Dark Earth: 1947

Quite correct. It was supported by the Allies by sea, but the defences made for a very static front throughout the war.

Some notes:

- In all cases of 'non-fictional' articles, check the authors for a bit of extra fun and food for thought.

- Vlad Tepes slaying Mahomet II in the Night Attack
- The Prince of Darkness being a classical composer popular in 18th century Vienna?
- Dracula has a very nasty wartime record
- He effectively invents the smiley face picture, albeit with fangs
- Nazi theft of relics plays into the previous storyline on the Shroud of Turin in Castle Mordenheim
- Among others, Dracula fears Sherlock Holmes and the Doctor.
- The Duc de Richleau is from The Devil Rides Out, Captain Kronos is from Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter and Solomon Kane is from Robert E. Howard's works.

- Digenes Akritas and Robin Hood being historical figures
- The Persian dragon eggs prove instrumental to Byzantium's survival
- The First Crusade has a larger force drawn from all over Western Europe
- Friedrich Barbarossa not drowning and a coordinated Third Crusade, culminating in the recapture of Jerusalem and the
- The Fourth Crusade not going for Constantinople, but retaking Jerusalem
- Defeat of the Mongol attempt at an invasion of Europe
- The War of the Wizards and the Dragonstrike...
- Repulse of the Mongol siege of Baghdad, with the accompanying lack of the same level of destruction of the Mesopotamian irrigation system.
- The Templars settle on Cyprus, at least temporarily. They are not suppressed.
- The Fall of Athens acts as one trigger of the Renaissance
- Henry VIII going on Crusade and the Royal Navy having some small Mediterranean role since the 1200s
- England playing a major role in the Thirty Years' War/no English Civil War
- Establishment of a loose Italian Confederation post 1763
- Constantinople serving as a hotbed of wartime intrigue
- The mention of Field Marshal Edmund Blackadder, 1st Earl Blackadder of Athens, VC and Bar, GCB, CBE, MVO, KCIE, MC, the hero of Mboto Gorge and Arras and GOC-in-C of Seventh Army. The Allies invade the Peloponnese in late 1943 after the clearance of the Aegean and then push up through Greece and Macedonia into Thrace and Yugoslavia. This results in a southern push into Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary similar to the Great War breakout from Salonika. It is tough, costly fighting that strains Allied logistics, but it comes with a great reward.

The broad consequences are quite huge, as the British meet the Soviets on the Romanian-Bulgarian border along the Danube and the Allies manage to roll through Austria-Hungary in a pincer formation to meet the Red Army in the Carpathians. Without the invasion of Greece, the thrust up through the Ljubljana Gap would have lacked the superiority to push through German defences onto the Hungarian Plain; the Soviets would have been able to add Bulgaria, Austria-Hungary and Yugoslavia to Poland and Romania, not to mention being better positioned to occupy more of Germany. The other major contributing reason is something of a backhand strategy in 1943 on the Eastern Front by Germany and Austria-Hungary.
- Herr Otto Flick and the Fallen Madonna are from 'Allo 'Allo
- The Agapos defection is a major event

- British control of Egypt proceeds rather earlier.
- The RFC developed in the 16th century and finally received its modern name in the Napoleonic era.
- Joseph Chamberlain's period as PM is notable for a lot more than Zionist settlements at El-Arish.
- Baluchistan and Hormuz are the furthest western extent of British India. Abadan's annexation proves useful enough when oil becomes a factor, but was primarily chosen to control merchant traffic in Shatt-al-Arab.
- There is substantial oil on-shore production in the British Isles, which has some later flow-on effects.
- Allenby is transferred to Egypt in April 1915 after some initial success in France.
- The London Declaration is different from the Balfour Declaration in a couple of ways.
- Both Britain and France have interests in Syria, with the British eventually winning out due to issues of the broader World War, economics, trade offs elsewhere in the world and the Lebanon.
- Lawrence has rather faster success in Arabia due to his various possessions.
- Megiddo is a big, big victory and is studied and hailed as such postwar.
- The Faisal-Weizmann Agreement has a little bit more success given the Arab control of Syria. It isn't a panacea and later peters out over various administrivia.
- The Royal Legion of Frontiersmen becomes a de facto unit of the British Army and sees a lot of action in the Middle East, allowing regular forces to be kept at minimal levels.
- The Handley-Page V/2500 is a mid 1920s 4 engine heavy bomber with a range of 2000 miles and a heavy bombload. It served until replaced by the Vickers Wellington in the mid 1930s.
- The beagle is of course Snoopy, who did shoot down the Red Baron.
- The Suez to Singapore railway is quite significant, as is oil in the Sinai.
- British control of Arabian oil proves very useful and strategic later down the line.
- Israel and specifically the refinery at Haifa is the key logistic node for the heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force in the Middle East.
- Postwar, the makings of an Arab League emerge and nationalism begins to raise its head. The Soviets are keen to expand into the area in search of a warm-water port, oil and to control the Middle East. The Americans want to supplant the British as the regional hegemon to stop this, as well as serving their own commercial interests; the OSS/CIA and State Department favour certain factions in the area as modernizers and the best long term option. Britain is pushed hard, but the feeling in London and Delhi is that it needs to play to win. The wildcard is elements of the French government and establishment, who are keen on trying to build up their own influence in the area as a reliable partner and alternative to the British. Then there are the German exiles seeking safety and employment.

- Albert Palmer's mate Peter 'Tucker' Jenkins is the father of a future student of Grange Hill Secondary Modern.
- Oxford was not hit by Nazi bombing raids during the war due to a top secret magical air defence spell based around an aestel, or ancient enchanted relic from the age of Alfred the Great. This was employed in a few locations of key strategic importance, with substantial work being carried out in Oxford, Cambridge, Stonehenge, Bletchley and several other secret locations. Without going into extensive details that will come out in the wash later on, there was something of an arcane Manhattan Project analogue going on. This is still heavily, heavily classified postwar.
- The cold weather is just an unfortunately timed natural occurrence. Nazi Germany played around with a few forces that were far beyond mortal ken and the clean-up/repair process on the fabric of reality itself will take many years. The curse of Castle Mordenheim is only one example; there are many other pockets of nastiness across Europe, a strange monster waking from its sleep in a ruined city at the bottom of the South Pacific, a massive disruption to global climate, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, a plague of undead and literal plagues, in addition to Werwolf. 1947 is when the first signs of abatement occur; when I rewrite the extended 1946 storyline, there will be a fair bit more on this.
- Thomas 'Tommy' Adams featured in an earlier 1947 story on ASW patrol in the Atlantic.
- The Holy Grail isn't physically at Camelot...
- Wonka is one of the four major British confectionery companies.
- Pathé News operates hand-in-hand with the Ministry of Information in what amounts to a continuation of wartime propaganda. This will play into later developments of public opinion and certain movements.
- Ostia has a large harbour and serves as a literal port of Rome
- There are plenty of references to the wartime record of the battleships and cruisers of the fleet, but less on the carriers. This is partly due to the different wartime experience of the Royal Navy, but also as a means of emphasizing areas of British success rather than dwelling on the greater American achievements in carrier warfare.
- The Royal Navy does make several high profile fleet visits in 1946 and 1947 in great strength as well as a series of pointed exercises to deter Soviet moves and to demonstrate their strength. This is extremely expensive and something of a bluff - it aimed and largely succeeded in giving the impression that British strength was greater than what it actually was. France was still trying to recover, Spain, Italy and Austria-Hungary were even worse off, Germany was in detention, the United States had its own interests and desires and the Soviet Union was seen as the unfriendly neighbour measuring up your house for his furniture. Britain spent the initial postwar years trying to put in place a postwar order on its own terms with Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Greece, Turkey and the Balkan states. They encounter varying degrees of success. The next step is to try and promote a general European alliance against the Soviet Union under British and American protection...
- Johnny Canuck is a much wider-known figure, featuring in comics, films and radio plays across the British Empire. Canadian Westerns are quite the popular genre.
- Helen Huddleson is the last unfinished novel of Amanda McKittrick Ros, an author famed for her extraordinarily purple prose, with characters including Lord Raspberry, Cherry Raspberry, Sir Peter Plum, Christopher Currant, the Earl of Grape and Madame Pear.
- The demonic attack is very much as Tolkien describes it - a moth to the flame.
- Catweazle's and Merry's lines are based on Tom Bombadil's song of banishment used against the Barrow wight in Fellowship of the Ring. The Quenya lines roughly translate to "Get back to the shadow! In the name of Christ, I banish/destroy thee!"; my Quenya is rather rusty.
- Annunakei are something that will come out in the wash.

Why is C worse than G.

Was thinking of a other C, but do not know if he is around in this time period.

The Cloverfield Monster, but he is not associated with a sunken city in the Pacific.

And Cthulhu is before mine memory system.