This would probably be plain "HoldingOutForAHero", but some friend nicked it.

This is a work of AlternateHistory written by the user "Faeelin" on the [[http://www.alternatehistory.com discussion board]] of Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom (home of ''Literature/LookToTheWest'', ''Literature/DecadesOfDarkness'', and ''Literature/SuperpowerEmpireChina1912''), where it is published as a serial.

The timeline is of course about [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Stresemann Gustav Stresemann]], interwar German statesman and victim of what was perhaps the worst-timed stroke in history. It goes on to explore the consequences, first in Germany and then, as the ripples expand, across the world. The absence of Nazi Germany doesn't mean nothing but sunshine and rainbows by any means, however.

The story is told partly as third-person vignettes from the altered world, partly in an authoritative and impartial history-book tone, the whole sprinkled with footnotes which are sometimes purely informative but just as often display the author's characteristic sarcastic wit.

[[http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=89874 Read it here.]] Or the AfterActionReport version [[http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=360676 here]]. In addition, here's the timeline's [[http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php/timelines/holding_out_for_a_hero_-_gustav_stresemann_survives profile]] on the AH.com Wiki.

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!!This story provides examples of :
* AlternateHistory: Of the UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar. But then, you knew that.
* BigBad: Josef Stalin rather fits the bill.
* DirtyCommunists: After Hitler gets it, they become the main antagonists.
* EveryoneLooksSexierIfFrench: Two German boys on a school trip to France in TheSixties argue jokingly [[AllMenArePerverts which way to get laid is better]]; by hooking up with the just-got-to-know French girl who's supposed to be easy meat just for being French or by living in a Spanish commune full of supposedly sexually sophisticated girls to be taught from?
* HumiliationConga: Dance, Krushchev, dance!
* KickedUpstairs: German President Kurt Schumacher from the SPD tries to do this with Konrad Adenauer from the Centre Party [[note]]In this timeline, Kurt's main contestant at the 1941 presidential elections that he won[[/note]] by making him first administrator of a new East African League mandate.
* KnightTemplar: President La Rocque of France has a lot of aims that it's easy to sympathise with. Shame he's a pseudo-fascist.
* LargeHam: The title already says it all.
* NoFourthWall: The characters sometimes feel the need to call the author out on something.
* ShownTheirWork: You're going to learn some interesting history from this.
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: A realistic, even cynical portrayal of a fairly idealistic premise.

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