Cultural
- Mark Twain is a newspaper columnist in San Francisco using his real name of Samuel Clemens (see below) and scoffs at the idea of becoming an author, stating that the minimal pay would not be worth it.
- Because Abraham Lincoln was never assassinated in this timeline, John Wilkes Booth never yells his famous "Sic Semper Tyrannis!" battle cry. Instead, Frederick Douglass yells it while shaking his fist at Stonewall Jackson.
- Two white Confederates attend a negro boxing league match in 1914. After watching one of the boxers absolutely destroy his opponent, one of the whites wonders for a second about how the victor would fare against a white boxer
, then reminds himself that a mixed boxing match would never be allowed in the CSA, nor in the USA. - Cincinnatus Driver enjoys "Dutch's" football broadcasts so much, he thinks the man could make reading a phone book sound interesting. "If anyone was a great communicator," the narrative states, "he was the man." In RL Reagan's nickname was "The Great Communicator.""Dutch" (as a runner tears downfield): There he goes again!
- Football has supplanted baseball as the national sport for both the USA and CSA (although the CSA version more closely resembles rugby) and many prominent baseball players in Real Life (Lou Gehrig, Hank Greenberg, Jimmie Foxx) are known for football in this timeline. Baseball is stated to be a regional sport confined mainly to the northeast, not unlike hockey in our timeline during this period.
- This is also a reference to how baseball became a national sport largely due to the Civil War - once mainly a New York game, numerous soldiers brought the pastime home with them, drastically increasing its popularity. A shorter war in this timeline provided less opportunity.
- An especially odd one is two men named Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who are experts at bugging rooms, despite the real Woodward not yet having been born at the time while Bernstein was only one year old. Turtledove later said that they were added as a joke and identified the third member of their surveillance team as Richard Nixon.
Military
- Custer wins a critical battle in the Second Mexican War with the use of a Gatling gun battery. Generals contemporary to Custer in reality noted that his failure to take along an available Gatling gun battery was a critical tactical error that may have led to his defeat and death at Little Bighorn.
- The Confederacy launches its blitzkrieg against the United States on June 22, 1941. It's called "Operation Blackbeard".
- Also in the series after the US Navy devastates the British Pacific Fleet in a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor (as Hawaii became a British colony instead of an American territory), a British character calls the incident a "day that will live in infamy".
- The main British fort in Pearl Harbor is called Fort William Rufus, after a Medieval king of England. It is on the site where OTL Fort Shafter stands, named after US Army General William Rufus Shafter.
- The Battle of Midway (between the Union and Japan) takes place on December 7, 1941. The Union loses its only Pacific fleet carrier (the rest are being used in the Atlantic against the British and Confederate navies) in the battle, forcing them to rely on escort carriers for the rest of the war.
- Dowling's objections to MacArthur's plans for an amphibious invasion of the Virginia coast to circumvent Confederate defenders around Richmond hearken back to the ill-fated Peninsula Campaign of 1862. Only the setting is updated. In particular, Dowling cites every single thing that went wrong with the campaign in real life as reasons why the plan should not go forward.
- This reference isn't only to the Peninsular Campaign, but also the Battle of Inchon from the Korean War. The only reason that landing isn't regarded as insane by history is that it worked (due to the critical over-extension of the North Korean army, which hadn't sufficient reserve-forces in central Korea to guard against them). The problems in both landings are surprisingly similar. Involving one Admiral Halsey in landings with MacArthur is also a reference to the entire Pacific War.
- This reference isn't only to the Peninsular Campaign, but also the Battle of Inchon
- The Battle of the Three Navies. It was the largest naval battle of the Great War, with the respective American, British and Japanese fleets utilizing hundreds of ships apiece and holding the most combined firepower in human history to that point. Whatever side lost that battle would inevitably lose the bulk of their naval forces and be forced to abdicate the war at sea. Or at least, that's what was supposed to happen; instead, the battle ended inconclusely, with neither side being able to thoroughly damage the other. All that said, guess what this battle was meant to representnote .
- In case it wasn't obvious, there's the battleship USS Dakota (in which Sam Carsen was serving at the time) and her actions during said battle. In the middle of maneuvering, the Dakota's steering would end up jammed, forcing the battleship to circle the British and Japanese fleets while enduring the brunt of their combined fire; regardless, the Dakota survived and inflicted damage on her attackers in turn. As the warship enthusiasts will recognize, the Dakota is pretty much a stand in for the HMS Warspite.
- The Battle of Pittsburgh is a very clear analog of Stalingrad, from the reason it was originally targeted (industrial capital) to being forced into attacking the city directly due to flank attacks preventing the city from being surrounded and cut off, and finally to the encirclement of the Confederate Army inside Pittsburgh. In addition, Pittsburgh is known as “Steel Town,” and the name “Stalin” means “Man of Steel.”
- In the final two books of the series, Morrell's invasion of the Confederacy sees him cross into Georgia and laying siege to Atlanta. When Atlanta falls, he goes even further into the interior of the Confederacy, he leads his army all the way to the coastline and then up into South Carolina. This is virtually the same strategy as William Sherman's campaigns in Georgia and South Carolina in 1864-65 that famously broke the back of the Confederacy.
- Toward the end of the timeline's version of World War II, a straggling Confederate Army unit ends up being cornered by US troops in a certain Virginia town named Appomattox, where they are forced to surrender. One of the Confederate soldiers takes note of the town's courthouse as he's led away.
- In this Timeline, Japan is the only major power involved in World War II that isn't the victim of a nuclear bombing.
- Clarence Potter is placed on trial for war crimes at the end of the story for having disguised himself and his troops in US uniforms to smuggle a nuclear weapon into Philadelphia. He is acquitted thanks in no small part due to testimony from Irving Morrell saying that US troops had also used the same strategy against the Confederates. This is reminiscent of the trial of Otto Skorzeny, who during the battle of the Ardennes put on US uniforms with a unit of Germans and snuck behind American lines. He was acquitted due to his claims that his soldiers only used the uniforms for sneaking and wore German uniforms in combat, which is allowed under the laws of war. The Allies let him off in part because convicting him would've required them to admit that they'd used similar tactics.
- The CSA starts producing rockets that sound an awful lot like V1s at the end of The Grapple, produced in Huntsville, Alabama. Huntsville is where Wernher von Braun ended up after WWII testing V2 rockets, marking the beginning of the US Space Program.
Political
- The post-war fates of James Longstreet and Ulysses S. Grant (who were classmates and friends pre-Civil War) in the series see Longstreet become President of the Confederacy while Grant ends up a disgraced scapegoat for the Union's defeat. This is a reversal of their post-war lives in our world where Grant went on to become U.S. President while Longstreet was scape goated by former Confederates and Lost Causers for the South's defeat at Gettysburg.
- In this timeline, the Emancipation Proclamation sits in draft form on Lincoln's desk as he negotiates a ceasefire with the Confederates and their British and French allies during the prologue of American Front.
- Doroteo Arango is the Radical Liberal candidate for president of the Confederacy in 1915. In Real Life, he became Pancho Villa.
- Irving Morrell meets a German Sergeant that has both won the Iron Cross, First Class, and expresses virulent hate towards Jews and Slavs. This should remind you of someone.
- It's not much of an allusion.
- For extra irony, this German NCO is an aide to Captain Heinz Guderian, who finds him rather annoyingnote .
- Teddy Roosevelt's surprise electoral defeat in 1920 to Socialist candidate, Upton Sinclair, is one to Winston Churchill's shocking defeat in the 1945 post-war election to Clement Attlee and the British Labour Party, as is Charles W. La Follette's defeat to Dewey in 1944.
- On one occasion when Flora Blackford is speaking to Franklin D. Roosevelt, she thinks to herself that it's a shame his being wheelchair bound prevents him from ever being able to run for President.
- Featherston's fate of going on the run rather than killing himself evokes Jefferson Davis' flight in the final days of the Civil War rather than Adolf Hitler's suicide. Before getting shot by Cassius Madison of course
- Thomas Dewey's surprise election victory in 1944 is marked with the Chicago Tribune headline "La Follette Beats Dewey".
- An offhand mention is made to an Italian politician who promised to make the trains run on time if elected, but he lost since nobody believed him. The POV character can't even remember his name, and takes that as evidence of how unimportant said politician was.
- As the CSA ramps up their "population reduction" on their black population, many characters make reference to what the public reaction might be if a different demographic, for example Jewish people, were the target of genocide. There are are also specific mentions that out of the countries with large Jewish populations it's possible that Russia could take similar actions against their Jewish citizens, but Germany is far too civilized. What makes it, in a way, grimly funny is that one of Jake Featherston's key aides - the man, in fact, responsible for Freedom Party propaganda - is Jewish, and Featherston himself has no particular animus against Jews.
