Hypothetical Axis victory in World War II

A hypothetical Axis victory in World War II has become a common concept of alternative history and counterfactual history. Such writings express ideas of what the world would be like had the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan won World War II. Numerous examples exist in several languages worldwide.[1][2]

The world under the victorious Axis in the 1962 Philip K. Dick novel The Man in the High Castle

The term Pax Germanica, Latin for "German peace", is sometimes used for this theoretical period,[3] by analogy to similar terms for peaceful historical periods. In some cases, this term is used for a hypothetical Imperial German victory in World War I as well, having a historical precedent in Latin texts referring to the Peace of Westphalia.[4]

The subject of Axis supremacy as a fictional dramatic device began in the English-speaking world before the start of World War II, with Katharine Burdekin's novel Swastika Night coming out in 1937. Subsequent popular fictional depictions of an Axis-powers victory include: The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (1962), SS-GB by Len Deighton (1978), and Fatherland by Robert Harris (1992).

Some have viewed the enduring interest in the "what-ifs" of an Axis-powers victory as the result of the resonance of related themes, for example, how ordinary individuals deal with the humiliation and anger of being dominated.[1][5][6]

Depiction of Axis victory in fiction
Wochenspruch der NSDAP 26 January 1941 claims that "National Socialism is the guarantor of victory".

Central themes and motifs

In terms of tone, the concept of a victory usually creates a background of depressing melancholy, audiences seeing plots unfold in a dark, strained atmosphere. Examples of writers using this device include Philip K. Dick, Stephen Fry, Robert Harris, and Philip Roth among many others.[1]

Early depictions

Swastika Night, authored by Katherine Burdekin under the pseudonym "Murray Constantine" in 1937, is a unique case given that it came out before World War II even began. It is thus a novel of future history rather than an "alternative" one. Writing in 2009 for The Guardian, journalist Darragh McManus remarked that "[t]hough a huge leap of imagination, Swastika Night posits a terrifyingly coherent and plausible" story-line. He also wrote, "And considering when it was published, and how little of what we know of the Nazi regime today was then understood, the novel is eerily prophetic and perceptive about the nature of Nazism". The journalist particularly noted the "violence and mindlessness" as well as the "irrationality and superstition" found in the post-victory dictatorship.[5]

In 1941, the travel-writer Henry Vollam Morton wrote I, James Blunt, a propaganda work set in a September 1944 where Britain has lost the war and is under Nazi rule. The story is in the form of a diary describing the consequences of occupation, such as British workers being transported to Germany and Scottish shipyards building warships for an attack on the USA. The novella ends with an exhortation to the reader to make sure the story remains fiction.’[7]

The first Nazi-victory 'alternate history' as such, in any language, was published in 1945 months after Hitler's suicide and written by the Hungarian author Lászlo Gáspár.[1] Titled We, Adolf I (Adolf the First), the novel envisages German success after fighting in Stalingrad eventually leading to the victorious Hitler crowning himself a new modern 'Emperor'. Erecting in Berlin a huge Imperial Palace incorporating elements of the French Eiffel Tower and the U.S. Statue of Liberty among other spectacles, the narcissistic despot prepares a dynastic marriage with a Japanese princess in order to produce an heir who would rule the whole world.

Often known in English by the title The Last Jew, the Hebrew work Ha-Yehudi Ha'Aharon (היהודי האחרון) by the Revisionist Zionist physician and political activist Jacob Weinshall came out in Tel Aviv in 1946. In it, hundreds of years in the future, a completely Nazi-dominated world ruled by a "League of Dictators" discovers a last surviving Jew hiding in Madagascar. The Nazi rulers plan to publicly execute this last Jew during the forthcoming Olympic Games. However, before this can take place, the Moon moves close to the Earth as a result of the Nazis' misguided attempt to colonize it. The catastrophe causes the end of human civilization and thus of Nazi rule. Weinshall's Hebrew text, as of 2000, has never received a full, formal translation into other languages.[8] The novel should not be confused with Yoram Kaniuk's novel The Last Jew, which has been translated to English.[9]

The work Peace in Our Time explored a fascist-dominated London and the deleterious effects of occupation on regular people. English playwright and Secret Service agent Noël Coward, whose name appeared on a Gestapo arrest list in the event of a ground invasion of the UK, authored the drama, and it received its stage debut in 1947. Although facing a muted response at first, lingering interest in Coward's work as well as the specific themes of Peace in Our Time have meant that subsequent productions have gone on, even into the 21st century.[6]

Later depictions

Additional notable depictions of Axis victory include:

Literature

Counterfactual scenarios are also written as a form of academic paper rather than necessarily as fiction and/or novel-length fiction.

The All About History Bookazine series came out with What if...Book of Alternate History (2019). Among the articles are What if...Germany had won the Battle of Britain? and What if...The Allies had lost the Battle of the Atlantic?

Film

Television

Comics
  • "Blitzkrieg 1972", issue 155 of The Incredible Hulk (September 1972), takes place in a battle-torn New York City, where German Nazi forces, from their headquarters on Wall Street, are increasingly defeating the outnumbered US Army forces desperately defending the city - until the Hulk comes to take a hand in the fighting and confront the super-Nazi Captain Axis.
  • In DC Comics, Earth X is an alternative Earth in which the Nazis won World War II.
  • In the 2003-2004 Captain America story arc Cap Lives (Captain America Vol. 4, issues 17-20), Captain America awakens from suspended animation in 1964 to find that - due to a temporal anomaly - Nazi Germany has won WWII and conquered much of the world, including the United States. After dropping a nuclear bomb on the US, Nazi Germany took control of North America, renaming New York City as "New Berlin" and declaring New Berlin the capital of Nazi America. The Red Skull has become the Führer of the so-called "New Reich" and seeks to create an army of blonde, Aryan supermen or super soldiers based on Captain America's DNA. Alongside American resistance fighters that include Bucky Barnes, Nick Fury and his Howling Commandos, Peter Parker, Ben Grimm, Johnny Storm, Sue Storm, Reed Richards, Hank Pym, Janet van Dyne, Tony Stark, Donald Blake, Bruce Banner, Matt Murdock, Luke Cage, Frank Castle, and Stephen Strange, Captain America fights against the New Reich and succeeds in returning to the timeline he is originally meant to be in.[11][12]
  • An alternate reality (designated as Earth 9907) in which the Red Skull survived and assumed leadership of the failing Third Reich, leading it into total world domination, also appears in the A-Next comic series by Marvel Comics.[13]

Video games

Cultural studies

Academics, such as Gavriel David Rosenfeld in The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism (2005), have researched the media representations of 'Nazi victory'.[14]

See also

References
  1. "Alternative History: What Might Have Been Had Hitler Won?". Haaretz.
  2. Fred Bush (July 15, 2002). "The Time of the Other: Alternate History and the Conquest of America". Strange Horizons. Archived from the original on 3 January 2010. Retrieved 2 January 2009.
  3. Carl Tighe: Pax Germanica - the Future Historical. Journal of European Studies, Vol. 30, 2000.
  4. "CAPUT LXVIII. Chronologia." in CAMENA. See for years 1648 et 1649.
  5. McManus, Darragh (12 November 2009). "Swastika Night: Nineteen Eighty-Four's lost twin". The Guardian.
  6. Hardy, Michael (September 30, 2014). "Review: Peace in Our Time Is a Play For Our Time". Houstonia. Retrieved December 18, 2016.
  7. https://hvmorton.com/2020/01/18/i-james-blunt-by-kenneth-fields/
  8. Eli Eshed, "Israeli Alternate Histories" (in Hebrew) published by the Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy, November 2, 2000
  9. Kaniuk, Yoram (2007-12-01). The Last Jew: A Novel. Grove/Atlantic, Inc. ISBN 9781555848385.
  10. "World War Two: The Rewrite". The Independent. April 23, 2006. Retrieved 2009-06-26.
  11. Hölbling, Walter; Heller, Arno (2004). What is American?: New Identities in U.S. Culture. LIT Verlag Münster.
  12. "Marvel Knights Captain America Vol. 4: Cap Lives". Marvel Masterworks.
  13. A-Next #11-12
  14. "If Hitler had won World War Two…". July 2005.

Further reading
  • Rosenfeld, Gavriel David. The World Hitler Never Made. Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism (2005).
  • Tighe, C., "Pax Germanica in the future-historical" in Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik, pp. 451–467.
  • Tirghe, Carl. "Pax Germanicus in the future-historical". In Travellers in Time and Space: The German Historical Novel (2001).
  • Winthrop-Young, Geoffrey. "The Third Reich in Alternate History: Aspects of a Genre-Specific Depiction of Nazism". In Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 39 no. 5 (October 2006).
  • Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers. Nazi Palestine. The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine, New York: Enigma Books with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2010.
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