The New Order of Hitler: virtual history, fiction and myth

At the intersection of counterfactual Historiography and literary fantasy, the triumph of the Axis powers in World War II has been one of the main issues. The resurgence of a hypothetical IV Reich also results extensive. Similarly, cinema has not failed to go over the old question of “if”. This article intent to analyse some virtual literature and historical works of reference about the New European Order in order to discuss possible inspiration that science awoke this genre and concepts revolving around the revisionism and determinism.


DEBATER A EUROPA
A (DES) CONSTRUÇÃO DA EUROPA (1939-1945 (DE) CONSTRUCTING EUROPE (1939-1945 13 jul-dez 2015 When the German army completed the conquest of Poland in September 1939 the New European Order began to take shape. The euphemistic name of that brutal military occupation was in fact more incisive than the name given to the Japanese occupied areas: Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 1 . But, the main issue was if Hitler's projects achieved in a few years the degree of dehumanization promised by the propaganda with the so called Reich of a Thousand Years. Based on the assumptions outlined by Mein Kampf, as well as the improvisations made during the course of the war, the dreams and fantasies of world domination were analysed not only by the historiography, but widely widespread by the alternate story genre. The vortex of the abyss is somewhat seductive and catches the eye. First, due to a combination between myth and reality, that since the beginning of the national-socialist regime, was deduced from the exotic interpretations that intertwined swastika and the occult 2 . On the other hand, in the eve of defeat, the Wagnerian finale that Hitler wished for himself and Germany, either by issuing the Nero Decree, or waiting for the arrival of the Soviet army to Berlin, it was in order to dramatize for History the last act of a piece 3 .
Moreover, the most important cinematography about the twilight of the Third Reich did not fail to emphasize, in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Chancellery bunker, the ultimate reverie of the dictator 4 . Ironically, both Alec Guinness in Hitler, The Last Ten Days (1973), andBruno Ganz in Der Untergang (2006), look at models of wide streets and huge buildings, which should be constructed after the end of the war in Berlin, while the Russians tighten the final siege of the city. These brief moments of the two films, revolving around the illusions of the New European Order, contrast with the filmography that imagined a victory of the German army. For example, It Happened Here (1965) focus on the collaboration versus resistance of British citizens to an hypothetical Nazi conquest, following a successful Operation Sea Lion. Making use of an almost documentary style, hence the paradox, the film seems to discuss the matter of some British historiography, which postulates that the cases of cooperation versus resistance of the Channel Islands (Jersey and Guernsey) should not be extrapolated to Great Britain 5 . For instance, Fatherland (1994), by the British director Christopher Menaul, also evokes an alternate reality, now extended to the entire European continent.
Set in the sixties, this film was based on a homonymous book 6 . In this imagined world, Germania is a superpower stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals. However, the relations with the United States are strained and the Soviet resistance was never broken.
Then, a terrible secret kept by the Nazis is revealed: the extermination of the European Jews during the war. Such disclosure will be disastrous for Germania, putting an end to thaw attempts with the United States. The film also claims that Washington will support the Soviet guerrillas.
2 GOODRICK-CLARKE, Nicholas -The occult roots of Nazism. The Ariosophists of Austria andGermany (1890-1935 's Germany (1944's Germany ( -1945. New York: Penguin Press, 2011. 5 ROBERTS Andrew -"Hitler's England: What if Germany had invaded Britain in May 1940", in FERGUSON, Niall (ed.) -Virtual history. Alternatives andcounterfactuals. London: Papermac, 1998. 6 HARRIS, Robert -Fatherland. New York: Random House, 1992. In literature, for the majority of the works, the Nazis and the Japanese have conquered most or the entire world and there are no remaining powers to confront them.
For these fictional works this happens for two kinds of reasons: 1 st , the major power of the Allies, the United States or the United Kingdom, lost the war and were conquered; 2 nd , the domestic problems or the prominence of the Anglo-American fascism led them to neutrality. This is the thread of books as the Swastika Night (1937)  After escaping, and travelling through a forest he runs into a barrier of "Bohlen Rays", is knocked unconscious and awakens in a Nazi controlled world at least a hundred years after the War on the estate of the Reich Master Forester, Count Hans von Hackelnberg.
After a long journey and a series of fanciful adventures that culminate in the death of the Count, Querdillon manage to slips across and returns to 1943.
One of the most popular alternate history novels is The Man in the High Castle by American writer Philip K. Dick that has given rise to the American television series with the same name, which is currently produced by Amazon Studios. The action of this novel is set in 1962, fifteen years after the end of a fictional longer Second World War (1939)(1940)(1941)(1942)(1943)(1944)(1945)(1946)(1947). After winning the conflict, the Axis Powers -Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan -rule over the former United States, that has been divided into three parts: the Churchill, died in 1941. Great Britain made peace with Germany thus freeing the Nazis up to make war on the Soviets. The two sides fought themselves to a standstill, but after Stalin was overthrown in a coup, peace is made. Germany gains the western Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs), but the core of the Soviet Union still exists. Now the powers are locked in a three-way Cold War for supremacy over the world. The United States and Imperial Japan still exist (Japan never attacked Pearl Harbor), but neither is considered a great power due to lack of will or resources respectively. My own experience as a high school teacher shows that students often present counterfactual hypothesis, perhaps as a result of many computer games on History consider this possibility. But, surely, we have to distinguish fiction from revisionism. In the computer games, we cannot assume a deterministic approach. Winning or losing is at the reach of a wise or a bad decision. Even games with a solid historical accuracy, as (2001) In the same way he also stated:

Cossacks European Wars
The other source of the attack is the famous crux of Cleopatra's nose. This is the theory that history is, by and large, a chapter of accidents, a series of events determined by chance coincidences, and attributable only to the most casual causes. The result of the Battle of Actium was due not to the sort of causes commonly postulated by historians, but to Antony's infatuation with Cleopatra. When Bajazet was deterred by an attack of gout from marching into central This way of looking at the problem was exactly what Carr was warning: that people tended to fantasise about contemporary History, accepting the Antiquity and the Middle Ages as an inalterable reality. The fact is that we know much more details about recent History and each of them sometimes seems to be just a small and innocuous part of a great web. After all, even in October 1917 the Bolsheviks were just a small political party in revolutionary Russia. But Carr also dismissed the Cleopatra's nose principle, which seems very alike the Theory of Chaos. Some critics underlined that Carr failed to predict the development of science and its influence in History 24 . What is History Now?, edited by David Cannadine forty years after the first print of Carr's What is History? as an homage, points that "Cleopatra's nose resembles the butterfly effect" 25 .
In France, the influent book by Paul Veyne, Comment on écrit l'Histoire 26 from 1971, also debated the "causation in History". The arguments of Veyne for the counterfactual analysis are relevant. He clearly asserts that "we never know what shall be the tomorrow. The causality is necessary and irregular; the future is the realm of the contingency". Also important is the concept of retrodiction. In that particular, Veyne says that historians should avoid the search for causes as if the historical process was irreversible 27 . Furthermore, the French historian claims that, in History, chance, the "great man" and his epoch are non-negligible aspects.
Anyway, it was Niall Ferguson who discussed this subject with more acuity. In the book he edited, Virtual History, the historian enunciated the methodology of the counterfactual analysis: 1) That what really happened was not the most likely outcome -in the opinion of the most enlightened contemporaries; 2) That alternative is based on historical sources and not a mere fantasy 28 .