Meanwhile, Alger Hiss' trial for perjury is over, with a conviction on all five counts, and a sentence of twenty-five years alltogether. The nation is solidly united behind Attorney General Warren (brought in as a special prosecuter, he worked his level best to conduct the trial in a fair and just manner, something he mostly succeeded at.) There will be no move to acquit Hiss in this TL; he will never be a martyered icon of the Left after being convicted of espionage once, and then convicted again of perjury at his first trial. Oberg, commander of the small SS force in Rome has begun making dire intimations to Erich von Witzleben, German C-in-C Italy, about just what the Reich does to failures; there's talk of replacing von Witzleben with Oberg's immediate superior Kaltenbrunner, or simply shooting him and putting a more competent Army officer in charge. Similarly, in Rome, Italian and German Army troops arrest every SS officer in the city; Erich von Witzleben is the most senior surviving Army officer in the Reich, already there is talk of him as the next Chancellor. Heinrich Himmler's terrible generalship has let the Americans drive to the North Sea in most places, forcing the Wehrmacht back to defensive lines around the city of Arnhem, in eastern Gelderland.
On September 9, 1945, one of the largest paratroop drops in military history sees an entire American airborne division dropped behind German lines in the eastern Netherlands. In the Pacific, the Philippine Islands are largely in American hands by the end of August. A tableau arose for a moment; the unarmed Army officers, including Luftwaffe commander Kesselring and Peenmunde commander Dornberger, frozen at one end of the locked room, Eicke and his men at the other, loaded machine guns trained on the Army men, fingers trembling on the triggers. The massive casualties caused by X-Day (D-Day will remain a lexicon for failure in the American language until the end of the century, and beyond) have only reinforced the fervent isolationism of Robert Taft, he is only too glad to pledge agreement with his predecessor's suggestions for postwar German occupation zones, and even carry them further. By early July of 1945, most of the Low Countries are solidly in American and Allied hands. And, perhaps the most obvious, what if he'd succeeded outright?
They'll be there tomorrow, von Kesselring to plead for his bombers (as if he stands a chance, with Goering in chains for his failure), Dornbergers for his rockets, and Keitel and the rest of his Army lackeys, Jodl and Blomberg and Reichenau, to bow and scrape before the greatest evil we have ever known. Dornberger will linger another few weeks in an Army hospital before dying; von Kesseling will live out the rest of his life in a wheelchair. By realizing our bountiful creativity, our national civilization will flower in the warmth of spring that pervades the world. It is to restore our natural, rational foundation by rectifying the unnatural, irrational ambition of the Japanese politicians in the grip of obsolete ideas. Henning von Treschow is there to say the same for Hungary and the Horthy government. Eberhard von Breitenbuch will become a favorite source of speculation for alternate historians of the future. Just before the Fuhrer was rushed out of the command pillbox, unconcious from shock and with a sucking wound to the chest, a volley from a dozen SS SG-44s took Breitenbuch in the chest, killing the young officer instantly. Most of the students are just going to class; most of the city's workers are on their way to work, on the streets.
When the bell rings for a sighted enemy aircraft at 2:15 AM, most citizens of Wakkanai don't bother to move to their shelters (most people don't have them anyway), but every soldier in the area gets to their beachside bunkers. There are 10,000 people in Nuremburg Stadium, a mix of administrators, Party officials, SS officers and loyal soliders, on the afternoon of October 16, 1945, cheering with varying degrees of madness as Admiral Karl Doenitz, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and then Joseph Goebbels proclaim their loyalty to the fallen Fuhrer and to the ever-lasting Thousand-Year Reich. Albert von Kesselring and Walter Dornberger fall as well, critically wounded. Guderian isn't alone in joining the Resistance; as Kiel, Erfurt, Essen, and Hanover are shattered from the air over the course of July and August by American bombers, and as a whole cross-section of the German military steps into the anti-Hitler column, everyone from Erwin Rommel, the commander of the German Home Army, to Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, commander of Army Group Center, (and all of his staff) who has fallen back to western and central Poland after a Soviet drive stalled just east of Warsaw. His best customer was the British government which wanted troops for such projects as trying to keep the American colonists in line.
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