“Such as?”
Harrison shook his head as he left. “I always try to deal with facts, not things that may or may not be true. Life is so much simpler that way.”
A little before 1600, two nurses helped him get dressed and into a wheelchair. The orderly who scooted him through the underground tunnel to the institute’s main building, got him to the meeting room just on time.
The others were already there. He took the last empty seat, between Billingsley and Antonia. She didn’t respond to his greeting, but stared stonily ahead. Before he could speak again the Chancellor said, “Thank you all for coming here on such short notice. As you know, Dr. Robbins was seriously injured during his last translocation to TCE. We all wish him a speedy recovery.”
Then Velikovsky spoke. “For the last five days my staff has been traveling to TCE investigating the historical anomaly experienced by Dr. Robbins. Many were given missions which would normally have been considered too dangerous. Some have actually been injured—several fatally. Through their dedicated efforts, we now know that Transcosmic Earth has suffered a major catastrophe.”
Everyone in the room glanced at Robbins. What happened? What did I do?
Velikovsky continued, “Outside of a surge in nationalistic activity in the various German states in the preceding decade, we did not discover any significant deviations in the history of TCE until 1848. In that year, in our history, a number of popular and nationalistic movements threatened to or, in a few cases, succeeded in changing the political structures of many countries in Europe.”
Robbins listened as Velikovsky described events he only vaguely recalled from the historian’s orientation lectures. Demonstrations and riots in Vienna and Berlin in March, 1848 which forced the royal family of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Hapsburgs, to flee their capital and threatened to topple the other major German state, the Kingdom of Prussia. The calling shortly thereafter of the Constituent National Assembly in Frankfurt. Its purpose was to try to unite all the independent German states—Prussia, a hodgepodge of much smaller principalities and cities in middle and southern Germany, and the Hapsburgs’ empire composed of Austria, Hungary, and much of central Europe—into a single nation.
In the end, Velikovsky said, that attempt failed. By 1849 the reactionary factions, the ones who supported the political status quo, had won. The first successful steps towards German unification were delayed until the mid-1860s. Through the Realpolitik policies of Prussia’s “Iron Chancellor,” Otto von Bismarck, that kingdom and the smaller German states were united in 1871 into the German Empire with the king of Prussia, William I, as its Emperor. The Hapsburgs continued on their own separate path, their Austro-Hungarian Empire marked by a growing decadence and military weakness until its political incompetence touched off the First World War in 1914. Except between 1938 and 1945, the Germans in Austria never were a part of the nation that became “Germany.”
“That is what happened in our history and,” Velikovsky continued, “until recently, on TCE. But while our history has not changed, that of TCE certainly has. There, in 1848, Prussia, the smaller German states, and the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire were united into the Pan-German Empire, with the Hapsburg ruler Ferdinand I assuming the title ‘Emperor of All the Germans.’
“Such a major change in the political structure of Europe—a new nation of over 75 million people in the very middle of the continent, much larger than any except Russia—produced a history far different from ours. The event which almost cost Dr. Robbins his life in 1852, one which never happened on our Earth, was the near-capture of Vienna, the capital of the new empire, by the army of Czar Nicholas I. The German forces under Prince Alfred von Windischgratz were finally able to repel it, and a week later won a decisive victory over the Russians at the Battle of Olmiitz. The French, under the newly self-crowned Napoleon HI, also launched an attack as the Russians were threatening Vienna. They were more successful, defeating the Germans near Cologne. After an armistice, they forced the Pan-German Empire to cede all territory west of the Rhine to their own Second Empire.”
He went on, adding more details. The Franco-German war of 1868, ending with the execution of Napoleon III and the installation of a German prince on the throne of France. The successful invasion and subjugation of Russia in 1878 by a general named Moltke, with a member of the German royal family placed on the throne of the Czars.
“—And with the formation of the Anglo-German Confederation in 1892, all of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Australia were under the direct or indirect control of the Pan-German Empire. Over the next two decades the Confederation extended its influence to include all of Africa and, after a bloody war with the Empire of Japan, Asia. By 1912, except for those countries in the Western Hemisphere which were not possessions of formerly-independent European nations like Great Britain and Spain, a “Pax Germanica” extended across TCE.
“Except for different patterns of immigration to it in the late 19th century and, of course, no war with Spain in 1898, until 1912 major events in the United States were very similar to those on our Earth. That year, Woodrow Wilson was elected president on an ‘antimonarchist’ platform. It included his ‘Ten Points,’ calling for the ‘liberation of the enslaved peoples of the world, the establishment of democracy, and the right to national self-determination.’ That began a period of forty years in which the US waged an ideological, indirect war against the Confederation that included fomenting civil unrest, terrorism, and guerrilla wars using proxy ‘national democratic liberation front’ groups within its borders. In the early 1950s, however, this ‘cold war’ reached a crisis after the successful invasions of Cuba and Canada by the United States, and the overthrow of the republican government of Mexico by a Confederation-backed local faction and its replacement by a monarchy headed by a Hohenzollern prince.”
Velikovsky paused. “To understand what happened next, remember that nearly all of the important scientific figures from 1848 on we are familiar with still existed on TCE. For example, Albert Einstein, Edward Teller, and Wernher von Braun did similar pioneering work, but never emigrated to the United States. Those born in America, like the Wright brothers, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Robert Goddard had careers even more successful than in our history. Thus, the technology on TCE in the middle of their new twentieth century was as advanced or, in some cases, more advanced than at the corresponding date on our world.”
Velikovsky looked directly at Robbins. “On December 1, 1953, the United States of America launched a massive preemptive nuclear strike with its full arsenal of aircraft and missiles against the major cities and military installations of the Confederation. The latter retaliated in kind.”
There was a long silence. “It was difficult to assess the full range of destruction produced immediately, and by the later effects of residual radiation, plague, and the famine caused by the resulting ‘nuclear winter.’ We estimate that three billion people—85 percent of the total population of TCE when the war began—had died by the end of 1954. After 1996, we’ve been unable to find any survivors.”
I did it, Robbins thought to himself. I don’t know how, but I killed all those people. Eyes closed, he didn’t dare look at the rest of them. Especially Antonia.
From a distance he heard Velikovsky say, “There are two important questions we must answer. What caused this catastrophe? And can we do anything to change it? I will defer the latter question to Dr. Everett. As to the first, I would like your opinion, Dr. Robbins.”