raharris1973
Well-known member
Midnight April 23 1945 - Hitler made his last public appearance to give medals on his birthday 3 days before. His commanders told him the day before his proposed operational schemes for a counterattack and defense to hold Berlin are untenable. He's stated his intention to stay in Berlin and kill himself rather than be captured, and just about given hope of being a Miracle of the House of Brandenburg to save him, despite taking cheer at the death of Roosevelt 11 days before.
The Russians are shelling Berlin.
Mussolini, the "Head of State" of the Italian Social Republic (RSI), aka the "Republic of Salo" is facing the start of the final Allied offensive into northern Italy. Attempts by some of his cronies and German military commanders to broker a surrender basically failed. His preoccupation above all is about how to get to Switzerland before the Allies, or Italian partisans, get to him.
Within just a few hours on the 23rd, the Soviet Russians were destined to pinch off and surround Berlin on all sides. That afternoon, American and Soviet forward troops would meet at Torgau on the Elbe. Mussolini would be caught and shot by April 28th, Hitler would shoot himself on April 30th.
But in this dimension of the multi-verse, that doesn't happen. Instead, every bit of territory and people still within Axis lines in Germany, Bohemia, Austria, and Italy is sent by supernatural force exactly 100 years in time, replacing the lands and people there. By morning the German forces notice that its only the sound of their own guns they are hearing and they are not taking hits from HE shells and bullets for hours.
What they have seen and heard and occasionally felt are a few bullets and relatively muted explosions from weak, almost antique bullets and cannon, and puffs of black powder smoke in the distance. Plus some men in antique costume holding up white flags venturing forth to parley.
On a Europe-wide scale, this is what has occurred:
In Italy, the Habsburg territories of Lombardy and most of Venetia, the Duchy of Parma, and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, except for Nice, Savoy, and Sardinia, have been replaced by the German-occupied Italian Fascist Social Republic, with a core of Fascist true believers and an increasingly restive population and some anti-Fascist partisans.
The Austrian Habsburgs have found their lands sitting roughly within the German Confederation replaced with a new state with a Swastika flag that is strangely both built up, and smashed down. With large concrete and steel structures both standing and destroyed. The line doesn't track the German Confederation exactly, the Habsburgs still have Slovenia and their riviera, they still have Vienna and Brunn, but their Graz-Styria, western Austria, Bohemia and Silesia are this frightening new thing.
Baden and Wurttemburg have lost their southern extremities to the swastika land. Bavaria, while holding onto its Franconian lands and Nuremburg, has lost its Upper Bavarian heartland and Munich.
Hamburg, Lübeck, Bremen, Saxony, Holstein, and most of Schleswig have entirely vanished and been replaced by the Swastika state, with its landscape all being an even uglier gray of smoke, steel, and massive building, massively destroyed.
Prussia has its heart torn out with its capital overwritten by the bombed out 1944 version of Berlin, and a central north-south strip running through Brandenburg. It also loses all its coastline west of the Oder river. But it retains the bulk of its landmass, population, and frontier armies.
[Described territorial situation all shown on map, with coat of arms and green marking the Italian social republic, the Habsburg and Hohenzollern coats of arms marking their territories, and you know what marking the Nazis in crimson]
For the Nazis and Italian Fascists, their miracle has come with the disappearance of their enemies.
They face starvation, exposure, exhaustion, and they are sitting on land that various 19th century powers thinks is their property. But they possess weapons technology, tactical knowledge, some remaining industrial facilities (although quite short of raw materials) and industrial know-how a century in advance of everyone else they share the continent, and the world, with.
What next?
The Russians are shelling Berlin.
Mussolini, the "Head of State" of the Italian Social Republic (RSI), aka the "Republic of Salo" is facing the start of the final Allied offensive into northern Italy. Attempts by some of his cronies and German military commanders to broker a surrender basically failed. His preoccupation above all is about how to get to Switzerland before the Allies, or Italian partisans, get to him.
Within just a few hours on the 23rd, the Soviet Russians were destined to pinch off and surround Berlin on all sides. That afternoon, American and Soviet forward troops would meet at Torgau on the Elbe. Mussolini would be caught and shot by April 28th, Hitler would shoot himself on April 30th.
But in this dimension of the multi-verse, that doesn't happen. Instead, every bit of territory and people still within Axis lines in Germany, Bohemia, Austria, and Italy is sent by supernatural force exactly 100 years in time, replacing the lands and people there. By morning the German forces notice that its only the sound of their own guns they are hearing and they are not taking hits from HE shells and bullets for hours.
What they have seen and heard and occasionally felt are a few bullets and relatively muted explosions from weak, almost antique bullets and cannon, and puffs of black powder smoke in the distance. Plus some men in antique costume holding up white flags venturing forth to parley.
On a Europe-wide scale, this is what has occurred:
In Italy, the Habsburg territories of Lombardy and most of Venetia, the Duchy of Parma, and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, except for Nice, Savoy, and Sardinia, have been replaced by the German-occupied Italian Fascist Social Republic, with a core of Fascist true believers and an increasingly restive population and some anti-Fascist partisans.
The Austrian Habsburgs have found their lands sitting roughly within the German Confederation replaced with a new state with a Swastika flag that is strangely both built up, and smashed down. With large concrete and steel structures both standing and destroyed. The line doesn't track the German Confederation exactly, the Habsburgs still have Slovenia and their riviera, they still have Vienna and Brunn, but their Graz-Styria, western Austria, Bohemia and Silesia are this frightening new thing.
Baden and Wurttemburg have lost their southern extremities to the swastika land. Bavaria, while holding onto its Franconian lands and Nuremburg, has lost its Upper Bavarian heartland and Munich.
Hamburg, Lübeck, Bremen, Saxony, Holstein, and most of Schleswig have entirely vanished and been replaced by the Swastika state, with its landscape all being an even uglier gray of smoke, steel, and massive building, massively destroyed.
Prussia has its heart torn out with its capital overwritten by the bombed out 1944 version of Berlin, and a central north-south strip running through Brandenburg. It also loses all its coastline west of the Oder river. But it retains the bulk of its landmass, population, and frontier armies.
[Described territorial situation all shown on map, with coat of arms and green marking the Italian social republic, the Habsburg and Hohenzollern coats of arms marking their territories, and you know what marking the Nazis in crimson]
For the Nazis and Italian Fascists, their miracle has come with the disappearance of their enemies.
They face starvation, exposure, exhaustion, and they are sitting on land that various 19th century powers thinks is their property. But they possess weapons technology, tactical knowledge, some remaining industrial facilities (although quite short of raw materials) and industrial know-how a century in advance of everyone else they share the continent, and the world, with.
What next?