From what I can gather, the Entente in the SGW is more focused on revenge for the FGW, rather than breaking and remaking the world order as the Axis intended IOTL. The Freedomites didn't come across as being as ideologically deranged compared to the Nazis (Not saying they weren't deranged, they just don't seem nearly as ideologically fanatical). I don't recall how much we learn about the French in the SGW, so I can't speak for them, nor have I really read up on the consensus of what Actionist France may be like, so idk.
TL-191: Filling the Gaps
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MaxGerke01
Banned
Thats the thing we dont have alot of details about what the aims of the Entente/Radius powers were-especially Britian,France and Russia. We know alot more about the CSA and Japan and what we know about them tells us they were both very interested in remaking the order in North America/Caribbean and East Asia . Given the context of that and because we dont have the specifics we shouldnt assume that the powers that were in Europe were not thinking under similar lines.
Maybe HT should have spelled it out more directly but these people would be called fascists in OTL- meaning the leaders of not just the CSA but the UK,France and really Russia and Japan. Just because we dont have all the details of their goals context tells us they very much wanted a radically different world than what existed in 1941 and certainly from what existed in 1914. The argument that a power bloc that included a nation that murdered upwards of 10 million of its citizens in essentially murder factories and would have done more if possible wasnt really interested in changing things that much actually borders on offensive. I guess it depends on who you are or where you live but to me a world run by the Axis or the Entente/Radius woud be equally horrifying.
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Point is I really don't see anything that indicates the alliances of GWII aren't the same as the alliances of GWI. No matter how radical they are nothing similar to the complete dismantlement of the Central Powers happens ittl, and I don't see any reason why the GWII Entente wouldn't be a continuation of the GWI Entente as a result.
There's plenty we can tell from what Turtledove says. France and the CSA are fascist by almost any definition, but that doesn't impact the latter's war aims very much, since they were extreme even under the Third Republic. Japan's government type doesn't matter; that sort of expansion could have taken place under basically anyone who could have realistically taken power there. Russia is similar, but I doubt its fascist by any conventional definition. Churchill is bad, but unless your definition of fascist is very broad he isn't one, even if he works with Mosley. Churchill is an old school imperialist working with fascists, and war aims can change remarkably little between those two groups. Its not that the fascists are not that much more extreme than their predecessors, its that their predecessors aren't a whole lot less extreme than the fascists, and will likely have layed the groundwork for a lot of GWII post-war Entente plans. Nazism itself was a clear evolution of Voklish nationalism and the ideas of Drang Nach Osten, and I'd argue the same similarly applies to the GWII Entente.
"Remaking the order" in Europe would mean dismantling the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, placing Slavic Europe under Russian Hegemony, and potentially fragmenting Germany. That's basically just a more radical version of the otl French plan for after WWI.
There's plenty we can tell from what Turtledove says. France and the CSA are fascist by almost any definition, but that doesn't impact the latter's war aims very much, since they were extreme even under the Third Republic. Japan's government type doesn't matter; that sort of expansion could have taken place under basically anyone who could have realistically taken power there. Russia is similar, but I doubt its fascist by any conventional definition. Churchill is bad, but unless your definition of fascist is very broad he isn't one, even if he works with Mosley. Churchill is an old school imperialist working with fascists, and war aims can change remarkably little between those two groups. Its not that the fascists are not that much more extreme than their predecessors, its that their predecessors aren't a whole lot less extreme than the fascists, and will likely have layed the groundwork for a lot of GWII post-war Entente plans. Nazism itself was a clear evolution of Voklish nationalism and the ideas of Drang Nach Osten, and I'd argue the same similarly applies to the GWII Entente.
MaxGerke01
Banned
Agreed.And other than specifically having this spelled out and wishful thinking what reason do we have to believe this wasnt the aim of the Entente/Radius as its totally consistent with both their hard right ideology and their aims for territorial expansion ? If this happened,an Entente/Radius victory Europe would be remade along with Asia and North America -not to mention changes that would come to Africa and South America.All that sounds alot like a new world order....
Agreed and that alone almost says it all about them and their allies in the Entente/Radius.
But it does matter because these people werent forming soviets. They and their ideology and war aims were hard right .
If you look at Churchills career, save for presiding over a mass genocide, it is made up of actions and events that are comparable to what OTL fascists leaders did in WW2. Also to me when you walk like a duck and quack like a duck you are usually a duck. The Winston Churchill of TL-191 isnt the same man that was in OTL. Neither was for example Jimmy Carter who was fighting for the Freedomites and probably one himself. I dont think even Carter haters could imagine him doing something like that OTL. The fact that Churchill worked hand in hand with Mosley alone but also with Featherston -whom he helped get the superbomb- and the Action Francaise and Russia and Japan tells us where his symapthies lied.He wouldnt have a problem living in an Entente/Radius dominated Earth-thats most of what we need to know- https://turtledove.fandom.com/wiki/Winston_Churchill
Well so what ? Was Nazisms aims similar in many ways to the Kaiserreichs ? Of course. Did the Freedomites have much of the same aims as the Whigs ? Obviously. But the point is the expansion and perversion of those aims lead to horrors that as bad as the Kaiserreich and the Whigs were they didnt come close to doing during their rule. If this is true all you can do is either accept it or downplay it. I dont get why anyone would want to do the latter ?
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I don't buy personally that 10 million African-Americans were killed in the Population Reduction ITTL. In our timeline, the Nazis had almost an extra year to do their killing (1944 in fact was their peak year) and they "only" 6 million or so Jews. I think for the sake of parallelism, I would go with 6 million blacks dead in the CSA from the Population Reduction. Still a lot dead and heinous for sure but I don't think they could realistically wipe out any more people than that or else it wouldn't be able to do as much as it did (and even that's kind of a stretch). And I agree with @Hexcron about the likely aims of the European Entente Powers. We don't have enough information to suggest anything like Lebransraum (even in the CSA) or even the attempted recreation of the Roman Empire in Fascist Italy under Mussolini. It's most likely revanchism and likely trying to reacquire old land. The root causes for war seem to be the same as the First Great War, unlike OTL World War 2.
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MaxGerke01
Banned
Blacks in the CSA were in a much weaker and more vulnerable position than Jews were in Europe during WW2 OTL. They had next to no resources to help save themselves,didnt have anywhere really to run to except the USA when possible and that was rarely possible.They also had next to no white or Hispanic Confederates-except in Cuba mostly-who were willing to help shield and save them.Taking all of that into account we have no reason other than wishful thinking to think that the body count of the Destruction didnt approach that of the full Holocaust in OTL not just the number of Jews killed. Even if you just go with percentages there were more blacks in the CSA than Jews in Europe so that would mean more killed .I dont see why this matters though.It doesnt make the CSA one iota better or different than Nazi Germany if they killed less blacks. ITTL only what the Ottoman Empire did to the Armenians during the GW -ie genocide-is a close comparison. And at least they didnt repeat the same actions during the SGW but perhaps they would have been welcomed in the Entente/Radius if they did ?
What we do have is the context of what the CSA and Japan were doing and how likely it would be that the other Entente/Radius powers would have similar goals. Also why change from who was in charge during the GW ? The same powers that be that were in charge in Germany,Austro-Hungary the USA and the Ottoman Empire during the GW were in charge during the SGW so why not make it the same for Britain, the CSA,France ,Russia and Japan ? If there was no real difference in what they were trying to do why not just have a latter generation of the same people carry it out ? It would be a much simpler plot for one ?
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I still think capping the Population Reduction at 6 million makes more sense from a logistical standpoint. In order to continue the war into 1944 the Confederacy would have to tap into its black population in some capacity, even if only for labor purposes, and would spare a significant minority of the Afro-Confederates from death. As far as the Jews of OTL go, while the Jews of Germany and Western Europe were clearly less vulnerable than the Confederate blacks here, I don’t know if that’s the case with the Jews who came from Poland and the Soviet Union. They were comparable to the Eastern European Jews who came over to America OTL from 1880-1924 in that they were dirt poor, suffered systematic persecution even before Hitler came along (up to and including pogroms), and weren’t exactly tolerated by the Christian majority where they were massacred both before and after the Holocaust and didn’t receive too much help from the locals. And that's not even taking into consideration Stalin being in power in the USSR.
I personally disagree with the idea of only Cuba helping blacks escape certain death. I don’t think it was a coincidence that Turtledove chose to have Houston, Sequoyah, Kentucky, and Tennessee admitted back into the Union before everyone else and that Texas was given independence. If you look up the breakdown of voting over the Civil Rights Act of 1965, the majority in Kentucky and Oklahoma voted in its favor, and Tennessee and Texas were split down the middle. Even before then, a majority of blacks in those states (except Texas and even then it was 35% there) were registered to vote. Going back decades into the 20th century, they weren’t constantly aligned with the Solid South on issues like civil rights and women’s rights and swung back and forth between Democrats and Republicans in presidential elections. So I think a large minority of whites would’ve helped blacks in those states or at least would’ve been horrified by the revelation of the Destruction.
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It might make sense for parallelism, but like previously said blacks are much more vulnerable. I mean some Jews could "blend in" with non-jews and give them a chance to survive, but Afro-Confederates have no chance to blend in since they are too visible and despised. Regarding the states being admitted, if I remember correctly, Sequoyah voted to stay in the US during the pre-war plebscite, and the other states were admitted under some sort of the dealt the Democrats made with the socialists. Also they had spent one generation under US rule, so no matter how the people hated it, it was something these people were going to be more used to than say some Confederate from South Carolina or Mississippi.
That's ultimately why I suggested the mentality towards the Population Reduction might be different in those four states than elsewhere in the Confederacy. And in addition to parallelism, I headcanon the cap at 6 million because of sheer logistics. IOTL, the Nazis had an additional year to kill as many people as they did, something that the Confederates do not. And it's important to note that the extermination camps in Europe were at their top efficiency in 1944 in terms of the numbers of people killed at a time thanks to advancements in technology that the CSA likely wouldn't have achieved in time. In other words, more people were killed in the Holocaust in 1944 than any other time due to pure efficiency of the system, which time allowed Nazi Germany and wouldn't allow the CSA to the same extent. Also, it's important to note that only half the OTL Holocaust victims died in gas chambers, which amounted to 3 million Jews or so. The rest died either in ghettos, mobile killing centers, or traditional labor camps, the latter of which the Confederacy seemed to lack.
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MaxGerke01
Banned
And this is a case where HT has told us that Featherston and the Freedomites largely got around the "need" for blacks to do labor intensive or menial work in agriculture and elsewhere both through a big increase in automation and mechanization as well as a big influx of immigrants from the Empire of Mexico. From the perspective of most Confederates and certainly Featherston and the Freedomites ,blacks were neither wanted or needed anymore.
I dont think it was only Cuba but it definitely was mainly Cuba.There were some examples of whites elsewhere in the CSA sheltering blacks but HT makes clear that was usually out of a twisted sense of "ownership" as opposed to real empathy or sympathy. There were already fewer blacks in those states and a good number of them were luckily able to leave the CSA for the USA when the Richmond Accords went into effect. Also it makes sense that the relative handful left would have been some of the first to have their terrys-read ghettos-walled off and cleared out since there were known to not be many left therefore that it was an easier task. So were some good Christian white or Hispanic Confederates appalled by the Destruction and did whatever they could to help ? Of course ? Was that a majority or likely even a very large number ? No way.... The little white town near Camp Determination was typical -completley aware of what was happening and completely sullen and unrepentant when it was ended and they were caught....
And HT makes it clear that the Destruction was in progress before the SGW started and also before gas chambers and crematoria were introduced at Camp Determination, Camp Dependable and elsewhere. Blacks were being killed more on the dl the whole time Featherston was in office or at least most of it. There were most definitely ghettos-ie terrys where blacks were always contained anyway.Once Featherston got into power those would have been used to very effectively keep blacks all together in mass. HT makes a point of telling us that the entire black population of Jackson Mississippi was cleared out ,transported and murdered just within a few days on Featherstons orders. Also HT tells us there were essentially some forms of traditonal labor camps and killing vans where at first blacks were just worked and starved to death and they were later gunned down and buried in mass until Jeff Pinkard got the idea of asphyixation from the suicide of Chick Blades.
This was mostly black men caught fighting against the Freedomites whereever possible but there would have been lots of targets of opportunity as well. All of those coupled with the overall horrendous vulnerabilty of the black population in the CSA means that once the Destruction was fully implemented it would have been like a knife through warm butter. Especially with women and children and elderly and disabled blacks who wouldnt be able to stay on the move or fight. The vast majoirty of Destruction survivors would be young single men and hardly any women or children whatsoever.
Thinking that the CSA lacked any of the tools or brutality that matches what Nazi Germany did is more of a lack of imagination imo.Its all there in the story and The Destruction was as bad or worse than the Holocaust. No reason other than wishful thinking or benefit of the doubt to think otherwise....
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MaxGerke01
Banned
Parallelism works only if you ignore that fact that the overall condtion of,situation for and the way blacks were viewed in the CSA as oppsoed to the condition of ,situation for and the way Jews were viewed in Germany and Europe as a whole was almost totally different and way worse by every measure.Even when you overlook the vast differences in condtion and situation there is still the way they were viewed. Even though Jews were hated and seen as aliens and Christ killers and threats by probably a majoriity of the German and overall European population there was still a fair number who saw them as fellow human beings. That was mainly just because they looked like them .
That same sense of common humanity was not extended to blacks in any way by the majority of white and Hispanic Confederates. There were of course exceptions but the usual case was were the white Confederate saw the blacks they sheltered as being "owned"by their family and sheltered them just as they would any valuable item. It sadly usually wasnt out of any emapthy or sympathy. To me this harsh reality would be a big part of the reason I think most in the USA would not want to reunite with the CSA. The implications of this would inform the Americans about the average Confederate man on the street who didnt actively round up blacks or put them into gas chambers but nevertheless did nothing to help them or protest what was happening to them in any way...
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The US might not want to reunite with the Confederacy, but given the 4 wars, Operation BlackBeard, the Destruction, and the superbombing all this has proven that the Confederacy is too dangerous to let exist as an independent state.
MaxGerke01
Banned
Right I agree with that, But on the other hand there has to be something other than full intergration or full independence. To me the best solution would be a combination of at least one black client state on the territory of the former CSA and a Morgenthau type plan that splits the CSA up but gives them some modicum of independence but mainly just in economic matters. Segregation is strictly prohibited.There is a De-Freedomite program instituted . But they dont have real foreign policy independence and they certainly arent allowed to maintain a military or large weapons. No sovereignity . This is a solution that not only ends and punishes the CSA but doesnt reward the former Confederates by welcoming them back as fellow Americans and forgiving and forgeting...
EDIT this allows for them to eventually have alliance with the USA and perhaps even EVENTUAL reunification and statehood .But not within the first one to three generations after the Destruction.If I was an American at the time I would howl at the moon at the prospect of the CSA being reunited with the USA no questions asked.The notion is completely unacceptable ittl.Almost as much as it was OTL before the Radical Republicans took over for a while...
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Many Americans probably would not want the CSA back. But then again, most white Americans weren't much less indifferent to the Population Reduction than white Confederates. But what tips the balance so that they probably don't get admitted back into the Union is the newly acquired Caribbean territories, the people of which probably wouldn't want to share a country with one that unleashed genocide in one of the countries in the region.
It is a New World Order. Its a more extreme and fascistic evolution of the New World Order proposed by the otl Entente at the end of WWI. Fundamentally its very clearly descended from their GWI aims, since the Entente of GWI and GWII are fundamentally the same.
Russia and Japan's war aims were hard right, but they could have very well happened under either a fascist government or a non-fascist authoritarian one. In the case of Japan it could have probably even happened under a semi-Liberal one (freedom for me, not for thee). Japan even in the Taisho period was capable of the atrocities it committed in WWII.
Churchill is a whole other can of worms. He's certainly fascist-adjacent, but I really hesitate to call him a fascist. He's still an old school imperialist Tory in my view. I know a few people who would have plenty to say if you classified Japan in WWII as unambiguously fascist for instance.
I'm not downplaying anything here. I'm saying how the war aims of the Entente of both wars are fundamentally similar, and how in GWII its really a more extreme extension of the war aims of GWI driven by revanchism and fascism. Because of how clearly descended the Entente of GWII is from that of GWI, I think its clear to say it is an evolved version of that alliance, and that they should have the same name.
I wonder if the Freedomites had ever done any form diabolical medical experiments on blacks and other prisoners at the concentration camps much like the Nazis had done ITTL?
It's almost a complete certainty given both the tone of the regime and the IRL pattern of such things in the US historically
David has Dr. Martin Josephs, an analogue to Josef Mengele, as the chief doctor of Camp Determination in 'After the End' to fill that role. He is captured and executed after hiding out in Perú for years.
MaxGerke01
Banned
I think its very important that we never "dumb down" the Freedomites when it comes to their false and terrible ideas about blacks compared to what the Nazis thought about Jews.While perhaps the argument can be made that perhaps the Freedomites did not see blacks as quite as big a threat as Nazis saw Jews it was very close. This mainly would have been because since they were black Freedomites wouldnt have seen blacks as having the same level of capability and intelligence that Nazis did actually ascribe to Jews along with their subhuman wickedness.
Also all the forms of scientific racism that motivated Hitler and the Nazis about Jews and blacks would still be around in this world and very much motivating the Freedomites. That coupled with their long standing hatred and distrust of blacks could easily lead to the same types of horrors that the Nazis did to Jews on very level. Just because HT didnt go into all the details is no reason to ever think it didnt happen or even worse that it wasnt likely to happen. The Destruction was not "better" than the Holocaust in any way.
BTW its also important to consider that even if Featherston didnt have this level of "knowledge" about the "danger" of blacks there would have been other Freedomites who did and they would have been enpowered to visit pretty much any horrors they wanted upon black people as long as it did not get in the way of Featherstons goal to kill them all. So skys the limit in atrocities and anything else.
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OTL America has a long and sordid history of unethical human experimentation and exploitation on the grounds of "scientific discovery", often on the poor, racial minorities, or prisoners. There's no reason not to think that wouldn't continue in a world where the CSA continued to exist or even become far worse when white supremacy and anti-black racism become explicit state policy. It's not hard to imagine a 191 equivalent of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment being far more common and far far worse