Alternate History, WW2, part 2
Alt-History…
World War II
Part 2
It was the newsreel that took our full attention though, and it shocked me to the core. It confirmed much that we had already learned, and might as well have been entitled: The Fall of Britain.
Filmed in standard propaganda style, the newsreel footage told the story well enough, as did the serious narrator: They had fought on the beaches, in the fields, in the streets, and shop to shop, but in the end they lost. Churchill himself died valiantly; to the last, manning a fifty caliber machine gun perched above Trafalgar Square. He chose martyrdom.
The fall of Britain had actually begun at the end of May 1940, with the Disaster at Dunkirk when more than a quarter of a million men-at-arms were killed or captured, virtually the entire British army. This was a turning point, a crushing blow to morale.
Over the next summer, German Air Marshal Göering saw to it that the coastal radar stations were destroyed. The London blitz was a secondary tactic. Spitfires were eliminated one by one, many on the ground.
Then came the October Surprise… the early days of the month provided calm seas and fog. A full scale Nazi invasion proceeded and beach heads were established near Dover and Brighton.
Two days later, America was firmly entrenched in Iceland and Greenland, strictly as a precautionary measure, it was said.; though we stopped short of declaring war on Germany.
There was fierce resistance, yet it amounted to a pull back, ever westward, and to Ireland. Civilians mostly, then a mass exodus to the US and Canada… bound for Halifax and Boston.
A vast convoy sailed across the Atlantic, hunted by U-boats; thousands were lost… It’s estimated that nearly ten percent of the population evacuated the British Islands, close to five mullion people: the old, the infirm, women, children, the wealthy, the political class, and those with technical knowledge that could later help the war effort; namely, academics, scientists, industrialists, and engineers… But the Corridor of Mercy became the Corridor of Doom.
Note:
An excerpt from Red City, the fifth and final Tractus Fynn Mystery, to be published in May.
World War II
Part 2
It was the newsreel that took our full attention though, and it shocked me to the core. It confirmed much that we had already learned, and might as well have been entitled: The Fall of Britain.
Filmed in standard propaganda style, the newsreel footage told the story well enough, as did the serious narrator: They had fought on the beaches, in the fields, in the streets, and shop to shop, but in the end they lost. Churchill himself died valiantly; to the last, manning a fifty caliber machine gun perched above Trafalgar Square. He chose martyrdom.
The fall of Britain had actually begun at the end of May 1940, with the Disaster at Dunkirk when more than a quarter of a million men-at-arms were killed or captured, virtually the entire British army. This was a turning point, a crushing blow to morale.
Over the next summer, German Air Marshal Göering saw to it that the coastal radar stations were destroyed. The London blitz was a secondary tactic. Spitfires were eliminated one by one, many on the ground.
Then came the October Surprise… the early days of the month provided calm seas and fog. A full scale Nazi invasion proceeded and beach heads were established near Dover and Brighton.
Two days later, America was firmly entrenched in Iceland and Greenland, strictly as a precautionary measure, it was said.; though we stopped short of declaring war on Germany.
There was fierce resistance, yet it amounted to a pull back, ever westward, and to Ireland. Civilians mostly, then a mass exodus to the US and Canada… bound for Halifax and Boston.
A vast convoy sailed across the Atlantic, hunted by U-boats; thousands were lost… It’s estimated that nearly ten percent of the population evacuated the British Islands, close to five mullion people: the old, the infirm, women, children, the wealthy, the political class, and those with technical knowledge that could later help the war effort; namely, academics, scientists, industrialists, and engineers… But the Corridor of Mercy became the Corridor of Doom.
Note:
An excerpt from Red City, the fifth and final Tractus Fynn Mystery, to be published in May.
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