So if the Axis won WWII, the Federation would have never existed?

Discussion in 'General Trek Discussion' started by The Overlord, May 12, 2012.

  1. Temis the Vorta

    Temis the Vorta Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The Space Reich is the Terran Empire.

    ;)

    To play the what-if game, I'm with the school of thought that says if the democracies got knocked out and it came down to the Axis vs Commies, the Commies win in the end. Let's not forget that the Axis nations would have had a large population of surly underlings. With Communism as the only viable alternative, they all become Commies. The Axis nations can't fight the whole damn world.

    But that leads to a dilemma, because the Terran Empire doesn't seem remotely communist. No, the Terran Empire is a result of the triumph of the Nazis and eventual takeover of their global empire by the most dynamic and enterprising of the subject nations - Americans. The Terran Empire is Nazism, as reinvented by Americans. No loyalty, no self-discipline, no taste in clothing. Every day is a new opportunity to elevate your position through back-stabbing and mayhem. Shit, I've worked places like that. :rommie:

    So, where does the timeline where the Commies triumph lead? To the Federation, natch!
     
  2. MacLeod

    MacLeod Admiral Admiral

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    From memory and it has been several years since I watch COTEF, but it wasn't so much conquest that allowed Nazi Germany to win, but the delayed US involvement allowed them to develop the A-Bomb first.

    So we have to assume events played out in Europe as they did up until the end of 1941. So Britian wasn't invaded, and the Nazi advance into Russia had become bogged down in the winter.

    So 1942 is when things change, the US id not enter the war. Either Pearl Hasrbor was attacked but the peace movement was able to prevent a decleration of war and continued to try the diplomatic route or the US and Japan were still in talks and there was no attack until sometime in 1942.

    So there was no manhattan project by the allies to develop the A-Bmb, and the delay allowed the Nazi's to get ahead in their development of it. Along with the V2 and maybe a V3 (ICBM) it allowed the Nazi's to nuke cities like London, Moscow, New York, Washington DC. Which forces the allies to the peace table.
     
  3. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The thing is, the Communists also had a huge population of downtrodden underlings, many of whom thought that going Nazi would be a splendid way to escape from the Russian rule of terror. It's not that one system or the other would have been better or worse for the in-between people, in absolute terms - it's just that any competing system was automatically better than the current one in offering at least some hope of an eventually brighter future.

    Polarization of the world because one player gains in power is by no means a given. Earth has experienced several periods of history where one or two absolutely dominant powers emerged on a continent-wide scale or better (e.g. China has been doing that for some two millennia in a row now), and smaller players nevertheless continued their game as usual in the immediate geographical, economical or political vicinity. A Nazi victory might have jolted the world, but as for making it more uniform...

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  4. sonak

    sonak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    you're overlooking something-Communism has potentially universal appeal. Anyone can be a Communist.

    Nazism is inherently limited because of its racialist/Ubermensch nonsense. It could NEVER have appeal to Blacks, Jews, Gypsies, the disabled, gays, feminist women, etc.

    in a global contest between the two, the Commies have a wider base of support.
     
  5. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Not really, not in the Nazi Germany vs. USSR contest. Communism in the Soviet Union was highly exclusive and discriminatory, especially so in the war years; OTOH, Nazis were happy to accept everybody who'd join their war effort, even if they did a little ethnic slaughtering at one sector of a front while the ethnic group in question was fighting the Soviets for them at another.

    A military alliance in this context of a contest would not be an ideological one. Churchill allied with the Devil because the Beelzebub was about to overrun his country; he'd have done the reverse in the reverse situation, and so would everybody else. Let's not forget that Hitler immediately won allies to his cause whenever he drove out a comparable danger from another direction. Stalin was but one such danger: Norway was about to be occupied by Britain and well knew it, lending a bit of legitimacy to a local Nazist movement, while the Balkan nations directly benefited from Hitler sorting out longstanding issues between them. It's not that Hitler would have been a solution: it's that, combined with the fact that Hitler was coming anyway, an alliance made a great deal of sense.

    None of these alliances and arrangements really had a significant ideological element to them - it just obviously followed that after a deal was made, those with Nazi sympathies had a position of power in the ally nation. But perhaps tellingly, while there existed Nazi factions in several nations, and the war gave them disproportionate powers, no nation demonstrated a comparable increase of Communist sympathies due to the war or volunteered to join fates with the USSR. The "universal appeal" of Communism hit its lowest bottom at the time...

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  6. sonak

    sonak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    you're talking about the WWII contest specifically, though. I'm referring to a Cold War afterwards, when Stalin is long gone. The Nazis will be limited in looking for allies by their racial supremacy beliefs.
     
  7. T'Girl

    T'Girl Vice Admiral Admiral

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    The Nazi's were allied with Spain (Franco), so that opens up all of Latin America as possible allies (join the winning team). They also had Japan, so there's another, fairly large group.The United States had a Nazi party before the war, although Hitler apparently didn't get along with it's leader. I'm not sure if Canada had it own Nazi party, perhaps under a different name?

    There was also a connection with certain Arab groups, don't know if that rose to "allied" status. The modern middle eastern Batha party is basically the Nazis under a different name.

    So the Nordic/Aryan Nazis would/might have been at the top of the pecking order, but there was plenty of room for others.

    :)
     
  8. barnaclelapse

    barnaclelapse Commodore Commodore

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    It would have been mighty, mighty interesting to see what would have had happened had the Nazis met The Borg.
     
  9. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    ...They organize a bold preemptive strike, but royally screw it up by underestimating the enemy and splitting their forces, and only get their act together again by massively reorganizing during a long withdrawal - and when they have been basically fought back to the edges of the Sol system, their leader makes wild promises of superweapons that will change everything? :devil:

    Only, in the best Trek tradition, those superweapons will give them their victory...

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  10. sonak

    sonak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    right, but the point is that Nazism was an inherently supremacist/hierarchical ideology. Under it, for example, Slavic peoples were to serve as nothing more than slave labor for the Third Reich. And what about Blacks in Africa or in the U.S.? Which way do you think they're going to go?

    So again, yes the Nazis had many potential allies, but Communism was an egalitarian universalist ideology(in theory if rarely in practice), while Nazism in theory and in practice was radically inegalitarian and supremacist. The Communists just have greater mass appeal if they can get their act together.

    Remember also, that Communism can be democratic,(again in theory) which gives it more propaganda appeal. Nazism by its very nature is antidemocratic.
     
  11. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    How so? It organized itself in the form of a party that got voted to power; it stayed in power through a democratic mandate. It just happened that said mandate was upheld through a campaign of intimidation and brutal elimination - just as with communism in the USSR.

    On the practical level, Nazism was opportunism incarnate. Had Hitler been prompted to emigrate from Vienna to the United States rather than to Germany, he would no doubt have attempted to enlist the support of the black population once his initial fantasy of a more bourgeois revolution failed, much like he rode on agendas appealing to the economically downtrodden in Germany.

    Plus, everybody already knew enough to fear communism, even if much of the knowledge was outdated by half a century and fell short of predicting what was actually happening inside the Soviet Union. Nazism didn't have this sort of historical ballast, despite choosing "socialism" as one of its buzzwords; OTOH, anything with "national" in its name would feel at the same time a bit threatening (because most nations are not your own) but also a bit soothing and familiar (because nationalism is easy to associate with).

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  12. sonak

    sonak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I don't mean the methods that the Nazis used to get to power, I mean the theory of Nazism-it's based on the "Fuhrer" being the symbol of the state and the "Volk." Hitler thought democracy to be flabby and decadent. I also think you're making Hitler out to be too much the realpolitik guy and not enough the fanatic. He may have been flexible in METHODS, but his racial ideology was a core of who he was. He may have made temporary alliances(like with Stalin), but his ideology was racial to the foundations. You change THAT and you change who Hitler was.
     
  13. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    If the guy himself didn't give a damn about who he was, in terms of practical actions, why should anybody else?

    And odd ideas about leadership are part and parcel of many ideologies, including communism. There's nothing about the theories of Marx that would directly support much less require the use of representative democracy in ruling, and indeed most communist systems have managed quite well with dictators in the lead. Also, again, many would be far more comfortable with a dictatorial system than with one that shuns conventional methods of leadership altogether; the Nazis would have been the conventional alternative, and thus potentially the more appealing to most democracies.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  14. sonak

    sonak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I have no idea what your first sentence means. As to the paragraph, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. The fact that the late 20th century showed Communism to have mass appeal whereas Nazism pretty much disappeared demonstrates which one has the natural advantage to me.
     
  15. Magellan

    Magellan Commander Red Shirt

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    Black africa or gypsy's or any other minority frankly would not have mattered much in 1940's. Remember blacks were not exactly loved in Eastern Europe or the West either. Also Africa had a negligible industial base and virtually no money. even the whole population of a place like Africa in that time frame was less than Russia. Maybe 150 million people. Europe and East Asia were the centers of population in this time frame.

    Also even though the Nazis espoused racial superiority of "Aryans" some Russians or Ukrainians or Turks are more "aryan" than others and collaboration could easily benefit them. The Nazi's managed to find collaborates in every country they conquered and forged an alliance with decidedly non-Aryan Japan. Pragmatism is ALWAYS a factor.
     
  16. sonak

    sonak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    again, I wasn't referring strictly to the situation in the 1940s, but as a potential Cold War went on for a while.
     
  17. Magellan

    Magellan Commander Red Shirt

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    I guess I should say that Nazism's appeal maybe less universal than communism's but appealing to the upper class rather than the lower class could be just as successful in the short run. Especiallly considering the "whiter" "aryan" upper class generally already held political power in the 40's 50's and 60's.
     
  18. sonak

    sonak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    fair point