no means occupied at this juncture. On the other hand, there are lands claimed by Portugal, and claimed by others, where nobody yet has any sort of presence. These latter are open to infraction, especially if one’s rivals are tied down in a major war, and Portugal is not going to be so slow off the mark that if Britain is bogged down in defending its position in Europe, Portugal won’t push its position in what became the Rhodesias. The rose-coloured strip was an aspiration not a dream, was an assumed reality and not a mere hope.

Add in these details to the timeline – Spain vigorously subdues its rebel colonies (again – which means perhaps not for the last time having to do so) and Portugal establishes treaties giving it legal claim on the rose-coloured strip. Even if Britain is victorious in this putative world war, and the USA rearms its navy as per OTL, it does not affect what has already happened as a virtual fait accompli. It adds colour and contrast to your timeline, and means that whatever you have happen down the line (another Cuban rebellion, a US war of conquest, a British Nyasaland even) you have not simply played fool to the Gods of Convergence.

Conclusion

No country exists in a vacuum, except by the laziness or blatant manipulation of the author.

It may look like work to devise a history for a specific country in your timeline, but you are only called into having to do it if that country plays any role in your writing, and anyway, is not creating a whole new alternate world what you are in this for, what you think of as fun?

If its not fun to do this, then perhaps you need to step back, abandon alternate history and either adopt time-travel science fiction, or write pure historical fiction instead. Either is a lot better than bad alternate history fiction, and either can get accolades and praise in the real world, when bad alternate history fiction will never get either

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

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Posted in Discussion, Fiction | 21 Comments »

The Things People Say

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

The Things People Say

It is always the most difficult part of writing an alternate history novel, getting the right feel for the way that people talk. Many common aphorisms, cliches, sayings and greetings would not be in use, logically thinking. However, there is a certain amount of amelioration along Rick Robinson’s lines of if you’re making something up, and what existed anyway is as likely as what you make up, then you may as well go for what existed anyway. Thus there is no need to change everything, and in a world where Shakespeare and the Bible still exist, then a lot of common parlance would have the same root – its amazing how many sayings are rooted either in one of the Bard’s plays, or in the Bible, especially from Proverbs or Psalms.

But of course you want your characters to speak at least somewhat differently, for effect if nothing else. A large part of this can be created by seeing to the other areas that I discuss in my posts and articles, things such as Music, brands and marques, popular names, and so on. Jingles from radio adverts, or straplines from television adverts may well be things that the common person, or perhaps most especially the young adult, speak to each other. For example when I was growing up, Hereward Radio frequently had adverts for the car sales firm T C Harrison, with the jingle “TC Harrison, there’s no comparison” and if the word ‘comparison’ popped up in lessons, or in homework assignments, the jingle was one of the first things to come to mind. More recently, anytime a former colleague of mine was finding the mire of legal documents she was working through bemusing she wasn’t confused, she was “confused dot com”. In an alternate world, such jingles and clever advertising ploys are going to be available for careful use of the author.

Greetings are an intriguing area. When I was growing up, aged maybe 8 to 11, when you met up with your friends you said “Watcha!” and when you left them you said “Seeya!”. Later, I guess one just said “Hi” but now that I’ve moved to Wales, the passing greeting that everyone uses is “Alright” to which the general reply is also “Alright”. Of course, in Nazi Germany you were as likely to greet another with “Heil Hitler!”, if only to be on the safe side, as with ‘Guten morgen”. In Arabic cultures it is usually a ritualised Islamic greeting, with its equally ritualised reply.

In an alternate timeline, you could keep with more formal greetings, “Good morning” being the obvious one, “Good day”, or some sort of “Top of the morning!” which always feels Irish, even when not spoken with an accent. This retention of formality from an older age fits some alternate timelines, but not others, so feel yourself, see which one your timeline is. It may well be that you want to create a completely new greeting, not too difficult if it on the lines of ‘Heil Hitler’ and your dictator is John Smith – “Hail Smith!” would do nicely, and add a touch of the macabre to your writing.

“Hey man!” and “Yo dude!” both have an obvious similarity in that the first part is the active greeting and the second part referencing the person being greeted. It would not be too difficult to play on this with a greeting of your own making, perhaps using guy, or fellow, or chap instead.

Exclamations are another aspect of common life, often merging into swearing, but for the sake of this section kept apart from it. “Jolly hockeysticks!” and “Oh my giddy Aunt!” were both common once, and in fact Patrick Troughton’s Dr Who even makes the second exclamation in one of his adventures. Nowadays, they sound both posh and weird; even the word ‘giddy’ has more or less fallen out of use, with ‘dizzy’ generally being used in its place. But their origins are probably in creating acceptable euphenisms for swear words, such as kids often said “Sugar!” or “Gold!” to stay out of trouble with parents or teachers, though nowadays they more often than not can easily get away with more mild forms of actual swearing. In an alternate timeline, different euphenisms for swearing can exist, and I knew a woman who used to train teachers and one of her pieces of advice was to make up your own swearwords so that if things go wrong you will unthinkingly say “Fluffy Dogs!” rather than effing hell, and not shock or disturb the children – or their parents! Such made-up swearwords could become mainstream in your timeline.

Swearing itself is not fixed in stone, and some words we currently view as beyond the pale were thought of as rather tame a century or two ago, whilst curses we now think nothing of were seen as the absolute in filth at other times, often due to reasons of associated blasphemy which most people don’t even notice these days. Swearing is rarely invented, because then it would lack the impact – if someone decided that ‘smoog’ was a swearword, anyone who didn’t know this and heard it would not know they’ve been sworn at. The words and phrases often have centuries of meaning behind them, often going back into old English.

The exception to this is in the area of insults. Once, walking to work, some obnoxious guy yelled out at me “Hey batty boy!” and laughed nastily. I assumed it must be some kind of racial insult that I didn’t know, since the guy was black, but when I asked some of my younger colleagues they said that the word was the current abusive term for calling somebody gay and the idiot had probably not liked my light coloured trousers! Non-swearing insults are thus an area where the author in alternate history can have an amusing play. Some famous novels already do this so you would be following in well-trodden but effective footsteps (if footsteps can be said to be effective?)

Abusive terms have that strange dual quality of often not being understood by the victim, and of being too widely applied. I was once attacked in school by a West Indian kid who called me “honkey” as he hit me. I assumed that he was making fun of the size of my nose, but later learned that it was a term of abuse used by black people towards white people. I was angry when I told my friends of the incident and called the lad a “paki” because at that time I didn’t know any other abusive term for people of colour. Of course, what is now referred to as “the N word” would have been more correct, but it wasn’t in my parlance. Turning it on its head, I recently read about the experience of the first generation of Indian and Pakistani children to be schooled in British cities and how they were often called ‘niggers’ because those wishing to abuse them did not know of an alternative abusive phrase.

Two-part curses or exclamations are another area. In one episode of House a character wishing to swear but being filmed shouts “Fork!” Among my current acquaintances if anyone did that the immediate riposte would be “handles!”. Sneezing is another area, usually greeted by “Bless you” or “Gesundheit” but for comedy sometimes greeted with “Bless you my son” as a play on the first, and if “Gesundheit” is given, then it sometimes also has a rebound reply of its own.

Differences in the use of the same word can be intriguing – bumming a fag means different things to different people. Even the word ‘truck’ means something different dependant on where you are from – in the USA it can be a gigantic lorry or juggernaut, in Britain its the smaller version of such things. The word ‘juggernaut’ itself was coined from a Hindu myth, though as a term it is falling out of use as Americanisms take over British speech.

That, of course, is another thing – cultural influence from abroad. If you live in a bungalow, but Clive of India had been an inept commander, it would probably be called a cottage or a villa, rather than the word that English adopted from the Indians for a single-storey dwelling. Without the British imperial presence in India and China it is unlikely that terms such as cash, cha (for tea) or pyjamas (pajamas) would exist, or that words such as guru or mandarin would have their common contemporary meanings.

Changing language in alternate history is therefore a process of identifying what influences would not be there and replacing them with what influences would be there. With religion, if there is no Reformation, then Britons in general would probably have that mixture of curse and exclamation involving the Mother of Christ – “By Our Lady!” being an example. If Christianity never happened, then the field of religious exclamations is even wider, dependant on what pantheon did triumph, or if it is a Druidic natural religion. “God’s Teeth!” probably transcends most pantheons, whilst “Holy Shit!” probably fits even a naturalistic, or animalist religion as well. But “By Thor’s Hammer!” or “Forked Trident!” would be suited only to their relevant pantheons.

Abbreviated speech is another area which is deserving of attention. Often when young children start writing and ask for spellings from the teacher they do not know that the apparent word they are asking for is in fact a conflation, or an abbreviation. A child once asked for “wunsuppona” not having a clue that it was “Once upon a” to be followed by ‘time’ (a word they did know). But in the area of popular abbreviations these come and go over time, and according to popular culture, as much as from the degeneration of the language. Currrent ones that would not arouse any reaction include “gonna” (which Gordon Brown used during the election campaign in an attempt to sound like a man of the people), “kinda”, “dunno”, “gotta” and “hafta”, often mixing and matching so “dunno, you kinda gotta do it” is a meaningful phrase, at least in speech.

My inclusion of “hafta” in that list was deliberate, again to illustrate the difference between American and British versions of English. A Brit would say “You have to” whilst an American would say “You got to”, meaning in both cases “You have got to”. Have and Got often seem to be in a war across the ocean, “They don’t got it” and “They don’t have it”, or a more ubiquitous term that I’ve completely forgotten but will hopefully remember in time for editing this page to turn it into an article on my website, rather than the blog!

If your characters are not actually speaking English, but you the novelist are writing their speech in English, because you are English and so is your audience, and you rather doubt they could manage Russian, or German, or French, then a different set of rules may apply. Some are simply versions of the above – Anglicise a French curse, or leave it in the original. “Merde!” sounds more genuine than writing “Death!” as an exclamation, though the latter would get across just what the exclamation is, and fit in better with the rest of the dialogue being in English.

Time periods, and propaganda, can dictate some things in speech you are writing as English but which is not – for example is Russia a “Fatherland” (Tsarist usage) or a “Motherland” (Communist usage) ? In German, if you have a ship named after a male it should be referred to as a “he”, “him”, “his” and not as the feminine that would be usual in English and which, I think, is the default in German if it is not named after a male. This, one assumes, is similar to how an otherwise male verb in French (eg chat for cat) has a female form if the individual incidence in question is definitely female (chatte). This latter cannot really be reflected when the language is being written as English, but is a useful light to illustrate the German example which can be, eg the battleship Bismarck would be referred to in the masculine, so not “She tried to outrun the Hood and Prince of Wales” but “He tried to outrun the Hood and Prince of Wales”.

Being alternate history, of course, it does not need to be the Communists who change Russia from a masculine to a feminine, it could be any other group you have in power, or even a power-crazed female emperor. The idea is what is important here, not the actuality of the fact.

Summation

  • It is not necessary to alter what you do not want to alter, if there is no need to alter it – if what term is used in reality makes enough sense in your alternate history, then it can meet Rick Robinson’s rule of being as good as any you can make up in its stead.
  • Swearing and cursing usually has a centuries’ old origin so it is more a matter of what is in vogue, and what current society thinks more or less filthy than of making new terms up
  • Insults and abusive terms are more dependant on popular culture and on things such as gangs and sub-cultures so are more open to the author’s manipulation, and invention
  • Euphemistic swear words and curses are usually time-locked and cultural, so would be open to the author to choose what he or she wishes for whatever reason that these be
  • Brand names, jingles, straplines and advertising slogans are all generally short-term and can be invented to fit the character of the timeline or period that is being written about. Some (eg “Its a duesy!”) have a much longer shelf life, but have long ago shed their associations with a product (Duesenburg cars which went bust in the 1930s!)
  • Abbreviations and greetings come and go, can be ignored if you don’t want to change them, or can provide a fertile playground if you do
  • Shakespeare and the Bible provide a cornucopia of quotes and sayings in common use, so if both of these have happened in your alternate timeline you do not need to worry about changing them
  • Applying Rick Robinson’s rule again, changing a few obvious things can be much more effective than trying to change a myriad of lesser things that just as easily could have fallen out the way they did historically
  • Avoiding pitfalls is at least as important as creating amazing, amusing and logical new ways for people to speak. If there is no likely reason for an OTL phrase or saying to become common parlance in your alternate history, then it is important to omit it and use something else instead, and the substitute’s use is probably going to be more effective in your writing than by replacing “Shit!” with “Faeces!”

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

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First Names in Alternate History

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

People get their names from three sources

-1- Names which have been in the family for a long time
-2- Names which are owned by current famous or admired figures
-3- Names which are in vogue

There is the 4th one too – Names which a person takes a fancy to, or thinks important for their own reasons, and we mustn’t forget this one. This category includes default names (often biblical) and nature names, such as those Hippies often chose for their children (Oak, Storm, River etc)

Each of these sources can trump another – a name which has been in the family for generations for the first son might lose out if a new baby is born as the first son of the next generation just as a famous national figure reaches their zenith.

Names are not set in stone until the moment of christening/registration and many a parent has thought that they knew the name of their baby-to-be only to change it after the baby was born.

But for alternate history purposes what we are really interested in here, is a mixture of the second and third instances, with a small mix of the fourth.

To take a modern example, whilst the name Kylie was not unknown prior to her fame (or neither Miss Minogue nor her co-star on Neighbours Kylie Flinker would have borne it), it was not at all common and was in pretty limited use. But when her fame took off, the name Kylie really rocketed in popularity.

It can be more difficult with names that are always there anyway – there are always girls christened Charlotte, and whilst Charlotte Church might have boosted the popularity of the name for a while, it was not so obvious as any individual baby Charlotte might well have been named that anyway – statistically there was a surge, but it was less of a surge in percentage terms as there were always a few Charlottes around, decade after decade.

An example of a name that can be considered in vogue is Jessica, year after year high in the list of new baby names, but never really having someone it is named after. The same goes for the boy’s name Jack. Newspapers and celebrity magazines help by letting the public know what celebrities or people who are really famous are naming their children – but did we see a rise in the instance of Daisy Boo, or Buddy Bear? Its a mixture of fame and vogue which names get used the most.

In the past, the availability of celebrity gossip was limited to those who lived in the cities and could afford a newspaper or newsheet. But the names that everyone knew were the royal names, the names of the leading politicians and the names of the leading military commanders of the day.

Added to this, in the cities, would be the names of entertainers of one form or another, quite possibly the names of famous hangmen, notorious criminals and the names that the literate, or semi-literate, saw on advertisement signs – for shops, or stalls or goods.

Alternate History

If the world you are setting your story or timeline is has some significantly different names in its recent past, then expect more of your characters to bear those names.

Example 1 If Charlotte, daughter of King George IV, had not died in childbirth and had become Queen, then both her name and that of her husband, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, would have been high among the names that new parents considered giving to their children.

Concomittantly, the names of Victoria and of Albert would have been statistically far fewer.

Example 2 If Hitler had never risen to power, the male name Adolf would have been more common in English speaking nations, and there would be one or two amongst your acquaintances

Example 3 Sporting prowess also has its impact; the girls name Shannon took off after the success of the gymnast Shannon Miller, for example. Also in gymnastics, the name Nadia had a miniboost after the success twenty years before of Nadia Komeneci.

Example 4 Even fictional names have their impact. Whilst Bianca Jagger is of course factual, the name Bianca for a modern girls name did not take off until the popularity of the character Bianca on the soap Eastenders, a character ironically probably named in the scriptwriter’s mind for Bianca Jagger.

None of these are rules, only observations. Regarding Example 3, one did not notice a boost in popularity in English-speaking countries for either the name Olga in the 1970s, or Lavinia in the 1980s despite the successes of Olga Korbuts and Lavinia Milosevici.

Some of it is to do with politics – there would not be many Labour supporters in 1945 who would have named their son Winston after Prime Minister Churchill. Then again, perhaps politicians are always a neutral or a negative – how many Clements were there, named for Attlee or Margarets named for Thatcher? People probably don’t consider politicians by and large to be people they should name their children after. It only comes into effect when they decide that they are people they should NOT name their children after – like Adolf Hitler.

Thoughts

I had a great aunt named Olga – I don’t know why, nobody seems to know why, not now anyway. She was Welsh on both sides, and her sisters had names that were relatively common in Britain at the time, though largely unheard of now for a baby. But Olga? I think it must have come from the Grand Duchess of that name, the eldest of Tsar Nicholas II’s daughters and someone who would have been in the news a lot around the time of her birth, someone with seemingly exotic and glamorous connections. I could be wrong but it fits the time frame, and one can only play ‘what ifs’ with it – what if Olga Nicolaevna had not lived beyond infancy, would the second daughter of the Tsar, Tatiana have supplied an unusual name for my Welsh great aunt?

For the novelist or creator of timelines, names are not so much a set of rules as a trap to be avoided. Of course people that have babies named after them had their own names IRRESPECTIVE of their own fame, but in many a place where their own name would never have been among the common purview of couples looking for a name for their baby it would not have surfaced.

You can write a timeline in which someone is called Edward or George or John or Paul and set it in any alternate history of the last millennium. But if you had a Leopold in pre-nineteenth century times, or even an Albert, there should be a good reason why the character has that name. For any early modern or later setting the names Charlotte, Elizabeth, Mary and so on would be an easy enough one to accept, but have a Kylie in Elizabethan times, or a Lettuce in modern times and it would not only jar but be anachronistic. Of course, maybe the name Kylie does have medieval origins but if so it would only be in a specific area and only people from there (South Wales maybe?) would be using it. And maybe your timeline has preserved the more outre of Victorian names to the present, but if it has then then there should be a reason why there are Lettuces and Elijahs wandering the streets!

While we can discuss the merits of Kylie, both Lorna and Wendy provide another lesson for the alternate historian – both names were made up by novelists. Before they were coined for the various books (Lorna Doone and Peter Pan), the names did not exist as girls names. If the novels are not written, and certainly before the novels are written, the names would be out of time, outside of logic. A word of caution though – I once thought I had made up a name in a story I wrote, but it turned out after all that Suzette was an acceptable French name. It was Fantasy I wrote and I had used a common root and a common end to create what I thought was an unusual and unknown name, but as both were common it turned out the name had been in use for centuries after all.

I recently read a novel in which a minor character was called Lorna. Its just about in the timeframe where the influence of Lorna Doone could have spread the name, but to an illiterate poor family? Maybe, since once the name Lorna had escaped from the book it would have propagated along many a route into the general public. However, it could be an error – or it could be the result of greater knowledge than “what is commonly known”.

Nigella Lawson exists, and I bet if we did a search we would find a couple of things – that the name Samuella is out there, and also that there have been Nigellas and Samuellas around for the last century or more somewhere. The relevance to this and Lorna, is that Lorne is a boy’s name (see Lorne Greene), taken one assumes from the Scottish island originally. Now, what is a boy’s name often acquires a female form, even if in very rare usage (I’ve never met a Nigella or a Samuella, for example). One assumes that the author of ‘Lorna Doone’ got inspiration for the name from somewhere – quite probably the boys’ name Lorne. Thus, if he could give it a feminine form as Lorna for his novel, then so too could some families in times past, and even times contemporaneous.

No Rules

Thus I would reiterate again that there are no rules, only guidelines. If you want a medieval Scottish lass called Lorna, then you can justify it. If you want a modern gentleman called Elijah or Jehosophat, then you can probably find a real example, and you can work justification into the timeline. If these names are common, then the timeline needs to explain that. To me, that is the major point – if a name is not usual for the time period, or logical for the timeline, then its use should be explained. People have names that are unusual, or go actively against the grain (River Phoenix, or Daisy Boo Oliver, or Fifi Trixabell Geldof in modern times) but they are explained by the background of those giving the name.

What changes in an alternate history timeline is not so much individual choices but statistical overviews. If Charlotte and Leopold reign happily until the mid nineteenth century and follow the usual pattern of naming children for themselves, then by 1900 there should be a lot of Leopolds in Britain. It doesn’t mean that your character should be called Leopold, or even that he cannot be called Albert if you want, only that he should know a couple of people called Leopold amongst his acquaintances, co-workers and friends.

If your story is set in such a time, then a few of the people mentioned should have that name, one by the law of averages should be a character in the story, even if a minor one.

It is of course one of the great failings of authors who are not writing historical fiction, that very very few characters share the same first names. It would be too confusing for readers, or would mean they would have to think… But to someone who writes historical fiction set in the War of the Roses just think of all those characters called Edward, Richard and Henry! Luckily they all had titles and different forms that could be used to distinguish them, they could be referred to as the Prince of Wales or the Duke of York, or the Earl of Richmond, so diluting the names confusion.

But any realistic timeline would have people with the same first name, often in office at the same time. Remember history here – the Thatcherite Normans and Kenneths for example? If your timeline becomes a novel, or if you aim to write an alternate history novel which approaches what novelising a timeline would be like, then you need to duplicate first names. What those names would be would depend on the timeline, but would represent a statistical result – ie in the Charlotte and Leopold world, where the crown passed from Queen Charlotte to her son King Leopold I to his son King Leopold II then by 1910 the British cabinet should have in it, by statistical right, a couple of people whose first name is Leopold.

In conclusion

The popularity and statistical instance of names change according to the specifics of your timeline, but for individuals in most cases it matters less.

Where a name would be highly unusual either because it has not yet come into common use, or because it long ago fell out of common use, then its existence in your story should be explained.

When a statistical overview is taken of your timeline or story there should be more people bearing the names that would be common in that timeline, comparative both to other names, and to OTL.

There ought to be more than one person with the most common first name, even if for the sake of the story, or the reader, the second bearer of the name is not a character so much as a passing mention, or a famous figure in this alternate world.

There should be a spattering of names which reflect a different set of famous people. Whilst these would largely being made up here, the very fact of their being different would be enough to add flavour to a novel, especially if a passing mention of one or two of these non-existent (in reality) people is made.

Many names recur generation after generation, century after century and will not die away, but it is the body of names which supplement these which add colour to the story. Sure you have a load of Johns, Charles, Pauls and Marys in your alternate world, but the addition of some significant Jeremiahs, Adas, Lewis’ and Brendas could make all the difference.

A timeline, or novel based on an alternate history, is the sum of its parts. One of those parts needs to be a body of names which reflects the world and society the fiction is set in, and where the statistical report on that world would show a slewing towards an allohistorical perspective.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

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Three Studies in Opportunity

Friday, October 8th, 2010

Three Studies in Opportunity

To best illustrate the point I am going to make, I will use three of History’s great characters who could easily have not been ‘great’. I won’t quite dignify them with the term ‘Great Man’ since despicable villain is the better for two of them at least; for the third, the jury is out. In reverse order of death they are of course Stalin, Hitler and Napoleon.

If we leave aside all moral and judgmental issues around the use of the term ‘Great’, we can describe it simply as being someone who has a substantial impact upon history, not merely bending some of it to his will, but becoming in himself the very force of history itself, shaping the future, such as it would be.

Stalin rose from being the revolutionary terrorist charged with raising funds for the Bolsheviks by bank robberies and train hijackings, to become the undisputed, if mightily paranoid about it, leader of one of the two remaining post-1945 super-powers.

Hitler rose from being a failed artist and down-and-out, a wounded corporal with an honourable track record in the war, an Austrian living in Bavaria and serving the German army, to supreme dictator of one of the most ruthless totalitarian empires on Earth.

Napoleon rose from a background of minor Corsican nobility with a junior officer status in the artillery, to Emperor of France and controller of most of Europe. Not least he also abolished the Holy Roman Empire, brought about a code of laws which forms the basis of that of much of Europe, and provided an example of how revolutionary forces could be harnessed for a more traditionally-formed state. Napoleon, of course, is the only one of the three where History remains the hotbed of debate as to his merit.

What all of them had on their side was not Destiny, or even simple opportunity, but accident, the accident of history that made them the right man at the right time able to seize the reins and take the initiative. Of course what they all also had was a belief in themselves, a scheming nature and a cold ruthlessness when needed.

Napoleon could well have been a general under either the Ancien Regime or the Revolution, he could have distinguished himself in battles, but probably not wars, he could have provided a turning point in a campaign, but he would not have been directing it, he could have seemed a key player when historians looked back and said if this battle had not been won then so-and-so might have happened. He most probably would not have risen to become a Marshal of France, but the possibility might have been in sight for his old age.

But that was not the route that History provided for him. He was in the right place at the right time – Toulon. He was in the right service – artillery. His excelling there made him a minor player in politics. He shacked up with a woman of good birth who had many connections, in both camps – Josephine de Beauharnais. He got the command of the army in Italy because of another’s death – Joubert. He got the command of the expedition to Egypt as much because the politicians wanted him out of the way as because of his ambition. He survived it, as he was to survive the invasion of Russia, by a mixture of skilful propaganda and the abandonment of his men. He benefitted from the achievements of others, not least when they died in action bringing him a victory they could never claim. And he had the vision to dream himself more than he was.

Of course, he also had talent, and he had charisma, but this alone would not have won him Italy, never mind set himself up for the rest of his career. Many men were schemers in those days of the Revolution; it had being going for a decade, had burned up many of the early figures, and often seemed in danger of eating itself up, never mind the attempts of the other powers to crush it. It had survived due to commanders of the talent of Hoche and Joubert, because of the passion unleashed among the French citizenry, and because of the incompetence of the other powers. But it needed more – it needed to stabilise, to pause, to breathe, to settle. That is what Napoleon offered it – not just another coup, but First Consul, a one-man leadership again, a hand on the tiller, someone to guide the ship of state out of the storm.

That is what the entirety of the rest of Napoleon’s career is built upon – being the man who could tame the Revolution.

Hitler had been a nobody of far lesser worth than Napoleon had ever experienced. Born to a brutal minor official in Austria-Hungary he had escaped his origins as soon as he could, dreaming of being an artist, but lacking either connections or originality, he had fallen upon hard times and ended up in poverty in Vienna. From there he had skipped across the border into Bavaria to avoid doing service in the Habsburg army, something which he would later spin as being due to his hatred of them, their rule, and their nature, but which was simply because he didn’t want to, and had an opportunity for an out.

Not wanting to serve is not cowardice – since Austria-Hungary was not at war, it was not conflict he was running away from but army life, something that he could see would not be what he was seeking in life. Ironically, his presence in Bavaria allowed him to volunteer for a Bavarian army unit when the Great War broke out – Hitler was not squeamish about serving them, it seems. But war was a different matter from peacetime service and he had convinced himself, probably, that a pan-Germanic war was a struggle for everything he believed in, rough and unformed though those opinions were as yet in many areas. His political views were informed by experience and by prejudice, not so much by in-bred prejudice as by that he experienced and which fed on what he perceived as being the injustices he had suffered.

Whilst Hitler’s war years are hardly a blank they are subject to a rather strange kind of revisionism that seeks to paint him as a coward based on threadbare evidence but great dislike. Conventional history records that he was a runner, a deliverer of messages and that in general this was a dangerous job, since the people who either sent or received the messages were in dug-outs and bunkers near the front line, but the runner had to speed down trench lines that were subject to constant bombardment by the enemy. One should not be afraid to say positive things about Hitler if they are likely true – we are historians not propagandists. The runner’s life was a precarious one and one that was generally survived due to luck. Hitler attained the rank of corporal, was awarded the Iron Cross for bravery and was gassed into hospital where he was when news of the armistice reached him.

So far so stunningly average; lucky for sure to have survived the war in his profession, but the historical record is written by those few percent who survive when most of their number die. Records of the Blitz, for example, may give an a-typical picture of it because it is written by those who had narrow escapes and survived, not by those who died, and were presumably more typical of those living in an area where the bomb fell. Hitler’s survival was neither due to cowardice nor to Destiny, it was simply due to percentages.

He was one of the lucky ones released from hospital after a gassing who could see, walk, talk and return to normal life, and he sought that in Bavaria, which was his adopted home, and one he was entitled to live in as a veteran of the Bavarian army. He retained his links with the (Imperial) German Army and was paid, when many were being discharged with no pay, to look into and report on radical political movements springing up everywhere in the aftermath of defeat. Again this is neither betrayal nor destiny, it is something to do that he thought he could do, something that would earn him money, and something which melded with his half-formed ideals of German greatness. This was not to be undermined by radicals and revolutionaries, to his mind these types of people had already betrayed the cause by signing the peace, now not let them destroy what remained.

As a note, if you seek to show the Nazi leaders as inhuman monsters, evil incarnate then you are either a propagandist or a crap historian. They were human beings with all the failures and weaknesses of that state of affairs. Human beings do evil acts, not strange creatures from the outer darkness. Some were psychopaths, some were deranged, but the vast majority were no different from the previously inoffensive Hutu or Bosnian Serb who committed terrible crimes. Demonising the individuals does not deal with the problem. They are as you and your friends are, until the moment that they are not. It is a weakness of the human condition and when the choice comes, it is between taking advantage of and being swept along by the darkness, or of making the braver choice to resist, or to retire. It is human beings who do evil acts, not evil beings who do what is in their nature.

Hitler presumably knew there was no long-term future in being an army agent, and also had his convictions that the German cause had been betrayed and was in need of someone to galvanise support for its resurrection. His hijacking of Drexler’s NSDAP gave him a stage for his rhetoric and proof that he could move people with his oratory. If he had failed at this stage, even the footnotes of history would never have heard of him. Leadership of the NSDAP gave him contacts within Bavarian politics, and access to hotbeds of what was now being called Aryan thinking, rather than just Germanic. The Munich Putsch can probably best be seen as a misfiring, an attempt to force the dream before the reality was able to hold it up; he had Mussolini’s example as a guide, and he had the support, however muddled, of Ludendorff. Its failure could have destroyed him, but the judicial system was weighted to the right, and seeing Communism as the real threat did not seek to heavily punish a right-wing leader, no matter how scurrilous, whilst the contacts within Bavarian society he had made stood him in good stead.

Mein Kampf is often derided as stupid, unreadable and delusional, but that misses the point. What Hitler and Hess did during the period of their imprisonment was not to produce a work of philosophy or carefully-thought-out intelligent discussion, but to produce a Bible for the right. It begins, perhaps in a slightly muddled way, with an examination of the propaganda of those whom its authors see as the enemy – socialists, communists, trade unions etc. It looks at their methods, and urges that these be taken up by a grand movement of the right. Then it plays to prejudices, and if there is one thing everyone has it is prejudices – in a book laden with them, a reader will find something that resonates, and in being semi-autobiographical the book also provides justifications and apparent reasoning that would help many to accept their prejudices and not shy away from them.

But a background as a minor heroic war veteran, a failed right-wing revolutionary and the author of a book pandering to everyone’s prejudices do not a great leader make. The truth that is often lost about the Nazi party is that until there came another crisis within Germany, it was at best a minor player, often simply an irritant or a bunch of people in uniforms pretending to be much more than they were. Hitler needed the Great Depression or he would not have been anyone. He also needed Stresseman’s death, for if there was one man who might have rescued the ‘Weimar Republic’ it was Gustav Stresseman.

What he also needed, of course, were backers, and he got these in two ways. Ernst Roehm brought the thugs, the streetfighters, the private armies to fight the private armies of the left for mastery of the streets, he brought a socialistic, but not distinctly left-wing vision, of a people’s army in the SA, and he brought organisation and motivation. The Nazis could not have succeeded without the SA and the SA could not have succeeded without Roehm. Much of recent history chooses to overlook these facts and to focus instead on Hitler’s other backers – the conservative aristocracy, the industrial capitalists who needed a bulwark against the left, and the monarchists who looked at Hitler through the refraction of Goering and saw a route to bringing the Hohenzollerns back. These people were as important to final victory as was Roehm and the SA, but the one would have got nowhere without the other.

The combination of all these factors brought Hitler opportunity, but once again he seemed to blow it, but the parlous state of Germany brought a quick follow-up election in 1933, and this last chance was what propelled him and the Nazi Party into power. By the end of 1933 all was secure, and the myth of an inevitable rise, a path of Destiny, and all that type of bunf was born. Success needs a back story and one of ordinariness, misfirings, being used by others, and owing their success only to a global phenomenon was hardly the right mythos for the Nazi Party.

Stalin by contrast seems almost normal in his rise. Once the October (November) Revolution had occurred and the Bolsheviks seized power, Stalin’s fate was tied to that of the Communist party. His previous existence as petty criminal, revolutionary, internal exile and hardman mattered little compared to whether or not he could seize the opportunities that the ascent of Lenin and Trotsky into power presented.

Stalin was not a nobody but many people were a minor somebody in 1917, 1918 etc. What Stalin had was both inherent ruthlessness and skill. He had not survived the previous incarnation of his career by being stupid, careless or unlucky. Now he ploughed himself into his new career, focusing on the party bureaucracy and, legend has it, playing the long game, though one wonders how much truth there is in that if Lenin in his dying months warned Trotsky against him. By the early 1920s, Stalin was for certain one of the key men, but only one of them, and his position vis-a-vis the others relied upon his position within the party bureaucracy, but Stalin knew this, and relied on it, appointing his own supporters to key positions when and where a vacancy came up.

As the 1920s drew on, Stalin was able to use this powerbase at the heart of the party machine to destroy his opponents, driving Trotsky into exile, and judicially murdering most of his remaining rivals. Additionally he relied on a Georgian, or more specifically Mingrelian, elite that had absolute loyalty to him as a fellow traveller. The leader of the Soviet Union from then on was not known as General Secretary for nothing!

Because his rise was within a ruling structure people can often overlook just how hard Stalin played the game, how he was able to use what was supposed to be administrative position to his advantage, and how much his Mingrelian comrades would later come to be used to underpin areas of state whose loyalty was suspect, or where additional reinforcement of that was needed. Stalin grew his office to match his dream, outmanoevred all of his opponents, and subverted the system to promote those he could rely on, eventually relying on those most trustworhy of all in an almost tribal focus.

The lessons of history

Opportunity is king, the rest of it only keeps one in the running to accept the crown. This is not to say that without opportunity one would be nothing, only to say that without it one would not be what one became. The three men above seem superficially very similar, but a look at the paths that their rise to power took should show how disparate they were.

Being in the right place at the right time needs to be added to believing in oneself, and having a vision to believe in, and both of those then need to be added together to provide a foundation for actually doing something once that position had been achieved.

One can argue that it is a three-stage process since 1) plenty of people are in the right place at the right time, but are not the right person, 2) plenty of people believe in their own destiny, have faith in their vision, but miss the boat, and 3) plenty of people get into power one way or the other and lack the drive that a combination of 1) and 2) gives to achieve anything.

The Great Man needs to have all three or he is the Never man, the Almost Man, or the Failed Man.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

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Great Powers in Alternate History

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

Great Powers

Who the great powers of an alternate history world are is something which tends to exercise my mind, and my ire, when reading more unimaginative timelines or works of fiction. Generally, the great powers of history from 1800 onwards could be listed as Spain (declining and gone by the 1820s), France (constant), Britain (constant), the USA (growing from a regional power with some power projection to a world power steadily over time), Russia (constant), Austria (until 1918 when the Habsburg monarchy ceased to exist), Ottoman Turkey (until 1918 when the empire collapsed in defeat), Prussia (which turned into Germany and remained a constant), China (which declined, stuttered on the brink then came back) and Japan (from the Meiji period onwards in a steady increase). To these might be added Italy (after unification) but probably nobody else.

Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal all became or remained major colonial powers but none of them could claim to be a world power. Persia remained independent (if sometimes perilously close to being divided). Sweden and Denmark had had their day.

Now, I listed this for a traditional view of great powers, and am well aware that in the modern era one can begin to place former dominions of Great Britain such as Canada and Australia into the same league, as well as growing economic powerhouses such as India and Brazil.

But this is an alternate history discussion article, and stating the generally accepted position is the place to start.

Nineteenth Century Possibilities

One trouble with history is that we are all so knowledgable about who failed and why that we see these as inevitabilities, thus undermining the whole point of alternate history. Of course, alternate history should not be a playground for fantasists and the ignorant, but sometimes they can make a good point without realising that they do – that a writer should step outside of the box.

Mexico, Peru, Gran Colombia, the United States of Central America, the Empire of Brazil – all of these could become more than they ever did.

Mexico started its independence as an empire under Agustin Iturbide, attempted to become a liberal empire and ended up a corrupt republic where military and local leaders could overthrow the elected government. It can be argued that the repeated presidencies of Santa Anna either ruined the country, or are symptomatic of what was ruining the country. The French invasion came as a result of Mexico defaulting on its loans, the installation of Maximilian as emperor an attempt not only to project French power but to tie Mexico into the world economy. After civil war, the execution of Maximilian and the return to power of Juarez, Mexico entered arguably its most stable few decades but it was a country with a heavy legacy by this time, and by the first decades of the twentieth century was sunk once more into revolution and civil war.

What an alternate history Mexico needs is early strength and stability. Arguably it had the chance for this up until the defeat against the Texicans and the de facto acknowledgment of Texas. Even with Santa Anna’s presidency, at this stage the devolution of the constitution into chaos was not inevitable; victory, or avoidance of conflict, would have given a chance. The better chances come earlier – imagine if the United States of America had embarked upon its independence with another revolution, and a military leader as president involving the country in a war of secession within ten years?

Points of divergence can be found to keep Iturbide upon his throne, or to make the country secure and stable into the long term under Guadeloupe Victoria. Using any of these, it is not fantasy to have Mexico as a great power, even if with only regional power projection, by the mid nineteenth century.

Peru is more complicated as the requirement for its great power status comes in one of several ways – either that Bolivar and San Martin agree a unity of all ex-Spanish possessions, or that the Argentine/Chilean/Peruvian rebel alliance remains strong enough to create a federal state under San Martin, or that Peru-Bolivia in union is able to stabilise, defend its borders and prosper.

The first two options would give you a power the same size as Brazil, though in one Peru would be a Southern aspect, and in the other a Nothern one. The Peru-Bolivian state (and it would have no such confusing name since Bolivia was viewed as Alta, or High, Peru) would require time and good management.

And there are of course Points of divergence where you could get both a strong Mexico and a strong Peru-Bolivia.

Equally, from this view you may also get a surviving Gran Colombia for in an age where centrifugal forces prevent the breakup of large unities, or the dissipation of early power, Gran Colombia is not going to be beset to anything like the same extent with secessionist forces.

On this subject, it is worth taking a moment to note that secession is not always successful. People tend to think the CSA or Biafra or Chechnya as special cases, but they are in fact simply the more prominent of a large number of incidences where secessionist movements failed completely. Mexico, somewhat ironically considering what it in fact did lose, is riddled with instances – the Yucatan even existed as an independent de facto state for a while, whilst on other occasions it again tried to secede, as did Sonora, Chihuahua etc. These failed. So did the attempted secession of Eastern Venezuela as the independent republic of Oriente, an obscure fact but one which has some significant impact upon Gran Colombia.

The United States of Central America is again another nation where secessionist tendencies pulled it apart, but there were frequent attempts to pull it back together and from time to time a reunification of some or all of it that only ended in disolution again later. One can argue that the unifiying tendencies indicate a stong residual in favour of union, or that the resultant breakups indicate a strong impulse towards secession and independence. Both would be right, and it was often more of a balance than it seems in retrospect since in retrospect everything is always viewed from the prevailing position at the time when the viewer looks back.

An American observer regarding secessionist tendencies in the United States of America in 1861 may well think that they are inevitable, whereas an American observer in 2000 would think that their defeat is inevitable. The truth is that neither was, that it was a constant balance of forces and that from time to time one side of the balance had the upper hand, and at other times the other did. One might even argue that the current status quo is not the end of history, that one does not know whether in fifty years events might not have pulled the USA apart again. Historical inevitabilities are but the bias of the viewer, coloured by his own time. The UPCA could have survived, and it could have prospered. That it did not is simply only how things turned out.

As an aside on Central American history we have the whole William Walker saga, entering via Misquitia, becoming president of Nicaragua, pressing to unify the republics under his personal rule. History now regards him as doomed to failure, but at the same time does not properly explain how he achieved the successes he did. What really needs to be understood is that there are points of divergence whereby William Walker could have remained successful and achieved his aims.

On an overview so far, it could ironically be considered that a great power Mexico, a great power Gran Colombia, a unified Peru-Bolivia and a stable UPCA could all exist within the same alternate timeline.

We could then throw Brazil into the same mix, the only South American monarchy, and a country that was forged in exile from Napoleon’s conquest of Portugal by the Portuguese royal family. Before that it had been a rough union of separate colonies with separate governors, and the ultimate result for Brazil could well have been what happened to the rest of Spanish America – that it broke up into its constituent parts eventually. But the exile of the royal family in Rio de Janeiro, and the separation of Brazil from Portugal under a line of its own rulers of the Braganza dynasty ensured that the united colony remained whole.

I would add the Brazilian empire to the cases of a unified Peru-Bolivia and a surviving UPCA as being a power whose greatness would come later. But come it might very well do, and not necessarily at the cost of any of the other putative great powers of South America. By 1900 it would not be impossible for the Mexican Empire, the United Provinces of Central America, Gran Colombia, greater Peru, and the Empire of Brazil to be first class powers with an impact in the world at large at least as great as that of Italy.

What fails does not always fail

…in alternate history that is! Neither the defeat of the Confederate States of America nor of Maximilian in Mexico are inevitable. The whole point of Points of Divergence is that they offer up roads to a position where a wholly different state of affairs has come to pass. In fact the independence of the CSA could well lead to the ability of Maximilian to hold onto his power, not least if that independence is won after a short sharp war against the Union leaving veterans who wish to continue to serve. Richmond won’t be able to afford much of a standing army, if it even is allowed to remain on the statutes, so service for Maximilian would seem like a great opportunity, one not least with the potential rewards of land and pretty Hispanic brides.

Regarding great powers, this rule that we should never look at OTL failure as being inevitable is equally valid. Not only might the CSA and Habsburg/Iturbide Mexico develop into great powers down the line, but other almost forgetten chances might come to pass.

1848 is a very pregnant year, yet it is one where many people view the revolutions as inevitable and their eventual defeat also as inevitable. People are guilty of inertial doublethink, because neither was inevitable. There are many Points of Divergence to prevent either the outbreak of revolution, or its spread, and equally there are many PODs where the revolution is not roled back.

Whilst France remained constantly among the number of the great powers, it went from republic to empire to monarchy to reformist monarchy to republic to empire to republic again. There are many occasions where this catalogue of changes could have been arrested, though of course there are other potential places where changes could have happened at times that they did not do in OTL. The Orleans monarchy might have survived in 1848, perhaps if the Prince Royal, Ferdinand of Orleans had lived, or perhaps if the abdication of Louis Philippe for his heir had been handled in a better way. If it had, we might well be speaking of a powerful Orleanist France even now, and especially we would have been in the 1870s or 1900s when the balance of the constitution would have remained with the monarch.

1848 also gives us other potential results which affect the list and nature of the great powers. Intriguingly absent from OTL is a unification of Italy, despite the revolutions across the Italian states – this is an occasion where alternate history would suggest even greater change and disruption than OTL revolutions, something that should not be ignored as Britain is also a great example of where there was upheaval but where it stopped short due to a variety of reasons. If Victoria had died, either young and Ernest Augustus had become king, or perhaps in childbirth and there was an unpopular Regency, then 1848 in Britain could have seen true revolution and potentially a French-style ousting of the monarchy.

The creation of a unified Italy out of the 1848 revolutions might still look a step too far, but the creation of a unified Germany happened – for a while. The Frankfurt Parliament made a federal union reality for a while – a federal navy was formed, ships bought, officers appointed to man the fleet. That it was all turned back and scuppered does not mean that what happened in the period when it was a reality was simply an illusion – no, it was a possibility!

Thus a potential great power is an earlier unified Germany under a liberal parliamentary system, but one which it would be noted has a nascent navy of some growing power, and this Germany would be no less militant, no less forceful on the world stage than the French Third Republic or Great Britain.

But the period of revolutions also offers up other nations – Hungary which had it won its independence under Kossuth would have found a monarch from a European royal family, maybe even part of Italy, whether the North in a union of Milan and Venezia independent of Austria, or Rome under Mazzini. Another nation has possibilities in these decadesm – Poland. There was a revolt at the beginning of the 1830s, another 3 decades later at the beginning of the 1860s. Poland could have wrestled its independence back, but also of course it might never have risen in rebellion – perhaps if Konstantine became king upon the death of Aleksandr I, and not Nikolai. Thus, things can and could always have swung both ways.

A Poland independent in this time could have emerged powerful later, or could have sunk into poverty-stricken obscurity. It might have been the spark to other successful secessions, the break up of Western Russia on a scale such as that seen in 1918, or it might have stood alone in a confused battle of wills between Russia, Prussia and Austria.

Native Powers

Many people forget Egypt – instead of Mehmed Ali and his dynasty, the Suez Canal, Egyptian cotton, ex-Confederate soldiers in Egyptian service, ex-Confederate ironclads bought by Egypt, people remember 1880 and Egypt thereafter as a British vassal. More than a half century of Egyptian history is usually consigned to the dustbin of history with the idea that failure was inevitable, that overstretch brought ruin, that the khedives had ambition but not the wherewithal to make it stick.

Alternate history challenges this, no less than common sense should. By the 1840s Mehmed Ali was being seen as so dangerous a threat that an alliance of Britain and Austria with the Ottomans had to contain him. The Egyptian fleet was first class, but nobody could stand against the Royal Navy so he in the end he was forced to back down and disarm. This did not end Egyptian power, merely retarded and contained it.

Alternate history is made of Points of Divergence, just as real history is made of opportunities seized and chances missed. Had Britain being involved in a major war elsewhere, for example had the Aristook crisis with the USA been allowed to degenerate into war, or the issue of Oregon led to war then Egypt might have held out, defeated the Ottomans, continued on an upwards trajectory. By the time that Britain was in a position to act, Egypt might have been too powerful – or, such are the tides of fate, been too important as a bulwark against the Russians.

Oman once had territories down the East African shore and not least ruled Zanzibar. The latter split apart from Oman and became a power of its own, deep into the African interior from the East, penetrating into what today is the Congo. Their power was built on slavery, a slave trade that included trans-African routes up into the Fezzan across the Sahara. But though that was the basis of the power, it was not all that there was to it – Zanzibari agents, slavers etc constructed civilisations deep in the African interior where none had previously prospered. Tippu Tip may have been a despicable slaver, but he held sway over a civilised enclave that European visitors marveled at. Nothing is ever black or white, nothing is ever simple.

Had not the American colonies revolted, then where would British slavery had been? Could reformers such as Wilberforce and Shaftesbury ever have hoped to get abolition within the empire if the American colonies had remained dependant upon slave labour?

Other worlds, other outcomes for the leading powers, other wars where they need allies in unusual places – all of these lead towards native powers being able to survive, prosper and develop.

Given the right circumstances Zanzibar, or indeed Oman if the state remained unified, however loosely, could become a great power

Something of a Summary

This has just been a short and simple journey around the possibilities for great powers. Other points of departure could result in other powers having their chance or in these same powers having earlier, or later, or different opportunities to rise to greatness.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

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Dress – Part 1

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

Dress – Part 1

Dress is never a static thing – from mini-skirts normal in the late 1960s to flared trousers or tank-tops of the 1970s, we all have seen how a style that is normal in one period has become horrendous in a later one.

It is only our sense of continuity and of the rightness of the now that gives these a place in time and place, but objectively they are a phase which could come at any time, go at any time, repeat at any time as platform shoes did in fact in the 1990s.

Thus a style is not in fact cemented into the period in which it appeared in OTL, and it is not irrevocably connected only with the movement which gave rise to it in known history. Added to this, styles which were minority in any OTL timeframe could easily have become the norm in an alternate history.

I was most struck by this while watching the Suzanne Vega video “Luka” with her hat and style that at the time would have been called “sloan”. One could easily envisage an ATL in which this is how ALL young women dress and where it is unacceptable not to.

At one time it was the height of cool to dress like an early aviator in leather jacket and white scarf, and infact even today anyone dressing thus whilst standing out as odd would still come with the associated kudos and be met with a largely favourable response.

Hats are a factor which change considerably over time. At one time top hats and bowler hats were a common sight; in my grandfathers’ time it was trilbys and both had several, some for best and some for usual; in my time it is baseball caps, hunting caps and bobble hats. Once, a balaclava would have been a sensible choice, now it is usually the choice of criminals wishing to conceal their identity. Even in baseball caps there was the period when wearing them backwards was the only way to do it, then a fightback for the natural occurred, partly led by the sense of having a brim over your eyes against either sun or rain, and partly through the reverse way’s increasing association with crime and unsavoury elements.

Hair

How hair is worn is a powerful visual aspect of any alternate history and can give colour and dimension to a timeline or novel. It can also provide societal clues, even to status as you wish to have it depicted it in your ATL.

Take for example the guy in the video for DJ Sammy’s “Boys of Summer” video – he has long hair in a very controlled braid and a small goatee, yet he is undoubtedly handsome and all the girls are after him. Beyond this, though, if that were in an ATL the hairstyle of the true aristocracy, he would be signing himself as a member of that even without other status symbols. The pre-Meiji Japanese had a similar way of signalling aspects of status in how they wore their hair.

In Britain in the 1950s you had teddy boys, in the 1970s you had hippies, in the 70s-80s you had punks, in the 80s-90s you had metallers and goths and what all of these musical movements and fan genres had in common were hairstyles that a full devotee would wear.

Of course a teddy boy hairstyle in the 1970s, a hippy hairstyle in the 1980s, a metaller perm in the 1990s, all would show a person as being an old whatever, still living the dreams of his youth or still sticking to principles he plays out in his looks though the world has gone on. Never forget the people from a past cultural tradition who still cling to it even though society now looks upon them as increasingly like freaks. They are always there, and they may be the ones who hold a vital position or play a vital role in your timeline or story.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

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