”I think not,” Jackie said, as the tank finally reached the practice field. “Now… crank it up… and lets see what this baby can really do.”
“Well, what do you think?” General Stillwell asked, hours later.
Jackie smiled at him. Stillwell had little time for racism; he’d spent years trying to help the Chinese to build a proper army. “I think we’ll do fine,” he said. “Is there any news on deployment?”
“Nothing as yet,” Stillwell said. “The betting pool says Iran, as the tanks aren’t that much good in Scandinavia.”
Jackie smiled. “I can’t wait,” he said truthfully. “These tanks can move faster than anything they have and they fire very quickly. All we need are a few hundred more and we’ll be ready.”
“They’ll be here next week,” Stillwell said. “The President promised that he would see to it personally.
The White House
Washington DC, USA
25th March 1942
The White House was being rebuilt; a process that had begun just after the Wet Firecracker Rebellion had come to an end, and still smelt of new paint. The temptation to install some of the most modern security systems had been considerable – and indeed the Secret Service had hired British experts after the Hoover debacle – but Truman had ordered them to avoid tearing down the entire building. That, he was certain, would have to wait until the war was over – for now, America needed to see the centre of her government standing strong.
Rain lashed against the windows of the Oval Office, even though it was March. Truman had read papers prepared on the butterfly effect, which might well have altered the historical weather patterns in unpredictable ways, and – he was assured – had given them rain like he remembered from London. It suited his mood; there was work to be done, but he knew that he didn’t feel like taking a grip on it.
The buck stops here, he reminded himself. His alternate had placed that one his desk. He was President, and short of resigning – or doing something that would get him impeached – the buck did stop with him. It was just that his other self, or even Roosevelt, had never had to steer the country away from the brink of civil war.
“My apologies, General,” he said. Eisenhower, the commander of Allied Forces in Norway, was seated behind him, facing his back. In the other history, Eisenhower would have been supreme commander of the European theatre and later President, but in this history… the balance of power between Britain and America was lopsided, on the other side. The wrong side, as far as Truman was concerned; he wanted – needed – America to be strong.
He shuddered; the anti-Soviet riots had been brutal in the wake of New York. For a week, he had feared that it would plunge the country back into civil unrest, even civil war, but ironically most of the communists and ‘useful idiots’ in high places had been purged by Hoover’s men, during their one day in power.
And the British hadn’t stuck back at a Soviet city, he thought bitterly. Everyone knew that Britain had atomic weapons, and certainly atomic material had been used in the blast, but they hadn’t blasted a Soviet city. Intentionally or unintentionally, they’d weakened Truman’s position… and only one man could deliver what he wanted, and needed.
He realised he was wool-gathering again and pulled his mind back to the subject at him. “Please continue, general,” he said.
“The build-up of forces is continuing,” Eisenhower said. If he noticed the President’s distraction, he was too polite to mention it. “At the moment, we’re raising fifty new armoured divisions, most of them mixed-race, except for the handful of… other units.”
Truman scowled. It had been the compromise required to please the Southern senators that hadn’t been implicated by the coup attempt. Those white men who couldn’t stand the thought of fighting beside black men had been guaranteed Jim Crow units. He’d taken a small amount of revenge by ensuring that the Jim Crow units were last in line for new equipment.
“At the same time, of course, we’re also raising fifty infantry and several dozen other units,” Eisenhower continued. “Part of this is rotating people – experienced people – from Norway and using them to pass on their experiences to the new recruits. As we have nearly one hundred thousand soldiers in Norway, we have some ground for reinforcing them and rotating entire units out of that hellhole.”
Truman nodded slightly. Between the Germans in the south of Sweden, and the Russians in the north, life was difficult for the Americans in the centre. Even with Patton pressing their logistics as far forward as possible, Norway was hardly the country for armoured warfare. It was an infantry war, with a handful of tanks, and it chewed up entire regiments without a qualm.
“Is there anyway that we can force them out completely?” Truman asked finally. “We need to press the war forward as soon as possible.”
Eisenhower nodded. “As you know, one of George’s priorities was to construct airports that could take the new B-29’s, now we finally have a few hundred of them, and the new squadrons have been practicing tactical bombing.” Truman scowled; some of the early practice runs had been disasters. “He thinks that we can literally bomb the Russian lines out of existence.”
“Public opinion will more likely accept the quick end of Germany, with the war going on to Moscow, than they will the opposite,” Truman said. “Has he prepared plans for attacking the Germans?”
“He has,” Eisenhower said, somewhat to Truman’s surprise. Whatever George Patton’s merits as a general were, planning ahead wasn’t one of them. “It’s fairly simple; we launch diversionary attacks against the Soviet forces, and then strike down for Goteborg and Malmo, stopping for nothing. He’s fairly confident that the USAAF can hammer the Germans enough from the air to make brushing them aside on the ground easy.”
Truman shuddered. The Axis powers had made good use of the winter to dig in and fortify their positions. By now, some of them were dug so deep that even a JDAM couldn’t shift them, slaughtering infantry in hand-to-hand fighting.
Eisenhower coughed. “Personally, I think he’s being a bit too optimistic,” he said. “Still, if we did manage to cut their supply lines, we could stave Stockholm out without having to attack it.”
“The Swedish government-in-exile would love that,” Truman muttered. “It’s a shame that they can’t convince more of their countrymen to rise up against the enemy.”
“The Germans raze villages to the ground for that,” Eisenhower said. “They’re complete and total bastards… and the Russians are worse. Did you hear the report from the SAS team? The menfolk slaughtered; the women systematically raped and then slaughtered by the SS!”
“That’s what we’re fighting,” Truman said. The new televisions, both the British imports and the newly-made American designs, had run live footage. The results had created even more enthusiasm for the war.
“It makes organising a behind-the-lines movement hard,” Eisenhower said. “Longer-term, of course, we’ll have to move into Germany.”
“Something to discuss with the British,” Truman said. “We’ll have to be working with them at that point, and of course they have Japan to worry about.” He frowned. “General, I want you to start preparing the operation to evict the Germans from Sweden, then we can start supplying the Finns with weapons. They, at least, will fight.”
“Yes, Mr President,” Eisenhower said. “I’ll see you in a week.”
Truman nodded. “We’ll try and launch the operation in a month,” he said. “In the meantime, see what we can scrape up to send to Iran, to help out the British.”