If you’ve read part four of my alternative history series “The Greater German Reich”, you will know that Donald Trump made an appearance towards the very end. I was accused of flinging him into the book as a cheap gimmick, and you know what, maybe I did. I figured that around 2000, in my timeline, if Germany went to war against the US, launching a surprise attack, and with the Americans having an incumbent president who was facing serious mental health issues that his administration found worrisome, it might be that they would plot to have him replaced. And in America, it seems that money is the way to win the presidential election.

I must admit that – in real life – I enjoyed Trump’s bluster and patriotism (American politics, for a Briton, will always be an enjoyable drama to watch – far removed from reality, even more so than my novels), and I wondered how he would prosecute a war against Nazi Germany at the start of the 21st century, a man who rarely took advice on board and almost always spoke first without thinking of the ultimate consequences.

There is, however, a significant problem in putting a real person inside a fictional novel. Libel. Now, if one of my characters is a dead president, that’s fine. In the UK, dead people can’t sue you for libel. But Trump, if he chose to, could decide to sue me. I’ll admit that it seems that’s the way he chooses to deal with dissent. But I’m insignificant, and the interpretation of Trump that I presented, whilst not wholly flattering, was not a character assassination. Certainly, it wasn’t the character assassination that a left-wing read would’ve liked me to have written. I suppose I was intrigued by the notion that a right-wing politician, whom half of his electorate have condemned as a racist, should be chosen to fight a war against history’s most extreme right-wing regime. Nazi Germany. Would those who hated Trump get behind him, much like people got behind Churchill in the UK, in spite of the fact that Churchill was alleged to have been a right-wing antisemitic himself? Do people become more nationalist when their country is at war? Certainly, I think in an existential war with a very real enemy, there are few anti-war protestors who would be taken seriously in their own country. Let’s disregard the myriad proxy wars both the UK and the US have been involved in over the last couple of decades. None of them presented an existential threat.

Maybe I was trying to get people to think about how they choose their leaders, and that not every leader is good for every situation. In my alternative history timeline, for example, against a belligerent Nazi Germany, the only world’s superpower, in a cold war with the US, and which has no desire for peace and which controls all of Europe and Russia, most of Africa and the Middle East, is allied with a powerful Japan, has non-aggressive pacts with India and all of the countries in South America, would an American choose a) Barack Obama, b) Donald Trump or c) Joe Biden to lead their defence? I imagine most people would choose Obama, but really? I mean, really, would you? The fanatical right-wing neo-fascists in my Greater German Reich are not interested in peace. They’re not interested in laying down their arms and having a game of football in the no man’s land between the trenches. They want to enslave you, and if you won’t let them do that, then they want to kill you. Would Obama be the right choice to fight that war? Or would a nationalist, right-wing neo-con be the better choice? Or would that person sue for peace because deep down he is a fascist? Maybe that’s what my left-wing readers – if there are actually any of them left – would hope, just so they could say, “I told you so!”

Hmm. Well, I haven’t decided myself yet. I’m not even sure that Trump – my Donald Trump – will survive to the end of book 5. I’m already worried that I shouldn’t have included him. But actually, you know what? I had already decided that Trump was going to promise his military that he would provide them with space marines, and that was before the real Trump made that ridiculous announcement about the creation of Space Force, so I suppose no-one can argue that my Trump is libellous. I hope.

Lebensraum II: Operation Eisbär is pencilled in for a late 2023 publication, so keep watching this space.