The Great Crusade (Reds! Part 3)
- Thread starter Aelita
- Start date
Excerpt from Diary of a Reactionary: My Life in the Sons of Liberty by Paul Matthews (UASR: University of Colorado Press, 1983)
Leningrad was probably the coldest I ever got. Even the harshest Colorado winters could’ve never prepared me for the sheer cold of Russia. As I stood, talking with my comrades, as the Nazis closed in on the city, I sipped as much hot chocolate as I could. I would’ve appreciated cigarettes too, but they weren’t in the rations.
Still wore my heaviest clothing, along with the other soldiers. I was keeping prepared for any event. 3 years in basic training taught me that.
“Matthews!”
I turned to see Commissar Jeff approaching me from behind.
“The officer wants to see us. We have a new assignment.”
“On the frontlines?”
“Don’t know.”
I followed Jeff into the tent, where the officer was viewing a map of the city, with the Nazis just outside and the Nazis behind their lines. He turned.
“Ah, Matthews, Cooper. Sit down.”
The officer pulled out a photo of several buildings. On the far right was the Romanov Winter Palace. He then points out one of the other buildings.
“You both know what this building is?”
Jeff nodded, while I stared at the photo. Can’t say I was terribly cultured, even after I got an education.
“It’s the Hermitage,” Jeff said. “One of the most famous bourgeois art museums in the world. Built by the Tsaress Catherine the Great in the 18th century.”
“Indeed! Bourgeois or not, the paintings have significant value to our Russian comrades. They sold a lot of them to fund themselves. Under no circumstances can we allow objects of that value to fall into the hands of Germans.”
Jeff took the photo and looked at it.
“Cooper, you’ve done an excellent job with this squadron, rehabilitating these reactionary teenagers to proletarians, like Comrade Matthews here. I would like you and some of your soldiers to supervise the evacuation.”
“And me, sir?”
“Well, you’re to assist Comrade Cooper directly as one of these soldiers.”
Jeff eyed me for a second.
“Think you can handle it.”
Transporting a bunch of art? Not exactly what I’d imagine when I joined, but I had a job to do.
“Yes, comrade.”
[...]
“It’s cold as hell out here!” Jesse yelled at no one in particular, shivering as we moved in the transport truck.
Across from him, George just stared him down, irritated. Or angry. He just always seemed to be intense. Meanwhile, Jeff, next to him holding a rifle chuckled.
“What’s the matter? Nothing like it back home?”
Jesse just glared at Jeff, before going back to shivering.
“You should’ve thought of this, before you tried to burn down that grocery store in Monroe.” I told him.
“I didn’t do that! Or.. I wasn’t trying to! I was going to start a small fire as a warning, and it got out of hand. No one got hurt! I gave all them names from the Sons of the Confederacy to StateSec when I was caught, and I was given service instead of jail.”
“Not as severe, but I was caught directly planning an attack at a Young Sons of New England meeting,” James piped in. “My father was… thoroughly unimpressed when he had to pull strings to ensure I didn’t end up at Alcatraz.”
James’ father was some big shot lawyer from the Pre-Revolution days who made his fortune in Mexican oil, but cozied up to the New Order, and got a comfy job as district attorney in upstate New York. He was basically the black sheep for continuing his reactionary activities. His 9 siblings were all bona fide revolutionaries by this point.
“Your brother wasn’t there?” Jesse inquired
“Junior has… embraced the new system a lot more vigorously and tenaciously than I. He sends me Marxist commentary from his commissar post in Peru.”
“You both would’ve ended up somewhere in Russia anyway.” Jeff chuckled, before pointing to George. “None of you got anything on George. Back in Atlantic City, he tried to bomb the local Party headquarters. He must’ve had a good lawyer to end up here.”
“They said they said for the two of you. I was too young, I could be reformed…” George grunted before trailing off.
“Not much of a talker, that one.” Jeff chuckled, needling the rifle. “Looks like we’re here.”
All five of us disembarked to the Winter Palace, like I had seen in a Soviet film once. A bearded man in a dark coat (who looked like Karl Marx) approached us.
“Zdravstvuyte,” Jeff began shaking his hand, “I’m Commissar Cooper. These are Comrades Matthews, Rockwell, Helms, and Buckley. We were sent to help with the evacuation.”
“Ah, yes, we’ve been waiting. Joseph Orbeli. I’m the director of the museum. Come.”
I could finally see the yellow hue of the Hermitage (remember, we didn’t have color photography back then), as we walked behind the director. We could see several trucks with soldiers mulling around. I assumed those were the trucks sent to get the paintings out.
Orbeli opened the door and ushered us inside.
“Not as big a collection anymore. My predecessor was a firm believer in socialist reconstruction. He wanted to make this a monument to Tsarist oppression and new socialist art.”
“I presume he was the one who facilitated the sale of the paintings?” Jeff ascertained.
“Yes, but you should be pleased. Your Museum of Modern Art and National Gallery got a lot of paintings. As for me, I want to use this great museum to showcase great pieces of Oriental art.”
“And what would that involve?” I asked, curious as to what he meant.
“Well, pieces from my native Armenia. Turkic art. Iranian art. I actually organized a festival for the great Turk poet Ali-Shir Nava'i.”
“Any idea what the hell he’s talking about?” Helms whispered to me.
“Turks. Like Turkey.”
“Aren’t we fighting them too?”
“No, no, they’re different. Too hard to explain.”
Orbeli led us through the hall, through a large collection paintings, representing locations and times long past. Images ranging from the desert tribes of Central Asia to the Venetian canals.
George ushered me and pointed to a large painting. It showed a woman clad in pink, showing her legs and a sword to her side.
George and I stared at the painting, before a voice came from behind.
“Judith. Painted in 1504 by the Italian Giorgione.”
We turned to see a young woman not much younger than us. Blonde, green-eyed, clad in a Soviet Red Army uniform, her hair tied back. She stepped forward.
“Giorgione was a great artist. A leader in the Venetian Renaissance. A Lover, A musician, a poet. He died of the plague, and only 6 paintings of his survive.”
She held out her hand. “Anya.”
“Paul. This is my associate George.”
George walked off, irritated.
“Uh… anyway, how did you know all that?”
“I was an art history major. I went to Harvard, in fact. Before the war.”
“Huh, so you work at the museum.”
“No, but because of my knowledge, I was assigned here after I joined the Red Army to help lead the transfer for Professor Orbeli.”
Anya and I talked for a few minutes in front of the Judith painting, before she turned.
“Would you like to see some more? Before they get shipped off?”
I figured I’d never get the chance to do this again.
[...]
“Will you stop shaking?” George snapped to Jesse.
“It’s cold!”
“Those damned Krauts are just over the horizon. You wanna be shot?”
“No?”
“Then, get your damn act together, Helms!”
We were standing guard as the Red Army soldiers carefully removed the paintings from the building and unloaded them onto the trucks.
“Any Nazi prick comes close to me, I’ll blast them to Kingdom Come! Keep watch, Helms and don’t fuck up.”
Jeff, standing to the side, just chuckled as George commanded poor Jesse.
I was half-paying attention. Anya was directing the soldiers how to carefully put the artwork into the truck. I watched carefully as she explained how to place the artwork.
“Paul?”
I snapped back.
“Perhaps your romantic endeavors could wait until the mission is over?” James pipped in from the side.
“Oh, sorry....”
“I understand, rest assured.”
I looked out for any sign of Nazis.
“What do you want to do after we’re done here?”
“Reassigned?”
“No, I mean done with the war. Assuming….”
“Oh.” I thought for a bit. My old man was in prison (caught shortly after I was). My mother died. I suppose there was my brother, who had left the Sons and joined the Army on his own volition. He was serving in Morocco.
“I might go back to Denver. Though, I’ve grown fond of this place. I might stay.”
“I know what you mean. Junior and I have discussed perhaps staying in the armed forces. Though we’re considering a career in intelligence…”
I suddenly noticed something strange. One of the soldiers was kneeling to the side of the truck, doing something.
“Hey, chem ty zanimayesh'sya”
He didn’t respond.
“Chem ty zanimayesh'sya”
George walked over.
“What the hell is going on?”
As we got closer, we saw the soldier had a knife and was trying to cut the break.
George pulled out his pistol and shoved it to the back of the soldier’s head.
“Don’t make another move!”
The soldier stopped and rose.
“What were you trying to do?”
The soldier just stood there with his hands up.
“Answer me!”
On a hunch, I decided to take a chance.
“Du wurdest geschickt?”
The soldier cringed further, before nodding.
“A fucking Kraut. I should’ve known. I oughtta blow this bastard’s head clean off his…”
“Calm down, Donald Duck” Jeff walked over. He nodded towards me.
“Ask him what he was trying to do.”
“Was hast du versucht zu tun?”
“My mission was to cut the break on each of the trucks, so that the truck would spiral out of the control when we entrapped it.”
“Entrapped?”
“We were going to cause an attack on your routes, to destroy or steal the contents.”
I told them what I had heard.
“Does he have the exact location?”
The German pulled out a map from his jacket with the route intended for Moscow. He likely stole it off one of us. A large red mark was placed right outside Leningrad.
“Interesting,” Jeff looked over each of the trucks. “Did he get to all of them?”
I translated and he shook his head.
“This is perhaps an opportunity, comrades. Let him go, Rockwell.”
He grunted, but complied.
“Translate for me, will you Matthews?”
The German was shaken as I relayed:
“You will go back to your encampment to report your success. You will say that you were successful, and that the mission will go off without a hitch. We … have an agent there who will assassinate you if you tell the truth. In exchange, we will leave you be, for now.”
The soldier scampered off.
“Do we actually have a man in their camp?” James inquired
“Don’t know. But he’s in a lose-lose situation, anyway, so might as well delay it.”
[...]
“Hey, Matthews?”
I was driving the truck needed for the operation, with Jesse and James tagging along. It was the dead of night.
“Yeah?”
“How’d you learn German so well?”
“Presumably from the basic training courses. They offer German in addition to Russian” James pipped in.
“Actually, I was learning it for a bit longer. My father became convinced that Hitler was going to help us seize control of America back from the Reds, so we were taught German to help their forces. Then, when they offered languages, I knew enough that I decided to take it as well as Russian.”
“Huh.” Jesse laid down on his seat. “You know, at the Sons of the Confederacy, we were warned about people who were multilingual. ‘If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for us.’ they’d say.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I know. It didn’t make sense to us, but we never questioned it. They actually thought the British would come in and help our cause.”
“How times have changed.” We all laughed, as the point of attack neared.
The radio came on.
“Vy na meste?”
Jesse radioed in.
“Da, my priblizhaemsya.”
My comrades and I prepared to jump from the truck, just as we reached the location.
On the count of three, we jumped out, and hid as gunfire hit the truck and soldiers surrounded it. We crawled away as the truck exploded, and confusion emerged among the German soldiers. We did our best to be quiet and hide as the soldiers attempted to find us.
We were tense as they scoured the area, but they ultimately gave up, and tried to salvage what they could from the truck.
A truck with no art, but a lot of dynamite.
[...]
“To a successful mission!”
We all raised our glasses as we sat in front of the USO show. A fellow serviceman was performing as a magician, “The Great Carsoni.”
“I heard he performed magic in front of Martin Abern himself,” Jesse told me. “And that’s why he’s here with the USO”
“The art has been successfully evacuated East. No losses or damages. With hope, the Nazis will never get their hands on it.” Jeff proudly boasted.
As the Great Carsoni introduced the act for the day, a trumpeter named Dizzy Giuseppe, I saw Anya watching the performance alone, and I decided to get up and join her.
She tells me nowadays that’s when our romance really began.
Leningrad was probably the coldest I ever got. Even the harshest Colorado winters could’ve never prepared me for the sheer cold of Russia. As I stood, talking with my comrades, as the Nazis closed in on the city, I sipped as much hot chocolate as I could. I would’ve appreciated cigarettes too, but they weren’t in the rations.
Still wore my heaviest clothing, along with the other soldiers. I was keeping prepared for any event. 3 years in basic training taught me that.
“Matthews!”
I turned to see Commissar Jeff approaching me from behind.
“The officer wants to see us. We have a new assignment.”
“On the frontlines?”
“Don’t know.”
I followed Jeff into the tent, where the officer was viewing a map of the city, with the Nazis just outside and the Nazis behind their lines. He turned.
“Ah, Matthews, Cooper. Sit down.”
The officer pulled out a photo of several buildings. On the far right was the Romanov Winter Palace. He then points out one of the other buildings.
“You both know what this building is?”
Jeff nodded, while I stared at the photo. Can’t say I was terribly cultured, even after I got an education.
“It’s the Hermitage,” Jeff said. “One of the most famous bourgeois art museums in the world. Built by the Tsaress Catherine the Great in the 18th century.”
“Indeed! Bourgeois or not, the paintings have significant value to our Russian comrades. They sold a lot of them to fund themselves. Under no circumstances can we allow objects of that value to fall into the hands of Germans.”
Jeff took the photo and looked at it.
“Cooper, you’ve done an excellent job with this squadron, rehabilitating these reactionary teenagers to proletarians, like Comrade Matthews here. I would like you and some of your soldiers to supervise the evacuation.”
“And me, sir?”
“Well, you’re to assist Comrade Cooper directly as one of these soldiers.”
Jeff eyed me for a second.
“Think you can handle it.”
Transporting a bunch of art? Not exactly what I’d imagine when I joined, but I had a job to do.
“Yes, comrade.”
[...]
“It’s cold as hell out here!” Jesse yelled at no one in particular, shivering as we moved in the transport truck.
Across from him, George just stared him down, irritated. Or angry. He just always seemed to be intense. Meanwhile, Jeff, next to him holding a rifle chuckled.
“What’s the matter? Nothing like it back home?”
Jesse just glared at Jeff, before going back to shivering.
“You should’ve thought of this, before you tried to burn down that grocery store in Monroe.” I told him.
“I didn’t do that! Or.. I wasn’t trying to! I was going to start a small fire as a warning, and it got out of hand. No one got hurt! I gave all them names from the Sons of the Confederacy to StateSec when I was caught, and I was given service instead of jail.”
“Not as severe, but I was caught directly planning an attack at a Young Sons of New England meeting,” James piped in. “My father was… thoroughly unimpressed when he had to pull strings to ensure I didn’t end up at Alcatraz.”
James’ father was some big shot lawyer from the Pre-Revolution days who made his fortune in Mexican oil, but cozied up to the New Order, and got a comfy job as district attorney in upstate New York. He was basically the black sheep for continuing his reactionary activities. His 9 siblings were all bona fide revolutionaries by this point.
“Your brother wasn’t there?” Jesse inquired
“Junior has… embraced the new system a lot more vigorously and tenaciously than I. He sends me Marxist commentary from his commissar post in Peru.”
“You both would’ve ended up somewhere in Russia anyway.” Jeff chuckled, before pointing to George. “None of you got anything on George. Back in Atlantic City, he tried to bomb the local Party headquarters. He must’ve had a good lawyer to end up here.”
“They said they said for the two of you. I was too young, I could be reformed…” George grunted before trailing off.
“Not much of a talker, that one.” Jeff chuckled, needling the rifle. “Looks like we’re here.”
All five of us disembarked to the Winter Palace, like I had seen in a Soviet film once. A bearded man in a dark coat (who looked like Karl Marx) approached us.
“Zdravstvuyte,” Jeff began shaking his hand, “I’m Commissar Cooper. These are Comrades Matthews, Rockwell, Helms, and Buckley. We were sent to help with the evacuation.”
“Ah, yes, we’ve been waiting. Joseph Orbeli. I’m the director of the museum. Come.”
I could finally see the yellow hue of the Hermitage (remember, we didn’t have color photography back then), as we walked behind the director. We could see several trucks with soldiers mulling around. I assumed those were the trucks sent to get the paintings out.
Orbeli opened the door and ushered us inside.
“Not as big a collection anymore. My predecessor was a firm believer in socialist reconstruction. He wanted to make this a monument to Tsarist oppression and new socialist art.”
“I presume he was the one who facilitated the sale of the paintings?” Jeff ascertained.
“Yes, but you should be pleased. Your Museum of Modern Art and National Gallery got a lot of paintings. As for me, I want to use this great museum to showcase great pieces of Oriental art.”
“And what would that involve?” I asked, curious as to what he meant.
“Well, pieces from my native Armenia. Turkic art. Iranian art. I actually organized a festival for the great Turk poet Ali-Shir Nava'i.”
“Any idea what the hell he’s talking about?” Helms whispered to me.
“Turks. Like Turkey.”
“Aren’t we fighting them too?”
“No, no, they’re different. Too hard to explain.”
Orbeli led us through the hall, through a large collection paintings, representing locations and times long past. Images ranging from the desert tribes of Central Asia to the Venetian canals.
George ushered me and pointed to a large painting. It showed a woman clad in pink, showing her legs and a sword to her side.
George and I stared at the painting, before a voice came from behind.
“Judith. Painted in 1504 by the Italian Giorgione.”
We turned to see a young woman not much younger than us. Blonde, green-eyed, clad in a Soviet Red Army uniform, her hair tied back. She stepped forward.
“Giorgione was a great artist. A leader in the Venetian Renaissance. A Lover, A musician, a poet. He died of the plague, and only 6 paintings of his survive.”
She held out her hand. “Anya.”
“Paul. This is my associate George.”
George walked off, irritated.
“Uh… anyway, how did you know all that?”
“I was an art history major. I went to Harvard, in fact. Before the war.”
“Huh, so you work at the museum.”
“No, but because of my knowledge, I was assigned here after I joined the Red Army to help lead the transfer for Professor Orbeli.”
Anya and I talked for a few minutes in front of the Judith painting, before she turned.
“Would you like to see some more? Before they get shipped off?”
I figured I’d never get the chance to do this again.
[...]
“Will you stop shaking?” George snapped to Jesse.
“It’s cold!”
“Those damned Krauts are just over the horizon. You wanna be shot?”
“No?”
“Then, get your damn act together, Helms!”
We were standing guard as the Red Army soldiers carefully removed the paintings from the building and unloaded them onto the trucks.
“Any Nazi prick comes close to me, I’ll blast them to Kingdom Come! Keep watch, Helms and don’t fuck up.”
Jeff, standing to the side, just chuckled as George commanded poor Jesse.
I was half-paying attention. Anya was directing the soldiers how to carefully put the artwork into the truck. I watched carefully as she explained how to place the artwork.
“Paul?”
I snapped back.
“Perhaps your romantic endeavors could wait until the mission is over?” James pipped in from the side.
“Oh, sorry....”
“I understand, rest assured.”
I looked out for any sign of Nazis.
“What do you want to do after we’re done here?”
“Reassigned?”
“No, I mean done with the war. Assuming….”
“Oh.” I thought for a bit. My old man was in prison (caught shortly after I was). My mother died. I suppose there was my brother, who had left the Sons and joined the Army on his own volition. He was serving in Morocco.
“I might go back to Denver. Though, I’ve grown fond of this place. I might stay.”
“I know what you mean. Junior and I have discussed perhaps staying in the armed forces. Though we’re considering a career in intelligence…”
I suddenly noticed something strange. One of the soldiers was kneeling to the side of the truck, doing something.
“Hey, chem ty zanimayesh'sya”
He didn’t respond.
“Chem ty zanimayesh'sya”
George walked over.
“What the hell is going on?”
As we got closer, we saw the soldier had a knife and was trying to cut the break.
George pulled out his pistol and shoved it to the back of the soldier’s head.
“Don’t make another move!”
The soldier stopped and rose.
“What were you trying to do?”
The soldier just stood there with his hands up.
“Answer me!”
On a hunch, I decided to take a chance.
“Du wurdest geschickt?”
The soldier cringed further, before nodding.
“A fucking Kraut. I should’ve known. I oughtta blow this bastard’s head clean off his…”
“Calm down, Donald Duck” Jeff walked over. He nodded towards me.
“Ask him what he was trying to do.”
“Was hast du versucht zu tun?”
“My mission was to cut the break on each of the trucks, so that the truck would spiral out of the control when we entrapped it.”
“Entrapped?”
“We were going to cause an attack on your routes, to destroy or steal the contents.”
I told them what I had heard.
“Does he have the exact location?”
The German pulled out a map from his jacket with the route intended for Moscow. He likely stole it off one of us. A large red mark was placed right outside Leningrad.
“Interesting,” Jeff looked over each of the trucks. “Did he get to all of them?”
I translated and he shook his head.
“This is perhaps an opportunity, comrades. Let him go, Rockwell.”
He grunted, but complied.
“Translate for me, will you Matthews?”
The German was shaken as I relayed:
“You will go back to your encampment to report your success. You will say that you were successful, and that the mission will go off without a hitch. We … have an agent there who will assassinate you if you tell the truth. In exchange, we will leave you be, for now.”
The soldier scampered off.
“Do we actually have a man in their camp?” James inquired
“Don’t know. But he’s in a lose-lose situation, anyway, so might as well delay it.”
[...]
“Hey, Matthews?”
I was driving the truck needed for the operation, with Jesse and James tagging along. It was the dead of night.
“Yeah?”
“How’d you learn German so well?”
“Presumably from the basic training courses. They offer German in addition to Russian” James pipped in.
“Actually, I was learning it for a bit longer. My father became convinced that Hitler was going to help us seize control of America back from the Reds, so we were taught German to help their forces. Then, when they offered languages, I knew enough that I decided to take it as well as Russian.”
“Huh.” Jesse laid down on his seat. “You know, at the Sons of the Confederacy, we were warned about people who were multilingual. ‘If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for us.’ they’d say.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I know. It didn’t make sense to us, but we never questioned it. They actually thought the British would come in and help our cause.”
“How times have changed.” We all laughed, as the point of attack neared.
The radio came on.
“Vy na meste?”
Jesse radioed in.
“Da, my priblizhaemsya.”
My comrades and I prepared to jump from the truck, just as we reached the location.
On the count of three, we jumped out, and hid as gunfire hit the truck and soldiers surrounded it. We crawled away as the truck exploded, and confusion emerged among the German soldiers. We did our best to be quiet and hide as the soldiers attempted to find us.
We were tense as they scoured the area, but they ultimately gave up, and tried to salvage what they could from the truck.
A truck with no art, but a lot of dynamite.
[...]
“To a successful mission!”
We all raised our glasses as we sat in front of the USO show. A fellow serviceman was performing as a magician, “The Great Carsoni.”
“I heard he performed magic in front of Martin Abern himself,” Jesse told me. “And that’s why he’s here with the USO”
“The art has been successfully evacuated East. No losses or damages. With hope, the Nazis will never get their hands on it.” Jeff proudly boasted.
As the Great Carsoni introduced the act for the day, a trumpeter named Dizzy Giuseppe, I saw Anya watching the performance alone, and I decided to get up and join her.
She tells me nowadays that’s when our romance really began.
Bookmark1995
Banned
In one of my contributions on the original fanfic thread, I explored the TTL version of Helms.
Instead of being a racist troll like OTL, he would be a commie troll TTL.
My contribution was based off an OTL incident where Helms, I shit you not, sang Dixie to Carol Braun, the first Black Senator from Illinois. Then he gloated to someone else that he was going to make her cry.
Senator Braun gave Helms a sick burn: "Senator, your singing would make me cry if you sang Rock of the Ages."
A few observations about the last round of updates:
- Its likely that Goring's reputation ITTL will be different. I mean he is seen as utterly loathsome for the most part in OTL but there's always been a thread of 'ha - what a blowhard/ass' due to his blatantly failing to live up to the Nazi superman image, his ludicrous uniforms and the far too many titles he acquired over the years. I think there is a view in pop history that he is one of the less committed and more 'in it for the power' Nazis ideologically speaking. (I don't know enough about the reality to say whether this is accurate but this is my impression of his reptuation). ITTL, by contrast he'll be the Nazi leader who fought on until the end and is the fanatical 'true believer'.
- The Tintin update was interesting, although I couldn't tell whether it was foreshadowing that Belgium would actually break into its constituent parts in the wake of the Congo War or just me reading too much into it.
- The India update is fascinating, although I don't know enough about the subject to comment on it.
- Its always interesting to hear more about Jane's experiences, I presume we're going to hear about her experiences in the post-war world? The chapter was unpleasant reading but effectively gets across just how awful the Eastern Front is ITTL.
Keep up the good work!
- Its likely that Goring's reputation ITTL will be different. I mean he is seen as utterly loathsome for the most part in OTL but there's always been a thread of 'ha - what a blowhard/ass' due to his blatantly failing to live up to the Nazi superman image, his ludicrous uniforms and the far too many titles he acquired over the years. I think there is a view in pop history that he is one of the less committed and more 'in it for the power' Nazis ideologically speaking. (I don't know enough about the reality to say whether this is accurate but this is my impression of his reptuation). ITTL, by contrast he'll be the Nazi leader who fought on until the end and is the fanatical 'true believer'.
- The Tintin update was interesting, although I couldn't tell whether it was foreshadowing that Belgium would actually break into its constituent parts in the wake of the Congo War or just me reading too much into it.
- The India update is fascinating, although I don't know enough about the subject to comment on it.
- Its always interesting to hear more about Jane's experiences, I presume we're going to hear about her experiences in the post-war world? The chapter was unpleasant reading but effectively gets across just how awful the Eastern Front is ITTL.
Keep up the good work!
Bookmark1995
Banned
It was a racist dog-whistle against Mexicans.
Give the bigotry of the voters a stamp of approval.
It was used by Governor Ferguson of Texas.
Pretty much. In this context, it's referring to the propensity of American socialists to use German terms.
Bookmark1995
Banned
I looked at the TVTropes page, and discovered that Effinger and Dudley Pelley, my two Frankensteins, have been given the categorization of "Complete Monster."
I don't know how to feel about that.
I am glad my writing left an emotional impact, but it came from creating such vile beings.
I don't know how to feel about that.
I am glad my writing left an emotional impact, but it came from creating such vile beings.
Tbh,they apparently take significant chunks of Austria.So North Italy is in a bit of trouble.
A Final Update (For Here)
Since the timeline recently got mentioned on an Alternate History Hub youtube video, I decided to make a final little update for the AH.com version of Reds!
A few years ago, some of my cowriters convinced me to begin cross-posting the timeline on the forum Sufficient Velocity to support the growing alternate history community there. I resisted, because I knew it would end up in an irresistible temptation to revise and rewrite. But when I accepted, and this has resulted in what I would consider the true, definitive edition of the timeline.
While for a time work continued on both sites, on WW2 here in AH.com, and on the rewrite on SV, this has become unfeasible. The timeline has many core writers and collaborators other than myself. And for one reason or another, many of them have decided to leave this site behind. Since there will undoubtedly be more people stumbling upon this, I've decided to make this final update.
So for any long-time readers or any new people coming to this, you can find more content for this long labor of love here . This is not the end, or even the beginning of the end. Rather, think of it as the end of the beginning. Thanks for all your support and comments over the years. See you beyond the barricade...
~Aelita
A few years ago, some of my cowriters convinced me to begin cross-posting the timeline on the forum Sufficient Velocity to support the growing alternate history community there. I resisted, because I knew it would end up in an irresistible temptation to revise and rewrite. But when I accepted, and this has resulted in what I would consider the true, definitive edition of the timeline.
While for a time work continued on both sites, on WW2 here in AH.com, and on the rewrite on SV, this has become unfeasible. The timeline has many core writers and collaborators other than myself. And for one reason or another, many of them have decided to leave this site behind. Since there will undoubtedly be more people stumbling upon this, I've decided to make this final update.
So for any long-time readers or any new people coming to this, you can find more content for this long labor of love here . This is not the end, or even the beginning of the end. Rather, think of it as the end of the beginning. Thanks for all your support and comments over the years. See you beyond the barricade...
~Aelita
