| 1 | %% |
| 2 | %% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample entries are not allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them. |
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| 4 | |
| 5 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/southern_victory.jpg]] |
| 6 | [[caption-width-right:350:World War I is different. (Yellow = Central Powers, Green = Entente)]] |
| 7 | |
| 8 | The ''Timeline 191'' series is Creator/HarryTurtledove's most sweeping AlternateHistory work so far: Either ten or eleven books (depending on who's counting). Set in a world where the Union failed to intercept a message (Special Order 191, hence the timeline's name) intended for a Confederate officer before Antietam, which resulted in an independent Confederate States of America, complete with slavery. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | The series proper starts around UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, although the series is sometimes known by the title of its first book, ''How Few Remain'', which takes place in the 1880s. Amazon.com, and possibly others, refer to it as the "Southern Victory" series. |
| 11 | |
| 12 | !!!The installments of the series : |
| 13 | * ''Literature/HowFewRemain'' (1997) |
| 14 | * ''[[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI The Great War]]: American Front'' (1998) |
| 15 | * ''The Great War: Walk In Hell'' (1999) |
| 16 | * ''The Great War: Breakthroughs'' (2000) |
| 17 | * ''[[GenteelInterbellumSetting American Empire]]: Blood and Iron'' (2001) |
| 18 | * ''American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold'' (2002) |
| 19 | * ''American Empire: The Victorious Opposition'' (2003) |
| 20 | * ''[[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII Settling Accounts]]: Return Engagement'' (2004) |
| 21 | * ''Settling Accounts: Drive to the East'' (2005) |
| 22 | * ''Settling Accounts: The Grapple'' (2006) |
| 23 | * ''Settling Accounts: In at the Death'' (2007) |
| 24 | |
| 25 | |
| 26 | Now has a [[Characters/{{Timeline 191}} Character Sheet]] under construction. Please help out. |
| 27 | ---- |
| 28 | !!The ''Timeline 191'' series contains examples of the following tropes: |
| 29 | |
| 30 | * AbsenceMakesTheHeartGoYonder: Played straight, with Emily Pinkard. Played with, with George Enos. |
| 31 | * ActionGirl: Anne Colleton is forced into the role during the Red Negro uprising in the First Great War. |
| 32 | * AnAesop: |
| 33 | ** As obvious as the parallels between the Confederate Population Reduction and our world's Holocaust are, it does enable Turtledove to make some important points about how such atrocities happen, about the bureaucracy involved and how most real-world Nazis and war criminals were not {{Card Carrying Villain}}s that are easier and more palatable to digest in fictional form. |
| 34 | ** Also: racism is bad. Period. And the South winning the Civil War would have been a bad thing, despite the cries of many Confederate diehards. |
| 35 | * AllForNothing: [[spoiler:Despite eighty years as a sovereign nation, it looks like the Confederacy's fate is to once again become part of the United States of America.]] |
| 36 | * AllohistoricalAllusion: As you can see from the fact that [[AllohistoricalAllusion/Timeline191 it has its own page]], Turtledove ''lives'' on this trope. |
| 37 | * AlternateHistory: |
| 38 | ** 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 in Belgium instead. |
| 39 | ** A ''very'' minor case from ''The Victorious Opposition''. Jonathan Moss mentions buying a Model D Ford in 1933, in part because it was common on his block. Ford never made a Model D. By the date, it would likely correspond to a Model A Ford (1927-31) or possibly a Model B (32-34). |
| 40 | * AlternateUniverseReedRichardsIsAwesome: Inverted. Because the Battle of Little Bighorn did not take place in this universe, Custer rose to prominence in the Second Mexican War by providing the USA with its only conclusive victory. He actually got a chance to cash in on his fame by getting promoted to Brigadier General, and we get introduced to an alternate version of him who lives to serve in World War I. A far cry from the grizzled, Indian-fighting badass of legend, this Custer is a broken down, overweight old man who's dangerously out of touch with the harsh realities of modern warfare, getting soldiers killed left and right with nothing to show for it. Then played straight when his AttackAttackAttack tendencies turn out to be the correct strategy for using barrels (tanks). |
| 41 | * AmericaSavesTheDay: Downplayed example during the Second Great War portion of the series. The American and European Theaters are fairly separate from one another so when it comes to the North American theater it's "America Saves the Day" but in Europe it's "Germany saves the day". |
| 42 | * AnalogyBackfire: In ''How Few Remain'', Schlieffen quotes the Latin phrase "Vae Victus" (meaning "Woe to the Conquered", first said by Brennus the Gaul when he defeated the Romans in battle) when he's telling President Blaine that he has no choice but to accept defeat in the war with the Confederates. Blaine quickly points out that it was the Romans, not the Gauls, that ultimately won that war. Sure enough, America bounces back and ends up trouncing the Confederates in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. |
| 43 | * AnonymousRinger: There's a de-emphasis on geopolitics, so many characters are just referred to by title. Mind you, it's not difficult to figure out who "the Kaiser" and "the Tsar" are. |
| 44 | * AntiVillain: |
| 45 | ** Clarence Potter, who ends up as the Confederate Army's Head of Intelligence and masterminds [[spoiler:the near-destruction of Philadelphia with a nuclear weapon.]] He's also somewhat aware of what's going on at Camp Determination. Despite all this, it's easy to sympathise with him, as Potter is clearly MyCountryRightOrWrong. He even attempts to assassinate Featherston! |
| 46 | ** Tom Colleton too. He's the most generic, normal guy in the series as a viewpoint character. Along with Potter and Dover, these three are the analog to Germans who weren't Nazis, but went along with the order of Germany. [[spoiler:His death in Pittsburgh]] goes a long way towards changing the tone. |
| 47 | * AnyoneCanDie: |
| 48 | ** Sadly TruthInTelevision, especially when it comes to viewpoint characters during both Great Wars. Taken to ridiculous extremes with some characters: [[spoiler:Reggie Bartlett]] is randomly shot after tearing down a Freedom Party sign, [[spoiler:Anne Colleton]] dies during the ''Remembrance's'' air raid on Charleston, [[spoiler:[=McGregor=]]] dies after Custer throws his bomb back at him, and [[spoiler:Nellie Jacobs]] dies from blood poisoning caused by ''mishandling a chicken''. A new viewpoint character usually takes over when another dies. |
| 49 | ** Turtledove is also fond of doing this at the very start of each novel - [[spoiler:Bartlett and Colleton]] die at the start of ''The Center Cannot Hold'' and ''Return Engagement'' respectively. |
| 50 | ** In fact Turtledove kills off at least one POV character in every book. ''How Few Remain'' indeed. |
| 51 | * AsYouKnow: Turtledove often uses the characters to recap the alternate history and plots of the series by having characters engage in conversations or think to themselves about things that they would already know. |
| 52 | * AttackAttackAttack: General Custer's preferred method of winning battles. Nightmarishly wrong once trench warfare becomes predominant, though ironically it's Custer that ends up winning the war - just replace "soldiers" with "barrels"! |
| 53 | * AuthorAppeal: The sex scenes. [[FetishRetardant The fans don't approve.]] He's also fond of having Jewish characters. |
| 54 | * AuthorOnBoard: Turtledove's analogy to Islamic fundamentalism. He chooses Mormons for the role. In later books, though, the conflict that they inspire has a lot more parallels with UsefulNotes/TheTroubles in UsefulNotes/NorthernIreland, with the US playing the role of Britain. |
| 55 | * AuthorCatchphrase: |
| 56 | ** The phrase "It never even crossed his mind that..." or variations thereof shows up a lot to demonstrate some form of hypocrisy on the part of the viewpoint characters. Possible example of {{Narm}}, depending on your point of view. |
| 57 | ** There are many cases of characters thinking that "the next time X happens will be the first", when X is something deemed impossible or highly unlikely. |
| 58 | ** There are also many, many instances of events happening "as if to punctuate what was just said." |
| 59 | ** A typical form of {{Understatement}} the author uses is that a character will indicate that he is imperfectly X (e.g. imperfectly sympathetic) when he means the exact opposite of X. |
| 60 | ** Typically, in hostile negotiations, the author will emphasize that the parties are staying "what the diplomats called 'correct'", often explaining that the term means that they hate each other, but don't let it show. |
| 61 | ** "On Shank's mare" shows up in most of Turtledove's works set on Earth. |
| 62 | ** "It was as good an answer as any, and better than most," is a phrase you'll almost never hear. Turtledove uses it... again... and again... and again.... |
| 63 | * 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 Dover released from a POW camp. |
| 64 | * BetterToDieThanBeKilled: Unlike [[UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler the historical figure]] he was an {{Expy}} of, who [[DrivenToSuicide chose to take the easy way out]], Jake Featherston averted this at the end of the Second Great War. He tried to escape Virginia by air, hoping to get to Texas so he could [[IWillFightSomeMoreForever fight to the bitter end]]. Instead, he was [[spoiler:shot down over now-occupied Georgia (having just been "barreled" through by Morrell's army), where he was found by Black partisans and [[KarmicDeath shot dead]].]] |
| 65 | * BittersweetEnding: As observed by reviewer Lionel Ward, the ending can only be considered happy in the sense that the Freedom Party was defeated. The United States is a much darker, less egalitarian, and less globally regarded nation than it was after the real World War II, and on top of that they're trying to control no less than three groups of former enemies (the Confederates, the Mormons, and the Canadians) while treating them with utter contempt, meaning the next rebellion is more a matter of "when" than "if". There's no United Nations in this universe, just a vague form of nuclear regulatory committee overseen by the US and Germany lording over the other nations, and there are plenty of international powers with the means and motives to start trouble in the future -- assuming the US doesn't do it themselves, such as trying to forcibly re-assimilate Texas (itself an independent nation at the end of the story) along with Chihuahua and Sonora (which Mexico more than likely wants back). |
| 66 | ** Should also be noted that while Japan is not a nuclear power at the end of the war, they came through relatively unscathed, as the USA doesn't have the resources to do the island hopping campaign that occurred in real life. There will almost certainly be future conflict between the USA and Japan (and there's been at least two conflicts besides the world wars already). |
| 67 | * BlackAndGreyMorality: As in real life, the Confederacy forms in order to keep slavery alive. Even after giving up slavery they maintain an oppressive apartheid system, and ultimately become an analog for Nazi Germany. But the United States is similarly militaristic and brutal, and only marginally less racist (several black characters in the CSA muse that they wouldn't be much better off in the USA). They also embrace horrifying tactics during the wars (including arresting and executing random civilians in response to guerilla attacks). |
| 68 | * BlackShirt: The Freedom Party "Stalwarts" and Oswald Mosley's "Silver Shirts". |
| 69 | * BlandNameProduct: The most popular soft drink in the Confederacy is "Doctor Hopper". |
| 70 | %%* BloodKnight: |
| 71 | %%** Gordon [=McSweeney=] |
| 72 | %%** Jefferson Pinkard is after his wife cheats on him. |
| 73 | %%** So is Jonathan Moss after his family is killed. |
| 74 | %%** Boris Lavochkin counts in ''In at the Death.'' |
| 75 | * BoisterousBruiser: Many, but especially Chester Martin and Michael Pound. |
| 76 | * {{Bookends}}: In the ''Great War'' trilogy, Cincinnatus Driver and other African-American truck drivers for the U.S. find themselves involved in a confrontation when new white drivers object to them earning bonuses and working jobs other than drudge labor. ''Not one'' of the white drivers they've been working with, including a man Cincinnatus had considered a friend, speaks up for the African-American drivers. In ''The Grapple'', Cincinnatus, the only dark-skinned driver in his unit, gets into an argument with a mouthy white sergeant. ''Every single one'' of his white coworkers loudly and immediately takes his side. |
| 77 | * BunnyEarsLawyer: Henderson [=FitzBelmont=], head of the Confederate atomic bomb project |
| 78 | * TheButcher: During the Second Great War, the Union gives Featherston the derogatory nickname "Jake the Snake" (or just "The Snake"). |
| 79 | * ButWeUsedACondom: When Flora Blackford reveals that she's pregnant, her husband's approximate reaction is to say, "Well, so much for prophylactics," and ''then'' he says, "This is wonderful!" |
| 80 | * ButtMonkey: Scipio has to watch his back with almost everyone he encounters and his situation seems to go from bad to worse...all the way to the end. |
| 81 | * CallARabbitASmeerp: Shows up often. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], since it's an AlternateHistory series and has a more America-centric 19th and 20th century as its {{backstory}}. |
| 82 | ** The most obvious is [[TankGoodness tanks]] being called "barrels". Not as ridiculous as it sounds, as this was one of the names they were given during their genesis. The name "tank" actually comes from what the British claimed to be building. The British call their tanks "tanks" even in this alternate timeline, but it doesn't catch on internationally (much like "Char" is used only for French tanks and "Panzer" for German and Polish ones in our history). Tank destroyers are called "[[AddedAlliterativeAppeal barrel busters]]". |
| 83 | ** {{Molotov Cocktail}}s are called "[[AddedAlliterativeAppeal Featherston Fizzes]]" after the President of the Confederacy. They hardly could have been named for Molotov, considering the White forces won the Russian Civil War and there is no Soviet Union. For an additional irony, the last Bolshevik stronghold to fall is Tsaritsyn, the monarchist name for Stalingrad, now Volgograd. |
| 84 | ** The element neptunium is called "saturnium", and plutonium is called "jovium" (or "[[UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill churchillium]]" if you're British). The US still calls the elements what they are called in our timeline. It's mostly because the Confederacy really hates the US. |
| 85 | ** Regular atomic weapons are referred to as superbombs. Sunbombs are mentioned at the very end of the series as a future development and are described as far more devastating (and the sun persists on hydrogen fusion), so that term is likely referencing hydrogen/thermonuclear bombs (the first of which was tested in our timeline's 1952). |
| 86 | ** Suicide bombers are called "people bombs". |
| 87 | ** Radar is called "Y-range/Y-ranging" ("Y" for "wireless"). |
| 88 | ** The Panzershreck-like rocket launchers used by the CS army in the Second Great War are called "Stove Pipes".[[note]]Doubles as a GeniusBonus, as "stove pipe" - or rather, "ofenrohr" - was an actual nickname for the Panzershreck.[[/note]] |
| 89 | ** 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 (which doesn't stick here). |
| 90 | ** The influence of UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany on the US military and industry is also apparent once you realize The Union calls their monoplanes "one-deckers" (mirroring the German aviation terms "eindecker", "doppeldecker", "dreidecker" for a monoplane, biplane, triplane, etc.). |
| 91 | ** Jet fighters are called "Turbos." |
| 92 | ** A new word - "flabble" - (roughly synonymous with "whine") ends up gaining an awful lot of popularity. |
| 93 | ** Characters routinely say they are 'throwing in the ''sponge''' rather than throwing in the towel when they decide to call it quits on something. |
| 94 | ** When the Confederacy changes their uniforms, they refer to the color as "butternut" rather than "khaki". TruthInTelevision, as "butternut" was the actual Confederate term for khaki. |
| 95 | * CelebrityCasualty: In ''Drive to the East'', UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter is an 18-year-old sailor in the Confederate States Navy and is killed while on leave when black guerillas and escaped [=POWs=] attack his hometown. |
| 96 | * CelibateHero: Played straight and mildly subverted, with Jake Featherston being a rare Celibate ''Villain''. There's a couple of throwaway lines when he's campaigning about how he will sometimes bring a supporter back over later, but once he takes power, the trope holds. |
| 97 | * ChildSoldiers: In addition to the stated or implied participation in the [[LaResistance numerous resistance and insurgency movements]] in the series, the Confederates have the 'National Assault Force', an analogue to the ''Volkssturm'' that like its real world counterpart utilized children, the elderly, and people otherwise unfit for military service as a last-ditch defense once the USA penetrated deep into their territory. |
| 98 | * CityOfAdventure: Covington, Kentucky manages to become this by changing hands four times over the course of the series (and being the source of much intrigue from all sides in the interim). |
| 99 | * 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 when the Confederates occupy it. |
| 100 | * ClusterFBomb: Jerry Dover occasionally talks like this, when he isn't using other obscenities. |
| 101 | %%* LesCollaborateurs |
| 102 | * CoolBoat: |
| 103 | ** 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]], while it's in-story description describes it as being built from a battlecruiser that had it's construction halted midway, then had a flight deck and an "island" built on upon it, while retaining 5-inch guns in sponsons below the flight deck, which suggests it being more akin to the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexington-class_aircraft_carrier ''Lexington''-class aircraft carrier]]. |
| 104 | ** After that there's the USS ''Josephus Daniels''. While she's "only" a destroyer escort (otherwise known as a frigate), the ''Josephus Daniels'' (she's always referred to by her full name, even by her own crew) proves to be the Little Ship That Could throughout the Second Great War, performing various missions that range from interdiction to courier service for [[spoiler:superbomb schematics]]. It helps that her captain is a POV character. |
| 105 | * CoolPlane: Several, though they're really just doppelgängers of various planes from our history. |
| 106 | ** 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. |
| 107 | ** The US Boeing-71 "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]]. |
| 108 | ** 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]]/[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinkel_He_111 Heinkel He 111]] expy. |
| 109 | ** The CSA has the "Mule" dive bomber (a.k.a. "The Asskicker"), their own version of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuka Ju-87 Stuka]]. |
| 110 | ** The CSA's Alligator, by it's descriptions of being a three-engined transport plane, used in an airlift to support cut off troops and to personally transport a dictator, is a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_Ju_52 Junkers Ju-52]] expy. |
| 111 | ** The Grasshopper, a two seat scouting airplane, and the the Boll Weevil, a vintage biplane from the Great War, springs to mind of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polikarpov_Po-2 Polikarpov Po-2]]/[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arado_Ar_66 Arado Ar 66]]/[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotha_Go_145 Gotha Go 145]]/[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinkel_He_46 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. |
| 112 | * CoolVersusAwesome: CSA Major General [[HistoricalDomainCharacter George S. Patton]] versus the USA Expy of UsefulNotes/ErwinRommel. |
| 113 | * CrapsackWorld: |
| 114 | ** 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 lip service 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 effectively 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. |
| 115 | ** As far as the USA is concerned. It's certainly true that the USA was close to a police-state during the period between 1881 and 1917, when it emulated its Imperial German ally in many spheres and the Democratic Party had a monopoly on the White House and Congress. However, after the USA's victory in the Great War, things loosened up ''a lot'' - not least in that the Democrats finally acquired serious political opposition in the form of the Socialist Party, which took the White House and both houses of Congress in the 1920 election and governed the USA with only one four-year break between 1920 and 1944. To cite just one example, once the Socialists got into power, labor unions (as seen in the Chester Martin storyline) had a far easier time of it organizing and agitating for better conditions and wages. |
| 116 | ** The USA has most of the North American continent either under direct military occupation or as puppet states (Texas, Quebec, and likely Mexico and an independent Cuba) 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 their anti-Confederate rebellion. The US also has a lot of friends in Mexico, due to their backing 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. |
| 117 | ** 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 territory, they're pretty much left to RapePillageAndBurn East Asia at their leisure. |
| 118 | ** 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 with their equivalents of 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. |
| 119 | * CycleOfRevenge: Besides the RealLife European one between Germany and the Allies, there's also the main one between the USA & CSA, with each side winning a war and the losing side becoming dominated by a culture that aims to get revenge in the next war. |
| 120 | * DarkestHour: ''Return Engagement'' and most of ''Drive to the East'' would be this for the U.S. during the Second Great War. Al Smith is killed in an air bombing by the Confederacy, the U.S. has been cut in two with the Confederacy overrunning Ohio, Irving Morrell has nearly been killed by an assassination attempt, and U.S. counter-offensives in Virgina against the Confederacy have completely failed. |
| 121 | * DeliberateValuesDissonance: The issue of women working outside the home is addressed in the Great War trilogy, with people who oppose this being more than sexist caricatures who want to "keep women in their place". In ''American Front'', it is revealed that, if a married woman works outside the home, society will assume that her husband is a deadbeat who isn't good enough to provide for his family the way he should. Furthermore, in the absence of laws against sexual harassment, women who work outside the home are vulnerable to unwanted sexual advances. Specifically, Sylvia, who has to work outside the home, refuses the advances of her boss and subsequently faces retaliation, ultimately needing to find a new job. Her colleague, Isabella, gives in to these advances and becomes pregnant. [[spoiler: In a later novel, it is revealed that the boss dumped her and she was driven to prostitution.]] |
| 122 | * DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: |
| 123 | ** 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 fifty other characters, and soon enough a 450 page book becomes a 500 page book. |
| 124 | ** Justified in that when he didn't do this in ''How Few Remain'', people apparently lost track of who was who. And that was a book where nearly all the major characters were real historical figures. |
| 125 | * DifferentStatesOfAmerica: The United States lost the Civil War and the Confederate states are their own country. |
| 126 | * DifferentWorldDifferentMovies: The changes in the timeline lead to a few noticeable differences in American pop culture. Among other things: Creator/JohnWayne (who still goes by his real name "Marion Morrison") first becomes a movie star after starring as UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt in a film about his exploits in the Second Mexican War; when ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'' comics become popular in the 1940s, they depict Superman fighting evil Confederate soldiers (instead of fighting Nazis like the ones in RealLife), inspiring Southern publishers to introduce their own AlternateCompanyEquivalent called "Hyperman"; and Creator/HumphreyBogart stars in a film called ''The Maltese Elephant'' instead of ''Literature/TheMalteseFalcon''. |
| 127 | * DolledUpInstallment: Of ''Literature/HowFewRemain''... and of actual history. |
| 128 | * {{Doorstopper}}: Guess. |
| 129 | * DoubleReverseQuadrupleAgent: Cincinnatus Driver, a lowly black truck driver in Kentucky, starts as an ActionSurvivor and ends up as a go-between for all sides (the USA, Confederates, and black Marxists) in the conflict during the First Great War, taking [[TookALevelInBadass several levels in badass]] in the process. He eventually becomes a US auxiliary despite being in his fifties during the Second Great War. The man even had ''Teddy Roosevelt order the head of the Kentucky State (read: secret) Police to release him and pay him $100 (in 1920) out of his own pocket'' at one point! |
| 130 | * DroppedABridgeOnHim: Goes hand-in-hand with AnyoneCanDie. |
| 131 | ** Nellie Jacobs dies from ''mishandling raw chicken'', for God's sake! |
| 132 | ** Sam Carsten lived through both Great Wars, risen up through the naval ranks to the point where he's a well-respected officer...and then in one of his last scenes scratches a mole that bleeds, implying that his sensitivity to the sun has given him melanoma, a cancer that's usually fatal even now, and certainly would be in 1945. |
| 133 | * DrivenToSuicide: |
| 134 | ** The Confederates are forced to find less personal methods of genocide when concentration camp guards start committing suicide from the stress of repeatedly marching prisoners into the woods and machine gunning them. |
| 135 | ** A specific example is Hipolito Rodriguez, who guards one of the camps in Texas. He ends up befriending a couple of the prisoners; when he finally [[HeelRealization realizes that the prisoners are people]] and not sub-human monsters, and [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone he has been actively participating in their genocide]], he eats his gun. |
| 136 | * DumbassHasAPoint: General Custer's standard tactic is send waves of men into battle, which generally gets a lot of them killed with little benefit. When he sees the newly invented [[TankGoodness barrels]], his immediate instinct is to mass a few hundred and throw them at a single point to force a breakthrough. This is dismissed by his higher-ups, who prefer to cautiously spread them along the entire front. It turns out that Custer's strategy is very effective for tanks, and results in one of the first breakthroughs of the war. |
| 137 | * DuelToTheDeath: Confederate General [[HistoricalDomainCharacter George S. Patton]] challenges Clarence Potter to one; as challenged party, Potter has the right to choose the weapons. Potter's choice? ''Flamethrowers at two paces''. [[BloodKnight Patton]] actually thought he was serious for a moment, before laughing it off as a joke. |
| 138 | * EarnYourHappyEnding: The Union goes through a lot of hell throughout the series, from two crushing defeats to two more costly wars, one of which they were completely caught off guard for and were nuked. Despite this, by the end of the end of In At The Death, the United States stands as one of the three most powerful countries in the world (the other two being UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan and UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany), has completely destroyed the Confederacy and have pushed the British and French (whose interference set the whole series into motion) out of the Americas. |
| 139 | * EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: |
| 140 | ** ''Literature/HowFewRemain'', the first book, is the only standalone novel in the entire series, and it is told completely from the point of view of historical characters [[note]]UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln, UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt, Frederick Douglass, George Armstrong Custer, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, J.E.B. Stewart, Alfred von Schlieffen and Creator/MarkTwain, to be exact[[/note]]. Every book after it is part of a continuous arc with an established cast of fictional characters, most of whom are street-level everymen who occasionally act as BeenThereShapedHistory. The 33 year TimeSkip between ''Literature/HowFewRemain'' and the rest of the series is also a bit jarring. |
| 141 | ** The earlier installments of the Great War series in Timeline-191 clearly alludes to the United States becoming analogous to Germany in our timeline; everything from the stalhelm-expies to the CSA reenacting the Battle of Messines by burying an enormous mine under a position held by US troops, to the CSA offering slaves citizenship points to the CSA becoming a UK analogue post Great War. Of course, Turtledove seems to have realized that readers might not be particularly sympathetic to Confederates. |
| 142 | * EnemyMine: |
| 143 | ** The [=USA=] supplies arms and ammunition to the Red Marxists in the Confederacy during the Great War. Though the [=USA=] is racist and the Marxists would like to overthrow their ruling class as well as the Confederacy's, the two sides have a common enemy in the [=CSA=]. The [=CSA=] returns the favor by arming Utah's Mormon insurgents during both the First and Second Great Wars; the Confederates and the Mormons despise each other, but both hate the [=USA=]. |
| 144 | ** The Confederates bomb the USA's atomic bomb research facility in Washington state with a one-way mission resembling Doolittle's raid on Tokyo, landing their bombers in Canada. Although they don't expect the bombers to be useable after the mission, they figure there's an off-chance the Canadian resistance can use them against the US occupiers. |
| 145 | * EvenEvilHasStandards: Most of the US whites are as racist as their Confederate adversaries, such that they pay little mind to the sufferings of the Confederacy's black population. However, when the Freedom Party starts butchering blacks, and more so when Camp Determination is captured, the Yankees see that their already hated enemies have crossed the line. Indeed, as many a individual white Northerner has stated, it's one thing to hate blacks, it's another to actually slaughter them.[[note]]TruthInTelevision as this was pretty much the Allied attitude toward Jews when the Holocaust came to light; even the Soviets, renowned for pogroms under the empire and (in Stalin's final months on earth) on the verge of a fully-fledged purge of Jews from the party and government, took issue to it.[[/note]] |
| 146 | * EverybodySmokes: Being a period piece, this isn't so unusual. In the First Great War, US characters occasionally mention that the quality of tobacco products have gone downhill since the war put an end to trade with the Confederacy. |
| 147 | * {{Expy}}: |
| 148 | ** Well, naturally, the most obvious of these is Jake Featherston, being an expy of UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler. |
| 149 | ** The Art/StatueOfLiberty's counterpart in this universe is the Statue of Remembrance, a gift from Germany to the United States. Visually, the only difference is that she holds a sword and shield in the place of the Statue of Liberty's torch and tablet of law, respectively. The statue is a symbol of the the US desire for vengeance against the CSA, Britain, and France. |
| 150 | ** Mainly of our timeline's military equipment. One example is the Confederate airforce's "Asskicker" dive bomber plane, which is largely analogous to the [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII the German Stuka]]. However, most vehicles and weaponry go unnamed, aside from technical descriptions like the caliber of tank guns. |
| 151 | ** 'Daniel' [=MacArthur=] is almost identical to the original timeline's Douglas [=MacArthur=] in temperament and professional skill. The only real difference is the use of a cigarette holder instead of a corncob pipe. |
| 152 | ** Irving Morrell is a pretty clear analog of Erwin Rommel, with a bit of Heinz Guderian thrown in for fun. |
| 153 | ** Morrell also conducts Sherman's March 80 years later, being one of the last movements of the Second Great War in 1944 as they surrounded the Confederate government. |
| 154 | * FaceHeelTurn: Jefferson Pinkard and Jake Featherston start out as sympathetic soldiers of the Confederacy. Later on in the series, Jake Featherston becomes UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler, and Jefferson Pinkard becomes Rudolf Hoess (commandant of Auschwitz in OTL). |
| 155 | * FalseFlagOperation: |
| 156 | ** Both the Union and Confederacy make use of soldiers who sound like Southerners/Northerners and dress them in the other side's uniforms to cause confusion behind the lines. This is how Potter manages to [[spoiler:smuggle a nuke over the border.]] His status as a KarmaHoudini is only due to the Union doing the same thing. |
| 157 | ** Roger Kimball's raids on New York harbor and Chesapeake Bay are [[IncrediblyLamePun littoral]] examples of the trope. |
| 158 | ** Not really traditional versions of the trope--these are people who wear the enemy's uniforms to sneak behind enemy lines. A more classic example is the Freedom Party's use of a black assassin to get Huey Long out of the way. |
| 159 | * FamousAncestor: Confederate Presidents Wade Hampton V and Burton Mitchel are the respective grandsons of Senators Wade Hampton III and Charles Mitchel. |
| 160 | * FanDisservice: Four words: [[spoiler:Mark Twain's sex scene.]] |
| 161 | * FanSequel: One of the members of Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom has written one for the timeline's post-WWII years. Read it [[http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php?id=timelines:tl-191_after_the_end here]]. As of June 2013, it has been finally completed and chronicles the developments of the TL-191 world between the alternate 1944 and 2009. |
| 162 | * FantasyCounterpartCulture: |
| 163 | ** The Featherston-ruled Confederacy bears some [[{{Anvilicious}} resemblance]] to Nazi Germany. Also, the [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic Mormon jihadists]]. |
| 164 | ** PlayedWith in the case of the USA. It eventually morphs into a CultureChopSuey of the Union and Imperial Germany...and is led by German-style social democrats! Now that's what I call an AlternateUniverse... |
| 165 | *** Not to mention the British and French becoming fascists and an equivalent of WWII Italy and Japan. And UsefulNotes/TsaristRussia, Austria-Hungary and UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany becoming more liberal and turning into a thinly-veiled {{Expy}} ''[[BizarroUniverse of our world's inter-war USA and Canada]]''. |
| 166 | * FantasyLandmarkEquivalent: In this universe, the Statue of Liberty does not exist due to poor relations between France and the United States. Standing in its place is the German-influenced Statue of Remembrance, carrying a sword in its right hand and a shield in its left. |
| 167 | * FatherNeptune: Sam Carsten develops into him over the course of the series. Arguably, George Enos Sr. already was the civilian version before joining the Navy in the First Great War. For the Confederates, Roger Kimball fills the role. |
| 168 | * FictionalPoliticalParty: Several notable ones in the both the Union and Confederacy: |
| 169 | ** Overseeing the U.S.'s defeat in both the War of Secession and Second Mexican War causes the Republicans to be supplanted by the newly formed Socialist Party as the other big two party in U.S. politics. The Sodalists being a big tent mix of genuine radicals like Eugene Debs but also more standard progressive reformers like Al Smith. |
| 170 | ** The main parties of the Confederacy are the Whigs and Radical Liberals. The Whigs are the dominant party (every C.S. President before Featherston was a Whig) and are composed of the aristocratic landholding elite of the Confederacy. Radical Liberalsm meanwhile are mainly a party based out of the Confederacy's western and Mexican territories and composed of reformers. |
| 171 | *** Then there's obviously Jake Featherston's Freedom Party. |
| 172 | * FinalSolution: Jake's solution to the Confederacy's "nigger problem" involves a genocide. |
| 173 | * ForeShadowing: |
| 174 | ** By the time the series gets to [[GenteelInterbellumSetting the interwar period]] readers can probably guess what the next major event will be. Nonetheless, events like the Business Crash are foreshadowed by a number of civilian characters cheerfully describing how well their investments are doing. |
| 175 | ** 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. |
| 176 | * ForWantOfANail: The nail in this case is Special order 191, a general movement order issued by Confederate General Robert E. Lee outlining the routes and timing of the movements of the Army of Northern Virginia. In our timeline, a copy of the order was lost and recovered by the Union Army, giving them an important advantage in subsequent battles. In Timeline 191 of the novels, the Confederate aide who lost the order quickly picks it back up again; without the advantage, the Union ends up losing the Civil War and the Confederate states successfully secede into their own country. |
| 177 | * FourLinesAllWaiting: It's not uncommon for characters to disappear for a hundred pages before reappearing. |
| 178 | * FourStarBadass: Irving Morrell, once he's promoted that far. |
| 179 | * FromNobodyToNightmare: Jake Featherston, Clarence Potter, Jefferson Pinkard, and the rest of the Freedom Party elite. |
| 180 | * TheFundamentalist / StrawCharacter: Gordon [=McSweeney=] oh so very much. He is so narrow-minded and judgmental that he confuses a Greek character's worry beads for a rosary, and labels him as a "Papist" from that point on. Even after other characters mention that the guy wasn't Catholic. |
| 181 | * GameMod: Several popular mods for ''[[VideoGame/VictoriaAnEmpireUnderTheSun Victoria]]'' and ''VideoGame/HeartsOfIron'' incorporate all or part of the events of ''Timeline 191''. |
| 182 | * GatlingGood: Armstrong Custer dislikes gatling guns even though he has personally used them to great effect against Confederates and their native american allies. [[{{Irony}} He gets assigned a whole bunch of them]] and they play a vital role in defeating the British/Canadians at the Battle of the Teton River (the only U.S. victory during the Second Mexican War). |
| 183 | * GeneralFailure: |
| 184 | ** Although his viewpoint chapters admit that he respects Custer, Abner Dowling thinks nonetheless thinks he's a senile old fool who ought to be replaced by Pershing or Morrell. |
| 185 | ** [[BeAllMySinsRemembered Dowling sees himself this way as well.]] In reality, he's considered by his Confederate counterparts as a [[WorthyOpponent formidable threat]], able to improvise when [[spoiler: the USA's lack of preparedness for the Second Great War rears its head and he is forced to make a fighting retreat through Ohio]]. Dowling has benefitted from years of experience covering for Custer's missteps. And for that matter, Custer, for all his deficiencies as a general, was a good professional mentor, and he ''did'' get a few things right. |
| 186 | ** Chinese Gordon (who is never encountered directly, but is glimpsed from afar during Custer and Roosevelt's skirmish with the British on the Canadian border during the 1882 war) is regarded by his opponents with bafflement for his attempts to use lancers on horseback against Custer's Gatling gun emplacement. |
| 187 | ** Pretty much Featherston's view of the entire Confederate general staff. |
| 188 | * GeneralRipper: George Patton, who's so obsessed with pursuing the enemy that he doesn't care if his troops are exhausted, demoralized to the point of mutiny, or too far ahead of their supply lines. |
| 189 | * GrenadeHotPotato: In ''Blood and Iron'' Arthur [=McGregor=] chucks a homemade bomb at George Custer during a parade. Custer catches the bomb and flings it back at [=McGregor=], killing him. |
| 190 | * HeelRealization: Hipolito Rodriguez. A humble Mexican farmer and Freedom Party supporter from Confederate Sonora, Rodriguez ends up as a guard at Camp Determination. Faced with the horrible realisation that the blacks he's been feeding into the gas chambers are not enemies of the Confederacy, but ''actual human beings'', he ends up [[RedemptionEqualsDeath eating his gun]]. This is stated to be a common occurrence at the camp. |
| 191 | * HideYourGays: Implied to be the case with Wilf Rokeby and Goodson Lord. It's justified; given that attitudes toward gays in this timeline seem to parallel those of our own during this period in history, gays would have every motivation to keep their sexuality secret. |
| 192 | * HighClassCallGirl: Maggie Stevenson, a prostitute that Sam Carsten visits in Honolulu during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, fills this role. She charges about ten times as much as most other hookers in the city, she operates out of a large manor house (complete with armed guards), and she generally carries herself like a high-society gentlewoman. By UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, she's effectively become the owner of Honolulu's Red Light district. |
| 193 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: ''How Few Remain'', where every viewpoint character was one. The rest of the series has original characters that frequently interact with people from our own history. |
| 194 | * HistoricalDowngrade: The Adolph Hitler in this timeline seems identical to real-life except that he's viewed as annoying and wields no power or influence. |
| 195 | * HistoricalHeroUpgrade: In an in-universe inversion, many of the United States' Founding Fathers, like the Virginians UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington and UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson, are much less well-regarded by United States citizens in this timeline because they were Southern, and Northerners no longer consider Southerners to be their countrymen. Very few of the Founding Fathers appear on US currency, with their "national hero" roles being filled by figures like Custer and Roosevelt, who are celebrated for fighting the Confederates. |
| 196 | * HistoricalVillainUpgrade: |
| 197 | ** George Armstrong Custer, of the "lucky idiot" variety. |
| 198 | ** General George Patton, by virtue of the fact that his talents are now being used in support of the genocidal Featherston regime. |
| 199 | * HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct: Subclause "if not him, somebody else" -- Jake Featherston is a genocidal dictator, only targeting black people in the American South rather than Jews in Europe. Ironically, Hitler also exists in this timeline relatively unchanged, except that he annoys those around him and has no power or influence. |
| 200 | * IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace: Defied in ''The Grapple''. Koenig wants to name Pinkard's newest death camp "Camp Destruction" or "Camp Devastation". In refusing to do so, Pinkard warns of the effect such a name would have on the prisoners. |
| 201 | * IllegalReligion: The US government faces rebellions from the Mormons of Utah during every war they fight with the CSA, with the Union Army crushing the rebels each time. This mirrors the real-life conflicts of the Mormons with the USA, and UsefulNotes/TheTroubles. It's sparked by the federal government cracking down on their polygamy in 1881. |
| 202 | * IndustrializedEvil: The Confederacy under Featherston is industrial evil on the scale of Nazi Germany, using the most modern and efficient practices to exterminate the African-American populace. |
| 203 | * InfoDump: He generally manages to avert it, but there's one significant instance in the middle of the ''Settling Accounts'' arc when Featherston considers how the war has progressed in Europe almost as if he's narrating a story. |
| 204 | * InsistentTerminology: The civil war is "The War of Secession" in this timeline. |
| 205 | * InSpiteOfANail: |
| 206 | ** The Great War begins the same way it does it our world, despite nearly fifty years of completely divergent history before it. |
| 207 | ** World War II also occurs on the same timeline it did in the real world, and under similar circumstance: a veteran of the Great War brings his political party to power, performs a ''blitzkreig'' attack against a neighboring country to kick off the war, and organizes a genocide against a portion of his own population. |
| 208 | ** Several historical characters still crop up in similar positions to where they would have been: |
| 209 | *** 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. |
| 210 | *** 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!]]'' |
| 211 | *** 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). |
| 212 | *** Lou Gehrig is still a premier athlete playing the most popular sport in the United States; however, in this timeline that sport happens to be UsefulNotes/AmericanFootball, rather than the {{UsefulNotes/Baseball}} he played in real life. Other real-life baseball players Hank Greenberg and Jimmie Foxx also make appearances playing football. |
| 213 | * InThePastEveryoneWillBeFamous: Several famous historical figures pop up. It's justified in most cases; a long-term Congresswoman and former First Lady being friends with Senator Robert Taft, or Irving Morrell, regarded as one of the world's foremost experts on barrels, meeting Heinz Guderian. |
| 214 | * IronLady: Custer's effectiveness as a general and administrator improves dramatically when his domineering wife Libby shows up to accompany him at the front. |
| 215 | * IstanbulNotConstantinople: Several times. |
| 216 | ** In OTL Berlin, Ontario, was renamed Kitchener (after Lord Kitchener) during World War I. In TL-191 it is renamed Empire. After the US and Imperial Germany win the Great War, the US occupies Canada and restores the name Berlin. |
| 217 | ** Hawaii is British-controlled until the Great War and is known as the Sandwich Islands. |
| 218 | ** Roanoke, Virginia remaining Big Lick is a subversion of this trope. Big Lick is the city's original name. It was changed to Roanoke in 1882 (which, apparently, did not happen in the alternate timeline). |
| 219 | ** Also, Oklahoma is Sequoyah[[note]]the name proposed by the eastern counties of what is now Oklahoma during a failed bid for statehood in 1905--incidentally, it was an attempt by the Native Americans in the region to retain their sovereignty within the framework of the United States[[/note]], and a section of Texas ceded to the USA in the aftermath of the Great War is renamed Houston (not to be confused with the city of the same name in the CSA). |
| 220 | * JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Jerry Dover, with regard to Scipio. Scipio and his family are able to survive [[spoiler: almost to the end of the series]] mainly because Jerry repeatedly sticks his neck out for them, despite the risk to him and his business. [[spoiler: Once Jerry gets drafted, all bets are off.]] |
| 221 | * JurisdictionFriction: The reason Scipio is able to escape from South Carolina to the relative safety of Georgia after the Marxist uprising. Because the Confederacy places heavy emphasis on state's rights, there is less cooperation between the Confederate states in law enforcement matters. Georgia is too busy tracking down its own black Marxists to worry about fugitives from another state, so any warrants from South Carolina don't carry a lot of weight and Anne Colleton doesn't have as many social contacts in Georgia with whom she can pull strings to expedite the issue. |
| 222 | * KangarooCourt: Jonathan Moss' non-military career is dedicated to preserving some amount of fairness in Canada's new legal system (which is extremely biased against native Canadians). Much later, he represents [[spoiler: Jefferson Pinkard]] who is convinced (and not without some justification) that his war crimes trial is little more than a formality. |
| 223 | * KarmaHoudini: |
| 224 | ** 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 to 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, suffer some unfortunate "accidents", to which Dowling can't argue with when in return asked if they really deserve to live.]] |
| 225 | ** 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. |
| 226 | ** As a nation, UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan. They're the only major power that doesn't get nuked in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, they betrayed their British and Russian allies, and they're left to rape and conquer most of East Asia because the USA is too concerned with its own North American concerns to give a crap about Japan other than making sure they don't attack the US's Pacific assets. |
| 227 | ** The Ottoman Empire is another nation that escapes karmic justice, as they're never called to account for the Armenian genocide. Their alliance with the victorious Central Powers (including Imperial Germany and the United States) and the fact that the remaining major powers are either too battered by the First Great War to do more than field a limp protest (or, in the case of Japan, completely apathetic regarding the situation) has a lot to do with this. |
| 228 | * LampshadeHanging: |
| 229 | ** True to the genre, several characters wonder what their lives might have been like had history been different. |
| 230 | ** Then there's the reaction to people finding out about the Confederacy's [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything "Population Reduction"]] program : "God forbid, it could happen to the Jews!" |
| 231 | ** More directly when Featherston's director of communications Saul Goldman (and the analogue to Joseph Goebbels) remarks that if it had happened in Europe, people would probably be blaming Jews rather than blacks, which even Featherston agrees with. Goldman himself is Jewish. (Featherston disapproves pretty strongly of Russian anti-Semitism; he himself doesn't have any especial use for Jews in general, but he makes a point of emphasizing, in his warped racial worldview, that Jews are whites as good as any other whites. One wonders how he would have reacted to Beta Israel—i.e., Ethiopian Jews.) |
| 232 | ** Turtledove also mentions "world of if" stories being popular--with one of the more common stories being the US winning the War of Secession. |
| 233 | %%* LeanAndMean: Jake Featherston. |
| 234 | * LiteraryAllusionTitle: |
| 235 | ** ''How Few Remain'', appropriately, is a reference to a line from a poem by UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln himself. |
| 236 | ** ''Blood and Iron'' is a reference to Otto von Bismarck's "Blut und Eisen" speech. |
| 237 | ** ''The Center Cannot Hold'' is a reference to the poem ''Literature/TheSecondComing''. |
| 238 | ** ''The Victorious Opposition'' (which is mainly about the rise of the ANaziByAnyOtherName Freedom Party to power) is a reference to the Devil's Dictionary, and the full quote forms the book's prefix: |
| 239 | --> '''Manicheism''': ''The ancient Persian doctrine of an incessant warfare between Good and Evil. When Good gave up the fight, the Persians joined the victorious opposition.'' |
| 240 | ** ''Drive to the East'' is an English translation of "Drang nach Osten", describing a German desire to expand into and settle Eastern Europe cited during the OTL UsefulNotes/SecondWorldWar. |
| 241 | * MeaningfulName: Cininnatus Driver's contact among the Black Marxists of Kentucky is a man named Apicius, who runs a barbecue shack outside Covington. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apicius Apicius is the name of an ancient Roman cookbook]] (and possibly that of its author as well). |
| 242 | * MeaningfulRename: Confederate blacks do not use, and are not permitted, surnames. When Kentucky becomes a U.S. state after the Great War, its black residents are instructed to choose surnames. They choose names which have meaning to them: Cincinnatus becomes "Driver" for his profession; while Apicius chooses "Wood" for an important component in his legendary barbecue. Cincinnatus and some others recognize the simple existence of their new surnames as granting them greater human dignity. |
| 243 | %%* TheMedic: Leonard O'Doull. |
| 244 | * MolotovCocktail: Or should we say Featherston Fizz? Used by Confederate die-hards in territory annexed by the US at the end of the Great War. |
| 245 | * MoralityPet: Lulu to Jake. She's the only person he's even remotely pleasant to. |
| 246 | * MyGreatestSecondChance: Clarence Potter telling a Confederate soldier - who's as angry and disgruntled about having lost the second war as Jake Featherston was after the first war - to move on and accept the loss of the war, the way he never did with Featherston. |
| 247 | * NWordPrivileges: Dowling reflects about this during his conversation with Lucullus Wood. |
| 248 | * NamedAfterSomebodyFamous: Most African-Americans in the Confederacy are named either for Biblical figures or for historic [[AncientRome Romans]]. When friends from the U.S. ask Cincinnatus Driver why Confederate blacks have such fancy names, he theorizes that, being forbidden surnames, they want to pack as much meaning into their given names as they can. |
| 249 | ** Several white characters were also named after famous figures, notably Jefferson Davis Pinkard, Armstrong Grimes, and Laura Secord. |
| 250 | * NarrativeProfanityFilter: Though Turtledove doesn't shy away from actual swear words, occasionally he employs this. Some notable examples: |
| 251 | -->"Why the devil is Wood taking my men?" Custer said, rather more pungently than that. |
| 252 | -->It [the order] was signed "F.K." What Jeff said had an "f" and a "k" too, with a couple of other letters in between. He said several other things right afterwards, most of them even hotter than what he’d started with. |
| 253 | %%* ANaziByAnyOtherName: [[FictionalPoliticalParty The Freedom Party]] of the CSA. |
| 254 | * {{Nepotism}}: During the Great War, Clarence Potter is looking for black Socialist sympathizers and artilleryman Jake Featherston points out his commanding officer (J. E. B. Stuart III)'s black servant. J. E. B. Stuart Jr. blocks any further investigation, and when the servant shows his true colors, the disgraced Stuart III [[DeathSeeker gets himself killed in battle]]. Blaming them for what happened, Stuart Jr. prevents Potter and Featherston from ever seeing another promotion for the rest of their lives...which is Featherston's StartOfDarkness. |
| 255 | * NiceJobFixingItVillain: Realizing how brilliant a tactician Irving Morrell is, the Confederacy attempts to assassinate him. However, this only serves to make the United States military realize how much of a threat he is regarded as, and he gets promoted as a result, making him an even more dangerous force. |
| 256 | * NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed: |
| 257 | ** Several characters are parallels of famous figures from our own history, most notably Irving Morrell (Erwin Rommel) and Jake Featherston (UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler). |
| 258 | ** Flora Blackford, a.k.a. American [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg Rosa Luxemburg]] with some Eleanor Roosevelt thrown in. |
| 259 | ** Don Partridge fills the same role as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_D%C3%B6nitz Karl Donitz]], who signed Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender. His name, though, is a reference to UsefulNotes/DanQuayle, and he's just about as bland. |
| 260 | ** In-universe, the most popular comic book in the Confederacy is "Hyperman", a thinly-disguised CaptainErsatz of Franchise/{{Superman}} who was specifically created by the Confederates because they didn't want kids reading Superman comics, where he fights the evil Confederates. |
| 261 | * NonIndicativeName: |
| 262 | ** The 'Empire' of Mexico has ceded large amounts of territory to both the CSA and USA over the course of the series, covers much less territory than Mexico in RealLife, and tends to do whatever the CSA 'politely requests'. |
| 263 | ** The Second Mexican War wasn't fought against Mexico, and only part of it took place south of the Mexican border. The war was between the United States and the Confederate States, and the part of Mexico where the fighting took place was technically part of the Confederacy at the time. The name refers to the fact that it was sparked by the Confederates acquiring two territories in Mexico, which led the US to invade to stop them from forming a transcontinental empire. |
| 264 | ** The 'Freedom' Party under Featherston changes the CSA from a nominal democracy where at least whites enjoy constitutional freedoms to a police state where everyone regardless of color can be eliminated if they step out of line. |
| 265 | * NoKillLikeOverkill: [[spoiler: In response to Featherston having Clarence Potter dentate a superbomb in Philadelphia, the U.S. drops its first superbomb on Newport News believing Jake Featherston was located there. Wiping out an entire city just to try and kill one person]]. |
| 266 | * NotSoDifferentRemark: Stonewall Jackson invites Frederick Douglass to eat with him in his tent after Douglass is taken prisoner by Confederate soldiers. They both expect the other to be the personification of evil, but are surprised to find that they have some things in common. |
| 267 | * OnlySaneMan: |
| 268 | ** Abner Dowling with regard to just about everything Custer did, [=MacArthur=]'s plans for an amphibious invasion of the Virginia coast, and again with Camp Determination. |
| 269 | ** Also Lucien Galtier's response to just about everything that's happened. |
| 270 | ** Mark Twain's newspaper editorials fill this role in ''How Few Remain''. |
| 271 | %%* OutWithABang: Lucien Galtier. |
| 272 | * ParentsAsPeople: Several, but most prominently Cincinnatus Driver, Sylvia Enos, and Nellie Semproch. Jefferson Pinkard with regard to his second wife and her children also counts (if you discount the way he is during his day job). |
| 273 | * PetTheDog: |
| 274 | ** Jefferson Pinkard, basically the Confederacy's version of Adolf Eichmann, genuinely loves his wife and children, to the point where he worries what will happen to them if they lose the war. Quite common with actual Nazi prison guards. [[FaceHeelTurn Quite a change]] [[MoralEventHorizon from his first wife...]] |
| 275 | ** Even Featherston gets a few moments with his secretary. That MercyKill hurts. |
| 276 | ** Anne Colleton intercedes on behalf of Sylvia Enos before a Confederate court, despite Sylvia being from an enemy country and a much lower social class. Sylvia was in the dock for having shot Roger Kimball [[spoiler: to avenge her dead husband, who was aboard a ship Kimball had sunk ''after'' the First Great War had ended]]. Given that Kimball [[spoiler: had earlier tried to rape Anne]], a little LaserGuidedKarma was at play here. |
| 277 | * PinkertonDetective: Pinkertons work as strike breakers and are present at several of those that Chester Martin takes part in. |
| 278 | %%* PresidentEvil: Jake Featherston. |
| 279 | * PointOfDivergence: In our timeline, the Union army recovered a lost order outlining Confederate troop movements; this gave them an advantage that helped turn the tide of the war. In Timeline 191, the order was never recovered; the Union subsequently lost the war and the CSA remained a separate country. |
| 280 | * PuttingOnTheReich: |
| 281 | ** The Freedom Party Stalwarts, which parallel the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung (SA). |
| 282 | ** The Freedom Party Guards, which are based of both the SS, and the Waffen-SS, due to being outside the military chain of command, their own ranking system and that they originally served as the dictator's bodyguards, then replacing the Party's original paramilitary wing, before expanding to become a military branch in their own right. |
| 283 | ** The Freedom Youth Corps is essentially the Freedom Party's version of the Hitler Youth. |
| 284 | ** The Confederate Veterans Brigade, and the National Assault Force, both serve the function of the Volkssturm. |
| 285 | ** An official newspaper of the Confederate States Army is named the Armored Bear, which translates in German as ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzerbär Der Panzerbär]]''. |
| 286 | ** A rather unusual and amusing subversion in general. Almost everything about the CSA's Freedom Party is modelled after the Nazis - except the CS Army uniforms, which resemble those worn by our timeline's US troops during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. |
| 287 | ** The uniforms and equipment of TL-191 Confederates in the Great War 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, etc. The small arms, especially during WWI, are implied to be license-built versions of British and French ones, or their knockoffs. |
| 288 | ** Ironically, the uniforms of the US forces resemble WWI and WWII German ones (Stalhelms, high boots, gas masks), since The Union had a long-standing alliance with UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany after UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar (to the point of almost hero worship of the German Empire). The WWI US tanks are pretty clearly [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A7V German A7Vs]]. Aircraft and armoured vehicles from WWII show a more American bent in their design, but still have some similarities to our history's German WWII tech. |
| 289 | ** As for the Germans themselves, Germany is [[UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany still under the Kaiser]] even by the end of the series. |
| 290 | * RealityIsUnrealistic: Some readers objected to having La Follette and especially Teddy Roosevelt defeated after leading the United States through victorious wars. In fact, this is exactly what happened in RealLife to George H. W. Bush, who was defeated less than two years after the successful Gulf War, and to Winston Churchill, who was defeated less than three months after Hitler's defeat. |
| 291 | * ReassignedToAntarctica: |
| 292 | ** After the defense budget is slashed by the first Socialist administration, Irving Morrell ends up reassigned to Kamloops, British Columbia. |
| 293 | ** Abner Dowling regards being sent to west Texas, a secondary front in the Second Great War, as such an assignment. ReassignmentBackfire ensues when he discovers (and liberates) Camp Determination. |
| 294 | * RebelliousRebel: |
| 295 | ** [[spoiler: Texas and Cuba break off from the CSA near the end of the Second Great War and assert their independence.]] |
| 296 | ** Ulster's protestants attempt to pull this off after Ireland becomes independent from Britain. [[spoiler: It doesn't work.]] |
| 297 | * LaResistance: A LOT. |
| 298 | ** The Mormons are almost constantly in rebellion against the United States, starting in 1881. |
| 299 | ** Black Marxist guerrillas harass the Confederacy during the Great War, and they are crushed. |
| 300 | ** Other black rebellions, driven more by survival than ideology, flare up in the Confederacy thereafter. During the Second Great War, escaped US [=POWs=] occasionally join up with these guerrilla bands. |
| 301 | ** Canadian patriots rise up at several points during and after the American conquest. |
| 302 | ** Freedom Party sympathizers engage in open, armed rebellion against US authorities in territories taken from the Confederacy after the Great War. |
| 303 | ** Both the USA and the CSA sponsor rebels and subversives in Kentucky at various points. |
| 304 | ** Other, smaller examples include the Mexican Republicans and Native American tribes in Sequoyah during the Great War. |
| 305 | * TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized: Very often. In ''Timeline-191'' alone we have [[ChurchMilitant the Mormons]], [[LaResistance the Canadians]], and [[DirtyCommunists the black socialists]], ''none'' of whom could be called even ''remotely'' civilized in the rather brutal methods they employ in their resistance movements. In the latter case, though, they still earn sympathy since they're fighting ANaziByAnyOtherName. The Mormons are cited as being extremely scrupulous about observing the Geneva Conventions with regard to prisoners of war. But the use of people bombs pushes them over the MoralEventHorizon. |
| 306 | * RichardNixonTheUsedCarSalesman: So many. |
| 307 | ** Grand Duke Michael becomes Michael II of Russia after the death of his brother, [[UsefulNotes/RomanovsAndRevolutions Nicholas II]]. |
| 308 | ** Creator/LFrankBaum is a Union fighter pilot, [[Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz and later becomes a children's author]]. |
| 309 | ** John Wilkes Booth remained a popular stage actor until the 1880s. |
| 310 | ** UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter was an 18-year-old Confederate sailor who was killed by black rebels while on leave in 1942. |
| 311 | ** Charles I remains Emperor of Austria-Hungary well into the 1940s. |
| 312 | ** UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill still manages to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, but his authority is limited by the more powerful member of the coaltion government, Oswald Mosley. Churchill is ousted as Prime Minister after London, Norwich and Brighton are destroyed by superbombs, and Horace Wilson becomes Prime Minister. |
| 313 | ** [[Creator/MarkTwain Samuel Clemens]] is a journalist in San Francisco. |
| 314 | ** UsefulNotes/CalvinCoolidge ran for President in 1928 and 1932, winning in the latter. He died before he could be inaugurated,[[note]]Both the TL-191 and OTL versions of Coolidge died on January 5, 1933.[[/note]] and his running mate UsefulNotes/HerbertHoover became President. |
| 315 | ** George Custer never fought at Little Big Horn. Instead, he fought in Montana during the Second Mexican War, delivering one of the Union's few victories. In the Great War he was commander of the First Army in Tennessee, and was responsible for the breakthrough that ended the war. After the war he commanded the occupation forces in Canada and Utah before retiring. |
| 316 | ** Due to the Nazis never rising to power, UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein remains in Germany and works on the German superbomb project. |
| 317 | ** UsefulNotes/UlyssesSGrant was a broken and poor old man, one of the few people who supported the plight of the blacks of North America. He died of complications from alcoholism. |
| 318 | ** Creator/ErnestHemingway was an ambulance driver in the Great War, where he suffered an injury that rendered him permanently impotent[[note]]A character from one of Hemingway's novels has the same problem.[[/note]]. He co-wrote Sylvia Enos' novel and had an affair with her: this ended when, in a bout of depression, he accidentally shot and killed her. Horrified, he committed suicide in front of Sylvia before she succumbed to her wound. |
| 319 | ** UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler is a Sergeant in the German Army and an orderly to Heinz Guderian. While his hatred of Jews and Slavs is present here as in the real world, the changed history means he never rises to a position of authority. |
| 320 | ** Stonewall Jackson became head of the Confederate General Staff and masterminded the Confederacy's victory in the Second Mexican War. |
| 321 | ** UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln lost the 1864 presidential election and becomes a Socialist activist. Years later, he is remembered as one of the pivotal figures in the American Socialist Party (which itself becomes one half of the American bipartisan political system), but he's widely reviled for failing to stop the Confederates from spreading across the continent. |
| 322 | ** George S. Patton was the greatest general in the Confederate Army, responsible for many of its victories in the Second Great War. When the tide of the war turned, he commanded much of the rearguard action. An avid supporter of the Freedom Party, he once attempted to shoot a soldier suffering from battle fatique, and was taken into custody at the end of the war. |
| 323 | ** UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt was Secretary of War in the Hoover administration and later Assistant Secretary of the Navy under two Socialist Administrations. He was also responsible for the the Union's superbomb project. |
| 324 | ** UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt led a volunteer cavalry regiment in the Second Mexican War, and was the US President from 1913-1921.[[note]]Interestingly, the cavalry unit in this book is actually made up of men on horseback. In Real Life, Roosevelt was the only member of his "cavalry" unit to have a horse.[[/note]] |
| 325 | ** UsefulNotes/JosephStalin and Vyacheslav Molotov somehow became the leaders of the Red forces in the Russian Civil War (despite both being virtual nobodies at that time IRL), which the Whites ultimately won. |
| 326 | ** Music/LouisArmstrong (named Sennacherib in TL-191) was leader of the popular band "Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces." During the Second Great War he was forced to play for Confederate troops and eventually escaped into Union territory. He brought the plight of the blacks to the Union government and later recorded propaganda for them. |
| 327 | ** UsefulNotes/WilliamHowardTaft was never elected President, instead serving as a Democractic Congressman. |
| 328 | ** Kaiser Wilhelm II remained the German Emperor until his death in 1941. He was suceeded by his son, Friedrich Wilhelm V. |
| 329 | ** UsefulNotes/WoodrowWilson was president of the Confederate States from 1910 - 1916, and led the Confederacy during the early years of the Great War. |
| 330 | ** Al Smith is elected U.S. President in 1936 and 1940. In 1936, he defeats Herbert Hoover, who defeated Smith in the 1928 election in real life. |
| 331 | ** UsefulNotes/HarryTruman was elected Vice President in 1944, alongside running mate Thomas Dewey. |
| 332 | ** Frederick Douglass is an aversion, as he's doing pretty much the same thing in ''How Few Remain'' as he was doing in real life. |
| 333 | ** Various members of the [[UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy Kennedy clan]] also offer an aversion, as they end up in the same roles during the Second Great War that the Kennedys of our timeline held in World War Two: JFK is a naval officer, Joseph Kennedy Jr. a pilot in one of Jonathan Moss's squadrons, etc. As with the historical Kennedys, the family is also politically powerful (Joseph Kennedy Sr. is still a Massachusetts political operative), able to arrange the early discharge of George Enos Jr. from the Navy. |
| 334 | ** UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan is a radio sportscaster, paralleling his real-life career at this point in history. |
| 335 | ** Another aversion: [[Creator/JohnWayne Marion Morrison]], who still plays war heroes in motion pictures. He is described as making "a first-rate [[UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt TR]]." |
| 336 | ** Music/ElvisPresley as a young boy is wounded by US troops while participating in the Confederate 'National Assault Force', an analogue to the ''Volkssturm''. |
| 337 | ** [[UsefulNotes/RichardNixon Nixon]] himself as noted above is a US Army specialist...[[spoiler: in wiretapping and bugging rooms.]][[note]]Nixon in reality served as a Navy logistics officer during World War Two, and saw no combat, although by his own admission he became (not surprisingly) a very good poker player during this period.[[/note]] |
| 338 | *** He's joined by two soldiers named Carl and Bob (obvious references to Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who broke the Watergate scandal. However, the real Woodward and Bernstein were born in the 40s, so this is just for the sake of a joke. |
| 339 | ** James Longstreet, a Confederate General in the Civil War, is President of the Confederacy in ''How Few Remain''. |
| 340 | ** A bald US general named [[UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower Ironhewer]] accepts CS General George Patton's surrender. In real life Eisenhower and Patton were friends and colleagues. |
| 341 | ** UsefulNotes/FidelCastro appears in ''The Grapple'' as a 16-year-old kid who is part of the underground resistance in Confederate Cuba, opposing the Freedom Party. Sam Carsten, who commands the ship smuggling guns, ammo and supplies into Cuba, is told that despite his young age and being white (unlike his black comrades), Fidel was clearly the one in charge. |
| 342 | ** Lou Gehrig is a well-paid football player who, when asked how he feels about having a higher salary than the president of the United States, cracks, "I had a better year than he did." In RL Gehrig was a baseball star, and that line was spoken by his teammate Babe Ruth. |
| 343 | ** Creator/ShelSilverstein is a surgeon in the United States Army, who operated on Irving Morrell after the attempted assassination on his life. In real life Shel Silverstein was a Korean War veteran, not a World War II veteran. |
| 344 | * RidiculousFutureInflation: In the Confederacy following the Great War, in a direct parallel to Weimar Germany. |
| 345 | * RipVanTinkle: A severely sleep-deprived pilot is forcibly sidelined by the airbase Chief Medical Officer, who cons him into taking a sleeping pill. When he wakes up ([[AsleepForDays 48 hours later]]) he feels a hell of a lot better overall but ''really'' desperate for a piss. |
| 346 | * 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 [[JustForFun/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. |
| 347 | * SecondAmericanCivilWar: With the Confederacy having won the first American Civil War, the in-universe equivalents to WWI and WWII are de facto teh |
| 348 | * SeparatedByACommonLanguage and UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents: The differences in accents and regionalisms is discussed a few times. Clarence Potter runs the Confederacy's spying operations in World War II and mostly recruits people who lived or were educated up North (like himself) and thus don't have Southern accents. In another segment, two Confederate [=POWs=] are planning an escape, and one teaches the other some Northern turns of phrase ("carrying a bucket" versus "toting a pail") to help blend in after they break out. |
| 349 | * SettingUpdate: ''Timeline-191'' is basically European history of the 19th and 20th century [-MOVED TO AMERICA !-] Featherston is Hitler, Louisiana and it's Huey Long regime is akin to the "Austrofascism" regime in Austria before Anschluss, Houston(a state carved from the western portion of Texas)/Kentucky/Sequoyah suffers a fate identical to Sudetenland/Czechoslovakia, [[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. |
| 350 | * ShoutOut: |
| 351 | ** The mayor of Atlanta during the Second Great War is one [[Creator/ClarkGable Clark]] [[Film/GoneWithTheWind Butler]]. |
| 352 | ** ''Film/GoneWithTheWind'' gets another one when you consider that Anne Colleton and Roger Kimball play like a ''very'' dark version of Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler. |
| 353 | ** A medic assigned to work with Leonard O'Doull is named Vince Donofrio, a possible reference to actor Vincent D'Onofrio with the added bonus that both the fictional character and real life actor are musicians in their spare time. |
| 354 | ** Jonathan Moss is a hotshot pilot who becomes a military attorney (partly due to age and partly due to the US drawing down forces) after the Second Great War, not unlike [[Series/{{JAG}} a certain TV military attorney...]] |
| 355 | * ShownTheirWork: In addition to being a novelist, Turtledove is also a history Ph.D. |
| 356 | * SlidingScaleOfAlternateHistoryPlausibility: Starts out reasonably hard in ''How Few Remain'', but, [[{{Sequelitis}} gets softer and softer with every sequel]]. The historical parallelism of the last 3 or 4 novels (depicting an alternate WWII set mostly in North America) [[MirrorUniverse often runs to absurd degrees]] (basically becoming just an American re-telling of European history of the first half of the 20. century). |
| 357 | * SmashTheSymbol: One of the two cities the U.S. drops it's first superbombs on is Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston being the symbolic birthplace of the Confederacy due it being located in South Carolina (the first state to secede) and where the first shots of the War of Secession were fired at Fort Sumter. Signalling the U.S.'s intention to finally end the Confederacy. |
| 358 | * SociopathicSoldier: |
| 359 | ** Union soldier Boris Lavochkin of ''In At The Death'' is a psycho. And there's always [[TheFundamentalist Gordon]] [[KillItWithFire McSweeney]], to the point that some fans anticipated him becoming the Hitler-analogue if the US lost WWI. |
| 360 | ** Almost every member of the Freedom Party Guard, given that they're pretty much the [[StateSec S]][[ThoseWackyNazis S]]. |
| 361 | * SomebodySetUpUsTheBomb: [[spoiler:Clarence Potter]] uses stolen US military uniforms and vehicles to smuggle [[spoiler:the Confederacy's first (and only) nuclear bomb]] into Philadelphia (which is serving as the US capital). He sets ''two'' timers, just to be sure it goes off, and ends up [[spoiler:[[NukeEm destroying half the city]]]]. |
| 362 | * SomeoneToRememberHimBy: When Yossel Reisen dies in World War I, his fiancee Sophie names her unborn son after him. Yossel II grows up just in time to serve in World War II, though he survives. |
| 363 | * SpiritualAntithesis: To Turtledove's ''Literature/TheGunsOfTheSouth''. Both series share the basic premise of a Confederate victory in the American Civil War but in ''The Guns of the South'' it was on account of time-travelers trying to MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight while the series here has a far more mundane point of divergence with the Union never intercepting Lee's lost Special Order 191 dispatch. In addition, ''The Guns Of The South'' ends on a more hopeful note with the implication the United States and Confederacy will work more closely with one another along with better racial relations for blacks. While Tl-191 is a kickstart to an 80 year cycle of bitter and destructive war between the United States and Confederacy. |
| 364 | * SpiritualSuccessor: To [[Creator/HarryTurtledove Turtledove's]] own ''Literature/TheGunsOfTheSouth''. |
| 365 | * StartOfDarkness: |
| 366 | ** Jefferson Pinkard begins the series as a decent, hard-working man who loves his wife and bears no hatred towards blacks despite the atmosphere of the CSA at the time. It all starts going downhill after he catches his wife cheating on him with his next-door neighbor, which is what starts turning him bitter and cynical. After the Great War, he gets involved with the Freedom Party, and the distance causes his wife to cheat again, at which point he literally throws her out and dedicates himself wholly to the Party, eventually becoming the series' analogue of Eichmann. |
| 367 | ** As mentioned above, Jake Featherston's occurs when he hits a glass ceiling after being inconveniently right about his superior officer's black servant being a spy. |
| 368 | ** Arthur [=McGregor=] reluctantly tolerates the American occupation of Canada, until his son is killed by occupying authorities. Then he becomes [[RevengeBeforeReason obsessed with revenge]]. |
| 369 | * StrawCivilian: Returning home after the Confederate defeat in the Great War, Jefferson Pinkard is accosted in a train station by a woman who criticises him for being a coward. This kind of thing did sometimes happen in real life in some European countries, but it was more common before everyone realised it wouldn't be over by Christmas. |
| 370 | * StylisticSuck: The ''Mein Kampf'' parallel, Jake Featherston's ''Over Open Sights'', is intentionally terrible because Featherston is mostly self-educated and does nothing more than rant about how much he hates Yankees and black people. Unlike ''Mein Kampf'' it's only published after Featherston becomes president and starts the war with the USA (this change is likely because Turtledove felt that it would be implausible for a Hitler-parallel to write a "Mein Kampf" style book long before he came to power in a language that he shared with his primary rival nation and not attract more attention) and most Confederates are disappointed to find that it's just a less coherent version of the speeches he'd been giving for years. |
| 371 | * TankGoodness: Tanks are called "Barrels" in this universe. During the Great War, the U.S. General Staff wanted to use the tanks for support roles, but Armstrong Custer is the one who uses the barrels to great effect in the "Barrel Roll Offensive" when he gathered over 300 barrels into one force and used them to smash through Confederate trenches. |
| 372 | * TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized: Hoo boy. The [[spoiler: black Marxists]] [[RapePillageAndBurn massacre, burn, and rape]] their way across much of the CSA, including [[spoiler: implied genocide on the part of the Black Belt Socialist Republic]]. The [[spoiler: Mormons]] are [[SuicideAttack hardly]] [[ChildSoldiers saints]] themselves. |
| 373 | * ThirteenIsUnlucky: Jake Featherston is the thirteenth president of the CSA. |
| 374 | * TitleDrop: |
| 375 | ** In the last book Flora Blackford notes that "It wasn't given to many men to be in at the birth of something wonderful. If you couldn't do that, being ''in at the death'' of something foul was almost as good." Several other characters also comment on "being in at the death." |
| 376 | ** In fact, most of the books in the series do it at one point or another. |
| 377 | * TookALevelInBadass: The USA goes from being a militarily feeble country with horribly incompetent Generals and unorganized military to being an industrial and military giant who takes down The Confederate States, Great Britain, and France at the same time (though Germany is doing a lot to keep Great Britain and France occupied). |
| 378 | * TotallyRadical: Several characters comment on the word "swell" replacing "bully". In a more subtle example, Confederates are often referred to as rebs/Rebels/Johnny Reb up through the end of the Great War, but the term falls almost entirely out of use afterwards, while Northerners remain "damnyankees" right up to the end. |
| 379 | * TrojanAmbulance: CSA President [[PresidentEvil Jake Featherston]] travels in a vehicle marked with the Red Cross to avoid being shot at by USA forces. |
| 380 | * UpThroughTheRanks: Sam Carsten starts out as an enlisted man in the US Navy. During the period between [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI the Great War]] and [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII the Second Great War]], he takes a test to become an officer, passes, and eventually gets his own command in the later books. |
| 381 | * VetinariJobSecurity: In accordance with his status as a Hitler expy, Featherston is able to seize control of the Freedom Party by threatening to resign and challenging them to see how far they get without him. |
| 382 | * VicePresidentWho: Donald Partridge, the second vice president of evil Confederate Nazi President Jake Featherston, is chosen for that office specifically because he is an ineffectual cipher. Featherston's first Vice President had tried to assassinate him. Partridge doesn't do much more than hang out with society ladies and tell jokes. Also true on the Union side -- at one point the USA Vice President tells his in-laws that his job is to sit around collecting dust unless something happens to the President. |
| 383 | * VillainHasAPoint: At Jefferson Pinkard's trial, he offers no defence - not even "I was JustFollowingOrders" - but points out that while his actions were horrific [[spoiler: instituting their version of the "Final Solution"]], the victorious North only cares about what the Confederates were doing ''because it was the Confederates who were doing it''. Given other comments from Northerners elsewhere, he clearly has a point (not that it saves him). |
| 384 | * WashingtonDCInvasion: In this timeline, Washington D.C. is just across the river from the CSA, easily within artillery range. Once The Great War starts, Confederate forces quickly overrun it, and occupy it throughout the war. |
| 385 | ** 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, such as Presidential inaugurations and state funerals. |
| 386 | * WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Donald Patridge, the last president of the Confederacy, is promptly arrested by American soldiers after signing the papers to end the war. It is unknown if he was executed, imprisoned or exonerated for any crimes. |
| 387 | * WhatIf: What if the Confederacy won the Civil War? |
| 388 | * WideEyedIdealist: |
| 389 | ** Jonathan Moss, in his interwar career as an 'occupation law' attorney. Moss opposed his own government in court regarding claims made by Canadians for property seized by the US Army and was noted by Canadians as providing honest representation. Unfortunately this did not end well for Moss, [[spoiler: whose family was killed by a resistance bombing.]] |
| 390 | ** Flora Hamburger's political career starts this way, although she does become an IronLady after being exposed to the inner circles of power. |
| 391 | * YiddishAsASecondLanguage: Thanks to Turtledove's fondness for Jewish characters. |
| 392 | * YouALLShareMyStory: |
| 393 | ** Averted for the most part, though occasionally characters will meet each other: Jonathan Moss becomes Jefferson Pinkard's defence attorney, Flora Blackford meets Cassius Madison in a ceremony in his honour, etc. |
| 394 | ** There's also cases of it going the other way, where two characters who were together get separated and then both of them become viewpoint characters. Chester Martin and Gordon [=McSweeney=] being one example. |
| 395 | ** Every character interacts with as many other viewpoint characters as possible, even in incredibly minor ways. Moss and Sylvia Enos even interact, as Moss is mentioned in a throwaway line to be wearing boots with red rings on the top (and Sylvia worked in a rubber boot factory painting the red rings on top). Oddly enough given this series, it's only mentioned once. |
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