Pre TL discussion thread

[BlairWitch749]

Am planning a joint TL with Captain Stern, would like here to post some of the general concepts and outlines... and pick the brains of the board's many experts on some of the themes


primary theme one and major POD

no zimmerman telegram, however the Germans still enact unrestricted submarine warfare, and an additional liner gets torpedoed by a U-boat. This boat like Lusitania in 1915 is carrying war materials... a hundred American civilians die. Wilson uses this to push for war... which passes congress more narrowly than otl... William Randolf Hearst, via an intense investigation (as the owner of the NY herald) finds out the ship was carrying shells for the British, which was withheld from the public. He goes to Wilson, letting him know that he is aware of the deception.

Wilson begs him not to scuttle the war effort which has only just gotten underway, and Hearst being a good Democrat (although not a friend of Wilson's) decides to sit on the story... the espionage and sedition acts come out as otl, and Hearst becomes furious over the suspension of Habaes Corpus, and one of his field reporters is killed during the spring offensive. When he gets word of the pending armistace in the first week of November, he decides he can't hold his tongue any more and releases a tell all of Wilson and big business's duplicity and back door relationship with the entente, and publishes a hidden manifest showing that the causus belli ship was carrying rifle cartridges and artillery shells and that no warning was given to the passangers (this is done just days before the 1918 midterm elections)

The democrats get absolutely slaughtered in the midterms and a Republican/Isolationist super majority emerges, which begins immediate impeachment proceedings against Wilson

Thoughts?

[John Fredrick Parker]

I'm getting the sense that Hearst comes off in this as a heroic defender of free speech and civil liberties.

I suppose as long as it's in the ASB forum...