PBS airs "Hitler's Victory," an alternate history with significance to American patriots

[risk]

Hitler's Britain (2 ´ 50'), produced by AAC FACT™, Lark International for PBS and Lion Television, examines one of the most intriguing questions of our time: what would the Nazis have done if they had conquered Britain? Told in two equally compelling parts, Thinking the Unthinkable: The Nazi Occupation of Britain and Churchill's Last Stand: The Secret of the British Resistance, Hitler's Britain will examine the unsettling possibilities of an alternative world order, and the chilling consequences that Hitler's victory would have had on the UK and beyond. Using reconstruction and graphic manipulation, the programme shows how Hitler's plans would have transformed Britain from a gentle, free-spirited country into an unimaginably harsh and repressive regime.

[Reaganwuzthebest]

Yeah the B-36 had its beginnings somewhere around 1941-2 to be used as an intercontinental bomber should all of Europe fall.

Re post #28, even if the US wasn't able to stop Hitler from capturing Britain, there would have been several alternative ways to get to Germany, perhaps through Italy and the South, but it would been have bloody with maximum casulaties. And we had bases in Iceland and possibly Ireland if we chose to attack Germany from the air in that direction as well. I'm not sure how useful the B-36 by itself would have been, the US still needed bases in Europe to attack Hitler directly.

[G Larry]

Regarding 2000 Re-do w Algore in charge.
More like this:
Post 9-11 U.S. pulls out of Mid-East, subsequent attacks on Israel result in nuclear retaliation by Israel, U.N. isolates Isreal, global recession due to reduced oil production, higher energy prices.
Meanwhile, Republicans obtain super majority in 2002 elections, as precursor to Algore losing in a landslide to Bush in 2004.
Europe by this time has become MORE anti-semitic & anti-U.S.
Post 2004 Bush agenda prevails, U.N. dismantled, tax cuts DO stimulate economy, effective & environmentally responsible exploitation of Western Hemisphere energy resources. U.S./Israel strengthen relations.
Might have been worth it....????

[Princeliberty]

Britian falling was the key.
With Britian we could still defeat
a Germany that conquers Russia.
After Britian fell.
There would have hard to imagine
Russia not falling.

Then Germany is the can't be beat be position.
Britian falling was nearly the longshot
people think it was today. For one
remember people back then expected it
would fall. Were they all just crazy?

Remember Crete? Germany took that
island with Britian controlling the
sea.

How, its paratroopers. 18,000
German paratroopers defeated
35,000 allied troops in Crete
mainly British not second rate forces at all)

Germany could have probably using it paratroopers
and guilders gotten 100,000 men onto England
to grab beacheads. And as weak as British
land army was probably could have seized the
beachheads fairly easily. And the
German Air Force would have easily been
able to have control of the air over
just beach heads. The Germans
messed up getting into the London
bombings and all that.
They could have grabbed air control
over just the needed beachpoints
quickly and then brought in the paratroopers
and guilders.

The British Navy would have forced to
come to the Channel and
in the Channel the German Airforce and
subs would have smashed it like we
did to the Japanese in the Solomon Islands.

Then the main army can crossover
and finish the British off.

What if the British Navy had refused
the bait?
Then the Germans could have minned the
Channell opening at Dover.
And then crossed with a screen of mines
and subs and Airforce so that
the British could have not stopped them with
their Navy at that point.

And if the British come around
the other way that would have taken long
enough the Germans could have stopped
whoever was midway going to England
and turned and blow away the Navy
with their sub and Air Force and
then crossed over with the Main army.

[GeronL]

My local station reran this last night

[goldstategop]

Harry Turtledove is the acknowledged master in the "Alternate History" genre of science fiction. He's created believable parallel universes in which the South won the Civil War and the Nazis and Japanese conquered the world. Fascinating "if it had happened" speculation on what the world would look like if certain things changed. Quantum mechanics says parallel universes are not only possible but very likely.

(Denny Crane: "There are two places to find the truth. First God and then Fox News.")

[GeronL]

I wonder if it would ever be possible to get into an alternate universe/time line?

[goldstategop]

I would say not. For the same reason time travel's a no no. Not for moral reasons but for the simple fact you'd have to expend an unimaginable amount of energy to move through time or over to an alternate universe/timeline. The technology to do it doesn't exist and I doubt any one will be able to show how you can make an Einstein-Poldolsky bridge scenario work. I believe that one was the basis behind the TV series Sliders where the heroes found themselves in an alternate universe/timeline every week. As fantasy its fun; as reality, its quite another matter.

(Denny Crane: "There are two places to find the truth. First God and then Fox News.")

[GeronL]

we got better things to do anyway. Like find a way to bend space so we can get from here to there fast...

BTW- where can I get a conservative-view of the history of the communist movement in the US??? online of course.

[risk]

It's also interesting to ask why things didn't turn out well for Hitler in this universe, such as it is.

Does it prove that Providence is looking after the good? Are we still deserving of its benevolence, if it were so? What must we do to maintain such a blessing? Or was it simply an accident of fate? Certainly for the millions who died in WWII, no amount of historic wrangling could erase their sacrifice.

Do evil leaders fail because to be evil is ultimately stupid? Now that we have mass media and weapons of mass destruction, does this rule still hold, if it did apply then?

The Fates by Vedder

[GeronL]

Now that we have mass media and weapons of mass destruction, does this rule still hold, if it did apply then?

Check DU for useful idiots

[kms61]

Two points--

The Germans would never have been able to mount a successful cross-channel invasion in the timeframe we're talking about. They simply didn't have the amphibious capablity, and Hitler's attention had already turned back to the East, which was where, in his mind, the Reich's real destiny lay. Thus any German takeover would have to have been political in nature...Say Churchill gets killed in an air raid, or there's a pro Nazi coup deposing him. Britain capitulates, and the Germans walk in unopposed. This would render American military assistance moot.

Second, even if the US did decide to intervene, the American convoys would have had to run a U-Boat gauntlet across the entire Atlantic to get there, and without any British help on that side of the pond. I don't think it could have been done in 1940-41. It took until 1944 for us to get the upper hand against the U-boats, and then only because of improved ASW tactics and technology.

Although it wasn't widely recognized at the time, there was never a serious threat of a German amphibious assault. There was, however, the real possibility Britain being knocked out of the war poltically--with a German occupation or, in my mind the more likely outcome--a quasi-independent puppet regime. The Germans had drawn up plans for such a government, with the reinstalled Edward VIII as it's head.

[Atlantic Friend]

You must mean "Fatherland". "Archangel" is about Stalin's hidden son.

[Atlantic Friend]

What part of the invasion force would have arrived safely if it hadn't been for the Royal Navy escorts ? Germany had mainly a fleet-in-being (except for the submarines), but Italy had a sizable and good quality navy, with state-of-the-art battleships.

Furthermore, the Vichy French navy at Toulon (which fielded good battleships and two aircraft carriers) would have already been seized by the Germans - they only refrained from doing so since Hitler did not want the ships to sail for England and enhance Great Britain's fighting ability.

Take England out of the war and you take more than half of the ships, men, planes, and logistic support available in 1942.

[Atlantic Friend]

"France was almost on Germany's side form the start of the war!"

Hardly. Theone and only chance of French fascists to topple the Republic was in February 1934, when huge riots could have stormed the Congress if it hadn't been for the fact that the largest political movement involved, the Croix de Feu (crosses of fire), didn't want to overthrow the Republic but to reform it.

In reaction, the Left won huge popular support in the 1936 elections, and installed social reforms, slowing down the modernization of the army and the procurements for the Air Force.

The Socialist government (called the Popular Front), in turn lost popular support at the National Assembly and from 1937 till 1940 France was governed by a Centrist government.

[archy]

Archangel - Robert Harris ... he suggested an alternate history in which Hitler had won the war (similar to PK.Dick's The Man in the High Castle or Otto Basil's The Twilight Men, among many ...

Or The German Detective in which Hitler flees Germany with his niece Geli Rabaul in 1931 following an attempt to murder her by Party members, and becomes a successful Americal illustrator of Westerns and science fiction magazines. Until the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's son, in which a German carpenter is suspected, and New Jersey Superintendent of Police H. Norman Swartzkopf [Senior] needs an assistant who's both fluent in the German tongue and familiar with German political machinations....

[dfwgator]

Thinking the Unthinkable: The Nazi Occupation of Britain and Churchill's Last Stand: The Secret of the British Resistance,

I liked it better when it was called "It Happened Here."

[dfwgator]

If you liked that program, check this one out as well.

[dfwgator]

Also they are showing on PBS Masterpiece Theater, "Island At War" which is a fictionalized account of the German occupation of the British Channel Islands (Guernsey and Jersey). This also sheds some light on what a potential Nazi occupation of England would have been like.

[Fedora]

Do evil leaders fail because to be evil is ultimately stupid?

I think there's some evidence of that. With Hitler, he was so egomaniacal and unobjective about this own estimations that when his generals advised him against invading Russia in winter, he told them something to the effect of, "You worry about the tanks! I'll worry about the weather!" Then in Stalin's case, his paranoia led him to purge his best intelligence officers and dismiss accurate reports of the Nazis' plans to attack him, which he attributed to Allied infiltration of his intelligence network. The mental conditions evil creates in a warped mind can lead people so out of touch with reality that they foil their own schemes.

[risk]

I've seen some of the Island at War series. It's interesting to see the island people having to choose between self-sacrifice and survival.

I agree with AF that the war could have gone differently if Hitler had taken England. For one thing, it might have bought him time and intellectual capital for nuclear research. He already had heavy long-range bomber designs that could reach the American east coast and return.

Also, Japan could have bought time by avoiding direct conflict with America until Britain and China were fully subjegated.

One does get the sense that America had fantastic resolve and great reserves of men and materiel. I think once we had entered the war, nuclear or not, we would have fought until we had overcome the Axis, even if it had played its cards more wisely.

I wonder if we have such depth of resolve today?