This post will not be about music, but a book series. The series is called the “Southern Victory Series” by Harry Turledove. The first book in the series is How Few Remain. Why is it interesting? Well, I came across it a few years ago. It is an alternate history series, which is set from September 10, 1862 to 1944. The series features many historical chacaters in very different roles than they had in our world. For example, the Battle of Little Bighorn never occurs, and an aging John Custer fights in the First World War.
The novels tell the story of a different, fictional outcome of the Civil War and the consequences that followed, presenting an alternate version of our world’s history. The divergence in history is that Robert E. Lee’s Special Order 191 is not lost before the Battle of Antietam. In our world, this movement order was captured by the Union forces, which contained all the movements of the Confederate Army, thereby helping the Union to gain victory. With the order not lost, Lee wins the battle in this world and destroys the Army of Potomac. This victory prompts the United Kingdom and France to recognize the Confederacy and enter the war on their side. In the end, the CSA gains independence.
Years later, when the Confederacy purchases northern Mexican territory, and gains a Pacific seaboard, a second war occurs between the Union and the Confederacy. The CSA humiliates the USA, and similarly to what happened in France after the Franco-Prussian war, revanchism arises. With the CSA, France and Great Britain being allies, the Union joins the Central Powers on the eve of the First World War. When the war starts, thrench warfare erupts not just in Europe, but in the East Coast and the Canadian Border, while war in the West is more similar to the Eastern Front in Europe. With some minor divergences, Italy does not join the war against the Central Powers in this world. Russia is engulfed in a bloody civil war, and without American supplies, Germany eventually overpowers France and Great Britain, while the Union also manages to gain the upper hand, as Marxist black rebellions threaten the South.
The North’s demands are humiliating, and the South is in total disarray after the war. In Russia, the whites eventually win the civil war, and the Tzar stays in power, although the Russian economy is failing. As the Great Depression occurs when Russia in not able to pay her loans to Austria-Hungary, a new party comes to power in the South, called the Freedom Party. Led by a charismatic man named Jake Featherston, they blame the blacks for all the problems of the country, and start heavy militarization, quite similar to what happened in Nazi Germany. All the while, socialists come to power in the North, and the Second World War is about to begin.
World War Two starts with a French and Russian attack on the Central Powers and a CSA bombing raid on Washington D.C. (the Union capitol in this world is Philadelphia). The Entente seem to be gaining the upper hand, while a Holocaust is started against the blacks in the CSA. Eventually however, after a disastrous battle of Pittsburg, the CS Army is defeated (this world’s Stalingrad), and the Confederate forces are driven back. Germany also mounts an offensive, and develops an atomic bomb. Eventually, the Entente are defeated and the South and Canada are occupied similar to the Eastern Block in our world. The series ends with a developing Cold War between Germany and the USA.
The books in the series are as follows:
– How Few Remain
Great War Trilogy:
– American Front
– Walk In Hell
– Breakthroughs
American Empire Trilogy:
– Blood and Iron
– The Center Cannot Hold
– Victorious Opposition
Settling Accounts Tetralogy:
– Return Engagement
– Drive to the East
– The Grapple
– In At The Death
I know it is not about music, so let’s listen to some great Southern metal:
Songs of Rebellion 