- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Presumably, that's where the Anglo defiance comes in.
Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline
- Thread starter Aelita
- Start date
- Timeline Post-1900 Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Libertad
Interdimensional Traveler and Culture agent
- Location
- Culture orbital It's Fantastic For You To Be Here
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I still remember the ancient version of this timeline back in AH.com when there was still a three way Cold War split between the UASR, the USSR and the FBU, with the USSR eventually reforming in the 1970s and democratizing but that's so ten years ago, quite literally.
A complete break between America and the Soviet Union was determined to be unfeasible by Aelita and her old partner Illuminatus Primus even way back in AH.com around 2013/14ish ...
There are times when I think if Aelita should have really kept that three way split but I understand the reasoning why it was changed and it really makes sense that it's not going to happen.
- Location
- The Midlands.
That's not much of a departure from OTL. The only things we didn't officially switch to metric in the seventies are speed and distance and liquid measurements for milk, beer etc, both of which were exempted because it would have cost too much to replace the existing infrastructure. You can still buy some stuff in imperial measurements if you really want to, and there were a few stubborn holdouts still working in imperial only up until the year 2000 when Trading Standards refused to keep certifying any scale that didn't have metric units.
SpookyBoy
no
- Pronouns
- He/They
There are actually "patriotic" trade unions to represent labour that are affiliated with the People's Alliance and where people in some cases are obliged to join, who are at odds with the leftist unions which tend to be affiliated to either the Labour Party or ESCI (the main FBU communist party).LOL Corporatism sounds like what we have here in Singapore. So is there a FBU NTUC (National Trade Union Congress)?
Not quite, road signs are in miles in the UK rather than kilometres.
the atom
Anarcho-Kemalist Thought Leader
- Location
- Comfortably numb
Yeah but they still do things like personal weight and height in standard don't they?
- Location
- The Midlands.
In casual conversation? Sometimes, but that's dying out. The last generation to be even taught anything but metric are in their fifties and sixties now; people who were too old to ever get out of the habit of thinking in Imperial are themselves dying out.
In Canada this is because we share a language, a border, and the majority of our culture with the elephant to our south. Legally speaking, everything is metric. Weights and measures, speed signs, education, etc.. In practice, people will use feet for heights and pounds for weight in casual circumstances.
Yes, it's cursed. No, there's nothing we can do to fix it so long as the bloody Americans are obstinate relics.
- Location
- The Underdark
Some of us try not to be obsolete. Unfortunately, there are a lot more people who are happier in pounds and ounces.
The Blond Devil (Free American State prologue)
Miss Teri
The Queen
- Location
- West
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The Blond Devil (2013 miniseries)
3 episodes
Richard Heinz was a 20 year old WFRA soldier captured with his unit in Belarus in 1942. He was held at the infamous Maly Trostinets POW camp, near the Free American State.
Given his fairly Nordic appearance (blond hair, blue eyes) and German heritage, William Dudley Pelley selected him as to go through the process of brainwashing, steadily broken through torture, shown anti-Communist propaganda, and groomed into a fanatical Nazi American guard at the camp by Pelley himself.
Heinz was called "The Blonde Devil", because of his extreme brutality, beating the enslaved citizens nearly to death for any indiscretion, mutilating many of the prisoners for amusement, and doing unspeakable acts towards his fellow POWs and those deemed inferior. The successful transformation from "Judeo-Bolshevik soldier to fighter for the Aryan race" is touted by Pelley and Silber Legion head Virgil Effinger and he was given commendations by the two.
As Comintern advanced deeper into Belarus in 1944, and Effinger began to execute other brainwashed POWs they had converted, Heinz caught wind of what was happening, and escaped before he could become the next victim. He subsequently disappeared, with little trace of where he went or what happened to him
Even for survivors of the notorious Maly Trostinets concentration camp and the horrific Free American State, "Richard the Black" or "the Blond Devil" remained a ghastly memory, his sadistic actions and physical appearance inscribed in their memory decades later….
In 1977 DeLeon-Debs, a Shoah survivor named Sonia Gertler holds back tears as she recounts the brutal death of her brother at the hands of a cruel Maly Trostinets prison guard named Richard the Black, a converted American POW, who stomped on him for falling down at work from starvation. Section 1 agent Yana Berlin, a young member of the "Axis Criminal Task Force" made by several intelligence agencies to hunt down remaining Axis war criminals still in hiding, has been assigned to record Sonia's story to add to various stories about Richard the Black and his brutal crimes, to help identify and locate him to be brought to trial.
Berlin and Shin Bet agent Donald Greenbaum head to an East German jail to interview a Hiwi at Maly Trostinets named Georges. Georges and Richard worked as guards at the camp and later helped maintain the crematorium. Georges recounts, himself shaken by the memory, how Richard would bring in people who were still alive (but barely) to burn. He goes on to explain that after he himself left Maly Trostinets, he eventually came across Richard in occupied Hungary shortly before Hitler's capture (and Georges' own capture by American forces). During their discussion, Heinz said he was likely headed to England, noting that he could disguise his identity and slip away from the WFRA. The identity was "Heinrich Wagner". Heinz' brother Martin (determined to bring his brother to justice, despite just being a postman) believes Wagner is his brother, given their father was into classical music, often forcing the two to listen to Richard Wagner. The two agents begin scouring London in search of evidence for Heinz' location.
In 1991 Toronto, Gertruda Tomorov, a young nurse named at the newly established Toronto Commune for the Elderly, tends to a 71-year old retired plumber named John Demme, who has osteoarthritis. Demme, while pleasantly sarcastic and calm, is fairly evasive about his past, avoiding any questions about his relatives, only giving an address in Ottawa as the home of his brother. Tomorov checks the address, but finds no actual location. Attempting to dig further through archives to find more info about him, she makes a startling discovery: John Demme was a 17-year old who was killed with his parents in an Ottawa house fire in 1939.
In 1978, Berlin, Greenbaum, and fellow Sec1 agent Lewis House manage to gain information about "Heinrich Wagner" in London, but find no information beyond 1953. A former neighbor said he was evasive and reclusive, especially about his oddly Americanized English, though recalled a conversation where he discussed possibly moving to Brazil for "the sun."
Berlin scour the archives of the Hudal exposure in search of any sort of resettlement plans, but is frustrated by the lack of info. Eventually, she does find records of his immigration to London, but little else. The former neighbor calls House and Greenbaum regarding a postcard she had received in 1960 from "Heinrich Wagner" from an address in Quebec City.
1992, Tomorov reports John Demme to MDSS Section 7 for identity fraud. The agent assigned to it, Terri Sawyer, digs into Demme's recorded life. Reportedly, he first started using the Demme name in 1956, while living in Ottawa, in order to get an ID. He was able to get a plumber's license in Toronto after vocational school using this ID in 1960, and lived in relative peace, despite the eventual osteoarthritis in recent years. Co-workers said he was "pleasant enough", if a bit reclusive and strange, often found staring at the pipes for no reason, listening to white noise, and seemed unemotional most times, merely doing his job without any real hobbies. One who visited his home, noted it was sparse, no family photos, or anything distinguishing. He explained a strange American accent by stating he was a refugee from America after the Civil War. Despite this, not enough detail exists to show any indication of his real identity. Sawyer does log his information into the new MDSS database for others to use.
1982: The anti-Heinz team has more trouble accessing the Quebec City archives until the Red Turn. Even then, "Wagner"'s entry and some early jobs are listed, but by 1958, he had disappeared off the map and no one, not even those who remember him, seems to know where he is. However, one did remember seeing someone like him during a visit to Ottawa some years earlier. Nevertheless, the search atrophies from the lack of evidence, with the members steadily taking other, more concrete assignments. By 1987, even Berlin has given up hope of finding Heinz, especially since all traces of him or his various aliases vanish after 1958. Martin attempts to convince Berlin to continue, but she says that there is so little to work with, and it's likely he had died at some point. She does direct him to donate blood samples in case something comes up.
1993, enough evidence exists for Demme to be questioned. He initially denies that he had stolen the identity, but after evidence and grilling, he confesses to finding the name in an old newspaper and finding the birth certificate to use. He is arrested when he refuses to reveal anything else other than the lies he had spouted for 30 years and attempts to avoid his photo being taken, and his story of defrauding both the Canadian and American governments reaches front page news in The Daily Worker.
In 1989, the investigation into Richard Heinz is shut down, with the members accepting that he had likely disappeared. Many are disappointed, but Berlin keeps a hot-line up for any tips that might lead to his arrest. In 1993, Sonia sees Demme's photo in the Daily Worker, and recognizes him as the man who killed her brother. She calls Berlin, who sends a clipping of the article to Martin, who also recognizes his brother in the photo. Photo analysis between all of Demme's photos and all of Heinz' known photographs show a strong resemblance between the two (Greenbaum noting that Demme's driver's license photo in 1956 looks identical to Heinz's 1944 SS photo)
A DNA comparison between John and Martin from their respective investigation confirms that "John Demme" is in fact, Richard Heinz, his identity theft an attempt to hide himself from prosecution. The one-time unassuming Toronto plumber is subsequently deported to the Soviet Union to stand trial for his action s in Maly Trostinets.
With no recourse, Demme finally admits that he is in fact the one called the Blond Devil, pleads guilty and is sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2000. Before his death, in 1999, he and Berlin sit down for an interview, where he gives a full account of what happened after Maly Trostinets. Of his excursions in Eastern Europe, emigrating first to London, then Canada, where he threw off investigators by stealing the identity of a deceased teenager. He admits that, by the time of the Red Turn, he was certain that the trail of "Richard Heinz" had gotten cold enough that he didn't feel the need to flee again, hence why he stayed and worked in communist Toronto. He doesn't answer when asked if he regrets the things he did.
Background:
A vicious Nazified German-American guard named Richard, nicknamed "The Blond Devil" was depicted in Free American State survivor literature as early as 1945. John Henry George, another Maly Trosinets guard, directly named Richard Heinz at his own trial in 1947, and the Soviet Union issued a warrant for his arrest that same year. He first reached popular consciousness in 1958 with The Yanks Are Coming, historian Arthur Schlesinger's account of the Free American State, where his nickname "Richard the Black" was popularized. The 1961 trial of fellow FAS collaborator Heidi Glockner, found living in the London suburbs, highlighted that Richard Heinz was still at large. He was one of the main inspirations for the villainous "John the Baptist" in Newt Gingrich's The Eichmann Papers in 1972. After his capture in 1993, the 1996 Ram Singh* book The Yankee and the 2002 film adaptation starring Lauren Becall as an elderly Shoah survivor and Robert Duvall as a Calgary autoworker accused of being a Nazi war criminal was inspired by the Heinz trial.
The miniseries hews close to the truth, but for narrative convenience, some minor details were left out or changed. The Ontorio Provincial Police did open an investigation into John Demme for possible ID fraud in 1985, but it stalled and eventually shut down with other events going on. Gertler's assertions are shown as the main impetus for connecting John Demme and Richard Heinz, but during the initial investigation into ID fraud, John Demme was listed as a possible Nazi war criminal, and investigators assembled some photos of noted Nazis still on the run, including Richard Heinz. Georges the Hiwi is an amalgamation of several collaborators (both Hiwi and White American) interviewed about Richard the Black over the course of the investigation. The real Yana Berlin praised the show, but said that it downplayed the real Heinz's coldness: "You could feel the emotional emptiness behind his eyes as he spoke. He spoke about his crimes in the most clinical of terms. "
3 episodes
Richard Heinz was a 20 year old WFRA soldier captured with his unit in Belarus in 1942. He was held at the infamous Maly Trostinets POW camp, near the Free American State.
Given his fairly Nordic appearance (blond hair, blue eyes) and German heritage, William Dudley Pelley selected him as to go through the process of brainwashing, steadily broken through torture, shown anti-Communist propaganda, and groomed into a fanatical Nazi American guard at the camp by Pelley himself.
Heinz was called "The Blonde Devil", because of his extreme brutality, beating the enslaved citizens nearly to death for any indiscretion, mutilating many of the prisoners for amusement, and doing unspeakable acts towards his fellow POWs and those deemed inferior. The successful transformation from "Judeo-Bolshevik soldier to fighter for the Aryan race" is touted by Pelley and Silber Legion head Virgil Effinger and he was given commendations by the two.
As Comintern advanced deeper into Belarus in 1944, and Effinger began to execute other brainwashed POWs they had converted, Heinz caught wind of what was happening, and escaped before he could become the next victim. He subsequently disappeared, with little trace of where he went or what happened to him
Even for survivors of the notorious Maly Trostinets concentration camp and the horrific Free American State, "Richard the Black" or "the Blond Devil" remained a ghastly memory, his sadistic actions and physical appearance inscribed in their memory decades later….
In 1977 DeLeon-Debs, a Shoah survivor named Sonia Gertler holds back tears as she recounts the brutal death of her brother at the hands of a cruel Maly Trostinets prison guard named Richard the Black, a converted American POW, who stomped on him for falling down at work from starvation. Section 1 agent Yana Berlin, a young member of the "Axis Criminal Task Force" made by several intelligence agencies to hunt down remaining Axis war criminals still in hiding, has been assigned to record Sonia's story to add to various stories about Richard the Black and his brutal crimes, to help identify and locate him to be brought to trial.
Berlin and Shin Bet agent Donald Greenbaum head to an East German jail to interview a Hiwi at Maly Trostinets named Georges. Georges and Richard worked as guards at the camp and later helped maintain the crematorium. Georges recounts, himself shaken by the memory, how Richard would bring in people who were still alive (but barely) to burn. He goes on to explain that after he himself left Maly Trostinets, he eventually came across Richard in occupied Hungary shortly before Hitler's capture (and Georges' own capture by American forces). During their discussion, Heinz said he was likely headed to England, noting that he could disguise his identity and slip away from the WFRA. The identity was "Heinrich Wagner". Heinz' brother Martin (determined to bring his brother to justice, despite just being a postman) believes Wagner is his brother, given their father was into classical music, often forcing the two to listen to Richard Wagner. The two agents begin scouring London in search of evidence for Heinz' location.
In 1991 Toronto, Gertruda Tomorov, a young nurse named at the newly established Toronto Commune for the Elderly, tends to a 71-year old retired plumber named John Demme, who has osteoarthritis. Demme, while pleasantly sarcastic and calm, is fairly evasive about his past, avoiding any questions about his relatives, only giving an address in Ottawa as the home of his brother. Tomorov checks the address, but finds no actual location. Attempting to dig further through archives to find more info about him, she makes a startling discovery: John Demme was a 17-year old who was killed with his parents in an Ottawa house fire in 1939.
In 1978, Berlin, Greenbaum, and fellow Sec1 agent Lewis House manage to gain information about "Heinrich Wagner" in London, but find no information beyond 1953. A former neighbor said he was evasive and reclusive, especially about his oddly Americanized English, though recalled a conversation where he discussed possibly moving to Brazil for "the sun."
Berlin scour the archives of the Hudal exposure in search of any sort of resettlement plans, but is frustrated by the lack of info. Eventually, she does find records of his immigration to London, but little else. The former neighbor calls House and Greenbaum regarding a postcard she had received in 1960 from "Heinrich Wagner" from an address in Quebec City.
1992, Tomorov reports John Demme to MDSS Section 7 for identity fraud. The agent assigned to it, Terri Sawyer, digs into Demme's recorded life. Reportedly, he first started using the Demme name in 1956, while living in Ottawa, in order to get an ID. He was able to get a plumber's license in Toronto after vocational school using this ID in 1960, and lived in relative peace, despite the eventual osteoarthritis in recent years. Co-workers said he was "pleasant enough", if a bit reclusive and strange, often found staring at the pipes for no reason, listening to white noise, and seemed unemotional most times, merely doing his job without any real hobbies. One who visited his home, noted it was sparse, no family photos, or anything distinguishing. He explained a strange American accent by stating he was a refugee from America after the Civil War. Despite this, not enough detail exists to show any indication of his real identity. Sawyer does log his information into the new MDSS database for others to use.
1982: The anti-Heinz team has more trouble accessing the Quebec City archives until the Red Turn. Even then, "Wagner"'s entry and some early jobs are listed, but by 1958, he had disappeared off the map and no one, not even those who remember him, seems to know where he is. However, one did remember seeing someone like him during a visit to Ottawa some years earlier. Nevertheless, the search atrophies from the lack of evidence, with the members steadily taking other, more concrete assignments. By 1987, even Berlin has given up hope of finding Heinz, especially since all traces of him or his various aliases vanish after 1958. Martin attempts to convince Berlin to continue, but she says that there is so little to work with, and it's likely he had died at some point. She does direct him to donate blood samples in case something comes up.
1993, enough evidence exists for Demme to be questioned. He initially denies that he had stolen the identity, but after evidence and grilling, he confesses to finding the name in an old newspaper and finding the birth certificate to use. He is arrested when he refuses to reveal anything else other than the lies he had spouted for 30 years and attempts to avoid his photo being taken, and his story of defrauding both the Canadian and American governments reaches front page news in The Daily Worker.
In 1989, the investigation into Richard Heinz is shut down, with the members accepting that he had likely disappeared. Many are disappointed, but Berlin keeps a hot-line up for any tips that might lead to his arrest. In 1993, Sonia sees Demme's photo in the Daily Worker, and recognizes him as the man who killed her brother. She calls Berlin, who sends a clipping of the article to Martin, who also recognizes his brother in the photo. Photo analysis between all of Demme's photos and all of Heinz' known photographs show a strong resemblance between the two (Greenbaum noting that Demme's driver's license photo in 1956 looks identical to Heinz's 1944 SS photo)
A DNA comparison between John and Martin from their respective investigation confirms that "John Demme" is in fact, Richard Heinz, his identity theft an attempt to hide himself from prosecution. The one-time unassuming Toronto plumber is subsequently deported to the Soviet Union to stand trial for his action s in Maly Trostinets.
With no recourse, Demme finally admits that he is in fact the one called the Blond Devil, pleads guilty and is sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2000. Before his death, in 1999, he and Berlin sit down for an interview, where he gives a full account of what happened after Maly Trostinets. Of his excursions in Eastern Europe, emigrating first to London, then Canada, where he threw off investigators by stealing the identity of a deceased teenager. He admits that, by the time of the Red Turn, he was certain that the trail of "Richard Heinz" had gotten cold enough that he didn't feel the need to flee again, hence why he stayed and worked in communist Toronto. He doesn't answer when asked if he regrets the things he did.
Background:
A vicious Nazified German-American guard named Richard, nicknamed "The Blond Devil" was depicted in Free American State survivor literature as early as 1945. John Henry George, another Maly Trosinets guard, directly named Richard Heinz at his own trial in 1947, and the Soviet Union issued a warrant for his arrest that same year. He first reached popular consciousness in 1958 with The Yanks Are Coming, historian Arthur Schlesinger's account of the Free American State, where his nickname "Richard the Black" was popularized. The 1961 trial of fellow FAS collaborator Heidi Glockner, found living in the London suburbs, highlighted that Richard Heinz was still at large. He was one of the main inspirations for the villainous "John the Baptist" in Newt Gingrich's The Eichmann Papers in 1972. After his capture in 1993, the 1996 Ram Singh* book The Yankee and the 2002 film adaptation starring Lauren Becall as an elderly Shoah survivor and Robert Duvall as a Calgary autoworker accused of being a Nazi war criminal was inspired by the Heinz trial.
The miniseries hews close to the truth, but for narrative convenience, some minor details were left out or changed. The Ontorio Provincial Police did open an investigation into John Demme for possible ID fraud in 1985, but it stalled and eventually shut down with other events going on. Gertler's assertions are shown as the main impetus for connecting John Demme and Richard Heinz, but during the initial investigation into ID fraud, John Demme was listed as a possible Nazi war criminal, and investigators assembled some photos of noted Nazis still on the run, including Richard Heinz. Georges the Hiwi is an amalgamation of several collaborators (both Hiwi and White American) interviewed about Richard the Black over the course of the investigation. The real Yana Berlin praised the show, but said that it downplayed the real Heinz's coldness: "You could feel the emotional emptiness behind his eyes as he spoke. He spoke about his crimes in the most clinical of terms. "
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the atom
Anarcho-Kemalist Thought Leader
- Location
- Comfortably numb
The 'Red Turn' refers to the Canadian revolution I assume?
The Free American what?
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Miss Teri
The Queen
- Location
- West
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yes, it was a fanon term sort of adopted.
The name exiled American fascists and other NaZi collaborators gave for the microstate they set up in occupied Belarus. The Americans too insane for Macarthur fled to Germany, and many became willing collaborators, such as William Dudley Pelley (as its leader) and Virgil Effinger (as its muscle). Pelly convinced the Nazi party higher-ups to allow him to set up a slice of "pure" Americana in Belarus. It started out like a reenactment of Deep-South Chattel slavery, but with Slavs as the oppressed underclass (with captured Africans, Jews and women singled out for special mistreatment) and "pure" Americans (collaborators and brainwashed captured soldiers) as a pampered Master class. Then its leadership went increasingly insane as the war turned against the Fascists. The White population began fleeing as the Red Armies got closer, the awful stench from the nearby extermination camp increased, the amenities dried up and the leadership became self-destructive.
First discussed and described in the Alt Hist threads.
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- Location
- The Midlands.
I fear to even imagine what the first Russian or UASR unit to reach that place found when they got there. There must have been quite the debate about whether it was better to preserve the place in as close to its original condition as possible as a warning to future generations or obliterate every above-ground structure with explosives, fill the cellars up with concrete and possibly have a local priest perform an exorcism just to be on the safe side.
EDIT: And having said that, part of me wants to do a crossover with What Madness is This? around this "free state", but I feel like that might not be treating the subject with the gravity it deserves. What do you lot reckon?
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Dr. Thunder
Philosopher-King of Florida
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/They
Was this mentioned previously? Cause this not only means Hitler either decided to not kill himself before the Soviets make it to Berlin but the possibility of the Greatest Trial in Human History.
Either that or he manages to kill himself in prison like Göring did at Nuremberg.
Regardless, I can't wait till the rest of WW2 is covered and we get more context to the tidbits mentioned here and elsewhere.
Miss Teri
The Queen
- Location
- West
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's been well-known on AH.com, but I'm not sure if it's been mentioned on here before.
- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Sorry for quoting so much, but it seems like you might have gotten the dates a bit out of order there.
Also, does brainwashing really work like that? I mean, it's possible to turn someone to your side, but I doubt it would be that easy if the person themselves weren't open to the idea.
What happened to Pelley after the war again?
Miss Teri
The Queen
- Location
- West
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It shifts between two parallel stories taking place in different time frames. I honestly don't know how that's not obvious from the way it's written.
I forgot to add a bit about how Heinz's father may have been connected to the German American Bund, but the miniseries left that fact out. Probably would've helped, but there are cases where it did happen.
Stay tuned
- Location
- London
Brainwashing like you see in fiction is considered functionally impossible (especially with 1940's technology). That said I don't doubt there were a lot of racists in the army who only served for lack of an alternative and could be persuaded to join a new pure American state. Add in the one's who cooperated out of fear of death and the "free state" would have a good core of troops on offer to it.
Miss Teri
The Queen
- Location
- West
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That's fair. Brainwashing is more shorthand for the intensive indoctrination that some of the less ideological, more susceptible soldiers go through on Pelley's orders.
- Location
- The Midlands.
I figured as much. If it wasn't a case of Heinz either being an ex-Sons of Liberty supporter who slipped through the cracks or playing along to save his hide and getting a taste for it, he probably would have been committed to involuntary psychiatric care rather than the regular prison system.
But on the other hand, it's a bit odd that Heinz managed to go almost the rest of his life without ever coming to the attention of the authorities in civilian life. Someone with a personality disorder, probably undiagnosed and definitely untreated because even if they want to seek help they can't do so without confessing to their crimes, is not likely to be lucky enough to avoid a relapse at some point. And if he was just a sadistic thug then he's even less likely to keep his nose clean. The only other explanation that comes to mind is that he spent his time in the camp in what is known in modern times as a dissociative fugue: He was partially aware of what was happening, but the only way his mind could cope with the horror of it was simply to convince himself that it wasn't real, or that he wasn't real. This is a relatively common phenomenon and a fairly well-understood one in the present day of OTL, the technical term being "Depersonalization-derealization disorder", but it doesn't seem like he tried to use that as a defence in court from the synopsis.
I suspect that in-universe, Heinz and others like him spend a lot of time being studied by mental health professionals trying to understand how and why they did what they did. If any of them get a clear answer I doubt they'll like it very much.
But on the other hand, it's a bit odd that Heinz managed to go almost the rest of his life without ever coming to the attention of the authorities in civilian life. Someone with a personality disorder, probably undiagnosed and definitely untreated because even if they want to seek help they can't do so without confessing to their crimes, is not likely to be lucky enough to avoid a relapse at some point. And if he was just a sadistic thug then he's even less likely to keep his nose clean. The only other explanation that comes to mind is that he spent his time in the camp in what is known in modern times as a dissociative fugue: He was partially aware of what was happening, but the only way his mind could cope with the horror of it was simply to convince himself that it wasn't real, or that he wasn't real. This is a relatively common phenomenon and a fairly well-understood one in the present day of OTL, the technical term being "Depersonalization-derealization disorder", but it doesn't seem like he tried to use that as a defence in court from the synopsis.
I suspect that in-universe, Heinz and others like him spend a lot of time being studied by mental health professionals trying to understand how and why they did what they did. If any of them get a clear answer I doubt they'll like it very much.
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Miss Teri
The Queen
- Location
- West
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I based the character off two primary figures who did actually do this:
-John Demjanjuk, a Cleveland auto worker who was accused of being a cruel Ukrainian guard in Treblinka nicknamed "Ivan the Terrible". He was convicted and sentenced but cleared when other guards pointed to another man as Ivan the Terrible. He was then accused of having served in Sobibor instead.
- Joseph Chandler III, an electrical designer from Ohio, who committed suicide in 2002. Investigators found out that Joseph Chandler died in a car crash in 1945. This guy (eventually identified as Robert Ivan Nichols) stole his identity.
Oh yes, Hitler's capture has been a part of the timeline since the old AH.com days...and just to answer your question without spoiling too much: No, he doesn't commit suicide.
- Location
- London
And in both cases they managed to keep up an illusion of normality because they had to, especially early on when they probably feared rapid extradition to a slow execution (the Allies had handed back the Linz Cossacks to that fate after all and that group was responsible for far less than the guards had done). By the time the cold war had put paid to that risk they had integrated into their new communities, which often included relatives of victims (or victims themselves, but rarely their personal victims so they weren't exposed). Being exposed as a camp guard was obviously social suicide so they kept quiet and gradually over time they got so good at being who they had become they often seemed to almost forget about that part of their lives and never exposed themselves until the Nazi hunters came calling.
More prosaically Europe was a mess with 50 million dead, massive destruction of records and dislocation of surviving government structures. In such an environment it was easy to claim to be someone else and overwhelmed authorities (especially in the US but also elsewhere) didn't look to closely at anyone who wasn't a top tier Nazi. That helped alot of people escape capture and vanish into new identities and that let far to many monsters die in bed rather than on a rope.
I don't doubt Red America tried a bit harder than OTL but here as well the sheer mess at the end of the war would have ensured a determined person could evade their just deserves.
This brings up a question.
How culpable for their actions is a person who's been broken, tortured and brainwashed to this point. I mean, they've basically been destroyed as a person by the process. How aware are they that what they're doing is wrong?
Was this ever discussed in-universe?
A lot of modern media - Think 'The winter Soldier' as the first example that comes to mind - seems to take the view that a person is on some level not responsible for their actions when they're under this sort of conditioning.
This isn't like a natural Nazi - this is a manufactured one which is sort of different somehow.
- Location
- London
Functionally "Reprogramming" someone has never been done in RL and is somewhat believed to be impossible. Manipulating someone, indoctrinating them or using threats to make them comply is of course plausible but the person its done to is still them and at the very least would have to face a trial. See the example of the IS Brides whose level of responsibility is still being hotly debated three years after that vile thing fell apart. You can manipulate someone, push them but ultimately anything that happens is their choice and so our alt Nazi's still need to answer for their actions. Especially as someone whose from say the deep south and got conscripted into the army of an equalist state may not need to huge a push to decide that evil is the correct path to take. Add in the alternative options (presumable American's are lumped in with the rest of the Ostfront prisoners ITTL and treated the same) and the person choses the option that lets them live and eat and after a while they've done so much evil they have to justify it to themselves by embracing the ideology of those who made them do it.