It could also accelerate the radicalization of the military if Stedman offers the Bolshevik exiles military commissions. Imagine Trotsky in a US Army uniform.
Crimson Banners Fly: The Rise of the American Left
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That sounds ridiculous, but that's also why it would make for great alternate history. That said, I still think that's a step too far as long as the US hasn't explicitly turned socialist. A bigger paradigm shift would be required.
I'm not so sure. I don't know what happened to the Entente blockade of Germany ITTL, but the shortages of food and other goods by December 1917, combined with anti-war sentiment, led to the massive strikes of January and February in Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Entente expeditions failed under better circumstances, so I'm sceptical of Germany being able to do better.
Wait, What happened to Korea? Are they still under Japanese occupation? Or Gained Independence?
More will be revealed about the international situation in upcoming updates.
As I touched on in terms of the Vienna Treaty's efficacy, more than a few of the treaty clauses were unenforceable.
Japan was likely pressured to release any captured U.S. and German holdings, but otherwise left to their own devices. I'd wager Korea remains occupied.
Working on the next part to the timeline but I'm afraid nothing major this week. Started working a new job full-time so updates may be a bit staggered until I get situated.
Also currently accumulating new sources - hopefully some of them will be delivered soon!
Also currently accumulating new sources - hopefully some of them will be delivered soon!
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The sheer effort and research that goes into this timeline is astounding. Definitely take the time you need to get the momentum back!
Title: Crimson Banners Fly II
Presenting...Book II of the 'Crimson Banners Fly' series!!
Prologue: A Dream Unfulfilled
Ford Motor Co. Factory Under Construction, 1914 - Source: Wiki Commons
Prologue: A Dream Unfulfilled
America, the Land of Opportunity. Millions arrived by land and sea to embrace in the warm glow of this promised paradise. Glorified success stories, the never-ceasing Horatio Alger myth, typified a fairy tale life in the New World. Politicians boasted of a Pax Americana, an American Century. Yet the United States in the twentieth century was anything but sturdy and dependable. Neither its politics nor its economy represented the kind of glorious Neo Rome that had enticed generations to take root upon American soil. Behind the glistening curtain hid extraordinary instability, violence, persecution, bankruptcies, and turmoil. Times were hard at the dawn of the so-called American Century, but it took the pounding turbulence of the nineteen twenties and thirties for naïve talk of a bright future to simmer down.
The above quotation is borrowed from an introductory segment in Hard Times: The Struggle of the Workingman. This piece leads the viewing audience into a celebrated historical documentary which explores and contrasts first-hand accounts of various worker demographics from the Southern coal mines to the Northeastern textile mills. It examines not just their lives from a strictly economic perspective but contextualizes the closeness of their communities and measures family traditions carried from long-departed ancestors. The film's creator believed that one needed to learn precisely what was at stake to relate and empathize with the plight of the industrial worker.
To know their routines, their religious practices, and their languages was pivotal in understanding how these men and women ticked. Scores survived in squalor, working to the bone to make ends meet, and an ingrained fear of repression and loss prevented ideas like unionization from taking hold. Some distrusted outsiders and some preferred one-on-one talks with employers. Unionists, from within and beyond these communities, were not always greeted so warmly by an America resistant to working-class solidarity, but eventually the conditions ripened for a massive swing in the opposite direction.
Even before the Nationalist March and the long days of the Troubles, times were rough for the average American family. Hope persisted, however, and the mirage of prosperity stayed in their sights. Theodore Roosevelt swore to his grave that his steps as president would bring about an inevitable commercial boon, a triumph resulting in equitable benefits for entrepreneurs and farmers alike. This proved a severe miscalculation. War, the focal point of Roosevelt's rule, did not bring about the type of market growth he imagined. Or, as it may be more apt to say, any wealth generated by the catastrophe of the Great War was reserved exclusively for the Oligarchy: A tangled web of corporate interests and robber barons all but immune to the restraints of the law and the tepid rulings of the courts. The fading away of the proper Gilded Age did not likewise fade men of profound, unfathomable affluence from positions of power. Trust-busting may have decimated Northern Securities Company and U.S. Steel, but it was all too evident throughout the much-maligned Progressive Era that the wealth was all moving in one direction.
Collective action by organized workers was the sole means to combat the unequal state of things. With government disinterested in taking on the issue, sects of laborers fed-up with a lifetime of workplace oppression took matters into their own hands and fought for justice. Some populations satisfied with lackluster conditions and the brutal burdens of twelve-hour shifts chose not to grab their pitchforks, but others did. Millions engaged in the burgeoning Labor Movement. Rising militancy and class consciousness gradually became a staple facet of American life in many corners of the country, and the rate of enrollment into organizations promoting industrial unionism skyrocketed as never before. This development epitomized the 1910s just as much as the federal government's apparent subservience to business interests. The tumultuous convergence of these competing trends, and the resulting bloodshed, paved the way for newfound complexities and battle lines in the subsequent decade.
Hard Times adeptly encapsulates the transition from labor's "Wild West" in the 1900s and 1910s to its more rigid entrenchment in the 1920s and beyond. The film explores how otherwise sleepy communities were brought together under the ideas of mutual brotherhood and revolutionary upheaval. As its narrator explains, "Solidarity blossomed in the sewers, they say. It arose from the bottom-up. The Labor Act of 1921 had been the culmination of years of hard work. [...] But the wave soon crashed against a brick wall. Richard Morris was mystified by letters from his cousin in Detroit. Having bled for the union and his right to organize the coal fields, Richard could not comprehend the cheery nature of his cousin's words. "At Ford, we are individuals," the letters read, "architects of the future. Communism has no place here." These curious boasts symbolized something new for Richard, for whom the union and collective action was integral, but millions shared that attitude. In automobile assembly, petroleum refinement, electrical engineering, and dozens more trades unionism was an alien concept that attracted unbridled contempt by management and workers alike."
Oh yeah, that sounds grand! Let's just ignore the MASSIVE warning sirens going off in the background. Ah FUCK, Henry Ford is into politics and shit, I sense a future run for office! Here we go again!
This was terrific! Glad to see you back.
That was one intriguing introduction! I am, as always, hungry to read more.
Great new title for Part 2. Very interesting tease with that little snippet. I cannot wait to see what else you have got in store in this TL 
Part 1: Introduction - Page 1
Logo of the Socialist Party of America, c. 1915 - Source: Wiki Commons
Part 1: Rebel in Power
Introduction: The Battered Generation: A Snapshot of Embittered Souls
Ours was never lost. Hemingway hated that idea. He said of his "The Sun Also Rises" ensemble that they were not lost but battered - and battered we were. Endlessly. First by that accursed war, then pestilence. Men grappled with political upheaval, unemployment, depression, uncertainty. My cavalier brothers marched to the front while draped in the stars and stripes, and they followed the siren of glory to their graves. Our parents cheered them on and proudly parroted Roosevelt's mission statement: Peace and prosperity in our time. They voted for war, but it was us who drowned in the trenches and choked on phosgene. The scarring pushed some into despair, corruption and aimlessness, yes, but as a cohort we were not lost, simply made to witness the ash-strewn world created by our dutiful leaders. My comrades and I have never forgotten.
Jeremiah D. Crowley, Quoted in Spare Us Not: Grassroots Activism in the 1920s, 2003
Young men and women coming of age during the turn of the century, in an American period soon judged the Progressive Era, encountered many of the same trials and challenges of their forbearers with a few extra ingredients thrown in. Historians generally have agreed upon the notion that the country's citizenry and its political class exhibited an increasing concern for the public welfare whereas the U.S. since Reconstruction demonstrated an unmoving reliance on laissez-faire policies. This shift was clearly exemplified within both the public and private arenas, however the extent to which such narrative changes benefited the masses is in dispute. Initiatives represented by Roosevelt's Square Deal made a dent in the lives of working families, but most Americans lived beneath the poverty line, suffered poor housing and working conditions, and dealt with a lackluster educational system and nonexistent health services.
Jeremiah Crowley was one of these individuals, enduring a trouble-stricken childhood and several drawn-out economic downturns. Reverberations from the Panics of 1893 and 1906, as well as the never-ceasing postwar slump, decimated thousands of industries and put scores of businesses in bankruptcy. As soon as it appeared a recovery was well underway, another travesty would rain down on the working poor. Nothing ever seemed to improve for good. Bread lines faded away one year and reappeared the next. Supercilious bankers swore to the stability of institutions yet crumbled on the whim of a sudden buyout. The nation repeatedly overexerted itself on vanity projects like the Philippine War, costly endeavors in terms of human lives as well as from a fiscal point of view, and the material gains always seemed to escape the men on the ground. For Crowley, the prospect of Pax Americana was a laughable one at that.
Crowley's statement quoted above shines a light on the hurdles of that generation and elucidates the reasoning behind a left-wing undercurrent that overtook the United States in 1920. Starting from the table scraps of disjointed movements and misaligned labor communities, the Socialist Party of America under the stewardship of Eugene Victor Debs cut through the noise and against all odds fostered a genuine American Labor Movement. Together with the Industrial Workers of the World, the Socialists stirred the pot and garnered a solid reputation for class conscious activism over the course of about two decades. The 1920s started with a bang as presidential candidate for the Socialist Party Seymour Stedman overtook incumbent President Hiram Warren Johnson at the polls and, following a rather heated contingent election in Congress, was confirmed president-elect. Needless to say, the U.S. was on the precipice of a decade unlike any other in its relatively short history.
Crowley joined the Socialists in 1916 and thereby became a part of a new cadre of commanders in that organization. Joining the young activist were long-time veterans of the cause like "Big Bill" Haywood and Emil Seidel, radical feminists Rose Schneiderman and Doris Stevens, civil rights proponents A. Philip Randolph and Harry Haywood, and a slew of others determined to see the country change direction. Albeit stymied by rampant factionalism and squabbling, the party members trusted in the guidance of its overall mission and stayed unified even as other competing groups fell apart at the seams. These figures proved instrumental in countless labor battles, and their work was undoubtedly cut out for them upon the arrival of the Red Scare of 1918-20. With the election of Stedman, a new phase was upon them, and the younger generation, embodied by Crowley and numerous others, would be tasked with inspiring hope in the ongoing struggle for peace and freedom.
The fight for the soul of America had only just begun, and to the misfortune of the Socialists riding high with Stedman in office, dozens of interested parties saw not hope and progress in the palm of the U.S., but something else entirely. Something far darker: A twisted vacuum begging for a savior.
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Well that's a fucking intro and no mistake. All this saviour talk has me worried and no mistake.
Oh is that what we're calling them these days?
Truly. I'm glad to see that Part 2 is starting up.
I can only wonder what kind of powderkeg this US looks like in the 20s. So much going wrong and not a damn soul is capable is fixing half of it.
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