ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
The biggest problem I have with the book (and have had since I first picked it up in my early teens) was the use of South Africans as time-traveling gunrunners; even at that young age, I wondered "surely there are neo-Confederates & other white supremacists in the early '90s who would've jumped at the chance to give the South AK-47s?" I suspect that given the end of apartheid at the time of writing, Turtledove might've figured that angry AWB types made good villains; yet they felt out of place even for AH, and the justification for/ultimate goal in altering the Civil War that they gave Lee was, to put it politely, a mix of clunky and "huh??" Yes, they used the excuse that their time machine could only go back 150 years, but a more believable use of them as characters (esp. given the scene with the AWB book laying out their ideology) would've been their going back to WWII to make sure Hitler won and South Africa became an apartheid "paradise." Were this book to be written today, I have little doubt there's plenty of R-W militia groups who'd be used in their place, and to far more chilling effect.
I never had the impression, going by unreliable memory, that the AWB had the resources of a modern-day state behind them. They had AK-47s, a handful of more advanced weapons, history books, radios and a small number of other things. They didn’t have tanks, aircraft or nukes. That suggests, to me, that they were a paramilitary group at best and there were limits to what they could obtain before going back in time to set wrong what once went right.
Their options are therefore more limited than you might suppose, if their goal is to create a client state and/or ally for Apartheid SA.
Nazi Germany? They would have trouble changing the course of the war - a few thousand AKs aren’t going to make much of a difference - and it would be very hard to gain a position of influence over the Reich. The gap between AWB and the Nazis isn’t that big - besides, the Nazis might regard South Africa as an enemy state.
The Boer Republic? Already isolated, in their minds, from the world; about to go to war with the UK, a war they might still lose even if they had modern weapons. Coming to terms with the UK might work, but would be ideologically problematic. Plus, too great a risk of their team coming apart, as they’re not strangers in a very strange and potentially hostile land.
The CSA offers a number of advantages. The tech gap is wide enough that Lee et al will have no conception of what awaits them (radios, for example), allowing AWB to manipulate Confederate politics and build a 1940s tech base years before its time ... giving them a chance to embed themselves in the fabric of society. The CSA will also be isolated, allowing them a chance to ally with South Africa when - if - it becomes an apartheid state; it will make the CSA dependent on AWB, which will give them a great deal of additional clout. And, as the South Africans are inherently not Southerners, it will be a great deal harder for their group to disintegrate and merge into the local population.
Hope that makes sense.
Chris