{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6425",
    "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'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 6425,
    "subject": "Short Story 51: How I Lost the Second World War ...",
    "messages": 6,
    "voices": 4,
    "first": "2013-08-23T20:20:38+00:00",
    "last": "2013-08-24T19:17:44+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<1377289238.67813.YahooMailNeo@web160703.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Marc Aramini",
        "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com"
      },
      "date": "2013-08-23T20:20:38+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth)  Short Story 51: How I Lost the Second World War ...",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
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          "text": "“How I Lost the Second World War and Helped Turn Back the\nGerman Invasion” appeared in Analog in 1973 and is reprinted in Castle of Days\non page 79.\nSUMMARY: In a letter composed on April Fool’s Day 1938 to an\nunnamed magazine concerned with gaming and logic puzzles, an alternate history\nDwight Eisenhower talks about the simulated game he and his friend Lansbury\nhave been playing, “World War”. It\nmirrors the sides of our own World War II. He goes to an Exposition in Bath in England set up for Hitler to push\nhis “people’s cars” — Volkswagens. Here,\nhe runs into Herr Goering in the uniform of a flugzeugmeisterei (aircraft? master), and they discuss the possibility of\n“modern” war and how it would differ from the Great War with the current\ntechnology. Goering likes Dwight and\nsneaks him in more or less as a journalist to where Hitler will unveil his “people’s\ncar” — the Volkswagen. He meets the\njournalist Churchill there. \n“After the introduction\nof the car and Churchill’s talk of the British urban car, the Centurion, Hitler\nchallenges him to a race.” They cannot\nagree which side to drive on, so Churchill posits a race track that will have\nan urban side and a straight racing side, and that there will be mandatory\nparking along the way, with interference run by Japanese toy cars. When the track is constructed, of course\nGermany protests the use of professional drivers, and Eisenhower winds up\ndriving in the race for England. England\nwins, and based on Churchill’s explanation later, it is because the track was a\nlarge transistor: the high saturation in the urban side of the track quickly\ndispersed to interfere with the flow of the German traffic, and by the time the\nEnglish Centurions met the congestion point, the repulsion of the German side\nhad also been pushing the traffic behind their progress to some degree (ie — it\nis easier to flow from an area of saturation to an area of emptiness than from\nan area of emptiness to saturation “against the current”). The final talk of Dwight’s simulated war does\nof course mention the cold war split between the Slavic nations and Russian and\nthe United States. The story ends with the\nstatement that their heavy smoking has damaged part of the map in Japan, and\nthat both men are heavy smokers (thus the threat of further nuclear war in the\nCold War era).\nHISTORICAL MATCHES:\nHistory seems to have followed a parallel course up to a\ncertain point. The Great War and the\ndisaster of Gallapoli or Dardanelle has cost Winston Churchill his First Lord of\nthe Admiralty position just as in our timeline, but the Graf Spee ship, named\nafter the German hero, is a dirigible instead of a battlecruiser.??? In our story, Austria and Poland have been\neconomically taken over by Gemany (by 1938) because they own the bank through\nthe success of their cars. Goering did\nmake a preliminary visit to Poland to quell rumors of invasion in our\nhistorical 1938, and this invasion started on 1 Sept. 1939. (Economic takeover\nwas actually quicker than hostile invasion).\nThe elite sales force is known as the sturmsachbearbeiter\nhere — a sachbearbeiter is an advisor or official in charge, and of course\nsturm is a storm. The story acknowledges\nHitler’s involvement in the creation of the autobahn (in our history he became\ninvolved in its support in 1933 with Fritz Todt). Interestingly enough it opened in 1935 and a\nhigh profile racing death in 1938 curtailed its usage in attempting road speed\nrecords.? ??This story culminates in a race in 1938, and\nthrives on the? pun that the German’s\ninsist their car is the “race master”. Further puns involve the Japanese production of Toyotas, which they are\npushing at Pearl Harbor at the end of the text, while Eisenhower goes to work\nwith Buick.\nBath is the site of the exposition, but in the real world it\nwould suffer several air raids in 1942. Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia\nwas exiled from 1936 to 1940, and stayed at Fairfield House in Bath — there seems\nto be no mention of him in the story, yet our exposition building has\ndefinitely been altered by German engineering.\nThe dates that Lansbury and Dwight divvy up the sides by\nchance (February 17th, 1938) seem to have no historical\nsignificance, though in 1944 February 17th is the date of a victory\nfor America in the war. Similarly, the\ndate that he reads of the exposition, February 20th, also seems to\nhave no significance, save that again in 1944 it is the start of the “Big Week”\nfor America in raiding German facilities. Was there really a 7 mile hippodrome and a dirigible tower in Bath? I don’t think so - this is another area in\nwhich buildings and technology diverge thanks to German economic interference. \nCOMMENTARY:\nThere are no glaring elisions are plot holes. This is more of a fun story than anything\nelse, but there are plenty of little historical Easter Eggs scattered\nthroughout it. The idea of Eisenhower\nand Goering talking about war strategy over Bavarian creams, and perceiving\neach other as kindred spirits, is very interesting. ??Eisenhower then employs the blitzkrieg\nstrategy he learns from Goering in his simulated war game with Lansbury.\nAt the inception of the text, Dwight Eisenhower writes a\nletter on April Fool’s day to a magazine devoted to some kind of strategy/ Game\ntheory (though game theory would probably be a slight anachronism in 1938). The\nbasis of their World War is one that involves strategy, invention, and rhetoric\nto convince their opponent that whatever advance they want is feasible. The story does at least one thing very\nstrange: it reduces our reality to a small 4 by 6 board game and it actually\nincreases a transistor to the size of a giant race track (even though there ARE\nsome super small cars on it). This shift\nin scale/reality is actually pretty interesting, and I feel it is a comment to\nsome degree on the smallest things having world altering impacts (the model\ncars are the reason the real cars can’t park — they run signal interference,\nand splitting/fusing an atom creates such a powerfully massive force that the\nworld trembles). Thus in this story, the\nshift in scale is a very real theme and microcosmic events are ultimately “maximized”.\nGoering, reenacting the powerful bomb of a Stutzkampfbomber (a bomber used for\nbattle employing a steep sloping attack?), simulates it with a Bavarian Cream\nthat hits Dwight’s shoe. Game theory deals with strategic decisions, not only\nin battle, but in economics, and I feel Wolfe is here definitely equating the\ntwo as effective means of domination: military and economic force; the theme is\nthat all simulation ultimately comes back to a valid means to control (thus\neconomic takeovers are ultimately the same as war, on a simulated or even “smaller”\nlevel).\nAnother irony of course is that the toy Japanese cars are\nflitting around at the beginning of the exposition trumpeting “the virtues of\nthat industrious nation’s produce, particularly the gramophones, wirelesses,\nand so on, employing those recently invented wonders, ?transistors?” (82). Much like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor\nwaking America from its complacency on the international scene, this toy trumpeting\nof transistors presages the downfall of the economic invasion: Churchill will\nturn the racetrack into a giant transistor (another pun is that the common\nconstruction of transistors involves Germanium). “This irony is of course also reflected in the\nbackground of Dwight Eisenhower: a German American fighting against\nGermany.” In the game, he also has\ncontrol of Germany and the Axis powers. This almost seems like the old trope of apotropaic magic to some degree:\nif you want to defeat something, you have to use its nature against itself\n(thus Othello leading the Venetian army against the Turks, or convicted hackers\ngetting amnesty working for the government on security systems).\nUltimately the simulation screams: little things can have\nbig consequences.\nUNANSWERED QUESTIONS:\nIs Lansbury the historical George Lansbury, who visited all\nthe heads of state during WWII suing for peace?\nThe Bath exposition mentioned in the text — is this similar\nto the Paris Expositions of 1937/38 and a kind of transplantation from art to\ntechnology, or completely unrelated? From the description of several structures as created by the makers of\nthe autobahn, it seems this is unique to Wolfe’s fictional universe as a result\nof the widespread German industrialization and economic invasion.\nWhere exactly did history diverge? One event in particular\nthat we can pinpoint through detail, or just in the direction of Germany\nimmediately after the Great War, (as they have already established economic\nfootholds in countries where, in our reality, they established military\nstrength)? I would assume this diverges immediately following the Great War,\nwith the focus of German obsession latching onto industry.\nRELATIONSHIPS TO OTHER WORKS: Wolfe’s alternate history\nworks are actually pretty scarce, insofar as they deal with real world contemporary\nevents. The war seems to have a special\nplace in his heart, as many of the planes and weapons of the World Wars will\ncome up over and over again (Against the Lafayette Escadrille, The Last\nCasualty of Cambrai). Certainly one\nmight read this and “Donovan Sent Us” as flip sides of a coin — Churchill shows\nup in both, but this perhaps has the more flattering presentation. ??Contemporary alternative history is actually\nvery scant and scarce in Wolfe’s work, though mythic reworkings are practically\nomnipresent (The Lost Pilgrim, The Death of Koschei the Deathless, etc).\nFar more importantly is the creation of microcosmic\nrepresentations that are somehow still real: the war game follows our reality,\nand the threat of nuclear war is equated with Dwight’s smoking tendencies. The life size transistor shoves home the idea\nthat scientific knowledge is how one can overcome all kinds of obstacles, even\nwhen the science doesn’t seem particularly applicable. I think this is at the heart of larger mysteries\nin Wolfe as well, like Short Sun (vegetable hybridization) and The Fifth Head\nof Cerberus (larval lifecycles and engineering approximation techniques) — the science\nbecomes a metaphor that actually helps understand the action. ??I feel this is to some degree the way Wolfe’s\nsymbols work as well — representation is a little bit closer to reality than it\nfirst seems: “things weaker than our words for them” (from Chapter 1 of Shadow\nof the Torturer)"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<1377289459.76287.YahooMailNeo@web160706.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Marc Aramini",
        "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com"
      },
      "date": "2013-08-23T20:24:19+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth)  Short Story 51: How I Lost the Second World War...",
      "in_reply_to": "<1377289238.67813.YahooMailNeo@web160703.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "As far as I can see the only two changes before the story starts are that Germany focused on economics instead of military might after the Great War, and that Churchill's career never got over the disasters from that war and he returned to journalism."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<445991.55777.bm@smtp829.mail.ird.yahoo.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Mo Holkar",
        "address": "lists at ukg.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "2013-08-24T09:50:57+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Short Story 51: How I Lost the Second World War ...",
      "in_reply_to": "<1377289238.67813.YahooMailNeo@web160703.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>",
      "reply_link": "header",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "At 21:20 23/08/2013, you wrote:\nThe Bath exposition mentioned in the text — is \nthis similar to the Paris Expositiions of \n1937/38 and a kind of transplantation from art \nto technology, or completely unrelated?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I have wondered 'why Bath?' In real life it's a \nsmallish antiquated town, with no industrial \ntradition, and not at all a likely candidate for \nthe hosting of such an exposition. Yet, being \nWolfe, one feels there must be some reason why he chose it.\n\nMo\n\n\n# ~ # ~ #\n\nWolfeWiki -- a wiki about Gene Wolfe\nhttp://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/ "
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<B4A04ABA-C551-48B9-9851-0F26172FA79C@yahoo.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Marc Aramini",
        "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com"
      },
      "date": "2013-08-24T13:59:35+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Short Story 51: How I Lost the Second World War ...",
      "in_reply_to": "<445991.55777.bm@smtp829.mail.ird.yahoo.com>",
      "reply_link": "header",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "The only significance it had in ww2 as far as I could see was that Ethiopian ruler in exile there and the heavy damage it suffered,  but I have absolutely no knowledge of the banking-commerce-loan infrastructure of England around that time at all.  Good question. \n\nSent from my iPhone"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On Aug 24, 2013, at 2:50 AM, Mo Holkar <lists at ukg.co.uk> wrote:\nAt 21:20 23/08/2013, you wrote:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "The Bath exposition mentioned in the text — is this similar to the Paris Expositiions of 1937/38 and a kind of transplantation from art to technology, or completely unrelated?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I have wondered 'why Bath?' In real life it's a smallish antiquated town, with no industrial tradition, and not at all a likely candidate for the hosting of such an exposition. Yet, being Wolfe, one feels there must be some reason why he chose it.\n\nMo\n\n\n# ~ # ~ #\n\nWolfeWiki -- a wiki about Gene Wolfe\nhttp://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/ \n_______________________________________________"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<6a16df66675bd398addd69142a68cc3c.squirrel@webmail.prismnet.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jeff Wilson",
        "address": "jwilson at clueland.com"
      },
      "date": "2013-08-24T18:25:31+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Short Story 51: How I Lost the Second World War ...",
      "in_reply_to": "<445991.55777.bm@smtp829.mail.ird.yahoo.com>",
      "reply_link": "header",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On Sat, August 24, 2013 04:50, Mo Holkar wrote:\nAt 21:20 23/08/2013, you wrote:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "The Bath exposition mentioned in the text — is\nthis similar to the Paris Expositiions of\n1937/38 and a kind of transplantation from art\nto technology, or completely unrelated?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I have wondered 'why Bath?' In real life it's a\nsmallish antiquated town, with no industrial\ntradition, and not at all a likely candidate for\nthe hosting of such an exposition. Yet, being\nWolfe, one feels there must be some reason why he chose it."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Perhaps a front of misdirection on the part UK, parallel to their assembly\nof scale factory mockups to draw Axis bombing attacks away from actual\nfactories during the war."
        },
        {
          "kind": "sig",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Jeff Wilson - < jwilson at clueland.com >\nA&M Texarkana Computational Intelligence Lab\n< http://www.tamut.edu/cil >"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<CA+WO8_4HOdoqZ+8=hnydcMdE9bQd=uULWYWaFfTOmWHqjubN9w@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Tony Ellis",
        "address": "tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com"
      },
      "date": "2013-08-24T19:17:44+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Short Story 51: How I Lost the Second World War ...",
      "in_reply_to": "<6a16df66675bd398addd69142a68cc3c.squirrel@webmail.prismnet.com>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "From: Mo Holkar"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I have wondered 'why Bath?' In real life it's a\nsmallish antiquated town, with no industrial\ntradition, and not at all a likely candidate for\nthe hosting of such an exposition. Yet, being\nWolfe, one feels there must be some reason why he chose it."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Wolfe says in Castle of Days that his mother's family was from there,\nand that he's always wanted to see the place. (From a Letter to Nancy\nKress)\n\nAlso, once you've dismissed London for being too obvious, it's a very\ngood choice for an exposition. It's an historic town, rather than an\nantiquated one, in the heart of England, with a longstanding tradition\nof high culture, leisure and tourism."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}