Jackboot Britain: The Alternate History - Hitler's Victory & The Nazi UK!

by Daniel S. Fletcher

  “Well, that’s a turn up. Bloody vicious bastards.”

  Despite himself, Paul suppressed a little smile. He liked it when she swore. Naomi Rosenberg was the only girl – woman – he knew that used profanity, as well as frequenting pubs to drink pints. But it never sounded ugly from her; she was too sweet-natured, with too nice a temperament. And God knows, he thought, she has every reason to swear with these buggers here.

  “Don’t worry. No one is too inspired. And cops – our cops – will hardly be breaking down doors to check passports will they? People aren’t buying it. That screaming Austrian charisma just doesn’t translate into English. As for the Protocols, it will bore the kids to death.”

  She was only slightly mollified. He pressed on, trying to cheer her up.

  “It won’t catch on, lass. ‘Germany Awake’ and ‘Hail Victory’ aren’t exactly ‘Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité’ are they? You reckon we’ll go Nazi mad? Have you seen the goons coming out of the woodwork in BUF clobber?”

  Naomi opted to not answer, taking a lengthy swig of her Tetley’s while brooding over the hated Protocols, the hated registration, the hated Nazis. Paul tried to catch her eye with a smile.

  “I read it funny. In class, like… Make a real show of it, complete with theatrics. Act it like Fagin the Jew, with his gang of boy thieves…” Seeing how little impact the jokes had, Paul’s smile faded, and he sobered his tone. “Come on, lass; everyone knows it’s a load of old bollocks. The kids laugh.”

  “And the younger kids, Paul? The next generation of kids? The ones that follow?”

  He hesitated. “It won’t last that long.”

  She forced a laugh. “Oh, that’s right, Mr Writer. Your novel explains exactly how we defeat the forces of evil. Like a Winston bloody Churchill speech.”

  “Shh…”

  Paul glanced around, nervously. There were only a few local drunks in the pub, sat smoking pipes in their Sunday best. Paul always wondered about them. They had the air of defeat, of suppression and melancholy, which he understood as most had fought in the Great War. But these forlorn figures wore their Sunday best to the pub. Their demeanour of being broken men was masked; misery clad with the outward appearance of respectability. It confused him.

  Some hated him. One old man had approached him once at his table in the far corner, at the height of the Blitz, tottering over unsteadily as Paul sat reading quietly, drinking his fourth Tetley’s. “More like you, and we wouldn’t have held out even this long…” the man had said. “Bleedin’ coward.”

  “I’m a fireman,” Paul told him shortly. And when the man shouted at him again, he added a little less reservedly, “I’m a fireman, and a conscientious objector to war. I’ll help victims, not create them. I’ll do my bit for my country, but not by agreeing to what every other stupid bugger did, including those at the top who think war’s such a great pastime. All right? And I’ve not slept either, and I’m tired, and reading, so kindly piss off.”

  “You’re a ruddy coward, you bastard shirker,” the old man told Paul, utterly impervious to his irate counter.

  To his astonishment, the old man had spat on him, and then left. He’d never returned to the pub thereafter. Paul hoped he hadn’t killed himself in grief. He sometimes wondered.

  Now, Paul leaned in to Naomi.

  “Yeah. Well, about that… I figure it might help, it might not.”

  “So what’s the deal?”

  “Well, I write about England victorious.”

  She shook her head. “Impossible.”

  “Aha!” he cried. “That’s only retrospect convincing you of that. Really, things could, and probably should have gone differently.”

  Now he had her attention. He leaned in, suddenly animated.

  “The navy repulse an invasion. Obviously a few thousand Boche initially land, the Luftwaffe cause some mayhem, yada yada, but then the Navy, our lads, arrive in force. Churchill…” he leaned in closer, and his voice went even lower. Naomi could smell the cheap aftershave perfume he used on his neck. “… Churchill never got deposed. No armistice. No defeatism. Tell Jerry to go stick it up his arse. Fight to the last man. They know the SS won’t actually harm a single POW, or the yanks and maybe Stalin, the empire en masse; every other bugger will come in on our side… they call the bluff, hold their nerve. Whitehall stabilises. They rally together…”

  He was speaking faster than she’d ever heard him, bubbling with enthusiasm.

  “The Navy blocks further kraut supplies, support and troops sent from the coasts of France, Belgium and Holland. The air force didn’t overextend and get battered in May and early June, and the Germans delayed their planned invasion to mid-September at the earliest. By that time the RAF had recovered its losses. Then Jerry focuses only on bombing the cities, only uses the Messerschmitts for guarding bombers, instead of knocking out Spitfires faster than we can build new ’uns. They can’t support the divisions that landed. The rest of the Wehrmacht are stuck in France. The Boche navy can’t clear ours. The RAF holds out. The Jerries who landed run out of supplies. The invasion collapses.”

  Speaking quickly at barely more than a whisper, Naomi allowed herself to be taken in by the passion of Paul and she pondered, musing on the possibility. It seemed an insane concept, yet something about it rang true. Imagine, she thought. The Germans beaten back from British shores. Imagine.

  “If only,” she said wistfully. “I might still be a teacher. Thousands of others might still have their jobs. Thousands would still be alive,” she quickly added, catching herself lest Paul notice the unintended callousness.

  Paul scratched his chin, eyebrows raised. “Not be rain on the parade, but…” beats of hesitation. “loss of employment may not be the worst of this grim tale.”

  She smiled coldly, which was unnatural for her, and he shivered to see it.

  “When a madman appears sane, it is high time to put him in a straight-jacket,” she observed, once more reverting to Poe, one of the few favoured poets of Paul.

  “Even for those to whom life and death are equal jests, there are some things that are still held in respect,” he replied with his own, noting that it was inadequate in the face of such nihilism.

  “German blood, blond hair and wars of aggression seem to cover it,” she deadpanned back, ticking the three on her fingers.

  “Including Saxon blood, which miraculously and stupidly includes Britain. In reality we’re all as mongrel as each other, but who’s to tell Hitler that? Hopefully once the dust settles the issue fades instead of being focused on.”

  She smiled with warmth, now. “I’m confused. So you think I should stay the course, or go back to my place or leave the country or…” she shrugged, feigning indecision.

  His eyes held hers for milisecond too long; just enough time lapsed for him to see the question form in her mind, through her inquisitive eyes, dark brown and Semitic against his Celtic green.

  “Stay the course. We’ll ride through this storm,” he said smoothly.

  “You seem very sure about that, mister…” Naomi asked, half-hoping for reassurance. It came in the form of a churlish grin, as Paul raised his glass to her.

  “In vino veritas, missus,” he chuckled, and despite herself, Naomi let an understated giggle escape her lips as their pints met in silent toast. In wine there is truth.

  The bell tinkled, signalling last orders. There was a time when boos and jeers would greet this noise; that day in the Hyde Park Pub there was barely a stir. Naomi and Paul finished up, ordered a second pint which they drank at a leisurely pace, as Paul briefly, sadly described the unsightly scene he’d witnessed earlier in the day, before leaving for a nearby café that had peeling paper on the walls, furniture that seemed chintzy even for a greasy spoon, and a dumpy little woman with the disposition of a bulldog with venereal disease.

  They ordered two coffees, both winning their silent game of suppressing the urge to stare at the woman’s unsightly boils, and asked for two bacon butties. Paul r
egretted sharing the story of random German violence, and hoped it would not unsettle his friend. But her mind was elsewhere. Sitting down at the thick table of what felt like plastic, Naomi resumed questioning him about the book.

  “How are you going to get it printed? Assuming that’s what you’re after…?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” he replied breezily, trying to dissuade her from the conversation.

  “So how does this book end, if the invasion fails at the start?”

  Paul’s eyes lit up as he warmed to the subject, that of his creative juices flowing; basking in the product of his imagination. His animated demeanour was unforced and balanced, which she found endearing, and a yet-more intrusive feeling.

  “They come back next year – mid-to-late 1941 – having rebuilt the Luftwaffe and created a load more U-boats for the wolfpacks. Spain, France, Italy all join the hunt, so our Navy gets tied down fighting off four major powers simultaneously. Stretched, fighting for our lives. The air force can’t hold out. They land en masse; stabilise their position, and reinforcements flood in. Their stronghold widens; the advance begins. London capitulates, declared an open city…”

  “That’s more bloody like it,” she said darkly. He grimaced in reluctant agreement.

  “They execute Churchill. Neither he nor the Royals get out.”

  “My heart bleeds for Churchill and the royals,” she said again, bitterly. “Wish I was in bloody Canada.”

  He blanched, and she felt ashamed of herself.

  “I’m sorry, sorry,” she cooed hurriedly, a half-smile fixed on her pursed mouth. “You know I didn’t mean that. It’s the beer talking. Canada’s even colder than here. And there’s French people there. Frenchies.”

  He smiled widely at her. That was more like it.

  “Don’t worry. Ride it out, this registration bollocks will die a death. Anyway… well, yeah… viva le revolution. We rebel. The Scots come down to the northern cities, kind of like what happened but more of them, and the whole populace fights back. Eventually the Germans pull out, because it’s too costly and they cannot occupy England, let alone Britain. We win.”

  She considered the possibilities.

  “Paul…” she said slowly. “That’s not entertainment. That’s a bloody incitement to riot.”

  He didn’t respond, fixing her with a sudden look of intent. She recognised it for what it was.

  “Oh, bloody hell, Paul.”

  “Let’s just see how things turn out.”

  “Paul, even owning the paper you write that thing on will be a death sentence.”

  He shook a young head of slicked

  “Don’t worry.”

  She folded her arms, crossly.

  “I know you will anyway, because you’re bloody-minded and stubborn. And for what you’ve done for me, and my family, I can’t disagree with you. But I think you’re daft.”

  He leaned in, something sombre, sorrowful, in the smooth contours of his boyish face.

  “Naomi… I’m not a fighter. I never was. Never will be.”

  Her eyes searched his. There was fire in them as she’d never seen, and the hair on the back of her neck prickled.

  “But we can’t just let the ideals of this country die. Even if those at the top are comfortable with that happening, and the classes who flourish regardless of system. I mean the intangibles. The sense of fair play and good conduct. Democracy, even. Civil rights. Everything that wasn’t represented in that scene I witnessed, and the countless others that have happened and are happening and will happen… And this is how I can help. If I muster people up to fight, at least it would be for the right cause.”

  “Plenty of people die for the right cause,” she observed sadly.

  He nodded in silent acknowledgment, but in this thoughtful expression, Naomi saw no crisis of confidence, and knew that he’d go ahead with his plan.

  ~

  The pale light faded as the afternoon wore on; obscured by clouds, the sun pierced through with less frequency as a chilly breeze bit the young teachers with sudden force. They returned to Paul’s flat after a lengthy stroll around the park, by which time the sun had fully set, and darkness descended on England’s north.

  Neither had acknowledged it, but the sight of Blackshirts marching in Woodhouse Moor – known to most as Hyde Park – had deeply disturbed them. It seemed so raw, so visceral; to celebrate a foreign triumph over countrymen. And why the park? The very centre of the city centre was barely a mile down the road.

  “Perhaps they’ve marched here from the city centre barracks. An evening break from licking German boots,” Paul joked. The responding chuckle had been hollow.

  Sunlight had pierced the red-brick estate street at intervals, thinly pricked beams of light forcing through the gaps in the park trees. Were it not for the serious, marching men in the park, the leafy parkside lane, nestled away to the far-corner of the wide open space, would look for all the world like a late-summer day in the north of England. Unoccupied, with no antagonistic political force present, nor unwelcome foreign visitors.

  And no grieving families. Brothers, sons, nephews and cousins lost. And for what?

  “A lad I used to be friends with at school signed up,” Paul found himself blurting.

  She looked at him in surprise. Despite some slight crossovers, Naomi and her younger friend had different social circles, but while she had to admit that Paul’s friends were an eclectic mixed bag – an assorted bunch of aspiring artists, writers and fellow teachers with creative ambition – with odd quirks and traits, none of them were particularly disagreeable, let alone malevolent. It was hard to imagine Paul associating with a man who would sign with the British Fascists. Even Oswald Moseley, it was now thought, had supposedly renounced support for a foreign occupier and had been resultingly praised, appeased, publicly elevated and then marginalised.

  He caught her look and nodded, glumly. “Tony. Lost touch after school. Used to want to be a fireman. Christ, I wonder what happened to him? The kid’s from t’ Rookwoods, was just an estate kid without a farthing to scratch his arse with. Knew nothing, but he were pretty ’appy. Nice lad in fact. Used to play football together on Sundays; he had no prejudice, no politics, only one or two phrases he’d picked up from his daft old man. Now…” he said bitterly, gesturing to the field, “he’s that.”

  Paul’s head slowly shook from side-to-side, surreptitiously watching the fascist demonstration in the park – almost detatched from his own movements, bemused. How had Tony ended up a fascist? How had these people? How had so many in Europe done likewise?

  The Fascist Blackshirts, or BUF party members, had all taken to walking with newfound arrogance in general, which was received with widespread disgust. Paul had commented on his previous visit two days prior that he’d seen a march in the city centre, some kind of asinine SA mimicry. They were yet to wield clubs, thankfully, and their overall insolence was tempered by a more British approach.

  Of course, Paul realised even as he observed their restraint, Britain had not had to deal with the frantic revolutions and bloody mutinies on the home front after defeat in the Great War, nor economic collapse. Germany had, until recently at least, lived through an altogether more dramatic 20th century within its own borders than had Britain. Yet still, as wargames, it was sinister to see the emergence of that blackshirted street dominance. There was something animal about its visage; the alpha behaviour as exhibited in the world of primates, along with the threat of violence as the ultimate victory; reason and restraint dismissed as an all-too human quality, representing decadence to the hard young men of the new, strong, fascist continent. A scientific regression, almost religious; the belligerent disdain of softening principles and glory inherent in abandoning one’s own mind to a cult. Fledgling as it may be, neither of the studious young Brits had any doubts that it would not take long for the proud, raw recruits to the cause to evolve from man to machine; violence comes naturally in the right circumstances. Göring, for one, had voice
d public approval and praise for the BUF, though Hitler was yet to comment.

  And as it was wryly pointed out through Chinese whispers of the knowing, it had been Göring who seized control of the police force in 1933, set up concentration camps and turned the SA loose. Don’t trust the fat man, they said. Fat and jolly men too can do terrible, wicked things. So can bank clerks, and bus conductors. Create the machinery of tribalism and fuel it with fear; enough people will soon embrace it through self-interest. Incalculable suffering and calculated pragmatism often go hand-in-hand.

  ~

  In the end, Paul was too tired to bother leaving, and he once more took a blanket upstairs to the sofa. He bade a swift exit, refusing to hear of her protestations, and in the ensuing silence of the dark underground room, tiredness descended on Naomi. To her surprise, despite only having been awake several hours, sleep came naturally.

  She awoke to his knocking on the wooden beam.

  “Come in, Paul, it’s your room,” she murmured sleepily, wriggling with pleasure as she stretched her limbs, still in a dozing state.

  “Top o’ the mornin’. I’ve brought you some breakfast.”

  That woke her up fast. She sat up, dumbly rubbing sleep out of her gummy eyes with her knuckles, to see that he carried a tray on which sat a plate of buttered toast and eggs, a biscuit and a cup of tea.

  “You’re a star, you know that?” Naomi shook her head in wonder.

  “Nonsense, it’s a pleasure.”

  Bloody hell, she’s beautiful, he thought. Even with her hair now tousled and hanging in knotty clumps, freshly awoken from slumber in a basement. She was radiant.

  “You shouldn’t waste your rations, Paul. I don’t know if I can eat,” she confessed, expecting him to break into his usual repertoire of teasing jokes and silly puns. He didn’t.

  “Try, lass. Try.”

  And he looked so earnest that she gulped down one of the toast slices.

  Paul consciously avoided her with his eyes, after the first bite; feigning interest in one of the discarded books on the couch, he retreated to its distant sanctuary and as casually as he could, tried to read. Her morning presence in his bed, a visage of strange vitality, had shaken him with a visceral quality, and simultaneously filled him with lust and attacked his fragile self-belief. Somewhere in his mind, he was dimly aware that a barrier of sorts in his mind had broken down; a lessened inhibition, or just an epiphany? Or was he simply scared and listless, and twisted by the occupation? He couldn’t be sure, but wired as he was, Paul conceded – almost relieved – that he was definitely not powered, at least primarily, by lust.