Nazi World Order

For all the red-blooded Americans obsessed with history, World War II is always the center in which interest revolves. It's simply the greatest victory in United States history. No other war has left America as an economic and military superpower as did World War II. And we didn't even annex territory-physically. Ironically, whenever fans of history investigate the possibilities of an alternate history, the one scenario most people contemplate off the top of their head is a Nazi world order. What if Germany won the war?

As such, dozens of entertaining books, movies, and shows have been developed to meet this audience of historians. This article will review and give suggestions for four books that deal with the possibility of a Nazi world order. The first on the list is theoretically the first novel written about a German ran alternative universe called "The Man in the High Castle."

This tale by the infamous Philip K. Dick, tells a tale in which the United States is under the de facto rule of the Axis nations. According to Dick's timeline, America's policy of isolation is never broken by a Roosevelt in office, and as such, Europe and Asia falls to the Axis power. After this, the Japanese mount a strike against the California coast while the Germans take the Eastern seaboard. What is left are the withering Rocky States and the Midwest. This timeline, though it may be the first Nazi victory novel written, is not very probable to this writer's opinion. Now, I have studied World War II a lot throughout high school and college, one of my minor's being in history, and I have concluded that even without the United States entrance into the war, Western Europe may crumble beneath the Nazi war machine, but the Soviet Union would have eventually marched to Berlin with or without allies. And the rest of Europe for that matter. The Russians just had an over abundance of resources, plain and simple. Though the Germans achieved significant victories during the first Barbarossa offensive, the Soviets managed to push the Nazis into a retreating mode, even before the English and American had a foot hold in Europe. Not only does the author make claims that the Russians crumble, but that the Germans have the resources to conquer major industrial centers of the US across the Atlantic ocean. How can an invasion fleet not be met with overwhelming resistance? A simple sneak attack is reasonable, hence Pearl Harbor, but the Germans couldn't even get across the English channel. The book goes further to claim that because of ingenuity of German scientists, is the Third Reich capable of completely draining the Mediterranean Sea in the name of Lebensruam-breathing space-but that the colonies in Africa captured from the fall of the imperial empires of France and Britain are completely cleansed of all Africans. Though I do not believe that the Nazis were not willing to commit genocide in Africa, the sheer impossibility of such an idea is monstrous. Granted, the Nazis were innovative in their murderous techniques, killing twelve million civilians, but that does not compare to the nine-hundred million people that are native to Africa. And on top of that, they were planning on colonizing the Solar System. Now I know many German scientists were brilliant and ahead of their time, the center of physics was located in Berlin, but there is only so much a scientist could do with nuclear technology. Even today, man has not gone beyond the moon, let alone colonizing Mars. For this reason, I think "The Man in the High Castle" is not only a dull story, though I won't spoil the plot, but an unrealistic scenario for an alternate universe.

Of course, the Nazis winning the war in itself is an unrealistic scenario. So an author dubbed the master of alternate history created a bizarre situation to make it possible. The book is actually a trilogy by Harry Turtledove called Colonization. This trilogy actually takes place after another trilogy called World War. In this series, a reptilian alien species known as The Race is on its fourth mission of intergalactic conquest; their target being Earth. Unfortunate for these aliens is the fact that their probe recorded a human race fighting with swords and horses. Yet the time it takes to travel to earth in cryogenic sleep allowed the humans time enough to develop guns, tanks, planes, ships, and theoretical stages of the atomic bomb. The Race, has grown accustomed to taking pace with technological discoveries, as such, they land on a war ravaged planet using deadly weaponry that could even penetrate the army of the Race. Because of this alien invasion, the most advanced nations of the world, Germany, the Soviet Union, the United States, the Japanese Empire, and England, forge a shaky alliance in order to combat the reptilians. These nations manage to remain sovereign, but the rest of the world falls into the Empire governed by the Race. Twenty years later, the colonization fleet reaches Earth, and to their surprise, is only allowed to colonize two-thirds of the planet. Hence the title. But the influx of lizard immigrants is met with distaste by all humans. The rest of the trilogy portrays how the United States, the Soviets, and the Nazis struggle with these creatures. Though it is a very bizarre situations, it does give a somewhat probable reason for the Third Reich surviving past the war. It illustrates how the resources of the United States combined with the wizadry of German scientists could create a war machine good enough to fend off alien invaders. It also does a very good job in portraying how even though humans are united against this overpowering enemy, their nature is still geared towards old racial prejudices - especially that of the Third Reich. Which in someways is a strength, because no event has brought about technological breakthrows like war. Disturbing, but true, and because the aliens never had the experience of fighting amongst their own people or a similiar species technological-wise, they never had the innovation that eventually allows humanity to remain self-determined.

Harry Turtledove has also written In the Presence of Mine Enemies, which does not involve aliens. Instead, it is alternate world where the Nazis win the war on their own. The premise is that the Germans cracked the nutshell of Britain with operation Sea Lion and thus free to overrun Moscow. Twenty years of cold war with the United States led to a nuclear war, in which the Nazis have the upper-hand and eventually occupy America. Similar to Dick's work, though my suspension of belief is a little more accepting to Turtledove's timeline. First of all, there is no crazy technology that drains the Mediterranean Sea in the 1960s and the overall plot is a little more interesting. Plus, it takes a nuclear war to conquer the United States, not force of will. Though this is also an unrealistic scenario, it is a novel a bit more realistic than some of the predecessors. If not only that, the story is pretty descent, drawing parallels between an alternate Nazi-world that has overextended its power to the collapse of the communist world in the late 1980s early 1990s.

The best novel, in my opinion, is Fatherland. This is a story taking place in the 1960s, in which the Nazis are able to drive the Bolsheviks into the Urals, but still suffer from twenty years of guerilla warfare, as the Russians fight to free Moscow. Since the USSR collapses, England reluctantly signs a peace treaty to end the war. Thus the Third Reich rises as a super power and begs the US for good relations in order to deter from a third world war and to focus on the communists in the Urals. This is the most realistic timeline I have seen so far. It is a world in which it is accepted that the Nazis could never conquer the planet, but they could take a chunk and secretly murder millions in the name of racial purity. If you are interested in alternate history or timelines dealing with World War II, I suggest reading Fatherland by Robert Harris.