The Day The Tanks Came

"Hans!"

Summer had come early and the shout was almost muffled by the torpid air.

"What is it?" Hans had been looking forward to a lazy afternoon with the family, little Addy was ready to work in the fields now and Anna had been making noises about a third child, a duty that he had been anticipating nicely.

"Hans, have you been able to get anything on the radio?"

Rudolf was a worrier, the whole village knew it, and had never been a ranking officer despite having been in the army almost as long as service allowed.  Old age had failed to take the edge from his concern but nor had it made him any harder to live with.  As a single man he was unusual but he was well-liked and a useful man to know in case of electrical repairs.  "No, Rudi, you know I don't bother with that thing."  Sometimes the music was nice, but lately it had become a little political for his tastes, "Besides, since when did we need it?"

"Hans, I listen to the radio always, and I tell you that it has gone. Now, what do you think of that?" Rudolf's face was flushed, he'd been running.

"I tell you that you spend too long listening to the radio and now there has been a break in the service and that it will do you some good."

"Hans... Mister Group-Leader, I-"

"Please, not now," Hans cut him off, the rank brought back a whole phalanx of memories that he had long ago grown tired of dealing with. "Rudi, you are a radio man, that is fine.  Go ask Konnie if he has anything and then work with him, yes?  For now, it is Summer, it is nearly harvest and I have 'duties' to perform for my family.  I do not expect you to understand but I do expect you to give me some peace."

"They were talking of the Front again-"

"And they always will, you know that.  Now, run along to Konnie, he may have more time for you."

Konrad was new to the village, recently discharged with distinction, and had a young family.  Starting was always hard, but the cameraderie of the Old Guard meant that he had been well-supported, and his aptitude with technology made him a natural appointment for the village broadcast and reciever station.  It saved him from running his own fields, something Hans doubted the youngster would enjoy, and meant that they had enjoyed the full benefits of the radio for some months, something Hans reflected on with some pained displeasure.

"Yes of course, Mis-"

"Oh, just leave man!"  Hans turned and walked off his porch as pointedly as he could, deliberately ignoring the obvious salute.  Rudolf was a walking testament to why men needed to be married: so that they could turn their worries and anxieties to real concerns rather than phantasmogorical ones.

The Day the Tanks Came

What if the Nazis had 'won', inasmuch as it were possible, the war in the USSR?  I recall Richard Overy saying that such a thing were possible in Virtual History in a rather well-researched 'what if' history.  He postulated that the organisation of the Ostmark that was to be created would have been cataclysmically badly done and chaotic, much like the Nazi state at large, and that the economics would have caused a collapse of Greater German finances in a few years.  Indeed, he seemed to suggest that the situation was critical even before the war had reached the turning points of Stalingrad and Guadalcanal.  In fact, the implication, made elsewhere in Overy's studies, was that the war prolonged the Nazi's power in Germany by allowing loot and pillage to fill the gaps left in the shoddy economic planning and fantasy-land ideas.
Anyway, I have an idea about writing a short story set in one of the NSDAP veteran farms in a place where that particular victory was run.  Greater Germany would be an almost anarchistic economic basket-case with some form or Nazi-dictatorship (there were no other politrical avenues open to the German people following July 1933) and that village would be created in line with the few clear organisational guidelines.  I guess Himmler would still be in charge too.

But what if the USSR, a more industrially minded country after all, had managed to survive along the border of perpetual warfare and created new factories utilising the mineral wealth of Siberia?  Ecological disaster almost certainly would have occurred but they may have lasted long enough to mount a counter offensive.  Against a pastoral economic basket-case like the Third Reich an ecologically bankrupt industrial USSR would have an intriguing relationship and reasons beyond ideology for fighting.  I'd love to explore that whole thing.

Anyway, when I have some time, that's an idea I would like to expand on this blog!