Read this inflammatory thing.

[coloradodem2005]

Disturbing Parallels , October 6, 2004
Reviewer: Alan Rockman (Upland, California) - See all my reviews

For Adolf Hitler, substitute the megalomaniac Jake Featherstone.

For the KKK or the Nazi Party - substitute the "Freedom Party".

For the Third Reich, substitute the bitter Confederate South and its ancillary allies.

In his latest post Civil War "what if" saga of a divided America, Turtledove, using familiar characters from his past works (Carsten, Abner Dowling, Featherstone and others), imagines a Fascist South launching the kind of blitzkrieg war Hitler inflicted on Russia. In fact, he even uses the actual date when the Panzers rolled into the then Soviet Union, June 22, 1941, as the date Featherstone launches his surprise attack on the United States.

America is taken by surprise. Philadelphia is bombed in an air assault reminiscent of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Southern Panzers have the drop on the U.S. Army and quickly drive through Kentucky to the Great Lakes, dividing the country. The Socialist leadership of President Al Smith, whose policies of appeasement encouraged Featherstone's aggression, nevertheless is able to prevent the Southern forces from moving into the major cities on the East Coast, and U.S. Air and Naval forces immediately bring the war back to the South. Yet the United States is on the ropes.

More disturbing than the initial U.S. defeats are the stories coming out of the Deep South, where the ruthless Featherstone, having killed off his opposition, has appointed a "First World War" crony, a hard drinking redneck by the name of Jefferson Pinkney to oversee his concentration camp program. Blacks are rounded up, ostensibly to work at these camps, and are taken out to the swamps and killed by Featherstone's equivalent of the S.S.

A few Blacks, including Louis Armstrong manage to escape to the north, where their horrific reports are dismissed by a Northern society that despite the Southern excesses and atrocities are still deeply divided on the issue of Race. And even as the United States gets a grip and its armed forces prepare to respond to the Southern aggression, the Holocaust of Black America intensifies.

It could have happened here. For Featherstone, one can easily substitute Tom Watson (not the golfer), John Rankin, Theodore Bilbo, Robert Byrd, Fritz Hollings, David Duke.

For a weak, U.S. President Al Smith, Henry Wallace, Jimmy Carter and George McGovern easily come to mind...and yes, Dennis Kucinich, Howie Dean and even the current Democratic nominee for President.

Will the Fascist, Racist South prevail - while this book doesn't have the same battlefield intensity as previous Turtledove works had, he does leave the reader with that queasy, hanging in the air feeling.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0345457234/ref=cm_cr_dp_2_1/104-6252034-9464740?%5Fencoding=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort%5Fby=-SubmissionDate&n=283155

THis is from a review of Harry Turtledove's latest book.