Reds fanfic
- Thread starter E. Burke
- Start date
Bulldoggus
Banned
I was skiing for my winter break. Not much web access. Thank you, also.
Yeah, that was my basic idea.
Redshank Galloglass
Banned
Oh fun, skiing. I love skiing.
Really? So FBU_CPL_BONDFAN was intended to be the Yin to Red_DevilDog's yang?
Bulldoggus
Banned
Yup. Always a great time.
The goal was that he could be a patriotic FBU citizen, NOT be a creepy fascist or a general asshole, and get along with the socialists.
Redshank Galloglass
Banned
Yo, question: does anybody know how to create your own timeline on AH.com? I'm interested in creating my own TL, and I still don't know how to create one.
If it's plainly obvious, dont think I'm a jackass :/
If it's plainly obvious, dont think I'm a jackass :/
Ditto, although I was out in the French Alps, and there was practically no snow. Good food at least, and I got to hang out with my Dad and brothers.
Bulldoggus
Banned
Oh, yeah? I was up in Vermont. Kinda icy conditions, but one shouldn't ski the east if they don't like a little ice.
Redshank Galloglass
Banned
Still thinking about it.
All I know is that it's going to be in "Future History" and it's going to be about a drastically changed Earth by an alien event, and how humanity thrives through the event, but is very distant from our own world.
Those of you who know me understand that there's gonna be military sci-fi involved.
Bulldoggus
Banned
AH.com Chat
What is The Most Important Responsibility You've Ever Had?
*Comerade Cianci
What is The Most Important Responsibility You've Ever Had?
*Comerade Cianci
Bulldoggus
Banned
AHL Standings, 2016
- Boston Bruins
- Detroit Red Wings
- Pittsburgh Penguins
- Chicago Blackhawks
- Philadelphia Quakers
- Metropolis Rangers
- Minnesota North Stars
- Boston Bulldogs
- Metropolis Americans
- Cleveland Barons
- Hartford Whalers
- Providence Reds
- San Fransisco Seals
- Los Angeles Kings
- Seattle Totems
- Kansas City Scouts
- Montreal Canadiens
- Vancouver Canucks
- Edmonton Oilers
- Hamilton Tigers
- Montreal Maroons
- Toronto Maple Leafs
- Calgary Cowboys
- Toronto Marlies
- Oshawa Generals
- London Knights
- Montreal Maroons
- Quebec Bulldogs
- Halifax Highlanders
- Ottawa Senators
- St. John's Shamrocks
- Quebec Nordiques
- Toronto Toros
- Saskatoon Blades
Redshank Galloglass
Banned
AH.com Chat
What is the most important responsibility you've ever had
*Manhattan Commune University- I'm assuming this TLs equivalent of NYU.
What is the most important responsibility you've ever had
*Manhattan Commune University- I'm assuming this TLs equivalent of NYU.
Last edited:
Bookmark1995
Banned
The narrative of Reds is still in World War II, and I haven't really contributed much of anything related to that conflict. So I intend to create a character who will have survived one of the worst crimes of the war, and who will achieve (and suffer from) fame by writing about his terrifying tale, shocking both Reds and Blues alike:
Emile DuMont
Emile DuMont (December 5, 1928-January 8, 1998) was a Belgian journalist, author, activist, and Nobel Laureate. A prolific writer, his most famous work, Faith in Darkness, details his experiences as a forced laborer in Ford-Werke, the largest and deadliest of Henry Ford's factories, which was adapted to Sidney Lumet's The Factory of Tears, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1997. He received the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Aside from his writing, he was also a political activist who campaigned for organizations that aided Nazi survivors and also helped them fight for compensation from corporations they believed to be responsible. Despite being initially sympathetic toward the Comintern, in his later years he became increasingly anti-Comintern after a series of disputes with leftist political forces, and embraced nationalism during the 1980s, arousing controversy and criticism.
Nevertheless, Faith and Darkness remains a best seller worldwide, and in many Comintern schools, it is required reading.
Early Life
Emile DuMont was born in Liege, Belgium to Robert DuMont (1899-1945) and Emma DuMont (nee Eyskens) (1903-1970). He was one of four children. He had an older sister named Julie (1925-2010), and two younger brothers named Julien (1931-1986) and Alexandre (1933-1943). Alexandre died during the war of scarlet fever.
As a young man, DuMont always had a great interest in literature. He often read works as varied as Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, and Walt Whitman. By the time he was ten, he was already a published poet. His mother, who was a schoolteacher, nourished his interest by giving him after school writing lessons. He remained very close to his mother throughout his entire life. His father, a machinist in a steel mill, forced his son learn about engineering, believing a writing career would be meaningless.
He described his parents as devoutly Catholic. When growing up during the 1930s, he would often hear his father denouncing the UASR as "godless atheists."
World War II, deportation, and enslavement
In 1942, Belgium was occupied by the Third Reich. Instantly, the effects of the war fell upon him and his family. DuMont wrote how the person most affected by the occupation in its early stages was his mother. She started burning many of the books she gave him and was forced to alter her teaching lessons to support Nazi ideology. "Her intellectual zeal was replaced by a sad acceptance of our oppression", DuMont wrote. DuMont witnessed a Jewish neighbor being dragged out of her home. DuMont recalls the shame he and his family felt by ignoring the woman's cries for help.
By the middle of 1943, things would take a turn for the worst. As the tide turned against the Axis powers and more German men were sent to fight, Henry Ford and Albert Speer began advising Hitler and defense companies to use slave laborers from across Europe to fill the labor gap. SS soldiers began seizing hundreds of people at a time across many European states to work in defense industries. While most of the laborers were from Eastern Europe, many French, Dutch, and Belgian people were also sent to factories*.
In June 13, 1943, Liege authorities demanded that any "working male appear before the Palais de Justice". Emile and Robert ended up in a crowd of men that was quickly apprehended by Belgian police and SS forces. Emile, despite being a teenager, was taller than his peers (172 cm) and was mistaken for a young adult. He was separated from his father, who would be murdered at a work camp by an SS Commander in 1945.
Emile spent 14 months (August 1943-October 1944) working as a forced laborer at an IG Farben dye factory Leverkusen. He described his time as "tolerable, but somewhat tiresome". He worked for ten hours a day, and received sufficient, if low quality food. Because he wasn't an untermensch by Nazi racial beliefs, and because he knew German, his superiors believed he had the possibility of being a good Aryan. Under these conditions, he was only allowed to send one letter every month to his mother, but he and she remained out of his contact with his father, whose fate he would not know of until the end of the war.
Ford-Werke
In October 1944, he was framed by a fellow prisoner for stealing the camp commander's food**, and was sent as punishment to Ford-Werke in Niehl, Cologne, Germany. It is estimated that nearly 70 percent of the people sent to Ford-Werke (243,000 people)***, would perish between September 1943 and December 1945, when the building was destroyed by FBU bomb raid.
During this period, he was branded with a tattoo that read AA1224. He endured long hours and little food. He was isolated from the mostly Soviet and Polish slave labor due to being only fluent in French and Flemish.
His desire to see his mother again drove his desire to live. The leader of the camp was Oskar Dirlewanger****. In his book, DuMont documented many of Dirlewanger's crimes, including the torture of prisoners, and the molestation of children imported from Poland. DuMont's description of Dirlewanger and his atrocities played a role in Dirlewanger's capture and arrest in Brazil.
(A photo is a picture of Ford standing on top of one of his tanks. Surrounding the tanks are forced laborers. DuMont is third to the left)
In November 1945, Direlanger pulled him aside and beat his legs severely after DuMont accidentally broke a window.
DuMont claimed he was stuck in Dirlewanger's underground torture chamber when Allied bombing leveled Ford-Werke. After realizing the building had been bombed and was largely deserted, DuMont fled, but the injuries and undernourishment prevented him from covering too much distance when he was again captured by German soldiers, who had been transporting various prisoners of war. When they discovered his tattoo, they sent him on a forced march to Dachau concentration camp, where he remained until the liberation of the camp by FBU soldiers in May 1946.
The poor medical care he received for his right leg at Dachau led to a gangrene infection. FBU military doctors were forced to amputate his leg.
Post War Career
After being freed from Dachau, DuMont spent three months in at a refugee camp run by the Red Cross before being returned to Belgium and reunited with his mother in August 1946. After a 14 month period of physical recovery, he was able to walk with a prosthetic leg and crutches.
In 1948, DuMont enrolled in the University of Liege and minored in French and Literature, and was given a free scholarship to the University of Leuven, where he completed his double major in French and Literature with honors in 1953. He spent two years working as a teacher's assistant in an elementary school in Brussels, and worked part time as a journalist for a small newspaper, which covered local civic affairs in the Belgian capital.
In 1955, he quit his school job and founded his own daily newspaper, Les Affaires de la Nation (The Business of the Nation). Despite a slow start, it quickly became, and still remains, one of the most highly distributed newspapers in Belgium today. Readers were impressed with DuMont's integrity and unwillingness to support any specific political agenda. He trained his reporters to operate under this principle.
Les Affaires de la Nation gained international attention in 1962 as a result of its coverage of the riots in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo. Nation reporter Edmond Vandevelde, in his groundbreaking report, highlighted the brutality of the colonial state, and the role in played in the riots. The story brought both DuMont and Vandevelde into the spotlight.
In 1964, the British tabloid The Daily Mail accused DuMont of being a UASR spy, claiming a correspondence he had with East Italian politician Enrico Berlinguer as proof. The letter had merely been DuMont asking for information on Berlinguer's negotiations with the Italian government, but The Mail held it up as proof of what they called "DuMont's Communist sympathies". DuMont sued The Daily Mail for libel. It is generally believed the incident was a stunt by the tabloid to sell more newspapers.
Faith in Darkness and International Celebrity
In the 1960s, DuMont looked upon the rise of the German Reich Party*****, a far-right anti-communist movement in West Germany, with despair. He was aggravated by the increasing tendency of West German politicians to engage in Holocaust denial by preying on fears of the Communist east. He wrote "It is upon these seeds of ignorance and denial that a new horror will rise upon the continent. I water the seeds with my silence."
After working for three years, DuMont published Faith in Darkness in 1967. It immediately became a best seller in France and Belgium. However, it wouldn't achieve legend until Simon Wiesenthal, the famed Nazi hunter, used descriptions of Oskar Dirlewanger and other officials in DuMont's work to locate the infamous Nazi commander. In 1969, Dirlewanger was finally captured in the city of Manaus with the work of Section 9 and Palestinian agents, and was deported to East Germany where he was sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity in 1970.
(Picture of DuMont testifying at Dirlewanger's trial in April 8, 1970)
DuMont gained even greater fame by appearing at Dirlewanger's trial. He was noted for his stoic, and calm description of Dirlewanger's atrocities. In an interview, he claimed seeing Dirlewanger "was like staring at death in the face. I felt any moment, he could murder me if he blinked". He claimed that when he was alone while the court was on break, he would cry to himself, as his demons resurfaced******.
DuMont used his celebrity to travel, visiting countries such as Japan and Mexico, and often took photos with world leaders and celebrities.
(picture with Bernard Montgomery and Emile DuMont, 1974)
On November 10, 1974 DuMont, during a visit to a British war memorial, was assaulted by George West, a member of the Oswald Mosley League, a far-right organization notorious for Holocaust denial. DuMont was left with bruises, while West was charged with assault by a British court and was sentence to six years in prison.
In 1975, DuMont and co-founded with Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel the German Truth Commission (GTC), an organization that argues on behalf of survivors of Nazi atrocities, demanding those who cooperated with Nazis economically must pay damages to those who suffered at their hands.
In 2002, after DuMont's death, the West German government finally agreed to pay the survivors of Nazi atrocities damages over a period of 20 years, with the first recipients being Jews who had their property stolen from them by the Nazi government *******. In 2005, Edsel Ford II, Henry Ford's great-grandson, donated $30 million dollars in a private ceremony held in London, wishing to atone for his great-grandfather's crimes. DuMont was posthumously credited with these actions thanks to his tireless media campaign.
Battles with the Comintern, Political Controversies
In his early adulthood, DuMont had mild sympathies toward the Comintern. In a report in 1966, he praised Premier Bayard Rustin as a natural leader.
In 1976, the UASR Congress awarded DuMont an honorary Sinclair Award, for "heroically depicting the struggle of the European proletariat under the Nazi jackboot". He came to Debs, DC to receive it.
(Picture of Emile DuMont talking with Bayard Rustin)
While DuMont was impressed with community life and the standards of livings in the UASR, his Catholic upbringing in a traditional left made him feel repulsed by family life and sexuality in America. He was also annoyed by he what he considered the arrogance and zeal of Socialist. On a visit to Columbia University, he and Justine were verbally attacked by a female student for their traditional clothing. "The young woman claims me and Justine imprison ourselves because we wear a suit and a dress. It is insane."
But politics quickly drove DuMont from sympathy to outright hostility with the Comintern. During his visit to the US, many far-left politicians often pleaded with him to join the struggle for liberation. In other words, he was asked to use his newspaper and celebrity to promote Comintern goals and interests. He refused any involvement with far-left organizations, claiming that his journalistic integrity would be compromised by joining any specific political party. He was also asked by union leaders run his newspaper along syndicalist lines, which he refused, believing that a business can only operate well with a boss at the helm. DuMont became increasingly exasperated with the demands of leftists, especially when they brought up his enslavement. As his biographer Jules Minou wrote ,"DuMont wanted to be seen as a middle-aged who moved beyond tragedy. Socialists only saw him as the young man who lost his leg, and a potential ally to oppose capitalism...What angered DuMont was the failure of socialists to only seem as the legless child."
In 1978, Marie Dilleau, a reporter for Les Affaires de la Nation, uncovered ties between the Khmer Liberation Army (KLA), a leftist guerrilla group in Cambodia, responsible for the Massacre of Ta Nong, and the Comintern. The report triggered angry protests from Debs politicians, who denied the allegations. At one point, radical politician Paul Boutelle outright called DuMont "a tool of capitalist oppression, an utter hypocrite who wishes to condemn millions to the suffering he endured for some British pennies. A true symbol of capitalist corruption." Anger and leftist passion had been aroused by the Canadian crisis that volatile year, in which any criticism of the UASR was regarded as reaction.
No link has conclusively connect the UASR government with the KLA. Dilleau has claimed to this day that her evidence was true, while the UASR groups claim that Dilleau and DuMont were in the pockets of the FBU intelligence, who fabricated the story to demonize the UASR during the tumultuous period of 1978. After this incident and the Canadian crisis, DuMont increasingly believed the UASR and their aggression to be a danger to society.
In 1981, The Union for Belgian Liberation (UBL), a far-left Belgian political party, obtained a private picture of DuMont wearing shorts without his prosthetic leg and used in an anti-capitalist propaganda poster. DuMont sued the UBL Leader Andre Cools for invasion of privacy. The case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. Cools later claimed "he hoped to use the ad to push DuMont and remind him of his proletarian past, and to stop forsaking his destiny". Comintern officials have denied any knowledge or involvement in Cools actions.
During the 1980s, DuMont became increasingly nationalistic in his worldview. As Belgium sought to build economic and social ties with the FBU, DuMont frequently used Les Affaires de la Nation to make populist denouncements of FBU political and business leaders. In 1985, he infamously denounced French President Jacques Chirac as "a unionist puppet who will destroy Belgian identity for 30 shekels". He also was critical of identity politics and Walloon and Fleming nationalism, blaming the UASR for driving a wedge between the Belgian people. In 1987, many schools in the Comintern banned his work. These bans where eventually lifted after The Factory of Tears returned DuMont to international stardom. After the 80s, he eventually toned down his rhetoric, but still remained a skeptic of Belgian integration with the FBU.
People still debate what caused this controversial period in DuMont's life. While his family attributed it to a paranoia he developed as a result of manipulative behavior of Comintern politicians, and anger toward British media after The Daily Mail incident, others blamed the failure of his marriage for sending him down his angry populist path.
During this period, he remained a tireless campaigner for the rights of the 3rd Reich victims. In 1987, he completed a successful fundraiser to build a memorial museum at the site of Ford-Werke. The main building was renamed the Emile DuMont archives in 1999 in his honor.
Personal Life
DuMont married Justine Jacobs (b. 1935), a bank secretary in 1958. In 1982, Jacobs and DuMont divorced. Jacobs claimed "I loved Emile, but I was always in his shadow. I was always part of his sad story, and I wanted to be able to live my own."
In 2001, Angelique Johnson, an American sex worker, claimed in an interview that he had an affair with DuMont in 1975 during his visit to the UASR, and claimed the affair played a role in the couple's divorce. Justine denied the affair, but did not pursue libel charges against Johnson claiming ,"Emile deserves peace, and I have no interest in pulling his body out of the ground for a trial".
Justine gave birth to 2 sons and a daughter: Max (born in 1960), Pauline (born in 1963), and Albert (born in 1968). Max and Albert currently work at a high tech firm in Brussels, while Pauline works as a mathematics teacher at her father's alma mater at the University of Leuven.
DuMont was a prolific book collector, collecting 191 antique books in his life. Among his collection was a 150 year old copy of the Count of Monte Cristo and a Gutenberg Bible gifted to him by the East German government in 1972. After his death, his collection was donated to the University of Liege.
DuMont was a prolific smoker and drinker for most of his life, habits that contributed to his death.
He was fluent in French, Flemish, and learned English in his middle age with the help of a friend who was a British diplomat.
Final Years and Death
On March 8, 1990, DuMont retired from his post as editor Les Affaires de la Nation after 35 years, writing a farewell article thanking loyal readers for their support. Nevertheless he remained a part time consultant to the newspaper until 1996.
While DuMont had long practiced the ability to walk with crutches, the strain on his arms became unbearable. On a visit to Rome in June 1991, he lost his grip on one of his crutches, falling head first onto a table, bruising his skull. His doctor urged him to get a wheelchair and ask the government for a nurse. DuMont initially refused, but another fall in his home convinced him to give up his crutches. He sank to a deep depression, with his son Albert claiming "one moment he would be kind and welcoming, but in private, he would often complain about how he felt imprisoned".
In 1994, American director and screenwriter Sidney Lumet contact DuMont asking for rights to make a screenplay and a movie based of Faith and Darkness. Lumet claimed that DuMont initially didn't want his life story to be put on film, but eventually agreed to a film version, fearing that the memories of the Third Reich would be forgotten. DuMont assisted Lumet with the screenplay. Lumet described DuMont as a "difficult partner, but also a good man. In his own way, he was happy that someone wasn't treating him like he was still the child abused by Nazi oppression. He liked that I raised my voice at him, since it meant I saw him as a human being." DuMont also had a feud with Leonardo DiCaprio, the actor who portrayed his younger self.
Lumet picked DiCaprio largely because DuMont hated him so much. "His hate was a code that meant that DiCaprio was the one most able to resemble his old self, which Emile felt ashamed of," Lumet claimed in an interview.
The Factory of Tears , when it premiered in November of 1996, it brought not just critical acclaim to Lumet, but more international fame than ever for DuMont. But health problems prevented DuMont from enjoying his fame. A week after the film's Hollywood premiere, DuMont was hospitalized with pneumonia. After three weeks in Cedar Sinai, he was released. He returned to Belgium and, following his doctor's advice, never traveled again, not even for the Academy Awards in March.
On September 10, 1997, he was diagnosed with throat cancer, as a result of his lifelong smoking, and he underwent surgery to remove the cancer. The surgery required the removal of his larynx, costing him his speech. On January 3, 1998 DuMont suffered a stroke and was rushed to a hospital. He slipped into a coma and died five days later at the age of 69.
Funeral
DuMont's funeral was held in the National Basilica of the Sacred Heart on January 15, 1998, one of the largest churches in Europe. Nearly 10,000 people showed up to pay their respects. Elie Wiesel, his long time friend and fellow activist, gave a heartfelt eulogy, saying DuMont's greatest accomplishment was "his war on denial". He was laid to rest in Sainte-Walburge Cemetery ******** in his hometown in Liege.
* OTL, 500,000 Belgians were used for force labor. Eastern and Western Europeans had to endure slave labor, not just Jewish people.
** I based this off an OTL story where a German Jewish boy witnessed his uncle being deported to a concentration camp because of a traffic violation. Even before gassing, the noose was already tight around Jews and Gentiles alike, since even a petty crime against a Nazi official could spell your doom.
*** For this part, I calculated the monthly death toll at Auschwitz (yes, a very grim task but one I did for realism), and the number of people working at at Ford's River Rouge Plant. Auschwitz's extermination program last about 32 months. On average, 34,375 people died every month. I'm thinking while Ford's factory would be deadly, extermination would not be the end goal. I guessed that 9,000 people would die every month during those 27 months. 243,000 divided by 69 percent is about 352,000 thousand. Subtract the two and you get about 100,000 people, the amount of people employed at Ford's River Rouge plant OTL at its peak.
**** This guy is on a list of the most evil Nazis ever. What I've described is just the tip of the iceberg of what this fiend did.
***** OTL, they were a political party. They even gained some representation in a regional parliament in 1959. I imagine they might be alarmingly more powerful since West Germany ITTL is more tolerant of Holocaust denial.
****** On the set of Schindler's List OTL, a Holocaust survivor actually shook with fear when she saw Ralph Fiennes' portrayal. Yes, Amon Goeth was so demonic, a fictional portrayal of him could strike heart into one's soul.
******* There was an OTL dispute when Holocaust survivors and their families demanded Swiss banks return the wealth take from them by the Nazis. I imagine these disputes being more of a cause celebre, with real-life workers' states demanding settlement for oppressed people.
******** The cemetery for famed Liege people.
Emile DuMont
Emile DuMont (December 5, 1928-January 8, 1998) was a Belgian journalist, author, activist, and Nobel Laureate. A prolific writer, his most famous work, Faith in Darkness, details his experiences as a forced laborer in Ford-Werke, the largest and deadliest of Henry Ford's factories, which was adapted to Sidney Lumet's The Factory of Tears, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1997. He received the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Aside from his writing, he was also a political activist who campaigned for organizations that aided Nazi survivors and also helped them fight for compensation from corporations they believed to be responsible. Despite being initially sympathetic toward the Comintern, in his later years he became increasingly anti-Comintern after a series of disputes with leftist political forces, and embraced nationalism during the 1980s, arousing controversy and criticism.
Nevertheless, Faith and Darkness remains a best seller worldwide, and in many Comintern schools, it is required reading.
Early Life
Emile DuMont was born in Liege, Belgium to Robert DuMont (1899-1945) and Emma DuMont (nee Eyskens) (1903-1970). He was one of four children. He had an older sister named Julie (1925-2010), and two younger brothers named Julien (1931-1986) and Alexandre (1933-1943). Alexandre died during the war of scarlet fever.
As a young man, DuMont always had a great interest in literature. He often read works as varied as Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, and Walt Whitman. By the time he was ten, he was already a published poet. His mother, who was a schoolteacher, nourished his interest by giving him after school writing lessons. He remained very close to his mother throughout his entire life. His father, a machinist in a steel mill, forced his son learn about engineering, believing a writing career would be meaningless.
He described his parents as devoutly Catholic. When growing up during the 1930s, he would often hear his father denouncing the UASR as "godless atheists."
World War II, deportation, and enslavement
In 1942, Belgium was occupied by the Third Reich. Instantly, the effects of the war fell upon him and his family. DuMont wrote how the person most affected by the occupation in its early stages was his mother. She started burning many of the books she gave him and was forced to alter her teaching lessons to support Nazi ideology. "Her intellectual zeal was replaced by a sad acceptance of our oppression", DuMont wrote. DuMont witnessed a Jewish neighbor being dragged out of her home. DuMont recalls the shame he and his family felt by ignoring the woman's cries for help.
By the middle of 1943, things would take a turn for the worst. As the tide turned against the Axis powers and more German men were sent to fight, Henry Ford and Albert Speer began advising Hitler and defense companies to use slave laborers from across Europe to fill the labor gap. SS soldiers began seizing hundreds of people at a time across many European states to work in defense industries. While most of the laborers were from Eastern Europe, many French, Dutch, and Belgian people were also sent to factories*.
In June 13, 1943, Liege authorities demanded that any "working male appear before the Palais de Justice". Emile and Robert ended up in a crowd of men that was quickly apprehended by Belgian police and SS forces. Emile, despite being a teenager, was taller than his peers (172 cm) and was mistaken for a young adult. He was separated from his father, who would be murdered at a work camp by an SS Commander in 1945.
Emile spent 14 months (August 1943-October 1944) working as a forced laborer at an IG Farben dye factory Leverkusen. He described his time as "tolerable, but somewhat tiresome". He worked for ten hours a day, and received sufficient, if low quality food. Because he wasn't an untermensch by Nazi racial beliefs, and because he knew German, his superiors believed he had the possibility of being a good Aryan. Under these conditions, he was only allowed to send one letter every month to his mother, but he and she remained out of his contact with his father, whose fate he would not know of until the end of the war.
Ford-Werke
In October 1944, he was framed by a fellow prisoner for stealing the camp commander's food**, and was sent as punishment to Ford-Werke in Niehl, Cologne, Germany. It is estimated that nearly 70 percent of the people sent to Ford-Werke (243,000 people)***, would perish between September 1943 and December 1945, when the building was destroyed by FBU bomb raid.
During this period, he was branded with a tattoo that read AA1224. He endured long hours and little food. He was isolated from the mostly Soviet and Polish slave labor due to being only fluent in French and Flemish.
His desire to see his mother again drove his desire to live. The leader of the camp was Oskar Dirlewanger****. In his book, DuMont documented many of Dirlewanger's crimes, including the torture of prisoners, and the molestation of children imported from Poland. DuMont's description of Dirlewanger and his atrocities played a role in Dirlewanger's capture and arrest in Brazil.
(A photo is a picture of Ford standing on top of one of his tanks. Surrounding the tanks are forced laborers. DuMont is third to the left)
In November 1945, Direlanger pulled him aside and beat his legs severely after DuMont accidentally broke a window.
DuMont claimed he was stuck in Dirlewanger's underground torture chamber when Allied bombing leveled Ford-Werke. After realizing the building had been bombed and was largely deserted, DuMont fled, but the injuries and undernourishment prevented him from covering too much distance when he was again captured by German soldiers, who had been transporting various prisoners of war. When they discovered his tattoo, they sent him on a forced march to Dachau concentration camp, where he remained until the liberation of the camp by FBU soldiers in May 1946.
The poor medical care he received for his right leg at Dachau led to a gangrene infection. FBU military doctors were forced to amputate his leg.
Post War Career
After being freed from Dachau, DuMont spent three months in at a refugee camp run by the Red Cross before being returned to Belgium and reunited with his mother in August 1946. After a 14 month period of physical recovery, he was able to walk with a prosthetic leg and crutches.
In 1948, DuMont enrolled in the University of Liege and minored in French and Literature, and was given a free scholarship to the University of Leuven, where he completed his double major in French and Literature with honors in 1953. He spent two years working as a teacher's assistant in an elementary school in Brussels, and worked part time as a journalist for a small newspaper, which covered local civic affairs in the Belgian capital.
In 1955, he quit his school job and founded his own daily newspaper, Les Affaires de la Nation (The Business of the Nation). Despite a slow start, it quickly became, and still remains, one of the most highly distributed newspapers in Belgium today. Readers were impressed with DuMont's integrity and unwillingness to support any specific political agenda. He trained his reporters to operate under this principle.
Les Affaires de la Nation gained international attention in 1962 as a result of its coverage of the riots in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo. Nation reporter Edmond Vandevelde, in his groundbreaking report, highlighted the brutality of the colonial state, and the role in played in the riots. The story brought both DuMont and Vandevelde into the spotlight.
In 1964, the British tabloid The Daily Mail accused DuMont of being a UASR spy, claiming a correspondence he had with East Italian politician Enrico Berlinguer as proof. The letter had merely been DuMont asking for information on Berlinguer's negotiations with the Italian government, but The Mail held it up as proof of what they called "DuMont's Communist sympathies". DuMont sued The Daily Mail for libel. It is generally believed the incident was a stunt by the tabloid to sell more newspapers.
Faith in Darkness and International Celebrity
In the 1960s, DuMont looked upon the rise of the German Reich Party*****, a far-right anti-communist movement in West Germany, with despair. He was aggravated by the increasing tendency of West German politicians to engage in Holocaust denial by preying on fears of the Communist east. He wrote "It is upon these seeds of ignorance and denial that a new horror will rise upon the continent. I water the seeds with my silence."
After working for three years, DuMont published Faith in Darkness in 1967. It immediately became a best seller in France and Belgium. However, it wouldn't achieve legend until Simon Wiesenthal, the famed Nazi hunter, used descriptions of Oskar Dirlewanger and other officials in DuMont's work to locate the infamous Nazi commander. In 1969, Dirlewanger was finally captured in the city of Manaus with the work of Section 9 and Palestinian agents, and was deported to East Germany where he was sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity in 1970.
(Picture of DuMont testifying at Dirlewanger's trial in April 8, 1970)
DuMont gained even greater fame by appearing at Dirlewanger's trial. He was noted for his stoic, and calm description of Dirlewanger's atrocities. In an interview, he claimed seeing Dirlewanger "was like staring at death in the face. I felt any moment, he could murder me if he blinked". He claimed that when he was alone while the court was on break, he would cry to himself, as his demons resurfaced******.
DuMont used his celebrity to travel, visiting countries such as Japan and Mexico, and often took photos with world leaders and celebrities.
(picture with Bernard Montgomery and Emile DuMont, 1974)
On November 10, 1974 DuMont, during a visit to a British war memorial, was assaulted by George West, a member of the Oswald Mosley League, a far-right organization notorious for Holocaust denial. DuMont was left with bruises, while West was charged with assault by a British court and was sentence to six years in prison.
In 1975, DuMont and co-founded with Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel the German Truth Commission (GTC), an organization that argues on behalf of survivors of Nazi atrocities, demanding those who cooperated with Nazis economically must pay damages to those who suffered at their hands.
In 2002, after DuMont's death, the West German government finally agreed to pay the survivors of Nazi atrocities damages over a period of 20 years, with the first recipients being Jews who had their property stolen from them by the Nazi government *******. In 2005, Edsel Ford II, Henry Ford's great-grandson, donated $30 million dollars in a private ceremony held in London, wishing to atone for his great-grandfather's crimes. DuMont was posthumously credited with these actions thanks to his tireless media campaign.
Battles with the Comintern, Political Controversies
In his early adulthood, DuMont had mild sympathies toward the Comintern. In a report in 1966, he praised Premier Bayard Rustin as a natural leader.
In 1976, the UASR Congress awarded DuMont an honorary Sinclair Award, for "heroically depicting the struggle of the European proletariat under the Nazi jackboot". He came to Debs, DC to receive it.
(Picture of Emile DuMont talking with Bayard Rustin)
While DuMont was impressed with community life and the standards of livings in the UASR, his Catholic upbringing in a traditional left made him feel repulsed by family life and sexuality in America. He was also annoyed by he what he considered the arrogance and zeal of Socialist. On a visit to Columbia University, he and Justine were verbally attacked by a female student for their traditional clothing. "The young woman claims me and Justine imprison ourselves because we wear a suit and a dress. It is insane."
But politics quickly drove DuMont from sympathy to outright hostility with the Comintern. During his visit to the US, many far-left politicians often pleaded with him to join the struggle for liberation. In other words, he was asked to use his newspaper and celebrity to promote Comintern goals and interests. He refused any involvement with far-left organizations, claiming that his journalistic integrity would be compromised by joining any specific political party. He was also asked by union leaders run his newspaper along syndicalist lines, which he refused, believing that a business can only operate well with a boss at the helm. DuMont became increasingly exasperated with the demands of leftists, especially when they brought up his enslavement. As his biographer Jules Minou wrote ,"DuMont wanted to be seen as a middle-aged who moved beyond tragedy. Socialists only saw him as the young man who lost his leg, and a potential ally to oppose capitalism...What angered DuMont was the failure of socialists to only seem as the legless child."
In 1978, Marie Dilleau, a reporter for Les Affaires de la Nation, uncovered ties between the Khmer Liberation Army (KLA), a leftist guerrilla group in Cambodia, responsible for the Massacre of Ta Nong, and the Comintern. The report triggered angry protests from Debs politicians, who denied the allegations. At one point, radical politician Paul Boutelle outright called DuMont "a tool of capitalist oppression, an utter hypocrite who wishes to condemn millions to the suffering he endured for some British pennies. A true symbol of capitalist corruption." Anger and leftist passion had been aroused by the Canadian crisis that volatile year, in which any criticism of the UASR was regarded as reaction.
No link has conclusively connect the UASR government with the KLA. Dilleau has claimed to this day that her evidence was true, while the UASR groups claim that Dilleau and DuMont were in the pockets of the FBU intelligence, who fabricated the story to demonize the UASR during the tumultuous period of 1978. After this incident and the Canadian crisis, DuMont increasingly believed the UASR and their aggression to be a danger to society.
In 1981, The Union for Belgian Liberation (UBL), a far-left Belgian political party, obtained a private picture of DuMont wearing shorts without his prosthetic leg and used in an anti-capitalist propaganda poster. DuMont sued the UBL Leader Andre Cools for invasion of privacy. The case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. Cools later claimed "he hoped to use the ad to push DuMont and remind him of his proletarian past, and to stop forsaking his destiny". Comintern officials have denied any knowledge or involvement in Cools actions.
During the 1980s, DuMont became increasingly nationalistic in his worldview. As Belgium sought to build economic and social ties with the FBU, DuMont frequently used Les Affaires de la Nation to make populist denouncements of FBU political and business leaders. In 1985, he infamously denounced French President Jacques Chirac as "a unionist puppet who will destroy Belgian identity for 30 shekels". He also was critical of identity politics and Walloon and Fleming nationalism, blaming the UASR for driving a wedge between the Belgian people. In 1987, many schools in the Comintern banned his work. These bans where eventually lifted after The Factory of Tears returned DuMont to international stardom. After the 80s, he eventually toned down his rhetoric, but still remained a skeptic of Belgian integration with the FBU.
People still debate what caused this controversial period in DuMont's life. While his family attributed it to a paranoia he developed as a result of manipulative behavior of Comintern politicians, and anger toward British media after The Daily Mail incident, others blamed the failure of his marriage for sending him down his angry populist path.
During this period, he remained a tireless campaigner for the rights of the 3rd Reich victims. In 1987, he completed a successful fundraiser to build a memorial museum at the site of Ford-Werke. The main building was renamed the Emile DuMont archives in 1999 in his honor.
Personal Life
DuMont married Justine Jacobs (b. 1935), a bank secretary in 1958. In 1982, Jacobs and DuMont divorced. Jacobs claimed "I loved Emile, but I was always in his shadow. I was always part of his sad story, and I wanted to be able to live my own."
In 2001, Angelique Johnson, an American sex worker, claimed in an interview that he had an affair with DuMont in 1975 during his visit to the UASR, and claimed the affair played a role in the couple's divorce. Justine denied the affair, but did not pursue libel charges against Johnson claiming ,"Emile deserves peace, and I have no interest in pulling his body out of the ground for a trial".
Justine gave birth to 2 sons and a daughter: Max (born in 1960), Pauline (born in 1963), and Albert (born in 1968). Max and Albert currently work at a high tech firm in Brussels, while Pauline works as a mathematics teacher at her father's alma mater at the University of Leuven.
DuMont was a prolific book collector, collecting 191 antique books in his life. Among his collection was a 150 year old copy of the Count of Monte Cristo and a Gutenberg Bible gifted to him by the East German government in 1972. After his death, his collection was donated to the University of Liege.
DuMont was a prolific smoker and drinker for most of his life, habits that contributed to his death.
He was fluent in French, Flemish, and learned English in his middle age with the help of a friend who was a British diplomat.
Final Years and Death
On March 8, 1990, DuMont retired from his post as editor Les Affaires de la Nation after 35 years, writing a farewell article thanking loyal readers for their support. Nevertheless he remained a part time consultant to the newspaper until 1996.
While DuMont had long practiced the ability to walk with crutches, the strain on his arms became unbearable. On a visit to Rome in June 1991, he lost his grip on one of his crutches, falling head first onto a table, bruising his skull. His doctor urged him to get a wheelchair and ask the government for a nurse. DuMont initially refused, but another fall in his home convinced him to give up his crutches. He sank to a deep depression, with his son Albert claiming "one moment he would be kind and welcoming, but in private, he would often complain about how he felt imprisoned".
In 1994, American director and screenwriter Sidney Lumet contact DuMont asking for rights to make a screenplay and a movie based of Faith and Darkness. Lumet claimed that DuMont initially didn't want his life story to be put on film, but eventually agreed to a film version, fearing that the memories of the Third Reich would be forgotten. DuMont assisted Lumet with the screenplay. Lumet described DuMont as a "difficult partner, but also a good man. In his own way, he was happy that someone wasn't treating him like he was still the child abused by Nazi oppression. He liked that I raised my voice at him, since it meant I saw him as a human being." DuMont also had a feud with Leonardo DiCaprio, the actor who portrayed his younger self.
Lumet picked DiCaprio largely because DuMont hated him so much. "His hate was a code that meant that DiCaprio was the one most able to resemble his old self, which Emile felt ashamed of," Lumet claimed in an interview.
The Factory of Tears , when it premiered in November of 1996, it brought not just critical acclaim to Lumet, but more international fame than ever for DuMont. But health problems prevented DuMont from enjoying his fame. A week after the film's Hollywood premiere, DuMont was hospitalized with pneumonia. After three weeks in Cedar Sinai, he was released. He returned to Belgium and, following his doctor's advice, never traveled again, not even for the Academy Awards in March.
On September 10, 1997, he was diagnosed with throat cancer, as a result of his lifelong smoking, and he underwent surgery to remove the cancer. The surgery required the removal of his larynx, costing him his speech. On January 3, 1998 DuMont suffered a stroke and was rushed to a hospital. He slipped into a coma and died five days later at the age of 69.
Funeral
DuMont's funeral was held in the National Basilica of the Sacred Heart on January 15, 1998, one of the largest churches in Europe. Nearly 10,000 people showed up to pay their respects. Elie Wiesel, his long time friend and fellow activist, gave a heartfelt eulogy, saying DuMont's greatest accomplishment was "his war on denial". He was laid to rest in Sainte-Walburge Cemetery ******** in his hometown in Liege.
* OTL, 500,000 Belgians were used for force labor. Eastern and Western Europeans had to endure slave labor, not just Jewish people.
** I based this off an OTL story where a German Jewish boy witnessed his uncle being deported to a concentration camp because of a traffic violation. Even before gassing, the noose was already tight around Jews and Gentiles alike, since even a petty crime against a Nazi official could spell your doom.
*** For this part, I calculated the monthly death toll at Auschwitz (yes, a very grim task but one I did for realism), and the number of people working at at Ford's River Rouge Plant. Auschwitz's extermination program last about 32 months. On average, 34,375 people died every month. I'm thinking while Ford's factory would be deadly, extermination would not be the end goal. I guessed that 9,000 people would die every month during those 27 months. 243,000 divided by 69 percent is about 352,000 thousand. Subtract the two and you get about 100,000 people, the amount of people employed at Ford's River Rouge plant OTL at its peak.
**** This guy is on a list of the most evil Nazis ever. What I've described is just the tip of the iceberg of what this fiend did.
***** OTL, they were a political party. They even gained some representation in a regional parliament in 1959. I imagine they might be alarmingly more powerful since West Germany ITTL is more tolerant of Holocaust denial.
****** On the set of Schindler's List OTL, a Holocaust survivor actually shook with fear when she saw Ralph Fiennes' portrayal. Yes, Amon Goeth was so demonic, a fictional portrayal of him could strike heart into one's soul.
******* There was an OTL dispute when Holocaust survivors and their families demanded Swiss banks return the wealth take from them by the Nazis. I imagine these disputes being more of a cause celebre, with real-life workers' states demanding settlement for oppressed people.
******** The cemetery for famed Liege people.
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Nice work Bookmark. As a note on new timelines, I've gone and started a new one that you can see in my signature. Not at all the same kind of fare as you'd get in this one of course.
But I would like to see more contributions like Bookmark's.
But I would like to see more contributions like Bookmark's.
So can we get a confirmation whether Edward VIII remains king in the revisions?
