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. The Overlord

    The Overlord Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    There have been a few alternate timelines that suggested that if the Axis had won WWII, the Federation never would have existed. So does that mean Hitler's Reich really would have lasted a thousand years? Would these alternate timelines have had Nazi Star Ships annexing other star systems? Or is there something else about an Axis victory that would have changed history and prevented the Federation from being born?
     
  2. captcalhoun

    captcalhoun Admiral Admiral

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    no empire lasts a thousand years.
     
  3. The Overlord

    The Overlord Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    It can be argued the Roman Empire lasted a thousand years, if we take into account the eastern Roman Empire. But this doesn't answer question, how would an Axis have changed conditions to the point that the Federation never existed in the first place? In both timelines when the Axis powers won the war, the federation never existed so Hitler's Reich lasted a thousand years or something else prevented the Federation from existing.
     
  4. T'Girl

    T'Girl Vice Admiral Admiral

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    The series Enterprise seems to say that Earth was the driving force that brought the original members of the Federation together. Without Earth, the other founders would have just gone their own way.

    Debatable, the Romulan War wouldn't have happen, the Romulans wouldn't have later been penned up behind the NZ in the 23rd and 24th centuries.

    *******


    The Egyptian Empire lasted just over 3000 years.
    The Mayan civilization (semi-empire) was about 2900 years.
    The Chinese empire was over 1300 years (depends on what you consider a "empire")
    The Byzantines were a even 1000 years.

    :)
     
  5. The Overlord

    The Overlord Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    But would an Axis victory have prevented the Earth from becoming involved in Intergalactic society? Would the people of Earth never have overthrown the tyranny of the Axis powers? Would defeat in WWII for the Allies have meant that Earth will be dominated by the Axis powers for centuries to come or is there something else that Axis victory would have done to prevent Earth from joining the Federation?
     
  6. T'Girl

    T'Girl Vice Admiral Admiral

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    First, Earth didn't join the Federation, Earth created the Federation, was the prime factor, was the driving force, in the Federation's "birth."

    The movie First Contact says that it wasn't just Humans engaging in warp flight that brought interaction with the Vulcans, the first warp flight had to happen within a pretty narrow time window. Would the Nazis have hit that window? And would the Nazis have permitted the Vulcans to keep Human out of interstellar matters for a century, or would the Vulcan's have been told to "step aside?"

    Would the Nazis have even tried to form a early coalition? There a certain amount of conjecture that it was Archer's action in forming peace between the Vulcans and the Andorians that started the Romulans on the path to war, the Romulans didn't want peace between the players. And it was the Romulan War that help the Humans in convincing the Federation's founder to form the Federation at all.

    There was nothing about the Federation's formation that was inevitable.

    :)
     
  7. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Also, there's no reason to assume the Nazis would have remained a presence in the 2060s or the 2160s. It would suffice that their brief histrionics in the mid-20th century changed something about the Earth that then either stayed changed, or then caused a cascade of events.

    Say, first contact with Vulcans might have gone poorly if not for the fact that Earth was ravaged by WWIII and wasn't fielding a fleet of heavily armed space warships at the time. And that would certainly have meant no Federation, even if the last Nazi in that timeline died in 1991.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  8. MacLeod

    MacLeod Admiral Admiral

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    It is possible thatThe Federation is an alliance of worlds, the Nazi's were about conquest. even if they made an alliance with another race to further there goals sooner or later I suspect that they would have turned on them.
     
  9. captcalhoun

    captcalhoun Admiral Admiral

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    maybe Cochrane's ancestors were killed when the Nazis attacked the US and so his creation of warp drive never happened and no one else was able to make it work.
     
  10. -Brett-

    -Brett- Vice Admiral Admiral

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    2161 - 1945 =/= 1000.
     
  11. Shatinator

    Shatinator Commander Red Shirt

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    If the Axis had succeeded in winning WWII. Their influenced may of certainly caused no such show as "Stat Trek" to be created and most certainly no stars of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner to be involved in such a show, both of Jewish decent.

    So, this whole discussion would become mote.


    However, if we were to proceed and assume a future in a 'Star Trek'-like universe. One would need to imagine a justifiable continuity leading from the Third Reich dominance of Eastern / Western powers into the eventual evolution to some such established world government of "equality" between the nations.
    But with out a over throw / radical restructuring of the Nazi Regime, the influence and strong heavy-handed approach would not subside.
    In such a case we should, all being equal have a future tyranny, equivalent to a historical one; a fascist Federation. A coalition of the conquered, if you like; by an Imperial Earth.
     
  12. Silvercrest

    Silvercrest Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I believe the Blish novelization of COTEOF suggested the Earth tore itself apart in rebellion after the Nazis won. No more Axis, no more Allies, no space flight of any kind.

    How Spock could have derived that using stone knives and bearskins is another question. ;)
     
  13. MacLeod

    MacLeod Admiral Admiral

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    There is also the factor that it was the US and the USSR engaging in a space race, that deveopled space travel. That might not have happened or it would have taken longer.
     
  14. sonak

    sonak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Actually I tend to think that the Nazis would have been very interested in Space. But they would have been interested in it in terms of conquest. Nazi ideology needed enemies and war-Jews, Communists, etc. So if they succeeded in becoming the dominant power on Earth, what's next for them, other than to go out into Space looking for aliens to make war upon and conquer?

    So it would be more like the mirror universe Terran Empire than the UFP.
     
  15. Deimos Anomaly

    Deimos Anomaly Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Man, the Space Reich would make the Terran Empire look like Dr. Evil's "margarine of evil".
     
  16. Sci

    Sci Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Let's go with the presumption made in "The City on the Edge of Forever" that Edith Keeler's pacifism led to the United States either not becoming involved in World War II, or becoming involved too late.

    Under such a scenario, my suspicion would be that the Third Reich would have conquered the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, etc., and would have eventually come to dominate the Kingdom of Italy; Fascist Italy would become a client state of the Reich. I think that the Reich and the Soviet Union would have ended up going to war as they did in the real world, but that it would have ended up devastating but not destroying both sides, since the Germans would no longer have had their resources tied up fighting a war on two fronts. Eventually, they would have had to come to terms with one-another.

    Meanwhile, the Japanese Empire would have had free reign in most of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Australia would have been attacked, and either had some of its territory seized or have come to an agreement to become a Japanese client state. Japan would have turned its attention to the United States; an already-reduced (because of domestic pacifism) Pacific Fleet would presumably have been destroyed, and the Japanese may well have decided to target the West Coast (which was a constant fear of Americans at the time). This may or may not have eventually coincided with German attacks from the East Coast, possibly leading to a version of what was seen in ENT's "Storm Front" -- an East Coast occupied by the Nazis, a puppet government put in place in Washington, the populace subject to Nazi propaganda.

    Whether or not the United States was ever completely conquered or the invasions repelled, I think this would have reduced the United States to a third-rate military power. It would not have been a major factor in international politics going ahead.

    From there, then, we'd have three major empires vying for power -- the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, and the Empire of Japan. Eventually, this would have ignited into another major war.

    I suspect that it is impossible to predict technological development in such a counterfactual history. Early space program successes may have been replicated, given the successes of the Soviet Union and of captured Nazi scientists who worked for the U.S. after the war. Atomic weapons would likely have been developed, if a few years later. I suspect that without the United States and United Kingdom, the miraculous advances in computing and telecommunications we've had in the last fifty years would have been severely delayed, or gone undeveloped. So, probably either no Internet and Web, or a much more primitive Internet and Web. Personal computers would likely be more primitive.

    Add to this the significant loss of skilled and brilliant scientists, researchers, entrepreneurs, etc, as a result both of the wars, and of the subsequent genocidal campaigns brought about through a Nazi victory.

    So I think it's probably fair to say that by 15 April 2063, Zefram Cochrane, even if he still exists, would not have had the infrastructure--not the economic infrastructure, not the educational infrastructure not the military infrastructure of a former major military power--available to him to either conceive of or build the Phoenix. As such, there would have been no warp flight, and the T'Plana-Hath would not have landed in Bozeman, Montana, to make First Contact.

    Indeed, if Vulcan survey vessels were monitoring Earth during that timeframe, they would likely have concluded that a world dominated by three mass-murdering totalitarian states would be best avoided.

    No First Contact in 2063? No United Earth. No United Earth, no Nathan Samuels and Jonathan Archer to push for a Coalition of Planets. Also no one to help the Syrannites overthrow V'Las, restore the original teachings of Surak, combat Vulcan imperialism, or uncover Romulan agents influencing the Vulcan government.

    The recent novel DTI: Forgotten History by Christopher L. Bennett features an alternate timeline in which Earth does not become a player on the interstellar scene in the 22nd Century. By the 23rd Century, Vulcan has become a militant, imperialistic state that has conquered the Romulans, while the Andorians and Klingons have united in opposition to Vulcan. The quadrant is ravaged by war.

    So, yeah, without Earth to serve as the "honest broker" who brings Vulcan, Andor, and Tellar together--who helps Vulcan return to its roots and end its neo-imperialist government; who mediates conflicts between Vulcan and Andor and between Andor and Tellar; who prevents wars of aggression based on false intelligence; who pushes for a Coalition of Planets; who uncovers Romulan manipulations and then fights a war against Romulus--it seems fairly clear that there's no Federation.
     
  17. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Hmm...

    If Edith Keeler delayed or prevented US involvement in WWII, that necessarily means she delayed or prevented the attack against Pearl Harbor, and/or other Japanese aggressions against US possessions such as the Philippines. She could not have held back her country in face of such offensives.

    If anything, the Japanese would have had less success in the Pacific... Although if Stalin were tied up with a German advance that in turn was not burdened by a second front, then Japan might opt to advance against Siberia despite the disasters of 1939. The elimination of western Europe as a colonial power would not have made Australia or the Pacific particularly vulnerable as long as the US remained a factor - and Edith could not plausibly have succeeded if Japan did move against the US.

    OTOH, the events of ST:FC were such touch-and-go that any tiny disturbance, such as the absence of "Magic Carpet Ride" from the history of popular music, could have spelled total disaster. It probably doesn't take much to prevent the formation of the Federation if a timeline meddler really sets his or her heart to it.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  18. captcalhoun

    captcalhoun Admiral Admiral

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    there's two big flaws in that.

    1. the Germans could never have invaded Britain because they didn't have the naval capability to lift troops across the Channel and they couldn't mount an air-only invasion without destroying the RAF and they singularly failed to do that in our reality and any attempt at a sea-borne invasion without air dominance over the channel would've left the ReichsMarine at the bottom of the sea, even without factoring in the Royal Navy's capacity to whup ass.

    2. the Japanese couldn't have invaded Hawaii because they lacked the fleet capacity to get that far across the Pacific with enough troops.

    so, i know what you're going to say: oh, but given enough time they could've built more ships.

    nah, the Germans would've had the British bombing the shit out of every port and shipyard going and the Americans would've woken up and smelled the sake before the Japanese got a big enough fleet and whupped ass too, assuming Britain and the Sovs hadn't already spanked the Germans and diverted their forces to the Pacific theatre.

    oh, yeah, cuz everyone forgets that Britain had interests in the Far East and was fighting out there too. it's just that, understandably, Germany was the bigger threat. remove that and Britain goes to war on Japan.
     
  19. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    That would never have stopped Hitler. After all, he had already done three impossible things before breakfast - conquering Poland in a couple of weeks, taking Norway, and defeating France. He was famous for doing the impossible until reality caught up with him. And sheer daring would have handed him Britain on a platter, as the nation had no defenses to speak about - only an air force and a fleet, which could easily have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or poorly commanded (this sort of thing is what gave him Norway and France, after all).

    Rather, they distributed and diluted that capacity because they thought in terms of feints and silly schemes. Plus, the scenario presupposes that Edith Keeler was undermining US policy of aggression, meaning Japan wouldn't have been in such a stranglehold in terms of steel and coal and oil.

    Which scenario involved "removing Germany" again? The supposition seems to be that Britain would be removed instead.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  20. MacLeod

    MacLeod Admiral Admiral

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    It's easy to talk hypotheticals. Even in the UK had managed to stave off invasion, it would have o divert resources away from elsewhere in the world. Possible allowing Japan to conquer places like Australia. A Potential victory in the middle east.

    So Both Japan and Nazi Germany continue to rise in power. The US gears to war too late. Perhaps as well as delaying the US entry into WWII the lend-lease act is never passed.