*intro inspired by 30's Flash Gordon serials and not the 80's film with Queen's songs*
Nothing unites people more than a common enemy.
If history teaches us anything,
it's that if two groups stop killing each other for more than a few years to kill some bigger threat,
then that's a healthy alliance.
The Germans united the Brits and French in the Great War,
and World War II united communists and capitalists against the Nazis.
Today in a world of social media,
you might feel like we're more divided than ever. (Close up)
Well, in fiction, there's always one good thing that brings in perspective:
a catastrophic alien attack..(Explosion)
World peace can only be achieved when we're all on the brink of extinction.
Harry Turtledove took this concept and had an idea.
What if we combined World War II,
the biggest conflict in history,
and at the same time, dealt with a planet-wide alien invasion?
That, my good audience, is the plot behind Harry Turtledove's Worldwar alternate history books.
In the midst of World War II back in the 1940's,
an alien empire arrives to conquer the human race.
For everyone's survival,
former enemies need to put aside their differences.
"Independence Day" style(reference to the 1996 film).
This concept is one to fill four very long books spanning a timeframe of 40 years.
Let's say you, dear viewer, don't have enough time to read that much.
But you like the idea.
Well, this video is for you.
I'm going to explore the strange timeline and ramifications that Turtledove imagined.
At least in the first two books.
"In The Balance", and "Tilting The Balance".
Just broad concepts and events.
Of course, nothing can replace the actual books,
and I highly recommend them, even after this video.
Nobody can cover these events in better detail than the author himself.
So, let's begin.
There's really only two main things you have to know at the start of this.
One, it's the 1940's, and World War II is happening.
The same exact war we all know and love.
Two, suddenly, during this war,
an invasion fleet from an alien empire reaches the Earth.
Who are these aliens? What do they look like? What are their hopes and dreams?
Their real name is never actually said.
They're simply called, "the Race".
The Race is a race(Get it?) of what can only be described as humanoid lizards with chameleon eyes.
For a race that has conquered numerous planets by sheer force,
you'd imagine hulking monsters like the elites of Halo or the Xenomorphs(Alien).
But the Race are actually about three feet tall.
The Race has a few flaws that I can say.
The Race's empire has existed for tens of thousands of years.
Sounds oppressive. Right?
Well, just because they've been around for a while,
it doesn't mean they've actually progressed all that much.
Race technology advances very, very slowly.
They haven't really changed in 50,000 years.
*congratulation whistle*
Not even the Imperium(insert franchise name here) is that slow.
The Race simply assumed everyone else did that.
Until they met humanity.
When they first sent a probe to Earth,
humanity was still in the Medieval Age.
With that preconceived notion in mind,
they didn't see the harm in invading a few centuries later.
What a shock it was to find out man did in a century what took the lizard lits tens of thousands of years.
By the time they found out,
they had traveled too long, and too far, to simply stop the attack.
To catch everyone up on the human troubles,
U.S. and Japanese have fought at Midway(There is an alternate scenario where Japan wins that battle.),
Poland just doesn't exist anymore,
and the Germans had been plopped down inside,
preparing an invasion against the Soviets.
Before Germany can release Call of Duty in June however,
THEY(the Race) show up(On May 30, 1942).
There are reports of aircraft in Europe and across the West being shot down.
The attacks are so vast that it's impossible for one single nation to be doing this.
Long story short, everyone realizes,
"Oh no! Aliens exist! And they're attacking!"
The war comes to a halt.
Not because everyone wants to get along,
but because the invasion has forced everyone to divert resources from the front line to stop themselves from being destroyed.
It isn't working very well.
In a matter of weeks, they have taken Africa and South America(and even Mexico and Central America).
The German-planned invasion to ruin Stalin's day can't even happen anymore as the entire former nation of Poland(along with the Baltics, Belarus, and Ukraine)...
...is now ground zero for a massive alien attack.
Now, it may seem like all hope is lost, but it actually isn't.
Because one group can stand a chance against these impossible lizards.
The Germans! Yay!-
*censorship* Aw come on!(YouTube: NO NAZI GLORIFICATION, CODY!)
Because Germany has such a large military and has been trained for so long,
they have the best chance on Earth at fighting the lizards.
In fact, they even get a few lucky shots and destroy alien ships.
The thing that's interesting about this series is that the aliens are an overwhelming force that humanity must band together to defeat.
But, it isn't like "Independence Day"(directed by Roland Emmerich).
There is nothing you can just blow up(Michael Bay should know this.) to make it all go away.
Or install a virus into.(Jeff Goldblum is David Levinson.)
*Cody sighs in frustration*
The only way to defeat those lizards is guns of your own.
This dynamic is made very clear in 1942.
Yes, the humans are less advanced than the aliens.
But they have three advantages over these scaly invaders.
One, man is fighting on their own turf.
If they lose vehicles, men, or guns, they can make more.
The aliens only have a limited amount of resources they brought over,
because it takes hundreds of years to cross time and space.
Two, man can advance far faster than the aliens.
And in fact, they're making advances in nuclear technology.
Something the Race, once again, took far, far longer to do.
So, even though there is a technology gap NOW,
humans are working on it.
Three, the Race are horrible tacticians.
Even though they have better tanks and guns and planes and all that stuff,
they don't actually know how to effectively use them.
And their incompetence often leads to humans being able to beat the aliens as equals,
and maybe even come up on top.
Usually in these alien invasion stories, we are like ants.
And the aliens are the kid with the magnifying class.
But in Turtledove's series,
the war between the two is much more like a conventional war.
Humans were already militarized.
They can outproduce and out-research the aliens.
It's like any Civ(Civilization) game where you don't put enough into science.
Sure they have knights now(1141),
but they're going to have tanks eventually.
In Turtledove's series, we're(U.S.) the hornet's nest that the Race just stumbled into.
The Race is not used to the conditions it finds on Earth.
It loved the idea of a warm equator temperature.
However, as the Winter gradually came around,
their advancement freezes along with the climate.
In the six months since they have landed,
they have only taken a few states in the Midwest(along with some of Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, and the Louisiana Purchase south of the 49th parallel).
Badly enough, Ohio is one of them.
They have orbital nuked Berlin and Washington, D.C.,
however, this has done little to stop any counterattacks by the humans.
By 1943, the war on the ground is at a standstill.
The aliens dominate the sky, so humans simply operate in the shadows at night.
Somehow, the Race doesn't have night-vision technology,
but hey, I'm not going to focus on that.
That doesn't mean the Race doesn't progress at all.
Spain and Italy have both fell(Portugal with them),
and they're making gains into France and dangerously next to Russia.
People have resorted to carriages to save resources.
The most valuable resource of all: plutonium.
I have to be honest.
Most of this video is about book one, and not book two.
"Tilting The Balance" is about, well, tilting the balance. (Woah.)
It's how the Americans and Germans are doing everything to create a nuclear bomb.
Instead of being against each other,
it's the only savior against the alien attack.
This is pretty much the only way the world changes throughout the entire progression of the second book.
It's much more focused on the characters themselves,
which I'm not going to spoil.
The U.S. researches in Denver,
and the Germans in Wittlesbach,
until, well, no more Wittlesbach.
The accidental explosion lets everyone(even the Race) know humanity is working on nukes.
"Whoops." -Germany
The Race makes gains into Soviet Russia,
they break through from Poland,
but, on the way to Moscow, well,
they trigger a nuclear mine.
In one instant, the entire balance of the war is, tilted.
*Cody sighs in frustration again*
As mankind now has a massive advantage over the Race,
they can now make nukes.
And in the next two books, they'll certainly come in handy.
But I'm not covering that,
that's Tigerstar's job.
And he'll be covering those on HIS channel,
link in the description.
The Worldwar series is a strange one.
It takes place in a time that we're not used to thinking of as technologically advanced,
but even with the weaponry of the 1940's,
humanity has a chance against an alien race.
It's not one that you see so often,
and if you do, well, it's usually in the future, or dumb.
*footage from "Independence Day"(distributed by 20th Century Fox[which is being purchased by The Walt Disney Company]) plays*
This is Cody of AlternateHistoryHub.
T-Shirts available on BonFire.(*wonders what Jimmy and Billy think of this series and the collab*)
There might be playlists of this and the following parts that give shout-outs to Audible by Amazon.
Cody has Patreon that you could donate to,
social media pages like Facebook and Twitter you can follow,
and you can even support the channel by subscribing if you haven't done so.
Cody also has a second channel called KnowledgeHub(formerly GeographyHub).
His brother, Tyler, is a great overseer and caretaker of it.
A majority of its videos are frequently based on and sponsored by The Great Courses Plus.
And finally, Cody, Tigerstar are in a Sunday livestream with Tristan from StepBack History, called "So That Happened".