Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
How did the QC universe get so different from ours?
Rocketman:
--- Quote from: Norton Quintessential on 07 Apr 2008, 18:49 ---OK... first off, this isn't anything personal, I just love debating. :wink:
--- End quote ---
Same here. :wink:
--- Quote ---I highly doubt that the South would have freed their slaves so quickly, purely because of the intense racism of the time. Integration practically happened during reconstruction, were it not for Southern democrats and "Ex"-Confederates who refused to accept the new order. If the Confederate government tried to free the slaves in the 1880's, the majority of the (white) people probably would have hauled them out and hung them from the nearest tree.
--- End quote ---
The massive influence of the KKK and other groups also relies on the South losing. Unable to fight the USA, they took their frustrations out on an 'enemy' they could fight.
But, in a victorious South, the enemy is not going to be the slaves, but other nations. Britain will have shifted to getting cotton from Egypt by 1865, and more and more nations simply won't want to trade with a slaveholding country as the years roll by. And the South will need to trade with other nations, as all the cotton means it's not self-sufficient. Look how badly it suffered under the Union blockade.
The South had already made a concession to the international scene by banning the slave trade, and once Brazil ends slavery in the 1880s, the South is going to find itself alone in the world. And for a nation dependant on international trade, that's not a good position.
--- Quote ---Crumbling cotton economy or not, slavery was the whole reason the South seceeded in the first place. To give ANY sort of concession to what many considered a "lesser race" probably would have seemed like an insult to most Confederates. It gets whitewashed a lot today, but The CSA was a nation FOUNDED on racism.
--- End quote ---
I agree on the whitewashing, to a point. Reading the CSA constitution reveals they were also heavily concerned with the power of the national government, and many things the Confederates implemented would still be good ideas today (all bills must have one subject, expressed in the title; when Congress gives money to something, an exact dollar amount must be specified, and not a penny more can be given, etc).
--- Quote ---Second... how about the fact that Hitler and Nazism have been referenced in the same strip before in the QC-verse? :-P
--- End quote ---
Nazism is a common term, as the nickname for the French Fascists.
Hitler, after serving in the Kaiser's army in the Great War, went home to Austria, finding his views on nationalism and race unwelcome in victorious Germany (no "stabbed in the back" mythos to incite people to join those kind of militaristic parties).
However, in Austria, he does find people who listen. Austria gained little from the War and lost many young men and her Great Power status - even if it's not official, everyone understands that Austria-Hungary exists at Germany's whim.
So, when France and Italy attack and the Second Great War begins, Hitler's Austrian Worker's Party rises up in Austria and Bohemia, capturing Vienna and some other cities, proclaiming Hitler as "Fuhrer of Austria-Bohemia", and murdering those the party hates in the streets of those cities.
The outright attempts at genocide and the brutal nature of life in the lands his Party controlled as made Hitler's name even more of a household term than the Fascist leaders of France and Italy, who preferred to exile their undesirables to places like Madagascar.
Border Reiver:
The only problem with your Austro-Hungarian Workers Party theory Rocketman is that Austro-Hungary was a very cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic place. Post WWI Germany (real world), especially after the loss of the areas to Poland, and France after the Treaty of Versailles was much less so.
Stoutfellow:
--- Quote from: Border Reiver on 08 Apr 2008, 04:31 ---The only problem with your Austro-Hungarian Workers Party theory Rocketman is that Austro-Hungary was a very cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic place.
--- End quote ---
True enough, but that didn't prevent the rise of powerful anti-Semitic parties (the Liberals and the Christian-Socials) there as early as the 1880s.
Border Reiver:
As a bonus, we wouldn't be subjected to "The Sound of Music" as Karl von Trapp would have continued his successful career as an Austro-Hungarian submariner, and there would have been no need for him to move to Austria....
As a minus though, we wouldn't have the GREAT novel "All Quiet on the Western Front"
Rocketman:
--- Quote from: Border Reiver on 08 Apr 2008, 04:31 ---The only problem with your Austro-Hungarian Workers Party theory Rocketman is that Austro-Hungary was a very cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic place. Post WWI Germany (real world), especially after the loss of the areas to Poland, and France after the Treaty of Versailles was much less so.
--- End quote ---
It was becoming more multi-ethnic. I see Austria-Hungary as following OTL's Italy after the War - they don't gain much in land, they lost a whole lot in people, and despite being on the winning side, they come out much worse for the wear, And unlike Italy, A-H loses its Great Power status.
With the Hapsburg monarchy on shaky ground, the various ethnicities in the Empire clamor for independence, hoping that Germany will allow them separate satellite states like it had for Belarus, the Ukraine, Poland and the like. This would also allow Germany to absorb the German-speaking lands of the former empire, completing the Grossdeutschland idea of the 1800s.
Hitler's nationalistic and militaristic ideas would gain credence in a nation wishing to regain its pride. Then, when the Hapsburgs collapse in the 1940s, it looks like the fulfillment of what he's been speaking about - Hungarians and the like tearing the Emprie apart, while the North Germans stab their cousins in the back to take their land.
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