Patrick Harding

I wanted to go beyond the literary stereotypes where Storm Troopers goose step into the White House and the land is blanketed with swastikas. I don't think they would be stupid enough to rub our faces in it. I think the Nazis having dropped an A-Bomb on Washington could control things a little more subtly. I don't believe that the German people during the thirties were much different from any other nationality. What happened there could have happened here under similar circumstances.

Well there were a lot of wealthy well connected people who weren't happy with Roosevelt's New Deal. There was some attempt at a putsch that fizzled out before it started. The hope was that General Smedley Burns, a very popular WW1 General, would be the face of it. There was widespread dislike of Jews in some circles. Henry Ford was virulent on the subject and wrote an anti Semitic pamphlet in the twenties. It is said that Adolf Hitler had a portrait of Ford in his office. Both Henry Ford and a GM executive received the highest German medal awarded a foreigner. They were both building cars and trucks in Germany The GM exec had the sense to send it back. In the Depression there were large sections of the country that might have been persuaded to take harsh methods against Blacks and Jews. And the Jim Crow laws were in full effect. So it was possible under the right circumstances.