American Empire (USA '36)

[Dweomer]

-Fairfax, Virginia-
-March 1, 1937-

Colonel Cabberay put his gleaming black boots gently upon his practically ancient oak desk. It had probably at one time or another been finished, but that finish was long ago removed or worn away giving it a worn but somewhat charming look. Papers and folders and envelopes were strewn about. The Colonel put a thick cigar into his teeth and bit down taking a few nursing puffs as the flames from his Zippo licked at the other end, charring it slowly and sending traces of brilliant orange along the fibers of tobacco.

Relations with Japan had slowly been cooling and some were beginning to claim that there could very well be war between the United States and Japan. Europe, on the other hand, was warming up dramatically. It was none of the United State's concern, of course, but the gathering maelstrom was evident. War would soon be upon the world, any fool could see that, and the U.S. Military was no body’s fool. So here Ivan sat, smoking a fine Cuban, his heels resting on a bunch of irrelevant data. His treatise on the potential value of paratroopers had apparently turned some heads, and he had landed himself a promotion and a job with a new Top Secret sub division of the military called “Doctrine and Strategy Development.” Two dozen military minds and fifty or so general staff worked in the small office not so far from Richmond, Virginia. Supposedly, because of his nudging, the Douglas Aircraft Company had been put to work on another air transport plane. It was ’37, though, and as the treatise explicitly explained, airborne assaults would be useless without the proper support of a conventional front, an umbrella of air support, and the proper methods of re-supplying the paratroopers behind enemy lines. Building a better air transport was useless, because we needed better fighters, interceptors, and close air support to act in unison with the deployment of troops.

Nevertheless, he had a job to do. With a little bit of effort, Cabberay lifted his heavy feet from the desk and tucked them under it in a slow sweeping arc created by swinging them off the edge of the desk and letting them drop. He rolled a piece of crisp paper into the typewriter and began tikka-ticking away.


(On March 1st, several acts were ushered through Congress after his re-election and new spending for R&D began all over the country.)


-Fennimore, Wisconsin-
-September 14, 1937-

Sven Tiedemand rolled a new tractor tire up the dirt road which stretched for several miles out of the main road leading into town before vanishing behind a hill. It was a surprisingly, unreasonably hot September afternoon, and he perspired furiously. He wore faded jeans with overalls, a simple moss-green shirt, and some old gray boots. The boy was about fifteen, and stood nearly as tall and thin as a stalk of corn. His hair was a sandy brownish color, and his eyes like the blue-green of the ocean. A row of short grass sprouted up in the median of the dirt road, as if to brag about the tires that frequently graced its gravel. Not that the entire road was gravel, you understand. It had once been, before the quarry closed, but now it was just the remains of a fine gravel road. In any case, it served its purpose just as well. He smiled with relief as he finally rounded the hill and saw his small two story house. It was sided with wood, painted white, and looked very quaint. The road gradually gave way to a large grass-free dirt area in front of the barn and house, with a zig-zagging split-rail fence made of oak or cedar. The entire group of buildings was under the shade of a massive Birch tree casting a liberal dose of shade on all of it. Sven was certainly happy to be under it, that’s for certain. Sven’s father, who was an immigrant from Norway and spoke not a single word of English, was busy setting up a swing from the old tire for Sven’s little brothers and sisters. The rows of corn on the right side of the road that had been left to stand had now begin to grow a golden brown color, with strings of brown sprouting from the tops of each ear. In the hilly pastures to the left around which the dirt road flowed grazed a small herd of Holstein Cows. Even now, he could hear the cool brook trickling behind the barn in front of him.
He rolled the tire up to the barn and rested it against the wall. He saw little Karolina already by the stream trying to build a dam out of rocks and sediment, and it was actually pooling up quite nicely for now, even if her work would be washed away by tomorrow. Sven was glad for it, though, and sat down beside her, taking a blue handkerchief from his denim’s pocket and soaking it in the cold water.
“Ufda!” He said playfully at her, bringing the cold cloth to his forehead. She smiled, revealing several missing baby teeth, most notably her two front ones.
“What did you bring me?” She asked.
“Now why would I bring you anything?” Teased Sven, sticking out his tongue. The six year old girl pushed him softly, still grinning. Sven mock fell over, as though a full grown adult had delivered the push.
“My! But I have such a mean little sister! Please! Don’t hurt me!” He pleaded, producing a penny piece of candy from his pocket – a peppermint stick from the drug store. Karolina’s smile widened and she snatched the piece of candy.
“Thank you!” She said, and she stuck it in her mouth.


-Washington, D.C.-


Jacob Brown twisted the cork remover into the bottle of champagne and pulled a bit. It shot out of the top, flying to some distant part of the room, with a stream of bubbly liquid following it and spilling over the edges as he lowered it to a glass. The depression was still on, of course, but this was a time for celebration! The entire country seemed to be behind their president, and had never been more left.

In a brilliant campaign of radio speeches, Roosevelt had only managed to become more popular than ever when extremists began rabblerousing about the proper interpretation of the constitution. It was difficult to go back to his mind numbing assembly line post after writing material for the leader of a nation, so he would enjoy this dull party for now; and after all, he was lucky to have a job of any kind in the first place.

He had not put his livelihood in danger to go work for nothing as a volunteer for Roosevelt for nothing. He certainly didn’t think of himself as altruistic, indeed, he didn’t believe in altruism. He had done what he did to help out what he saw as a great man, and help jumpstart his own political career while doing it, establishing contacts and getting known. In two years, he would be a senator, and Jacob knew well that before his life was over, he would be president of these United States. Each step was like a move in a chess game, and he knew all the moves that would carry him to victory.


(The New Deal continued to churn out industry all across the nation.)


(Following FDR's radio campaign, the nation leaned more left than it had since the Revolutionary War. Maybe moreso.)


(While still in the midst of the Great Depression, early '36 began to see the light at the end of the tunnel as American began to return to some of the prosperity they had known in the roaring '20s.)


-Tokyo, Japan-

Hojo Kitta entered the Kawasaki Heavy Industries offices dressed in a pebble-blue western-style suit with a white undershirt and an ash-gray tie. Underneath his arm was tucked a lemon-yellow folder with some papers in it and two flaps of brass protruding from a hole in the paper from the other side and folded in opposite directions so as to keep it shut. He waved with the folder to the guard in the little box office and smiled. The smile was returned and he was waved past as the gate lifted. Of course, Hojo didn’t own the black car he was in, and probably wouldn’t even be in use of this one much longer with war breaking out between China and Japan so recently. And now, with the Americans so openly taking the side of the Chinese, Hojo had to act now.
He parked his car among a few others and got out. The slate-colored ocean lapped against the docks and harbor, as birds called overhead. He headed into the main office and smiled and exchanged pleasantries with his colleagues before heading to the construction site of the new Imperial Destroyer. It was still a rough framework, with showers of sparks falling off of it here and there. There were guards stationed at each door. Hojo smiled as he approached them, and then pulled out his silenced pistol and shot them both dead as casually as though he had been swatting a couple of annoying flies.
He fired another shot into each of their skulls to ensure they were not suffering, even though this was utterly unnecessary. Hojo had spectacular aim. He slipped the clip out of the gun and replaced it with a full one, in case more killing had to be done. If it did, though, he will have probably failed his mission. He opened the door and headed into the work area which was swarming with workers – you might think that this would complicated things, but on the contrary, the crowd of chaos allowed him to walk right up to the blueprints, roll them up, tuck them under his arm, and walk away, even making small talk once or twice with the foremen there. The bodies would be discovered only moments after he left, but it was hours before anyone realized Hojo was gone and put the two facts together to realize that he had been a spy all along. By then, of course, Hojo was on a flight to the Philippines where he would get aboard the American ship which would take him and the blueprints he had stolen from Kawasaki and Nissan all the way back to San Francisco.


-Atlanta, Georgia-

The man across the table slid an envelope towards J. Edgar Hoover. For a moment, the director of the FBI looked at the envelope as though it were as alien as a Martian. His thick fingers pressed against the table around the envelope and slid together to force it to bend in the middle so as to create something to grab onto. He moved it to his hip and looked inside, counting the bills. He pursed his lips slightly.

He nodded, and unbuttoned his jacket so he could tuck the envelope safely away in his inside pocket. Hoover picked up a fountain pen and held it to the paper, trying to look as though he were thinking about the next sentence he was about to write. His door opened again, and he looked up with a smile.

“Ah! Come in, come in!” He said. “How are things proceeding?”

“Mister Hoover, this is most unprecedented! Your organization is supposed to be for purely domestic intelligence matters!” The man said, waving a lemon-yellow folder as though it were an angry letter about Lil’ Hoover’s mischievious behavior and the man was Hoover’s father. Hoover’s smile in reply matched perfectly that scenario, like a cat licking proudly at bloody yellow feathers.

“But how did things go?” Hoover asked anxiously. The military man sighed deeply.

“Several of your agents were killed, but we did recover prototypes, blueprints, and research journals on a wealth of technology, but you’re in deep this time!”

A sharp exhale which was apparently a quiet chuckle, judging by the smirk which accompanied it, sounded from the man.

“You’re the one who told me to purge foreign agents from our soil and organize a counter-espionage effort.” Hoover replied, still smirking.

“Not in those words, I didn’t! And I certainly didn’t mean for you to have men killing citizens of foreign countries on their soil, or stealing sensitive material like this!” The man said, glowering at Hoover. “Do you realize what will happen if Japan or worse, the Soviet Union finds out what we did?! And since we stole something so valuable, you can be sure they will! It will be a miracle if they don’t! You may have just started another World War for Christ’s sake!”

“Don’t be so dramatic, they didn’t find out, did they? Even if they did, they won’t have the evidence to justify a war.”

“Japan and Russia?! Germany? Italy? Have you lost your mind? Do you know what Japan declared war on China for?”

“That’s different.” Hoover replied, his smirk returning. “And besides, at least we’ll have some nice new toys to use against them if they do declare war.”

“This is the last straw, Hoover! I’ll see you go down for this, even if I have to go down too. You’re a madman and you should not have this much power! You’ll doom us all!”

“You make it sound as though I were a child playing with his tin soldiers…”

“That’s precisely what you are, Hoover!” The man shouted, his face beet-red. He stormed out of the office.

Hover exhaled slowly, and picked up his phone.


(The massive wave of foreign espionage attempts intercepted at the begining of '37 triggered the government to grant even more power to the already power-drunk Director of the FBI, giving him the ability to not only capture spies within the borders, but control intelligence personel in other countries as well. With a year, and with no small amount of spending, the United States had captured and tried over thirty persons accused of espionage and/or treason, but had infiltrated the country's most prominent rivals and enemies with special focus on Germany, Japan, Italy, and the Soviet Union all of whom had made more attempts than any other nation against the United States. As a result, stolen technology began to flow into the United States for reverse engineering.)



-Key West, Florida-

Ernest Hemmingway looked up from his newspaper with a grave expression. He had been reading about the Spanish Civil War. It was as surely a battle between fascism and freedom as treading water in the middle of a turbulent sea is a fight for one’s life, yet while Germany and Italy were pouring men and materials into fight on the side of Fascism, only volunteers of their own volition were going over to Spain to help the Republicans. It was a brutal and bloody war in a land he had come to think of as a almost a second home after his visits there. Only the Soviets were giving any real help to the Republicans, and they certainly didn’t protect anyone’s freedom, they merely wanted another communist puppet. Hemmingway sighed deeply.

Hemmingway almost thought that if he weren’t so busy with his work, he might go over and fight in Spain, too. Deep inside, he knew this wasn’t true at all, and it was killing him. His grip on his chair had tightened slowly as he thought about this, and he relaxed it. He shook his head to himself, realizing how much he loathed himself.

The only way he could tolerate his own existence was by pretending that his writing could somehow have an effect on the world, but he was beginning to see through that lie, and his days were starting to become more and more bitter and jaded. Sighing again, as though he hoped this would exhale the dark and angry thoughts within him biting at his soul, he thought he felt a bit of relief, but soon the feeling of a desolate life had returned, and he simply gave up and headed for the gloomy darkness of an unlit bedroom to sleep misery of his pitiful life away.


(Ernest Hemmingway falls into a deep depression after seeing the inevitable victory of Nationalist Spain after only a half of a year of fighting, and another portion of Europe, and what he had come to consider an adopted home, falling to Fascism.)

[AOK. 11]

Excellent beginning for this AAR. AARland is sure in love with the old US of A right now.

Wonderful to see characters with real potential to drive the story. It looks great so far. I will follow this one.

[rich-love]

Interesting start. 8 Transports? What will you do w/ so many expensive planes?

[OAM]

I predict after the communist USA AARs come and go, normal USA AARs will be the trend. (I think my fascist USA AAR is the only one still going)

[Dweomer]

Mine is just old vanilla USA with an alternate timeline. Not fascist, not communist, but not the isolationist sleeping giant either. This is an aggressive USA that has not forgotten its manifest destiny to rule the American Continents. They're still the good guys, though, at least, relatively speaking when compared with the Commies and Nazis. Thank you all for your supportive comments. Small update here. I have another Hemmingway and Hojo one coming soon, but I'm falling asleep.

EDIT: Also, thought I should mention I lived in Fennimore at one point and the Battery Factory and Cheese Plant are both actual places.

-Fennimore, Wisconsin-
-March 1, 1938-

Sven’s father, Roland stayed at home while Sven and his siblings ventured to town with their mother. Roland was a quiet man, terribly quiet, in fact. Sven had only rarely heard him speak to people who weren’t close family members or one of his very few friends. He headed out and hooked up the trailer to the tractor; the ten people climbed in behind. They were all dressed up in their Sunday Best to see the parade, and rode to another farm just outside of town. For a while, they exchanged pleasant small talk, and then walked as a large group of nearly twenty to main street among the huge crowd.

It was March, and the springtime Wisconsin air was positively freezing. Breath rose from the masses of people and people hugged themselves and chattered their teeth in silent protest of the weather. Fennimore was born because it was a major crossroads. Two major roads and a rail road all connected here, and so the town thrived. Soon, it started. Karolina was sitting on Sven’s shoulders and the entire family was grouped very close together so all could see and were warm as they could manage. They were gathered outside a building where cheese was created, packed, and shipped. From the south, a convoy of dark green trucks with slightly lighter green canvas tops rolled past the cheering crowds. Dozens and dozens of them, making their way past with soldiers waving merrily to the citizens of the small town most of them had never visited and likely never would. Yet still, they waved as though they were waving at their mother or father and in a way, maybe they were. All heading off to Madison, or maybe somewhere even further than that. The convoy, though, was hardly the focal point of the evening. Most were coming because they or someone in their family had been hired to work at the new Rayovac Company’s battery manufacturing plant and were coming for a ribbon cutting ceremony. All were obviously looking forward to having so many new jobs brought to the town, and it would be a genuine celebration.

Over the winter months, Sven had grown even taller, and people he knew kept commenting on it, though Sven hadn’t even noticed until this very night when he saw boys his age whom he hadn’t seen in several months.

A friend of the family, known to all the children including Sven, the eldest, as “Aunt” Gretchen came waddling up to Sven to make the same sort of comment he had heard all evening. She flung her arms wide as though to hug everyone in the bunch at once as she spoke. “Edna! You must stop feeding Sven or he will scarcely be able to fit in your house anymore!” She cried, smiling. She hugged Sven and kissed Karolina on his shoulders who laughed. She, too, had grown, and Gretchen noticed this too. “My! You’re combining your heights to show it off!” She pinched Karolina’s smiling face in a cliché old grandmotherly way. It occurred to Sven that that could indeed be why he had been receiving so many comments on his height, not because it made him look any taller, of course, but simply because it made the two of them stick out.

“How are you, Aunt Gretchen?” He enquired politely. She was very old, maybe seventy, but she looked as energetic as ever. Her skin was like lettuce, but the woman could move as fast as a deer if she wanted to, and was so animated Sven was surprised that she didn’t collapse from exhaustion sometimes.

“Oooohhhh!” She replied, waving her hand dismissively. She then began to chat with Edna, Sven’s mother. Sven was almost offended by this, but was happy not to get trapped in a conversation with her, so merely lowered Karolina to the ground and wandered off with her and a few of his siblings to view the magnificent factory.


(The Great Depression has ended early for the Americans, and the economy is booming once again. Dozens of divisions of infantry are being trained around the country and rebased in preparation for the coming years of war.)

[OAM]

Yes, Wisconson has alot of cheese. Anone ever read the origonal mainfest destiny from back in the 1800s? Without it we may have stopped at the Lousianna Purchase.

[Dweomer]

Yes, Wisconson has alot of cheese. Anone ever read the origonal mainfest destiny from back in the 1800s? Without it we may have stopped at the Lousianna Purchase.

EDIT: Fing huge picture removed.

James K. Polk in the HIZZOUSE, DAWGS! What what?!

[OAM]

That picture is quite big. Ask him if he likes to Polka... get it polk-a

[Vann the Red]

Interesting start, Dweomer. I look forward to how this USA will react to the events of the world. Or, with your emphasis on intelligence work, will the world be reacting to you?

Vann

[Spitfire_Pilot]

Great start. Cant wait for the next update, your a good writter man.

[lifeless]

very nice update! great job infiltrating those countries!

[anonymous4401]

This AAR moved?

And glad to see a proper American AAR.

[Spitfire_Pilot]

Yeah, so many fascist USA AAR's, hard to keep track of which one is which

[anonymous4401]

This one doesn't seem to be one of those...

Which makes it automatically better than all of those rest, of course!

[Dweomer]

Heh. Small update. A Hemmingway one. You may notice the timeline begin to radically shift away from ours with Spain's early victory -- it is quite fun to speculate on the effects of something like that. -- Spain effects Hemmingway, Hemmingway effects Hoover, Hoover effects the intelligence and security of the United States -- And after that it's pretty much the whole world that gets dramatically changed by the event, and that's only because of its effects on ONE person. ^^ Very fun.

-Key West, Florida-
-March, 1938-

Hemmingway gazed out the glass of his Florida home at the rapidly changing world around him. With the fall of Spain to Fascism, and his failure to do anything but complain loudly about it, Hemmingway had not only failed himself, but his very ideals. He knew that now. Ideals are worthless until tested by adversity. He would not give up on himself yet. He would do something. Hemmingway had grown more and more distant from his wife over these past months, and knew that that relationship was over too. He could do everything he needed to do from almost anywhere in the world, and had no more excuses for remaining idle. He could feel himself at a crossroads, and knew that he would be miserable all his life if he tried to fight fascism with a pen while others fought it with their lives.

Ernest had a long trip before him. First by train to Boston, then by boat to London. Finally, he’d travel back to Paris and stay with friends he had known when he lived there before. After that, he wasn’t sure where he would go. He had told only a select few friends about what he had planned and they didn’t say so, but Hemmingway could feel they thought him mad. Or maybe stupid. In any case, he probably was both.


(Francisco Franco leads National Spain to victory almost exactly one year early. Because of this, Hemmingway never goes pointlessly sub-hunting in Cuba only to be shut down by J. Edgar Hoover, but goes abroad to be closer to the fight for the future of all Humanity.)

[therev]

Excellent start! I like your style Dweomer! Will read on with interest!

[Dweomer]

-San Francisco, California-
-March 12, 1938-

Hojo at last arrived in the San Francisco Bay after such a long time traveling from island to island, changing papers, changing boats, going through great pains to ensure the Japanese would have no way of tracing the espionage attempt to the United States with any verifiable proof. Hojo was the only proof there was, and he would soon disappear forever from the eyes of the Japanese. He felt no shame for what he had done, no remorse for the two men he had killed. Hojo had been born in Hawaii, and raised in California. He loved liberty, and the Japanese had turned their backs on Liberty in favor of Fascism. He would do whatever his country asked him to do. For the price of a small luxury car in the States, Hojo had acquired plans that had cost the equivalent of millions of US Dollars. Not that Hojo would see much of that money. True, he was being paid quite well, but most of that money had gone towards transportation, intelligence, room and board, and the like.

Along the way, Hojo had transformed himself back into the hojo he really was. He removed the phony glasses and shaved his moustache. He slicked back his hair and let it grow a little longer. He was entirely unrecognizable as the man who had walked into Nissan and Kawasaki and Mitsubishi headquarters and factories casually looking for plans. Thick hemp ropes were tossed to men on the concrete and steel pier and tied to deeply rusted and smooth-worn metal posts embedded into the concrete after the boat had pulled up alongside in the deep water harbor. Hojo merely walked off with the captain and a few crew and headed off into the bustling street as casually as though he had done this a thousand times. No one stopped him. How easy it must be for spies to enter our country, he thought to himself. But then, maybe those people at the dock had already been told not to bother anyone coming off of the docks by the FBI.

Five hours later, after settling into a Hotel under an alias, Hojo headed for a small “Chinese” restaurant with his papers and folders and found a conspicuously obvious G-Man sitting in a booth near the back of the smoky, grease-stained, sorry-excuse-for-a-restaurant. He wore a beige overcoat, shades, and a hat of the same color as his coat. He couldn’t help but laugh to himself when he saw this – the image of a private investigators and spies from American Gangster movies of the time. He man was either an imbecile or had a very hazardous sense of humor. Hojo slid silently into the booth with the man who showed his FBI identification in reply. He then lanced another piece of beef with his fork – Hojo doubted anyone in this place used Chopsticks except maybe some of the employees. The man scooped up some rise on top of the beef and put it into his mouth.

“Beef!” He said with a trace of glee in his voice. “Haven’t had good beef in a while! Say what you want about this place, but the food ain’t half bad!”

“I’m sure.” Hojo replied, smirking a bit. “So where do we go from here?”

“Adwannta” The man answered with his mouth full. Judging by the ravenous pace at which the man was eating, Hojo now started to believe him about the quality of food. Of course, he had meant ‘Atlanta,’ where the headquarters of the FBI was, currently. Though, with Hoover at the head, it might very well change to Omaha or Juneau the next day as likely as not. The man swallowed for his next words. “Hoover wants to receive the package directly from you and then give you some sort of award or another. Then you’re off to Panama. After that? I have no clue, pal.”

“It’s best that way.” Hojo said idly, as though it was nothing, but the man looked back up from his food and looked at Hojo and burst out laughing. He reached across the table and slapped Hojo on the shoulder. Hard. Hojo’s small 5’5” frame buckled from the blow, his entire torso moving towards the table. Hojo returned the chuckle as best he could, though he was really laughing at the personality of the man and certainly not the stinging blow he had just delivered. Finally, after what seemed to Hojo like an hour, the slightly vulgar special agent finished up his food and the pair left for Los Angeles where they could catch a military transport plane to Atlanta.


(Along with this Stolen Tech, two other blueprints were also captured and reverse-engineered during Hoover’s reign of absolute power over intelligence matters.)

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Please note that in this timeline, Floyd B. Olson never died from his stomach cancer. He is still my Foreign Minister in spring of ’38 when he should have already been dead. I have no idea why this is so, but there you have it. =D

==================================================

-Atlanta, Georgia-
-March 13, 1938-



“I’m sure something can be arranged.” Hoover was saying to an obese Sicilian man across from him. You’ve certainly done so much to help me and your country. You should not have to suffer under the weight of such unfounded accusations. Clearly, you only have to endure this nonsense because those responsible don’t know all you’ve done for them.”

“I’m glad we have an understanding.” He answered in a crude New England accent, Boston or New York, one of the two, probably. Just then, the door burst open and the same man who had come to him before entered, his face beet-red again – or maybe still? Hoover smiled at this thought.

“You had me investigated?!” The man asked incredulously. The large man scooted his chair away and rose, as Hoover tucked a mysterious envelope into his pocket.

“Now, now, Mr. Olson, you’ll give yourself and Ulcer by shouting like that.” Hoover said in a very calm, mock-sweet voice, smiling inwardly with a dark pleasure at the effect of his words. Olson was positively blustering with fury.

“How dare you bring that up?! I nearly died from my illness! You are a wicked, wicked man, sir!” He shouted.

“Mr. Olson, please contain yourself! I meant nothing by that! Please have a seat and be calm so that we can discuss this rationally.”

“You speak to me about rationality?”

“You wound me, Mr. Olson.”

“Now you listen to me, Hoover, you leave my family out of this you sonofabitch! Stop sending threatening calls to my wife! She’s in tears and refuses to answer the phone! Stop sending men to look through my trash!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Floyd.” Hoover said innocently, showing the empty palms of his hands as though to show them clean of any wrong-doing. “However, a little bird did tell me that on a lovely day in May, some twenty years ago, a certain Foreign Minister, though he didn’t hold that title at the time, may have paid a young woman for sex in downtown St. Paul. Don’t you find that to be just fascinating?”

“Mr. Hoover, do you recall what I said to you last time I was here? I told you our enemies would find out. Well, Germany has found out what we did. The German Ambassador came to me and confronted me with the evidence and a signed confession by one of your reckless spies in captivity by the Germans. They’re HOLDING him, Hoover. HOLDING Him. Do you know what that means? That means they’re waiting until they are in a position to declare war on us so that they can parade him out in front of their brainwashed people and use your crimes as pretext for their war! You’ve overstepped your bounds, and I’ve spoken with the president. You’re fired, Hoover!”



He slapped the papers down on Hoover’s desk, who merely stared at them for a long moment, then looked up and smacked his lips as though to speak, though for a second no sound came out.

“You’ve made a terrible mista—“

“Oh don’t I just bet? Get out.”

“Who are they replacing me with?”

“Chaplin.”

“Charlie Chaplin?! That Jew-Commie?! I’ve got so much dirt on him--”

“Get out, Hoover. And I’m sorry to tell you this, but being a ‘Jew-Commie’ isn’t a crime in this country, even though I shutter to think that you believe it is. I wonder what might have happened if you had stayed in office with this overwhelming level of power. I warned you you’d go down even if I went with you. You didn’t listen. Get out.”

With that, it was Olson who left while Hoover just sat in his chair, dumbfounded. Where did everything go so terribly wrong? Well, they’d pay. They’d all pay. Hoover opened up a drawer in his desk and took out a heavy bundle of folders and files and put them in a box as he began to pack…


(During this chaotic month of March, many things happened, including the German Auchluss of Austria, and it was only a bit more than halfway through. Who could say what would happen in the future? This third violation of the Treaty of Versailles raised even more eyebrows in France and the UK, and they continued their preparations for war with ‘Greater Germany.’)

(J. Edgar Hoover was not only fired and replaced, but was also put on trial of a lengthy list of crimes and finally sentenced to nine months in prison. Hopefully for him, he wouldn’t meet anyone he had put away there.)

[anonymous4401]

This is pretty good! The espionage system of DD really adds a new dimension to the game and the AAR, especially for nations in peace for a good part of the game like the US.

[Vann the Red]

More excellent updates, Dweomer. Love the storytelling style. Also loved J. Edgar getting the boot; I hope this doesn't portend some type of coup in the coming days, though.

Vann

[OAM]

Nice updates!