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April 10, 2026
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"[opening narration] It has been 20 years since the Second World War ended with the failure of the Allied invasion in Normandy. A triumphant Hitler declared victory over Europe and the British Empire. The United States withdrew from the conflict, listening to those like Charles Lindbergh, who had argued against a war with Germany. In the East, only the Russians fought on in a bitter guerrilla war. American efforts turned to retribution for Pearl Harbor. That came in the summer of 1945, with victory over Japan. By then, American General Eisenhower returned to the United States and a humiliating retirement. In 1947, King Edward and Queen Wallis assumed the British throne. Winston Churchill, who had barely escaped with his life after Normandy, died in exile in Canada in May 1953. In the years after the war, country after country of the old Europe had become part of the vast empire of Germania. The Fuhrer's architect, Albert Speer, built a monument to the Thousand-Year Reich. Germania's capital, Berlin, became a Nazi showplace. The SS became a peacetime police force, patrolling clean, orderly streets. As the '50s came to a close, Hitler was able to put a more civilized face on the Greater Reich, but news continued to be tightly controlled. The '60s began with the war with the Soviet Union still dragging on. Hitler desperately needed to conclude a formal peace with the United States and forge an alliance against the Russians, still led by the 85-year-old Joseph Stalin. Hitler saw signs of hope in late 1960 with the election of a new President of the United States. The Fuhrer believed with President Joseph Kennedy Sr. in office, at last there would be someone with whom a deal can be struck. Now in 1964, for the first time in 20 years, Germania's borders are being opened to the Americans. The world press is being invited to cover the Fuhrer's birthday celebration on April 20. There are rumors that President Kennedy will attend a Germanian-American summit conference. An alliance with America would ensure Germania's invulnerability... but there are other more persistent rumors that could threaten Hitler's plans. There were stories that something terrible happened in Germany during the war. That the official Nazi story that Jews and other minorities were relocated to the East, wasn't true. There are also rumors that in the Greater Reich, terrible things are still happening. Television, radio, and newspapers are all controlled by the powerful Ministry of Information. Nobody, in a new Berlin, dares to ask awkward questions."
"[closing narration] I used to wonder why she never got out while she had the chance. But she and my father the first to see those images of horror. The first to know, and that somehow linked them forever with each other and the victims. So she sat on until the Gestapo came for her. Everything has changed. Without the American alliance, Hitler's Reich collapsed. Of course, there are some who say it never happened. Those who look and do not see. The years since have been difficult ones, but my father would be proud to know that no longer are we all living in the house of the blind."
"It's 1964. What if Hitler had won the war?"
"Rutger Hauer - SS-Sturmbannführer Xavier March"
"Miranda Richardson - Charlie Maguire"
"Peter Vaughan - SS-Oberstgruppenführer Artur Nebe"
"Michael Kitchen - SS-Untersturmführer Max Jäger"
"Jean Marsh - Anna von Hagen"
"John Woodvine - Franz Luther"
"John Shrapnel - General Globus aka Odilo Globocnik"
"Clive Russell - Krebs"
"Clare Higgins - Klara"
Young though he was, his radiant energy produced such an impression of absolute reliability that Hedgewar made him the first sarkaryavah, or general secretary, of the RSS.
- Gopal Mukund Huddar
Largely because of the influence of communists in London, Huddar's conversion into an enthusiastic supporter of the fight against fascism was quick and smooth. The ease with which he crossed from one worldview to another betrays the fact that he had not properly understood the world he had grown in.
Huddar would have been 101 now had he been alive. But then centenaries are not celebrated only to register how old so and so would have been and when. They are usually celebrated to explore how much poorer our lives are without them. Maharashtrian public life is poorer without him. It is poorer for not having made the effort to recall an extraordinary life.
I regret I was not there to listen to Balaji Huddar's speech [...] No matter how many times you listen to him, his speeches are so delightful that you feel like listening to them again and again.
By the time he came out of Franco's prison, Huddar had relinquished many of his old ideas. He displayed a worldview completely different from that of the RSS, even though he continued to remain deferential to Hedgewar and maintained a personal relationship with him.