Never Was Magazine

[Never Was Magazine]

When the World Held its Breath: Altona

What if Hitler had spared the Soviet Union in favor of a Mediterranean strategy?

On June 14, 1941, German commanders amassing their forces on the Soviet border received the message “Dortmund”. The name of the city on the River Ruhr was the prearranged codeword that the final preparations for Operation Barbarossa were to begin as a prelude to the commencement of the invasion of the Soviet Union. From this moment on, there could be no turning back. This was the culmination of…

View On WordPress

[Never Was Magazine]

Changing the World: L'Hexagone

In our latest republication from Sea Lion Press, Katherine Foy explores the limits geography sets for an alternate France

What they call France here is the land beyond the Loire, which to them is a foreign country.

Jean Racine, 1662

The year is 1941. The location a nightclub and gambling den in French Morocco. A group of boorish German officials are belting out a loud piano rendition of “Die Wacht am Rhein”, to the forlorn disapproval of the rest of the patrons. With the tacit approval of the proprietor, Paul…

View On WordPress

[Never Was Magazine]

When the World Held Its Breath: First Lightning

In our latest republication from Sea Lion Press, Paul Hynes wonders: What if the Soviet Union had attacked Germany first?

For Germans awaking on the Sunday morning of June 22, 1941, the news that their country was at war with the Soviet Union was delivered to them with the usual bombast and lies of Nazi propaganda. They were told that this new war was not an invasion but a preemptive strike, one necessary to deal with the “Soviet Russian-Anglo-Saxon plot” to destroy Germany that was nearing completion. In his…

View On WordPress

[Never Was Magazine]

Changing the World: Unnatural Limits

Changing the World: Unnatural Limits

If otherwise mountains had arisen, rivers flowed or coasts trended, then how very different would mankind have scattered over this tilting place of nations.

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803)​

Last time we discussed whether it was by fluke or fate that a single United Kingdom had come to occupy the island of Great Britain. The UK being able to set most of her borders upon the shoreline has…

View On WordPress

[Never Was Magazine]

Lost Cause: Genre Trope to Avoid

Lost Cause of the Confederacy: A trope to avoid in alternate history

Now that monuments to the Confederacy have been torn across the United States, non-Americans may be wondering why the country honored a rebellion in the first place.

The reason is the “Lost Cause”: an extensive mythology developed in the aftermath of the Civil War by Southern artists, authors and politicians, which denied the true cause of the conflict (slavery) and idealized the Antebellum…

View On WordPress

[Never Was Magazine]

When the World Held Its Breath: Fixed Bayonets

When the World Held Its Breath: Fixed Bayonets

As Barbarossa began, Soviet troops at the front were often asleep.

When the Germans struck, their stocks of ammunition and fuel were low without any preparation for a fight and the stockpiles available were often either destroyed or captured within the first days of the conflict. The Red Air Force planes were arranged in neat rows for the Luftwaffeto destroy, leading to over a thousand planes…

View On WordPress

[Never Was Magazine]

Dreams of Arab Unity

Dreams of Arab Unity #maps #history

Proposals for unification of the Arab world are more than a century old. Sharif Hussein ibn Ali of Mecca, the steward of the holy cities of Islam, was the first modern Arab leader who sought independence for his people from the Ottoman Turks.

The British, who at the time controlled Aden and Egypt, promised to support Hussein’s ambitions if he would revolt against the Ottomans during the First…

View On WordPress