Joe Steele (story)

"Joe Steele" is an alternate history short story by Harry Turtledove. It was published in Stars: Original Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian (eds. Janis Ian and Mike Resnick), DAW 2003 (0756401771); and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-first Annual Collection (ed. Gardner Dozois), St. Martin's/Griffin 2004 (0312324782, 0312324790). An audio version is available at Escape Pod, read by Stephen Eley.

Summary
The idea behind the story comes from a line from a Janis Ian song "god & the fbi" which says that "Stalin was a Democrat". The story's point of departure is that Joseph Stalin's parents (as well as the parents of several of Stalin's OTL cronies, evidently) emigrated to the United States. Stalin, here called "Joe Steele", becomes a Democratic congressman from Fresno, California. After bringing about the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Steele is elected President of the United States in 1932, trouncing Herbert Hoover. Steele begins to slowly take more power, eliminating opposition with the enthusiastic help of J. Edgar Hoover. He initiates a massive set of public works projects, called the Four Year Plan, to end unemployment and build industry. He nationalizes the banks and creates collective farms. He meets great resistance from capitalist ideologues, eventually resulting in underhanded purges of the Supreme Court, and later the military establishment. Soon, the average American is cowed. In his second term Steele introduces labor camps for political opponents and wrong-thinking citizens. Unrepentant prisoners are exiled to Alaska, North Dakota, and other isolated regions.

Meanwhile, events in Europe spiral towards war, as Adolf Hitler rises to power in Germany, and Leon Trotsky consolidates his control of the Soviet Union. Steele hates both with equal fervor. He refuses to enter the war in 1939, although later he financially supports Britain and then Russia, after Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union. Japan attacks the United States in 1941, and Steele takes his country to war against the Axis powers. The Normandy invasion takes place in 1944 when Steele fears the possibility of Trotsky's USSR becoming dominant in Europe if the Western powers fail to take a stand. Nazi Germany is defeated, and attention turns to the Pacific War, which proceeds until December, 1945. The United States and the USSR jointly invade and defeat Japan, which is then divided into North and South Japan. After a brief interlude of peace, North Japan attacks South Japan in 1948.

Back in 1945, however, Joe Steele had learned of Germany's stillborn atomic bomb project. When Steele interrogates Albert Einstein about this technology, Einstein admits that he had kept Steele in the dark, fearful of how the US might use the bomb. A vengeful purge of Einstein, Leo Szilard, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and other Jewish physicists follows, until Edward Teller pledges to build the bomb in three years. Steele allows him to do so. In the meantime, the USSR begins its own atom bomb project with the aid of other captured scientists. The Japanese War ends when each side drops an atomic bomb on a Japanese city in August 1949, setting the stage for a Cold War in the 1950s.

The story ends with Steele's death shortly after being elected unopposed to his sixth term. His vice president, John Nance Garner, J. Edgar Hoover, and the "Hammer" (arguably Vyacheslav Molotov) each order the execution of their rivals. Hoover wins out and takes office. The last line of the story implies that Hoover proves to be worse than Steele.

Novel
In June 2014, Penguin books announced that "Joe Steele" would be expanded into a novel. It is scheduled for publication in April 2015.