Jackboot Britain: The Alternate History - Hitler's Victory & The Nazi UK! by Daniel S. Fletcher

had sunk into a sort of resigned slump. Those veterans of the Great War and the filth of Flanders Field and the Somme, the men of Passchendaele and Ypres, could not comprehend the apparent quiet with which the rest of the men left in the cities apparently accepted their fate. These can always be spotted, still; the ones who thus far have avoided the surprisingly well-informed forced recruitment policies of the Germans to send able-bodied workers to the factories and Organisation Todt – well-recompensed, they assured the public –they’re conspicuous at a glance. To a man they carry the unmistakeable, haunted look of inconsolable misery and heavy-hearted widespread dejection felt since the first Germans in feldgrau landed on British soil.
    Simon stopped. That was enough for today. He knew that the spirit remained, even here , deep in occupied territory; peace pacts and nominal sovereignty be damned. Even those not actively resisting, out with the rebels and hiding in shelters, made do with mocking remarks about ‘Jerry’ – actual pleasure of the foreign victory was rare; even a conflicted Oswald Moseley’s fascist interests had supposedly waned. British pride still lived. But with forced factory conscription, prisoners-of-war overseas and the awful uncertainty of the future, the jokes rang hollow; less the bleak cynicism of Britain, and closer in essence to the gallows humour of the condemned. No matter how reassuring the radio broadcasts were, fear remained. Even those with sons, husbands and brothers in factories, captivity or shallow graves soon came to be shaken from their apathy with a real and pronounced trepidation of what might happen to them too, and to Britain entire.
    About to finish, the word ‘apathy’ triggered him, and he penned a conclusion in the hope that he could properly capture the zeitgeist of the moment, wryly noting even as he did so the German origin of ‘ der geist seiner zeit. ’ The pen scribbled assuredly; words flowing with rediscovered confidence.
    All men, women and children can fall prey to war’s capricious, indiscriminate evil. The inimitable George Orwell – dear Eric, of course – penned a marvellous account of the war in Spain (non-fictional, unlike the American Hemingway), a tragic prelude to Europe’s wider suffering, and victory for the fascist forces of Franco. Sadly, I believe that to date, it has sold only several hundred copies, overshadowed as the Spanish conflict was by the growing menace of Franco’s foreign allies. But had this country bothered to pay attention to that epic clash, and read this book, the warning at its conclusion might have resonated; “… all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs…”
    London, much like Leeds, Bristol, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Liverpool, Manchester, and just about every other city and town within four hours’ drive of the capital have certainly been jerked out of that slumber; explosions, gunfire, artillery; the ominous stuttering of distant guns drawing closer, all the nasty apparatus of war and destruction, and the panicked anguish of the dying as war’s hell finally reached them and shattered their gentle peace.
     

Fearful, darting eyes could be seen blinking behind curtained windows; despite the weather, there was a repressed tension in the air that was brutally palpable, almost electric. Everyone knew – soldiers and civilians alike – that someone, anyone, could strike sparks anywhere. In Leeds, Wehrmacht soldiers who were billeted in the centre and at Armley Palace to the west patrolled cautiously through the central districts that still bore the marks of what had first been defence, and then frenzied, desperate rebellion. It had collapsed in impotent fury and defiance, much like the rival ideologies and social paradigms that had proven weak in the face of the insurmountable jackbooted beast that was