Free Jackboot Britain: The Alternate History - Hitler's Victory & The Nazi UK! by Daniel S. Fletcher Page A

worryingly unaware. But this, his diary, was the private resistance that he himself used, in the forlorn hope that perhaps the leather notebook and his thoughts could possibly survive the mayhem to be read one day, in a free world, by a free people; an insight into occupation and life under the jackboot.
    It had taken him several days to relax. A member of the dissident writer’s movement named Walter had been captured in London, and punished mercilessly. Simon did not personally know the man –an acquaintance of Eric, and other familiar faces of the ’30s who had been at home on the political left – but regardless, the ghastly nature of the news still shook him to the core. It was not so much the failure and resulting arrest that disturbed him, but the baffling, brutal barbarity of German vengeance. Evidently, Walter’s Hebrew heritage swung the balance. The freelance journalist had gotten careless at the printers; snatched by the Gestapo or SD, he’d been hauled in for interrogation. Days later, the poor writer’s family received his severed tongue in a box. A note written in blood explained in vicious, vivid detail that by the time the poor, doomed writer had died, Walter was not only missing several other limbs – diabolically heinous – but even worse; that he had been castrated and blinded prior to death.
    Presumably, blood loss had spelled his demise, given the protracted torture and the nature of his many grievous injuries. Simon found himself fervently hoping that the mercy of unconsciousness had descended on him as early as possible, acutely sensing his empathy surge, before realising with a cold sensation in the pit of his stomach that it was inconceivable that Walter had not suffered tremendously and at length, given the horrific nature of his tortured ordeal.
    Such horror was unfathomable, and it hit hard with those guilty of the same crimes as the condemned man. Reverting to cannabis was misjudged; it merely led Simon to protracted bouts of intense introspection, after which it took several sober days and a considerable mental readjustment for him to recover his flagging spirits and resume writing, encouraged as he was by the others.
    Today had been a revival. Musing over the materials he’d typed, the young writer even dared to consider the possibility that his day’s literary yield was equal to Eric’s standards. Restless, he rose and approached the mirror, peering into the flecked brown of his own eyes. He was not Orwell. Shaking his head slightly, the writer resolved to return to the hemp; ego-checks were essential, in order to keep progressing. Packing his huge wooden calabash with the cannabis, he puffed happily, allowing the tempo-switch to come into effect, sensing his thought processes changing along with his vision. Slow down , he told himself, setting the tone. Never get ahead of yourself. Keep going. You are not Eric yet, but you could be .
    He returned to the great desk and with fountain pen in hand, he opened the leather notebook, dipped his quill’’s nib into ink and he inhaled deeply, preparing to write.
    Possibility is limitless .
    Smiling, the scribe repeated his simple mantra thrice until satisfied, and then reached for the calabash, his good humour returning.
    Simon used none of the four comfortable rooms downstairs as an office, preferring to dedicate the space to bookshelves and homeliness; tables, rugs, ornaments. He liked writing in the quiet solitude and security of his own bedroom, with its wide desk and ample drawers, reclining couch, four poster bed and comfortable chair. Each room of the house was adequate to host a number of guests in, tended lovingly by his mother, whom he’d insisted move in after the death of his father. At any rate, her house had been in no less peril during the Blitz than had his own.
    “But I couldn’t possibly get under your feet, my darling boy,” she’d tried to protest, voice crackling. “You don’t want your old Ma