That factoid has all the makings of an alternate history novel. Who knows, if I live long enough I might write it!
Hmmm
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21859771.amp
I gots to know: what did theyserve at that Cafe? Guy, Texas
Write it Don! I’d love to read it.
I used to say can anything good come out of Germany, but it looks like I’m going to have to add Austria as well.
So… we should have let the Turks sack Vienna?…
All things draw to their center.
The Emperor (much older than the rest) would probably not dine out at the time the rest were old enough to drink, and if Hitler was antisemitic as a young man, he would hardly go anywhere that served Jews. Stalin (I read) was a loner. Trotsky and Freud are only pair I can see getting along, at least over coffee.
Stalin decides to rob a bank, something he has done in the past, in Vienna and is captured and put in jail. Hitler is working as a jail keeper, using his late father’s good record in the Austrian civil service to get a job to keep him from starving. Freud is contacted by the Austrian government to interview Stalin, using a translator, as the Austrian government can’t decide if Stalin is a typical mad Russian or something much more sinister. Trotsky is tasked by Lenin to break Stalin from the jail, a task Trotsky views with extreme distaste. He hires Tito as an unsuspecting get away driver. The Emperor recalls meeting Freud and decides to sit in on one of Freud’s sessions with Stalin. Hitler is one of numerous guards to provide security.
It should be an “Odd Couple”/”Seinfeld” Mashup where they’re living in a govt rent controlled apartment. Stalin in the “Newman” role.
Don:
That scenario might work, except the last bit, although Kaiser Franz was reportedly milder-tempered than Kaiser Bill, and more approachable and I believe some enemies sneered at him as “der Judenkaiser”, because of his determination to treat all his subjects equally (as subjects, of course). What Freud would have thought of them all (preWWI) offers interesting speculation. How about having Hitler and Stalin get in a bar fight, while Trotsky laughs in his cups? Shades of foreshadowing!
My German (not Prussian or Austria) grandparents would have been quite amused as they boarded the boat for America. They were part of a mass of citizens in German states that were opposed to unification and emigrated in the late 19th century. Unfortunately they were quite prescient about a Prussian ethos that caused so much misery in Europe, the effects of which are still felt today.
Sci Fi alternative:
The Emperor believes he may be a werewolf and starts seeing freud to determine if he is, or is not mad. Very secretly of course. A low level government functionary who is obsessed with the occult (Hitler) gets wind of this. Hitler wants in on this power to create a greater Germanic state through super wolf soldiers. Unfortunately, he and Stalin are sharing a mistress, who leaks a “crazy story” she hard about the Emperor to Stalin. Stalin takes it quite seriously and wants super wolf power for a proletariat rising in Russia. When Stalin confides in Comrade Trotsky- Trotsky is secretly appalled and does whatever he can behind Stalin and Hitlers backs to thwart this unnatural plan. He is unable to, until he meets Gavarillo Princip and works with the Black Hand to assassinate the Emperor, which goes wrong when Princip cannot resist assassinating the visiting Archduke instead. Ends with Freud scheduling clandestine meetings in a castle basement every full moon, wondering what will happen if the Emperor cancels and doubting his own sanity.
Not bad BO! Bad Moon Rising Over Vienna.
I don’t ever recall visiting Vienna, ever.
😉
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