 First edition | |
| Author | William Overgard |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Alternate history |
| Publisher | Jove Books |
Publication date | 1980 |
| Publication place | United States |
The Divide is a 1980 alternate history novel by William Overgard. It concerns resistance in the United States to a Nazi occupation. [1]
The point of divergence occurs in 1940 when Nazi Germany forces France and the United Kingdom to surrender and takes control over their former empires. After Germany soon overruns all of the Soviet Union in 1941, both it and Japan attack and invade the United States later that year. President Burton K. Wheeler (who defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940) surrenders the United States to the Axis after a devastating bombardment of missiles from occupied Canada. The surrender takes place on April 20, 1946, Adolf Hitler's fifty seventh birthday. President Wheeler, Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall, and other government officials are executed by garrote in a meat packing plant outside of Washington, D.C., on July 24 of the same year (by using the method that was used for the 20 July plot conspirators in our timeline) after being found guilty of war crimes. In the former US government's place is a puppet government akin to what happened in our timeline to the Czech part of Czechoslovakia during the German occupation.
Thirty years later in 1976, Hideki Tojo and Adolf Hitler are preparing to board trains that will carry them to their historic meeting marking the 30th anniversary of their victory over the United States. The celebration is to be held at The Divide, a small town that is exactly equidistant between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, at the somewhat uneasy boundary the two empires.
The division is both geographical and cultural. Germany has integrated the eastern part of defeated America into the Greater German Reich while the western part is occupied by Japan, as part of the Greater Co-prosperity Sphere and more a colony than anything else. In both cases, the subjugation is almost complete.
The story commences with the assassination of the Japanese general who conquered the area by using methods like those of Tomoyuki Yamashita in Malaya and Masaharu Homma in the Philippines. The story then moves back and forth between the two areas of occupation, but the emphasis is heavily on the German side.
The plot centers on the efforts of an anti-partisan officer of the SS who tries to find the perpetrators of the assassination and to determine if it is a harbinger of actions at the Tojo-Hitler meeting.
As the action moves forward, information appears on the details of the new German-American synthesis. It is a land of Europeans; the result of a "Final Solution," which encompassed most other minorities, including Native Americans and blacks. What occurred in the Japanese sector is never completely addressed but it is hinted that the ethnic cleansing took place, though in a less industrialized manner, like the Rape of Nanjing instead of death camps. After 30 years, the American people more or less accept or perhaps put up with the occupation.
The resistance movement has elements scattered around the country in both occupied zones and have some inter-group communication. However, the groups are rarely not engaged in partisan activity. That is especially the case for the official component, a stay-behind military and scientific group that was charged by President Wheeler, just before the surrender in 1946, with a secret project that could, if successful, reverse the country's fortunes. Its task to develop a new weapon became, as the war ended and the new regimes take over, so important the group feared that any action would cause them to be discovered. Thus, doing nothing and remaining in what was more or less a prison, albeit a comfortable one, evolved into its mission long after the weapon was perfected. It falls, therefore, to newcomers, those who had carried out no act of rebellion in years, perhaps decades, to agitate its use. They, along with the surviving scientist, set out to ambush the trains.
The outsiders and misanthropes even by the standards of the "survival-at-any-cost" members of the stay-behind head out with their device to try to change the course of history.
The narrative occasionally contains third-person comments, which create a sense of the story being told after the fact. That is at odds with the rest of the narrative and is almost as if the author is acting as a Greek chorus of sorts and is puzzling, as it implies associated events outside the storyline but related to it.
The puzzlement dissipates as the book comes to an end. The malcontents and disaffected and the disenfranchised and threatened unite in an act of rebellion that needed little more than a "hero" to act as the catalyst. What will happen remains unclear, but it is possible that the events are ongoing.
World War II or the Second World War was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all the world's countries—including all the great powers—participated, with many investing all available economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities in pursuit of total war, blurring the distinction between military and civilian resources. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, with the latter enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and delivery of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, resulting in 70 to 85 million fatalities, more than half of which were civilians. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust of European Jews, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. Following the Allied powers' victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and war crimes tribunals were conducted against German and Japanese leaders.
The Axis powers, originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis and also Rome–Berlin–Tokyo Axis, was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies. Its principal members were Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Empire of Japan. The Axis were united in their far-right positions and general opposition to the Allies, but otherwise lacked comparable coordination and ideological cohesion.
Werwolf was a Nazi plan which began development in 1944, to create a resistance force which would operate behind enemy lines as the Allies advanced through Germany in parallel with the Wehrmacht fighting in front of the lines. There is some argument that the plan, and subsequent reports of guerrilla activities, were created by Joseph Goebbels through propaganda disseminated in the waning weeks of the war through his "Radio Werwolf", something that was not connected in any way with the military unit.
The European theatre of World War II was one of the two main theatres of combat during World War II, taking place from September 1939 to May 1945. The Allied powers fought the Axis powers on both sides of the continent in the Western and Eastern fronts. There was also conflict in Scandinavia, Iceland, and the Mediterranean and Balkan regions. It was an intense conflict that led to at least 39 million deaths and a dramatic change in the balance of power in the continent.
The final battles of the European theatre of World War II continued after the definitive surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allies, signed by Field marshal Wilhelm Keitel on 8 May 1945 in Karlshorst, Berlin. After German leader Adolf Hitler's suicide and handing over of power to grand admiral Karl Dönitz on the last day of April 1945, Soviet troops conquered Berlin and accepted surrender of the Dönitz-led government. The last battles were fought on the Eastern Front which ended in the total surrender of all of Nazi Germany’s remaining armed forces such as in the Courland Pocket in western Latvia from Army Group Courland in the Baltics surrendering on 10 May 1945 and in Czechoslovakia during the Prague offensive on 11 May 1945.
The Balkans campaign of World War II began with the Italian invasion of Greece on 28 October 1940. In the early months of 1941, Italy's offensive had stalled and a Greek counter-offensive pushed into Albania. Germany sought to aid Italy by deploying troops to Romania and Bulgaria and attacking Greece from the east. Meanwhile, the British landed troops and aircraft to shore up Greek defences. A coup d'état in Yugoslavia on 27 March caused Adolf Hitler to order the conquest of that country.
The German Instrument of Surrender was a legal document effecting the unconditional surrender of the remaining German armed forces to the Allies, which ended World War II in Europe, with the surrender taking effect at 23:01 CET on the same day.
Almost every country in the world participated in World War II. Most were neutral at the beginning, but only a relative few nations remained neutral to the end. The Second World War pitted two alliances against each other, the Axis powers and the Allied powers. It is estimated that 74 million people died, with estimates ranging from 40 million to 90 million dead. The main Axis powers were Nazi Germany, the Empire of Japan, and the Kingdom of Italy; while the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union and China were the "Big Four" Allied powers.
This timeline of events preceding World War II covers the events that affected or led to World War II.
During World War II, resistance movements operated in German-occupied Europe by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation to propaganda, hiding crashed pilots and even to outright warfare and the recapturing of towns. In many countries, resistance movements were sometimes also referred to as The Underground.
German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly militarily occupied and civil-occupied, including puppet governments, by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 and 1945, during World War II, administered by the Nazi regime under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.
The following events occurred in September 1943:
The Axis leaders of World War II were important political and military figures during World War II. The Axis was established with the signing of the Tripartite Pact in 1940 and pursued a strongly militarist and nationalist ideology; with a policy of anti-communism. During the early phase of the war, puppet governments were established in their occupied nations. When the war ended, many of them faced trial for war crimes. The chief leaders were Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany, Benito Mussolini of Fascist Italy, and Hirohito of Imperial Japan. Unlike what happened with the Allies, there was never a joint meeting of the main Axis heads of government, although Mussolini and Hitler met on a regular basis.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to World War II:
This is a timeline of events that stretched over the period of World War II in 1941, marked also by the beginning of Operation Barbarossa on the Eastern Front.
This is a timeline of the events that stretched over the period of late World War II, its conclusion, legal aftermath, with the inclusion of the Cold War, from January 1945 to December 1991.
The following events occurred in May 1945:
A hypothetical military victory of the Axis powers over the Allies of World War II (1939–1945) is a common topic in speculative literature. Works of alternative history (fiction) and of counterfactual history (non-fiction) include stories, novels, performances, and mixed media that often explore speculative public and private life in lands conquered by the coalition, whose principal powers were Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy.
The following events occurred in June 1942:
Dramatic portrayals of Reinhard Heydrich number among the more numerous of any Second World War figure, comparable to Adolf Hitler as well as war films depicting Erwin Rommel. Reinhard Heydrich has been portrayed in both television and film, and was one of the few high ranking Nazis to be depicted in a dramatic film while the Second World War was still ongoing.
