Industrious: Engineering Marvels - Chapter 23

Greenland Declares Independence!

An island on top of the world is seldom in the public consciousness, but today we take a break from discussing the grim realities of the ongoing war in Europe and the Pacific to take a look at the political situation with one of the few remaining colonial holdings in North America. Denmark, a nation under the boot of Nazi tyranny and occupation, has held the sparsely-populated island of Greenland as a possession of the crown for several hundred years. Originally populated by Norse settlers, the people of the region today are a majority arctic indian or inuit ethnicity in addition to whalers, fishermen, and some especially rugged craftsmen who make their living by repairing the ships the first two categories use in their daily lives.

With the fall of Denmark to the Third Reich, however, Greenland has been rendered without a true seat of government even with the Danish royal family and parliament nominally ruling from exile in the United Kingdom. To prevent Hitler's navy and armies from claiming both Greenland and Iceland (also a possession of the Danish Crown), the two islands have been occupied by the United States and the United Kingdom respectively. This move, undertaken with the full support of the Danish government-in-exile, has resulted in the people of Iceland assuming direct control of their foreign relations just four years prior, one of the last steps that they had yet to take before declaring their full independence from their embattled European mainland.

Greenland, on the other hand, has never had a sufficient population to mount the kind of public demand for its own home-rule as Iceland had done in decades prior. It is with this understanding that the population of twenty-thousand have chosen to unilaterally assert their independence, no doubt feeling that if there is any time to force the Danish government to honor a promise, it is while they have no armies or navy to call upon and little diplomatic power to exercise.

Vice-President Henry Agard Wallace of the United States has announced a visit to meet with an impromptu elected council of the Greenland people in conjunction with a representative from the Danish government-in-exile to mediate a mutually-satisfactory resolution to the sudden political complication. Christian X, the current King of Denmark, has pointed out, with some validity, that Greenland has historically been dependent on Denmark proper for financial and material support in virtually every agricultural, economic, and industrial field in operation in Greenland which they have supplied, often at great expense to the people of Denmark. Further, the European monarch has called for unity in the face of this trying time, asking for a pause in any talks of independence or secession until the war in Europe is brought to a close.

While President Roosevelt could not be reached for comment, Vice President Wallace has publicly floated the idea of a monetary grant to whatever government the Greenlander government might construct in order to make the American military presence at Thule Air Base a permanent feature, much like the American Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, which is the subject of a forty-year-old lease negotiated at the end of the Spanish-American war, automatically renewing each calendar year. It is unclear the exact nature of any potential relationship between the American government and any potential Greenlander government, though there appears to be significant interest on both parts. While loath to drive a wedge in the political alliance attempting to liberate Europe from Axis control, Vice President Wallace affirmed the commitment of the American government to the principle of self-determination of all peoples throughout the world and cited the Atlantic Charter as a precedent should the people of Greenland be truly ardent in their desire for self-governance.

Only time will tell if this is a political stunt by the people of the island to condition their continued loyalty to the Danish Crown on increased post-war support or the harbinger of one of the last North American colonial possessions slipping their leash at an opportune time.

-More Details on Page 7

New York Times: February 7th, 1944

I folded the newspaper with mixed feelings, placing it down on the table as I returned to my cooling meal in the base's canteen.

Part of me was surprised the government would go run with the idea, but... realistically, it wasn't an awful political maneuver. There was no way the United States was going to get Iceland under their banner at this point, realistically. The smaller island was well on its way to full independence and would need a near-occupation to actually subsume as an American territory. A hundred years ago? Sure, Iceland could have been traded for a bag of gold like any other European colony. America had even tried to buy it just after the Civil War, as a matter of fact, along with Greenland.

But even just buying the larger of the two was out of the question, in this day and age.

One of the principle ideological planks of American participation in the war as a whole was that the Allies were not engaging in a war of conquest. That meant they couldn't march in, plant their own flag, and tell everyone they took orders from someone else now. That was one of the core tenants of the Atlantic Charter, even.

A tenant which the Soviet Union largely ignored, granted.

'Eastern Europe,' a region which Stalin had insisted politicians in diplomatic meetings refer to anything east of pre-war Germany as... was largely just a pretext to establish it as a Russian sphere of interest. Or, if one wanted to be particularly biting, you could refer to it as the Soviet Eastern-European Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Instead of conquering the nations, they'd 'liberated' them from Nazi occupation and then held 'free elections' while Soviet troops were still in their territory to 'maintain order and a peaceful transition of power.' And, sure, the first few elections might have been free and fair and legitimate, but once everyone had identified their political leanings and the Soviets knew who to exile, imprison, or kill... well, suddenly a vast majority of ballots started turning up for the various communist parties of the 'liberated' nations.

I cannot possibly air-quotes that word hard enough and I'd probably sprain my fingers from trying.

The excuse was that, obviously, all of the nations that still had Soviet troops in them had seen the glory of communism and wanted a piece of that prosperity for themselves! It was just a plain fact of life that the Soviet system was better and the decadent west was only managing to hold onto power through the use of authoritarian police forces, fascist oppression, and blinding the unwashed masses with shiny new toys thought up by the shadowy cabal of capitalist bourgeoisie that really controlled the government!

Which just goes to show that if you yell something stupid loud enough, some idiot will hear it first and start believing it before they can learn the truth.

And, in the same breath, I would acknowledge that Jim Crow and the Internment Camps would like to have a word about how equal all people actually are created. But there is a difference between a country that has to try to slow down the recurring waves of immigrants who want comparative safety, prosperity, and a better life for their children...

...and a country that has to build walls to keep people in.

I was digressing, though. And distracting myself. Because the United States had, at my behest, quietly nudged the Greenlander communities in the direction of independence. Greenland, already seeing Iceland moving towards that direction, had pushed ahead with the reckless abandon of FOMO given the situation Denmark was currently in. The United States would act as a security guarantor, we'd get a few military bases to protect against the oncoming Cold War and ICBM scares, and...

Well, Greenland's population was twenty-thousand right now.

America had individual army divisions with more people in them.

It would be a matter of a decade before more Americans lived on Greenland than Greenlanders. After that, it would only be two more decades before half their population had at least one American parent, had a job relating to providing for the military, or worked directly on a base. When that saturation point was hit, Greenland would willingly vote itself into statehood.

Maybe Greenland and Puerto Rico will be a compromise set of states to admit in this timeline?

The clatter of a tray next to me pulled me back to the present and out of geopolitical musings. Looking up, I wasn't very surprised to see Steve sitting down with an overloaded tray containing what was probably three normal peoples' worth of food.

“Gotta fill up while we have the chance. We're back in the field next week,” Steve smiled, irritatingly chipper as always. “What's with the look?”

“Churchill wanted to have another talk,” I sighed. “And FDR's making a move on Greenland.”

“Ah,” Steve nodded, drawing out the noise as he began to dig in. “Need to get it off your chest?”

I grimaced. “Just the usual. Wondering about the potentially-outsized effect I'm having on history in general, the events of the moment in question. Greenland... I'm not too worried about, really. Denmark maintaining control of the island was basically a historical fluke. It was never interesting or strategic enough for someone more powerful to take it from them for the last few centuries. With the evolution of ballistic missiles, though...”

Steve nodded, taking a pull from his cup to wash down the greasy army hash that made up a good portion of today's meal. “I remember this. Intercontinental ballistic missiles, right? You said something about the over-the-pole route.”

I hummed. “It's a little counter-intuitive, but when you're thinking about a globe – a sphere – a straight line isn't actually straight. Depending on the route you're following, it could be faster to arc into the northern latitudes to take advantage of the geometry involved.”

Steve grinned. “Believe it or not? I actually know some of this. We had to study perspective in my art classes a lot, so I'm used to turning objects over in my head to see the sides you don't usually think about.”

I blinked, then chuckled. “Interesting how some skills intersect. Anyway... if things hold true, FDR is going to drop Wallace from the ticket come summer, so he's the perfect guy to take the political bullet here and play bad cop with Denmark.”

“But Denmark's going to have hard feelings over this, won't they?” Steve asked, still just a bit naively.

“Other than nursing a grudge, there's not much they can do in a practical sense. Their government is in exile, their country is occupied, and they're going to be the front line in the Cold War besides needing massive investment from the United States to rebuild.” Geopolitics was a cold and cruel thing. “They'll lodge complaints, cite diplomatic precedents, probably get a few concessions, but at the end of the day Greenland will quietly enter the direct American sphere of influence and Denmark will be forced into the anti-soviet military alliance the US builds post-war.”

Steve grimaced, shoveling another load of food in his mouth while I did the same. For a few seconds, neither of us spoke, contemplating that ultimatum. Finally, Steve spoke. “It still bothers me, you know? I've never been a big fan of the Reds, even if I think Marx had a point about rich people having too much power, but... I would have thought we'd learn something from all this. Fighting real evil, I mean. Working together to stop the bad guys.”

I sighed deeply, trying not to hand the other man a look of earnest pity... and mostly succeeding. “You should remember that nations don't actually change that much, Steve. The people who run them are nicer or meaner, but the land doesn't change and the culture is entrenched. Russia will always have the problems of Russia, Germany will always have the problems of Germany. It just depends on how desperate and ruthless their leaders want to be about solving them.”

Steve grimaced, then shook his head. “I don't believe that, Ray. There's more to people than just where they live and how they're raised. They have a choice, everyone does.”

I dropped my head in one hand, laughing softly to myself as Bucky dropped into a seat across the table. “What's up? Steve crack a funny joke for a change?”

The good captain turned his bemused pout into a faux-glare towards Bucky. “My jokes are always funny, thank you very much.”

The look on Bucky's face clearly said, 'keep telling yourself that,' without a single word needing to be spoken. “So, what'd he do?”

Steve opened his mouth to respond, but I spoke over him. “One of those heartfelt boyscout moments where he expresses an unending wellspring of faith in humanity that you have to either laugh or cry at.”

Bucky hummed around his mouthful of food, nodding. “Right, one of those. Yep.”

Steve, his face tomato-red, huffed. “Is it weird that I think I prefer being shot at to a meal with my best friends?”

Bucky chuckled, declining to reply, while I... swallowed the lump in my throat.

Goddammit, Steve. Even when you don't mean to...

I shook it off, now wasn't the time to get cheesy.

“So was that what Churchill wanted to talk about? The stuff with Denmark and Greenland?” Steve pressed, ignoring the other supersoldier's amusement, which faded to curiosity when the question properly registered.

I shook my head. “No, he wanted another session about the technology trends of the future. I managed to put a good word in for Alan Turing, emphasizing how important he was with... that thing we're not supposed to talk about.”

Both men paused, then nodded.

I hoped the British government remembered that. I hadn't exactly outed the man to Churchill or anything, that'd be a step too far, but maybe a time traveler talking someone up, no matter how gay they turned out to be, would make the difference between an investigation getting quashed and a man's personal life making the headlines.

“But, no... the thing he really wanted my insight on was the whole India... thing,” I motioned vaguely. “We didn't really have time to cover it during the last discussion since they just wanted to get a handle on everything I knew, but... It's a mess.”

“How bad?” Bucky prompted around a mouth of half-chewed military-grade beef. “On a scale from... one to, uh... what's happening now, I guess?”

I grimaced, getting the last bit of my meal in my mouth and taking my time chewing it before downing the last of my soda. God, months later and it was still amazing to have a coke on-demand again. So good.

“Original timeline? A million people died,” I stated bluntly, making both of them flinch. “Post-war, Churchill's government gets voted out. So even if he's personally popular the new majority government puts someone else in the Prime Minister slot. That was... hmm, Clement Atlee, if I remember correctly. The man was... well, at least as much of a mixed bag as Churchill is, just in a different way. The Labor government... which, ah... is kind of like FDR's in terms of policy? It did a lot of good in terms of proactively providing for post-war Britain, but...”

I tilted my head this way and that, still playing with my spoon as I tapped it.

“He's... something of a bungler, to be blunt. At least internationally, which makes sense given his party ran on and was elected for a platform focused on domestic issues. His 'solution' to the issue of the empire's dissolution was to largely wash his hands of the entire problem and send whoever wanted out through the door unilaterally.”

“But if the country wants to be free, shouldn't they get to walk away if they want to?” Steve asked, frowning.

“There's a difference between setting a timeline for independence, drawing sensible borders with input from local governments, handing over power incrementally to ensure a peaceful transfer of authority... and just handing someone the keys to the kingdom and walking away,” I explained, trying not to talk down to Steve too much. It wasn't his fault, really. Most people in my time would probably have missed the intricacies of the situation, too, and they didn't have the excuse of relying solely on legacy media during a high water mark of wartime propaganda.

No, in the twenty-first century we don't need to be actively lied to. My generation sought out the lies they liked the most and got their friends to help them build an information silo around their choice of propaganda.

“Ah... yeah, I see how that could... yeah,” Steve muttered with a nod. “So that's what they did? Just... walked away?”

“The Atlee government? Pretty much. Drew a border between the Muslim and Hindu majority regions, gave both groups maps, and washed their hands of the entire thing. The fact that they set a timeline of eleven weeks to remove their own troops before India and Pakistan would be responsible for sealing their borders was pretty infamous. A lot of Hindus panicked that they'd be in a Muslim-majority country and a lot of Muslims panicked that they'd be in a Hindu-majority country. They basically stampeded across the border as fast as they could. It was... ugly. Lot of violence, theft, rape...”

Both men grimaced, looking away in impotent anger and disgust.

“What'd you tell them?” Bucky asked, then frowned and shook his head. “Not that I think you'll have all the answers, but... there's a way to stop it, isn't there?”

“There are ways to make it less bad,” I replied. “But... as much as ethno-states aren't really the answer to political stability, throwing an ethnically-diverse population together and expecting them to get along with each other has historically been a very bad idea. The trick is to do it over a long enough time frame, give people enough notice, and ensure at least one neutral party helping to keep the peace that as few people die, are taken advantage of, or disenfranchised as possible.”

“That's not very encouraging, but I can see why this is bothering you,” Steve stated gently, finishing his own meal. “So, what did you tell them to do?”

…

“So you don't think we should listen to Jinnah?” Churchill asked pointedly, the portly man puffing on a cigar with a glass of alcohol perched underneath that, his finger curled like a vulture's claw overtop of it. “My advisors tell me the man as a point. There is a great deal of discrimination against the Muslims in India. Hardly a year has gone by where we've not seen some trouble between them that threatens to flare up into violence.”

I took a sip of my own alcohol, carefully controlling my reaction to the English whiskey. Thankfully, I could turn off the burning sensation of the strong booze instead of just tolerating it.

“All I can tell you is what happened in my time. Jinnah died in '48. A year after that, the Muslim-majority government makes government service the province of those who worship Islam. By... I can't remember, exactly, but it was the mid-seventies, there was an amendment passed to their constitution that made Islam their national religion and anyone who didn't acknowledge Muhammad as the prophet, specifically the Sunni school of Muslim theology, was something of a tolerated outsider.” I shook my head. “Later that decade, they had a military coup and started importing radical Islamic extremists from all over the Muslim world – people who had been jailed and/or exiled in other Muslim nations – to build the foundation of an extremist Islamic state.”

“That rather contradicts what Jinnah has told me,” Churchill muttered. “What do you think, Clement? Presuming, of course, that our glimpse of fate has the right of it and you are destined to allow India to go its own way.”

There was a kind of exhausted venom in the rebuke Churchill shot towards his Deputy Prime Minister, the 'Loyal Opposition.' It was the kind of subdued irritation of something that has had more than one shouting match over the subject and not been resolved.

“Winston,” Clement Atlee sighed, his eyes flicking towards me as he remembered my last name, then dismissed it. “We've been over this. Putting aside the general strain of both the soldiers and the people here at home, there simply isn't the budget to hold a nation the size of India which is straining for independence.”

“Damn the budget,” Churchill growled like a bulldog, but let the declaration pass without further comment, even if he glared at the other man.

“My main issue in all this talk of-of the future,” Atlee muttered, looking every bit like an accountant out of his depth as he ran his thumb over his mustache while cradling his chin. “Is the backlash. The Muslim League has been very supportive of our war effort. Nehru and Gandhi have earned quite the reputation...”

Churchill grunted and swiped a stack of paper from his desk. “-and I quote, 'The government of Pakistan, having transitioned fully to Sharia Law by nineteen-eighty, is one of the few countries in the world where a woman must provide three witness to her own rape, lest she be sentenced to execution for adultery. It is also one of the few places in the world where a woman who commits a crime can be sentenced to being raped.'”

 Atlee sighed, setting down his glass and rubbing at his face.

The larger man hummed darkly as he flipped through the pages in his hand. “Ah! Here we are, 'The Bangladesh – Bengalese – genocide, occurring in nineteen-seventy-one, was a direct result of the efforts to mandate a national identity across both West and East Pakistan and quash the uprisings of the educated middle class that were campaigning for independence from West Pakistan. Estimates vary, but somewhere between three hundred thousand and three million people were killed.'”

The smack of the papers on the desk as Churchill dropped it in disgust rang loud in the office for a long moment as the Prime Minister put his cigar back in his mouth. He looked at me. “Between three hundred thousand and three million? That's quite the range.”

I shrugged, refusing to be intimidated. “Keeping in mind that this was before my time, nearly two decades before I was born, it's my understanding that the Islamic fundamentalist militias that were put together had learned from the Nazis and other, previous attempts at genocide, not to keep records. In fact, burning or destroying virtually any important records helped their cause of cultural assimilation. You're more likely to accept an identity forced upon you by another if you have no idea what the one you inherited.”

Don't mention Ireland. Don't mention Ireland. Don't mention Ireland.

I took a sip of my whiskey and remained silent.

Churchill looked to Atlee with a wave of his hand, a motion indicative of a certain sentiment I could only liken to, 'you may question the witness, your honor.'

If a bit more sardonic than it was normally applied.

“A three-state solution, then,” Atlee surrendered, holding up his hands. “Bengal, Bangladesh, whatever they want to be called. A separate nation for them. Separating a single nation by a thousand miles was a daft idea anyway.”

“You're not listening, Atlee,” Churchill growled. “As much as the good women of London have never let me forget that damnable quote I uttered in my youth that they didn't deserve the vote, I won't have some great abyss of medieval fundamentalism open up and consume the region.”

Clement glared at his superior. “You're just looking for an excuse, Winston. We can't stay in the region. It's just too bloody expensive and the war's taken everything we have!”

“We shouldn't leave, I'll admit it! If anything, this entire mess proves that the natives need a stern hand now more than ever! If only to protect them from themselves!” The Prime Minister threw his hands up. “God, look at me! I'm supposed to be the uncaring bastard and here I am trying to help these ungrateful subjects of His Majesty.”

“I can't deny that the loss of life in this... this other timeline,” Atlee looked as if speaking the words caused him physical pain. “Is regrettable. Imminently so. But are we to betray the cooperation Jinnah and his people have shown us by simply denying his life's goal out of hand due to some glimpse of the future? What of the Muslims in India? Are we to just shunt them into the population with nary a care? Should we not reward that loyalty with something other than betrayal?”

I couldn't help it.

I snorted.

Both me, their mouths open to yell at each other, turned to me, glares on their faces. I rolled my eyes. “I mean, do you want me to quote T.E. Lawrence or does simply mentioning him suffice?”

Anger turned to sour irritation, but both men turned away from me instead of facing down their nation's hypocrisy. Which was just as good, since I didn't have an actual Lawrence of Arabia quote at hand. I knew the man had condemned the betrayal of the Arabian people after their uprisings against the Ottoman Empire during WW1, substantially helping the British in the war, but I didn't remember what he'd specifically said at the moment.

“Is there not some way to work out a solution to this impasse, oh oracle?” Atlee asked, picking his glass back up and drinking from it deeply.

“Pakistan is doomed to become a hotbed for Islamic extremism,” I replied clearly. “It was a bad idea-no, scratch that. It was a good idea. An egalitarian, secular republic with a Muslim majority that treated its Hindu and other minority ethnic groups fairly and equitably. The problem is that it will never survive contact with reality. Even the name is something of a dark joke in that regard.”

“I'm afraid I don't follow,” Clement stated, frowning. “Isn't it an acronym for the various peoples of the region?”

Something I actually gave him credit for knowing, since not many people in my day and age did. “Punjab, Afghan, Kashmir, Sindhi, and Balocistan with the 'I' coming from the Indus River, yes. But that's the problem.”

Standing for the first time, I prowled across the smoky room with richly-appointed dark paneling, a few hunting trophies decorating the walls, and a great map of the region in question spread across a movable stand. “Punjab and Kashmir are both divided by the border with India. More than half of these parts of the country aren't parts of the country.”

I wrapped on the map with my knuckles to emphasize the point.

[FULL SIZE MAP LINK]

“Punjab is the traditional home of the Sikh population, which was violently purged after the partition. The king of Kashmir was pressured by both, but ended up joining India. Pakistan invaded the western regions when the annexation began with the aim of seizing the headwaters of the Indus River. The Afghan territory is mostly occupied by the Pashtun people that have virtually nothing to do with the Indian subcontinent-”

“The Durand Line-” Atlee interjected pointedly.

And I lost my shit.

“Goddamn your lines!” I shouted, turning on the suddenly shrinking Deputy Minister. “Lines! Lines! The Durand Line, the Radcliffe Line, the Sykes-Fucking-Picot Line! God Save Me from another British Line in the Goddamn Sand! One more British Line on the map and the world shall never know another day of peace!”

There was a moment of shocked silence and I opened my mouth to say something when Churchill cut me off with a snort that rapidly spiraled into a deep laughter.

Atlee shot his superior a foul look as he dropped heavily into a chair and continued laughing for at least another minute while I took a few calming breaths. Finally, the Prime Minister gave Atlee a smug look. “You have to admit, it was rather funny.”

I ignored him. “My point was that half of the Pashtun population is in Afghanistan and the other half is in the proposed borders of Pakistan. They've very violently established that they wish that was not the case. The Sindhi people are an ethnogroup that are split between Muslim and Hindu without any regard for lines on a map, the proposed border being one which cuts their people in half as well, just between India and Pakistan rather than Pakistan and Afghanistan. Finally, the Baloch people are Persian, not Indian, and would much rather be their own nation than part of any union they very much did not have a say in creating.”

“So what do you suggest?” Churchill asked bluntly. “Square the circle you're so critical of then, lad. You're in my shoes right now. Or Atlee's. Make a plan that satisfies everyone and won't have rioting in the streets, preserves my party's colonial interests while satisfying India's thirst for independence, and do so on Clement's budgetary constraints.”

I sighed and stared at the map.

“Jinnah walks away empty-handed.” I stated, shaking my head. “Muslim fundamentalist extremism was a reaction to the diverse ethnic groups of Pakistan pulling away from each other and the government trying to find a unifying ideology once nationalism had failed them. It just won't work. The Pashtuns get to reunite with their population centers in Afghanistan, Jammu and Kashmir become independent, as does Punjab. Balochistan gets everything west of the Indus and south of the Pashtun population. The Sindh get the region east of the Indus as a separate state, extending the border up north to where it intersects with Punjab.”

I stalked over and grabbed my glass and drained it. “Give them a five year timeline with the goal to fully pull-out by nineteen-fifty-two.”

Atlee opened his mouth and I held up a hand.

“Britain pulls out, but only after you get a United Nations mandate for a multi-national peacekeeping unit. The United States wants to open the world in a giant free market, make them pay for the privilege. Make it a condition of the transfer of power that the various new nations being created need to foot some of the bill too, but have it paid to the UN rather than Britain directly to ally their suspicions. Oh, and tell them they can't join until they do. That will make them want to join instead of seeing it as a diplomatic quagmire from which there will be no escape from.”

Even Atlee snorted at that.

I turned to Churchill. “India won't have any navy. Cut a deal with the new government, possibly the Sindh and Baloch states as well to supplement funding for naval patrols to keep the waters safe and guard the coast from foreign threats in the meantime. Of course, they will have to give you the rights to berth ships free of charge in their ports, an agreement you can finagle to include commercial merchant shipping and cut back on the taxes thereof. Extend that agreement out for however long you can and, functionally, India remains a colonial vassal in the British Dominion without any of the financial need for oversight or military rule.”

Atlee and Churchill looked at each other, both with speculative frowns.

“It's not an awful plan,” Churchill admitted.

…

“It sounds... pretty good?” Steve offered, very obviously out of his depth.

“It'll cause a whole slew of problems,” I replied. “But they'll be the same problems that would exist in the region regardless, just without the ethno-religious tension and the easy excuses to fund terrorist groups.”

“Sounds like a win, then.” Bucky snorted. “Think they'll go for it?”

“Fuck if I know,” I replied as I stood from the table with my tray. “Politicians will do whatever they want, and I'm completely exhausted from talking to them. Any chance our flight leaves early?”

Bucky and Steve both chuckled as the dark-haired supersoldier grinned. “You and Steve. When did I become the reasonable one?”

~~~

So... next chapter we go back to fighting Nazis.

Steve wants to, Ray wants to, I want to.

A 5.5k essay on the geopolitics of 1944 will do that to you.

Have fun reading it, I'm going to go stare at a wall for a while and not think about anything. Next update is... uh, Winning Peace? Mind Games? Something. I'll have something out by the weekend. Brain tired.