The Last Article

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"The Last Article", a short story by Harry Turtledove, is an alternative history tale that describes a Nazi invasion of India and the reaction of the Germans to the non-violent resistance and pacifism of Gandhi and his followers.

[edit] Plot summary

Germany's success in World War II has led to their invasion of the British Raj, and rather than struggling for independence from the Crown, Gandhi and Nehru find themselves in the position of resisting Nazi occupation using the techniques that in our history were successfully employed against the British.

Unfortunately, they discover that appealing to the humanity of their Nazi oppressors in the hope that they will be unable to execute large numbers of peaceful protestors is an ineffective strategy. The story discusses why non-violent resistance would likely fail when confronted with Nazism. In large part it concerns how an important part of Gandhi's, and later Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, non-violence movement required influencing the good people among the communities that oppressed them. In the case of a relatively free society like the US or UK enough good people existed to make this a plausible goal. However, the story details how the Nazis are almost completely unmoved by Gandhi's strategy. The Nazis consider non-violence to be weakness and have no moral qualms killing those who resist non-violently. In the end the movement collapses as it proves unable to deal with the savageness of Nazism.

The story then takes what could be deemed an intensely bleak tone. In the story, Gandhi draws a moral equivalence between the Nazis and British imperialists, something that seems consistent with what the actual Gandhi believed and suggests at best a kind of naivete, and other elements of the story are critical of Gandhi's real-world beliefs.

In essence, the story posits that violent resistance to things like Nazism, such as the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, is more valid a response than a Gandhi approach.