Baxter traces the effects of the occupation on several protagonists. Ben Kamen is Jewish, gay and a latent telepath, while Mary Wooler, and her son Gary, and daughter-in-law Hilda, work on covert projects for the British Army, endeavouring to discover how to dislodge the Nazi presence from the "Protectorate of Albion" in the southeast. Ernst Keiser, a relatively kindly officer, lodges with a rural family, whose female members, Irma and Viv, collaborate intentionally with the military, while Alfie is made to serve in a forced labour unit later in the war.
As in "our" timeline, Hitler still launches Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union, but there are other divergences, as the Japanese Empire has sufficient manpower to invade Australia in this timeline as well, although no other details are forthcoming.
Ben's identity is discovered, but he is spared from the ravages of an expanded version of the Holocaust due to his latent telepathic abilities. Julia Fiveash, another English Nazi collaborator, is involved in the Ahnenerbe, an SSoccult warfare division. In 1943, the tide of war has turned, and the British and U.S. militaries launch "Operation Walrus" to recover the territory of the former "Protectorate." However, they stumble on Ahnenerbe plans to use Kamen to alter the course of history so that either William the Conqueror lost the Battle of Hastings to Harold II in 1066, or Christopher Columbus turned east, reviving Crusader hostility against the Islamic world during the sixteenth century, instead of his discovery of America. In the ensuing battle, Fiveash kills Gary, and Mary is able to prevent any further historical change through influencing Kamen's choice of telepathic transmissions. However, the novel ends with Kamen once more entering a dream state, and hints that our timeline is the result of his broadcasting a telepathic message to one of Hitler's advisors at the time of the Dunkirk Evacuation.
Historical, scientific and metaphysical basis
In an afterword, Baxter described his influences as Niall Ferguson's book Virtual History (1997), PanzerGeneral Heinz Guderian himself (from his book Panzer Leader (1952), Derek Robinson's Invasion 1940 (2005), and Martin Marix Evans' Invasion! Operation Sea Lion 1940 (2005).
He used Heather Pringle's work on Nazi pseudoscience, The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust (2006), Julia Gardner's Wartime Britain 1939-1945 (2004) and Richard Vinen's account of Vichy France, The Unfree French (2006) for details of everyday life under Nazi occupation and British relative wartime rationing stringencies.
Finally, he incorporated J. W. Dunne's concepts about metaphysical "time travel" through dreams. There are also references to fledgeling "calculating engines" (computers), whose actual construction began in Manchester in 1934.
Sources
Stephen Baxter: Weaver: Time's Tapestry: Book Four: London: Gollancz: 2008: ISBN978-0-575-07864-2
Kurt Gödel: "An Example of a New Type of Cosmological Solutions of Einstein's Field Equations of Gravitation" Reviews of Modern Physics (1949): 21: 447–450.
1940 (MCMXL) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1940th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 940th year of the 2nd millennium, the 40th year of the 20th century, and the 1st year of the 1940s decade.
The Battle of Dunkirk was fought around the French port of Dunkirk (Dunkerque) during the Second World War, between the Allies and Nazi Germany. As the Allies were losing the Battle of France on the Western Front, the Battle of Dunkirk was the defence and evacuation of British and other Allied forces to Britain from 26 May to 4 June 1940.
Free France was a political entity claiming to be the legitimate government of France following the dissolution of the Third Republic during World War II. Led by General Charles de Gaulle, Free France was established as a government-in-exile in London in June 1940 after the Fall of France to Nazi Germany. It joined the Allied nations in fighting Axis forces with the Free French Forces, supported the resistance in Nazi-occupied France, known as the French Forces of the Interior, and gained strategic footholds in several French colonies in Africa.
The Battle of France, also known as the Western Campaign, the French Campaign and the Fall of France, during the Second World War was the German invasion of the Low Countries and France. The invasion plan for the Low Countries and France was called Case Yellow. Fall Rot was planned to finish off the French and British after the evacuation at Dunkirk. The Low Countries and France were defeated and occupied by Axis troops down to the Demarcation line, ending land operations on the Western Front until the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944.
The Dunkirk evacuation, codenamed Operation Dynamo and also known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, or just Dunkirk, was the evacuation of more than 338,000 Allied soldiers during the Second World War from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, in the north of France, between 26 May and 4 June 1940. The operation commenced after large numbers of Belgian, British, and French troops were cut off and surrounded by German troops during the six-week Battle of France.
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 the Scandinavian, 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.
From 1939 to 1940, the French Third Republic was at war with Nazi Germany. In 1940, the German forces defeated the French in the Battle of France. The Germans occupied the north and west of French territory and a collaborationist régime under Philippe Pétain established itself in Vichy. General Charles de Gaulle established a government in exile in London and competed with Vichy France to position himself as the legitimate French government, for control of the French overseas empire and receiving help from French allies. He eventually managed to enlist the support of some French African colonies and later succeeded in bringing together the disparate maquis, colonial regiments, legionnaires, expatriate fighters, and Communist snipers under the Free French Forces in the Allied chain of command. In 1944, after the Allies had landed in Normandy and the southern front moved from North Africa across the Mediterranean into Italy and Provence, these forces routed the German Army, and Vichy officials fled into Germany.
The Ahnenerbe was a pseudoscientific organization founded by the Schutzstaffel in Nazi Germany in 1935. Established by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler in July 1, 1935 as an SS appendage devoted to promoting racial theories espoused by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, the Ahnenerbe consisted of academics and scientists from a broad range of academic disciplines who fostered the idea that Germans descended from an Aryan race which was racially superior to other racial groups.
The German invasion of Greece, also known as the Battle of Greece or Operation Marita, were the attacks on Greece by Italy and Germany during World War II. The Italian invasion in October 1940, which is usually known as the Greco-Italian War, was followed by the German invasion in April 1941. German landings on the island of Crete came after Allied forces had been defeated in mainland Greece. These battles were part of the greater Balkans Campaign of the Axis powers and their associates.
The Timeline of the Battle of France, also known as the Fall of France, covers the period during World War II from the first military actions between Germany and France and to the armistice signed by France. Over the period of six weeks, from May 10 to June 25, 1940, Nazi Germany had also conquered Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. Nazi Germany's overall plan was to invade the Low Countries which would make the French and British troops leave their current position and position their forces in Belgium. Then, a second force would navigate through the Ardennes Forest and move around the Maginot Line at the weakest part of the Allied defences. The force would then move towards the west French coast and cut the northern Allied force off. The Germans would then capture Paris, eliminate any resistance that remained, cross the English Channel, and invade the United Kingdom.
The 7th Panzer Division was an armored formation of the German Army in World War II. It participated in the Battle of France, the invasion of the Soviet Union, the occupation of Vichy France, and on the Eastern Front until the end of the war. The 7th Panzer Division is also known by its nickname, Ghost Division.
Timewyrm: Exodus is an original Doctor Who novel, published by Virgin Publishing in their New Adventures range of Doctor Who novels. It is a sequel to author Terrance Dicks' 1969 Second Doctor story The War Games as well as the second part of the ongoing four novel Timewyrm narrative.
The following events occurred in June 1940:
This is a timeline of World War II events that took place in 1940, the first full year of the second global war of the 20th century.
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.
Events from the year 1940 in France.
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.
There is a significant body of fiction set in an alternate history or a secret history, where the Operation Sea Lion, a German plan to invade Britain during World War II, is attempted or successfully carried out. However, analyses by experts during a wargame conducted in 1974 concluded that there was little chance of the plan succeeding.
The following events occurred in July 1941:
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