Victorious German Arms?
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Post Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 12:27 am 
 

http://cgi.ebay.com/Victorious-German-A ... dZViewItem



What is this?



Looks like just a pure piece of historical speculation, 'how the Nazis could have won WWII," looked at in various different theaters, etc.



(My answer to that is just: keep the peace with Russia, and don't let the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, and you can run all of continental Europe for a while at least. A lucky case of genocidal egomaniacs overreaching out of overconfidence.)



Anyone know about this book though?


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Post Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 12:35 am 
 

=> viewtopic.php?p=57597&highlight=#57597 :)

  


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Post Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 12:43 am 
 

I think its kind of a neat idea.  Don't get me wrong, I am not at all saying that I would be happy if the Nazis had won WWII, not by any stretch, but just taking a view point of targeting a specific world event(any world event for that matter), altering the outcome of it, and then exploring how the world might be a different place now because of it.    Someone wrote a novel under a very similar premice about the US Civil War where the South wins instead of the North. Kind of fascinating.


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Post Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 12:59 am 
 

bclarkie wrote:Someone wrote a novel under a very similar premice about the US Civil War where the South wins instead of the North. Kind of fascinating.

Also http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pag ... pageid=674 (Winston Churchill, 1930 *g*; extract only at URL)

Alternate histories have been a fairly common theme in various literary genres for a long time; and rather a favorite of EGG's judging by some of his earlier articles elsewhere.

  


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Post Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 1:01 am 
 

Sounds like it could have been Harry Turtledove — he's got sort of a whole industry going for "alternate history." He has multi-book series for the Civil War, World War I, etc.

An alternate-history classic actually won a Hugo Award some years ago:

The Man in the High Castle

So as not to be beaten with another "off-topic" stick, I'll add that the book mentioned above, and a couple of others I can think of, would make excellent source-books for a role-playing campaign.

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Post Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 1:21 am 
 

Xaxaxe wrote:Sounds like it could have been Harry Turtledove — he's got sort of a whole industry going for "alternate history." He has multi-book series for the Civil War, World War I, etc.

An alternate-history classic actually won a Hugo Award some years ago:

The Man in the High Castle

So as not to be beaten with another "off-topic" stick, I'll add that the book mentioned above, and a couple of others I can think of, would make excellent source-books for a role-playing campaign.


Philip K. Dick is an author you don't hear enough about. His books and short stories have given us some classic Sci-Fi movies.... Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report and Paycheck (ok the last one is a not up to par with the others).


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Post Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 1:55 am 
 

Marlith wrote:
Xaxaxe wrote:Sounds like it could have been Harry Turtledove — he's got sort of a whole industry going for "alternate history." He has multi-book series for the Civil War, World War I, etc.

An alternate-history classic actually won a Hugo Award some years ago:

The Man in the High Castle

So as not to be beaten with another "off-topic" stick, I'll add that the book mentioned above, and a couple of others I can think of, would make excellent source-books for a role-playing campaign.


Philip K. Dick is an author you don't hear enough about. His books and short stories have given us some classic Sci-Fi movies.... Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report and Paycheck (ok the last one is a not up to par with the others).


You can't say enough good things about the man's work.  Classic paranoic, conspiracy themed, cold war excellence in most of his work. I think "A Scanner Darkly" is going to be the next of his classics to be made into a movie if I remember correctly.   I believe Second Variety was also made into a movie but have never seen it (great, great story, don't know anything about the movie).  It's amazing how much of his stuff has been stolen without PKD getting credit for it.  He practically invented the entire "Wake up one day and everyone thinks you are someone else but you know you aren't" genre with Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. And if you get a chance read his short story "Upon the Dull Earth". Hands down one of the top ten creepiest horror stories ever written. I read an interview with British Horror writer Ramsey Campbell where he lists it as one of his favorite stories ever, and says he's read it dozens of times and it still scares the hell out of him every time.

Mike B.


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Post Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 4:40 am 
 

*g*. Just spotted the final price ($265).

Where were y'all last time? ;)

  


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Post Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 5:41 am 
 

I believe Second Variety was also made into a movie but have never seen it (great, great story, don't know anything about the movie).

It's called "Screamers". it's a really good underrated movie. Starring Peter Weller and worth checking out.

  

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Post Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 10:44 am 
 

faro wrote:*g*. Just spotted the final price ($265).

Where were y'all last time? ;)


I know!  The last one ended at $86.

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Post Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 10:51 am 
 

Some additional info on VGA, from Gygax:  


EGG over on ENWorld wrote:Col_Pladoh          12-16-03 04:28 AM
Quote:

grodog wrote:Hi Gary---

A friend loaned me a copy of "Victorian German Arms: an alternate military history of world war two" by e. gary gygax & terry stafford (Baltimore, MD: TK Graphics, 1973).

It's 76 pages long, about the size of the OD&D manuals (octavo), has a lightweight, white card stock cover, with a German eagle facing dexter with a wreathed swastica in it's claws, while the back cover only has a swastica and the publisher's contact info.

Do you recall how many copies of this were printed? Did you used it in conjunction with Tractics? Who's Terry Stafford (any relation to Greg Stafford of RuneQuest fame)? Any other interesting tidbits?

As always, thanks :D



Yuletide Greetings!

Grodog, you surely do manage to find some oldies. Next you'll be digging up my old "Baku" expansion for Avalon Hill's Stalingrad board wargame, my first boardgame, the Battle of Arsouf, or maybe the "Conanomacy" Dippy variant I did... :eek:

Terry Stafford was the commander of the British Far East Squadron in the Ad Hoc Committee for the Reinstitution of WW II, the game directed by a group of wargamers at Standford U. back around 1962. I was living in Chicago, met Terry through the International Federation of Wargaming (a society I co-founded with Bill Speer and Scott Duncan, and Terry Joined). Thus I became the commander of the Chinese Communist forces in the short-lived WW Ii recreation (Don Kaye was commander to the Nationalists, BTW). Anyway, Terry used to drop in during lunch hour when I worked for Fireman's Fund Insurance Company in Chicago, and we'd talk military history. One day we got onto the subject of alternate history and decided to write one where the Germans won WW II. Between us we did about 30 maps and the text you have in Victorious German Arms.

Ted Pauls was an active SF fan in Baltimore, published a fanzine, Kipple, to which I subscribed--as did folks like L. Sprague de Camp and Jack Chalker, then about as well-known as I was;) When Ted learned about the ms. Terry and I had done he asked to publish it, and we agreed. Sadly, the Good Mr. Pauls totally screwed it up, left out all the maps, lost them to boot! I think he printed 2,000 copies of VGA, maybe it was 3,000, and to the best of my recollection, I think all Terry and I ever received was a very small advance. My copies of that work are long lost.

About a year ago Lauren Wiseman from SJG emailed and inquired if we would be interested in having SJG republish it. I got ahold of Terry, and we both agreed it would be okay. that's the last I heard, so I assume that Steve Jackson changed his mind.

Terry Stafford is not related to Greg. Intersetingly, though, Greg Stafford was here in Lake Geneva for a time, a partner with another chap here and running a metal casting business doing 30 mm figurines. He left that enterprise about the time I moved back to Lake Geneva from Chicago, so I never met Greg here. His former partner hit is big with Bergamont Brass back in the 60s when large belt buckles were in vogue, and that company is still operating and doing well, having moved to Darien, Wisconsin where the rent is a lot lesds than spece in this tourist town.

So there's a long response to a couple of short questions :D

Holiday best,
Gary


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Post Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 11:23 am 
 

Interesting item.  I'm surprised that the seller was able to post an image of the cover.  Aren't items bearing swastikas banned on ebay?

  

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Post Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 11:29 am 
 

Marinagh wrote:Interesting item.  I'm surprised that the seller was able to post an image of the cover.  Aren't items bearing swastikas banned on ebay?


I don't think so...did a search with Nazi as the term and got back almost 2000 items.

And for the record that is not something I would normally search for. It was just the easiest way I could think of to see if there were items containing swastikas.

UPDATE: Based on what Faro said I looked and I guess coins and stamps are excluded from the ban....I would alsomst guess paper money is as well. Most or all of the items I found looked to be coins or stamps.


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Post Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 11:37 am 
 

Marinagh wrote:Interesting item.  I'm surprised that the seller was able to post an image of the cover.  Aren't items bearing swastikas banned on ebay?


They are in germany!


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Post Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 11:41 am 
 

Marinagh wrote:Interesting item.  I'm surprised that the seller was able to post an image of the cover.  Aren't items bearing swastikas banned on ebay?

Correct; http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/offensive.html (notionally banned for all sales, worldwide, although it probably depends on which eBay employee is judging, that day).
Examples of items that will generally be removed:
* Items that bear symbols of the Nazis, the SS, or the KKK, including authentic German WWII memorabilia such as Olympic medals that bear such marks


The underlying reason is probably just to cover their backs in Germany and, as usual, they'll do nothing about such listings unless prompted.

  


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Post Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 12:49 am 
 

Not trying to start any fights here, just an amusing thought occured to me though, Shouldnt the Communist Hammer & Sickle also be banned along the same lines as the swastika? I mean afterall Stalin did mass murder 3 times the civillians as the Nazi party ever did. And if you take in account the fact that the Nazi party does not exist today, yet Global Communism does and their current mass murder numbers worldwide are easily in the hundreds of millions to date today Or is it more acceptable to commit mass murder genocide on the basis of political intolerance versus racial intolorance? Maybe Ghengis Khan and Napoleon should also be banned.

" Those who fail to remember the past mistakes of history are condemed to repeat them. Those who fail to rember the past mistakes of history are condemed to repeat them"   - Somebody wrote that or something

Just my 2 cents!

  

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Post Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 1:53 am 
 

Hitler has more emotional power than Stalin.  I'm sure Ebay doesn't really care at all...just saving themselves problems.

Mark   8)


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Post Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2006 8:21 pm 
 

Mars wrote:
faro wrote:*g*. Just spotted the final price ($265).

Where were y'all last time? ;)


I know!  The last one ended at $86.


Hell, I was there last time and bid $84 (3rd place was $20....). I waited a year until another copy turned up and bid $230, thinking this one will surely be mine. This time I was beaten by three other bidders.

Next time I'll bid $500 and my snipe won't even register.

Regards

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