Chamberlain Resigns and Other Things That Did Not Happen

By Charles E.P. Murphy

At a crucial moment in the war, Neville Chamberlain – Britain's greatest Prime Minister – resigns?

Impossible as that seems, it could have happened.

In this collection of essays, we look at six ways that the European Great War and the world it made could have gone very differently. From that old standby, "what if Germany had invaded Ireland", to new counterfactuals such as "what if Japan had joined the war", we aim to challenge what we all think we know.

Are our ideas correct or are they wrong? If only another world could tell us…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sea Lion Press
• Release date: Jul 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393110064

Book preview

This book is a work of fiction. Where 'real-world' characters may appear, the nature of the divergent story means any depictions herein are fictionalised and in no way an indication of real events. Above all, characterisations have been developed with the primary aim of telling a compelling story.

Published by Sea Lion Press, 2019. All rights reserved.

This book is a 'double-blind what if': it claims to be written in a fictional world in which history did not unfold in the same way as in ours. Everything from this point on is written from that perspective.

Chamberlain Resigns

and other things that did not happen

2nd edition, by Operation Green Press

THE YEAR IS 1939. GERMANY and Russia have invaded Poland. The red line has been crossed; Britain and France must either go to war, risking death and disaster, or turn away. France dutifully comes to Warsaw’s defence but back in London, the Prime Minister – Lord Halifax, following Chamberlain’s sudden death by car accident – declares this to be a matter between our neighbours.

The year is 1936. The German-American Bund have managed to get their man into the White House. The homegrown Nazis of the United States tighten their grip in North America just as they did in Europe, interning the Jews and the Japanese-Americans, re-enslaving blacks by other means, erasing the Amero-Indians. When Hitler declares war, the United States falls on Canada.

The year is 1933. Two old flat mates, Addie Hitler and Joe Stalin, both children of immigrants, have taken their New Party into government on a wave of discontent. Their rabble-rousing and lies and dirty tricks have got them this far, now they just have to run Britain. As the wheels come off, only a Dundee-formed political alliance led by Lord Bunkerton [1] can save the day.

Such is the backstory for George Orwell’s 1979, Philip K Dick’s The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, and Kim Newman’s Anno Axis, three of the more controversial alternate history stories.

All three books take the European Great War as a starting point. For Orwell, writing only two years after its end, this was to take savage aim at the people who pretended they’d always supported standing up to Hitler and Stalin (and a penance for his own opposition to action); instead, everyone stands by and lets it happen and, eventually, Britain has becomes a totalitarian state as well, the infamous Midgard. For Dick, it was for a sharp lampooning of the 1962 United States at the height of the Greater Game, snarling that in another timeline the US’s sins may have run rampant and it would be justly beaten and occupied. [2] For Newman, it was a way to lampoon Heseltine’s Conservatives in the late 80s by comparing their works to the old Axis propaganda and their infighting to the fractious Nazi-Soviet Pact.

And all three books got a lot of stick before, in time, becoming beloved classics.

The European Great War still shapes our world and the culture of an entire continent. It is that rarest of creatures, a genuine ‘good war’ in which democracies fought tyrants and rapidly won. We have so many perceptions of it that it’s near impossible to imagine that it could ever have gone another way. Alternate history stories and counterfactual essays from Britain and the Commonwealth are uncommon compared to foreign countries. The seminal French film Breathless, where on-the-edge rebel Michel runs through an alternate 1960 where the Nazis won, has no British counterpart. [3] The Commonwealth rarely seems to want to think about how it might have gone.

For the 75th anniversary of Victory Day, we have decided to change that. Six essays from top writers, academics, and political figures will look at alternate ways the war and the status quos it created could have gone.

There are many in Britain who see this as a boorish flight of fancy. All it is, they say, is people disgruntled over how things went or people wanting to loudly yell how nothing better could ever have happened. We’d argue that this is worth knowing anyway. Alternate history tells us how things could be different and how we think about ourselves. 

Cecile Lyon (editor)

April 2016

[1] The Liberal Bunkerton and his Labour allies are a reference to the obscure Beano strip Lord Snooty and his Pals, who were constantly fighting Hitler.

[2] It has been repeatedly noted that Britain and Japan could not have conquered and divided up the United States at the time, but of course this is to miss the point of the story.

[3] A contemporary film, Kevin Bromlow and Andrew Mollo’s They Attacked Here, came close with its documentary-style depiction of a German occupation in the Home Counties. While grim and grounded, and having controversial depictions of British collaborators, it has the occupation broken within a week.

What if Chamberlain had fallen?

By Amir Khan

ON THE 7th of May, 1940, in the House of Commons, Prime Minister Chamberlain stands to his feet and gives an account of the battle for Norway. He calls again for support from the opposition: We do not set ourselves up as being infallible, as being above receiving help from others who are willing to help.

The opposition respond: no!

Attlee and Liberal leader Sinclair both go on the offensive, citing the numerous issues with the Norwegian campaign and all of the inadequacies of Britain’s war preparation and all of the ways in which the government had lied (‘been optimistic’, if you are kind and they were not). All these faults lay at Chamberlain’s door. Britain needs a new leader, they conclude.

That’s when the Conservatives turn on him. Leo Amery has opposed Chamberlain for years and famously called for Labour’s Arthur Greenwood to speak of England at the start of the war, implying Chamberlain could not do so. Now he opens fire on the Norwegian campaign. His words open the floodgates. [1] Other Conservative MPs who’ve been barely holding their tongues let fly. Sir Roger Keyes, Robert Boothby, and others all start to make their cuts.

Having the opposition against him