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DOMINION WAR WWII COMPARISON...

F

Farscape One

Admiral
Admiral
I thought it might be interesting to associate World War II participants to those who were involved in the Dominion War.

I'll start.

Federation - The U.K. Made up of several countries already, a sort of micro-Federation, if you will.

Klingons - Russia. Since the Klingons were essentially STAR TREK's version of Russia in the original run, this was an easy choice.

Romulans - The U.S. The late entry into the wars by both made this comparison simple.

Dominion - Italy. Fascist government, very much like the Dominion and the Founders.

Cardassia - Germany. Given how Cardassia was devastated by the Klingons and the Holocaust parallels with Bajor, Germany was the easy choice for Cardassia.

Breen - Japan. The bold, sneak attack on Earth by the Breen reminded me a bit of Pearl Harbor.

What do you all think?
 
How the war itself transpired makes this roll call a bit dubious - the Italians didn't actually threaten to conquer the globe, say.

As for the initial setup, the Japanese were to a degree still the trusted allies from the previous war, unlike the Breen. The Germans managed to rearm (and, given a decade more, might have managed to rearm enough to keep up the world conquest foreign policy), while the Cardassians were as wimpy as ever at the onset of the war. But that's nuances. The bigger thing is that it's a bit difficult to see the Feds as the UK and the Romulans as the US since our impression is that the former is the easygoing industrial giant that needs to be dragged to wars kicking and screaming, and the latter the stubborn midget that will never consider surrender...

Timo Saloniemi
 
While the writers were inspired by WWII tropes, especially as they came from movies, I doubt that they intended any one-toone correspondences. Cardassians were the obviously fascist power, but after being put into the passenger's seat, were they not more like Italy? Weren't the Klingons, the archaic warrior-elite or aristocrtatic society struggling against mondernization, more like Japan or UK? Doesn't the Federation seem to act like both USA and UK?
 
The British Empire of WW2 a micro Federation???? Tell that to the subjects of said Empire. The British Empire were like the semi democratic Klingons with the vote. And not everyone had it.
 
I'd have to watch/go through Memory Alpha... but being a student of military history, as well as a young veteran, I've taken an interest in WWII- as it's up to my generation to keep its history alive. Anyways, my point is, a few DS9-Dominion plots reminded me of specific events/battles/raids/etc in WWII.

Again, I'd have to re-watch some later-season episodes, but off the top of my head...

The "cavalry raid" conducted by Klingon Defense Forces... reminded me of the Doolittle Raiders. Early-mid war raid. Pretty daring. One of the first of its type. From "Once More Unto the Breach" S7E07

There were some other ones I can't recall right now. But I remember being reminded of the "bouncing bombs raid", the heavy-water plant raid...
 
To add to my previous post-

Don't forget the Maquis were based off of the WWII French-resistance organization of the same name.

The use of code-breaking by Garak harkens back to the Enigma/OSS/etc days

Although certainly not a great parallel... the addition of the Romulans to the Federation/Klingon alliance reminded me of the Soviet addition to the war. They were both happy to stand by and watch the Germans/Dominion give the Allies/Federation-Klingons a bloody nose... before being dragged into the war.

I will cede that these sorts of events will happen in any war, fictional or not... but the DW definitely had a WWII flavor to it, in my opinion.
 
I don't think this is a strong analogy. It's hard to compare anyone in the Dominion War to the Nazis, as nobody in the Dominion War was interested in genocide.

This comparison is a little bit of a stretch.
 
Well, Section 31 DID create the Changeling virus with the explicit reason of genocide.

And the Cardassians had a history of mass murders in the millions, when they occupied Bajor years ago.

And the Female Changeling started bombing Cardassian cities with the express purpose of killing every single Cardassian. Genocide.
 
I'd identify Cardassia with Italy, and the Dominion with Germany. The Dominion was by far the greater threat, and coerced Cardassia into an alliance that the general population had mixed feelings about, and Cardassia switched sides before the end of the war (although closer to the end than Italy), and the Dominion treated Cardassia as a hostile combatant and was especially destructive before the end.

It's sort of a forced analogy though. I tend to identify the Federation with the United States as the stronger power and leader of the alliance, although as you say the US late entry into the war works against that interpretation. Perhaps the UK should be identified with the Klingons as the ones who saw the threat first?

The Breen's attack on Earth wasn't like Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was attacked while the US and Japan were at peace. The Breen were already at war and had already fought battles with the Federation, it was just a surprise that they got as far as Earth.
 
Farscape One said:
I don't think there was a sustained armed conflict with the Breen before they joined the Dominion.
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I was always under the impression that there was a low-intensity conflict going on with the Breen through the 2360s-70s. At the very least, high levels of Breen piracy and similar attacks on Federation assets, citizens, commerce, etc.

This could just be 'fanon' I've picked up over the years. But I do recall in TNG's "Data's Day" that Breen pirates are immediately assumed to be the culprits of the cornerstone event in the episode.
 
This is a pretty far fetched comparison.

Firstly, where does China fit into the comparison? China had more military AND civilian casualties during the Second World War than any other combatant except the USSR. China and Japan ("Breen") had also been at war with each other since 1937, two years before what is traditionally considered to be the "beginning" of the Second World War.

Secondly, Spain. The Spanish Civil War occurred in the run up to the Second World War in the late 1930s, and was often used by the Fascist and Communist powers of Europe as a proxy war. While I don't ascribe to the notion that the Spanish Civil War was a "dress rehearsal" for the coming world war, it was essentially its first battleground, with Madrid falling only months before the invasion of Poland.

Thirdly, if either the Dominion or Cardassia can be considered as a proxy to the German Reich, then it would have to mean that the western Allies/Federation Alliance have some capability to strike at its industrial core, as a comparison to the strategic air bombing campaign. We were never shown this capability. The Dominion's "home front" was cut off for the majority of the conflict by the closing of the wormhole, while the few raids that were conducted behind-the-lines into Cardassian space were seen as being far too costly to justify the benefit.

So... yeah, not buying this one.
 
GabyBee said:
So... yeah, not buying this one.
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I agree that on the whole, it's a very forced comparison. While I still maintain that there were certain elements that borrowed from history, I think everything else is going a bit too far.

I think it was just fun at first to try to assign WWII properties to the DW... but the more I did that, the more it felt like an arbitrary and forced process.

That said, it would have been better for the DS9 story arch if the Dominion had reasonings for their goals that were as clear as, say, Nazi Germany. The Domimion basically always had a "We want to conquer you, because," attitude.
 
Voth commando1 said:
WW2 is so popular and easy to write about or from.

I hope that doesn't continue into the 24th century.
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I have a feeling that 1, 2, maybe 3 generations from now, the current War on Terror will be highly fictionalized. It's our longest "war," and there will just be so much material for writers, producers, authors, etc. to pull from.
 
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