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human crime...
By then the whole European situation had acquired a momentum that was causing
it to diverge from the history of the Proteus world much faster than anybody
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realized. As agreed, the
British force in northern France advanced into Belgium to meet the anticipated
German thrust, but
Hitler had changed his plans. The main weight of the German attack fell not
upon the Lowlands but farther south, in the Ardennes, and in days the Panzers
had broken through the lightly held French line and were racing for the coast
at Abbeville. The northern armies were trapped, and by the end of the month
more troops were being evacuated in addition to those still coming back from
Norway-
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ration.txt this time over 300,000 of them, from Dunkirk.
Hitler didn't yet understand the change that Churchill's appointment
signified. Taking the rapid collapse as evidence of the Allies' desire for a
speedy end to their involvement, he signaled his adherence to the
"understanding" that he still thought he had by holding the Panzers back for
three crucial days while the Dunkirk evacuations went ahead. He publicly
expressed absolute confidence that the British and French would then sue for
peace, posing as the magnanimous conquerors by offering them generous-sounding
terms.
Britain's reply came over the airwaves in Churchill's defiant, rasping tones:
Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen
or may fall into the grip of the
Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or
fail...We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing
confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island,
whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the
landing-grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall
fight in the hills; we shall never surender..
But it was too late to save France. Paris fell on June 14, and F an armistice
was signed a week later. Britain was left alone to face a Nazi-dominated
Europe, just twenty miles away across the Channel. Invasion, surely, would be
the next step. To oppose it, the Royal Navy was left with sixty-eight
serviceable destroyers; there were just three hundred fifty tanks in all of
the British Isles.
If the invasion had come, it would have been everybody's war While farmers and
factory hands drilled with iron railings and shotguns, the King had a shooting
range constructed in
Buckingham Palace grounds, where he, other members of the Royal Family, and
the palace staff practiced assiduously with Tommy guns and pistols. He
professed a distinct feeling of relief to
Churchill that England was now on its own and disencumbered of foreigners that
it was necessary to be polite to. The young Princess Elizabeth, heir to the
throne, trained as an Army truck driver
In the Mediterranean theater, meanwhile, the French battleships at Oran hadn't
fallen into
Hitler's hands as they had in the Proteus world; Churchill sent the Royal Navy
there and sank them. A more cautious Franco kept Spain out of the Axis this
time, and Gibraltar and Malta didn't fall. Churchill quashed requests for the
Mediterranean Fleet to withdraw when Mussolini joined in the war, and instead,
the Navy's torpedo bombers crippled the Italian capital ships in an audacious
attack at Taranto.
These were the events that inspired Roosevelt, across the Atlantic, to run for
a third term, and he was nominated as his party's candidate without any real
opposition. "If we do win this war," Winslade told Anna as they settled down
after boarding the train that would take the team back north to Washington,
"it will have been won in July 1940, at the Democratic Convention in
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F Chicago."
Even before then, Roosevelt's policies had shown the effects of the Proteus [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]