The Normandy Club
Page 35
As for what a Nazi America would be like, it is highly probable that upon conquering the United States, Hitler would have changed the country’s name to further obliterate the past and to better consolidate his power over the populace. Various historians and war buffs have speculated as to what that name might have been: Vinland, taken from the original name bestowed by the Vikings, was one suggestion. New Thule was another. By far the most fanciful, and the one used in this book, is Avalon. Taken from the Arthurian Mythos and referred to by Richard Wagner in his grand opera, Parsifal, Avalon is known as a mystical land to the west. I think this reference would have appealed to Hitler’s warped sense of history. At least it does in my story.
As for the individual states themselves, I have retained their original names and identities so that you, the reader, could better follow along as Denise and Jack made their way to Canada.
And you also may have noticed that the characters in Nazi-occupied Avalon speak a patois sprinkled with German words and phrases, a lot of them derogatory. It is only natural to assume that a people conquered by a strong culture will eventually incorporate phrases from the conqueror’s language into their own.
In the 1944 section of the book, I endeavored to be as historically accurate as possible, but again made some concessions to the muse. It is well known that by spring of 1944, Adolf Hitler spent most of his time at Berchtesgaden within the safe walls of the Berghof, his retreat high in the Bavarian Alps. But, for the sake of the story, I wanted him in Berlin, so that is where we, and Werner Kruger, find him.
As for Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, he was, in fact, a real person. A field officer renowned for his early successes commanding divisions in Operation Barbarossa—Germany’s attack on Russia—he found himself in a military quandary when Hitler refused to listen to his entreaties to push on to Moscow. When the tide turned, as it inevitably did, von Bock was relieved of his command. Though he lived in Prussia, I gave him an estate in Dahlem, an exceedingly affluent section of Berlin at that time. Von Bock ended his life ignominiously, killed in an air raid at Kiel, May 1945.
Churchill’s bunker, and the “War Room” within it, does indeed exist where I have placed it and has been preserved as a museum by the British government. As for Sir Winston’s taste in brandy and his eye for the ladies, I have again taken liberties for the story’s sake.
In any event, I hope you enjoyed reading The Normandy Club as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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Bill Walker
Los Angeles, California
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