History Literature / TheIronDream

** A while after the last example, it is reported to Jaggar that nearly forty thousand pure human females have been found suitable for breeding with the SS. (Meanwhile, [[FridgeHorror seventy thousand suitable SS recruits have been found]]. [[invoked]])

** A while after the last example, it is reported to Jaggar that nearly forty thousand pure human females have been found suitable for breeding with the SS. (Meanwhile, [[FridgeHorror seventy thousand suitable SS recruits have been found]].)

* TakeThat: The book suggests that in the real world, the works of certain specific sf and fantasy writers, their {{Fandom}}, and the science fiction and fantasy genres as a whole at large have UnfortunateImplications - see the [[YMMV/TheIronDream YMMV page.]] v

* TakeThat: The book suggests that in the real world, the works of certain specific sf and fantasy writers, their {{Fandom}}, and the science fiction and fantasy genres as a whole at large have UnfortunateImplications - see the [[YMMV/TheIronDream YMMV page.]]

* UnfortunateImplications: Apparently, if the Nazis hadn't taken over Germany, the communists would have instead, resulting in a Greater Soviet Union that dominates most of the world, with only an American-Japanese alliance holding out.

* FantasticRacism: [[CaptainObvious A bit of that, yes.]]

* UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler: His alternate-history version illustrated for [[PulpMagazine the pulps]], then moved on to writing cheesy fiction.

* StylisticSuck: Hitler's not a very good author. As anyone who's read even a few short passages of ''Literature/MeinKampf'' can attest, [[TruthInTelevision he really wasn't]].

* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Quite a few
** Helder = German
** Heldon = Germany
** Zind = the Soviet Union
** Bora = Moscow
** Universalists = Communists
** Libertarians
** Dominators = Jews
** Wolack = Poland
** Borgravia = Austria
** Vetonia = France
** Husak (capital Kolchak) = the Netherlands
** Cressia, Arbona, Karmath = unclear, perhaps Iberia or Italy
** Feder = Belgium
** Knights of the Swastika = SA
** Sons of the Swastika = SS
** Gormond = Linz
** Heldhime = Berlin
** High Republic = Weimar Republic
** Feric Jaggar = Hitler
** Classification Camps = concentration camps (Konzentrationslager)

** Feric (or "ferric," for iron) Jaggar (or "Jaeger," German for "hunter"). Other characters, usually ones loyal to Feric, have vaguely Germanic names.
** The higher-ups in Jaggar's party also have names similar to those of their real-life Nazi counterparts: Joseph Goebbels becomes Seph Bogel, Rudolf Hess becomes Ludolf Best, and so on.
** The name of the country that is clearly meant to be Germany, Heldon, comes from the German "Helden" for "heroes".

** There is in fact an appearance by the fairer sex in this book! Specifically:

* WordOfGod: The framing commentator/literary agent says that Hitler in the alternative timeline died of syphilis, which slowly ate away at his brain. This accounts for (some of) the wild excesses of the later part of the novel.

** DieselPunk: as Feric Jaggar ascends to power, the Held air force uses giant aircraft with ten gasoline engines each and just as big steam tanks. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Do_X Both]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_tank existed]] in RealLife in the period between WorldWarOne and 1933 [[RealLifeWritesThePlot and performed poorly]], just as Jaggar himself admits. Reason for which our hero pushes the Helden industry to develop smaller, faster and more practical designs.

* WeHaveReserves: Millions and millions of them, in the Dominators' case.

* AlternateHistory: A world in which Hitler moved to the US in 1919, got involved in ScienceFiction {{Fandom}}, and died in 1954. Without his presence, the Nazi party fell apart in 1923, and eventually Germany fell to a Communist revolution in 1930, and by the time of the book's "afterword" the Greater Soviet Union dominates Eurasia and Africa and is moving into South America, leaving only the United States and Japan as the bastions of freedom on the Pacific.

* RichardNixontheUsedCarSalesman: Instead of joining the Nazi Party, becoming its supreme leader and installing himself as the dictatorial Fuhrer of Germany, Adolf Hitler moved to the USA and became a pulp sci-fi writer.

''The Iron Dream'' is a 1972 HeroicFantasy / ScienceFiction novel by Creator/NormanSpinrad... sort of. The majority of the book is the full text of the brilliantly popular fantasy novel ''Lord of the Swastika'', written by famed SF author UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler; the rest of the book is a framing device setting up the world in which this alternate Hitler lives, and a concluding essay hammering the point home for those who didn't get it the first time through.

** TruthInTelevision in that Hitler was known to be very negative toward the idea of nuclear weapons. He was forced to conduct research into nuclear weaponry only because the Germans knew that the other Powers would do so. (Surprising? Likewise he was against police brutality and would not allow German police to carry guns or truncheons, which he considered demeaning to the public.).
** It is surprisingly obscure knowledge, but Hitler was for a short time a member of a secret police and was tasked with infiltration of political movements. (He attended his first German Workers' Party (later renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi Party) meeting as a police spy, liked what he heard, and joined up for real.) He quickly concluded, that brute force only causes the dissenters to hide and the covert intelligence operations are much more likely to yield good results. And his aversion to [=WMDs=] might have been caused by being wounded in a gas attack during Great War.

** A while after the last example, it is reported to Jaggar that nearly forty thousand pure human females have been found suitable for breeding with the SS.

* WhoWouldBeStupidEnough: The author analyzing Hitler's story notes that while some fans may yearn for such a decisive and iron-willed leader to save them from Soviet domination, he concludes that no rational person would ever stand such a clearly delusional, bloodthirsty tyrant, and that they certainly wouldn't be swayed by [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-04062A,_N%C3%BCrnberg,_Reichsparteitag,_SA-_und_SS-Appell.jpg snappy uniforms, precision marching, and gigantic displays of stirring imagery]].

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<<|{{Literature}}|>>

[[quoteright:57.47090383141:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_iron_dream_1st_edition.jpg]]

* AlternateHistory: A world in which Hitler moved to the US, got involved in ScienceFiction {{Fandom}}, and died in 1954. Furthermore, Germany fell to a Communist revolution shortly after he left, and by the time of the book's "afterword" the Greater Soviet Union dominates Eurasia and Africa and is moving into South America, leaving only the United States and Japan as the bastions of freedom on the Pacific.

* StylisticSuck
** Hitler's not a very good author.
** As anyone who's read even a few short passages of ''Literature/MeinKampf'' can attest, [[TruthInTelevision he really wasn't]].

* UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler -- His alternate-history version illustrated for [[PulpMagazine the pulps]], then moved on to writing cheesy fiction.
* AlternateHistory -- A world in which Hitler moved to the US, got involved in ScienceFiction {{Fandom}}, and died in 1954. Furthermore, Germany fell to a Communist revolution shortly after he left, and by the time of the book's "afterword" the Greater Soviet Union dominates Eurasia and Africa and is moving into South America, leaving only the United States and Japan as the bastions of freedom on the Pacific.

* {{Deconstruction}} -- Of the HeroicFantasy and ScienceFiction genres, intended to show the creepy fascist aspects at their core.

* DontExplainTheJoke -- The Afterword outright explains every single subtlety and satirization in the book, which takes quite a bit of the fun out of writing entries for this page.
* FramingDevice -- The novel framed with "nonfiction" materials.
* HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct -- Of the "something even worse takes his place" type, despite the lack of time travel. The framing story is set in a world where Hitler never went into politics and the Nazis never mattered much. The Cold War is going very badly, and Europe and a lot of the rest of the world are probably much worse off than in our world.
* ANaziByAnyOtherName -- Inverted, having Hitler become a popular American science-fantasy novelist.

* PuttingOnTheReich -- The alternate universe sci-fi fans do this with the uniforms described in the story.

* TakeThat -- The book suggests that in the real world, the works of certain specific sf and fantasy writers, their {{Fandom}}, and the science fiction and fantasy genres as a whole at large have UnfortunateImplications - see the [[YMMV/TheIronDream YMMV page.]]
* ViewersAreGeniuses -- Spinrad expected his readership to, in effect, get the joke. Of course, not everyone did.
* WhoWouldBeStupidEnough -- The author analyzing Hitler's story notes that while some fans may yearn for such a decisive and iron-willed leader to save them from Soviet domination, he concludes that no rational person would ever stand such a clearly delusional, bloodthirsty tyrant, and that they certainly wouldn't be swayed by [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-04062A,_N%C3%BCrnberg,_Reichsparteitag,_SA-_und_SS-Appell.jpg snappy uniforms, precision marching, and gigantic displays of stirring imagery]].

* WordOfGod -- The framing commentator/literary agent says that Hitler in the alternative timeline died of syphilis, which slowly ate away at his brain. This accounts for (some of) the wild excesses of the later part of the novel.

* AfterTheEnd -- A nuclear apocalypse has tainted the human gene pool.
* AlwaysChaoticEvil -- The Dominators.
* [[spoiler:AstralFinale]] -- [[spoiler:When the Dominators pollute Earth with radiation all over again, Feric responds by colonizing the stars]].
* AttackAttackAttack -- The Dominators' {{Mooks}} are mind-controlled to keep on fighting even though the hero's forces are cutting them down by the score.
* AuthorAvatar -- Feric Jaggar is an obvious avatar of Hitler.
* AwesomeMcCoolname -- Feric Jaggar! See also MeaningfulName, below.
* BodyHorror -- The descriptions of some of the mutated wildlife in the radiation jungles are just ''nauseating''.

* DropTheHammer -- The Steel Commander, aka the Great Truncheon of Held, is as light as a feather ([[OnlyTheChosenMayWield to its rightful bearer]]) but strikes with the mass of a mountain.
* EliteMooks -- As their last stand, the Dominators of Zind unleash special mutated warriors capable of fighting on independently.

* FantasticRacism -- [[CaptainObvious A bit of that, yes.]]

* {{Gorn}} -- In spades. Battle scenes are [[SexIsViolence written like orgies]], with splashing fluids flying everywhere while Jaggar thrusts his truncheon every which way.

* HellBentForLeather -- The tight black leather uniforms of Jaggar and his army are repeatedly described in loving detail.
* InvincibleHero -- Jaggar's one of these. Every decision he makes is right, his army wins against forces which vastly outnumber him, and even a little thing like [[spoiler:a second nuclear holocaust]] can't stop him from creating his master race.
* KeystoneArmy -- The Warriors of Zind are all brutish mutants, but lack the brains to coordinate their own activities and rely on Dominator direction. Once Feric's forces kill the mutant masterminds, the Warriors begin attacking each other (and [[PottyFailure lose control of their bladders and bowels]] in their frenzy, and yes, this is usually described each time they do it).

* MindControl -- How the Dominators dominate. Jaggar is the only one able to resist them.
* {{Mutants}} -- Quite a few distinct species exist (at least before {{the purge}}), such as [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Parrotfaces, Pinheads, and Toadmen]].
* OneGenderRace -- [[spoiler:Humanity, at the end. Since the Dominators' spiteful radiation bomb has ruined mankind's genome, cloning is used to create the next generation of {{ubermensch}}, who are all tall, blue-eyed, blond males.]]
* OnlyTheChosenMayWield -- Only Jaggar can wield the Truncheon of Held.
* PhallicWeapon -- The Great Truncheon of Held is described in unambiguously phallic terms. And then Feric Jaggar forces his new underling to kneel and kiss it.
* SchizoTech -- The book starts in a post-apocalyptic world where steam-powered buses are common transportation, but swiftly moves through World War II-level weaponry before ending with cloning and interstellar spaceships.
** DieselPunk technology: as Feric Jaggar ascends to power, the Held air force uses giant aircraft with ten gasoline engines each and just as big steam tanks. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Do_X Both]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_tank existed]] in RealLife in the period between WorldWarOne and 1933 [[RealLifeWritesThePlot and performed poorly]], just as Jaggar himself admits. Reason for which our hero pushes the Helden industry to develop smaller, faster and more practical designs.

* SpaceJews -- The Dominators of Zind, intentionally.
* YouClonedHitler -- Well, Feric Jaggar.
* ZergRush -- Army of mind-controlled, disposable creatures, few of them...
* WeHaveReserves -- Millions and millions of them, in the Dominators' case.

''The Iron Dream'' is a 1972 HeroicFantasy / ScienceFiction novel by Creator/NormanSpinrad... sort of. The majority of the book is the full text of the brilliantly popular fantasy novel ''Lord of the Swastika'', written by famed SF author AdolfHitler; the rest of the book is a framing device setting up the world in which this alternate Hitler lives, and a concluding essay hammering the point home for those who didn't get it the first time through.

* AdolfHitler -- His alternate-history version illustrated for [[PulpMagazine the pulps]], then moved on to writing cheesy fiction.