There doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in these. Oh well. Here's one more.
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It's 1945, and the Second World War has just ended. France must now rebuild...
ISAAC ASIMOV is dead. He and his family lived in Paris until 1941, then made their way across the border into Vichy, where they changed their names and successfully avoided notice for three years. In 1944, however, they were picked up by a police sweep in Marseilles. Asimov died of typhus in Belsen in January 1945. His brother Stanley survives him, and Asimov's diary will be published posthumously.
ISAIAH BERLIN is another victim of the camps; his musings on philosophy and music, history and life were extinguished unrecorded when a guard beat him to death for "cleverness". And ALLEN GINSBERG will never write a poem; he starved to death in a labor camp last year, one week before his 18th birthday.
Adults are not the only ones to have suffered. Two year old STEPHEN JAY GOULD (Stephen France in this TL), a frail child, died in 1943 of thirst and shock in the crowded train on the way to Auschwitz. His parents went to the gas chambers soon afterwards. No member of the family survives.
EMMA GOLDMAN never reached a camp either. Aging and sick, she was dragged from her apartment by the SS and immediately shot. Legend is that her last words are "I was getting tired of Paris anyway."
A few of France's Jews have survived. The family of ten year old Alain Konigsberg -- WOODY ALLEN in OTL -- changed their names, left Lyons and moved into the Vichy countryside to avoid notice. Friendly neighbors hid them in an isolated farm house for the last six months of the Occupation. The experience has a profound effect on young Alain; he will grow up to be one of France's most celebrated film directors, famous for showing the existential horror that underlies traditional rural life.
ALBERT EINSTEIN has just returned to France. He escaped to Switzerland; he seems to have vaguely intended to travel onwards to America, but was trapped by the Italian declaration of war. He spent the war back in Basel, under observation by both Allied and German agents, and quietly chaperoned by the Swiss police. Isolated from all intellectual give-and-take, he has accomplished little, and gradually slipped into a decline. His return to Paris is a sad one, as his beloved adopted home city is ruined and grey. He will die in 1946, despairing of humanity.
19 year old POUL ANDERSON, son and grandson of Danish immigrants, is in a hospital bed outside of Ulm, Bavaria. Young Anderson became a Resistance fighter in 1943, inspired -- like so many other young Frenchmen -- by the example of JOE DIMAGGIO, who died in the Dieppe raid. Anderson joined the French Army after the Liberation and received a field commission as a lieutenant in March. If he survives his injuries, he is thinking about going into politics; his hero, General De Gaulle, will need help in rebuilding France. His best friend Leonard -- OTL's LENNY BRUCE -- was also active in the Resistance, but as a Communist; he's already establishing a reputation as a vigorous pamphletist and speechwriter.
AYN RAND (Ayn Reine in this TL) is under a cloud. Though she was briefly imprisoned in 1940, the Nazis soon decided that her anti-Communist screeds were a positive influence, and released her to continue publishing. Although there is no evidence of her actively cooperating with the Gestapo, there's no question that she spent the last four years viciously attacking the Left while completely ignoring the German occupation. Her trial for treason will become a cause celebre, especially when the judge orders the microphone cut off two hours into her speech of self-justification.
She will be acquitted, but -- paradoxically -- will find herself ostracized; though stubborn, eventually in 1947 she will leave France for Indochina, looking for a fresh start and some peace.
Her former rival, publisher HUGO GERNSBACK, is contemplating the ruins of the building that once housed the offices of _Histoires Fantastiques_. Still, he considers himself lucky; he spent nearly two years as a slave laborer in the Krupp foundry. He'll be happy if he can find work as a clerk.
FIORELLO LAGUARDIA and ROBERT WAGNER are dead, as is AL CAPONE. La Guardia, Mayor of Paris, went to an SS prison and thence to the concentration camp where he died of dysentery and lack of attention. The exact fate of Wagner, former Socialist Minister for Labor, is unclear; he briefly led France's "special government", which led the nation for a few days after the Premier took the rest of the Cabinet to Algeria. Wagner was last seen being shoved into a truck by the Gestapo, but his last, stirring broadcast ("France cannot be defeated... France is an idea") will be in French schoolbooks for generations to come.
Capone died in 1943 out of complications arising from tertiary syphilis. In the crucial years 1940-41, the Foreign Legionnaire turned military governor had helped hold French Africa loyal to Free France, and had led the troops that helped expel the Italians from Libya. In 1942 he attempted a coup against the civilian goverment, but when it failed, he was arrested and confined to the military hospital where he would die 15 months later. The coup attempt and his madness will be quietly glossed over for a generation, and "Appelez-moi Al" will be a national hero.
A generation of children will grow up with memories of the war. In Normandy, the family of five year old TED KOPPEL has survived by cultivating their potato farm; other children in his village give him the mocking title "Monsieur tete de pomme de terre", which will cause the boy to grow up shy and reclusive.
Other children have been suffered worse. Nine year old ANTONIN SCALIA is in jail again; after his father was killed in Belgium, the son of immigrant parents grew up wild and turned to petty theft. Intelligent and vicious, in the years to come he will grow up to be one of the most feared criminals in the Marseilles underworld.
By the '70s he's known as Le Supreme, capo of a crime organization that stretches over three continents. The French authorities will find him difficult to prosecute; not only is he brilliant, but he seems to have an uncanny intuition for loopholes in the law. Le Supreme's career of evil will continue unchecked until 1986, when a rival's bullet elevates him to the attention of a higher court.
Thirteen year old MIKE DUKAKIS, on the other hand will never forget his ride on an American tank; forty years later, he will be one of France's most decorated soldiers and Minister of War.
No discussion of France's children would be complete without mentioning VLADIMIR NABOKOV, who hid four Jewish children, and starved himself to keep them fed during the final months of the Occupation when rations dwindled down to subsistence and little more. His health ruined, he will die before the end of the year, but his name will live on for generations as a symbol of the selfless virtue that young girls can inspire.
Thoughts?
Doug M.