Taking a Duce (A Benito Mussolini SI)

[wetwipefatass]

HAIL ROMANIA

Click to shrink...

Made me laugh.

the story just goes from strength to strength

 

[Wolffils]

Vivat Imperium!

"Jim Crow is the Devils Law." Never before have I heard such accurate words.

 

[asdweryt]

As a black dude this genuinely makes me happy

 

[Alenco98]

An excerpt from Maya Angelou's 1977 book: We just wanted to be free

Meanwhile, across the Mason-Dixon Line, the Republican Party smelled opportunity amid the ashes of Savannah.

At the center of this political pivot stood Thomas E. Dewey, the reformist Governor of New York and rising star within the Republican establishment. A sharp, clean-cut prosecutor turned politician, Dewey had long been known for his stance against organized crime—but now, his attention shifted to a far greater and more insidious enemy: American apartheid.

The Democratic Party, under the banner of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had ruled the White House for an unprecedented three consecutive terms. Almost twelve years of uninterrupted dominance had rendered the Republicans increasingly irrelevant on the national stage. Most political strategists predicted another crushing defeat in 1944. Roosevelt's New Deal was wildly popular. The Allies were gaining ground in the Pacific and had fended off the soviets in Scandinavia after the Karelia crisis ended, and even Mussolini's dramatic repositioning on the world stage—though alarming—had not yet swayed many American voters.

But Savannah changed everything.

The Battle of Savannah was not just a tragedy—it was a revelation. It exposed to the world that racism in the United States was not a regional quirk, nor a relic of the past—it was a living, breathing system of domestic terrorism, protected by governors and state officials, upheld by police, and tolerated by Washington.

Dewey saw what Roosevelt would not say aloud: this was a moral crisis. And it was a political one.

On June 14, 1943, just a day after the smoke finally cleared in Savannah, Dewey took the stage in Albany and delivered what would become one of the most consequential speeches of the decade.

He did not mince words.

"The Ku Klux Klan and segregation are not relics—it is a domestic enemy, a shameful legacy of our nation's failure to fulfill the promises of Reconstruction. Savannah has shown us the truth: Jim Crow is not law, it is terror in a white hood. And it is time we call it what it is—un-American."

The speech landed like a thunderclap across the political landscape. For the first time in modern memory, a major-party figure had publicly and vociferously called out white supremacy by name. Dewey condemned not only the Klan, but also the institutional rot of segregation, calling it "a fascism of the soul, no less dangerous than the jackboots of Italy or the torture chambers of Tokyo."

He pledged that, under his leadership, the Republican Party would become a bulwark for civil rights, and he warned the nation of a terrible irony: that in fighting fascism abroad, America risked nurturing it at home.

"If the United States cannot guarantee liberty for its own citizens, how dare we preach democracy to the world?" Dewey asked. "We are on the brink of losing the new war, just as the old one ended—not to bombs or tanks, but to the poison of hatred, fear, and racism."

True to his word, Dewey wasted no time. He convened an emergency session of the New York State Legislature, where, under his guidance and relentless pressure, the Ives-Quinn Act was drafted and passed in August 1943. It became the first state-level law in the United States to ban employment discrimination based on race, color, creed, or national origin—a legislative sledgehammer aimed directly at the Jim Crow ideology.

To enforce the law, Dewey created the New York State Commission Against Discrimination (SCAD)—an unprecedented move that gave real teeth to civil rights protections at the state level. For the first time, Black workers in New York could bring their grievances to a state agency and expect justice.

But Dewey's ambitions were bigger than New York.

On August 15, 1943, standing before a crowd of thousands in Manhattan, Dewey formally announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States. Civil rights were not a footnote in his platform—they were the foundation.

"America stands at a crossroads," he declared. "Across the Atlantic, Mussolini courts the world's oppressed with honeyed words and open arms, not for liberty, but for power. He seeks to shame us—and he has succeeded. Savannah was not a foreign plot—it was our shame laid bare. If we want to secure our place in the world, we must first secure it at home. That means civil rights for every American. Not later. Now."

The crowd erupted in cheers, but in the South, the backlash was immediate.

Southern Democrats denounced Dewey as a "race traitor," "New York radical," and "fascist sympathizer"—ironic, given how closely many of them mirrored fascist ideology themselves. Jim Crow defenders went on the offensive, warning that civil rights would bring "Black domination," "white genocide," and "moral collapse." Pamphlets were distributed in Mississippi calling Dewey a "Negro puppet of northern banking interests." Radio shows in Alabama accused him of plotting to "hand America to the Papists and coloreds."

But Dewey didn't flinch.

He doubled down, touring Black neighborhoods in Harlem and Chicago, meeting with labor leaders, war veterans, and pastors. He called for a federal civil rights commission, an anti-lynching law, and the desegregation of the armed forces. He even met with Italian-American leaders to acknowledge the sacrifices made in Savannah, telling them:

"You showed America the mirror. Now we must have the courage to look."

For African Americans, Dewey's rise offered something they had not seen in generations: a sliver of hope from a party that once freed the slaves but had long since abandoned the cause. For segregationists, it was a harbinger of revolution—a challenge to their power and privilege.

For America, it was the beginning of a tragic reckoning.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, once cautiously optimistic about the promises of liberal democracy was stunned by the events of Savannah. The battle had shattered any illusions of progress through traditional, incremental means. Black and Italian blood had stained the cobblestones of Georgia, and the sound of gunfire echoed louder than the voice of any senator, louder than the dithering equivocations of northern liberals too afraid to confront the South's festering cancer. Washington remained paralyzed—paralyzed by fear, by tradition, by the weight of a Constitution that too often served as a shackle rather than a shield. The message was clear: the system was not listening.

And then, Thomas E. Dewey spoke.

He did not stutter. He did not equivocate. He did not hide behind the language of commissions or gradual reform. He condemned segregation, denounced the monstrous hypocrisy of America's "freedom," and called the Jim Crow regime what it was: a grotesque apartheid system born in sin, maintained in violence, and destined for destruction. Dewey's words did not come wrapped in platitudes but in fire. And for the first time in decades, a major white politician spoke not about Black Americans, but to them—and with them.

The NAACP, disillusioned but desperate, took a leap no one had expected. In a historic and thunderous announcement, they formally endorsed Dewey's campaign for president, calling him:

"The only relevant white voice in America that openly stands with us. He does not beg for patience, he demands justice. And he does not ask for our votes—he earns them."

It was a political earthquake.

But the tremors did not stop there.

The Catholic Church, long nominally apolitical in American affairs, began to stir. Conscience and compassion overcame calculation. In the wake of Savannah and the martyrdom of its priests, Pope Pius XII issued a sweeping encyclical, denouncing racial hatred not as a mere social ill, but as a mortal sin. Racism, he declared, was "an affront to the divine image of mankind," and he called upon all Catholics, "to oppose it not only in prayer, but at the ballot box, and with their lives if necessary." He also began the process of canonizing Father Giulio Santini, calling him a, "modern day saint Sebastian."

The Vatican's words were not buried in obscure theological journals—they were printed in newspapers, shouted from pulpits, and echoed in catechism classes. Mussolini, ever watching from afar, endorsed the encyclical with a statement that shocked even his most cynical observers:

"Let it be known that the Church's war on racial injustice has the full blessing of Rome. Those who wear the fasces do not kneel before the lash of Jim Crow. Romans are not slaves."

The message was unambiguous.

Within days, Catholic churches across the United States—from the slums of the Bronx to the vineyards of California—began openly urging their congregants to vote for Dewey. Priests thundered from the pulpit. Nuns distributed voter guides. Bishops reminded their flocks that neutrality in the face of evil was itself a sin. And in pew after pew, hearts began to turn.

Italian, Irish, and Polish Americans—the backbone of the Democratic urban machine—began to defect. Many had suffered their own forms of bigotry, and while few had faced the unrelenting nightmare of Jim Crow, they knew injustice when they saw it.

Black Americans, too, began to notice.

Something was changing—not slowly, not subtly, but with the unmistakable tremor of a tectonic shift. In Black churches across the country, from the red clay hills of Georgia to the brick-row neighborhoods of Chicago, something sacred was unraveling. The old pillars of faith—Methodist, Baptist, and Episcopalian congregations—began to see their pews empty, their member rolls dwindle. Not because the people had lost their faith in God—but because they had lost faith in the institutions that had too often been content to coexist with injustice.

In many corners of the Black religious world, sermons still clung to the language of patience, of long-suffering humility, of awaiting God's justice in the next world rather than demanding it in this one. But the children of sharecroppers and steelworkers had seen too much—too many broken promises, too many polite betrayals. They were no longer willing to bow their heads while their neighbors were beaten for trying to vote, or while their sons returned from war in Europe only to be lynched at home. They sought something different. They needed a new message, one that did not ask them to endure—but to rise.

And that message came—from the most unexpected of places.

Mussolini, the unlikely architect of this new spiritual crusade, had been watching the slow collapse of Southern Protestantism's moral authority among the Black faithful. Perceiving both a spiritual vacuum and a moral opportunity, he convinced Pope Pius XII to act boldly, to send missionaries not to distant colonies but into the heart of America's own fractured soul: the Deep South.

These missionaries were no ordinary priests. They did not come alone.

They arrived in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana under armed escort—accompanied by Italian Blackshirts and Sicilian mafiosi, whose loyalty to Mussolini and the Vatican was matched only by their disdain for American racism. They guarded the missionaries not from Black citizens, but from the mobs and sheriffs and Klansmen who saw their presence as a foreign invasion. In truth, it was an invasion—an invasion of the heart, a campaign not of bullets and banners but of Bibles, baptismal fonts, and fearless conviction.

But it was far from peaceful.

The South—already a cauldron of racial hatred and white supremacist paranoia—erupted into fury the moment it became clear that something irreversible was taking place. The rising tide of African American conversions to Catholicism, the presence of Italian missionaries, the symbolism of armed foreign escorts marching into small Southern towns—it was, for many white Southerners, a nightmare made real.

Local law enforcement, far from being neutral arbiters of order, were often the very instruments of suppression. Sheriffs and police officers—many openly affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, others quietly sympathetic to its ideology—moved swiftly and violently. Under the pretense of "preserving the peace," they raided church services, dragging priests from altars, hauling them into jail cells on fabricated charges like disturbing the peace, inciting unrest, or practicing a "foreign" religion without proper permits.

In many cases, the mere act of offering Communion to Black citizens alongside white converts was treated as a provocation, a defiance of what white Southerners considered sacred: the racial hierarchy.

White citizens, inflamed by sermons from segregationist pastors and whipped into frenzy by local newspapers warning of "papist invasions" and "Black insurrections," formed mobs. Men with shotguns, baseball bats, and ropes gathered to confront the missionaries, to run them out of town with threats, fire, or bloodshed if necessary. Church buildings were firebombed. Rosaries were torn from elderly Black women's hands. Sacred statues were smashed beneath boot heels.

But something had changed.

This time, the resistance was not unarmed.

What had happened in Savannah—a bitter confrontation between armed fascist protectors and white supremacist militias—began to repeat itself across the South, again and again. From the swamps of Louisiana to the Appalachian foothills of South Carolina, small towns became battlegrounds.

Italian Blackshirts, loyal to Mussolini but also deeply committed to defending the missionaries, stood their ground. Alongside them were Sicilian mafiosi, many of whom saw the fight as both an extension of their code of honor and a brutal way to settle old debts with the forces of American nativism that had long treated Italian immigrants with disdain.

They did not ask for permission. They answered violence with violence.

When sheriffs tried to arrest priests, they were met with gunfire from concealed rooftops and ambushes along country roads. When mobs came with torches, they were confronted by men in trench coats with Thompson submachine guns, men who spoke in Sicilian dialects and recited Hail Marys before pulling the trigger.

But perhaps the most remarkable transformation was not among the foreigners—but among the locals.

African Americans, long conditioned to endure, suddenly began to resist.

Moved by the image of white men willing to fight and die on their behalf, willing to protect their churches and defend their children's right to worship without shame, they found something within themselves that generations of fear had buried but never destroyed: the will to fight back.

They took up arms—some smuggled from sympathetic mafiosi in the North, others handed down from veterans of World War I and II. They barricaded their churches. They trained their young men to shoot, to patrol, to organize.

Side by side with the Blackshirts and the mafiosi, they stood defiant.

In some places, the struggle escalated into all-out warfare.

In Clarksdale, Mississippi, a mob attempted to storm a recently established Catholic mission where over 200 Black residents had gathered for a night vigil. What they found instead were sandbags, barbed wire, and a defensive perimeter guarded by a coalition of Black volunteers and Italian gunmen. The firefight lasted two hours. By dawn, five Klansmen lay dead in the street. The National Guard arrived days later, not to restore peace—but to reclaim the bodies under the watchful eyes of the blackshirts, black Catholics, and the Sicilian mafia.

In Gadsden, Alabama, a Black community that had embraced Catholicism declared its independence from the county government. They expelled the sheriff, burned down the courthouse records, and raised a banner above their church: "Christ is King. Jim Crow is not."

And in dozens of other towns—Marion, Selma, Greenwood, and farther still—the pattern repeated: Black majority communities, newly awakened and newly armed, expelled their white political overlords, often after bloody skirmishes. White landowners fled under cover of night, leaving behind plantations that were promptly seized, their fields collectively farmed under the protection of local defense committees.

These towns became armed, Black-only enclaves—self-sufficient hamlets fortified not just with weapons, but with faith, fury, and unyielding resolve. They welcomed the Blackshirts and mafiosi who had bled beside them, granting them honorary citizenship and spiritual kinship. Together, they built walls—not just physical barricades, but cultural and spiritual sanctuaries, where children learned Latin hymns and Black Madonna statues replaced confederate statues.

White America watched in horror and disbelief.

To segregationists and their political allies, it was nothing short of insurrection—a blasphemous coalition of foreigners and "uppity" Negroes, threatening the foundations of their way of life. To others, especially disillusioned veterans and progressives in the North, it was something closer to prophecy fulfilled—a sign that America's underclass had finally thrown off the chains of both slavery and silence.

The federal government stood paralyzed, unsure whether to crush the movement or court its favor. President Roosevelt, caught between political necessity and personal conviction, issued a statement calling for calm, but refused to denounce the communities outright.

And across the South, the fires continued to burn—not only in buildings, but in hearts long starved of hope, now ignited with the flames of resistance.

What had begun as a spiritual awakening had become something far more powerful: a revolutionary realignment of power, race, and faith in the American soul.

And there would be no going back.

The Catholic Church meanwhile marched on, long an irrelevant force outside the northeastern US, was now at the center of a spiritual and political revolution. Within months, its membership surged by the millions. Entire Black communities, moved by the clarity and courage of the Vatican's stance on racial equality, began to leave their old congregations and embrace a faith that did not treat them as second-class Christians.

In sermons delivered in simple country chapels and grand city cathedrals alike, Catholic priests spoke with moral fire. They denounced Jim Crow from the pulpit, not as unfortunate tradition but as heresy. They invoked scripture not to placate but to inspire rebellion against the forces of hate. And in every sermon, one truth echoed: "There are no segregated pews in Heaven."

In the North itself, the effects were even more dramatic.

It was not a ripple—it was a tidal wave.

From Harlem to Detroit, from South Side Chicago to the immigrant neighborhoods of Boston, Catholic churches threw open their doors to Black Americans. There were no roped-off sections, no signs, no whispers urging "patience." There would be no separate seating for whites or Blacks. No separate sacraments. No divided flock. The message was clear, unyielding, and revolutionary:

"All are equal in the eyes of God—and all shall sit together."

In cities long divided by redlining and resentment, Catholics—Irish, Italian, Polish, and now Black—stood side by side at the altar. They knelt together. They shared communion. They broke bread in the same churches where, only years before, race riots had scarred the streets. It was not always smooth, nor was it without tension. But it was happening.

A new Great Awakening was unfolding across America.

But unlike the revivals of old, which often focused on personal salvation and emotional conversion, this was a collective spiritual uprising—rooted in justice, equality, and the refusal to tolerate oppression cloaked in the language of law or custom. It was not born in revival tents, but in the hard concrete streets and shotgun churches of Black America—and it spread like wildfire.

In towns both north and south, from cotton fields to steel mills, African Americans began converting to Catholicism in droves. Not out of novelty, but out of necessity—out of a yearning for a church that would march with them, that would shelter them, that would fight.

In Chicago, entire Black neighborhoods baptized hundreds at a time. In New Orleans, once ruled by the legacy of Creole caste systems, Black converts sang in Latin and raised crucifixes. In Harlem, Black children now attended parochial schools taught by nuns who did not flinch when they walked into the classroom.

This wasn't just spiritual.

It was political. It was cultural. It was radical.

The Catholic Church, once aloof and European in its distance, had descended into the trenches—and with it, came a renewed sense of solidarity that transcended race, region, and tradition. Black Catholics began forming their own councils, schools, and even publishing houses. They brought with them their traditions—the rhythm of gospel, the cry of the blues, the strength of their prayers—and fused it with the liturgy of Rome.

A new theology was being born—Black, Catholic, and unafraid.

And so, as America teetered between its past and its future, the Spirit moved. Not in whispers, but in roaring winds.

A once silenced people found their voice in the Latin mass, their strength in the sacraments, their dignity restored by a Church that had finally chosen to walk the path of righteousness—even if it was late in doing so.

And for the first time in generations, Black Americans no longer felt like spiritual exiles in their own land.

They were children of God—and now, everyone knew it.

Dewey meanwhile began to make promises—not to dismantle the New Deal but to reform it, to make it leaner, cleaner, more efficient without gutting its core. This calmed the fears of workers and union men. He was no reactionary. He was offering not a return to the past, but a bold leap forward.

And so they came. One by one, family by family, street by street.

In New York, voter rolls began to swell. In Buffalo, Polish dockworkers changed party affiliation en masse. In Pittsburgh, Irish steelworkers who once cursed the GOP as the party of Hoover now whispered that Dewey might be different. In Philadelphia, Catholic precincts buzzed with a new energy. Across Pennsylvania, the Republican Party—long a spent force outside the leafy suburbs—suddenly had life.

And in every conversation, every kitchen table debate, one name loomed like a phantom behind it all: Jim Crow.

The South's twisted system of white terror—its lynch mobs, its poll taxes, its segregated schools and sundown towns—had become too grotesque to ignore. It was not merely immoral. It was obscene. It was the living proof that America's democratic mask was slipping, revealing something far more monstrous underneath. It was the rotting corpse of Reconstruction, animated by hate and ritual violence, now exposed to the light. Every photo of a Black veteran beaten for trying to vote, every newspaper article about a child barred from school because of their skin—they were daggers to the American conscience.

And Dewey, for all his flaws, was the only white politician willing to wield a scalpel against the tumor.

The Republican Party, once thought unelectable in key northern states, now surged with new blood and righteous fury. Registration offices overflowed. Party chapters were inundated with new volunteers. Campaign offices buzzed with Catholics, progressives, disillusioned Roosevelt men, and young Black veterans demanding change. The once laughable notion that New York or Pennsylvania might flip was now whispered as strategy in smoky backrooms.

The dam had cracked.

And behind it surged a tidal wave of rage, hope, desperation, and resolve.

The battle lines were no longer Democrat versus Republican. They were Justice versus Jim Crow. Conscience versus cowardice. The future versus the noose.

And this time, at last, America might actually choose the right side.

Dewey immediately set to work on one of the most crucial tasks of any presidential hopeful: uniting his fractured party.

His primary obstacle was the conservative wing of the Republican Party, led by the formidable Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio. The two men had a long and bitter rivalry dating back to the 1940 Republican National Convention, where their clashing visions for the party and the country had created deep fissures. Their personal relationship was distant at best, marked by mutual suspicion and ideological contempt.

But Thomas Dewey was, at his core, a pragmatist.

He knew that to mount a serious challenge to Roosevelt's Democratic dominance—and to offer a credible alternative to the American people—he had to bring Taft and his followers into the fold. Without the conservative bloc's support, the Republican Party would remain divided and vulnerable.

The day after announcing his presidential bid, Dewey did something few would have expected: he personally went to Taft's office in Washington, D.C., and requested a private, one-on-one meeting.

Taft, the "Senator from the Senate," known for his unwavering conservatism and mastery of legislative tactics, was cautious but curious. Dewey's visit was unusual—he rarely sought out his rivals so directly.

The two men sat together for hours.

In a measured, firm tone, Dewey laid out his case. He spoke not as a mere politician, but as a man who understood the stakes facing the world and the nation.

He warned Taft of the looming threats abroad—Mussolini's aggressive gambit in Europe and Africa, Stalin's relentless expansionism in Asia, and the terrifying possibility that these totalitarian regimes could divide the globe among themselves, leaving the United States isolated and vulnerable. He painted a dire picture of what might come if America did not act decisively.

Dewey emphasized that this election was the best chance the Republican Party had in years to reclaim the White House and restore American leadership in the world.

He was careful not to alienate Taft's conservative ideals. Dewey offered no grand reduction of the New Deal. Instead, he promised to streamline and reform existing programs, cutting waste and inefficiency while protecting the social safety net.

He pledged tax cuts to stimulate growth, a determined effort to pay down the national debt, and a crackdown on what he called "organized labor's worst excesses", signaling his intent to appeal to business interests and moderate conservatives without alienating working-class voters entirely.

Then, in a bold move, Dewey extended an offer that would both flatter and challenge Taft: the vice-presidential nomination. He promised his full support and endorsement for Taft's own presidential ambitions in 1952, presenting a deal that sought to bridge their differences through political cooperation.

Taft listened carefully but said little in response. His face remained inscrutable throughout the meeting—neither warmth nor outright hostility. When Dewey left that evening, Taft was left with a blank expression, a mask of cautious calculation.

Behind that impassive exterior, the wheels were turning.

And one thing was clear: Dewey had taken the first critical step toward bridging the divide in the Republican Party—and the future of the nation might depend on whether Taft chose to accept it.

For the remainder of August 1943, Thomas Dewey and Robert A. Taft met almost daily. Sometimes it was over formal luncheons in the Senate dining room; other times, in the quiet of Taft's office, shielded from prying eyes and the ever-present whispers of Washington politics. There were dinners at Dewey's hotel suite, walks through the Capitol's marbled corridors, and long conversations that often stretched late into the evening.

What began as strategic negotiations gradually evolved into something more genuine. As the days passed, they discovered they had far more in common than either had previously assumed.

Both were men of the law—trained attorneys forged in the crucible of rigorous education and the high-pressure world of litigation. Over coffee and bourbon, they swapped stories of grueling nights studying for the bar, the anxiety of their first appearances before a judge, and the satisfaction of winning hard-fought cases. It was in these shared experiences that the walls between them began to fall.

They were both men who revered the Constitution—not as an abstract idea, but as the bedrock of American democracy. They were committed institutionalists who believed deeply in the structure of the Republic, the separation of powers, and the sanctity of the rule of law. And while their approaches sometimes differed, both harbored a measured skepticism toward the New Deal's expansive federal bureaucracy, which they viewed as a potential threat to American self-government and individual liberty.

More urgently, they were united by a growing reality: that the world was being carved up by tyrants. Fascism and communism—once rivals—now posed parallel dangers to the democratic order. Mussolini's ruthless expansionism and Stalin's iron-fisted control over Eastern Europe and Asia terrified them. Neither man believed that Roosevelt, burdened by an aging administration and a one-party dominance, would be agile enough to face the coming storm.

Their alliance, once fragile, began to harden into a true political partnership.

Then, on September 1, 1943, a symbolic and strategic milestone was reached.

That morning, Senator Taft stood before the press and issued a statement endorsing Governor Thomas E. Dewey for the presidency of the United States. He praised Dewey's competence, his legal acumen, and his integrity. More importantly, he described him as "a man capable of guiding the nation through war and peace, without abandoning its constitutional moorings."

Later that afternoon, Dewey formally announced that he would select Senator Robert A. Taft as his running mate for the 1944 election. The Republican ticket—once thought to be divided by deep ideological fault lines—now stood united under two of its most capable and principled leaders.

The news electrified the party.

Eastern moderates and Midwestern conservatives alike rallied behind the Dewey-Taft ticket. Newspaper editorials hailed the union as a masterstroke—a fusion of legal brilliance, executive competence, and legislative authority. Even skeptical party bosses began to believe that Roosevelt could be beaten, especially in the wake of the Savannah Massacre and growing unrest in the South.

For the first time in over a decade, the Republican Party was no longer fractured by internal squabbles or ideological purges. It stood as a single, formidable force with a message of constitutional governance, restrained government, and unwavering commitment to defeating tyranny at home and abroad.

Now, the campaign would begin in earnest.

The Democrats were still reeling from the violence in Georgia and the criticism Roosevelt had faced for his silence. The public mood was shifting. The world was on fire, and America's soul was at stake.

The Republicans were united. Now, they had to win.

But victory always comes with a price.

 

[Chaoswind]

Dewey is going to get murdered isn't it?

Anyways awesome chapter

 

[Wolffils]

Absolutely amazing writing here .

 

[Alenco98]

Transcript: Emergency Oval Office Meeting – June 14, 1943
Participants:

President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Vice President Henry A. Wallace

Governor Eugene Talmadge of Georgia

Location: White House, Washington D.C.
Time: 8:45 PM

---

[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT]

ROOSEVELT:
(slamming hand on desk)
Goddammit, Eugene—have you seen the front page of The New York Times?! Le Monde?! Do you even know what they're calling us in Rome right now? "The Butchers of Savannah." That's what! You have singlehandedly ruined America's name in every capital from London to Canberra.

TALMADGE:
Mr. President, with all due respect, this didn't start with us. That consulate was harboring radicals, terrorists! They opened fire on our boys. They started it.

WALLACE:
Bull shit, Eugene. They were handing out passports, not weapons. It was the National Guard that opened fire on unarmed civilians. You slaughtered people in front of the goddamn Italian consulate! Do you have any idea how this looks?

TALMADGE:
They were harboring seditionists—Negro agitators, thugs, communists. It was a powder keg. They lit the match, not me.

ROOSEVELT:
You nailed a priest to a telephone pole, Eugene! You let mobs run wild through the streets like it was 1865. We have photos of priests cradling shot children, for God's sake! Do you have any concept of the damage you've done?

TALMADGE:
You're not pinning this all on Georgia, Franklin. Your damn State Department let those Italians set up shop in Savannah like it was a Roman colony. They were fanning the flames of rebellion. I won't apologize for defending my state.

WALLACE:
Defending it? By lynching men in broad daylight? By letting white mobs burn down half the Black side of Savannah? You turned a consulate into a charnel house! There are Black veterans—men who fought for this country—lying dead in the gutters.

ROOSEVELT:
And now we're getting telegrams from the Vatican! The Archbishop of New York is threatening to denounce the Democratic Party from the pulpit. You think the Irish and Italians in Boston and Chicago are going to vote for us now? You've sabotaged 1944.

TALMADGE:
You want to talk sabotage? How about Rome issuing passports to American Negroes? That's not diplomacy. That's infiltration. That's incitement!

WALLACE:
You don't get it, Eugene. The world has changed. The colonies are rising. Africa is watching. Harlem is watching. And Rome is offering a future that we won't. You've singlehandedly destroyed the fragile coalition we built because you couldn't keep your boys under control!

ROOSEVELT:
And now we're being dragged with you. I've got Churchill on the phone asking if we're slipping into fascism while Mussolini is handing out civil rights like they're candy! What the hell am I supposed to say?

TALMADGE:
Tell Churchill to worry about his own empire. We don't answer to Rome. Not now, not ever.

WALLACE:
Tell that to the corpses in Savannah.

ROOSEVELT:
Enough. God damn it, I should've put you on a leash a year ago. But now we're bleeding support in the North and losing it in the South. I have Catholic mayors threatening to break with us. Progressives walking out. Wallace's people are ready to bolt, and honestly, so am I.

WALLACE:
If we don't hold someone accountable, Franklin, the progressives will walk. And I don't know if I can stop them.

TALMADGE:
If you throw me under the bus, you'll lose the South.

ROOSEVELT:
If I don't, we'll lose everything. God help you, Eugene—you may have lit the match that burns this party to the ground.

[END TRANSCRIPT]

---------------------------------

Transcript: Emergency Cabinet Meeting – June 14, 1943
Location: White House, Cabinet Room, Washington D.C.
Time: 11:00 PM

Attendees:

President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR)

Secretary of State Cordell Hull

Attorney General Francis Biddle

Secretary of War Henry Stimson

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover

Vice President Henry A. Wallace (briefly present)

Other senior advisers and military aides

---

[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT]

FDR:
(paces the room, voice heavy with frustration)
Gentlemen, we stand on the edge of a knife. Savannah has exposed the rot at the core of our nation—and it's bleeding out in plain sight. Photos of Black corpses in church clothes, priests nailed to poles, fires burning neighborhoods... And all while our allies in Europe are trying to build a new world order. This is the image we project? God help us.

We cannot allow this to continue. Not only is it a moral stain, it's a strategic disaster. I want the FBI to crush the Klan—root and branch. J. Edgar, I'm counting on you to shut down those cells, and fast. No more tolerance, no more turning a blind eye. This isn't a Southern problem; this is an American problem.

HOOVER:
(nods, grim)
Mr. President, I've already been moving on this quietly. We have informants in several chapters. But the Klan is deeply entrenched, especially in local law enforcement. It won't be easy.

FDR:
Easy? No. Necessary? Absolutely. We must break their back. If not, the violence will spread to cities in the North. The party's chances in '44 depend on it.

(turns to Secretary Hull)

Cordell, what about these Italian consulates? They're functioning like mini-embassies of Rome in our backyard. Offering citizenship to African Americans, openly defying our sovereignty. We've got mobs burning homes and lynching men in front of their doors. It's chaos.

HULL:
Mr. President, it's a diplomatic nightmare. The Italians have been careful to keep things just below open war. But public opinion is a powder keg, especially after Savannah. Closing the consulates would send a clear signal, but it risks escalating tensions with Rome.

FDR:
(voice rising)
We have to close them. We have to preserve peace here at home before it becomes a war abroad. I don't want another Rangoon or Kiev in the streets of Savannah. The consulates must be shuttered—tomorrow.

BIDDLE:
Mr. President, legally, we can revoke their privileges, citing incitement and interference in domestic affairs. It's a justified action.

FDR:
Good. Do it.

(paces again, rubbing his face tiredly)

I'm worried—no, terrified—about the party. The Catholics in the North, the progressives on the left, African Americans who see Rome as a beacon, and the Southern Democrats clinging to their old ways. We are tearing ourselves apart. I'm the only thing holding this coalition together.

(pauses, voice dropping to a quiet resolve)

I'll run for a fourth term. I hate it, but I see no other way. No one else can hold the party together. Not in these fractured times. The nation needs a steady hand to secure a post-war peace, to rebuild our shattered world and to reclaim our standing.

But... the world is watching, and they're judging. Mussolini—that bastard—he has outplayed us. Declaring himself Emperor Constantine XII, restoring the Roman Empire, preaching civil rights and decolonization while we bicker over lynchings and consulates. Rome has stolen the moral high ground from us.

It's brilliant, and it's infuriating.

STIMSON:
His gambit in Africa and the American South is shrewd, but fragile. The new Empire lacks the economic and military strength to hold it for long. We must focus on winning the war and shaping the post-war order.

FDR:
Exactly. But that means winning back our narrative. We have to act fast, decisively, or this moment will define us—not the New Deal, not the war effort, but Savannah and the broken promise of America.

HOOVER:
If I may, Mr. President, taking down the Klan will send a strong message domestically and internationally. But it must be thorough. Half-measures will only embolden extremists.

FDR:
Do whatever it takes, J. Edgar. And make no mistake, I'll be watching. We cannot allow this country to be divided by hate—not while the world looks to us for leadership.

(leans forward, voice low but fierce)

Gentlemen, the stakes have never been higher. We are fighting for more than victory overseas—we are fighting for the soul of this nation. And I intend to see that fight through to the end.

---

[END TRANSCRIPT]

-------------------------

Transcript: Democratic Party Emergency Leadership Meeting
Date: June 15, 1943
Location: Roosevelt Room, The White House
Time: 3:00 PM

Attendees:

President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Vice President Henry A. Wallace

Senator Robert Wagner (NY) – Labor wing

Senator Alben Barkley (KY) – Majority Leader

Representative Sam Rayburn (TX) – Speaker of the House

Senator Theodore Bilbo (MS) – Southern wing

Senator James Byrnes (SC) – Southern moderate

Senator Claude Pepper (FL) – Progressive

Senator Harry S. Truman (MO) – Seen as a compromise figure

Democratic Party strategists and aides

---

[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT]

FDR:
(seated, hands folded, unusually grim tone)
Gentlemen, I won't waste time. Savannah changed everything. We're bleeding—morally, politically, internationally. The Roman Empire is back, and it's wearing the cloak of anti-racism, civil rights, and decolonization. And what are we offering? Lynchings in the streets of Georgia.

We're being outflanked—by Mussolini, of all people.

(murmurs ripple across the room)

If we don't come together now, we lose the White House, we lose Congress, and mark my words—we lose the New Deal and segregation. The Republicans won't stop at busting unions. They'll burn both ends of the house down if they take over. The only chance we have is unity.

(leans forward)

I'm telling you all now—I'm going to run again in '44. I don't want to. God knows I don't have the strength. But there's no one else who can hold this damned party together.

(glances toward Wallace)

We're going to have to make changes. Serious ones. We will move on civil rights—not for votes, not for optics, but because the world is watching. Mussolini is handing passports to Black Americans while we let them get lynched outside a consulate. If we don't do something, our credibility is gone. Forever.

WAGNER:
Mr. President, I agree entirely. Labor's with you. We've been pushing for anti-lynching legislation for years, and now we have the moment. But the Southern boys—

BILBO:
(slamming the table)
The Southern boys aren't going to be sold out to Mussolini's moral sermonizing! You want to hand the government over to the NAACP and call it progress? You want Federal troops in our towns?

WALLACE:
(cold, furious)
Maybe if Southern towns stopped acting like fascist colonies, the President wouldn't have to consider it.

BILBO:
You watch your tongue, Henry. You talk about fascism, but you're backing one in Washington!

WALLACE:
You're calling me a fascist while defending lynch mobs! You are the reason Black Americans are turning to foreign powers for dignity and protection!

FDR:
(banging his cane on the floor)
Enough! ENOUGH!

(room falls silent)

If you think I'll sit here and watch this party tear itself apart while the world burns, you are out of your minds. You want to fight? Fine. But if you don't shut up and listen, I swear to God I'll resign tomorrow and leave you bastards to choke on Dewey's dust in '44.

(all stunned into silence)

You want to keep the South? Fine. We give them someone they can stomach. Wallace, you've been loyal, but you know as well as I do you are poison to the Southern vote now.

WALLACE:
(visibly shaken)
So that's it. I've spent my life building a better America, and you're trading it away like chips at a card game?

FDR:
No, Henry. I'm buying time. Without time, we get nothing. No labor reforms. No integration. No victory. No world peace. Nothing.

I propose we run with a compromise. A moderate. Someone they can live with—someone who won't excite the mobs but won't drag us into the swamp either.

BYRNES:
Who do you have in mind?

FDR:
Harry Truman.

TRUMAN:
(startled)
Me?

FDR:
Yes. You're labor-friendly, no firebrand, and Southern enough for the Dixiecrats. You're clean, respected, and dull enough to avoid headlines. Which is what we need now.

RAYBURN:
(grumbling)
It could work. He's Missouri. Border state. Not Deep South, not New York. He's a bridge.

BILBO:
I don't like it. But it's better than Wallace.

WALLACE:
This is a betrayal! You're throwing away the progressives to appease those damn racists in the south!

FDR:
I'm not throwing them away goddamn it! If we don't do it, we'll all regret it when Mussolini's "Roman civil rights empire" is welcoming American refugees with olive branches and we're left explaining why we shot priests and mothers in the street.

(long silence)

FDR:
This is the deal: we put Truman on the ticket. We move on civil rights—quietly, incrementally, but firmly. We shut down the damn Klan. We close the consulates. And we take back the moral high ground from that son of a bitch in Rome.

Take it or leave it. But this is the only path forward.

WALLACE:
(rising to his feet, voice sharp, eyes blazing)
You want to run with Truman? Fine. But I won't be part of it. And don't think I'll go quietly. The progressive wing of this party will walk with me. I'll take every labor leader, every farmer, every Black voter who still believes in this country's promise—and we'll bury this party before we let it sell its soul to Dixie.

BILBO:
(grinning smugly)
Let 'em walk. Maybe then we'll have a party that actually represents the South again.

WALLACE:
(turning on Bilbo)
We're not the ones who killed negroes because we don't like them being next to white people! The whole world saw what your ilk did in Savannah. You're a walking gift to fascism. If we let you keep setting the rules, we don't deserve to win.

FDR:
(roaring now, slamming his fist into the table, voice like thunder)
HENRY. Sit. Down damn it!

(Wallace freezes. The room goes quiet. FDR's face is red, his breathing heavy.)

You think I want this? You think I enjoy playing goddamned puppeteer? But this isn't about you, or your pride, or the south's! This is about survival. Of the New Deal. Of the labor movement. Of democracy.

You walk—and the Republicans will annihilate us. They'll repeal every reform we've fought for since '33. Social Security? Dead. WPA? Gone. Union protections? Gone. Housing, banking, regulation? Dead. And in their place? Taft, Hoover, and a thousand little fascists with American flags in one hand and Wall Street checks in the other.

You think Dewey gives a damn about civil rights? You think he'll do a damn thing for the poor, the Black man, the farmer, or the working mother? He'll smile and gut everything we built while patting you on the head.

(points a finger directly at Wallace)
You want to walk out? You want to split this party and hand the country over to the bankers and Taft? Be my guest. But don't pretend it's moral. It's not. It's surrender dressed up in principle.

WALLACE:
(teeth clenched, voice lower but angrier)
You're choosing appeasement. You're choosing comfort over courage.

FDR:
I'm choosing victory. And the chance to live and fight another day. This is chess, Henry, not a sermon.

TRUMAN:
(quietly)
Look, I don't want to be the wedge here. If it's going to split the party, maybe I'm not the right—

FDR:
No, Harry. You're exactly right. Because you won't split it. You'll hold it—barely—but just enough to win. That's all we need.

(long silence. Everyone is drained, except Roosevelt, who still burns with controlled rage.)

FDR (cont'd):
This is the deal. We run with Truman. We move on civil rights. We take the hit now to keep the future intact. We fight Mussolini's narrative not with purity, but with progress. Inch by inch.

Because the world is watching. And history will remember what we chose to do now.

(No one speaks. Even Wallace stays seated, seething but quiet. One by one, heads begin to nod. Slowly, bitterly—but they nod.)

[END TRANSCRIPT]

 

[ATP]

I DON'T BELIEVE IN ANY OF THIS. This little rhetorical and ideological vomit was the result of me reading hours of fascist, integralist, traditionalist and even syndicalist writings. Even sprinkled some Jreg in there.

If you genuinely base your political ideology on this then comrade, go outside

Click to shrink...

But you still created system more logical then Imperial Truth of Emprah from WH40.Or communism from real life.You did well.
But - Italy still do not have economy and army to win like that.....

 

[Shaedy Hoe]

As a black dude, this genuinely makes me happy

Click to shrink...

Right?! I've always been of the opinion that African Americans back then shoulda fought tooth and nail for their rights instead of enduring all that abuse. Maybe they woulda been taking more seriously if a few thousand white women and children hung from the trees every time a black American was lynched. Since they liked to murder black people to protect their precious little white girls, then maybe they (black folks) shoulda REALLY given them a reason to worry about them melanin-deficient hoes. Can't have black women being the only ones getting gang raped in these streets, am I right?

Oh, and all them judges, police officers and politicians that endorsed that shit? Yeah, they shoulda gotten their homes and workplaces bombed to the ground. Honestly, my black American and Latino (cos I ain't forget about them racist clowns across the border) cousins shoulda just turned the Western Hemisphere into a warzone to get their reparations. Too, bad it didn't go that way.

 

[Chaoswind]

Right?! I've always been of the opinion that African Americans back then shoulda fought tooth and nail for their rights instead of enduring all that abuse. Maybe they woulda been taking more seriously if a few thousand white women and children hung from the trees every time a black American was lynched. Since they liked to murder black people to protect their precious little white girls, then maybe they (black folks) shoulda REALLY given them a reason to worry about them melanin-deficient hoes. Can't have black women being the only ones getting gang raped in these streets, am I right?

Oh, and all them judges, police officers and politicians that endorsed that shit? Yeah, they shoulda gotten their homes and workplaces bombed to the ground. Honestly, my black American and Latino (cos I ain't forget about them racist clowns across the border) cousins shoulda just turned the Western Hemisphere into a warzone to get their reparations. Too, bad it didn't go that way.

Click to shrink...

Hard disagree.

They should have fire bombed the institutions, police and armed themselves to the teeth, but explicitly targeting women and children is a fast way to lose.

 

[Alenco98]

Hard disagree.

They should have fire bombed the institutions, police and armed themselves to the teeth, but explicitly targeting women and children is a fast way to lose.

Click to shrink...

This man knows urban guerrilla warfare

 

[Shaedy Hoe]

Hard disagree.

They should have fire bombed the institutions, police and armed themselves to the teeth, but explicitly targeting women and children is a fast way to lose.

Click to shrink...

I know. I'm just being petty. Also... Due to my narcissism, my first thought whenever someone pisses me off is to hit 'em where it really hurts, which is usually either their family or their livelihoods. Also, one of the main reason why black men were lynched is cos white women'd falsely accuse them of sexual assault or harassment, like in the case case of Emit Till, so it's not like them heffas were innocent either.

But, yeah, I defo agree with you on that whole bombing their institutions thing. Like, if it were me, and I got denied access to all the services that my taxes paid for? Yeah, no, if I can't have it then no one else can. Honestly, with how psycho I can get, the only reason why I haven't committed crimes against humanity is cos I live in a social democracy that treats me right. Lord knows that if I were living back home in Somalia I'd have probably been a terrorist or serial killer by now cos that place is basically the Wild West but with more melanin.

 

[Alenco98]

I know. I'm just being petty. Also... Due to my narcissism, my first thought whenever someone pisses me off is to hit 'em where it really hurts, which is usually either their family or their livelihoods. Also, one of the main reason why black men were lynched is cos white women'd falsely accuse them of sexual assault or harassment, like in the case case of Emit Till, so it's not like them heffas were innocent either.

But, yeah, I defo agree with you on that whole bombing their institutions thing. Like, if it were me, and I got denied access to all the services that my taxes paid for? Yeah, no, if I can't have it then no one else can. Honestly, with how psycho I can get, the only reason why I haven't committed crimes against humanity is cos I live in a social democracy that treats me right. Lord knows that if I were living back home in Somalia I'd have probably been a terrorist or serial killer by now cos that place is basically the Wild West but with more melanin.

Click to shrink...

Speaking of Somalia, I made Siad Barre (yes that one) a guerrilla working under Skorensky to set Africa on fire to spread African liberation.

He will be VERY prominent in future Africa chapters. I want your take on it.

 

[Shaedy Hoe]

Speaking of Somalia, I made Siad Barre (yes, that one) a guerrilla working under Skorensky to set Africa on fire to spread African liberation.

He will be VERY prominent in future Africa chapters. I want your take on it.

Click to shrink...

Yeah. I noticed. I hope you do my uncle Siyaad justice, cos that man is a legend for my people! Honestly, our country has never been the same without him. Like, we miss him so much that I wish I could learn necromancy so I can bring him back, cos them clowns that are running my "country" are a legit embarrassment, and we need him to fix the mess that absence has created.

 

[Alenco98]

November 3, 1942
Outskirts of Jizan
Kingdom of Yemen

Lieutenant Mattias Berg exhaled sharply through gritted teeth, the arid wind catching in his throat as he raised a clenched fist—his signal to halt. The column of Yemeni conscripts behind him froze mid-step, their boots scuffing the cracked earth. Overhead, the shadows of the Regia Aeronautica and the nascent Yemeni air corps circled like vultures, engines snarling as they began their descent toward the doomed city below.

"Masks on!" he barked in clipped, heavily-accented Arabic. The words came more easily than they should have—he had been in Yemen less than a month, and yet necessity had carved the language into him like a blade.

Officially, he was an instructor—an "advisor" sent by Rome to help modernize the Imam's army. In reality, he was little more than a ghost of war, conscripted into another man's crusade. The Scuola di Guerra Moderna had been his reward—or punishment—for surviving Thrace and Germany. A fresh commission, papers adorned with signatures and seals, and a slow descent into something colder, harder than he had once been.

They had broken him in stages. Drills at dawn, doctrine at dusk. Mao, Clausewitz, Tukhachevsky—all memorized and spat back with obedient precision. War, he'd learned, was a language. And he had become fluent.

He adjusted the straps of his gas mask, tugging them taut. The chemical was not mustard gas, though it might as well have been. Lieutenant-Colonel Alborghetti had spoken of it in the careless, conspiratorial tones of a man who'd seen too much and coped with laughter.

"Tabun," he had said, swirling brandy in a chipped glass. "Some German-made shit. Duce imported it with the chemists. My cousin's in the department—says they've got ex-Nazis working with them. One of them tested it on a dog. Said the skin peeled clean off. Like fruit." Alborghetti had raised his glass with a grin, "So, Mattias, keep that mask tight. Or you'll be pissing blood and seeing angels by dawn."

Mattias had laughed, but his hands had trembled for an hour afterward.

He crouched behind a low wall of sunbaked stone, watching the airstrike unfold. Distant screams echoed on the wind—coughing, howling, a chorus of agony muffled by distance but unmistakable. He didn't need to see to know what the gas was doing.

Some of the civilians—Shi'a mostly, loyal to the Imam—had been warned. The Yemenis had ensured it, discreetly. A quiet word to a village elder. A slip of paper beneath a prayer mat. Not enough. Never enough. But it was all the imam could do without risking his entire scheme those under his command.

He turned to look at the boys behind him—barely old enough to shave, trembling fingers clutching rifles too large for their frames. One of them reminded him of Giustino, the same wiry build, the same careless lock of dark hair falling into his eyes.

Giustino.

The name hit him like a stone dropped in still water. He had not spoken it aloud in months. He had not dared. But it lived in him, just beneath the surface, like an old wound that flared at the wrong angle.

He reached beneath his tunic, his fingers brushing against the dog tags that hung close to his heart. He wore them still, tucked beneath his uniform where no one could see. Giustino's name engraved in clean, blocky letters. His mother had let him keep them. She had pressed them into Mattias' palm the day he left their village in Sicily, her eyes dry but sunken with something heavier than grief.

"You were his friend," she had said. "You were with him when he fell."

He had nodded. He hadn't corrected her.

Friend. It was a word that meant too little, and too much. Giustino had been his shadow in the trenches, his echo in the barracks, the only laughter he could still remember clearly. His best friend when he was conscripted —and both had volunteered for Thrace. Mattias had told himself it was duty, that it was merely the bond between soldiers. He had believed it then. He tried to believe it still.

But sometimes, in the quiet moments, when the stars stretched endlessly over the desert and sleep would not come, he thought of Giustino's voice—soft, joking, always a little too close. He remembered the night they had sat back to back beneath the shattered remains of a Turkish mosque outside Edirne after surviving that chemical infested nightmare of urban warfare, sharing a cigarette stolen from a dead soldier, their shoulders touching. Neither had spoken for an hour. And yet, it had been the fullest conversation Mattias had ever known in his life.

He was dead now. Lost in Thrace, buried in an unmarked grave on a nameless Hill along with most of his old unit. But Mattias carried him still, through the sands and smoke, through the cries of the dying and the rot of imperial ambition.

A gust of wind stirred the air, carrying the chemical tang of tabun. Mattias adjusted his mask again and blinked the sweat from his eyes.

There was still a mission. Still orders. Still young men who looked at him for guidance, for certainty. He could not afford memory. He could not afford longing.

He rose to his feet and signaled the advance.

The war moved forward. And so did he.
But in his chest, the dog tags clinked quietly against his ribs—like a heartbeat that wasn't quite his own.

They entered the town like a slow-moving tide—measured, deliberate, methodical. The dry wind carried the acrid sting of chemical residue and scorched stone. Mattias led from the front, eyes scanning every window, every rooftop. His body moved on instinct now, muscle memory forged in the relentless crucible of the Scuola di Guerra Moderna. Drill upon drill, repetition until exhaustion. It had hollowed him out and rebuilt him, not into a man, but into a mechanism—precise, detached, efficient.

"Check the corners!" he barked in Italian, the phrase tumbling out like a reflex. One of his interpreters—Mahmoud, the tall one with kind eyes—translated the order, and it passed down the line like scripture.

"Check for snipers! Sweep and clear! Every room, every rooftop!"

The Yemeni conscripts obeyed without hesitation. There was a certain grace to the way they moved, a young soldier's hunger to prove himself. A few took initiative—secure a junction, barricade a side alley, cover an open street. Mattias made note of it, scribbling names into a small, leather-bound notebook he kept in his breast pocket. Field commissions. Commendations. A gesture, perhaps futile, but one that gave the illusion of meaning.

The Imam had plans to build his own Scuola, modeled after the Italian academies. Mattias had seen the blueprints—modest but ambitious. He wondered if any of these boys would live long enough to graduate from it.

Then the civilians emerged—or what was left of them.

The gas had done its work with ruthless efficiency. In the main square, bodies were stacked like discarded lumber. Faces blistered, eyes glazed, some frozen mid-scream. Children clung to their mothers, limbs locked in a final, fruitless embrace. The air stank of death, of chemicals and blood and shit. The kind of smell that clung to the inside of your nostrils long after the wind had carried it away.

The Yemeni troops laughed. Jeered. Spat.

"Mushrikīn," one sneered, kicking a corpse.
"Zindīq," said another.
"Kāfir. Let them burn."

Mattias didn't need to ask what the words meant. He'd been briefed. He had sat through hours of lectures from the General Staff and the Imam's scholars alike. The hatred between the Shi'a and the Wahhabis was not political. It was religious. Ancestral. Cosmic. Not unlike the hatred between Protestants and Catholics back in Europe during the reformation and wars of religion. Here, in the deserts of Arabia, it bled freely and without apology.

And Mattias—neutral, foreign, Catholic—was merely the one holding the leash, pretending it wasn't in his hand.

One of the soldiers, barely more than a boy, retrieved a rusted fuel canister from a truck. Another followed, and another. Soon, a half-dozen of them were dousing the corpses with gasoline, the liquid sloshing over bodies with a sickening, wet hiss.

Mattias didn't stop them.

He didn't speak, didn't move. He didn't even look away. He stood still, helmet tucked under one arm, gas mask dangling from his belt, the desert wind whipping at his coat like the fingers of ghosts.

To look away would have been cowardice. He owed the dead at least that much. A witness.

The flames caught quickly—ragged tongues of orange and red that licked the sky with ravenous hunger. The fire roared, devouring flesh and bone alike, black smoke rising into the heavens like an unholy prayer.

He didn't flinch. He didn't vomit. He felt the nausea claw at his throat but swallowed it down, along with the shame. He had long since learned to bury those things, to wrap them in steel and silence.

A small part of him—deep, hidden—was grateful Giustino wasn't here.

Giustino would've said something. He always did. A joke, most likely. Something disarming. Perhaps a quip about a barbecue, accompanied by that crooked grin he wore whenever he was trying to distract Mattias from something terrible.

And then, when they were alone, away from the others, he would turn solemn. He'd talk about morality, about how men convince themselves of righteousness. About the sheer fragility of civilization, and how easy it was for good men to slip into evil over things like doctrine and dogma and the shape of God. Then he would smile, like a child fascinated by what he'd just observed.

Mattias had listened to him then, but he hadn't understood. Not truly.

Now, too late, he did.

He turned his gaze upward. The sun blazed hot and indifferent above, veiled by smoke. No thunder came. No divine voice spoke from the clouds. No judgment. Only the steady crackle of burning flesh and the distant sound of artillery in the mountains.

The world was quiet, cruel, and godless.

He touched the tags beneath his uniform again. Giustino's name was warm against his chest. He had taken to doing it unconsciously now—like a gesture of prayer, or guilt.

The interpreter approached, clearing his throat gently. "Capitano… your orders?"

Mattias nodded absently. "Secure the perimeter. No looting. And… bury the rest."

"Yes, sir."

As the boy turned to go, Mattias remained still, eyes fixed on the fire. His shadow flickered in the flames, long and broken.

He didn't know if it was grief or guilt or something else entirely. But whatever it was, it never left him. It walked beside him, just as Giustino once had—silent, close, unspoken.

---------------

November 6, 1942
Outskirts of Jizan
Kingdom of Yemen

They cleared the bodies once the flames died down, their charred remains reduced to brittle husks, indistinguishable from one another—faces gone, names erased. The stench of scorched flesh still hung in the air two days later when reinforcements finally arrived. By then, the displaced Shia townsfolk had begun to return, cautiously at first, like ghosts peering out from the ruins of their former lives.

Then came the cheering.

"The souls of the martyrs rejoice!" cried one old cleric, hoisting a black banner as boys waved rifles in the square.

"Our souls for our deliverers!" a young woman sobbed, clutching the boots of a passing soldier. Her voice cracked with exhaustion and reverence.

Mattias stood in silence as the newly arrived Yemeni troops passed out bread and dates to the children. It felt rehearsed, orchestrated—liberation as theater, the audience starved for anything that looked like victory.

By the next morning, the division was moving out. The orders were clear: they were bound for the holy lands.

Mecca.

That was the Imam's goal—the prize whispered to him by the Emperor himself, promised in private correspondence, sealed with the authority of a new Rome.

Mattias remembered how the Imam had spoken with quiet certainty of his lineage. "Through Fatimah," his officers claimed, "and Ali, the Lion of God. A Sayyid, pure in blood and pious in heart." He would be caliph, they said. A just man to unite the faithful and cast down the Saudi heretics—the Wahhabis, whom they cursed with venom no different in tone than the Germans had used for Jews.

In truth, Mattias had stopped distinguishing the slogans from the hatreds. Both seemed to blend in the desert heat, rising like mirages, shimmering with blood and holy rage.

That night, beneath a sky strewn with stars and silence, he sat outside his tent, radio in his lap, cigarette between calloused fingers. The wind carried with it the taste of ash and sand. He lit the cigarette and turned the dial. Static, then a clear voice, rich and measured, filled the night.

The Emperor was speaking.

"The world is in flames," he said, "and has been since that September day in 1939. But amidst the fire, a rebirth…"

He spoke of Palestine. Of Stern and the Lehi fighters, now locked in a brutal civil war with the British. The words that followed were thunderous:

"We, the Roman Empire, recognize the steadfast and resilient Jewish people. There shall be no peace in Palestine until a Jewish state, from the river to the sea, stands sovereign!"

The cheers from Rome echoed even through the crackling speakers. A tide of sound, of conviction, of theater.

"And let it be known!" the Emperor roared. "Comrade Stern has pledged that Israel will be a homeland for all—Muslim, Christian, Jew! As Rome is the steward of harmony, so shall Israel be its twin in the East! Am Yisrael Chai!"

More cheers. More carefully crafted thunder.

Mattias chuckled, bitterly. Giustino would have laughed too.

"He's a master politician," Mattias imagined him saying, lounging back with that half-smile, eyes alight with cynical admiration. "Tell people what they want to hear and they'll follow you straight into hell. I wish I'd learned that trick back in Thessaloniki. Maybe then I wouldn't have struck out with that cabaret hostess."

A fake memory, conjured from fragments and daydreams. But it was so him. That easy charm, that knowing grin. That insufferable, irresistible warmth.

Mattias exhaled slowly, eyes fixed on the dark expanse above. The stars blurred for a moment—whether from smoke or from tears, he wasn't sure.

His thoughts drifted. To Anne Frank, the girl with fire in her eyes and vengeance on her breath. To the Lehi fighters, barely more than children, fighting like wolves cornered by history.

He wondered if they were still alive. If they had grown harder, or if the war had softened something inside them in defiance of its cruelty.

He closed his eyes and said a prayer—not loud, not performative. Just a whisper. A remnant of some long-buried faith.

"Let them live. Let those kids grow old. Let them laugh in sunlit gardens. Give them peace and a future. Don't let them become ghosts like me… or like Giustino."

He didn't say amen.
He just sat there, cigarette burning down to ash, listening to the radio, to the desert wind, and to the silence that lingered long after the Emperor's voice had faded

-------------

November 10, 1942
Abha, Asir Province
Kingdom of Yemen

The city fell without fanfare.

Like every town and village along the road to Mecca, Abha had been taken swiftly—too swiftly. Resistance was fierce, yes, but disorganized. The Saudi garrisons, composed of frightened conscripts and zealous volunteers, fought with the kind of desperate fury only religion can inspire. They clung to their rifles and Qur'ans, chanted verses as they charged, and bled out with prayers still on their lips.

But fervor, Mattias reflected, could only go so far. It could not stop the artillery, nor the gas shells. It could not stand against flame and steel and tanks painted with black flags and green crescents. Conviction alone could not overcome the cold arithmetic of modern war.

It certainly couldn't withstand what they had become.

He walked through the city's central square just after the last burst of gunfire had died away. Smoke drifted through the air, curling around shattered domes and gutted homes. Somewhere nearby, a woman wept. The sound followed him as he moved past a heap of burning papers—records, sermons, family names, dreams—all reduced to ash.

The Wahhabi imams were the first to be taken. Then came the bureaucrats, clerks, constables, prison guards, their families, even their cooks and servants. No one was spared. Guilt was inherited, collective, total.

The Shia militiamen—the partisans of the Imam—moved with grim purpose. They did not scream or mock. There was no need. Their hatred was older than this war. Older than any of them. It was the kind of hatred that is passed down like scripture, carved into memory by centuries of betrayal and blood. He regretted asking his translator what they said.

"These are the dogs who defiled the tombs of our saints," one of them muttered as he forced a teenage boy into the pit.
"These are the spawn of Najd," said another. "Of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Heretics who worship the sword, not God."

The pits had been dug at dawn. Now, by dusk, they were ready.

Many of the condemned begged. Most stayed silent, clutching their children or murmuring prayers. Some cried out in protest, invoking the Prophet's name. Those were the first to be shot.

Mattias watched it all from the edge of the square, his rifle slung over his shoulder like a dead weight. He no longer knew if he carried it for war or as some kind of relic. He had stopped firing long ago. There was no need to. There were others eager to do the killing.

And then he saw him.

A ghost in the flesh.

SS-Sturmbannführer Ottofried Hansen.

No. That wasn't the name anymore. Not here. Not now.

OVRA agent Ottofredo Herin.

He had the look of a Nazi propaganda poster—tall, pale, hair like bleached straw, eyes so blue they looked glassy and inhuman in the dying light.

But it was the expression Mattias remembered most. That perfect, unchanging mask of apathy. The same look he had worn at the German Italian border, over 3 years ago, when he casually referred to a transport of Jewish refugees as cargo.

Even Giustino—sharp-tongued, ever-joking Giustino—had been shaken by him.

Mattias remembered that September day. The border crossing. The rain clinging to the edges of the trucks. The smell.

He remembered how Giustino had fallen silent when Ottofredo dropped the Jews off like dropping trash off.

It had disturbed him. To see Giustino— Giustino, who had once flirted with a German diplomat's daughter just to make a point—silenced by that man's presence.

And now, somehow, impossibly, Ottofredo lived.

While Giustino did not.

Mattias felt a heaviness settle in his chest. It wasn't rage. Rage had burned out long ago. What was left was something quieter, duller. The ache of meaninglessness. The cold joke of divine providence.

If God was real, then He was cruel. Or perhaps merely indifferent.

Perhaps mercy was only for the good. And the good, as the saying went, died young.

Giustino had been younger. Brighter. Better.

And he, the survivor of the two… God forgive him, he wasn't good. Not anymore.

"Fire!"

Ottofredo's voice cut through his thoughts like a blade. The Yemenis obeyed at once.

A hundred rifles cracked in unison. Bodies fell forward into the pit.

Some twitched. Others rolled. Children followed parents. Servants followed masters.

Mattias closed his eyes. Not in prayer. Not in grief. Just to block out the sun.

He lit a cigarette with trembling fingers.

Somewhere deep inside, he hoped he would see Giustino in a dream that night. Maybe on a quiet patrol in Thrace, or in a smoky bar in Constantinople after curfew. He would laugh, and say something cynical, and everything would feel like it made sense again.

Just for a moment.

But dreams rarely came to him anymore. And when they did, they were always stained in red.

Their bodies fell into the ditch one by one—ragdoll collapses, punctuated by shrieks that fractured the desert air. Men, women, children, some still clutching each other in their final moments. Some screamed prayers, others only whimpered. The bullets didn't discriminate.

And yet Ottofredo Herin watched with the calm of a seasoned conductor at a symphony. He did not flinch. Not once. If anything, his jaw tightened with a subtle pride—pride at the precision, at the swiftness, at the silence that would soon follow. He stood as an artist might before a completed canvas. There was no cruelty in his gaze—only cold satisfaction. A master of systems. Of extermination.

He never looked away.

Mattias did. For a moment. But then he looked back. Someone had to. Someone had to bear witness. It was the least he could do for the dead. The very least.

And yet—somewhere, beneath the uniforms and the rank and the medals that meant less with each passing day—something in him recoiled. Or was it something darker? That voice again. Whispering from the hollows of his soul.

Witness? it asked. Is that what you call yourself? Or are you too enraptured by the horror to look away? You think yourself different from him? But your boots stood firm while they screamed.

He said nothing. Only closed his eyes and pulled out a cigarette. BH Menthol. He didn't care for the taste—artificial, sterile—but British Aden was near, and it had flooded the markets here. The Yemenis loved it. And right now, that was what he had.

He took a long drag and exhaled slowly, letting the smoke drift over the pit where the last of the Wahhabis were being executed. The Yemenis had learned their craft well—Ottofredo had taught them how to kill like Germans. Methodical. Efficient. No hesitation.

There was a venom in the Yemenis' eyes—a hatred older than the rifles in their hands. Not political, not strategic—religious. Deep, ancestral, festering hatred. To them, the Wahhabi Saudis were heretics, apostates, enemies of God. The takfir and the sectarian slurs were spat with the same fervor as their bullets.

By the time the sun set, the ditch was filled, and the silence began to settle.

Gasoline followed. The same ritual as every time. It was easier to burn the evidence than to bury it. Ottofredo strolled along the pit's edge, the breeze lifting his coat ever so slightly. Occasionally, he paused, drew his Luger, and fired into the mass. Sometimes a groan would answer, or a gurgle. He didn't flinch then, either. He just moved on.

Then he gave a whistle, and the fires came. An orange wave of light and flame, and with it the smell—acrid, sour, unforgettable.

Ottofredo approached, smiling as if returning from a garden stroll. He held his nose theatrically, half-laughing. "Goddamn," he chuckled, "they smell even worse after you kill them."

Mattias didn't smile. Didn't flinch. He only responded, coolly, in German: "You get used to the smell."

Ottofredo blinked, then grinned. "Mein Gott, you speak German too? What are you doing in the Italian Army? Were you Heer?"

"No." A slight shake of the head. "South Tyrol. Roman, technically. Doesn't matter."

Ottofredo nodded as if that explained everything. "Pleasure to meet a fellow German." He held out his cigarette. "Got a lighter?"

Mattias handed it over without a word. The other man lit his cigarette with a practiced motion, then offered a companionable shrug.

"I hate these British things. My wife loves them though." He took a slow drag, almost wistfully.

Mattias blinked. "You're married?"

Ottofredo beamed like a schoolboy. "Ja. Margarethe. Second cousin. We were childhood friends. Married just after the war started." His voice softened, took on a warmth that chilled Mattias more than the fire behind them. "She survived the war, thank God. And our son, Günther, was born a few months ago. Little miracle. I suppose I owe it to the Russians."

He gestured to his shoulder. "Sniper, Kiev. Bastard got me through the joint. Sent me home just before winter. Margarethe and I had… some extra time." A grin. "And now I've got my little boy."

He pulled out a silver locket—heart-shaped, absurdly delicate. Inside, a photograph: a young woman smiling, holding a swaddled infant.

"They're lovely, aren't they?" Ottofredo said. "Soon as this tour's done, I'm going back to Milan. My boss Heydrich lined this job up for me, OVRA, soon to be reborn—it pays well. More than enough to pay off the mortgage and provide for a few more kids. Start fresh."

Mattias stared. And stared.

This man. This thing. This butcher of men and children. And yet he had a wife. A child. A future. A home. Happiness.

It was obscene. Absurd.

"I was engaged," Mattias muttered, almost without thinking. "After Thrace. After… Constantinople. It fell through."

After Giustino died in front of me. After I held what was left of him. After the world turned grey.

Ottofredo nodded with genuine sympathy. "That's unfortunate. But you look Germanic. Strong. I have a cousin in Munich—lovely girl. I could introduce you."

Mattias forced a nod. "Sure."

Ottofredo handed him back the lighter with a smirk. "Thanks, Kamerad."

He walked away, whistling, the scent of burnt flesh clinging to his boots like a curse.

Mattias didn't move. Not for a long while. He looked up at the stars—the same stars that shone over South Tyrol, over Constantinople, over every grave he had ever helped dig.

And he laughed.

Quietly at first, then louder. A dry, broken sound—somewhere between a sob and a scream. He laughed because it made more sense than weeping.

Because if he cried now, he wasn't sure he would ever stop.

 

[Alenco98]

June 20, 1943
An Isolated Cabin
Ten Miles Outside Savannah, Georgia


The Southern woods were hushed and heavy, their breathless silence broken only by the distant rustle of cicadas. But then came the scream—a long, warbling shriek of pain that cut through the pines like a knife through raw silk. Inside a run-down hunting cabin choked with the scent of blood, sweat, and cigarettes, the old wood groaned under the weight of history and violence.


By the dusty window, Franco Soprano fiddled with the knob of a battered tabletop radio until Frank Sinatra's "My Buddy" floated softly into the room. The gentle crooning of Sinatra seemed to wrap around the scene like silk bedsheets around a corpse—sweet, soothing, and utterly out of place. It drowned out the cries, or at least made them seem like a distant part of the melody.


Franco lit a cigarette, the match flaring bright for just a second—enough to catch the outline of his face in sharp relief. God had given him the face of a saint, the looks of a movie star: smooth, olive-toned skin unmarred by time or scars; a clean, strong jawline; thick, shoulder-length black hair that shimmered in the dim light like wet ink; and those eyes—crystalline blue, piercing yet soft, the kind you'd expect on a choirboy or an altar server. There was an innocence to his appearance that was almost angelic. And that made the truth of him all the more terrifying.


Because Franco Soprano was no angel. He was the wolf in the vestments of a priest, the butcher wrapped in silk gloves. Loyal to Don Vito Genovese with a zeal that bordered on religious devotion, Franco didn't just serve the Genovese family—he believed in it. To him, Don Vito was not just a man but a prophet. And to the Church, he was fiercely devoted, attending Mass every Sunday without fail, even if his hands were still red from the night before. He wore his rosary like a badge of honor and kissed the crucifix before every job, asking God's forgiveness not for what he was about to do—but for what his victims had made him do.


The sheriff tied to the chair was nearly unrecognizable now. His face had been transformed into something bulbous and grotesque, a swollen mask of agony. One eye was a pulpy mess of tears and blood, his lip split down the middle like an overripe fruit. The man whimpered through broken teeth, his dignity long since stripped from him, along with his badge and uniform.


Fredo Rossi stood a few feet back, his face drawn and glistening with sweat. Despite the oppressive Georgia heat, he shivered slightly as he watched Franco. Fredo was no coward—he had cracked skulls and dumped bodies without blinking—but something about Franco unsettled even the toughest of men. There was an unpredictability in his calm, a stillness that reminded people of snakes before they strike.


They called him il Confessore—the Confessor—not because he brought redemption, but because everyone talked in the end. Everyone. His methods were simple, almost ritualistic. He didn't scream. He didn't curse. He didn't break a sweat. He merely listened. And then, when he was ready, he asked—with fire, steel, or silence. And sinners confessed.


"Please," the sheriff whimpered, his voice barely a whisper. "I told you what I know—"


Franco knelt in front of him, like a penitent before the altar. He took a long drag from his cigarette, exhaling slowly, letting the smoke trail up into the beams above. Then, with infinite calm, he leaned in and pressed the burning end into the sheriff's remaining eye. The scream that followed could have cracked glass.


Sinatra kept singing. The world kept spinning.


Franco didn't flinch. His hand was steady. His expression serene. It wasn't rage or vengeance that moved him. It was duty. Loyalty. Faith.


In the circles of power and blood that made up the Italian underworld, Franco Soprano was a name you never spoke unless you had to. Even among killers, he was feared—truly feared. They said he talked to God during his work. That he whispered Hail Marys between screams. That sometimes, he laughed. That sometimes, he cried. But no one ever asked him why.


Because no one really wanted to know what was going on behind those angelic eyes.


And God help the man who tried.


"You don't have to die for them," Franco said softly, his deep Naples accent curling around the words like velvet around a knife. "They won't die for you."


His voice was low, almost tender—confessional, as if he were the priest and the man before him a wayward penitent. Yet there was no absolution waiting. Only pain.


Franco reached into his coat, the fine Italian fabric catching the glow of the lantern light, and pulled out a small, worn stack of photographs. He let them fall slowly to the floor, like dying leaves. The sheriff sobbed harder as he saw the faces—his wife, his boy, a fragile world about to be shattered.


"Shelly," Franco murmured, as if tasting her name. "She closes up your uncle's store at nine every night. Alone. Unarmed."
He flicked another photo.
"Walter. Sunday school at seven, school by eight. Such a sweet boy. Has your eyes."
He inhaled deeply from the cigarette, the ember pulsing like the devil's eye. "Shame if he went blind before his 10th birthday."


And then, with surgical cruelty, he leaned forward and pressed the burning cigarette deep into the raw socket of the sheriff's ruined eye. The scream that followed was strangled, animal. The air grew heavier, filled with the stink of burnt flesh and blood.


Franco didn't flinch. He never did.


He exhaled slowly, eyes half-lidded, as if savoring the smoke. He looked like a painting of a saint—smooth olive skin, thick black hair tucked neatly behind his ears, lips like those of a Renaissance cherub, and piercing blue eyes that shimmered with a purity so profound, it was almost divine. Almost. But there was no divinity in Franco Soprano.


Only death.


"I want names," he said, gently brushing ash from his lapel. "Who led the attack on the consulate? Who killed Father Santini? Who gave the order to shoot Roman boys in the streets?"


He tilted his head, smiling crookedly—a boyish grin that made young ladies and old women coo and offer him cookies after Mass. But there was no sweetness here. Only venom.


"This is your last chance," Franco whispered. "You lie to me, and your wife watches as I burn the lies out of your son's eyes. You tell me the truth, maybe you get to kiss your wife goodbye before I put one in your brain. Your choice. But understand something…"


He leaned closer. "No one touches the famiglia. No one spills roman blood and walks away."


To the outside world, Franco was a ghost story. A myth. But to the underworld, to the cosa nostra, he was all too real. A made man, handpicked by Don Vito Genovese himself—a man so devout he went to confession daily, so loyal he would kneel in broken glass if the Don asked it. Franco's love for the Genovese family was a religion unto itself. He would have carved stigmata into his own flesh if it pleased Don Vito.


He crossed himself before every job. Said prayers in Latin for the men he disfigured. Lit candles for their souls—after extinguishing their lives. The Church didn't ask questions, and he didn't offer explanations.


The other mafiosi avoided him like plague. Even killers—men who had drowned enemies in acid or strangled snitches with wire—went pale when Franco entered a room. Il Confessore wasn't the only name he bore, some called him il Serafino, the Seraph, because of his angelic face. But behind closed doors, out of his sight they whispered darker names—il Pazzo, the Mad One. Il Martire Nero, the Black Martyr.


Fredo Rossi had been with the family for over a decade, but his hands still trembled as he scribbled in his notepad, unable to meet Franco's eyes. Eyes that sparkled with something… wrong. A holy rage. A divine madness.


Franco had once knelt before a man, kissed his forehead like a brother, then calmly cut out his tongue with a meat fork.


He'd once broken a rival's legs, then sent him flowers and a Bible with the verse "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord" underlined in red ink.


And Father Santini? That was sacred.


Father Santini had baptized Franco. Held him as a child. Given him his first taste of wine from the chalice, taught him how to pray with his whole heart. When the priest's body was found—burnt and crucified—Franco didn't just want justice. He wanted wrath.


They wanted war?


Franco was war.


And now he stood in that wooden cabin, beautiful and terrifying, the incarnation of Old Testament retribution draped in fine wool and silk. He was God's fury wrapped in a smile, and even the Devil might have wept to see him work.


As Sinatra's song drifted to its final note, Franco gently crushed the last inch of his cigarette in a nearby ashtray, then turned back to the ruined man.


He smiled—not cruelly, but sweetly. Like a friend offering comfort.


"You ready to confess?"


"Yes…" the sheriff whimpered, choking on his sobs. "Please… please don't hurt them."


"I promise," Franco said, and his tone was almost soothing. He nodded once to Fredo, who opened the notepad with shaking hands.


Franco crouched in front of the sheriff and locked eyes with him. His voice was quiet. Deadly.


"Begin."


The sheriff began to speak. Haltingly. Brokenly. As though the words themselves had to crawl through shattered teeth and past the wreckage of his will.


Franco Soprano listened. Then went off to turn on the stove while Fredo listened and wrote.


The sheriff slumped against the rough wooden beam to which he'd been tied for the past nine hours. His face was a ruined mosaic of blood, blistered flesh, and bruises the color of spoiled fruit. His right eye was gone—nothing left but a dark, wet socket where Franco had gently, almost affectionately, pressed the lit tip of his cigarette, humming a lullaby as he did it. His limbs trembled, not from the cold, but from pain that had burrowed deep into the marrow of his bones. His body betrayed him now, twitching in spasms like a dying insect.


The record player had long since fallen silent. Sinatra's voice had faded minutes ago, leaving only the soft hiss of the needle running in endless circles. The silence was broken only by the sheriff's ragged, shallow breathing—and the soft sizzle of tomato sauce on the stove.


Franco stood by the flame.


He wore a stained white undershirt and a simple apron with embroidered lemons, humming tunelessly as he stirred the simmering sauce. The kitchen smelled of garlic, onions, fresh basil, and tomatoes—the fragrance of a Neapolitan home, not a torture chamber. He chopped herbs with the same little blade he used to carve out eyes and tongues. His movements were fluid, methodical, graceful. There was a kind of sick elegance to the way he moved—like a dancer, or a surgeon.


Or a priest preparing for mass.


Fredo Rossi sat at the wobbly wooden table, scribbling every name the sheriff whispered. His hands shook. He didn't look at the man. He couldn't. Not anymore. It wasn't the screams that had undone the sheriff—it had been the photographs. The promises. The precision with which Franco described the routine of his wife and son. That was what made men crumble. Not just pain. Not just violence.


Fear.


That was Franco's sacrament. And he administered it like holy communion.


"...George officials," the sheriff gasped, lips cracked and bleeding. "State Senator John Woods… Police Commissioner Taylor… It was Talmadge… Governor Talmadge gave the orders… said Father Santini was an Italian spy… said the Mafia had too much influence… said we had to send a message…"


Franco didn't look up. He nodded to himself and stirred the sauce, then plated the pasta—rigatoni, cooked perfectly al dente. He poured the sauce over the noodles, added shaved parmesan and fresh basil. Then he walked it to the table.


Fredo stared at the plate, eyes wide. Franco sat across from him and took a bite. His face lit up in quiet pleasure.


"Mangia," he murmured. "You'll feel better."


Fredo hesitated, then forked some pasta into his mouth. His expression softened.


"This is incredible," he said, almost reverently. "Where the hell did you learn to cook like this?"


Franco's lips curved slightly. "My nonna. Back when I was a boy. Before the polio took her and Don Vito took me and my family in. She was a saint. Would've made a better pope than half the bastards in Rome."


A beat of silence passed.


Franco rose and walked back to the sheriff, a half-full glass of red wine in his hand. He knelt in front of the dying man, his expression calm. Gentle. He lifted the glass to the sheriff's lips and tipped it. The man drank greedily, the wine dripping from his chin, mingling with blood.


"You're not gonna hurt my boy? My Shelly?" he asked, voice a raspy whisper. His remaining eye was swollen almost shut.


Franco shook his head solemnly. "No," he said, brushing a curl of blood-matted hair from the man's forehead. "I promised. Your wife and son will live. But you—you won't see them again."


The sheriff didn't even have time to beg. Franco moved like a shadow. The stiletto slipped from his belt, and in one fluid motion, he buried it deep into the man's chest, just below the sternum. Straight to the heart. His free hand cradled the sheriff's head as he died, like a mother guiding her child to sleep.


Then Franco gently lowered the body to the floor.


He stood in silence for a moment, then crossed himself.


"San Michele Arcangelo, difensore della fede, proteggi la sua anima," he whispered.


Fredo stared, wide-eyed, frozen in place.


Franco rolled up his right sleeve. Fredo's breath caught.


His arm was a horror of scar tissue. From wrist to elbow, dozens—no, hundreds—of slashes crisscrossed his skin. Some were jagged and raw, others old and faded. It was like looking at a roadmap of penance. A madman's confessional carved into his own flesh.


Franco took a small razor from his pocket. He held it over the stove's blue flame to sterilize it, then pressed it to his forearm and dragged it slowly, precisely across his skin. Blood welled instantly and trickled down his hand.


"For every sin, a mark," he muttered. "For every soul I take. For the blood we owe the Don."


Then the breakdown came.


Franco dropped to his knees and began to sob. At first, silent tears. Then choked gasps, his entire body shaking. He collapsed forward, pressing his forehead to the blood-slick floor, arms spread like a crucifix. He whispered Latin prayers between sobs—fragments of the Rosary, half-remembered psalms, the names of saints.


A fallen angel, weeping in the blood of the damned.


He was beautiful in a way that made the stomach turn. Fine-boned, with soft lips and sea-glass blue eyes that could melt a girl's heart—or stare coldly into yours as he shattered your kneecaps. To look at Franco was to see a choirboy lost in time. A painting from a ruined chapel. Something sacred and broken.


But inside?


Inside was something else entirely. Something dark. Something unholy.


He understood now. Why he made hardened soldiers from the family who worked with him just once piss themselves just by walking into the room. Men who had killed and tortured for decades would not meet his gaze. His smile unnerved them. Too innocent. Too pure.


It was said even Don Vito, the patriarch of the Genovese family himself, had once confessed: "Franco makes me feel like I'm in the presence of a saint—or a demon."


And yet… Franco was loyal. Utterly, fanatically loyal.


He owed Don Vito everything—his life, his family's survival, his very soul. He prayed for the Don's health every night. He lit candles for his victories. He would kill infants, nuns, priests if the Don asked him to. And then he'd go to church the next morning, kneel in the front pew, and beg God to forgive him.


Because Franco believed. He truly believed.


In the Church. In the Family. In Don Vito.


He was the blade they kept sheathed in the dark. The ghost who knocked in the night. The retribution that came not as thunder, but as a whisper.


They had killed Father Santini.


And Franco?


Franco was their reckoning.


Fredo stood frozen.


His body wouldn't move, his breath caught somewhere between his lungs and throat. He had seen death before—caused it with his own hands more than once—but nothing, nothing, had prepared him for the terrible, soul-shaking spectacle of Franco Soprano's grief.


There was something wrong about it. Something unnatural. Like watching a child mourn at a funeral while holding the murder weapon. The way Franco sobbed—raw, ragged, trembling—it wasn't just sorrow. It was madness laid bare. A symphony of guilt, rage, and religious ecstasy.


Fredo swallowed, his mouth dry as sand. "You… you okay?" he managed, though the words came out thin and useless.


Franco rose slowly from the floor, blood smeared on his hands and cheeks like war paint. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his undershirt. When he turned to look at Fredo, his eyes were no longer weeping. They were still, sharp, and cold—ancient, even. The kind of cold that doesn't melt with time. The kind of cold found in the marble tombs of saints.


"We have work to do," he said flatly, voice hollow and calm, as though the weeping angel of five seconds ago had been a mirage.


He turned, walking past the sheriff's still-warm corpse without a glance. At the desk, Franco bent down and pulled a jerry can of gasoline from beneath it. He uncapped it and began dousing the room with methodical grace, as though administering last rites. The corpse, the table, the stove, the walls—nothing was spared.


The flames of vengeance were being prepared, and Franco was both judge and executioner.


Fredo watched, unable to look away. He had known about Franco for six years and this was the first time he worked with him on a one on one basis. Il Cherubino, the Cherub, another one of his names. Not because he was sweet. But because he looked like something out of a Renaissance painting—soft curls, bright blue eyes, cheekbones like marble. Like he should've been holding a lyre in a fresco, not a stiletto soaked in blood.


But it was a lie. All of it.


Because behind that cherubic face was something fractured. Something cold. Something unclean.


Franco Soprano was loyal—loyal in the way a crusader is loyal to his God. He worshipped two things: the Genovese crime family, and the Roman Catholic Church. And in his mind, the two were not separate. They were one and the same. The Family was sacred. Don Vito was the Pope of his world. And Franco? Franco was the Inquisition.


He didn't kill for money. He didn't kill for pleasure.


He killed for faith.


"Blood for blood," Franco whispered, almost like a lullaby, as he struck a match with the same bloodstained hand that had just held the blade.


Fredo stepped back instinctively, the sulfur tang in the air making him flinch. Franco didn't hesitate. He tossed the match into the growing pool of gasoline, and the cabin erupted instantly, flames devouring everything in seconds.


The sheriff's last confession, the tortured screams, the sauce simmering on the stove—all of it was gone, swallowed by fire.


Behind them, the Georgia woods danced with orange light. The cabin crackled and groaned as it burned, casting monstrous shadows across the trees. And in front of it all stood Franco, lit by hellfire, his innocent face framed in silhouette, a cigarette glowing in his mouth like a halo of sin.


He turned slowly and began walking into the darkness, smoke curling behind him, the flames bathing his back in infernal light.


Fredo hesitated, then followed.


He'd once heard how Franco gouged out a man's eyes with a sewing needle after he drunkenly joked about the virgin Mary. Another time, he beheaded a snitch and left his head in front of his family's house in Newark. Rumors claimed he carried holy water in his coat pocket and sprinkled it on his victims before they died. Some said he went to confession after every kill, others said he confessed during—whispering prayers while he slit throats and crushed kneecaps.


The other capos feared him. Even hardened killers gave him wide berth. They said he didn't blink. Didn't flinch. That he laughed during torture, cried after mercy, and carved Bible verses into his arms after each job.


One lieutenant had once called him a "freak" behind closed doors.


Franco found out.


The man found Franco standing in front of his door. He didn't say anything, just the look of displeasure from him alone made him piss himse.


Even Don Vito, who had personally raised Franco after his mother died kept his tone measured when speaking to him. He loved Franco—everyone knew that—but it was the love of a man who knew the wolf he had raised would tear out any throat for his approval.


As the flames behind them consumed the last remnants of the sheriff's station, Fredo dared one last glance at Franco.


He was walking calmly, smoke haloing his head, his white shirt soaked in sweat and blood, looking like a lost saint who had wandered into the wrong century.


And Fredo understood then, with bone-deep certainty, that Franco Soprano was not just a soldier.


He was a weapon.


A sacred, unholy weapon—blessed by the Family, baptized in blood, and unleashed upon the world with terrifying devotion.


And God help whoever stood in his path.

Note: Anne Frank chapter is next, get the napkins ready because you will soon cry.

 

[Alenco98]

November 3, 1942
Old Haifa
Haifa, British-Occupied Palestine


Anne Frank took the proffered cigarette from Rudy, a Croatian Jew who had recently been attached to their unit. The paper was cheap, the tobacco stale, but it didn't matter. It was a BH—her father's brand. She lit it with a shaky hand, the lighter's click echoing softly across the empty rooftop. Below them, the old city of Haifa sprawled out under the moonlight, fractured and tense under British rule. Streetlamps flickered uncertainly, like the final pulses of a dying star.


She took a long drag and closed her eyes.


Papa used to smoke these.


Every Friday evening after sunset, he'd light one as the radio hummed in the background, classical music giving way to news, then back to music again. Shabbat dinner would have just ended. Her mother would sit beside him, resting her head against his shoulder as he exhaled slowly, peacefully, as though the world could not reach him in that moment.


Margot would wrinkle her nose in protest and wave the smoke away dramatically. "Ugh, Papa, it stinks!" she'd say, her voice pitched high, theatrical, like an actress on a stage.


Grandmother, visiting from Basel, would always pretend to scold him too—then slyly take the cigarette from his fingers, take a single drag, and hand it back with a wink.


Mother would scold them both, saying it was inappropriate to smoke around the girls. But Father would just smile—that smile—and walk over to the record player. He'd put on On a Little Street in Singapore. Frank Sinatra. The opening chords would drift through the house like silk.


Anne had never been to Singapore. Had barely even seen much of the world. But the name sounded exotic, faraway, like the promise of life beyond war, beyond hiding, beyond fear. It had been British, of course—another jewel in their imperial crown. She had dreamed once of visiting it, of seeing what the Empire looked like from within.


But now all she saw of the British Empire was its boot, pressed firmly on the neck of Palestine. And now she smoked BHs on a rooftop in Haifa, waiting to ambush a British convoy.


She flicked the ash off the edge of the building and opened a folded, stained letter. The handwriting was unmistakable: Bernhard, her cousin, Aunt Helene's son.


She remembered Switzerland.


How he taught her to ice skate on the frozen lake, how she'd slip again and again, her legs tangled beneath her like a newborn fawn. How he'd laugh—not cruelly, just as an older cousin does—then help her up, brushing snow from her elbows. The cold wind had bitten at her cheeks, but she'd kept going, until one day she finally surged ahead of him. She had screamed with joy, only to slip a moment later and land flat on her back.


He had laughed until he cried, then helped her up again.


But that wind was gone. Switzerland was gone. Childhood was gone.


There was no ice here. Only dust and broken stone. Only the scent of salt and gun oil. Here, if you fell, you didn't get up again. Falling meant being caught. Falling meant disappearing into the shadow prisons the British had carved into this land, like parasites burrowing deeper into a host that no longer wanted them.


"They're coming."


Anissa's voice was soft, but clear—cutting through Anne's reverie like a blade. Anne turned toward the French Jew, who stood at the opposite edge of the rooftop, binoculars raised. Her Hebrew still carried a Parisian lilt, like a perfume that clung to her even now.


"Understood," Anne said without emotion, as if announcing the weather. It was the voice of someone who had already killed and expected to kill again. There was no excitement, no dread. Only routine.


Anne stubbed out her cigarette and reached for her Cercano rifle. She pulled back the bolt and settled behind the low wall that edged the rooftop. Her fingers moved with ease now. The fear had long ago become second nature.


She took a deep breath, held it, then slowly released.


A truck rolled into view—British. Painted olive drab. Standard convoy detail. Likely filled with soldiers, maybe even prisoners.


She lined up her sights. Her heart was a slow drum, steady, unrelenting.


Steady, she reminded herself.


She thought of her father's hands, soft and ink-stained. She thought of Margot's laughter. Of her mother's humming while folding laundry. She remembered the feeling of her cousin's hands pulling her up from the ice.


Then she thought of the British—how they turned away ships full of Jewish refugees. How they imprisoned children in camps. How they shot young boys for throwing stones. How they whispered words of "civilization" and "order" while strangling the land and its people with barbed wire and curfews.


She thought of the men that had hanged. Her father. Then how her sister, then her mother died.


And she wasn't alone. Everyone in Lehi carried that same hatred—burning, unspoken, shared like blood. They no longer believed in pleas or pity. The British weren't protectors. They were occupiers. Colonizers. And now, executioners.


Anne didn't believe in forgiveness. Not anymore.


She steadied her breath, felt the cool breeze on her cheek—and waited.


The crosshairs danced slightly.


The British truck crawled closer.


Anne Frank steadied her aim, her cheek pressed against the cold stock of her bolt-action rifle. Her finger curled around the trigger with a familiarity born not of training—but of repetition, of necessity, of rage. She exhaled slowly, letting her breath slip away like a ghost.


Then she squeezed.


The rifle cracked, shattering the silence.


The driver's head snapped back—blood splattering the window behind him like a crimson starburst. The truck swerved violently to the right, tires screeching. The soldier riding shotgun reached for the wheel in a panic, trying desperately to regain control, his mouth open in a silent scream.


Anne worked the bolt—metal sliding, shell ejecting—then fired again.


This time, the bullet punched through the windshield and found its mark. The second soldier jerked and slumped sideways. The vehicle jumped the curb and slammed into a lamppost, crumpling like paper.


Before the noise had even died, the rooftops around her erupted with gunfire. Other Lehi cells opened up, their rounds raining down on the rest of the convoy. The street below turned into a kill zone—glass shattered, engines howled, men screamed. Truck after truck was riddled with bullets, each one reduced to twisted steel and blood.


There was no hesitation. No mercy. Every pull of the trigger was fueled by memory, by fury, by betrayal.


"They turned us away!" the political officer had shouted the night before, his voice gravelled with rage. He always reminded them, every evening, as if branding the words into their souls. "The British! Those lying bastards! Those polished monsters! They turned us away and left us to die in the dark!"


They showed photographs, time and again. Of mass graves in Poland. Of the pits at Babi Yar. Of Treblinka and Chelmno, the ash-streaked chimneys. The dead-eyed children, lined up in rows. The mothers clutching their babies as bullets tore through them.


"But Mussolini!" the officer bellowed, veins bulging in his neck. "He took us in! He gave us weapons! He gave us a place, a purpose, a future! Hail Caesar! Hail the Falag! Hail Stern!"


"To hell with the Haganah! To hell with the Irgun! To hell with Ben-Gurion and his Mapai traitors! They are worse than nazis! They are traitors!"


"Hail Stern! Hail Rome! Hail vengeance!"


Every night, they raised their hands in salute. Not out of doctrine—but out of fury. Their hearts beat not with ideology, but with grief sharpened into hatred. They had lost too much to forgive. Their Zionism was not the Zionism of speeches or debates. It was the Zionism of bullets, of fire and blood.


Anne took a shallow breath as she chambered another round. There was no fear. No hesitation. That had died in her long ago—back in Libya, when they landed in Haifa. In Germany. When she saw the camps. What would have awaited her and her family.


She thought of her father—gentle, kind Otto—who believed the world still had decency left in it. She thought of Margot, so quiet, so smart. She thought of her mother, whose final embrace she could barely remember now.


If the British had let them in peacefully and given them a nation they would still be alive.


They were not victims of gas, but of bureaucracy. Not murdered by Germans, but sentenced by British indifference.


They turned us away.


So now, she turned her rifle on them.


She fired again. Another shot, another crash of metal, another scream. A British soldier fell from the back of a truck, clutching his stomach, writhing.


All that was left in Anne Frank now was vengeance. Her diary was ash. Her innocence, a corpse. The girl who once dreamed of being a writer was gone.


What remained was the soldier.


She stood tall atop the rooftop, her eyes wild, and shouted into the dusk:


"HAIL STERN!"


"DEATH TO THE BRITISH!"


Her voice rang out like a war cry.


All around her, from the rooftops and alleyways, the Lehi answered as one, their guns still hot, their faces smeared with smoke and fury.


"DEATH TO THE BRITISH! HAIL STERN! HAIL CAESAR!"


The cry echoed across Haifa like thunder. Not a cry of protest—but of war.


Of reckoning.


The last of the trucks burned in the street, its frame wreathed in flames, black smoke curling skyward like a funeral pyre.


The air was filled with the scent of cordite, of gasoline, of blood. Screams echoed in the stone alleys. Some British soldiers were still alive, crawling, moaning, begging.


Anne didn't flinch.


She slung her rifle and drew the blade from her boot—a long, curved fighting knife given to her by a Polish volunteer who had died the week before. She remembered the man's name—Wladislav—but not his face anymore. They disappeared so quickly now.


"Down!" Her cell leader Schlomo barked. The team began their descent.


One by one, the Lehi operatives clambered down fire escapes and stone balconies like vultures descending upon carrion. Anne followed, her boots pounding against rusted metal, her breath sharp and fast in the night air.


By the time she hit the ground, the killing had already begun.


A British officer was pinned against a wall by two partisans. He tried to reach for his sidearm—he didn't get the chance. A blade slashed across his throat and a second buried itself in his gut. The man let out a gurgled scream and slumped to the ground, twitching.


Anne approached another—he was young, barely older than Raoul had been when he died. His leg was shattered, his uniform soaked in blood. He reached toward her, lips trembling, eyes wide with terror.


"Please…" he whispered.


She didn't blink.


She drove the knife into his throat with a quick, practiced motion, twisting it once before yanking it free. He gurgled and collapsed, blood pouring from the wound like a broken faucet. She wiped the blade on his jacket.


"Keep going!" Schlomo shouted. "Leave none alive!"


The Lehi fanned out like wolves, dragging wounded soldiers from the wreckage, knives flashing under the streetlights. Some screamed. Most didn't have the strength.


They had no uniforms, no formal ranks—only vengeance. What the world had denied them, they now claimed in blood.


Anne moved through the carnage like a phantom, unfeeling, efficient. Another soldier tried to flee—she chased him down an alleyway, leapt, and brought him to the ground with a single gunshot from her sidearm to the back. He screamed in agony, crawling.


She knelt beside him, eyes flat, empty.


"This is for Margot," she said in Dutch.


Then she stabbed him in the chest. Again. Again. Again.


When she rose, her arms were slick with red. She didn't feel the weight of it anymore. It was just part of her skin now.


The political officer, Micah appeared, with a sack and a bloody grin.


"Cut the heads," he growled. "Put them on spikes. Let them see what happens when you anger the Falag."


Anne didn't hesitate. Alongside the others, she helped behead then drag the decapitated bodies into a heap near the edge of the plaza then blew them up with grenades. The heads were placed on sharpened iron rods taken from the wrecked British trucks. Ten of them. Then fifteen. Then 100 by the time they were finished.


Each one was crowned with a British helmet—mockery laid atop horror.


Passersby's—Arabs, Jews—watched from the shadows, silent. Horrified.


Let them see, Anne thought. Let them remember.


One of the Lehi, a teenager no older than sixteen, began singing an old Hebrew folk song as he cleaned his blade. Others joined. The melody was calm, even cheerful—a grotesque lullaby echoing among the dead.


Anne stood beneath one of the spikes, gazing up at the dripping head of a British sergeant as she began to sing.


She felt nothing.


Not fear. Not triumph.


Just a cold, endless ache where her family used to be.


And she thought of Switzerland. Of her cousin.


Did she deserve to be with them?


-----------


A few hours later, and she was resting. In a safe house. The firelight flickered against the jagged stone walls, casting long shadows that danced like ghosts. Anne sat alone, her back pressed against the cold brick, the weight of the night pressing down on her chest like a thousand stones.


Her hands trembled as she reached into her satchel and pulled out a worn leather-bound book—her diary.


She opened it carefully, almost reverently, fingers tracing the edges of the pages as if touching the past itself.


Her eyes fell on the very first entry. Her birthday, a little over two years ago.


Monday, 12 June, 1940


On Friday, June 12th, I woke up at six o'clock and no wonder; it was my birthday. But of course I was not allowed to get up at that hour, so I had to control my curiosity until a quarter to seven. Then I could bear it no longer, and went to the dining room, where I received a warm welcome from Moortje (the cat).


Soon after seven I went to Mummy and Daddy and then to the sitting room to undo my presents. The first to greet me
was you , possibly the nicest of all. Then on the table there were a bunch of roses, a plant, and some peonies, and more arrived during the day.


I got masses of things from Mummy and Daddy, and was thoroughly spoiled by various friends. Among other things I was given Camera Obscura , a party game, lots of sweets, chocolates, a puzzle, a brooch, Tales and Legends of the Netherlands by Joseph Cohen, Daisy's Mountain Holiday (a terrific book), and some money. Now I can buy The Myths of Greece and Rome— grand!


Then Lies called for me and we went to school. Things have been hectic after the invasion ended. But daddy says everything will be ok.


Anne swallowed hard. The words felt like a knife twisting in her heart. Eleven years old. So young. So innocent. So full of hope.


Back then, the world was still a place where family dinners existed. Where laughter wasn't stifled by fear. Where the greatest worry was whether Margot would tease her for being clumsy or if Papa's jokes would make Mommy smile.


Tears welled up suddenly, blurring the inked letters on the page. They spilled down her cheeks—hot, silent, and relentless.


She folded the diary shut and pressed it to her chest. The diary, the last tangible piece of the family she once had.


But it wasn't enough.


Her thoughts spiraled deeper.


Margot… Mommy… Papa… Grandmommy…


She could almost hear their voices—their laughter, their scolding, their warmth.


She missed the way Margot's smile could light up a dark room. The way Mommy's hands smelled of freshly baked bread and thyme. The gentle way Papa would brush a stray lock of hair from her forehead and whisper, "Everything will be alright."


But everything wasn't alright.


Her family was gone.


Taken by the British indifference, bullets and soldiers. The cruel gates that slammed shut when they begged for refuge. By the cold bureaucracy that labeled them "unwanted," "dangerous," "expendable."


Anne's heart ached with a fury that burned hotter than any gunpowder.


She pulled from her satchel the letter Bernhardt had sent—a fragile envelope, its edges worn from days of being folded and unfolded.


She cradled it like a treasure, pressing it against her cheek, inhaling the faint scent of the Swiss pine forests he had described.


She remembered Bernhardt—the boy who taught her to skate, who laughed when she fell, who picked her up and never let go.


The letter was a lifeline to a time before the war swallowed everything.


She unfolded the fragile paper with care, the creases worn thin from too many readings, the ink slightly smudged from old tears. Bernhardt's handwriting was careful, almost too careful, as though he feared even his pen could break her if he wasn't gentle enough.


"I miss you, Anne. We all miss you."
"Come to Switzerland. You're welcome anytime. There's always a home for you here."


Her breath caught in her throat.


A home.


The word echoed in her chest like the toll of a bell. A home—not a bunker, not a ruined building stained with blood, not a rooftop from which she picked off British soldiers one by one. A real home. Warm. Safe. Full of life and the sound of voices that didn't scream.


She closed her eyes and clutched the letter tighter, pressing it to her chest as if she could somehow crawl inside it, vanish into the paper, into the world Bernhardt still lived in. A world untouched by what she had become.


Is there a home for me? she wondered. Could there ever be?


Her eyes drifted down to her hands—steady, scarred, calloused from gripping the cold steel of her rifle. Those hands had slit throats. Had torn flesh. Just hours ago, she'd driven a blade into the neck of a British soldier and watched the light go out of his eyes. It hadn't felt like murder. It had felt like routine. A task. Necessary.


She remembered the way the blood sprayed across her sleeve, how the warm, sticky liquid soaked into the fabric and skin without resistance. And she hadn't flinched. Not once. No more than a butcher carving up meat.


Bernhardt was only a few years older than her. Just a boy, really. But he still had softness in his eyes, still believed in letters and laughter and futures.


And she…


She turned toward the dying fire, its embers crumbling into ash like everything else she'd once loved. The heat barely reached her anymore. It spat and cracked, struggling to cling to life, just as she was.


She stared at it.


A monster.


I'm a monster.


The thought was not new. It was not sudden. But tonight, it felt heavier than usual.


Uncle Erich. Aunt Helene. Bernhardt. They were still alive. Still people. Still human.


And if she ever saw them again, if she walked into their home with her soot-blackened coat and eyes hollowed out by death, what would they see? Would they see Anne, the girl who wrote fairy tales and believed in dreams?


No. They would see a stranger.


A killer.


A girl with ghosts in her shadow and blood under her fingernails.


Maybe they'd pity her. For a time. Offer her tea, bread, a bath. Ask questions. Cry. Smile sadly.


But soon, the silence would come. That awkward, awful silence of two worlds that no longer touched. A silence as wide as the sea that now separated them.


Then they'd ask her to leave.


The Mediterranean was not just a body of water. It was a chasm. A grave.


And yet, here—here in the ruins, in the filth, in the endless blood and smoke—she belonged.


With her comrades.
The damned.
The broken.
The burning.


They didn't flinch when she wept. They didn't recoil when she screamed. They didn't pity her.


They were her family now.


The lost who had no time to dream, they could only act.


To build something better from the ashes.
To claw out a future with bloodied hands.
For Bernhardt. For Helene. For Erich. For the Anne she could never be again.


She couldn't leave. Not yet. Not until the war was over.


Not until they had won.


Because if she walked away now, if she let go of this fight, then her family's deaths would have been for nothing.


She reached again for her diary, the one she'd sworn never to abandon. The pages were stained now—dirt, blood, tears—but it still held her soul.


She opened it with trembling hands and began to write. Every detail. Every bullet. Every soldier who fell. Every face. Every scream. The beheadings. The fire. The look in her victim's eyes. The numbness that followed.


Her pen scratched across the page like a knife.


And then the feelings came. Crashing. Crippling.


The rage. The sorrow. The loneliness that hollowed her from the inside out.


The tears followed—slow at first, then pouring, breaking past the dam she'd built around her heart. She covered her mouth to muffle the sobs, but they escaped anyway, ragged and raw. Her whole body shook.


She hugged the diary to her chest, her lifeline to the past, and buried her face in her knees. Her heart ached with a pain that no blade could dull.


She wasn't just fighting soldiers in the streets.
She was fighting the silence. The guilt. The yawning emptiness inside.
The place where Papa once lived. Where Margot once sang.
Where Mama whispered lullabies in the dark.


A prayer slipped from her lips, broken by gasps.


"Please… let me see them again. Just once. Please… let me avenge them. Let this mean something."


Outside, the wind howled. The city slept in ruins.


And in the flickering firelight, Anne Frank wept—not just for the family she had lost, but for the girl she could never be again. For the innocence stolen. For the memories that now tasted like ash. For a world that forced her to become something she never wanted to be.


But still she wrote.


Because that was all she had left.

 

[AAAustinYu]

Well......
Aside from that, will the Israel of this timeline be as technologically innovative as OTL Israel? They did have some good tech