A Day in July: An Early 20th Century Timeline
- Thread starter Zulfurium
- Start date
Good to know.
I think she would be too frail to manage the trip involved, but Anastasia visited her in 1923 and she is relatively happy with the state of things. She likely dies some time between 1928 and 1930.
A very interesting point. OTL in 1920 Herbert Hoover was agitating for government intervention to lift the US out of recession but Harding did nothing and the economy recovered. Hoover learned the wrong lessons from this and did nothing in 1929 when a modest increase in government spending could have recovered confidence. The difference being that the 1920 recession was about the economy transitioning from wartime to peacetime mode whereas the 1929 recession was about market saturation and the end of a business cycle.
Economic studies have concluded that some of FDR's policies during the New Deal, particularly around the NRA actually prolonged the Depression and made it worse and Britain going back on the Gold Standard and France being in a position to veto intervention to support Kreditanstalt didn't help internationally.
The "Dustbowl" has been building up for over 30 years due to unsustainable and inappropriate farming practice. Things may not be quite as bad as OTL because with the Don Whites still selling grain on the world markets wheat prices will be lower and a bit less will consequently be grown in the US Midwest but we are still going to see some Okies, maybe a little later but still in the thirties.
Another driver is that a major food and fuel crop (oats) have become much less profitable. By 1929 urban horses have largely been replaced by motor vehicles so the demand for fodder crops slumps and people are increasingly eating cold cereals rather than porridge for breakfast. Now OK, the latter use wheat, maize and rice too but there is an enormous displacement in the agricultural market. Tractors and combine harvesters are also making a huge contribution to increased productivity, as are nitrate and phosphate fertilisers -and hence lower prices, law of supply and demand in operation. So, there is going to be an agricultural Depression, this will be largely unavoidable.
And industrially, as I said, without an impoverished defeated Germany and a more limited breakup of the Hapsburg Empire and a more stable China and parts of Russia still open to the global economy, world markets are that little bit larger. But ultimately this market is going to reach saturation (everyone who can afford a car, radio, refrigerator has one and is only going to buy a new one if the old one breaks) and shrink/stabilise until the next generation of technology comes along. Which it will, but not usually just in time to avoid the downturn.
These changes allow for some leeway and you could possibly have a situation where the agricultural and industrial depressions don't coincide as closely as a slightly larger world market and higher defence spending than OTL 1919-33 could push the industrial depression as much as two or three years further down the road. But I don't think you can avoid recession completely -partly down to the business cycle, partly down to inevitable disruptions of introductions of new technologies. But with someone other than Roosevelt in charge, the US may recover more quickly (which isn't the usual trope in most TLs)
azadi
Banned
We are not schizophrenic. KRG (the autonomous regional government of South (Iraqi) Kurdistan) is the sole legitimate representative of the Kurdish people. PKK doesn't support Kurdish independence. PKK is a terrorist organization according to USA and EU.
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Finished reading the last update. I'm a bit worried about how you portrayed the Siberian Whites and their miraculous success. Anastasia's success in the US was already pushing it to me, sound more like a movie scene than history. And the resolution of tensions is way too neat. Siberia is dirt poor and full of people who have little reasons to like the Romanov. The earlier corruption and incompetence at different levels probably didn't disappear, and it should result in wild misappropriation of foreign help barring a miracle. I get that people are cowed by Sternberg and thus won't erupt into another revolt easily, but it should be extremely shaky.
They are ruling over a vast empty expanse of nothing they have to police for dissidents and somehow make somewhat profitable despite the massive lack of infrastructure needed to exploit the existing resources. The far east province is probably the only part remotely economically relevant.
I can buy the Don Whites. They're close to support from Europe, they sit aside Russia's biggest river and sea outlet, they have reasonable civilian minded people in addition to their military elites, and their approach of giving concessions to Ukrainian identity could help with the Ukrainian elites. The people won't care much because filling their bellies is more important than what language is taught in schools they can't afford to attend, but if foreign help bring economic prosperity, it won't matter too much. The back and forth battles of the civil war and decimation of the landed aristocracy probably helped consolidate agricultural land and remove some of the big sources of inefficiencies. Capitalist consolidation of land for industrial agriculture is still going to push tons of disaffected people to the cities, but if foreign investment follows, it could be a boon more than anything. Did they do any form of land reform, or just let things as is?
Siberia's economy and stability is another can of worms.
They are ruling over a vast empty expanse of nothing they have to police for dissidents and somehow make somewhat profitable despite the massive lack of infrastructure needed to exploit the existing resources. The far east province is probably the only part remotely economically relevant.
I can buy the Don Whites. They're close to support from Europe, they sit aside Russia's biggest river and sea outlet, they have reasonable civilian minded people in addition to their military elites, and their approach of giving concessions to Ukrainian identity could help with the Ukrainian elites. The people won't care much because filling their bellies is more important than what language is taught in schools they can't afford to attend, but if foreign help bring economic prosperity, it won't matter too much. The back and forth battles of the civil war and decimation of the landed aristocracy probably helped consolidate agricultural land and remove some of the big sources of inefficiencies. Capitalist consolidation of land for industrial agriculture is still going to push tons of disaffected people to the cities, but if foreign investment follows, it could be a boon more than anything. Did they do any form of land reform, or just let things as is?
Siberia's economy and stability is another can of worms.
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Siberia is far, far, from stable. Hell, they just had a straight up palace coup. Furthermore, Siberia is dirt poor, don't see any place where I said it wasn't - hell, I spend a good while discussing the fact that most of the population is living on the edge of starvation for several years. The larger population and arrival of educated engineers and the like in Siberia means that some of the many natural resources in the region are discovered pretty early, which in turn plays a part in luring American investments. There are plenty of examples of idiot investors tossing money into sinkholes (see the South Sea Bubble), and this is just another example of that. Anastasia and her network of contacts in the US have been running around in New York preaching of the fortunes to be made from exploiting Siberia. The thing about corruption is that while it is often rather endemic in societies like the one established in Siberia, people are pretty damn worried that if they get caught they will be hauled in, tortured and executed. There is corruption, particularly further away from the center, but in Chita and its surroundings itself the oppressiveness of the government largely scares off anything too overt.
Siberia is far from a miraculous success, it is a struggling regime experiencing considerable political turmoil. The fact that Olga actually proves half-way competent is what prevents Siberia from turning into a complete shit show. There are plenty of instances of palace intrigues and infighting similar to what I described in the history books. The betrayal and capture of Ungern and his paranoid behavior are all based on his OTL life. All Anastasia has really done is proven to be a good intriguer who knows how to maneuver in society contexts - which really shouldn't be too surprising given her upbringing at a literal intrigue-filled royal court. In the US, you have a pretty significant recent conglomeration of White Russian factions which Anastasia and Savinkov have spent the last half-decade consolidating behind them. All Anastasia really did was befriend the Roosevelts and through their contacts push for pro-Siberian political attitudes, not all that different from the actions of Madam Soong for the Kumintang or Evangelina Cisneros for the Cuban revolutionaries. Sure, there is plenty of propaganda aimed against her and she is vilified by sections of the press, but beyond paying some bribes, making the right contacts, spreading rumors and fighting a war of murders and assassinations with rival White Russian factions - none of which is particularly outside of the plausible - I am not sure what the problem with her is.
The Don Whites parcelled out lands previously owned by people who died without heirs or are associated with one of the other factions, while accepting many of the civil war landgrabs perpetrated by the peasant populace. It wasn't particularly popular. There hasn't been any concerted effort at land reform for the time being, but political pressure for it is growing.
Hope that answers the majority of the issues you brought up.
Yeah, yeah, you did.
My problem with Anastasia is more one of depiction than one of results. As you said, the results are plausible and have historical parallels. But the depiction sound very much like a movie plot where the awesome main character princess solves problems through sheer good looks and main-characterness. Maybe more of a focus on why powerful people in America care and what they get out of it would help.
My concern with Siberia isn't how it is doing economically, because it's pretty clear it's not doing too hot. Even if there is investment, there is no infrastructure or workers to take advantage of it. No, it's more the ease with which the Sternberg problem is handled and the degree of competence of the young monarchs. The earlier updates clearly showed the court wasn't very competent, and there is no reason the princesses would be especially well trained for the job either.
Bear in mind that these are all claims that could have been made about Saudi Arabia in 1959 though. If some of the more accessible oil, minerals and diamonds are detected early the funding for infrastructure may not follow too far behind.
Saudi Arabia is never too far away from the sea though. The amount of infrastructure needed to be built to export the oil is much lesser. It's also worth keeping in mind 30+ years did a lot for the technological possibilities. A trans-Siberian pipeline would be a colossal undertaking for example.
Looking back, i’m a bit surprised that Britain and France actually decided to directly intervene in the Hungaro-Croatian war, and even more surprised that the Germans actually allowed this. I mean, what would have stopped the Germans and Hungarians from blockading the Croatian coast, or closing the Adriatic entirely, to prevent French or British weapons weapons from reaching the Croats? After all, Croatia is surrounded by Germany and its allies, and Italy is in the midst of a civil war, so there not much the French and British could have done about it. I could see them try to make appeals to both sides, and offer humanitarian aid or something, but to actually supply the Croats with weapons and advisors? Right at Germany’s border?
Imagine the French or British reaction if the Germans had decided to intervene in this manner in Britain’s war with Ireland. Frankly, i would have expected for this to turn into a major diplomatic crisis, maybe even a war scare. As things stand this was a major victory for the French and British, while the Germans were left looking incredibly weak.
Imagine the French or British reaction if the Germans had decided to intervene in this manner in Britain’s war with Ireland. Frankly, i would have expected for this to turn into a major diplomatic crisis, maybe even a war scare. As things stand this was a major victory for the French and British, while the Germans were left looking incredibly weak.
I can understand that, it isn't so much good looks and competence that swings things in favor of Olga and Anastasia as it is Ungern being out-of-his-mind murder crazy paranoid, torturing supporters because he suspects they might betray him and generally just being a cruel asshole. While neither Olga or Anastasia make any major missteps and are proactive in their actions, it is more a matter of Sternberg being so disliked by anyone even remotely close to the court that everyone wants to get rid of him.
I don't think I ever portrayed the Ungern-Romanov Siberian Whites as incompetent. I think you might be mixing up the fact that there were several iterations of the Siberian Whites of which the first were ridiculously incompetent. The current Siberian Whites are an outgrowth of the movement which developed around Ungern and Olga and which was notably competent but autocratic, brutal and terroristic in approach.
If you go in and look up the various natural resources in Siberia, it is honestly ridiculous. The work put in by the Soviets to develop the region led to its exploitation and to it serving as an engine of economic growth for an otherwise cut-off economy. Here, the Siberian Whites get started on this a bit earlier than the Soviets. The main point of all this is that with a larger population and governmental focus on economic development in the Far East and Eastern Siberia, this region expands a lot more economically compared to the region IOTL.
The British and French don't intervene officially, they are providing military resources and observers. The reason for the Germans not acting was to avoid an escalation - basically a gentlemens agreement to provide arms to either side but avoid direct clashes between them in order to avoid a larger clash while undertaking negotiations to end the conflict. The comparison to providing aid to Ireland doesn't quite fit - if it was British and French aid to Austrian nationalists or the like that would be comparable. Here it is either side just tossing weapons at either side in a conflict, like they did in Arabia. Hell, the Croats actually made entreaties in hopes of German aid for their cause as well, but ended up getting screwed over by the German determination to limit the cost of intervention. If you look closely at the conflict as a whole, you should notice that the Germans basically ran off with most of Cisleithania without firing a bullet.
I didn't mean the heads, I meant the body they have to lean on to administrate anything. Those previously incompetent people didn't vanish overnight, and Siberia didn't really get a shipment of competent administrators willing to put up with Sternberg.
In general, the track record of autocratic regimes when receiving foreign aid tend to become disastrous fairly quickly because every layer takes its share before reaching the people.
In fact, investors getting fed up of the threat from Sternberg looming in the background is probably the biggest reason why his removal could go quickly. But welcoming them has a cost. Siberia will in practice be foreign owned very quickly since it depends entirely on aid, expertise and investment to develop, and it doesn't have the strength to deal with them on a more equal manner. In turn, those investors' clashing interests probably won't help stability or corruption.
Siberia is full of resources, but it is also very far from anything. The soviets had the advantage of a somewhat close industrial base to build up from. Here, the Siberian whites have to rely entirely on trading through their far east ports for it. Infrastructure probably took a beating during the war too. If there is a place that would develop a lot, it's the pacific coast since all the help they receive have to go through it and all their transport infrastructure leads there.
Update Twenty-Four (Pt. 2): The Wheel Grinds On
The Wheel Grinds On
Political Campaign in Berlin
A Teutonic Imperium
Political Campaign in Berlin
A Teutonic Imperium
Gustav Stresemann's second term as Chancellor would see a number of social, economic and cultural clashes which placed considerable pressure on German post-war society. In Germany, the proportion of the working population engaged in agriculture had been on a steady decline for decades, but by the 1925 census 30.5 percent of the working population still remained involved in the agrarian and forestry sector. The agrarian situation varied so greatly across the country that it would be hard to make generalisations. No area represented only one kind of land tenure and social system, though there were prevailing trends. In East Prussia large estates worked either by tenant or sharecropping systems or by agricultural labourers still predominated, though there were many small peasant holdings as well. Saxony had a mix of estate and peasant holdings. The south and southwest had primarily peasant holdings, and the same was true of the north and northwest where dairy farming predominated. All of the farmers hated the system of market and price controls imposed during the war, which continued in uneven form for some years afterward. Most of them dodged, bent, and undermined the system by black market transactions and felt no compunction. All the farmers benefited from the fact that they controlled basic products for which there was great demand. The distortions of the market as a result of controls and inflation gave the agricultural sector relative power, and enraged city dwellers especially, as well as a huge range of officials who were trying to steer the economy toward recovery.
Over the course of 1924 and early 1925, Friedrich Ebert and the SPD had turned its focus on the Junker estates of Prussia, and land reform generally, in a bid to extend support for the SPD beyond Germany's urban centres and end what they viewed as the exploitation of both rural and urban workers by the Junkers. At the heart of the issue lay the proven inability of the German state to feed its population during war-time and the clear inefficiencies of the large Junker estates which had struggled economically since the 1870s when American and Russian grain initially undercut the market. The Junker class had stubbornly held onto their estates across the region for decade after decade despite near-continuous economic losses and had secured the support of one pre-war government another.
This had the effect of artificially kept these estates alive in spite of fierce competition, not only of a foreign nature but from German commercial and smallholder farms, while allowing for the exploitation of the wider population. Indebtedness was the scourge of agriculture. Farmers climbed out of debt during the inflation and managed almost immediately to sink back in. Always eager to buy more land, they invested too heavily when the terms of trade were in their favor, and suffered when prices collapsed and they could no longer carry their mortgages. Moreover, they bemoaned the shortage of labor that they endured, especially the paucity of girls and young women willing to put up with the strain of agricultural labor. On the farms girls and women endured sixteen- to seventeen-hour working days, dirty conditions, and heavy lifting, all under the ever-watchful eye of the owner of the farm and his wife. These workers continued to labor under the highly repressive labor codes (Gesindeordnungen) that gave agricultural employers nearly feudal powers over their farmhands, male and female.
With Ebert pressing for the abolition of the Gesindeordnung and significant land redistribution in Prussia, the tenor of politics in Prussia rapidly turned hostile, with cries of treason rising from the ranks of the Junker class. At the same time, Ebert was able to secure support from the FVP and, surprisingly, the NLP for the effort with promises of support for commercial farming in these land reforms. While the more radical elements of land redistribution would ultimately not go through, Ebert was successful in securing the repeal of the Gesindeordnung, significant cuts to the subsidies granted to the Junker estates and, perhaps most significantly, the establishment of a governmental body and a body of legal requirements for productivity in order to enforce efficiency on the part of Junker estates, with the forced sale of estate lands should they be unable to follow regulations (9).
The political victory which these reforms constituted could not have come at a better time for an increasingly embattled mainline SPD, which found itself challenged on all sides. Internally, the SPD leadership found itself challenged by a loose collection of young and nationalistic leaders who pressed for changes to the party platform and a change in leadership to bring new voices to bear. Most significant of these figures was the vocal Otto Strasser, who conducted a major campaign against the party leadership in hopes of overthrowing them and replacing them with himself and his pack of followers.
At the same time, the SPD found itself attacked from the left by the Communists under Rosa Luxembourg, who claimed the SPD was little more than power-hungry bourgeoisie in workers' clothing - out to exploit the workers of Germany for their own gain. They pointed to the increasingly centralization focus of the SPD, who had made this shift in platform in order to consolidate their power over Prussia, as a clear example of the wrongheadedness of their rivals and pointed to the Communist regime in Moscow, with its leftist inclusiveness and internationalist outlook, as the only true form of socialism. The SPD and KPD clashed across a number of different planes, from establishing and supporting competing unions and challenging each other's candidates in working-class neighborhoods to the SPD using its governmental authority to come down harshly on more revolutionary cells, smearing the KPD with them by association.
Finally, on the right, the passage of the aforementioned land and legislative reforms as well, as Ebert's signalling that the Prussian government would seek to centralise authority at the Kingdom level, and thereby reduce the power and autonomy of the sub-state level, brought out the DKP and DNVP in large numbers to oppose anything the SDP sought to accomplish in Prussia (10). On a national level, the government found itself increasingly divided over the spending of tax revenues and a series of cultural clashes. Of the two, it would be the latter which caused most problems, as large segments of the DNVP, DKP and Centre united in a campaign against what they considered "Trashy and Filthy" writings.
The campaign had emerged well before 1914 and attracted a diverse array of supporters. Teachers, clerics, social workers, and all sorts of other conservatively minded people fumed about penny novels and other forms of cheap literature. The writings were, sometimes, pornographic, but more often were simply heart-thumping, horseback-mounting, detective-revolver-packing romance and adventure stories. Their wide availability and great popularity were signal features of modern, urban life. Enterprising publishers and authors spotted a lucrative market; high-volume printing presses, accustomed to churning out hundreds of thousands of copies of newspapers every day, could easily be adapted to pour out mass-market, cheaply made books or brochures. From pulpits and classrooms around Germany pastors, priests, and teachers spoke out against the dangers of Schund und Schmutz, trash and filth, and their portrayal of the excitement of the bright lights of the city, alcohol, bodies rubbing close to one another, sex. The writings appealed, so the critics said, to the most base human instincts and destroyed respect for authority. They were directly responsible for the frightening rise in criminal behavior, promiscuity, and sexually transmitted diseases. The works had no aesthetic value, the law’s advocates claimed, and were often the product of foreign, notably Jewish, authors. Reading them undermined young people’s ability to appreciate the great works of German literature and the deeper truths they revealed. Some of Germany’s leading intellectuals spoke out against the law as a blatant act of censorship that violated the constitution, but these intellectuals struggled mount a successful public campaign. The proponents were lodged in powerful institutions and successful pressure group, the Protestant and Catholic churches, the teachers’ association, the librarians’ association, middle-class women’s groups, and many others. For all their claims to be representing “traditional values,” they spearheaded a modern political mobilisation. They campaigned on the local level, organising exhibits, demonstrations, and rallies, which gelled into a national movement. They had direct social and personal links to the major centrist and conservative parties.
The sole reason for the failure of this bill was the decision on the part of the both the KPD and SPD leadership to back the opposition to the bills alongside the NLP and FVP, deeming it a threat to their own growing power amongst the German youth. On a state and sub-state level, Bavaria and Wurttemberg as well as East and West Prussia would all pass a bill similar to these efforts, but after two readings in the Reichstag the law failed to pass at the national level and was defeated in the Prussian Landtag, marking a major morale blow to the right and a victory for the shaky Left-Liberal alliance (11).
The middle years of the second decade of the twentieth century were amongst the most riotous and prosperous in German history. Germans went on a consumption binge, and they did it with modern flair. Even workers were looking for display and style, which more and more people were prepared to buy on credit. Rigid class lines dissolved around consumption as even middle-class people were buying on credit, whereas before the war only the poorest had gone into debt for consumer purchases. The better-off workers felt themselves to be more or less lower middle class, and they had taken on the requirements of the earlier lower-middle-class person without having the latter’s firm foundation of assets. In general, the sense of thrift had relaxed. People wanted to enjoy something from life, and they spent their money on clothes and externals of every kind. Even poor people bought butter instead of margarine, and everyone looked for good-quality meat. Shopkeepers, legislators, government inspectors, social workers all had the explanation: war and inflation. People had suffered enough deprivation and now wanted to enjoy themselves. In war and inflation they had learned that assets and goods, even life itself, were ephemeral. What had value one moment could, in a flash, depreciate to nothing. All that was solid melted into the air, not, as Marx said, under capitalism in general, but under the crisis conditions of total war and hyperinflation. Better to enjoy life now than live for the future.
This was an attitude both well suited for and cultivated by the advertising industry, which blossomed in this era of mass consumption. Advertisers merged the appeal of sex with the clean lines of modernist design. The line between advertising and art was quite indistinct. Many artists worked for advertising firms, and intellectual journals like Die Neue Linie adopted covers that could just as easily have been product endorsements. The architects of the new department stores, like Erich Mendelsohn, devoted great energies to interior design to ensure that the goods were displayed attractively and seductively. Outside, new construction techniques of steel, reinforced concrete, and plate glass allowed for ever larger display windows. Window dressing became a recognized profession, complete with formal apprenticeships, exams, and licenses. All over Berlin and even in provincial towns one could see on the streets the display of wealth and the penchant for modern design and consumption (12).
If modern consumption was one sign of the golden years of the post-war period; "Rationalisation” was the other. The term meant, most basically, the application of scientific methods to production in order to expand output, with less labor. Technological and managerial improvements were all the rage. Businesses combined, mechanised many processes, and shed workers. More than seven hundred institutes, state, private, and mixed, were involved in researching and planning rationalisation. The rewards were supposed to come in the form of economic prosperity for all, and it was on that basis, and because of their commitment to technology, that Social Democrats initially supported rationalisation. But the social benefits were never to emerge, at least not at the level at which they would have a highly beneficial impact on the broad mass of workers. Certainly, major companies deployed an array of welfare programs designed to bind workers to the firm. But major benefits like company housing were generally limited to an elite stratum of the workforce. For the rest, it was sports teams, parks and playgrounds, churches, cultural events, newspapers, and recreational associations, all sponsored by the company and dedicated to creating a loyal workforce. The companies directed many of their efforts at women, not female workers, but the wives of male workers. The presumption was that as the caretakers of the “orderly family,” widely understood as the bedrock of society, women would benefit from advice on how to conduct household labor more productively, which would also signify efficient use of the wages brought home by the male worker. A cozy, comfortable, and rationalised household would give the men the rest and recuperation they needed to perform well day in and day out, by the drill press, the mine seam, or the blast furnace (13).
While economic rationalisation and modern consumption fuelled Germany's economic miracle of the 1920s, it did create a series of major social and political challenges which the federal and state governments found themselves forced to deal with. While rationalisation naturally generated unemployment as previously occupied positions were removed in step with growing efficiencies, the growing economy and opportunities presented not only within Germany, but across much of Eastern Europe, helped alleviate some of the stress on the system while widespread campaigning for government-run or sponsored social welfare systems to assist these rationalisation efforts proved surprisingly popular not only amongst the trade unions and workers but with employers and the centrist consensus increasingly forming around the SPD-NLP-FVP-Centre at a the national level and in the Prussia government. The outcry against ever longer working hours and insufficient job or unemployment security led to a series of governmental reforms placing legal limits on working hours and the establishment of unemployment insurance as a worker's right rather than a conditional benefit.
The issue which would consume the most amount of time, and dominate political discourse for most of 1926 and the first half of 1927, would prove to centre on the role of the central government, the spending of government revenues and the degree to which it should intervene in state affairs. Central to the issue lay the current NLP-DKP-Centre government's focus on limiting governmental expenditure in favour of prioritising the repayment of state debts, almost to the exclusion on all else. There were clear reasons for why the government had this focus, given that most of this debt was help by the middle and upper classes, as well as by larger business and industry interests, the primary backers of the current government. With white-collar workers emerging as a stratum of the middle class and blue-collar workers' wages increasing, particularly in Prussia under the government-backed conflict conciliation system, the pressure for an end to the elite nature of the old middle-class of store owners and artisans and a sharing of tax contributions beyond the old elites became increasingly difficult to deal with for the federal government.
With the SPD under Ebert pouring gasoline on this fire, the Stresemann government found itself increasingly pressed to act or fall. Rather than break under the pressure, Stresemann chose to compromise and sought out Ebert to negotiate an agreement which might help set Germany on a good path forward. What Stresemann had not reckoned with was the opposition to such an agreement which he might have to face within his own coalition. The DKP under Oskar Hergt had served as a crucial part of Stresemann's coalition over the preceding years, but in the face of what many in his party viewed as capitulation to the leftists, he was forced to openly oppose the effort, going so far as to threaten to leave the governmental coalition and bring down the government. Everything was balanced on the knife's edge in mid-1927 when Stresemann decided to go with his previous decision, pushing forward with the legislative proposal, passing it with SPD and FVP backing.
This led to the departure of the DKP from the governmental coalition and strong pressure from Centre to depart as well, with some talking of a possible Centre-DKP-DNVP national-conservative government. What none of these figures had expected was for Stresemann to break with his long-held policy of keeping the SPD's power limited by inviting them to join the governmental coalition alongside the FVP, an offer which was accepted, marking the first time since the Great War that the SPD had been part of the national government. Centre politicians such as Wilhelm Marx and Heinrich Brauns called for Centre to abandon the governmental coalition as well, but the steadfast leadership under Matthias Erzberger remained aligned with Stresemann and backed the decision. The result was the restructuring of the governing coalition under Stresemann as NLP-Centre-FVP-SPD and a shift in governmental spending attitudes, allowing for the funding of a national unemployment insurance system, a series of significant school reforms which brought the curriculum up to date and introduced a host of modern ideas and concepts to the learning process and the establishment of a number of government-sponsored healthcare clinics in poorer urban districts - a move by the SPD to weaken support for the Communists which secured Stresemann's support (14).
Footnotes:
(9) With the more limited nature of constitutional changes ITTL, the Gesindordnung remains in place for another half-decade and is left to the SPD to abolish. Perhaps most significantly, Friedrich Ebert survives his OTL bout with gall stones by being in general better health, under less stress and without a court case to hold up his doctor's visit. As a result he gets medical aid in time and lives on past 1925 ITTL, providing the SPD with a strong central leader for at least a couple years longer.
(10) With Ebert holding on for the time being, Strasser and his followers remain kept at bay. The question now is whether the current leadership and their supporters can hold the line against the Strasserites and their ilk and whether Strasser himself eventually gives up on securing power over the SPD. An interesting development which continues here is a push for the centralisation of power and authority in the regional government in a bid to weaken the power of the right in Prussia.
(11) This clash over censorship is actually based on OTL, but with the stronger and more united Left and Liberal parties of TTL, resistance to the measure is stronger politically and the censorship efforts end up failing. This is actually a really interesting case which demonstrates how the political right in Germany learned to coordinate its mass populist efforts in the years before the Nazis came to power.
(12) This consumption binge is something that occurred IOTL, although ITTL it isn't quite as manic and probably has more in common with the OTL American consumption boom than the German one - still a powerful force, but not quite as mindlessly ruinous. This is a country truly enjoying its time in the sun and at peace, drawing heavily on its large Eastern European empire and rapidly growing industrial capacity.
(13) This is an extremely important point. In contrast to OTL, where the Weimar Republic really lacked the natural and economic resources to get rationalisation to function due to the mass unemployment it provoked, ITTL it large works as intended. The reason for this is that there are far more opportunities available to an unemployed German worker ITTL. With resources flooding Germany from Eastern Europe and global trade significantly stronger, not having been caught up quite as strongly by protectionist efforts, the factors are present to allow for Germany to really expand economically into the super-heavy-weight class. While unemployment remains an issue, alongside the general stress on workers and other issues which are discussed in the following segment, they are manageable ITTL, which is a sharp contrast to the completely unmanageable situation which presided IOTL. This results in a significantly more healthy economy, growing alongside the rationalisation efforts rather than the rationalization mechanisms provoking ever greater unemployment.
(14) I really hope people find all of this stuff interesting. We see a series of shifts in governmental attitudes here and the importance of men like Erzberger surviving into the 1920s and the greater strength of Conservative politics in contrast to National-Conservative, as seen by the that Oskar Hergt goes into the DKP rather than the DNVP ITTL. The unemployment insurance scheme is based on a similar effort IOTL which started under significantly greater stress than IOTL and had to be abandoned within a couple of years because of the Great Depression. Weimar Germany really is an interesting place when looking into what sort of legislative initiatives were undertaken.
Ruins in Calabria
The Building of an Empire
Over the course of the early 1920s, these efforts provoked considerable clashes between German business interests and the protectionist efforts undertaken by these nascent states to protect themselves from the dangers of the international market. One particularly heated case centring on the efforts of the German chemical giant BASF seeking to export nitrates to Poland to support agricultural development, but finding its efforts mired in bureaucratic entry barriers and high tariffs, would provoke a collapse of the current Polish government and its replacement with the more business-friendly Gabriel Narutowicz, who supported the reduction and simplification of tariffs in order to secure greater foreign investment in Poland.
However, this was just the most high profile of a series of similar cases where German investment and export efforts floundered in the face of ramshackle protectionist legislation. The solution, as viewed by the Germans, lay in the extension of the Zollverein to Eastern Europe, moving beyond its one-time role in uniting the German peoples and towards the creation of a Common Market. This would prove a central issue in European politics for much of 1924 and 1925, with protests and demonstrations for and against the proposal across much of the region. However, assent was eventually secured in Poland, Lithuania, Bohemia, the United Baltic Duchy and Romania for entrance into the Zollverein - secured at the Hamburg Conference of 1926, with currencies in all those states to be steadily brought into line with the German Reichsmark, the establishment of an equitable split in external tariffs and the establishment of a Zollverein Directorate in Prague to manage the customs and currency union.
While Denmark, Finland and Bulgaria all remained outside of the Zollverein, they were able to negotiate a trade deal with the Zollverein nations which saw tariffs between them significantly lowered, eased the movement of peoples and created greater ease of money transfers. This would prove particularly important in the case of Denmark, which became a hub for British and American investments into the Zollverein, given that the Danish state had been able to negotiate favorable deals on financial transactions with both states. At the center of the Zollverein's financial apparatus lay the city of Frankfurt, which was growing rapidly into the pre-eminent center of Central and Eastern European finance, locking out British, French and American banking interests in the region through the Zollverein (15).
The sudden incorporation of western Cisleithania, which would come to be referred to simply as the Kingdom of Austria, to Germany caused significant disruption to both Austrian and German state apparatuses. With the arrival of King Maximilian Eugen von Habsburg to Vienna, the Austrian peoples had much to celebrate. Under the continued leadership of Johannes Schober, the practicalities of Anschluss were undertaken as the Austrians were slowly transitioned to the German Reichsmark and the bureaucratic systems were aligned to German standards while large sections of the governmental bureaucracy was closed, no longer being necessary following the Austrian incorporation into Germany. Significant investment by German banks soon caused trouble, as Austrian banks found themselves threatened by hostile takeovers and powerful competitive forces which placed their formerly secure position under threat. The greatest blow of this period of financial instability came with the takeover of the debt-ridden Creditanstalt, which had over-leveraged itself when buying out the Anglo-Austrian Bank, by the Hamburg based Commerz- und Privat-bank AG. This merger created a banking goliath which would dominate German finance over the course of the 1920s, buying up dozens of smaller banks and several larger, although none would quite compete with Creditanstalt for size. The integration of Austrian industry to the wider German Empire would prove surprisingly painless, much of the groundwork for economic integration having already been undertaken in years prior as part of the Austro-Hungarian alliance with Germany and as part of its membership in the Zollverein. However, by 1928 most of the issues of incorporation had been at least partially resolved and the Austrian peoples looked forward to an age of prosperity mirroring what they saw their fellow Germans experience (16).
Not to be left out, the German dominated Romania would experience a period of unparalleled economic growth as oil production ballooned and agricultural production skyrocketed in response to the introduction of modern best practices. Over the course of the 1920s, the Romanian economy would expand rapidly, with the country becoming one of the most significant migration points for entrepreneurial Germans hoping to strike it rich. While the court was inundated in luxuries, keeping the King occupied with a life of indolence, his German minders strengthened their grip on power in Romania. The Romanian military received numerous "advisors" who effectively took over the running of the army while German diplomats and advisors inundated every governmental ministry. Much of the wealth generated in this period would find itself siphoned away from the wider populace, with the new German elite enjoying the fruits of victory. While well-paying jobs were created in large numbers within the petroleum industry, these positions were primarily occupied by Germans while agricultural and other low-skilled work was left to poorly paid Romanians. While there was some discontent, particularly from the displaced Romanian elites and a small core of nationalists, for the vast majority of the population it felt as though little had changed. During this period many populist, peasant and socialist political parties found themselves marginalized but not forbidden, with the entire political apparatus largely turned into little more than a rubber stamp for the German dominated government bureaucracy (17).
There was a great outcry following the fall of Rome to the Italian Communists in September of 1923 which had prompted further investment in the Royalist cause on the part of the French and British, while debate was undertaken in Parliament and the Reichstag over whether to intervene directly in the conflict. Catholic volunteers, particularly from Spain, rushed to volunteer to fight for the Royalists while communist unrest on Sardinia was put down with a hard hand, ensuring that the Royalists would at least remain secure in their control of the Mediterranean isles. With the royalists in disarray and the Communists on the offensive, there was little to prevent the subsequent fall of Naples and Foggia in November 1923. However, a harsh winter with driving rains which turned every road to slush and sickened even the heartiest would ensure that the Royalists would retain control of at least the southern sections of the Italian peninsula for the remainder of 1923.
This reprieve allowed the Royalists to get their affairs in order, securing an equilibrium between the government and the powerful Mafia, Fascist and religious factions which had become ascendant in royalist ranks. Large numbers of Sicilian peasants were conscripted by the Mafia, trained by British and French advisors, and dispatched to the mainland to assist in holding southern Italy for the King. It was in this period that the British and French invested in an alliance with the Croatians in their war with the Hungarians, in the process securing permission to base naval forces out of their Dalmatian ports wherefrom they raided the Italian coastline incessantly. While tensions with the Germans grew in response to the Allied investment in the Croatians, they themselves soon found that the Italian Communists would not let Veneto go without a fight.
Over the winter and spring of 1924, a bitter partisan conflict erupted in the Veneto as officers were murdered in their sleep and soldiers poisoned in their barracks, administrators were gunned down in the streets and collaborators were murdered and left on public display while women who consorted with German men were attacked and degraded. The sheer rancor came as a shock to the Germans, who had inherited the conflict with their incorporation of Austria, and as such they soon began implementing many of their counter-partisan methods which had caused so much trouble in Belgium. Anyone suspected of aiding in these activities were executed and houses of partisans were burned. The German government and public were consumed by debate over how to resolve the crisis, with many calling for the abandonment of Veneto rather than a continuation of the constant warfare of the last decade.
In mid-1924 Rathenau met with Gramsci in Chur where they negotiated an end to hostilities, with the Milanese government handing over Camillo Berneri and the other surviving perpetrators of the Schönbrunn Raid for justice in return for an end to the occupation of Italian territories. While there was some discussion of whether to acknowledge the Communists as the rightful Italian government, this floundered in the face of Catholic opposition in Germany. Berneri and his compatriots, the two that survived to be handed over, were judged guilty of terrorism and received life-time sentences - a precondition for their handover having been that the death penalty would not be applied (18).
When fighting restarted in the spring of 1924, the royalists proved surprisingly effective. Abandoning the flat heel of Italy, they had concentrated their forces in Calabria and the Basilicata, stretching north into the mountains surrounding Salerno. The result was a formidable defensive position from which the royalists and their allies were able to hold out against repeated communist assaults. With the coast covered by the British navy, the royalists were able to keep their men well supplied and in contact with each other, redirecting reinforcements by water at considerable speed and reacting with surprising ability to a series of major attacks. However, their position remained vulnerable in the north where Salerno sat at some remove from the remaining defensive positions. The result was that following the failed attacks of the spring and summer, the communists redirected their focus towards Salerno where they were able to slowly ground down the defenders, cutting them off from land by securing the long valley south of the city and limiting the ability of the British to aid them by emplacing large naval batteries off Amalfi. After bitter fighting, the Salernan defenders would surrender in the dying days of 1924, marking an end to another year of bitter fighting.
In the meanwhile, the communist regime worked overtime to improve relations with the Germans, increasingly desperate for access to international markets. With the Allied intervention in Croatia growing by the day and the Germans increasingly aligned behind the Hungarians, the entreaties were increasingly met with interest in Berlin. An illicit trade deal was negotiated just as the Battle of Salerno came under way while diplomatic representatives from Moscow would arrive in time to celebrate the fall of the city. In Milan the communist regime set about reforming Italian history, pointing to the long history of republican rule in Italy as an antecedent to their own regime. Inspired by events in Russia, the government in Milan would embark on an ambitious educational program which saw schools established across much of the country under their control and an overhauling of the educational system to bring it into line with the ideological baseline of the regime. Marx, Bakunin and Fanelli all figured heavily in this curriculum and introduced leftist ideas at an early age.
With the Allies and Germans increasingly focused on the war in the Habsburg realms in early 1925, the situation grew grimmer for the royalists in Calabria. At the same time tensions between Nitti and the Mafia began to flare, primarily over the Mafia's protection of the constantly agitating Achille Starace, which culminated in the assassination of Starace by a "rogue fascist" in March of 1925, gunning him down in the street while under the protection of Don Calogero Vizzini. This mortally offended Don Calo and as a result retaliation was swift to follow, with Premier Nitti's youngest son Federico being kidnapped in late March. Nitti reacted with considerable anger, ordering a police raid on a series of Mafia related businesses in Palermo, only to receive one of Federico's fingers from the Mafia in response. With the Mafia openly feuding with the government, Sicilian conscripts abandoned their posts and sailed home in fishing boats by the hundreds, gravely weakening the royalist positions in the south.
With everything on the edge of disaster, Nitti was finally convinced by Dino Grandi to give way, apologising to Don Calo for the overreach and granting considerable leeway to the Mafia in the appointment of local politicians in central and southern Sicily. However, while Nitti's son would be returned less one finger, it would prove too late for the royalist positions on the mainland. With the Sicilians defecting by the hundreds, it had not taken long before this spread to the other troops - with the result that when the communists launched their Spring offensive, they encountered little to no actual opposition. The royalists were forced to sabotage what they could, fleeing the mainland in disarray. By May of 1925, the Communist government in Milan was able to declare the Italian mainland liberated. While the British would continue their naval blockade of Italy for the remainder of the year, they would soon find that the Germans unwelcoming of this intervention in the Adriatic, Berlin having negotiated a major trade deal with the Milanese regime and acknowledged their government in early June of 1925. This would be a key reason for the neutrality enforced upon the Habsburg realms, forcing the British from the Adriatic (19).
Footnotes:
(15) There are a number of points which should be mentioned here. First of all, I.G. Farben is never formed ITTL and as a result companies like Bayer and BASF are still independent of each other. Second, with the alternate course of events in Poland ITTL, Narutowicz is never assassinated and becomes part of the pro-German faction in government. While he remains nationalistic in outlook, he is willing to abide the Germans as long as they bring prosperity with them - which, for the time being, they are. As for the extension of the Zollverein, it seemed like the most obvious and logical way for Germany to expand its economic dominance over Eastern Europe and cut out competitors. While money is transferred through Denmark to Frankfurt, business within the Zollverein is conducted almost exclusively through German, Danish and Bohemian banks.
(16) Without the Austrian state to bail out the Creditanstalt every time it overleveraged, it proves easy pickings for the German banks which come looking for ways to secure swift market entry in Austria. The result is Creditanstalt's merger with the Commerzbank, creating a large and powerful bank which dominates much of Austria and can use this advantage to outmanoeuvre its German competitors. The integration of Austria to Germany isn't particularly smooth, but it does eventually work out.
(17) Romania experienced considerable economic prosperity in the 1920s and much of that is mirrored here, however little of that prosperity actually gets to the population as a whole. Much like in other oil-rich nations, a small elite are able to siphon off most of the wealth. Furthermore, Romania does not experience anything close to the same level of peasant unrest and disruption experienced in the neighbouring regions. The dominance of the National Liberals and Conservatives of the political sphere is upheld ITTL through German interference and the Peasant Party is not able to make its OTL gains in 1919 through their intervention in the electoral process. The Romanian electoral process has been turned into little more than a show election in which the winning candidates have already been selected by the government bureaucracy. However, there is some economic spillover which improves the lot of many Romanians, just nowhere near the level it would if they had control of their government.
(18) The royalists have been granted the time they needed to build up defences and bring their house in order, while the French and British become even more open about their involvement in the conflict, but in return the communists have restored Veneto and brought an end to conflict with the Germans. While they lack international acknowledgement, their popularity is soaring as the restoration of Veneto buys them a lot of credit with the populace.
(19) I know, I know, the whole Mafia kidnapping and finger cutting is a cliche, but there is a reason for that cliche. The main point I am trying to convey here is that the Liberal government and the Mafia are finding their recent closeness a bit of a chore. The toe of Italy is really fantastic defensive land, particularly given the British control of the seas. The decision by the Germans to acknowledge the Italian Communist regime in 1925, despite the protests of the Catholics and Conservatives, is another instance where Stresemann's pragmatism gets him into problems with his coalition partners. It is this strain, among others, which eventually leads to the collapse of the government coalition. In general, Stresemann is pretty open to working with socialists and social democrats if he believes it will benefit Germany, which he in this case does.
End Note:
Splitting the update significantly helped me get quality content ready for the TL and gave me more breathing room. I hope people will be able to content themselves with a continuation of these splits. Next we will have a narrative update. I am aiming to have it out on Sunday next week, but I am expanding the PoV to three instead of two (depending on how I manage time-wise I might even add a fourth). I hope you enjoy.
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Wow, Italy's gone fully Communist. I'm surprised the Germans just kind of... accepted a fully Communist Italy on their southern border without some serious retaliation.
As far as Germany itself, it seems likely that they will become the hegemon of Europe pretty soon. With the Brits drained of resources from Ireland, and the French exhausted, no one is there to challenge their power. Maybe early EU?
Also, does Max von Habsburg retain all of his Austrian titles, or does he just become "King of Austria"?
As far as Germany itself, it seems likely that they will become the hegemon of Europe pretty soon. With the Brits drained of resources from Ireland, and the French exhausted, no one is there to challenge their power. Maybe early EU?
Also, does Max von Habsburg retain all of his Austrian titles, or does he just become "King of Austria"?
Keep in mind that the Germans already accepted a Communist Russia after spending years fighting against them and that the Communists border on their Austrian border, far from anywhere that the power brokers in Berlin view as significant.
Furthermore, Communism has a significantly more mixed reputation in Germany than in say the US, France or Britain. Rosa Luxembourg and other German Communists aren't exactly viewed as mainstream, but they also aren't viewed as irredeemable terroristic monsters, and this has an effect on how the rest of the political establishment views the Milanese communists. Hell, Gramsci proved downright decent when it came to handing over actual terrorists like Berneri. The German government views Communist Italy as a significant, but dangerous, opportunity to challenge British dominance of the Mediterranean at some point in the future.
It is more Mitteleuropa than the EU. Germany is clearly the central hegemon of the powerblock and little happens without Berlin's sanction. Furthermore, there is a flood of German business into the region hoping to exploit the underprovided markets of Eastern Europe and to secure control of the vast natural resources of the region. It is a synergetic relationship, but the Germans definitely reap far more benefits than their partners.
Max's title as King of Austria is implemented to create a formal state in the German Reich, similar to Bavaria, Baden or Prussia. Within the Kingdom of Austria are all the subsidiary titles held by Max.
So the crown lands of Austria were merged, but the titles retained, or are the crown lands untampered with and directly incorporated into the Reich?