The Red Napoleon
 Dust-jacket from the first edition | |
| Author | Floyd Gibbons |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Alternate history |
| Publisher | Cape & Smith |
Publication date | 1929 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 223 pp |
The Red Napoleon (1929) is a novel by Floyd Gibbons predicting a Soviet conquest of Europe and invasion of America. The novel contains strong racial overtones such as expressed fear of the yellow peril and of inter-racial breeding. However, the characters expressing these views are exposed in the text as being bigoted and ill-informed, as is one of the main U.S. character's views of the Soviet Union's free-love-but-with-male-accountability laws.
The Red Napoleon was published in 1929 and projects the next few years. In it, Joseph Stalin is killed by an assassin in 1932. A Red Army leader takes over and starts a massive military buildup based on the immense human population of Asia. In 1933 the Red Army invades Poland."[1] After conquering all of Europe later that same year, Red Napoleon's massive multi-racial army attempts to invade the U.S. but is repelled through canny use of the U.S.'s comparatively-slender military resources, including airfields in Cuba, at the time of writing under U.S. control, and through grit and determination. At the book's end the narrator, a newspaperman like the author himself, interviews the imprisoned Red Napoleon, who defends his policy of non-racialism, of inter-mixing the races of the world, saying it must be the way of the future.
References
Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. p. 126.
External links
- "Mongol Hordes Take Manhattan: Before there was Red Dawn, there was Red Napoleon" by J.M. Berger, Foreign Policy November 21, 2012