Synopsis "Democracy's Missing Arsenal: Bloodshed Universal-Slavery Triumphant (in English)"
Summer 1914: a tragic tale familiar to every history student. Bismarck's fateful prediction of some "damn fool thing in the Balkans" comes true. Obedient to Schliefflen's ghost, gray-clad Imperial German columns march towards the Belgian border, even as Austrian artillery bombards Belgrade and the Germanic allies brace for an assault by France's great hope, as the Russian behemoth stirs in the East and slouches towards Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes. Then, impelled to honor a deal he did not make, and knew nothing of until Wilhelm's armies were on the final approach to Liege, the young Belgian King grants Germany free passage into France. Tens of thousands of US troop sail into the Atlantic, hoping the US Navy with its new-fangled carriers will sink enough British, German, and Ottoman battleships to win through to Brest, from whence the AEF must hurry to the Marne if the Kaiser's legions are to be hurled back from the gates of Paris. Chilean cruisers up steam to prevent a Peruvian and Bolivian invasion backed by the USA; Canadian troops rush to defend against a renewed American assault; Brazilian and Argentine armies prepare to battle for Montevideo; and along the Rio Grande the Confederacy readies to expand her slave empire at Mexico's expense. This is the world of Democracy's Missing Arsenal, an alternate history thought experiment that chronicles world events in the century following a Confederate victory in the Civil War. In Volume One-A Nation Sundered-A World Engulfed-authors Michael King and John Bredehoft described how the success of Robert E. Lee's September 1862 invasion of the North-the Lost Order stays lost, George McClellan remains timid, and the Army of Northern Virginia crushes the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg-produces a decisive Anglo-French diplomatic intervention on the side of Southern independence. The CSA quickly becomes an active player in the game of international relations, grabbing Cuba from a vulnerable Spain and scheming to seize northeastern Mexico. The Great Power alliances that gelled after 1900 in our world crystalize differently and earlier. An Anglo-German-Confederate military combination features the Krupp-Tredegar steelworks in Birmingham, Alabama, run with slave labor. Brazil forgoes emancipation and joins with the Confederacy to support a revival of the slave trade out of the Belgian Congo. The USA counters by allying with Spain, France, and Russia. Tensions mount at flashpoints girdling the globe, until war erupts over an Anglo-French confrontation at Fashoda in 1898. Battles on land and at sea are waged on a scale never before seen-including a Royal Navy raid laying waste to Boston and New York City-before peace is restored .in 1901. Kirkus Reviews praised A Nation Sundered-A World Engulfed for its "flawless blending of actual and potential events," and named it one of the top 100 Indie books and five best war stories of 2013. Now in Volume Two-Bloodshed Universal-Slavery Triumphant-King and Bredehoft chronicle an alternate "Great War of 1914-1918" whose scope and devastation vastly exceeds the World War One of our history. At the end Imperial Germany emerges master of Europe, seconded by a revivified Habsburg dominion. Reminded by Confederate consultants that "Slav" shares a linguistic root with "slave," and inspired by the Confederacy's emergence as a viable model for industrial and military development based on human bondage, Germany and Austria-Hungary restore serfdom to the Eurasian hearyland. A horrified Great Britain, appalled at the Germanic Frankenstein's monster it has unleashed, must now turn to its former enemy the United States, and make common cause against Berlin's pursuit of absolute weltmacht. The course and outcome of that struggle will be the subject of DMA's concluding volume. Kirkus Reviews urges readers to "[s]tay tuned" for the final installment!
