"Jodl," Hitler smiles, "I am looking at my beautiful snow-covered Alps, but what am I seeing?"

"The world, Führer."

Hitler beams. "And that, my dear Jodl, is why you command our magnificent Wehrmacht."

Happy to be in the good graces of his master, still Jodl understands the time pressure. England is fighting alone with only economic help from the United States. But one day, soon, there will be the dreaded American presence in Europe. Germany needs to win the war before America arms herself. Despite the strong America First movement, German Intelligence has learned that Roosevelt is secretly planning America's physical entry into a decisive war. Germany does not want such a potentially formidable foe.

"Führer," Jodl ventures delicately, "our glorious march to world victory is predicated on the condition that General Franco will cooperate..."

"Cooperate? COOPERATE you say? Little Franco? He will lick the boots of all German troops entering Spain. If I order it, the Generalìsimo will personally carry us piggy back across Spain to Gibraltar."

"But Führer, he has not been notified of the Führer's wishes."

"The sight of twenty divisions will notify him. He will know his duty to the Third Reich. He knows who won his Spanish Civil War for him. He knows that if I had not intervened he would have lost his petty conflict and would be in a communist prison today. Or executed."

Hitler smiled benevolently, "No, Jodl, have no fear. Little Franco is a friend who will perform his historic role..."

And so it passed. The black mass of twenty divisions of the Wehrmacht arrived at Hendaye and as the vast clouds of dust from all those tanks and personnel carriers settled, the Spanish Customs Officials at the town of Irùn raised the barrier, saluted and gestured for the Germans to enter.

Just inside Spain was a car sent by El Caudillo in which his brother-in-law, Ramòn Serrano Suñer, Spain's Foreign Minister, waited with the Baròn de las Torres, Franco's personal translator.

Serrano Suñer put his arms around the German commander, hugging him in the traditional Spanish abrazo. "Mi General," he said, aided by the Baron's fluent German. "I greet you in the name of the Spanish Chief of State, General Francisco Franco Bahamonde, and bid you welcome to our poor country. What little we have is yours. El Caudillo has provided troops to escort the great Wehrmacht safely through Spain's hazardous terrain to Gibraltar. And eternally grateful Spaniards wish you and the Führer's mighty soldiers Godspeed."

The black column snaked its way down the mountains to the coast, and then traveled the dirt road along the Mediterranean through Màlaga, Torremolinos, Fuengirola, Marbella and Estepona. At every pueblo the streets were lined with Spaniards waving miniature flags of the Third Reich. The German might rolled through La Linea and onto British held Gibraltar which, contrary to general perception, is not an island but part of the Spanish mainland. The few lightly armed British soldiers and English Bobbies offered no resistance to the tanks and personnel carriers of the Wehrmacht.

German U-boats had arrived and closed off the Mediterranean to British shipping. Now, as Hitler had planned, the British would be unable to supply themselves without this Inland Sea, as the alternative long route to their colonies was impossible. America's Foreign Aid was only money and they could not fight without food and raw materials imperative to military supplies.

Contrary to British bluster that if needs be the Government would move to Canada and carry on the war against Hitler, Churchill sued for peace and signed a surrender with Germany's Foreign Minister Joachim Ribbentrop. The ceremony took place at Buckingham Palace and was followed by the raising of the Swastika atop the historical home of the British monarch. The entire Royal Family was removed to prison in Berlin.

Events moved quickly. Now the Master of Europe and Great Britain, Hitler ordered his troops through Africa where with nothing to oppose them they gained the land, slave labor and the vast mineral wealth of the continent. From Africa they crept over South America, Australia and quickly the map of the world was dominated by black Swastikas. There remained only the United States of America.

By January of 1940 the ships of the French and British navies, sailing under German flags and German command, arrived on the coasts of the United States: Boston, New York, southern and northern California and Norfolk, Virginia. Some, for dramatic impact, sailed up the Potomac River to Washington DC.

The American navy was almost entirely deployed in the South Pacific. The United States had a standing army of 150,000. Half of them carried twenty-two year old rifles from World War I with no ammunition or spare parts. The other half had wooden rifles, for marching. The Third Reich had just landed half a million heavily armed soldiers, battle hardened, and victory hungry.

Facing history's greatest fire power were only the State Troopers and municipal police departments who watched in silence as tanks, personnel carriers with light cannons, 50 mm machine guns and an endless mass of soldiers landed on the shores of the United States...

What you have just read is, of course, fiction. It is what might have happened.

The following is what did happen.