Trying Out Alternate History ~ Fatherland Book Review HEAVY Spoilers

This was a request by a patron and I hope after they watch this they won't decide to stop being my patron LOL! Journey with Julian into an alternate universe where Bad Man (TM) won the war. Then follow some guy around as he tepidly tries to solve a mystery!

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Love the animal shenanigans? I also made a nice wish list for the pets!

[RuinQueenofOblivion]

Totally agree with you on the prevalence of this particular alternate history. I basically stopped going to r/alternatehistory because people kept posting variations on it. Not going to say it couldn't work, but this book sounds like it doesn't make it work, at all, like most takes on it.

[SharkaOfSea]

I understand the appeal of alternate history. I I find the speculating on "what ifs" quite interesting. But it seems this specific topic is the vast majority of it and after a while it gets repetitive.
On another note, I also read a book with premise "what if World War 1 never happened and the Habsburgs were still in power". It was a nice, cozy sci-fi, that I absolutely didn't expect. But I enjoyed it.

[kandibug]

You know what did a good or better version of what if Himmer Whun tha Wars, Wolfenstein: The New Order / The New Colossus (it's a sci-fi-ish first person shooter video games from the point of view of the resistance). The New Order really doesn't do much with the alternate history other than a few jabs at the Nahzis' ideology and playing as a Super Anti-Fascist killing machine. The New Colossus actually goes somewhere by examining how the US was already racist in so many ways and in turn most of the able body white cishet Americans were willing to sell out and sacrifice their fellow citizens who were already marginalized to the Nahzis because it wasn't all that different from before, but now slavery is legal again and there are concentrations facilities. All is fine if you just ignore those being hunted down and you can live in peace until the Nahzis say your kind is no longer "pure" enough.

It's kind of sad that a shooty over-the-top video game actually tries to reckon with how a sizable portion of the US would sadly be on board with the Nahzis and their policies rather than just pretending that the US wouldn't know the Nahzis are Evilz or pretending the US is innocent of the things that condemn the Nahzis like the books seems to be doing.


Jacob Geller has a good video about how the newer Wolfenstein games uses its alternate history to actually say something about how eerily the US mirrors the Nahzis in many ways (along with some criticism of how the games misses certain exploration opportunities) then he ties it back on how the legalized and openly endorsed racism in the US was a big influence for the Nahzis policies and how the US has never truly reckoned with its role in racism, queerphobia, and antisemitism on its own soil and globally.

Also the US allowed many Nahzis to keep their positions of power in the places they devastated and even integrated them into the US government to fight those damn commies, labor unions, civil rights activists, and anyone who wanted economic justice after WW II, which is why some say the Nahzis lost the battles of WW II but in the end they won the ideology war as their ideas are now embedded into long standing US, Canada, and European policies and culture. In fact Canada has monuments dedicated in honoring the Nahzis under the guise of saying they were victims of Russia and Communism because the meany Russians didn't like the Nahzis invading Russia for some reason.

[katendress]

I could see enjoying books like this in a "could be worse" sense, I guess?

Alternate history can be fun in the thought experiment sense, but this and "Confederacy won the Civil War" sometimes feel like wish fulfilment in a really icky way.

[bellesterling]

Well it's true that right after the war, not a lot of countries knew about the Holocaust. And any rumours were treated as that. Or myths. But people found out pretty soon. However, im curious as to how this book handled that. Did people not know because very bad man managed to not let any jews escape and tell their stories? And im also curious as to how technology is. World war 2 is a HUGE stepping stone in humanity's technology growth. I seriously doubt wed have half the things (cell phones, computers, etc) if he won. But i feel like a lot of these books keep the tech, but just change the history. Instead of actually showing what that would look like? Maybe I'm wrong.

[theoproasheck]

Hey! This video reached a completely new recommended page! I enjoyed this video very much despite never hearing about this book, but I completely resonate with the alternate history and alternate history politics. As for the audience insert, it would be a GREAT casting for Nicholas Cage as a man who plays men written by men with a beautiful woman inexplicably interested in him.

[lynxlubbpeeps]

I actually read this a while ago and mostly loved it, probs coz I haven't read many other types of similar stories. The romance part seemed pretty unnecessary though

[kelsey]

I would recommend The Second Sleep by the same author, but he is partial to that type of main character and romantic interest, so you probably won’t find it to your taste. I loved Pompeii too, again it has the same hero and romance design though. Robert Harris isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s okay! 👍

[_decaysea]

I objectively understand this specific flavor of alternate history in that in that we can have the "evil kingdom" setting in a modern way without calling any *current* parties evil?? But I've never met one with an execution I've enjoyed, and from what you say about Fatherland, it doesn't seem to be an exception. Perhaps they should stick to speculative dystopias instead of delving into the viper's nest of real politics.

[Croakamancer]

Yeah... this and a certian other lot of Bad Men with a silly cross flag winning a war in America are both alt history concepts I could happily do without. Like... in theory, I should enjoy this subject matter. I like political stories, I love it when people try to examine broken systems and stuff like that. But I don't tend to find any alt history writers really managing to pull that off. YA is better at dystopia, and has been for ages. Alt History books seem more.... 'armchair historian', if I'm being charitable. If I'm being *less* charitable, they want to write WWII stories, but don't want to have to think about the technology and culture gap.

[LorewithouttheE]

yeah i am SO TIRED by now of this kind of alternate history... i'm begging more writers who wanna do alt history to *pick another time period* 😮‍💨 i want somethin further back tbh, like go medieval-era or somethin, maybe even ancient times - there's SO many options!! the [Bad Man/Men] won [The War], of either the 40s or 1860s, is boring to me. too often feels like an excuse to write a bunch of b*gots,

[tropetrinitytrilogy]

Honestly I want to get into alternate history books, but moreso Roman Empire stuff... guilty😅