Patton's Spaceship by John Barnes

Author:John Barnes
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781453262597
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Spring held more surprises. President Lindbergh, too late and too little, offered aid to Britain, and not only brought the American Army home, but warned Cedillo to stay out of the European war.

But Congress was in a different mood, and many of them seemed to feel that if the Consortium was arming the British, Congress did not need to do anything for the USA. Lindbergh couldn’t even get the weapons expended in Mexico replaced.

Hider popped three surprises, one after another, in the summer of 1941. Under persuasion of his agents, and with the offer of German help, Franco joined the Axis, swept down the Tagus Valley into Portugal, and took Lisbon in a week; a week after that, Nazi guns were pounding Gibraltar, and the guided V-1 had closed off the western entrance to the Mediterranean.

Simultaneously, the Turkish government was overthrown by a Nazi-backed coup, and suddenly Greece and Yugoslavia were under a two-front attack. It was over quickly; in less than a month Hitler’s control extended from the Atlantic to Iran, and in a short time after that the attack was under way to close Suez. Unable to supply Egypt and Palestine by any means except around the Cape, Britain was forced to evacuate forces to India and Australia, and by July, Hitler had gathered up everything in the region, including the Persian Gulf.

The drive into Russia was nothing like what happened in our timeline. The attack was announced by Stalin’s assassination; it was only six weeks till Moscow fell, and in the peace treaty the USSR gave up the Ukraine and the Baltics to Hitler. The German troops were not merely home, as they had been promised, by Christmas; they were home before the leaves turned.

President Lindbergh must have been sincere, and not a German agent, for he moved more and more to actively resist the Nazi onslaught. Al’s poem called him that “poor, poor, well-meaning man, not a good mind, not even a good heart, but not bad, not evil, not yet captured, driven mad hysterical naked by the drum drum drum of evil.” He proclaimed the Lindbergh Doctrine: The United States would fight to prevent any of the Atlantic islands, from which our shipping and Britain’s lifeline might be threatened, from falling into German hands.

On November 8, 1941, German parachute and glider troops landed in force on the Azores, in a complete and total violation of the Lindbergh Doctrine. They were under command of Air Marshal Manfred von Richthofen; I was a little startled, since in my own timeline the “Red Baron” had been shot down and killed in WWI. Clearly the Closers had been working pretty hard for a long time in this timeline.

The Battle of the Azores is about half of Al’s poem; he goes ship by ship, blow by blow. The story is grim from one end to the other; Admiral King’s Atlantic Fleet was far from ready, but they linked up with the troop ships and set out anyway. It was clear

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.