AH Vignette: The Klan Grandpa

"In modern America, there are quite a few old Klansmen who served the infamous Stephenson administration during the Second Great War among the living. Some are unrepentant, some say it was a mistake done 'only following orders', others are senile, or at least claim it if investigated for war crimes. The iconography of the Klan has been strictly outlawed, though neo-KKK groups will use older US flags as a loophole. But a culture of shame has been instilled by the government put in place by Britain, Japan and the Soviet Union after the war's end. American culture has mostly moved on, but most families have at least one relative that for whatever reason, was part of the wartime fascist racialist government."

White Hooded Ghosts That Haunt: A Cultural Study of Post War America


In school, Rob learned about the Klan years, but it was a boring abstraction. Like the Wild West, or the Revolutionary War. It was before he was born. Therefore it didn't matter a shit to him. He knew it wasn't legal to say racist things, but most black people had left to the Black Belt Socialist Republic or Canada or the Caribbean and most Jewish people had moved to Israel, so there was nobody to hear it. An abstraction.

His problem was money he owed in gambling debts to a bookie. He was looking for work as a bouncer.

He lived in the suburbs of Pittsburgh and he had come into the city today to find a bar that might hire him to guard the door during Happy Hour.

He found an Irish pub, Flanagan's on Carson Street and walked up to an old man tending bar.

"Need a bouncer by any chance, pops?"

"Gotta be Restaurant Worker's Union for that here. Are yinz?"

"No. I come from up by Cranberry. Lost my job. Owe me some poker and blackjack money. Thought it was worth a try."

"Well...I can't have you working the door here...but I might have a side job for you."

"What?"

Even though there was nobody in the bar drinking mid day, the man motioned him to follow him in the back, and something made him twitch.

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"My grandson owns this pub. He gave me the job since I'm on the National Medical Insurance blacklist and can't get Social Security benefits or much else."

"Why's...oh...you were one of them fascist Nazi Klan types back in the day, weren't yinz? Them's the only ones who get on the Feds' shitlist for benefits."

"Hell...everyone was back then. You had to be. President said so."

"Back before they lynched him in front of the White House."

"Well, I ain't looking to get what we gave to the Negroes and the Jews. But that's why I'm looking for a bodyguard. I gots me one of them Mossad assassins lookin for me. Either he'll put a bullet in me or they'll kidnap me and take me to Israel for trial like they did Hiram Wesley Evans."

"Sure it ain't just out of it from being old and working around free booze, pops?"

"When I wasn't tending bar, my grandson Jake said a man with an Israeli accent came in with a gun and a black jacket asking about me."

"I need cash to pay a bookie...not some old war criminal who killed a bunch of minorities because DC Stephenson and Hitler said so getting me shot by assassins or some shit."

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Rob walked out and a man he took to be the old man's grandson was there.

"Where's my grandpa?"

"In back."

"You ain't one of them Mossad, are yinz?"

"Nah...but he wanted me watching his back, but I can find less dangerous work."

"If you keep your mouth shut, you get a free drink. Don't want the secret police on us. Half the damn country's an informant."

"Deal."

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He sipped his beer. A few other people, mostly off duty steelworkers from the state owned collective plant came in, got a noon day swill.

The old man came back out and was pouring.

Then, a man with an accent sat down on the next stool.

"You know this man?"

"Nah, other than this beer."

He whipped out a gun and pointed it at the old man.

"Don't move. You are going to Israel for a war crimes trial."

Rob went outside while they weren't looking at him.

He hear shouts. Then shots.

It wasn't so abstract to him now, though.

Axis America? Allied Japan? Total U.S. defeat? U.S. Balkanization?

Cool.

Sweet Jesus, DC Stephenson becomes president?

Yeah...

The idea behind it was DC Stephenson, the KKK leader in Indiana in the 20s never gets caught assaulting a woman which in OTL ended his political career.

After the Depression starts, the KKK fills the role of fascism in Europe, not messed up by the scandal as badly, and Stephenson's KKK branch absorbs the mainstream one after their leader, an overly litigious man, screws it up.

DC Stephenson runs for President, blaming the Depression on foreign nations, immigrants, minorities, etc. He wins in 1932. Prohibition is not repealed, since he supported it. He expands the Prohibition enforcement apparatus to enforce the KKK political agenda on the average American among other things. He forms ties with Hitler and Mussolini and his independent KKK now the power in the nation in the Depression begins going along with some of their ideas, Stephenson saying "Mister Hitler and Mister Mussolini share proper ideas on race and the place of the white man, and they have made successes of their countries in these hard times, and surely we can learn a thing or two".

Japan is still imperialist and militarist, but a loud, proud and off puttingly racist America with competing interests in the Pacific makes Japan reconsider all this Axis stuff. They don't renew the Anglo-Japanese Alliance treaty exactly, but when the Second Great War occurs, after clashes with American ships near the Phillipines, they become reluctant co-belligerents in exchange for them getting the Phillipines and any colonies of German occupied nations, and a free hand in China.

Stephenson, initially in alliance with other fascist groups such as the Silvershirts, Father Coughlin, etc. purges them in the mid 30s. The German-American Bund gets to stay, but Fritz Kuhn is removed by mutual agreement of Stephenson and Hitler.

Britain becomes quite nervous for Canada and Canada also becomes quite nervous for Canada. With good reason.

The war starts in 1939, roughly as OTL in Europe, but with Stephenson in the Axis, the US goes right in with Germany and Italy and invades Canada claiming it rightful American territory, and War Plan Red sees action with more racist stuff involved, such as lynchings of black people in Canada, especially ones descended from escaped slaves.

Quebec goes through a somewhat Vichy like period of US occupation. Resistance is stiffer everywhere else, but Britain, besieged by the Nazis, can't really send any help.

Hitler invades the USSR and has a little more success, but the sheer numbers and winter and Soviet determination still dent the German advance. Japan enters after the incidents in 1940 in exchange for the Phillipines, Dutch East Indies, French Indochina and whatever it wants in China.

By 1943 and 1944, the Germans are in retreat in Europe, as are the Italians, and discussions begin on What to Do about America.

Large scale invasion would be difficult indeed, though some British forces try it in raids to back up Canadian resistance.

The Soviets are still throwing all their troops on the Eastern Front.

Japan can do naval and air raids on American islands in the Pacific, and has occupied some islands and had invaded the Hawai'an Islands, but doesn't totally control them yet.

The British have an answer. Something about Tube Alloys...

A British bomber leaves an airfield in liberated territory near Ottawa in early 1946. Later, Washington DC is wracked by a great explosion like a mushroom.

DC Stephenson and his inner circle of Klansmen are killed as are most of the US joint chiefs of staff who had already had many generals killed for an attempted coup against the President.

The US surrenders, but dividing the nation as Germany was, proves hard.

Japan gets a restored Hawaiian monarchy as a satellite state and the Philippines. Britain, Japan and Russia all try to get Alaska, so they have to let the rump US keep it to avoid squabbling. There was a genocide against African Americans and Jews, though a more haphazard one than the Nazis, more with mass lynchings, this being the KKK.

The Soviets impose a Black Belt Autonomous Region in the South through the US Communist Party members they brought out from their camps and prisons and hiding places and put in charge in the new post war government. Its still technically part of the States, but runs its own affairs.

Some small border adjustments enlarge Canada as compensation wherever an excuse can be found.

The US is large and the victors are exhausted, so there is little occupation beyond that.

The new US government is a compromise of non-KKK or willing to put aside KKK US officials, and heavy British and Soviet influence. It is much more socialist, and has things like a British or Canadian style National Health Service, collectively owned businesses, more powerful unions, and the Black Belt, but is not officially communist, and some other parties are allowed, but have little power. It comes to resemble both West and East Germany in some ways, in that is ostensibly a democracy, but has former Klan officials still around alot, and a heavy public culture of shame about the KKK rule years and their role in the Axis, as well as Soviet influenced federal security bureaus with too many informants.

The guy is being metaphorical when he says Stephenson was lynched. Lynch means killed in every day slang in this ATL America. Really, the British nuke made him a shadow on the Oval Office wall remains.

Amazing. I weep for America. And China. And Canada. And Philippines. And Korea. And Indonesia. And Russia, as without all of that American lend-lease, many, many more Soviet soldiers will die. A Decade of mourning ahead.

I'm intrigued.

China eventually kicks Japan out, but it takes until the late fifties for Mao to finally kick them out, with Soviet arms sent under the table.

Indonesia gets Greater East Asian Co Prosperity Sphere puppet status under Sukarno after the war. There was a time when they were used as forced labor during the war, but it ended.

Indochina...well, the Viet Minh overthrow Japan and their collaborators by about the time they kicked the US out. Late sixties.

India achieves independence after the war a bit more violently, with Britain much more beaten down through having to expend so much effort to defend Canada and Subhas Chandra Bose leading a mutiny, though without direct Japanese backing, since they're technically still allied with Britain.

Subhas Chandra Bose is Prime Minister after a longer lived Gandhi. Pro-Japanese. Pretty authoritarian. His time as PM is looked upon somewhat like Indira's.

The USSR mellowed out after the war faster after Stalin died. Anastas Mikoyan was relatively benign in comparison.

KKK rule in America was pretty bad. Birth of a Nation is the ATL equivalent of Triumph of the Will. Stephenson put his own stamp since he ran his own Klan and took over the main one in the ATL. Invisible Empire means much the same as Third Reich. Show trials and purges worked like a trial of an African-American accused of flirting with a white woman in the south. The judge and jury would all be Klansmen and convict. There were still elections, but they were rigged to make sure the "Klan Vote" always won. Blaming immigrants and foreigners and "un-American races within" for the Depression worked to play on discontent to get elected, but their solutions were skewed. War production got things moving, but generous they were not.

The US military had a highly ambivalent attitude about all this, much as the Heer did to the Nazis. They were enthused about building up the military, but alot of the KKK pseudo mysticism and ridding out of say Catholic officers wasn't so popular, and the wars Stephenson picked were seen as futile after a while. There were many attempted assasinations and plotted coups as things got worse and more than a few came from the military. Eisenhower was involved in one and didn't live to tell the tale.

I got the idea for this thinking about a TL for a fascist America in the thirties and I tried a bunch of Business Plot ideas, but came up with a neutral but pro-Axis America under Macarthur as an American Franco and thought it was boring, so I tried a different tack.

I got the specific idea for the post from stuff like that concentration camp guard being deported and Eichmann and the movies like Apt Pupil and Marathon Man about exiled Nazis hiding out as old men after the war hunted by the Israelis and what an American equivalent would look like.

I set it in Pittsburgh because I lived there for a year, and a Klan leader lived near the town of Cranberry in the rural suburbs. They say "yinz" not "you" sometimes there, as some local dialect thing. That's what that comes from.

Does Malaya and the rest of Borneo go the Indonesian or Indochinese way?

Britain keeps it since their colonies weren't part of the deal with Japan, until it goes independent. Japan messes with it, but has several other guerilla wars with reluctant Co Prosperity Sphere members, so never takes it over. The British Borneo one gets absorbed into Japanese puppet Indonesia though.

KKK America run Phillipines was...highly unpleasant. The Japanese weren't resisted much, since there had been more rebellions against the racist fascist dick America and the US forces had brought back 1900s era Philippines insurgency tactics at Stephenson's behest.

The Japanese put in their Phillipines Republic puppet as OTL and its still a reluctant Japanese satellite like Indonesia or Manchukuo.

The Duplessis collaborationist regime in Quebec was broadly similar to its Vichy counterpart. Quebec nationalist rhetoric. The KKK Americans made him de-emphasize Catholicism, and he got a bit disgruntled.

Everywhere else...well, there were some collaborators, but the racist Klan shit didn't win them friends. Plus, General Winter has a place in Canada as well as Russia.

Post war, Canada mostly returned to normal, but Quebec is smaller, not allowed to do as much, and a close eye is kept on it, and relations with America are much cooler, and border checks and security got a lot tighter a lot earlier even though the US lost and a neutered British-Soviet puppet put in place, just in case.

Hey there. While this mini TL of yours does happen to be a bit on the implausible side, it does have my interest. Will you be continuing this soon?

Maybe. I'm stranded in the suburbs of San Diego with my folks that wrecked my car making me do un nessecary dental surgery and my ex girlfriend that cheated on me back in NJ followed me here, ran me out of Morro Bay where I was living the past few months and is marrying one of the people she cheated on me. She even changed her FB profile picture to her giving me the finger with the ring on it. Might not have time.

What is Japan like in this TL's present day?

A good analogy would be sort of like modern day Burma or Thailand on roids. Its grudgingly decolonized China, Indochina and a few others places after communist guerilla wars. Korea is still under their thumb, as is Taiwan, and Manchukuo, the Philippines and Indonesia remain satellites under puppet nationalist regimes.

Its tried to reform and be more acceptable to the international community since, but the Emperor is revered and frequent coups are attempted, derailing attempts at parliamentary "managed democracy" allowed by the military, sort of a mix of Thailand's supposed reverence for the King while frequently staging disruptive coups in his name, and Burma have a military junta and repressing other ethnic groups but trying to have staged rubber stamp democracy, and the volatile period of the militarists taking over the Taisho democracy.

Much more effort has been put into a colonial empire and Co Propsperity Sphere and years of military rule and repression by the Kempetai in the Home Islands, so less skyscrapers, fancy gadgets and anime. Its sort of a drab, beaten down dictatorship/vestigial empire trying to become a more open democracy under international pressure, but like OTL East Asian states that did not become Communist like Burma or Thailand, there's alot of unrest and tension between the military that really runs Japan and won't give up power, the Emperor who is a revered figurehead but whose approval is needed to take power, and Diet parliamentary politicians who are supposed to be rubber stamps for the military staged to get better relations with the west, but trying to actually exercise power.

I always thought that the most realistic course for an Imperial Japan that somehow made it past WW2. Doesn't take over the world, has to decolonize at least some of the Co Prosperity Sphere due to communist guerillas and independence movements, politics evolve over time, similar patterns to other East Asian military dictatorships and monarchies in the later 20th and 21st century

If I don't get bogged down with my OTL problems, I may do an AH Vignette where an elderly Malcolm X living in exile in Cuba after surviving and becoming a leader of the Black Panther Party, then fleeing to Cuba to escape the crackdowns on them, becomes worried about the end of the Cuban embargo, and goes to talk to his friend Che Guevara to see if the Cuban government will protect him, Assata Shakur, etc.

But that's another AH vignette timeline for another time for now