Empire and Tyranny: The Rutherford Chronicles Part 3

Peace and prosperity returned to Europe and the British Empire for a while. Joe came back from the Great War, a broken man. His wife nursed him back to strength, and he returned to his pre-war job in the shipyards. Life returned to normal for a while for the Rutherfords. But the stock market crashes of 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s caused new misery as millions lost their jobs. In this third part of The Rutherford Chronicles, you will share the anguish of these troubled times as the world slides into yet another World War. The impoverished, unemployed North East workers and their families, including Joe’s, migrated south for a new life in a burgeoning South.

In Germany, Adolf Hitler was on the rise and leading his people, hungry and disillusioned by the Great War’s loss, out of the Depression and into a rapid expansion of Germany’s economy, territory and military. Not long after, World War Two began. Squadrons of German planes relentlessly bombed London and its surrounds, threatening the lives of so many. Part 3 of the series follows a Canadian Artillery soldier’s arrival with the First Canadian Division for duty in South England. Our new hero, George, meets and marries one of Joe’s daughters, and they have a son. You will follow George for a further two years in the Italian Campaign. British and American troops push the Germans back up the peninsula, followed by the march north through France and Belgium to the border between the Netherlands and Germany in the last days of the war. The battles won, the Army sent George’s wife and son and thousands of other Canadian and American war brides to their husbands’ home countries to await the victorious returnees.