{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3828",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 3828,
    "subject": "DOORS: wars not fought",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2003-02-04T00:19:19+00:00",
    "last": "2003-02-04T00:19:19+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0302-2879@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com"
      },
      "date": "2003-02-04T00:19:19+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) DOORS: wars not fought",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "It is a given that the American Civil War did not happen in Otherworld, and\nas a result there is still slavery.  (I think this also suggests that the\nO-USA is far more agrarian, less industrialized, than E-USA, but I'll be\ngetting into that in a second.)\n\nThe strange flags in the hotel suggest, iirc, that the Austro-Hungarian\nEmpire still exists (two headed eagle on flag); if true, then there was no\nGeneral War in Europe (i.e., WWI), or if there was it was softer and\nshorter.  If there was no WWI as we know it, then there was almost\ncertainly no WWII; with no WWII, there would be no USA cranking up the\nfactories to help win an industrial war; without a victorious post-war\nindustry there would not be the creation of the booming consumer state,\nwith color televisions, ice making refrigerators, and snazzy automobiles\n(just three of the items lacking in O-USA).\n\nAside from the technology side (i.e., how much of our everyday technology\nstuff is a result of leaps and bounds made during wartime R&D), there is\nalso the issue of Germany: Germany, German people, and things German play a\nstrange part in TAD.  Our perceptions of the Germanophonic world are\naltered by and fixated upon the Nazi period . . . what impact, if any, does\nthis have upon our reading of the text?  That O-Germany perhaps had no\nNazis, no Hitler, no need for any of that?  The text uses standard Nazi\nimagery (\"Hogan's Heroes\" is one example), but how might this be a complete\nred herring (aside from showing a typical E-American mindset on E-Germany)?\n\nI mention this in part because, having finished WILL, I can report that\nLiddy has had a deep interest in Germany and Hitler, beginning from his\nchildhood days when he heard Hitler's speeches on the radio, up through his\nincarceration when he did little German/Nazi riffs in his own adventures.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}