You people know who you are.
We know the book cover you people have in mind, an astronaut (we tried to translate this into German but the German word for astronaut is astronaut) planting the Reich flag on the moon.
It's been done lots of times.We can think of alt hist covers with Confederate, Nazi and Comnie flags on the moon.
Simply put The Austrian Painter's 1964 is a lot more peaceful than our 1964.
We'll explain.
After the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon, Europe was at peace for 99 years. This was by design. Nobody wanted to repeat the turmoil of 1792 to 1815.
Ok, ok there were mid sized wars but nothing like the Napoleonic Wars or the Great War.
At the end of the war the powers met at the Congress of Vienna to draw the map and make the piece. Interested readers should Google names like Metternich and Castlereagh. The five great powers, Britain, France, Prussia/Germany, Austria and Russia maintained the peace. There was no general European War until 1914.
Had the Great war not happened or happened differently, as it does in The Austrian Painter, our whole miserable, bloody 20th century would not have happened.
Europe would have continued along its path of industrialization, political liberalization, technological advancement, etc etc. Russia and the United States would have remained on the edge of European affairs.
Not gonna happen
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