The Sacred Timeline/1942 - 1949

## FICTIONAL HISTORY

### 1942 (cont)

The sudden disappearance of all of the top physicists (except Einstein) from all of the top universities did not go unnoticed. It was noticed by colleagues in the lesser sciences (chemistry and biology), as well as the few remaining physicists (who were particularly miffed), many of whom felt a bit bitter about missing out on whatever it is they were missing out on. Scientists are very thin skinned.

Rumors of a top secret military project circulated, and SOMEONE got Einstein drunk (he rarely drank so this did not take long) and Albert spilled the beans about the letter he'd written to Roosevelt, the Manhattan Project, and his distrust of Oppenheimer.

Word spread to some chemists, who told some biologists, who happened to be fans of a new comic called Captain America, and one of them said (probably while drunk, biologists are notoriously boozy) that with that sort of money they could make a real Captain America, and then SOMEONE else (also drunk) said they could make a whole army of them, and then SOMEONE else pointed out that most of the people in the army aren’t as noble as Steve Rogers, so after a bit of back and forth they agreed that a platoon was probably achievable. The America Platoon!

Now this was just drunk talk, and in a million parallel universes, it stopped there. But in this one universe, the idea took hold.

One of the scientists had some contacts who knew some people and eventually a letter was written to the President, which must have been convincing, because the President decided to take half the funding originally intended for the Manhattan Project and allocated it to what was now called the Queens Project, whose mission was to create a platoon of Super Soldiers to be named The America Platoon.

Details Needed: scientist names (real scientists), location, dates, a vaguely plausible scientific rationale for the project (using known science from the 1940s) with an unreasonably optimistic assessment of its likely success.

### 1943

Now everyone loves a good scientific rivalry story, and this one is epic. The race for the prize was now a triangular contest between the Nazi bomb project, the American bomb project, and the American super soldier project. And didn’t the physicists get their atoms in a twist about that! Especially Oppenheimer, who had a notoriously foul mouth and almost zero respect for biologists.

Details Needed: Oppenheimer's rant.

Which may have been justified, because not only was the Queens Project responsible for some of the most unethical human experiments ever conducted, it was also a hotbed of espionage. At least a dozen different scientists were at some stage involved in leaking secrets to the Nazi’s, the Soviets, and the Japanese.

Details Needed: who leaked what to who?

In due course, the world was in the grip of a new arms race to create Super Soldiers, with harrowing results. The Nazi’s focused on steroids and amphetamines. The Soviet program built on the work of Lysenko, which rejected genetics in favor of grafting weapons onto the body of peasants. The Japanese focused on robotics. And nobody knew what, if anything, the Chinese were up to (they were up to something).

Details Needed: all of these need to be fleshed out

* Nazi Super Soldier program
* Soviet Super Soldier program
* Japanese Super Soldier program
* Chinese Super Soldier program

Meanwhile, the Americans took a different approach. Inspired by the work of Henry Ford, and the scientific management methods of Taylor, the Queens Project set about the ambitious task of testing every single possible combination of known drug compounds (and some new ones they invented on the fly) on a group of human “volunteers” to see what happened.

What happened is a lot of people died, some in horrifying ways. Others were permanently damaged, also in horrifying ways. A few got some short-lived benefits (increased strength, psychedelic experiences, etc), but most were fairly fucked up by it all.

All of this took place in a top secret location where a lot of scientists are getting more sex than they had ever imagined possible. So they were understandably pretty keen to keep up the impression that progress was being made.

### 1944

As you’ve probably guessed, despite all the money and the experiments and occasionally not-horrifying results, they failed to make a super soldier. But being scientists, they lied about it (all scientists lie, just ask a Conservative pundit).

* First they lied about their test results to keep their funding flowing, believing they were going to crack it any day now.
* Then they lied about having succeeded, even though they hadn’t.
* And then they lied about being ready to demonstrate their success to the President, which they weren’t.

Meanwhile, top military brass, excited by the prospect of The America Platoon and the certainty of US Military Dominance for years to come, requested a team from the Training Film Division to produce a Newsreel so the American Public could be told of this latest triumph of American ingenuity.

Some thought this might be a bit premature, but others pointed out that they can always destroy the film if things go sour, and they won’t go sour anyway, because America has great scientists, and those great scientists have assured them that everything is going swimmingly.

Guess who gets tapped to write the script? Stanley Lieber and Theodor Seuss Geisel.

On arrival at the secret research facility, Stanley and Theodor quickly worked out that all was not as rosy as they were led to believe. Eventually SOMEONE came clean and tell them that the whole project is a terrible failure, and they don’t know what to do.

Details Needed: who fessed up?

#### The first super soldier film

When he found out there wasn’t going to be a real America Platoon, Stanly was briefly devastated (he was a true believer from the moment he heard about it), and then he got creative. He suggested they make a film using trick photography (Stan was a Buster Keaton fan)

“Fake it till you make it!” he said.

> I suspect Stanley genuinely believed that the scientists were close to a breakthrough, and was just trying to help. I do not believe for a second that he deliberately launched a massive government conspiracy that would last 80+ years. And he definitely didn't feel good about lying to the President.
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> I’m not 100% sure about adding Dr Seuss to this wicked web of deceit, but I do like the idea of him writing the early dialogue, and then the fake Super Soldiers having to talk in whimsical rhymes all the time:
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> *“I don’t like Nazi’s in the air, I don’t like Nazi’s over there. I think the Nazi’s all should die, I think I’ll go give that a try.”*
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In record time, biologists became stunt coordinators and chemists became special effects wizards and Stanley became a director and they produced a film showing soldiers performing amazing feats of strength, and endurance, and they all clapped at the premier, believing they really had saved the project.

The film was, by today's standards, laughably and unbelievably unrealistic.

Details Needed: How to create fake super soldiers using 1940's film techniques

It’s not entirely clear whether the top military brass really bought the bullshit, or just decided to run with it. Either way, the President believed the Queens Project was a triumph, and he authorized the deployment of Super Soldiers to Europe to take out the Nazis.

Details Needed: The chain of communication from the Queens Project, via several layers of military management, to the President

This of course created a new set of problems. But now they were balls deep in it, so they had to keep going. Work began on a new fake super soldier film. This one had to not just convince a small group of decision makers who were desperate to cover their own asses: it had to convince the whole world.

#### Operation: Erase Reagan

SOMEONE high up insisted that Ronald Reagan be involved.

> Clearly this person is both in the know, and a Reagan fan, but I don’t know much else about them. It may or may not be important. The point is, whoever it was didn’t think about the fact Reagan was somewhat famous.
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This set off a secondary project (with a smaller, but not small budget) to destroy every print of every Ronald Reagan film ever made. effectively putting Ronald Reagan the actor down the memory hole.

> Not everyone forgot. And not every reel of film was destroyed. This is important.
>
>

Details Needed: OPERATION: ERASE REAGAN (timeline, methods, successes & failures)

#### The second super soldier film

Several issues quickly became apparent:

1. If the Super Soldiers were real, they could wrap the war up quickly, and this might not happen in the real war;
2. They did not have access to Nazi uniforms which would be necessary to make the film realistic;
3. They were limited in their options for locations on which to film.

They worked around these problems of by creating a new enemy: the Red Barons (this was Stan's idea). These Nazi Super Soldiers wore an entirely different uniform with bright red with skulls painted on them. Because the Red Barons posed such a threat to regular US troops, the Super Soldiers must first focus their attention on these villains.

This also helped to explain why they didn’t just go after Hitler, because the Red Barons were also Hitler’s personal bodyguards.

Long story short, this is how Ronald Reagan became First Lieutenant America of the America Platoon! (They did briefly consider promoting him to Captain, but for reasons of military etiquette, and out of respect for the recently deceased chose to stick with the less catchy, but more accurate rank, given his role as a platoon leader).

Details Needed: Name and rank of other members of The America Platoon.

Details Needed: sample pages from the script (probably a newsreel), written by Stan Lee and Dr Suess, starring Ronald Reagan.

Details Needed: How and where to shoot a realistic war film in the USA during war time without anyone noticing.

### 1945

The film was a huge hit, even though a lot of people thought that the main guy looked awfully familiar, and some of them were certain that it was that actor Ronald Reagan who was in the film they saw but couldn’t remember the title. But this was quickly shot down with the help of a compliant war-time media who knew who the real enemy was.

Details Needed: OPERATION: ERASE REAGAN (continued)

People started to notice the similarities between Captain America comics, and the America Platoon.

This in turn triggered discussion about a third project to erase all memory of Captain America, but this was too hard because there are more prints of a comic than a film, and Captain America was more popular than Ronald Reagan. Then they realized that many people believed Captain America was real too, so they got Stanley to write a Death of Captain America storyline and the comic was the best seller ever. Reagan gave the eulogy at his funeral.

No one ever thought to ask why Captain America didn’t kill Hitler that first time they met (Captain America #1)

The film was also shown to US troops, who were relieved to hear that these men were on their side, although many wondered why nobody had seen them on any military bases. This later led to a morale boosting tour not dissimilar to a certain scene from Captain America: The First Avenger

> OK things start getting a bit meta now. In our Universe, Ronald Reagan played a role in selling war bonds. In Captain America: The First Avenger, Steve Rogers also promotes war bonds. In this story, Ronald Reagan *is* First Lieutenant America selling war bonds.
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Things got a bit trickier when the film was shown to British and other Allied troops, who found the premise a little more difficult to swallow.

> I am in no way suggesting that Americans are dumb, just more patriotic.
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#### Meanwhile in Germany

A single copy of the film fell into the hands of Joseph Goebbels, who admired the chutzpah (Probably not the word he used) of the American propaganda machine. You may be surprised to learn that Goebbels was a huge fan of Ronald Reagan, and he quickly identified the handsome First Lieutenant despite his disguise.

Goebbels and Hitler watched the film together while off their chops on methamphetamines, and they laughed themselves silly. It was a welcome relief given the state of the war at this point, and it gave them renewed hope that the Western Front was winnable. This didn’t change the fact that the Eastern Front was not, but they chose to ignore that for the moment. To their peril.

War ended in Europe and a new film was made explaining exactly how the Super Soldiers had done it. This upset some people: notably the brave US soldiers who actually fought in the war. And the Soviets, who actually won it, at a massive cost.

Details Needed: sample pages from the script

> Here’s my theory: The entire Cold War could have been avoided if the US had given credit where credit was due to the Soviet Union for their part in winning WW2. But the US Propaganda Machine told the world that America won the war, and the Soviet Union was immediately painted as the bad guy, and that pissed a whole lot of people off, not just in the immediate aftermath, but for decades to follow. A significant part of the animosity between the USA and USSR can be put down to lack of respect, which got under the skin of a whole lot of people (including Vladimir Putin).
>
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> If the Americans had been more humble, the Cold War would have been a series of peaceful negotiations, not a whole lot of dick swinging brinkmanship.
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> Or not, this theory could be total bullshit. But bullshit or not in our universe, it's true in the Hero Complex universe. Maybe.
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#### Back in America

People believed the Super Soldier story. Mostly Americans, but still, they believed. So more films were made, and more people believed. The Super Soldiers headed to the Pacific to finish the job.

Meanwhile, it was becoming increasingly apparent that someone would eventually have to tell the President the truth. This became increasingly apparent when FDR asked if the Super Soldier serum might cure his paralysis. They said it was dangerous, he insisted, and rather than come clean, they saw this as an opportunity to kill the President, and then tell the incoming President that it was all FDR’s idea from the start.

FDR was assassinated with a lethal injection by his own military. Harry S. Truman became President. No one had the courage to tell him the truth, so the Super Soldier lie continued.

Oh, and the USSR invaded Japan from the North.

### 1946

The year things got seriously confusing.

> You may have noticed that the war didn't end last year. Well that's because the Queens Project diverted funds from the Manhattan Project, which caused delays, which means the timeline really changes dramatically at this point.
> I'm basing a lot of the alternative history on this article.
>
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Japan was forced to divert troops away from the islands of the Pacific in order to defend its northern shores from the Soviet invasion. True to form, the USA took credit for this, rolling out another Super Soldier Newsreel showing the Reagan-led Super Troops liberating Asian villages and decimating Japanese forces. Filming was facilitated by the large population of Japanese Americans in internment camps in the USA.

This again raised the question: if our Super Soldiers are so unbeatable, why haven’t we won yet? So they invented another enemy: Japanese Robot Samurai. This had repercussions.

Details Needed: How to produce fake Japanese Robot Samurai V's US Super Soldier battle scenes using 1940's film techniques.

President Truman was still in the dark about the fake Super Soldiers and was starting to ask why the war wasn’t over yet. The military blamed the Japanese Robot Samurai, so FDR doubled down on funding for the Super Soldier program.

Meanwhile, top military brass were concerned that the Soviets were going to conquer Japan before they had a chance to. Technically still an ally, the Soviet Union was seen as a major threat to American plans to plunder Asia. So the President was told that intelligence had learned that the Soviets had soldiers who had their arms removed and replaced with arms amputated from bears, and bullet proof plates inserted in their chests, and that this posed a threat post war.

> When the newsreel film showing the Soviet Bear-Human hybrid soldiers was released, the American public demanded the right to bear arms.
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They requested more funding to expand the Super Soldier Program, so Reagan was paraded around in a series of short films telling everyone to buy even more war bonds. The extra funding was used to improve production facilities at the secret studio where all the Super Soldier films were being made. And some of it went on entertainment and office furniture and such. War is a racket.

Details Needed: the Super Soldier secret studio - location, facilities, etc.

More fake super soldier films were created, with even more super soldiers with even better abilities, fighting ever more terrifying enemies and always winning. But no one was ever better than Reagan. He was always the hero among heroes.

And the people fucking lapped it up!

> Again, this  is not to suggest in any way that Americans are stupid, simply that more money was spent convincing Americans that it was true.
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### 1947

Some people were asking questions. Like why was this war still going on? And how many fucking super soldiers do we need to win this damn thing?

Meanwhile, the Manhattan Project was still being funded (despite the protests from the Super Soldier program that their fantasy weapon was a waste of precious resources). Unfortunately they had failed to make a working atomic bomb. Taking a leaf from the Queens Project playbook, they decided to fake it.

A high level delegation was sent to Japan with an offer: surrender, or we’ll drop this mother-fucker of a bomb we’ve just invented. The Japanese called bullshit, because they’d already worked out that the Super Soldiers were bullshit, so they assumed this was a bluff as well.

And they counter-bluff that they have a massive robot that will eat the giant bomb, and the plane it came in on, and vomit it all the way to Washington (some of this may have been interpreted incorrectly). The Americans were fairly sure the Japanese were bluffing about the robot, but they also knew they were bluffing about the bomb so they went back home to reassess the situation. No agreement was reached.

#### Rebellion in the ranks

At this point in the process, the scientists of the Queens Project had been sidelined completely, with only a trickle of funds going into actual Super Soldier R&D. And they were miffed, but at the same time slightly relieved, because the guilt of performing horrific human experiments had weighed heavily on some of them.

The Manhattan Project scientists were also miffed, because they now knew about the fake Super Soldiers (scientists are notoriously gossipy), and were convinced that if they'd had all the money, they would have succeeded and could have ended the war 5 years ago, saving countless lives (physicists always over-estimate their abilities).

This is where the Manhattan Project and the Queens Project unite. The two groups of scientists put aside their philosophical differences, and united behind the common cause: ending the bullshit. (It’s not clear how they managed to collude, given the tight security at each of their facilities, and the risk of being made dead if caught. But scientists are clever and occasionally have integrity.)

The scientists blackmailed the US military. They signed a letter stated that evidence of the Super Soldier fraud already exists in the hands of people outside the Hero Complex (as they had begun to call it). And that the evidence would be released to the public if their demands were not met:

1. An immediate end to the war.
2. An immediate end to the super soldier hoax.
3. Tenure positions for all scientists involved.
4. An immediate end to all atomic bomb research.

They were bluffing (there was no leaked evidence, that would have been suicide). And the bluff worked, their demands were accepted (except for the not making any more bombs part, which was OK because it kept the entire Manhattan Project team employed for another 18 months).

The President agreed to make a propaganda film about what would happen if a bomb was used. The President would then present this to the Japanese Emperor personally.

Hirohito laughed at the poor quality of the special effects. He explained that the Japanese would not fall for such American rubbish, because their production standards were already much higher. He then showed a movie of a giant robot fighting a giant monster that was very convincing.

Then to everyone’s surprise, the Emperor agreed to a full surrender if the Americans were willing to produce a better quality film. They hired Orson Welles and Akira Kurosawa to co-direct a fake nuclear attack event in Hiroshima.

> The reasoning behind this is simple: Hirohito needed a reason to surrender, or else he looked weak.
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The Welles/Kurosawa live event did an amazing job of approximating the devastating impact of a nuclear bomb, given that they had no real examples to work from.

> This may become part of the back story of the Manga edition of The Hero Complex, which (if told) will tell the story of fake Superheroes from a Japanese perspective, with a cross-over event somewhere in the main story linking the two together, involving American (fake) Superheroes teaming up with giant Japanese (fake) human controlled Robots to defeat enormous (fake) dinosaur sea monsters. It's a triumph of international cooperation.
>
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Details Needed: sample news articles and historical reports about the end of of WW2, the Japanese surrender,

See Also: Japanese Hero Complex

### The Rest of the Forties

Victory celebrations involving public appearances by Super Soldiers become incredibly popular. Some cracks appear in the story, which are covered up.

The President is finally told the truth. He is not happy about this, and stabs one of the generals responsible. In his defense, the General was wearing a dress sword, and the President expected the General to know how to use it. Apparently he did not.

It was agreed that exposing the truth now would be a bad idea, what with the economy and all. So they decided to quietly drop Superheroes from the public conversation. And silence anyone who asks too many questions.

But the public asked too many questions, and you can’t silence all of them. They wanted to know where the Super Soldiers had gone. They wanted to know why they weren’t helping to rebuild our country? What with all their superpowers and all. I bet they could plow a field in no time. Without a tractor. Those things are expensive.

Others suggested that Super Soldiers could be put to work in the mines. Big strong men would do well down there.

And one particularly bright spark calculated that if all the known super soldiers were strapped to a treadmill for 18 hours a day, they could produce enough electricity to power half of New York. Without greenhouse emissions.

When asked about these greenhouse emissions, the scientist wove a fanciful tale of future woe if we don’t stop using fossil fuels like oil. This did not go down well with the assembled crowd, but he got out alive. And vowed to get his revenge.

In order to give the appearance of doing something to address the issue of what to do with Super Soldiers in times of peace, the Bureau of Superhuman Affairs was created. This had repercussions.

The Baby Boom began. This also had repercussions.

Meanwhile in the Hero Complex, everyone laid low while they waited to see if there was going to be any fall out. There wasn't.

## REAL HISTORY

Details Needed: relevant real world historical events.

## REFERENCES

1. ↑ https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/einstein-szilard-letter-1939
2. ↑ This one?: https://www.marvel.com/comics/issue/7856/captain\_america\_comics\_1941\_16
3. ↑ https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/steroids-other-appearance-performance-enhancing-drugs-apeds/what-history-anabolic-steroid-use
4. ↑ https://time.com/5752114/nazi-military-drugs/
5. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
6. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese\_robotics#History
7. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific\_management
8. ↑ This section will be based on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth:\_Red,\_White\_%26\_Black
9. ↑ So much nerd sex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan\_(TV\_series)
10. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buster\_Keaton
11. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory\_hole
12. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red\_Skull
13. ↑ https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2015/fall/united-newsreels.html
14. ↑ https://www.marvel.com/comics/issue/7849/captain\_america\_comics\_1941\_1
15. ↑ https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Captain\_America%27s\_USO\_Show
16. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald\_Reagan#Military\_service
17. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph\_Goebbels
18. ↑ British intelligence, American steel, Russian blood...

http://www.fallen.io/ww2/
19. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry\_S.\_Truman#Presidency\_(1945%E2%80%931953)
20. ↑ https://www.history.co.uk/article/what-if-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-never-happened
21. ↑ https://www.penguin.com.au/books/they-called-us-enemy-9781603094504
22. ↑ Here's a document claiming that all nuclear weapons are fake (PDF) http://mileswmathis.com/trinity.pdf
23. ↑ https://www.lenntech.com/greenhouse-effect/global-warming-history.htm#ixzz7JpE7w9hn

*In the 1940's there were developments in infrared spectroscopy for measuring long-wave radiation. At that time it was proven that increasing the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide resulted in more absorption of infrared radiation. It was also discovered that water vapor absorbed totally different types of radiation than carbon dioxide. Gilbert Plass summarized these results in 1955. He concluded that adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere would intercept infrared radiation that is otherwise lost to space, warming the earth.*

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