You ever make an edit just- Of a photo of a historical person because of an Alternate History video? Yea, I did that, but don’t expect me to share it! Haha-
Happy spring equinox! March 20 was also the day that Napoleon, freshly escaped from Elba, marched into Paris, greeted by cheering crowds. And today, speaking of Napoleon, I’m pleased to introduce Gareth Williams (here on Tumblr at @garethwilliamsauthor). He’s the talented author of Needing Napoleon, a new time travel/alternate history thriller where the twenty-first century, down-on-his-luck protagonist, Richard Davey, goes back in time to help Napoleon win the battle of Waterloo. Does Richard succeed in changing history? What adventures befall him on the way? And what is his relationship like with his hero, Napoleon? Find out in Needing Napoleon— the first three commenters will win a free PDF copy!
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Hello, Gareth. Thanks for coming here today. How did you become interested in Napoleon?
It is hard to remember a time when I wasn’t captivated. I suppose it started at school but before I knew it, I was teaching about Napoleon to my own students!
I think it is the scale of his achievements, both military and civil, achieved, let’s face it, against the odds. An obscure Corsican becomes Emperor of the French, fighting a series of European coalitions, codifying French law, building infrastructure and defying the dominance of the British Empire. Of course, without the French Revolution opening up the military to men of talent rather than title, he would have remained an obscure Corsican. So, the short answer, is that I was drawn to his against the odds story. Plus the glamour of the Hundred Days, when, like a boxer who can’t stay retired, he steps into the ring for one last fight, and what a fight - Waterloo!
When did you first become interested in writing a novel about him? Specifically, a time travel novel?
It had been a vague idea for a long time. I had written other stories, pretty unsuccessfully, partly because I was reluctant to tackle a subject so close to my heart.
But retiring a couple of years ago presented the opportunity to think and plan a book with Napoleon at its heart. Then the first UK lockdown was introduced in late March 2020 and I was out of excuses! In fact, I wrote the whole thing, once plot notes were complete, in just three months. As to the time travel component, there are two reasons I was drawn to this element of the plot. Firstly, I love time travel stories in general. Secondly, I am like my central character, Richard Davey, in that I too was a history teacher and I too believe Napoleon underperformed at The battle of Waterloo. If only I (or Richard) could whisper in his ear. Surely, then, we would see the Bonaparte of Austerlitz, not the pale shadow whose lacklustre command lost the battle.
Do you have any favorite books or movies about Napoleon?
As a man past his mid-fifties, I was dazzled by the sheer scale of Sergei Bondarchuk’s film Waterloo starring Rod Steiger and produced by Dino de Laurentiis. I recommend Max Gallo’s series of books recounting Bonaparte’s life in the first person. Even translated from French into English, all four books in the series seem to put you right inside Napoleon’s head!
Do you have any favorite books or movies about time travel?
Time and Time Again by Ben Elton is brilliant about the experience of being stranded in the past.
Making History by Stephen Fry tackles the unforeseen consequences of tinkering with the past. When this came out, I was gutted. It was like he had stolen ideas right out of my head and made them better! To add insult to injury he went to Queens’ College, Cambridge University just like me.
I really enjoyed the original Back to the Future movie starring Michael J. Fox from 1985. I was at university, I had just got engaged, my future was bright!
TerminatorandTerminator 2 are classics too, you just can’t separate them. They sum up the basic time travel plot in non-stop action movies. And you can’t forget Bill Murray’s arrogant weatherman learning to be a better person in Groundhog Day.
Can you tell me more about your research process? How accurately did you try to depict Napoleon—- and what aspects of his character might you have altered and why?
I read quite a lot of autobiographical material dictated by Napoleon. I was influenced, as I said earlier, by Max Gallo. In truth, I don’t think there is one true Napoleon waiting to be revealed through research. The artillery officer at Toulon morphed into a commander in Italy who became one of three Consuls governing France before having the Pope watch him crown himself Emperor of the French!
Life changed him. He started out as an opportunistic republican and look where he ended up!
If I have altered anything, it is to allow Napoleon to retain a little more of his earlier self, buried, but waiting to be re-ignited. Richard Davey, the time travelling schoolteacher will try to light that fire! As a consequence, Bonaparte emerges a little more open to advice and becomes, perhaps, a little less arrogant than the average emperor.
I’ve seen a number of recent fictional depictions of Napoleon where he’s depicted as a Hitler-like villain trying to conquer the free world. In your book, the hero not only admires Napoleon, but he’s willing to buck his very British upbringing by trying to help his hero win Waterloo. What led you to this characterization?
To be honest, I never buy into cartoonish caricatures. Very few leaders are without redeeming features, especially if judged by the standards of the time. Hitler was a monster. Napoleon was not. How else can we explain the men who rallied to his cause in 1815 when he escaped Elba and returned to France?
The other issue here, is the notion that Napoleon wanted to be a new Alexander the Great, conquering the known world. Firstly, he was constantly faced with military coalitions determined to oust him as a threat to the notion of hereditary monarchy. What choice did he have but to fight?
Secondly, how was his behaviour different from the British? They claimed to be reluctant to subsume territories into their empire and yet it girdled the globe! All major European powers were prone to acquiring territories to their own benefit. France under Napoleon was no different.
As to Richard Davey’s motivation, his life is empty, he admires the scale of Bonaparte’s achievements and believes his downfall was not inevitable. Dreams of Napoleon fill Richard’s emptiness. After all, I’m British but admire the Founding Fathers of the United States!
Your depiction of Waterloo was particularly memorable. It feels like you were there. Did you travel to Belgium to see the battlefield?
Thank you. That is very rewarding to hear but I have never visited the site of Waterloo. Most battlefield visits are a disappointment. Usually, you end up looking at farmers’ fields trying to imagine what happened there centuries ago. I have visited many other battle sites without finding them especially informative. So, I decided to rely on the wealth of published material on the battle from narrative accounts to meteorological reports, from detailed illustrations of uniforms to explanations of early nineteenth century tactics.
What inspired your depiction of your hero’s best friend Emile?
In truth, Emile developed as I wrote. I needed someone on the French side who would listen to Richard. Without that, he would have been shot as a spy in short order.
I know this is not really a good way to develop character, but I got to know him as he interacted with Richard. He had to be open-minded and fairly close to Bonaparte hence his regiment and posting.
I also wanted him to be a contrast to Richard Davey. In a way, he is everything Richard might wish to be. He is confident, charming, sociable, brave and relatively successful. He also gives Richard an anchor in the past that has become his present and in so doing, allows him to start thinking about his nineteenth century future.
Thanks Gareth! Your novel was fast-paced and a lot of fun. As this is the first in a trilogy, I am very excited to read the sequels!
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As an additional treat, I have uploaded Gareth’s interview with Carole Horton of Radio Skye here. And I also have uploaded a playlist, also curated by Gareth, to my Youtube channel. You can listen to it here— there’s also a description of how the tracks inspired him.
Don’t forget, the first three commenters on this post (not reblogs, just comments) will win a free PDF copy of Gareth’s book. Thanks everyone!
More about Gareth:
If you enjoyed this interview, here’s another interview he did with the Historical Novel Society.
Gareth’s website can be found here— and this is his Goodreads page. If you enjoyed this content, please hit like and subscribe!
So the joke here to me is that I’ve actually read quite a bit of books since my last Review Roundup post. I post short reviews on Goodreads for just about everything I read, but I’ve actually begun to use TikTok and Instagram as other means of getting myself out there. I don’t see myself adding TikTok reviews to these posts anytime soon, but I might consider doing midweek posts, similar to this…
Not that it matters, but the reason that I haven’t done one of these in almost three weeks is that I’ve had to do full-on reviews for a couple of books and I don’t like to start anything new until I have all of my thoughts down. So if two or three reviews look familiar, it’s because GoodReads always gets a slightly shortened version of my longer reviews.
“… in any case, the possibility of advanced intelligence among mammals remains extremely speculative. Endothermy and brain cortex are in their favour, but their neurons are not dense enough if compared to ours. They would need an enormous head, and a proportionate blood supply. Which leads to their worst issue, viviparity. It should be obvious to anyone that egg-laying is a requisite for cerebral development; can you imagine the head of a sapient mammal passing through the mother’s birth canal? The problem is insurmountable.” “Let us not overstate; harder problems have been solved by evolution. Clearly our sapient mammal ought to be a marsupial, which would complete its cerebral development in the mother’s pouch, relatively unconstrained as it sucks milk.” “Call me a moralist, but the idea of a sapient being feeding on milk keeps repulsing me.” “Our males regurgitate food in our children’s mouth; you think that so different?” “You do not? Food is food, whether pre-digested or not. Milk is a bodily secretion – it’s like feeding on blood, on mucus, on semen. Mammals are born as parasites, and frankly I don’t believe they are worthy of upper faculties.” “If you believe so. Myself, I see no reason an omnivorous marsupial, perhaps tree-dwelling, could not evolve organs of manipulation and an advanced brain. Tagra’s mutable environment would give it the necessary incentives. A prehensile-tailed tree-dweller could start using its forelimbs to handle objects, adopting a bipedal gait.” “But having left the trees, it would have to walk on two legs, with its spine up straight, as a penguin’s, lest it falls forward. It’s not just very unseemly, it’s also extremely unstable.” “Once the tail has lost its prehensile function, it could increase its size and balance the head’s weight, giving the marsupial a stance similar to ours. It would retain the furry coat, analogous to our plumage - there’s no reason to shed it, even in climates warmer than ours. The general result would be something much like an ‘ikra, although molded from different material.” “Ah, such an image! Describe, describe us this thinking mammal of yours!” “Well… our foremost sense is sight, as typical of the feathered beings of land and air. Not so among mammals – probably this being wouldn’t even see colours, fundamentally nocturnal creature that it is. It would find its way mostly with hearing and scent. I would expect a large wet nose proportioned to its brain, to sample the air with the precision worthy of a superior mind. We know that mammals can discriminate more scents than we can hues. Communication… the vocal apparatus of mammals is a poor thing, it allows little more than screeches and bellows. Many communicate with their bodily stance, or contracting their facial muscles, which are well developed in furred beasts, and might even supplement the function of hands in holding tools. Lips, perhaps, nimbler than beaks…” “What a sight would they be, the cities of the featherless biped. People croaking and howling, jumping on the spot, baring their teeth and squinting their eyes. Grunting noses, lips smacking and spraying spit. But if their eyesight is as poor as you say, perhaps they would rather trust olfaction in this field as well, and communicate by rubbing on each other their nether glands, as astrapotheria do. And to do so they would need to be always sticking to each other.” “I don’t think that would disturb them. Mammals appreciate physical contact; the smallest species are always curled in their burrows. The greater risk of disease might be a price worth paying. They would have no concept of a respectful distance and, who can say, maybe they would not envy it to us.” “A use for burrows is dubious, for a species that fears no predators. It’s well known that the metabolic activity of mammals is generally inferior to that of feathered species. The hypothetical creature would inhabit only a warmer and moister world, dominated by flower plants. They would leave the trees to live in a garden of giant flowers…” “Might be, might be. But I think they would conserve an instinctual love of enclosed spaces, moreso as they would spend their earliest infancy in the maternal pouch.” “Enclosed spaces that would soon be satured with the stench of their secretions. Is this a fancy of yours, that you wish to impose on us?” “And still you confuse your aesthetic pleasures with iron laws of nature, even in a world of conjecture. I wager, for you even the caravans of Yakak'ratu would be unsufferably alien. This being has sprouted from another branch altogether of the delta of life. What is pleasurable to us would probably be disgusting to it, and viceversa; but if the selfsame happiness is achieved by different means, what makes a form of it inferior to another? Tagra, even our noble city of Grikaa, is hardly perfection embodied. I have counted more than enough beggars and cutthroats leaving my house this morning. Who can say whether the thinking mammal, in her garden-world, isn’t happier than we?”
I remember the day I received my copy. It was 2005 and I had just turned nine. Rav Sabbati led me into a dark corner of the Beit Midrash at the Sinagoga Al-Hambra, handed me this and told me that he understood I had an interest in cross-universe travel and that he could help me with it. He would let me have this book now, and if I turned nineteen and was still interested, he would connect me with the Consortium pour le voyage et l’etude d’univers alternatifs, in Lyons.
Since then, my copy of this book has seen thousands of timestreams in hundreds of universes. It’s gazed upon the mechanized horror of Nazi Germania and the crumbling boulevards of Paris under Soviet occupation. It’s served as a improvised notebook for recording the singsong language of the walen (Dutch-affiliated whale communities; long story) and the consonant-heavy folksongs of the Muscovite Nyandertalets.
This book has ridden in the bag of the striking garment workers of the Arbeiter Ring as a roiling New York City faced off with the National Guard. It’s seen the Appalachian Free State and the Negro Revolt, and stood stopped a Union bullet at Ninth Manassas in 1934. It’s ridden the steppes of the great Khazar Empire with the Ninth Armoured Reconnaissance Division “Khagan Yosef’s Own”. It’s seen the underwater kingdoms of the Eelmen of the Pacific Rift. It’s staunched bleeding wounds and holes in dikes. It’s been signed by soldiers and musicians, commercial airship pilots and the conductors on the underwater trains that crisscross the Pacific. In the back cover is the small, cramped signature of John Peacock Flannery O’Nann (W-Deseret), the first Neanderthal President of the United States.
Interestingly, there has never yet been an Earth I’ve seen where humans, or hominins did not tread. I think that counts for something.
A member of the United States Army’s 1st Extranormal Activities Division photographed with the remains of a Viet Cong guerilla killed by a Thành hoàng, or guardian spirit. While these village deities are generally benign and were even reported to help American and allied forces operating within their domains, in the more remote corners of Vietnam there are villages which are deemed “corrupt” or “tainted” by the ruling religion. Worshipping such shadowy beings as the Lecher, the Serpent God and the Beggar God in rituals which bear a striking similarity to those witnessed later by Soviet “Division P” troops in Afghanistan, the villages generally kept to themselves and were left alone by all sides. Unfortunately, when roused, the dark spirits are known to manifest physically and go on horrendous killing sprees far outside of their village borders. Only one such incident was officially reported, when a Soviet advisor, disregarding the warnings of his North Vietnamese comrades, led a company of VC directly through such a village. Not a single one survived, and although the Thành hoàng was eventually subdued and then banished by a sanctioned cultist, the amount of amateur footage and eyewitness accounts that was released to the public caused an uproar. From that day forward, the EAD was declassified and their “secret war” against non-human creatures and supernatural entities has become a topic of near-national obsession.
“From where I was, it looked like bad news. Being out in the open was something none of us were used to, and we weren’t sure how the increased scrutiny would affect our ability to operate. What we had never banked on was the sheer raw ability of the American public to ferret out the truth when the situation calls for it. Within months we had tips going through the roof, some of them bum tips but most of them on the spot. We were all shocked– the first year, 83% of the tips checked out, and by 1982 it was 91.5%.
"Phil Edwards, who at the time was our J-3, always thought it was the massive interest of the American people forming a sort of telepathic collective consciousness that could sniff out supernatural entities. Privately, I always wondered whether that collective consciousness would someday gain sentience and if we might someday have to fight it, and many of the officers shared my fears. That precipitated our first foray into psychic warfare, our contact with Colonel Ed Dames’ First Earth Battalion, and our eventual exploitation of the ‘battlefield of the mind’s inner reaches’ as Dames put it…”
from Major Tom Selenkow’s article “What We Do In The Shadows: On the Frontlines of America’s Deadliest Secret War” published in Soldier of Fortune magazine in 1988
Here’s a picture for you: Nixonian forces move on Bund positions during the Second American Civil War. The Nixonians, or Unionists, although being the underdog, were far more professional than their Bund counterparts. They managed to win the war despite the Bund Government’s Nazi support, thanks in no small part to President Nixon and General Kissenger’s genius.
General Kissenger was later instrumental, if you’ll remember, in establishing the “Iron Curtain” against Reich-allied nations.
Now this is some first-class propaganda, lol. I try to keep my personal opinion out of things, but this is too rich. In what world did the Nixonians win the war, we pushed them out of all their disputed claims and all their Southern holdings, we even captured half the Joint Chiefs at Duluth!
Also, I love how you’re spreading the long-debunked lie about Nazis sponsoring the Independent Unity Government. All our foreign funding came from Britain, Egypt and Chile, and this is easily verifiable.This had nothing to do with “ideology” or whatever, it’s literally about federal government overreach and always has been. You even called our government the Bund when we’re more Liberty-minded than you guys behind your fortified borders.
FFS I’m literally a Jew who lives in the South, and even with the Nürnberg Thaws Jews aren’t particularly welcome in Reich or Reich-sponsored countries, so I disprove that argument on my own. And we signed the Anti-Germanian-Compact– late, but we did!
Leave it to Yankees to distort the truth, lie, and encourage intellectual dishonesty. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
The Independant Unity government was run by the damn German-American Bund, no shit they got Nazi support. In what world did the Nixonian forces not capture entire pallets worth of Sturmgewehr-60’s bound for Bund forces? In what world were Heinkel He-5000 multiroles not shot down over Cleveland? Fritz Kuhn was your president! Britain was captured by the Nazis in ‘47, and has been a puppet ever since. Pushing money through a puppet doesn’t mean that you’re not pushing money.
And although you guys still own the Southeast, Kissenger kicked your asses repeatedly in the Texases. The fact that an insurgency led by a couple of career politicians was able to not only win a major war against a Reich-allied power, but also rally half the free world into retaking their homes from Reich-allied governments via local coups is proof enough that we won. The fact that the Bund won a few isolated positions in the South proves nothing.
You guys signed the Compact after we won the Cold War and you saw the tides were changing, not out of goodwill.
Fritz Kuhn was a better American than Nixon and Killsenger combined, and I’ll stand by that to my grave. And look, whatever you captured some stuff, but we took the Provisional Capital at Duluth, half the Joint Chiefs, and pushed North to grab the Industrial Ring at St. Paul’s. So whatever, you destroyed some surplus German stuff and captured a few assault rifles, that’s a drop in the bucket.
Also, it’s a matter of public record that Parliament pushed the funding rider through without seeking any approval from the Reich (of their own accord, for narrow Yank brains) and fifteen MPs got executed for it. To glibly say “well the Reich funded us” spits on the grave of fifteen brave men who literally died for our freedom.
Anyway, the pre-War Bund is a completely different animal from the Wartime Bund, they really only kept the name. Hell, they discarded even that in ‘70. And “a few isolated positions in the southwest”? That’s a nice way to say “the American Southwest, Mexico, California and the Cascadias”. Stay mad, lol.
We signed the Compact in ‘92 because we were BARRED BY THE TEXT OF THE ORIGINAL AGREEMENT. Stop getting your “facts” from unionizer.org, jeez.
Sounds like someone’s mad that Neo-French troops under General Pierre Langlaise took back Duluth only 23 hours after Bund forces captured half the JCS as they were fleeing via helicopter. Or that our forces systematically captured the entirety of the Texases under Major General Abrams, a real American hero, in a series of armor engagements studied in your own damn military colleges.
We didn’t capture Reich surplus, we captured brand new Sturmgewehr-60’s in ‘65. Look it up. The Lockheed-Grumman F/P-25 “Detroit Specials” took down a pair of He-5000 piloted BY REICH PILOTS in the Third Battle of Cleveland. There’s a lot more incidents, including the capture of German Fallschirmjaeger in the Texases, but you probably won’t look it up.
Oh no, 15 men. That pales in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of Nixonian-Americans who were involved in WWIII and the retaking of England and France. To the Neo-Frenchmen who helped retake their homeland.
You were barred from the original because we’d just fought the worst war in American history to be free of Nazi influence, and you guys were getting checks signed by the Reich. “Different from the wartime Bund” my ass, I bet you deny the Amerindian camps and the Greater Japanese camps on the Hawaiis (WHICH YOU GUYS SANCTIONED).
Did you not read my words? The Brits gave us funding without Reich sanction, which literally destroys your whole argument. Also, jeering at dead men is such a Yankee thing to do, jeez. Like good Southern men didn’t do their part fighting the Nazis, anyway. We sent 15,000 of our best to England, and many of them would have died if you Yankee fucks hadn’t sent them home out of hand.
Also, are you forgetting the California Liberation Campaign, where we chewed up the entire 3rd and 5th Armoured Infantry Divisions in engagements that Abrams himself described as “textbook offensive warfare”? Or that we destroyed ¾ of your heavy industry at St. Paul, forcing you to start mainlining Russian funds and equipment from over the Pole.
I never said the rifles were surplus, but they were Chilean rifles, built under license by the State Armaments Consortium. The bombers were flown by Chilean pilots, something you guys killed them to cover up. You literally executed prisoners of war to push your stupid “IUG is Nazi!” narrative. Those paratroopers were Egyptian anyway, but your photo doctors sure hid that well.
I’m not gonna talk about the camps except to say that they were necessary. The League of Nations passed enough resolutions against conditions in your POW camps that you’re in no spot to condemn us.
Here’s a picture for you: Nixonian forces move on Bund positions during the Second American Civil War. The Nixonians, or Unionists, although being the underdog, were far more professional than their Bund counterparts. They managed to win the war despite the Bund Government’s Nazi support, thanks in no small part to President Nixon and General Kissenger’s genius.
General Kissenger was later instrumental, if you’ll remember, in establishing the “Iron Curtain” against Reich-allied nations.
Now this is some first-class propaganda, lol. I try to keep my personal opinion out of things, but this is too rich. In what world did the Nixonians win the war, we pushed them out of all their disputed claims and all their Southern holdings, we even captured half the Joint Chiefs at Duluth!
Also, I love how you’re spreading the long-debunked lie about Nazis sponsoring the Independent Unity Government. All our foreign funding came from Britain, Egypt and Chile, and this is easily verifiable.This had nothing to do with “ideology” or whatever, it’s literally about federal government overreach and always has been. You even called our government the Bund when we’re more Liberty-minded than you guys behind your fortified borders.
FFS I’m literally a Jew who lives in the South, and even with the Nürnberg Thaws Jews aren’t particularly welcome in Reich or Reich-sponsored countries, so I disprove that argument on my own. And we signed the Anti-Germanian-Compact– late, but we did!
Leave it to Yankees to distort the truth, lie, and encourage intellectual dishonesty. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
The Independant Unity government was run by the damn German-American Bund, no shit they got Nazi support. In what world did the Nixonian forces not capture entire pallets worth of Sturmgewehr-60’s bound for Bund forces? In what world were Heinkel He-5000 multiroles not shot down over Cleveland? Fritz Kuhn was your president! Britain was captured by the Nazis in ‘47, and has been a puppet ever since. Pushing money through a puppet doesn’t mean that you’re not pushing money.
And although you guys still own the Southeast, Kissenger kicked your asses repeatedly in the Texases. The fact that an insurgency led by a couple of career politicians was able to not only win a major war against a Reich-allied power, but also rally half the free world into retaking their homes from Reich-allied governments via local coups is proof enough that we won. The fact that the Bund won a few isolated positions in the South proves nothing.
You guys signed the Compact after we won the Cold War and you saw the tides were changing, not out of goodwill.
Fritz Kuhn was a better American than Nixon and Killsenger combined, and I’ll stand by that to my grave. And look, whatever you captured some stuff, but we took the Provisional Capital at Duluth, half the Joint Chiefs, and pushed North to grab the Industrial Ring at St. Paul’s. So whatever, you destroyed some surplus German stuff and captured a few assault rifles, that’s a drop in the bucket.
Also, it’s a matter of public record that Parliament pushed the funding rider through without seeking any approval from the Reich (of their own accord, for narrow Yank brains) and fifteen MPs got executed for it. To glibly say “well the Reich funded us” spits on the grave of fifteen brave men who literally died for our freedom.
Anyway, the pre-War Bund is a completely different animal from the Wartime Bund, they really only kept the name. Hell, they discarded even that in ‘70. And “a few isolated positions in the southwest”? That’s a nice way to say “the American Southwest, Mexico, California and the Cascadias”. Stay mad, lol.
We signed the Compact in '92 because we were BARRED BY THE TEXT OF THE ORIGINAL AGREEMENT. Stop getting your “facts” from unionizer.org, jeez.
Here’s a picture for you: Nixonian forces move on Bund positions during the Second American Civil War. The Nixonians, or Unionists, although being the underdog, were far more professional than their Bund counterparts. They managed to win the war despite the Bund Government’s Nazi support, thanks in no small part to President Nixon and General Kissenger’s genius.
General Kissenger was later instrumental, if you’ll remember, in establishing the “Iron Curtain” against Reich-allied nations.
Now this is some first-class propaganda, lol. I try to keep my personal opinion out of things, but this is too rich. In what world did the Nixonians win the war, we pushed them out of all their disputed claims and all their Southern holdings, we even captured half the Joint Chiefs at Duluth!
Also, I love how you’re spreading the long-debunked lie about Nazis sponsoring the Independent Unity Government. All our foreign funding came from Britain, Egypt and Chile, and this is easily verifiable.This had nothing to do with “ideology” or whatever, it’s literally about federal government overreach and always has been. You even called our government the Bund when we’re more Liberty-minded than you guys behind your fortified borders.
FFS I’m literally a Jew who lives in the South, and even with the Nürnberg Thaws Jews aren’t particularly welcome in Reich or Reich-sponsored countries, so I disprove that argument on my own. And we signed the Anti-Germanian-Compact– late, but we did!
Leave it to Yankees to distort the truth, lie, and encourage intellectual dishonesty. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
@industrialconnections recommended me an interesting-looking memoir related to what I posted last: “Unter die Erde: The Journey of a German Officer in Indochina” by Gerhard Hauptmann trans. Wilhelm Walker. Just looked it up on Nilius.com, and it’s quite well-reviewed. Von Rundstedt and Guderian both gave it five stars, as did someone named Wiesenthal (apparently Hauptmann’s company commander). I think I’m going to have to check it out, and I’d urge other readers to do the same. I’m going to have to post a review when it arrives.
Signal boost for those who haven’t seen it (I love this book too much to let this slide.) I know that, for a lot of people on this site, the German deployments in French Indochina are a controversial topic (honestly, what about them isn’t controversial these days), but UDE is worth reading regardless. Asides from anything else, its got quite a lot of good leadership lessons in it and its one of the few Company-level sources from within the German military at the time that is also relatively digestible for the light reader.
Looking forward to @the-alt-historian doing a review on it, and happy I was able to contribute to his research somehow. For those interested, full title of the book is “Unter der Erde: The Journey of an SS Officer in French Indochina”, although you might find it under “Under die Erde: The Journey of a German Officer in Indochina” if you come across the 1990 print.
Just ordered, can’t wait!
Also, I did find it under the latter title, are there any big differences between the two editions? I’m wary of any edition produced specifically for the American market; you know how censor-happy HUAC gets.
Members of the Waffen-SS’s elite “Dschungel Kader” alongside Japanese occupation troops in the former French Indochina, 1960. Operating against the American-funded Viet Minh guerilla army, the Germans’ superior parachute tactics and combined-arms expertise soon ended the civil conflict and secured the Greatest East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere’s hold on the resource-rich nation.
One of my cousins is a German-born mischling who somehow got himself caught up with the Waffen-SS (this was after Himmler’s execution in ‘56, and the subsequent relaxations of the Nürnberg Laws). He’d shown such promise in training that they selected him for the Dschungel Kader (incidentally, a lot of German Jews and part-Jews ended up serving with the Kader) and he was part of the third contingent of German troops sent to Indochina. I have some of his letters, and if you don’t mind I’ll reproduce a passage:
“23. July, 1960. My dearest sister. We had a hard piece of work against us today. Encountered our first American advisers– leather-tough special troops [spezialtruppen is the word he used, which I assume refers to Army Special Forces] in very odd striped camouflage. They were weighted down with more equipment than I have seen in three months, grenades, knives, compasses, ammunition bandoliers, rucksacks and mines, anti-tank launchers. Our entire platoon could only kill three of the four in three hours of firefighting, and we lost six of ours. Our local assistants [exact trans.] had no trouble tracking the last; they are loaded heavily and move like beasts. Americans cannot fight in jungles properly, not at all.
[…] We did finally get our hands on the fabled new American automatic rifle, known as the M-16. It is a beautiful thing, light and easy to fire with practically no recoil. I would have taken one, but the ammunition is of a remarkably strange caliber, much different than our Kurz round. As it is, we sent them back for analysis…”
The letter goes on, but I feel that that’s enough. Anyway, just posting these online is enough to get HUAC down your throat. And my family’s connections to Germania have already gotten us investigated multiple times. The war rages on, I guess…
wait i am so confused, the Nazi scum had soldiers operating in Việt Nam all the way into the 1960s ?? or am i missing something ?
I’m with you ^^^ doesn’t sound right more like commando us or British with US funding south Vietnamese troops
I assure you that both I and the-alt-historian provide only the most accurate and well-researched alternative history posts.
Bullshit, this is Reich propaganda. First and foremost, American forces were horrifically rare in Indochina. The DeGaulle government, operating out of Neo-France, sent the majority of troops, while the Americans provided the logistics and equipment. The guys described in that post were probably Legionnaires recruited fresh from the Second Canadian Civil War or San Francisco Insurgency. They were damn good troops, but they were better suited to the rapid-deployment and mechanized warfare that Neo-French troops saw during the many battles of Quebec.
Secondly, Reich forces only took the Southern half of the country. The Viet Minh lost US funding after Fritz Kuhn was elected as president in 1964, and the U.S. devolved into its own civil war, but the north of the country remains a lawless wasteland to this day. I don’t know if half the country being the stomping ground of the Minh sounds like victory to you.
Propaganda? Dude, I’m sorry but I know my cousin and I know what he did. I’m sure you’re right about the Americans, I have literally thousands of letters and photos and the Americans show up precisely four times, and they stop showing up at all after fall of 1963. My cousin (Jakob R. Meier, look him up, he’s on the Iron Cross registry) fought against Legionnaires, who are referred to quite highly in his letters (he calls them “the worthiest of foes”, and compares them to Thermoplyae’s Spartans) , but I thought the letter referring to the Americans was more interesting, that’s all. Legionnaires were a penny a bushel compared to Americans.
Also, I know the Reich forces only took the South half of the country; didn’t stop the Oberkommando from declaring total victory. Jakob was quite bemused at that.
Literally I never disputed or even mentioned anything you bring up in that post. You sound like a Yankee spoilsport of the highest order.
Members of the Waffen-SS’s elite “Dschungel Kader” alongside Japanese occupation troops in the former French Indochina, 1960. Operating against the American-funded Viet Minh guerilla army, the Germans’ superior parachute tactics and combined-arms expertise soon ended the civil conflict and secured the Greatest East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere’s hold on the resource-rich nation.
One of my cousins is a German-born mischling who somehow got himself caught up with the Waffen-SS (this was after Himmler’s execution in ‘56, and the subsequent relaxations of the Nürnberg Laws). He’d shown such promise in training that they selected him for the Dschungel Kader (incidentally, a lot of German Jews and part-Jews ended up serving with the Kader) and he was part of the third contingent of German troops sent to Indochina. I have some of his letters, and if you don’t mind I’ll reproduce a passage:
“23. July, 1960. My dearest sister. We had a hard piece of work against us today. Encountered our first American advisers– leather-tough special troops [spezialtruppen is the word he used, which I assume refers to Army Special Forces] in very odd striped camouflage. They were weighted down with more equipment than I have seen in three months, grenades, knives, compasses, ammunition bandoliers, rucksacks and mines, anti-tank launchers. Our entire platoon could only kill three of the four in three hours of firefighting, and we lost six of ours. Our local assistants [exact trans.] had no trouble tracking the last; they are loaded heavily and move like beasts. Americans cannot fight in jungles properly, not at all.
[…] We did finally get our hands on the fabled new American automatic rifle, known as the M-16. It is a beautiful thing, light and easy to fire with practically no recoil. I would have taken one, but the ammunition is of a remarkably strange caliber, much different than our Kurz round. As it is, we sent them back for analysis…”
The letter goes on, but I feel that that’s enough. Anyway, just posting these online is enough to get HUAC down your throat. And my family’s connections to Germania have already gotten us investigated multiple times. The war rages on, I guess…
“As sun broke over the black wart in the Atlantic, a banging on the door disturbed the island’s governor at his toilet. ‘Your Excellency, he is missing,’ stammered Engelbert Lutyens, Captain of the Twentieth Regiment of Foot. 'General Bonaparte is missing.’”
On this day fictionally in 1821, a new Napoleonic adventure began.
Mechanisburg had been unaware of the space race when it first started. Otherwise they would have made sure the first person put into orbit around the planet was actually intended to survive the experience.
As it is, they are very shocked and offended that there is apparently a space race going on, and not only were they not invited, they are already loosing. The Soviet Union has already launched the first working satalite. The resulting tantrum from the Heterodyne sees the first potted geranium, the first live duck, and the first ant farm launched into space. (The sentient ants that ran the farm got used to it pretty quick, but did wish they had had some warning first.)
After that they get serious, to make up for lost time they launch the first eastern european entertainment broadcast satalite. (Which featured such Mechanisburg Favorites as “The Snail Kitchen,” “Death Devestation and Horror,” “DYI Surgery,” “Best Rants of the Heterodynes,” and “The Happy Funtime Hour.”) Every household in America was watching Mechanisburg TV programs. At least until people finally, finally, figured out how to turn them off.
The pride of the Mechanisburg space program however was the first space-ship they launched. The bronze dragon head on the prow was really the first clue that they had taken the concept of a “space ship” a bit too literally.
What they build is basically a giant viking longboat crossed with galleon, with a giant glass dome over the deck, two huge rocket engines attached to the side, and which is pointed straight up to the sky. And since this is to be the pride of Mechanisburg, the first cosmonauts the Heterodyne puts into space are naturally their best. (Though not necessarily their brightest.)
The Jagermonsters.
General Gkika is chosen the captain this first space ship and charged with getting the jagers picked for the mission ready for it. Which mostly involves them seeing how long they can hold their breath in case they get a leak in their suits. There is also the tricky question as to wether they should wear their hats on top of their fishbowl helmets or should make the helmets big enough to fit their hats inside. Launch protocols are just the unspoken understanding that they’ll hold unto the back of their seats during launch. At least until the ship gets into space and straightens out.
Bewildered international reporters, (who were kidnapped from their hotels at spear-point), report on a cermony that looks like something out of John Carter of Mars, complete with the multicoloured people and the large melee weapons, and get first hand views of “The Loonie Bin of the Eastern Bloc” launching a giant bronze viking ship into space, and hear the cheers when it clears the atmosphere and is able to hoist the solar sails.
The crew on the soviet space station is even more suprised. The cosmonaut that first spots it thinks they are hallucinating. Then they get the radio message telling them to prepare to be boarded. The jagers wearing fishbowl helmet space-suits throwing grappling hooks and “swigging” over, do nothing to make the who scene any less sureal.
In truth Mechanisburg’s first space voyage is rather boring actually. There’s nothing up there to fight. The scientists on the space station surrendered on the spot and had nothing to loot except research data. The Jagers on the ship really have nothing to do while they sail around earth except drink and brawl. (Which is admittedly what they would have been doing back on earth anyway.) So they mostly bum around earth’s orbit, vandalize a few satalites, and are forced to turn back when they start to run out of booze.
There is nothing like watching a flaming viking ship re-enter the atmosphere and make a firey crash landing in the Black Sea. However once the waves calm down and the steam clears, the jagers waste no time in heading back home. The mechanical oars pop out of the side of the ship and they began rowing towards the Danube, the Dyne, and home.
This is a world where everything is exactly the same. Except Mechansiburg exists, and it is exactly the same as it is in GG cannon. AKA this heavily armed and very militaristic eastern european city state that was successfully contained sometime in the 1800s, but has never stopped trying to conqure the world.
In fact, this narrative remains more or less unchanged right up until World War II, where german troops invading eastern europe are greeted with “Oh thank god you’re here! Quick, the Heterodynes are breaking out!”
The Nazi high command would have normally dismissed the stories that come back as a bunch of bullshit being spouted by cowards. Except the Heterodynes made sure there was a designated survivor, left alive to spread the tale. Well, left alive is not exactly correct. More like they were brought back to life so that their severed head could tell the tale to Hilter and the Nazi high command.
As a result german forces do not retreat from the Mechanisburg Valley until they are forced out by the Red Army, and then Mechanisburg is Stalin’s problem. The Soveit Union never admits it, but they come close several times to having the Heterodynes break out of the Mechanisburg Valley. Especially when the Heterodyne respond to the Katyusha rocket launchers by building a mobile pipe organ capable of wiping out an entire battallion.
As the Cold War heats up, Mechanisburg finds itself as this small little stain on the Iron Curtain, the one spot in eastern europe that is not communist and has brutally resistened any attempt to make it so. (The Soviet Leadership are too scared to even try dropping a nuke on the town, because sure as hell Mechanisburg already has nuclear defenses anyway.) And despite the fact that Mechanisburg is only the size of a particularly large city state, it is an enthusizastic participant in the arms race.
Yes it may not have the same size nuclear stockpile as the two superpowers, but neither the US or the Soviet Union has a giant death ray pointed at the moon. The rest of the world watching this tiny city state parade this truely bizzare array of weapons, monsters, and historical war loot thinks the people of the Sovereign Nation of Mechanisburg (AKA the Heterodyne Empire) is completely nuts (It is) and is bluffing to try and puff up its ego. (It’s not.) This is not helped by the occasion addresses to the UN, which are basically hour long, winding rants, read off by a member of the Von Mekkhan family with the best poker face.
The Space Race is no better. Yes the Soviet Union may have launched the first satillite, the US may have put the first man on the moon, but Mechanisburg put the first human into orbit. (Granted, the fact that they didn’t survive was the whole point) and they have a big head start toward being the first nation to put a jagermonster on Mars. Nevermind the fact that American astronauts on the moon had a lot of reasons to pray diplomatic relations with Mechanisburg didn’t suddenly dip.
Thankfully by the time the Berlin Wall comes down, a new Heterodyne has taken control of Mechanisburg. Bill and Barry have a different vision for their homeland then their ancestors did, and set out opening a new and friendlier Mechanisburg to the world. This includes things like recognition in the UN, the development of a tourist industry in Mechanisburg, and things like signing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (After the definition of “human” is expanded significantly and horrifically.) They also show their good will by dismantling the giant death ray pointed at the moon. (They use the parts from that to build the Great Hospital) As well as cutting back the number of nuclear weapons to only a “couple of the nicer ones,” disbanding the biological weapons team, closing that portal to the hell dimension, disbanding the chemical weapons team, promising to stop arming local bears, disbanding the psychic weapons team, and so on.
Now, how Bill’s daughter, Agatha, found herself being raised by a pair of engine mechanics in Zurich involves a car full of killer wasps, her parent’s best friend being dumped deep into the middle of the amazon jungle, a creepy cult her mom started up, one very very big bomb, and is quite frankly, a story for another time.
