Britannia Falls
Britannia Falls is an alternate history book trilogy written by Guy Saville, set in an alternate universe where Germany won the war against the USSR. The setting of the story, however, are a British Isles that are invaded and divided between the Axis and Comintern.
Backstory of the Trilogy
Events of Britannia Falls
The point of divergence is Hitler listening to his General's advice during Operation Teutonic and pushing toward Moscow instead of trying to target industrial sights. The victory of Moscow is quickly followed by other crucial victories in Murmansk and the Caucasus. Eventually, an attack on Vladivostok by Japan finally knocks Russia out of the war by June 1941.
In a separate peace deal with the Axis, the USSR loses all of its territory West of the Urals, and is forced to pay huge reparations in order to have its POWs returned to it, called the Greatest Ransom.
The victory of the Axis prompts Britain and France to push for trade deals with the Nazis, and increases the popularity of fascism in both countries. But even during these deals, Hitler plots to invade and occupy France and the British Isles.
In March 1942, as in real life, Petain is able to overthrow the French government and put down French resistance.
Clement Attlee forms a government to oppose the growing Axis. He appeals to the UASR for military and economic aid, but due to the loss of Russia as a major actor in the war, the government of the UASR subjects to him to serious demands in exchange for aid: the end of military aid to the MacArthur government, the independence of all of Britain's Caribbean possessions, and the transfer of the Falkland Islands to Argentinian control.
The announced deal riles up the increasingly pro-Nazi British establishment, which seeks to maintain lucrative ties to the Axis, and opposes Attlee's desire to increase ties with the UASR. Behind the scenes, they and other members of the Reich arm and train commmited fascists for a planned revolt against the Attlee government.
On August 10, 1942 (a day known as "Dead August" by anti-Nazi figures and "Liberation Day" by Nazi collaborators), a pro-Nazi sector of the British army, led by General J.F.C Fuller [1] launches a successful coup against Attlee's government, executing both him and Winston Churchill in impromptu trials. The Royal Family avoids capture and flees with the help of British socialists, which is depicted in the first novel. By August 15, the forces of the newly named British National Socialist Republic, led by Oswald Mosley, control London and much of Southern England, while Loyalists establish a resistance government in Worcester [2], lead by Herbert Morrison.
Though resistance rises up against the coup, it is deeply divided between Conservatives, Socialists, Anarchists, and Moderates. By September, the Resistance has lost ground to the fascists throughout Southern England. With the fall of major ports such as Southampton and Dover to the Mosleyites, the Nazis finally have the opportunity to invade British soil.
On October 1, Germans begin Operation Sea Lion, and invade the now friendly British Southern Coast. Aid to the Mosleyites and bombing of Loyalist positions, combined with the internal divisions of the latter, sends the Loyalists into retreat. By November 10, the English Midlands have been devastated, and the Mosleyites are only 50 kilometers from Worcester.
The final straw for the loyalists is when Scottish and Welsh nationalists, opposed to the war and angered by the wartime emergency oppression[3], revolt against the Loyalist rule. Saunders Lewis in Wales and Douglas Young in Scotland establish nationalist republics Edinburgh and Wales on November 27, and promise armistice with the 3rd Reich.
With the fall of Scotland and Wales, the Worcester government and the Royal Family evacuate to Northern Ireland on December 8. On December 10, the Mosleyites enter Worcester, Bernard Montgomery signs the terms of surrender.
By that time, over 2 million Englishmen (including almost all of England's Jews) have fled to the Republic of Ireland. While most of the refugees are preparing to evacuate to other British dominions, their presences angers Irish citizens and an Irish government unprepared to deal with the influx. Eamon de Valera is only prevented from deporting the refugees by a warning from the UASR government that any such action will mean the end of military and economic aid in any future conflict with the Reich. De Valera, however, is able to ring a major concession: Northern Ireland will become fused into the Republic, mollifying the anger of Irish nationalists who oppose the refugees. While most Protestants prefer Irish rule to Nazi rule, some Unionists revolt violently against Irish "occupation."
Events of Britannia Shackled
By March 1943, the United Kingdom has been broken into an English Axis puppet, and two Welsh and Scottish states that while nominally independent, are made into Reich client states. The arrangement is a mixed bag. While both Scotland and Wales enjoy a renaissance of their old traditions and democratic freedoms, they must also accede to the Nazis and their twisted schemes.
The British government-in-exile and the Royal Family end up in Canada, which establishes a military and political alliance with the UASR. The UASR creates socialist republics in the former European colonies in the Caribbean, and finally overthrows MacArthur's corrupt regime in Cuba.
Despite the brutal defeat in the European front, the UASR has been able to divert resources toward the war in the Pacific and the war in South America and succeed in those conflicts.
By the middle of 1944, the UASR crushes Japan and Integralist Brazil, and a Cold War has emerged between the now dominant Axis and the Comintern.
The fall of breakup of the United Kingdom triggers political change throughout the British Empire. South Africa is taken over by a pro-Axis government. The White Dominions, the rest of British Southern Africa, and the island territories not absorbed by UASR pledge allegiance to the British crown. India and British Southeast Asia choose the path of neutrality in the growing Cold War.
Events of Britannia Reborn
By 1967, the Cold War dominates geopolitics, with the British Isles as Ground Zero. The Irish Sea is heavily patrolled by National Socialist forces and Irish Naval Forces. Tension is high, and skirmishes occasionally break out.
While the Nazi Reich has slowly colonized much of Eastern lands and depopulated much of the former Soviet Union, the UASR has merged with Canada, Mexico, and the USSR to form the Union of Socialist Nations, a super-national political union. Ireland, though technically not Comintern, had gradually liberalized.
But underneath the image of strength, the Axis is beginning to crumble underneath its own excesses. The Soviet backed guerrillas in Eastern Europe, Comintern backed revolts in African colonies, and economic mismanagement have left an entire generation of young people, who have secretly enjoyed Comintern media, disillusioned and dissatisfied.
The dissatisfaction is especially strong in the English National Socialist Republic, now run by William Joyce [4] after Mosley's retirement, who is seen by many English as a corrupt and incompetent stooge in Berlin. The Nazi leaders panic even more when the Indian bloc, disgusted by Nazi policies, refuses any overtures by the Nazis for anti-Comintern alliance.
Joyce and his Nazi leaders, to distract their nations from present problems, attempt to engineer a nuclear war by framing Irish soldiers for an attack on the English coast. When the plot fails, Joyce orders, without permission from Berlin, a preemptive attack against Scotland and Wales on September 10, 1967. Due the mismanagement and corruption, the British National Socialists, though superior in numbers, crumble underneath the more competently administrated Scottish and Welsh armies. They can only hold their own thanks to Nazi aid.
But intervention in England proves to be the final straw for the Nazi Reich, already overstretched in its military commitments. On October 10, 1968, a military revolt breaks out Germania [5]. By the end of October, the Nazi Reich falls into open civil war. Throughout Europe, Reich-backed governments crumble under a wave of worker's rebellions and student revolts without a Reich to provide military and economic support.
The loss of German aid proves fatal to the struggling National Socialist Government. On December 10, military leaders opposed to the war with Scotland and Wales and increasingly in sympathy with socialism overthrow William Joyce and execute him. On January 10, 1969, Queen Elizabeth II returns to England for the first time in a quarter of a century, and proclaims the resurrection of England under a government that combines constitutional monarchy with syndicalism.
Plot Summary
Each book has three subplots.
Britannia Falls
* The author and leftist George Orwell and his attempts to first join a Loyalist British army unit, only to defect due to incredible infighting among his own unit, and later his attempt to escape to Ireland with his wife Eileen, his life in a refugee camp, and later his exile to the UASR, while battling his frequent chest infections. This section is written as excerpts from an in-universe memoir of Orwell titled
Worcester, and is the only section of the trilogy written in first person.
* The Royal Family, their rescue from Mosleyites by English socialists, their live in Worcester, and their eventual evacuation to Northern Ireland.
* An upper crust young adult and his transformation into a vicious fascist, due to the manipulations of his elitist pro-Nazi family and his equally crooked peers.
Britannia Shackled
* A customs official in the now independent, but Nazi-aligned Scotland is confronted with a moral crisis when he discovers his new neighbor and friend is actually a Jewish refugee who couldn't evacuate during Sea Lion. A deal with the Nazis requires that he be turned over to the English National Socialist Republic, who will deport him to Lager Norderney [5], the British Auschwitz. Failure to deport Jews could mean the deportation of himself and his family to Lager Norderney, and the customs official desperately searches for someone who can safely evacuate the man to friendlier shores.
* A Manchester police officer and his gradual transformation into a Gestapo-like enforcer as the new regime imposes brutal ideas of justice and law upon England.
* A British doctor who is being obligated into performing euthanasia on his sick patients must find a way to treat a son who lost his foot in a factory accident.
* An undercover spy for a pro-fascist Protestant group and his infiltration of the increasingly leftist Ireland.
Britannia Reborn
* An officer of Britain's fascist government who uncovers Joyce's mad scheme to turn the Cold War hot and plots to spoil it.
* A struggling Midland coal miner who joins an underground trade group/British resistance force after being drafted into Joyce's pointless war against Wales and Scotland.
* An aristocratic young woman who grows out of her fascist leanings and joins the revolt that brings down the English National Socialist Republic.
[1] He was a British general who OTL had fascist leanings. A Nazi victory would make his sympathies even stronger.
[2] OTL, that was the planned capital for Britain in the event of a successful Nazi invasion of the British Isles.
[3] OTL, many Scottish and Welsh nationalists were often conscientious objectors and didn't want to fight World War II. This was not out of Nazi sympathy, but out of not wanting to fight on behalf of the British crown.
[4] William Joyce was the British Tokyo Rose. He was derisively referred as "Lord Haw Haw", by listeners, and the British hung him at the end of the war. I figured he would be the perfect slimy puppet dictator.
[5] OTL, it was the only concentration camp built in England. With an occupied England, I think it would become a full blown extermination camp.
