Parallelism in Southern Victory

Even among Harry Turtledove's body of work, the Southern Victory series is famous for its parallelism with OTL. What follows is an attempt to document instances thereof.

Anthony Dresser
Anton Drexler was a German ultra-nationalist who became involved in right-wing politics at the end of World War I. Along with the like-minded journalist Karl Harrer, he cofounded the German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or DAP). In 1921 he recruited Adolf Hitler into his party, and soon found he had a tiger by the tail, as Hitler--who had convinced Drexler to rename the party National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or NSDAP, more commonly known today as the Nazi Party)--quickly eclipsed his own influence and supplanted Drexler as Chairman of the NSDAP.

Anthony Dresser, who precedes Jake Featherston as Chairman of the Freedom Party, is clearly an anglicization of Drexler's name. Dresser's relationship with Featherston is a bit more antagonistic than was Drexler's with Hitler: Hitler merely eclipsed Drexler's authority until Drexler sought out another party, and eventually allowed Drexler to return to the Nazi ranks, though never to hold a position of real influence. Featherston actually purges Dresser, decisively and irreversibly.

Flora Hamburger
When Flora Hamburger is introduced in American Front, she bears many resemblances to German communist agitator Rosa Luxemburg. Both are Marxists; both are Jews, though Luxemburg was an atheist while Hamburger was merely secular; both are politically radical; both are opposed to their respective countries' involvement in the Great War; and both agitate on behalf of socialist revolution, though Hamburger's commitment to violent overthrow of the government is not quite as strong as Luxemburg's. Still, like Luxemburg, she takes place in anti-war demonstrations which turn bloody.

These initial parallels are evidence in support of the popular belief among fans that Turtledove initially intended the Great War series to end with yet another defeat of the United States at the hands of the Confederates. This theory then has the chaotic history of the Weimar Republic playing out in the United States. Of course, if this belief is true, Turtledove eventually changed his mind and decided to make the CS the analog of interwar Germany. At this point he had to draw back from making Hamburger a Luxemburg analog, and her radicalism is gradually dialed down. Hamburger is elected to the House of Representatives, where she initially resembles Jeanette Rankin, the Republican Representative from Montana who, in 1917, became the first female member of Congress in US history. (Hamburger is not the first woman elected to Congress in TL-191, but the first session in which she sits is very male-dominated, with only one other female member of the House, and she the widow of a longtime male Congressman.) Rankin voted against Woodrow Wilson's declaration of war against Germany in 1917. Since the war has already begun when Hamburger is seated, she does not have the opportunity to do so, but she does oppose wartime appropriations and is extremely critical of both the political and military leadership of the war effort. (She had earlier been outraged when influential Socialists in Congress had voted for US entry into the Great War.)

Rankin also voted against Franklin D. Roosevelt's declaration of war against Japan in 1941, the only member of either house of Congress to do so. (She abstained from voting on the declaration of war against Germany, contrary to popular belief that she voted No to that declaration as well.) By 1941, the fictional Hamburger has parted ways with the historical Rankin and become rather more hawkish. She votes for declarations of war against all the Entente members and, as a member of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, presses for increasingly aggressive prosecution of the Second Great War as the Settling Accounts tetralogy progresses, even aligning herself with conservative Democrats, including Robert Taft, who had been the party's candidate in the last presidential election. Taft had run on a hawkish platform, the late President Smith had run on a dovish one. Hamburger had, of course, supported Smith at the time, but she eventually admits to Taft that she had come to realize that he'd been right and Smith had been wrong.

In the later books of the Southern Victory series, Hamburger (now using her married name of Blackford) bears a loose resemblance to Hillary Clinton: Both women were the wives of Presidents (Flora eventually married Hosea Blackford) and, after their respective tenures as First Lady of the United States, both joined (or, in Flora's case, rejoined) New York's Congressional delegation.

Gordon McSweeney
Fans of the series have long hypothesized that Turtledove originally planned for the United States to lose the Great War and to play out an analog of the chaotic history of the Weimar Republic in later volumes. Under this theory, it is believed that Gordon McSweeney would eventually become an analog of Adolf Hitler. Both serve as noncommissioned officers in the first war. (McSweeney would eventually become an officer, but only after Turtledove had abandoned his original plan for the series, if indeed there was such a plan.) Both had reputations for going above and beyond the call of duty, and both were decorated with their government's highest military award. (Hitler also received the Iron Cross, First Class in TL-191 as well as in OTL.) Furthermore, both were extremely self-assured in their belief systems (McSweeney's religious in nature, Hitler's nationalist and racist) and both were alarmingly bigoted toward and intolerant of any individual or member of a group which stood in opposition of these beliefs. McSweeney is fanatically religiously partisan, strongly opposed to Catholicism in particular and all non-Protestantism faiths in general (as well as some Protestant faiths which he finds inadequately austere). Despite the Great War in North America being fought among secular governments (not counting the Mormon leadership) and having little if any religious undertones (with the same exception), McSweeney regards violent acts on the battlefield against the Entente are pleasing to God.

Of course, this is all with the caveat that the biography of Hitler during the First World War is relatively vague, and accounts have been colored by knowledge of the man he became in later years. It is possible that he did not display these traits at that time, or that they were much more muted than is commonly portrayed.

McSweeney is killed at the end of Breakthroughs. Turtledove has admitted that he did not choose to abandon this character at random. In a live chat with readers in 2000, he made the cryptic comment that he "couldn't imagine a character like [McSweeney] playing a role in peacetime." From this, readers have found further support for the belief that that US was originally supposed to play out German history, with violent civil strife that was definitely not "peacetime" following the war.

Irving Morrell
Irving Morrell's first name is the anglicized version of the German name Erwin, and his last name is very close to being an anagram of Rommel. The similarities between Irving Morrell and Erwin Rommel do not end there.

Both were born in 1891. Both attended their countries' military academies in the early twentieth century and both were junior infantry officers at the outbreak of the wars in 1914--World War I in the historical Rommel's case, the Great War in the fictional Morrell's. Both were wounded in action during the war--Morrell once, Rommel three times. Both served on several different fronts, including in both cases elite mountain warfare units.

After the war, the parallelism between the two begins to fade (obviously, Rommel did not play a role in the final victory of the German army over its enemies, since the Germans achieved no such victory in World War I), but never disappears altogether. In the interwar years, both preferred "muddy boots" assignments to their countries' General Staffs.

At the outset of hostilities (World War II for Rommel, the Second Great War for Morrell), both hold the rank of colonel and command armored units. Both very quickly rise through the ranks and become army group commanders.

Both are notorious for leading from the front--thus exposing themselves to needless personal danger, neglecting their duties as field commanders behind the lines, and causing their colleagues to wonder whether they had been promoted beyond their abilities. However, Rommel did so only on occasion, whereas with Morrell the habit is indulged constantly.

Both lead extremely aggressive drives against their enemies--Rommel through France in 1940, Morrell through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia. During these aggressive drives, both men's army groups' logistical wings are hard-pressed to keep the troops properly supplied.

Both generals win the confidence of the men under their command (though not necessarily their fellow generals) and the civilian populations of their respective countries. In fact, both are arguably the most celebrated heroes their countries produce during the war.

Both face armies led by George Patton in battle, and in both cases Patton uses tactics which he was inspired to adapt by studying Rommel's (in OTL) and Morrell's (in TL-191) pioneering tactical styles during the early days of mechanized warfare.

Both men have differences with their respective heads of state, though the patterns of these differences are opposite. Morrell, a conservative Democrat, is initially horrified when Socialist President Al Smith wins reelection in 1940, fearing (correctly) that Smith's naive foreign policy will allow and encourage Jake Featherston to attack the United States from an advantageous position. However, once the war starts, Morrell quickly becomes at least outwardly apolitical, and Smith's successor, fellow Socialist Charles W. La Follette, praises Morrell on the public record. (This is somewhat reminiscent of liberal Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt's glowing support for conservative Republican Dwight Eisenhower--who would eventually lead the GOP into the White House for the first time since FDR defeated Herbert Hoover--during World War II.) Rommel, on the other hand, was initially an admirer of Adolf Hitler, and gradually became disenchanted with the dictator's increasingly erratic leadership, until eventually he took part in a conspiracy to overthrow Hitler, which resulted in his own death and execution.

Both have working relationships with Heinz Guderian, though obviously the different circumstances of the American fictional character from the German historical figure lead to a very different nature of this relationship in Morrell's case.

In their personal lives, the two do not have a great deal in common. However, both are married with one child, though Rommel, unlike Morrell, also had a second, illegitimate child from a relationship before his marriage.

Morrell also bears some resemblance to William Sherman in the final two books of the series. When he crosses into Georgia from Tennessee, when he drives on and captures the city of Atlanta, and when he then marches to the sea and up into South Carolina while also sending columns in other directions into the interior of the CSA, he follows Sherman's campaigns in the final year of the American Civil War almost exactly.

When the Second Great War ends, he becomes military governor of a military division comprising several former Confederate states. Sherman also became a military governor after the Civil War, though Morrell's district does not align with Sherman's.

Don Partridge
Many readers have pointed out similarities between Confederate Vice-President Don Partridge and Dan Quayle, who served as Vice-President of the United States from 1989 to 1993. Obviously, the name Don is close to the name Dan, and the partridge is related to the quail. Beyond similar names, Partridge is frequently described and sometimes portrayed as a lightweight intellectually and professionally, as a good-looking and affable figure who did not play a significant role in Jake Featherston's policy decisions. Popular perception in the United States during the administration of the elder President Bush was that Quayle had been asked to run as Bush's running-mate for similar reasons.

Clarence Potter
The character of Clarence Potter bears some resemblance to the historical Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who headed German Intelligence for most of the Second World War as Potter headed Confederate Intelligence. The resemblance is not manifested in specific biographical details (Canaris did not know Hitler during WWI, he never smuggled a nuclear bomb into an Allied city, and he ultimatley fell foul of Hitler and did not survive the end of the war). However, Potter's basic character and motivation are summed up by Featherston as a stanuch Confederate patriot who only accepts Freedom Party rule as long as he judges it to be compatible with the Confederacy's interests, and who would turn against the Party the moment he felt that that would be better for the Confederacy. Exactly the same could be said of Canaris' historically attested attitude to Germany and to Nazi Party rule in Germany, respectively.

Confederates Discover a Powerful Force Multiplier: McClellan
At the Battle of Camp Hill, George McClellan, commanding the Army of the Potomac, rues the fact that his forces have been outnumbered from the beginning. George Custer, the viewpoint character who witnesses this, internally disputes this assertion.

At the Battle of Antietam, the historical climax of the Maryland Campaign that leads to Camp Hill in Southern Victory, McClellan had shown a similarly unrealistic view of the relative strengths of the two armies, refusing to commit over 10,000 reserves whom he claimed did not exist against an Army of Northern Virginia whose numbers he greatly overestimated. Fortunately, the results of this lapse were far less disastrous for the Union cause than were those seen in How Few Remain.

Schlieffen Plan
Alfred von Schlieffen designed the plans which Germany would use should it ever find itself in a two-front war against France and Russia. The plan called for an initial holding action against Russia while the army launched a massive two-pronged invasion of France, with the main column flanking France from the north by marching along the coast of the English Channel, violating the neutrality of the Low Countries in the process. The plan was attempted during World War I, and failed.

In Southern Victory, Schlieffen once again draws up Germany's war plans for such a situation, this time taking as his inspiration Robert E. Lee's 1862 Maryland Campaign. How if at all this version of the Schlieffen Plan differs from the historical version is not known. We do see that it is attempted, and fails, as Germany is once again drawn into a protracted two-front war of attrition.

Revanchism
Following the Second Mexican War, the popularity of Remembrance propels the Democratic Party to decades of political dominance, though it remains a unique feature of the Democratic platform and is not embraced by other parties. The United States government makes preparing to fight and win a war against the Confederate States, Canada, Mexico, Britain, and France its top priority.

In OTL, revanchism also dominated French politics from their humiliating defeat in the late nineteenth century through the end of World War I. In France, no political party held dominance over this period, but revanchism was a feature of platforms across the political spectrum, and was so popular that a politician who spoke against it risked the ruin of his career.

In both instances, the defeat of the hated enemy (World War I in France's case, the Great War in America's) was followed by a brief period of patriotic jubilation, an attempt to impose a harsh peace on the vanquished foe, and then a very rapid loss of interest in further antagonizing the enemy.

Day of Infamy
President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously referred to the Japanese assault on the United States Navy's base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii as "a date which will live in infamy." In American Front, the US Navy attacks the Royal Navy at Pearl Harbor, defeats it, forces its withdrawal, and takes Hawaii for the United States. British national Alfred Forbes refers to the episode as "a date which will live in infamy for the British fleet."

Christmas Truce
On Christmas Day, 1914, all along the front between the United States and the Confederacy, frontline soldiers of both armies declare impromptu truces and engage in games of football. This parallels the celebrated 1914 Christmas Truce between German and Anglo-French forces on the Western Front, during which the soldiers played soccer.

In both the historical and fictional incidents, the various combatants' military leaderships were horrified by the breakdown in discipline. In the Great War, the Christmas Truce was a one-time thing and was not repeated in the second year of the war. In the historical World War I, a second Christmas Truce occurred in 1915, though it was much more muted. There was also a third truce in 1916, though this occurred on the Eastern Front, not the Western.

Domestic Unrest in the United States in the late 1910s
Following the US victory in the Great War, the country finds itself embroiled in an economic recession which leads to unrest between laborers and their employers. This in turn leads to strikes, which often turn into violent clashes between labor activists on one side and police and private detectives on the other.

This also happened in OTL, and lent credence to the claims of nativists that immigration from Eastern Europe must be stopped to prevent infiltration into the US of radical elements. In TL-191, radical elements are already present among native-born American citizens, and they become a force to be reckoned with in American politics. The Democrats lose control of both houses of Congress in 1918 and of the Presidency in 1920. (Democrats also lost control of the elected branches of government in OTL on the same timetable.) The Socialists' domestic policy is very popular among the American electorate. This is a departure from politics at this point in American history, when laissez-faire economics wins the day; however, and perhaps inexplicably, we will soon see signs that the Socialist government is also practicing laissez-faire economics.

In TL-191, the Democrats' foreign policy platform remains more popular than the Socialists', but voters no longer view foreign policy as a top concern, for the first time in half a century. In OTL the American electorate also lost interest in foreign policy, emphatically rejecting candidates who supported the League of Nations in favor of candidates of a more isolationist philosophy.

Both TL-191 and OTL can date the 1920 Presidential election as the end of a long era of American political history: the Remembrance Era in TL-191, and the Progressive Era in OTL.

The defeat of Theodore Roosevelt's bid for reelection so soon after he led the country to victory would have seemed inconceivable a very short time earlier. This is loosely parallel to similar incidents in history, wherein recently-unassailable elected leaders are defeated in their first reelection bid after leading their countries to universally popular military and diplomatic triumph. Examples of this include the United Kingdom's 1945 General Election, in which Winston Churchill's Conservative Party lost control of the Government, and the 1992 Presidential election in the United States, in which Bill Clinton won a landslide victory against George Bush, who had seen a rapid decline in public approval since the end of the Gulf War in 1991. Early in 1991, Bush the Elder's approval polls had hovered well above 80%.