Worlds of Freedom Design Journal #7
Erde: The Fight for Freedom
From Lilith’s Journal...
16 April 2007: So, after seven years as a gun-toting rebel, I’m back in front of a keyboard again, trying to make the “genius” come out. You can bet if anyone other than Tomas Morgen asked me to do this, I’d have remembered how to laugh. But you just don’t say no to Morgen. He is the savior of the world, after all.
At least, he was supposed to be. I’m still not clear on all the details, but Morgen got kicked upstairs to “Dr. Tomorrow, Guardian of Time” (whatever that means) and disappeared. Again. Before he left this time, he promised he’d send help from somewhere, and he asked me to type up a sort of “tourist guide” to our blighted little planet, Erde, for their sake.
Well, here goes. This is for you, Tomas... and whoever our helpers turn out to be. I hope they get here soon.
Descent into the Darkness
Erde is what it is because of the Second World War, which the state-approved history describes as the Axis powers’ glorious triumph over the decadent democracies and Bolshevism. To us non-fascists, it was the end of human liberty and dignity in the world.
The textbooks also call the Axis victory “inevitable” because of lots of racist nonsense few outside the ruling classes actually believe. When I was working at the Propaganda Ministry, all happy and stupid, I got to see the unapproved truth. All the standard Nazi scheiße about Aryan superiority had nothing to do with it. The reality was the Axis powers had hope and inspiration, and their enemies didn’t. When it counted the most, America just didn’t believe in itself.
Triumph of the Will
In the entire world, only Germany, Italy, and Japan noticeably recovered from the Great Depression, and for most, that was proof enough that democracy had failed and fascism worked. When Axis super-beings made their public debut, they were celebrated as symbols of national might and superiority - more evidence that time and providence were on the fascists’ side. The jack-booted thugs believed the world should be theirs and were more than ready to fight for it.
Meanwhile, other countries were busy destroying themselves. Tyrants like Stalin, Mao, and Chiang killed far too many of their own countrymen to earn any real devotion, and the democratically elected leaders who could inspire their people went down in hails of bullets. Franklin Roosevelt, for one, might’ve gotten America through the Depression, if he’d lived to take the Oath of Office instead of being gunned down in February 1933. He certainly couldn’t have done much worse than his successors.
The Depression-wracked democracies grew increasingly unsure of themselves and what they stood for. They continued to appease the fascist powers and nervously disarm, terrified to risk a fight for any reason. Fear engulfed the free nations, so much so that they treated their own heroic costumed mystery men as dangerous freaks and hoaxes, denying their people the tremendous morale boost the Axis powers got from their super-agents.
When global war finally came in 1939, the Axis was anxious and ready for it, while their foes continued to question what all the fighting was about. By the time they realized how much they stood to lose, it was far too late.
The Amerikanisch Nightmare
The isolationist and nearly bankrupt United States stayed out of World War II until after the UK, the USSR, and the rest of Europe fell before the German onslaught. America’s time of living in denial finally ended in 1945 when Japan, fresh from conquering China and Oceania, launched devastating surprise attacks throughout the Pacific. This forced the U.S. into a two-front war its atrophied military, economy, and national spirit just couldn’t win.
Plans to liberate the British and Hawaiian Islands were still being devised when the American Dream officially died on August 29th, 1949, its passing marked by mushroom clouds over what used to be Washington, D.C. and New York City. Two German A-9 “Projektil Amerika” rocket planes, launched from Spain, carried the first-ever atomic weapons across the Atlantic, along with Hitler’s implicit threat of more to come. Facing nuclear annihilation, what was left of the American government surrendered unconditionally, followed by the rest of the Western Hemisphere.
America’s collapse secured the Axis conquest of Erde (the damn-near ubiquitous German name for our planet). The former U.S. was partitioned at the Mississippi River between Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. Japan absorbed the western portion into its Co-Prosperity Sphere, while the Nazis established a puppet regime in the east known as die Nationalsozialistische Staaten von Amerika: the National Socialist States of America or the NSSA.
Despite the official surrender, the American Resistance waged guerilla war against the occupation from day one. Though Erde remained in the grip of Axis tyranny, North America was its most troublesome conquest. The insurgency got even bigger when a Nazi-bred eugenic superman named Tomas Morgen turned against the Reich and became leader of the Resistance. Unfortunately for us, Morgen eventually disappeared, after using an experimental Nazi time machine in an attempt to change World War II’s outcome.
Zeit der Krise
Talk about a tough act to follow. I wound up taking over for Morgen after he vanished. I won’t ever claim to be as good, but I did learn a lot while filling in for him. At any rate, the resistance kept up the figh,t and best of all, we eventually found Morgen and freed him from a Nazi prison. He claimed he’d returned from “another Earth” where history took a better path and the Axis powers lost. Morgen said he helped bring about their defeat and had with him the key to beating them on Erde.
Said key was noburpolene, a chemical formula Morgen developed while on Earth-Prime. Noburpolene provides a sort of telepathic boost, insufficient to affect another ordinary human being. However, the mental hike is more than enough to make puppets of the Nazis’ cybernetic war machines, which are piloted by disembodied brains conditioned to obey orders.
Before disappearing again, Morgen passed the noburpolene formula on to the Resistance. Even with the limited quantities we’ve been able to manufacture, we’ve liberated much of North America. With almost no super-beings on our side, we’re still winning, simply by turning the Axis’s own weapons against it.
The Japanese are holding on tooth and nail to the Rocky Mountains and points west, while the Nazis cling to New England and roughly everything east of the Hudson River. We’re told NSSA Reichspräsident Robert Inglis (better known as the super-powered Übermensch) is now holed up in Boston with his wives and the rest of his super-Nazi pals.
Yes indeed, the American Resistance is finally winning. And yet it seems our troubles are just getting started....
