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kept them completely hidden from the world. Plus, if only Jewish men were sterilized, at least some Jewish women would have let themselves be impregnated by non-Jewish men; in fact, Jewish religious law specifically stipulates that such children would be considered Jewish. (...) Anyway, why would Gloder do it at all? To be sure, he is an anti-semite, like many
Germans of his time. But as seen from his cynically frank wartime diary, he is above all a completely ruthless and totally unprincipled opportunist, for whom German Nationalism and wartime heroism are simply tools to be used or discarded. He needed the Jewish nuclear scientists to develop nuclear bombs by 1938. He still needs them when entering a nuclear arms race with the US. Were the Jewish scientists and their families exempted from deportation to the "Jewish Free State"? Would they go on working for him when all other Jews were deported? (...) The book avoids the real moral dilemma which it could have easily posed and which would have made it a far more profound and thought-provoking work. Suppose the opportunist Gloder had altogether avoided the
465:
sensitive woman escaping into fantasy from the harsh reality of her life; the 10-year old Adolf Hitler standing up to his father... Later chapters take place in the trenches of WWI, told from the point of view of Hitler's comrades in arms: ordinary German combat soldiers, completely unaware of the hidden power struggle going on around them between the two potential leaders of the future Nazi
Germany—Adolf Hitler and the charismatic officer Rudi Gloder. In one scene, Hitler tricks Gloder into a foolhardy heroic act and getting himself killed; but in the changed history, where Hitler was never born, it is Gloder who tricks another soldier into this act, and gets decorated for recovering his body. Later on, the ruthless Gloder murders a fellow soldier who discovered his opportunist machinations, followed by the past-war scene where Gloder joins the budding Nazi Party in 1919 Munchen and becomes its star
499:, and contented himself with some anti-Jewish rhetoric. Which world would be worse? Our world – or a world with an entrenched Nazi dictatorship in Europe and a racist and homophobic America, but no gas chambers and ovens, six million Jews able to live out their life, even if under Nazi rule? Putting it this way, the protagonist would have needed at least some serious thinking and inner debate before proceeding as he does in the final chapters."
469:. The significance of some details in these past scenes only becomes clear much later. For example, there is an early scene where Hitler's mother's vomits when trying to draw water and getting out of the pump a stinking maggot-filled mass; this turns out at the book's end to be the result of the protagonist sending back in time the rotting bodies of dead rats in order to prevent Hitler's father from drinking the sterilizing water.
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Michael begins to discover the history of this new world. It turns out that without Hitler, a new leader emerged, Rudolf Gloder, who was equally ruthless. In fact, Michael and
Zuckerman have replaced Hitler with a Nazi leader who was even more charming, patient, and effective, and as committed to the
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gets told that "There are no Jews left in Europe". That result could not have been achieved solely by sterilizing Jewish men through the "Braunau Water". In that case, in the 1990s there should have still been a big number of sad old and middle aged Jews with no progeny, and the Nazis could not have
233:
who – when the Nazi defeat became certain – gave his son the identity of a Jewish doctor that he murdered. Leo has developed a machine that enables the past to be viewed—but it is of no practical use as the image is not resolvable into details. Together, they hatch a plan to modify the machine such
455:
Time changes again. Expecting the disorientation, Michael comes to his senses faster now and discovers that almost everything is back to how it was, except that his favourite band, Oily-Moily, never existed (one of the band's members was of
Austrian extraction). He gives up his career in academia,
446:
the
European Jews, wiping them out in one generation. In a cruel twist of fate, the person who perfected the synthesis was Dietrich Bauer. Once more his physicist son, Axel, is wracked with guilt and has developed a Temporal Imager. With Michael and Steve's help, they plan to send a dead rat to
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Every chapter told by the first-person narrator in the (changing) late 20th century reality is followed by one in the German past. These early such chapters depict Hitler's father, an abusive husband and father and a petty tyrant in his job as a customs inspector; Hitler's mother, a gentle and
274:. It takes some time for Michael's memory to return. He realises that his plan was successful, history has changed, and for some reason his parents must have moved to America. Initially he is elated and tells his new friend Steve how happy he is because Steve has never heard of Hitler,
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poison the well so that it will be pumped clean of the sterilising water. As they begin to do this, they are interrupted by the federal agents who apprehended
Michael earlier and they end up shooting Steve, who dies in Michael's arms just as the time alteration occurs.
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figuring he can at least make some money "writing" the songs that he remembers from the previous reality. Finally, Michael is reunited with Steve, who is
English in this universe and also remembers the previous reality. Their gay relationship is no longer criminal.
442:—since Britain had been under Nazi rule for nearly half a century, anyone speaking like a Briton is a suspect. Michael learns that the water from the well in Hitler's home town was used to create "Braunau Water", which was the instrument to
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marches, urban gay communities, and a mass social movement in
Michael's world of origin, regarding it as "utopian". Much to his own surprise, Michael reciprocates Steve's feelings.
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alternative history texts wherein events during the war occurred differently from those in history. The most common variant of these detail the victory and survival of
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is still active. Students at
Princeton are purely white and the only Black people on campus are manual workers; students feel free to harass them and use slurs.
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Literature and Films – Before and After Schindler's List" (in Hebrew), Jerusalem 2002, pp. 23, 27, 46
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Steve turns out to be homosexual and in love with Michael, and when he discovers Michael's background, he marvels at his talk of
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in 1932 and built up an electronics industry of their own. Unlike Hitler, Gloder proceeded with stealth, ensuring peaceful
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nations capitulate, although Britain rebels in 1941, leading to the execution of several dissidents, among them the
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heritage. However, it is later revealed that Leo was born Axil Bauer, the son of Dietrich Bauer, a Nazi doctor at
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found the comic tone of the book "shockingly tasteless" and "deeply offensive" given the subject matter.
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and the United States. The latter has never gone to war against the
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Stephen Fry's Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music
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never existed. While most of the book is written in standard
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in this alternative 1938. The Greater German Reich annexes
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researcher Asaf Ben Vered noted that "The protagonist of
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by Michael "Puppy" Young, a young history student at
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in 1937. More alarmingly, Gloder's Nazis also had a
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313:on the research and development of
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