Operation Red Herring (Countryhumans Alternate History)

Chapter 26

Canada was terrified.

That bit wasn't anything new per say, as he had felt scared many times in his life, and the feeling had become very common since the start of the war. However, this time the terror did not come from bombs or fire- it came from a man in a Ushanka, whom he was waiting to be allowed to see.

The USSR.

Canada hadn't seen him in years, but vividly remembered how intimidating the man was. He was taller than Canada (which made the Canadian a bit uneasy, as he was used to being the tallest in almost any room he was in), and had way more mass to him. While he was built like a brick wall, Canada was more akin to a random dead twig someone decided to stick upright into the ground.

He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his suit, shifting slightly in his seat. He had been meaning to have this meeting for months, as he and the other allies had already spoken with other neutral countries about support. It had gone fairly well, with Ireland and Portugal agreeing to send medical supplies and food, Sweden and Switzerland both agreeing to act as safe havens both for those fleeing the Axis, and for the Allies as they tried to travel through war-torn Europe, Spain agreeing to send what funding he could, and Turkey offering the same service as Sweden and Switzerland should they need to access Africa. But it had been extremely difficult to make this meeting happen with the USSR. For one, it had been literal hell trying to fly into Moscow without drawing the attention of the Axis, as most of the area surrounding the USSR was occupied by them. He couldn't land at the Allies' base as it was currently in Greece, which was not only a long way from Russia, but was already on the verge of being forced to move again as the Italian forces continued trying to fight their way through the country. He ended up having to fly into Sweden (he would have flown into Denmark, but it was conquered by the Axis in mid-May), try to sneak through a sliver of Finland and then enter the Soviet Union by land. This was the same reason why trying to get a letter to the Soviet Union was nearly impossible- there were so many chances of it being intercepted.

He sighed, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment in an attempt to soothe the dull ache in his head. Canada was so tired. Everything had been getting harder and harder to pull off, and he was flat out exhausted from trying to run everything. Not to mention the changes he made back in his own country were also taking a toll on him. Granted, it was working. They were producing weapons, and Canada's economy was becoming more and more prosperous. However, he wasn't exactly proud of the means he used to achieve this.

Canada had realized very quickly after beginning the plan that it was going to be very tricky for him to copy what America had done. For one, she already had the factories set up from the Industrial Revolution. However, that wasn't his main issue. Factories could be built fairly quickly. The problem was getting the work-force he needed. America's population was substantially bigger than his, with her having over 100,000,000 people, whilst he had about 11,000,000. Not to mention that fact that he had men off actually fighting in the war, which shaved even more off of that number. So, he needed to figure out how to get more people into these factories. The first thing he did was to pump out huge amounts of propaganda promoting women in the workplace. Forget being a housewife, according to these posters, real women worked over 10 hours a day in a factory to save their husbands' hides.

The over ten hours a day bit wasn't an exaggeration either. People were working an ungodly amount of hours to produce weapons for the cause- even against their will at times....

That was where things began to get dicey morality wise. Because in order to feasibly accomplish his goal of supplying the Allies with the same amount of weapons as America, he had to modify quite a few of his laws concerning labor (he liked to think of it as modifying, but even he knew that they were practically non-existent at this point). Bosses could (and were often encouraged to) strong-arm these people into working longer shifts in the name of the war effort, with their job being threatened if they did not comply.