“After the Battle of Britain, Churchill told the world ‘Never before in the field of human conflict had so much been owed by so many to so few’. It’s only in hindsight that the real truth of those words is seen. In 1941, Germany launches Operation Barbarossa — the invasion of the Soviet Union. At first, the war goes very well but that doesn’t last. By 1944 the Wehrmacht is in retreat on all fronts. As the war in Russia is going badly and American and Allied forces are pushing up through Italy, a ‘Second Front’ is launched in France. From ports all over Southern England, invasion forces set forth in what becomes known as ‘D-Day’ — June 6, 1944. From this moment the Germans are doomed. Italy has already surrendered by this time and the Germans are now fighting alone on three fronts: there’s no way they can win.
“It used to be a moot point, but there’s a theory that proposes that without D-Day and the Western Front, the Axis might have been able to halt and possibly even defeat the Soviet Union. Without Great Britain as a staging base, there’d be no way an invasion of France could’ve been attempted. Of the number of major mistakes or errors made by Hitler and his staff — and there were more than a few — this was one of the greatest in my opinion. Although he had no real wish to invade England, his failure to do so was to be strategically and literally fatal.”
“But something’s gone wrong with that…” The DVD paused again as Trumbull made the observation. No matter how much he wanted to disbelieve what was going on, the arguments and what he was seeing was becoming undeniable.
“You’re not kidding!” Thorne passed the flask of scotch across once more. “As I said, most of the BEF should have got out of Dunkirk. History as I know it’s already changed in a major way! Remember I said I was working for the SIS on tracking down a group of Neo-Nazis…?” Trumbull nodded. “Well, the Europe of the Twenty-First Century has a revived Aryan movement that’s unfortunately quite alive and thriving…particularly throughout Western Europe.
“For a long time, this was restricted mostly to gangs of thugs calling themselves ‘skinheads’. A majority of them swore some kind of token allegiance to Adolf Hitler and the defunct Third Reich, but that was all bullshit really: most of ‘em were just violent turds who liked to wander about looking for vulnerable people to thump and blame their problems on, just like the Nazi thuggery of the late twenties and early thirties.” He took another breath. “Around the end of the Twentieth Century however, we realised something else had started to rear its ugly head. Out among the wankers, there really was an organised ‘movement’ of sorts coming together…”
“This is where our story begins as such…” The narrative began again as Thorne continued the video and the picture focussed once more on Thorne and Laurence Trumbull at the airbase. “…A true Neo-Nazi movement sprang up early in the Twenty-First Century — a Fourth Reich of sorts. It’s believed to have been financed by a group of very wealthy businessmen with the military and technical assistance of this man…” A picture of a hard-faced officer in a strange but obviously German uniform appeared.
“Reichsmarschall Reuters!” Trumbull exclaimed, recognition instantly lighting his expression. There wasn’t a well-educated officer live who wouldn’t know that enemy face, and it was Thorne’s turn to seem surprised as he halted the presentation.
“Reichsmarschall…?” He repeated in wonder.
“It was on the newsreels a few weeks ago…he was given the rank by Hitler after the success of the campaign in France. He’s the military head of the entire Wehrmacht.”
“Nick didn’t mention that, the cheeky sod! Göring will be pissed off: that promotion should’ve been his after the fall of France. My God, they’ve really been making an impact over there if he’s got that far!” He started the picture again.
“He’s known as Kurt Reuters, an ex-German staff officer with well-known pro-Nazi sympathies. He, more than any other planned the strategic aspects of what’s now going on. Businessmen and industrialists with a lot of money behind them, most of them not old enough to remember the war but able to remember what Germany went through after it, were putting up cash to fund something big.” The picture went back to Thorne again. “For a while, the SIS and everyone else regarded it rather hopefully as a ‘flash in the pan’…something that would dissipate of its own accord. Unfortunately, this wasn’t to be the case.
“We realised this midway through the year 2009… at that point a group calling themselves ‘New Eagles’ kidnapped a Jewish-English physicist by the name of Samuel Lowenstein. He and his partner, Hal Markowicz, had been working on a project researching what we called ‘Temporal Displacement’…” he added sourly, “…a project that was top secret…or so we thought at the time… In layman’s terms we’re talking about building a working ‘time machine’. If you’ve read it, this was broadly similar to the device in the H. G. Wells novel, and although Markowicz was assisting, it was really Lowenstein’s project. When he disappeared at the point it looked like it might actually produce results, most of the people that knew about the project went mad with concern!
“Within a month or so we’d confirmed it was the New Eagles who’d kidnapped him but we were unable to track either Lowenstein or his notes down. Without his help, Markowicz was unable to proceed much further with the research, although he gave us a damned good idea what they’d be able to do if they could make Lowenstein finish his work: they were going to try and change history…” Thorne stopped the video completely at that moment and the screen went dark.
“That should do of that for the moment,” the Australian decided.
“Could they do this?” Trumbull was enthralled. “Is it possible?”
“Looks like they already have, mate…” Thorne shrugged. “Markowicz reckoned it was very possible, although no one wanted to believe it at first. It’s apparently almost impossible to alter relatively recent events, but the further you go back in time, ironically, the easier it becomes. The technical aspects and the physics of the whole thing are a bit beyond me to be quite honest, but I can give you an overview of the general principles behind it. What happens is basically this: if you send someone back in time and they do something or say something at some point that alters the correct flow of history as you know it, something is created that’s called a Temporal Distortion Wave, and it can be either a large or small wave depending on what’s been done. At first, very little changes and it theoretically takes months for any major alterations to occur, but they are possible and reactions to this distortion wave grow exponentially as further changes are made, particularly as more alterations occur and the effect becomes cumulative.