Will's Good Idea for the Week of 3-5-17: The Austrian Painter

Alert and loyal reader Marky Mark want's to know why I'm toying with an alternate history that 'romanticizes' Hitler.

He's noticed something here in the title, The Austrian Painter.

This novel will take place in 1964, just like Robert Harris' excellent Fatherland. It's really about a world where the Great War never happens. Germany's great Schleifen Plan succeeds, knocking France out of the war and the next year they turn on and crush Russia.

In the aftermath Germany and Britain come to an understanding. Germany takes a small piece of France, a sliver of Belgium and all of Luxembourg. More importantly they take the Congo, French Equatorial Africa and Gabon, making them masters of Central Africa. In Eastern Europe they create Poland as as a bulwark against Russia. They probably stab Austria in the back to set themselves up as the guarantors of an Eastern Europe free of Russian encroachment.

Now remember with no World War One there is no World War Two. Basically in this world the march of 19th century progress continues. There is no communism, at least no Soviet Union. No nuclear weapons yet. Heck, there's no space program.

We welcome reader ideas as to what is and is not happening in this universe.

Now, the vehicle for this story is a 75 year old Adolph Hitler. Here he's the kindly old man down the hall for whom well meaning parents make their children do chores and drop off mother's home backed muffins and such.

Why do it this way?

Because I think its interesting. I think its science fiction. I think its thought provoking. We all no Hitler was evil. What if he wasn't?

That's alternate history.