To the Victor, Go the Spoils (Redux): A Plausible Central Powers Victory

ahmedali

Banned
The German economy is a ticking time bomb even without Versailles. They funded over 90% of their entire war effort by borrowing, leaving them with a debt of 156 Billion marks in 1918, note the Versailles reparations were considered almost unpayable at 132 billion marks. They got out of this OTL due to hyperinflation making the money used to pay them back worthless. Now they have French Reparations ITTL, but those are only 10 Billion marks. So Germany is in for an economic crisis in the 20's

Nobody else is in for good times either. The French and Belgians are in for some serious economic disruptions due to territorial losses and the French having to pay reparations on top of that. Furthermore than and the British are lacking in German reparations. The British while not having to pay reparations themselves have the issue of needing to spend significantly more on their military than OTL. Italy is having a civil war, which is going to screw up their economy

Basically the only nations that might be doing better than OTL are Austria-Hungary and the US, the former because it isn't having an integrated economic torn apart by tariff walls between different countries, the latter because it is likely to have more government/military spending and less money coming in, avoiding the overinflating of the economy, and even then they might only be doing as well as OTL, or even slightly worse. It is simply that to my knowledge they don't have giant problems like the others

Of course it is also possible that we don't have a large scale return to the gold standard allowing monetary freedom to deal with these issue, but that goes against the economic orthodoxly of the time
But something like the Great Depression, I don't think it's going to happen

The German loans, along with the Entente loans, played a role in the depression
 
But something like the Great Depression, I don't think it's going to happen

The German loans, along with the Entente loans, played a role in the depression
A lot of things played a role in the Great Depression depending on who you listen to. The exact circumstances are less likely, but many of the supposed causes are still going to be there. There is almost certain to be worldwide issues from a return to the gold standard, overproduction, wages not keeping up with productivity, the weather in 1929 won't change that much, etc. So something like it could still happen, or you could have a general malaise lasting longer or confined to a few nations
 

ahmedali

Banned
A lot of things played a role in the Great Depression depending on who you listen to. The exact circumstances are less likely, but many of the supposed causes are still going to be there. There is almost certain to be worldwide issues from a return to the gold standard, overproduction, wages not keeping up with productivity, the weather in 1929 won't change that much, etc. So something like it could still happen, or you could have a general malaise lasting longer or confined to a few nations
This is correct

Although I read that the First World War is also a cause of depression, along with the economic paralysis imposed by Versailles on Germany
 
Refresh my memory, why was northern Dobruja ceded to Bulgaria?
Treaty of Bucharest declares most of it to be a CP condominium, with the mouth of the Danube retained by Romania as an exclave (but as far as I can tell was intended to be administered by a Danube Commission), however the Bulgarians would successfully lobby Berlin and Vienna to recognize their control of the entire condominium later in 1918. It's one of those areas that's made somewhat grey by the allied victory iotl, but in this timeline it seems to have been upheld.
 
Treaty of Bucharest declares most of it to be a CP condominium, with the mouth of the Danube retained by Romania as an exclave (but as far as I can tell was intended to be administered by a Danube Commission), however the Bulgarians would successfully lobby Berlin and Vienna to recognize their control of the entire condominium later in 1918. It's one of those areas that's made somewhat grey by the allied victory iotl, but in this timeline it seems to have been upheld.
Yeah Irl it was given to Bulgaria as a way to keep them in the war. I don’t see that changing ittl.
 
Yeah Irl it was given to Bulgaria as a way to keep them in the war. I don’t see that changing ittl.
IIRC, they were given Northern Dobruja four days before Bulgaria capitulated and was more of a desperate attempt to keep them in the war, so it might go a little differently ITTL.
 

ahmedali

Banned
Yeah Irl it was given to Bulgaria as a way to keep them in the war. I don’t see that changing ittl.
I think Bulgaria will get Dobruja at the expense of Western (Greek) Thrace, which should be given to the Ottomans. (This will not happen because they made a separate peace with the British)
 
The German economy is a ticking time bomb even without Versailles. They funded over 90% of their entire war effort by borrowing, leaving them with a debt of 156 Billion marks in 1918, note the Versailles reparations were considered almost unpayable at 132 billion marks. They got out of this OTL due to hyperinflation making the money used to pay them back worthless. Now they have French Reparations ITTL, but those are only 10 Billion marks. So Germany is in for an economic crisis in the 20's

Nobody else is in for good times either. The French and Belgians are in for some serious economic disruptions due to territorial losses and the French having to pay reparations on top of that. Furthermore than and the British are lacking in German reparations. The British while not having to pay reparations themselves have the issue of needing to spend significantly more on their military than OTL. Italy is having a civil war, which is going to screw up their economy

Basically the only nations that might be doing better than OTL are Austria-Hungary and the US, the former because it isn't having an integrated economic torn apart by tariff walls between different countries, the latter because it is likely to have more government/military spending and less money coming in, avoiding the overinflating of the economy, and even then they might only be doing as well as OTL, or even slightly worse. It is simply that to my knowledge they don't have giant problems like the others

Of course it is also possible that we don't have a large scale return to the gold standard allowing monetary freedom to deal with these issue, but that goes against the economic orthodoxly of the time
But doesn't Germany have their soft imperialism in Eastern Europe to help them recoup some of those losses?
 
But doesn't Germany have their soft imperialism in Eastern Europe to help them recoup some of those losses?
Theoretically. But that would take a decent period of peace for that to happen, and in the mean time they are going to have to pay for garrisoning and maintaining order there. So short term loss set against mid to long term gains
 
With regard to an alt-Depression , in this timeline. The world may be spared the full blown economic catastrophe that OTLsaw.

Germany is not in the same economic straits that it was in 0TL , the Russian civil war may have a different outcome than OTLand its’s likely that different economic decisions are going to be made in the world’s largest economy, namely, that of the United States. Herbert Hoover rose to prominence in part as a result of his famine relief efforts in 0TL Europe. It may well be that Hoover will never become President here, and therefore, some of the very regrettable decisions that were made by his administration, might well be avoided.
 
The German economy is a ticking time bomb even without Versailles. They funded over 90% of their entire war effort by borrowing, leaving them with a debt of 156 Billion marks in 1918, ...
... which were almost completly internal debts as the war bonds were only sold in Germany to germans , private persons as well as institutions and institutional investors (like the companies producing the war materials adn the banks creating the 'financial backings' of these production) which were the mayor (to overwhealming) holder of these bonds. While their devaluation during the inflation crisis was for the private holders there were truly catastrophic they were still the much smaller part of holders.

However ... Internal debts have the luxury of being or being made subject of whatever financial shenanigans there might be :
rename,​
reallocate,​
redeploy​
remake their maturtities,​
remake paying conditions​
combine them into other financial products​
...​
and thereby GREATLY delay payment day as well GREATLY remove them from the 'public' eye.
(The MEFO bills for i.e. might serve as a model. Despite becomming 'mature from 1938 the latest (IIRC) from the 12 billion RM there were still 8 billion held by the investors in 1945. ... due to some 'additional' legislations like not having to show these in to be published bank reports or certain accounting possibilities against other ... debts of certain tax-advantages granted to holders of such bilss etc., etc..)​
As the victor there would also be quite some possibilities to 'refund' those debts i.e. accounting them against certain investments goods now under administration of the victorious goverment. ...
simplest might be soil to be sold,​
then there might be railways rights​
harbour rights​
mining rights to be sold/leased to said institutional investors, may these 'rights' lay within eastern europe or middle africa.​

In opposite the Entente powers debts were foreign, external to the (much) greater ammount and from 1919 these external debtors (mainly american banks but in the re-re-reloaning of the entente poweres between each other) were at the doors of the treasuries of Paris, London, Rome, Belgrade etc. demaning their loans to be repayed. ... in public ... not subject to a single goverments measures and means.

Therefore I'm quite convinced that the victorious german goverment - regardless of how much reparations they actually might drew out of a victory ('only' 6 billions from russia are already set plus 10 billions from France ITTL) - would be well able to considearbly minimize its short(er) term debts, delay their payment and maturity and likely finally sit them out.
It won't be paradise but MUCH better and higher living standard for the populace compared to OTL as well as the war time just having ended.

... note the Versailles reparations were considered almost unpayable at 132 billion marks. ...
... well ... , only afeter a considerable time the Entente arrived at this numbers
  • 1919: first "off hand" 20 billion to be paid in gold (equal to ~ 7.000 t of gold)
  • June 1920 (conference of Boulogne): 269 billion (equal to ~ 94.150 t of gold)
(wee reminder: Frankfurt treaty was 1.450 t of gold and Brest-Litovsk were a mere 6 billion)
and only in
  • May 1921(one of the many London conferences): 132 billion

... Of course it is also possible that we don't have a large scale return to the gold standard allowing monetary freedom to deal with these issue, but that goes against the economic orthodoxly of the time
Well ... looking into what is known of plans and ideas that Helfferich, Erzberger and Rathenau during the war - esp. later in the war - developed ... they seemed to be well prepared with keeping the actual war time system of 'masking' the gold standard (and other finance political shenaningans) for ... some time longer until the economy had enough (open to free definition what 'enough' might mean) recovered. If ... after such a time (from 2 to 12 years as in some letters by Rathenau) there would be a return to gold standard system at all ... might very much depend on how the economics and finances of everybody else might have developed until then.
 
Last edited:
I’m sure you already have at least a general idea of what’s happening in Austria-Hungary, and I’m very far from an expert. But based on my limited understanding I’ve always seen the double monarchy as being more than capable of surviving, though the Magyars make it somewhat difficult post-WWI. They were against the war, are beholden to the borders of the old Magyar kingdom, got to march around Eastern Europe for years soaking up all those communist ideas, and are now coming home to Vienna telling them that the south Slavs need to be appeased, who, at least certainly in their eyes, started the war they hated in the first place, and that part of that appeasement will chop off swaths of land from Hungary, along with removing it’s only coast. I can imagine that’d be a hard pill to swallow in their position. Just my two cents, though I certainly don’t believe it makes reform or surviving the reform impossible, they are surrounded by Germany, German allies, and German puppets after all.
 
I’m sure you already have at least a general idea of what’s happening in Austria-Hungary, and I’m very far from an expert. But based on my limited understanding I’ve always seen the double monarchy as being more than capable of surviving, though the Magyars make it somewhat difficult post-WWI. They were against the war, are beholden to the borders of the old Magyar kingdom, got to march around Eastern Europe for years soaking up all those communist ideas, and are now coming home to Vienna telling them that the south Slavs need to be appeased, who, at least certainly in their eyes, started the war they hated in the first place, and that part of that appeasement will chop off swaths of land from Hungary, along with removing it’s only coast. I can imagine that’d be a hard pill to swallow in their position. Just my two cents, though I certainly don’t believe it makes reform or surviving the reform impossible, they are surrounded by Germany, German allies, and German puppets after all.
I do also want to note, for Austro-Magyar relations, that Austria, mid war, broke an important promise to Hungary: not to annex Serbia. By voiding the existence of the Serbian state, declaring Serbian soldiers to be internal rebels and therefore exempt from the protections of the Geneva convention and hanging portraits of the emperor in Serbian schools, the Austrians essentially proclaimed the annexation that they had explicitly promised never to implement.
 
Social Conflict & Elections: The United States (October 1918 - January 1920)
wSZs4v6.png

Social Conflict & Elections
The United States
October 1918 - January 1920

The experience of the United States in the first world war was brief and somewhat bizarre. Having entered the war after German forces sank numerous American vessels killing hundreds of American citizens, notably the Lusitania, and after the Germans demonstrated their hostility through the Zimmerman telegram, the US came into the conflict without clear goals. These ultimately became Wilson’s 14 points in early 1918, with the US public committing itself to the idea of winning a war in order to liberate the people of Europe and secure US trading interests.

Yet by January 1919 the situation had entirely reversed. With a US peace treaty having been signed at the Treaty of Vienna in late November the US had essentially spent millions, billions even, on financing a foreign war for which they had achieved nothing of true value. Sure, trade was now resuming, there would be no more deaths at sea and Europe at a glance at least seemed to be returning to stability. However, hundreds of thousands of soldiers had been sent to France for almost no reason, and the US military had, despite their eagerness, not performed well for lack of time - and American families had paid the price.

Unlike most of the allied powers too, the US soldiers returning from the front had only very briefly experienced the horrors of modern war. Some returned to the states with their horror stories, of men being mown down in their dozens by a single machine gun, or of entire units being subjected to brutal artillery strikes killing dozens - or even gas attacks. However, the vast majority of America’s troops came home having essentially gone on an all expenses paid holiday to Europe where they felt denied the chance to do their bit for the war.

It’s easy in hindsight to assume most US soldiers were disinterested in the conflict, but in practice war fever had swept through the ranks and US soldiers had mostly volunteered to fight - rather than being forced to go. This meant that many had built a large amount of pride, motivation and determination to serve - and then suddenly it was gone. France broke, and the war came to an abrupt end, and within weeks they were back on their boats.

The number one victim of the war was Woodrow Wilson. While the President had brought the country into the conflict with high hopes and good intentions, his dreams of a third term in office were dead in the water as the general public quickly started to view the conflict as a pointless endeavour. Unfortunately for Wilson, he seemed completely unaware of this fact.

Ever the arrogant, self righteous man that he was, Wilson’s health began declining throughout the end of 1918 and into early 1919 - but he was convinced he would be able to secure a third term in office. This was something Democratic Party bosses quickly became convinced was inconceivable as US labour unrest and social clashes started to increase in the period following the conflict. Thus, very quickly a wide gulf politically began to emerge between the lame duck president and his party leadership.

The GOP meanwhile continued to be led by the Conservative, and often isolationist, right of th party despite the best efforts of Teddy Roosevelt who tragically and unexpectedly died in January 1919 aged just 60. Bequeathed to the earth in a small ceremony, Roosevelt’s son Quentin, returned from France where he had served throughout the final German offensive, led tributes to his father. “Us cubs know little how to thank the old lion” he noted, “but the men at the front will always remember.”

Since the end of the war Roosevelt had lambasted Wilson for his failure to better prepare the US for the war, and had spent the final months of 1918 campaigning for the GOP in the midterms. Achieving stunning success wherever he stood, he was seen as a near shoe-in for the Presidency in 1920 - now the field was wide open. Calling for all kinds of new social security measures, such as old-age pensions, insurance for the sick and unemployed, and the construction of public housing for low-income families among other policies. Roosevelt ‘s death had left the GOP perfectly divided between the Rooseveltian, socially conscious and pro-intervention wing, and the isolationist, old style, conservative wing.

His message had spoken to what the American Expeditionary Force veterans felt was something of a squandered opportunity. While before the US entry into the conflict a debate had raged in the US over how ‘prepared’ the US was in the case of attack, at the time it had seemed something of a low priority issue. After all, if the US were attacked, she had a grand fleet and an army could be created from scratch in no time. However - the practice of creating that army for this war had re-fuelled the debate. Training the hundreds of thousands of men needed for frontline duty had taken months, not weeks, and the French capitulation had showed that was simply too long.

While beloved by the US public, Roosevelt had mixed backing among the GOP party bosses who, fearing a hard economically interventionist stance after 1920, sought to capitalise on their control of the legislature after the midterms - but more on that later. This further split the party as a result, with the old isolationist conservatives calling for the US to cut its losses and end the war as soon as defeat became evident, and focus on domestic development while extracting payment for all war loans.

This defined the two new wings of the GOP. The progressives, inspired by Roosevelt’s views and the massive expansion of state powers that they believed could be used for social as well as military causes after the war, believed firmly that Wilson had wasted a massive chance for America to take global leadership by dithering for too long. They sought to create a new, outward looking America intent on caring for its own citizens and using its power to spread the gospel of freedom and free trade. The protectionists meanwhile saw the war as a dismal failure because the US had never needed to intervene at all. They saw all this time shipping, training and arming these men as money wasted - unforgivable to the primarily big-business based GOP old order, made worse by Wilson’s ‘overreach’ in federal power.

The Democrats meanwhile also had their split views on the war. Some of the more progressive leaning north-eastern Democrats agreed with the Progressives, though did not necessarily agree with their spin on the social commentary of the classless, race-less war effort. Most though backed the war solely because they had been the ones to approve of it, while Southern Democrats began to slowly but surely condemn Wilson’s wasted efforts as time went on and the outcome of the war became more clear.

1918 Midterm Elections
The 1918 midterms were a clear indicator of US public opinion rather decisively turning against the Democrats and President Wilson. The timing of the midterms too proved extremely difficult for the Democrats in particular, who faced a hostile electorate and were unable to explain exactly what the US had achieved from the war. Furthermore, with the Treaty of Vienna still up for negotiation by early November, many Americans questioned why the US was involved in discussions at all by that point and sought an immediate treaty with Germany to permit the demobilisation of US forces and a return to ordinary life - especially Democratic voters.

If you were a democrat supportive of the war, you might still vote Democrat for Wilson’s domestic record. But if you were a democrat hesitant about the war, an independent voter unclear what was gained out of it, a progressive supportive of the war but hostile to Wilson, or a Republican against it - you were far more likely to vote GOP.

Largely focused on domestic issues still but with the Democrats divided over the conflict, the midterms proved to be a landslide for the GOP. Winning 27 contests in the Senate, the GOP entrenched their majority with 53 seats to the Democrats’ 43. Taking a majority in the House too, and the Governorships of Nevada and Ohio, along with five other states out west. The only gain of the season for the Democrats would be the New York Gubernatorial election where Al Smith won with an incredibly narrow margin of victory of fewer than 2,000 votes - seemingly on account of the GOP’s progressive vote being split by the Socialist Party.

The result set the tone for the buildup to the 1920 Presidential election and re-ignited the ever burning fire of US isolationism largely championed by the GOP’s conservative wing, even though many GOP voters would in fact have favoured a more interventionist stance.

The 1919 Legislative Year
One issue the US faced after the war was that they had invested their entire economy into fighting, and had brought numerous utilities and enterprises under state control to execute the conflict. This, and a massive investment into the arms industry, had for a time left the US with a nearly 100% employment rate and greatly boosted the standard of living for many Americans. The end of the war flipped this on its head though.

No longer requiring such an active wartime industry and no longer needing to arm four million men, plus the rest of the allies, as Wilson and Pershing had planned for what they assumed would be a war that would drag into 1920, the arms industry seemed to evaporate overnight. Government contracts were quickly cancelled outside the realms of aircraft and shipbuilding, and 800,000 Americans in France began to return home to a country in need of a standing army no larger than 300,000 prior to the conflict.

This would theoretically leave half a million men without jobs across the country, along with hundreds of thousands more who would ultimately not be needed in the coming years by the arms industry and their various input industries. What made this even worse though was the fact that mine workers, farmers and other primarily resource extraction based industries suddenly facing a huge drop in demand as 1919 rolled on.

Throughout the war workers had been prevented from striking by the federal Government as part of the Lever Act, giving Congress power to set prices and limit union actions to ensure continuity of the war effort. This had the effect of both slowly dampening wages nation-wide, especially in the mining and industrial sectors, and meaning that union membership had risen rapidly as frustrated workers sought a voice to champion their desire for better pay and hours.

For the US economy this proved disastrous. Industrial bosses, faced with a massive fall in weapons orders, naturally sought to cut costs. Unions simultaneously sought to raise wages and protect jobs, both of which would have to be frozen or cut to save profits. Those cuts also then meant there were fewer people with cash on hand, which meant the services industry began to shudder to a halt. Further, this then proliferated out of the cities into the countryside and the agricultural and mining industries, greatly reducing demand while supply remained high - forcing down prices and thus profits for those businesses on a national scale.

On top of this slow economic grind to a halt throughout 1919, Wilson quickly became aware of the very real concerns from the US Treasury about the prospect of European defaults on loan repayments. US Treasury Secretary Carter Glass made clear in a January report to Wilson that with Italy embroiled in civil conflict and certain to default, and France now staring down debts amounting to 200% of GDP, the prospect of a ‘default crisis’ across Europe was very real.

France in particular, along with many of the Entente powers, owed the British and Americans catastrophically enormous sums of money. This was because to finance the war the allies had created an intricate web of IOU’s, with France and most other Entente partners having borrowed from Britain, and Britain having borrowed from France, and both having borrowed from the US in order to spread the capital liquidity among the warring empires. This practice was sustainable for some, but for a country like France absolutely required a victory and massive compensation to be paid by Germany in order for it to avoid wreaking havoc on the French economy. Unfortunately of course, France had capitulated.

This in turn meant that France now had an economy that had been enormously damaged by the war, with over 100bn in damages and billions more in debts to their own internal lenders, which in turn would further damage the French economy if they defaulted. Glass feared that a French default could trigger a global economic contraction the likes of which no state had experienced before, with American banks such as J.P.Morgan seeing catastrophically large debt sheets written off not just by the French, but by the British too who might themselves suffer a default if France did.

The impact of this globally would be unimaginable, particularly if it happened sooner rather than later, leaving members of the cabinet concerned that bolshevism could emerge in other parts of Europe, or even the United States. This was only further emphasised by the insurrection in Italy, which by January had spiralled into an existential civil conflict for the country. The revolt also raised further questions; would Italy be able to repay its own debts to Britain and France? Would this new bolshevist revolution spread to France if Italy defaulted?

For Wilson this spurred two fears. First, despite the rapid death of many of his 14 points, Wilson still hoped to create a community of nations to prevent a second great war that the US might have to become involved with. While primarily focusing on involving the former Allied powers, by late 1919 he even approached the German Government about the prospect of a German membership of the League of Nations. This quickly proved to be its undoing, despite the initial plans being well supported by the French and British - though all of this mattered little as the GOP controlled Congress made clear there would be no US-led League from the outset.

Elected in March 1919, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Henry Cabot Lodge quickly made it clear the US would not tie itself at the hip to foreign powers. While the battle would rage on until the next Presidential election, the Senator from Massachusetts quickly amassed the support of enough GOP and Democratic representatives that Wilson’s foreign policy plans died long before his Presidency did.

The second fear of Wilson’s was that a major economic catastrophe would erase his record as President, and further destabilise Europe to such a degree that a second war - or even a broadly ‘global’ revolution across the west as Lenin so confidently called upon, would emerge. While some historians have painted this as a highly humanitarian and internationalist view, in reality this was a purely selfish view motivated by Wilson’s desire to seek a third term and his view that all of his actions done in the name of and in the support of God would be undone by a major global monetary crisis.

As such, for much of 1919 Wilson set about attempting to change the US approach to foreign debt repayment structuring. This began with the aforementioned Koltz-McAdoo Deal, in which the United States essentially permitted additional foreign loans being made to the French Government in exchange for steel and coal tariff relaxations. This move demonstrated to Wilson that the allied powers in particular still relied on America in this time of uncertainty - and that he could ‘rescue’ his own legacy through generous international credit arrangements.

This in particular focused around seeking to limit interest rates and extend credit to France in additional longer scale lower interest loans intended to allow France to start to recover, and eventually, slowly, repay US loans. Unfortunately though this created an obvious backlash. While war financing was conducted largely by private ventures, the move quickly drew the ire of the GOP in congress. This was both gravely damaging in the long term, and also completely unsurprising at the same time - causing immeasurable difficulties later on.

The GOP, who had come to loathe anything and everything Wilson did by now, immediately did their utmost to cut aid to the allied powers. There would be no understanding or sympathies, these nations owed the United States and its people money for a war they lost - and by God they would pay.

While Wilson would continue to seek better fiscal terms with the Allied powers during 1919, even visiting Paris in February 1919 and London in June, he would suffer a major stroke in October 1919 which marked the de-facto sudden end of his Presidency in everything but name.

The Red Scare
Arguably the culminating event of social unrest in 1919, the Red Scare would dominate the country as increasingly violent labour unrest would explode across the country. Meanwhile in the South, racial tensions would be exacerbated as black servicemen would return home, some of which having fought in Pershing's disastrous delaying offensive, leading towards the confusingly named "Red Summer".

Fuelled by bolshevik victories in Russia, defeat on the continent, Italian conflict and its impact on the Italian-American community, along with a growing sense of American nationalism, the red summer would prove to be a brutally violent and racist period overlooked by the excessively foreign policy orientated Wilson administration.

Before the Red Summer though came the Red Scare. This was primarily triggered by the Seattle General Strike in January 1919 over wage increases, a consequence in itself of the return of millions of servicemen who returned to the United States bored, frustrated and unemployed from the war. Many had not seen combat, and those who did felt they had been let down by their Government and allies in the conflict. This in particular led to a period of distrust of Franco-Americans, and attacks against Italian Americans too following the country’s collapse into civil war in late 1918.

The Seattle General Strike started as a dispute among dockworkers, but quickly spread to a city-wide strike. Terrified of the consequences, particularly given the recent strikes in France and Germany which socialist leaders had clearly intended to become something more, the US press lambasted the strikers as bolsheviks and Seattle’s Mayor deployed large forces of police and strikebreakers to attempt to put down any violent demonstrations. With 60,000 workers on strike though, the situation in Seattle quickly devolved into chaos as the city was put to a standstill.

Much like in France, the middle classes of the city were deeply opposed to the strike and local government officials quickly began piling on the pressure with labour leaders to end the workers action. The sad thing of course was many of the striking workers had perfectly reasonable justification to strike, having suffered years of delay in wage hikes and growing inflation thanks to the massive injection of public money into the economy during the war by the Government. Few, maybe none, wanted anything more radical to happen - but of course the Mayor of Seattle cared little for their true motivations.

Mayor Ole Hanson, who had only held the role for a matter of weeks when the strike began, took a particularly aggressive stance against the strikers - especially for a western Republican, and even more confusingly for one who once was a member of Roosevelt’s progressive Bull Moose Party.

Spurred by the writings of a small number of radicals, who encouraged the Seattle strikers to overthrow their ‘wage slavery’ inspired by the Bolsheviks with pamphlets saying that “Russia Did it” and therefore they could too, Hanson cracked down hard. Deploying police armed with machine guns and vastly raising the number of policemen and soldiers in the city, Hanson threatened striking workers with violent action should they not abandon their strike.

Some union leaders, seeing the sheer weight of forces arrayed against them, did fear that the consequences of continuing the strike may be great - however they remained determined. Buoyed by the successes seen in Germany and France, and questioning whether American troops - so demoralised by the war - would return home to kill their own countrymen, they challenged Hanson’s bluff.

Hanson then addressed the city saying that any man who “attempted to take over the control of the municipal government functions will be shot”, prompting the national committee of the AFL to suggest to the striking committee that the strike end immediately. Boldly, the striking committee voted this down on February 8th, and the general strike in the city thus continued.

By the 11th though several unions had already returned to work, fearful of the consequences of the strike’s continuation. On the 13th, after just a week of striking, the committee would vote to end the strike - fearful of the consequences and having decisively lost the battle for public opinion. This set a tragic and fearful example of what the ‘establishment’ should do in response to major strikes for the future; crackdown with threats of violence.

While the strike, peaceful though it was, had ended - Hanson quickly made sure that the US public viewed it as an attempted ‘revolutionary’ event, even characterising it’s peaceful nature as a sign of violent intent. Resigning as Mayor soon after, he toured the country and made enormous sums speaking against the rights of workers, revolution and the danger of socialism.

What followed elsewhere though was far worse.

In late April 1919, a collection of at least 36 bombs were mailed across the country to prominent individuals, including politicians, judicial officials, businessmen and newspaper editors. One such bomb would be mailed to Mayor Hanson - but he never opened it. The package, wrapped in brown paper and containing an explosive that would trigger when acid was dropped inside a container, triggering a stick of dynamite, instead was opened by his staffer William Langer.

Langer was more or less instantly killed by the explosive, which blasted apart the room he was in on May 1st - the widely celebrated ‘May Day’ dedicated to workers in the United States and abroad. Elsewhere, Georgia Senator Thomas W. Hardwick, who had recently sponsored an anti-extremist immigration act in 1918, narrowly avoided his own maiming when his housekeeper opened the explosive. She would have both of her hands removed in the explosion, while his wife would be severely burned on her face by the bomb.

Naturally, the two explosions and the near identical packing style of each weapon left the postal service easily able to identify other mail-bombs. Perpetrated by an extremist group of anarchists known as the Galleanisti led by Italian Luigi Galleani who had long been an advocate of labour action in the United States. The bombings were primarily in protest of Galleani’s upcoming deportation by the US Dept of Justice, however were widely misinterpreted as a campaign of terror intended to cause a socialist revolution or as ‘revenge’ killings by anarchists.

While the Galleanisti were not initially blamed for the plot - the postal service had no way then of tracking any of the perpetrators - the bombings surprised the US public and instilled a slight paranoia, deepening the red scare.

One such person destined for a mail bomb would be Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Palmer, unfortunately, would be destined for not one, but two bombs - and in the second wave of bombings in June 1919 received a second package. This was not unfortunate for Palmer, but instead for a different senior American couple; the Roosevelts. Carlo Valdinoci, a Galleanisti who had been tasked with delivering the explosive to the home of the Attorney General, would be blown to pieces when the explosive detonated prematurely just as he arrived at the family home. Unfortunately for the young Assistant Secretary to the Navy and his wife Eleanor, who lived just across the street from the incident, they were just a matter of metres from where the attack took place.

The bomb exploded and destroyed virtually the entire front of Palmer’s home, sending bodyparts of Valdinoci flying across the street - later found on Roosevelt’s front porch. Unfortunately, unlike the previous explosives, these bombs had been layered with a metal slug intended to become shrapnel to increase the lethality of the weapon. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a promising young Democratic politician, was thus riddled with shrapnel - along with his wife, and died shortly after from his wounds. Amazingly despite sustaining injuries Eleanor Roosevelt would survive the encounter - experiencing only minor injuries thanks to her husband’s body in effect shielding her from the blast.*

The first and only high profile casualties of the bombings in June, besides the death of a nightwatchman William Boehner, Roosevelt’s death shocked the country - and left Palmer apoplectic with rage. Determined to destroy the perpetrators of the attack, Palmer goes to the House Appropriations Committee and demands $500,000 to fight the terrorists, and remarkably for the time is awarded half of that sum, $250,000.

With his new finances, he sets about beginning what became known as the ‘Palmer Raids’, first arresting several anarchists in Buffalo, New York, in a failed deportation case that sees the group freed after a judge rules that someone cannot be jailed or deported merely for being a member of an anarchist group. Palmer immediately challenged this policy, seeking a new Sedition Law in the Senate that surprisingly was passed in December 1919 on the back of Roosevelt’s death - allowing the deportation of any convicted member of a violent extremist group. Amendments would be made to the original text though by the Republicans, who did not allow Palmer to revoke the citizenship of foreign-born Americans convicted of sedition.

This gave J. Edgar Hoover, Palmer’s new head of the new General Intelligence Division, the power to investigate radical groups, detain individuals almost without cause, and later jail or deport them in a manner that many agree broke the US constitution. Hoover, along with a determined Palmer, would go on to arrest thousands of individuals marked as ‘radicals’ throughout late 1919 and early 1920 in the Palmer Raids. It is believed that before the Wilson administration was removed and Palmer with it in January 1921, Palmer and Hoover would deport around 10,000 people from the United States - often without having committed any crimes.

The 1919 Strikes**
Frustrated after years of patiently waiting for pay rises due to the war and empowered thanks to their hundreds of thousands of members, the American Federation of Labor decided that they would strike for pay on November 1st.

This was a notable strike as it was the first time the workers of any single industry had directly challenged the Federal Government since the end of the war. There had been previous strikes in 1919, but only the coal strike had directly involved the US federal Government.

The Boston Police Strike in September by police officers had briefly threatened to set off a similar incident when officers sought to create a union and associate themselves with the AFL, however the union had failed to back the policemen.

Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge and local police commissioner Curtis made a name for themselves crushing the officers mercilessly by sacking the policemen and deploying the army, even ignoring mediation efforts - making Coolidge a household name. Having not yet directly faced any major strike action since Seattle, which was largely handled at a local level, Palmer used the planned coal miners strike to further improve his own reputation to build a platform for a Presidential run in 1920.

Despite being a vehement anti-socialist, Palmer took a surprisingly restrained approach to the strike in public, failing to heed the call of some radicals to label it as an attempt at revolution or an “insurrection”. Actually viewed historically as being pro-labor, he took the view that any of his actions were not directed against workers as a whole, nor unions, merely against extremism and revolution.

Part of that was his belief that he could not allow a union to ‘break’ the federal Government following the Seattle example, fearing that if he did it would ruin both his reputation and unleash a tidal wave of mass strikes across the country.

Sure of broad, if not universal support from the US public and establishment, Palmer did however heavily suppress the strike through legal rather than forceful means. Threatening AFL chief John Lewis with criminal prosecution for ‘hoarding’ and ‘profiteering’ off necessity goods under the Lever Act. This would prove too much for Lewis to bear, and he quickly withdrew the support of the AFL for the strike - but the 400,000 miners decided to go ahead anyway.

After three weeks of striking, and with pressure mounting on Palmer to act, a deal was eventually struck with the miners in December without violence. The incident gave Palmer a respected reputation among the US conservative right, and would set him up nicely for a run for the Presidency in 1920.


---

* Yes, this really happened
** I cant be arsed to write about the Great Steel Strike - it happened as per OTL and shall be referenced next update.
 
Last edited:
Top