TL-191: Filling the Gaps

I'M BACK! :D

Eugene Talmadge (1884-1946)

Eugene Talmadge was born in Forsyth, Georgia, CSA on September 23rd, 1884. He attended the University of Georgia from 1902 to 1906 and graduated from the colleges' law school, the University of Georgia School of Law.

In September, 1914, shortly after the Great War broke out, Tallmadge set up a law office in Telfair County, Georgia. The next year, Talmadge ran for the Georgia State Legislature under the Whig Party. Talmadge won the election, but would later lose his seat just three years later in 1918, when local voters, dissatisfied with the Whig Parties' bungling of the war, voted him and other local Whigs out of office.

After he was voted out of office Talmadge returned to practicing law in Telfair County. However, Talmadge was not a happy man during these years. His law office only saw sporadic activity and he publicly expressed frustration with the wartime Whig establishment whom he felt mishandled the war and betrayed their countrymen in the process. Nevertheless, Tallmadge remained a member of the Whig Party, wanting to seek election to whatever office some time again in the future. In 1927, Talmadge endorsed Charles Burton Mitchell III's re-election for President.

That aforementioned opportunity came in 1932, when Talmadge was elected Governor of Georgia under the Whig Party. As governor, Talmadge proved a popular figure, but often stooped to corruption and other underhanded tactics to further his goals. His popularity declined somewhat after his first year in office as a result of the worsening depression, but he still had enough support to keep his job. In 1933, Talmadge was nominated by the Whig Party for the Confederate Presidential Elections of that year, but lost to the more popular Hugo Black of Alabama and his running-mate Samuel Longstreet of Virginia.

In 1936, Talmadge ran again for Governor of Georgia, but this time under the banner of the Freedom Party. Over the years, Talmadge had become increasingly disillusioned with the state of the Whig Party and their handling of the Great Depression, and his politics gradually began to lean more and more to the right and as a result to the Freedom Party. Talmadge also came to resent more and more the Black population of the Confederate States, and came to believe they had a hand in the Confederacy's loss in the Great War. As a result, he decided in 1936 to join the Freedom Party and run as governor under their banner in his home state. He ended up winning the election in a landslide.

As governor this time around, Talmadge proved quite loyal to Featherston, and was willing to his bidding when need be. As a result, Talmadge had quite a role in Featherston's crimes against humanity in the state of Georgia. In 1941, the Second Great War broke out, Talmadge supported Featherston and his declaration of war upon the United States, and made a number of enthusiastic speeches in support of the war. He himself visited the front lines in Ohio at least twice, reviewing Infantry Regiments from the state of Georgia and visiting them to increase their morale. Meanwhile, Talmadge continued to be a staunch and loyal Freedomite, and throughout the war years continued to help Featherston in his crimes, including the deportation of Blacks to the concentration camps.

In December 1943, the city of Atlanta fell to the US Army under General Irving Morrell. Talmadge attempted to escape to Florida, possibly intending to flee the country at some later point, but was captured by US Military Police before he could do any such thing. He was then taken to a local prison and was held in custody by the Union Army for almost two years, until the Philadelphia Trails came in 1945. At the trails, Talmadge was found guilty of crimes against humanity and was sentenced to life imprisonment. His imprisonment would end up lasting only over a year. He died in a remote Pennsylvania prison on December 21st, 1946, aged 62 years of age. His remains were cremated and discarded in an unknown location.
 
The US Mark I and German A7V Barrel

In 1915 the US General Staff now led by General Leonard Wood set about to harness the US’s massive industrial advantage. The General Staff established a deliberate policy to use industrial innovation to mitigate US casualties and inflict disproportionate CS casualties. The first outward manifestation of this was the US adoption of the “coal scuttle” designed helmet. The increased power of artillery shells meant that most casualties were now the result of artillery bombardments. Head wounds were increasingly killing or wounding US soldiers and helmets seriously helped to mitigate these problems. The US also began increasing the overall firepower of each US division by increasing the number of artillery pieces per 1,000 men from 6.8 to 12 in heavy fighting sectors. It also began increasing the power of infantry y battalions and platoons. The US also copied their German allies by assigning combat engineers or pioneers to each battalion. This meant giving each battalion grenadiers and trench mortars. Eventually every soldier was equipped with grenades and trench mortars were organic members of each battalion. Despite the success of the battlefield innovations, none created the kind of breakthrough the US public dreamed of.

The horrors of the trench-warfare and the innovative spirit of US industries in the prewar period led the US to adopt experimental units faster than their CSA counterparts. The most notable US wartime innovation was the Barrel. The idea of armored fighting units was not new and dated back to proposals by Julius Caesar and Leonardo Da Vinci. In the pre war period Benjamin Cardozo, submitted a paper while at the Army Staff College, on the idea of "Self-Propelled Artillery." While his proposal was more of a call for armored self propelled artillery, it demonstrates that the many of the army’s heavy thinkers were attempting to tackle the problem of keeping artillery up with advancing infantry.

Colonel Cardozo joined the General Staff in 1915 following the shake up after General Woods take over. As general Wood’s aide Colonel Cardozo presented Wood with a report on the possibly of armored fighting vehicles. Armored fighting automobiles had shown to be devastating to horse cavalry in Kansas, but largely ineffective for trench fighting. The report contained a design for a larger track mounted vehicle with a 4.5cm artillery piece in the front and was protected by machine guns on the sides. COL Cardozo convinced General Wood to allocate resources for a test vehicle. The project was given over to Major Ned Sherrad an engineer and enthusiastic supporter of the project. By summer 1915 a test vehicle was completed. The prototype was powered by the two truck engines made by the White Company, which made the most powerful truck engines in the country. Colonel Wood invited President Roosevelt, a keen enthusiast for military innovation, to the demonstration. Both were blown away by the performance and Colonel Wood immediately set an initial order of 500 vehicles.

After trading specifications with German engineers working on similar devices the US came up with the Mk.I Barrel. The Mk.I carried a crew of 18. It was 7.35m in length, 3.06 m in width and 3.35m in height. Mk.I’s main armament was a 4.5cm forward mounted gun, with six water -cooled browning machine guns. It was powered by two White truck engines, giving it a top speed of 18 kmph on road and 8 kmph on unimproved terrain.


The US machine differed from there German counterparts by adding additional armor to the front and sides of the vehicle. The German version was only capable of stopping rifle and machine gun fire. Thanks to its larger and more powerful white truck engines compared to the German Daimler truck engines, the US modification increased the thickness of its armor. This made it capable of with standing small caliber mortar and trench artillery fire.

Barrels were first used in the spring offensives of 1916. This first employment met with limited success. Though they caused panic in Canadian and Confederate soldiers on first site, Entente soldiers quickly found ways to counter. Common defenses were digging ditches Barrels could not traverse or knocking them out with artillery. Many in the war department were ready to write them off as a novelty. However Cardozo and a handful of other officers fought for their continued use. When General Wood learned how much they reduced casualties in the initial engagements, he became a supporter and authorized an order for over 3,000 of the vehicles to be ready by summer 1917.

This order proved fortuitous after Custer’s brilliant success outside Nashville. Massing Barrel proved successful in creating a breakthrough were years of combined infantry and artillery tactics had not. When the General Staff ordered the adoption of massing the Barrels by all Armies the new order proved decisive.

It was during the breakthrough towards Nashville that the world’s first barrel on barrel engagement took place. After Custer’s rupture of CS lines, the Army of Kentucky sent what Barrels they had to help stem the US avalanche. There six confederate copies of the British Mark IV tank took on eight US Mk I barrels. To the astonishment of the US forces the confederate machines proved to be far more maneuverable to their US counterparts. Their rhomboid design allowed them better maneuverability and speed. Capable of crawling there way out of ditches that normally trapped US Barrels. The Confederate “tank’s” gun proved capable of penetrating the sides of US Barrels armor. The Confederate tanks were able to destroy or damage five US Barrels, the US destroyed six in the initial engagement until US Barrel reinforcements arrived destroying the remaining confederate vehicles.

The Germans also began a limited production of vehicles in November 1916, which they named the A7V. Only 20 were ready by the end of hostilities on the western front. General Ludendorff in a memorandum to the High command was quoted as saying “we do not regard the tank as a decisive weapon in this conflict. We know how to defend against them and are winning battles without them. Besides they need to be massed in great numbers to be of any real effect, which we do not have.” Though he correctly grasped how best to employ Barrels failed to understand their significance.

The German’s had their own armored warfare proponents, like Major Heinz Guderian, recently returned from the United States. Now assigned to the General Staff Office Major Guderian wrote a number of papers on their usefulness. He proposed they be employed in the role of cavalry. They would be especially useful on the eastern front as protection for motorized Infantry. When Custer’s Barrel roll succeeded in breakthrough the Confederate Lines North of Nashville, the German High Command took notice and ordered more A7Vs into production. Major Guderian pressed the General Staff to allow him to use what Barrels Germany had in an attack on the British before they left the continent. Major Guderian’s A7Vs were involved in only one action on the western front. At Viller- Bretonneux, 12 A7V’s attacked a relatively quiet sector of British forces, in late July. This was met with limited success but showed that the German made vehicles could perform in battle.

In the years following A7V’s saw action as on the Eastern Front. From 1917-1923 as the German Army fought alongside the new states created by the Treaty of Brest- Litovsk and Czarist forces against Red Soviet Armies. Both Polish and the Ukrainian armies were given A7V’s to strengthen their new forces. A Regiment of A7V’s proved a decisive factor in the 1920 Battle of Mariupol, where three Red Armies Divisions attempted to seize eastern Ukraine. Two Division of mixed German-Austrian- Ukrainian Division with a Column of 100 A7V vehicles blunted the Red attack and helped break a Red drive on the Crimea.

The successful employment of barrels in 1917 led the victorious Quadruple Alliance to ban their enemies the Confederate States, France and Russia from building or designing new barrels. It also led to the US of establishing a barrel training and testing center in Fort Leavenworth Kansas, nicknamed the Barrel Works. At the Works a team of engineers led by Colonel Irving Morrel designed the Mk. II Barrel with a rotating turret and 37mm cannon. The US had not yet developed the technology to build a hydraulically powered turret. This reduced the size of the gun that could be placed on the turret. Only one prototype of the Mk. II was produced before the Barrel works were closed in 1923. This was due to cut backs in military spending during the Sinclair administration.

In the wake of developments in new vehicle designs in the United States, Mexico and Great Britain, the Germans developed their own second generation of vehicles in 1923. Named Panzerkampfwage Mk. I, it was markedly faster than both British and American vehicles. It also employed a turret, but suffered from the same smaller gun barrel size due to its lack of a hydraulic system. In the Inter war period the US and Germany suspended military technology sharing and Panzerkampfwagen Mk. I saw only limited production.

The US Mk Is and A7Vs remained in active service into the Second Great War. The Austrian- Hungarian Empire began production on its own variant in 1919 and the design was sold to German and Austrian satellite states of Poland, Ukraine and Baltic States. Germany sold more than two hundred vehicles to the Ottomans to put down uprisings in Arabia, Mesopotamia and Armenia. During the Second Great War The Quadruple Alliance members used mothballed Mk.I’s and A7V’s in anti-partisan campaigns in Utah, the Ukraine, Mesopotamia and Canada. By 1943 the vehicle was phased out in nearly all Quadruple Alliance Armies ending its more than 28 years of service.

*This image is from Photos from Featherston's Confederacy/ TL-191 poster cortz#9

** welcome back zoidberg, great post

1-91 A-7v.gif
 
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Thanks President Mahan. :D Heres another one thats been laying on my laptop for way too long. :p

John Edgar Hoover (1895-1935)

John Edgar Hoover was born in Washington D.C., the de-facto capital of the United States of America, on New Year's Day, 1895 to Anna Marie Scheitlin Hoover (1860-1914) of German Swiss descent, and Dickerson Naylor Hoover, Sr. (1856-1920) of English and German ancestry.

Hoover grew up in the Eastern Market in Washington's Capitol Hill neighborhood, and attended Central High School from 1909 to 1913. At Central High, Hoover sang in Choir, participated in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps program, and competed on the debate team. As soon as he graduated from Central High, Hoover, aged eighteen years of age, joined the US Army and began his training, seeing it as his patriotic duty to do so. He expected to serve in the army for at least four years, then return home to his family.

However things would not go exactly as planned. In July of 1914, little more than a year after Hoover joined the army, the First Great War broke out in Europe after the crisis in Sarajevo, and quickly came to the North American continent. The Confederate States of America invaded Washington D.C. in the summer of 1914, and Hoover, only nineteen years of age and a private, was part of the defensive force. However it was during the opening days of the war that Private Hoover would receive very bad news. During the Confederate invasion of Washington D.C., his mother was killed after a nearby building fell after being hit with Confederate artillery. His father survived the fall of the building, but was crippled for life, and moved to Newburgh, New York to escape the fighting. This event greatly affected Hoover, and the young private gained a reputation amongst his comrades a hardened fighter as a direct result. After Washington D.C. was overrun by the Confederate Armies, his army retreated into Pennsylvania. Hoover and the rest of army later fought on the Roanoke Front, all the while pushing the Confederates back into Virginia.

The Great War ended in September of 1917, and Hoover was honorably discharged from the army in June 1918, almost a year later. For those seven months in the army after the war, Hoover was on occupation duty in Frankfort, Kentucky. After he was discharged, Hoover decided to live with his crippled father in Newburgh, New York and assist with him with his daily needs. Hoover eventually moved to Newburgh, New York from Frankfort, Kentucky in July of 1918.

Hoover continued to live with his father and assist him until his death in 1920, all the while working as a store clerk. After that, Hoover sold the house his father lived in and moved to New York City, a city mostly unaffected by the Great War. That August, Hoover began attending Columbia Law School. Hoover passed the bar in 1922, and in the following years grew to become a respected and prominent local lawyer in the New York City area. Rumors surfaced during this time that Hoover was a homosexual, but they never seriously harmed his career. In 1927, Hoover, having become bored of New York City, decided to move to Occupied Canada and set up a legal practice there. That May, Hoover moved from New York City to Edmonton, Alberta and, still working as an attorney, set up a legal practice in the city. Hoover worked at this practice for almost a decade, and gained a reputation as a though and uncompromising attorney, which bought him into conflict with the American military tribunals more often than not.

Despite the fact that Hoover defended mostly Canadians, many Canadians still hated him for sole fact that he was an American. On October 30th, 1935, Hoover, aged only forty years, became one of a number of American attorneys assassinated during the general surge in violence in Occupied Canada. At about 9:30 in the morning, a mail bomb sent to Hoover's law office by an unknown Canadian terrorist was opened by Hoover's secretary, killing her and Hoover instantly, Hoover himself standing by his secretary at the time of the explosion. Hoover's remains were sent down to his family in Washington D.C., and he was buried next to his parents at a private cemetery at Washington D.C.
 
John Wilkes Booth (1838-1902)

John Wilkes Booth was born on May 10th, 1838 in Bel Air, Maryland, the illegitimate son of noted English Shakespearean actor and tragedian Junius Brutus Booth, Sr. (1796-1852) and his mistress Mary Ann Holmes, who immigrated to the United States in 1821. His brothers included Junius Brutus Booth, Jr. (1821-1883) and Edwin Booth (1833-1893), also illegitimacy born to Booth, Sr. and his mistress. John Wilkes Booth was named after the English Radical politician John Wilkes, who was a distant relative.

John, along with his aforementioned brothers Junius and Edwin would become known as the greatest and most famous American stage actors of the 19th century, both in the United States before the War of Secession and in the United States and the Confederate States after the War of Secession. The three brothers made a number of tours throughout the USA and CSA during the late-1860s and 1870s, after the War of Secession had been over, and this skyrocketed the brothers to greater popularity in both nations. However, their American tours and performances came to an abrupt halt with the Panic of 1875, which caused the final bankruptcy of the Booth Theater, Edwin Booth's theater in New York City. As a result, the brothers began going on a number of European tours, with Edwin Booth gradually regaining the fortune he lost.

In September, 1865, Booth married Lucy Lambert Hale, the 24 year-old daughter of Senator John B. Hale of New Hampshire. They had no children.

Throughout much of his life, Booth was a Confederate sympathizer and anti-abolitionist, a fact which was known, though not widely, in his lifetime. In 1859, Booth attended the hanging of Abolitionist John Brown, and after Lincoln was elected President in 1860 he wrote a long, undelivered speech deriding Norther abolitionism and making clear his support of the South and Slavery. After the War of Succession in 1862, Booth kept quiet about his politics, though letters from that time, discovered after Booth's death, mention how satisfied he was with the outcome of the war, and some years later, how satisfied he was Lincoln was voted out of office. Nevertheless, the public seemed to forget whatever they knew about John Wilkes Booth's political views, allowing Booth to continue his successful stage career alongside his brothers. It is interesting to note that during the war, his brother Edwin was pro-Union, which caused come arguments between the too during the war. Also of interest is the fact that Edwin Booth saved a young Robert Todd Lincoln's life from a moving train in Jersey City, New Jersey, sometime around 1864 or 1865.

During the Second Mexican War, the Booth brothers continued to act, but only in the United States, as travel to the Confederate States was made problematic by the war. During the war, Booth made no public statements in relation to it and wrote nothing to himself or others about it. It seems that Booth wanted to keep his acting career in tact, at any and all costs.

After the death of Junius Brutus Booth, Jr. in 1883, the remaining two Booth Brothers retired from acting. John moved to Baltimore, Maryland, while Edwin moved to New York City. With the pressure of an acting career of his shoulders Booth wrote some private letters during the mid-1880s, again, discovered after his death, which give insight into his views on the Second Mexican War. He mentioned how he was pleased to see the United States get their just deserts for what he saw as unfair aggression against the Confederacy. He also talked about being glad the British, French and Canadians stood up for the Confederacy and her right to own slaves (in truth, none of these nations supported slavery in any way, but supported the Confederacy to keep the United States weak) and expressed worry about the American alliance with Germany, saying would spark a world-wide war in forty years' time, something he did not seem to want. Those words would prove prophetic. Also of interest is the fact that Booth made a number of trips during the 1890s to a number of major Confederate cities, though he visited some Union cities in the Midwest as well. It seems that these trips were simply for pleasure, not business.

John Wilkes Booth died at his home in Baltimore on October 13th, 1902 at the age of 64. His body was subsequently buried in a local cemetery. Coincidentally, he died three years to the day before what many called "his British counterpart", the legendary Sir Henry Irving. Booth and Irving were also born in the same year, 1838. Booth's wife Lucy Lambert Hale Booth survived him by thirteen years, dying on October 15th, 1915 at the age of 74.
 
Empire of Brazil (Part One)

The roots of the Empire of Brazil go all the way back to 1808, when the Portuguese regent Dom João VI, along with the incapacitated Queen Maria I, fled from Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Portugal and established himself and his government in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janerio. The United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves was established on December 15th, 1815 by Prince-Regent Dom João VI as a result of the fact that the monarchy was more popular in Brazil than in Portugal at the time and that Rio de Janerio offered much more freedom to the monarchy. As a result, Brazil was elevated to the status of a constituent kingdom within this new pluricontinental monarchy.

After the Liberal Revolution of 1820 in Portugal, João VI returned to Portugal in April of 1821, leaving eldest son and heir Pedro to rule as regent of Brazil. The Portuguese government immediately began moving in to get rid of the autonomy Brazil had enjoyed since 1808, which ignited widespread opposition from Brazilians. As result, Prince Pedro, Regent of Brazil, declared Brazil's independence from Portugal on September 7th, 1822. On October 12th, 1822, Prince Pedro was proclaimed Pedro I, the first Emperor of the newly created Empire of Brazil, a constitution monarchy. The Brazilian War of Independence lasted until 1824, and Portugal officially recognized Brazil's independence in August of 1825, an act which also officially disbanded the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves.

In 1831, Dom Pedro I abdicated the throne of Brazil due to the Liberal Wars in Portugal. His five year old son became Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, and a weak regency was created around the young emperor, leading to a number of regional civil wars. However, when Dom Pedro II came of age he was able to restore order to Brazil. It was also under Dom Pedro II that Brazil became an emerging international power, with Brazil emerging victorious in a number of South American wars, such as the Platine War (1851-1852), the Uruguayan War (1864-1865) and the Paraguayan War/War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870). With economic development and prosperity came a number of immigrants from Europe. By the middle of the 19th century, the Empire of Brazil was the most powerful nation in South America and Latin America. It is important to note that unlike their Hispanic, Republican neighbors, the Empire of Brazil was politically stable, had vibrant economic growth and had freedom of speech and civil rights as a part of its constitution, albeit with restrictions on women and slaves.

By the late 19th century, Brazil was one of the last slave-holding nations on earth, along with the Confederate States of America, which began manumission in 1883 in the aftermath of the Second-Mexican War (1881-1882). This all changed on March 1st, 1889, when the Brazilian parliament, with Dom Pedro II's approval, passed "Lei Áurea", in English "Golden Law", abolishing slavery, but providing for manumission. The law was modeled somewhat on the Confederate Manumission Amendment, and stated that all slaves in Brazil would be gradually freed by the year 1900, with financial compensation to their owners. While the law caused many ultraconservatives to join the Republican and Anti-Monarchist camp, the promise of financial compensation for their freed slaves placated many who would otherwise have taken some sort of drastic action against the Emperor. With European powers, such as Great Britain, France, Spain and Portugal, openly supporting the, admittedly weakening, Brazilian monarchy in the aftermath of their passing of the "Golden Law", any talk of a Republican coup was laughable at best.

With the threat of a Republican coup gone, the Empire of Brazil and their monarchy made a return to overall stability. Nevertheless problems remained for the monarchy, such as the issue of an heir. Dom Pedro II only had one heir and living child, Princess Isabella, who acted as his regent three times previously. Both of his sons had died when they were toddlers back in the 1840s, and with no male heir, Dom Pedro feared it was would give strength to the Republican cause. Brazil was a traditionalist and male dominated society, and many found the idea of a female monarch unacceptable. Even if a female monarch would be tolerated, Isabella showed no interest in becoming monarch, and an apathetic monarch could spell disaster for Brazil. As a result, in mid-1890, Dom Pedro and the Brazilian government decided to appoint a new heir to the Brazilian throne from the Portuguese branch of the House of Brazanga. Princess Isabella, not wanting to be monarch and not wanting her country to fall victim to political instability, consented. In October of 1890, Dom Pedro and the Brazilian government granted the position of heir to the Brazilian throne to Dom Pedro de Alcântara of Orléans-Braganza, Prince of Grão Pará, the 15 year-old son of Princess Isabella and Grandson of Emperor Dom Pedro II.

As it turned out, that time would come in over a years' time. Dom Pedro II died in the Paço de São Cristóvão in Rio de Janeiro on December 6th, 1891 at the age of 66. With that, the 16 year-old Dom Pedro de Alcântara of Orléans-Braganza, Prince of Grão Pará, became Emperor of Brazil, taking the royal name Pedro III in honor of his grandfather Pedro II, with his mother Isabella ruling as regent until his eighteenth birthday in 1893. The coronation of Dom Pedro III was held in Rio de Janeiro on Christmas Day, 1891. Massive celebrations occurred in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, and Dom Pedro was paraded though the city after his coronation. With that, the Brazilian monarchy was as secure as ever, and with slavery ending and the 20th century approaching, a new era in Brazilian history had begun.

Dom Pedro III's reign was mostly quiet, aside from the War of Canudos (1896-1897) and the Acre War against Bolivia (1899-1903). Dom Pedro III proved a popular figure, despite his young age, and the people of Brazil adored him. Dom Pedro III also kept his country outside of the European Alliance System, and traded frequently with both he nations of the Triple Alliance and Quadruple Alliance. In 1900, the process manumission in Brazil finally ended, ending slavery in Brazil and in the western world once and for all.

Emperor Dom Pedro III died suddenly and unexpectedly of Malaria in Recife on October 29th, 1913, aged 38, after returning from a week long hunting expedition in the Amazon Rainforest, where he most likely contracted the disease. His younger brother, Prince Luís of Orléans-Braganza, had died earlier that year of tuberculosis on March 26, 1913, aged 35. With Prince Pedro Gastão of Orléans-Braganza, the oldest son of the Emperor, only three years-old, the Brazilian government decided, for the sake of national stability, to not establish a regency around the young prince and to give the position of Emperor and the Crown of Brazil to the only surviving son of Princess Isabel, the 32 year-old Prince Antônio Gastão of Orléans-Braganza, who at the time was a captain in the Brazilian Air Force. On the day after his older brother's death, Prince Antônio Gastão was honorably discharged from the Brazilian Air Force and became Emperor Dom Pedro IV of Brazil. He was crowned Emperor in Rio de Janeiro on November 8th, 1913. Dom Pedro IV's reign started out as uneventful, but in June of 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. Dom Pedro IV gave his condolences to the House of Hapsburg, but saw no reason to enter the war, which he saw as a European and North American Affair. He continued his predecessors policy of trading with both the nations of the Entente and Central Powers, and though he was courted by both sides, Brazil remained a neutral nation. However, this would all change in 1917.
 
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Empire of Brazil (Part Two)

In 1917, the Great War entered its third year and as the year itself progressed it became blatantly obvious that the tide of war had turned in the favor of the Central Powers. 1917 saw the Barrel Roll Offensive, the begging of the Russian Civil War and withdrawal of Russia from the war and the mutiny of the French armies, among other significant events. During the war, Brazil maintained a policy of neutrality, trading with both belligerent alliances. Secretly, Emperor Dom Pedro IV was trying to ascertain which alliance was more likely to win, and what benefits if any joining said alliance would bring to Brazil. By the summer of 1917, Emperor Dom Pedro IV and Prime Minister Venceslau Brás were both in agreement; it was high time to for Brazil to join the Central Powers. One of the main reasons they had agreed as such was because many politicians in Brazil, themselves included, hoped to get some land from Argentina (the main Entente Power in South America), British Guyana and/or French Guyana. There were other benefits as well, such as increased trade with the Central Powers. Whatever the case, Brazil declared war on the Entente Powers and joined the Central Powers on July 29th, 1917. At the same time Brazil extended diplomatic recognition to the Republic of Quebec, the Republic of Ireland and the new German Client States of Eastern Europe.

As a result of Brazil throwing their lot in with the Central Powers a major shift in power from the Entente to the Central Powers occurred in the South American theater of the Great War. Brazilian ports were now being used as bases for American, Brazilian and Chilean navies to sever the naval supply lines between Argentina and Great Britain. With the aforementioned supply lines severed, Great Britain, the last remaining belligerent of the Entente Powers, knew it was finished. In September of 1917, Britain surrendered and the Great War ended, Brazil having played a key role in getting the British to surrender.

Brazil continued to be at war with Argentina until November 1st, 1917, when an armistice between the two was signed, returning things between the two to the status quo ante bellum.

In the aftermath of their brief but significant participation in the Great War, many in the halls of the Parliament of Brazil began to ask; Was it worth it for Brazil to get involved in the Great War? On one hand, some argued that Brazil's joining of the Central Powers gave them a good amount of international prestige amongst the powers of Europe and the Americas, both the victors and the defeated, and that it made it known to them that Brazil was a power to be reckoned with. Others argued that Brazil had already been getting wealthy trading with both belligerent alliances and that their entrance into the war was superficial, for the aforementioned reason but also for the fact that Brazil had received none of the territories it might have wanted to gain. Invasions of British and French Guyana proved inconclusive, not to mention the neutral Dutch had no interest in selling their Guyanese colony. Brazil also gained no territory in their brief war with Argentina. Some Brazilian politicians wanted to continue the war with Argentina into 1918 or even into the early 1920s if need be, but Emperor Dom Pedro IV and Prime Minister Venceslau Brás saw no reason for more bloodshed, as Brazil was already the dominant power in South America/Latin America, and had been for decades previously.

The 1920s proved a mostly quiet decade for Brazil, which continued to enjoy its status and a regional and world power, the latter which everyone considered Brazil to be now, what with their show of force in the Great War. This all changed in October of 1929 with the begging of the Great Depression. Brazil, though not hit as hard by the Depression as some of its Hispanic neighbors, was still hit hard none the less. Most people continued to have faith in the Emperor, though many became disillusioned with the elected politicians. This lead to the rise of a number of far-right groups in Brazil. One of these groups was the Brazilian Integralist Action Party, founded in October, 1932 by Plínio Salgado and modeled on Benito Mussolini's ill-fated National Fascist Party in Italy and Oswald Moseley's British Nationalist Party in Great Britain, and to a lesser extent Jake Featherston's Freedom Party in the CSA. The Integralist movement supported the Brazilian monarchy, much like how Mussolini supported the Italian monarchy, and like other far-right movements was staunchly anti-Marxist and anti-Liberal. The Integralist movement was also Clerical in nature, advocating for "Christian values" and was also anti-Semitic. While the movement did gain a following, a government crack-down on far-right and far-left movements in Brazil began in 1938, severely undermining the movement. The party disbanded in 1944 and never reformed.

On September 29th, 1937, after an almost twenty-four year-long reign, Dom Pedro IV died in Rio de Janerio at only 56 years of age. The Emperor was loved by a great number his people for his comforting them during the two world wars and the worst years of the Great Depression. Many residents of Rio de Janiero, young and old, rich and poor, attended his funeral on October 18th, 1937. Dom Pedro IV was succeeded as Emperor by his 27 year-old nephew, and the son of Dom Pedro III, Prince Pedro Gastão of Orléans-Braganza, who was crowned Emperor Dom Pedro V of Brazil in Rio de Janiero on November 1st, 1937.

In July of 1938, Brazil nearly went to with Venezuela over a border dispute. Venezuela had, since the mid-1920s under President and Military Strongman Juan Vicente Gómez, claimed Brazilian land between their borders and the Branco River. After Gómez died in 1935, he was succeed by Eleazar López Contreras, one of his collaborators, and Contreras continued claimed the aforementioned land from Brazil. Brazil laughed this claim off, until July of 1938 when border skirmishes between Brazilian and Venezuelan infantry occurred around the disputed border area. Dom Pedro IV and Prime Minister Washington Luís were furious, and threatened to declare war on Venezuela if such skirmishes continued. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed and war was averted, with a peaceable agreement between Venezuela and Brazil being reached, with Venezuela giving up on the border dispute in exchange for a number of trade deals and related trade benefits. Brazil also promised to come to Venezuela's aide if it were ever attacked by another South American nation.

The first year of the 1940s went smoothly for the Empire of Brazil, with the country recovering somewhat after the worse of the Great Depression. Then on June 22nd, 1941, the Second Great War broke out. Dom Pedro IV and Prime Minister Júlio Prestes announced soon after that Brazil would remain neutral in the conflict. This was so for a number of reasons; first of all Brazil had little to gain from joining the war. The government knew a war with Argentina would drag on for years, and agreed that it would not be worth war for what would probably not be much land gained. With Britain and France fortifying their Guyanese colonies from attack since in 1937, Brazil knew any invasion there would be a fools errand. The Brazilian government and Dom Pedro IV, much as he had done in the initial years of the Great War, perused a policy of neutrality where trade was conducted with both belligerent alliances, the Entente and Central Powers. Brazil under Dom Pedro IV and Júlio Prestes, was one of a number of nations during the Second Great War which remained neutral and traded with both alliances, other examples including Italy under Victor Emmanuel III and Ferruccio Parri and Sweden under Gustav V and Per Albin Hanson. Per Albin Hanson, famous for being the founder of the Swedish Socialist/Social Corporatist Welfare State, was admittedly inspired by both the Italian and Brazilian policies of neutrality during the First and Second Great Wars when deciding the neutrality policy his nation would take during the Second Great War.

After the Second Great War ended in 1944, things continued on much as they always had in Brazil. The Empire of Brazil, having weathered both the Great Depression and the Second Great War, and having gotten wealthy trading with both the Entente Alliance and the Central Powers during the war, was one country which looked hopefully to what the post-war years and the 1950s would have to offer them.
 
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^ Thanks. :) The Brazil updates were the funnest to write for me.

Heres another. I'm really on a role today!

Richard B. Russell Jr. (1897-1945)

Richard Brevard Russell Jr. was born on November 2nd, 1897 in Winder, Georgia, Confederate States of America, the fourth of fifteen children, to Ina Dillard Russell and Richard Brevard Russell, Sr. (1861-1938), a prominent lawyer and later chief justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia.

In 1914, at the age of 17, Russell graduated from the Seventh District Agricultural and Mechanical School in Powder Springs, Georgia. The following year, in February of 1915, Russell was drafted into the CS Army during the First Great War. He was sent to the Western Theater of the war, and fought along the Arkansas Front. After only nine months on the Arkansas Front, Russel was recalled back to his home state of George in November of 1915 to participate in the putting down of the Red Rebellion in that state. For almost a year, until October of 1916, Russel went into battle against Black Guerrillas from from both the Black Belt Socialist Republic and the Altamaha Workers State. In November of 1916, Russel was sent back to the front lines, this time in Tenseness. It was here that Russell fought against the US Army the Barel Role Offensive in April of 1917. After being seriously injured by a Yankee bullet to the knee in said offensive, he was sent to a CS Militarily Hospital in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he stayed until he fully recovered that December. When he found out about the armistice and of the Confederate States' defeated, Russell would later recall, in a newspaper interview with the Raleigh Times in 1939, being "outraged. I spent the good part of that year in a depressing, lonely hospital only to find my country was finished and finished good by the damnyankees."

Russell returned home to Winder that same December, and in August of 1918, he decided to move to Athens, Georgia to enroll in the University of Georgia School of Law. He graduated there years later in 1921, earning a Bachelor of Laws Degree. He then worked as a lawyer in Atlanta for some years, before becoming interested in politics. In 1925, Russell joined the Whig Party (his father, it should be noted, was a staunch Whig) and campaigned for a seat in the Confederate Congress in 1928, a seat which he won somewhat easily, despite his relatively young age.

Russell's Congressional career in the senate started innocently enough. Then, everything changed with the Crash of 1929. The Confederate States of America was once again an impoverished nation. Just when it seemed brighter days were ahead when US President Sinclair allowed the Confederacy to renege on her reparation payments five years previously, the country was back where it started in the years after the Great War. Russel could not get over this fact, and it was in 1929 and 1930 that he became increasingly attracted to the Far-Right Freedom Party led by Jake Featherston. Russell, much like Featherston, had also become distrustful of Black-Confederates as a result of the Red Rebellion, Russell himself having fought against the Black guerrillas himself. Russell, officially joined the Freedom Party in 1932, when he decided to run for the Confederate Congress yet again, but this time under the Freedom Party's banner. During the 1933 Confederate election, Russel campaigned actively for Featherston and toured the country several times over.

Russel continued his career as a Confederate Congressman for another five years after the election of Jake Featherston to the office of the Presidency. Throughout his time in Congress during the Freedom Party years, Russell became famous for his loud and passionate speeches in defense of the Freedomite cause, his undying loyalty to Jake Featherston and his unabashed hatred of those whom he and the rest of the Freedom Party believed "stabbed the Confederacy in the back". Some of Russell's speeches even made it into the infamous 1936 Freedomite Propaganda film Glory, directed by D.W. Griffith.

Russell's successful Congressional Career ended in 1938, when he was appointed personally by Jake Featherston to be the Confederate States Ambassador to the United States of America. Many in the Confederate States government saw this an act of favoritism, given Russell's repeated and undying loyalty to Featherston, but no one dared say anything less they want to stay alive, let alone keep their political careers. One American journalist, writing for the Detroit Free Press, called Richard B. Russell, Jr. an "unapologetic and comically desperate brown-noser."

It was during Russell's tenure as ambassador to the United States that the Second Great War broke out on June 22nd, 1941. The day before the war began, Ambassador Russell delivered to the US President Al Smith an ultimatum demanding that Smith withdraw from all former Confederate territories ceded to the United States following the Great War. If these demands were not meet, the Confederate States would declare war on the United States. President Smith refused, and Russell was declared persona non grata in the USA, as was his counterpart Jerry Voorhis, the American Ambassador to the Confederate States, in the CSA.

As a result of Russell becoming persona non grata in the US, Featherston had to decide on what to do with Russell next. In the end, Featherston decided to keep him as US ambassador, but the role became more symbolic than anything. However, Russell was soon about to play a significant role in the war. Begging in 1942, Featherston sent Russell, still ambassador to the US, into occupied US states to coerce whatever was left of their governments to comply with allowing the CS Army to send local blacks to Confederate Reduction Camps. Russell, unfortunately, proved successful in these endeavors, and a number of African-Americans in the US died in the camps because of him.

Russell continued in this position until after the Battle of Pittsburgh ended in February of 1943. During the final years of the war, Russell, still ambassador to the US, though said position began to mean less and less and the war wound on, hunkered down in Richmond, not doing much of anything. After US armies under Irving Morrell and Daniel McArthur captued Richmond in 1944, Russell was captured by US armies attempting to flee the city. He would be held in custody by the US Army for the next year and a half.

When the Philadelphia trails began in January of 1945, Russell was one of the many Confederate officials put on trial for Crimes against Humanity. With the evidence of Russell forcing American officials in occupied territories to comply with the deportation of Black-Americans to Reduction Camps, Russell was found guilty. He was executed on December 16th, 1945, alongside several other notorious Freedomite Confederate War criminals. His body was cremated and his ashes were dumped in an unknown location, as was done with all other dead/executed Freedomites, so as to prevent a hypothetical grave-site from being venerated by Neo-Freedomites. Russell was 48 years of age at the time of his execution. He never married and had no children.
 
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When ever I start reading one of your articles and it begins _______ was born in the confederate states in 1890 or 1880, I brace myself for something something terrible to happen.

Keep'em coming Zoidberg these are great.
 
When ever I start reading one of your articles and it begins _______ was born in the confederate states in 1890 or 1880, I brace myself for something something terrible to happen.

Keep'em coming Zoidberg these are great.

Thanks. :) I should have more up this week, including two more Confederates, John Nance Garner and Howard Hughes.

I also created an AH wiki page for this so that one can find the individual articles all in one place. Not all are up yet though.
 
Russian Alaska 1741-1945

Russian Exploration of America dates from 1741, when a Russian expedition to Kamchatka sighted Prince Whales Island. Russian settlement began when Danish explorer Vitus Bering employed by the Russian court shipped wrecked on Berring Island. By the late 1790s, these had become permanent settlements. Approximately half of the fur traders were Russians from various European parts of the Russian Empire or from Siberia. The others were indigenous people from Siberia or Siberians with mixed indigenous, European and Asian origins.

By 1800 the Shelekhov-Golikov Company had a monopoly on the Alaskan fur trade. It used systematic violence as a tool of colonial exploitation of the indigenous people. When the Aleuts revolted and won some victories, the Russians retaliated, killing many and destroying their boats and hunting gear, leaving them no means of survival. The most devastating effects were from disease: during the first two generations of Russian contact, 80 percent of the Aleut population died from Eurasian infectious diseases; these were by then endemic among the Europeans, but the Aleut had no immunity against the new diseases.

In 1790, Shelekhov- Golikov Company, hired Alexander Andreyevich Baranov to manage his Alaskan fur enterprise. Baranov moved the colony to the northeast end of Kodiak Island, where timber was available. The site later developed as what is now the city of *Shelekhovberg. In 1795, Baranov, concerned by the sight of non-Russian Europeans trading with the Natives in southeast Alaska, established Mikhailovsk. He bought the land from the Tlingit, but in 1802, while Baranov was away, Tlingit from a neighboring settlement attacked and destroyed Mikhailovsk. Baranov returned with a Russian warship and razed the Tlingit village. He built the settlement of **New Archangel on the ruins of Mikhailovsk, which remained the capitol of Russian Alaska.

From 1812 to 1841, the Russians operated Fort Ross, California. From 1814 to 1817, Russian Fort Elizabeth was operating in the Kingdom of Hawaii. The Russo-American Treaty of 1824 recognized exclusive Russian rights to the fur trade above Latitude 54°, 40' North, with the American rights and claims restricted to below that line.

When the Russian-American Company's charter was renewed in 1821, it stipulated that the chief managers from then on be naval officers. Most naval officers did not have any experience in the fur trade, so the company suffered. The Aleut, many of whom had been removed from their home islands and sent as far south as California to hunt sea otter for Russians, continued to decline in population during the 1840s. At the height of Russian America, the Russian population had reached 700, compared to 40,000 Aleuts.

By the 1860s, the Russian government was ready to abandon its Russian America colony. Zealous overhunting had severely reduced the fur-bearing animal population, and competition from the British and Americans exacerbated the situation. This combined with the difficulties of supplying and protecting such a distant colony, reduced interest in the territory. During the Lincoln administration Secretary of State Seward floated the idea of purchasing Russian Alaska. This was apart of Seward’s larger policy of orienting United States expansion and trade Northward and Westward after the loss access to the Caribbean.

The financial instability following the Union defeat and occupation of Philadelphia prevented any real possibly of the purchase. When Seward was replaced by Edwards Bates the inquiry was dropped. In 1867 the Russian government approached the Seymour administration again about purchasing the Colony, but a focus on balancing the budget in the wake of the war ended further discussions.

Over the next 30 years the colony remained a Russian backwater and grew only slowly. It was the discovery of gold in the Yukon in 1896 that brought renewed attention to the colony. A wave of fortune hunters passed through the colony on the way to the Klondike, in Yukon Territory, Canada. After gold was discovered in Alaska, many who didn't make their fortunes in the Klondike strike came back to prospect in Alaska. An earlier strike had established in Southeast Alaska, and around Nicholasberg in 1899.

Other precious and semiprecious metals were being mined in Alaska, too, particularly copper. In 1910, the richest copper mine in the world, started operation at Kennicott. At its peak employed more than 800 workers. The more traditional ways of life, fishing, in particular, also provided a livelihood for many Alaskans, particularly after canning was introduced. In 1878 businessmen built the first two canneries at Klawock and New Archangel. In 1883 the Russian Pacific Fish Company established a cannery at Nushagak Bay in Southwest Alaska, where they were able to exploit the immense runs of salmon. Two years later the Russian Alaska Packing Company opened a cannery across the bay, and by 1908, 10 canneries ringed Nushagak Bay in Southwest Alaska. Shelekhovberg's first canneries were built in the late 19th century, when word of phenomenal fish runs became widespread.

By the turn of the 20th century, commercial fishing was gaining a foothold in the Aleutian Islands. Another traditional occupation, whaling, continued with no regard for over-hunting. They pushed the bowhead whales to the edge of extinction for the oil in their tissue. By 1910 the colony had reached a population of 55,000 whites and an unknown number of natives possibly as low of 30,000.

Russian Alaska played a minor role in the Great War. With its small population and minimal strategic importance, the Russian government stationed only 2,000 soldiers and sailors in the territory. When the war broke out a militia division was raised bringing the total forces to 5,000. The US Pacific Fleet’s primary focus was the conquest of the Sandwich Islands. Russian Alaska served primarily as Naval bases for British Empire and Japanese ships resupplying Canada via Vancouver. A Small Japanese Fleet based in Vancouver and Shelekhovberg protected this route. When Canadian resistance in the West began to collapse after the fall of Banff, the Russian government sent a Brigade of soldiers to reinforce the defense of Vancouver. In 1917 a mixed Division of Russian and ANZAC soldiers defended British Columbia after Canadian forces were ordered east to defend the Great Plains cities.

The Alaskan Brigade fought valiantly when US forces in Washington probed the lines south of Vancouver following the Canadian Army departure. Though Russia withdrew from the war before their British and Canadian allies, the Alaskan Brigade chose to fight on. They Alaskan Brigade only quit fighting, when Canada officially surrendered in fall of 1917. Many in the US wanted to annex Canada for Russian support of Canada and as a step towards the final conquest of North America. The US General Staff advised against it, as US resources were already pushed to the brink by the occupation of Canada. The US offered to repatriate the Russian fighters either to New Archangel, Alaska or Vladivostok. Most soldier decided to return to Alaska and avoid the fighting associated with the Russian Civil War.

During the Russian Civil War Alaska remained a safe haven in a storm of war. Alaska’s population of entrepreneurs, prospectors and fur trappers proved a poor recruiting pool for the Bolsheviks. In 1919 a small Bolshevik Cell was organized and went on a brief rampage in the winter of 1919. Local Bolshevik agents played on the grievances of the Aleut and Tlingit tribes and led them on reprisal attacks. These attacks included the burning of Alexandergrod. By summer of 1920 the local Russian militia had defeated these forces and the territory spent the rest of the Civil War in relative peace.

During the Russian Civil War the economy continued to stagnate and the territory suffered. After the Tsarist victory in the Civil War, Russian Alaska once again began to grow and prosper. Alaskan gold and mineral wealth became increasingly important in the rebuilding of the Russian economy. The Alaskan fishing fleet quickly filled the void left by the destruction of the Canadian fleet. Japan’s growing population and demand for fish proved extremely lucrative for Russian fishermen, who were not restricted by the same post war tariffs as the US fleet.

The Alaska also proved a lucrative for Russian Arms dealers. After the Civil War Russia ended in the Far East, the territory was awash in weapons. Canadian rebels financed by the Japanese and MI6 proved a growing market. By 1923 Russia had become the main conduit for arms smuggling to Canadian Rebels. When Canadian hatred and resentment boiled over into outright rebellion, US officials easily identified these Russian weapons. Canadian rebels routinely used the Russian border to elude pursuing US authorities. In a report in 1925 the General Staff admitted its mistake in not annexing Alaska. The Generals Staff pushed the Sinclair administration to pursue purchasing the territory in 1925. Sinclair however feared the purchase of the Alaskan would interfere with the payment of his social welfare programs.

In 1929 President Blackford decided that the purchase of Alaska was worth the prevention of future headaches. US Secretary of State John Reed pursued the purchase of Alaska, but Tsar Michael II refused to relinquish any more territory after the humiliation of Brest- Litovsk. After the Collapse later that year the matter was forgotten.

In order for the Tsar to defeat Bolshevik forces, he was forced to make peace with reformers. In the post war years he was forced increase the powers to Russian Duma (Parliament) especially Liberals and reformist factions. Under the Duma's leadership Russia underwent a dramatic economic expansion.During the global economic prosperity of the mid to late 20’s the Russian Duma invested heavily in expanding the economic modernization begun during the Great War. This included Alaska where the government invested in railroads and the modernization of its ports.

When the collapse hit in 1929 Russia was thrown into chaos and like the other defeated Entente Powers its politics shifted dramatically to the right. A Reactionary Monarchist movement modeled on the Action Francais quickly gained power in Russia. The group was pro- orthodox, pro-monarchy, anti-liberal and anti- republican. The movement quickly began to repress liberal members of the Duma and government. With the rise of Action Francais and the British Silver Shirts the usual places for liberal Russian emigration were closed off. Some chose to emigrate to the United States, but many more chose instead to emigrate to Alaska. Tsarist officials let it be known that Alaska would be a safe haven for outspoken liberals.

By 1940 the Russian population had doubled from 50,000 to 100,000. Many smaller towns were like Nicholasberg and Baranovberg transformed into thriving port cities. The arrival of these refugees included many engineers, civil servants, lawyers and skilled machinists. Despite turmoil throughout the rest of the Empire Alaska again was a bastion of calm and even economic growth.

Alaska in the Second Great War would go on to play an even smaller role than it had in the previous war. The Russian Army drafted over 10,000 Alaskans but these were used primarily in the European theater. The Second Great War saw fewer side theaters than the First Great War, as neither side was as militarily prepared as three decades earlier. Neither the Quadruple Entente nor the Alliance could spare the resources for distractions from their main efforts.

Alaska largely sat out the Second Great War. The Russian Pacific fleet had languished in the interwar period and Japan was primarily focused on the US Sandwich Islands. US and Russian troops squared off in a bitter truce for most of the war. When the Canadians uprises began in 1942, Alaskan Forces lent some support. However when US troops overwelmed several Russian border check points in revenge, overt support stopped. For the rest of the War the US was content to focus on the Crushing the Confederacy and checking the Japanese Navy. The US Navy relied on Long Range Submarines and commerce raiders to interdict supplies and possible Japanese landings.

When Japan attacked Britain and France in late 1943 Russia upheld its commitment to its allies and declared war on Japan. This again turned into a strategic truce as neither Japan nor Russia had the resources to deploy forces to Siberia. The Second Great War ended in 1944 after the Q.A. deployment of seven superbombs over Q.E. cities. Russia was again thrown into turmoil and Bolsheviks again began to guerrilla attacks in the chaos. Within six months of the end of hostilities between Russia and Germany, Japan demanded Russia’s surrender of Siberia. Having learned from its mistake in the First Great War the US General Staff headed by former Governor General of Canada William Mitchel, recommended to President Dewey that the US occupy Alaska to prevent its falling into the hands of Japan. Dewey agreed and plans were drawn up to occupy Russian Alaska in summer of 1945.

Note: With this I am not suggesting this timeline roles into David bar Elias TL 191 After the end. Its just seems logical the US would occupy Alaska to prevent it from falling into Japanese hands. I'm trying to avoid talking about the post war period.


* Shelekhovberg = Kodiak
** New Archangel = Sitka
*** Alexandergrod = Ruby
*** Nicholasberg = Nome
**** Baranovberg = Anchorage
 
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John Nance Garner (1868-1937)

John Nance Garner IV was born was born on November 22nd, 1868, in Detroit, Red River County, Texas, CSA, to John Nance Garner III and Sarah Jane Guest Garner, just a few years after the Confederate States won her independence in the War of Secession. Garner attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, for one semester before dropping out. After that, Garner returned home to Texas. Soon after, Garner started studying law. He passed the bar in 1890 and soon after set up a law practice in Uvalde, Uvalde County, Texas.

In 1893, aged only 25, Garner entered politics for the first time when he ran for County Judge of Uvalde County under the banner of the Whig Party, the most powerful political party not only in Texas, but also in the rest of the Confederate States of America. In Texas, a Whig nomination to any office tantamount to election. As a result, Garner won the election, and soon became a popular figure in Uvalde County.

On November 25th, 1898, Garner married Mariette Rheiner, the daughter of a local rancher. They had one child together, John Nance Garner V [1], born on September 24th, 1896.

In 1900, Garner, having been County Judge of Uvalde County for seven years, was elected to the Texas House of Representatives, naturally under the banner of the Whig Party. He was re-elected in 1902. He was elected a member of the CS House of Representatives from Texas's 15th district in 1906.

During the Great War, Garner remained an enthusiastic supporter of the Confederate War effort, and when the Red Rebellion broke out in Autumn of 1915, supported a harsh and quick crack down of the rebels for in his words "hampering our war effort". Ironically, Garner supported the drafting of Negroes into the Confederate Army, seeing from the Red Rebellion how well they could fight, but supported a number of measures which would "prove their loyalty to the Confederate government". It was also during the war that a traumatic event happened to Garner. On October 28th, 1916, his only son John Nance Garner V, aged 20, was killed in combat on the Sequoyah Front as the CS armies there were being pushed back into Texas by the invading US armies. His body was never recovered. His son's death crushed Garner, though he vowed not to let said event force him out of politics. He wrote to his wife in a letter dated November 8th, 1916; "I'm tired of this damned war. It took away countless sons, including ours, and now it is painfully obvious it will take the life out of our Confederacy."

Garner lost his seat in the CS of Representatives in 1918, a year after the war ended, due in part to the Confederate voter's frustration towards the Whig Party and their losing of the war. Garner retired from politics, moving back to his home-town of Detroit, Texas, until 1926, when he ran for Governor of Texas, wanting very much to get back into the political world of the Confederate States. He won the election comfortably against his Radical-Liberal opponent William Travis Davis [2].

During his early years as governor, Garner supported legislation that would financially enrich his state of Texas and, on a national level, that would ban radical groups, both far-right and far-left, from the CSA, including the Freedom Party. Garner viewed the Freedom Party in particular as a threat, stated that they were "mindless, hate-filled men who, if they ever got a hold of our government, would it set the country back more than the Yankee victory ever could of hoped to do". However, by the mid-1920s, the Freedom Party was no longer seen as a threat to the status quo of Confederate politics, so such legislation never became a reality. After the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, Garner criticized the President Mitchell and the Confederate central government's handling of the crisis. Garner attempted for a while to pass a law allowing relief workers from Texas to assist those in the affected areas, but even Garner later realized that the central government would have none of it, and that it would be too little too late anyways. After the Crash of 1929 and ensuing Great Depression, Garner supported measures to assist those affected by the Depression in Texas. A number of such measures were passed by the Texas government in 1930 and 1931 and they showed mixed results. Nevertheless, the people of Texas admired him for taking their needs and well-being seriously.

During the 1933, Presidential elections, Garner supported and actively campaigned for the Whig ticket of Samuel Longstreet and Hugo Black, with Garner becoming one of Jake Featherston's harshest critics during the Whig campaign. He remarked to Longstreet after a Whig rally in Tupelo, Mississippi that Featherston, "wasn't worth a bucket of warm piss". Nevertheless, Jake Featherston of the Freedom Party ended up winning the election on November 1st, 1933. John Nance Garner was furious, but since there was nothing he could do about it, he considered himself lucky he was still Governor of Texas.

During the following years, Garner proved very resistant to President Featherston and his wishes. Garner quickly became very independent minded, and it seemed he underestimated what lengths Featherston would go to to achieve his goals. On April 19th, 1937, Garner was struck and killed almost instantly by a oncoming car in the Texan capital of Austin. The man driving the car, a 35 year-old local businessman and Freedomite activist from Virginia named Wilbur Wilson Richards [2], was charged with vehicular-manslaughter, but soon acquitted of all charges by a local judge. Garner's body was buried by his widow Mariette Rheiner Garner in a small private cemetery outside of his home town of Detroit, Texas. Garner's Lieutenant Governor Coke R. Stevenson, who would later serve as President of the US-backed Second Republic of Texas from 1948-1956, succeeded him briefly as governor until he lost the next gubernatorial election to Freedom Party candidate W. Lee O'Daniel that autumn. With that, Texas was under full Freedomite control.

After the fall of the Confederacy and the establishment of the Second Republic of Texas, Garner would become a hero to Texans, admired as someone who was ready to stand up to Featherston before most others were willing to realize the danger the Freedom Party posed to the Confederacy. His death remains a mystery, but it is generally agreed on by historians that W.W. Richards, who died as a civilian in 1944 during a US air raid of Richmond, was part of a conspiracy stormed up by Featherston and the rest of the Freedom Party to eliminate Garner as a potential threat to their power.

~~~~

[1] With the CSA having an influential pseudo-aristocracy where family names could mean the difference between prestige or obscurity, it makes sense Garner would want to continue on his name in this way. IOTL his son was named Tully Charles Garner and died on October 1st, 1968.

[2] Both are fictional characters, the former named after William Travis, one of the heroes of the Alamo.
 
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Poor Garner, nice to here some people resisted Featherston. I bet this killed Johnson to hear of the assasination of his mentor…

I reread the Brazilian Empire post. Great work, I enjoyed how realistic it was. I'm always tempted to make my post too weird or too long (Speaking of the Next Lodge has US volunteers in the Boer War). In contrast the Brazil article was concise and realistic to Brazils goals and position in TL 191.
One little nitpick on Brazil, Turtledove never uses the term central powers. I'm pretty sure he refers to the Alliances as either the Quadruple Entente or Quadruple Alliance, making Germany and the US the Allies and the CSA-France and UK the Entente. I like the idea that these terms survive into the Second Great War, like the term Great War.

A few quick edits to the Alaskan Post.
Any good ideas for the name of Russia's facist movement?
We need some posts on Russia and the Far East if people were looking for ideas.
 
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Poor Garner, nice to here some people resisted Featherston. I bet this killed Johnson to hear of the assasination of his mentor…

I reread the Brazilian Empire post. Great work, I enjoyed how realistic it was. I'm always tempted to make my post too weird or too long. The Brazil article was concise and realistic to Brazils goals and position in TL 191.

A few quick edits to the Alaskan Post.
Any good ideas for the name of Russia's facist movement?
We need some posts on Russia and the Far East if people were looking for ideas.

I may write about Johnson soon. For the record, he's President of the Second Republic of Texas from 1961-1969, though if I write about him, It'll most likely focus on his life before the mid-1940's.

Thanks. :D Like I said before, those Brazil updates were the funnest of these recent ones to write. And yes, I did try and make it realistic, and I guess it worked. :cool:

I'll think of a name for Russia's Fascist Movement after I read the Alaska update.

I'm thinking of writing a sequel to Criago's unfinished Russian Civil War post, as well as his Charles XI post.
 
Most of this essentially a rewrite of OTL, though it is significant and will prove even more significant later, when the butterflies begin to become more apparent during the conflict between the Venizelists and King Constantine during the First Great War.


Kingdom of Greece (Part One)

The Kingdom of Greece, the first fully independent Greek state since the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, was established in 1832 at the Convention at London by Britain, France and Russia. It was internationally recognized at the Treaty of Constantinople, the treaty which ended the eleven year-long Greek War of Independence (1821-1832) and secured the full independence of the Kingdom of Greece from the Ottoman Empire.

It was also at the Convention of London that, at the insistence of the Great Powers, Greece became a monarchy. Prince Otto Friedrich Ludwig of Bavaria of the House of Wittelsbach was made King Otto I of Greece. However, Otto's reign would prove to be a rocky one. Otto's ability to maintain the support of the Great powers of Europe proved key to him staying in power. As a result, Otto played the interests of the Great Powers without aggravating them, and thus remained in power. This was much to the chagrin of the Greek people. He ruled as an autocrat with Bavarian, rather than Greek, advisors, was unable to solve Greece's financial weaknesses and, as a Roman Catholic, refused to covert to Greek Orthodoxy. These actions made him quite unpopular with his people. It wasn't until the September 3rd, 1843 revolution that a constitution was created and, as a result, Greeks allowed to participate in Otto's government. The new constitution also created a bicameral parliament, consisting of an Assembly (Vouli) and a Senate (Gerousia). However, as time went on, the people became frustrated with Otto's constant interference in the constitutional government. Another coup against Otto was launched in October of 1862, this time deposing Otto for good. As a result, Otto and his wife Queen Amalia of Oldenburg took refuge on a British warship which took them back to Otto's home-country of Bavaria. He died in the city of Bamberg in 1867. Queen Amelia died in that same city eight years later in 1875.

Meanwhile, Greece needed a new monarch. The Greek people wanted Prince Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, fourth child of Queen Victoria, to be the new king, but none of the other Great Powers besides Britain approved. As a result, a young Danish Prince by the name of Prince William of Denmark was decided on being the new King of Greece. Prince William became King George I of Greece on March 30th, 1863, when we was only seventeen years old, although he would not arrive in Greece for exactly another seven months, on October 30th, 1863. At the urging of Britain and the teenaged King George, Greece adopted a much more democratic constitution in 1864. The powers of the king were reduced, the senate abolished and the franchise extended to all adult males. Nevertheless, Greek politics remained dynastic, as they always had been up to this point. It was also in 1864, on May 28th, that Britain gave Greece back the Ionian Islands, which had previously been a British Amical Protectorate known as the "United States of the Ionian Islands" since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, as a gift for Greece adopting the pro-British George I as King.

It was also during the reign of King George I that the Parliamentary Process in Greece developed greatly. Nevertheless, throughout the 19th century, Greece remained a poor nation, with the country lacking raw materials, infrastructure and capital. By the 1890s the country was all but bankrupt. Despite the poverty rife in rural areas, progress was made in the country in regards to infrastructure and communications. The 1890s would also see an important and groundbreaking event occur in Greece. In April of 1896, Greece hosted the first modern Olympic Games, the brainchild of French educator and historian Pierre de Coubertin, in their capital of Athens.

The next year, the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 broke out. The war was the result of the Ottoman Empire ignoring the 1878 Pact of Halepa which granted, or was supposed to grant, Crete wide-ranging autonomy within the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman's ignoring said pact caused Greek rebellions in Crete in 1885, 1888 and 1889. In 1894, Sultan Abdul Hamid II re-appointed Alexander Karatheodori Pasha as governor of Crete. Karatheodori Pasha zealously wanted to implement Cretan autonomy, but this angered the Muslim inhabitants of islands, who clashed with the island's Greek inhabitants in 1896. Ottoman military forces arrived on the island at the same time Greek volunteers arrived to aid the Greek rebels. The situation escalated, and in January of 1897, the first Greek troopships sailed for Crete. The Greek Army under Colonel Timoleon Vassos declared Crete in union with Greece, causing the Ottoman Empire to declare war the next day. After ten months of fighting, the war finally ended on December 4th with an Ottoman military victory and a Greek diplomatic victory. The Ottoman Empire annexed northern Thessaly, while Crete was granted autonomy within the Ottoman Empire, thanks in part to intervention by the Great Powers of Europe.

For the people of Greece and the Greek military the end of the war proved a humiliation, showing how unprepared they had been for the war, which was fought due in part to the Greek government wanting to take on more step in fulfilling their "Megali Idea". The "Megali Idea (Μεγάλη Ιδέα)", meaning "Great Idea" in English, was an irredentist and Greek nationalist concept stating that the Greek state should own all Greek-inhabited lands, which meant conquering said Greek-inhabited lands, lands including Crete, Pontus and parts of Anatolia, from the Ottoman Empire. As a reuslt of this humiliation and perceived loss of the war, a military coup, known as the Goudi coup, occurred in the Athenian neighborhood of Goudi on August 28th 1909. It was the goal of the coup leaders to immediately reform the Greek armed forces. Though King George I replaced Dimitrios Rallis with Kyriakoulis Mavromichali as Prime Minister, it was not enough for the insurgents. A long stalemate took hold, with the coup leaders eventually reaching out to the Cretan Greek politician Eleftherios Venizelos, who respected democracy, democratic norms and free elections in Greece. Venizelos, leading the Liberal Party, eventually became Prime Minister of Greece in October of 1910, ending the standoff between the insurgents and King George I. Soon after Venizelos came to power, a wide range of reforms were enacted in regards to the Greek military, economy and society. It was hoped by Venizelos and his Liberal supporters in the Hellenic Parliament that these reforms would help Greece win a future war between them and the Ottoman Empire, or any other enemy for that matter. Greek politics were also changed for decades as a reuslt of the coup, now divided into liberal, republican Venizelism and conservative, monarchist anti-Venizelism.

It is interesting to note that Albert Crawford [1], a newspaper reporter from New York City, where a number of Greek immigrants resided, compared the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 to the Second Mexican War in a 1911 article for the New York Times. In his article, Crawford drew on an analogy between the conflicts over Crete and Sonora and Hermosillo, Greece and the United States' unpreparedness to fight in each respective war, how each war was fought over an irredentist and nationalist concept of land both the United States and Greece saw and theirs and how a wide range of reforms were enacted by the American and Greek government in the years after each war.

In terms of the reforms in Greece, they would prove to be a saving grace for the country. On October 8th, 1912, the First Balkan War began between the Ottoman Empire and an alliance of Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece known as the "Balkan League". The war began as the result of years of tension between the independent Balkan states and the Ottoman Empire, with each of these states having rival aspirations in regards to the remaining Ottoman land in Europe, in a region known as "Rumelia". Things came to a head in May of 1912, when Albanian revolutionaries proved successful in driving the Ottomans out of Skopje, thus forcing the Ottoman Empire to grant autonomy to their Albanian regions in June. Serbia, a supporter of the Albanian rebels, used this as a pretext for war. Serbia, Greece, Montenegro and Bulgaria had all been in talks with regards to invading the Ottoman Empire before the Albanian revolt, and now it was agreed they would start putting their plans into action. As a result the four Balkan nations and the Ottoman Empire began mobilizing their armies. Montenegro declared war on the Ottomans on October 8th, 1912. The rest of the "Balkan League" decalred war five days later on October 13th, 1912.

The First Balkan War ended up lasting less than a year, ending seven months later on May 30th, 1913. The war was a victory for a the Balkan League, which divided up all formerly-Ottoman land in Europe west of the Enez-Kıyıköy line. Albania was also made an independent nation, though occupied by Serbo-Greek armies in the aftermath of the war. In regards to Greece, it seemed with their victory over the Ottomans that their reforms under Prime Minister Venizelos paid off in full.

Still things were not over in the powder keg of Europe. Disputes over how to divide Northern Macedonia between Serbia and Bulgaria and Southern Macedonia between Greece and Bulgaria would lead to the Second Balkan War only a month later.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[1] Fictional Character.
 
With the retcons of previous TL-191 POTUS lists in this thread, I think both the POTUS and VPOTUS lists need an update....

List of Presidents of the USA from 1789 to 1945

1. George Washington (Independent) (1789-1797)
2. John Adams (Federalist) (1797-1801)
3. Thomas Jefferson (Democratic-Republican) (1801-1809)
4. James Madison (Democratic-Republican) (1809-1817)
5. James Monroe (Democratic-Republican) (1817-1825)
6. John Quincy Adams (Democratic-Republican) (1825-1829)

7. Andrew Jackson (Democratic) (1829-1837)
8. Martin Van Buren (Democratic) (1837-1841)

9. William Henry Harrison (Whig) (1841) †
10. John Tyler (Whig) (1841-1845)

11. James K. Polk (Democratic) (1845-1849)
12. Zachary Taylor (Whig) (1849-1850) †
13. Millard Fillmore (Whig) (1850-1853)

14. Franklin Pierce (Democratic) (1853-1853)
15. James Buchanan (Democratic) (1853-1857)

16. Abraham Lincoln (Republican) (1861-1865)
17. Horatio Seymour (Democratic) (1865-1869)
18. Thomas Hendricks (Democratic) (1869-1873)
19. George Woodward (Democratic) (1873-1875) †
20. Samuel S. Cox (Democratic) (1875-1877)
21. Samuel J. Tilden (Democratic) (1877-1881)

22. James G. Blaine (Republican) (1881-1885)
23. Winfield Scott Hancock (Democratic) (1885-1886) †
24. Allen G. Thurman (Democratic) (1886-1889)
25. Thomas Brackett Reed (Democratic) (1889-1897)
26. Alfred Thayer Mahan (Democratic) (1897-1905)
27. Nelson W. Aldrich (Democratic) (1905-1913)
28. Theodore Roosevelt (Democratic) (1913-1921)

29. Upton Sinclair (Socialist) (1921-1929)
30. Hosea Blackford (Socialist) (1929-1933)

31. Herbert Hoover (Democratic) (1933-1937)
32. Alfred E. Smith (Socialist) (1937-1942) †
33. Charles W. La Follette (Socialist) (1942-1945)

34. Thomas Dewey (Democratic) (1945- )


† = Died in Office

List of Vice Presidents of the USA from 1789 to 1945

1. John Adams (Federalist) (1789-1797)
2. Thomas Jefferson (Democratic-Republican) (1797-1801)
3. Aaron Burr (Democratic-Republican) (1801-1805)
4. George Clinton (Democratic-Republican) (1805-1812) †

Vacancy by death (1812-1813)
5. Elbridge Gerry (Democratic-Republican) (1813-1814) †
Vacancy by death (1814-1817)

6. Daniel T. Tompkins (Democratic-Republican) (1817-1825)
7. John C. Calhoun (Democratic-Republican) (1825-1829)
(Democratic) (1829-1832)*
Vacancy by resignation (1832-1833)
8. Martin Van Buren (Democratic) (1833-1837)
9. Richard Mentor Johnson (Democratic) (1837-1841)

10. John Tyler (Whig) (1841)
Vacancy by ascension (1841-1845)
11. George M. Dallas (Democratic) (1845-1849)
Vacancy by ascension (1841-1845)
12. Millard Fillmore (Whig) (1849-1850)
Vacancy by ascension (1849-1853)
13. William R. King (Democratic) (1853-1857) †
Vacancy by death (1853-1857)
14. John C. Breckenridge (Democratic) (1857-1861)
15. Hannibal Hamlin (Republican) (1861-1865)
16. George H. Pendleton (Democratic) (1865-1869)
17. Joel Parker (Democratic) (1869-1873)
18. Samuel S. Cox (Democratic) (1873-1875)

Vacancy by ascension (1875-1877)
19. Henry B. Payne (Democratic) (1877-1881)
20. J. Donald Cameron (Republican) (1881-1885)
21. Allen G. Thurman (Democratic) (1885-1886)
Vacancy by ascension (1886-1889)
22. Adlai Stevenson I (Democratic) (1889-1897)
23. Robert E. Pattison (Democratic) (1897-1905)
24. Charles W. Fairbanks (Democratic) (1905-1913)
25. Walter McKenna (Democratic) (1913-1921)

26. Hosea Blackford (Socialist) (1921-1929)
27. Hiram Johnson (Socialist) (1929-1933)

Vacancy by ascension (1933-1937)
28. Charles W. La Follette (Socialist) (1937-1942)
Vacancy by ascension (1942-1945)
29. Harry S. Truman (Democratic) (1945- )


† = Died in Office
* = Resigned
 
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Heres the same lists, but for the Confederate States. Are these choices still agreed on? The only change so far has been Stonewall Jackson as POTCS from 1886 to 1892.

Edit: New list on next page.
 
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