1945

New Year 1945 - Hitler dead
or occluded, Dr Goerdeler’s
government savagely executed
after a brief civil war. Absurder

to believe decapitation would end
the war, once the July 20 plotters
tried to treat, than SS would not render
Party, the Oberkommando, Flotte

and Luftwaffe their minions, when planes
and ships were not to be had; so sailors
and airmen Kulturkampfed down streets and lanes.
The success of that Germany’s failure,

no other Germany would be - firestorms
burned a phoenix never to be reborn.

Woodford Halse - 27 March 2026

This poem figures a dystopia even harder, than the hard end of National Socialism really was.

As it was, several leading National Socialists attempted a run on the bank, and to divide the Allies, and many ran for cover, even when there were fewer opportunities to do so, than there are now for the IRGC, who have all of Eurasia to fall back into.

Debellatio requires the putting to death of a legitimate hostile government, the prevention of usurpers and pretenders, and the ability to replace the former administration. As the Laputans found out in Gulliver’s Travels, this could not be done by aerial or fractal bombardment. It requires a monopoly of political space in the defeated polity, or else the opportunity for a people to take back their government to themselves, so as to reassign and redesign it.