Alternative Reich

The greatest shock to this planet’s system was the Second World War. While the great powers fought and bled for six years in campaigns whose outcomes now seem predetermined, there were many moments of what Winston Churchill would call a “close run thing.”

Great men rose and fell, battles were won and lost, the glow of sublime heroism burned side by side with the lights of perverted science, and for every triumph, there was the shadow of tragedy or failure.

The Failure of Imagination. In 1935 the Nazis held an Exhibit of Degenerate Art, which Germans flocked to in droves, mostly for the wrong reasons. But when some truly disturbing paintings appeared, Joseph Goebbels sent a young GeStaPo officer to find the artist in “I Paint What I See.”

The Failure of Democracy. Democracy has already failed in “A Storm Over Cumorah,” when German envoys arrived in New York in an attempt to persuade the Mormon President to deny aid to the British. The pivot point was 1940, and the pendulum was already swinging.

The Failure of Faith. In 1941 the evil that was Hitler invaded Russia and came up against the evil that was Stalin. This titanic struggle of two great war machines left little room for doubt among the soldiers who did the fighting and dying. But there were older forces in play, like the “Vrykolax.”

The Failure of Espionage pervaded 1944 as spy Moe Berg worked to determine how close the Germans were to achieving an atomic bomb in “The Heisenberg Errand.” The best Allied minds were working on the problem. But was it the right problem? There were many ways to skin a cat or a cataclysm.

The Failure of Intelligence went right down to the basics. If you put an idiot in the mix, or worse, in charge and give him any power, he’ll do what idiots do. 1945. “The Day We Really Lost the War.”

And perhaps the major failure was the Failure of Peace because its repercussions echoed forward into the years of rebuilding if rebuilding was even allowed to happen. For the hatred of war would follow and poison the body of humanity forever. “And the Sea Shall Give Up Its Dead.”