A Blunted Sickle - Thread II

[Rufus Shinra]

I've written a few snippets, but only the early days of it. The problem is how to develop it further - they aren't going to be happy being run from Paris (and eventually the French won't be happy about it either), but just copying the British model won't work either.

The French model for colonization never was like the British anyway, the French colonists integrating a lot more into the local system than the British ones, who tended to remain very distant. As indicated earlier, Félix Éboué's policies are something to look at, particularly as he could very well survive beyond the war in this timeline and push further his ideas of local elites and giving more administrative power to the locals. Another very important difference with the Brits is the comparative lack of colonies with an colonist majority - no real soft/hard native replacement policy like in CANZUK where they got frakked hard.

Full integration is pretty much unthinkable for at the very least a century, though, noone in 1950 Paris would want the Assemblée Nationale full of natives from the Empire, but further autonomy under a metropolitan leadership could work. The idea would possibly be to build the local societies to be more and more like the French one, though whether it could hold in the long term is hard to say, but the TLDR is that the French policy has more been towards a cultural/societal replacement than a physical one, a policy applied in France proper as well as in its colonies.

The other big obstacles would be the US and USSR, obviously, both of them inevitably mining the two Empires as much as they can to gain advantages over the Euros, just like IRL. My fear is however that a victorious France will not enact the numerous reforms it needs to get a modern enough outlook on itself and the world to deal with this properly, the same reforms that weren't enough OTL to overcome in the colonies the consequences of WW2 and the post-war treatment of the colonial forces. Hell, France without the CNR's political reforms is going to be utterly alien compared to OTL, and you have a very interesting opportunity here, @pdf27, in a timeline where de Gaulle and the others aren't as important as OTL: France without the ENA, without the generation of Resistance veterans, without the Nouvelle Vague moviemaking, without the strong legitimization of the Communists - for those here from the UK and US, Communists were a critical part of the Resistance here from 1941 onwards and had a relatively positive influence on us afterwards - without the Fifth Republic system, without the massive hit to nationalism. You can go crazy by following the path of the pre-war French statecraft, to which I recommend the Conseil d'État's website, it has English parts, and if you can check their pre-War decision style, you could get an idea of how to go forward after the War.

 

[naraht]

If I remember correctly, there are two Armies left within 100 miles of main body of the French troops right now, the 6th, which was East of the Rhine and thus was not encircled and the 7th which had been hollowed out of regular army troops and which covered the Rhine south to the Swiss border.

The primary question in the drive Northeast by the French is whether they are creating routes by which supplies can be gotten to the British or whether their advance will be pulling from those same supplies.

How much do the French care whether Stuttgart is conquered or whether the Germans surrender it when they surrender the country?

 

[naraht]

In a completely different area...
Palestine.

I'm not sure whether there is any significant use of the Jews in Palestine in an organized fashion in this war. So determining how the Haganah develops will be interesting. The Germans haven't killed nearly as many Jews, but a *lot* of Jews will be inside the boundaries of the USSR. The USSR may have more Jews inside its boundaries at this moment than they ever did after Barbarossa iOTL. Where there are still a lot more Jews that could go to Israel is in southeastern Europe, Slovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia etc.

So more Jews, but a stronger Britain to keep them away from Palestine.

 

[Ryan]

In a completely different area...
Palestine.

I'm not sure whether there is any significant use of the Jews in Palestine in an organized fashion in this war. So determining how the Haganah develops will be interesting. The Germans haven't killed nearly as many Jews, but a *lot* of Jews will be inside the boundaries of the USSR. The USSR may have more Jews inside its boundaries at this moment than they ever did after Barbarossa iOTL. Where there are still a lot more Jews that could go to Israel is in southeastern Europe, Slovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia etc.

So more Jews, but a stronger Britain to keep them away from Palestine.

not that the soviets would let them leave anyway.

however, more jews could mean that a better patch of land is chosen for the jewish autonomous oblast.

 

[Thisisnotausername]

however, more jews could mean that a better patch of land is chosen for the jewish autonomous oblast.

It's too late for that: the JAO was established at its current location in 1928. A larger Soviet Jewish population and weaker Israel might mean it has a larger Jewish population post-war than IOTL, though.

 

[von Mises]

not that the soviets would let them leave anyway.

however, more jews could mean that a better patch of land is chosen for the jewish autonomous oblast.

If we're going down a darker route, an earlier doctors plot might be a possibility. Stalin was no great friend of the Jewish People, and combine that with his paranoia, well, it may well be very nasty.

 

[Tanc49]

but the TLDR is that the French policy has more been towards a cultural/societal replacement than a physical one, a policy applied in France proper as well as in its colonies.

I've always thought that'd be a great Phd subject: parallelism between Ultramarine colonisation and the internal homogeneisation of France during the IIIrd Republic

the consequences of WW2 and the post-war treatment of the colonial forces. Hell, France without the CNR's political reforms is going to be utterly alien compared to OTL, and you have a very interesting opportunity here, @pdf27, in a timeline where de Gaulle and the others aren't as important as OTL

On the other hand... less of a drive to prove something in crushing insurrections, way less destabilisation in Indochina, another victory for France.
With a government in Algiers or at least a bigger base there, there has to be some effort. Just a few intellectuals actually going to Algeria and seeing condition of the muslim citizens... a spark that leads to a proper multiethnical civil rights movement.
However, no WWII means no Social Security, no woman's vote in 1945, and a bunch of other stuff missing

 

[Eric S. Raymond]

not that the soviets would let them leave anyway.

Not if anyone with enough power to obstruct an exodus has a historical clue. If I were a bit more of a historian myself I might write a book on expulsions of Jews and how badly those tend to fuck up your empire. Guts your mercantile and intellectual classes, with very bad long-term results as you forgo economic growth and your political system ossifies around non-market power centers. Parallel effects have been visible after expulsions of other mercantile minorities like the Armenians and the diaspora Chinese in Asia.

The type case is Spain, which never really recovered from expelling its Jews after 1492 - the gold it looted mostly didn't get ploughed into internal investment, consequently the emergence of a middle class was late and weak. England did recover after 1390 but it took 200 years for the gentile merchants to build the kind of international connections the Jewish diaspora had brought in. When the gradual decay of the Soviet system allowed Jews to emigrate after 1969 the SU lost a significant chunk of its engineering and mathematical talent; this was undoubtedly a factor in the final collapse after 1989.

Stalin might not have liked Jews much, but there were a lot of monarchs who didn't while still realizing that they could be an asset. My favorite case of hostile exploitation was the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Its elites did a clever thing - they used their Jews as tax farmers, deflecting peasant resentment away from themselves and incidentally incubating a folk tradition of bone-deep Jew-hatred among same from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea that outlasted the Commonwealth's 1795 demise into modern times.

 

[naraht]

Not if anyone with enough power to obstruct an exodus has a historical clue. If I were a bit more of a historian myself I might write a book on expulsions of Jews and how badly those tend to fuck up your empire. Guts your mercantile and intellectual classes, with very bad long-term results as you forgo economic growth and your political system ossifies around non-market power centers. Parallel effects have been visible after expulsions of other mercantile minorities like the Armenians and the diaspora Chinese in Asia.

There are essentially three choices:
1) Don't allow the Jews to emigrate.
2) Allow the Jews to emigrate.
3) Force the Jews out.

The other question is whether the Jews in the portion of pre-war Poland that the Soviets took over would be viewed as Poles or as Soviet Jews. There is also the odd effect that almost all of the surviving Pre-war Polish Jews are now inside the USSR and the restored Poland will have very few. This would, I think cause any Polish Jews allowed to leave the USSR to head elsewhere.

This is also a *real* headache for the British. The more Jews that Stalin allows to leave (or expels), the worse trying to keep a lid on Palestine becomes. So there will probably be more Jews, but *less* militarily organized than OTL.

The other question is since there will be no United Nations and the League of Nations is likely still largely Moribund, who do the British try to hand Palestine off to?

And in regards to the numbers of the Holocaust. (Which I think we've done before but can't find) Running the numbers at Back of the Envelope numbers from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Death_toll

Assuming that the number of Jews killed in Germany and Austria are the same, those in Poland and Czechoslovakia (in this TL the Slovaks didn't kill any) are cut in half, everywhere else the Germans invaded are 1/4 of OTL.

That gives about 1 Million Polish Jews, 165,000 German Jews, 70,000 CZ Jews, 65,000 Austrian Jews, 25,000 Dutch Jews, 20,000 French Jews and everyone else is less than that.

So roughly 1.3-1.5 Million Jews and given that most of the remaining people killed in the Holocaust were either Poles or Soviets, I'm again including half the Poles, none of the Soviets, and half(?) the Roma (which may be high). So about a Million Poles and half a Million from the Roma, Gay, disabled and JWs.

So the Holocaust killed 3 Million of whom just less than half are Jewish (as opposed to OTL with 11 Million with just more than half are Jewish).

By comparison, the Soviet Union had over 3 Millon Jews prior to the invasion and actually gained *more* than half of the Jews in Poland (The Germans got about 2 million, the Soviets 3.5 Million).

So the Soviets would have more Jews (close to 3 times!) than all of the Jews killed iTTL holocaust.

 

[Eric S. Raymond]

So the Holocaust killed 3 Million of whom just less than half are Jewish (as opposed to OTL with 11 Million with just more than half are Jewish).

So 4.5 million Jews dodge a bullet.

I should declare my stake in this matter. I'm not Jewish, but if a chromosome assay were to demonstrate that I have Jewish ancestry I would be somewhat pleased. Because my natural peer group is a couple SDs up the IQ bell curve and I've lived my adult life in the U.S.'s East Coast metroplex, many of my friends are Ashkenazim, and my idiolect includes some common Yiddishisms. I have formed a strongly held opinion that one of the ways you can judge the morality and indeed the health of a society is by how it treats its Jews. My adult politics was largely formed (see http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/anarchist.html) by grappling with the question of how to prevent another Holocaust or Holodomor from ever happening again.

As I think about the circumstances surrounding the formation of Israel OTL I find that I don't have a strong projection about whether it happens ITTL. There's no Word of God on this from pdf27, is there? 1.5 million murdered Jews would probably be enough to shock the conscience of the nations - it only seems like a small number because we're used to the larger ITTL figure. On the other hand, the Brits are going to feel a lot less pressure to divest themselves of bits of empire than in OTL, a lot more confident. On the gripping hand, there are a lot more living Jews likely to be thinking they'd better split town before the next pogrom and saying so, loudly enough to increase public pressure. These considerations might net out to a wash.

I'm not sure it would be determinative if they didn't, anyway. I think the formation of Israel is one of the clearest examples in history of charismatic individuals making a difference on a geopolitical scale through sheer moral suasion. The course of war ITTL does not seem to have killed any of the key actors, which I think is the best argument for something like the formation of Israel happening more or less on schedule.

But I don't think I know. Somewhere a butterfly's wings are flapping. Perhaps someone with a more detailed knowledge of the relevant history will comment.

 

[quaelegit]

Here's some of pdf's old comments on the Holocaust and the situation in Palestine:

What I have in my head is that the Germans are killing all the Jews under their control, starting with those in Poland (because the logistics are easier) or already in Concentration Camps in Germany. However, with the Catholic church having come out more overtly against the Nazis (because they feel like they have less to lose) and using words like "martyrdom" there are probably a few more people trying to help than in OTL. Net result is likely to be similar casualty rates in Poland and Germany, maybe a little lower in the other occupied territories with the overwhelming difference coming from the areas the Germans don't occupy ITTL.

Regarding @naraht's numbers, I think the number of Polish victims would be higher ITTL, and the number French victims probably much lower b/c the Germans didn't control much French territory for any length of time. (Basically I agree with your analysis from 2016, I think.) Not sure about other countries. This chart from wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jewish_population_comparisons#Comparisons) might be helpful for getting a numerical estimate but I'm too tired to do the math right now.

(also this post elaborates more on the Nazi plans for genocide in Poland ITTL, among other points.)

In the circumstances I really can't see the Palmach being formed, although the Irgun will still be about. With a highly concentrated Holocaust in Poland and the vast majority of European Jewish populations unaffected, I'm not envisaging anything like the OTL levels of Aliyah which is likely to lead to a much weaker potential insurgency.

(see also naraht's comments that this quote^ is replying to.)

I feel like I've seen some other posts discussing the situation in the Levant but not finding them right now. I don't get the impression that pdf27 has decided much. I'll try to look more later inthe week b/c I'm personally very interested in this area but it seems like a complicated and thorny issue. Though as naraht points out most European Jews live in the Soviet Union now -- so Stalin's policies re:Jews might be a deciding factor.

 

[naraht]

Here's some of pdf's old comments on the Holocaust and the situation in Palestine:



Regarding @naraht's numbers, I think the number of Polish victims would be higher ITTL, and the number French victims probably much lower b/c the Germans didn't control much French territory for any length of time. (Basically I agree with your analysis from 2016, I think.) Not sure about other countries. This chart from wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jewish_population_comparisons#Comparisons) might be helpful for getting a numerical estimate but I'm too tired to do the math right now.

(also this post elaborates more on the Nazi plans for genocide in Poland ITTL, among other points.)



(see also naraht's comments that this quote^ is replying to.)

I feel like I've seen some other posts discussing the situation in the Levant but not finding them right now. I don't get the impression that pdf27 has decided much. I'll try to look more later inthe week b/c I'm personally very interested in this area but it seems like a complicated and thorny issue. Though as naraht points out most European Jews live in the Soviet Union now -- so Stalin's policies re:Jews might be a deciding factor.

For Polish non-Jews, while the Nazis care less about keeping them around, they only have access to half of them. The Poles in the Soviet conquered areas won't be counted as part of the Holocaust, I think.

Yeah, half for the French is probably really high. While the Nazis invaded, it is unclear that they had control of any significant area for long enough to ship the Jews out of. Eastern Netherlands and Eastern Belgium, *maybe*. The questions are Norway and Denmark, but neither had a significant number of Jews living there in 1939. And given the Danish reaction to the Nazis taking the Jews iOTL, I'm guessing that taking them would have been mentioned in the story.

 

[omrk]

probably someone asked this question several time, but there is any way to get a PDF of the whole TL? I remember something about a website with an older PDF version

 

[naraht]

probably someone asked this question several time, but there is any way to get a PDF of the whole TL? I remember something about a website with an older PDF version

At one point he did a pdf of everything through the end of 1940 available for a donation to a specific charity. I figured that the next one would be at the end of 1941, but given that we are in the middle of the British *screaming* across Germany, this may not be the place to break for longer pdf.

 

[HJ Tulp]

probably someone asked this question several time, but there is any way to get a PDF of the whole TL? I remember something about a website with an older PDF version

You send pdf a PM, donate to his charity and you get a PDF of the frist part of the TL.

 

[Eric S. Raymond]

Speaking just for me, I wouldn't find the PDF as interesting. While pdf27 has done a spectacular job of worldbuilding and writing, the discussion here adds value and depth that I would not want to give up.

 

[Jonathansouth]

Speaking just for me, I wouldn't find the PDF as interesting. While pdf27 has done a spectacular job of worldbuilding and writing, the discussion here adds value and depth that I would not want to give up.

Speaking just for me, I wouldn't find the PDF as interesting. While pdf27 has done a spectacular job of worldbuilding and writing, the discussion here adds value and depth that I would not want to give up.

Honestly I would like both mainly so I can have a condensed version to make it easier to look back on if I want to refer to a specific previous event in the timeline

 

[Eric S. Raymond]

Honestly I would like both mainly so I can have a condensed version to make it easier to look back on if I want to refer to a specific previous event in the timeline

A fair point.

 

[Eric S. Raymond]

Yesterday I found myself wondering how things go for Spain ITTL. I think the answer is probably "Not very differently."

Of course Franco had the good sense not to enter the war as a co-belligerent IOTL, but Spain did sometimes describe itself as an Axis member diplomatically. Pretty sure that won't happen ITTL. No Blue Division, either, since Barbarossa never launches. The 1941 re-up of the Anti-Comintern pact also seems like a non-starter with Germany and the Soviets still allies, so Spain won't be signing that.

I guess there's a possibility that. having maintained more distance from the Nazis, Spain reintegrates into the postwar peace more rapidly. IOTL it was allowed to join NATO but remained rather diplomatically isolated until Franco's death in 1975. ITTL it's probably easier to ignore the more unsavory aspects of Franco's regime - which to be fair was pretty benign compared to the more serious totalitarianisms to his east.

But it's hard to foresee any dramatically divergent consequences from any of this. Unless I'm missing something?

 

[Belschaft]

Yesterday I found myself wondering how things go for Spain ITTL. I think the answer is probably "Not very differently."

Of course Franco had the good sense not to enter the war as a co-belligerent IOTL, but Spain did sometimes describe itself as an Axis member diplomatically. Pretty sure that won't happen ITTL. No Blue Division, either, since Barbarossa never launches. The 1941 re-up of the Anti-Comintern pact also seems like a non-starter with Germany and the Soviets still allies, so Spain won't be signing that.

I guess there's a possibility that. having maintained more distance from the Nazis, Spain reintegrates into the postwar peace more rapidly. IOTL it was allowed to join NATO but remained rather diplomatically isolated until Franco's death in 1975. ITTL it's probably easier to ignore the more unsavory aspects of Franco's regime - which to be fair was pretty benign compared to the more serious totalitarianisms to his east.

But it's hard to foresee any dramatically divergent consequences from any of this. Unless I'm missing something?

Musolino and Franco are likely to get together post war and denounce the National Socialist regime of Germany, which they obviously never supported....