France Continues Fighting From North Africa? Pro-West Korea But PRC Taiwan?

Still checking on the public forums of the Internet's premiere alternate history site despite having been self-banned from posting for several years at this point. Here are some of the most interesting recent offerings.

Essai En Guerre: An FFO-Inspired TL-"France Fights On" is one of the more well-known scenarios in the online AH subculture, albeit more so in France than in the Anglosphere. It diverges from our history when the suspiciously pro-Axis mistress of French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud dies in a traffic accident. This tiny change leads to a Reynaud more willing to exert himself to continue fighting Germany from the colonies even if it means disengaging from the losing battle on the mainland. As a result, the French evacuating much of its military to North Africa and continuing the war from there rather than having Marshal Petain get a cease-fire and set up the puppet Vichy regime. Here's a YouTube video breaking the first part of the main timeline down and here is an in-progress English translation. This version, though it has a lot in common with the main FFO scenario, has some unique spins. It's definitely a worse world for the Axis on top of the additional losses the Germans took having to fight for the entirety of European France--the Italians get their stuffing wrecked in Africa well before they did in real life and the French, reequipped with gear they'd ordered from the US that didn't arrive in time to help them fight the Germans, contribute enough for (most of) mainland Greece to hold against the Germans and their various cronies in the Balkans.

(Not as crazy as it sounds--Hitler's strategic priority at this point was attacking the Soviet Union for "living space," so leaving the Allies with a toehold in mainland Europe that they now have to feed is plausible. He was pretty overconfident about defeating the "subhuman" Russians, so him thinking he can deal with Britain, the French die-hards, and that little bit of Greece after the Soviets are destroyed isn't that much different than his real-life view he could deal with Britain once the Soviets were destroyed.)

Pro-Western United Korea, PRC-Controlled Taiwan-This timeline has two different scenarios, not just one. In the first, the Red Chinese finish off the Nationalists in Hainan Island more quickly than in real history, allowing them to attack the Nationalist remnant in Taiwan before the U.S. can organize the Seventh Fleet to defend them. This keeps them too busy to intervene in Korea to keep North Korea from getting obliterated. In the second version, the Chinese don't intervene in the Korean War, leading the U.S. to withdraw the Seventh Fleet--and after a sufficiently-decent interval the Chinese pounce on Taiwan. Either way, this world is spared the horrors of the Kim Dynasty, but the Chinese Communists have a direct outlet on the Pacific. That in turn will have its affects on U.S. possessions and allies in the region, like Okinawa and the Philippines.

Patton In Korea? Two Versions of a Communist Confederacy? 1196 Byzantine Revival?

Still self-banned from the alternate history forum, but I still check on the public sections for good stuff to read. Here are some of my latest choices:

Patton in Korea-In which the...controversial...General George Patton doesn't die as a result of a car accident at the end of World War II and after a very brief retirement, is recalled to the colors to command US troops in the Korean War. Only a few chapters in and so far so good...Patton is restoring discipline that in actual history had been seriously allowed to lapse and remembering lessons of WWII that the peacetime army had forgotten to make the North Koreans' opening advance a lot more difficult. But it's not all sunshine and roses--Patton is having territory issues with MacArthur, who's diverting resources for something Patton dismisses as just "an amphibious landing." We'll see how this goes.

Union Blue and Dixie Red: A History of the Communist South-The author of this timeline makes the argument that an independent Confederate States of America would have a lot of the same social conditions that Czarist Russia had, and like Russia might be vulnerable to a Communist takeover if it lasted into the 20th Century. I like the alternate-timeline ephemera--quotes from historians, politicians, books, etc.--that offer hints as to how this happened. The divergence from real history is that it's the North, not the South, that violates Kentucky's neutrality first, and that causes a lot of trouble.

To Live and Die In Dixie: A Communist Confederacy TL-Fellow author Sean C.W. Korsgaard has been tinkering with the idea of a successful Confederate secession that later falls into Communist revolution for years now. The novel that takes place in this timeline involves a reluctant African-American soldier named Malcolm Little (real-life Malcolm X) on a mission to infiltrate the Red Confederacy for the U.S., but getting there is the fun part. The divergence from the timeline seems to be during our history's Seven Days Battle, which in this timeline is referred to as the Six Days Battle. The opening post hints that a lot of "victorious Confederacy" clichés will be avoided--Lee apparently will die a hated pariah rather than a national hero.

The Eagle of the East, Rhomania: An Eastern Roman Timeline-My first professional publication was a military-history article on the 1071 Battle of Manzikert, which kicked off the large-scale Turkish settlement in Asia Minor and the beginning of the end of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. In this scenario, the incompetent and pleasure-loving Byzantine Emperor Alexios III Angelos is deposed by two Anatolian Byzantine aristocrats disgusted by the Empire's failure to defend the Emperor's frontiers against the marauding Seljuk Turks. They reform the military and push back against the Seljuks, but the Venetian doge Enrico Dandalo still hates the Byzantines and he's got an army of Crusaders to plot his revenge.

What If Stalin Had Survived His Stroke?

My self-ban from the alternate-history forum won't expire until the end of this week and I might re-ban so I can avoid unnecessary distractions from finishing and submitting Little People, Big Guns over the summer. However, I can still read the forums and I found something else you guys might appreciate...

Twilight of the Red Tsar

There's a book called Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar that compares the Communist absolute ruler of the Soviet Union with the Russian monarchs of old and I'm guessing that's where the user whose handle is Napoleon IV derived the title. The gist of it is that Stalin survived the stroke that killed him in our history.

That's not a good thing because he was apparently planning another Great Purge, this one with a particularly anti-Semitic focus. Given Russia's history with Jew-hating, there's the possibility of a second Holocaust within a decade of the first one.

Highlights of this timeline include the use of nuclear weapons, poison gas, and weaponized germs, rifts within the Communist movement (that usually followed Moscow's line), a Chinese messianic movement in the vein of peasant millenarian revolts that occurred in the dynastic past, and Richard Nixon. And there are a lot of allusions to the Book of Revelation in the chapter titles.

Enjoy!

Movie Review: "Battleship" (2012) (Spoilers)

Just saw Battleshipwith my friend David.  Here's the review...

The Good

Once the actual alien invasion starts, things get fun.  I liked how Nagata devised a way to track the aliens without using radar using National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration buoys.  It also provided a way to have naval combat resembling the Battleship game realistically.  I'd talked with friends about how this would do just as well without tying it into the game at all, but this actually justifies the fact they made this based on a board game.

Although it's dubious that the U.S.S. Missouri could be made ready for battle that quickly and that it has ammunition for its big guns handy, the modern Naval crew and the retired WWII and Korean vets working together to get the ship running and setting off to do battle against the main alien ship was awesome.  In addition to the action coolness, there's some humor in the timing of the shots in the "move the shell" scene.

I really liked the beginning in which Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) tries to impress Samantha Shane (Brooklyn Decker) by breaking into a convenience store to get her a chicken burrito.  And then he flees the cops and gets Tased repeatedly to make sure she gets the burrito.  All that was hilarious.

They foreshadow Mick Canales (Gregory Gadson)'s hand-to-hand tooth-breaking brawl with the aliens by having Sam reference him being a Golden Gloves boxer when we first meet him.  Having him suddenly beat on the alien soldier without foreshadowing would have been an eye-roller.

The film does give some of the characters story arcs.  Alex has to grow out of his slacker ways and man up, especially once his effective brother is killed in battle.  He also has to put aside his pride and acknowledge the superior skills of Nagata, despite the soccer-game incident before.  Meanwhile, Canales has to put aside his self-pity and belief his injuries have left him incapable when the aliens attack and the NASA scientist has to face his own cowardice.  He starts out fleeing while the aliens massacre his graduate students, later abandons Sam and Canales, and ends with a surprise intervention into Canales' fight with the alien warrior..

Also, Rihanna didn't do a bad job as Petty Officer Cora Raikes.  It wasn't an outstanding performance, but she wasn't a bad actress.  The same for Decker.  If you want someone from a non-acting profession who cannot act, that British girl in Transformers: Dark of the Moon who had no chemistry with the male lead and only one good line ("Sentinel Prime's bitch!") is the way to go.

The Bad

There are some military issues.  I'm assuming Alex entered the Navy as an enlisted man due to his apparent lack of higher education (his brother is trying to get him a construction job).  Furthermore, assuming Alex was given the choice between jail or the military, which used to be fairly common and could explain why he wasn't in jail the next morning after breaking and entering, that's going to be another strike against advancing his career.

So how did he end up an officer again, especially in a relatively short time period?  Although it is possible for enlisted men to become officers (the "green to gold" program or something like that), very few long-service enlisted men become officers.  Where else do all these venerable sergeants and deck chiefs even low-ranking officers fear come from?

Also, there was some bad dialogue, especially early in the film.  When Stone laws down the law on his brother after the burrito incident, the culminating line ("YOU'RE JOINING ME IN THE NAVY!") was just lame.

The aliens are too human in appearance.  They're basically horse-faces with lizard eyes that don't take the sun well, four fingers on each hand, and funky beard-looking things.  Non-humanoid aliens would probably cost an arm and a leg to animate, but they could have looked a bit more different.

The aliens' odd military attitudes.  They smash two of the human destroyers but leave the third one alone when it breaks off to rescue survivors.  The aliens do a commando raid on the destroyer to rescue one of their personnel who's been taken prisoner and then walk off without taking the opportunity to kill the humans present (which include the ship's captain).  And then either they either left another soldier behind (the one who attacks the engine room) or were overconfident to the point they were willing to pull most of the rescue party off the ship and leave one to wreck it.  One of their soldiers catches the guy who runs the Beacon communications system and for some strange reason does not register him as a threat.

Either they were trying to fight a war with one hand behind their back (why?) or they were really overconfident.  If they'd been a bit more ruthless, they'd have won (or at least succeeded in phoning home with valuable intelligence that could aid a larger follow-up force, even if the initial attackers got nuked into oblivion later).

The Verdict

It was a entertaining movie, especially once the mayhem starts.  6 out of 10.  If you want to see this first-run, go to a matinee.