2015 Eric Terzuolo, If Hitler Had Won

If Hitler Had Won: Alternative Histories and Alternative Futures

by

Eric R. Terzuolo

The recent Amazon production of The Man in the High Castle, quite loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s award-winning science fiction novel of 1962, reminds us of popular culture’s persistent interest in how Hitler might have won the Second World War, and what would have followed. This was by far the most popular theme among some 116 works of alternative history dealing with the Third Reich reviewed in Rosenfeld's 2005 study.1 And the current popularity of dystopian literature, especially for «young adult» readers, seems to be feeding the interest in alternative history.2

Alternative history (also frequently termed «counterfactual,» «virtual,» «allohistorical,» or «uchronic») has both staunch defenders and harsh crit-ics. Niall Ferguson’s lengthy introduction to Virtual History3 is a philo-sophical manifesto on the need to counter historical «determinism,» wheth-er deriving from religion, science, idealist philosophy, or Marxism. Fergu-son aims to recover the «contingency» of historical events, and ultimately allow for the writing of history that takes into account the disorder in the universe. Historian of the Third Reich Robert J. Evans, on the other hand, argues that counterfactual historical writing is of interest primarily as a cul-

1 The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism. Cam-

bridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, pp. 404-405, n52. 2 See for example October 2015’s Wolf by Wolf, by Ryan Graudin, from high-end trade

publisher Little, Brown, which features a shape-shifting death camp survivor who aims to assassinate Hitler.

3 «Introduction: Virtual History: Towards a ‘Chaotic’ Theory of the Past» in Niall Fer-guson (Ed.), Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals, Basic Books, New York, 1999, pp. 1-90. Originally published by Picador, London, 1997.

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tural «phenomenon in itself.»4 He also warns against «presentism,» the in-terpretation of past events in the light of present-day values and attitudes, and finds counterfactuals such as in Ferguson’s book often reflect contem-porary political concerns, primarily from conservative perspectives.

Scholars of international relations seem more open to counterfactuals than are mainstream historians. Philip Tetlock and Aaron Belkin admit that the counterfactual thought experiment is «a third rate method,» in the social science world, but many topics, e.g. in international security policy, require such an approach.5 Richard Ned Lebow argues for using counterfactuals «to probe nonlinear causation and the understandings policymakers, histo-rians, and international relations scholars have of historical causation.»6

But what constitutes a ‘good’ counterfactual? Allan Megill makes a point about avoiding overreach with his distinction between restrained and exu-berant counterfactual history, the former addressing «alternative possibili-ties that existed in a real past,» moving from «observed effect to hypothe-sized cause,» and the latter dealing with historical outcomes that never ma-terialized.7 Ferguson argues for considering only counterfactual scenarios actors at the time demonstrably considered. But the essay in Virtual History on the results of a Nazi victory over the Soviet Union,8 meticulously based on archival materials, is hard to consider genuinely counterfactual.9 Lebow

4 Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History, The Menahem Stern Jerusalem Lectures,

Historical Society of Israel, Brandeis University Press, Waltham, MA, 2013, p. 125. 5 «Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical. Methodological, and

Psychological Perspectives», in Philip E. Tetlock and Aaron Belkin (Eds.), Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical. Methodological, and Psychological Per-spectives, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1996, p. 37.

6 Forbidden Fruit: Counterfactuals and International Relations, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2010, p. 3. Emphasis added.

7 Historical Knowledge, Historical Error: A Contemporary Guide to Practice, with con-tributions by Steven Shepard and Phillip Honenberger, University of Chicago Press, Chi-cago, 2007, p. 151, quoted in Evans, p. 114.

8 Michael Burleigh, «Nazi Europe: What if Nazi Germany Had Defeated the Soviet Un-ion?», in Ferguson (Ed.), Virtual History, pp. 321-347.

9Evans, p. 95.

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argues that Ferguson’s rule risks excluding potentially realistic counterfac-tuals that could arise from accidents, acts of nature, impulsiveness, etc.10

Tetlock and Belkin11 suggest criteria for well-designed counterfactual thought experiments that include: well-specified antecedents and conse-quents; logical consistency; consistency with well-established historical facts; projectability into the past and future. The guidance to contributors to a 2006 collection of world history counterfactuals, edited by Tetlock, Le-bow, and Geoffrey Parker,12 calls for avoiding arbitrariness and scenarios that require extensive rewrites of history or that reach too far into the fu-ture, and stresses the need to be explicit and self-critical concerning autho-rial perspectives. Lebow separately proposes a series of tests to assess the contingency of historical turning points.13 For example, to change history,

10 Pp. 48-49. 11 «Counterfactual Thought Experiments», pp. 18-31. 12 Unmaking the West:“What-If?”Scenarios That Rewrite World History, University of

Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI, 2006. Cited in Evans, pp. 109-14. 13 Forbidden Fruit, pp. 58-64.

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does an event need to be prevented, altered, or just delayed? How many plausible rewrites of history are necessary to accomplish the required change?

In truth, a novel or film that portrays Nazi Germany as having won the war is by definition exuberant. Evans quarantines overtly fictional accounts in a separate chapter, though he does draw a parallel between counterfactu-al history and fictional alternative realities, arguing that both require the reader’s willingness to suspend disbelief. Lebow is more convinced of the virtues of fictional alternative realities, extensively citing Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America.14 In this book, American Nazism is in part a homegrown product, with Charles Lindbergh defeating Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940 election on an isolationist platform. (Lebow points out problems, however, with Roth’s counterfactuals regarding US political dynamics in 1940.) Roth's focus in any case is on the experiences of a Jewish family (inspired by his own) in an increasingly anti-Semitic United States. Revelation of a German plot to secure Lindbergh’s support leads to a happy ending, however, and the historical timeline is largely re-stored.

Lebow argues that presentism is actually a virtue for novelists, who can use their «knowledge of the present to bring new meaning to the past,» stimulating readers, in turn, to come away with new meanings for the pre-sent. Fiction and nonfiction, Lebow argues, are «co-constitutive,» i.e. «one can inform the other.»15 Also, whereas historical writing is deterministic, leaving little room for emotion and uncertainty, fiction allows one to bring those elements back in.16

The influential intellectual Philip Roth is not a typical author of alterna-tive histories. Most of the authors discussed below are not true litterateurs, but solid professional writers in search of captivating stories. Of fictional

14 Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, Boston. 15 Pp. 249, 258. 16 While Lebow is quite critical of Ferguson (see pp. 47-49), the two authors seem to

share a dislike of determinism.

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works positing a Nazi victory in World War II, about 80% had been pro-duced in Great Britain and the United States, 15% in Germany, and the rest in a range of other countries, according to Rosenfeld’s 2005 count.17 As in Roth's case, authors’ preoccupations have depended heavily on their coun-try of origin, its geopolitical position, role in the Second World War, and political situation prior to the war.

The German hesitation about producing alternative histories with a victo-rious Hitler is understandable. The early postwar German alternative histo-ries focus on painting extremely dire portraits of life in Germany under a triumphant Nazi regime. Since reunification, however, there has been more space for optimistic projections that Germans ultimately would have over-come the worst aspects of Nazism.18

A considerable number of Polish authors have produced alternative histo-ries, focused on prospects for averting the invasions and dismemberments that have characterized much of Poland’s modern history. Marcin Ciszewski’s Major trilogy, however, seems to suggest that the sad outcome

17 P.15. Perhaps Rosenfeld could have cast his net more widely, however, outside of

Anglo-American and German waters. 18 See ibid., pp. 161-186.

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for Poland in the Second World War was largely inevitable.19 Noted Dutch novelist Harry Mulitsch wears his presentism on his sleeve in his 1972 nov-el De toekomst van gisteren (The future of yesterday), which is primarily about Mulitsch’s failure to complete an alternative history novel about a Nazi victory in World War II. Mulitsch also focuses on the vexed real life issue of extensive Dutch wartime collaboration with the German occupiers, which was only beginning to emerge for public discussion in the early 1970s.20

The Italian World War II alternative history literature, beginning in 1973 with Lucio Ceva’s Asse pigliatutto (The ace/the Axis takes it all), discussed in detail in this collection, also demonstrates specifically national character-istics. It seems partly rooted in the widespread Italian conviction that, had Mussolini not slavishly followed Hitler into war, fascism would have sur-vived. Authors such as Mario Farneti, in his Occidente (The West) trilogy and Giampietro Stocco in Nero italiano (Italian black) posit Italian neutrali-ty, while Enrico Brizzi in L’inattesa piega degli eventi (The unexpected turn of events) has Mussolini breaking with Hitler.21 In Ceva’s book, on the other hand, the Axis hangs together, but sagely avoids declaring war on the United States.

The numerous British alternative histories, though some have achieved great international success, also usually center on specifically British is-sues, notably appeasement and pro-German attitudes in the British elite. The first fictions positing a Nazi triumph actually appeared before the Sec-ond World War, to convince the public of the need to resist Nazi aggression

19 Marek Oziewicz, «’Healing Fiction’? Marcin Ciszewski’s ‘Major’ Trilogy as a Com-

pensational Journey from History to HISTORY», in Bogdan Trocha, Aleksander Rzyman, and Tomasz Rataczak (Eds.), In the Mirror of the Past: Of Fantasy and History, Cam-bridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 2013, pp. 45-58.

20 Rosenfeld, pp. 190-193. 21 A useful brief review of this literature is Łukasz Jan Berezowski, «Se Mussolini fosse

… le visioni alternative del potere fascista dopo il 1945 nella letteratura ucronica italiana del XXI secolo: alcune considerazioni allostoriche», romanica.doc, Vol. 2, No. 3 (2011), pp. 1-7, on the romanica .doc website.

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before it could reach Britain, e.g. Swastika Night in 1937 by Katharine Burdekin (writing as Murray Constantine).22

The seemingly obligatory counterfactual re-write in the British alterna-tive histories is the extension of German control over the British Isles, via successful cross-Channel invasion and conquest, or via surrender by a Brit-ish government of appeasers. Since there is no doubt of German intentions to launch an invasion, if possible, against weak British homeland defenses, and given the well-established view that only the RAF’s severely strained ability to maintain control of the skies in the Battle of Britain forestalled such an assault,23 it does not seem hopelessly extravagant to posit success-ful German conquest and occupation. The question then arises regarding the likely reaction of the British people: resistance or widespread collabora-tion with the occupiers?

The answer in the early postwar period, through the 1960s, was clear: the British would have resisted heroically. At the end of Noël Coward’s 1947 play Peace in Our Time, for example, an uprising by the British resistance and a coordinated Allied naval landing seem on the verge of expelling the Nazis. The title, of course, is a sarcastic reference to Chamberlain, and the play is replete with attacks on the appeasers24 It was easy, in a sense, for the British to project successful anti-German resistance. Their self-image high-lighted survival against the full force of Hitler’s fury, and ultimate victory. Except for the Channel Islands, they had not experienced actual invasion and occupation.

By the 1970s, though, the bloom had come off the rose of Britain’s post-war recovery. In SS-GB, first published in the UK in August 1978, Len Deighton draws a fairly complex and nuanced portrait of Britain under German occupation. He certainly moves away from a simple «our finest hour» narrative. In Deighton’s story, set in 1941, Hitler launched a success-

22 Rosenfeld, pp. 35-38. 23 See Andrew Roberts, «Hitler’s England: What if Germany had Invaded Britain in

May 1940?», in Ferguson (Ed.), Virtual History, pp. 281-320. 24 Rosenfeld, pp. 42-3.

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ful cross-Channel invasion in 1940, capturing London, and seizing King George VI and Prime Minister Churchill (the latter court-martialed and ex-ecuted in Berlin). British armed forces resisted until an armistice in Febru-ary 1941, though unofficial armed resistance still appears to be underway as of November. Deighton, however, posits a largely cozy accommodation to German occupation, especially by members of the British political class and by businessmen, profiting from both legal and illegal activities. (The author’s modest family background may be showing.) Deighton’s failure to account in detail for the lack of a continued, sturdy British resistance to Nazi occupation has come in for some criticism.25

As the story unfolds, preparations are underway for a celebration of German-Soviet friendship, and Hitler has provided the Soviet Navy with anchorages in Scotland. Despite US hostility toward Germany, authorities in Washington have not recognized the British government-in-exile there. A resistance movement rooted in the British elite, including people working in the Quisling British government, draws the protagonist (a Scotland Yard murder investigator) into a complicated plot to rescue the King and use him to help bring the United States into the war, along with providing British nuclear technology to the US.

Fiction authors often resort to rivalries between the SS and the German military to provide cracks or potential cracks in the Nazi regime. One of Deighton’s principal German characters, an officer of the Nazi party securi-ty agency (Sicherheitsdiesnt—SD), is sentenced to death for collaborating with the resistance plot to liberate the King, with the intention of discredit-ing the army, which is running the occupation. The book ends with his pre-diction that the United States, not Germany, will build a nuclear weapon and ultimately triumph.

Dominion, the successful 2012 novel by C. J. Sansom,26 is set in 1952, with Britain as a satellite state of Nazi Germany, its appeaser-led govern-

25 See for example Graeme Shimmin’s review online at his website (graemeshimmin). 26 Published in the UK by Mantle and in the US by Mulholland Books, an imprint of

Little, Brown and Company.

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ment having surrendered after Dunkirk. It starts with a single, highly spe-cific counterfactual: in May 1940, the appeaser Lord Halifax, rather than Churchill, replaces Chamberlain as prime minister. In a «Historical Note,» 27 Sansom makes a detailed argument for this core counterfactual, based on the British political scene of 1940, and for his choice of key players in the Vichy-like British government of 1952. Sansom is also very transparent about his dislike for the Scottish National Party (allied in Dominion with the collaborationist government) and for the UK Independence Party, and about his left wing, pro-welfare state personal politics.

In Dominion, the Germans have turned against the Soviet Union. The US is neutral and at peace with Japan. (Britain’s peace with Germany gave US isolationists the winning card in the 1940 elections.) Churchill is alive and leading the British resistance. But the decisive political event is Hitler’s death in December 1952, triggering a civil war in Germany between the army, unwilling to continue an unwinnable war in the USSR, and the SS (and most of the Nazi party).

27 In the US edition, the «Historical Note» is at pp. 611-628. The comments on sources

in the «Bibliographical Note,» pp. 605-610, are also useful reading.

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Sansom28 generously terms his British colleague Robert Harris’s 1992 novel Fatherland «the best alternate history novel ever written.» In this in-ternationally successful work29 set in 1964, Germany is the hegemonic power in Europe. Relations with Great Britain, ruled by Edward VIII (Germanophile in real life) are extremely cordial. The Greater German Reich extends far to the east of Moscow, though the remaining Soviet armed forces and partisans receive assistance from the US, which defeated Japan thanks to nuclear weapons, but is in a Cold War-like standoff with Germany, also a nuclear power. There are prospects for détente, since US president Joseph Kennedy (known in real life for his pro-German sympa-thies) is coming to Berlin for Hitler’s 75th birthday celebration.

The book’s protagonist, a detective with the Criminal Police, discovers a plot to eliminate all officials with any recollection of the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, where the final elimination of the Jews was planned. The point of eliminating all evidence of the Final Solution is to allow for rapprochement with the US. Harris might be faulted here for excessive pre-sentism. In real life, Joseph Kennedy expressed little sympathy for the Jew-ish people.30 The idea of him seeking détente with Germany, on the other hand, is credible, and it seems unlikely that he would allow events 20 years earlier to interfere with such a priority.

Alternative histories of World War II have been popular in the United States as well since the early 1960s. In 1995, even one of America’s most prominent politicians, Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gin-grich, co-authored a chaotic and commercially unsuccessful novel,31 posit-ing an emerging need for the US to confront Germany, after initially having

28 P. 610. 29 The 1994 film version starring Rutger Hauer did not earn high marks. 30 Clive Irving, «Joe Kennedy’s Answer to the ‘Jewish Question’: Ship Them to Afri-

ca», February 1, 2015, The Daily Beast website. 31 With William R. Forstchen, 1945, Baen Books, Wake Forest, NC. The two later au-

thored a trilogy of alternative history novels regarding the US Civil War which were much more successful. Rosenfeld (p. 157) notes that 1945 «met with the most savage reception of any work of alternate history in the postwar era.»

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accepted de facto German control over Continental Europe. The remarkably prolific American writer of alternative histories, Harry Turtledove, along with the Worldwar tetralogy (1994-96) in which aliens invade the Earth in the middle of World War II, penned a story of Jewish survival in Germany following a Nazi victory in the war. 32 Interestingly, Turtledove was criti-cized for his mild portrayal of a Third Reich undertaking an internal reform process.33

Some US science fiction alternative histories depend on improbable ele-ments, e.g. a time traveling, nuclear-armed stealth bomber (in the 1993 movie The Philadelphia Experiment II) or alien interventions in the Second World War (in the TV series Star Trek: Enterprise, 2004). But simpler is better. One of the most highly praised alternative histories in American popular culture is a 1967 episode of the original Star Trek series, «The City on the Edge of Forever.» The core question actually requires no science fic-tion accouterments: does one of the characters avoid a traffic accident and survive to lead a successful pacifist movement that leaves the US fatally unprepared for the Second World War?

Philip K. Dick’s aforementioned novel The Man in the High Castle34 is predictably more complex, and uses the Chinese divination text the I Ching to introduce historical indeterminacy, but the book’s setting does not seem extravagantly improbable.35 Unlike European authors, who largely neglect the war in the Pacific, Dick focuses markedly on events in the Japanese-controlled Pacific States of America. His picture of the Japanese occupation is not excessively dark, and one of the central, highly sympathetic charac-ters, is a Japanese official. It also becomes evident that Japan risks nuclear aggression by its erstwhile German ally, deriving from a power struggle be-tween the military and the SS, following Hitler’s incapacitation by syphilis.

32 In the Presence of Mine Enemies, New American Library, New York, 2003. 33 Rosenfeld, pp. 158-159. 34 G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1962. 35 An exception is the reinstitution of slavery in the now autonomous southern states of

the defeated US, in fact not a significant plot element. Dick’s book, however, predated the major successes of the Civil Rights movement.

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In Dick’s scenario, much of the eastern and Midwestern US is controlled by Germany, after falling to an invasion in 1947. But, while the recent Ama-zon production focuses heavily on German occupation and American re-sistance, Dick devotes almost no attention to the German-controlled area.

The real core of the story arguably has to do with a book, officially dis-couraged reading yet widely available outside the German-controlled area, which portrays an Allied victory over the Axis. The female protagonist ul-timately encounters the reclusive author (the eponymous «man in the high castle») with the hope of understanding more about the alternative history. She receives the perplexing information that the book represents what actu-ally occurred. As frequently happens in Dick’s work, characters and readers are left wondering which layer of reality is «really real.»

Can works of alternative history offer any benefits as we reflect on what wars may look like in the future? Of course, the primary purpose of popular culture is to entertain. There is a wide «genre gap» between the books and films discussed above and the governmental or scholarly documents in which we normally discuss the future of war. But the fictional alternative histories can remind us of some important things. Dick’s challenge to us, i.e. to question whether we are living in a fiction, should not be dismissed. Our interpretation of past wars is inevitably «so-cially constructed,» through interactions and exchanges among members of society, and the same can be said for our imagination of future wars. Alter-native constructions are possible. And those who seek to project the future should be no less explicit and self-critical regarding authorial perspectives than writers of alternative histories.

Counterfactual fictions remind us that alternative pathways exist, and must be considered. There is a «tyranny of desired outcomes» in institu-tions, which often excludes serious consideration of scenarios that do not correspond to leaders’ preferences and prejudices. In the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, for example, US Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki found no

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hearing for his concerns that post-Saddam Iraq would not be the stable, peaceful, happy place that his political superiors had convinced themselves it would be. It is as important to consider the possible unraveling of desired scenarios as it is to consider how an undesirable scenario, e.g. Nazi control over Europe, could unravel.

Alternative histories also illustrate that exploration of alternatives is bounded and shaped by national experiences and culture. Views regarding the nation’s military prowess, or its historical role and destiny, can deter-mine which alternatives seem open for consideration. Views on human agency, and whether specific individuals make a difference, also can differ across cultural lines.36

The focus in alternative histories on how the specificities of domestic pol-itics condition strategic choices is also quite appropriate. In thinking about future wars, we should consider the domestic political feasibility and con-sequences of conducting various types of warfare. Stories of murky, com-plicated, drawn-out situations may help vaccinate us against institutions’ tendencies to prefer scenarios of quick and complete success.

Fictional alternative histories also remind us of the centrality of narra-tive. Novels, think tank analyses, or governmental decision memorandum all involve some sort of narrative, a hopefully logical assemblage of plausi-ble data which describes, or at least implies, a way of moving from point A to point B. Gaps in logic and other shortcomings one might criticize in a novel can surface all too easily in policy-focused documents. At the same time, a policy narrative that is too compelling can prove risky.

Finally, writing history that takes into account the disorder in the uni-verse seems tough enough; doing so when writing about the future is truly daunting. But the alternative histories at least suggest maintaining a healthy respect for the unanticipated, and avoiding a sort of «planner's hubris.» They remind us, in effect, of von Moltke’s sage warning in 1871 that «one

36Miriam Hernandez and Sheena S. Iyengar, «What Drives Whom? A Cultural Perspec-

tive on Human Agency», Social Cognition, Vol. 19, No. 3 (2001), pp. 269-294.

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cannot be sure at all that any operational plan will survive the first encoun-ter with the main body of the enemy.»37

37Terence M. Holmes, <<Planning Versus Chaos in Clausewitz's On War>>, Journal of

Strategic Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1 (January 2007), pp. 129-130.