Dixieland
It has been twenty years since the Second Great War ended with the capture of Berlin by British and French forces, and the obliteration of Philadelphia. A triumphant President Jake Featherston declared victory over the United States, as did British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, over the German Empire. The Empire of Japan withdrew from the conflict, having taken what it aimed to from the United States in the Pacific, with their capture of the Sandwich and Hawaiian Islands.
To the North, Canada regained its independence as the United States occupation abruptly began to collapse. The once-unstoppable American forces, and their ally, the Republic of Quebec, were routed as Canadian militia and guerrilla forces, aided and backed by both the Confederate States and the British Empire, grew from small bands into massive armies. The restored Canadian government's efforts were focused on retribution for the twenty-seven-year-long occupation, and the reunification of Quebec with the rest of the country. Both came in the summer of 1945, with victory in the climactic Battle of Montréal.
By then, former U.S. Army General Daniel MacArthur had returned to his native Pennsylvania, and a humiliating retirement.
Irish war hero Michael Collins, who barely escaped Dublin as the last elements of Irish military resistance were crushed by the British Army, died just a year later, as the Royal Navy intercepted a rogue American submarine, sinking it as it attempted to escape to the South Atlantic.
As part of the terms of the unconditional surrender of Germany the German Empire was disbanded, and Kaiser Wilhelm II forced to abdicate. Under heavy pressure from the Tzar, the Kingdom of Poland became a protectorate of the Russian Empire. Utah proclaimed its independence, but before long became a virtual client state of the CSA.
In the years after the war, state after state has been annexed into the Confederate States of America. From the Gray House, Jake Featherston orchestrated a campaign of conquest that would see the flag of the Confederate States planted in nearly every nation of South America. With the former U.S. states all absorbed, the enormous surplus of money and resources enabled the Confederacy's capital, Richmond, to become a Freedom Party showplace. By 1957, the city had grown so large it engulfed Petersburg to the south, as Attorney General Ferdinand Koenig hired the greatest artisans available to build monuments to the glory of the Confederate States.
The Freedom Party Guards maintained several infantry and armored divisions, and created a peacetime police force, patrolling clean and orderly streets. Their rivalry with the C.S. Army became more subdued, yet while the Guards were presented as another of the C.S. Armed Forces to the public, they legally were not under the authority of the War Department and remained answerable only to the Attorney General and the President.
As the 1950's came to a close, President Featherston was able to put a more civilized face on the Confederate empire. Trade and international relations were at an all-time high. The long-standing alliances with Britain and France were improved further, with numerous visits between the heads of state and several trade and military cooperation agreements being signed. College students from The Citadel, Georgia Military Institute, and Virginia Military Institute were invited to visit the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and the Ecole de l'Air.
But news continued to be tightly controlled. The 1960's began with the war against U.S. and Central and South American resistance forces still dragging on. To the north, the Canadians struggled to keep Quebec under control, while across the Atlantic the British Army and Royal Irish Constabulary fought their second long war with the revived Irish Republican Army. The war had long been proclaimed as over, and these disturbing signs of unrest went counter to Jake Featherston's goals. He desperately needed to eliminate the pockets of holdout U.S. and Latin American guerrilla forces, the former still led by the elusive General Irving Morrell.
Featherston saw signs for hope in the early 1960's, as Richard Hendricks was promoted to Chief Group Leader, becoming Assistant Attorney General and commander of the Freedom Party Guards. An accomplished soldier who had done much to develop the fledgling Confederate Intelligence Service into one of the most feared and effective intelligence agencies in the world, Hendricks was the kind of man Featherston felt could finish the bitter guerrilla war and kill the Yankees' famous leader.
The world press has been invited to Richmond to cover the President's upcoming birthday celebration. By now, in 1964, Jake Featherston has been President of the Confederate States for nearly thirty years- five times longer than the Constitution originally allowed. Simultaneously, the leaders of Britain, France, Canada, Mexico and Russia are also being invited to the capital, to a Euro-North American summit conference. The death of the last remaining American war hero, combined with extensive military and economic backing from Featherston's allies, could ensure the Confederacy's invulnerability.
But there are other, more persistent rumors that could threaten Featherston's plans. There are stories that something terrible happened in the Confederate States of America during the war. That the official Freedom Party story that blacks and dissidents had been relocated to newly-purchased Alaska wasn't true. There are also rumors that in the Confederate empire, terrible things are still happening. Television, radio, and newspapers are all rigidly controlled by Saul Goldman's powerful Department of Communications.
Nobody, in a new Confederacy, dares to ask awkward questions.
A/N: This story is heavily based off the opening monologue of the 1993 movie "Fatherland". It is meant to show that had the very totalitarian CSA won the alternate World War II, there would have been numerous parallels between the post-war Confederacy and a Nazi Germany that won World War II. Numerous events and descriptions are borrowed from "Fatherland" almost verbatim, and in some cases literally. Nevertheless, I had to do a lot of work "translating" events in a victorious Nazi Germany to fit in a North America where the CSA had eliminated its enemy and subdued all the other neighbors to virtual client states.
Jake Featherston, Saul Goldman, Daniel MacArthur and Irving Morrell are all Turtledove characters. Winston Churchill and Michael Collins are real historical figures. The Royal Irish Constabulary was the national police force of Ireland in the later years that it was part of the British Empire, and was actually the inspiration for the creation of a national police force that still exists today, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Richard Hendricks is an OC, my historical analog to the brilliant and feared Reinhard Heydrich, who in "Fatherland" became Reichsführer-SS, successor to Heinrich Himmler.
The Freedom Party in canon never really tries to use the real-life Nazi public claim of "relocating" Jews and other minorities, to keep secret the plans for exterminating them. But I don't think it's all that implausible that the Freedom Party, too, could have used such a story, especially if they'd managed to purchase Alaska from the Russian Empire.