- Gabb, Sean.
The Churchill Memorandum.
Raleigh, NC: Lulu.com, 2011.
ISBN 978-1-4467-2257-2.
-
This thriller is set in Britain in the year 1959 in an
alternative history where World War II never happened:
Hitler died in a traffic accident while celebrating his
conquest of Prague, and Göring and the rest of his
clique, opting to continue to enrich themselves at
the expense of the nation rather than risk it all on war, came
to an accommodation with Britain and France where Germany would not
interfere with their empires in return for Germany's being given
a free hand in Eastern Europe up to the Soviet border. With
British prosperity growing and dominance of the seas
unchallenged, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the
Philippines, Britain was able to arrange a negotiated settlement
under which the Royal Navy would guarantee freedom of the seas,
Hawaii, and the west coast of the U.S.
The U.S., after a series of domestic economic and political
calamities, has become an authoritarian, puritanical
dictatorship under
Harry
Anslinger and his minions, and expatriates from his
tyranny enrich the intellectual and economic life of Europe.
By 1959, the world situation has evolved into a more or less
stable balance of powers much like Europe in the late 19th
century, with Britain, Germany, the Soviet Union, and Japan
all engaged in conflicts around the margin, but in an
equilibrium where any one becoming too strong will bring forth
an alliance among the others to restore the balance.
Britain and Germany have developed fission bombs, but other than
a single underground test each, have never used them and
rely upon them for deterrence against each other and the
massive armies of the Soviets. The U.S. is the breadbasket and
natural resource supplier of the world, but otherwise turned
inward and absent from the international stage.
In this climate, Britain is experiencing an age of prosperity
unprecedented in its history. Magnetically levitated trains
criss-cross the island, airships provide travel in style around
the globe, and a return to the gold standard has rung in sound
money not only at home but abroad. Britain and Germany have
recently concluded a treaty to jointly open the space frontier.
Historian Anthony Markham, author of a recently published biography
of Churchill, is not only the most prominent Churchill scholar
but just about the only one—who would want to spend their
career studying a marginal figure whose war-mongering, had it
come to fruition, would have devastated Britain and the
Continent, killed millions, destroyed the Empire, and impoverished
people around the world? While researching his second volume on
Churchill, he encounters a document in Churchill's handwriting
which, if revealed, threatens to destabilise the fragile balance
of power and return the world to the dark days of the 1930s,
putting at risk all the progress made since then. Markham finds
himself in the middle of a bewilderingly complicated tapestry of
plots and players, including German spies, factions in
the Tory party, expatriate Ayn Rand supporters, the British Communist
party, Scotland Yard, the Indian independence movement, and more,
where nothing is as it appears on the surface. Many British historical
figures appear here, with those responsible for the decline of
Britain in our universe skewered (or worse) from a
libertarian perspective. Chapter 31 is a delightful
tour d'horizon of the
pernicious ideas which reduced Britain from global
hegemon to its sorry state today.
I found that this book works both as a thriller and dark
commentary of how bad ideas can do more damage to a society
and nation than any weapon or external enemy, cleverly told from the
perspective of a world where they didn't prevail.
Readers unfamiliar with British political figures and
their disastrous policies in the postwar era may need to
brush up a bit to get the most out of this novel.
The Abolition of Britain
(November 2005) is an excellent place to start.
As alternative history, I found this less satisfying.
Most works in the genre adhere to the rule that one
changes a single historical event and then traces how
the consequences of that change propagate and cascade
through time. Had the only change been Hitler's dying in
a car crash, this novel would conform to the rule, but
that isn't what we have here. Although some subsequent
events are consequences of Hitler's death, a number of
other changes to history which (at least to
this reader) don't follow in any way from it
make major contributions to the plot. Now, a novelist is
perfectly free to choose any premises he wishes—there
are no black helicopters filled with agents of Anslinger's
Bureau of Genre Enforcement poised to raid those who depart
from the convention—but as a reader I found that having
so many counterfactual antecedents made for an alternative world
which was somewhat confusing until one eventually encountered
the explanation for the discordant changes.
A well-produced Kindle edition is available.
May 2011 