Wednesday, November 1, 2017

1918 – German Occupation of former United States



The 1896 invention of the heat-killed cholera vaccine by German bacteriologist Wilhelm Kolle greatly improved those created by Catalan and Russian scientists in years before. It could be manufactured on a massive scale, outpacing the growth of any potential catastrophe if cholera spread into a local water system. When Kolle announced his development, the German Empire won worldwide acclaim, including adoration from Japanese saved during an epidemic in 1902.

Kolle continued his work, later written in the famous Experimental Bacteriology, to make a discovery that warped his mind with power: he could create his own strains of cholera resistant to other vaccines. If one of his strains were released, he alone would have the cure. At a top secret meeting with Kaiser Wilhelm II, it was agreed that such technology would be kept quiet and that it could be used to conquer the world.

After controlled tests in German colonies like the Samoan Islands and Kamerun, Wilhelm determined it was time to put the operation into its fullest potential on the most obvious target: the United States of America. The States had grown into a world power through its industrial development, although few in Europe took the young nation as seriously as other Old World empires. Millions of Germans had immigrated to America in search of work and better lives since the seventeenth century, giving Germany a strong cultural base of power already. A controlled plague would wipe out the others, leaving mineral wealth and even a large deal of the industrial core of the country intact.

German agents introduced the man-made cholera into key water systems in American major cities, beginning with the largest, New York City. Previous cholera epidemics had been contained through quarantines, but health officials were baffled as cholera continued to spread upriver to drinking supplies throughout the country. Like other countries, Germany quickly responded with medical aid, although the German Empire soon vastly outpaced the others in resources being sent to America. Most of these resources were dedicated to Pennsylvania, Ohio, the Midwest, and other areas where German nationals had settled.

The survival rates of the German immigrants as compared to those of other Americans grew suspicious. Anti-German sentiment rose, even sparking riots in Texas, but the American government was too dependent on German support to follow the outcry. Instead, American troops loyal to Germany helped suppress those fighting against the tightening grasp of the Kaiser. When increasingly advantageous treaties were granted to Germany, outright rebellion broke out in independently minded portions of the nation, particularly in the South. Militias formed to drive out “the Hessians” recalled Washington fighting German mercenaries during the American Revolution. Unfortunately, these militia camps soon found themselves devastated by cholera, and support vanished.

When the Archduke of Austria was killed by a terrorist in 1914, the Kaiser was so busy with plans for America that he barely commented on the unfortunate. Instead, he continued to exert control over the New World. The cholera epidemic spread to Mexico, whose own government was already in turmoil, and the people gladly joined as a new province in the German Empire in exchange for the near-mystical cure from Kolle’s vaccine.

After years of horrific death from coast to coast, the German empire began rebuilding what became known as “New Prussia.” Other empires were still fearful to venture into the area for their own colonization; Britain maintained a tight quarantine along the border with Canada. German supporters such as the Ottoman Empire, which was granted swaths of land in depopulated Florida, and Japan, which had retained close allies with Germany after its own epidemic. Austria tried its own hand at colonizing Baja California, although its own resources were limited after a short and brutal war with Russia ending much of Austria’s sway over the Balkans.

Formerly large cities in the United States became ghost towns renamed by their new rulers, from Nagaseattle in the northwest to New Hamborg that had once been New Orleans to New Potsdam, formerly New York. The most obvious was the change from Washington, D.C., to New Berlin, but the propaganda that flowed out of the new capital dripped with awe for the German “saviors” of the few that remained. There were many Americans who beat the cholera epidemic with their own immune systems, but those who attempted to stand up to German imperialism were rounded up and shipped to the “American Reservation” in what had once been New Mexico, watched over by tribal Native American forces.


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In reality, this map was a Life Magazine production in response to a German propaganda leaflet.

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