Talking-up Scotland

 

We’ve had a re-run of that old favourite of blimps:

‘If it hadnae been for Churchill or Bomber Command or your Uncle Archie ye’d be speaking German the day!’

With a little historical and geo-political knowledge and some reflection (I have a little), of course, ultimate German victory seems most unlikely to have taken place.

If Churchill had not been appointed PM, perhaps after an intervention from the King, a national government is formed and having witnessed the Blitzkreig in France, it accepts Hitler’s offer of a non-aggression pact still allowing Britain to keep its empire.

Horrified, Brian Monteith’s great-grandfather emigrates to Australia where he can join the war against Japan. Years later, in 1977, the young, Brian Monteith, superfit, tanned and with a mop of sun-bleached hair, dies while surfing, almost bitten in half by a giant Great White Shark know locally as ‘Winston’. Piers Morgan’s equally courageous great grandfather joins a mainly Scottish rebel army in the Highlands, fighting against the British Government and assassinating Nazi sympathisers, such as the May and Gove ‘soap’ dynasties, across the UK. He is shot dead in a raid by the Royal Welsh Regiment. His loyal wife dies heartbroken and childless thus preventing the birth of Morgan’s mother.

Brian ‘The Man’ Monteith on Bondi Beach in 1977

Back in Europe, Hitler’s armies, only slightly stronger because of Britain’s withdrawal, win at Stalingrad but are still turned the following year by a massive Russian counter-attack which ends in 1947 with the Russian occupation of all of Germany.

Once sure the Russians have the upper hand, the USA invades Spain and pushes to the French border with Germany, on the Rhine. In 1948, Europe is divided into the North Atlantic Economic Area including the UK, Scandinavia but not Finland, France, Spain and Portugal and the Soviet Democratic Confederation including all of Germany, Italy and the countries to the south and east of them.

In the following decades, the economies of France and Spain boom while that of Germany is stifled by central planning and having to continue with the undamaged pre-war factories. German cars built in the old munitions factories of the Krupp family are notoriously slow and heavy, leading English comedians to remark that they are ‘Krapp!’ Still led by a bunch of privileged but feckless ‘public schoolboys’, the UK economy stagnates.

The Krupp badge symbolising crap cars

Having survived the war relatively intact the UK armed forces are turned on the colonies many of which wish to break away. In 1979, the young Margaret Himmler, the Lincoln wife of a German refugee, leader of the Conservative and Eugenics Party, becomes PM and launches a doomed campaign to retake South Africa.

In the South African campaign, only Scottish regiments, thought to be mainly leftists, are used and 25 000 die in action. This triggers mass protests across Scotland and, in 1977, a declaration of independence by their popular and charismatic leaders Willie ‘Red’ Rennie and Murdo ‘Mad Dog’ Fraser. With most UK troops fighting in the colonies, Scottish irregulars defeat an English army mainly made up army cadets from Eton led by a TA Colonel Davidson, in the Battle of Ecclefechan, before going on to claim Cumbria and Northumbria for the new Republic of Caledonia.

In the post-war years with support massively increased after the discovery of a cure for cancer by Dr John Robertson and the development of a huge Pharma Campus in Skinflats, Falkirk FC go on to dominate Scottish football, winning 25 league titles in a row and 10 European cups. Falkirk-based players lead the Scotland team to three world Cup wins.

And we all lived happy ever after!