The Victorious Opposition: A Look at what Might have Been

The Victorious Opposition by Harry Turtledove is a book that I started a while back but never got around to finishing. I found it laying under one of my magazines in my closet last week and decided that I'd give the book another try. The book revolves around a future in which the South won its independence from the North in a war not known as the Civil War but the War of Secession. The Victorious Opposition takes place nearly 70 years after that event. Seen threw many eyes is a post war Confederate States of America reminiscent of our time lines Germany after the Great War, which happened not only in Europe but in North America as well. The books main draw is its characters. From military men, to waitresses, to the Southern analogue to Adolf Hitler, Jake Featherston, all are important in some way and since the book takes place over many years, they change like real people and have time to develop. As a novel of alternate history, it shows us what might have been, were conditions like those in 1930 Germany placed on the people of the Southern United States. The realization that any people put under pressure like that would accept help from almost any place. To represent the Nazi Party comes the Freedom Party, an authoritarian "fascist" party who draws its strength from the peoples fear of communism which instead of being tied to Jews is tied to people of African descent. It was particularly uncomfortable to read the logic behind the events, and how Union victory in the Civil War really was one of the defining moments in the history of the modern world.