For the Republic: A History of the Second American Civil War
- Thread starter The Angry Observer
- Start date
Personally would prefer 3, 2, 5, 1, then 4. Your call though.
Hey, it's my Great Great Uncle, OTLs Secretary of the Navy in WWII! Im glad he is on the right side here!
Oh, that bastard! Sullying the name of the Union's heroes!
Great update. I love TLs that dedicate as much time and detail to the homefront and economic and social issues as political and military ones. No history is complete without knowing what's actually happening on the ground to all the little people who are living through such events.
on the other hand Sherman was given to massacres and geocidal actions so perhaps its an appropriate homage........
I’ve decided that this will be the next update I’ll write. Hopefully won’t take too long, should be minimally messy since we’re correcting it early.
Point 3 is the major bugbear with this timeline.
As i have said before it just does not make sense with how it is written.
As i have said before it just does not make sense with how it is written.
Yeah, as far as I can tell those are the only ones. And it’s chiefly #16.
“Old World Blues - Paris is Burning”
“Our spirit of enjoyment was stronger than our spirit of sacrifice. We wanted to have more than we wanted to give. We tried to spare effort, and met disaster.” -Philippe Pétain.
Breaking out in 1934, the Second American Civil War sent the already apoplectic global economy into further convulsions. Of those hit hardest were the United States’ closest trading partners, Canada, Mexico, Britain, and France, with France in particular suffering as due to its lack of highly industrialized colonies to fall back on to support the economy in the Métropole.
An already difficult economic situation became even harder as the French mobilized to lend what little support they could muster for the Albany Government. The causes for this were not rooted in a lack of preparedness, but rather in a lack of noted leadership. Albert Lebrun, the President of France, would one day be spoken of in simple but blistering terms by Charles De Gaulle– “As head of state, he lacked two things: there was no state, and he wasn’t a head.”
Albert Lebrun, final President of the Third Republic
Lebrun, in truth, bears both more responsibility for what was to come for France than most think and less blame than he is often given. For years, the French Communist Party (PCF) had been growing in strength, and though the party won few seats in the 1932 election, the French left dominated. The center-left Republican, Radical, and Radical-Socialist Party (PRRRS) won only twenty-eight more seats than the socialist French Section of the Workers’ International (SFIO). It was therefore understandable that the center-right Lebrun might hesitate in throwing his weight behind Al Smith’s government as the PCF and SFIO demanded that France do so when the Soviet Union began supporting Albany in earnest.
Likewise, the situation in the United States was frequently confusing, as formal diplomatic relations mostly collapsed for the war-torn nation. The French ambassador, André Lefebvre de La Boulaye, had fled Washington as MacArthur began his fateful march upon the city, winding up at the French consulate in New York, where he would stay until his removal from the post in 1937. Nominally, the French government considered Smith to be the rightful leader of the United States. However it would communicate with the neutral western states through its San Francisco consulate, Huey Long’s southern fiefdom through the New Orleans consulate, and even with MacArthur’s regime via unofficial backchannels with Benito Mussolini’s Italy.
Domestically, the loss of the overwhelming majority of American trade was a bodyslam to the fragile French economy. In an era of extreme protectionism, any hits to trade could be extremely significant. Manufactured goods and other luxuries saw massive price hikes, but it was the loss of most tobacco imports that hit the French people the hardest. Cigarette smoking had skyrocketed amidst the outbreak of the Great Depression, and the United States had been France’s primary supplier.
By late 1934, with prices on the vice sky high and supplies painfully dwindling, protests, strikes, and even riots began to break out. In truth, cigarettes were only a relatively small part of these disruptions, but the designation Cigarette Riots was coined by the leading French newspaper, Le Figaro, and the name stuck. The broader causes of the upset were both economic and political, as the French left agitated for France to stake a more aggressive role in combating authoritarianism, especially as Germany used its support for the National-Corporate regime as an excuse to aggressively rearm in wanton violation of the Treaty of Versailles.
All of this instability came in the aftermath of the Veterans’ Riot, a violent response to the discovery of breathtaking levels of corruption within the French government that saw far-right protesters clash with left wing counter-protesters in the Place de la Concorde, spiraling into a riot. The chaos was eerily reminiscent of the Bonus Army in the United States, which had of course decapitated the Smith Administration. Ultimately, the fallout of the riots was sufficient to remove the center-left Prime Minister, Édouard Deladier and see him replaced by the conservative Gaston Doumergue.
The Veterans' Riot - February 6th, 1934
The Cigarette Riots would intermittently flare throughout the second half of 1934 as economic hardship grew. Due to growing dissatisfaction with the existing government, which was dominated by conservatives despite the center-left having won the prior election, the government was pressured to amend the constitution to allow for the president to force new elections.
Shortly after this amendment was passed, under immense pressure from all sides, President Lebrun dissolved the French Parliament and ordered new elections, anticipating a grand coalition from the center-left to center-right. Indeed, this was the general perception amongst most of the French press and the upper class. “A government to represent the sensibilities of all sensible Frenchmen,” proclaimed Prime Minister Doumergue, “That is what the people shall return to us!”
That was not what the people returned at all. When the results were totaled on May 9, 1935, the newly-minted Popular Front of France, composed of the PCF, SFIO, and left-wingers from the PRRRS, had won a commanding victory, and in a brutal shock to Lebrun himself, the French Communists had won the most seats. The next morning, Maurice Thorez, the leader of the PCF, would hold a victory rally at the Place de la Concorde, the site of the Veterans’ Riot a year prior.
Maurice Thorez (right, with arm raised) at his fateful victory rally
On the morning of May 10, 1935, tens of thousands of Parisians streamed into the Place de la Concorde to witness France’s presumptive Prime Minister deliver his victory speech. Many were jubilant, while others anxiously awaited. Would Thorez declare a total takeover for the communists, turning France from a democratic republic to a Soviet-style dictatorship in the span of a single speech?
After brief speeches by other factions of the Popular Front that lacked much in the way of substance and instead were mostly self-congratulatory odes to their supporters and organizers, Maurice Thorez took to the stage at precisely twelve o’clock to deliver the main event. One attendee described how a seemingly unnatural calm descended over the plaza, in contrast to the frequent cheers and applause in response to the prior speeches.
Thorez, a gifted and charismatic speaker known for his ability to stir crowds, was cordial in victory. He vowed that the intent of the PCF was to preserve the republic, not to annihilate it. “The revolution,” he said, “Does not need to come violently to France. Indeed, this election constitutes the first step in a long road to the revolution. Democracy is our most cherished possession as a free nation, and its preservation is paramount. This government comes to improve lives, not disrupt them. We come to put the common man to work, not put him to the sword.”
Thorez’s speech continued, vowing to work within a constitutional framework and strongly encouraging the defeated parties to join them in passing common sense reforms and improvements. The further along he went, the more the crowd’s mood improved. Thorez was a known quantity for the people, and he certainly wasn’t perceived as a lapdog of Stalin’s. The sense was that change was coming to France, a revolution of the ballot box, not the bullet.
Then, at 12:38, shots rang out from the front of the crowd. The first struck Thorez in the shoulder and the second in the right lung, sending him stumbling backwards into the arms of his partner, Jeannette Vermeersch, who was pregnant with their son at the time. The third shot would strike just below his left eye, killing him instantly.
The identity of Thorez’s assassin was lost to history, as he was immediately swamped by the crowd around him and beaten to death so severely that his features were unable to be identified. All that is known is that it was a young man in his late teens to early twenties, and that he bore paraphernalia of the Jeunesses Patriotes, the Patriot Youth, a far-right paramilitary youth organization with similarities to Hitler’s Brownshirts.
It took only a few minutes for the Popular Front’s victory rally to spiral into yet another riot on the steps of the French Parliament. This one, unlike the prior crisis of February 6, 1934, would successfully storm the building while further rioting spread across Paris, driven by vengeful supporters of the Popular Front attacking the offices of various rightist organizations, and even the residences and businesses of prominent members. This, of course, resulted in those rightist groups fighting back. By nightfall, Paris had fallen into chaos.
President Lebrun and his cabinet fled the city for the Palace of Versailles in the Parisian suburbs, joined by elements of the military, including the famous Lion of Verdun, Marshal Philippe Petain, who was the chief of the French military and Minister of War. Alongside the Marshal were his two greatest protégés, Charles de Gaulle and Henri Mordacq, both celebrated heroes of the Great War.
Lebrun and the civilian members of the government wanted to wait out the situation in Paris, figuring that by morning, the fighting would be done and the military could sweep in to restore order. Petain, de Gaulle, and Mordacq protested that this would be tantamount to surrendering the capital, and the longer that they were gone, the more likely that they would be unable to retake the city without severe fighting. They, of course, were referring to the communists.
Unfortunately for both parties, other elements in the French military had other plans, as did the communists. With Thorez dead, leadership of the PCF fell to his deputy, Jacques Duclos. Unlike Thorez, Duclos was a more traditional communist, and a known Stalinist. Infuriated, Duclos, having been a part of the storming of the French Parliament, disavowed Thorez’s political revolution, proclaiming that the bourgeois would never permit a peaceful transfer to socialism. On the morning of May 11, 1935, Jacques Duclos stood on the steps of the occupied Palais Bourbon and declared before a crowd of thousands the death of the French Republic and the birth of the French Commune.
Jacques Duclos, Deputy Secretary-General of the French Communist Party
Duclos’ proclamation didn’t meet with universal approval, not even amongst the ranks of the Party. Many of the moderates within the PCF had shared Thorez’s vision of socialism born through democratic choice, not armed struggle. Duclos had, in their eyes, betrayed everything they had believed in. In the end, nearly half of the PCF’s parliamentarians, and almost every member of the other parties of the Popular Front, fled Paris for Versailles to join the rest of the government.
In response to Duclos’ speech, General Maurice Gamelin, who had not fled to Versailles, assembled a regiment of soldiers stationed in nearby Saint-Denis to move against Paris and smother the newborn French Commune in the cradle. He acted unilaterally, rallying the troops against the U.S.S.R. and communism, and moved onto the city that afternoon. Gamelin was notable for his staunch defense of the republican system of government. But even so, the circumstances convinced him drastic measures, if only for one day, were necessary. "Like General Mac," he said, "action needs to be taken, however strenuous and awful it is at the moment. Shall the Republic be the noose the communists hang it with?" This action, taken while the government dithered at Versailles, would seal France’s fate. When word of Gamelin’s actions reached the other divisions stationed around Paris, nearly all of them not already at Versailles rallied to his side. Lebrun was ignored.
General Maurice Gamelin
Gamelin and his divisions stormed the city, bound directly for the Place de la Concorde and the Palais Bourbon. The communards inside the city attempted to mount a defense in what amounted to a haunting repeat of the Paris Commune of 1871, right down to the ending. The ramshackle barricades raised on the major avenues were no match for the tanks that rolled through the capital city, and the small arms and single-shot rifles its defenders held were nothing compared to the army’s automatic weapons and shotguns.
The streets of Paris ran red as Gamelin carved a bloody path for the center of the communist insurrection. By sunset, the still-beating heart of the revolution had been carved out, and Jacques Duclos and the other members of the PCF who had proclaimed the French Commune had come to their bloody ends in the chambers of the French Parliament. With Paris in hand and the support of most of the local military compared to only the couple thousand troops that had followed Lebrun and the government to Versailles, Gamelin summoned Lebrun back to the city. Viewing his actions as nothing more than temporary measures to reclaim the French state from communism and for the Third Republic, Gamelin prepared to surrender his power back to the civilian government.
Lebrun emerged from Versailles to reassume control, with France’s capital in ruins. The image of their doddering President crawling out of Versailles after the army men had restored order with the sword and cannon was the boiling point for some of those who rallied to Gamelin’s side. It was the final spit in the face after a succession of civil disasters, including some directly induced by the government’s poor relations with the Army. And of course, there was the elephant in the room: that across the Atlantic Ocean, the American Army had overthrown its own weak and chaotic government in favor of something harder and stabler. There were open calls among those at Gamelin’s side to install a corporatist or military government, one that could permanently keep the peace in Paris’s streets.
This put the embattled French President in an awkward position that would’ve taken a master statesman to resolve. Lebrun owed his authority to these members of the Army that had just defused the crisis, albeit through dubiously legal brutality. And Albert Lebrun was no master statesman. Advised to put the Army to order, he dismissed Gamelin. Cautious, cerebral, and a devoted supporter of republicanism, whatever his subordinates were saying, Gamelin was no threat to the Third Republic’s integrity and in that moment was perhaps the only thing that stood between it and implosion. Leading historians in French history are basically unanimous that this was one of the worst blunders in that nation’s history. “I cannot believe my ears,” fumed Maxime Weygand, Gamelin’s immediate predecessor. “He does not merely fail to appreciate, but punishes the men that saved the backbone of the country in the nick of time!”
The city of Paris was still bloodsoaked and blanketed in military occupation. The simmering unrest that exploded after Thorez’s murder remained, barely suppressed under the Army’s boot. The status of the civilian government was now unclear. Lebrun had now totally and completely lost the confidence of the French public and political sector. And with Gamelin dismissed, there was a power vacuum in the Army, and one of its cooler heads was no longer in the room. The Army was desperate, and saw that the stars had aligned. They’d been given license to kill and crush the Communists. The government had never been weaker. There was already a force of armed, like-minded men in control of Paris. And perhaps most importantly: Maurice Gamelin and Albert Lebrun were physically in the city, though for how much longer nobody could say. The Army acted fast. On the morning of May 13th, as Lebrun prepared to replace Gamelin with Petain, the Officers’ Coup went into motion. It was over within an hour, with Gamelin, the President, and most of Parliament put under house arrest.
It was the retired General Weygand, still highly regarded and active in the Army, that made this possible. Without him, the Army may have shirked away from arresting the Hero of Paris, which would’ve destroyed the Coup’s legitimacy but his presence kept the Army men together. By the end of the 13th, Lebrun signed away powers to an emergency military government, and with the blood in Parliament still fresh the Third Republic ended and the French State began. A junta was formed between the Army’s leading men in Paris, and a Constitution drafted that granted them sweeping powers for the duration of “Cette Grande Urgence”. For his integral role in the Coup and respected position in the Army, Weygand successfully maneuvered to become the new regime’s leader.
But obedience was not universal. The Versailles Faction, so called because they followed Lebrun’s orders to retreat, recognized no such new authority. “Naturally,” recalled De Gaulle, “those of us more predisposed towards the Republic’s continuation were not in Paris.” Petain and his two apprentices had a simple choice— submit to the new government or face bloody consequences. Grimly, Petain realized that he had no choice but to flee France for the colonies with what he had. The Versailles Faction, which began as the officers that followed Lebrun to Versailles and would eventually become a far-reaching coalition from all walks of life and both ends of the political spectrum, fled the country before Weygand could stop them. This ceded France to Weygand, but gave the Versailles Faction perhaps the best it could hope for after Lebrun’s surrender: a fighting chance.
The news that France, right after the United States and Germany, had fallen to dictatorship sent much of the world into panic. The British economy imploded again. Of this moment, Prime Minister Baldwin said:
But, the British were in no position to help France. The French State did a far better job at securing its position from its democratic dissent than Douglas MacArthur did in America. Unless the B.E.F. intended to invade France and depose Weygand, there was nothing to be done. But, when Petain and his allies fled France for Algeria, they did so with the tacit faith of the British Empire. Other democratic loyalists fled Paris for London, and as much as the Baldwin government needed France for geostrategic purposes, turning over the Versailles Faction’s collaborators was a political and moral bridge too far. Thus, the Coup also paused the period of unusual closeness London and Paris enjoyed following the Battle of Waterloo, even if both sides were shamelessly pragmatic in their dealings with one another. This opened the door for the ambitions of the German dictator Adolf Hitler, whose country had long been kept in check by French power.
A central tenet of Nazi doctrine was unification with Austria, a concept it referred to as Anschluss. Only a year prior, the Fatherland Front, Austria’s fascist government led by Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg, had endured its own period of turmoil in an attempted overthrow of the government by pro-democracy forces, which was brutally suppressed. Schuschnigg and the Fatherland Front, although German-speaking and fascist, were opposed to unification due to Austria being majority-Catholic and Germany being majority-Protestant.
Kurt Schuschnigg, fascist dictator of Austria prior to the Anschluss
An Austrian Nazi Party had existed nearly as long as its sister in Germany, and was vehemently pro-unification. Austrian Nazis had used the chaos of the brief Austrian Civil War to assassinate the prior Chancellor, but had failed in seizing the government and went underground. Ironically enough, this caused a dramatic turnabout in the public’s opinion. British historian Ian Kernshaw notes that the Austrian public favored annexation by as much as eighty percent before the attempted coup, and opposed by as much as sixty afterwards. Austro-fascists were fast to ally themselves with Italy for protection against Germany, and cracked down on Austrian Nazis as hard as on social democrats.
However, Austria’s position was tenuous. The European powers overestimated how easily cowed Hitler actually could be, and with the Anglo-French alliance in chaos, the German Fuhrer made his move. Like every other developed nation, Austria had suffered woefully following the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and if there was light at the end of the tunnel the American economy’s nosedive smothered it. Hitler’s minions speedily pressed their advantage. With France and Britain distracted and Germany’s economic wrath too much to bear, Schuschnigg believed he had no choice. By the end of May, Austria had de facto become a protectorate of Germany, although nominal independence would persist for much longer. The Nazis were fast to consolidate power, rewarding Austro-fascists that bent the knee and rapidly purging those that didn’t.
Peace would not come to France. The colonies, already a frequent headache for the authorities of the Métropole due to their worsening economic circumstances, were rocked by further turmoil as pro-independence forces sought to capitalize on the chaos to break away. In the end, the French colonial empire shuddered, but did not fall, and Petain was able to beat Weygand to the kill in many of them and win their allegiance. In one of only a few boosts for the Free French, as they came to refer to themselves, nearly the whole of the French Navy, most of which was moored in the Mediterranean, was won over by Petain. However, the Free French lacked the immediate strength to retake the mainland and depose Weygand, and perhaps equally importantly, still were receiving mixed signals from London. Over the protestations of First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, the Baldwin government adopted a pragmatic course to relations with Paris to contain Hitler’s ambitions. The merits of such actions have long been debated, and remain a sticking point in relations between the two countries.
In Algiers, Petain did not have enough of the Third Republic on hand to even begin rebuilding it. Even so, he felt he had little choice. The Free French quickly organized a rump government of their own, with Petain as a President and Mordacq as Prime Minister. Charles de Gaulle, meanwhile, was given command of the Free French forces. These three are known as the Triumvirate, and they would go on to lead the Free French for more than a decade through the coming fires.
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Hey everybody-- this is the retcon to the chapter about France. Shortly, I'll be replacing the actual text of it, too. Just wanted to put this up here so people could read it in a linear fashion with the rest of the thread, but it won't have a threadmark as a copy will be in its original place. Feel free to let me know what you think, feedback's always greatly appreciated. Let me know if I missed any references to the previous chapter that don't align with what we've got now.
@MagicalPhantom345 This should fix the problem with the images in those two chapters, 16 and 17. I'll go back to the China one sometime soon and fix that manually
@MagicalPhantom345 This should fix the problem with the images in those two chapters, 16 and 17. I'll go back to the China one sometime soon and fix that manually
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Here's a WorldA map of this timeline so far. If there are any inaccuracies let me know.
Can you make a map key explaining the sides of the second U.S. civil war?