Love this show, I've studied the Nazis or years in Univeristy and have a BA Hons History degree n really disappointed that they've got the Nazis smoking (Which Hitler banned),
Also, hunting was banned under Hitler's authority.
Don't know why they had to put all that it, would have been so much authentic without the smoking etc...
SPOILER ALERT: just finished watching te last episode and noticed Nicole said to Joe we can make the world a better place and it'll be our time after "theirs" cut to a scene of them having sex... Got me thinking if she's trying to breed seeing as they're both Lebersborn. Think this could be a possibility in series 3.
Anyone else think the same?
This is an alternate reality so you can't go by our history. The banning of smoking and hunting may never have taken place or was un-banned in the 20 years since WWII ended in their reality. Also might be different rules for the United States vs Germany when it comes to smoking and hunting.
It's Me Dear, BOO!
Indeed.
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It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing .
hunting was banned, but people hunting was ok lol
shareNeither of these claims is correct. Smoking was not banned in Germany. Hitler was a non-smoker and forbid smoking in his presence, but there was no general ban. As for hunting, while the Nazis did ban vivisection and strengthened animal cruelty laws, they did not ban hunting. Indeed, prominent Nazis, like Hitler's designated successor Herman Goering, were avid hunters.
shareHi David
Thanks for this information . I should have worded this correctly what I meant was if Hitler was in that much power he would have put a smoking ban in as at the end of the day he was looking to build a nation on health and fitness most importantly.
Have you got any sources on Herman Goering being a hunter?thanks
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at the end of the day he was looking to build a nation on health and fitness most importantly.
Fanboy : a person who does not think while watching.share
when you order your "doctors" to defy their Hippocratic Oath and instead of being doctors they turn into hunters of the "defectives", and either are executioners themselves or they rat their own patients out to the executioners.
So, you are speculating about what would have happened had Hitler lived. That is not history and so you cannot claim that the TV series is historically wrong.
shareWere they showing Germans smoking?
I can't remember.
In any event, Germans could still smoke.
If I were you, I'd wanna be me too.
Yeah nearly all the characters smoke lol although I didn't see John Smith smoke yet but the few other SS officers were
shareWell, I'm wondering if there's a difference between the Germans and American Nazis.
Smoking is definitely a bigger part of the culture back then in the states.
In any event, since I didn't notice I guess it's not that important to me.
If I were you, I'd wanna be me too.
Besides the fact that you were corrected and now say that what you "meant to say" was something quite different, you do get that this is an alternate reality where quite a few things are not historically correct, yes?
Also, smoking is just common plot device that helps to place fictional scenes back in different eras, such as the 50s and 60s. It works.
Mostly though, I can't see how anyone can claim that their portrayal of Nazi america isn't "authentic" even in this fictional story. Most people are complaining about it being TOO heavy handed, with swastikas everywhere they can find a flat surface.
Brevity is the soul of wit.
I was stating that we studied in our History degree that if Hitler had come to power, he would have enforced no-smoking laws; similar to the ones we have now in the UK where you can't smoke in public places only in the comfort of your own home. It would have made sense for Hitler to do this... One, because he was anti-smoking, two- he was trying to promote health and wellbeing for the "master Aryan race" not to mention his breeding programmes.
Anyhow, I'm happy with the way the show is done and I think they've done a damn good job of how it would have been
He did come to power. For twelve years he was the supreme authority in Germany and he did nothing of the sort nor is there any evidence to show that he was seriously contemplating doing so.
shareThis. Perhaps the history courses haven't reached 1933 in their curriculum ?
shareI would be more concerned about the quality of this degree course if I were the OP.
shareBA Hons History degree Manchester University
shareYou are incorrect to say that you "studied" this hypothesis that Hitler would have done x had y happened (which it didn't). You can study facts and methodologies and engage in speculation, but studying the former is very different to doing the latter. Speculation has a place in history - for example, where evidence is lacking - but this type of counterfactual really is on the fringes of serious academia.
shareTough
shareAlso keep in mind that smoking wasn't viewed as a harmful habit until, around 30 years ago. Doctors used to prescribe cocaine to their patients (which is actually brought up in the show), and the original recipe for 7Up contained lithium!
You're trying to attribute modern-day thinking to the past. It doesn't work that way.
Furthermore, a good life lesson: what you studied in your classroom is merely conjecture, and to be taken with a grain of salt. Nobody knows what would've happened if this or that because it didn't happen. It's all guesswork, which is exactly what this show is doing. And doing quite well.
I am trying to like this show, since the main actors are great. I'm on ep 6, season 1. I am having a difficult time watching this show since the real history of WWII is heartbreaking. Does it get better anytime soon? This is like communism/fascism on crack, didn't you think? I know it's fantasy, but it's still difficult to watch.
shareNo I think it's amazing and love it
shareWhat?! A show about the Nazis and Japanese winning World War II isn't historically accurate?!? You've got to be kidding me!!
shareIt could have happened...
shareNo.
sharePlease explain, why not?
shareGermany didn't have the population, industry, or economy to do it. They couldn't cross thirty miles of English Channel let alone three thousand miles of ocean.
The United States alone had a greater GDP and production capacity then the rest of the world combined. Nor did Germany have the strength required to conquer the Soviet Union - even if they had not been distracted by war in the West. The logistics for anyone to defeat the USSR quickly did not then exist (arguably,m they still don't) and absent a quick victory, they were locked into a war of attrition they could not possibly win.
As for all the claims of Nazi superweapons - the Western Allies were equal or better technologically to the Germans. in almost ever significant area - nuclear engineering, electronics, aviation, automotive design and production - they were well ahead. Few of the much vaunted proposals at the end of the war that were supposed to turn things around were much more than the kind of nonsense one might find in Popular Mechanics. Some critics like to refer to them as Napkinwaffen: i.e designs written on the backs of napkins and envelopes rather than realistic proposals. One should note that the victors continued few of these projects after the war and those they did were almost entirely failures.
As for the idea that the US would somehow ignore what was happening in the rest of the world resulting in a fully mobilized Germany attacking a US still having a 1930's army*, it requires that American politicians and people be more than isolationist, it requires them to be lobotomized. By 1940, the need to rearm to face a new more dangerous world was widely accepted by just about everyone, even the few remaining isolationists. There was little difference in the foreign policy platforms of both parties in the 1940 election. If the Nazis were doing better than in real life, the US would rearm quicker.
* Mind you, the 1930's US Navy, limited by international treaties and serious financial cutbacks, was still far stronger then the wartime German navy every was and as strong or stronger as the wartime Japanese navy at it's peak.
IIRC, the book was somewhat vague on the exact details as to how the Axis Powers won WW2 - it simply presented it as a fait accompli. But you're right - the minute Hitler decided to take on the Soviet Union, he was effectively finished, even if it did take another four years. As for the Japanese, once Churchill heard that the USA had declared war, he said that was the moment he knew the Allies were going to win.
Having said that, once you simply take the show at its face value - it's an alternate reality that requires some suspension of disbelief - it works pretty well.
Having said that, once you simply take the show at its face value - it's an alternate reality that requires some suspension of disbelief - it works pretty well.
I think you can get to a world where Nazi Germany dominates central and eastern Europe and maybe even defeats the Soviet Union if you can use the fact that the British crown was controlled by a royal house with strong links to Germany (Hanover through Victoria's marriage, then Saxe-Coburg & Gotha after her marriage, renamed Windsor by George V in 1917), and thus is able to maintain a high tolerance of Germany and a non-aggression pact which keeps Britain and the US out of the war.
Unfortunately it doesn't get you "Germany wins the war", but it could get you a large Nazi state, including most of Eastern Europe, and Russia if you want to be a real optimist.
The open question is whether this eliminates German militarism and expansion towards the West permanently, or if a decade after conquering Russia if Germany turns on Britain. Perhaps you can posit some soft-focus version of Nazism that's socially anti-semitic but never goes "final solution" and becomes a significant political party in Britain, furthering Anglo-German political alignment.
I doubt you can ever get to a scenario where Germany, even with the active participation of Great Britain, is capable of an invasion of the United States. Too much population, industrial capacity and difficult terrain once you get much west of the US Eastern Seaboard, and too much ocean to cross to stage an invasion.
You simply can't occupy large unfriendly territory it takes too much resources , US know well itself from Vietnam and Afghanistan. Germans could win USSR if they had come as liberators from Bolsheviks not as Nazi , uber nation, enemy against all.
share^long and good answer this.
short answer = 2 fronts.
Hitler made a big mistake not taking care of the British (and dragging America in- well that was Japan), and still embarking on Barbarossa. That was doomed to fail.
edit: I meant Dave-R011's answer..somehow my reply went one level inside
Well, it does not matter if Germany did have or not the population, industry, or economy to do it. If German could invent the A-bomb first (at least 1-2 years) they would have bombed out half of the world to force the Alliance to surrender :)
Like in this TV series: they washed down Washington with the bomb before the invasion.
The only way Germany could have got nuclear weapons first would have been if the US didn't' have a nuclear weapons program. Things like population, industry, and economy count quite a bit there.
shareThe only way Germany could have got nuclear weapons first would have been if the US didn't' have a nuclear weapons program.
In the novel's parallel history, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt was assassinated by Giuseppe Zangara on February 15, 1933, leading to the continuation of the Great Depression and U.S. isolationism during the opening of World War II. Adolf Hitler led Nazi Germany to conquer most of Europe and ...
And in this story, the US didn't.
this isn't a historically accurate fictional show
As to why it couldn't have happened, Dave-R011 got it spot-on.
For more details as to why, go to pretty much any documentary on the subject. I'm new to all of this, and so I recently started watching the TV series "Hitler's Megastructures" (currently on Youtube if you're curious). It's not the best doc available, but it does go into some detail of the massive problems the Third Reich was having in developing their ambitious projects, and the reasons why his plans of domination were beginning to fail on a massive scale. By the time I was done watching episode 4, I realized that Hitler was pretty much doomed no matter what. It's really amazing that he went as far as he did, and he did take it as far as he could possibly take it...to the breaking point. And then it collapsed because it had to. His reach simply far exceeded his grasp.
The only way he would have had a chance was if the USA had suddenly decided that Hitler's way was the right way, and joined him voluntarily. Or if the USA had just sat back and let him roll over them. And neither of those scenarios was going to happen.
A question for anyone: As I'm relatively new to this part of history, could someone please recommend a good comprehensive documentary on why Hitler failed? There are apparently dozens of them, and I'd like to find the best ones to get started with. Growing up, I thought History was boring, but I'm now finding it fascinating, and I'd like to find good sources.
All it might have taken to turn around the tides could have been Robert Oppenheimer's decision to turn away from Judaism after a big fight with his father, go back to his family's hometown Hanau and help the Germans build the a-bomb first, maybe even way earlier.
As far as the Nazis were concerned, a non-practicing Jew (as Oppenheimer and his parents seem to have been in real life) or one who had converted to Christianit6y was still a Jew. Oppenheimer would still be subject to the Nuremberg Laws and eventually a one-way ticket to Auschwitz.
Even if the German nuclear weapons program wasn't a clown show, it's highly unlikely that they'd get the Bomb first or develop an intercontinental delivery system before the US.
I'm pretty damn sure the higher ups would have made exceptions in the prospect of a greater benefit. That's the great thing about power: If you have it, you can decide on a wide array of things. Like sparing promising people from lethal punishment and instead putting them into a think tank. If they don't deliver, they get punished after all. Win-win situation.
Although I actually do not know what the progress of the Nazi a-bomb was, but why go intercontinental? All they had to do is a-bomb Moscow or London. Or the Normandy a little while later. The a-bomb was and is more of a threat symbol than anything else.
But that's just an assumption, of course.
No, no exceptions were made when it came to Jews. He hated first and foremost Jews. Many Jews tried to "pretend" they converted to Christianity; it never worked. The Nazis traced their birth records to Jewish ancestors and they were sent packing.
shareI'm pretty damn sure the higher ups would have made exceptions in the prospect of a greater benefit.
why go intercontinental?
The a-bomb was and is more of a threat symbol than anything else.
If you think the "higher ups" would have made an exception for an expert in nuclear physics, then explain Lise Meitner.
share