The Southern Victory Series is a series of alternate history novels written by Harry Turtledove. The point of divergence involves Confederate States of America winning the American Civil War and becoming an independent nation. The series covers events from 1862 to 1944 and features dozens of characters, some of whom were historical figures.
(AE:CCH)
Abdul Mejid II became the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire sometime after the Great War. He was responsible for continuing the Armenian genocide through the 1920s. Despite protests from the United States and Germany, the Sultan continued the killings until there were few remaining Armenians left in Turkey.
(AE:VO-SA:RE, SA:ID)
Michael Alexandrovich is the Grand Duke (and later Emperor) of Russia. With the Red Russian Revolt smashed, and the tsarist government still in control of a post-Great War Russia, "Grand Duke Michael" took the throne as Michael II. He joined his allies in 1941 to wage war against the Central Powers. He condemned the German atomic bomb attack on Petrograd, the city of which he had escaped prior to the attack, but later was forced to request an armistice from Germany and to relinquish the throne.
(GW:AF-GW:WH, AE:BI)
During the Great War, Doroteo Arango (known by the nom de guerre "Pancho Villa" in our timeline) was the Radical Liberal presidential candidate in the 1915 elections. He promised he would fight the war against the United States even harder than Woodrow Wilson did. He is also the first non-white candidate to seriously run for the presidency of the Confederacy and showed the wartime strains on the ruling Whig Party, as the war dragged on and the United States' numbers and the Red Rebellion started to strain the Confederates. Interestingly enough, he was not opposed due to his ethnicity (Mixed "Mestizo" Mexican), only his political views. The Mexican Revolution in which our timeline's Pancho Villa had a major role has its counterpart in the Republican revolt against the Habsburg Emperors of this timeline's Mexico, which is crushed with the help of Freedom Party stalwarts. However, in the Confederate-annexed parts of Mexico, it is the Freedom Party itself which mobilises the peasants to overthrow the centuries-old rule of the big landowners.
(GW:AF, AE:VO)
In a rather odd move on Turtledove's part, L. Frank Baum is introduced as an American fighter pilot early in the Great War, this despite the fact that Baum was aged 58 in 1914. Somewhere along the line, Baum still becomes a children's author. Only his book Queen Zixi of Ix is mentioned by name, but because the book is an offshoot of the Wizard of Oz series, we can assume he still wrote his most famous book.
(SA:G)
Sergeant Carl Bernstein is in charge of a U.S. Army counterintelligence squadron that specializes in detecting wiretaps. He is sent to check Congresswoman Flora Blackford's office for bugs. Among his team are a 'Bob' (possibly Bob Woodward or H. R. Haldeman) and 'Dick' (almost certainly Richard Nixon). However, this is an obvious anachronism, as the Bernstein of our timeline was not born until 1944.
(AE:CCH)
Hugo Black was the Whig Party's Vice-Presidential nominee in 1933 during the Freedom electoral sweep. He ran with James Longstreet's grandson, and was caught in a riot against Freedom Party stalwarts during the 1932 Election Riots. The Longstreet-Black ticket lost in a landslide to the Featherston-Knight ticket.
(HFR)
James G. Blaine was the second and last Republican president of the United States. He was also known as the only other president to start a war (over the CSA's purchase of the states of Chihuahua and Sonora, giving the Confederacy a Pacific port) and to lose the war as well. At the end of Second Mexican War, Blaine started the U.S. tradition of Remembrance Day and also started the alliance with the German Empire, which developed into The Central Powers of the Great War.
(SA:DE)
In this timeline, Humphrey Bogart still became a movie actor. He starred in the movie The Maltese Elephant, which is an analog of our timeline's The Maltese Falcon (The Maltese Elephant is also the name of a short story in Harry Turtledove's short story collection Counting Up, Counting Down). Armstrong Grimes thought of Bogart when he learned that his aunt Clara was marrying someone named Humphrey Baxter.
There is no mention of Denmark taking any part in either of the Great Wars, and it seems to have succeeded in maintaining its neutrality. However, Niels Bohr is mentioned as having been persuaded by Einstein to come over to Germany and take part in its atomic weapons program.
(HFR)
With the South having gained its independence, John Wilkes Booth's political sympathies are fulfilled. He and his elder brother Edwin Booth remain popular stage actors into the 1880s.
(AE:VO)
Herbert Hoover's running mate (Hoover became president after president-elect Calvin Coolidge died and did not have a vice president) in the 1936 election, William Edgar Borah had even some of the most loyal Democrats saying that his vice presidential opponent, Charles La Follette, would make a better VP.
(GW:AF)
Robert Borden becomes Prime Minister of Canada during the Great War years in both our history and Turtledove's novels. When Canada was ceded to the U.S. after the war, his government was ejected from the occupied territory.
(AE:BI)
Following the U.S. defeat in the Second Mexican War, John Brown became a national hero. He was not seen so after the War of Secession. Many towns raised memorials to John Brown because of his attacks on the 'slavocrats' in Virginia ("He saw the coiled serpent and attacked it!"), particularly in Kansas.
(GW:WH, AE:VO)
Known only as "Mordecai" in the series, Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown, instead of becoming a Hall of Fame pitcher, was a crewman on the USS Dakota during the Great War. Sam Carsten noted how Mordecai could work as if he had ten fingers, instead of eight, which was the result of a childhood accident. By 1934, Mordecai was the foreman at a Los Angeles construction company; one of his employees was Chester Martin, who had moved from Toledo as a result of the Business Collapse. By the late 1930s, however, Mordecai lost many of his workers, including Martin, as a result of a worker's strike.
(AE:VO)
A Socialist Congressman from Missouri, Clarence Cannon becomes Speaker of the House during the Smith Administration.
(SA:G)
Known by his first name only, Fidel Castro is a young leader of an anti-Freedom Party group in Confederate Cuba, working closely with the United States which sends him clandestine shipments of arms and ammunition.
(SA:DE)
A Confederate Navy sailor, Jimmy Carter (1924-1942) was on leave and found himself informally in charge of the defense of his hometown of Plains, Georgia when the black rebels raided the town. He was killed by Jonathan Moss in front of his mother, "Miss Lillian".
(AE:VO)
Instead of becoming notorious in the baseball world for his attitude towards Jackie Robinson, Ben Chapman serves in the Freedom Party guards as a Chief Assault Band Leader (a captain in Army ranking). His first and only appearance in the books is when he shows up at Camp Dependable in the dead of night to drop off Willy Knight as a political prisoner.
(SA:G)
Lon Chaney, Sr. appeared as a silent movie star in The Phantom of the Catacombs, which is probably an analog of our timeline's The Phantom of the Opera.
(SA:G)
Charles I of Austria still holds the throne of Austria-Hungary well into the Second Great War. In 1943, he and Tsar Michael trade public insults as to whose country God hates more.
Turtledove does not spend much time on the monarchy of Austria-Hungary. Indeed, the only reference to Charles is the one described above. But with Austria victorious at the end of World War I, Charles would not have abdicated as in real history, and so would have avoided dying of pneumonia in 1922 while living in Portugal.
(AE:VO, SA:RE-SA:ID)
Winston Churchill, in this timeline as in the real one, was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He leads his nation into the Second Great War on what appears to be a platform of rearmament, restoration of the British Empire's former borders, and a military alliance with France and Russia aimed at reversing the German Reich's dominant position in the world.
Although he was a member of the Conservative Party, his government's actions were strongly influenced by Silver Shirt leader Oswald Mosley, who wielded much greater power and influence in the right-leaning revanchist Britain. In our timeline Mosley's British Union of Fascists were known as Blackshirts, though Turtledove may be referencing the American fascist group linked to Bruno Hauptmann and the Lindbergh Baby case. It is unknown how his half-American heritage has influenced his relationship with the USA or whether his mother was still Jennie Jerome, born in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn.
Churchill authorized the British superbomb attack on Hamburg, and retaliated to the German superbomb attacks on London, Norwich, and Brighton by sending a plane with a second superbomb to attack Germany. However, the plane was shot down over Belgium, all but ending Britain's chances to defeat Germany. Churchill was then ousted as Prime Minister in a no-confidence vote, and was succeeded by Horace Wilson, who sought a cease-fire with Germany.
(HFR, SA:DE)
Samuel Clemens does not become famous in this timeline as the novelist, travel writer, and essayist Mark Twain. Here he has lost his family's valuable land in Tennessee, and settles down with a family in San Francisco where he becomes the editor of the San Francisco Morning Call, known for his very sarcastic war editorials in the 1880s during the Second Mexican War. His journalistic work keeps him occupied full time and he never takes up writing books.
Clemens had children in this world, just as he had in real life. Unlike our world, one of his offspring grew up to have a famous life in the journalism industry: Ophelia Clemens. It was never revealed whatever happened to his other child, Orion.
(AE:BI)
General Michael Collins lead a rebellion against the British Empire during the Great War, supported by the United States and Germany, and became first president of the Republic of Ireland when this country achieved independence in 1917. In the early 1920s Collins lead the Irish Army against a pro-British Protestant uprising in Ulster and suppressed it with the help of American and German warships.
(AE:BI-AE:CCH)
Calvin Coolidge was the Democratic governor of Massachusetts and then the Democratic nominee for president in 1928. He lost that election to Hosea Blackford, and when he called Blackford to concede the race, he warned him that a "bull market going as high as it is, will fall". Blackford thought it was just sour grapes and paid no heed. When Coolidge's words came true in 1929 and the Socialists and Blackford were blamed for the crash, he was nominated on the Democratic ticket again in 1932 with Herbert Hoover as his running mate. He won in a landslide, but died soon after his victory over Blackford, on the same date as our timeline's Coolidge died. Hoover took his place as President-elect.
(SA:ID)
Congressman Jim Curley of Massachusetts was the Socialist Party's candidate for Vice President in the 1944 election. Flora Blackford questioned this choice because of his role in the Boston Socialist political machine, though she figured the Kansas City Democratic machine was more corrupt. The Socialist ticket of Charles La Follete and Curley lost to the Democratic ticket of Tom Dewey and Harry Truman.
(HFR, GW:AF-AE:CCH)
In this timeline, George Custer was not killed fighting Indians in 1876, as this smaller United States appears to have attempted to salve its wounded national pride following the War of Secession by unleashing a much larger US Army upon the Native American tribes, thus compressing the conquest of the Great Plains into what appears to be a much shorter timescale. He served in Utah and Montana during the Second Mexican War (where he met Theodore Roosevelt). His forces helped defeat General Gordon's invasion of Montana (after the cease-fire, Canadians complained.) In the Great War, he was a lieutenant general in the United States Army and commanded the First Army forces in Tennessee. He was personally vain, using peroxide to bleach his grey hair and mustache despite his advanced age. As a Great War commander, he was unsuited for trench warfare, insisting on mounting large assaults on enemy lines instead of winning by attrition. However, his strategies were perfectly suited for "barrels," the timeline's term for tanks. Once they were introduced in force he crafted the "Barrel Roll Offensive," an armored breakthrough which ultimately won the Great War for the U.S.
Following the war, Custer was appointed to command the occupation forces in Canada, where he survived a few assassination attempts. Custer was forced into retirement following the election of Upton Sinclair as President. He was buried next to Theodore Roosevelt near Robert E. Lee's house in Arlington, Virginia. His extraordinarily lengthy career is roughly analogous to that of the German general Paul von Hindenburg in our timeline.
(HFR)
Tom Custer, in this timeline, was not killed in 1876 alongside his brother George at Little Big Horn. He fought alongside his brother during the Second Mexican War in both Utah and Montana. In 1881, Tom was killed during the fighting in Montana; this led to his brother George developing a lifelong hatred of the Canadians.
(GW:AF-GW:B)
Despite his Southern origins, Josephus Daniels served as Secretary of the U.S. Navy during the Great War. A destroyer escort was named after him in the Second Great War. (It is unknown why he is on the USA's side, and it is commonly believed to be an error on the part of author Harry Turtledove).
(AE:CCH)
With no Southern states to interfere with the teaching of evolution, Clarence Darrow practiced criminal law in the United States. He was famous enough to convince the State of Kentucky (and the Kentucky State Police head Luther Bliss) that it was wrong in holding Cincinnatus Driver on trumped up charges.
(GW:AF-GW:WH)
Richard Harding Davis was a journalist and war correspondent in this timeline as well as ours. He was famous for coverage of the Hispano-Japanese War of 1905, and was a thorn in the side of General George Armstrong Custer. He died of a heart attack in 1916 observing the trench fighting in the Great War. (In our timeline, he died in the same year of the same cause, but in New York City instead of a war zone.)
(GW:B-AE:BI)
Senator Eugene V. Debs was one of the first Socialists to be elected to Congress after the split of the Republican Party. He was the Socialist Party candidate for President in 1908, 1912 and 1916. He ran unsuccessfully for president against Teddy Roosevelt twice, and was a strong opponent of U.S. involvement in the Great War.
(GW:AF)
George Dewey is the admiral who commands the successful U.S. attack on the Sandwich Islands early the Great War, in 1914. There are passing similarities between this fictional battle and the real Battle of Manila Bay.
Dewey may or may not have commanded the Navy during the Battle of the Three Navies—the commander is never named. If it is not Dewey, it is Bradley Fiske, who evidently succeeded Dewey. It should be noted that Dewey would have been 77 at the time of the Battle, and Fiske was over a decade younger.
(SA:ID)
Thomas Dewey was governor of New York when he received the Democratic nomination for President in 1944. He and his running mate Harry S. Truman defeat the incumbent Charles La Follete. His victory is partially attributed to pointing out that the CSA was able to regain strength and attack the United States on the watch of three Socialist Presidents (conveniently downplaying Democrat Herbert Hoover, who made no efforts to stop the CSA). Upon his election, he presents two foreign policy positions. First, he calls for the reintegration of the C.S. into the U.S. Second, he calls for a continued partnership between the United States and the German Empire to police the world against other countries developing atomic weapons.
Dewey's victory might be intended to parallel Clement Attlee's surprising landslide victory over Winston Churchill at the end of the Second World War in our timeline. His U.S.-German partnership is reminiscent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Policemen idea.
(GW:WH)
Major Eduard Dietl of the Austro-Hungarian army was an observer attached to Irving Morrell's unit during the 1916 campaign in the Canadian Rockies.
(HFR)
Frederick Douglass was still trying to tell the United States of the suffering of the African-American slaves in the Confederacy twenty years after the War of Secession. His pleas were heard only by the small minority of freedmen in the USA and a handful of whites. He also, ironically, becomes one of the first people (in his mind) to approve of the "Revenge" mindset that the United States picked up in the Second Mexican War in fighting the CSA.
(GW:AF)
Marcel Duchamp, in this timeline, is still a famous artist, but this time his appeal in North America is limited to the upper-crust of the Confederacy. He tried to have an affair with Anne Colleton, and at least one of his works was destroyed in the burning of Marshlands Plantation during the 1915 Red Rebellion.
(SA:DE)
Albert Einstein is a German physicist who was believed to have been working on an atomic bomb project in Europe. Along with several other leading German and Austro-Hungarian physicists, Einstein disappeared from public view in 1942. Not long afterwards, the United States, along with Germany and Austria-Hungary, were suspected of beginning atomic bomb programs. Since in this world Germany never became Nazi and there were no persecutions of Jews, he has no problem in contributing to the German war effort, especially as the war begins with Germany being attacked and invaded.
(SA:DE)
W.C. Fields still becomes a film comic, and retains his trademark line "All things considered, I'd rather be in Philadelphia," perhaps inspired by the city becoming the de facto capital of the USA.
(GW:B)
Bradley Fiske is a rear admiral during the Great War. He is the force commander of the U.S. fleet that assists Chile in its war against Argentina in 1917. He appears briefly to congratulate Sam Carsten and Vic Crosetti for tipping off the military to Hawaiian spy John Liholiho.
It is quite possible that he was also in overall command during the Battle of the Three Navies, fighting the Japanese and British to a draw and frustrating their efforts to retake the Sandwich Islands from the United States. However, his name is not mentioned. If it was not Fiske, it was probably his predecessor, George Dewey.
(HFR)
Ferdinand Foch is a major, the French Military Attache' to Washington, at the onset of the Second Mexican War. With his German opposite number Alfred von Schlieffen, and an unnamed British army captain, he accompanies U.S. Secretary of State Hannibal Hamlin and Captain Saul Berryman (U.S. Army) under a flag of truce to the Long Bridge outside Washington D.C. The truce, called by C.S. President James Longstreet and C.S. General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, is designed to declare Washington D.C. an open city, sparing its destruction. The Confederate proposal is rejected by Berryman, under the authority of U.S. Commanding General Rosecrans. The French and British are declared personae non gratae and asked to leave the United States.
(AE:VO-SA:ID)
In this timeline, the great-grandson of Nathan Bedford Forrest was the head of the Confederate General Staff. Instead of airplane warfare, Nathan Bedford Forrest III, was a tank expert. Forrest was valued by Featherston because he was unafraid to tell the President the truth about how the war was going, instead of being a "yes man" and only telling him what he wanted to hear. When an increasingly stubborn Featherston rejects Forrest's advice to cut short the Pittsburgh Campaign, thus dooming Patton's entire army of irreplaceable veterans to death or surrender, he begins plotting with Clarence Potter based on concerns about Featherston's sanity and whether new leadership was needed, for Forrest fears a Confederate loss and what the Yankees would do if they defeated the Confederacy again.
With the Confederate war effort collapsing, Forrest attempted to execute a coup to oust Featherston in 1944, analogous to the July 20 Plot, but was thwarted by the President. Forrest never revealed that he had ever discussed the failed coup with Potter. Eventually, Forrest was killed off for his attempt.
(HFR, GW:AF)
This American politician, lawyer, and poet appears at the beginning of How Few Remain. Before the war starts William Foulke is an infantry captain of the United States Army. Jeb Stuart wonders what a stuck-up young man is doing out west. He reappears in 1915 as Irving Morrell's divisional commander in southeastern Kentucky.
(SA:DE)
Instead of becoming a Hall of Fame first baseman, Jimmie Foxx was a running back in the U.S. football league. His name was used as a password in Irving Morrell's army to identify Confederate spies.
(HFR)
Senator James Garfield is one of the Republican Party leaders who gather in Chicago to discuss the party's future. He is more conservative than former president Lincoln and wishes not to make the party more radical.
(AE:CCH)
Lou Gehrig played professional football in this timeline as a member of the Philadelphia Barrels team. When asked about earning more money than President Blackford, he responded, "I had a better year than he did," echoing Babe Ruth's comments about President Hoover in our timeline.
(HFR)
Geronimo led a band of Apache warriors into an alliance with Jeb Stuart's army during the Second Mexican War. The alliance would not outlast the war. He led a rebellion against the Confederates following a dispute in territory occupied in New Mexico. During this, one of Geronimo's men shot and killed Stuart, which consequently led the Confederate Army to all but wipe the Apache tribes out.
(AE:VO)
Barry Goldwater was a Democratic Congressman from New Mexico noted for his anti-Mormon speeches and rabble rousing during the days and months leading up to Second Great War. (Note that the New Mexico of this timeline included Arizona, home to our timeline's Goldwater.)
(HFR, AE:BI)
General Ulysses Grant, in the twenty years after the War of Secession, is a broken down, poor man. Known for his victories in a war the United States had few in, he was one of the few people left in the United States who supported the plight of the African-Americans in both North American republics. Grant died from complications from alcoholism.
(SA:DE)
Instead of becoming a Hall of Fame first baseman for the Detroit Tigers, Hank Greenberg was a prominent U.S. running back. His name was used as a code in Irving Morrell's army to prevent Confederate spies from infiltrating U.S. lines.
(SA:RE)
Joseph F. Guffey was the Speaker of the House during the Smith and La Follette administrations. When Al Smith was killed in the Confederate bombing raid of Philadelphia in 1942, Guffey announced the President's death to a joint session of Congress.
(SA:ID)
Lord Halifax was the British ambassador to the Confederate States during the Second Great War. He presented to C.S. President Jake Featherston materials on the British superbomb project, which possibly helped the Confederacy develop their own superbomb.
(SA:RE)
A Rear Admiral of the Southern Shore Squadron, Bill Halsey was part of the MacArthur plan to land and attack at the mouth of the James until General Abner Dowling contacted the War Department to stop that plan. From Dowling's statement on him, it seems he is as reckless as MacArthur.
(HFR)
Hannibal Hamlin, former vice president of the United States becomes secretary of state in the Blaine administration and is chosen to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the conflict leading up to the Second Mexican War, a task in which he was not successful.
(GW:WH, AE:CCH-AE:VO)
Known only as "Ernie," the novelist Ernest Hemingway was an ambulance driver in the U.S. Army on the Québec front in the Great War (in our timeline Hemingway drove an ambulance in Italy during World War I), Ernest was strafed by a British aircraft and severely wounded in the groin. After the war, his impotence served as a constant frustration. He ghost-wrote Sylvia Enos' book, I Sank Roger Kimball, and was involved in an affair with his client. He accidentally shoots her when attempting suicide while he is drunk. He then shoots himself in remorse. (In our timeline, Hemingway lived to 1961, shooting himself to death but no one else.) In the Southern Victory Series, he never becomes a prominent author -- though he does have work published.
(AE:CCH)
Because of the German Empire's victory in this world, Adolf Hitler is a sergeant in the German Army. He holds the Iron Cross, First Class. Morrell met him once as an orderly to Colonel Heinz Guderian, who was on an inspection tour in Kamloops, British Columbia. Morrell thought that he was very much like Jake Featherston, but with a hatred for Jews and Slavs rather than Africans. However, nobody pays him much regard with his much lowlier position. The obvious implication is that because Germany won World War I, Hitler remained a nobody and never rose to power. It should be pointed out that Hitler is never mentioned by name in CCH, but the author has acknowledged his identity.
(GW:WH-AE:VO)
Oliver Wendell Holmes becomes Chief Justice of the United States rather than associate justice, as he does in our timeline. He is one of the last surviving War of Secession veterans and manages to live longer than even General Custer. Holmes is a staunch Democratic supporter, who is very displeased in 1920 at having to administer the oath of office to Upton Sinclair, the first Socialist President. He dies in 1935 (the same year of his death in our timeline) during Herbert Hoover's administration. He is replaced as Chief Justice by Cicero Pittman in time for Al Smith's inauguration in 1937.
(AE:CCH-AE:VO)
Herbert Hoover was part of the Coolidge-Hoover Democratic ticket that defeated the Blackford-Johnson Socialist ticket during the Democratic sweep in 1932. When Coolidge died before he got into office, Hoover took over. The only thing his term was known for was making the situation in Kentucky, Houston (West Texas), Sequoyah, and Utah worse. He ended the Pacific War with a status quo ante bellum "peace" with Japan and allowed Jake Featherston to begin rebuilding the Confederate Army in the face of the "black rebellion". Hoover was also derided for not doing anything to help the Depression. Because of this, the Democrats were defeated with a Socialist sweep the Congressional elections of 1934 and he lost the presidential race to Socialist Al Smith in 1936.
(SA:RE)
Bob Hope is a comic seen entertaining the troops in Occupied Ohio. He was booed offstage for his non realistic war jokes and for not being "Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces".
(AE:VO)
Hubert Humphrey is referred to as the "pharmacist from Minneapolis." He wisely decides not to move his business to Rosenfield, Manitoba, where the local general store (owned by an American) had been bombed by Mary MacGregor several years before.
(HFR)
Because of the Confederate victory in 1862, Stonewall Jackson did not die in 1863 as he did in this timeline. In the twenty years from the War of Secession to the Second Mexican War, Jackson became the head of the Confederate General Staff in the Longstreet Administration. His brilliant tactics in the Second Mexican War led to victory for the Confederacy. Also critical to the Confederate cause was his decision to let the captured Frederick Douglass go free, after a memorable debate between the two showing some grudging mutual respect - a decision which eventually helped the Confederacy cement British and French support for its cause. Subsequently, Jackson refused Wade Hampton III's proposal to lead a coup against Longstreet after Longstreet began steps to end slavery.
His face appeared on the Confederate five-dollar coin, which naturally came to be called a "Stonewall".
(AE:CCH)
Hiram Johnson was the Socialist nominee for vice-president in both the 1928 and 1932 elections. He and Hosea Blackford won the 1928 election over Calvin Coolidge; the victory was clinched after the Socialists won Johnson's home state of California. He was present at the Socialist party rally that was held on the same day that Japan raided Los Angeles. Blackford and Johnson were easily defeated in 1932 by Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.
(AE:CCH-AE:VO, SA:ID)
Joseph Kennedy, in this timeline, was a Democratic Party organizer in Boston, Massachusetts. Although married to Rose Kennedy and the father of Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., he attempted to seduce Sylvia Enos, who was a minor heroine for killing Roger Kimball, and was campaigning for him at his political rallies.
After the Second Great War, Kennedy helped obtain the discharge of George Enos Jr., from the Navy to allow him to return to civilian life.
(SA:RE)
Joseph Kennedy, Jr. appears in this timeline as a fighter pilot, serving in the same squadron as Jonathan Moss during Operation Blackbeard.
(AE:VO-SA:ID)
The fourth Socialist President of the United States, Charles La Follette was vice-president of the United States until the death of President Smith in 1942. LaFollete also promised to keep the agreement between his office and Flora Blackford on the African-American holocaust in return for her keeping quiet about the atomic bomb project in western Washington State.
After the U.S. made significant progress in 1943, invading Kentucky, Tennessee, and capturing Camp Determination, La Follette demanded Jake Featherston's surrender. Featherston responded by firing two rockets into Philadelphia.
As the war was drawing to a close, La Follete issued an executive order barring discrimination in the armed forces on the basis of race. He also pledged to introduce civil rights legislation into Congress to protect all blacks under U.S. jurisdiction.
Though he led the U.S. to victory in 1944, La Follette was defeated by Tom Dewey in the Presidential election later that year. This might be intended to parallel the real world defeat of Winston Churchill at the close of the Second World War by Clement Attlee.
Turtledove's version of the character is not a historical La Follette, but rather an amalgam of three contemporaneous LaFollettes. Turtledove's La Follette hails from Wisconsin and his middle initial is 'W' (revealed in Settling Accounts: In at the Death). The historical Rep. Charles M. La Follette was from Indiana whereas the historical Gov. Robert M. La Follette, Sr. and Sen. Robert M. La Follette, Jr. were both from Wisconsin.
(AE:VO)
Fiorello LaGuardia is elected governor of New York on the Socialist ticket and attends the New York City Remembrance Day parade shortly before the beginning of World War II.
(HFR)
Lucius Lamar is the vice president of the Confederate States under James Longstreet. It is mentioned that Lamar would have acted as president should anything have happened to President Longstreet while he visited the war front in Kentucky.
(GW:B)
Robert Lansing was the United States Secretary of State at the conclusion of the Great War and was responsible for drafting the terms of the peace treaty with the Confederacy and setting policy for Occupied Canada.
(GW:AF)
Robert E. Lee is the Confederacy's military hero. It is his decision to invade Maryland, and the complete failure of Union general George McClellan to respond that allows the CS to gain military victory, and receive recognition as a country from Britain and France.
Lee appears briefly in the prologue of GW:AF, which is set in 1862. He is heavily referenced throughout the series.
In AE:CCH, we learn that a man named 'Lee' was president. As Robert E. Lee was never said to have been president in the prior volumes, nor so described in subsequent volumes, a debate has developed among fans of the series, with some arguing that Robert E. was president, while others favor his more political nephew, Fitzhugh Lee.
(AE:BI-AE:CCH)
Hunter Liggett replaced General Leonard Wood as Army Chief of Staff under President Upton Sinclair. He appeared unenthusiastic about some of the Socialists' more unrealistic policies.
(HFR)
In this timeline, Abraham Lincoln was a one-term president who was defeated in the 1864 election, and who was generally remembered as "a failure". Feeling that the Republican party was no longer true to its original roots, he led a faction of the party to break off and join the Socialist party with Marxist activist Friedrich Sorge, which eventually became the major opposition to the Democrats and one of the two main parties in the American political system.
(HFR)
Mary Todd Lincoln was the wife of former President Abraham Lincoln. As her husband was not assassinated in 1865, she did not suffer from mental illness. In the late 1870s, Mary Lincoln died of typhus.
(AE:VO)
After the assassination of their sibling, we learn that one of Governor Huey Long's brothers is involved in some sort of machine gun "accident" and the other is imprisoned at "Camp Dependable" outside Alexandria, Louisiana for his brother's non-Freedom Party politics. Although in our timeline Huey Long had three brothers, George, Julius and Earl Long, in the Southern Victory Series he has only two.
(AE:CCH-AE:VO)
In this timeline, Huey Long was a Radical Liberal governor of Louisiana in the Confederate States. Like Jake Featherston, he used strong-arm tactics to suppress opposition and control that state, erected prison camps for political opponents, but did not resort to anti-black racist demagoguery. He proved to be a danger to the Freedom Party in the '32 elections and afterwards, where the Freedom Party was under attack in his state, and planned to run for president once Featherston ended his term (at the time, the clause in the Confederate constitution restricting a president to a single term was still in force). He was later killed by an assassin of the Freedom Party in 1938 after getting a warning about not following Jake Featherston's orders from Anne Colleton. This assassination allowed Featherston to have the entire Confederacy under his control. The conquest of Louisiana from Long and his followers is roughly the analogue of Hitler's Austrian Anschluss.
(HFR)
James Longstreet was a victorious Confederate general turned president of the CSA in the early to mid 1880s. Although having a reputation as being an opportunist, his term was known for the second defeat of the United States in the Second Mexican War and the manumission of the slaves as the price of British and French alliance for help in the Second Mexican War. Longstreet also prevented, with Stonewall Jackson's help, a planned rebellion by Wade Hampton.
(GW:AF)
Richard Lyons was a British diplomat who was sent to Washington after the Battle of Camp Hill to advise Abraham Lincoln that Britain and France were set to offer recognition to the Confederate States, and that if the U.S. did not do the same, Britain would defend the C.S. by use of its military. Lord Lyons also envisioned a time where both the U.S. and C.S. would "stand together, [as] a pair of sturdy brothers," which never happened at any point of the Confederacy's independence between 1862 and 1944.
(GW:WH)
Alfred Mahan was a two-term Democratic president from 1889 to 1897. During his time in office, Mahan threatened to declare war on the Confederate States because of a proposal by the CSA to build a canal in Nicaragua in order to reach their Pacific port in Guaymas, Sonora, without having to travel around South America. After receiving the threat of war, the CSA backed down in their attempt to build the canal. Sam Carsten mentions that he might be the best President the country had ever had before Theodore Roosevelt.
(AE:VO)
George Mahon was a Freedom Party Congressman from the State of Houston who was among the Congressmen (from Houston and Kentucky) who demanded that plebiscites be held in order to return to the Confederate States (Houston had joined the U.S. in 1917). He eventually got his wish, and on January 7, 1941, Houston, along with Kentucky, was returned to the CSA by popular vote, and was restored to the state of Texas.
(AE:CCH-AE:VO, SA:ID)
Known as King Charles XI, Charles Maurras was the head of the Action Française movement in post-Great War France. After the overthrow of the French Third Republic in the 1930s, Charles XI took the movement's position to reclaim Alsace-Lorraine from Germany. When Kaiser Wilhelm II died on 4 June 1941, Charles XI formally demanded the return of Alsace-Lorraine. After Wilhelm's successor Friedrich Wilhelm V denied this request, France, supported by Britain and the Confederate States, declared war on Germany, and the Second Great War began. Charles XI was killed in the superbomb attack on Paris in 1944 and was succeeded by King Louis XIX.
(AE:VO)
Congressman Edward C. Moran, Jr. of Maine is a Democrat who debates Flora Blackford on whether or not the United States should interfere with the treatment of blacks in the CSA.
(AE:CCH-AE:VO)
James Clark McReynolds was the last Chief Justice of the Confederate Supreme Court. He played a key role in the ruling allowing Burton Mitchel to run again out of fear of the Freedom Party after the Hampton V assassination. Later he was noted for his battles in the early months of the first Featherston administration, most importantly the "torpedoing" of the River and Dam Act. (This is roughly analogous to the opposition of McReynolds to much of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal legislation in our timeline.) This led to the Featherston Administration finding a way to abolish the Supreme Court before it could strike down any more Freedom laws, and because Featherston wanted to settle accounts with the Court for its allowing Mitchel to run for re-election.
Attorney General Ferdinand Koenig pounced on the precedent of the CSA not having a Supreme Court for the first five years of existence, and forced McReynolds to admit to the legality of that precedent as prelude to having the Supreme Court knocked down, to great fanfare across the Confederacy's white population. Threatened with his life by Featherston if he trifled with the abolition of the Supreme Court, McReynolds retired into private life. The Confederate president then went on the radio to declare: "James McReynolds has made his decision, now let him enforce it!" (echoing a quote attributed to Andrew Jackson following an 1832 U.S. Supreme Court decision).
(AE:CCH)
Also known as "The Hammer", this is Vyacheslav Molotov from our world, another Red holdout (in the failed rebellion) in the Volga area, trying to defeat the Tsarist forces. By 1941, the Tsarist forces have all but defeated the Red Russians.
(AE:CCH-AE:VO, SA:ID)
Oswald Mosley is the leader of the Silver Shirts, a fascist movement analogous to the British Union of Fascists (Turtledove conflates two OTL movements: Mosley's historical BUF, also known as the Blackshirts; and the Silver Shirts, an American fascist group linked to Bruno Hauptmann and the Lindbergh Baby case). Mosley and several members of the Union gain seats in the British parliament, creating an influential minority. In an attempt to stifle them, the Conservative Party formed a coalition with the Silver Shirts. However, this actually gave more power to the Silver Shirts. The fact that the Conservatives under the leadership of Winston Churchill had taken a revanchist just insured that the coalition left both parties indistinquishable. Churchill named Mosley Chancellor of the Exchequer to mollify the Silver Shirts. During the later conflict with Germany in 1941, Mosley was also given a position as Minister of War.
Shortly after Germany shot down a British plane carrying the second British superbomb in 1944, he was ousted as Chancellor of the Exchequer in a non-confidence vote.
(SA:RE)
Although not mentioned by name, Flora Blackford tries to recall the Italian politician who had pledged to make all the trains in his country on time, but had little public support. The real Benito Mussolini claimed to have done this during his rule of Italy; actually, improvements in the train system predated Mussolini, and the trains were as unpunctual as before.
(SA:ID)
Wright Patman was the Governor of Texas during the Second Great War. In 1944, with the U.S. close to defeating the C.S., Patman seceded his state from the Confederacy and declared an independent Republic of Texas with himself as President. His first act was to obtain an armistice with the U.S., who immediately recognized his nation.
(GW:AF-GW:B)
Brigadier General Mason Patrick was a senior aviator in the U.S. Army air service and served on the Canadian front in the Great War.
(SA:RE-SA:ID)
General George S. Patton, C.S. Army, was in charge of the Confederate armored forces (Army of Kentucky) in Operation Blackbeard in Ohio and the attack on Pittsburgh. He had many of the same character traits as our timeline's Patton, including attention to the appearance of his men and the effective use of armor. Instead of being the first American general to integrate his combat formations, this Patton is an unabashed racist and supporter of the Freedom Party. Patton was evacuated from the pocket at Pittsburgh before it fell in February 1943. He unsuccessfully tried to hold the U.S. Army out of Kentucky and Tennessee.
This included an incident where he slapped a soldier suffering from battle fatigue. He would have shot the soldier save that other soldiers around them threatened to shoot Patton on the spot. He was reprimanded for this incident by President Featherston, who promised the average soldier a fair shake.
Patton's aggressiveness was checked by General Morrell. When he switched tactics to fight a delaying action in Chattanooga, he was bypassed by a U.S. airborne assault on the hills overlooking the city. Because of this, the U.S. drove to Atlanta, disgracing him in Jake Featherston's eyes.
By 1944, Patton was forced to flee Atlanta and head into Alabama. With the U.S. ravaging his army, Patton was eventually forced to surrender in Birmingham. After giving a farewell address to his forces, Patton was taken into captivity.
(GW:AF-AE:CCH)
John Pershing is the commanding general of the US Second Army and rival of George Custer's First Army in the Great War. After the Socialist victory over the Democrats, he became military governor of Utah. Later on during his term in Utah, a Mormon sniper killed him, thus elevating Colonel Dowling, commandant of Salt Lake City, to military governor of Utah.
(AE:BI)
Rather than being appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1912, as he was in our timeline, Mahlon Pitney goes to Canada to preside over trials in occupied country.
(SA:G)
Pius XII was Pope in this timeline as well as ours. He was criticized for not condemning the Turkish genocide of Armenians or the Russian pogroms against Jews, and it appeared that he likewise did not care about the Freedom Party's killing of the black population of the Confederate States. One character observes that Pius would have spoken out against human rights violations if the group being persecuted consisted mainly of Catholics. The criticism of Pius' failure to condemn human rights violations in this timeline echoes the widely disputed relationship between our timeline's Pius and the Holocaust.
(HFR)
John Pope was the commander of U.S. forces in Utah during the Second Mexican War. He was responsible for ordering the execution of several Mormon leaders during the attempted revolt in Utah. Pope also arrested Abraham Lincoln for allegedly having Mormon sympathies, but President Blaine ordered Lincoln's release.
(AE:VO)
Ronald Reagan, "Dutch", like this timeline's counterpart, was a sports announcer in Iowa between the wars. His favorite phrase in games is "There he goes again" (similar to one of Reagan's most familiar phrases in our timeline, "There you go again"). Cincinnatus Driver also describes "Dutch" as a "great communicator", a description applied to the historical Reagan.
(GW:AF)
Thomas Brackett Reed was a Democratic president sometime in the late 1890s. Like Alfred Thayer Mahan, Reed was considered a hero of the Remembrance ideology. Reed entered into the United States into a mutual-defense pact with Haiti. Presumably this helped curb CSA designs in the Caribbean while at the same time irritating the CS government, which had long desired the destruction of the former slave colony. This pact was reaffirmed by Theodore Roosevelt during the Great War.
Reed was depicted on a fifty-cent coin used as currency during the Great War.
(SA:ID)
Captain Hyman G. Rickover, U.S. Navy tesifies before a House of Representatives committee, as an expert on submarines (as was our timeline's Rickover). Rickover has the unpleasant task of explaining why the U.S. has not yet built copies of German fleet submarines.
(AE:VO)
Will Rogers is referred to as "that comic from Sequoyah." As in our timeline, he is quoted as having said, "All I know is what I read in the newspapers."
(AE:CCH, SA:RE-SA:ID)
Franklin D. Roosevelt, in this timeline, was Secretary of War in the Hoover administration and later Assistant Secretary of War under the Smith and LaFollette Administrations. He is not much in the public eye, but plays a key role at being in charge of the United States nuclear program at the Hanford site. Roosevelt was paraplegic and uses a wheelchair. He develops a kind of platonic affair with Flora Blackford. There is no mention of his being married in this timeline to Eleanor Roosevelt, who as wife of an obscure Assistant Secretary would have far less scope for her own activities than she did as First Lady in our timeline. It noted that his son (who goes unnamed) is in the US Navy during the Second Great War.
Shortly before the end of the war Flora Blackford notices with concern that Roosevelt is "killing himself with overwork and smoking". After the fall of the Confederacy Roosevelt is not mentioned again, and the disposal of the Confederate nuclear program is left to General Abell rather than to him.
(HFR-AE:CCH)
Teddy Roosevelt became a national figure for leading a volunteer cavalry unit, the Unauthorized Regiment, in the Second Mexican War, during which he developed an intense rivalry with George Custer. A member of the Democratic Party, he was President of the United States from 1913 to 1921. Roosevelt was the first president to run for a third term, but he was ultimately defeated by Socialist Upton Sinclair. After his death in 1924, he was buried at Robert E. Lee's house in Arlington, West Virginia (which was annexed from Virginia after the Great War).
(HFR)
William Rosecrans was a lead general in the Second Mexican War. He was partly responsible for the U.S. defeat as he admitted to observers on the Kentucky front that he had no real strategy to defeat the Confederate States.
(AE:VO)
Richard Brevard Russell, Jr. was the Confederate Ambassador to the United States before the Second World War. He was kicked out of the U.S. after President Featherston kicked out the Confederacy's U.S. ambassador Jerry Voorhis from the C.S. as well.
(AE:VO, SA:RE-SA:G)
Known in the Southern Victory world as Sennacherib ("Satchmo"), Louis Armstrong in the Confederate States, during the rise of the Freedom Party and the Featherston Administration, was the leader of the popular band "Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces". He was forced by the Confederate government during Second Great War to play for Confederate troops in Ohio. Satchmo and his band were able to escape to U.S. lines at night after one of their shows. In Drive to the East, Satchmo and his band share the horrors of the Featherston government's treatment of African-Americans with Flora Blackford. Subsequently, Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces produce propaganda for the U.S., although their style of music, unknown outside of the C.S., is a bit of a mystery to the average U.S. citizen
(HFR)
Alfred von Schlieffen was a colonel in the German army working as a military attaché before and during the Second Mexican War at the German embassy in the United States. His study of Robert E. Lee's encirclement of Washington, D.C. is said to be the inspiration for the Schlieffen Plan of World War I.
(SA:ID)
Eric Sevareid was a radio broadcaster for U.S. Wireless Atlanta, which was established after the fall of Atlanta, possibly to counter Confederate Connie. After the death of Jake Featherston, Sevareid was one of the broadcasters who interviewed Cassius.
(GW:AF)
Ironically, Robert Gould Shaw, the man who in our timeline led the 54th Massachusetts, one of the first all black regiments in the Civil War, ends up surviving through the War of Secession, though losing a hand in the process, and lives on until 1914 in Boston. He was depicted as an elderly racist with little money.
(SA:ID)
William Shirer is a U.S. broadcaster who interviews Cassius Madison in his tour of the U.S. after killing Jake Featherston.
(AE:BI-AE:VO)
In this timeline, Upton Sinclair was the first Socialist President. He was elected over Teddy Roosevelt in the 1920 elections for a number of reasons, including (but not limited to) worker unrest, outrage at Roosevelt's decision to run for a third term, and the public's general exhaustion with the Remembrance ideology. His first acts were to slash the military budget, force General Custer into retirement and enact new labor laws. He was re-elected in 1924, where he and the Socialist Party take credit for the Roaring Twenties prosperity. Sinclair declined to run for a third term in 1928 and was succeeded in office by his Vice President, Hosea Blackford.
(AE:VO-SA:RE)
Al Smith is elected as the third Socialist (and first Catholic) President in the 1936 election, defeating Democrat Herbert Hoover. He is known as the "Happy Warrior" since he tries everything to keep the United States out of war with Jake Featherston's Confederate States, including the infamous Richmond Agreement, helps gain him re-election over Robert Taft in 1940. All of Smith's efforts simply delay the inevitable; Featherston scraps any agreement with Smith and once again demands territorial concession. Smith refuses, touching of the Second Great War in June, 1941 (in an operation patterened after OTL's Operation Barbarossa). Smith is killed in his second term (1942) when Confederate bombers blew up parts of Powel House and destroy his bunker.
Smith shares parallels with Neville Chamberlain, who attempted, but failed, to prevent war in our timeline with a fascist regime through the use of appeasement.
(SA:G)
Kate Smith was a famous U.S. singer in this timeline as well as ours. In 1943, she sang "God Bless the Stars and Stripes" with backing by Satchmo and the Rhythm Aces.
(GW:AF and AE:BI)
The marches of John Philip Sousa in this timeline were very popular in the United States. The Socialists despised him as a tool who substituted nationalist desires for vengeance for the class struggle, but respected his talents.
(AE:CCH)
Joseph Stalin is nicknamed "The Man of Steel" in this world. The Red Revolution following the Great War failed and Stalin became a holdout in the Volga area near the city Tsaritsyn along with the "Hammer" (Vyacheslav Molotov), deliberately ironic as in our timeline the city was known at the time as Stalingrad.
(SA:ID)
Harold Stassen was peripherally mentioned as "the governor of Minnesota" as the Republican Party's candidate for President in the 1944 elections, carrying Minnesota, Wisconsin, and two of the other 35 states in three-way races against Socialist Charles LaFollette and Democrat Tom Dewey.
(AE:BI)
Seymour Stedman was a Socialist Congressman from Ohio. In the Socialist-majority Congress of 1919, he was elected Speaker of the House. Stedman became the first non-Democrat since 1881 to be elected as Speaker.
(HFR)
Because of the CSA's victory in the War of Secession, Jeb Stuart did not die in 1864 as he did in this timeline. During the Second Mexican War, General Stuart arrived in the former Mexican provinces of Sonora and Chihuahua in order to ease their transition into C.S. territories (later states). Stuart was killed by an Apache sniper near the close of the war in 1882. His son Jeb Stuart Jr. (a person who had never known his father in real life) later became head of the Confederate War Department, and his (fictionalized) grandson Jeb Stuart III was a battery command officer on the Virginia front in the Great War.
J.E.B Stuart III once prevented Army intelligence from interrogating his man servant. Later it was revealed that this servant had in fact been a spy and a communist rebel. Stuart was humiliated, and assured by many that he would never rise above the rank of Captain, despite his Father's position in the war department. Destroyed, Stuart decided glory was all he had left, and died leading a charge across No Man's land.
This would greatly impact history in this timeline, because it was Jake Featherston who had reported the man servant, and Stuart's father blamed him for his son's humiliation. He ensured that Featherston also was never promoted, which infuriated Featherston forever after, leading him to write his infamous book, Over Open Sights, and later to purge the old military upon his acension to the Presidency of the Confederate States. After that point, promotion and rank in the new army was based solely on talent and loyalty, which unfortunately for the United States, worked very well in the opening months of operation 'Black Beard'.
(AE:VO, SA:DE-SA:G)
Robert Taft was a Democratic Senator from Ohio who ran against Al Smith in the 1940 presidential election. Taft was narrowly defeated running his campaign on an anti-Freedom Party line and the refusal to permit the states of Kentucky and Houston to hold a plebiscite to return to the CSA. During the Second Great War, he and Flora Blackford became fast friends and political allies as Flora became more hawkish as the war went on. Taft dies in 1943, a victim of a suicide bomb attack in Philadelphia.
(GW:B-AE:BI)
William Howard Taft was a Democratic Congressman from Ohio who served on the Transportation Committee during the later days of the Great War. He was on the same committee as Socialist congresswoman Flora Hamburger, and the two frequently disagreed on many political issues.
(HFR)
The Mormon leader John Taylor takes the opportunity to try to force the United States to recognize the believers' right to practice polygamy. However, with the use of the new Gatling gun his rebellion is quickly crushed and he becomes a fugitive, facing death along with the other Mormon leaders if he is caught. The Union army places a price on his head, but he is never captured.
(AE:BI-AE:CCH)
N. Mattoon Thomas served as Undersecretary of War in the Sinclair Administration, often as Sinclair's hatchet man. He was responsible for informing General Custer of his forced retirement and for closing down the Barrel Works.
(SA:RE)
Strom Thurmond was a Freedom Party Congressman from South Carolina. He is still as conservative in this timeline as he was in ours. Good on the "Negro question, but weaker elsewhere" was Anne Colleton's view on him. It was unknown if he died during the U.S. naval raid on Charleston in June 1941.
(HFR)
Samuel Tilden was President of the United States from 1877 to 1881 in this timeline. He was nominated by the Democrats for reelection in 1880, but lost to Republican James G. Blaine. Tilden was defeated for not taking a hard line against the Confederate States and for ordering the removal of twelve stars (representing the former Union states in the CSA) from the U.S. flag.
(SA:ID)
Harry Truman was a Democratic Senator from Missouri who was selected by New York Governor Tom Dewey as the Democratic VP candidate in 1944. The Dewey-Truman ticket defeated the incumbent President Charles La Follette. In announcing the Democratic victory, Truman had a copy of the Chicago Tribune that had the headline "La Follete Beats Dewey" (referring to the infamous "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline in our timeline's 1948 election). Truman made an appearance in occupied Florida to speak to U.S. soldiers before his inauguration as Vice President.
(AE:VO)
Jerry Voorhis was the United States ambassador to the Confederate States prior to the start of the Second Great War. After delivering news to Jake Featherston that U.S. president Al Smith refused the latest C.S. territorial demands, the C.S. president told Voorhis to leave the country within 24 hours; soon after this meeting, Featherston authorized the commencement of Operation Blackbeard.
(SA:DE)
Confederate Secretary of State during the Featherston Administration, George Herbert Walker is probably one of the few remaining old-liners to remain from the Whig Era into the Freedom Regime, since he is not considered to be part of the Freedom Party inner circle by Featherston. Walker is placed in charge of obtaining more soldiers from the Empire of Mexico to aid the Confederacy after General Morrell's attacks destroyed the first three divisions in the 1942 U.S. offensive in Ohio.
(SA:RE)
Henry A. Wallace was the Secretary of the Interior under Al Smith. He was one of the few people who knew of the United States' plans to develop nuclear weapons during the Second Great War.
(AE:VO)
John Wayne is an actor known in this world under his real name, Marion Morrison. He played Theodore Roosevelt in a movie that recounted the details of the Battle of Montana in How Few Remain.
(GW:AF-AE:VO)
Kaiser Wilhelm II was the German Emperor and one of the main allies of the United States in World War I. "Kaiser Bill" was a popular character in the U.S. Many men wore a "Kaiser Bill" mustache in imitation of him. He lived until 1941 (as he did in our timeline), where his death and his son's coming to the throne and refusal to give France its lost territory back started the Second Great War. He was the father of Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm V.
(AE:VO, SA:RE-ID)
Friedrich Wilhelm V (the Crown Prince of Germany) became Kaiser of the German Empire in 1941, upon the death of his father, Wilhelm II. He refused to return Alsace-Lorraine to the newly revived Kingdom of France and their British allies, which precipitated the Second Great War in Europe. He authorised the destruction of several targets with superbombs, including Petrograd, Paris as well as London, Norwich and Brighton in a deadly triple strike that crippled Britain into defeat.
This character may be the center of a substantial historical gaffe on Turtledove's part. Upon his ascension in American Empire: The Victorious Opposition, he is announced as Friedrich I of Germany and Friedrich Wilhelm V of Prussia. If this character is indeed the historical figure William, Crown Prince of Germany, then he would have reigned as William III in real history. While the Crown Prince's first name was Friedrich, even if he chose to call himself that upon his ascension, or, if the character is meant to be the fictional son of William II of Germany, he could not have been Friedrich I, but would in fact have been Friedrich IV. There also does not appear to have been a tradition of the German Emperor using a different name in his role as King of Prussia.
As Turtledove only refers to this character as 'the Kaiser' in the Settling Accounts series, there are no additional clues available to the reader as to the character's identity.
(AE:VO)
Wendell Willkie was the Republican nominee for president in the 1940 election, both in this timeline and our history. As the Republicans were a third party in this timeline, Willkie was not considered to seriously contend for the presidency against the Socialist incumbent Al Smith and the Democratic challenger Robert Taft.
(SA:ID)
Horace Wilson became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1944 in the wake of the ouster of Winston Churchill in a no-confidence vote. His first act as PM was to ask Germany for a cease-fire.
(GW:AF-GW:WH)
Woodrow Wilson was president of the Confederate States from 1911 to 1917. He led the CSA to war with the United States in the summer of 1914, following the US declaration of war on the Confederacy.
(SA:ID)
Walter Winchell was a news reporter from New York who was one of those to interview Cassius after he shot Jake Featherston. During his interview with Winchell, Cassius found his accent difficult to understand.
(GW:AF-GW:B)
General Leonard Wood was Chief of the General Staff of the U.S. Army during the Great War