History Literature / Timeline191

* BecauseYouWereNiceToMe: Cassius Madison later repays the multiple times Jerry Dover helped his family through Freedom Party witch hunts by using the political pull he'd gained in the US for killing Jake Featherston by getting the latter released from a POW camp.

* RuleOfCool: YMMV, but things seem to go all too well for the CSA between 1861 and about 1915 considering it is a nepotistic, ethnically divided country that ties itself to a rural economy and slavery while the rest of the world embraces the second industrial revolution. It's justified since the intention of the author was to recycle UsefulNotes/WorldWarI [[RecycledINSPACE IN AMERICA!]], but still. Still plausible within limits, in that the Confederacy is no longer practicing slavery by 1915 (replacing it with an apartheid-analogue; South Africa in our timeline was able to industrialize well enough despite the limitations of the system). Proximity to the United States provides lots of opportunities for industrial espionage, with people like Clarence Potter able to take advantage of US university educations during peacetime. And Britain and France--two of the most industrialized countries in the world at the time--are close at hand to provide technical expertise. However, given that the Confederacy from the start is far behind the United States in population and expertise, and the United States as a tremendous head start in industrialization, their success in this timeline has to be taken with a grain of salt. Yet none of that explains how the CSA was able to start after the USA and Germany on [[spoiler:superbombs]], finish one before the USA, and do so without anyone mentioned from our history working for the CSA on the project. There is no plausible explanation for how the CSA pulled that off.

%%* ForWantOfANail: Special Orders 191.

* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: George Armstrong Custer, of the "lucky idiot" variety.
* HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct: Subclause "if not him, somebody else".

** The Great War begins the same way it does it our world, despite nearly fifty years of completely divergent history before it. While history in general becomes ForWantOfANail afterwards, historical characters still crop up in similar positions to where they would have been. Winston Churchill is still born -- despite having an American mother -- and is Prime Minister during the Second Great War. Justified in that Churchill was born in 1874, while the animosity between the US and Britain doesn't start until 1881. It is strange that his being half-American never comes up though. Also justified in that Churchill probably didn't advertise his ancestry heavily given the hostility between the two countries. As a relentless self-promoter early in his career, Churchill would be unlikely to bring up anything that would jeopardize his prospects. He was also estranged from his parents in RealLife, and there's no reason to suspect that the family dynamics were altered by the changes in this timeline.
** George S. Patton is a Confederate general in this timeline; whether or not he's the same George S. Patton as in our timeline is a matter for debate, as the historical Patton's maternal grandfather settled in California (a US territory in TL-191) prior to the Civil War[[note]]Patton in RealLife was a California native[[/note]], while his paternal grandfather remained in Virginia and fought for the Confederacy. In other words, TL-191 Patton is so awesome a character that ''[[GrandfatherParadox he can survive even though his parents never met!]]''
** Fidel Castro appears as a Cuban revolutionary, but he may not be the same Fidel Castro as in our timeline. Castro in our timeline was the son of a Spanish conscript soldier who was sent to put down the rebellion in Cuba in 1895...long after the CSA seized Cuba in TL-191 (sufficiently long, in fact, for the historical Castro's father still to have been a young boy well below conscription age).

** The US Boeing-71 "[[AwesomeMcCoolName Screaming Eagle]]" fighter jet used near the end of the Second Great War is basically a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_262 Messerschmitt Me-262 Schwalbe]].

** The CSA has the "Mule" dive bomber (a.k.a. "[[AwesomeMcCoolName The Asskicker]]"), their own version of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuka Ju-87 Stuka]].

* CelebrityCasualty: In ''Drive to the East'', UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter is an 18-year-old sailor in the Confederate States Navy and is killed by an army major in battle.

** The complete lack of anything resembling a free society anywhere on the planet. The USA and CSA are effectively police states (with the CSA becoming an outright dictatorship under Featherston) for all that they have elections and pay lipservice to individual rights. Every other country mentioned in the series is either a dictatorship, becomes a dictatorship, is under occupation by a dictatorship, or a puppet state of a dictatorship ([[spoiler: Quebec and Houston--later the whole once-again-independent Republic of Texas for the USA, with Haiti implied as a USA protectorate. Parts of Mexico and the whole of Cuba were annexed by the CSA, and the [[NonIndicativeName Empire of Mexico]] is heavily implied to be a puppet of the CSA.]]). UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII equivalents playing out in full bloody detail in North America as well as Europe don't help matters.

** The USA has most of the North American continent either under direct military occupation or as puppet states (Texas, Quebec, likely fate of Cuba and Mexico) after 1944. Sustaining martial law in an area several times the size of the core USA probably will require its citizens to make even more sacrifices in the name of security. There are, however, indications that the USA's new acquisitions/puppets may fall into line. Perhaps most importantly, the Canadian resistance has been absolutely shattered, and most Canadians seem to be assimilating well (there are also indications that Canadian provinces will be granted statehood at some point). Texas will likely be able to govern itself. Cuba will probably be fairly pro-US, because it funded Fidel Castro's anti-Confederate rebellion. The US also has a lot of friends in Mexico, due to their funding of the (losing) republican side in their Spanish Civil War-analogue before WWII. Quebec has always been quiescent. As for the old Confederacy, though, it seems like the US will be in for a long insurgency.
** The real crapsack world here would be those under the dominion of UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan, who are implied to be becoming more and more brutally militaristic with each success. And with the US uninterested in them after the Second Great War other than keeping them from US Pacific assets, they're pretty much left to RapePillageAndBurn East Asia at their leisure.
** Ironically thanks to the invention of the superbomb, there are signs that the world will turn out for the better in the future. Much like in OTL, the rampant use of superbombings has caused nations that have superbombs to be weary of deploying them, while those who ''don't'' have superbombs are more willing to fall in line lest they wind up like London, Hamburg, Paris, Philadelphia or Charleston. Alongside is the ratification of the Dewey Doctrine, in which the US, alongside Germany, will police the world to ensure that superbomb technology does not spread, all the while a growing focus on rebuilding is spreading amongst the nations. Overall, the end of the Second Great War is just as hopeful as the end of our World War II, perhaps even more so as the Soviet Union and accompanying RedScare do not exist.

** And not a very pleasant one either (considering a lot more countries end up being militaristic superpowers armed to the teeth or become battlefields of the various post-ACW conflicts). It ends in a full-on atomic war, with bombs going off ''everywhere''. (''Except'' Japan, ironically enough.) To wit: Philadelphia was the first city nuked, by a bomb driven into the city on a truck by Confederate infiltrators. Newport News (near Richmond) and Charleston, both by the USA; the former as an attempt to assassinate Jake Featherston (Hitler-analogue) and the latter because it was one of the few Confederate cities not already completely destroyed or occupied[[note]]as well as for symbolic vengeance against South Carolina for being the first state to originally secede from the Union[[/note]]. The Germans went on a huge spree, nuking Petrograd (St. Petersburg), Paris, London, Norwich, and Brighton, the last three as retaliation for the British nuking Hamburg. Aside from Hamburg, the British also dropped another bomb, probably intended for Berlin, but the plane carrying it was shot down and the bomb fizzled somewhere on the North German plain.

** Ironically thanks to the invention of the superbomb, there are signs that the world will turn out for the better in the future. Much like in OTL (but UpToEleven), the rampant use of superbombings has caused nations that have superbombs to be weary of deploying them, while those who ''don't'' have superbombs are more willing to fall in line lest they wind up like London, Hamburg, Paris, Philadelphia or Charleston. Alongside is the ratification of the Dewey Doctrine, in which the US, alongside Germany, will police the world to ensure that superbomb technology does not spread, all the while a growing focus on rebuilding is spreading amongst the nations. Overall, the end of the Second Great War is just as hopeful as the end of our World War II, perhaps even more so as the Soviet Union and accompanying RedScare do not exist.

** Often discussed [[spoiler:near the end of the series by U.S characters, since basically every Confederate down to civilians had at least a strong inkling of what was happening the Negro population and did nothing, and just how far the legal prosecution should stretch. Abell tacitly admits when asked that a number of CSA figures who can't be tried for crimes against humanity are going to, or already have, suffered some unfortunate "accidents", to which Dowling can't argue with when in return asked if they really deserve to live.]]

** Often discussed [[spoiler:near the end of the series by U.S characters, since basically every Confederate down to civilians had at least a strong inkling of what was happening the Negro population and did nothing, and just how far the legal prosecution should stretch. Abell tacitly admits when asked a number of CSA figures who can't be tried for crimes against humanity are going to or have already suffered some unfortunate "accidents", to which Dowling can't argue with when in return asked if they really deserve to live.]]

** Often discussed [[spoiler:near the end of the series by U.S characters, since basically every Confederate down to civilians had at least a strong inkling of what was happening the Negro population and did nothing, and just how far the legal prosecution should stretch. Abell tacitly admits when asked a number of CSA figures who can't be tried for crimes against humanity are going to or have already suffered some unfortunate "accident's", to which Dowling can't argue with when in return asked if they really deserve to live.]]

** Clarence Potter. He [[spoiler:ran the Confederate intelligence agency through WWII, knew about the genocide and did nothing, and set off a nuclear bomb in Philadelphia]], and yet is allowed to peacefully retire at the end of the series.

* AuthorAppeal: The sex scenes. [[FanDisservice The fans don't approve.]] He's also fond of using Jewish characters.

** Sam Carsten has extremely fair skin, and burns easily - a bad trait for a sailor. As a result, he can often be seen slathering sunblock onto his skin, but it does little good - he still gets badly burnt. Forgotten all that? Don't worry, Sam will helpfully mention this ''every single time he makes an appearance''. Multiply this by [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters fifty other characters]], and soon enough a 450 page book becomes a 500 page book.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Oh yeah. For example, ''Return Engagement'' opens with short runs of the different Viewpoint Characters. There are 17 of them, one of which [[spoiler:dies]] along the way, and a Viewpoint Character doesn't repeat until page 98 (Hardback) when Carsten returns to the viewpoint. Tom Colleton is later added to replace [[spoiler:his sister]] keeping it at 17.

* MoralDissonance: Blacks are not liked by either the Union or the Confederacy - both see them as the reason they lost wars (The War of Secession for the Union, the Great War for the Confederacy). The majority of the white characters don't care much for them either. Of course, this is all overshadowed by the Freedom Party's [[KillEmAll plan to fix the problem]].

** The Grasshopper, a two seat scouting airplane, and the the Boll Weevil, a vintage biplane from the Great War, springs to mind of the Polikarpov Po-2/Arado Ar 66/Gotha Go 145/Heinkel He 46, given that it was used to perform harassment raids (flying at treetop level), evacuate casualties, to land spies and saboteurs behind enemy lines, and had the capability of being able to take off and land nearly anywhere, and to literally hover in midair against a stiff enough wind, and that it's extremely low speed and manouverablity enables it to survive against much modern fighter aircraft, including ''jet'' aircraft.

** A rather unusual and amusing subversion in general. Almost everything about the CSA's Freedom Party is modelled after the Nazis - except their uniforms, which resemble those worn by our timeline's US troops during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.

* SettingUpdate: ''Timeline-191'' is basically European history of the 19th and 20th century [-MOVED TO AMERICA !-] Featherston is Hitler, West Texas/Kentucky/Sequoyah suffers a fate identical to Austria/Sudetenland, [[SignificantAnagram Irwing Morrell]] is an American CaptainErsatz of Erwin Rommel and the Battle of Pittsburgh becomes the equivalent of our Battle of Stalingrad. Blacks, Mormons and Indians become the equivalent of Jews, Slavs, Roma and other nationalities that died in our world's Holocaust. It may not be particularly inspired, but it works well both as a story and as a HistoricalInJoke. The only real outliers are the fate of Canada, which is occupied by the United States at the end of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, and American politics, which are far too soft and democratic (albeit increasingly left-wing after UsefulNotes/WorldWarI) to make a meaningful parallel to the Soviet Union. Still, the Confederate invasion of the United States in 1941 strongly parallels, militarily, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, though the geography is ''tremendously'' compressed (Ohio and eastern Pennsylvania compared to the whole of Europe east of Warsaw) and the United States is somewhat more prepared.

* CityOfSpies: Washington D.C., being much too close to the Confederate border to be a safe or effective US capitol, has become this at least through the First Great War.

** It's actually because of fear of this trope that the US moved most of its government functions to Philadelphia, starting in the 1880s. DC is still officially the capitol, but only for ceremonial functions.

* WashingtonDCInvasion: The proximity of how close D.C. is to the Confederate border sees the city get rather quickly overrun by the Confederate offensive at the start of the Great War. It's not until 1917 when the Confederacy is on the retreat that the U.S. reclaims it.
** It's actually because of fear of this trope that D.C. since the 1880s has only been the ''de jure'' capital of the U.S. (largely only used for Presidential inaugurations). The U.S. Federal government has setup shop in Philadelphia since then with the President living out of the Powell House.

** Blackford is the US president during the Great Depression instead of Herbert Hoover, resulting in shanty towns of unlucky stockholders being called Blackfordburghs rather than Hoovervilles. In the Confederate States, they're called Mitcheltowns in "honor" of Burton Mitchel. And the funny thing is, Blackford is succeeded by Hoover as President. Throwing a little AllohistoricalAllusion into the mix, Blackford's wife calls them "Hoovervilles" at least once in the series.

** The USS ''Remembrance'', the world's first aircraft carrier. Cover art makes her look like a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorktown-class_aircraft_carrier ''Yorktown''-class aircraft carrier]], whereas her in story description is more along the lines of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Argus_%28I49%29 HMS ''Argus'']].

** The uniforms and equipment of TL-191 Confederates are also clearly based off of the ones of their traditional allies, the British and French: Tanks suspiciously similar to British WWI ones, the French 75 mm cannon, Spitfire-like fighter planes in WWII, etc. The small arms, especially during WWI, are implied to be license-built versions of British and French ones, or their knockoffs.

** The CSA has the "Mule" dive bomber (a.k.a. "[[AwesomeMcCoolName The Asskicker]]"), a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuka Ju-87 Stuka]] with the serial numbers filed off.

** Custer could be a military version of DiscoDan, as he appears to openly hate any military innovations introduced after his graduation from West Point in 1861. He nonetheless uses state-of-the-art military technology (massed Gatling guns) to earn the USA's sole victory in the Second Mexican War in ''How Few Remain''. He does it again with massed barrels during the First Great War

** From the vague descriptions, the standard US fighter (Wright-27) sounds like the P-40 Warhawk while cover art portrays it as looking like the P-51. The Confederate fighter (Hound Dog) appears to be a turbocharged version of the P-39 Airacobra or (ironically) the Bf 109, given that its only uniquely described area is its propeller hub mounted cannon.
** According to the cover illustrations, the Confederate "Razorback" bomber appears to be a B-17 Flying Fortress. However, given its medium bomber designation in-story, it's more likely a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-25 B-25 Mitchell]] expy.