Why People Hate "Alternate History" (See SPIKE-TV)

People hate alternate history because people hate (or don't know, or don't care about) history.
I have to say I agree with this. People never gave a crap about history, thus, they don't know anything of history. The show can't use history without confusing the audience, which would ruin the business model.

I don't blame them, but people shouldn't think this as historically plausible.
 
Meh, it wasn't THAT bad. I just wish they had picked a less obvious subject than the nazis winning WWII. But what do you expect, it ain't the history channel.
 
For those who don't want to watch the show but want to know all that was wrong with it... enjoy watching this. :)

Well, it is pretty funny. The guy seems like a bit of a Nazi apologist to me, though, with the whole "Nazi labor unions would prevent large-scale slave labor" and "no one would rebel against the Nazi-American state, becuase it would be rich and economically successful." Why exactly should we expect a system as crazy-quilt, reliant on plunder and filled with bizarre ideology to work any better than the Soviet bloc, which at least had a sort of plan and relied on exploiting its own population? Expecting an eventual collapse of the system seemed like the least implauisible bit of the whole show to me, really. Oh, and the guy's whole bit about how the Nazis never wanted to kill Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, etc., but only throw them out of their country seems a bit like wishful thinking - the Holocaust may not have been planned from 1933 or anything, but the idea of Lebensraum, which pretty much necessarily involved killing a lot of the locals, was there from the beginning.
 
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"Nazi labor unions would prevent large-scale slave labor"
Because, you know, that's just exactly what they did in peacetime. The pre-war concentration camp population did not amount to anything even close to a significant part of the work force. Nazism worked not primarily because they kept the population in fear, but because they kept the population in Germany content. Which means, well-employed.
"no one would rebel against the Nazi-American state, becuase it would be rich and economically successful."
There is no mention of foreign wars, and what military kit we're shown in the show is light paramilitary stuff with a few helicopters thrown in for good measure. Nazism in the historical context was bound for bankrupcy because it used all available funds on the military in apprehension of coming conquests. That's not the case here, because there still *is* a Mexico after 70 years. There's nothing making the economic policies of a contained Nazi state impossible; without the impetus of a massive military upbuilt, we're looking at something comparable to European social democracy in an economic sense. As for the rebellion: because, you know, people usually don't rebel when they are content and at least moderately well-off. :rolleyes:
Oh, and the guy's whole bit about how the Nazis never wanted to kill Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, etc., but only throw them out of their country seems a bit like wishful thinking
Considering that was pretty much what the official policy of discrimination's goal amounted to - and which worked pretty well - that's kinda you arguing against historical evidence.
the Holocaust may not have been planned from 1933 or anything, but the idea of Lebensraum, which pretty much necessarily involved killing a lot of the locals, was there from the beginning.
It really didn't. Pre-war Lebensraum talk, if you get down to the specifics of what they were actually talking about, usually concerned the Sudetenland, Austria and the territories in Poland. If modern holoaust research has proven one thing, then it's that the Germans more or less stumbled from one measure to another because the influence of an ideological core clique and military success coincided for some while.
Especially prominent is Prof. Hans Mommsen's interpretation of the decision process that eventually resulted in the Holocaust, as a process called "cumulative radicalization". The Nazi regime - this is his thesis in brief - had entangled itself into constraints that by themselves demanded more and more radical approaches as time progressed, finally ending with the "Final Solution".
 
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It didn't strike me as Nazi apologia at all; His points are accurate,If there was a German Labour Front why would there not be a similar organization for such a large, well equipped industrial and manufacturing industry. Though, I suppose there could be an argument that the last thing the Nazis would want is an occupied country with more/better industry than the Fatherland itself. Also, the Wansee Conference was in 1942, up till then I believe (and someone can correct me if I am wrong) the KZ's were mostly political prisoners & the like, after Wansee was when the extermination apparatus at Auschwitz, Treblinka, etc were started in earnest.
 
Even before Wanasee, there were death squads running around shooting every Jew they could find in Soviet Russia, not to mention ghettos with horrendous living conditions and the Kristallnacht progrom at least. The Nazis were already doing what they could to destroy the Jews of the territories they ruled.
 
Well, that's true, but our (ludicrous) point of divergence is in '44 - the Nazi state has already been through that gradual process of radicalization and has developed an ideology of extermination, rather than removal.

On the other hand, what if the victorious Nazis decided to "purify the Old World" by sending everybody they didn't want around to the Americas, perhaps allowing "loyal Aryans" to emigrate the other way, back to Europe? That could be an interesting TL, and very satisfying when the castoffs of the Nazi state were there for its collapse.
 
Well, yes, you had the Einsatzgruppen in the East, and I wasn't of course implying it was sunshine and roses,but Wansee was were things got organized and codified and etc is what I was meaning to get at
 

Warsie

Banned
I'm surprised Jimbo Wales has a passing interest in alternate history.

he did some things for the "america: the story of us" and so did the marine first sergeant. Am I the only person who found his boisterous bullshit annoying? Some other people in the comments did too.
 
Fuck that makes me rage. If the nazis won, why would the US automatically be annexed? :S

Yeah, I thought the same thing. I do agree the V2 cannot carry something like "Little Boy" or "Fat Man," but even if the Germans did manage to nuke Boston and NYC, it would make us fight much harder and with rage. Germany no way could take over the U.S., even if ASB's would do a brain drain on our Federal leaders, I think they would be ousted by the Army and/or National Guards and we'd carry the war on under an emergency government. In short, no way that would really happen. The worst from such a scenario is after a German victory, you'd have a Cold War between the U.S. and allies vs the Axis. Now something like that could turn ugly if Hitler lives on.
 
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