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What's the most Cringeworthy Alternate History you've ever read?

Admiral Halsey said:
To be fair that was with Soviet supplied groups though IIRC.
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And of course, when the Portuguese communists are deposed, The Congressman goes into great detail about how much the Portuguese people hate them and are glad to see them go.

Really, AANW and NDCR both follow the same trajectory when it comes to their bad guys-a few early victories to make it seem like they have a chance, followed by an endless stream of humiliation.
 
Baron Steakpuncher said:
I read a TL somewhere where fucking Rommel ended up imprisoned by Israel then released to be its king if he could beat the arabs for them.

Like, the fuck?
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Well, Rommel did have too important redeeming features: He was one of a very small number of high-ranking Wehrmacht officers who would probably have come out of the Nuremburg trials with no more than a slap on the wrist, and he was extremely good at his job. Definitely the sort of guy you want on the inside pissing out.

Promising him anything other than a generous pension and perhaps a bust in a corner of the lobby of the Ministry of Defence with a plaque inscribed with the accolade, "He Was Alright For A Nazi", on the other hand...
 
Speaking of AANW something else that bugs me a bit is how the US beat Japan by starving them out. CalBear never really explained why they did that instead of invading them.
 
The thing I find most likely with a surviving Rommel is something similar to von Manstein's trajectory, TBH. Maybe a bit earlier and larger influence on the Bundeswehr at best. A bit more fame too. Nothing major.

Assuming a somewhat OTL ending to the war, mind you.

Meanwhile, re: AANW

I've said before that I have...problems with that thing. The times I've bothered to try and read it, the writing turns me off because...to be frank, it's not that great. On top of that, I find a lot of choices made in the timeline to be silly or outright done for TEH DRAMAZ. Like, IIRC (from TVTropes, because again, I can't stomach the writing) orbital death-striking German college students in the late 20th or early 21st century for...demonstrating to reunite their country? That's just...even after a worse Nazi rule in Europe, that's a bit excessive.

On top of that, my impression is that CalBear is mostly writing a military technology wank, more than an actual story. And with questionable beliefs and such on that technology. Like a raging hateboner for the Alaska.

(there's also the fact that the amount of people who do ISOTs of the thing feel more like 'sucking up to the mod' and less like 'this is actually a good story' but that's another rant)
 
Maybe this just loops back around to my general dislike for dystopias, then.

(also the idea that a Nazi 'victory' doesn't lead to a hilariously multi-sided civil war the moment Hitler dies, but y'know)
 
Memphet'ran said:
Re: Green Antarctica cringe: also the freaky medical stuff and casual mutilation the Tsalal get up to, especially the Cold Islanders, though to be fair with them it's hard to tell how much is in-universe embellishment. There's a reason no real culture views the human body as a trivially deconstructible machine, and it's not just morality and squick. Your malnourished immune-compromised slaves will die of infections if you cut out their eyes because they "work in the dark so they don't need them anymore" Iskr, that seems kind of wasteful and also those germs will spread to your people who are constantly doing questionably sanitary things like mutilating their faces and then wearing human skin face masks.

Really, the Tsalal should have horrible problems with disease given their combination of unsanitary lifestyles and extreme inbreeding (which weakens collective disease resistance). And they have a grimmer version of the "libertarianism is not actually a good social system for a space colony" issue.

I don't think I'd call Green Antarctica the most cringeworthy alternate history I ever read, but it's definitely got a big "these people do not suffer the realistic costs of their way of doing things, at all" problem.

The Draka had the same issue. As I recall, the Spartans (who the Draka are roughly modernized and "amped up" versions of) had to be cautious with foreign adventurism because it was risky to take too much of their manpower away from keeping the Helots down. Going by that once they ran out of easy conquests a culture like the Draka should actually expand fairly conservatively and be almost timid as a geopolitical actor (in ironic contrast with their macho culture and self-image). The Draka just conquer tens of millions of square kilometers of land and huge chunks of the world population in a few years no problem.
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I really think Green Antartica would've benefited with explicitly supernatural elements, it was in this weird limbo zone where it was fine with unrealistic elements (i.e all the horror) in the name of advancing the plot (i.e the horror) while also pretending to be somewhat realistic. If the author would've just had them be worshippers of cosmic horrors then it would've been much better. I mean, it already fondly referenced Lovecraft so it clearly wanted to be Lovecraftian.

For me, Green Antarctica is solidly in the category of "things I like but generally agree with its critics".
 
Norseman said:
3. Monkey Don't See, Hear, Or Do
Three big offenders here are Green Antarctica, AANW, and The Big One. In the first place the western powers appear entirely oblivious to the power and significance of Tsalal rocketry, to the point where Tsalal fleets can wipe out the Royal Navy without breathing heavy. For AANW and TBO a massive nuclear and air force program is completely hidden from the Nazis, who either don't notice it or fail to take any sensible steps to prevent it.
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In fairness, the author of TBO did go into some detail as to how the US kept their nuclear and air force programs a secret:

1) The nuclear program was under secrecy comparable to real life, just sustained for a few years longer without dropping a bomb.

2) If I recall correctly, the US never used the B-36 in any raid against the Germans, not even once, so as to ensure that its true capabilities would have the maximum possibility of remaining unknown. Meanwhile, they made every possible effort to ruthlessly optimize it for the highest possible flight ceiling, because their entire attack plan revolved specifically around flying over the German defenses.

3) The US made extensive conventional military efforts against Germany, in the form of carrier-air raids against the German-held European coast along with troops to serve as an expeditionary force in Russia and with enormous commitment of Lend-Lease supplies.

All things considered, I think Slade at least made a credible good-faith effort to show how such a massive sneak attack could be concealed from the enemy. Even then, he gives the Germans just about every Napkinwaffe weapon system they were working on historically; it just doesn't make much difference because none of it has the ceiling to reliably engage a Featherweight-ed B-36 flying at maximum altitude.
 
I think the issue is that the author, as a professional war planner, knew very very well how to analyze the precise capabilities of the historical technologies and factions in World War Two, because he could rely on hard facts. As soon as he got into significantly counterfactual events postwar and had to start speculating, it all fell apart because he twisted up his timeline in service of extending the "be careful what you wish for, you just might get it" theme of The Big One (where it was directed against Nazi-wanking alt-history timelines on the Internet) to real world Islamic fundamentalists.

And Slade doesn't know Islamic fundamentalists nearly as well as he knows World War Two military trivia and weapon capabilities and industrial figures, and it shows.
 
Admiral Halsey said:
I mean his main problem was something they all shared. They didn't understand what the hell logistics were.
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Rommel was about the best damn general it was humanly possible to be without a proper understanding of logistics. That is to say, he was very good, within very sharp limits, outside of which he became ineffective.

The analogy I like is that Rommel was like a chained-up junkyard dog. Very, VERY dangerous, a veritable bandsaw of teeth and claws, right up until he slams into the limit of the chain of his logistics and jerks to a strangled halt, unable to figure out what the hell just went wrong.

So on the one hand, like that junkyard dog, Rommel was objectively quite dangerous and it did not pay to underestimate him- observe how fast he rolled back the British advances in Cyrenaica, twice.

On the other hand, also like that junkyard dog, there were very sharp limits on what he could and could not accomplish, and he didn't fully understand those limits, which made him vulnerable to a cunning opponent with the means to force him to overextend.
 
The main reason that Monty was effective against Rommel (when Monty was objectively not that great himself, out of actually knowing logistics and set piece battles) was exactly because of that.

Rommel was a very, very good divisional commander, and when logistics weren't an issues, that translates somewhat well to bigger formations. That said, the man wasn't a good Field Marshal.

(Monty, meanwhile, I've described as 'the best WW1 General that Britain had')



Also, a lot of the problems the Italians memetically had in North Africa are 99% because Rommel kept stealing all their supplies.
 
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Honestly Rommel not understanding Logistics seems like a general trend in the German High Command when you consider how little planning was done for Barbarossa and how they ignored going after the vital oil fields and instead went after Moscow, assuming they'd fold like a taco like the French did when they took Paris. Even though the Soviets were a much, MUCH bigger country compared to France.
 
Considering the thread we're in and the AH subject:

One of my favorite WW2-era PoDs is the idea of 'Monty in Malaya' because Montgomery's particular...brand...of generalship would have done nightmares to the Japanese there.

(it's not particularly cringeworthy, but hey, it's still marginally on topic :V)
 
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