Hurry Up Living or Hurry Up Dying
is a AlternateHistory.com timeline written by jeandebueil.
One day, a 21st-century Frenchman wakes up to find himself on a train. Shortly after, he realizes that he is thrown back to December 1938, as one Major Henryk Sucharski, the newly appointed commander of the Westerplatte garrison, the site of the first battle of World War II in Europe and the German invasion of Poland.
Sucharski must now prepare his command for a near-impossible defense, all the while planning for how to make a better postwar world despite being a single officer in a war that involved millions.
The first volume of the timeline is completed, with the author taking a brief hiatus before starting the second volume, found here. https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/hurry-up-living-or-hurry-up-dying-volume-two.539733/
This work provides examples of:
- Alpha Strike: Sucharski often employs this to devastating effect.
- Sucharski spends significant time training two gun crews, his entire artillery detachment, under his command in Westerplatte so that they can disable an entire battleship, the Schleswig-Holstein, in a matter of minutes.
- Many of the Polish counterattacks at Westerplatte and the Polish corridor are prefaced by a massive barrage of artillery and machine gun fire.
- Sucharski annihilates an entire Panzer division with naval gunfire followed up by massed artillery, anti-tank gun, and machine gun fire that leaves virtually no survivors.
- Chest of Medals: Less than a year into the war, Sucharski has earned the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Virtuti Militari, Commander of the French Legion of Honour, Commander of the Norwegian Order of Saint-Olav, and Member of the British Distinguished Service Order.
- Combat Pragmatist: Sucharski develops a “win at all costs” mentality and isn’t afraid to bend the rules of war, and his own morals, to attain victory.
- Justified given that Sucharski is fighting against literal Nazis.
- Sucharski uses a medical truce exchanging wounded prisoners of war to destroy a crippled battleship and reinforce his own position
- He later repeats the same thing at Brest to reinforce his defense and temporarily halt German artillery bombardments.
- Sucharski orders artillery to fire at his own soldiers to end a German offensive jeopardizing his plans.
- Cool Ship: The navies of all factions in WWII feature prominently in the story, especially during the Narvik Campaign and the Battle of France.
- The ships of the British and French Navies get to see plenty of action throughout the Atlantic and Mediterranean.
- The destroyers and submarines of the Polish navy also get their fair share of exploits.
- Cool Sword: Sucharski kills a soldier with his ceremonial saber.
- Death from Above: This is a work set during World War 2, so artillery and aircraft are used by all sides.
- The Germans bombard Westerplatte and the Hel Fortress with dive bombers and howitzers, to limited effect.
- Torpedoes launched by British carrier aircraft help cripple the Gneisenau.
- At Brest, naval artillery obliterates an entire division, and aircraft and artillery pieces rain down fire from the sky on both sides.
- Determinator: Sucharski has a single-minded focus in stopping Nazi Germany (and to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union) after getting thrown back in time.
- The Dreaded: Sucharski develops a fearsome reputation among the German officer corps for his ability to pull off stunning victories and his utter ruthlessness in battling the Germans.
- Four-Star Badass: Sucharski becomes a major-general by the end of Volume 1.
- Historical Badass Upgrade:
- Sucharski and Dabrowski go from brave but outmatched officers who defended Westerplatte admirably at the very beginning of WWII to some of the most successful commanders in the entire war so far.
- Admiral François Darlan goes from a reluctant Vichy collaborator to a rallying point for all of Free France
- Historical Downgrade: Many of the German officers who would have otherwise gone on to have successful (and brutal) careers in the Wehrmacht or the SS have their careers cut short when they face Sucharski.
- Erich Raeder is forced to resign three years earlier than historically did after the German surface fleet is annihilated after invading Narvik and attempting to supply the German forces that landed there.
- Eduard Dietl gets utterly crushed by Sucharski’s forces at Narvik and captured, when he would have otherwise gone on to earn accolades for his defense of Narvik and command the 20th Mountain Army against the Soviet Union.
- Joachim Lemelsen gets killed in the opening artillery salvo at Brest, when he historically would have gone on to command the XLVII Motorized Corps, which committed several war crimes on the Eastern Front
- Humiliation Conga: Sucharski causes several of these for the Germans.
- In Poland, Westerplatte becomes a massive humiliation after Sucharski destroys a battleship and inflicts hundreds of casualties on a vastly superior force. After Sucharski is evacuated to Gdynia, he helps inflict a series of defeats on the Germans attacking Gdynia and the Hel Peninsula that render them unable to advance without calling in reinforcements from other areas.
- At Narvik, the German surface fleet is virtually destroyed by the British and French navies, while Sucharski captures the entire invading force of over 3,000 men with less than a hundred men dead in 48 hours.
- Admiral Darlan causes one for Vichy France, with help from Sucharski. After Vichy appoints a rival to head the navy, Darlan defects to Free France, taking virtually all the ships based in the Atlantic with him. He then takes over 150 current and former government officials and France’s gold reserves to Great Britain. When Vichy decides to arrest associates of Darlan, disgruntled subordinates defect and take even more ships to Free France. Then because of the increased legitimacy of Free France and the combined British and French navies, most of the overseas colonies defect to Free France. Finally, Germany and Italy take even more concessions from Vichy because Vichy failed to keep much of the navy and most of the colonies neutral.
- At Taranto, Italy’s Regia Marina has suffered worse in this timeline.
- Kick the Dog: Kurt Eimann kills a wounded Polish soldier handed over to the Danzig hospital by the defenders of Westerplatte for treatment.
- The Lancer: Franciszek Dąbrowski. Dabrowski often acts as a foil to Sucharski (aristocratic vs common background, differing strategies for battles and the broader plan to ensure a free Poland, etc.), but he remains staunchly loyal to his time-displaced superior.
- Life Saving Misfortune: Gunther Lutjens is captured when the Polish navy sinks his flagship, but he would have otherwise gone on to command the Bismarck during its ill-fated voyage and go down with the ship.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Westerplatte for the Germans. They take the peninsula, but they have suffered immense casualties - including the loss of a battleship - against a vastly superior force, the harbor is destroyed and will take months to repair, and most of the garrison successfully escapes to Gdynia.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The defenders at Brest are an amalgamation of French army remnants, a Canadian artillery regiment, Polish infantry, British air units, and elements of the French navy.
- Red Baron: Sucharski gets dubbed the “Ghost of Westerplatte” and the “Polish Lion” by the public.
- Sacrificial Lion: Sucharski’s brother-in-law, Janek, dies at the Battle of Brest, partly due to Sucharski’s order to fire on his unit.
- The Scapegoat: The Germans look for many after their defeats against Sucharski and the Allies.
- Erich Raeder assumes the blame for the naval defeat in the North Sea.
- The Nazi leadership in Danzig pins much of the blame for the failures at Westerplatte on Brigadeführer Kurt Eimann.
- Trial by Friendly Fire: Sucharski orders a naval bombardment on top of his own men, including his brother-in-law Janek, as the Germans are about to break through that sector
- We Do the Impossible: Sucharski pulls off a series of improbable victories against vastly superior forces.
