As the war in Europe drew to a close, the Western Allies convinced themselves that the fall of Berlin would not be the end of it. The Nazis, they believed, would hunker down in the Austrian and Bavarian Alps and continue the war from a formidable Alpenfestung in the mountains.
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Third Reich Victorious
While we don’t often think about it, every moment we make decisions that might have serious consequences.
For example, if I had not taken a specific college course in a specific semester, I would have never met the woman of my dreams whom I would someday marry.
Taking this further, if I had never met the jewel of my eye, our daughter would have never been born. Not only was our meeting necessary for her existence but how many lives has she also touched?
Continue reading “Third Reich Victorious”The Future as Imagined by the Past
The genre of steampunk is often inspired by the nineteenth century, the Victorians, and futurism. It’s about alternate futures or futuristic ideas of times past. But how did the Victorians view the future?
The nineteenth century was a time of many rapid changes. In a fairly short span of time many scientific breakthroughs were made, many new objects and machines invented. Things moved at a fast and exhilarating pace. It could be compared to the current developments around the internet and computers: things are changed and invented at such a speed that it’s hard to keep track sometimes, and you can reminisce with your friends about times when no one had a mobile phone. Just like that, Victorians reminisced about times without diesel power, electric motors or bicycles.
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Railways and War
Probably there is nothing more steampunk than the locomotive — besides the airship, of course. Railways have always represented movement, freedom, human genius, but after their introduction they soon became infected by the germ of war and started serving destructive purposes.
This seems to be the sad destiny of all human inventions, from the ancient chariots to the modern airplanes.
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Did Adolf Hitler Survive the War?
Stories of Adolf Hitler surviving the war to die an old man in Spain or South America have been around since he committed suicide in his bunker deep below Berlin in April 1945.
Historians have largely dismissed these claims. Skull fragments, long held in Russian archives, were believed to prove that the German dictator perished together with his dream of a Thousand Year Reich, but an archeologist and bone specialist who examined them in 2009 concluded that they most likely belonged to a woman.
This has only fueled the conspiracy theories.
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Victorian Seaside Resorts
Seaside holidays are today a common way for many people to pass their summer vacation. What many probably don’t know is that the summer vacation we envision today, with children playing on and with the sand, people bathing or walking along promenades and piers, are all traditions rooted in nineteenth-century England.
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Surviving the 1930s
The years following the collapse of Wall Street in 1929 were some of America’s most iconic with regards to the dieselpunk genre. While the Roaring Twenties tore us away from the moorings of Victorian culture and the 1940s saw Uncle Sam fighting toe to toe against the Axis, many of the sights and sounds that we associate with dieselpunk are actually products of the 1930s.
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The Lost Generation
Following in the horsemen’s wake of World War I, the story of America in the 1920s was one of a country weaving itself together from the tatters of plague and poverty. It was a time when the citizens danced to Nero’s fiddle while the republic battled its self-made robber barons and gentlemen thieves. It was a time when the populace cried out and told the heavens that no matter what was thrown their way, they were still alive. It was the Roaring Twenties.
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Art Deco
The Roaring Twenties were a period of great paradoxes. After the First World War, the world was experiencing a period of vitality and exuberance, new technologies and styles. At the same time, it was a period of political and social contrasts which ended with the Great Depression.
Art Deco is the aesthetic which best incarnated the aspirations of those years and their yearning for modernity.
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Germany’s Golden Twenties
The Roaring Twenties, or Goldenen Zwanziger Jahre, as they were known in Germany, were very likely Germany’s happiest time in the first half of the twentieth century. They can also be considered Berlin’s Golden Age.
The time between the end of the hyperinflation and hardships of the post-Great War period and the stock market crash of 1929 were a comparatively stable period for the troubled Weimar Republic. The largely French-driven dictates of the Versailles Treaty were modified and relieved by the implementation of the Dawes Plan and later the Young Plan (although the latter would not come into effect until 1930). In 1926, the Weimar Republic joined the League of Nations, another sign of normalization.
Fueled by American dollars, the German economy stabilized and expanded, leading to increased wealth. This credit-financed economy would later prove highly vulnerable to the effects of the Great Recession of the early 1930s, but, for the moment, the Weimar Republic enjoyed prosperity, stability and good times.
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