War is an enduring issue in the human world.
Where there are people, there are rivers and lakes, and where there are countries, there are wars.
And history is usually written by the victors. If, in World War II, we didn't win that day, what would history be like?
Amazon's series The Man in the High Castle has the answer.
This sci-fi series from Amazon shows you a world of blood and fire with a huge brain hole, showing an epic alternate history——
When the Axis Powers defeated the Allies and ruled the world, what would the world look like?
It's a pity that such a high-energy drama ended up unfinished! Are American dramas unable to escape the curse of unfinished ends? Is it really impossible to use alternate historical themes?
of course not! ! ! I'm the first to disagree with HBO !
Last year's dark horse limited drama "Chernobyl" was also adapted from history, and the whole network exploded and praised! Reality and fiction are intertwined to reveal the brutal truth of the nuclear explosion.
And this year, HBO has a big enough brain hole to construct the alternate history of 1940 and bring this new drama——
anti-American conspiracy
The Plot Against America
March 16丨HBO
Look at the blood-stained Stars and Stripes on the poster, listen to the "reactionary" title of the show, HBO is going to do something.
This "Anti-American Conspiracy" is based on the novel of the same name by American Jewish writer Philip Roth .
Philip Roth (1933~2018), has always been considered the most prestigious candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature among American writers, and his name is always on the nomination list every year.
He has won an award in the history of American literature.
What the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize, Faulkner Prize, Kafka Prize for Literature , etc... Some of them have won more than once, and the Columbia University News has praised him as the "Lion of Literature" . He wrote all his life, and didn't stop writing until he was in his 80s. He worked hard to write 27 novels and many short stories in his life.
He rose to fame for his collection of short stories, Goodbye, Columbus, which won a National Book Award, and has since written works such as the Zuckerman Quadlogy and the American Trilogy.
"Anti-American Conspiracy" is a fictional autobiographical novel he wrote in 2004. It was named "America's Best Historical Novel" by the Association of American Historians , and it was also his last novel featuring himself as the protagonist.
The story is about what America would look like when pro-Nazi politician Lindbergh defeated Roosevelt for the presidency .
The inspiration for the novel came from Ross reading the autobiography of White House assistant Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (a famous American historian and political critic) , and found that in the 1940s, the Republican Party really seriously considered letting Lindberg participate in. Elect the president.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was a special assistant to President Kennedy
Known as "the man who knows the era of Roosevelt and Kennedy best"
He couldn't believe that American history was really only one step away from fascism, and he couldn't imagine what would have happened to their Jewish-American families had Lindbergh really been in power.
So he decided to write this novel against this background.
Before Philip Roth died on May 22, 2018, HBO bought the rights to the novel. The six-episode limited series was produced by David Simon and Ed Burns .
Previously, the two had collaborated on the highest-rated drama "The Wire" in HBO's history , so their "Anti-American Conspiracy" is really exciting!
"Wire of Fire"
In order to restore the scenes in the novel, the crew deliberately chose the community near Peak Avenue where Ross grew up, and the interior decoration also referred to a lot of Ross' family photos and historical materials.
Most of the leading actors in the play also deliberately chose real Jewish descendants. Two of the most well-known are Winona Ryder , and Italian-American actor John .
Winona, who has appeared in "Stranger Things" and "Alien" , has half Jewish blood. Her father is Jewish, and she also has relatives who died in the Jewish Holocaust, which caused a huge psychological blow to Winona. It couldn't be more appropriate for her to be in this drama.
• America's "Darkest Hour"
In 1940, at the beginning of World War II, Hitler's iron cavalry ravaged Europe, leading to the evacuation of 340,000 British and French troops from Dunkirk to the British mainland, resulting in the world-famous tragedy "Dunkirk Retreat" .
France was defeated in six weeks, the Germans occupied Paris, and French Prime Minister Pétain surrendered to Nazi Germany. A large number of Jews fled to the United States, at a time when the United States was not involved in World War II, and in an election year, the news of war and elections kept refreshing in the newspapers and radios.
Today's milk method (1/1)
Philip Levin , just a child of an ordinary Jewish family living in Newark, New Jersey;
He loves stamp collecting and has an older brother, Sandy, who has a talent for painting; his father, Herman, is an insurance broker, and his mother, Bessie, is a housewife.
They just lived in this Jewish community.
Sometimes strangers from Jewish neighbors came to their house; after dark, in stammering English to raise money for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, the generous father always offered a few coins. (Palestine, the last outlying province of the Ottoman Empire after the victorious Allied Powers in 1918 disintegrated under the British mandate; the money they donated was only used to house European Jews fleeing Hitler.) But in fact, Philip knew that, Their family has had their own country for generations, and that is the United States.
I thought that life would go on peacefully until a politician named Charles Lindbergh appeared.
He was pro-Nazi , arguing that "Jews want America to go to war because it's in their interests, but Americans need to consider their own interests, and what America needs is peace."
He pretended to maintain peace and wanted the United States to remain neutral, but he was actually taking advantage of Americans' racial discrimination to carry out racial segregation and oppression of Jews.
Because of him, history has completely reversed the direction. Roosevelt lost the election to this Lindbergh, which caused the United States not to participate in World War II and went directly to fascism.
And historically, Lindbergh is a real person; he is a descendant of Swedish immigrants and a U.S. Air Force pilot.
From May to 21, 1927, Lindbergh flew from New York City to Paris in his single-engine plane, the Spirit of St. Louis;
Crossing the Atlantic Ocean without landing, it took 33 hours and 39 minutes to successfully complete the world's first non-stop single-person flight across the Atlantic Ocean. He immediately became a heroic figure envied by the world , and even appeared on the cover of Time magazine.
Charles Augustus Lindbergh in History
When fascism prevailed in Europe, Lindbergh was ordered by the US military to Germany several times to test the dynamics of Hitler's government.
In 1938, the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe Hermann Goering awarded Lindberg the German Medal of Honor, which Lindberg accepted, indicating that Lindberg was close to the Nazis.
After the war expanded, he refused to return the medal, claiming it was an "unnecessary insult" to the Nazi leader.
In the play, many Jews did make fun of him about winning the medal.
After World War II began, Lindbergh was supported by isolationist and pro-German political factions. He did indeed propose that the United States remain neutral, hoped to establish diplomatic relations with the Hitler government, and asked the United States to join the Allies .
But when President Roosevelt took office, Lindbergh resigned from his post in the U.S. Air Force. After Pearl Harbor, he also wanted to return to the aviation regiment, but was never allowed to; he has been assisting the U.S. Air Force as a civilian ever since. In reality, he can be regarded as a character with mixed reputation. History is so, but Philip Roth's novels are not, and neither is The Conspiracy Against America. In the novel, Philip used a combination of fiction and reality to tell the story in the first person through the perspective of an ordinary Jewish boy Philip; and "Anti-American Conspiracy" is through the perspective of this ordinary Jewish family, to tell the story in the first person. Multithreading, tells the virtual history of this non-existent.
• • •
The first episode of "Anti-American Conspiracy" just plainly describes the life of the Levin family, briefly narrating the background and character relationships. At first glance, it may seem boring or even a little boring.
However, entering the second episode, the rhythm of the story gradually tightens up, and the struggle between the radically opposed American people and factions with different political stances is staged in turn;
By the end of the second episode, Lindbergh was successfully elected as the President of the United States, and the unknown historical curtain is being opened by the Americans;
What kind of abyss greets them, the people of the overhead world do not know.
On the surface, this Jewish family lives an ordinary life; in fact, HBO shows how normal life collapses through a lot of details. The story of the first two episodes is actually more like a foreshadowing, a feeling that disaster is about to happen and rain is about to come. In the whole story, the biggest fiction is "Let Charles Lindbergh be elected President of the United States". The purpose of this drama's fictional fact is obviously to show the possibility that if the United States evolves into a Nazi country, American Jews will be persecuted, assimilated, massacred, and eventually perished. The so-called "anti-American conspiracy" is the conspiracy of the Lindbergh government to ravage the U.S. Constitution, persecute Jews, and deprive them of their rights to democracy and freedom under the control and manipulation of the Nazi regime in Germany.
In fact, this terrifying fascist atmosphere is not unfounded and groundless.
In the play, there is a lively scene where Hitler's admirers are drinking and having fun in the "beer garden", and Philip's father scolded angrily: "Damn fascist bastards!".
In fact, these people are all members of the "German-American Alliance" , and they really exist in history;
Led by Fritz Kuhn, who claimed to be the "head of the United States", it has 25,000 members and is the most powerful, rich and active Nazi group in the United States.
It can be seen that the Jews have really encountered such a dilemma, and the United States has indeed been only one step away from the fascists.
In connection with the current United States, HBO chose to broadcast the "Anti-American Conspiracy" during this time period, which also gave the show a certain meaning of reality mapping . New York writer and historian Ron Chernow once said: "
"The erosion of democratic institutions doesn't have to be a blockbuster event, but it can be a slow, insidious and sinister, almost imperceptible process, like carbon monoxide seeping through the door."
"Especially after Trump came to power, many writers believed that "Anti-American Conspiracy" truly predicted the status quo of the United States; how similar Trump's "American supremacy" is to Lindbergh.
This year is another US election year, although we cannot predict the future;
But we know that when Lindbergh in the play took the position of President of the United States, a completely unpredictable American history had already begun.
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- The pictures in the article come from the Internet -
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