Edward F. Howard is a Los Angeles-based artist, many of whose paintings hint at steampunk adventures in the colonies.
Continue reading “The Art of Edward F. Howard”Nick Ottens
Nick Ottens created The Gatehouse and the Gatehouse Gazette, one of the first and only magazines devoted to dieselpunk and steampunk, in 2008. The Gatehouse became Never Was in 2018. Nick also writes for the Atlantic Sentinel and Forgotten Trek.
The Art of Tari Márk Dávid
Hungarian artist Tari Márk Dávid recreates icon midcentury pictures as well as posters and scenes from the ultimate dieselpunk game, BioShock (our review here and more BioShock art here).
Continue reading “The Art of Tari Márk Dávid”Hitler’s Peace
Good alternate history sticks close to real history. Philip Kerr forgot that cardinal rule in Hitler’s Peace.
The novel starts off promising enough. Kerr references real-world events, including Heinrich Himmler’s peace overtures to the Western Allies and the German plot to kill Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at the Teheran Conference in 1943.
But he tries to do too much by featuring not one but two plots against the Big Three and throwing in too many historical characters, including the widowed wife of German security chief Reinhard Heydrich and British intelligence agent Kim Philby, who spied for the Russians, for seemingly no other reason than to mention their names.
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The Art of Ian McQue
Ian McQue is a concept artist and illustrator who has worked in the game industry for over twenty years, including as lead concept artist and assistant art director for the bestselling Grand Theft Auto series. He also drew covers for Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines Quartet. His personal work includes a number of magnificent dieselpunk scenes.
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The Art of MrXpk
“MrXpk” is an artist from Mexico, who creates delightful fake vintage posters and advertisements.
Continue reading “The Art of MrXpk”Five Came Back
Never Was readers may be familiar with Frank Capra’s Why We Fight series. I’ve used animations from the seven films, which were produced for the War Department between 1942 and 1945, in several stories, including “How the Nazis Planned to Invade Great Britain” and “The Rise and Fall of Japan’s Empire in Maps“.
But did you know the animations were from Disney? That Capra used Axis propaganda footage in his films? And that there were four more Hollywood directors who made movies for the war effort?
I didn’t. In Five Came Back, Francis Ford Coppola, Paul Greengrass, Lawrence Kasdan, Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep and Guillermo del Toro tell the story of how five directors invented the war documentary.
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Hardkor 44 Concept Art
Hardkor 44 was a Polish film production. The idea was to show an alternate take on the 1944 Warsaw Uprising in the style of Sin City (2005) and 300 (2006). A group of Polish resistance fighters would have an army of Nazi cyborgs.
The movie was canceled, but we still have the concept art!
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De Gaulle’s Cold War
European countries generally welcomed American involvement after the Second World War. From the Marshall Plan to NATO, the United States was seen as a benevolent influence.
But American help came with a price. European governments were expected to keep the far left out of power, accept the rehabilitation of West Germany and curtail trade and other relations with the Soviet Union.
France took exception to being treated as an instrument of American foreign policy. Charles de Gaulle famously blocked Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community, believing it would be a Trojan horse for America. He refused to give up France’s independent nuclear deterrent and even pulled out of NATO’s integrated military structure in 1966.
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What If France Had Started World War II?
It is hard to imagine France starting World War II. Its entire military strategy, including the construction of the formidable Maginot Line, was premised on fighting a defensive war. The only people who ever envisaged 1930s France as the aggressor were Nazi propagandists, and I doubt even they believed what they wrote.
To make the scenario remotely plausible, we probably need to start by changing the outcome of World War I. A more lenient peace that would have allowed Germany to keep its gains in the west, including Alsace-Lorraine and maybe Belgium, could have given the world a revanchist France in the 1920s, which in turn could have given way to a Weimar-like France in the 1930s with the far left and far right vying for power. Either could be motivated to start a war.
But such a France would not be allied to Britain, and such a war would not involve the United States. The outcome would almost certainly be French defeat.
Continue reading “What If France Had Started World War II?”Partnership with Sarah Zama
Never Was is proud to announce a partnership with Sarah Zama, author of four books and many stories set in the diesel era. She most recently published Living the Twenties, a nonfiction e-book about the decade. Sarah also maintains an active blog, called The Old Shelter.
In 2018, she blogged about the history of Weimar Germany in an A-to-Z challenge: 26 entries, one for each letter of the alphabet. We’ll be republishing those stories in the coming months. The first one, about the 1918 armistice that ended World War I, just went up.
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