Well done - good Beagle War scenarios are hard to find!In the spring of 1978, the South Atlantic was not high on anyone’s list of potential global flashpoints. There had been a longstanding dispute between Chile and Argentina over the Beagle Channel and the chain of islands there. If anywhere in the region was deemed likely to provoke a military conflict it was the Falkland Islands, which the Argentinians also laid claim to, though the fact these were British dependencies should have ruled out any move by the Argentinians to try and invade them. Despite the high risk the Argentinians seriously considered an amphibious assault to seize the Islands and South Georgia in late 1977. They believed that with PM Dennis Healy and the Labour government focused on domestic issues on domestic issues and looking to reduce the defence budget there might be an opening for a swift decisive invasion of the Falklands This idea was also partly motivated by the fact that a British led international tribunal had awarded control of Picton, Lennox and Nueva to Chile in June of 1977. Wanting to punish the British for this action and deliver a military success that would bolster their failing public support the Junta controlling Argentina at the time had convinced themselves that faced with a fait accompli the British would protest but do nothing else. This theory was soundly rebuffed when intelligence pointing to Argentinian intentions was received in London and the Destroyers HMS Sheffield and HMS Hood were dispatched on a visit to the Falklands in November of 1977, along with the nuclear submarine HMS Temeraire. The presence of two British warships anchored off Port Stanley caused the Argentine Junta to reconsider their options and yet instead of abandoning the idea of using military action to distract from Argentina’s economic woes the Junta turned their attention back to the Beagle Channel.
Postscript The Beagle War - April – June 1978
If targeting the Beagle Channel avoided starting a conflict with a major western power invading the islands risked spilling over into a full-scale war with Chile instead, and whereas Britain was thousands of miles away Chile and Argentina shared a long common border. Still the Argentinians carried on planning an invasion to seize control of the islands supported by a full-scale invasion of Chile if necessary. It was a case of military minds seeking a military solution to social and political problems. The Argentines were willing to take this risk because they erroneously believed they would have the support of the USA, since the Americans had been willing to supply arms to the Junta precisely because of their enmity towards Chile. The US government had not been happy when Salvador Allende became president of Chile and the CIA worked with elements in the Chilean military to orchestrate a coup. This went spectacularly wrong in late 1972 when the Washington Post published details of the ‘Cuba Papers’, which not only revealed information about the conduct of the military and the CIA during the occupation of Cuba but also revealed information about some of the CIA’s other ‘black ops’ including their connections with the Chilean military. This resulted in a number of army officers, condemned as American puppets, being arrested or fleeing the country, including chief conspirator General Augusto Pinochet. He found refuge in Argentina, which only served to increase the strain on relations between the two countries. Much to the surprise of the US Allende followed the Chilean constitution which forbade anyone from being President for two consecutive terms and he was replace by his predecessor Eduardo Frei Montalva, which was not much of an improvement in American eyes. Some had hoped that after Nelson Rockefeller won the US Presidential election in 1976 there might be a thawing of relations, especially considering the constant accusations about the brutal treatment of opponents of the Junta in Argentina. Unfortunately, these hopes were dashed as the Rockefeller administration renewed US support to Argentina, and the US was distinctly non-committal about ratifying the disposition of the Beagle Channel arrived at by the arbitration commission.
It was this that led the Argentine to believe that they could count on the US to prevent any meaningful international response and the invasion of the islands began just after dawn on the 22nd of April. The Chileans had very little in the way of a presence on any of the trio and in the face of near simultaneous landings on all three there was little they could do to resist. The only significant casualties for the Argentines came when two amphibious assault vehicles collided just off Picton island and sank, claiming some twenty live in the process. Publicly the Argentines justified their action by claiming that control of the islands was vital to Argentina’s national interest and that the arbitration had been biased and possibly even corrupt, a claim that aroused the ire of the British.
Initially the US reaction to the capture of the islands was all that the Argentines could have hoped for. When he addressed the issue on the 24th of April President Rockefeller called for a halt to any further military action and for both sides to agree to sit down and negotiate. This superficially reasonable position served to infuriate many of the professional diplomats in Washington as it could be read as acceding to the Argentinian seizure despite the action being in violation of international agreements the USA was technically a party to. Rockefeller claimed that the fact things didn’t escalate into a full-blown Argentine invasion of Chile, or vice versa, was owing to his call for restraint. In fact the Argentines had concluded that despite possessing a much a larger military than the Chileans the terrain along the border and the natural advantages that accrued to the defender would make such an attack far too costly, though it seems this was not finally decided until the 23rd of April, too late to reconsider the Beagle Channel operation. Being heavily outnumbered served to dissuade the Chileans from any operations in the opposite direction, for the time being at least, and instead they began to work on plans to remove the Argentines from the islands and trying to build up international support, whether diplomatic or practical.
If the reaction from Washington towards the invasion was rather lukewarm the political temperature in London swiftly approached boiling point. The accusations of bias and corruption in the arbitration was a direct slap in the face to the British. Equally importantly this reckless action by the Argentinians raised serious concerns about what they might do next, meaning that the security of the Falkland Islands was once again in question. By pure coincidence other events had served to bring the Falkland Islands to the attention of the British public, specifically a BBC documentary that had explored the islands and their wildlife, meaning that when details of the previous Argentinian threat to the island leaked the press made them front page news. Several British newspapers who were inclined towards supporting the Conservative Party accused the government of jeopardizing British interests by their inaction, conveniently ignoring deployment of the Royal navy ships to the Falklands the previous winter. The two destroyers and HMS Temeraire had returned to Britain in January and rather than simply sending another small force of warships Prime Minister Healy decided that a clear and unequivocal message had to be sent to Argentina and so despite objections from some in the Royal Navy, and in his own cabinet, he decided a fully-fledged taskforce would be dispatched with the aircraft carrier HMS Vanguard at the heart of a force of fourteen warships which would escort a group of transport ships carrying a force of 385 Royal Marines to reinforce the defences on the islands. Healy announced his decision on the 27th of April and stated the task force would depart within the next fortnight. This both allowed the British government to be seen to be taking strong action and left a window of opportunity for pressure to be applied to the Argentinians to withdraw from the Beagle Channel and avoid the risk of clashing with the Royal Navy.
There was consternation in both Buenos Aires and Washington at the British decision, though regrettably not much in the way of a coherent response. In Washington there had already been some heated discussions behind closed doors at the White House about the President’s ‘hasty’ pronouncement, with Vice-President Ronald Reagan being particularly unhappy. He was of the opinion that the US should have followed the British lead and dispatched a US Navy Taskforce to the area, with US Marines taking control of the Beagle Islands ‘temporarily’ while conducting long term negotiations with Chile and Argentina over their final disposition. This idea horrified the State Department, still dealing with the mess created by the US withdrawal from Cuba, and annoyed President Rockefeller, who was in no mood to be portrayed as having been misunderstood or as having flip-flopped on his position. These disagreements served to prevent any positive action from Washington as April turned to May and the US Ambassador to the UN was left in the embarrassing position of having to abstain while a resolution condemning the Argentine occupation of the Beagle islands was passed in the General Assembly.
In Buenos Aires there was considerable apprehension among the leaders of the Junta at the British move, and this was nothing compared to the mounting tension among the general population, where the seizure of the Beagle islands had done nothing to bolster the standing of the Junta. Common sense might have dictated they take advantage of the opportunity seemingly afforded by President Rockefeller’s statement and seek an agreement to withdraw from the islands on condition the issue of control would be renegotiated. Given the divisions in Washington attempts by the Junta to reach out produced no result as the professional diplomats were desperately trying to distance the USA from this idea. Faced with this the Argentinians sought to calm the situation with the British by sending assurances that they had not been accusing them of any wrongdoing with regard to the arbitration and that they had never intended to invade the Falkland Islands. Given that the British had intelligence that gave the lie to this latter claim this diplomatic effort also failed dismally and with great fanfare the Royal Navy taskforce duly set sail on the 9th of May.
The time it took for the taskforce to reach the South Atlantic created a further opportunity for diplomacy and there would be several attempts to create some sort of workable compromise, with Peru taking a leading role acting on behalf of the UN. These efforts foundered because the Chileans were utterly unwilling to entertain any plan that might reopen the question of control of the Beagle Islands and the dispatch of the British taskforce simply stiffened their resolve. The Chileans were making discrete diplomatic overtures to London, looking for more active support from the Healy government. Even if a direct intervention was out of the question the Chileans hoped that might be able to obtain weapons and equipment that would strengthen their defence and encourage the Argentinians to back down. No one in London was prepared to go that far, yet, but neither did they encourage the Chileans to back down in the face of Argentine aggression. Adding the continued arguments in Washington over what steps they should take and in support of whom it was not surprising that the crisis was still threatening to flash over into a full-scale war between Chile and Argentina when the taskforce arrived on the 24th of May.
In Buenos Aires the Junta was now desperately looking for a way out of the crisis but were not at this point prepared to withdraw from the Beagle Islands without at least the guarantee that the result of the arbitration would be revised, something that definitely was not on offer. Any hopes that the seizure of the islands would bolster the Junta had been dashed by the hostile response from London and the clear signs of back peddling from President Rockefeller’s original position in Washington. The mood in Argentina overall was one of sullen unhappiness with an undercurrent of fear, only made worse by a series of false alarms about air attacks heading for Buenos Aires. The one action the Junta did take as the taskforce arrived was to recall the aircraft carrier ARA Veinticinco de Mayo for fear that there might be an accidental encounter between aircraft from Veinticinco de Mayo and patrolling fighters from HMS Vanguard. There was something of an irony in this owing to the fact that the Veinticinco de Mayo had begun life as the Royal Navy carrier HMS Vengeance. News of the withdrawal soon reached the Chileans, and this encouraged them to concentrate elements of their own navy around the Beagle Islands. These ships included the Almirante Lynch, a derivative of the Leander Class of Royal Navy frigates. She had been built in the UK and would engage in the most significant military action of the conflict.
On the 27th of May the ARA General Belgrano was escorting a transport carrying supplies and equipment for the troops garrisoned on Picton Island. This was meant to be a fast run, but the transport proved incapable of maintaining its rated speed and thus the journey would take a full eight hours longer than planned, which prove to be enough time for the Almirante Lynch to intercept the pair, though precisely how the Chilean acquired the information on the course and speed of the Argentine ships has been hotly disputed. Many believe that the British passed this intelligence to the Chileans, though records pertaining to operations in the South Atlantic are not due to be declassified until 2028 and successive governments have refused to be drawn on the issue. Conversely the General Belgrano was unaware that there was a Chilean ship in the vicinity and does not appear to have detected Almirante Lynch or if the Belgrano did, she does not appear to have registered the Almirante Lynch. Given that it was impossible to get any first-hand accounts from the senior officers of the General Belgrano in the aftermath of the encounter a definitive answer is impossible to come by. The Almirante Lynch had received updated rules of engagement that called for her to engage any hostile warships approaching the Beagle Islands without warning and she was equipped with a battery of British made Stingray anti-shipping missiles. At about 1810 hours she targeted the General Belgrano and fired two missiles. One failed to lock on but the second hit home, penetrating the hull just behind B turret. Fire and smoke billowed out of the hole torn in the hull as the explosion started a fire aboard the Belgrano. Frantic efforts were made to contain the fire but barely ten minutes after the missile hit a massive explosion in the ammunition magazine for B turret wracked the ship and broke her back. The Admiral Belgrano she slid beneath the water at 1845 hours, taking 904 of her crew with her, including her captain.
The merchant ship the General Belgrano had been escorting immediately turned around and headed back to port, leaving the Almirante Lynch to pick up the survivors of the attack. These survivors were shocked to be brought aboard a Chilean warship, apparently believing that the General Belgrano had been torpedoed by a Royal Navy submarine. This was also the belief in Buenos Aires, even after the Almirante Lynch radioed her base and reported their successful attack and the rescue of the survivors. It was only when the Almirante Lynch returned to harbour and offloaded the survivors that the Chilean version of events was finally accepted by the Argentinians, or at least by most of the populace, the Junta still clung to the claim that it was the Royal Navy that had sunk the Belgrano, which while provocative on one front provided an excuse not to escalate the situation with the Chileans, especially given they had rescued the survivors.
This sudden absence of belligerence was a result of the rapid shift in both the international and domestic attitude to the invasion of the Beagle Islands. On the 29th of May President Rockefeller called for Argentine withdrawal from the Beagle islands, ‘without precondition’. There were also large-scale demonstrations in Buenos Aires, and they were not in support of the Junta. Most Argentinians had concluded that they country was facing to prospect of a war that might draw in the British and Americans for a handful of islands that seemed to have little of value to offer. Crucially this attitude had crept into the ranks of the military as well, meaning that the Junta was on very shaky ground even among its natural supporters. The choices facing the Junta were stark, escalation or withdrawal. With no appetite for the former they would have to embrace the latter and try to avoid total humiliation in the process. The Argentinian announcement on the 2nd of June that they would withdraw was a huge relief to the international community, especially the Chileans and the British. The British were happy that the bulk of the difficult to sustain taskforce could be brought home, though several ships would remain in the area until August and the Chileans were willing to restrain their celebration of victory as they were acutely aware they had avoided a major war by the narrowest of margins.
The withdrawal did nothing to reduce the unrest in Argentina and the Junta would be ousted from power in September 1978. President Rockefeller would last rather longer but the mishandling of the crisis permanently damaged the relationship between Rockefeller and Reagan and established a narrative in the media of a gaffe prone administration that Rockefeller could never shake off, contributing to his defeat in 1980. For Denis Healy however the adventure in the South Atlantic proved to be a boost, with even the usual critics forced to concede that they had acted decisively and protected British interests. How much this influenced the Labour victory in the General Election of August 1978 is debatable, but it may have contributed a couple of seats to the majority of 37 that Labour achieved, allowing them to continue in office until 1983.
Munich Shuffle: 1938-1942
- Thread starter Garrison
- Start date
Can you expand on the "Stingray anti-shipping missile" even if its just an analogous version of a real system?
Garrison
Donor
I will confess the missile got its name because I was thinking of Gerry Anderson shows... As to what it is think of a ship launched Exocet in world where the British are a bit further up the curve on missile development and the French are rather behind owing to their political troubles.
In so many ways.
I gotta be fair my first thought when I saw the name was "stand by for action" I'm willing to bet their nicknames in this are Troy's cause you know someone would think that. I assume the coastal brothers are called Thunderbirds and nicknamed Tracy's?
Postscript The Nuclear Age 1945 – 1980
Garrison
Donor
Postscript The Nuclear Age 1945 – 1980
On the 29th of June 1945 the United States carried out history’s first nuclear detonation in the New Mexico desert. The device, referred to as the ‘gizmo’ by the Los Alamos scientists was a Plutonium implosion device and it performed flawlessly on the day. What it did not do was set the Earth’s atmosphere on fire as some of the scientists attached to the Manhattan Project had feared it might. This fear was the result of a mathematical error, but it was the first time the idea that nuclear weapons might end the world was considered, and then dismissed in the interest of national security and global strategy. The Manhattan Project had explored every possibility to make a work bomb and in the end they had built not one but two completely different nuclear weapon designs. The Uranium 235 based gun type weapon did not require a test to demonstrate it would work as it was all but foolproof, it was also a technological dead end and the future of nuclear weapon development lay in the implosion device.The test might have been a complete success, but there was no rush to tell the public about this incredible breakthrough in both physics and weapons technology. Detonating an atomic bomb was not something that could be done secretly, however the US Army had prepared for this contingency and neighbouring communities who reported seeing what appeared to be dawn breaking an hour early were reassured with stories that it was merely the result of an ammunition dump exploding and if anyone found this explanation implausible at the time it was uncritically reported in a press that was still subject to wartime censorship rules that lingered on throughout the summer of 1945.
The war might have been over, but the USA still had enemies, real and potential, so they were determined nuclear technology should remain firmly in the hands of the western allies. The USA government would have preferred to keep it entirely in American hands, the urgent drive to produce a working bomb as an alternative to invading Japan had however forced the Americans to share more information with the British than they had wanted so as to speed the research program along and with the end of the war the British held enough control of the remnants of the German nuclear and rocketry programs to ensure that their allies kept their promises about full sharing of design data and specifications. This access significantly sped up the British effort to build their own independent bomb and to develop the civil use of nuclear energy. The first British nuclear test was carried out on the 8th of October 1950, with the weapon being placed aboard the obsolete frigate HMS Cam. Placing it aboard a ship allowed the test to be carried out well away from anywhere that might be affected by fallout. This set a pattern for future British tests as the aftermath of the Auschwitz accident loomed over the entire British nuclear program. The British did share all the information about the dreadful effects of fallout and radiation sickness with Americans, and with the Soviets. Alas both nations would conduct tests with active service personnel being exposed to both radiation and fallout, with serious consequences for the health of those exposed, which in turn led to a series of lawsuits filed in the USA in the 1970s as information on the testing program was declassified.
If the US was unhappy about sharing their technology with the British, they were paranoid about the threat of Soviet espionage and the arrest of an alleged Soviet spy in the Manhattan Project during the summer of 1944 went a long way to justifying this. One frustration in trying to assess how much the Manhattan Project influenced the Soviet nuclear program is that the identity of this spy remained a secret and some sources doubt this Soviet agent actually existed, that the espionage claims were used as a pretext to tighten security and remove personnel who had raised moral objections about the use of the bomb against civilian targets. That there was no arrest or criminal charges brought in the aftermath tends to support this theory. The other possibility is that revealing the identity of the spy would have provoked such a major scandal that it was quietly swept under the carpet, and no one may ever have a definitive answer as all records regarding the matter remained classified. The supposed leaked papers used as the basis for a book that was extensively serialized in the London Times were exposed as forgeries, embarrassing the publishers of the book and the newspaper and making others in the media reluctant to pursue the question.
This effort to keep the Soviets from obtaining the bomb was ultimately futile, indeed it should have been obvious it was doomed from the start. The USSR had plenty of first-rate physicists and knowing an atomic bomb was a practical proposition meant it was only a matter of time before they replicated the results of the Manhattan Program if not their precise methods. The military leaders of the US nuclear weapons program assured the politicians in 1945 that it would take the USSR ten to fifteen years to produce a bomb, they did it in less than five, with the first Soviet nuclear test taking place on the 2nd of February 1950. This development provoked disbelief and anger in Washington. Some politicians claimed the USSR had faked the test, a claim that did not hold up in the face of independent scrutiny, or that there must have been a ‘nest of spies’ inside the US program passing secrets to the Soviets. This claim took far longer to discredit than the idea of fakery and retarded the progress of the American H-Bomb program as key scientists were forced to submit to tedious and repetitive congressional scrutiny that only finally petered out in 1953.
The club of nuclear armed states would remain an exclusive one throughout the 1960s, largely because most of the nations that had the means to have pursued their own bomb programs came under considerable political pressure not to do so. The French and the Poles certainly considered the idea of having their own independent deterrent, but internal French political divisions meant there was no consensus about going forward while the Poles reconsidered their position owing to the costs of building such a program, though they would revisit this in the 1970s, the same decade when the several other nations launched their own nuclear weapons programs, most notably India in 1975, the Republic of China in 1976, and Korea following suit in in 1979. This surge of new potential nuclear powers drove efforts to conclude a nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but the political and economic instability of the 1980s saw limited progress being made as the likes of Iraq and Saudia Arabia began to pursue their own bomb.
The development of civil nuclear power was frequently entwined with the desire to possess nuclear weapons. Reactors designed to generate electricity could also make Plutonium for weapons and civilian research provided a convenient cover for military nuclear ambitions. Allowing for these military considerations there was genuine enthusiasm for nuclear power in the 1950s, claims were made about nuclear generated electricity being too cheap to meter and there were proposals to use nuclear energy to power every kind of vehicle, though the practical applications of nuclear propulsion would be limited to warships, primarily submarines, and spaceflight. The Dulu’er bombing in 1956 didn’t dent the enthusiasm for the construction of nuclear power plants. Revelations about the terrible aftermath of the atomic detonation were dismissed as exaggerations and Soviet propaganda and nuclear power proliferated across the USA and Western Europe during the 1960s and 70s. Far from opposing this many in the growing environmental movement were pro-nuclear, being far more concerned about the pollution generated by fossil fuels, and the wildly inaccurate claims this would cause global cooling. This attitude would persist in most of the west until the late 1970s, by which time the nuclear lobby in the US was strong enough to fight against any change of heart by Congress or the White House.
Regardless of their propaganda the Dulu’er bombing also failed to discourage the USSR from pursuing its own civil nuclear power program, which became tied up with the desire to show that the USSR was at the cutting edge of science and technology. Soviet media in the 1960s emphasized that only Communist states could be trusted to use nuclear technology responsibly and much was made of the idea of using nuclear energy to create bright futuristic nuclear cities in regions of the Soviet far east that remained undeveloped and unexploited, all of course for the benefit of the proletariat and to prove that it was the Communist system that cared about protecting the environment, not the rapacious capitalists. The Soviets were also the biggest proponents of nuclear propulsion, taking ideas for nuclear aircraft and nuclear trains far further than they ever got in the west. This desire to keep up with, or overtake, the west when it came to nuclear energy sowed the seeds of tragedy. The limitations of the Soviet economy and industries where bureaucratic schedules took precedence over engineering quality meant that corners were cut with the inevitable consequences.
One reason for the decline of the USSR’s space program that was kept secret for two decades was the 1977 explosion that destroyed the prototype Energeia nuclear booster while on a test stand at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The explosion was akin to radiological or ‘dirty’ bomb and contaminated a large part of the site. This forced the Soviets to build brand new launch facilities, a process that took years and progressed painfully slowly because of the same inadequacies that caused the accident in the first place. Far worse was the accident at the Obninsk nuclear power plant, about 110km from Moscow. The accident occurred during a program to upgrade the plant in 1979. An egregious insistence on finishing the work on time led to a series of errors that trigged an explosion which destroyed the reactor. Not even the USSR could cover up the impact of the fallout from the plant especially when it reached the suburbs of Moscow.
Reporting of this disaster in the west prompted a string of revelations about accidents in the USA and Europe that had been played down or covered up altogether in previous decades. These revelations caused outrage and legal action against the nuclear power industry, but they were spared any serious consequences by the massive spikes in oil prices that followed the Soviet invasion of Iran. Far from going into retreat the nuclear industry in the USA saw a fresh surge in reactor construction during the 1980s as energy security became a major political issue.
Repurpose OTL’s Iraq War protest slogan:
“No blood for oil!” (Picture of dead Middle Eastern kid in an urban war zone)
and some modified ones:
“No kids for oil!” (Picture of young child in a coughing fit against the plume of a refinery in the background)
“No lungs for oil” (cigarette-style picture of cancerous lung)
Garrison
Donor
Comes back to the fact that the influence of the first use of an atomic bomb in anger just didn't grab public attention the way Hiroshima and Nagasaki eventually did. Combined withe a swifter development of concerns about the impact of pollution and suddenly nuclear looks like a great option.
Yes that will be coming shortly.
I'm thinking something snappier, 'Just Stop Oil', comes to mind
This has been mentioned twice so far, but only in passing as having been carried out by a western nation...
What happened? We
Postscript USA – The Exceptional Nation 1950 - 1979
Garrison
Donor
Postscript USA – The Exceptional Nation 1950 - 1979
The period in US history between 1950 and 1970 is frequently described as ‘the long 1950s’ or the ‘Gilded Generation’. These glib soundbites act as a shorthand for whether people view this period with nostalgia or cynicism. The idea of a Gilded Generation comes from the belief that this period represented the zenith of US power and prosperity, and after this it went into a political, economic and even moral, decline from which it never recovered. Reversing this downward trend in American power has been the rallying cry of US politicians, especially on the right of the spectrum, since the 1980s, though many of these same politicians claim to have been warning about it years earlier. While the scale of the decline in the USA is disputed, and when one looks at the living standards of the average US citizen it isn’t clear that there has in fact been a meaningful decline. On the other hand, it is true that in terms of global political power and influence the USA peaked during the 1950s and remained there for a remarkably long time. It was using this power to reshape large parts of the world into capitalist western oriented states that ultimately made the rise of competitors inevitable.It was industrial might and economics that made this pre-eminence possible. American wealth helped pay for the reconstruction of post war Europe and Asia and as the world rebuilt US businesses exported their goods to every corner of the globe as they converted back to a peace time footing, while at the same time its potential competitors were laid low by the destruction the war had wrought on their infrastructure. This economic boom also generated the tax revenues needed for major infrastructure programs and helped GIs returning from the war to find jobs and homes, which further fed into economic growth. US taxation in the 1950s and early 60s stood at record high levels, and yet this did nothing to restrain rising profits for corporations and rising living standards for their workers. Not every industry turned back to civilian markets, the US retained a powerful military that needed to be supplied with weapons and equipment. This created long standing ties between politicians, military officer and major corporations that became known as the ‘Military-Industrial Cartel’.
Only the propaganda emanating from Moscow could portray them as equals with the USA. In the west, and the USA in particular, the Soviet Union was seen as a continental power rather than a global one. Efforts to export the Communist revolution elsewhere in the world had proven erratic at best. Even countries that might have appeared to be natural Soviet allies such as Socialist Italy, Yugoslavia, and Iran all kept themselves at arm’s length throughout this period, keen to follow their own independent path and not be dictated by Moscow. US Politicians such as Senator Joseph McCarthy railed against the threat to the USA from godless communism regardless, going as far as to insist there was a communist fifth column inside the USA and demanding a full congressional investigation into this imaginary problem in the aftermath of the Red Skies crisis. There were certainly Soviet spies working inside the USA and most of them were natural born citizens of the country, but these American agents of the Soviets were largely motivated by money not ideology. McCarthy’s demands to root out anyone who had dabbled in socialism or displayed sympathy towards the USSR, even during that period when the Soviet Union had been a US ally, would have done nothing to curtail Soviet intelligence gathering. McCarthy problem in trying to stoke panic over the Berlin crisis was that while it certainly generated some concern among the US public this was mingled with surprise and annoyance that something so obvious as transport arrangements into East Germany had not already been arranged. Likewise, the detonation of the first Soviet atomic bomb provoked little reaction, as nuclear weapons were still largely regarded as just very big bombs by most people, a view that lingered on even after the Dulu'er bombing.
From the perspective of the historian and politicians who accepted the Gilded Generation concept uncritically this then was an unparalleled era of peace, prosperity and contentment for the USA, with the occasional conflict in other corners of the world barely creating a ripple to disturb the American people. The Long 1950s interpretation does not dispute the prosperity of this period, instead it points out that this peace and plenty led to cultural stagnation and economic complacency, and that this golden era was heavily tarnished by its failure to reach all Americans.
Japanese Americans had lost homes and businesses during the war, with many spending years in detention camps. In the aftermath of the war there was no contrition from the US government and certainly no compensation, despite the number of Japanese Americans who served in the US armed forces and returned home as highly decorated veterans. In the postwar era the Japanese American community in the USA began to emigrate as they continued to face serious discrimination, often excused by the ongoing belligerence of Japan towards the USA and the nations refusal to accept responsibility for the war crimes committed In China and across Asia. The Japanese American emigres found themselves no more welcome in Japan than they were in the USA, and many found Korea to be far more welcoming, especially of those who brought valuable skills and capital to their burgeoning economy.
For black citizens of the USA the war had seen them experience a brief boost in opportunities for jobs and many in the armed forces were exposed to the culture of other countries where while there was certainly racism it was not of the systemic type so prevalent in the United States. After the war the Civil Rights movement grew in numbers and sophistication and in Martin Luther King Jnr it would find one of its most eloquent and effective leaders. During the 1950s the movement only made limited progress, President Kefauver and President Stassen were both seen as dithering on the subject, in the case of the latter his refusal to take decisive action was seen as green light for hardline segregationists in the southern states and led to the open attacks on peaceful protestor by police and vigilante groups. That these were reported by the national news networks forced Stassen to send in the National Guard to restore order in Georgia, alienating the segregationists for siding with the ‘uppity’ blacks and failing to win over progressives who were appalled he had waited so long.
With the arrival of Lyndon Johnson in the White House the Civil Rights movement finally found itself pushing against an open door. President Johnson was sympathetic to the movement and earnestly determined to pass a comprehensive Civil Rights Act during his time in office. He faced considerable resistance in Congress, but passing the act remained a central plank of his plans for his second term and with his victory in 1964 its passage some form was in inevitable, though had he lived it might have involved considerable compromises to do so. His assassination at the hands of a white supremacist led to now President Kennedy passing an act far more comprehensive than he was personally comfortable with, but fully in line with Johnson’s ambitions. It outraged segregationists in Congress, but with some of the most vocal opponents having to fend off stories in the press that tried to link them to the assassin or the organizations he had been affiliated with most decided it was better to keep their heads below the parapet, though they certainly weren’t about to embrace racial equality as an ideal. The assassination also ended the long career of FBI Director J Edgar Hoover. Accusations emerged from within the FBI that Hoover had repeatedly ignored intelligence pointing the danger posed by white supremacist organizations, while pouring massive resources into digging up dirt on black civil rights leaders.
The leaders of the civil rights movement were keenly aware that changing the law was at best a start, changing attitudes and beliefs would be a far more difficult proposition. There were significantly different positions on how such change should be achieved and there were radicals such as Malcolm X who believed that the different races could never achieve equality, because the white race was on fact the inferior one. The story of his change of heart has become the subject of much cynicism, however Malcolm X was a man of deep religious faith and his accounts claim that while undertaking the Haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that all Muslims seek to complete, he saw people of many different races and nations coming together and he saw this as sign that different races living in harmony was possible if god willed it so. Whatever the full explanation Malcolm X did soften his attitude to equality between the races after his pilgrimage, which did not sit well with some members of his organization the Nation of Islam. Two young men attempted to gun him down while he was making a speech at a meeting of the Nation of Islam, and it was nothing more than luck that he survived. That the attack came from within the Nation of Islam was a shock and there were those who tried to claim it was a false flag operation perpetrated by the FBI, CIA, or some other shadowy government organization. While Malcolm X was recovering, he was frequently visited by Martin Luther King and while no one could claim they were now friends their relationship became much more co-operative when Malcolm X returned to public life. Playing off his own more conciliatory rhetoric against the still fiery Malcolm X allowed Martin Luther King to make more headway in achieving change than he might have alone, though using the analogy of ‘good cop, bad cop’ would have attracted the wrath of both men.
While there were certainly white Americans who actively supported the Civil Rights movement it was not their cause at the end of the day and middle-class white teenagers looking to rebel against the established norms embraced by their parents looked elsewhere for a cause to rally around. In the end those who didn’t just turn their attention to music and popular culture found it in the birth of the environmental movement. From the early 1960s many scientists began to issue warnings about the impact of industrialization on the natural environment, themes that were taken up in high profile books that were decidedly less academically rigorous and more histrionic than the scientific papers they were inspired by. That embracing the environment also allowed this nascent counterculture to attack the very corporations their parents seemed beholden to made it even more attractive. The movement was referred to dismissively as ‘flower power’, but to the surprise, and in some cases dismay, of its adherents it did steadily move into the mainstream of US culture and politics in the 1970s. This was facilitated by the fact that politicians who might have been expected to vehemently impose this drive were becoming concerned about the increasing US dependence on imported oil from the Middle East and the increasing power of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries that sought to control the global price of oil, without much regard to the desires of the USA. This embrace of energy efficiency and the fight against pollution not only upset some of the more revolutionary elements in the movement, but also exasperated US business leaders who found themselves forced to deal with a slew of new regulations as well as increasingly militant union activity.
Pinning the end of this era to 1970 is a somewhat arbitrary choice, the expansion of economies in Asia and Europe, coupled with a failure by the US to modernize heavy industry, and for manufacturers of consumer goods to respond to changing market trends, led to increasing competition in international markets that user producers were slow to respond to. This spread to domestic markets throughout the 1970s and the somewhat panicked reaction of many US corporations saw wages squeezed and volatility on Wall Street whenever some major company posted results that fell short of the often-inflated expectations of the stock market. This upsurge in imports and decline in exports saw the US balance of trade began its inexorable slide into the red, to the consternation of many in Washington, though no one had any clear solutions to the problem.
In terms of US politics 1972 marks a much clearer inflection point as this was the year when the Washington Post published the Cuba Papers, revealing the full sordid details of the US involvement in ‘stabilizing’ the island. Some sort of congressional investigation was inevitable but given that politicians on all sides had at least tacitly supported the US military presence in Cuba many pundits predicted that Washington would close ranks and seek to bury the matter as swiftly as possible. Some Republicans however could not ignore the fact there had been Democratic Presidents in the White House throughout the entire period and were determined to go on the attack. Lyndon Johnson was beyond the reach of any investigation, but the Republicans hoped that by attacking President Kennedy and other members of his administration they could wrest control of the Whitehouse and Congress away from the Democratic Party. This ambition was thwarted in 1972 for a variety of reasons, Kennedy’s plan for health care reform, the moon landing and the fact that the economy remained relatively buoyant. It also didn’t help the Republican cause that several of the most likely frontrunners for the Republican nomination were connected to the ‘Cuban Crisis’ by the media. This did not dismay those inside the party who weren’t just looking to oust the Democrats but what they saw people in their own party who had become far too comfortable with a status quo that was jeopardizing the economic security of the USA and by extension its paramount status in the world. The overall impact of this was that Walter Mondale won the 1972 Presidential election, narrowly, and continued the Democratic control of the White House for four more years. This failure led to yet more fierce arguments inside the Republican party and further polarization.
The Mondale Presidency opened with the US withdrawal from Cuba, and it was every bit the disaster that had been predicted by the Pentagon. The divisions between the communist insurgent groups prevented them mounting a coherent campaign to take over the island, while without US support the Cuban military began to disintegrate. The result was back and forth fighting that left large parts of the Cuban population displaced and desperately looking for escape. The US had retained their long-standing base at Guantanamo Bay despite the general withdrawal and it was soon swamped with refugees. Regrettably some extremists managed to infiltrate the hapless civilians and conducted an attack on the base that prompted a harsh response after sixteen US servicemen were killed. Guantanamo Bay was soon ringed with multiple layers of barbed wire fences and minefields and the refugees were forcibly relocated to camps further inland. Many displaced Cubans chose to make the crossing between Cuba and Florida, hoping to find shelter there and perhaps aid from the existing Cuban American community in the state. The refugees, representing the entire spectrum of Cuban society, politically left and right, honest citizens and criminals, received a frosty reception and plans to deport them back to Cuba provoked large scale unrest and large numbers escaped the overwhelmed detention facilities in Florida and fanned out across the southern states, surviving as best they could.
The refugee issue was as much of a political disaster as it was a humanitarian one. Congress passed the health care bill, but this was seen as the last act of the Kennedy presidency rather than as a success for Mondale and outside of support for the lunar exploration program Mondale struggled to advance his own agenda. The Republicans also faced issues as radical elements, led by recently elected Senator Ronald Reagan, pushed back against the passage of legislation that might have been expected to pass through ‘on the nod’ with bipartisan support. Many ordinary voters remained dubious about the radical prescription for the US economy being pushed by these radicals. What was pejoratively called ‘Reaganomics’ was not seen as a vote winner and explains why the far more conservative Nelson Rockefeller became the Republican nominee for the Presidency in 1976, where he won comfortably. The whole of President Rockefeller’s entire first term could be described as comfortable. He proved an adept horse trader, managing to assemble sufficient bipartisan support to pass the few major pieces of legislation he put forward. This created the superficial impression that it was back to business as usual for US politics.
The Soviet invasion of Iran in 1979 initially reinforced Rockefeller’s position, no one was interested gambling on any of the Democratic contenders for the Presidency in 1980 and there was broad approval for the administration’s approach to containing the conflict in Iran and pushing back against the Soviets. Within months of Rockefeller’s second inauguration the crisis in the Middle East would escalate massively and plunge the US into a dark decade where nostalgia for an idealized past that had never existed became a national obsession.
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I have been loving these Cold War posts. Garrison, could you summarize your thought process on how the USSR was perceived as less of a worldwide bogeyman post-war? How much of that comes from the British and their Empire successfully defending themselves in North Africa and South Asia? (as opposed to being perceived as having been “rescued” by the USA). The UK’s perceived strength helps make the West as a whole seem stronger.
Garrison
Donor
That certainly played a part, there being no Malaya emergency ITTL for example and no Suez Crisis. The Manchurian conflict was seen as a reckless act by the desperate Chinese Communists rather than a grand Soviet strategy for expansion and it was a win for the west unlike the peace of exhaustion that was the perceived ending of the OTL Korean War. Of course the fact the US didn't 'lose' China to the Communists helps a lot, as does the Iron Curtain in Europe being a lot further east. NATO isn't worried about Soviet Tank Armies pouring through the Fulda Gap, the Soviets are desperately trying to keep East Germany afloat, and I do have a postscript detailing how that ends.
One planned postscript I decided to drop for obvious reasons was one explaining how the Israel/Palestine situation worked out here, but suffice to say its less of a flashpoint.
Just reading through this excellent timeline again, fantastic work @Garrison
Has anyone considered AI generating a post-Hendon rendition of Chamberlain, complete with scars?
Has anyone considered AI generating a post-Hendon rendition of Chamberlain, complete with scars?