You can tell at once this is a newsreel, such as those produced by British Movietone News, British Paramount, Gaumont British, or Pathé News. The headlines were delivered over orchestra recordings, so rhythm and alliteration were as much a part of the news delivery as the voice and the words. The newsreel usually played before the main feature.

Maximan is presumably leading a section of Commandos. Despite Maximan’s powers, spectacle and appearance is very much the name of the game in World War II as it is now. All sides were only too aware of the power of the movie camera in propaganda.

The tank in question is a Tiger II, so that’ll weigh some 70,000kg. They were first used in combat against the Allied invasion of Normandy, in 11 July 1944, helping us to place this footage.

The planes are Avro Lancaster Bombers, as used in Operation Chastise, as immortalised in the film The Dam Busters . Eric Coates’s Dam Busters March is about 7 years too late to play here, but let’s imagine it, anyway. The formation here is purely a piece for the cameras. Rather than vic formations, with a leader and two trailing wingmen, or a box formation, the pilots are ordered to fly in the shape of a letter M, for Maximan.

There was no UK #1 at the time; no hit parade. If the BBC made use of their broadcast monopoly to list the top-selling singles, then recording companies would plug their records far more aggressively. Consider also that most materials, shellac included, were rationed. Music sales were derived more from sheet music; what made a song a hit was down to what people played rather than what they listened to.

The Battle of Berlin ran from 16 April to 2 May 1945, so this version of the Second World War is running a little fast. This could well be down to the deployment of superhumans, although as yet only two are in action: Masterman and Maximan. However, if the fighting has reached Berlin by December 21, it could indeed be all over by Christmas.

The vehicle in the background is a Sturmgeschutz III assault gun.

There are no sound effects, little visible activity save smoke in the air and the clouds of dust on the ground. Much of Berlin has been reduced to rubble.

We can’t see just how badly Masterman has beaten Maximan yet, but he’s down…

In Prog 534, the week before this episode first saw print, there was an advert in 2000AD, showing Masterman and Maximan squaring up. “In World War II there was Masterman and Maximan… in the ‘60s there was Task force UK and Cloud Nine… now, in the ‘80s there is ZENITH and Masterman is BACK!” Not necessarily implying that Maximan beat Masterman, but that there was a fight, the kind of once-in-a-lifetime battle between supermen representing freedom and tyranny.

Maximan expects to die. Unsurprisingly, in addition to being this ideal British soldier, stiff upper lip, not about to shirk from his duty, death before dishonour, William Whitlock was probably C of E.

The term ‘Englander’ is largely an affectation for Masterman. He is, after all, Iok Sotot, one of the Lloigor; the Second World War for him is nothing more than a battle between nations of ants; some who support and worship him; others who do not. It just amuses him to be German for the moment. Unless that’s some last artefact of personality left over from the body’s original owner.

Whether or not there is a God notwithstanding, the irony of Masterman’s statement is highlighted by the following page-turn reveal.

In a way, this is the first oblique reference to directions beyond our conventional up-down, left-right, back-forth axes. Religion tends to refer to Heaven as existing in the heights, and Hell as in the depths. If such realms exist, references to the conventional three dimensions scarcely seem adequate. Space probes have gone as far from Earth’s orbit – as far ‘up’ as one can go as makes sense to anyone on Earth – to the point where they’re no longer up but out. By studying seismic waves, the composition of meteorites, and the fluctuations of gravity and magnetic fields, we have pretty good working definitions of the density and composition of our planet, right down to the core – the very centre of the planet’s gravity and as far down was we can go. We can look up or down as far as we like, but neither direction has yielded a Heaven or Hell. Such locations are the province of more exotic directions.

Of course, back to Berlin in 1944, there is someone ‘up there’. It’s just the someone has a name, a rank, and service number, and the ‘up’ is more literal than Maximan or Masterman would have believed.

We soon come to understand, from Zenith Interlude One: Whitlock (Prog 558) that Whitlock had a prophetic dream. He is quite convinced that God is coming to set things right. Or that, at any rate, this particular chapter is going to end and Masterman will not like it.

The plane delivering the instrument packages is a C-47 Skytrain. These are intended to record the effects of the other package being delivered by the lead aircraft: a B-29 Superfortress.

In our world, the pilot of Enola Gay, which dropped the A-bomb codenamed ‘Little Boy’ on Hiroshima was Colonel Paul Tibbets. Bockscar, which dropped ‘Fat Man’ on Nagasaki, was flown by Major Charles W. Sweeney. I can’t tell if this is Colonel Tibbets here, Yeowell’s shading doesn’t seem to show Sweeney’s cleft chin, but it wouldn’t be too great a stretch to place him here. A mission like this would require an experienced pilot, and Tibbets was particularly experienced with the B-29.

Knowledge of the weapon’s capabilties was issued on a need-to-know basis. It was an ‘atom’ bomb, so naturally its payload was ‘atoms.’ The fact that it consisted of a ‘bullet’ of Uranium-235 being fired into a mass of the same material, causing a chain reaction as atoms split and released energy and caused other atoms to split was of secondary concern to them than the fact that it was a bomb that made a particularly big bang: they were airmen, not particle physicists.

How many of their guys were down there? Just a few thousand, as we’ll see in Interlude 1: Whitlock.

British readers might snort at the irony of hearing that from an American, but… once upon a time, long long ago… let’s be fair to ‘em. When displays of glee and exaltation are forthcoming, they usually come from politicians and civilians, especially those who’ve never fought a day in their lives and have precious little grasp of the gravity of the situation.

Of course, who could have guessed just what forces we were unleashing there?

Never mind. I only knew Tibbets’s and Sweeney’s names because I looked them up. And we haven’t got an actual name for this pilot. What he does might go down in history, but his own place isn’t quite so assured. In later life he might see the benefit in that.

I don’t know if this is the actual control used to release the bomb, but it sure as hell wouldn’t be mounted on the yoke, where a bit of turbulence could jolt the pilot onto the button.

The Enola Gay dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima from an altitude of 31,060 feet.

If you’re gonna rant, get as many clichés in as you can. But instead of David lamenting over how Saul and Jonathan are overthrown, Masterman is exalting over the bootleg superhuman project that resulted in Maximan. Another interesting points, the irony of a Nazi supervillain misquoting the Old Testament notwithstanding.

The verse used to be Oh howe are the myghtie ouerthrowen in Henry VIII’s Great Bible. The more familiar version is taken from the KJV. So not only is Masterman paraphrasing while speaking English, he’s paraphrasing an English text.

Even if Masterman is a dark god in a superhuman meatsuit, he delights in tearing into stereotypes as often as he spouts them. Anything that might speak to a positive quality.

The way Masterman tosses Maximan around, lifting him with one hand, flinging him like a ragdoll, indicates that there really wasn’t any kind of fight between the two to begin with. If any blows were exchanged, Masterman was toying with his opponent.

The first mention of the Many-Angled Ones. Of whom we will see and hear much more later. Masterman expects Maximan to die, so he sees no problem revealing something of what’s going on behind the scenes. Not as a kindness or a courtesy, but to show how doomed humanity is, and how Maximan’s scarcely elevated enough above that species to merit more than a personal beatdown.

Maximan has no idea what his serum was derived from; he had no idea of what Masterman was besides ‘a Nazi with superpowers.’ Would that knowledge have deterred him from volunteering? William Whitlock was prepared to risk his life. Just what else he might have placed in hazard we may never know. But at this stage he is at least still capable of horror. He had no idea what was going on behind the scenes.

Another voice calling for silence at a very solemn moment. He doesn’t complete this sentence.

The Big “NO!” trope is always going to have a home somewhere, but that tiny, flat ‘no’ from Masterman says so much more. He didn’t see it coming. None of the humans who served him saw it coming. He couldn’t even read it in the mind of Maximan, so even he didn’t know it was coming. This is of course another of the many tropes listed on TV Tropes, called, unsurprisingly, Little “No”.

Proven wrong twice in as many minutes. Darkness was not coming, but light. Terrible, deadly light.

In this version of history, Berlin, rather than Hiroshima, is consumed in the first deployment of a nuclear weapon. There were numerous historical pressures in our world to develop and then deploy the atomic bomb. First, there was the worry that the Germans might develop theirs first. In this world, the development of a superhuman like Masterman made the development of the atomic bomb an even higher priority.

Greta Haas is speaking to Dr. Driesch. Both are members of the Order of the Black Sun, who have an outpost in Antarctica. Because of course occult Nazis do. Why wouldn’t they? This will come up again in Phase III.

The mushroom cloud memorial, presumably, marks the spot where the Berlin A-Bomb fell. Ground Zero, in other words. Like Hiroshima in our world, Berlin was reconstructed after the War.

Note that the caption and Haas both describe the city as Berlin; not East or West Berlin as the city was in 1987 of our history. The Russians didn’t take it first; the Americans blew it up. And then reconstruction happened. Also, note the cars: to the far left, a VW Beetle. Traditional German capitalist vehicle. And further along: Trabants. Wanna bet they never got round to building the Berlin Wall?

Fräulein is German for ‘Miss’. Suggesting Greta Haas is young, unmarried, but somehow merits the use of a title or some degree of formality even if she holds no military rank or doctorate. Perhaps she is a medium, or initiated into higher mysteries of the order. Her maintenance of a command post like this in Berlin might also be worth consideration. Often mispronounced ‘Frow-line’ by non-German speakers; note the umlaut over the A. ‘Froy-line’.

Also, Driesch implies he was in Berlin during the A-Bomb. Not at the epicentre, perhaps, but there were survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These unfortunates are often referred to as hibakusha. If you wish to read a manga about a hibakusha’s experience, check out Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa.

This is long-standing Lovecraftian lore. Literally Lovecraftian lore. Consider the excerpt from the Necronomicon:

Quite what Haas suggests here, I don’t know. Partly that one doesn’t necessarily have to summon them to make contact. That’s just a formality. They like to be treated like gods. And they’re very keen on maintaining the pecking order. If she is a medium, then any such encounter will take a drastic toll on her.

In the Call of Cthulhu RPG, encounters with the various monsters result in the loss of Sanity Points. Even if the entity is not actively hostile, the meeting is always a physically and mentally harrowing affair.

The Swastika leaves us in no doubt as to the party affiliations of the Order of the Black Sun. For more on the history of that symbol, refer to Wikipedia. In the background is a cryogenic cabinet, evidently operational for quite some time, given the icicles. At least 43 years, I would guess. Can you guess who’s inside?

In the foreground we have a candle, obviously intended for ritual purpose, and beside that a statuette. Dan Sanchez, in his Superhero Studies substack, describes it as a figurine representing one of the Many-Angled Ones. He may be right, but only insofar as any idol may represent the survival of something more obscure and darker than we’d care to admit. I think it merits a closer look.

While Sanchez describes the statue’s face as tentacled, I disagree. The statue is an obvious amalgam of male and female principles, like the Baphomet goat. Were it not for the swastika on the wall, it would hardly appear sinister.

No doubt there were members of the order that wondered that very same thing first time around. Some saw fit to retreat to Britain with the serum used to develop Maximan. And no doubt people had similar thoughts about the atom bomb too.

Dr. Driesch has had a good forty-something years to reflect on that, so one might at least understand his doubts.

Sometimes, it’s the young who are terrifying in their fervour. Older adherents might have had years to get entrenched in their attitudes, but they can also develop qualms. Fräulein Haas, much younger, appears to be a banal kind of fanatic; she seems almost blasé; sitting on the freezer, brushing the frost off the window with her fingers.

Still, that gesture does give her the opportunity to show us what we expected: it’s another Masterman, or rather, another body for Masterman.

Pseudoscience has always been fascinated by identical twins, deeming them the ultimate control group. Nazi doctors aimed to find biological methods to make German women conceive twins, thereby boosting production of ‘Aryan’ babies. While performing his atrocities at Auschwitz, Mengele spared twins immediate execution, and selected them for experimentation. More than a thousand pairs of twins were selected for this fate; fewer than 200 individuals survived.

The obvious reference here is to Zenith, who flies and whose name begins with Z.

The Flying B is the mascot of the Bentley automobile.

Gibson famously produces a Flying ‘V’ guitar: an electric with a V-shaped body. Despite initial low sales, it caught on in the 1960s when played by Dave Davies of the Kinks, and found considerable purchase later among heavy metal and hard rock guitarists, such as Michael and Rudi Schenker.