In the mid 18th Century, the American Continental Congress (while fighting English occupation) had decided by one vote to make English rather than German the new nation's language. Had the Continental Congress voted Deutsch (German) the national language, Amerikanische studenten (American students) would be studying Göethe and Schiller instead of Shakespeare. Die musik (the music) of Bach, Haydn, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Strauss and Wagner would be considered national treasures.
That one vote in the Continental Congress had forever changed the world! Our American forefathers linked America to England in ways that could never have been foreseen or even imagined possible in those early years. Had they voted German the new nation's language, the course of history could have been much different and the cataclysmic events that befell all the people of the world in the middle of the Twentieth Century might never have occurred.
The following story changes history from what actually happened to what could have happened had America voted to speak German when it won its freedom from England. The author intertwines fiction with fact as he follows the course of nations and the footprints of a German youth through the latter part of the Nineteenth into the middle of the Twentieth Century.
The story begins in Bühl, Baden, Germany, a small town south of the former imperial city of Wiesbaden, close-by the beautiful Schwartzwald (Black Forest), located in Southwestern Germany, not far from the Rhein River and France. This is a story of a young man's attempt to escape the horrors of war and the monarchy; and his triumph over sadness and tragedy and his subsequent joy when Germanic culture and humanity saves Western Civilization and begins to lead the entire world to peace and prosperity. It is a peek at the future from the past as to what could have been and could still be.