by Scott Palter
Levi, Ruth (1902–1940): Greta’s mother. Also known as “Crazy Ruth”. Belligerent, argumentative, seen by her sister and daughter as a how-not-to manual for adult behavior.
Lincoln, Billy (1900–?): WW1 veteran, in one of the Pals Battalions. Old sweat, working-class.
Mason, Garth (1896–?): Staff officer sent to Malta. Coldstream Guards.
Maurice, Hans (1894–?): WW1, artillery. Freikorps. SA.
Money-Penny, James (1913–?): Harrow. One year of Cambridge. Soldier of fortune/gun for hire. Speaks over twenty languages. Excellent physical health, amazing reflexes, high intelligence, near to photographic memory, amazing social intelligence and no visible scruples.
Morgan, Henry[starts out as Hymie in pre-WW1 Hungary; a relative of the Cohens and Levi’s] (1899-?): he’s a smooth con man, counterfeiter, and fence. Has multiple identities and supposed nationalities. He is currently presenting himself as Captain Morgan, a Canadian veteran of the Great War.
Pentangeli, Vincenzo (1909–?): Italian reserve second lieutenant. used good connections to secure posting. Trained paratrooper. Fluent in English and German.
Peters, Frauke (1921-1940): A 110% Nazi who thinks Hitler was Jesus come to Earth. BMD and Camp Guard Corps. Fantastically good looking [Camp nickname was ‘the Dresden China Doll’]. Figure out of a Playboy Centerfold, ice blue eyes and corn silk blond rich lush hair with a perfect heart shaped face. Eyes are ever so slightly large for her face, making her look somewhat younger. Smart, despises being treated as a sex object. She’s been hit on since she started to develop breasts and hips at 12 and is still a virgin by choice. Extremely determined and focused. Of middle class Saxon descent.
Pieri, Bruno (1896-?): Think of this as a semi-fictional character. The last name, rank of militia lieutenant colonel, and approximate age correspond to a historic person. Everything else is fictional. We needed an officer who spoke Yiddish, and this gentleman from Trieste seemed likely to know that tongue. The real version stayed a POW after Italy switched sides. Either he was a true believer in Il Duce, or he just saw switching sides as treason.
Prezan, Florian (1897-?): Mildly corrupt, middling-efficient Romanian policeman known to the Schwabe/Cohen family. Any future volume resemblance to Captain Renault from Casablanca is purely coincidental.
Saxon, Naiomi (1915-?): Romanian Betar lieutenant. Veteran of Rommel’s brief anti-Soviet campaign in Romania. Befriends Greta. Ran her female platoon well on Malta and is now a 1st Lieutenant. Operates under Greta’s orders most of the time. Name is ‘Saxon’ because Strauss got tired of writing Schwabe every time the real name was too Jewish.
Schmidt, Alois (1919–?): Ramcke’s aide. A hero of Malta. Major after Malta. Complete weasel but brave.
Scott, Reginald [Nickname ‘Jutland’] (1900–1940): WW1 veteran, and commander of HMS Thunderchild. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but a decent officer.
Siegel, Karl (1910–?): University graduate, law. SS. Protégé of Schellenberg. “One of the smart ones”.
Smith, John (1922 - ?): Born in Oregon of German immigrant parents. JHS dropout – this was the Depression and the family needed him to work. Knows driving, trucks, tractors, machinery. Family returned to the Fatherland in 1937 and he becomes Johann Schmidt. Siegel has taken him from the HJ for his English language skills. He speaks perfect General American English and only passable German (kitchen table back home, plus three-year immersion course when he arrived ‘home’). He’s just been bumped to NL Lieutenant and made Siegel’s minder to Joey Bats, which to some extent means to Brigade Strauss.
Steiner, Klaus (1922–?): Socially awkward young man whom fate will make a hero. Short (his growth spurt is possibly late from restricted nutrition), squeaky voice, stutters. The classic “good kid”. Highest Rank: NL Oberstleutnant, so far. Also SS Sturmbannführer. Just became a Nazi Party member in book 2.
Stephan (1920–?): ex-pimp, and worker at Wanda’s bar/brothel. Dika’s “boyfriend”. Roma.
Strauss, Gunter (1902–?): WW1 veteran. Iron Division and other Freikorps, postwar. Early member Nazi Party and SA. Feldherrnhalle veteran. Spent most of the rest of the 20’s in New York, but maintained Party membership. Active in SA 1930–1934. Sidelined after Blood Purge, but got postal job from patronage. Very tall, extremely muscular, bright. His ideals burned out after 1934 and he’s in it for himself. Highest Rank: NL Brigadier, so far. Also SS Sturmbannführer.
Voss, Gregor (1900–?): Underage volunteer, WW1. Iron Division and Freikorps, postwar. Early Nazi and SA. Worked at the post office with Gunter and Adolph. Artificial foot and bad leg. A reactionary, nationalist hard-ass, but never took to Nazi ideology. He was Nazi instead of Nationalist because he’s a populist who dislikes the old ruling elites. His adoptive “nephew” Hans is a 25-year-old with the mind of a 12-year-old. Gregor never married. Not gay but somewhat indifferent to women and sex.
Wanda [last name never mentioned in text, but was Duch] (1914–?): Her father was a Pole from Lodz who chose to serve Kaiser instead of Czar. Marries his Polish girlfriend at the end of the war, legitimizing the daughter he had by her, Wanda. Wanda is Polish by blood and German by rearing. Thinks of herself as German, but is proud of being known as “the Polack”. Thrown out of her parents’ house at 12 as incorrigible (boys, drinking, wild living). Has her oldest son, Adam, at 13. Always been on the fringes of the criminal life, but a hard worker and inveterate entrepreneur. Longtime bootlegger. Never was a sex worker and never did strongarm. Was friends with people who did both and worse. Hates most establishment figures and the Communists (a set of puritan zealots, in her opinion). Never formally a Nazi, but in the culture of the ex-Freikorps street fighters. Six children, the last two by Adolph Wrede. Through him, she’s friends with Gunter Strauss. Never pretty and the years have not been kind. Medium height, massive muscles (did heavy labor much of her life), sharp wit, acid tongue. VERY loyal to her friends.
Witt, Alfred (1891-?): Half Jewish WW1 veteran and Finance Ministry official. Pushed out of government job by Aryanization laws. Survived by doing cash business as a bookkeeper. He didn’t seem ‘Jewish’ (he was raised Lutheran), and his prices were cheap. He was also a wizard on filling out government forms. His two quarter-Jewish sons Arne (1915-?) and Uwe (1918-?) followed in his footsteps in terms of career. Not Aryanized until 1940 when they were expelled from Army service in the spring Aryanizations of the Army. Wife Kerstin (1896-?) was a full Aryan and Lutheran. Refused social pressure to divorce husband and abandon tainted sons. Mother Helen (1869 -?) was a full Jew. Her dead husband Karl (1864-1934) was Aryan and Lutheran. The family is educated, frugal, not especially religious, but the sort of middle class the successive German regimes built their civil service on back to the Great Elector of Brandenburg in the 17th Century. At this point in their lives they are loyal minions of Heydrich, because they are all too aware of how quickly and easily their resurrection could be reversed.
Wrede, Adolph (1898–?): WW1 veteran. Freikorps, but not Iron Division. Early Nazi and SA. Postal worker. A hard man whose one soft spot is his common-law wife Wanda and their children. NL Major and quite willing to plateau at that rank if it keeps him beside Wanda and out of field duty.
Glossary
Glossary
1922 Committee – the organization of Tory backbenchers in the British Parliament. They work in the twilight but can unmake prime ministers.
54 Broadway – 1940 headquarters address for British MI-6/SIS. The address was often used as a shorthand way for those in the know to talk about the agency in public.
AEF – literally American Expeditionary Force. This was the American Army Group that Pershing commanded in France in 1918. After the war it became a shorthand for the entire idea of the US intervening in Europe’s interminable wars. Retrospectively, the US public decided we had been swindled by a mix of tricky Europeans, the US arms merchants / merchants of death, the bankers (Wall Street and the City of London) and a US Eastern Establishment that was joined at the hip by marr
iage and schooling to the British upper classes. Quietly swept under the rug were US outrage at unrestricted submarine warfare, and the Zimmermann Telegram links to Mexican revanchism. There was just enough truth in each of the multiple overlapping conspiracy theories to give them political strength, more so once the Europeans repudiated their war debts. Even those people in the late 30’s US sympathetic to the West/opposed to Hitler, found the idea of millions of Americans being sent to Europe to die in someone else’s war over Danzig (which not one American in a hundred could find on a map) repugnant. That many of those pushing for intervention were Jews who seemed more concerned about their European kin than their American homeland, simply opened other fissures in the US body politic (the equally pro-war US Poles incited less bile because at least they were Christians and mostly weren’t Reds). Contrapuntally, the most anti-intervention groups were US Irish (anything the hated English were for, they were opposed to) and the Upper Midwest (lots of Germans and Scandinavians who did not want the US fighting against their homelands; a generalized hatred of the East Coast and bankers; a regional dislike of the Roosevelt administration as being the creature of Dixie and the weird East Coast cities).
AH – alternate history
Air Marshal – term used for Air Force Field Marshals
Alliance Française– a French cultural organization dedicated to imparting French language and civilization in a broad sense to the world. Very influential in Alexandria, where French was in many ways the main language for communication between the city’s many ethnic and religious communities.
AMR 35 – a French ‘cavalry tank’. It was relatively fast but armed only with a machine gun. It was also mechanically cranky, as were many French designs. They were designed by committee, and often with more of an eye to budget constraints and defense industrial issues than combat utility; the French army could never make up its mind on tank doctrine, for complex institutional reasons.
Arditi – Italian shock troops from WW1. Similar to German storm troops, but more elite in the manner of the mountain Jägers Rommel served in. Many of these veterans helped form the Fascist Party postwar. In our ATL, Italy will bring them back.
Arrow Cross – Hungarian far-right political movement. The Hungarian right and far-right post-1918 was a maze of feuding small parties set beside the dominant ruling Horthyites. Arrow Cross were not as crazy as Romanian Iron Guard or Croatian Ustache, but even the local Hungarian Nazis thought they were insane. OTL, the German Nazis force them into power when Horthy tries to dump the Nazi alliance to save Hungary, 1943–1944.
Associated Negro Press - a press association of 150+ Negro papers and periodicals, based in Chicago (which in this era contested with New York's Harlem as the unofficial capital of Negro America). The Association reporters provided national and overseas coverage for the mostly locally-based member publications.
ATL – alternate time line. This book is an AH set in an ATL.
Banana Wars – between the two World Wars the US Marine Corps was used in various interventions the US carried out in Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. Duty included counter-guerrilla, trainers/cadres for native forces, nation building, and various other small-war operations. The Marines who served there provided a valuable source of knowledge on fighting in poorly developed tropical lands in the Pacific and post WW2 (China, South Korea, Philippines, Indochina).
BDM - Bund Deutscher Mädel – League of German Girls. Nazi Girl Scouts. Sarcastically known as ‘League of SS Mattresses’ for the obvious sexual reasons. Many modern readers may find period sexism crude. I have cleaned it up quite a bit but it will still seem over the top to sensitive souls.
beschissenes Schlamassel – shitty mess
Betar – paramilitary youth movement of Revisionist Zionists (short form, modern Likud). Strong in Poland, Baltic States, Romania.
Black Roman Nobility – the section of the aristocracy who sided with the Pope when the Italian state took Rome from the former Papal states.
Blood Purge – liquidation of the SA leadership and, to a lesser extent, of the radical wing of the Nazi Party in 1934. Used as a cover for more generalized score-settling by Göring, Himmler, et al.
Blue Max – Technically, Pour le Mérite. The highest award for bravery under Prussian Kings and German Kaisers. Dropped with the Weimar Republic. In this series, reinstated 1940 by Rommel and then confirmed by Göring.
Bomb Plot – the closest of the many anti-Hitler plots to come to actually killing him. Its failure put the radicals firmly in charge, and contributed to the huge German losses of people and physical capital in those last ten hellish months. July 20, 1944.
Brownsville Boys/ Murder Incorporated – this collection of Italian and Jewish killers was the enforcement arm of the Five Families after Luciano unified the gangs. Based out of Rosie "Midnight Rose" Gold's 24/7 candy store in Brooklyn, they also operated as contract killers for gangs across the US and for ‘civilians’ with gang connections (many people had such, as the gangs controlled many legitimate businesses including commercial garbage hauling - which meant every small business in NYC had a connection). Dewey destroyed the first version in the second half of the 30’s. The former #2, Albert ‘the Mad Hatter’ Anastasia, recreated the operation with less visible people. The original cadre were street punks whose style of dress, poor anger control, and flamboyant lifestyle called too much police attention to themselves. The best guess is they killed several thousand people before Anastasia was assassinated in the late 1950’s. By then the original cadre of killers were aging out and the young men preferred the drug trade, which paid better.
Buffalo Soldiers – the Regular US Army post-Civil War had four regiments of what are now called African Americans. In 1940 terms, Colored or Negro. The vast bulk of the officers were white in these. 24th, 25th Infantry; 9th, 10th Cavalry. In the world of Jim Crow America, the Army was a good job. So while the white regiments got the scum of the Earth mixed with newbies just off the boat (military service mixed poor wages, abysmal living conditions, and very low social status), the Buffalo Soldiers got top-notch men who usually stayed with the colors for 20-30 years (blacks were kept out of most of the better things that led whites to shun serving). The “Buffalo” name supposedly comes from the reaction of a Native American nation (accounts vary as to which) over the nappy, curly hair common to the West Africans these men were descended from.
Bursche – in a military sense an officer’s batman or orderly
Castle Hill – government quarter of Budapest.
Chain Dogs – German military police. The name comes from a metal gorget they wore as a means of branch identification. Deserved reputation as “hardcore”.
Chancellery Guard – fictional security force created by Heydrich and Nebe. Nebe is first head.
Chicago Tribune – the most widely read of a linked group of fanatically anti-New Deal, anti-FDR, Isolationist newspapers in the US. Best known for publishing the US Navy’s secret WW2 code breaking operations after the victory at Midway in 1942. Tribune did this essentially out of spite and bile.
China Marines – US treaty garrison force interwar period, mostly in Shanghai but like the Army force in Tientsin (15th Infantry Regiment) often pulled hither and yon protecting consulates and other US interests. These two regiments were the only US source for ground combat cadres with any knowledge of East Asian culture or methods of war.
China Station – USN headquarters in Shanghai. Controlled a small squadron of ocean-going ships, the riverine boats (by treaty US and Britain were allowed armed patrol boats on China’s major rivers, especially the Yangtse), the China Marine garrisons in Shanghai and Tientsin, and the most important signal intercept station the USN possessed. In OTL it was tasking against Japan almost up to Pearl. Pulled out just in time for air transport to Hawaii.
Congress of Industrial Organizations/CIO – the more radical of the two US labor federations. In OTL it would (mostly) purge the actual Communists post-WW2. As the name says, it
did organization by industry rather than crafts as the more traditional American Federation of Labor did. CIO was the more politically active of the two, and tended to back FDR and squabble with him from the Left. They merge into AFL-CIO in 1950’s. AFL initially dominated the politics of the Federation for the first generation, but, over time, the Federation becomes more like the CIO, and has drifted leftwards, in part due to the rising strength of government workers unions.
Control Group – Japanese Army faction that opposed the radicals of both Imperial Way/Strike North and the IJN’s Strike South faction. It was more status quo and reactive. This is the group that ran things, with some brief interruptions, 1931-1945.
Counterfactuals – new term for AH’s by professionals trying to remove the amateur and fiction taint from such speculations.
Falange / old shirt Falangism – interwar Spanish rightwing revolutionary party. Its doctrines were a bizarre mix of futurism, syndicalism, Italian fascism, and some unique strains of Spanish autocratic nationalism. The membership was mostly young, urban, highly educated middle-to-upper-middle-class youngsters who wanted the chic of being radicals but rebelled at the left’s internationalism and hatred of the traditional higher classes. There was a second, much smaller wing, of the children of rural landlords to whom it was a chic way to defend their traditional privileges without the rigid Catholicism of the normal Spanish right. The urban wing was near exterminated at the start of the Spanish Civil War. The cities stayed loyal to the Republic, and the left chekas knew who the Falangists were. Franco then took over the dead husk of the party. Dictators of the period were supposed to have a party, and the Falange label was a banner under which to unite opportunists and careerists. However, a small wing tried to remain loyal to its revolutionary roots. These were a mix of relatives of the slaughtered original members (especially younger brothers) and Anarchist defectors to whom the revolutionary syndicalism was familiar. These were known as old shirt Falangists from the claim that they still had their tattered old blue Falange shirts from before the Civil War (and thus were distinguished from the mass of newbies who had no ideology beyond selfserving loyalty to Franco personally). Coxita was attempting to reposition herself as one of these, instead of the selfish little sellout that she is. DiSalo wasn’t having it. He didn’t care if she played let’s-pretend. He just wanted the pretentiousness dialed radically back.