Talk:Coup d'Etat

Let the speculation begin. TR 19:57, November 14, 2011 (UTC)

It is a title that begs for speculation. I'm thinking it refers mainly to Britain. We've got a Prime Minister who's eroding the strength of the kingdom's democratic institutions, and a cabal of politicians reduced to meeting in secret and planning for regime change. The situation seems ripe for escalation, though I would have thought HT would pace it a bit more slowly and saved the climax for Book Five.

There are other possibilities, of course. It could be a coup in France, starting with the mutiny that was threatening to break out among Harcourt's subordinates. It could be in Germany, though that was attempted when things were looking much worse for Hitler than they were at the end of the last book, and he was still around. It could be in the USSR, brought about by the Second Coalition's attempts to raise up local quislings in areas they've overrun. It could be in Poland. It could be in one or both of the Spanish factions, or in any combination of the above. I doubt it would be in Japan, where the leadership hasn't done anything to cause a major crisis of credibility, or in China, where the Nationalists, Communists, and warlords will surely not find anything worth breaking their alliance over while Japan continues to pose an existential threat. It's almost impossible to imagine it happening in the US. The US is at war, but only on one front, far away from all its major population centers, against an enemy it outnumbers several times over and which is unable to reach anything east of Hawaii or maybe the Aleutians. I can't conceive of anything there causing enough domestic turmoil to erode eight decades of universal respect for the Constitution. There might be a coup d'etat in the Philippines, though; enough people there will remember the half-genocidal American conquest of the 1900s that they might be won over by smooth-talking propagandists of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. I've always thought that would make for an interesting AH, and from the beginning of this series HT has been willing to experiment with secondary PODs on the side, in situations where the main POD hasn't yet produced much in the way of deviation from OTL.

But mostly I'm thinking Britain. The foreshadowing there was the heaviest. Turtle Fan 04:29, November 15, 2011 (UTC)


 * Summary is up at Amazon, too. Looks like your bet on the UK is the winner.


 * Given France's history, I think a French coup is basically inevitable. The English coup would probably be just the spark to light the French revolutionary fire.


 * I still think Hitler will go the way of Kaiser Bill. But not yet.


 * Coup in the Soviet Union--I guess the threat of the Second Coalition might be enough to scare some of Stalin's cronies into acting if they think it means trading space for time. But really, that lot had Hitler figured out before anyone else did.


 * Not sure what make of the Pacific War going badly point--that scans with OTL, and I can't see why it would be worse under these circumstances. I think that line is in there to remind us how "different" the US-Japanese war is rather than create an impression that the coup could be in the U.S.


 * Other random thoughts-"free-thinking" is not he first thing that pops into my head when I think of Luc Harcourt. That could be publisher overstatement, or it could mean Harcourt doesn't make it to the end.


 * I suspect Vaclav Jezek will ultimately kill José Sanjurjo. It will be somewhat anti-climactic in one sense, since the act itself won't free Czechoslovakia.  In the broader sense, I suppose it could be appropriate since Sanjurjo's continued survival did somehow cause the invasion of Czechoslovakia.  (Operative word being "somehow".)


 * HT seems as if he'll be doing something more with Clemens August von Galen, a good thing indeed.


 * Japan's "diabolical new weapon" would point to Unit 731 bearing fruit. (Or possibly HT reading Zzarchov's happy thoughts for ideas and deciding to give Japan the a-bomb first.)


 * On a more meta-note: this is probably the earliest release of a summary for an HT book that I can recall. Usually, these appear the Spring before a Summer release.  Mathematically, we're still closer in time to the release of TBS than to CdT.  It leads me to wonder if HT made good use of the slow schedule for 2010.  TR 05:25, November 15, 2011 (UTC)