Times of Change

Sci-fi / alternate history short story

Jan 16, 2025

World War Two was never going to be something easy for me to talk about.

Six years of war, from 1947 to 1952, and so many millions dead. At least we ended the Red Menace and managed to liberate Warsaw again, but the price was a number beyond belief. I hear things are a bit different in the Far East now, with the Empire of Japan finding common ground with the Americans against the Chinese, but the fighting in the Pacific always felt like it was something else. Something detached, something that actually deserves to be called by a different name perhaps.

I served in one of the Brandenburg divisions when the fighting finally spilled out of Germany. You will have seen the postcards I sent Mutter, and the letters. It was such an exciting time for us, and we were young then - so, so young. The civil war had been going for about three or four years at that time, with the Weimar and Red Guard units pitted against the Constitutionalists on the other side. We had the old kaizer on our side too, all the way from Amsterdam, but I’m not sure his presence really helped our cause as much as they now claim. People saw him and remembered the previous World War, and were cautious to get involved. Let them kill each other, they said, and let them finally have that victory they were complaining about missing from the previous war. I know you always got upset when I mentioned the kaizer, and I suppose a lot of other people felt the same too.

So we fought the communists, and we got some help from Spain, but most of the time it was just us. German against German. Yes, I called myself a German by then. I had been with my unit for too long to see myself as anything else, and besides: my studies had been away from home for even longer before that.

Then that Stalin man from the Soviet Union invaded Poland over a border dispute, and things suddenly flared up again. We heard little about it at the time, with the Rhine campaign in full swing and the Alsace region having worker riots every week, but eventually the Poles managed to convince the English to help them, and the Royal Navy started pounding the Red Navy in the Baltic, and then - our fortunes changed for the better.

The Red Guard units out of Kiel decided to attack the Royal Navy.

I think someone was lying to them about what the consequences would be, because the actual consequence from that little mess was that the English declared war on the Weimar and Red Guard units, and that rotten old Weimar government in Berlin, and started pounding them from the German coastline. Moscow flustered and blustered about it, and sent aircraft after the Royal Navy - ostensibly flown by the Red Guard Germans, but everyone saw through that ruse - and before you knew it, England was also at war with Russia.

With the English and the Russians at war - this was around the end of 1947 now, mind you - the French decided to join in and help too. They wanted to settle some old scores from the Crimean War of 1854, and with the English and Russians already at it, they probably thought it would be a good time to swing their fists and land a few good hits. They crossed the border into Germany near Stuttgart, and then - instead of meeting up with their Constitutionalist allies - they got ambushed by a Weimar division. The Schmerling Debacle, the newspapers called it. Instead of marching through Germany and into Czechoslovakia, the French were now stuck in the south of Germany. They made a big mess of it initially, especially when their tanks started failing. They also had a cavalry unit that they sent up against a Weimar People’s Militia group with Maxim guns, and that apparently ended just as poorly as it had done in the Great War.

Of course, the matter got worse when the Czechslovakian Workers Party overthrew their own government and sided with the Communists. Suddenly Moscow could send troops through their part of Poland and Czechoslovakia, and into Germany. A lot of people were very nervous at that point in time, as the Ivans started to move further west.

Austria, seeing the troops on its borders, declared for the Constitutionalists - and promptly got invaded by the Communist army that had been marching through Czechoslovakia to get to Stuttgart, where the French and the Weimar units were still slinging shells and mustard gas at each other. I was so worried when I heard the news, but I hoped that your studio would be safe. I know your time in the countryside was taking you far away from the big cities, and I just hoped and prayed that they would not catch you somewhere in a field with a canvas and an inkbrush, and mistake you for a spy.

I think someone in London had been expecting the Austria affair, though, because the French and English streamed into Austria two days later, from the west (apparently the Swiss turned a blind eye with some of the border crossings), and then they had the Summer Sprint to get to Prague. I think that was in 1949 or 1950, the fighting in Austria went back and forth a lot. I had a letter from Mutter from that time, only one, and when she said only nice things I reasoned that things were going well with you too, or at least not poorly enough to be worth mentioning.

Eventually though, things began to go better for us, and with the Five Flags Alliance - Germany (the Constitutionalists), Poland, England, France, and Austria - we managed to retake Berlin. Let me tell you, that was a big day for everyone! It was the 15th of March, 1951, and even though our unit only got the news a day or two later, we all cheered like it was the start of a new year. Seeing the photos of the Weimar statues and red flags being toppled was like a shot of pervitin straight to the heart.

1951 was a good year, overall. We retook the eastern German border by the end of the year, and hooked up with the Anglo-French Expeditionary Force in Poland just as December rolled to an end. Another Anglo-French army was in Austria, and once they started rolling north, we turned south too, and cut Czechoslovakia in half. I think that was the last time it was officially one big country. You should have seen the news by now, how they have finally split into two countries and given up claims of unity. I suppose it was inevitable, the war just made it happen faster.

Where was I… Oh yes, Poland in 1952. The communists were in disarray at this point, and we pushed them out east into Belarus by the time summer was turning into autumn. I still remember walking through a field there, on patrol in a region infested with Communist partisans, when the staff car from the battalion headquarters came racing past us. Gaspar was hanging out of the window and shouting like a lunatic, about the coup in Moscow. Someone had shot Stalin, they said, or he had fallen from a hospital window, others said, but regardless - the one we called Starving Stalin was finally gone. Their committees and councils were all in a disarray, and we saw it in the coming weeks as their cohesion on the front collapsed. The British and the French were overjoyed at it, and wanted to keep pushing on, but the rest of the Five Flags Alliance was not so excited to keep going. We had homes to rebuild and fields to replant, and we wanted to get back to that. Killing Communists can also get tiresome, eventually.

So with that, the second World War came to an end. The new partition of Belarus into Western Belarus and Eastern Belarus is quite novel, I think, and I am curious to see how the Anglo-French groups will rebuild things there in the western half. The Poles also have some plans to help. The eastern side of Belarus is still just peasants and commissars, so I expect we will see nothing great from there any time soon.

However, as much as this recollection has actually been not too unkind to my memory, I am actually writing you for another reason today, Father. A man came to visit me at the workshop today while we were preparing a new shipment of books. He was most polite, and said he had come in after seeing my name on the store sign. He asked me about my time in the war - which prompted my thoughts around the start of this letter - and then he did something I found most peculiar: he asked me about you. I showed him several of your paintings which I keep in the shop - the Innsbruck Tavern In Winter one which you are so proud of - and he listened with the greatest of focus. He asked about your health, how your other painting work was going, and then he gave me something which turned out to be the most disturbing part of the entire meeting. After that, he politely excused himself and left the shop again. Franz was outside in the yard, and said the man just turned a corner and was gone. I know Franz has been drinking a bit much the past few weeks, so I am not certain if I can trust him.

Please find included in this letter the coin that the man left with me. I have only once before seen a coin like this, and it was in that hidden drawer compartment in your desk at home. Please do not be angry at me for confessing this, but I have known about that secret compartment - and the strange coin - since I was a child. I must also admit that I completely forgot about it until this man arrived at the shop and showed me another just like it. The resemblance on the coin is uncanny, and I am fascinated by the symbols and dates on it. The strangely hooked crosses in particular are quite mesmerising.

A part of me wonders: is this somehow the same man who visited you in 1924 when you left prison? It is a crazy idea, and yet I cannot shake it. I can only remember one childhood story where you mentioned it, and I can only assume now - as an adult - that this man had some profound impact on you. You rarely spoke of it though, and aside from the one story I recall, I had to ask Mutter to get the rest of it. Please do not be upset at her for telling me, her mind is not what it used to be these days.

I will be returning home for Christmas, then we can talk more. I would love to get to the bottom of this strange man - or men - and these strange coins they have now delivered to both father and son.

Your humble and loving son,

Ferdinand K. Hitler

1953-07-11