As long as Italy being surprising doesn't mean a North/South split then I'm down.
A Day in July: An Early 20th Century Timeline
- Thread starter Zulfurium
- Start date
Events elsewhere? Hm, the most likely candidate to experience similar troubles during this period would likely be Spain, where a coup took place in 1923 IOTL. Good god, is there gonna be civil war in Spain as well, this time in the twenties? I wonder when things in Europe will calm down.
I‘m also curious who your ‚favourite American woman of the 20th century‘ is. I‘m not very familiar with American figures during this period other than the more well known ones.
Opens wikipedia...
Carrie Chapman Catt (January 9, 1859 – March 9, 1947) was an American women‘s suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendement to the United States Constitution, which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920.
So far so good. Let‘s see what else...
In South Dakota, Catt lamented that while women lacked suffrage, "The murderous Sioux is given the right to franchise which he is ready and anxious to sell to the highest bidder." In 1894, Catt urged that uneducated immigrants be stripped of their right to vote - the United States should "cut off the vote of the slums and give it to women." "White supremacy will be strengthened, not weakened, by women's suffrage," was her argument when trying to win over Mississippi and South Carolina in 1919.
Well, she certainly fits right in with the current atmosphere in the US, lol. She reminds me of Käthe Schirmacher, who was a German women‘s suffrage advocate and a fellow member of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance – and also a far-right member of the DNVP after WW1. It‘s quite interesting how many of those early feminists (or whatever the term was back then) were not at all on the left.
The European situation should calm down at some point between 1923-25 if all goes to plan. I will say that at the moment I don't plan for Spain to get into a civil war although I reserve the right to change my mind. IOTL Spain was wracked by considerable labor turmoil in the post-war period with their "Three Bolshevik Years" which saw plenty of conflict but never quite escalated to civil war. At the moment I have only covered stuff from OTL in that update but adapted to TTL events, but there will be changes and divergences further down the line. That said, I would point your attention towards Portugal instead where there are a number of really interesting ways events could have gone.
Regarding my favorite American woman of the 20th century, the answer is the enchantingly acid-tongued Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the eldest daughter of Teddy Roosevelt, undoubtedly my favorite Presidential offspring as well. She was a political force from her teenage years and was banned from both the Taft and Wilson Whitehouses for her biting commentary. A comment attributed to her (although from my reading it seems that someone else made the comment and attributed it to her), where she supposedly compared Thomas Dewey to the manequin on top of a wedding cake basically sank his presidential bid. When her cousin claimed that the Republican presidential candidate in 1940 Wendell Wilkie had a grass roots following she said yes, "the grass roots of 10,000 country clubs." She buried a voodoo doll of First Lady Nellie Taft in the White House Gardens when Taft beat her father in the 1912 elections. When her husband backed Taft against her father, she went and campaigned in her husband's district in favor of her father. When she was bored while visiting the House of Representatives, she placed a tack on a chair of an older man just to see him jump.
There are strong indications that her daughter was born out of wedlock to Senator William Borah and while her daughter was named Paulina, her diaries indicate she wanted to name her Deborah - as in de Borah!
She is absolutely hilarious to read too.
All in all, she was a spoiled devilish brat who grew up to leave Presidents trembling in their boots and socialites running for the hills. Despite being a lifelong Republican, she was also extremely supportive of the Kennedy brothers.
I had the inklings of a timeline I was playing around with some time before I started on this one where Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. survived World War Two and married Paulina Longworth, following JPK's career and that of his family, exploring the various divergences his survival would entail, for JPK moving forward, his family, America and the World. I never got super far into it, but I was playing around with various alternate 1950s and the like.
Bookmark1995
Banned
Catt defines Wilsonian progressivism: they want to help people, but their selves get in the way.
Yes, race-baiting was a tool used by early suffragettes.
Deleted member 81475
I'm definitely enjoying this current project and would read any future timeline you put out, but as a huge fan of Alice I'd love to see this some day.
For another suffragist who swung to the far right (aka fascist fruitloop) I would point to "Commandant" Mary Allen in Britain.
To do Catt justice, she was concerned about working class women not gaining the same benefits from womans suffrage as middle class women and was one of the earliest non-Jewish opponents of the Nazis anti-Jewish policies in the US. Possessing some of the flaws and common mistaken racial attitudes of her era yes, but on the whole a benign influence - a Progressive who wasn't seduced by fascism.
Emeline Pankhurst is also a good example of one of the most radical suffragettes who eventually joined the UK Conservative Party and was very pro-Empire and aggressively anti-Pacifist and anti-Communist.
Narrative Six: Reflections & The Bloodied Republic
Reflections
Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova
Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova
Evening, 7th of June 1920
Sagamore Hill, New York, United States of America
Anastasia studied her recently-made friend, Flora Whitney Roosevelt (1), from across the North Room and considered the whirlwind of events over the last several months. Learning of her sister's survival had been an incredible relief, though the whispers and quiet reports brought to her by Savinkov of her new brother-in-law's character could do naught but leave her worried for her sister's happiness.
Since her arrival in America, Anastasia had done all in her power to promote her familial cause, which was how she had come to meet Flora one bright day in Manhattan. With the turmoil and labor unrest of that gripped America, she had been perfectly positioned to make headway for the cause amongst the anti-Red contingent in both Democratic and Republican parties.
It was at a meeting with General Leonard Wood, a hopeful Republican presidential primary candidate, a couple months before that she had met Flora's husband, Quentin Roosevelt. Charming, bold and handsome, he had been an easy friend to make as she sought enter into New York society (2).
A bit of flirtatious back and forth after her meeting with the gruff and forthright General Wood had netted her an invitation to a small party being held by Charlie Taft, where she had been quick to seek out and befriend the cosmopolitan Flora, who had leapt at the opportunity to parade around with a Russian princess.
Anastasia couldn't really muster any heat in her critique of Quentin and Flora. They were bright and kind, welcoming her into their home with open arms. She enjoyed spending time with them both, even if they often seemed woefully naive about the world. Sure, Quentin had played dashing knight of the sky during the war, but he seemed to have swept through the conflict like it was all one grand adventure, not truly letting the conflict touch him. Flora had such a sunny view of everything that even Anastasia's pessimism seemed unable to crack her welcoming guise.
Flora left behind the conversation and sashayed through the crowded room, people making way for the young pregnant woman as she held out an arm to shield her stomach and dragged along the famously acid-tongued Alice Roosevelt Longworth behind her (3). Anastasia overheard her reply to an unheard question, "Oh, don't be such a worrywart L, you will love her. She is nearly as pithy as you!"
Alice Longworth harrumphed audibly even as the pair reached Anastasia's corner of the room, her mouth twisting tartly, "Ah yes, the infamous Grand Duchess. I could swear I read she had horns, Flora. Where are her horns?" She turned her attention firmly to Anastasia with a self-satisfied smirk.
Flora grimaced at the rather crass reminder of the latest rumours in the socialist rags, which had apparently taken to claiming that Anastasia was a demoness unduly influencing the elite in aid of the devil, but could do little but shrug at her sister-in-law's comment.
Anastasia grinned back. "Oh, those? I keep them in my purse for soirées like this... Wouldn't do to scare people off when I am trying to get entice them into satanic worship, would it?" (4)
"I like her already," replied Alice with a grin and laughter in her voice, "Call me L or Mrs. L. That's what everyone else does." she continued with a gleam in her eye.
Flora spent a moment looking suspiciously between the two women before speaking.
"I think I already regret introducing you two, this can't lead to anything other than mayhem." She raised her face to the heavens and exclaimed, "Dear God, what have I unleashed?"
She kept her face straight for a couple seconds, but she was unable to keep it up when her lips tugged into a brilliant smile and a giggle escaped her.
"Oh dear, Flora, I do feel you may have a point, this does seem like some devilish plot to subvert all that is good, right and godly." said Alice, before turning back to Anastasia.
"Let us sit and talk, I want to hear all about this tour you have been on." Referring to Anastasia's well publicized campaign to influence the American political climate in favor of her sister and brother-in-law, by talking to any and every sympathetic politician, from mayors and governors to senators and presidential candidates, she could.
Flora got a couple of servants to move some chairs around for them, so that they could sit quietly together in the corner and speak without disrupting the rest of the party.
"Well, as you already know, the question of whether to continue aiding my family against the Reds has been consuming a considerable amount of political debate, so I wanted to make sure that anyone who might have a voice on the matter knew full well what abandoning Russia to Trotsky would mean. Most seemed receptive, but there were a couple who seemed reluctant. I guess there is little I can do other than sit back and hope the Republican Convention finds favourably for my people's case."
Alice remained silent for a moment, scanning Anastasia's face for some hint of what precisely she had meant by that comment. Eventually coming to some conclusion with a nod to herself, she replied - her voice a bit cooler than previously.
"From what I hear, you aren't exactly the most powerless of observers, now are you?" she said with quiet certitude.
Anastasia grimaced at the reminder that her family's fate rested wholly on Savinkov's ability to sway the Republicans in favour of continued Russian intervention, while she was left here to continue building her relationships amongst this half of the elite (5).
"What do you mean by that, L?" Said Flora, a bit of sharpness in her voice, "Of course we have our voice in events, even though we can't quite match you in influence, both Ana and I have our due influence through the men in our lives. Why, your very own brother and my dear husband is in Chicago with General Wood as we speak."
Alice sighed, "Not what I meant Flora, but you are right, we do all exert our influence. Under the circumstances, I guess I would do the same Anastasia." she said with seeming remorse, giving Anastasia an apologetic glance.
Flora clapped her hands excitedly. "Well then, can we change the subject? I think we have had quite enough of politics."
Shaking her head ruefully, Alice motioned her agreement.
The rest of the night would pass with Alice getting to know Anastasia, ending when all three departing for bed shortly after midnight, to await word of events in Chicago.
Footnotes:
(1) This is Flora Whitney Miller from OTL. With Quentin Roosevelt living through the war, he marries his fiancée soon after his return in early 1920.
(2) General Leonard Wood had a close relationship with the Roosevelt family and helped along the careers of TR's sons in the military, particularly Quentin's career. Here Quentin is serving as aide to Wood, working as a key figure in organizing the General's election campaign in 1920 - in this case seeking to secure the backing of the anti-Red faction of the Republicans by way of a quiet word from Anastasia and her network of supporters, headed by Savinkov.
(3) Alice Roosevelt Longworth is honestly one of my favourite female figures in the US, if not the world, during the first half of the 20th Century. She is hilarious and has a sense of sarcasm that few could match. When reading a biography about her there were numerous occasions where I straight up laughed out loud at a lot of her quotes - not a common occurrence for me. Hell, by this point she had already been forbidden entry into the Taft and Wilson White Houses because of her acid tongue and willingness to cut through the bullshit.
(4) Anastasia's influence campaign did not go unnoticed during the period between her arrival in the US and the Republican Presidential Convention. She has steadily risen up the list of people absolutely hated by the Left as she has exploited her platform to smear them all with Trotsky's crimes, exacerbating and exploiting the Red Scare while spending liberally on political causes.
(5) Savinkov is basically exerting what influence he can in favour of interventionist and pro-White candidates for the presidency in as secret a manner as possible. Blackmail, bribery and threats all combine with the general cajoling which was part and parcel of politics in this period.
The Bloodied Republic
Michael Collins, Irish Independence Leader
Michael Collins, Irish Independence Leader
Night, 21st of February 1921
Adare, County Limerick, Ireland, United Kingdom
"We have to cross the sea and hurt them in their homes if we want any chance of winning this conflict!" Shouted one of the officers who had joined Michael for the meeting with de Valera's cabinet.
They were hours into a heated debate over how to force an end to the war and tempers were fraying badly.
At stake was the independence of Ireland and, in many cases, their lives. On one hand there were those who wished to keep the ever-escalating conflict contained to Ireland and to grind down the British resistance with time, while on the other there were those who wished to expand the conflict to Britain, extending the threat of the war into the homes of the electorate in hopes of forcing the British to the table (1).
Michael Collins was decidedly in the second of the two camps. Already action was underway for the largest ambush of the war yet, some 80 British officers and soldiers at Templeglantine. He was just waiting on word of their success at this point.
"No reason to raise your voice, O'Connel, we can hear you fine as is." Said one of Valera's aides with considerable disdain in his voice.
"We are well aware of the situation. The risks of extending the conflict to Britain are too high, as we have stated multiple times already." He continued with something nearing a sneer.
Michael put a hand on O'Connel's shoulder to quiet him before the situation spun out of control further and turned his attentions squarely to Valera.
"Come now, Eamon, we both know that continuing as we have so far is unfeasible. We need to be proactive. We need to remind the British public that there is a cost to continuing the war and that it won't only be the bloody Black an' Tans' who bear that cost."
The aide seemed about to respond before Valera signalled for his silence.
"You are right when you say that we cannot continue as we have, but what makes you think moving the fighting to Britain will improve our situation? Just because the status quo won't work in the long term does not mean that any change would be for the better."
A moment of silence engulfed the gathering while Michael mustered the arguments his side had brought already, seeking to figure out a way of convincing the Irish leader before him.
"This is the only path forward that has any chance of success, Eamon. Right now we are being ground to the nub because the Brits are able to focus their resources here. With their labour unrest settling down, they will be able to martial ever greater resources against us. Only by turning the public against the government on the issue of Irish independence can we have any hope of success."
Valera scanned Michael's face, looking for some hint as to how to proceed.
Sighing, Valera eventually responded, "Very well Michael, let us make some initial forays and see if the response favours us."
Michael nearly grinned, but was able to smother his smile. His entourage were not quite as controlled in their relief at having gotten support for their plans. Michael rose and saluted before marching out.
As he was leaving the building, word from Templeglantine arrived. Twenty seven dead and nineteen wounded in the fighting on the British side, in return for eight dead and fourteen wounded. It would seem events were turning his way now (2).
Footnotes:
(1) This is based on an OTL debate within the IRA from the war with the British. IOTL the decision was taken to expand the conflict to Britain was taken, but was never implemented because the treaty was proposed before events could get to that point.
(2) This was an attack that was planned and about to be launched when the treaty was proposed IOTL.. Here it happens before any sort of treaty can be proposed on the part of the British - although whether they would actually be willing to begin negotiations for peace remains a question. The failures at Copenhagen and Lloyd George's generally weaker position means that he doesn't have the same sort of diplomatic and domestic political capital to invest in a peace effort. Particularly the Conservatives would look very askance at anything that might threaten their sudden gains in Parliament from Ireland.
End Note:
Anastasia enters American high society and is up to a lot of things behind the scenes, while the Irish move closer to extending their war into Britain itself. I don't have too much to state, we will be exploring the events this narrative section hints at in the next update.
These narrative sections were a bit weird to write, given how much interaction and dialogue there is between multiple characters at once. Let me know what you think.
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That will likely end badly for Ireland, there was still a sizeable lobby across the benches and in everyday life that Home Rule had been coming and that it had been the government cocking up that caused the whole mess even if some blame for the Irish. Granted this view was based highly in naive ideas about how easy it would be to defeat Germany and how Ireland could be left to its own devices based on that, the view still persisted post-WW1 and during the War of Independence.
The IRA doing this will destroy that faction of people (in a political sense) who were willing to de-escalate and leave, though how much stomach this will add to the British efforts is something that can't exactly be calculated so I'll be interested in where you go with that.
One things for sure, there won't be any killing with kindness.
The IRA doing this will destroy that faction of people (in a political sense) who were willing to de-escalate and leave, though how much stomach this will add to the British efforts is something that can't exactly be calculated so I'll be interested in where you go with that.
One things for sure, there won't be any killing with kindness.
Bison
Banned
I will once again extend my suggestion to have Adolf Hitler be one of the characters for the next narrative update - I'm interested in what the identitarian right is doing at this point in the timeline and how the German puppet states in the east and Balkans are doing. How is the Germanization of Terra Mariana going? IOTL, the Baltic duchy was due to be annexed into the empire after some Ostsiedlung, especially by veterans. Were the veterans granted some land in the East? Do you think Hitler would be fighting with the Freikorps in Russia?
I dont think you should keep permanent characters for the narratives - I'm not a huge fan of Anastasia for some reason and I think having a (somewhat) new character every narrative would be more fun. That said, good job on the narratives nonetheless.
As always excited for the update.
I dont think you should keep permanent characters for the narratives - I'm not a huge fan of Anastasia for some reason and I think having a (somewhat) new character every narrative would be more fun. That said, good job on the narratives nonetheless.
As always excited for the update.
I hadn't planned to have him as a PoV character, but I have decided to add him as a third PoV in two narrative updates. It won't really make sense to bring him up before then, but he should provide a perspective on politics on the right-wing fringe and service in the Freikorps (yes, he ended up joining them in Russia for a year or so).
Terra Mariana is seeing some migration, but it is mostly on the lunatic fringe. This isn't some proto-Nazi effort, but rather a more ordinary right-wing/conservative/national liberal government which has moved further towards the center since then. There are right-wing movements swirling about but they have nowhere close to the weight of OTL. There are some nationalist tendencies in the SPD that emerged during the Great War and the formation of the DNVP provides a more vocal national-conservative party which most of the right-wing fringe gravitates towards - but even in the DNVP they are on the fringe for the time being.
The United Baltic Duchy does not become an actual part of the Empire, but instead becomes one of its vassal (if that is the right word for it) states. They aren't outright puppet states and are largely allowed to direct domestic politics as long as it doesn't infringe on German interests, but they are firmly under German influence and look to Germany as Hegemon of eastern Europe.
I will be posting the next update as soon as I can transfer it into the forum.
Update Nineteen: A Time of Transition
A Time of Transition
Eugene V. Debs Presidential Election Political Cartoon
A Contentious Election
Eugene V. Debs Presidential Election Political Cartoon
A Contentious Election
Behind the veil of war, America had been left completely changed by two important constitutional amendments. The Eighteenth Amendment which prohibited the sale or manufacture of alcohol in the United States, and the Nineteenth Amendment which gave women the right to vote. These two amendments were the culmination of the two separate but interlinked movements of suffrage and prohibition, and fundamentally altered the composition of the United States. Particularly the woman's vote would come to play an important role in the debate within both parties, as efforts at securing these new voters were undertaken and women of influence became important powerbrokers in the elite establishment of particularly the East Coast Republican progressives, perhaps most prominently featured in the form of Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, the recently deceased former President Theodore Roosevelt's youngest sister. While the party had seemed to be aligning behind another presidential run by Theodore Roosevelt, his death in early 1919 had thrown the Republican party into chaos, as various factions sought to exploit the situation to thrust past the previously dominant former president and his faction of Progressives.
In the lead up to the Republican National Convention the divisions within the party had grown increasingly clear - falling along two major fault lines, one split between progressives and conservatives and the other between the isolationists and interventionists. Importantly, there were relatively few conservative interventionists of any prominence and as such the conservatives were largely able to align themselves behind the figure of Governor Frank Lowden of Illinois. The progressives were more divided, with a prominent minority of the party arguing that with the world growing ever more dangerous and treacherous it would be better to pull back and focus their attentions on bettering America, as they had sought to do for decades. This wing of the party coalesced around the vocal figures of Hiram Johnson and William Borah, both of whom felt that the fear-mongering of the internationalists, riding the wave of hysteria provoked by the Red Scare, was going too far and felt that the diplomatic failures surrounding both the United States entry into the Great War and its miserable departure following the Copenhagen Conference were a clear indication that foreign entanglements were far too dangerous to entertain.
This left the third major wing of the Republican Party, the progressive interventionists, who had formerly been the backbone of Roosevelt's power in the party. Without the former president to back this faction was left without a figure to coalesce around until the Roosevelt family presented an old family friend and former Rough Rider. That man was Leonard Wood. A Major General during the war, General Wood had been sidelined for its duration and had spent most of the conflict leading training and logistics efforts in the US due to his close Republican ties, which had resulted in an unwillingness by the Democratic government to provide him any field commands where he might be able to acquire further fame and glory. The joke would ultimately be on the Democrats, for Wood's distance from the frontlines meant that he avoided the tarred reputations that so many of the American top commanders acquired during the war for the high casualty numbers experienced by America on the fields of France. As a result, Leonard Wood was not only a nationally known and respected military figure with significant backing from the Roosevelt machine, but was positioned so as to exploit this fact to the fullest degree with the backing of the Roosevelts. Campaigning on a progressive and interventionist platform, including backing the wildly popular Attorney General Palmer's campaign against the Reds to the hilt, Wood was able to cut a formidable figure, promising a safe harbour in a time of turmoil (1).
The Republican National Convention, lasting from the 8th to the 10th of June 1920, was dominated by the momentum built up by the progressive interventionists and Leonard Wood during the preceding twenty primaries, and saw Leonard Wood nominated by the Republican Party despite the efforts of party elders to stymie the slide in Wood's favor. It was in a bid to ameliorate relations with these party elders and to secure a better grip on the electorally important state of Ohio that Wood offered the Vice Presidency to Warren G. Harding in an attempt to reach an accommodation with the other wings of the party (2).
The Democratic Party, as the party in government, had hoped to enter the election year of 1920 on the backs of a successful war and with favourable peace terms to present to the American people. That was decidedly not the case when the terms of the Copenhagen Treaty became public, immediately provoking considerable turmoil within the Democratic Party. President Thomas R. Marshall found his already tenuous popularity crater, as his own party sought to distance themselves from him and the Copenhagen Treaty. This would culminate in an effort by the Democrats to repudiate the treaty with claims that Marshall had sullied the legacy of President Wilson, seeking to create a clear divide between the brave and capable Wilson and his scapegrace successor, who had wasted the hard-won gains of the war. While this effort to repudiate the treaty quickly ran into the problematic realities of leverage and international reputation, and the effort came to a quiet end in the aftermath of the 1920 election, the Democratic Party was left chained to the treaty and Marshall's presidency for the coming election.
It was here that Wilson's son-in-law and former Secretary of the Treasury, William Gibbs McAdoo, was able to exploit his ties to president Wilson and his departure from the cabinet in late December to distance himself from the Democratic failures of 1919, and reap the rewards of his exemplary efforts during and prior to the war, building significant support within the party. In sharp contrast to McAdoo was Attorney General Palmer, who with his red-baiting rhetoric and reputation built during 1919 and 1920 had been able to build a considerable following within the Democratic Party. With McAdoo distancing himself from the extreme position of Palmer, the Attorney General was able to press forward with his ambition of securing the nomination. However, during the convention, running from the 28th of June to the 1st of July, Palmer's manic and overtaxed mien left many with considerable reservations about his suitability for the office and worried for his health. With the Wilsonian Democrats increasingly aligning themselves behind McAdoo and Palmer's erratic behaviour turning party elders against him, McAdoo was able to secure the nomination from the Democratic Party.
The struggle over the vice presidency would prove as fierce as that for the presidency, as dozens of candidates were considered. While McAdoo initially considered Palmer, a backroom meeting with his former opponent left McAdoo firmly opposed to the suggestion. He turned instead to some of those who had been able to secure a strong backing on the presidential ballots, weighing this against their potential benefits in the coming election. With Warren Harding selected as Wood's vice presidential candidate, there was considerable pressure in favor of the Ohioan James M. Cox who would help outweigh Harding's effect on the Wood ticket in the mid-west. However, McAdoo was disquieted by Cox's willingness to work with labor movements and feared that he might well prove a liability against the red-baiting Wood. With some remorse, McAdoo would thus decide to go with Iowan Edwin T. Meredith instead, who had considerable popularity amongst rural voters and name recognition through his magazine Successful Farming, but lacked the crucial Ohio link. However, in contrast to Cox, Meredith also happened to be a supporter and ally of McAdoo which proved attractive to the presidential candidate (3).
The incarceration of Eugene V. Debs had already provoked considerable turmoil in the United States, when it played into the events of Bloody Saturday, but it would be his campaign for the presidency, the fifth of his career, which would be remembered. Having been sentenced to ten years imprisonment, Debs had recently been moved from the West Virginian Moundsville State Penitentiary to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary when he decided to make the run for presidency. He was largely able to unite the Socialist Party behind his campaign of "Vote For Convict 9653", but with the tense anti-red climate of the election many were too scared to campaign in public, and the Socialist campaign would prove little more than a protest campaign.
While the Debs campaign continued on, viewed as little more than a nuisance, the two major party candidates went forward like two heavyweight boxers entering the ring for a championship match. Both sides rallied their bases as well as they could, while delegating campaigning in specific parts of the country to the vice presidential candidates, with Harding and Meredith focusing their efforts in the Midwest, with Harding famously conducting his campaign from the front porch, speaking engagingly with any who would meet him there. This move by Harding provoked considerable media interest and his rather surprising local approach would bring with it considerable support in Ohio, though the rest of the Midwest also looked positively at his rather sedate approach, particularly when contrasted with the histrionics of the two presidential candidates. Wood met with veterans groups, anti-red defence organisations, women's leagues, progressive rallies and toured the country in imitation of Roosevelt's highly active campaigns. Throughout this period he was ably supported by the Roosevelt family and their political machine, with Corinne Roosevelt Robinson and Alice Roosevelt Longworth supporting his efforts to secure the woman vote, Quentin Roosevelt and his brothers campaigning amongst veterans groups and with the backing of Anastasia Romanova's increasingly expansive network of anti-red contacts to draw on.
McAdoo concentrated his efforts primarily in New York, where he exploited his business connections and contacts from his time as Treasury Secretary to secure support from amongst the New York business elite who rallied against the openly progressive campaign of Wood. In the South he campaigned as both a Southerner and as a supporter of veterans, promising veterans' bonuses and pensions, which were an increasingly loud demand from the demobilising soldiers who had fought in France. As the elections moved forward into the home stretch, the tone grew ever sharper, with Wood presenting McAdoo as a spineless creature of the corrupt business elite and a lackey of the Wilson-Marshall presidency, which had so bungled the conduct of the war. While continuing to emphasis the threat posed by Red revolutionaries, Wood also began to emphasise Democratic overreach on the issue of civil liberties, focusing his ire primarily on press censorship and government interference in private affairs during the war, an irony lost on many considering Wood's own support for extensive federal powers to pursue Red forces. McAdoo did what he could to distance himself from the Marshall presidency, and succeeded to some extent, but continued to champion the Wilson administration as a time of good governance and leadership, to the detriment of his support in the west and northwest where progressives were strong on the ground and had grown disenchanted with the Wilson administration already in 1918.
On election day, Leonard Wood swept to victory with 351 electoral votes, while McAdoo was left to console himself with a good showing - even if he hadn't been able to truly break through outside the south. However, surprising many, Debs was able to run away with nearly 5% of the popular vote despite not winning any states - convincing many that there remained a considerable groundswell of Red support in the United States. In the end, the Republicans were able to pick up seven seats in the senate, further bolstering their majority (4).
Leonard Wood immediately set about constructing his cabinet in preparation for his inauguration. He asked the venerable Elihu Root to serve as Secretary of State, bringing immense prestige and experience with him to the position. At treasury, Wood was able to secure the appointment of the highly active and famed humanitarian, Herbert Hoover. In a bid to retain his ties with the Roosevelts, Wood proposed Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt III, the eldest son of the president by the same name, as Secretary of War while appointing young Quentin Roosevelt assistant private secretary to the President, in effect continuing to serve as aide to the soon-to-be president, as he had since his return from the front soon after the armistice was signed. To replace Attorney General Palmer, Leonard Wood turned to a man he had gotten to know in the War Department during the war, Harlan F. Stone, who he had come to trust in matters of organising and structuring the chaotic efforts of Palmer, who had recently been quietly been removed from the public eye after experiencing a breakdown. As he filled post after post he drew on a number of different sources. Some held connection to his time in the Rough Riders, others were prominent Progressive figures in the Republican Party, a few were directly linked to the Roosevelt machine and a couple were conservatives who had demonstrated their efficiency and capabilities (5). By the time of his inauguration in early March 1921, President Leonard Wood was more than ready to put into effect his plans for the future.
Footnotes:
(1) These are similar leaders of the Republican wings as IOTL, but with a couple of key differences already having a pretty major effect. IOTL as ITTL Leonard Wood was one of the most vocal supporters of Attorney General Palmer as the latter whipped up terror and hysteria during the Red Scare. However, IOTL Wood was dealt an egregious wound to his political ambitions when the 1st of May conspiracy proved a complete fabrication. ITTL Palmer was able to shift this narrative and extended the lifetime of the Red Scare by quite a bit, leaving Wood's gamble in backing Palmer's raids a fruitful one.
(2) IOTL particularly Harding's campaign manager Daughtry was able to keep any other of the candidates from securing an early majority, allowing him to negotiate with the party elders on Harding's behalf. I have considered a variety of candidates for this vice presidential post, but ultimately Harding quite simply brings too many benefits to ignore electorally. He is quite popular in Ohio and a native of the state, which would give Wood a leg up in this swing state, while also ameliorating any hurt feelings on the part of party elders who were extremely suspicious of Wood's sudden jump to the forefront of the party. In contrast to OTL, Wood is able to secure sufficient support by the fourth ballot to secure the nomination due to his anti-Red position remaining viable.
(3) McAdoo was the favourite to win the nomination IOTL until Wilson sabotaged his bid in hopes of running for a third time. With Wilson completely out of politics, left barely able to speak or walk and requiring constant care, McAdoo is able to press forward with his candidacy. While Palmer had a lot of popular wind behind him, he was unstable and overstressed enough by this point in time for it to be visible in extended conversations, which makes his candidacy considerably more difficult. I felt Cox would be too much of a rehash of OTL, and he has some legitimate weaknesses ITTL's context. As a result McAdoo goes with his friend Meredith who, while not a particularly major figure in the party, is both a Midwesterner and extremely popular with rural voters.
(4) The election isn't quite a rout on the same scale as the OTL election experienced by the Democrats. They still lose the West Coast and Northwest, however they improve on their OTL results with victory in Tennessee, Oklahoma, Missouri and Iowa, as well as winning a good deal more votes in New York. An important key to these increases come from Meredith, who provides valuable rural voters in these states. This represents a fall back to the Democrats pre-Wilson days, but at 180 electoral votes McAdoo actually does better than William Jennings Bryant and Alton B. Parker. It isn't the historic defeat of OTL and doesn't completely destroy McAdoo's career. Debs is also able to secure 5% in contrast to his OTL 3% because despite the violence and repression, or perhaps because of it, the Socialists have actually grown more popular with time. Finally, while Leonard Wood sweeps a lot of states it isn't quite the landslide election Harding experienced IOTL. This is mostly due to the more competitive campaign by McAdoo and the more splintered and disjointed political scene of TTL. While people yearn for peace and stability, neither candidate quite seems to have the same appeal as Harding in that regard.
(5) Here is a list of the full cabinet:
President: Leonard Wood
Vice President: Warren G. Harding
Secretary of State: Elihu Root
Secretary of Treasury: Herbert Hoover
Secretary of War: Theodore Roosevelt III
Attorney General: Harlan F. Stone
Postmaster General: Henry W. Anderson
Secretary of the Navy: Beekman Winthrop
Secretary of the Interior: James Rudolf Garfield
Secretary of Agriculture: John M. Parker
Secretary of Commerce: John Hays Hammond
Secretary of Labor: Harold L. Ickes
Signing of the Root Plan
Restoring The European Order
Germany entered the post-war world with an immense domestic debt burden, having financed much of their war effort through the sale of bonds to both their financial sector and the German middle class. The weight of this debt on public finances, while having remained manageable up until late 1916, had grown uncontrollably following the implementation of the Hindenburg Plan, expanding so rapidly that neither the private financial sector nor the citizenry had been able to follow along, leaving the central bank to print more money to finance this debt. The result was that by the end of the war, the German economy had experienced a considerable rise in inflation and found itself deeply mired in debt. Under more acrimonious circumstances, this could well have turned into a disaster, potentially leaving the financial sector devastated and cutting a swathe through the middle class. However, the relatively swift restoration of international trade, coupled with the slow stabilisation of Germany's Eastern Empire and the re-entry of millions of working age men into the workforce had the effect of providing a rapid growth in prosperity as the economy expanded explosively, which in turn resulted in alleviating the immediate pressure on Germany's national finances and allowed for the beginning of repayment on its domestic war debts. With factories shifting over to consumer production and pent up domestic spending on the rise, the threat to Germany's economic stability seemed to slowly ease. While continuing to fund military activity in Russia and across Eastern Europe, Germany's future seemed bright but for the solitary factor of continuing inflation. In early 1921 this would be dealt with through the slow and measured implementation of contractionary financial policies lasting well into 1922, which brought inflation increasingly under control while having only a minor negative impact on the economic boom Germany was undergoing - a process made possible by the highly competent leadership of Stresemann.
The immediate post-war period would also mark the start of a period of intense cultural change for the Empire. For young people, in particular those who were old enough to work in the war industries but still too young to serve in the military, the war, despite all its hardships, also had liberating effects as many figures of authority, such as teachers and policemen, were no longer present and substantial wages provided novel opportunities for consumption. The flourishing cultural renaissance of Moscow would inspire hundreds of German artists, sparking a period of immense creativity in German literature, cinema, theatre and musical works, as innovative street theatre brought plays to the public while the cabaret scene and jazz bands grew to incredible popularity. While the conservative values of the pre-war period remained of importance, the euphoria of victory would open the doors to these new liberal cultural developments and movements.
The clash between these old and new values would play out during the 1920s, with rapid swings back and forth as an intense cultural struggle occurred which did much to strengthen the dynamism and inventiveness of both sides. The opening up that occurred following the war would create a level playing field for free expression, within the bounds outlined in the 1920 settlement. In the early years of the 1920s, the government with its liberal government would focus first and foremost on promoting and strengthening trade and industry while continuing debt servicing in order to continue fueling the economic boom. The result was that little was done at a national level to combat income inequality and squalor, being left mostly in the care of local and regional governments with vastly varying levels of success. Perhaps the most revolutionary change would occur in stodgy, conservative Prussia, where the changes to the state's voting structures meant the sudden rise of Social Democratic government in the largest German state. While the conservatives were able to hold onto power in the provinces of East Prussia, Saxony, Hannover, Hesse-Nassau and Pomerania, they had been swept from power in the Rhine provinces, in Schleswig-Holstein, Brandenburg, Silesia and West Prussia, which had fallen into the hands of social liberals and social democrats. This meant that while the conservatives were able to resist or slow some changes, they had to give way on others.
The new Prussian government would model its efforts on the welfare model that had been developed in Denmark during the Great War and which had received considerable German interest during the Copenhagen Conference. Working closely with trade unions in both the Ruhr and Berlin, the Prussian government of Friedrich Ebert set up industrial dispute arbitration courts and set out clear guidelines and rules for when and how industrial actions on either side were permitted. If no agreement could be reached through arbitration, a neutral conciliation service would intervene to help resolve the issue, with the ability to call of the government for support in enforcing agreements. A host of other initiatives would be attempted in the years to follow as efforts at improving the lives of Prussian citizens continued to be undertaken with varying levels of success. The conservative elite, particularly those in the Prussian Herrenhaus, sought to slow these changes as much as possible but they had seen the powers of their house of parliament significantly curtailed during the constitutional reforms. As such they were left to join the business elite in protesting these developments, and seeking to secure more power in the elections for state representatives with some success, while the national government proved limited in its willingness to intervene when the developments seemed to strengthen rather than hinder the German economy and remained relatively moderate (6).
While France had limped away from the Great War with territorial gains and pledges of economic support from both their allies and enemies, it remained a country beset by troubles. Under the leadership of Aristide Briand the country had been able to begin its long road to recovery through a series of international loans and investments. Drawing deeply on its colonial African population, France was able to generate the necessary work force required for the hard work of clearing battlefields and rebuilding the country. It would be this population, merging with the colonial tirailleurs who had stayed behind following the end of the war, which formed the foundation of the African minority in France and which would bring with them a surprising flavor to north-eastern France where they settled in sizeable numbers, leaving particularly Rheims, Soissons and Amiens with a noticeable African minority. At the same time, the French government found its hands full dealing with the recently annexed Walloons, who despite French efforts retained a sizable number of Belgian nationalists. However, securing Wallonia's industrial and logistical network would prove a major boon to the struggling French industrial complex, which helped the French buy time for the remainder of their industry to rebuild.
Politcally, France found itself increasingly split on the edges while a firm majority clung to the status quo in search of safety and stability. On the Right a variety of ligues and veterans organizations sought to band together, forming Union de la Droite (UD) in 1921 as an umbrella organisation under the nominal auspices of Ferdinand Foch, although in truth it would prove to be the monarchist Charles Maurras who was able to exploit the UD the most. Using the structured and expansive Action Francaise's organisational capacity to support the formation and strengthening of the UD, he was able to secure better access to the resources of their rival ligues and contacts to right-wing political voices.
On the left, a split was developing between the radical leadership of CGT which was increasingly leaning towards supporting revolutionary action, hoping to build on the successes of the Venetian Syndicate and Milanese Italian Socialist Republic in Italy in a bid to spur on revolution across Europe, and the more moderate French socialists who feared the consequences of a violent revolution. The formation of the Third International did much to bring the divide between radicals and moderates in both CGT and SFIO to a head, culminating in the victory of the radicals in late 1921 in a series of what amounted to coups against the moderates, hijacking the French Left. This would result in a split between moderates and radicals, the former greatly outnumbered by the latter, and prompted the moderates to depart the SFIO in favor of the Republican-Socialist Party, despite their disagreements with the leadership of that party on the role of reform in bringing about the socialist world order. The result was that the Republican-Socialist Party secured political stars such as Léon Blum, Marcel Sembat and Paul Faure. At the same time, the SFIO took a turn firmly in direction of communism under the leadership of Ludovic Frossard and Boris Souvarine, both heroes of the struggle against Poincaré and Foch, allying with the anarchist CGT with both declaring themselves part of the Third International. This split on the left would see nearly half of the SFIO's parliamentary seats transferred to the Republican-Socialist Party, but allowed the SFIO to take an increasingly belligerent line against the moderate government under Briand. As 1921 came to a close and 1922 dawned, the CGT turned increasingly belligerent while the SFIO pressed forward their case for workers' rights with an ever louder voice, provoking considerable fear and worry in government ranks (7).
With Germany's return to the world economy, the French reconstruction and American shift back to commercial production, Britain would find itself struggling to restore its pre-war trade dominance. Lingering economic and social troubles, coupled with massive war debts, the escalating war in Ireland and rising disaffection in colonial and dominion realms all combined to hinder Britain's return to pre-war prosperity. The threats to previously secure international markets grew rapidly as Japanese Cotton, German heavy industrial goods and American manufactured consumer goods all expanded into true trade competitors in the post-war period.
The gold standard had been part and parcel of the increasing integration of the global economy during the nineteenth century, assisting both international trade and international lending. From the perspective of the government, the principles of this fixed exchange rate system had been undermined during the war through inflation, severe budgetary imbalances, and the enormous insurance costs of transporting gold across the Atlantic. From the autumn of 1915 through the autumn of 1919, the sterling-dollar exchange had been at $4.765, fractionally below the pre-war level of $4.86, through the assistance of American lending. Once this artificial support was terminated in May 1920, the value of sterling fell on the exchanges. In order to prevent a catastrophic loss of gold to export, the British government issued a temporary gold embargo that brought sterling off the gold standard. Such a suspension of the gold standard was not new, a similar measure had operated between 1797 and 1819 due to the Napoleonic Wars, and it in no way undermined the Lloyd George government's commitment to the gold standard: the government had already signalled a return to gold at the pre-war parity as a key goal of Britain’s post-war financial policy, and the 1920 gold embargo was interpreted as a tactical withdrawal in the face of enormous financial difficulties. The ultimate goal of restoring the gold standard was not abandoned, as the embargo was later regularised as the Gold Embargo Act (1921), a piece of time-limited legislation that would automatically return Britain to the gold standard once it expired at the end of December 1926.
This pegging of the pound would have extensive consequences both in Britain and internationally as the artificially inflated pound made British products even more expensive and led to a boosting of the competitive power of their international competitors, damaging domestic production and provoking increasingly dire economic straits. This was coupled with a considerably heightened taxation effort in hopes of paying off international debts, which placed further burdens on both industry and the populace. At the same time the issues of war pensions, life insurances and the various other costs of the war incurred by the British soldiery grew rapidly into a point of considerable contention as veterans groups, whose members were often caught up in these economic doldrums began to protest government actions. With former servicemen protesting often, and a concurrent strengthening labor movement, there were many in government ranks who feared an alliance between the two. However, many service members viewed the labor movements with considerable distrust and dislike, often blaming them for the war ending before the British Army had a chance to regain its honor following the Flanders defeat. The result was that while both veterans associations and labor organisations demonstrated and protested regularly throughout the first years in the post-war era, whenever the two ran into each other they were as liable to attack each other as cooperate.
Particularly the Conservatives were swift to exploit this state of affairs, sponsoring and supporting various veterans associations and pushing the coalition government of Lloyd George to support benefits for these associations and the veterans they represented, even at the detriment of other government efforts. The result was that while Labour found its support amongst the working classes growing ever stronger, and even found support amongst the increasingly pressured middle class, the Conservatives were able to build a vanguard of veterans who owed everything to them and would protect should it come to it. Even working class loyalties would break down in the face of the Conservative charm offensive, as veterans pensions, bonuses, scholarships, healthcare and jobs programs were all undertaken. These efforts were led by the conservative up-and-comer, Stanley Baldwin, who had entered the cabinet late in the war and was increasingly amongst the leading figures in the party demanding that the Conservative party break with the coalition and establish themselves as the sole ruling party (8).
With British prospects looking increasingly dismal economically, there was considerable resistance to French entreaties in early 1922 for debt relief, with Briand hoping to lessen the external economic burden of interest payments in the hopes of further boosting their reconstruction efforts without a cloud hanging over them. France was forced to default on minor loans to Spain and Argentina in early 1921 and faced immense challenges in raising the money required to repay the 1915 J.P. Morgan loan of $250 million, resorting to lending at 8% interest rate from Wall Street to make the requisite payments by the end of 1921. It should come as little surprise that neither the British nor the Americans proved particularly interested in any such relief, particularly when the French economy seemed on the rebound and their own were undergoing considerable pressure.
Further worsening matters were the increasingly troubled relations between Lloyd George's increasingly Francophobic Foreign Minister George Curzon, who had replaced Balfour following the war, and Premier Briand. With the British reading French cables, Curzon had direct access to Briand's rather colorful dispatches in which he described Curzon in extremely unflattering terms for the continual British delays in debt negotiations. It was with Anglo-French relations increasingly dismal, that the Germans spied an opportunity to further break up the Entente alliance, publicly offering France loans at good terms with which to replace their debts to the British. This sent British and American negotiators scrambling, fearing the consequences of a France indebted to Germany, and led to the dispatch of Elihu Root by President Wood to support the negotiations and press forward on the issue of debt restructuring. The resultant tense negotiations would eventually result in a settlement agreeable to the French, allowing the French longer time to repay their loans, suspending interest payments and actually relieving some of the debt, while the British were able to secure a few important concessions in the form of an American interest payment freeze and a restructuring of their debt repayments, but were largely forced to accept the Root Plan as regarded French concessions. The Americans additionally strengthened their specific treaty obligations towards the French, in line with President Wood’s internationalist attitudes, and forced open new sectors of the French market alongside select colonial markets in Western Africa, securing congressional support through heavy-handed pork barreling and red-baiting aimed at those who resisted (9).
Just as these negotiations came to a close, the American economy began to experience the combined impact of a host of post-war factors. While America had experienced a brief economic recession in the half year following the June 1919 armistice as the shift to a civilian economy was undertaken and many of the war-time economic controls were loosened, but by 1920 the economy had seemed well on its way to recovery - experiencing a minor boom leading into the elections. However, by early 1921 the demobilisation of millions of soldiers had begun to cause considerable turmoil in the labor market and caused unemployment to rise drastically while labor unrest had grown increasingly volatile following the clashes of 1919, with major grumblings amongst rail workers while the West Virginia Coal Wars neared their height. This would combine with a sharp hike in interest rates by the Federal Reserve to combat inflation during the lame duck period of early 1921 while the natural swings of a gold standard economy provoked considerable deflationary expectations in the market and reduced willingness to invest within the United States, something that played a role in the growth of investments in France and Germany.
The American economy would thus begin to slow over the course of 1921 and the first half of 1922, growing into a recession by the middle of the year. This would slowly grow worse, with America seeming increasingly destined for an extended depression by the end of the year. Government intervention was swift to follow, with the imposition of agricultural tariffs to prevent the dumping of Eastern European agricultural products, particularly Ukrainian grain, which was increasingly flooding international markets. This was followed by attempts to resolve some of the many labor disputes currently disrupting the American economy, which proved difficult given the President's very vocal position on the threat of leftist agitation. He would, however, take inspiration from the actions of the British Conservatives and champion veterans benefits before congress, securing the passage of a major bill to that effect in February 1922 which established an entire administrative framework for veterans affairs within the Department of the Interior, Wood expecting veteran Secretary of the Interior and Roosevelt ally James Rudolph Garfield to manage this task well. In a bid to counter the growing American labor movement, Wood also sponsored the creation of veterans organizations along the lines of Baldwin's efforts in Britain which would take the place of unions amongst a considerable number of these veterans as they entered the work force (10).
Footnotes:
(6) Germany faced significant but manageable challenges in the post-war period if it had not been for the destabilising impact of the November Revolution and subsequent constant domestic turmoil and international pressure. With far more breathing room and relatively capable government leadership, they are able to support Germany enough for it to make its way out of the danger period of 1919-1922. By the end of 1922, the German economy is booming and the entire system is beginning to click together. I don't think it is possible to butterfly away the liberalizing cultural developments of the Weimar Republic even in this scenario, but it would have had a more robust pre-war conservatism with which to counter the cultural liberalization. The back and forth between the two cultural directions result in a variety of divergent but interrelated cultural movements which feed off each other and cause a sort of cultural arms-race between different cultural schools, inspiring each other to ever greater heights. This is all coupled to the rise of strong local and state governments, with the most significant being the Prussian one. While Ebert ends up borrowing quite heavily from the Danish model, which impressed many when they visited for the conference, it has a uniquely Prussian spin and is adapted to the very different situation in Germany. The tension between the FVP-SPD Prussian government and the NLP-DKP-Centre national governments are considerable, but remain largely dormant for the time being. There is still considerable KPD agitation, but with the economic times and spreading prosperity they have a hard time getting much of a following.
(7) With the added prestige of having a principal role in forcing an end to the war, with particularly Boris Souvarine among the most popular journalists in France, the split between the SFIO and Communist Party turns in favour of the communists ITTL. The different tenants of communism ITTL help sway considerably more in favour of the communists and allows them to retain control of the SFIO, although discussions on whether the change the name are already under way. The effect of this is to force many of the moderate leaders who dominated the socialists during the inter-war period IOTL into a smaller party with a considerable loss in power and influence as a result.
(8) In OTL the British situation was pretty dire throughout the 1920s and ITTL the situation is even worse. While the labor movements and veterans organizations were splintered over whether to cooperate or not IOTL, ITTL they are pretty uniformly opposed to partnership with Labor which presents an interesting opportunity for the Conservatives - who exploit it to the fullest. While it does place a further burden on the economy, it not only defuses a tense situation but also secures the allegiance of the many veterans who benefit from their programs. A lot of the economic policy is very similar to what was done IOTL and has some similar effects.
(9) I had a bit of fun with the Root Plan, which is aimed at securing the French can continue paying their debts without becoming too great of an impediment to their recovery rather than on the issue of German reparations as its OTL counterpart the Dawes Plan was. The German offer of loans is not really too feasible, as the German state still has an incredible tax burden and sending more money than they already are to the French would be a step too far for the electorate. The diplomatic gambit of offering a loan actually backfires on the Germans in this instance, bringing the Allies back closer to each other and triggering American involvement in Europe once again.
(10) The depression that hit the United States immediately post-Great War is delayed longer than IOTL and plays out over a longer period ITTL. Rather than a sudden economic shock, it is a steady slowing of the economy which makes it both less worrying but also more difficult to deal with. While something like Hoover's proposed wage freeze might be implemented at a later date, for now Wood is reluctant to do something that would alienate his support with the business classes who, despite his progressive leanings, are supportive of him for his staunch anti-red stance.
Revolutionaries Drive Through Vienna's Streets
Austria-Hungary's Woes
While the economic and social situation was tense amongst all of the former combatants of the Great War, the situation was undoubtedly worst in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Like Germany, the Austro-Hungarians had enormous war costs but it had lacked adequate financial resources, even if monetary and fiscal authorities found ways to cover the growing expenditures to sustain the long lasting war efforts. Ordinary public incomes had been of limited significance, as internal political conflicts made the increase of tax and non-tax revenues practically impossible, while neither Austria nor Hungary were able to borrow significant amounts of foreign capital over the years. From mid-1914, war loans and the credits of the joint Central Bank had been the main source of financing to cover the growing budget deficits, however from July 1916 onward, Vienna had begun accumulating larger and larger deficits and relied increasingly on the Central Bank’s. This was in contrast to the politicians in Budapest who were able to limit their expenditures, putting Austrian state finances in a much worse position than its Hungarian equivalent by the end of the war, even if both economies were ramshackle at best.
The Conference Year had seen the Austro-Hungarians transfer as many responsibilities as they could to the Germans in the recently established states of eastern Europe, while demobilisation played havoc with Austria-Hungary's economic stability. With the economic pressure of both foreign loans from Germany and the Scandinavian nations, as well as an immense domestic debt, alongside out-of-control inflation, the domestic pressures grew ever greater on the Austro-Hungarian governments. The natural result was increasing internal unrest across all parts of the empire. As demobilisation played out over the course of 1919 and much of 1920, the domestic situation grew tenser and tenser.
It was in this context that the continued dominant position held by court insiders over Emperor Karl, and their resultant grip on power, proved particularly problematic. At the heart of the matter was the fact that these court functionaries were extremely reliant on their German backers, and as such did everything in their power to retain German good will, including expediting the repayment of foreign war loans to the detriment of their domestic creditors. It would be this small clique of courtiers who sought to speed up the economy through inflationary policies, seeking to create sufficient jobs for the demobilising soldiery by having the federal government print money with which to buy up agricultural and manufactured goods in a bid to kick-start the economy. Initially this actually worked quite well, and the Austrian economy was able to enter an inflation-driven economic boom over the course of 1920, while making the necessary compromises to ensure domestic order by compromising with the Social Democrats. Most significantly, they released Friedrich Adler and began working to implement the Emperor's treasured Trialist plans by ordering the loosening of national ties within Cisleithania and the calling of national congresses for Bohemia, German-Austria and the united Duchies of Carniola and Carinthia. However, while these concessions did seem to reduce the tension between the Cisleithanian government and its nationalist and socialist subjects, it did little to hold in check the spreading menace of Venetian Anarchism which began to cross the border in early 1921 (11).
From early 1921, the situation in Cisleithania degenerated swiftly as anarchist labor agitation provoked conflict with the socialists in Vienna while nationalist forces in Bohemia sought to distance themselves from the increasingly unstable situation to the south. At the same time Serbian agitation in the recently annexed territories of former Serbia grew ever more ferocious, rallying around the image of the exiled former Crown Prince of Serbia, Alexander, and led by the seasoned guerilla commander and Chetnik Kosta Pećanac who had remained in hiding within Serbia leading the resistance against the Habsburgs for years. Although his attempts at destabilising the occupation during the war had seen only limited success, the end of the war and the resultant return of many Serbian veterans, who had travelled north from Greece following the armistice, provided Kosta Pećanac with the manpower, weaponry and experience he would need for the coming struggle. Having spent much of 1919 and 1920 organizing the coming uprising and as it became increasingly clear that the situation in Vienna was reaching a breaking point, Pećanac set the date for the coming uprising, settling on the 15th of June 1921, a day of momentous importance to the Serbs for its connection to Serbia's founding myth, the Battle of Kosovo and Prince Lazar's assassination of Sultan Murad. As the date of the rising grew closer, the Serbian resistance movement worked hard to prepare, setting up arsenals and safe houses across the lands of former Serbia and well into Bosnia while recruiting heavily to their cause.
However, before the planned launch of the rising, events in Cisleithania came to a head. With the arrival of the Venetian anarchist Camillo Berneri, the Viennese labor conflict found itself the staging ground for an attempt by the Venetians to spread the revolution. On the 23rd of May 1921, the Venetians launched their gambit. Provoking strikes and demonstrations across Vienna on the 22nd, swiftly growing into open clashes between police, anarchist strikers and socialist strikers in a free-for-all, the anarchists used the cover of the labor conflict to amass a strike force near the Schönbrunn Palace. Early in the morning on the 23rd, as everyone else was gearing up for a continuation of the preceding day of violent clashes, the Venetian strike force attacked. Berneri and nearly twenty others attacked through the gardens abutting the back of the palace, killing several palace guards silently before launching their assault on the palace itself. Blowing a hole in a wall, the strike force charged into the palace, catching the guards by surprise. A bloody firefight erupted as the Habsburg palace guards rushed to defend their sovereign. Over the course of half an hour these defenders were killed, alongside nearly half of the strike force, but this opened the passages for them to attack the Imperial chambers themselves. Storming the Imperial chambers, the anarchists would discover that while they had come as close to wiping out the Habsburg royal family as could be imagined, they had turned up just short. The protracted firefight with the palace guards had bought sufficient time for the Imperial family to make their escape, chivied out by a cadre of loyal bodyguards, nannies for the children and assorted other Habsburg loyalists.
The strike force, finding that it had failed in its major objective, instead set fire to the palace to cover their retreat and tried to make their escape. Unfortunately for them, the sounds of the fighting at the palace had attracted plenty of attention and garrison troops had rushed towards the sound of fighting - catching the strike force as they tried to flee through the gardens. The resultant firefight would see most of the strike force killed, while Berneri and three others made their escape and two men were captured - the role of the Venetians becoming known during their interrogation. However, by this time the Habsburgs had already made their escape from Vienna, fleeing to safety in Budapest (12).
The arrival of Emperor Karl and the Habsburg imperial family in Budapest sent shockwaves through the Austro-Hungarian Empire. With control of the Emperor and his family, who were largely confined to the Royal Palace in Budapest under what was effectively house arrest and a strong guard, the ambitious Hungarian Minister-President János Hadik made his move. Hadik having navigated the tense period following the Budapest Rising with increasing confidence, focusing on the fight against Socialist guerrilla forces in the Hungarian countryside led by Tibor Szamuely and strengthening his own grip on power, now set about pushing forward Hungarian leadership of the Empire. In the year and a half between the Budapest Rising and the signing of the Copenhagen Treaty, Hadik had been able to stabilise the Hungarian government and, by combining liberal monarchist principles with Hungarian nationalism, had been able to pull together a movement strong enough to hold together the Kingdom of Hungary. With the King-Emperor now in residence, Hadik decided to press his luck and moved to brazenly steal control of the Empire from the mostly Austrian court functionaries who had dominated Austro-Hungarian politics for centuries.
With Karl mostly focused on ensuring the safety and health of his own family following the shock of the Schönbrunn Raid, Hadik was able to secure his ascent to directing Imperial policy on behalf of the Emperor, in effect shifting the centre of political gravity from Vienna to Budapest. Claiming that the labor unrest in Vienna, which had peaked in the immediate aftermath of the raid, urged on by the potent symbol of the Schönbrunn Palace in flames, had made the Austrian capital too dangerous for the Imperial family, Hadik claimed that it was time for the Hungarians to take over their protection, including representing the Emperor's interests to the Austrian government. Hadik had thrown down the gauntlet against Austrian dominance and the Empire would never be the same. In effect, Budapest and the Hungarians were now laying claim to ruling the Austro-Hungarian Empire in its entirety, a move which provoked immense outrage in Austria over the course of the following month. However, rather than focus on the growing Austrian resistance, the Hungarian Premier found himself occupied fully by the sudden eruption of the Third Serbian Rising, so named to call to mind the Serbian struggles against oppression in the former century.
Attacking Hungarian officials, military outposts and various representatives of Habsburg order on the 15th of June, Pećanac was able to convince the Serbian populace that Habsburg authority had weakened sufficiently to support their rising. Spreading in a wave from Šabac, the Serbian Rising provoked intense unrest across the lands annexed by the Austro-Hungarians, even spilling over into Bosnia where the Serbian minority rallied to the call of the uprising, stirred by nationalist sentiments. Relatively well armed and prepared, the Serbs were able to overrun many key military posts and took control of a large swathe of territory. The rising would spill over the border to the south and provoke intense but disorganized and under armed resistance in Bulgarian Serbia, prompting the Bulgarian government to crack down bloodily in the region, massacring villages of relatively unprepared Serbs as the conflict grew fiercer, and in Kosovo. Perhaps the most important Habsburg success in the initial crisis of the Rising would be the defeat of Serbian forces in Belgrade itself. Here it would prove to be the very size of the city which undermined the chance of success for the Rising, with the large Austro-Hungarian garrison instituting martial law and clearing the streets of rebels with open violence. In response to the Serbian Rising, Hadik called up the Honvéd and ordered it armed from the Common Army's arsenals before deploying a major troop concentration compromising both Honved and Common Army forces south to Serbia under the leadership Pál Nagy, a grizzled veteran general of the Great War (13).
The brazen Hungarian grasp for power left a devastated Austrian leadership scrambling for a response. The sudden disappearance of the Emperor left the previously dominant Austrian court clique without any legitimacy and prompted the rise of the former Police Chief of Vienna, Johannes Schober, who had played an instrumental role in ending the Anarchist agitation in the city, and was swift to grasp control in the sudden power vacuum. Supported by a wide cross-section of Austrian political parties, Schober was able to forge a temporary alliance between pan-German nationalists like himself, and both the Christian Social Party and Social Democratic Party in favour of stability and a restoration of Austrian power and authority in the Empire. While there were some Pan-Germanists who called for the immediate abandonment of the rest of the Empire in favour of joining with Germany, these were eventually turned down in favour of a policy aimed at restoring Austria to the head of its empire, with the aim of finally bringing the intransigent Hungarians to heel.
To that end, Schober received considerable backing in calling up the Austrian Landwehr and what parts of the Common Army were willing to fight on behalf of the Austrians, before setting about securing control of Cisleithania in preparations for a move against the Hungarians, in a bid to return the Habsburgs to their rightful home in Vienna. Schober and his allies were able to force an early end to the national congress in Carniola and Carinthia, but met with considerably more opposition from the much more organized and ordered Bohemian congress. After nearly a month of negotiations, Schober was able to secure an agreement with the Bohemians whereby they would support the Austrian bid to restore the Habsburgs to Vienna in return for accepting a more autonomous subordinate Kingdom of Bohemia, with its own Minister-President and with control over many of the internal policies of their Kingdom. Efforts to establish contact with the Croatian Stjepan Radić who led the Croatian Peasant Party and wished for co-equal status for Croatia with Austria and Hungary were undertaken at around the same time in a bid to split the Kingdom of Hungary along ethnic lines in support of the Austrians. Deciding that supporting an autonomous Croatia against the Hungarians would strengthen the Austrian position, Schober proved more than willing to partner with various significant Croatian figures such as Radić, securing support against the Hungarians should it come to violence, on the promise of autonomy for Croatia. Schober was, however, not nearly as successful in far-off Galicia which experienced a rapid growth of Polish nationalism calling for the joining of Galicia to the German-backed Kingdom of Poland (14).
Agitation would rise rapidly, inspired by the Serbian Rising, and the threat of violence grew ever greater, stretching Austrian resources considerably. It was near the end of June, with the Hungarians increasingly distracted by the conflict with the Serbs, that Schober decided that a swift victory against the revolutionaries in Venice might build sufficient confidence in his regime for the bid against the Hungarians. The result was that over the course of July the Austrian Landswehr and the Austro-Hungarian Navy began preparations for a blow against the anarchists. Diplomats were dispatched to Rome, where they offered Austrian assistance in crushing the Venetians. Despite initial misgivings, D'Annuzio eventually gave his sanction to the offer on the 14th of July, setting the stage for a joint naval and land offensive against the Venetian Syndicate and their Armed Forces.
Martialing forces around Ferrara, the Royal Italian assault launched across the Adige alongside considerable Fascist militia forces while the Austrian Landswehr crossed the border and attacked the Venetian rear by surprise. At the same time the Italian Regia Marina and the Austrian-controlled K.u.K. Fleet under Franz von Holub launched a coordinated attack on the Black Navy, prompting the Battle of The Gulf of Venice. The Regia Marina quickly fell apart under an intense Venetian bombardment, with the Black battleship Giulio Cesare sinking its sister ship Conte di Cavour alongside half a dozen lesser ships. The Austrians, however, held firm and the SMS Viribus Unitis and SMS Tegetthoff were able to force the Guilio Cesare from the battle with considerable damage done to it. Fighting between torpedo boats and destoyers proved intense, but eventually the Venetians were forced to withdraw in good order to the shelter of Venice's Lagoon (15).
Footnotes:
(11) This is quite different from OTL events, as the Austro-Hungarian Empire is able to make it through the war. However, with both internal and external pressures growing at a rapid rate and spill-over from the Italian Civil War serving to worsen the stability of Cisleithania, the Austro-Hungarian domestic situation rushes rapidly towards disaster.
(12) I hope the drama isn't a touch too much, but given the various attempts at murdering royalty in the region during this period, I don't think something like this is too implausible. It bears mentioning that while the labor unrest is planned and supported by the Venetians, and they do provide the arms that are used in the Schönbrunn Raid, no one in Venice actually signed off on this attack and they were unaware of it until it happened. The idea was to arm the local labor movement to provoke a labor uprising, but Berneri, who is the Venetians' man on the ground, decided to be more ambitious.
(13) Yup, the Hungarians straight up stole the Emperor and now claim to rule on his behalf, which, granted, was exactly what the Austrian court functionaries were doing, but god damnit! They are Hungarians! Only civilized Austrians have that right! On a serious note, with Hadik having been able to secure his reign (which doesn't last 17 hours as IOTL), the Hungarians are actually on relatively stable legs as they move forward. However, they now have to deal with a major Serbian uprising and it isn't like the Austrians are going to accept getting sidelined without a fight.
(14) With their control of the Empire in its entirety now threatened, the Austrians prove more willing to make concessions to several of their subordinate nationalities. The impact of these events are only just beginning to play out and are going to fundamentally shift the entire setup of the region for years to come. The alignment behind Schober comes as a result of the felt need for someone acceptable to all parties. While he was of Pan-German sympathies himself, he proved surprisingly acceptable to Social Democrats and Christian Social Party members IOTL when they moved on from partisan efforts to secure the government for their own party. Here the crisis provoked by the Schönbrunn Raid is sufficient to set off a similar push.
(15) The Austrians getting involved in Italy really sets things off in the region and prompts a major escalation of the conflict across the region, turning it two separate civil wars into a conjoined conflict spanning Italy and Austria-Hungary, with alliances between factions in both nations - although only between the Royal Italians and Austrians for the time being.
Destruction of the Four Courts Building in Dublin
An Irish Conflagration
Over the course of the first half of 1921, the Irish conflict continued to escalate in scale and violence as the IRA grew ever more organised and powerful, securing greater and greater support from across the Atlantic in the form of arms smuggling, financing and support in spreading the message of the Irish struggle for independence. The execution of captured prisoners grew more common, with nearly twenty five executions between November and June, while warfare spilled out into every part of the island. The biggest single loss for the IRA in this period came in Dublin when, on the 25th of May 1921, several hundred IRA men from the Dublin Brigade occupied and burned the Custom House, the centre of local government in Ireland, in Dublin city centre. Symbolically, this was intended to show that British rule in Ireland was untenable. However, from a military point of view, it was a heavy defeat in which five IRA men were killed and over eighty captured by responding forces.
From the point of view of the British government it appeared as if the IRA's guerrilla campaign would continue indefinitely, with spiralling costs in British casualties and in money. More importantly, the British government was facing severe criticism at home and abroad for the actions of British forces in Ireland. On 6th June 1921, the British made their first conciliatory gesture, calling off the policy of house burnings as reprisals. On the other side, IRA leaders, in particular Michael Collins, felt that the IRA as it was then organised and acting could not continue indefinitely. It had been hard pressed by the deployment of more regular British soldiers to Ireland and by a lack of arms and ammunition.
These pressures led the British to restart their efforts at negotiating an end to the conflict. Such efforts had previously failed under Lloyd George's leadership, when the Prime Minister demanded the IRA unilaterally disarm prior to any truce. By June, the pressure from Asquith's Labor Party and the Labour Party, backed by the Trade Union Congress, to end the conflict had grown sufficient for the Prime Minister to press forward with another attempt at negotiations despite the strident opposition of Bonar Law and the Conservatives. The relationship between Lloyd George and the Conservatives had grown increasingly sour over the preceding year, most prominently over his wish to end the Irish conflict without a clear victory and his push for deflationary policies which would compromise British ability to finance the war against the Irish Nationalists. This division within the government, between the influential Conservative Unionists and Lloyd George's Liberals, would cripple British efforts at negotiating an end to the conflict long enough for Irish actions to make a truce untenable when the decision to expand the conflict across the Irish Sea to Britain itself, taken soon after Lloyd George had made his demand for unilateral disarmament, was implemented (16).
Planned by Michael Collins with the aim of doing as much economic damage as possible to make the war too expensive for the British to continue fighting, the plan called for a rapidly escalating series of assaults and bombings of a variety of British targets. The first of these attacks occured in Glasgow on the 19th of June 1921 when a grenade was tossed into a customs house - killing two and injuring a third. This was followed by the much larger bombing of the Liverpool Docks on the 2nd of July 1921, which killed seventeen and injured in excess of thirty while crippling traffic through the port for several weeks. This was followed by a series of bombings and assassinations across the country, in Manchester, Liverpool and London most prominently. By the end of July terror had gotten a firm grip on the British populace, with a backlash against Irish workers living and working in Britain. Irish servants were fired in many places, while Irish workers in the Liverpool and Manchester factories found themselves dismissed, their positions quickly filled from the large number of unemployed generated by government deflationary efforts, and attacked by angry mobs. The British public and press found itself gripped by fear and paranoia, with attacks on Irish individuals a common-place matter. The attempted bombing of the Daily Mail's headquarters in London would turn the British press firmly against any compromise with the Irish, outraged at the attack on one of their own and fearful that they might prove the next target (17).
The Irish bombing and terror campaign in Britain would have a profound consequence for the political climate in Britain and the for the Irish War of Independence. As the Conservatives leapt into the fray, criticising the conduct of Lloyd George in trying to negotiate with the Irish and attacking the Labour and Liberal parties for thinking that the Irish could be negotiated with. They whipped up public outrage at the terror attacks in Britain, further worsened when the Dublin Brigade launched an attack on Four Courts in Dublin in a bid to free captured IRA soldiers who were about to be brought on trial. The attack failed miserably and quickly turned into a hostage situation when British forces surrounded the building and tried to force a surrender. After a five hour standoff, the British went in, provoking the Dublin Brigade to begin executing its prisoners, including several judges and lawyers who had been caught up in the attack. The Dublin Brigade saw nearly its entire force caught up and killed in the resultant fighting, any prisoners being shot out of hand, while nearly two dozen lawyers and judges were left dead and the building itself was left in ruins.
Bonar Law, whose strident Unionist beliefs had been firmly trampled on by what he viewed as Lloyd George's weakness, led a leadership bid, calling for a vote of no confidence in late August 1921. Lloyd George and his coalition government collapsed as a result, and Bonar Law made a bid for Downing Street on the basis of a Conservative government with Royal acquiescence. The new government immediately escalated the conflict in Ireland, ordering the deployment of significant forces and giving wide leeway to the British Army when it came to combatting the Irish insurgency. However, while the Conservatives were undoubtedly the largest party in Great Britain at this point in time, it was a party with considerable divides internally. On one hand there was the nationalist, populist and unionist wing of the party which was firmly in favour of building mass support for the party and crushing the Irish insurgents, while on the other there were more fiscally and elitist conservative voices which disliked the agitating nature of their fellow Conservatives and were supportive of a continuation of Lloyd George's policies, particularly domestically.
At the heart of this division lay the issue of deflation which had been kicked off when the American Federal Reserve had begun hiking interest rates. This had slowed the American economy, and inflation with it, bringing economically hard times but considerably strengthening the American claim to being the center of world finance. This policy had also had the added benefit of weakening the violently agitated labor movement in the United States by slowing American industry, provoking unemployment and creating an employer's labor market which allowed businesses across the United States to strengthen their position against labor unions with the threat of replacement. This American deflationary push had forced the hand of the British government earlier in 1921, leading fiscal conservatives and the financial institutions of the United Kingdom to press for deflationary policies themselves in order to keep up with the Americans and to avoid losing London's position at the heart of world finance (18).
However, the need to cut government spending in order to restore the United Kingdom's global financial standing presented a major problem for the unionists and populists in the Conservative party. Not only were the deflationary policies of the Liberal-led coalition government deeply unpopular, they also severely hampered any hope of securing victory in the Irish struggle - a matter which had grown into an issue of British honour following the infamy of the British failure to hold the line on innocent Belgium's behalf. A reckoning with government deflationary policies grew ever more urgent as unemployment grew steadily throughout Britain and the calls for money to finance the conflict in Ireland grew louder over the course of the latter half of 1921.
The rise of Bonar Law's government in 1921, packed with Unionists baying for revenge against the Irish Nationalists, had a predictable impact on the course of the Irish conflict. With attacks growing in Britain itself, the British Army in Ireland grew ever harsher in its repression. Summary executions of captured fighters or suspected fighters spiked, while the policy of retaliatory arson was reinstated as British manpower commitments swelled. With the decimation of the Dublin Brigade, the British Army was able to establish a relatively safe cordon of control in the Pale extending north to much of Ulster, where volunteer Unionist brigades and militias formed to combat insurgents, or often just Catholic neighbours, while aiding the British war effort. The British reliance on the RIC was also greatly reduced, as militia and paramilitary forces took up supporting roles to the Army proper in combatting the Irish insurgents. Permission was granted for the use of teargas soon after while insurgent tactics pioneered during the Boer Wars and in Cuba were implemented. American opinions were outraged at the British conduct in Ireland but the shift was met largely with equanimity by the Germans and French, not particularly surprising given their own conduct against insurgent forces. The growing harshness of conditions in Ireland would provoke another wave of Irish migration to the Americas, most settling either in the United States, Mexico or Argentina, which grew rapidly in proportion.
The increasingly organized nature of British repression slowly began to strangle the IRA, with prominent leaders such as Liam Lynch, Eion O'Duffey and Thomas Derrig killed while Frank Aiken and Cathal Brugha were forced to flee Ireland to America with the British on their heels by the middle of 1922. Curfews and martial law were extended across Ireland, with every city and major town steadily brought under control, forcing the IRA into the countryside. From there a slow but steady grid search forced the insurgent forces into smaller and smaller spaces, making them increasingly vulnerable to British assault. By late 1922, Field Marshal Haig, who had been directing the conflict for nearly half a decade at this point, was finally able to unleash on the insurgents who had eluded him and his men.
A major concentration of insurgents led by the trio of Charlie Hurley, Tom Barry and Liam Deasy, numbering some 3,000 insurgents had found itself forced into hiding in the Glenveagh region of County Donegal, having taken refuge in the forests and glens of the region. It was here that Haig was able to bring the Irish insurgents to heel on the 23rd of January 1923. After finding his demand for their immediate and unconditional surrender rebuffed he authorized the use of mustard gas, having it fired into the forest with artillery and dropped by bombers from on high, while setting up machinegun nests around the woods. As the coughing and choking insurgents streamed out of the forest, having had no gas masks with which to protect themselves, the British opened fire. For six hours this continued, as section after section of the forest was cleared of insurgents, until it became too dark to continue. The survivors, some four hundred in all and including only Tom Barry of the original leaders, would be permitted to surrender thereafter but faced detention, separation according to their level of activity, and extended prison sentences for the lesser offenders, while those identified as having participated for any greater length of time or as having participated in active fighting against the British were executed, including Tom Barry.
The Glenveagh Massacre was what finally broke the back of the Irish resistance, coupled to a general amnesty for those lesser offenders who laid down their arms and surrendered to British justice - although no such agreement was laid out for any officer of the IRA nor for any cabinet member or functionary in the Irish revolutionary government. Dozens of prominent figures in the Irish independence movement would find themselves captured, imprisoned and executed depending on their level of involvement in the movement. However, three of the most prominent Irish resistance leaders, Michael Collins, Richard Mulcahy and Eamon de Valera, were able to make their escape aboard a pair of American smugglers, surviving the trip to America where they were welcomed with open arms by the Irish-American community in Boston. This marked the collapse of the Irish Resistance Movement in Ireland and the end of the Irish War for Independence, as the British government rooted out any hint of opposition to their rule, only gradually easing martial law and the powerful military presence in early 1924 (19).
This major expansion in British military resources for the Irish conflict would have been impossible if the Conservative Party had held the line on the government's deflationary efforts and in late 1921 that had proven to be the main argument for easing deflationary pressure. The result had been that while the British money supply expanded, and British industry found its exports increasing, its global financial standing had taken a major hammering as the Pound fell in value. Trust in the government's ability to maintain fiscal discipline eroded rapidly and the risk of investing in Britain was felt to be a growing concern on the part of both international and domestic financiers. This would play a key role in spurring further investments internationally, most prominently in America, where the Republican government's continued support for deflationary policies had caused considerable dissatisfaction with the working classes, but had seen trust in the government reach a previously unimagined high in the international financial community, an attitude which was also extended the German government's surprisingly adept handling of its inflationary pressures. The result was that London's status as an international centre of finance began to erode over the course of 1922 and 1923, New York and Frankfurt grew rapidly in its place.
The easing of deflationary pressures would, however, prove a godsend to the British coal industry when further international trade and tariff barriers on German coal were removed in Franco-German trade negotiations, prompting a flood of German coal on the international market. Particularly Welsh Coal Country had experienced a considerable economic shock at this sudden development, which caused a precipitous drop in coal prices. By suspending the pound's pegging to the Gold Standard and extending the gold embargo, the Conservative government was able to exploit the fall in the Pound's value to strengthen British competitive advantages in a variety of industrial sectors. This meant that British products could now be sold at a lower price than that of their deflationary competitors, and as such Welsh coal was able to make inroads in the international market, rebuilding market share. This, however, had wider impacts internationally, with particularly American coal experiencing a precipitous fall in market share, prompting a crisis in American Coal Country, which exacerbated what had seemed to be the dimming fires of the Coal Wars.
The Conservatives used the brief Bonar Law government to strengthen Conservative populist power, building mass support through their support of war veterans and their families, their inflationary policies and by securing a clear victory in the Irish conflict. although the loss of London's status as global financial hegemon would have major consequences far into the future. This period came to an end in May 1923 when Bonar Law was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer and was forced to tender his resignation to the King. In his place, the King summoned Austen Chamberlain, who had played a pivotal role in toppling Lloyd George from power in an alliance with Stanley Baldwin, and had spearheaded the shift to inflationary politics before serving as Leader of the Commons when Bonar Law had retired in 1920.
Austen Chamberlain accepted the King's offer to become Prime Minister and proceeded forward with some adjustments to his cabinet, most significantly selecting Stanley Baldwin to succeed him as Chancellor of the Exchequer and moving his half-brother Neville Chamberlain to head the Board of Trade to replace Baldwin. The Chamberlain Government would seek to slow the inflationary policies of the previous government somewhat in order to restore some level of financial order and to prevent the pound from running away from them, but the new Conservative government was increasingly of the opinion that returning to the pre-war value of the pound would be next to impossible and would do immense harm in the effort. As such, the Conservative government moved forward towards the coming elections of 1924 with relatively broad public support, but with a severely weakened financial sector. The outcry over British actions in Ireland had largely been quieted by the Irish terror campaign unleashed in 1921, but as the elections grew nearer the leadership of the Labour Party began to ponder whether they might be able to use the government's conduct as a cudgel against them (20).
Footnotes:
(16) The most important factor for why the British are unable to start negotiations for an end to the conflict, as they did IOTL, is the greater presence of Irish Unionists in the Conservative Party ranks. This is a result of the changed parliamentary results which saw the Conservative Unionists sweep the Irish parliamentary seats that were captured by Sinn Fein and IPP IOTL - mostly the result of a wide-scale boycott of voting by anyone not explicitly Unionist in Ireland during the elections. As a result, the Conservatives are even more powerful than IOTL and could in theory remove Lloyd George and still retain a supermajority. The only reason it hasn't happened yet having to do with Lloyd George's ability to make good with the Conservative leadership and an unwillingness to create any opening for reconciliation between the two branches of the Liberal Party. However, the end of the Great War greatly damaged the PM's prestige and resulted in the Liberal Opposition being a greater threat to his position than IOTL, making him more responsive to pressure from the Left. However, since he is completely reliant on Conservative backing for his coalition he is unable to push forward with his hoped-for negotiations to end the conflict, with Bonar Law most prominently pressing for harsher measures in Ireland.
(17) This is actually based on a series of plans Michael Collins developed in the period leading up to the OTL truce and which would have been implemented had the truce not come first. The beginnings of action in Glasgow actually did occur IOTL although it didn't amount to much. Here the delay in beginning negotiations on the part of the British delay events long enough for the campaign in Britain to begin, at which point the conflict escalates out of control of any single faction.
(18) This process of deflation was described in update seventeen as well, but was primarily focused on the issue from a domestic point of view, whereas this provides the international context of the move. The deflationary pressures exerted by the United States, while provoking considerable unemployment, inequality and poverty, does weaken labor movements and strengthens the hand of business and capital. This need for deflation is also at the heart of Lloyd George's push to end the expensive Irish conflict - a war is difficult to run on a shoestring budget after all - and as such this creates a problem for the new Conservative government.
(19) That marks the end of the Irish War of Independence, in about as horrific a way as it could have happened. The immense investment of resources and prestige in the effort, as well as the impact of the Irish terror campaign, has considerable consequences for Britain as it moves forward, leaving the horrors of the previous decade behind, and will also play a role in how events play out in the wider British Empire. While the Irish independence movement has been crushed this time, it is far from the first time this has happened and it is unlikely to remain compliant indefinitely. Rather than the revolutionary events of OTL, where the Irish War of Independence actually paved the road towards independence, no matter how long that took, ITTL the conflict becomes just another sordid chapter in the British dominance of their Irish neighbours. The survival of Michael Collins, Richard Mulcahy and Eamon de Valera, and their efforts to make a new home in the United States, could also have interesting consequences as we look towards the future.
(20) This marks the end of the Irish chapter of this saga, at least for the time being, and leaves Britain in an ambiguous position, its status as a financial superpower gravely undermined but with its economy seeming increasingly on the rebound and with unemployment dropping steadily. The issue of how to repay wartime loans remains a major worry, and Britain's willful disregard for the importance of a deflationary policy to secure the financial heft required to repay their loans has caused immense worries and tension in the Americas. We will examine the consequences of this as we move forward.
End Note:
This update is a bit weird and jumps all over the place. It deals with US politics, the developments in the international economy, public economic policy, the crumbling of Austria-Hungary, the end of the Irish Conflict and much more. It has been a bit difficult to piece together and I hope it doesn't come across as too disjointed, but there are so many separate events playing out at once, influencing each other in a complex web, that it is difficult to piece it all together. There are events which have happened by the end of this update chronologically which I haven't covered yet, perhaps most egregiously the situation in the colonies, but which have an impact on events here. Particularly the disjointed timeline might be a bit difficult to follow, but I try to provide dates, or approximations to dates, where possible so people have a bit of an easier time with it. If there is any confusion please feel free to ask - I know it is a mess and I am happy to try and explain it.
I have also made changes to the format, moving footnotes up below the sections they are directly related to. This was a suggestion made by @LordVorKon which I have decided to implement and for which I am extremely thankful. The idea is that this should make it easier to follow my mess of footnotes without having to scroll through the entire monster of an update. Let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions yourselves then I welcome them. I doubt I will implement everything suggested, but I am always open to considering such ideas.
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Bison
Banned
This update was nice and not at all hard to follow. Took me an hour to read the whole thing, I can only guess how much time you spend in writing. As with every update, I'm left clueless at whats gonna happen next, particularly in Austria Hungary. Also, how come Ukro grain is flooding international markets when the country (especially the region to the east of it) is at war, on the brink of starvation, and plagued by an anarcho-bandit insurgency?
Interesting update. Especially the portion about Austria-Hungary. I thought that the crisis within the Habsburg Empire would be Hungary trying to secede but it looks like Hungary is trying to do a power play by trying to become the dominant part of the empire by using the chaos in the Austrian portion from the Italian Civil War spillover and the Emperor as a source of legitimacy; with the Austrians scrambling for a response. It looks like no nationality has attempted to secede from the empire yet, except the Serbs. As for the Serbian Rising, this probably isn't going to end well for the Serbs. Keep in mind that 1 million Serbs during the Great War were killed, from a population of 4.5 million. Also, IIRC some 57% of the Serbian male population was killed in the war as part of that statistic. The Serbs are probably going to get crushed; especially if the Hungarians play extremely brutal towards the Serbs like the Bulgarians are doing. Also, if for some reason the Hungarians have to abandon Serbia the Bulgarians will probably move in and quash the Serbs themselves, probably annexing a portion of it as well as a reward. Neither the Habsburgs nor the Bulgarians want to see Serbia become independent again and will do all they can to crush it. I hope the Austrian portion win the current crisis and reform the empire into a federation, which seems to be what they are attempting to do.