The e-books, movies and TV-shows are an assortment of popular modern stuff. They can include science fiction, but nothing specifically about history, and especially nothing specifically about 20th century history. Side-references like Jim Belushi's reference to the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor (Animal House) are okay--actually more than okay.  Can you imagine a 1930s or 1940/41 era US intelligence officer trying to figure out if the Germans really were going to bomb Pearl Harbor. Star Wars and Star Trek are kosher. Use your discretion on the one where they go back to the thirties to prevent a German victory in World War II. Babylon 5 can be on there, as can A Clockwork Orange (though they don't have to be).

My iPad currently has Serenity, Kill Bill 1 and 2, and Twin Peaks, along with the IT crowd, Dr. Who, Archer, and Big Bang Theory, so I guess they could be fair game. 

Scenarios don’t have to be serious.  For example: How about iPad shows up in 1925, in Germany. It eventually ends up in the hands of a non-Nazi but extreme-right-wing party. They watch A Clockwork Orange and are inspired by the Droog costumes. The eye-catching costumes catapult them out of the obscure pack of non-Nazi radicalism and they become major rivals of the Nazis, with "Droogs" running around doing street fights with the Nazis and Communists.

The "Droog" party gets a major influx of understanding of the power of video messages from the sample they have from the future and use that within the limitations of the tech of the day (basically movies). They push for the development of filming techniques to emulate the ones they see.

Not sure where it goes from there, but Droogs versus Nazis would be a visually interesting fight if nothing else.

 Or, it could pop into early 1900 to 1920 Britain. Someone in officialdom takes it apart, notices Chinese or Japanese-named stuff inside and goes into full yellow peril mode.

Could the US Have Broken Up Due to the Great Depression?
 

Someone on alternatehistory.com asked that question.  This is a slightly expanded version of my response:

To make a breakup due to the depression you would need to find policies that pitted regions of the US against one another. The depression itself wouldn't necessary do that. I can think of things that pit classes or industries against one another, but not ones that would cause regional issues.

 I suppose that if you could somehow come up with a socialist/communist party gaining strength in industrial areas but not in the south or west that might lead to something like what you're looking for. Socialists with real power at the state level in the US is probably almost as unlikely as the breakup idea itself though. 

 There were a lot of reasons that socialists/communists never developed much open political clout in the US.  One of them was that the ideology didn’t develop here and didn’t really match the national character.  Where socialism has taken significant power in a country it is usually socialism that has mutated into a particular national version that fits the national character.  Socialism in the Soviet Union wasn’t quite Tsarism with different names and different justifications, but it came close.  East Germany, home of Marxism, actually came as close as I think is humanly possible to making it work, and it sort of did, though nowhere near the way West Germany worked.  If there was going to be a US socialism it would have probably been either reworked beyond recognition to fit our national character or would have originated from some of our home-grown labor radicals, of which there were a lot of very colorful and interesting groups.  That’s a bit of history I would love to look into some time.

Axis Spain?

If Spain were going to come in on the Axis side at all, it would have been either when it was obvious that France was falling or shortly after it fell. Hitler was uninterested at that time because he thought the war was as good as over and the incentives he would have needed to give to Spain at that time would have come at a cost to relations with Vichy France and probably Italy to some extent.

Spain on the Axis side in summer/fall of 1940 would have been a very mixed blessing for the Germans, but probably an net gain for the Italians because it would have diluted British efforts and possibly kept the Brits from exposing the Italian military for the bluff it was for another six months to a year.

Spain coming into the Axis in 1941 would be an almost unmitigated disaster for the Germans.

I say almost, because there would have been some benefits.

·         There were a couple of strategic minerals that Germany needed that were available in Spain and Portugal. With Spain as an Axis ally those minerals would have been more available from Spain because Spain would have been cut off from the world market and could only have been sold to the Axis. Portugal would have been very vulnerable to the Axis, and would have probably been bullied into providing the minerals they had that the Axis needed.

·         German planes and artillery based in Spain would have made British access to the Med very difficult until they were neutralized.

·         Spain in the Axis would have shielded French North Africa from Allied invasion, though the Allies would have probably gone after Spain in this timeline's equivalent of Operation Torch.

·         There is a reasonable chance that the Brits would lose Malta if Gibraltar fell or was under close siege. The Malta relief convoys came from Gibraltar and mounting them without it would have been difficult.

·         U-boat bases in Spain would have made anti-submarine efforts much more difficult for the Allies.

·         The Germans would have undoubtedly demanded some things from Spain in return for the supplies and weapons they would need as an Axis member. The biggest thing they would have gotten would have been manpower, both for German industry which was always short of manpower, and for second-line duties in the Balkans and on the Eastern Front. Historically Spain provided the Blue Division for the eastern front and considerable amount of labor for German industry, but they controlled the level of commitment more than they would have as a German minor ally.

On the downside, Spain couldn't feed itself. It had little or no oil. It had vulnerable colonies like the Canary Islands and Spanish Sahara that would have made really good anti-submarine bases once the Allies captured them, which they would, and an Axis Spain would have been a really plum target for an Allied invasion, probably to replace Operation Torch as noted earlier. 

The biggest problem with this scenario was that there really wasn't anything in it for Spain, and a huge number of downsides for the Spanish.

Posted on Jan 4, 2012.

More Stuff For POD Members Only

What you see here is a truncated on-line version of a larger zine that I contribute to POD, the alternate history APA.  POD members get to look forward to more fun stuff.