Update Twenty-Five (Pt. 2): Society in Flux
  • Society in Flux

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    A Berlin Nightclub

    Dealing With Feminity

    At the heart of 1920s society was a quest to discover what it meant to live in modern times, in effect the search for new forms of expression suitable to uncertainties of modern life, and the belief in the possibilities of the future. At the centre of this search lay modern society: an urban, industrial society composed of a mélange of sights, sounds, and thoughts connected with the city, with science and technology and layers of bureaucracy, with rational modes of thinking and complex social hierarchies. The world of the bourgeoisie and proletariat uncomfortably situated amid the old elite and a still-substantial peasantry, an urban world of gamblers, thieves, cops, prostitutes and an educated middle class desperately trying to maintain and improve its stature and status. This was “mass society,” a phenomenon that was both stimulating and unsettling which was sweeping across all of Western Europe at the time. In the shadow of war and revolution, the great disruptive events that left no life untouched, and the unceasing fluctuations of European politics led thinkers to probe ever deeper in immense bursts of creative expression.

    Politics in this era were characterised by popular mobilisations in the form of rallies and mass demonstrations in the streets, petition drives and letter-writing campaigns. Through these measures, all sorts of associations, from socialist youth groups to middle-class teachers’ organisations, exercised sharp pressure on the formal institutions of governance. At the same time, the elites continued to exercise influence through their prominent role in major institutions like the army, the churches, and the state bureaucracy. European politics were intensely modern, as the high level of popular mobilisation signified; at the same time, there existed profound residues of traditional power. There was no easy and clear Left-Right distinction in this regard: the extreme and even, at times, the established Right adopted all the forms and techniques of modern mobilisations and propagated modern ideologies, while liberals advocated a more traditional politics on the rule of law while also promoting the deference of the lower classes to those higher on the social and educational scale. The army and bureaucracy, populated at the upper levels by the wellborn and the well-connected, continued to command power and loyalties while also giving rise to a self-aware white-collar middle class.

    Yet there was also a freshness to post-war politics in Europe, for good and bad. New parties and movements emerged on the right and the left, and the style of confrontational mass politics that they promoted influenced every other political group. All of them had to contest elections in a raucous public sphere and learn how to use the new media to their advantage. The Right had come to understand that politics could no longer consist solely of deals made among men of the “better classes” in their clubs, boardrooms, and offices. In the age of mass politics and total war, traditional politics had to find a popular base. It had to win the support of millions of people who would march behind elite men: followers who would vote, march, and rally; would read, write, and propagandise their views. The Right followed the pioneering insight of the Left: there was power to be found in mass mobilisation (10).

    The new parties on the extremes were better than anyone else at mass mobilisation because they were less hobbled by tradition. They added paramilitary organisations and street battles to the repertoire of political contention, lending a sharp edge to European politics that enhanced its populist character. In cities and towns, Germans, Frenchmen, Italians and British were literally assaulted with slogans and starkly drawn poster images and with marching men. Crowds of both genders lined the streets to gaze; flying teams of agitprop players performed skits on street-corners and then rapidly moved on, before the police or rival groups appeared. Processions moved this way and that, and sometimes culminated in the seizure of the city hall, a company’s headquarters, or the marketplace. This was a politics of display and spectacle, suitable for an era of mass media and a society and polity deeply divided.

    It was also a politics, Right and Left, defined by militancy, by hostility to the existing social order of inherited privilege and of the status that came with education and property. Neither Communists nor those on the extreme Right displayed much deference to established authority and its status symbols. They broke the boundaries of politics as they had existed in the pre-war period. Women’s suffrage, passed in both France and Britain in the aftermath of the Great War, women’s activism, and reformism also added a new dimension to politics. Each of the parties now had to contend with female as well as male voters, the greater public presence of women, and women in their own ranks. The Center-left were especially worried about what they saw as the religious and conservative inclinations of women.

    Indeed, there was some rightward tug as a result of female suffrage, but not, as many contemporaries claimed, to the far right. In municipalities women won representation and found avenues for their talents and abilities in the expanding social welfare realm of the Germany and, to a lesser extent, France and Britain. Women worked as welfare inspectors, child and family counselers, and health officers. In national and various regional parliaments they served especially on committees dealing with health and education. They had a profound impact in these areas, and also in the newly professionalized field of social work. But major ministries and offices: economics, defence, and the interior, remained closed to them (11).

    Alongside the enfranchisement of women and a sense of moving forward into a new world, leaving behind the stigmas, hide-bound traditions and misunderstandings of the past, the post-war era, particularly in Germany, would see the beginnings of a revolution in the popular understanding of sex, bodies and the role of women in society. A legion of reformers diligently set about trying to help relieve Germans of their perceived misconceptions and "sexual misery", hoping that with explicit descriptions of sexual techniques and friendly counselling, they could show Germans how to lead pleasurable and healthy sex lives, which in turn, would create a sound, flourishing, productive, and fertile society. Across the extensive and very loosely knit sex reform movement, the post-war world opened up vast new opportunities. As in the fields of art and architecture, many of these reformers had completed their professional training and begun their work before 1914 but with the considerable relaxation of official censorship, as part of the new deal between the Imperial monarchy and its subject, and the fact that these sex reformers secured political allies in power, especially at the local level in SPD–run municipalities.

    Moreover, the war had caused a tectonic shift in moral and sexual values. For many Germans, the war dramatically demonstrated the ephemeral character of life. With so many men killed and ravaged by bullets, shells, and gas, so many women left without loved ones or reduced to caring for the seriously maimed. Why not indulge life’s pleasures when possible? To be modern meant a freer, more open attitude toward bodies and sex. But the image of liberated sex and, especially, of the “new woman,” the lithe, athletic, emancipated woman of the 1920s, also inspired visceral and vitriolic responses.

    Of all the flash points of cultural conflict in post-war Germany, none aroused so much deeply felt passion, so much debate, so much hostility, as the issues of sex and the family, and of women, what they did and how they looked, in particular. These issues lay at the very core of what Germans did and thought in their intimate and spiritual lives, and struck at the heart of beliefs about how Germans should live together, whether, as some believed, as a sober, sexually modest Christian family would undergird a moral society, or whether, as others advocated, sexual pleasure would help create the emancipated, open, and democratic Germany of the future. Between the defenders of the Christian family and the advocates of erotic fulfillment lay an unbridgeable chasm. On only one matter was there agreement: for both reformers and conservatives, sex was never simply a private matter, and no one, not even the most radical reformer, ever promoted pleasure for pleasure’s sake, it had to have a social and political purpose (12).


    Many of the reformers were left-wing doctors, including a substantial number of female physicians, and they knew the difficult conditions their patients faced. They lived in small, dark, overcrowded apartments where no one could find privacy, least of all a couple making love. Women were worn out by the burdens of housework, labor outside the home, and endless pregnancies. The level of ignorance about sex and biology was shocking. Terminated pregnancies, though illegal, were prevalent, and many women suffered the dire health consequences of back-alley abortions. A virtual epidemic of venereal diseases plagued the lives of men and women. Many reformers did not believe in sexual monogamy, and most advocated premarital sex. But they were often shocked by the casual sexual lives and the resultant cycle of unwanted pregnancies and illegal and dangerous abortions experienced by so many of the women they encountered.

    The sex reformers counselled, wrote, and lectured in a highly politicised, highly activist environment. “Sexual misery,” “marital misery,” “the crisis of the family,” “depopulation”: this was the language that saturated public discussion, and every political group had its prescription. The reformers found critical support especially at the municipal level, where Social Democrats or at least the Weimar Coalition parties dominated many city councils and governments, and from a diverse popular movement. A huge expansion of family- and sex-counselling clinics resulted, even in small towns. Most were led by physicians, women activists, and officials of various sex reform league, often one and the same person performing multiple roles.

    The sex reform leagues had more than 150,000 members, and an influence far beyond their numbers through their publications, lectures, clinics, and sales of condoms and other birth control measures. The leagues included laypeople, health-care professionals, social workers, activists in the socialist and communist parties and government officials. Many of them were involved in the energetic public campaign against paragraph 218, the legal provision that criminalized abortion. On the streets, in the legislatures, in theaters, and in the press, a large popular movement emerged in 1929, and it was one of the few issues of the post-war era that cut across class, gender, and political lines. Hundreds of thousands of Germans demanded that women have the right to an abortion free of the fear of criminal prosecution and in safe, healthy conditions. This would culminate in the repeal of Paragraph 218 in 1930 by the governmental coalition of SPD-NLP-FVP parties with communist backing for the repeal in another blow to conservative principles in the German Reich (13).

    The image of the new woman, however limited its incarnation in real life, provoked a tidal wave of commentary, some supportive, some filled with loathing. The very notion that women could determine their own lives, might decide not to marry or might choose to have a variety of sex partners, and not all of them male, the display of female desire on the cinema screen and in pulp and even serious fiction, all that struck something very deep, in men and women. For many people, body emancipation, whether in bed, on the streets, or at the beach, was one very powerful way to be modern and to display one’s rejection of the confining world of pre-war world. But there was more: the mass media lived off the display of beautiful bodies. Movies, photography, magazines, all thrived because the visual image, whether as an advertisement or as an art form, resonates so powerfully with humans and in the 1920s had become so easily and extensively reproducible. Moreover, a society that had become “mass” could now gather in the tens of thousands to watch spectacles of physical competition, whether boxing matches or soccer games, that would also be carried live on radio and reported in the newspapers.

    The hard-fought, often bitter discussions and commentary about the changing status of women and the body raged on in every public venue, in newspaper columns and illustrated magazines, on the radio, from pulpits, and in the halls of government. The broad expansion of the public sphere in the 1920s, wrought by democratization and the new media, made the conflict over the sexual revolution even more visible and contentious. But it was the churches in particular that thundered their opposition to all the sex talk and the public display of lightly clad bodies. All this, according to both the Protestant and Catholic churches, was the most blatant sign of the spiritual crisis of the age.

    For all their differences and hostilities, both major churches, Lutheran and Catholic, sounded similar themes: the family was the foundation of society, and only families infused with Christian values could provide the basis for a healthy and fertile society and a moral and powerful state. The sharp decline in the birthrate, the scandalous number of abortions, and the rapid increase in the incidence of venereal diseases were fearsome signs. In some areas of Germany, Protestants charged, premarital sex had become the new moral standard, the “unblemished beginning of marriage” an exception. Even the birth of a child out of wedlock was no longer seen as a sin. Conservatives all over Germany, the Protestant and Catholic churches in particular, loathed the sex and body talk and imagery of Weimar. To them, all this represented the victory of a hedonistic, atheistic, and materialistic worldview. They fought vigorously against it - and increasingly against the government on which they foisted the blame for Germany’s growing degeneracy. Many of these developments would find themselves mirrored elsewhere with greater or lesser reactions, in America where nativism and moral outrage ran rampant, in France where Catholic religiosity experienced a profound expansion or in Britain where the Conservative government did what it could to ignore the problem in hopes that it would disappear (14).

    Footnotes:

    (10) This is not all that different from similar developments IOTL, although it bears mentioning that particularly France finds itself even more powerfully influenced by these forces than IOTL. There is a degree of fragility to the current European status quo which leaves everyone walking on eggshells, fearing that one wrong move could set off another cataclysmic war or provoke another bloody revolution.

    (11) Women's suffrage is going somewhat more swiftly ITTL, most significantly in France and Italy where the French governmental coalition and the Communist regime both expand their franchises to include women - in both cases in a bid to strengthen their own power bases. Much as in the United States, Germany and Britain, this has the effect of drawing women into politics and public life, but doesn't shift the political status quo too significantly.

    (12) These are actually largely debates and cultural clashes from OTL which caused immense division in Germany. It bears mentioning that Germany's greater cultural sphere of influence ITTL means that many of these issues, questions and challenges are transferred internationally and become yet another part of the cultural clash occurring across much of Eastern Europe in particular. Cities like Warsaw, Vilnius, Riga, Rostov-on-Don, Bucharest and Sofia are all being exposed to these fundamental social questions which the Germans are asking themselves with rather explosive results in many cases.

    (13) The anti-criminalisation of abortion movement is actually something that occurred IOTL, reaching its peak in 1931 but failing to secure repeal. ITTL the movement is a bit faster off the ground and as a result is better able to snowball. Another key development is the jettisoning of NLP's governmental coalition with the DKP and Centre in favor the SPD and FVP. This shift brings the supporters of the movement into the halls of power and brings the national government into alignment in favor of repeal. While the conservative elements scream bloody murder at these developments, they find their power insufficient to halt the repeal - but it does come to serve as a galvanizing force on the right.

    (14) The world of the 1920s is one of profound contrasts and contradictions. It is a period in which social, sexual and cultural freedoms blossomed as rarely before and a period in which those very developments caused intense political and social turmoil. Deep fissures in society were exposed and provoked incredible conflicts which threatened to tear apart states. That is no different ITTL. While the forces of conservative thought are stronger in some regions than IOTL, in others they are far weaker and anaemic, looking for something to reignite their support. The threat and promise of communism hangs over everything and sees other political forces struggle to deal with them. In some cases, as in Germany, the government reacts by seeking to co-opt some of their more acceptable platforms while in others they react through censorship and nationalism.

    Endnote:

    I was caught by the urge to work on the TL after getting home from family Christmas celebrations, so this section of the update was finished far quicker than I had expected. I am sorry about being completely unreliable with regards to update rate, timing and warning, but I hope an earlier than expected update makes up for it. I had thought that Christmas celebrations would take more out of me. I also recently secured an internship for mid-January, so I have no idea how much time or energy I will be able to devote to the TL at that point. Will have to wait and see for that. I really hope you enjoy this one. I decided to dig into how politics and female suffrage have influenced each other and the impact of the sexual revolution of the 1920s. The focus in this update has mainly been on Germany because that is where I have the best sources for, but many of these developments are happening at least to some extent across much of the western world - the reaction from place to place is rather different though and should, at least in part, be dealt with in future updates.

    And yes, I rather shamelessly stole the picture from a scene in the TV-show Babylon Berlin. If you haven't had the chance, I would strongly recommend it. It is absolutely fantastic in its setting and world building, covering the late 1920s Berlin.

    IMPORTANT NOTE: I have added another paragraph to the previous section dealing with culture, this one dealing with the effects of a wider spread of new technologies on society as a whole. I originally wrote it for this section, but it really didn't fit once I got finished writing.
     
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    Update Twenty-Five (Pt. 3): Society in Flux
  • Society in Flux

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    Electrification of Paris

    Technology On The March

    The 1920s would see a massive technological boom as mass production techniques, business rationalisation methods and technological upgrading led to major steps forward. Perhaps most significant of the technological developments which came to a head during the 1920s was the mass electrification of factories in America and Europe. Though electricity was a well-established technology in 1920, its impact on productivity had been limited by old-fashioned industrial design. Prior to the 1920s, most factories were powered by big steam engines which sat in the basement and powered machines on the upper floors through vertical shafts that ran up the side of the building, and horizontal shafts on each floor of the building. At first factory owners were reluctant to waste all their sunk costs: they simply replaced the steam engines with electrical motors and expected the workers to put up with the inconvenience of tall buildings and lots of horizontal shafts. But during the 1920s, factory owners realised that it might prove beneficial to start from scratch: they started powering their machines with individual motors and laying out their factories horizontally rather than vertically.

    The electrification of households in Europe and North America began in early in the century in many major cities and in areas served by electric railways before increasing rapidly, reaching nearly 70% in the United States by 1930. Mass production improved productivity, which was a contributing factor to economic growth and the decline in work week hours, alongside other factors such as transportation infrastructures, canals, railroads and highways, and agricultural mechanisation. These factors caused the typical work week to decline from 70 hours in the early 19th century to 60 hours late in the century, then to 50 hours in the early 20th century and would finally reduce it to 40 hours by the middle of the 1930s. Mass production permitted great increases in total production with the result that by the late 1920s many previously scarce goods were in good supply, allowing for the evolution of consumerism by lowering the unit cost of many goods used.

    At the same time, a revolution within agriculture initiated by the invention of the combine harvester began to present a major issue as overproduction of grain placed increasingly immense pressure on the rural population of particularly the United States. The Great War had created an atmosphere of high prices for agricultural products as European nations demand for exports surged. Farmers had enjoyed a period of prosperity as U.S. farm production expanded rapidly to fill the gap left as European belligerents found themselves unable to produce enough food. When the war ended, supply increased rapidly as Europe's agricultural market rebounded. Overproduction led to plummeting prices which led to stagnant market conditions and living standards for farmers in the 1920s. Worse, hundreds of thousands of farmers had taken out mortgages and loans to buy out their neighbours' property, and now are unable to meet the financial burden. The cause was the collapse of land prices after the wartime bubble when farmers used high prices to buy up neighbouring farms at high prices, saddling them with heavy debts. By the second half of President McAdoo's Presidency this crisis was growing to a such a proportion that governmental intervention was becoming increasingly necessary (15).

    The post-war era was a golden age of physics, particularly theoretical physics, and although it was very much an international effort, the centres of gravity in those years were three institutes, in Copenhagen, Göttingen, and Munich. Niels Bohr’s Institute of Theoretical Physics had opened in Copenhagen in January 1921, quickly followed, in 1922, by the award of a Nobel Prize. Just before the Great War, Bohr had explained how electrons orbit the nucleus only in certain formations, which married atomic structure to Max Planck’s notion of quanta. But, in the same year that he was awarded the Nobel Prize, Bohr also explained the fundamental links between physics and chemistry, showing that successive orbital shells could contain only a precise number of electrons, and introduced the idea that elements that behave in a similar way chemically do so because they have a similar arrangement of electrons in their outer shells, which are the ones most used in chemical reactions. In 1925 the center of activity moved for a time to Göttingen.

    Before World War I, British and American students regularly went to Germany to complete their studies, and Göttingen was a frequent stopping-off place. Bohr gave a lecture there in 1922 and was taken to task by a young student who corrected a point in his argument. Bohr, being Bohr, hadn’t minded. The young Bavarian Werner Heisenberg was invited to Copenhagen by Bohr where they set about tackling further challenges of quantum theory. Heisenberg returned to Göttingen enthused by his time in Copenhagen but also confused. Over the coming years, Heisenberg and a growing menagerie of physicists including the Frenchman Louis de Broglie, the Austrian Erwin Schrödinger, Einstein and Max Born all provided crucial contributions to the development of quantum weirdness.

    At the same time, a coalition of anti-relativists, opposed to Einstein's theories grew increasingly vocal in their opposition to relativism and the increasingly complex theoretical nature of the field of physics, led by the notable scientists Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark. While both were competent physicists and Stark was a Nobel prize winner, their hatred and opposition to Einstein and what they viewed as the general "degradation and Jewishness" of the current forefront of theoretical physics led them to abandon relativity and quantum physics in favor of what they described as "German Physics". While Stark and Lenard would succeed in finding far-right backers, they were laughed out of the respectable scientific community and soon found themselves pushed to the margins, subsisting largely on the good will of sympathetic Junker sponsors.

    The fresh data that the new physics was producing had very practical ramifications that arguably have changed our lives far more directly than was at first envisaged by scientists mainly interested in fundamental aspects of nature. Radio moved into the home in the 1920s; television was first demonstrated in August 1928. Another invention using physics revolutionized life in a completely different way: this was the jet engine, developed almost simultaneously by the Englishman Frank Whittle and the German Hans von Ohain which would begin to see theoretical and experimental use in the 1930s (16).


    An area which would see considerable change and adaptation to new learnings from the 1910s were the medical sciences. After the Great War and the subsequent wars, the massive world-wide catastrophe of the Spanish Flu and the famine which had torn across Russia, there had been plenty of opportunity for doctors across the world to work towards improving their methodologies. Large-scale wars were attended by medics and mobile hospital units which developed advanced techniques for healing massive injuries and controlling infections rampant in battlefield conditions while thousands of scarred troops provided the need for improved prosthetic limbs and expanded techniques in plastic surgery or reconstructive surgery. These practices would be combined to broaden cosmetic surgery and other forms of elective surgery in the post-war period. Furthermore, during the Great War, Alexis Carrel and Henry Dakin developed the Carrel-Dakin method of treating wounds with an irrigation, Dakin's solution, a germicide which helped prevent gangrene while spurring the usage of Roentgen's X-ray, and the electrocardiograph, for the monitoring of internal bodily functions. This would then be followed in the post-war period by the development of the first anti-bacterial agents such as sulpha antibiotics.

    However, arguably the most significant medical development of the 1920s was the wide spread of the eugenics movement, particularly to Europe from America. While the roots of modern eugenics arose with the writings of the British Francis Galton, it had been the United States which was quickest to adopt and implement the concept. Over the course of the pre-war years, organisations had been formed to win public support and sway opinion towards responsible eugenic values in parenthood, including the British Eugenics Education Society of 1907 and the American Eugenics Society of 1921, both of which sought support from leading clergymen and modified their message to meet religious ideals. In 1907 Indiana had become the first of more than thirty states to adopt legislation aimed at compulsory sterilisation of certain individuals, mostly institutionalised individuals. Starting in 1896 with Connecticut, many states had begun implementing marriage laws with eugenics criteria while scientific efforts to map eugenics criteria were established, truly taking off with the establishment of the Eugenics Record Office in 1910.

    By 1910, there was a large and dynamic network of scientists, reformers and professionals engaged in national eugenics projects and actively promoting eugenic legislation. The American Breeder's Association was the first eugenic body in the U.S., established in 1906 under the direction of biologist Charles B. Davenport. The ABA was formed specifically to "investigate and report on heredity in the human race, and emphasise the value of superior blood and the menace to society of inferior blood". In the years to come, the ERO collected a mass of family pedigrees and concluded that those who were unfit came from economically and socially poor backgrounds. However, the ERO's suggested solutions, ranging from deportation, segregation and sterilisation to outright extermination, and research methodologies met with considerable scorn from Mendelian biologists and geneticists, with the criticism focusing on the crude methodology of eugenicists, and the characterisation of almost every human characteristic as being hereditary, rather than the idea of eugenics itself (17).

    On the basis of the American model, eugenic sterilisation policies were soon being developed in Europe. The first eugenic or "racially hygienic" forced sterilisation and forced castrations in Europe took place in Switzerland in 1890, with more to follow in the years to come. However, it would be Scandinavia which quickly emerged at the very forefront of the worldwide eugenics movement. One of the most comprehensive eugenics programs in the world would come to be conducted in Sweden where as early as 1909, a Swedish Society for Racial Hygiene was founded for the purpose of eugenic research. A network of people from different parties worked to establish a state institute for racial biology and advocated a law for eugenic sterilisation while two legislative proposals for the foundation of such an institute were introduced in 1921 in both chambers of the Swedish parliament. On the basis of the legislative proposals, the Swedish Parliament decided in 1921 to found the State Institute of Racial Biology at the University of Uppsala. In 1922, the Social Democrats drafted a bill to sterilise the mentally disabled.

    The spread of eugenic ideas in Swedish Social Democracy was furthered by close contact with German Social Democrats, which was also cultivated through the mutual exchange of visiting scholars at the Berlin Society for Racial Hygiene and the University of Uppsala. Thus, while American eugenics were the initial instigation point for German eugenics, it would be to Scandinavia they turned for inspiration in the years to come. That is not to say that German eugenics were anything other than pioneering, from seeking to take a Medelian approach to social Darwinism - seeking to explore the hereditary development of a population based on its socio-political state, and working towards the exploration of the mythologized Aryan race and its connection to the Nordic peoples. In 1920, the German National Assembly decided to introduce a eugenic leaflet with warnings about possible hereditary offspring by registrars in the run-up to each marriage , but strictly rejected possible marriage bans against allegedly "inferiors".

    Sterilisation laws were repeatedly discussed by various parties, most consistently by the SPD, and would be implemented in Prussia, Bavaria, Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Hesse by the end of the decade, with attempts at federal implementation of sterilisation laws having failed. In 1923 Fritz Lenz's appointment to the University of Münich would be the first of a chair for race hygiene at a major German university. More and more racial hygienists were also involved in policy advice and found their way into the SPD, FVP, NLP while a rather large fringe with a more outwardly racist and anti-Semitic outlook found themselves welcomed into the DNVP, both Centre and the DKP preaching actively against the movement on the basis of its advocacy of what they viewed as interference with God's work.

    In contrast to these positions was that of the Communist movement, building out of the nascent Russian eugenics movement in the years prior to the Russian Revolution. Russian eugenics largely unanimously criticised and rejected the racial and class elements of German racial hygiene and British-American eugenics, and especially after the revolution emphasized the importance of the social environment, education and upbringing. They condemned measures of negative eugenics such as segregation and sterilisation of the "unfit", which were so popular in Germany, Scandinavia and the United States and as an alternative, they proposed an improvement in social conditions, reforms and preventive medicine. This would be taken up by the global communist movement as well, with the result that in Germany a number of positive eugenics measures, such as rewards for large and healthy families as well as for the families of children who exhibited wished-for traits, while research into genetics, invitro fertilisation and even cloning would receive considerable financing, were implemented alongside communist-promoted and backed social reforms and wider preventative medical research alongside the pre-existing negative eugenics measures (18).

    Footnotes:

    (15) I have decided to largely keep technological development at least relatively on track for the time being and as such much of this mirrors a lot of what was going on IOTL. The major point which should draw attention here is that the American agricultural sector is faltering under massive debts, low demand and rapidly rising global productivity increases. This happened IOTL and led to a push for agricultural subsidies which IOTL failed in favour of smaller and more disparate measures. While subsidies might not be implemented ITTL, although the likelihood of a Democratic government doing so is much higher than with a Republican one, the issue will play into events the next time we turn to the United States.

    (16) This is again largely OTL but keep in mind that there was a lot of disruption within the field of theoretical physics in the 1930s. Perhaps most significant in this case is that Stark and Lenard's push towards "German Physics" proves even less popular ITTL and is largely ignored outside of far-right nationalist circles. IOTL they were able to ride the Nazis rise to power to the top of German science and essentially trashed the immense scientific framework and community which had previously put Germany at the forefront of science internationally.


    (17) The 1920s saw major progress within the medical sciences, from x-ray technology to antibiotics, as learnings from the Great War were processed. The Flu was also influential in developing quarantine measures, public health campaigns and other large-scale interventions against epidemics. This is all OTL. As for the intro to Eugenics, I thought that it would be best to introduce it in this segment and cover some of the developments in America before getting into what is happening in Europe - particularly Scandinavia and Germany. American Eugenics were viewed as pioneering for their time with Europeans travelling to America to learn more about how they were accomplishing it - much as they did with visiting Ford to learn of assembly lines. The 1920s largely just see a continuation of prevailing trends from previous decades, with more sterilisation laws passed and various positive eugenics measures implemented. There is, however, significant hesitancy when it comes to implementing the complementary reforms championed by communists and addressed in the next section.

    (18) While most of the information on Sweden is based on OTL, there are some divergences in Germany - most significantly the passage of sterilisation legislation in the 1920s which IOTL was prevented by religious conservatives. Of the states where it is passed, it bears mentioning that of the four, the Bavarian ban is unique because it comes out of the DNVP rather than the SPD and is far more focused on preventing miscegenation than sterilisation on criminal or medical grounds as it is in the three other cases. As for the Communist opposition to eugenics, that is all OTL. The fact that the German Communists are unable to prevent eugenics from being implemented is a major blow but the welfare system they are able to push for does help make up for it. The Communists pressure the SPD to make welfare reforms by challenging their claims to represent the working class, forcing the SPD to push for more welfare reforms, which in turn pushes the governmental coalition slowly but steadily further to the left.

    End Note:

    First of all, Happy New Year Everyone!

    I have now been working on TL on Alt-History for one-and-a-half years in all and feel that I have gotten a lot out of the experience. It has been extremely educational and helped me work through a lot of stuff. I would like to thank all of you for following along and (hopefully) enjoying the ride.

    I had meant to get more into the specifics of the eugenics movement and its interaction with the political scene, but it has proven rather difficult to find out all that much about what specifically was going on outside of the very broadest of outlines. I will be getting into its impact on politics more as we move forward, but for now I hope people can accept this rather basic description of the rise of eugenics. This section was a pain to research, particularly because it is a topic I know relatively little on, but now I can look forward to the final section on the ideological developments of the 1920s and a return to the more normal updates. I know that I didn't really have all that many divergences in this section, but that is again partly due to my lack of knowledge on the area. Let me know what you think.
     
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    Update Twenty-Five (Pt. 4): Society in Flux
  • Society in Flux

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    English Version of Trotsky's Autobiography

    A Clash of Ideas

    The 1920s were a time of significant political drift within the United States as ideological convictions began to sharpen and distinct factions rose to power within their respective parties. While the progressive paradigm had dominated governmental policy since Theodore Roosevelt's rise to power early in the century, even surviving governmental changes and divergent incumbents, 1920 had seen the start of a sea change, as the progressive faction within the Republican Party slowly alienated the increasingly powerful conservative wing of the party while nativist and nationalistic forces rose to prominence within the Democratic Party.

    This period was also marked by a nadir for the Socialist fringe of American politics as its brightest lights spent much of the early 1920s imprisoned. Eugene V. Debs, a five-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America, sickened and died while incarcerated in 1923 and Victor L. Berger, a former congressman, was left to rot in prison. In the meanwhile, former party stalwarts such as Meyer London and Allan Benson departed the party in favour of the Social Democratic League of America, initially an anti-pacifist refuge for those in the Socialist Party opposed to the party's policy of opposing the war but in the post-war years increasingly mirroring itself on the German SPD, while the SPA's more radical followers flocked to the Communist Party of America, associated with support for a Communist regime change and allied with the IWW labor movement which had found growing success from the hard-handed labor policies of the Wood Presidency (19).

    The Progressive Party as an entity had largely remained inert in the years between its dissolution in 1916 and its sudden reemergence under Robert la Follette in 1924. The sheer scale of the successes of the Progressives in the elections of 1924 caught many by surprise but could largely be attributed to a couple factors. First of all, it represented a major consolidation of progressive sentiment within the United States which had previously been split between the major parties, there was significant movement from amongst the moderates in the Socialist camp into that of the Progressives, with both the SPA and SDLA supporting la Follette's campaign and was also partly the result of an exodus of Irish American membership in the Democratic Party in response to anti-Catholic and nativist sentiments in that party (20).


    The middle years of the 1920s were thus characterised by a further consolidation of these rising ideologically aligned parties, the parties increasingly moving from a regional identity towards an ideological one. On the far-left was the Communist Party of America which remained revolutionary in outlook and outside of polite society. Next was the Socialist Party of America, which found its support dwindling in favour of the more energetic Progressive and Communist parties, followed by the Social Democratic League of America, although they would soon become little more than a subsection of the Progressive Party alongside Farmer-Labour Parties and a smattering of Catholic parties primarily associated with Latino, Italian and Irish communities. The Progressive Party represented the left-wing of polite society, drawing on its connection to Theodore Roosevelt and the recently deceased Robert la Follette for legitimacy.

    The Democratic Party's former progressive agenda became increasingly populist and nativist in nature, favouring protectionist trade policies, state-sponsored subsidising of accepted citizenry and the removal or alienation of unwanted segments of society - primarily Catholic, Black or Asian, doubling down on its cultural conservatism in the process. The Republican Party was marked more than anything else by the shedding of its Progressive wing, including the powerful Roosevelt machine, to the Progressive Party leaving its staunch conservatives in charge with recently elected Senator from Illinois Frank Lowden and Charles Curtis emerging as the dominant forces within the party alongside the quiet Calvin Coolidge. Finally, there was a right-wing fringe which looked for inspiration in the Sidonist movement in Portugal, the Fascist movement in Italy and various other autocratic movements, although few were larger than a couple hundred members at most (21).

    Communism as an ideology had gone through considerable changes in the years since its emergence as a synthesis of Leninist-Marxist socialism and anarchism in the cauldron of the Russian Revolution. There were few things in common between the early experimentations with anarcho-syndicalism and Leninist vanguardism and the complex ideological construct which emerged from the Russian Civil War. Central to the ideology was the belief in a Vanguard Party which could bring together the disparate strands of leftist ideology and unite its followers against the threat of bourgeois oppression and counter-revolution. This concept was the single most significant legacy of Leninism to survive the emergence of Communism, with the establishment of a central committee consisting of party leadership through which state decisions should be taken for the good of all becoming another key feature. To complement the leadership of the Central Committee were a series of democratic councils, called Soviets in Russia, from the lowly factory, neighbourhood or village soviet electing representatives to a district soviet wherefrom representatives to a provincial soviet were elected, which in turn elected representatives to the State Soviet. This State Soviet served as a consultative body to the Central Committee and had the power to present legislation for consideration to the Central Committee.

    However, it would be with the arrival of Leon Trotsky that the concept of perpetual world revolution became enshrined as a core precept of the Communist Movement while the two-stage theory was formally rejected. Proclaiming that while the spread of the Communist Revolution had seemingly been brought to a temporary halt, it was the duty of the Communist Party to work in any and every way possible to further the spread of revolution. This led to the ideation cultural supremacy as a venue for the spread of revolution and the adoption of diplomatic revolution as a means of spreading Communism, most significantly seen in the form of embassy openings in Berlin, Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Istanbul to compliment the pre-existing embassies in Tehran, Khiva, Mexico City and Rome. Support for revolutionary movements on an international stage were also furthered through the expansion and internationalisation of the Third International.

    There were also those who called for open, armed, support for leftist revolutionary movements across the world but these efforts would be stymied by the Central Committee, where in a special secret session it was determined that while the revolutionary arms of Yekaterinburg could be used for this purpose, it would be disadvantageous for the Communist movement as a whole to be associated with such violent means of revolution-making. After the conclusion of the Italian Civil War in the mid-1920s, it was hoped by many in Moscow that revolution would naturally spill over into the neighboring states, setting off a series of dominoes whereby one state after another would fall. When this did not happen, it proved a body blow to the ideological convictions of many in Moscow. However, Trotsky would soon present a solution to this failures, with the West now closed to all but cultural and diplomatic influence, it was time to turn eastward to the masses of Asia. Here were peoples aplenty toiling under autocratic rule as the Russian people had until recently. Here there were the beginnings of an indigent communist movement which with support and nurture might well rise to unimagined heights (22).

    One of the most interesting ideological developments of the 1920s came in the form of the German Liberty movement, the result of what its founders described as a National Conservative Revolution. Breaking with the German conservative consensus and with the statist nature of the DNVP, the movement was spearheaded by a number of bombastic self-promoting war heroes who had risen to national fame either during or in the aftermath of the Great War. Perhaps most significant of these war heroes were the author Ernst Jünger, whose famous memoir described the soldiers' mystical experience of the Great War to the German public like few others, and Manfred von Richthofen, whose own memoir had sold by the millions.

    While Jünger had spent the early years of the decade largely writing and studying whatever caught his fancy, including everything from marine biology and entomology to philosophy and zoology, Richthofen had entered local politics as a Reichstag delegate for the DKP from East Prussia, making a name for himself by opposing land reform and championing the creation of an independent Air Force from the Marine and Army Air Services. Both men, and those who would in time congregate around them, were skeptical of governmental power and yearned back to what they termed the "Age of German Liberty" under the Holy Roman Empire in which every man was a lord in-and-unto-himself, with rights and obligations which went both ways with the sovereign. With the support of the political theoretician Edgar Julius Jung and the philosopher Martin Heidegger these vague ideals of liberty through autocratic rule and a neo-feudalist belief noblesse obligé were sharpened and expanded on, with Heidegger's own recently published philosophical works serving to aid in the creation of a philosophical groundwork for the emergent ideology of National Liberty while Edgar Jung presented the ideology's call for the replacement of all state structures with the bonds of feudalism as a return to the roots of German conservatism while condemning the centralised autocracy advocated by the DNVP and the statist centralism of the SPD.

    They would soon find themselves supported by the Georgekreis, a collection of poets, historians and writers who formed around the poet Stefan George and who were determined to save German culture from what they viewed as its moral degradation under bourgeois and worker influence. In its place they presented a world of Great Men and highlighted a Heroic Age freed of the strictures of bourgeois governance and a world of Germanic Liberty. Historians such as Ludwig von Pastor, Percy Schramm and Ernst Kantorowicz were swift to join these efforts, merging their paradigmatic works on the medieval age with a focus on the bonds of feudal-vassalage, the role of the Church in society and most significantly the importance of German Liberty to the rise of the German Reich to European hegemony (23).

    In 1927, in preparation for the coming elections, the German Liberty movement decided to make a push for political legitimacy - accepting that only by voicing their opposition to the current state of Germany to the public would they be able to achieve their goals - and as such established the German Liberty Party (DFP/Deutsche Freiheitspartei) under the leadership of Manfred von Richthofen. Inspired by the medieval confraternal chivalric orders, Richthofen would come to be referred to as the Grand Master of the Party, while its membership were granted various other party titles, and he immediately began campaigning both through his seat in the Reichstag and through the conservative press to spread the message of the DFP (24).

    The Exile of the Vatican from Italy had a profound impact on both the Catholic Church itself and its wider congregation. With anti-clericalism at an unprecedented height, although a general trend opposing the power of the Church had been present for over a century in many Catholic nations by this point in time, there was a natural counter-reaction as believers rose up to protect the Church. In France this was expressed in the form of a rise in Catholic and Monarchist right-wing support and in Mexico it found expression in the violent rising against the anti-clerical central government by Cristeros rebels. In the United States it appeared as a general departure of Catholics from the Democratic Party while in Germany it spurred support for the Centre Party.

    However, the most significant impact of the Vatican's exile and the period of limbo in France would be on the actual ability of the Catholic Church to enforce its will upon the wider church hierarchy. This was most prominently exemplified by the reemergence of modernist tendencies in the American Church under the auspices of powerful liberal Archbishops like George Mundelein of Chicago and Austin Dowling of St. Paul, while more conservative voices such as the Archbishops of Boston and New York found themselves increasingly forced to take up the fight for the orthodox integralist position with the Vatican showing a rather significant degree of disinterest. Thus while modernist and integralist positions remained at the heart of the struggle over the Catholic Church in the United States, the disengagement of the Vatican from the struggle evened out what had previously been an uneven struggle for the modernists and opened up for the possibility of a more liberal Church.

    At the same time, the weakening of the Catholic Church opened up avenues for non-Catholic Christian groups such as Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons and Four Square Gospels to all make inroads in the Catholic community, particularly in the United States and Latin America, as they experienced their early rise to prominence. The loss of Rome deeply divided the Catholic Church with some claiming it as a sign that the Papacy had engaged too deeply in worldly affairs, or even rejected the Church as a whole in favour of another branch of Christianity, and thus rejected the integralist line of thought which had grown so popular in Church circles in the early years of the century in favour of progressive or modernist tendencies or claimed that the church had proven too lax in its enforcement of God's Will.

    This divide between modernists and integralists would prove central to the divisions within the German Centre Party and saw Catholic society divided more firmly than at any point in the last half-century into integralist and modernist camps. Pope Gregory VII remained firmly in the integralist camp and maintained the sanctions imposed upon modernist tendencies by his predecessors, but found himself more occupied by the struggle to ensure the Church's survival. He held complicated and difficult negotiations with the Catholic governments both in the Old World and the New in hopes of finding a more permanent home for the Catholic Church until Rome could be liberated from the grasps of the Communists (25).

    Footnotes:

    (19) The Socialist leaders imprisoned during the Great War are not released ITTL and as a result the Socialist Party loses many of its strongest and most popular voices, leading to a steady collapse in popularity. By the middle of the decade, Morris Hillquit remains one of the few major national figures in the Socialist Party still around, with his protégé Norman Thomas seeming like one of the few future leaders with potential still in the party, most having left for either the Progressive Party or the Communist Party.

    (20) I don't know how much people know about why the Irish-American community ended up in the Democratic camp when they arrived despite being so different from much of the rest of the party. It mostly had to do with the Democrats being able to function as an oppositional force to the traditional power of the Republican Party in the northern sections of the United States where the Irish settled most heavily. In Massachusetts it was used as a vehicle of opposition to the WASP elites who otherwise dominated the state, allowing the Irish-Americans to organize and develop their own political organization without WASP involvement. This, however, came into conflict with much of the national Democratic Party on numerous occasions throughout the first half of the twentieth century and was a core dynamic within the party. ITTL the entire Irish political establishment basically just changed the banner under which they were contesting political posts (Democratic->Progressive) but otherwise largely kept going as before. They are effectively a semi-independent force within the party with some rather sharp contrasts to other sections of the party - the Roosevelt Progressives, the Farmer-Labour Progressives (largely German-American) and Democratic Progressives being three other major factions.

    (21) I hope that gives a good spectrum of the political alignment in the United States and explains some of the political transition which has happened in those parties. While IOTL the conservatives in the Republican Party were able to emerge victorious in 1922 with the ascendancy of Calvin Coolidge and subordinated the progressive wing of the party to their rule, ITTL the progressives bolt for their own party. In general this is a period in which political ideologies consolidate within parties to a greater degree than in the past. One force not mentioned here, but which is important to keep in mind is the Ku Klux Klan which sort of sprawls across the spectrum stretching from the Democratic Party and into the political fringe right, with some spillover into the Republican party due to the continued regional identity of both parties (this is particularly the case in Indiana, where the Indiana Klan is Republican on a state-level and Democratic in national alignment).

    (22) There shouldn't be too much new information in this section, it is largely a summary of pre-existing events. While I didn't get into it in the direct text, it should be mentioned that a key force in the Communist movement is its continued openness towards new ideological propositions and relatively weak censorship outside of outright calls for Tsarist restoration or the like. Communist Russia is not exactly an out-and-out democracy and particularly the opaque nature of how people rise to the Central Committee remains an issue, particularly in the international communist movement, but while the State Soviet is quite limited in power, the same cannot be said for the three lowest tiers of soviets. At that level, all local government is managed through the soviets with their regional chairmen elected from amongst their number and running most local affairs. The further you get from the State level, the more power the democratic institutions have.

    (23) Alright, this is probably a bit hard to understand, I confused myself half the time with it, so I can't imagine how it read to everyone else. This is essentially a brand new ideology which I formulated based on some of the comments in the thread, research on some of the thought processes of the period and experimentation. At its most simple the National Liberty ideology can be described as an anti-statist right-wing ideology with strong neo-feudal overtones. In essence its supporters want to remove most of the modern state in favor of a system of lord-vassal relationships in which individuals pledge loyalty and fealty to others, forging overlapping sets of rights and responsibilities on the basis of these bonds in a complex web with the German Emperor at its center. It harkens back to the ancient principle of German Liberty, which effectively means that the authorities only have a right to intervene in inter-personal relationships when it directly threatens the another's inalienable rights. Please ask me to explain in greater detail or clarify if there is anything that doesn't make sense - it is an ideology I cooked and I want it to make as much sense as possible. And yes, I know how weird fanboying over the weak nature of state control in the HRE might seem, but considering the shit the Nazis were able to go for IOTL it shouldn't be too implausible.

    (24) If this reads like some sort of nostalgic boys club for medievalist fanboys, then good, I got the tone right. That is basically what it is to begin with, a bunch of lesser noblemen and arch-conservatives who all want to feel like they are part of something exciting. That said, the notion of reducing government interference in personal affairs should prove appealing to some, while the whole feudalist element has a lot of the nobility rather interested.

    (25) If anyone knows more about early 20th Century Catholicism, then please let me know if this doesn't make sense. I have tried researching it, but I am still uncertain. As I understand it, the key division at the time was between liberal-modernists and conservative-integralists with the former wanting to strengthen the church by shifting its ideological framework to better align with modern thought - such as accepting the division between church and state - while integralists wished to integrate the Catholic Church with society, breaking with the church-state barrier of modern life and involving the Church in daily life to a greater extent. As can be imagined the fall of Rome and exile of the Vatican has profound consequences for a Catholic faith already in turmoil and under assault. The most significant consequence is that church structures are at least temporarily weakened and distracted, opening up for a resurgence in modernist thought, particularly in America. It is still too early for something like liberation theology to emerge, but I would expect to see it appear earlier than IOTL and probably be more influential. I will deal, at least partly, with the immediate fate of the Vatican in the following update.


    Summary:

    Diverse and disparate cultural movements come to dominate the 1920s.

    Women's suffrage and wider engagement with society has major consequences for the development of society in Europe.

    Technological developments lead to the emergence of mass consumerism while eugenics augur a worrying future.

    From the Catholic Church to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the 1920s are a time of ideological flux as new ideas emerge and old ones rise to challenge them.

    End Note:

    And that ends our journey through the many disparate elements of the 1920s from culture and society to technology and ideology. I hope you found it enlightening, but I am really looking forward to returning to the more ordinary type of updates. I was wondering what format people enjoy most - one section at a time, two at a time or a full update at a time (bearing in mind that they are from fastest to slowest update speed). There are some interesting developments in this section, ranging from a new ideology and the transformation of Communism to a shifting Catholic Church and a realignment of ideology in the United States.

    I don't quite know when the next update will be, but keep an eye out for late next week. I hope you all enjoyed.
     
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    Update Twenty-Six (Pt. 1): European Crossroads
  • European Crossroads

    350px-Rey_Alfonso_XIII_de_Espa%C3%B1a%2C_by_Kaulak.jpg

    King Alfonso XIII of Spain

    Integralism, Irredentism and Illegality

    Since the loss of its colonial empire in the Spanish-American War at the dawn of the century, Spain had sought any and every avenue they could imagine to return to a position of prominence. This had eventually led to an almost mad focus on Morocco just as the rest of Europe turned their eyes to the same region. While they had won a series of campaigns against the tribal peoples of the Rif region in northern Morocco and eventually split the remainder of the Sultanate with the French, it had been far from an easy endeavour, with the blood and gold spilt in the effort provoking labor unrest and violence, which in 1909 had culminated in a revolt out of Barcelona and an attempted General Strike, both of which had ended in tragedy. In the aftermath of the 1909 crisis, the long-time Prime Minister Antonio Maura fell from power in favour of a short liberal government chiefly focused on anti-clerical measures, which was soon replaced by a conservative government led by Eduardo Dato and backed by Maura, the two conservative voices who would dominate the coalition governments of the Great War years. The chaos which followed the end of the Great War would severely weaken the status quo, particularly following the assassination of Eduardo Dato in 1922.

    However, at around this point in time the situation in Morocco were rapidly collapsing as Rif rebels under the leadership of Abd el-Krim attacked Spanish forces after they crossed into un-occupied Rif territory in pursuit of a local bandit warlord by the name of Mulai Ahmed er Raisuni, seeking to establish an independent Rif Republic. Whipping up a furor amongst the Riffans, el-Krim attacked an outpost defending a large military encampment at Annual, resulting in 141 Spanish casualties and resulting in a rush of support for el-Krim. Encircling the encampment at Annual, which had grown to number some 4,000 men by July 1921, the commander Manuel Fernandez Silvestre was convinced to retreat when the surrounding 18,000 Rif forces cut the Spanish lines of communication. Departing early in the evening on the 21st of July, Silvestre and his force were able to cross the northern heights with the Riffans on their heels. They encountered reinforcements enroute numbering some 900 but continued their retreat towards the forts of Ben-Tieb and Dar-Drius, skirmishing fiercely with the Riffans all the way. Most notable would be the rearguard action of Fernando Primo de Rivera, who lost nearly half his command, some 300 men, in the fighting but was able to hold the line long enough for the Spanish to reach safety.

    At Dar-Drius, the Spanish received significant reinforcements at the orders of High Commissioner Damaso Berenguer numbering nearly an additional 4,000 while as many as 25,000 peninsular forces were prepared for deployment in Spain. The resultant Battle of Dar-Drius was a bitterly fought repulse of the Riffans, which saw the Spanish forced nearly to the brink by the rapid if disordered attacks of the Riffans over the course of a week while raiders penetrated far into Spanish-occupied territory in the process. By early August, troops from Spain had begun to arrive in large numbers and Silvestre was able to shore up the Spanish-occupied positions. The remainder of the year and the next would see little Spanish progress despite considerable investment, with domestic turmoil making steady supply and reinforcement by conscription next to impossible. It was at this time that King Alfonso received a surprising proposal of aid from Portugal, where Sidonio hoped to shore up his neighbor in order to stabilize the porous eastern border wherefrom anarchists and socialists regularly crossed over to hide out or cause havoc in Portugal (1).

    In early 1923 the Riffans found themselves the target of a major campaign of suppression as Portuguese and Spanish forces stormed eastward out of Tetuán, sweeping through the region with extreme force, utilizing tactics originally pioneered in the bitter fighting of the Cuban War of Independence. Large camps were established to contain a significant portion of the rebellious population while the irregular fighters of the Rif were forced backwards or into the desert. El-Krim would gamble on a single large battle near the city of Chauen, catching the Iberian forces by surprise, driving them back and successfully cutting off nearly 2,000 men, including the forces of the recently established Spanish Legion, who soon found themselves besieged in the small town of Derdara south of Chauen. Over the course of more than a month, as the Iberian allies reconstructed their scattered forces, the men at Derdara fought of continual assaults with only parachuted supplies to keep them going. Finally, on the 8th of May 1923, the Iberians launched another attack which successfully broke the Riffans' backs and drove them into retreat. The survivors of the Siege of Derdara were feasted and buried in medals while the dead, amongst them the Legionnaire commander Francisco Franco, brother of the activist Spanish politician Ramón Franco, were widely mourned and lionised. Over the remainder of the year Riffan resistance was steadily broken culminating in the public execution of Abd el-Krim late in the year. By mid-1924 Riffan resistance would finally die out and the Spanish would finally secure firm control of the region.

    This final success, and the prolonged exposure to the surprisingly stable and successful Sidonist regime, would strengthen the King's hand to a degree not seen in the current century. Rallying support from the military and political traditionalists, most prominently Juan Vásquez de Mella, King Alfonso launched a coup against the current liberal government of Manuel Prieto Garcia on the 20th of January 1924, placing the entire government under arrest and abrogating the current constitution. With the aid of Mella and other Carlists, King Alfonso rewrote the constitution into a far more autocratic form, taking inspiration from the Sidonist regime in Portugal. Having struck with surprise and military backing, the King was able to imprison many of the most significant potential rivals to his power and made a number of key deals with the Catholic Church to gain their backing in this endeavor as well. What disorganized resistance which appeared in response to the coup was crushed firmly with military might even as a swath of new legislation was passed by fiat. Over the course of 1924, the King strengthened his grip on power further and deepened the relationship with the Catholic Church. This would culminate in December when King Alfonso invited the Vatican to set up in the Cathedral city of Santiago de Compostela until Rome could be reconquered. This offer was accepted by Pope Gregory VII, who would spend the next year digging into the city. During this time King Alfonso publicly declared in favor of integralism and further strengthened his grip on power, seeking to turn the Spanish Kingdoms into an absolutist monarchy once more (2).

    In Milan, the Central Committee of the Italian Communist Party met the announcement of the Vatican's settling in Santiago de Compostela with barely concealed worry. As a newly formed revolutionary state with few friends in the world, the fact that the Spanish had not only settled their bleeding ulcer in North Africa but had also brought their state to order by implementing a monarchical version of Sidonism, allowing them to engage with the rest of the world presented a significant threat to the Italian State. While supplies of coal and oil were purchasable for the Italians through their German contacts, it came at a significant premium and placed the state at the mercy of the Germans.

    Even beyond the threat posed by foreign powers, the internal stability of the new Italian state was none too secure, with immense resources required for reconstruction efforts and a considerable problem with rebels and bandits, particularly in the south, who constantly fought any effort at reform by the thoroughly northern Communist government. While vast noble estates were liquidated and the land parcelled out to the surrounding peasantry, the Italians embarked on a societal reconstruction on a level rarely thought possible in the past. Land lords were dispossessed, church lands were nationalised, corporations were syndicalised, with ownership given over to the factory's workers, while local government was placed under the control of centrally appointed Commissars and regional autonomy was rapidly reduced.

    Clashes within the Communist Party between centrist and anarchist factions proved fierce as differences regarding issues as disparate as Italy's role in the spread the revolution and the degree to which power should be focused in a central government or at a regional level caused major divisions. Most significantly, the centrists wished to build a model revolutionary communist state while the anarchists were determined to press on with the revolution. The relationship between anarchist and centrist became increasingly tense as the violent suppression of dissent in southern Italy reached a fever pitch in August of 1926 in the aftermath of the Calitri Massacre, where much of the small south Italian town's population was killed or dispersed after its inhabitants went into violent revolt at the instigation of a local dispossessed noble family.

    While military law was imposed across much of the south and governance of the region taken over by direct representatives from the Central Committee, the Calitri Massacre proved the instigating spark in a short-lived but extremely bloody revolt in the Campanian highlands. Sweeping across the province, government representatives were assaulted and on multiple occasions lynched by outraged locals while villagers dug up weapons hidden since the end of the Civil War. Red Army forces were rushed south and soon came into direct contact with the irregular rebel forces, who had already begun receiving supplies from Sicily. While the red Army lost nearly 300 men in the fighting, they would kill in excess of 5,000 in the frenzied response, culminating in the public execution of a dozen prominent regional families whose patriarchs had been integral to the spreading of the revolt. While the centrists were deeply engaged in the pacification of southern Italy, the anarchists established secret training camps in the northern Apennines where they prepared revolutionaries to spread Communism across the world, with representatives from as far-flung regions as Vietnam, Colombia, France and Spain. The discovery of these camps in 1929 by the centrists would ultimately lead to bitter infighting in the Central Committee which culminated in the expulsion of Errico Malatesta from the Central Committee and the closure of the training camps, although by this time more than 1,000 trainees had already gone through training and been dispatched to spread the revolution (3).

    In contrast to the isolation experienced by the Italian mainland, the Kingdom of Italy, consisting of Sicily and Sardinia, could barely be more connected to the rest of the world. In an effort to keep their French and British backers on board, the Sicilian government tore down most of its trade barriers, completely opening itself up to economic dominance by the two states. In return, they were able to secure favourable trade deals with both Britain and France and quickly came to serve as a key transshipment point for trade through the Mediterranean. The cities of Palermo and Catania would grow rapidly with this influx of trade even as the Mafia moved from the country-side into these very cities.

    Over the course of the latter half of the 1920s, the struggle for control of the Catania and Palermo smuggling routs would provoke bitter conflicts between Mafia clans and saw the rise of new figures to power, most significantly the Greco and Motisi clans in Palermo driving back an effort by the Agrigento-based Cuntrera clan to take control of the city's dockyards and the rise to prominence of the Saitta clan in Catania under Antonio Saitta. Antonio Saitta, emerging outside of the traditional Mafia structures, presented a major threat to Calogero Vizzini's dominance of the Sicilian underworld and soon saw the two clash violently in a series of "Mafia Wars" for control of Catania. Ultimately, Saitta was able to emerge victorious and cement his control of the city, forcing Don Calo to accept his presence.

    However, a key reason for Calo's failure to crush Saitta could be found in his increasing involvement in Sicilian politics, where Dino Grandi and his fascist cohorts were rallying support to end Nitti's reign. The challenge here was over the fact that many of Grandi's supporters wished to press the French for the return of Libya to them, which left Don Calo worried that such a move might sever the profitable ties he and his fellow mafiosi were getting rich from. After a secretive meeting with Grandi, Calo decided to throw his support behind the fascist leader, who proceeded to sweep Nitti and his fellow liberals from power in the elections of 1927. The deal struck between Grandi and the Mafia soon became clear when it emerged that Grandi had killed the proposal to petition for Libya's return. While nationalist supporters of the government were outraged at this betrayal, they soon found themselves increasingly locked out of power by Grandi, who turned firmly towards transactional politics and abandoned much of the populist rhetoric which had brought him to power.

    It was soon after this that the betrothal of Infanta Beatriz of Spain to Prince Umberto of Italy was announced, soon followed by the signing of a military alliance between the two states. During this time, Dino Grandi found himself increasingly influenced by the Sidonist and Integralist model which had come to dominate Iberia, restoring considerable power and authority to the Catholic Church in Sicily, significantly weakening democratic government and strengthening his own position of power. By the end of the 1920s, Sicily was emerging as a Fascist state under the rule of Dino Grandi in alliance with the Sicilian Mafia.

    Footnotes:

    (1) The Battle of Annual plays out very differently from OTL. Instead of a military disaster which propels Miguel Primo de Rivera to power, it is instead a successful retreat. The divergence lies in the cutting of communications spurring Silvestre to retreat earlier, meaning that the northern approaches to Annual are clear of Riffan rebels when the Spanish try to cross them. This means that the status quo civilian government remains in place for a bit longer and avoids the rather disastrous de Rivera government. It also puts the Spanish in a better position to combat the Riffans. We also see Sidonio finally turn outward and begin to engage with the surrounding world.

    (2) The Portuguese replace the French in aiding Spain against the Riffans with considerable success, in the process bringing the two states closer together and leading to an exchange of ideas. I had King Alfonso take power ITTL because I think under the circumstance, with his support for the African adventure a success and his enemies divided, this would be both possible and in his nature. The initial success of the move comes mostly because Alfonso is so successful in catching his enemies by surprise. His subsequent alliance with the Catholic Church and the Carlists seemed to be a natural follow-on from this. I decided to place the Vatican in Santiago de Compostela because of its religious prominence in Spain and relative distance from anywhere the pope might cause problems for Alfonso. As for why Spain, it seemed like the best possible solution given that France's relationship with the church remains tense and this path allows easier access to Latin America for the Catholic Church.


    (3) Things are not proving easy for the Italian Communists who are dealing not only with severe regional divisions but also internal political challenges and foreign threats. The Milanese government is undertaking a range of radical policies, but are doing so from a North Italian perspective, which puts them at odds with the south where landlord economies remain predominant - this is basically the old north-south divide in Italy on steroids. I use anarchist and centrists as factional notices here but understand that this isn't so much an ideological denominator as a factional one. The divides (anarchist/centrist) are more along the lines of outward/inward focus, regionalist/centralist and revolutionary violence/diplomacy than anything else. Important to note, the expulsion of Malatesta royally pisses off those of anarchist persuasion and puts them on a collision course. Finally, it should be mentioned that the Italian Communist Party's ideological framework resembles OTL Communism far more than the Russian version ITTL and despite the anarchist influx it experienced, it is really the statist socialist side of the coin which has come to dominate there. It is autocratic, centralising and inward-looking, in many ways reminiscent of the Soviet Union in the immediate post-Trotsky's expulsion (Malatesta's expulsion, while nowhere near as severe, at least partially mirroring the effect) - there is a central clique of leaders generally in agreement about how to rule but for the time being it is ruled by an oligarchy rather than a dictatorship.

    (4) Sidonist-Integralist-Fascism captures another state while the Mafia further cements its hold on the Sicilian economy. It bears mentioning that the Mafia are increasingly entering into legal businesses to complement their criminal enterprises, building business empires wherein their legal and illegal activities are closely linked. Hell, by this point much of the illegal activity they do perpetrate isn't prosecuted. We also see the rise of a power potentially capable of challenging Don Calo's grip on power in Italy in the form of Antonio Saitta - a mafioso who was crushed by the Fascists IOTL and whose grandsons IOTL rose to dominate the Catanian criminal underworld in the 1950s. It bears mentioning that Catania, and much of eastern Sicily with it, was outside of Mafia control for much of the first half of the 1900s and as such Antonio Saitta is basically constructing a different sort of criminal organisation from the traditional western Sicilian Mafia structure, using a much more corporate framework for his organisation with less focus on family loyalty and more on profits. It isn't a family business like the other Mafia clans.

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    Parisian Cafe Life

    The Crazy Years

    More than anything else, the middle years of the 1920s in Britain were dominated by the rising power of Labour on the left and growing fears of revolutionary action on the right. Balancing precariously between the radicals in his own party and the cries of Labour demanding major reforms was Austen Chamberlain. Under Chamberlain's careful stewardship, Britain emerged from the economic doldrums of earlier in the decade, rallied by strengthening international exports and a spiking demand for manufactured goods which the British were able to provide in large amounts to trading partners in the Mediterranean, most prominently Sicily, Spain, the Don Whites and the Croatian sub-state of the Habsburg monarchy. Large infrastructure projects, such as the massive Channel Tunnel Project and the modernisation of London's Metro system, and government work programs aided significantly in reducing unemployment further and even helped spark a minor consumption-driven economic boom.

    However, none of these efforts proved sufficient to quiet the Labour Party. Rallying against the exclusive nature of the current British Welfare State, being focused almost exclusively on military veterans and their families, Labour pushed for an extension of the unemployment benefits, pensions, healthcare and jobs programs to cover the remaining population. This was accompanied by calls for subsidised low-income rents, decreases in working hours and increased safety standards, particularly in the case of coal mines, where a looming health crisis placed added burden on miner's families. as well as in regards to traffic safety in response to a series of deadly car accidents. Finally, Labour agitated publicly for the restoration of a minimum wage for agricultural workers, greatly increasing their popularity in rural Britain.

    Over the course of Austen Chamberlain's ministry, the costs of the Channel Tunnel grew ever greater while the actual work on the project remained sluggish. The matter came to a head in early 1927 when it was discovered that the project had become engulfed in corruption, with much of the state finances dedicated to the project having been swindled away by a combination of contractors, treasury officials, inspectors and several politicians within the Conservative Party. While none of the participants in the corrupt scheme had direct ties to the Prime Minister or any figure on his cabinet, the Tunnel Scandal which resulted from the publication of the corruption would prove deadly to the Chamberlain government. With the public in an uproar and both Labour and the Liberals pouncing at the opportunity to bring down the over-mighty Conservatives, it didn't take long for a vote of no-confidence to reach Parliament. While Chamberlain was able to survive the vote, it severely weakened his government and in October of 1927 led to his resignation - Chamberlain having realised that he had lost the public trust and was unable to continue governing effectively. This resulted in the election of November 1927 in which Labour under Ramsay MacDonald was able to emerge victorious, both the Liberals and Labour having gained from the loss of the Conservatives (5).

    The MacDonald Ministry was the first Labour Ministry in British history and was sworn in alongside his Labour cabinet by the King in full court regalia, to the amusement of some and worry of others. The main achievement of the early years of the MacDonald government was that it showed itself to be fit to govern. Although this might not have meant much in terms of concrete policy-making, it at least did not alarm voters who may have feared that the party would dismantle the country and promulgate "Communism"; although, in any case, its tenuous parliamentary position would have made radical moves near impossible. Hence, Labour policies such as nationalization, capital levy taxation and public works programmes to alleviate unemployment were either played down or ignored altogether. However, to act respectably, as any other government would have, was a major component of the MacDonald electoral appeal and strategy.

    Despite lacking a parliamentary majority, the Labour Government was able to introduce a number of measures which made life more tolerable for working people. At the same time, the Conservative Party found itself fighting what amounted to a civil war between Unionist and Progressive factions, divided on who should lead the party, whether to ally with the Liberals and what the party's priorities should be. At the heart of this clash were Stanley Baldwin and Lord Robert Cecil, who had until recently sat in Chamberlain's cabinet, and a conflict for leadership of the party in the face of Chamberlain's decision to withdraw from politics. With Labour pushing forward with their reform package and worries about the intentions of the MacDonald government, it was the Unionists, with Baldwin and Joynson-Hicks at their head, who emerged victorious in the struggle, pressing the progressive with into the shadows. Together, Baldwin and Joyson-Hicks led a fierce opposition to the Labour government, which only grew more vocal as MacDonald became bolder.


    The shutting down of the Channel Tunnel Project came as an unsurprising blow to the Conservatives, soon followed by concrete Labour policy-initiatives such as the passing of an Act of Parliament in early 1929 which subsidised low-rent housing for the poor, radically strengthened government safety regulations, introducing a powerful regulatory agency in the process, and eventually turned their attention to the expansion of social security. When it became public that MacDonald and his Home Secretary Arthur Henderson would dismantle the Conservative Veterans' Welfare System in favour of a welfare system which would cover the entire population in late 1929, Baldwin and Joyson-Hicks were finally able to muster the support they had been looking for.

    A key provision in this new welfare package was that the actual worth of this system was reduced significantly in order to cover so many more people, with the result that war veterans and their close family could expect their benefits to shrink substantially. Veterans groups proved instrumental in the martialling of opposition to the Labour bill which soon engulfed the nation. From north to south, east to west, veterans of the Great War marched through the streets, many wearing their wartime uniforms, medals and other decorations, while publicly excoriating the government. Representatives from the veterans umbrella organisation, The Royal British Legion, petitioned the King to speak out on their behalf while in Parliament itself, veterans amongst the parliamentarians, particularly from the Conservative ranks, spoke out loudly against this change in policy. The further revelation of abuses in the safety regulation administration, accepting bribes from factory and mine owners to ignore violations, further added to the furore culminating in the failure of the administration to secure the requisite votes for the welfare reform bill. The MacDonald government limped on after this occurrence, but was significantly weakened and would struggle to pass legislation for the remainder of the 1920s (6).

    The years from 1924 till the end of the decade are known in France as Les Années Folles, the Crazy Years, and can be regarded as a period of significant social, political, cultural and economic flux in which wild new fads, particularly the American Jazz movement, the Charleston, the shimmy, cabarets and nightclub dancing, all rising to prominence in the years that followed as an exodus of broadway stars, jazz musicians, dancers and artists all responded to the growing censorship and nativism of the United States government by seeking out greener pastures, and there were few pastures greener than Paris in the latter half of the 1920s. Paris itself was the beating heart of French leftist movements and a bastion of general progressive intellectual thought. After a period of nostalgia for the Belle Epoque, early in the decade, the 1920s were a period in which powerful new movements of mass culture, consumption and politics all rose to the fore.

    Coming just as the most significant reconstruction efforts were brought to an end, France enjoyed an immense economic boom in this period as hydroelectricity investments allowed for an eightfold-increase in electrification, while radio, aviation, automobile and numerous other industrial sectors blossomed. Finishing repairs on the coal mines of northern France allowed for a further economic boom and contributed to the general increase in global coal supply which would with time come to plague the global coal industry. During the early 20th century, the inner eleven arrondissements of Paris became the centers of commerce; their populations were a smaller and smaller share of the total population of the city. About a quarter of Paris workers were engaged in commerce, wholesale and retail. The motors of the city economy were the great department stores, founded in the Belle Époque; Bon Marché, Galeries Lafayette, BHV, Printemps, La Samaritaine, and several others, grouped in the center. They employed tens of thousands of workers, many of them women, and attracted customers from around the world.

    The period was a high point for Parisian high fashion with the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in 1925 featuring 72 Parisian fashion designers including Paul Poiret, Jeanne Lanvin, who opened a boutique in 1909 on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and also branched out into perfume, introducing a fragrance called Arpège in 1927 and the House of Worth, which also introduced perfumes, with bottles designed by René Lalique. New designers challenged the old design houses was challenged, notably Coco Chanel who put her own perfume, Chanel No. 5, on the market in 1920. She introduced the "little black dress" in 1925. Paris was also was the home and meeting place of some of the world's most prominent painters, sculptors, composers, dancers, poets and writers. For those in the arts, it was, as Ernest Hemingway described it, "A moveable feast". Paris offered an exceptional number of galleries, art dealers, and a network of wealthy patrons who offered commissions and held salons. The center of artistic activity shifted from the heights of Montmartre to the neighborhood of Montparnasse, where colonies of artists settled (7).

    However, while Paris remained a bastion of progressive thought, it was very much at odds with much of the rest of the country. The Fall of Rome and the exile of the papacy proved immensely, soul-crushingly, devastating to many Catholics in France, with many coming to view the Great War and the expulsion of the Papacy by Communist atheists as a divine call to arms. Popular Catholicism and open displays of religiosity exploded across much of France and soon found itself part of a wider political movement. The active measures taken by the French government to incite the Papacy to depart France were met by great outrage in Catholic circles, who viewed it as a betrayal of the Holy Church, and conspiracy theories ran rampant in right-wing circles, centring primarily on the culpability of the government in covertly supporting the Italian communist regime.

    Public calls for an invasion of Italy and the liberation of Rome found surprising levels of support given the recent, tragic, warfare which had engulfed the world. The Ligues were highly politically active, holding demonstrations, marches and protests on a regular basis when they weren't publicly clashing with Communists, Socialists or Anarchists. While in Paris many of these ligues were forced onto the sidelines, in smaller cities like Lyon, Toulouse and Bordeaux they were able to generate considerable support. Support for Catholicism and support for the Republic had long been difficult to square with each other, and as a result this period saw a rather significant increase in support for the various monarchist factions.

    However, a pair of deaths in 1926 would significantly ease the challenge of finding a faction to rally behind when Victor Napoleon Bonaparte and Philippe d'Orléans both died, Victor Napoléon Bonaparte in London and Philippe d'Orléans in Palermo. The issue was that Victor Napoléon's death left the Bonapartists without any effective claimant - Victor Napoleon's only son Louis having died in the final year of the Great War from a childhood malady, his brother Louis having died in the chaos of the Russian Revolution and the last branch of the family living in America refusing to take any role, and the Orléanists supporting Jean d'Orléans, the Duke of Guise. The Legitimist candidate, Jaime de Bórbon, was more interested in contesting his cousin, the King of Spain's, claim to the Spanish throne and the Legitimists with few French supporters in general.

    In a move which shocked monarchist society, Jean d'Orléans extended a hand of friendship to the Bonarpartists, arranging the betrothal of his son Henri to the four-year-younger Marie Clotilde Bonarparte, Victor Napoleon's sole surviving child. This marked the effective unification of the Bonarpartists with the Orléanists, although an extremely small fringe of Bonapartists would continue to clamor for the American Bonapartes to take up the claim. With the quiet assent of the Pope, Jean d'Orléans proved willing to work with the new far-right factions, foremost among them Action Francaise, and quickly proved an energetic promoter of the monarchist movement. With the success of Integralist and Sidonist models in Iberia and Sicily, the French right soon began to find itself pressed into supporting the catholic-nationalist integralist-monarchist model of Action Francaise, other movements finding themselves either absorbed or crushed, one by one, over the course of the late 1920s and early 1930s (8).

    Footnotes:

    (5) While Austen Chamberlain's time as Prime Minister during the 1920s was relatively short, it will be remembered quite fondly as a time of prosperity and a return to peace. There remains considerable public backing for Chamberlain and there are many who are sad to see him go, but not only has the office aged him considerably, he also views the Tunnel Scandal to have been a personal failing and a blemish on his honour. It is important to note that while there was considerable labour turmoil, it never quite peaks with a General Strike as happened IOTL. Instead, Labour was able to press ever more heavily against the Conservative position and exploited a moment of weakness to push itself to the top.

    (6) The Labour Party gets its first opportunity at governing, but find their efforts collapsing within two years after they took one too many chances. It is important to note that the Labour Party did not in any way change their position towards the Communist regimes in Italy and Russia, regarding both with hostility and suspicion, while the Labour Party was actually forced to suppress some of its more radical supporters within the party to avoid triggering a conflict. While Labour rule has lost some of its immediate shine, the most important thing to note is that the Labour Party has been admitted into the sphere of acceptable parties. With the Conservatives retaining, and even strengthening, their Unionist and Nationalist credentials while weakening their progressive wing, the Liberals are able to exploit the opening which has emerged between the right-wing of the Labour Party and left-wing of the Conservative Party.

    (7) This section isn't too far off OTL, but the following section should highlight the major differences between OTL and TTL. France is recovering well and expanding economically, even if not quite as strongly as Germany, with a relatively moderate and competent government running things. It will take a lot more for France to lose its status as Europe's cultural capital. One thing to note is that Les Années Folles is used in a broader context ITTL than IOTL and also covers the political developments of the period in contrast to the largely cultural focus the expression has IOTL.


    (8) This is where the French monarchist wing enters the picture, consolidating claims and taking inspiration from movements elsewhere. The disruption in Belgium at the end of the Great War is where things really diverge for the monarchist movement with the death of the last real Bonapartist claimant. I know that having the Bonapartists and Orléanists kiss and make up might be a bit on the implausible end, and arguably the Orléanist investment in this effort might be slightly more than would ordinarily occur, but I do think it remains within the realm of plausibility. Thus, with the legitimists having lost most of their backing when the title fell to the Carlist Bourbon line and the Bonapartists extinguished, the monarchists are able to consolidate. However, the most significant divergence ITTL is definitely the fact that Pope Gregory XVII gives his sanction to working with Action Francaise - where IOTL the church explicitly forbid any cooperation with the movement. This is the result of a more conservative and activist pope than IOTL.

    End Note:

    I ended up getting completely caught up in a Chinese period drama (The Story of Yanxi Palace) and binged it for much of the week, surprisingly historically accurate dramatisation of mid-1700s Qing Dynasty, when I wasn't busy with securing an internship, so I ended up with a time crunch here at the end. I did end up finishing this second section, so I can give you guys half an update at this point. It does mean I haven't had a lot of time to proof-read though, so if something jumps out please let me know. This update is really focused on the rise of Integralism and other quasi-fascist or fascist movements, and the contrasting leftwing developments to a lesser degree. This update as a whole is mainly an update on events in Europe - with the next two sections dealing with Central and Eastern Europe respectively. I hope you enjoy it.

    EDIT: I have made some changes to this section, most significantly removing any reference to Churchill as being a leading figure in the Conservative Unionists at the time.
     
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    Update Twenty-Six (Pt. 2): European Crossroads
  • European Crossroads

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    Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany

    A Divided Empire

    The power and influence of the Hohenzollern family reached a low ebb during the first half of the 1920s as a series of family tragedies dealt body-blows to the Kaiser and his family. The first of these tragedies was the suicide of Prince Joachim of Prussia, who shot himself in 1920, dealing a severe mental blow to his father and sickly mother, to say nothing of his siblings. This acted as a fatal blow to Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, whose health plummeted in late 1920, resulting in her death on the 11th of April 1921. Both of these events drove the Kaiser into a lengthy depression which left him with little interest in governmental affairs, largely handing over most of his responsibilities to his sons and aides while secluding himself with scholars, historians and various other intellectuals willing to indulge his interests. There was even some discussion of Wilhelm retiring, abdicating in favour of his eldest son, but it was eventually decided to put this notion aside.

    In the Kaiser's place stood Crown Prince Wilhelm, who was granted the right to sign legislation into law and fulfill many of the Imperial duties in his father's place. The Crown Prince soon found a friend and ally in Gustav Stresemann, a man of utmost monarchical loyalty and intelligence, who he came to rely upon for political advice and whose hold on the Chancellorship he secured. This partnership between the Crown Prince and Stresemann was crucial to allowing Germany's prosperity during the 1920s, creating a solid backdrop to which Stresemann was able to maneuver between the left and the right in order to secure various legislative accomplishments. The Crown Prince's two eldest sons would play a key role in strengthening the Hohenzollerns' ties to society, with the eldest, also named Wilhelm, engaging deeply in military affairs and associating himself with a number of up-and-coming officers such as Hermann Balck, Eberhard von Mackensen and Heinz Guderian, most of whom were noted for their anti-communist stances and experience fighting either alongside or as part of the Freikorps in Russia, while the younger, Louis Ferdinand, involved himself with the business world and national liberal politics, even serving for a time in the recently founded Luftstreitkräfte, bringing prestige to the independent German Air Force. Prince Eitel Friedrich continued his leadership of the chivalrous Order of St. John and soon involved himself in the nascent German Liberty movement while Prince Adalbert remained in the navy and Prince Oscar in the Army. The black sheep of the family proved to be Prince August Wilhelm, who became deeply enmeshed in the far-right of the DNVP and a key financier and supporter of fringe anti-Semitic and ultra-nationalistic organizations.


    It was the latter of these which would cause August Wilhelm problems, when it was learned that a gang of anti-Semetic hooligans who had terrorised Jewish neighbourhoods and murdered three Jews in Leipzig over the course of 1927 had received funding from an organisation supported by August Wilhelm. The scandal, emerging in early 1928, caused an immense outcry which saw Prince August Wilhelm retire from public life and a public apology from the increasingly engaged Kaiser for his son's conduct - with rumours swirling that the prince had only barely avoided expulsion and disinheriting from the family for the public embarrassment. The August Wilhelm Scandal was the event which pushed the Kaiser to reengage in public affairs, immediately causing trouble for what had previously been an extremely stable relationship with the Chancellorship when the Kaiser publicly lamented the inclusion of the SPD in Stresemann's government (9).

    Germany was not spared the crisis within Catholicism, the Fall of Rome and its aftermath serving as the vehicle for the shattering of the Centre Party's unity as liberal and conservative wings of the party, to say nothing of the German Catholic Church, split over what these events meant. The liberal wing of the Church saw the Catholic Crisis as a clear indicator that God was punishing the faithful for the traditionalist and integralist dominance of the Church, some going so far as to claim that Pope Gregory XVII had proven himself unfit for St. Peter's Throne by his overtly political stance. The conservatives on the other hand viewed this as little better than heresy and rallied behind the Pope's call for political activism, drumming up support for Catholic action groups and a deeper involvement of the church in matters as diverse as healthcare, education, justice and business.

    Figures on the right, such as Franz von Papen and Ludwig Kaas loudly and publicly criticised Erzberger's leadership of the party, growing ever more insistent as the party leadership moved further to the left over the course of the middle years of the 1920s. Rallying significant support, most significantly amongst younger leaders like Konrad Adenaur, Andreas Hermes and Hans Globke, the right-wing of the Centre Party grew ever more powerful as cultural issue such as abortion, censorship and labor rights rose to the fore of political debate. By 1927 the two wings of the party were openly engaged in a war of words, with a few conciliatory figures such as Wilhelm Marx and Heinrich Brüning sought to keep the party together. Most vocal on the left were Adam Stegerwald, a major leader of Catholic trade unions, and Joseph Wirth, who throatily continued to support Erzberger's leadership and denounced the right-wing of the party as integralists, Latin-sympathizers and authoritarians out to silence any voice they disagreed with.

    The matter culminated in a general assembly of the Centre Party on the 13th of August 1927 at which Franz von Papen sought to oust Erzberger from the party leadership. The effort, which had included a great deal of underhanded double-dealing on Papen's behalf, was exposed before Papen could press forward with his plan. However, it was at this moment that Erzberger and his left-wing supporters grossly miscalculated their position and sought to exploit the opportunity to purge the leadership of their rivals. The sudden expulsion of von Papen, Kaas and Globke caused outrage within large sections of the party and soon saw an exodus, with Andreas Hermes, Konrad Adenaur and Heinrich Brünging among the most significant departures, and the establishment of the Catholic People's Party (KVP) which absorbed many of these departures. Across Catholic Germany, the party split and political struggle which followed for party infrastructure played out with devastating consequences. By the end of the year both party organizations were in total disarray and waging an all-out political war, their partisans brawling in the streets and their party organs riddled with spies (10).

    While Centre was the party to experience the most significant amount of turmoil, it was not alone in the matter. Over the course of the middle years of the 1920s, the tensions within the SPD between the leadership and the strengthening fringe surrounding Otto Strasser grew ever greater. In many ways, Strasser had never quite fit the mould of other SPD leaders and in fact proved at times downright heretical as regarded his view on social democratic ideology. Not only did he approve of the communists belief in limited government, as contrasted with the increasingly powerful SPD tendency towards centralism, but he also borrowed heavily from syndicalist and conservative ideological bases, at times even sharing some ideas with the German Liberty ideology. He wished to reshape society into an autocratic caste system based on councils which would answer to assigned managers, who in turn ruled their council with an iron hand. He and his supporters were fiercely nationalistic and proudly Christian, rejecting the Marxist prohibition on religion and referring to these ideas as True Socialism. As the years went on and Strasser continued to be held at bay by the party leadership, he also took up an ever fiercer anti-Semetic and anti-Capitalist tone which alienated a significant portion of the SPD while further strengthening Strasser's hold on his own supporters.

    Events came to a head in early 1928 when, as a result of the upcoming election, the SPD brought up its election plank for discussion amongst significant party figures. It was here that Strasser finally broke what few strictures had kept him quiet, not only disgruntled by the SPD's support for abortion and unwillingness to eject Jews from the party but also believing this to be his last chance at securing power within the party. Strasser's public expression of beliefs at a major party meeting quickly produced crisis as the media took up Strasser's expressions of anti-Semitism and various other odious beliefs, causing scandal and outrage amongst the SPD's membership. Outraged, the party leadership, most vocally pushed forward by Hugo Haase, voted to expel Otto Strasser from the SPD with any of his supporters who wouldn't recant their support of Strasserism.

    This expulsion came as a shock to Otto, who had believed himself to remain in strong standing within the party, and greatly provoked him, leading to his establishment of the National Socialist Party of Germany (NSPD). Amonst those to join the party were Ernst Röhm, Gustav Noske and Heinrich Laufenberg on the left, but by far the greater number of supporters came to the party when Gregor Strasser and his Bavarian compatriots, amongst them a talented Austrian rhetorician by the name of Adolph Hitler, abandoned the DNVP for what they viewed as an unwillingness to act when the nation was under threat of degeneracy. The NSPD and Richthofen-led DFP soon found themselves at greater odds with each other than either the SPD, KPD, DKP or DNVP, competing for a similar group of voters in their first election. The open rancor between the two young third-positionist parties brought considerable media attention to both parties and served as a key dynamic for the growth of both parties in the leadup to the 1928 elections (11).


    The German elections of 1928 marked a major changing of the guard in Germany, brought new parties into the political sphere and saw the stability of previous years brought under threat. The intense cultural and political conflicts of the last couple of years, joined with the ascendancy of new and exciting ideologies, contributed to making these elections amongst the most contentious since the start of the decade. Rumours flew and partisans clashed from Oldenburg in the north to Trieste in the south, while particularly Catholic Germany found itself in a state of bitter division between conservative and liberal church supporters. The rapid urbanisation of the last several years further had the effect of greatly strengthening the urban vote, most significantly in the SPD's favour through their support amongst unions and the working class, while the FVP and NLP also experienced important gains amongst the rapidly growing white collar working class to compliment their old bases of support. Perhaps most notable, beyond the entry of so many new political parties, was the retirement of Chancellor Gustav Stresemann, who endorsed his handpicked successor in the form of Karl Jarres, turning over both party leadership of the NLP and his presumptive status as head of the governmental coalition.

    While Stresemann contributed actively in the election campaign to follow, he was forced to take a backseat to much of it for fear of aggravating his worsening health, and as a result Jarres soon found himself forced to stand on his own accomplishments. Having served as Stresemann's right-hand man in government, where he had served as Interior Minister and managing most intra-coalition communications, and within the party since the early 1920s, Jarres was about as prepared as anyone to pick up where his mentor left off. However, it would not go completely in Jarres favor when election time came around. While Centre would prove considerably more successful than the KVP in retaining Catholic backing, the latter experiencing a painful weakening due to a lack of party infrastructure and the resentment of many Catholic voters over the shattering of Catholic unity, it would find its hold on power in particularly Bavaria gravely weakened by the surprisingly successful efforts of the NSPD in whipping up public furor and a concerted investment by the DNVP in the region. The DFP was able to secure an outsized level of influence, particularly in the Reichstag and the Prussian Landstag, due to the party's connections amongst the German elite, particularly the Prussian Junkers who were often spellbound by Richthofen's efforts. However, in the end the governing coalition would hold onto a slight majority of seats, experiencing some painful setbacks, particularly in the case of Centre, but making up some of the gains through a rising urban vote and the SPD's land reform efforts drawing limited amounts of interest amongst peasant voters (12)

    Footnotes:

    (9) I hope this helps explain what the Hohenzollerns have been up to while everything else has been going on. Wilhelm's disengagement from public affairs might be a bit convenient but the depression mirrors what happened IOTL where he went through a much shorter depression before a new marriage helped him recover. ITTL he doesn't get married again and as a result the depression runs on longer, although by 1925 he had largely recovered and just decides to keep fobbing off the responsibilities on his son while enjoying indulging in his personal interests. August Wilhelm was willing to break with his own family IOTL to support the Nazis, even after the rest of the family gave up any hope of partnering with the party, and seems to have been pretty committed to them as such I don't think this is too out of character. I should mention that he didn't directly pay the gang who ended up killing a number of Jews, but rather that the gang were members of an organization he sponsored and financed. He doesn't seem like the type to ask too many questions, so making a mistake on an issue like this also shouldn't be too surprising.

    (10) The Catholic Crisis takes a bit longer to really hit home in Germany but by 1928 it explodes with devastating consequences for one of the most powerful political blocs in Germany. The unity of the Catholics behind Zentrum was crucial for their political relevance as an independent faction in German politics and their ability to play the two sides against the middle to the benefit of Catholics in Germany. While the left-progressive wing of the Centre Party retains control of the party itself, it ideologically moves firmly leftward while the KVP moves right-ward. Centre also remains a part of the governmental coalition, if gravely wounded, while the KVP soon begins building ties to the DNVP and DKP, uniting with them particularly on issues of morality. It is important to note that the grumbling about the Pope's legitimacy is just that, grumbling, and doesn't signify an actual schism or anything like that. It is just vocal opposition to the Pope's support for political action groups like Action Francaise and for integralist regimes like that of Alfonso in Spain or Victor Emmanuel in Sicily.

    (11) Otto Strasser's incubation period within the SPD finally comes to an end when his rather odious ideas end up going public. Prior to this he had been very careful about who he said what to, but frustrated at being continually held out of leadership positions within the party and hoping to make a name for himself, he finally breaks with them. At the same time, Gregor Strasser uses the opportunity to break with his own rivals for leadership within the DNVP and brings a pretty significant portion of the DNVP's supporters in Bavaria and Austria with him. Hitler remains something of a background player, having made a name for himself in various speaking engagements but having been unable to secure control of a party like he did IOTL. He retains his firm anti-Semitic beliefs and a belief in the Führerprinzip, but significantly he doesn't make the OTL leap to deciding he has to be that leader - something he, at least in his own words, decided in prison after the Beerhall Putsch - so he remains a supporter of autocratic rule but hasn't decided that he needs to be that leader.

    (12) The government coalition holds onto power, but are definitely experiencing a pretty significant loss of popularity. The loss of Gustav Stresemann, who has been able to juggle the various coalition interests and press forward for German prosperity, is immense and whether Karl Jarres will be up for the task is very much in question. The Centre Party is wounded significantly and is shedding voters not only to the KVP, but also to the NSPD, DNVP and its coalition partners, but the new parties haven't really had sufficient time to build the requisite name recognition and infrastructure to really exploit the situation.


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    Collectivization Propaganda in the Volga Region

    Eurasian Resurrection

    For Red Russia, the middle years of the 1920s were dominated by recovery and reform, as new policies were implemented to create a Communist state while undergoing significant preparatory efforts to ensure the further spread of Communism. Under the leadership of Nikolai Bukharin, a massive ideological complex was established where debate over precisely what Communism and a Communist State was to look like, establishing councils, panels and committees to debate everything from the Russia's duty to promote global Communism and the role of the military in society to issues such as the correct forms of formal address and the economic independence of the individual.

    In the meanwhile Grigori Sokolnikov dedicated his efforts to far-reaching economic reforms and worked closely with Yakov Sverdlov and Commissar of Foreign Affairs Georgy Chicherin to negotiate important trade and licensing agreements with Germany, securing industrial aid for the massive reconstruction which occupied so much effort during the mid-1920s. Factories sprouted up across the major cities of Red Russia, in Petrograd, Moscow, Tula, Novgorod and more, while raw resources from the Ural mines flowed freely. In Yekaterinburg-controlled lands, massive collectivisation efforts were undertaken in agriculture, mining and various other resource extraction efforts, while Trotsky's militarisation efforts were strengthened.

    It was during this time that major military reforms were undertaken. The revolutionary armies of the late 1910s and early 1920s had proven themselves extremely unreliable and poorly disciplined, experiencing severe desertion rates and a problematic dependence on popular support. The end of the Civil War had seen the demobilisation of millions and an initial reorganisation of forces around a small professional core of soldiers and territorial militias, but was constantly starved for officers and NCOs, with particularly the former proving few and far between due to their historical connection to the nobility. However, military schools established during the Civil War soon began to alleviate this problem as diligent military minds such as Tukhachevsky, Frunze and Alexander Svechin invested their efforts in developing a military doctrine with which to successfully ensure the security and spread of Communism.

    However, it would be two disparate doctrines which emerged in the form of the Moscow and Yekaterinburg Doctrines, the former emphasising an offensive spirit aimed at completely overwhelming the enemy in a few decisive blows so as to break the enemy's will to fight, primarily formulated by Tukhachevsky, Vladimir Triandafillov and Nikolai Varfolomeev, while the latter emphasised a long and grinding military effort of attrition in which a mixture of offensive and defensive actions would slowly tear apart the opposing party while limiting the damage done to ones' own military forces, primarily championed by Frunze and Svechin, but receiving support from Trotsky for its emphasis on large-scale societal militarisation. By 1928 these reform efforts were well under way and economic recovery was well under way (13).

    While Red Russia seemed on the road to recovery from the Civil War, the same could not in truth be said of the Tsarist regime in the east. While Olga Romanova proved a capable leader, the inherent biases of large segments of the population, most significantly in both the military and governmental bureaucracies, which left many without much in the way of respect for the sovereign, opening the doors to rampant corruption and factionalism, as well as significant continual resource shortages left the Ungern-Romanov regime in a precipitous position.

    With the Tsar held under house arrest, a fact which soon became common knowledge in the capital, the circumstance left many an ambitious man spying an opportunity in Olga's bed. There was more than one attack on Tsar Roman's prison in the next couple of years, one by desperate supporters of the imprisoned Tsar and two by men hoping to replace him as Tsar, and efforts at wooing the Tsaritsa were commonplace, a bitter game which saw more than one high-standing official dead, while Olga and Anastasia did what they could with what little loyal support they could muster to protect themselves, the royal children and their reign. The most brazen of these suitors was Andrei Shkuro, who had risen to power as one of Roman von Ungern-Sternberg's lieutenants late in the Civil War, who launched an assault on the recently constructed Chita Palace in mid-1927 after Olga refused his advances, seeking to capture her and her family in order to force a marriage whereby he might ascend to the throne, after killing Tsar Roman, naturally, and secure power. Luckily for Olga and her family, the attempt was disrupted when the young Alexander Rodzyanko, who had been in Anastasia's orbit for some time and hoped to marry her, rallied a nearby segment of the Chita garrison and counterattacked Shkuro's forces with great success.


    While Shkuro was defeated and killed, rather than leaving the Romanovs in a more powerful position it allowed Rodzyanko to install himself as protector of the royal family, increasingly insistent on his hoped-for marriage to Anastasia. However, before Rodzyanko could become anything more than insistent on the matter, the failures of a distracted and corrupt government were sufficient to raise a peasant force in revolt along the Amur River in late 1927 which threatened to cut the Trans-Siberian Railway and potentially might result in the overthrow of the regime. While granting Rodzyanko command of the force sent to suppress the Amur Revolt removed Rodzyanko temporarily from the capital and created some space for manoeuvring for Olga, it at the same time paved a path for Rodzyanko to ascend to power should he succeed.

    Over the course of the winter of 1927-28, bitter fighting consumed the Amur region while the revolt threatened to spread further - only held at bay by the extreme cold and insufficient infrastructure in the region. However, as spring dawned the rebels were able to successfully cut the Trans-Siberian Railway for a week before Rodzyanko could chase them off, during which time they captured the contents of four major railway shipments and were able to break up the rails at several sites. This triggered a collapse in investor trust in the longevity of the Tsarist regime, causing a significant shortfall in foreign investment just as the Rodzyanko's army's payroll came due. When it was announced that the soldiers would not be paid for the month of April, the force went into mutiny, capturing Rodzyanko and demanding the Chita government pay them what they were owed. While Olga was able to scrape together enough to pay off the mutineers, she delayed long enough for them to murder Rodzyanko. Paid in full, even if it created massive shortfalls in almost every other governmental department, the mutinying soldiers returned to duty under a newly appointed commander, Alexander Kutepov. Kutepov proved extremely ruthless and efficient in the campaign that followed, crushing the remnants of the Amur Revolt by the end of the Summer and restoring an exhausted peace to Tsarist Russia by the Autumn of 1928 (14).

    In Moscow, the eruption of rebellion in Siberia was greeted with considerable interest from the Military faction around Trotsky and Tukhachevsky. As the situation grew from bad to worse, Trotsky began authorising covert subversive effort to be directed by the head of Yekaterinburg's intelligence aperture, Artur Artuzov, an extremely talented and experienced spy master who had helped consistently subvert Tsarist military efforts in Siberia during the Civil War. Under Artuzov's direction, infiltrators were inserted into the Siberian peasant populace, still disordered by the massive population movements of the civil war, in order to provoke public outrage and threaten further revolt. Agitating against corrupt officials and greedy military officers proved extremely effective, soon bringing much of the Cisbaikal region into ferocious foment against Tsarist rule. In Chita, Olga was increasingly reading the writing on the wall, coming to the conclusion that her reign was unlikely to survive the decade. As a result, she secretly arranged for her sister Anastasia to take her three children, Anastasia, Nikolai and Sophia Ungern-Romanov, to safety in the west until she had either stabilised the situation sufficiently or failed.

    Beginning on the 27th of April 1928, the Cisbaikal went into open revolt, cutting rail lines, assassinating officials and raiding arsenals across the region. Once more, Olga turned to Kutepov for command of the suppression effort while "volunteers" from Yekaterinburg crossed the border in secret with supplies and arms to aid in the revolt. By this point in time Kutepov had gained considerable experience in combatting peasant guerrillas and was well aware of how best to deal with them, hammering them hard at any strongpoint they had seized control of while combing the countryside for irregular forces and making preparations for a starvation campaign. However, he had not expected anything close to the resistance he faced when he passed north of Lake Baikal, running into well armed heavily defended positions commanded by professional officers. Initially caught by surprise, Kutepov sent a warning back to Chita that something seemed wrong with the situation, but pressing forward regardless. The bitter fighting which followed dwarfed anything seen since the civil war and shook the Tsarist leadership's trust in the Treaty of Tsarskoye Selo, serving to quiet the intrigues in Chita for a short while.

    In Moscow, the Central Committee met to discuss the Cisbaikal revolt where Trotsky urged immediate action, calling for an all-out assault to sweep away the corrupted Tsarist regime. The issue was fiercely debated over several days, storm clouds seeming to gather over Moscow under the threat of war. It was days into these debates that word leaked of Trotsky's role in inciting the revolt to begin with, provoking considerable anger amongst the other members of the Central Committee, not only at his disingenuous actions but also at what they viewed as his attempt to force the Central Committee's hand to back his effort. However, it would be the arrival of news on the 13th of July which finally pushed the Central Committee to action. A week earlier word had arrived from the Cisbaikal that Kutepov had won a major victory near the town of Bratsk over a force of nearly 20,000 rebels and the subsequent massacre of nearly 3,000 Yekaterinburg Volunteers discovered amongst the captured, and it was feared that a massacre of the Cisbaikal peasantry was about to be undertaken. Rallying the news media behind him and taking to the streets of Moscow to gain support for the effort, Trotsky put his vaunted oratory to use in whipping up support for an intervention. With crowds of as many as 100,000 men massing in Red Square, the Central Committee finally bowed to Trotsky's demand and authorized an armed intervention in Siberia (15).

    While events further east were playing out, Germany's network of satellite states across Eastern Europe was finding its relationship with Germany under growing pressure. At the heart of the emerging struggle lay Poland, which had emerged as the second most powerful state in the region after the Don Republic and still held out hope for national aggrandisement at the cost of its neighbours. To the north, they disputed Lithuanian control of Vilnius, in the east they contested the wide reaches of western Ukraine while to the west they looked longingly towards Prussian Poland and Silesia. Standing against this effort by Polish nationalists, foremost among them the Popular National Union under Wojciech Korfanty, who despite his ties to Germany was a firm opponent of Germanisation, was Prime Minister Jan Kanty Steczkowski whose pro-German attitudes were key to giving Poland the breathing room it needed to recover from the Great War and even enjoy a significant economic boom as German investors worked to exploit the cheap labor and rich natural resources available in Poland. The remnants of the Polish Military Organisation continued to cause trouble, bombing German investments and assassinating pro-German politicians and officials when possible, but found its support limited by less radical movements and political parties.

    To the South, in Romania, the most explicitly puppetised states of Eastern Europe, public resistance to German inroads were significantly larger and more popular. Peasant agitators travelled the country, constantly on the run from government agents, working to work the populace into a furor against German influence, at times even succeeding, most significantly with the Ploiesti Riots in which half a dozen German expatriates were killed by a riotous mob before the Romanian Army could disperse the crowd, leaving nearly fifty Romanians dead.

    To the East, in the Don Republic, Pyotr Wrangel balanced precariously atop an ever more divided republic as French and British efforts at gaining influence in the republic were met with considerable success. With the Germans increasingly interested in a partnership with Red Russia, Wrangel found his own pro-German stance increasingly under assault. As the relations between Chita and Moscow deteriorated, the issue of how to respond to an eventual reignition of the Civil War became an ever larger part of the public discourse, with Wrangel's wish for continued peace proving increasingly unpopular as the threat of a Red Russia stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific rose to prominence in political discourse. During this time, the Don Republic found itself increasingly pressured by the large Ukrainian segment of their population to adopt more pro-Ukrainian policies, including the acknowledgement of Ukrainian as a national language and the creation of Ukrainian-language schools and government institutions.

    Finally, in the north, the United Baltic Duchy struggled to recover from the deep wounds dealt to it by the Great War and Civil War which followed, the tense ethnic rivalries between Estonian, Latvian and Baltic German populations, the former two vastly outnumbering the latter while the latter exploited economic, social and cultural ties to Germany to the utmost. In Lithuania, Vilnius grew immensely, becoming a favoured hub for further east-ward investment among German banks and financiers, and experienced a significant amount of Germanification in everything from education, culture and high society, all of which provoked considerable resistance from the native Lithuanian populace. In Finland, the divide between the left and right continued to fester as the wounds of the Civil War and subsequent right-wing monopolisation of power at the highest levels left a great deal of bitterness on the left. However, significant German investments into the native forestry, mining and fishing industries all helped support a significant economic boom which helped alleviate some of these pressures for the time being. For the time being, Germany seemed in control of its vast satellite empire in the east, by hook or by crook, but as people moved on from the Great War and looked into the future - many ambitious men and women began to wonder how long those bonds might hold (16).

    Footnotes:

    (13) The important thing to note here is that the two disparate elements which IOTL ended up being combined into the Deep Operations military doctrine are separated ITTL, at least for now. IOTL it took until around 1930 for Tukhachevsky to accept Svechin's focus on the grinding aspect of DO doctrine after a great deal of back and forth - and only really after most of his major military thought rivals had died. The end result is that the Moscow school focuses heavily offensive operations, particularly large-scale war-winning offensives, while the Yekaterinburg school is far more defensive in outlook.

    (14) The situation in Chita turns positively medieval as Olga's effective availability following her removal of Tsar Roman from power serves to bring every ambitious idiot running. The intrigues, coup attempts, murders and assassinations which follow each other in rapid succession are not really all that conducive to effective governance and leaves the Romanovs fighting a constant war of survival and control, using every dirty trick in the book to accomplish it. One thing to note is that the appointment of Kutepov is the first time in this entire farce that Olga actually found the opportunity to appoint the person she wanted to the job. Kutepov proves surprisingly loyal and effective in his support for the Romanov women, neither attempting to woo them nor fighting to gain more power for himself. The main problem facing Olga is that she is a woman in a position where everyone is trying to exploit her, at a time in which few are willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Her orders are criticized and often ignored, her appointees are met with scorn more often than not and there are few officials who have the slightest qualm about engaging in corruption. However, by late 1928 things seem to be looking up and the Romanovs hope that they might finally have some breathing room.

    (15) With Red Russia on the path to recovery and the Siberian Whites gravely weakened, Trotsky exploits the opportunity to whip up a conflict which could allow him a path to greater power. Olga spots that things seem to be swinging against her and removes her children from the field of battle while Kutepov does everything in his power to force compliance on the Cisbaikal population. All of this finally draws Red Russia into action, reigniting the dormant civil war once more.

    (16) I am really sorry about how messy this paragraph is, jumping all over the place, but there really isn't a great deal to get into just yet as regards eastern Europe. This was more an effort at bringing the region up to date with the rest of the timeline. A couple of things to note - Germany's power outside of Romania remains largely soft-power reliant, although they could probably force their will should they need to.


    Summary:

    Integralism rises to prominence in Spain and Sicily while the Communist Regime in Italy struggles with a variety of challenges.

    France and Britain experiences important political and social shifts while the impact of the Fall of Rome plays out on French Politics.

    Germany experiences a significant degree of political division, but for the time being holds steady.

    Events in Tsarist Russia spin out of control as Red Russia looks to pounce while Eastern Europe deals with its German relationship.

    End Note:

    Sorry about leaving off on a cliffhanger with the restart of the civil war, but I think it is better to push it to the next time we deal with Russia. Russia enjoyed barely a couple of years of peace before the peace began to crumble, but hopefully they can find a more sustainable configuration soon. As for the rest of this update, the focus is really on the slow weakening of Germany's grip on power in the east and the way in which it opens up for various actors to push into the gap. Whether this trend will continue is definitely a major question, but as it stands there are some very important issues Germany will have to deal with in the near future. I really hope you enjoyed the update.

    All that said, I do have some IRL stuff to get out of the way. Tomorrow I start on an internship in hopes of securing something more permanent at the end, so I don't really know how much time or energy I will have to dedicate to the TL. I will be trying to get out at least one segment of an update a week, but I really don't know how all of this will work out in the long run. I will have a better idea after a week or two of the internship, but either way I will keep you updated.
     
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    Update Twenty-Seven (Pt. 1) - Explosive Americana
  • Explosive Americana

    411px-Pancho_y_Dona.jpg

    Francisco "Pancho" Villa and his wife Maria Luz Corral

    Viva la Revolución

    The summer of 1924 was bathed in red as the rapidly escalating Mexican civil war between Adolfo de la Huerta, Pancho Villa and Álvaro Obregón saw Chihuahua fall to Pancho Villa with barely a fight, clarifying beyond a doubt the critical situation in which Obregón found himself. Delahuertistas in the far-south, Villistas across much of the north and Cristeros west of Mexico City in Jalisco all posed a major challenge to the outgoing Mexican president, who rallied what support he could amongst his generals while turning to the rapidly strengthening government-controlled union of CROM, the Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers, and through the union arranged the reestablishment of Red Battalions like those of the middle years of the Revolution.

    Uncertain of whether to turn north against Villa or south against de la Huerta, Obregón eventually decided that his northern rival posed the greater threat and set off with a rapidly growing force to end Villa's threat before it could grow further. This left Plutarco Calles to deal with events in the south - a decision Obregón would come to regret. Fiercely anti-Catholic in outlook, Calles took control of most of the Red Battalions and rural militias in the regions surrounding Mexico City before marching southward towards Jalisco determined to crush the incipient Cristeros so that he could turn his attentions firmly towards de la Huerta without fear of a dagger at his back. While he initially sought to rein in abuses by his men, Calles' control of particularly the Red Battalions, who had recently become inundated in anti-clerical propaganda out of Italy, soon began to slip as the suppression effort turned into an outright arson, vandalism and murder spree aimed at the rural priesthood of western Mexico. Outrage spread like wildfire as priests across western and southern Mexico began to preach the Crusade, declaring that not until the ungodly were removed from power would Mexico be free, with armed Cristeros fighters emerging in Zacatecas, Nayarit, Guanajuato and Michoacán to repel Calles men. Further south, in Morelos, the smattering of Cristeros and Zapatista forces which had risen in response to José Reyes Vega's sermon found their support swelling rapidly while old ex-Zapatistas like Genoveno de la O and Francisco Alarcón Sánchez withdrew their already tepid support for Obregón.

    With Calles' forces increasingly bogged down as every guerrilla with a grudge began emerging from the woodworks, de la Huerta was able to attack the forces of General Vicente González with overwhelming force, shattering the Obregónista forces in the south and allowing him to push out of Tabasco. Obregón, realizing that time was against him, rushed northward in hopes of catching Villa by surprise, crossing into Durango before Villa could be alerted, forcing Villa to bring together his scattered forces, which had been sent in every direction to spread the Villista cause far and wide. However, in his haste Obregón had been unable to assemble a particularly large or unified force and as such, when the two old rivals met in combat outside of Parral it was Villa who scored a limited victory. However, both forces were far too disorganized to exploit the situation one way or the other, and Obregón was able to retreat in relatively good order. However, Obregón's failure to secure immediate success led those wavering in their support of him to desert the cause, either declaring themselves neutral in the struggle or jumping ship for the enemy. In Michoacán, Calles was assassinated by a woman Cristero on the 29th of August 1924, provoking a collapse in order across the region and opening the road for de la Huerta. Obregón, realizing that he had lost this round, fled Durango for the coast, wherefrom he set sail for exile in America on the 13th of September (1).


    With the death of Calles and exile of Obregón, the Mexican government had been effectively defeated and an equitable post-war settlement soon became the most important issue facing Mexico. This was far from the first time Mexico faced such a situation in the revolutionary period, having seen the Maderista, Huertista, Constitutionalist, Carranzista and now Obregónista settlements fall apart in the space of barely one-and-a-half decade. Villa, having been in this situation before, was unwilling to allow himself to be placed in a losing position once more and as a result rushed forces south to secure Mexico City the moment he learned of Obregón's flight into exile. From the south, Adolfo de la Huerta mirrored this rush towards the capital, as both leaders sought a position of power from which to negotiate the coming settlement.

    However, there was one point on which Villa was able to completely outmanoeuvre the more traditionalist de la Huerta, namely his willingness to promise the abolition of Article 130 mandating the separation of church from state, preventing religious figures from holding political office and requiring the registration of all religious organisations with the government to name just a few of the strictures inherent to the law, although it must be mentioned that the article had remained unenforced under both Carranza and Obregón. This secured Villa backing from the Cristeros and allowed him to sweep up support across western Mexico. The approach of Villa's forces from the north triggered panic, as rumours that he planned to avenge any slight done to him and to tear down the Obregónista edifice spread like wildfire through Mexico City, triggering an exodus of the well-to-do, most of whom fled south-east towards the perceived safety of de la Huerta's lines. As the two forces neared each other south-east of Mexico City, fears that the situation would turn bloody led both sides to come to a halt in the shadow of Pico de Oribaza wherefrom a conference between Villa and de la Huerta was soon negotiated.

    The Conference of Córdoba, which lasted nearly two months, and the Plan of Córdoba which resulted from it, were to set the framework for Mexican rule under the new regime. Villa had never coveted the presidency, and surprised de la Huerta with his willingness to hand over control of the federal government. Villa would content himself with the governorship of Chihuahua and de la Huerta's acceptance of Villa's wartime appointments which, given the fact they placed Mexico north and west of Mexico City in the hands of Villistas, was a more significant ask than de la Huerta realised initially. Having agreed to this, Villa went in for the kill, demanding a significant strengthening of state power, in effect seeking to undermine the unitarist consensus which had dominated Mexican politics since the Reform War of the late 1850s while the 1917 Constitution saw dozens of articles rewritten and a few, including Article 130, removed entirely. Issues such as land reform, labor rights, taxation and much else was devolved to the state level while the size of the Federal Army was severely curtailed. De la Huerta erupted in rage at what he perceived as an outright betrayal by Villa and had to be calmed by his aides, who were swift to highlight the fact that during the Conference, Villa's camp had swelled with an onrush of Cristero guerrillas who effectively doubled the forces under his control. After a night of angry contemplation, de la Huerta gave way and accepted Villa's demands, paving the road to the presidential palace (2).

    Adolfo de la Huerta was elected President of Mexico in a carefully orchestrated election in November of 1924, which additionally confirmed the restructured constitution agreed to at Córdoba. From north to south and east to west, Villista and Delahuertistas were placed into positions of power and influence, effectively splitting actual control of Mexico down the middle. Almost immediately, Villa set about implementing the radical reforms he had long hoped for. The massive estates which dominated much of northern Mexico were severely curtailed as land reforms were implemented at a break-neck pace, while plans for the nationalisation of sub-soil resources were developed with an eye towards implementation within the next couple of years. At the time, all companies in the business of oil production in Mexico were foreign companies. Labor practices in these companies poorly benefited the workers since the companies were able to block the creation of labor unions through legal and illegal tactics. Key to the Villista plan was the creation of the Confederation of Mexican Workers in early 1925 as a state-backed labor union with the aim of establishing general contracts for each oil company, and if this proved impossible to press on with nationalisation. Villa worked closely with local communities in a bid to improve their lot, most significantly establishing a legal designation whereby rural villages could hold communal lands in the area surrounding their village, a long wished-for provision which immensely strengthened the rural population's bargaining power against commercial elites.

    In the meanwhile, in the south de la Huerta proved a man in the mould of his predecessors, using what power was available to him to consolidate his hold on power while strengthening his ties with foreign powers and ensured control over his subordinate governors in the south. Perhaps most ambitiously, de la Huerta set into action a major educational policy whereby public schooling was made widely available and the contents were standardized. He was able to negotiate favorable agreements with a number of American companies who worried about Villa's plans for the north, getting them to accept a 50 year limitation on their land tenders and acceptance of the constitutional article establishing the Mexican government's right to sub-surface resources. These concessions were hard won, and proved distinctly unpopular in the United States where the victory of the Cristeros rebels and resurgent rise of Catholic political power were further viewed as a distinct threat on the right. After a year of relative peace and stability, in which the Villistas and Delahuertistas solidified their hold on power, events amongst the Yaqui tribe of Sonora led to another outbreak of violence, which would soon escalate into deadly clash of wills (3).

    The Yaqui Uprising of 1926-27 was a bloody affair in which the Governor of Sonora, Nicholás Fernández, used a combination of heavy aerial scouting and roaming death squads to eradicate Yaqui guerrillas where possible. However, the violence with which these efforts were undertaken were sufficient to drive the Yaqui into flight, crossing the US border into Arizona by the hundreds, precipitating a border crisis. In Washington, President McAdoo found himself the target of considerable criticism by nativists for his failure to deal with the Villistas who were now having a direct harmful impact on a part of the United States. These criticisms were soon chorused by the business elite from which McAdoo himself came, driving him to action in Mexico. While there were a variety of actions suggested in the days that followed, McAdoo patently refused to insert American forces into Mexico, instead turning towards the idea of trying to sunder the brittle alliance between de la Huerta and Villa.

    Over the course of 1927, American diplomatic efforts would escalate rapidly as de la Huerta found himself inundated in American demands that action be taken against Villa, who was beginning to implement some of the nationalisation plans that had been under development, and threatened sanctions should he prove unable to accomplish this task. De la Huerta weighed the issue and contacted Villa to negotiate, but with American pressure growing by the day it seemed increasingly as though the president would bow to their demands. In early 1928, the matter came to a head when Adolfo de la Huerta, in a shocking change of direction, expelled the American ambassador Josephus Daniels using the claim that Daniels had mortally insulted him with a distinctly un-diplomatic anti-Catholic comment and affirmed his alliance with Villa. Furthermore, he abandoned his previous policy of buttering up the Americans and instead took a firmly nationalistic tone - announcing his support for the nation-wide implementation of Villa's nationalization effort.

    The American reaction was understandably confused and outraged, with McAdoo publicly embarrassed by the whole matter while conservative, nationalistic and nativist media erupting in an enraged frenzy. McAdoo, determined to secure his reputation in the leadup to the 1928 elections, pressed forward with preparations for an intervention in Mexico under the auspices of placing Félix Diaz, former dictator Porfirio Diaz's nephew, in power. However, McAdoo soon saw this effort stymied when Diaz fled back to Mexico and publicly declared his support for de la Huerta. Searching about for another figurehead, McAdoo eventually found himself forced to turn to old Obregón in Los Angeles. However, Obregón's response varied not one bit from Diaz's, refusing to serve as an American stooge as well. Thus, by mid-1928 McAdoo remained without a plausible figure to back and without a legitimate reason for intervention, angered, humiliated and worst of all increasingly distracted by a surprising insurgency within the Democratic Party which would place the dominance of the conservative-nativist wing of the party in jeopardy (4).

    Footnotes:

    (1) While Obregón is probably the most talented figure of the revolutionary crop, the combination of a resurgent Villa, the escalated Cristero opposition and de la Huerta's play for power are sufficient to drive him from the field - at least for the time being. However, not since the defeat of Victoriano Huerta have forces as powerful as the Delahuertistas and Villistas been in a position to grasp for power - to say nothing of the rising power of the Cristeros movement which is looking to make rather significant constitutional changes.

    (2) From my reading, Villa never seems to have actually coveted the Mexican presidency and was, weirdly for the times, a committed federalist in the mould of pre-1860s federalists. That isn't to say he wouldn't exploit the situation to the fullest, but he has little interest in moving to Mexico City and having to deal with the city's elite day in and day out - much better to enjoy life in Chihuahua's Governor Palace while his friends and followers dominate the other states across much of the region.

    (3) Villa accelerates land reform efforts, to considerable discontent, while both he and de la Huerta secure their hold on power. Most significant in this section is that the Americans are increasingly discontent with the Mexican state of affairs. While the removal of Obregón, whose leftism left many in the US disconcerted, was viewed positively - the rise of Pancho Villa to political power, particularly the fact that he now effectively controls the entire US-Mexico border, and the reemergence of the Catholic Church as a political player are angst-inducing prospects for the McAdoo government and its backers.

    (4) I was tempted to throw another civil war at Mexico, but honestly I liked this result better. After years of uneasy alliance, American pressure finally forces the Villistas and Delahuertistas to cement their alliance under the more radical approach of the two. While McAdoo was left humiliated by the matter, weakening him sufficiently to see challenges from within the party, the most important aspect to understand here is that Mexico is actually gaining the time it needs to recover from the bitter fighting of the revolution. Obregón was defeated with relative swiftness while struggles like the Yaqui Uprising are minor matters, but by avoiding anything as devastating as the Cristero War of OTL, de la Huerta and Villa are able to strengthen Mexico significantly.

    Endnote:

    I started my new internship this week and while it is very interesting it is also rather exhausting so getting any significant degree of writing done has been a bit of a challenge. Further, I have been fighting off plot bunnies like crazy to keep my focus on the TL. That said, I hope people enjoy this section. It didn't end up quite as exciting as I originally thought it would, but I do find the developments this section sets up rather interesting given the sort of directions it allows me to go with Mexico. The reintegration of the Catholic Church in political affairs will come to have rather significant impacts as we move forward.
     
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    Update Twenty-Seven (Pt. 2) - Explosive Americana
  • Explosive Americana

    Naturalstep1927.jpg

    Great Mississippi Flood of 1927

    A Challenger Arisen

    The middle years of McAdoo's presidency had been characterised by the strengthening of nativist and moralistic impact at a federal level, as men like John Nance Garner, William E. Johnson, Hugo Black and Clifford Walker all amassed significant power and influence with which to shift government policy. It was an alliance between many of these figures that saw the establishment of a federal censorship board aimed at policing Hollywood, the replacement of William J. Burns as Director of AILE with esteemed police chief August Vollmer who would bring an immense degree of practicality and efficiency to the law enforcement efforts of AILE in the years to come, while anti-Catholic hysteria was brought to a boil, most significantly in the establishment of the highly inflammatory senatorial Black Commission under the recently elected Hugo Black, which held hearings questioning the loyalty of Catholics to the United States and publicly discussing the idea of enforcing a pledge of allegiance at the start of every Catholic church service, to great outrage in Catholic circles (5).

    However, the strengthening of national nativist sentiments greatly angered and distressed large sections of the public, provoking ever strengthening resistance to these ascendant forces. During this time, attacks on some of the various tariff measures introduced under President Wood earlier in the decade grew increasingly fierce as the American economy found its efforts at international trade hampered by foreign protectionist trade barriers with limited success in negotiating better trade agreements, particularly with the Mitteleuropean trade block which had formed around Germany and which actively sought to limit American market penetration to the great frustration of McAdoo's New Yorker friends. The solution would prove to be an economic alliance with Great Britain which significantly lowered trade barriers between the British Empire and the United States, with the effect that American investors and sellers found exciting new markets to exploit while the saturated British economy found an outlet in the still underserved American economy. Perhaps most significant in this effort was the new markets that this trade deal opened for an American agricultural sector in crisis.

    The technological developments of the last half century had revolutionised farming while the settling of the West and Far West had meant that the American agricultural sector had proven overly successful - producing far too much food to actually be consumed. By 1926, it had looked as though the American agricultural sector's downturn would turn into a depression but swift action in the form of this new trade deal and the passing of the McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Bill in September of 1927 which called for an equalisation fee, the government was to segregate the amounts required for domestic consumption from the exportable surplus. The former were to be sold at the higher domestic price, the world price plus the tariff, using the full advantage of the tariff rates on exportable farm products, and the latter at the world price. The difference between the higher domestic price and the world price received for the surplus was to be met by the farmers of each commodity in the form of a tax or equalisation fee, which would be paid by American consumers in the form of higher food prices. While the bill proved unpopular in business circles and with the average consumer, this was more than made up for by the ecstatic response from the agricultural sector which soon saw its profit margins increase and the immense economic pressure for expansion, which had seen many farmers go into significant debt, justified, fuelling the rapid rise in agricultural land prices over the course of the rest of the decade (6).

    What neither McAdoo nor anyone else had prepared for was the incredible flooding which engulfed the Mississippi River Basin starting in the autumn of 1926 and peaking during the first half of 1927. The Flood of 1927 had its origins both in nature and in man. In the late 1920s, technological advances kept pace with the growing economy. Heavy machinery enabled the construction of a vast system of levees to hold back rivers that tended to overrun their banks. Drainage projects opened up new, low-lying lands that had once been forests but had been left bare by the timber industry. Feeling protected from flooding by the levees, farmers borrowed money with easy credit from banks booming with the record levels of the stock market. They expanded their fields to low-lying areas on their own property or moved to new lands that were fertile from centuries of seasonal flooding. They felt safe behind the levees and secure in selling their crops to new markets, now accessible by railroad, truck, automobiles, and even international shipping. The “buy now, pay later” mindset of the 1920s encouraged people, including farmers of modest means, to purchase washing machines and other labor-saving devices on instalment plans. Even nature seemed to be cooperating, as the summer of 1926 brought rain instead of drought.

    The spring of 1927, however, saw warm weather and early snow melts in Canada, causing the upper Mississippi to swell. Rain fell in the upper Midwest, sending its full rivers gushing into the already swollen Mississippi. Its destination, the Gulf of Mexico, acted as a stopper when it too became full. Then, in the South, it began to rain. On Good Friday, 15th of April 1927, the rains came, setting all-time records for their breadth and intensity. They came down over several hundred thousand square miles, covering much or all of the states of Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana. In New Orleans in 18 hours there were 15 inches of rain—the greatest ever known there. In the spring of 1927, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers assured the public that the levees would hold. The Corps had built them, after all. But, as had been the case at the mouth of the river, the Corps overestimated its own prowess and underestimated the power of the river.

    The Corps built the levee system to confine the river and if necessary, it was thought, the flow would be reduced with outlets that would divert part of the river into the biggest outlet of all, the Atchafalaya River, into the Gulf, or at Bonnet Carre, just above New Orleans, into Lake Pontchartrain and then to the Gulf. But no cut-offs were dug. Nor was another idea, to build reservoirs on the tributaries to hold back the water. Nor were any outlets dug. The Corps of Engineers—and then the residents of the Valley—relied on levees only. At high water the river spread and rose even higher. In turn, the Corps raised the height of the levees, from two feet to 7.5 feet to as much as 38 feet. The Corps was confident that its levees-only system would hold in the river, and it so promised. The levees failed. Here, there, sometimes it seemed everywhere, the river undercut the levees. Water poured through breaks called crevasses, covering with 30 feet of water land where nearly one million people lived while twenty-seven thousand square miles were inundated. By the 1st of July, even as the flood began to recede, 1.5 million acres were under water. The river was 70 miles wide. Still the rains came. The river rose higher. Most threatened was the Mississippi Delta, between Memphis and Vicksburg, possibly the richest, most fertile land in the country, perhaps in the world (7).

    Into this disaster stepped one man. Having won a bitterly contested gubernatorial race in 1924, Huey P. Long had spent the first couple of years in office under attack from all sides. In New Orleans, the Bourbon Democratic political machine known as the "Old Regulars" presented constant challenges to Long's reformist efforts, hampering efforts to put Long loyalists in positions of power and sabotaging his policy initiatives. Most significantly, Long had found himself increasingly at odds with the growing power of the Ku Klux Klan, which was working to secure influence particularly in northern Louisiana, in the process infringing on Long's base of support. The result was that over the course of 1925 and 1926, Long had slowly but steadily begun to systematically turn his enemies against one another while building a base of support through a purposefully inclusive political approach, supporting poor Catholics in the south against the Old Regulars, turning his supporters in the north against the Indiana and Ohio Klansmen who led the charge in establishing the KKK in the north and making a couple important alliances with prominent power players in New Orleans who were hoping to break the power of the Old Regulars and create a new political machine.

    When the Great Flood of 1927 occurred, Long was thus looking for an opportunity with which to not only bludgeon he enemies, but also a chance to propel himself to national prominence and prestige. While hundreds of thousands were displaced by the flood, the treatment of those displaced varied immensely based on race, wealth and state. In the south, Planters feared that their sharecroppers, both black and white and most deeply in debt, might not return home from the Red Cross camps, leaving them without enough labor to put crops in the fields when the land dried out. This led to a controversial mandate in which sharecroppers, particularly black sharecroppers, were admitted to and released from the camps only under the supervision of their planters. African Americans needed a pass to enter or leave the Red Cross camps while some were forced at gunpoint by law enforcement officials to survive on the levees indefinitely in makeshift tents as water rose around them while would-be rescue boats left empty. They were forced by the National Guard with fixed bayonets to work on the levees, in addition to other flood relief efforts, while the Red Cross maintained refugee camps for flood victims through 15th September, when many people, black and white, were finally able to return to their devastated land to try to survive the winter and start over with virtually nothing.

    The only southern state in which this process did not play out would be Louisiana, where Governor Long used the emergency situation to crack down on his political enemies - many of them coming from the aforementioned planters, and threw his full efforts behind supporting the devastated population of his state. Long spent almost every hour of the day during the crisis resolving one issue or another, touring camps, rustling up money and supplies for the effort, personally joined rescue efforts and much more, all of it with a coterie of journalists in his wake, churning out favourable national news stories by the dozens. By the end of the year, the loud, smooth-talking, charismatic and hilariously crass Louisiana governor was a national sensation, polarising opinions like few others could (8).

    Never one to let an advantage go to waste, Long used his new-found popularity to solidify his hold on power, firing hundreds of opponents in the state bureaucracy, at all ranks from cabinet-level heads of departments and board members to rank-and-file civil servants and state road workers, and replaced them with loyalists across the board. These clients who depended on Long for a job would then pay a portion of their salary at election time directly into Long's political war-chest, creating bonds of patronage and significantly strengthening Long's financial resources. Finally finding an opening through which to put his political plans into action, he began ramming a massive slate of reforms down the throat of the Louisiana legislature and established an unprecedented series of public works which would help ensure another flood like that of 1927 never happened, ensuring work and prosperity for his poverty-stricken supporters and reconstruct the insufficient infrastructure network of the state, building roads, bridges, hospitals, and educational institutions.

    During this time Long's preexisting educational efforts also went forward, with a free textbook program for school children and the expansion of adult literacy classes which had been among Long's first policies to be implemented. This massive increase in expenditure provoked what amounted to a revolt in the state legislature, with Philip H. Gilbert, the President of the State Senate, moving to impeach Long on charges ranging from blasphemy to abuses of power, bribery, and the misuse of state funds. Gilbert had grossly miscalculated his position. The moment word of the accusation emerged, people took to the streets in protest. With Long judiciously fanning the flames and a sea of angry protesters shouting their outrage at the steps of the State Senate, to say nothing of Long's political allies picking apart the charges one by one in the senate, Gilbert soon found himself under attack from even his own supporters, with whispers of Gilbert's own improprieties making their way into Long-friendly newspapers putting Gilbert's position under threat. Rather than face the humiliation of losing the impeachment vote, Gilbert decided to withdraw the impeachment accusations and eat craw. The defeat of Gilbert was undoubtedly the climax of Huey Long's four-year struggle to consolidate power and put him in a position to press forward with his own goals.

    1928 also saw the true start of Huey Long's all-out war on the Ku Klux Klan, with his purging of suspected Klan members from positions of authority in northern Louisiana, banning of cross burning and the passing of a controversial anti-mask law directly targeting the klansmen's dress. With Long leading the way, anti-Klan Democrats in the south finally had a strong figure to rally behind in their condemnations of the Klan - soon provoking open violence across many of the southern states. The matter came to a head when a lone klansman arrived in Shreveport at one of Long's many anti-Klan rallies in the lead-up to the 1928 elections and opened fire on him from the crowd with a cry of "Long Live the Klan!". While Long was unharmed, two men in the crowd were killed and a woman gravely injured by the hail of bullets before the crowd turned on the klansman and literally tore him to pieces, his body so mutilated that identifying him proved impossible. The reaction to the news that a man as prominent as Huey Long had nearly been murdered by racist thugs would fundamentally shape the election to come (9).

    Footnotes:

    (5) It is worth noting that the appointment of Vollmer to direct AILE is unlikely to accomplish what McAdoo's followers were hoping it would. While he brings a great deal of professionalism and competence to the position, he proves rather dismal at the political-police aspects which AILE has taken on itself. Under Vollmer, AILE is far more effective in pursuing cases - particularly against gangsters and criminals of varying sort, but AILE's ability to impact policy and serve as the president's bludgeon against political enemies is severely downgraded. This does have the effect of making AILE significantly more independent from the Presidency, which might prove an issue in the future.

    (6) The Farm Relief Bill is based on an OTL effort which was vetoed multiple times. ITTL it passes with McAdoo's sanction and along with the new trade deal with the British has the effect of pushing the agricultural sector into overdrive to an even greater extent than IOTL. While the new international markets which are opened up here will prove a boon, it does have the effect of significantly reducing efforts to actually resolve the issues present in the agricultural sector.

    (7) This section is basically all OTL, but it is necessary to set the stage for events to come and understanding the sheer scale of the catastrophe should really help.

    (8) Finally Huey Long takes center stage. IOTL the Great Mississippi Flood was the key building block for Long's rise to power in Louisiana, where he used the governor's handling of the crisis to bludgeon him into defeat - and there were definitely plenty of failures in the effort. ITTL, however, Huey is the one on the hot seat - and like with every other situation in his life he is going to exploit it to the fullest. By personally overseeing every aspect of the crisis, Long is able to spin the crisis into a positive and win the support of a massive portion of Louisiana's population. By the end of 1927, he is finally in a position to secure control of Louisiana - and if there is one thing Huey Long knows how to do, it is crushing his enemies and basking in the lamentation of their women (might be a bit hyperbolic, but then again I do think the Kingfish might have given Genghis Khan a run for his money when it comes to ruthlessly destroying his enemy).

    (9) Huey Long's 1924-28 gubernatorial term is a rather tense time for Louisiana, with Long struggling a great deal more than OTL to consolidate his power. However, by 1928 he is able to force an end to internal political resistance while he emerges as a significant political figure on the national stage as well. Huey is still the autocratic bully of OTL who is willing to be as unscrupulous as he has to in order to get his way, but the fact that he does this on a populist, anti-racist platform is a rather fun idea to explore. I am sorry to say that it will take a bit before we get into the 1928 elections, but this should give you guys an idea of where we are headed.

    Endnote:

    That brings this week's section to an end. I really hope that you enjoyed this section and the way in which Huey Long entered the TL proper. With the next two sections we will be digging into what is going on in the Caribbean and South America, with a focus on the impacts of a shifting , activist Catholicism, and the way in which American interests are challenged and develop in the region.

    I enjoyed writing this section a lot. There is just something about Huey Long which I have always found rather appealing and I really want to explore his character more so expect him to play an important role in the United States at least for the next period of the TL.
     
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    Update Twenty-Seven (Pt. 3) - Explosive Americana
  • Explosive Americana

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    American Fruit Company Brigades in Nicaragua

    República Banana

    Not to be outdone by the rest of the Americas, Central America would prove as troubled a region for the Americans as anywhere else. With American power having exploded across the region since the start of the century, the weakening of this power and growing distraction posed by internal turmoil during the 1920s had slowly but steadily seen the United States' iron grip on Central America begin to weaken. Having largely come about as an effort to enforce the corporate rule of the United Fruit Company, Standard Fruit Company and Cuyamel Fruit Company in the so-called Banana Republics, the death of UFC President Andrew Preston in 1924, anti-Catholic sentiment against the Vacarro leadership of SFC and anti-Russian biases against CFC President Samuel Zemurray resulted in a precipitous collapse in American Government support for the American Fruit Companies.

    While the Fruit Companies were able to continue their explosive expansion during the first few years to follow, a series of major crises across the region beginning in 1925, with the overthrow of Miguel Paz Barahona by General Gregorio Ferrera in Honduras, would set the stage for the sudden collapse of the Classical Era of the Banana Republic of Central America. The rise to power of Ferrera in Honduras came on the back of a Liberal counterreaction to the strengthening of the Honduran Conservatives and swiftly gained the backing of the Fruit Companies, who Ferrera was able to leverage in favor of his regime. This proved vital within the year, when a coup attempt by General Carías was crushed with American might following Ferrara's expansive promises of alliance and partnership, Carías fleeing into exile in Mexico. However, even here the weakening governmental might of the fruit companies was partially revealed when the Marines dispatched proved significantly smaller and worse equipped than previous instances of intervention. While Ferrara worked to consolidate his hold on power, having Carías executed in secret before launching a bloody purge of his supporters, matters in Nicaragua took a turn for the worse in a significant way (10).

    The Nicaraguan Civil War came about in response to the landing of Liberal exile forces at Bluefields under José María Moncada, who fought to make the exiled Dr. Sacasa president, in May of 1926. However, when where in the past the American government would have swiftly moved in to secure the situation in their favor, in the case of the Nicaraguan Civil War the matter soon turned into a muddled mess as McAdoo hesitated in the face of fierce isolationist pressure within his own government opposed to the continuous Caribbean adventures of the past decades, with the result that the Conservative government of Emiliano Chamorro was left holding the bag. While there had been some discussion of Chamorro abdicating in favor of a more popular candidate, the lack of American pressure to do so allowed Chamorro to hold onto power for the time being and mass his supporters. By the time McAdoo finally decided to push forward in favor of the Nicaraguan government, it was already well on its way to collapse and required immediate military support. This was a step too far for McAdoo who instead sought to switch sides to Sacasa in hopes of retaining American influence in the region, to which Sacasa and Moncada proved open. However, in the mix was a man who had swiftly emerged as the most successful Liberal commander, and a man bitterly opposed to any sort of partnership with the Americans, Augusto César Sandino (11).

    In July 1912, when he was 17, Sandino witnessed an intervention of United States troops in Nicaragua, to suppress an uprising against President Adolfo Díaz, regarded by many as a United States puppet. General Benjamín Zeledón of La Concordia in the state of Jinotega bordering Honduras died that year on 4 October during the Battle of Coyotepe Hill, when United States Marines recaptured Fort Coyotepe and the city of Masaya from rebels, setting an early example for Sandino of the threat posed by American might and beginning his anti-American outlook. In 1921, at the age of 26, Sandino attacked and tried to kill Dagoberto Rivas, the son of a prominent conservative townsman, who had made disparaging comments about Sandino's mother. Sandino fled to Honduras, then Guatemala and eventually Mexico, where he eventually found work at a Standard Oil refinery near the port of Tampico. At that time the latest bout of fighting during the Mexican Revolution was drawing to an end and Obregón was consolidating his power through a new "institutional revolutionary" regime driven by a wide array of popular movements to carry out the provisions of the 1917 Constitution. It was during this time that Sandino was first involved with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, spiritualist gurus, anti-imperialist, anarchist and communist revolutionaries, soon neglecting his work to run in revolutionary circles.

    He would get the opportunity to fight in 1924 when he enlisted in Villa's armies in the bitter fighting against Obregón, participating in several of the most significant engagements of the Delahuertista Rising before encountering soldiers of the Feminine Brigades of St. Joan of Arc, a women's secret military order which emerged from amongst the Cristeros, who he was deeply impressed by and reinvigorating what had been a previously increasingly lapsed Catholic faith. While he was mustered out of the Villista armed forces in mid-1925 it would take until early 1926 before he returned to Nicaragua, arriving just as the Civil War was beginning. With Sacasa having declared himself President, Sandino immediately began recruiting a makeshift force composed largely of disaffected gold miners before launching a successful surprise assault on the Conservative garrison at the San Albino mine, gaining access to gold produced there, which he was able to swiftly turn about in order to secure arms in Mexico and qualified military trainers from amongst his Mexican contacts.

    When Sandino met with Moncada soon after, the latter had proven distrustful of these guerrillas who had emerged outside of his control, with Sacasa refusing to supply Sandino with arms or a military commission, although Sandino's successful capture of a Conservative arms depot soon convinced other Liberal figures to back him for a commission. By early 1927, Sandino had returned to his home in northern Nicaragua where he recruited local peasants for his army and attacked government troops with increasing success. In April, Sandino's forces played a vital role in assisting the principal Liberal Army column, which was advancing on Managua. Having received arms and funding from Mexico, the Liberal army of General Moncada seemed on the verge of seizing the capital when the American promise of support arrived. During this time Sandino had turned increasingly to a rallying cry consisting of a heady mixture of anti-Americanism, Indegenismo, Communist rhetoric and ardent activist social Catholicism, inspired by his time in Mexico, and as such greeted the idea of submitting to American interference with barely constrained rage (12).

    By mid-1927 the Conservatives under Chamorro and Liberals under Sacasa were increasingly looking with alarm to the snowballing might of the Sandinista movement in northern Nicaragua. The result was an American-backed series of secret negotiations which saw Chamorro agree to resign and the ascension of Sacasa, but with power to be divided between the Liberals and Conservatives. Further included in what would come to be known as the Agreement of Ometepe was a promise to combat the Sandinistas should they oppose the proposed peace agreement. With the Agreement of Ometepe signed on the 3rd of August 1927, the Sandinistas were caught by surprise the following day when their erstwhile allies trooped up across northern Nicaragua and began arresting Sandino's supporters. Sandino himself would escape due to the code-breaking efforts of his recently-married wife Blanca Aráuz, a young telegrapher who had proven vital in Sandino's military efforts by taking a lead in misinformation and message interception missions, which gave him sufficient warning to raise the nearest militia to repel the Liberal soldiers sent to take him into custody.

    Shocked and betrayed, Sandino fled into the jungle with some of his closest supporters while he worked to rebuild his forces and to make contact with those supporters who remained free. Even as Sacasa was ensconcing himself in the presidential palace, the countryside erupted into revolt against the reconciled Liberals and Conservatives, setting off what would prove to be a long and bitter guerilla war which would leave much of Central America ablaze in the fires of revolution. Banana plantations were targeted almost immediately by the Sandinistas, who set fire to the massive American-owned fields and ambushed both government and corporate representatives across much of the northern half of Nicaragua.

    With McAdoo reticent about miring the United States in what promised to be an extended conflict, the fruit corporations and Nicaraguan government were forced into closer cooperation, UFC and SFC importing large amounts of arms, munitions and other war-making materials alongside hundreds of American Great War veterans to form the Fruit Company Brigades, as they came to be known, led by American officers and a leavening of American soldiers but filled out with conscripted field workers and any desperate man looking for a quick cash out. These Fruit Company Brigades soon began terrorizing entire districts of northern Nicaragua while General Moncada mustered a large force sufficient to driving Sandino into exile. The bitter fighting of 1927 and most of 1928 would ultimately culminate in Sandino's flight across the border into southern Honduras, where he was met with open arms by an increasingly starved Honduran peasantry, General Ferrera's reign having tipped over into bloody tyranny following the assassination of his eldest son by Conservative opponents. Late 1928 and early 1929 would see the peace in Honduras collapse completely into utter chaos when one of Ferrara's erstwhile supporters Justo Umaña attempted a coup against him, hoping to end the increasingly paranoid man's regime, setting the fragile peace in Honduras over end (13).

    1929 would see Sandino's revolutionary movement reemerge as a major threat to the regimes of the region as the inspiring message of his movement spread across the region. In El Salvador the ruling Melendez-Quinonez dynasty of presidents came to a precipitous end with the assassination of President Pio Romero Bosque, a successor and ally to the Melendez-Quinonez presidents of the preceding two decades, leading to an attempt by General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez to take power, only for the populace to erupt into bloody protest. Securing arms from the Sandinistas and Cristeros, these Salvadorian Sandinistas soon contributed to further conflict across the region. Throughout this time the prices of particularly Bananas skyrocketed, as American-owned plantations across the region were put to the torch and the massive rail network built up to transport it all was torn up by enraged locals in response to harsh reprisals by Fruit Company mercenaries. With disorder widespread and the Central American economy on the verge of collapse, the Sandinistas soon found surprising support amongst the urban poor who began joining mass demonstrations, protests and outright riots against American and government targets.

    The first domino to fall would be the Ferrera regime in Honduras, which collapsed in June of 1929 - when it was replaced by Justo Umaña, only for the Umaña regime to find itself swept from power when a massive peasant army which marched into Tegucigalpa under Sandino's command in July, where Sandino was welcomed warmly by Archbishop Agustín Hombach, one of the most significant political figures in Honduras and a popular Catholic figure in the region. With Umaña fleeing northward towards San Pedro Sula, Sandino next turned westward and swept into El Salvador to widespread acclaim, driving Martínez from San Salvador into the arms of the elderly Military Dictator of Guatemala José María Orellana.

    Sandino was now able to turn south, sweeping into Nicaragua like an avenging angel, expropriating land en masse and executing leading Conservative and Liberal figures wherever he caught them. By the dawn of 1930, the Sandinistas controlled all of El Salvador and Nicaragua, as well as a large section of southern Honduras and parts of northern Costa Rica. In Guatemala, the sickly Orellana watched with considerable worry as Sandinista sentiment rose amongst the populace while in the south the American occupiers of the Panama Canal began to fear that they might be swept from the region. In Tegucigalpa, Sandino would welcome the new year with the establishment of the Central American Workers' and Farmers' Republic to cover his conquests.

    Working with Hombach and a number of far-left supporters, Sandino set in motion a series of reforms which would see the government of the Central American Republic centralized and its individual states abolished while village communes were significantly strengthened and land parceled out to the wider populace. Plantations were nationalized and either split up for the land reforms or incorporated as government-owned fields. The Catholic Church was given wide leeway in the imposition of moral rule and priests were granted administrative roles within the administration on a large scale. The response in the United States to the emergence of an aggressive, expansionist, Catholic-Socialist state hell-bent on evicting all American influence from the lands under its control would significantly worsen the already acrimonious political climate in the United States, while the mass arson, strikes and outright uprisings across many of the fruit companies' lands meant that the UFC, SFC and CFC were all forced into bankruptcy by late 1929, bringing to an end the great Fruit Companies of the early 20th century and inaugurating a new age of competition (14).

    Footnotes:

    (10) It is important to note that the American state remains heavily invested in the region of Central America, but that the federal government is rather opposed to the effort that goes into it. Gregorio Ferrara's OTL coup attempt proves successful here and he is swift to secure American backing - but it is immediately clear to him and many observers in the region that such backing isn't close to as valuable as it has been in the past.

    (11) The Nicaraguan Civil War was a rather short-lived affair IOTL, but there are a number of interesting developments which gain time to ripen if the Americans don't come down like a hammer and force peace immediately. The most significant of these is that it allows Sandino and his Sandanista supporters to win more support.

    (12) Sandino's youth is largely as per OTL up until his arrival in Mexico, and actually gets a taste of war earlier than IOTL by participating in the toppling of Obregón. Most notable here is that rather than turning against Catholicism, his exposure to the Cristeros inspires him and moves him into the Catholic camp. Notably, the ideology he is formulating takes the completely opposite direction of what is occurring in Catholic Europe with the Integralist movement, and instead falls far more into the Catholic left-wing of the church. The results of this experience is that Sandino is more successful early on in the Civil War and as such rises to power even quicker than IOTL. Sandino is basically formulating a left-wing answer to the Integralist right-wing here.

    (13) Sandino finds himself pushed into Honduras, although he still has some pretty strong footholds in Nicaragua and the Fruit Company Brigades are running roughshod over the region to everyone's anger. In Honduras he is able to find a rather strong following as well, and with the collapse of Ferrara's regime into bloody infighting the stage is set for a peasant surge.

    (14) While there are internal reasons for why the United States didn't intervene early on in the bloody conflict, by 1929 the situation has grown so dire that an American entry into the conflict promises to be exceedingly bloody. With the American public focused inwardly on a series of significant clashes in the lead-up to and following the 1928 elections, there simply isn't the willpower to send off a major military expedition, and by 1929 you would need to deploy several tens of thousands of troops to have a chance at victory. The Fruit Companies also ended up investing so heavily into the conflict that they eventually collapsed from the losses.

    End Note:

    I'll be honest, I did not see Sandino coming. I had some very vague ideas about some sort of activist social Catholicism emerging in Central America and the American grip on the region begin to slip, but it was only when I started reading up on the Nicaraguan Civil War that I discovered Sandino (I did know about the Sandinistas of later era though) and he suddenly ballooned out and came to dominate this section.

    What basically happens here is that a series of interconnected but disparate political, military and economic crises all snowball into a major change in direction for Central America. This is probably on the outer end of the plausibility spectrum, but I do think that if the stars had aligned it might be possible. The stability of the Sandinista regime is very much in question and you are likely to see a rather ferocious counter-reaction from those bordering the Sandinistas, to say nothing of the Americans, in the decade to follow.
     
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    Update Twenty-Seven (Pt. 4) - Explosive Americana
  • Explosive Americana

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    Tenente Rebels in Brazil

    A Continental Divide

    The thing that, more than anything else, would come to define the 1920s in South America would be the divergent developments of its nations, one building on Conservative centralism and stability leading to considerable economic wealth, a second characterised by bitter internal conflicts as a burgeoning class of lower-rank military officers clashed with the elitist and classist societies in which they were present, and a third of Liberal reform governments. Particularly notable of the former group of states would be Colombia, which would exploit the collapsing fruit company empires in Central America to emerge as the predominant source of tropical fruits in America. While Sandinista agitations would emerge near the end of the decade, it would find itself ruthlessly crushed by a combination of government power and Colombian business interests, while large-scale economic growth continued under the powerful Conservative Hegemony which had ruled unopposed since late in the previous century.

    Venezuela would also experience significant economic prosperity under the dictatorship of Juan Vincente Gómez as the exploitation of oil began in 1918. Venezuela had inherited its land ownership legislation from Spain which amounted to the understand that land, as deep as a plow or a water well went, could belong to individuals but everything under the soil was state property. Thus, Gómez began to grant huge concessions to family and friends. The Venezuelan concessionaires leased or sold their holdings to the highest foreign bidders while Gómez, who didn’t trust industrial workers or unions, refused to allow the oil companies to build refineries on Venezuelan soil, so these were built on the Dutch islands of Aruba and Curaçao instead. Although the Venezuelan oil boom started around 1918, the year when oil first figured as an export commodity, it took off when an oil well called Barroso blew a 60-meter spout that threw up an average of the equivalent to 100,000 barrels a day a couple years later. By 1927, oil was Venezuela's most valuable export and by 1929 Venezuela exported more oil than any other country in the world.

    The Venezuelan government derived considerable profit from these concessions and from taxes of one sort of another, but the original fiscal laws which applied to the oil companies were hammered out between the government and American lawyers to the benefit of the men present. The laws were relatively lenient, but Gómez, who had an acute business sense, believed it necessary to create incentives for investors in the Venezuelan oil fields, some of which were easily accessible but many of which were difficult to reach. Oil income allowed Gómez to expand Venezuela's rudimentary infrastructure and the overall impact of the oil industry on Venezuela was a modernizing trend in the areas where it operated. But in a wider sense, the Venezuelan people, except for those who worked for the oil companies and lived badly but had a steady income, benefited little or not all from the country's oil riches (15).

    The second group, consisting foremost of Brazil and Chile, would see immense popular discontent and several leftist lieutenant revolts over the course of the decade, only nearing some form of stability near the end of the decade. The third and final group was dominated by Argentina and Peru which both remained under more-or-less reform-oriented Liberal governments during the decade.


    What became known as the tenente movement came to public notice on 5 July 1922 when a group of young Brazilian Army officers began a rebellion against the Old Republic at Fort Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro. Sparked initially by the punishment and brief imprisonment of Marshal Hermes da Fonseca by President Epitácio Pessoa, the tenentes were demanding various forms of social modernisation, calling for agrarian reform, the formation of cooperatives, and the nationalisation of mines. Their early-morning rebellion was taken up by a garrison in São Paulo but not by others; only "scattered units around Rio de Janeiro revolted: the Escola Militar, some elements of the First Infantry Regiment and the Battalion of Engineers, and the garrisons of Forts Copacabana and Vigia. However, the remainder of the First Army Division stayed loyal and, with General Setembrino de Carvalho supervising the operations, easily crushed the revolt. Twenty-four hours later, just 200 rebels remained when the navy dreadnought Minas Geraes shelled the Copacabana barracks, after which two navy aircraft bombed the barracks in the first use of naval aircraft in combat in Latin America. The defenders were driven from their positions. A group known subsequently as the 18 of the Copacabana Fort revolt were led down Avenida Atlântica by Antônio de Siqueira Campos and Eduardo Gomes to confront the army loyalists; the eighteen made a last stand on the beach, where sixteen were killed and two, Gomes and de Siqueira Campos, survived. In the aftermath, the government imposed a state of emergency, 1,000 cadets were expelled from the army school and many officers posted to remote garrisons.

    Two years later, on 5 July 1924, another group of army officers mounted a rebellion in São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul. The date was chosen to honor the 1922 rebels; the uprising was better prepared and was intended to bring down the Bernardes government. The formal leader was retired General Isidoro Dias Lopes, with others including Eduardo Gomes, Newton Estillac Leal, João Cabanas and Miguel Costa. The rebellion began well, with control of São Paulo being secured after the governor and forces loyal to him abandoned the city early on 9 July (16). Efforts to cut off the city by government forces collapsed in the face of a speedy attack by the rebels, who were able to splinter the already fractured government forces and link up with rapidly escalating risings in Bela Vista and across much of Mato Grosso while concurrent risings in Aracaju, Sergipe and Manaus fought to join together as well further north. With Bernardes' supporters sent into disarray, the Tenentists struggled to consolidate their hold on the south, even as their successes began provoking widespread popular uprisings in their favor. Across southern Brazil, Coffee plantation workers took up ramshackle arms and turned them on their landlords, provoking panic and flight in particularly Minas Gerais state while Rio de Janeiro erupted in open revolt, forcing Bernardes to flee further northward with his government to Salvador in Bahia. Bloody fighting consumed much of July, August and September, but finally in late September 1924 the fighting became too much for Bernardes and he fled the country. Now all that remained was determining the future of Brazilian government (17).

    While the tenentists had thus driven their primary rival from power, they had unleashed a beast in the process. Across much of southern and central Brazil, coffee and sugar plantations went up in flames while landlords were driven out, if they weren't killed outright by their tenants. General Lopes initially fought to restore order by extravagant promises to the peasantry but soon found himself so disillusioned with his inability to bring the riots to a halt peacefully that he decided to turn to violence. Over the course of late 1924 nearly 5,000 riotous peasants were killed while martial law was imposed across much of Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul and Sao Paolo, stretching across a vast swathe of southern Brazil. Communist agitation was constant and soon began to seep into the peasant rebels. Increasingly despondent, Lopes eventually decided to step down from his leadership position. In Lopes' place came the powerful and ambitious General Joao de Deus Mena Barreto, who took up the challenge left by Lopes.

    Over the course of 1925, Barreto would proceed to crack down hard on the Coffee Barons, effectively sanctioning the massive land redistribution occurring across much of the countryside as plantations were parcelled out amongst their tenants while their former landlords were driven into exile en masse. Dozens of young men who had demonstrated their loyalty to the new regime found themselves propelled into positions far beyond anything they had ever imagined, including men like Eduardo Gomes, Luís Carlos Prestes and Antônio de Siqueira Campos, including cabinet positions while still in their twenties. The result, foreseeably, was a chaotic socio-economic and political crisis as the Brazilian economy collapsed in response to a withdrawal of investments, the predictable result of widescale land redistribution of plantations, and an economic embargo by British and American financiers. A collapse in coffee supply caused widespread unemployment in many of the coastal cities of southern Brazil, which were so reliant on international trade, and set off bitter strikes, protests and riots across Brazil's coastal regions.

    Throughout 1925 and 1926, the bickering over whether to end rule by emergency decree and to call a constitutional convention sabotaged any hope of competent government, with the younger members of the cabinet stridently calling for the convention while general Barreto himself remained skeptical. By 1927 the situation had grown dire and the populace was in near-open revolt, paving the road for the return of Old Republic supporters such as Júlio Prestes and Washington Luís to start martialing support. On the 8th of August 1927, Baretto was gunned down by an Italian communist agitator in an effort to push forward with a Brazilian Revolution, only for the Old Republicans to use the chaos that ensued to attack strong points across much of Rio de Janeiro. Already deeply unpopular, the Tenentist Regime began to crumble before word of Old Republican actions could even reach them. Over the course of the remainder of 1927, Brazil collapsed into ungoverned anarchy as Júlio Prestes and Washington Luís began to restore order along the coast while the more radical tenentist fled into the interior. Over the following years, large sections of the Brazilian interior would remain outside of the effective control of the Republic, but Prestes and Washington would consolidate their hold on the coastal lands and southern plantations where they slowly struggled to set aright the shattered state (18).

    Similarly to Brazil, Chile experienced a series of military coups and counter-coups starting around 1924 which would radically shape the state in the years to come. During most of 1924, Chile had been politically paralysed by a conflict between the President and the conservatively controlled congress, who refused to discuss the laws that he sent them. On 3 September, 1924 a group of 56 military officers protested their low salaries, in an incident known as the rattling of the sabres. The next day the same group of young military officers, led by Colonel Marmaduque Grove and Major Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, created a military committee to defend themselves from threatened sanctions by the government in response to their actions.

    On 5 September, the military committee demanded President Arturo Alessandri dismiss three of his ministers, including the minister of War; the enactment of a labor code; the passage of an income tax law; and the improvement of the military budget and salaries. Alessandri had no option but to appoint General Luis Altamirano, the Army Inspector General (Chief of the Army), as head of a new cabinet. On 8 September, General Altamirano appeared in front of Congress to demand the passage of eight laws, including Alessandri's labor code. Congress dared not protest, and laws which had been left to languish for years were passed in a matter of hours. These included the 8 hour day, suppression of child labour, regulation of collective bargaining, legislation on occupational safety, legalization of trade unions, a law on cooperatives and the creation of courts of conciliation and labour arbitrage were all passed. At that point, Alessandri felt that he had become just a pawn of the military, and, on September 9, he resigned and requested asylum at the US Embassy. The Congress refused to accept his resignation, and instead granted him a six-months constitutional leave of absence. He left the country immediately for Spain.

    General Altamirano assumed power as Vice President and on September 11 a military Junta was established to rule the country in the absence of the titular president, Alessandri. After the initially progressive September Junta had been a few months in power, the military committee, led by Colonel Marmaduque Grove and Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, started to suspect that a Conservative restoration was under way. The fears seemed confirmed when Ladislao Errázuriz, head of the Unión Nacional conservative alliance suddenly presented his candidacy to the upcoming presidential elections. At that point, the September Junta lost the confidence of those that had elevated them to power, chiefly among them the Military Union. Young military officers began to plot with the supporters of Arturo Alessandri's return, in particular the Comité Obrero Nacional, National Workers' Committee (19).

    Headed by Colonel Marmaduque Grove, left-wing militaries deposed the September Junta and handed the power to General Pedro Dartnell as interim president, hoping to recall Alessandri from exile. Dartnell, however, decided to form another junta, the January Junta, which ended with Alessandri's return on March 20, 1925. Alessandri had a new Constitution drafted, and approved by plebiscite by 134,421 voters on August 30. The Constitution, which was promulgated on September 18, 1925, reinforced presidential powers over the legislative. Furthermore, Alessandri created a Central Bank, initiating his first major rupture with classical liberalism's laissez faire policies. Alessandri's second government began with the support of left-wing and radical groups. However, this second group began to distance itself from the President. In March 1925, Alessandri's government repressed a demonstration, leading to the Marusia massacre, soon followed by the La Coruña massacre. This caused Alessandri to break with his Minister of Defence, Colonel Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, who had emerged as his primary rival for support from the masses. Alessandri wanted to present only one official candidacy to the presidential election, himself, while Ibáñez gave his support to a manifesto drafted from various political parties which called on him to present himself as a candidate for the presidency (19).

    Balanced on a knife's edge, the situation in Chile exploded when Alessandri forced the resignation of del Campo and several of his more overt supporters, provoking widespread public unrest and considerable grumbling in the military ranks, only to see another coup erupt when it was discovered days later that del Campo had been executed in secret soon after his resignation by some of Alessandri's supporters. The October 1925 Coup would lead to the establishment of a November Junta under Marmaduque Grove and the execution of Alessandri, inaugurating a period of intense reform as advisors from the tenentists in Brazil, exiled Obregónistas from Mexico and the European communists in Italy and Russia all found themselves welcomed with open arms by the socialist Marmaduque.

    Marmaduque would find his ambitions challenged in 1926 when oligarch-backed conservative forces tried to incite revolt in northern Chile, but he was able to crush the incipient revolt before they could get started primarily through superior aerial power. Marmaduque would use this opportunity to launch a series of major land reforms and confiscations of oligarchical estates even as he made preparations for a constitutional convention which would allow Marmaduque and his civilian allies, such as Eugenio Matte Hurtado, Luis Emilio Recabarren and Carlos Contreras Labarca, to establish their longed-for Socialist Republic. The tumult in Brazil started soon after this and after a few abortive efforts at establishing an alliance, Marmaduque eventually pressed forward with the Constitutional Convention in mid-1927.

    The resultant Socialist Republic of Chile in many ways mirrored, when it didn't exceed, the ambitious revolutionary constitution that had emerged in Mexico in 1917, breaking the power of the oligarchical classes and the church while paving the way for a joint military-socialist regime in which officers who had played prominently in the various coups of the preceding years were included in the government alongside civilian socialists. Chile marched into the coming decade having achieved some form of stability under this new socialist regime which, while at times repressed opposition, by and large fought to avoid turning into a tyranny (20).

    Footnotes:

    (15) This is largely based on the OTL developments of these two countries, with the exception of the even greater growth of tropical fruit plantations than IOTL (still a major trend IOTL but accelerated ITTL), although it is important to note that at least for the time being they are avoiding the immense damage done by the Great Depression - though even here, these two countries made it through easier than many others on the continent.

    (16) Everything is OTL up to this point, where the Second Tenenteist Rebellion goes off the rails.

    (17) IOTL this revolt fizzled out after 28 days of bloody fighting, primarily because the government forces succeeded in bottling up the tenenteists in Sao Paolo. ITTL they are able to break through and in the process buy time for the subsidiary revolts in the north and south to gather strength. With the Bernardes government on the back foot and the military streaming to support General Lopes, they soon begin to collapse. However, the Tenente movement has now provoked a revolutionary situation far more explosive than anything like what emerged in 1930 IOTL. How they deal with this situation will prove critical for the long-term stability of the region.

    (18) Brazil turns into an absolute shit show which allows Old Republican supporters to return to power. That said, the regime which emerges under Prestes and Washington Luís is far from what reigned previously. The coffee barons' power has been shattered and control of the countryside is spotty at best. Prestes and Washington effectively rule as dictators while they struggle to rebuild some semblance of a state, but foreign investment is hard to come by and there are other, more inviting, investments to make.

    (19) This is largely based on OTL and describes the situation in Chile up until Alessandri's OTL fall from power.

    (20) In contrast to OTL, instead of allowing his government to resign - which would significantly weaken his position and IOTL led to his own forced resignation - Alessandri instead pushes forward and has his greatest rival executed. This allows the socialistic Colonel Marmaduque to come to power and paves the road to a Socialist Chile - a state which Marmaduque attempted to create IOTL in the early 1930s. By 1930 Marmaque has succeeded in building at least some stability into the Chilean state and has turned his attentions towards supporting the Tenentists in the Brazilian interior - providing arms, supplies and advisors when needed, in the process giving the tenentist movement a significantly more socialist character than previously.


    Summary:

    Mexico comes under the joint rule of Adolfo de la Heurta and Francisco "Pancho" Villa.

    Huey Long steps onto the political stage at a national level.

    Under Sandinista pressure Central America is turned into a revolutionary cauldron while the great Fruit Companies fall from grace.

    South America is wracked by political division and politico-military movements which see the tenentists emerge in Brazil, only to fall into disgrace, and a socialist military regime in Chile.

    End Note:

    That brings this chapter of the Timeline to a finish. I am sorry about how diffuse the timeline has gotten, it seems like I am jumping around the world constantly with little forward progress, which is one of the reasons I will be putting the timeline into a hiatus for the time being. I need to re-evaluate my approach and figure out how to move forward and I have a number of other things I want to work on as well. The last month or so has been a bit difficult to manage update-wise so I am hoping that a bit of time away can recharge my creativity.

    All that said, I really hope that you have enjoyed the timeline so far and, if it is not too presumptuous, I would love it if people would go in and vote for their favorite TLs here. I always enjoy seeing the Turtledove Awards go out but so far I have been unable to bring one home, here's to hoping this year is different.
     
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    End of Hiatus Announcement
  • End of Hiatus!


    Hi everyone!

    I hope everyone is staying safe and that you are not too disappointed by how long it has been since I updated the

    I am happy to let those still interested in A Day in July know that I am finally ending the long hiatus which this TL has been under. I ended up running into something of a roadblock, uncertain of how to proceed, and ultimately shifted my focus away from the TL for a while. All credit for bringing my hiatus to an end really goes to @Ombra for not only pulling me back into the ADiJ and helping me figure out how to proceed from where I left off, but also for deciding to actively contribute to the TL.

    With a better idea of where I want to go with the TL, Ombra and I have begun working together to write up a few updates for you to enjoy. I will remain responsible for pushing forward the TL, while Ombra has been kind enough to work on a variety of supporting materials which should help expand and extend the story moving forward. Amongst other things he has put together the little video at the start of this message.

    The plan, at least for the time being, will be to release half an update every Sunday. I currently have written up to Update Thirty-Five over the last couple months, so you can be assured of at least 20 weeks worth of content moving forward. I really hope that you enjoy what work I have done up to this point. All I can say is that there are some wild developments brewing in the background which I really look forward to sharing with all of you.

    I will be posting the next Narrative Update immediately hereafter to get us started.
     
    Narrative Update Nine: Romanova in Gallica & A Criminal and Revolutionary
  • Romanova in Gallica

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    Grand Duchess Maria Kirilovna at her Marriage Ceremony​

    Afternoon, 29th of June 1928
    Saint-Geneviève-des-Bois, Essonne, South of Paris, France (1)


    Sweet sister, despite the circumstances, having you back in my life was beyond all hopes and dreams.

    However, I have made mistakes, and it would seem I shall now have to pay for them. I hope to see you alive and hale, but should that not prove possible I beg that you look over my children for as long as they should need it. Let them grow up in safety, away from the horrors of Russia, and when the time comes, let them decide on their path forward.

    Until we meet again, in this life or in the Kingdom of God,

    Your loving sister,

    Olga Romanova (2)

    Anastasia hugged sweet little Sophia to her chest as she came to the end of her sister's letter.

    How had it come to this? After so much, so many horrors, dangers and obstacles, her family had finally returned to the heights of power. She had her sister back, a life she thought lost restored overnight. And just like that, it was gone again.

    The cruelty of it had helped her realise that the bloody lessons learned in the revolution should not be forgotten again. She had become complacent. Had forgotten how perilous their position was. That was what they were now paying for.

    There were times when she hated Russia, but it was her family's birth right. Without the Romanovs, Russia was nothing. The proof was everywhere you looked in that godforsaken country, given over to hunger, sickness and death, to godless communists and greedy, overeager parasites. Her family sacrificed itself for Russia time and time again, and now it was going to take her sister as well.

    A peal of laughter shattered Anastasia's gloom as Nikolai rushed into the conservatory, a bright smile lighting up his face and an immensely long worm gripped in his fist - his clothes covered in dirt and mud. The sight brought an indulgent smile to Anastasia's face, even as Sophia's screwed up in disgust.

    "Auntie! Look! Look! It is so long!" He jabbered, taking hold of the writhing creature at both ends and stretching out his arms to demonstrate.

    "I see, it certainly is. Did you find it while digging amongst my rosebushes?" She slowly let her face turn stern.

    An expression of guilt began to spread across Nikolai's face before it suddenly evened out, "Nuh uh." He seemed to hesitate a moment before continuing "I didn't! I found it on the tiles!" An earnest expression almost making him convincing.

    Anastasia held her silence for a moment before replying, "I am sure. Now why don't you put that away and go ask nanny if she can help you clean up?".

    Nikolai hesitated for a moment, seeming to realise that his fib had been discovered, before slumping off - dropping the worm in a nearby bush.

    The moment he was out of eyesight, Anastasia gave a quiet laugh and hugged Sophia tight, determination to protect her family rising in her.

    She looked over another letter, this one from Savinkov in San Francisco outlining the latest news from Siberia and an update on the situation in America. Near the end of the letter was yet another pointed question towards her decision to settle down in France, rather than in America.

    She would need to get back to him soon, she would be needing more support if she was to stay here.

    As to the reason why she had to stay in Europe - the answer to that lay next to Savinkov's letter, an invitation from Uncle Kiril (3), that bloody vulture, inviting her to a family dinner.

    It had shocked her when she first arrived in Paris, only to find out that the plight of Siberia was ignored, her sister treated as a pretender and her niece and nephew declared illegitimate heirs to the Russian Throne. In France, in fact, in much of Europe, Russian Royalists supported His Imperial Majesty Kiril Vladimirovich Romanov as the legitimate heir to Emperor Michael.

    She felt rage as she gripped the invitation: Pretender? Illegitimate? Where did they find the nerve? What had they done for Russia, what sacrifices had their family made? Petrograd had barely fallen before they fled the country, living the high life in France while she and her siblings died one by one on the long flight across Siberia. The first time Anastasia had seen little Masha (4) on arrival, laughing with her husband and cradling her little son, she had nearly screamed in fury. Her family had been abandoned, and now those vultures who pretended to be family were going to steal what was rightfully her nephew's.

    No, this was not over. Not by a long shot. They would get was was their due, as all who had turned on her family would.

    Footnotes:
    (1) There was a large White Russian Emigré community in France IOTL and ITTL, and it is this community that Anastasia is settling into.

    (2) Anastasia initially left Russia with her nieces and nephew in order to take them somewhere safer while their mother dealt with the crisis, but the moment Olga learned of the Red Invasion she could read the writing on the wall. That is why she is so fatalistic in this letter. Worth noting that Anastasia Maria - known as Ana Maria to distinguish her from her aunt - is in school during this scene and as such doesn't play in here.

    (3) This is Kiril Vladimirovich Romanov of OTL, who became the OTL Romanov candidate to the throne. ITTL the greater interest in Russia given its extended civil war and division has meant that the Russian Emigré community is better off financially - being able to muster more resources and interest - and as such the Vladimirovich branch of the Romanovs have made a killing. They have been the main Romanov candidate to the throne in the eyes of Europeans and the Russian Emigré community in Europe, which largely views the Siberian Romanovs as illegitimate claimants. By contrast, Savinkov has been able to build a robust Siberian Romanov following in America and the Vladimirovich line of the Romanovs is largely disregarded there.

    (4) Masha is Grand Duchess Maria Kirilovna of Russia, Kiril's eldest daughter.

    A Criminal and Revolutionary

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    Wild Bill Lovett, Leader of the White Hand Gang and Ruler of New York's Criminal Underworld​

    Evening, September 23rd 1928
    Brooklyn Waterfront, New York City, United States of America


    Wild Bill Lovett had a glint in his eyes as his guest entered his offices. The man was in his late thirties, clean shaven with a sharp gaze, and had his hat in hand.

    Bill let a grim smile cross his face as he rose from his seat, arms wide in welcome, "If it isn't the esteemed Michael Collins, Hero of the Irish Republic and exiled leader of our dear Emerald Isle! What can I do for you today? Here to demand another handout? (1)"

    The mockery and anger in his voice was clear, a result of much financial investment in a cause without much in the way of returns.

    "Not today. We both know you have been a dedicated supporter in the struggle for freedom, and I thank you for the donations, but today I am not here for your money."

    "Oh? Then do tell, what reason do you have for visiting?"

    Collins smile took on a trace of vindictiveness as he replied, "Nothing much, I just wanted to let you know that I have had word that the AILE has reached a dead end in their persecution of the Italians. McAdoo is demanding results, and someone in Boston thought it would be a good idea to mention your name."

    "How do you know?", Bill's expression had turned sour and a flash of anger was swiftly suppressed.

    "We have friends on the docks and in boardrooms. There are those dedicated to the cause spread across much of the American nation. Is it so hard to believe that we might have a few in the AILE? (2)"

    Bill's expression turned incomparably sour before he gave a shallow nod of thanks, "I am in your debt, Collins, now if there is nothing else, please bloody well get out of here."

    "I will come calling if there is anything. Word to the wise, you might want to reconsider your friendship with Gustin and his boys (3) - and you should probably stop using the Brooklyn docks for the next couple months."

    With his piece said, Collins placed his hat on his head and left the building. Left behind was a brooding Bill Lovett, his adept mind already hard at work countering the calamity the Irishman had brought word of.

    It was going to be a hard, bloody couple months to come.

    Footnotes:
    (1) The Irish Republican leadership fled into exile in America after the Glenveagh Massacre and have had to find various ways of sustaining itself as they wait for an opportunity to restart their revolution in Ireland. Luckily for them there are numerous patriotic Irish-Americans who are willing to make donations, as well as others - like many of the Irish criminal gangs - who have found that being part of the patriotic effort brings a variety of perks with it.

    (2) Irish Independence had a significant degree of support in large parts of American society and enjoyed considerable support in the Irish-American community. The fact that there are Irish-Americans in the AILE willing to leak information to support the cause should give an idea of how significant the movement is. The American government, and the AILE in particular, have had a blind eye to a lot of this - which is part of why the Italians have been hammered so hard by the government while the Irish have made it through relatively easily. With the Italian gangs largely suppressed and the Irish ever more visible, it has become hard to keep avoiding a crackdown against them. Luckily for the Irish gangs, they have friends and contacts in high places.

    (3) The Gustin Gang is the preeminent Boston criminal gang at the time and is tied in a loose alliance with the White Hand. As obliquely referenced, the Gang has begun leaking information to the AILE.
     
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    Interlude Four: Ombra's Flag of the Soviet Republic of Russia
  • Hi, everyone! As @Zulfurium has already mentioned in his way-too-kind message, I will be helping out with the timeline. It was ADiJ that first pushed me out of lurker limbo on these forums, and before I set out to write original projects, I thought it would be wise to learn the trade with one of the best authors I've encountered over the years. You'll learn more about what exactly I will be writing about in the near future, although you can expect my supporting material to be mostly an in-depth look at some of the themes, political entities and actors at the very heart of the timeline. Now, you've all seen the teaser video, but under Zulfurium's guidance, I've created another small visual teaser - you can think of it as a taste of things to come :p without further ado, let me introduce you to the official flag of the Soviet Republic of Russia!


    flagofsovietrussiaadibljug.png
     
    Update Twenty-Eight (Pt. 1): The Balance of Asia
  • The Balance of Asia

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    Zhang Zuolin, Grand Marshal and Prime Minister of Imperial China

    The Jiangning Cabal​

    The unification of China under Grand Marshal Zhang Zuolin and the Xuantong Emperor in March of 1925 was far from the end of China's troubles. While overt opposition to the Fengtian Clique had ended and the various warlords espoused support of the government in Beijing, the country remained divided under the rule of the warlords, particularly south of the Yangtze where the shattering of the Kuomintang had led to the emergence of new warlords, most prominently Chiang Kai-shek, who proclaimed support for Zhang Zuolin but were effectively autonomous. While Zhang's grip on the north was stronger, even here he was forced to rely on a network of generals to exert control over the country, most prominently Wu Peifu, who had emerged as Zhang's right-hand, Yang Yuting, his Japanese-trained Chief-of-Staff, Zhang Xueliang, Zhang's eldest son, who held North-East China in an iron grip for his father, Zhang Zongcheng, the colorful if brutal Dog-Meat General, Feng Yuxiang, the Christian General, and Yan Xishan, the internationally popular governor of Shanxi.

    It was this clique of six generals who made up the most prominent members of the Fengtian Clique, and it was amongst this group that Zhang Zuolin would experience the greatest tensions. Zhang Zongcheng was a constant eyesore to the international press, with a harem filled with foreign women so large that he resorted to numbering them in order to keep track of them, and the heart of an inveterate gambler, but he was fiercely loyal to Zhang and his family. Wu Peifu was widely considered the cleverest of the Chinese warlords, and had been instrumental in the Fengtian clique's successes, but he was fiercely resistant to foreign influence and resented Zhang's reliance on White Russian and Japanese support, clashing publicly with the pro-Japanese Yang Yuting on more than one occasion. Yan Xishan was an exceedingly effective governor, but guarded his fief of Shanxi like a hawk and rejected any efforts on the part of Zhang to extend governmental control into the province, while Feng Yuxiang had proven himself an immensely changeable man, enforcing Christianity with violence amongst his soldiers while at the same time courting support from the Communists and even flirting with jumping ship from the Fengtian clique at one point during the preceding conflict with the Kuomintang, having previously built a strong friendship with the former KMT General Chiang Kai-Shek.

    The first year proved relatively peaceful despite these tensions, with a few revolts crushed by individual warlords, while Zhang Xueliang went on a major industrialisation and infrastructure building effort across North-Eastern China, further strengthening the Zhang family's control in China's industrial production. Further south, Zhang had placed trusted generals in positions of power, like Chu Yupu in Guangzhou, Li Jinglin in Jiangning, Chiang Kai-Shek in Wuhan and Zhang Zongcheng in Shanghai, in order to ensure the loyalty of these otherwise suspect regions (1).

    The situation in China, however, was soon to change, as the imprisonment of Emperor Roman in Siberia and an increasingly Navy-aligned Japan caused some amongst the warlords to see weakness in the Zhang regime. Feng Yuxiang, who had spotted a useful patsy in General Guo Songling, a man initially aggrieved over a friend's removal from command during the campaign against the KMT, and later angered over his exclusion from the list of men appointed to important commands in the south, decided to make an initial foray against the regime. Over the course of several months, Feng gradually stoked Guo's resentments and urged him to act on his anger, eventually prompting Guo to march his division, which was encamped on the border with Shanxi, towards Beijing in October of 1926, in the process catching Zhang Zuolin by complete surprise.

    It would prove to be the swift actions of Zhang Xueliang, who had forces encamped in northern Hebei protecting the work being done on rail lines from Manchuria to the capital, which saved Zhang Zuolin's regime. Learning of this sudden and shocking advance, Xueliang set out on foot at rapid speed with his men in time to head off Guo Songling at the Juma River near the village of Zhangfeng, south-west of Beijing, where Guo was forced to a halt in the face of intense opposition. The following month would see a rapid deployment of tanks and aircraft from Xueliang's North-East Army to completely crush Guo's forces, with Guo himself falling prisoner on the 3rd of December 1926 alongside his wife, both of whom were executed two days later. Guo's rebellion sent subtle but serious shockwaves through China, for while Guo had been defeated, it had proven a far more dangerous affair than anyone could have predicted. Had Xueliang been a day late, Beijing, which had seen its garrison significantly weakened to provide loyal troops for trusted commanders in the south, could well have fallen into Guo's hands alongside the Old Marshal and the Emperor himself (2).

    This course of events was to spur further treason and betrayal around the figure of Feng Yuxiang, who viewed this as the best chance for him to emerge as the most powerful warlord in China. Over the course of half a year, Feng slowly and secretively began to inveigle Yan Xishan, Li Jinglin, Li Zongren - a Chiang-aligned warlord in Guangxi, and Chiang Kai-Shek himself in a conspiracy aimed at overthrowing the Fengtian regime. Having come to agreement on uniting forces, the five would meet secretly in Jiangning on the 22nd of May 1927. Over the course of a week, during which the fivesome sought to obscure their location from Zhang Zuolin, a plan was gradually developed for a coup, to be implemented later that year, and for a subsequent division of the spoils of success. According to this agreement, Chiang Kai-Shek would be given Guangdong and authority over the southern warlords, Yan Xishan would see his territory extended to include Shaanxi and Henan, Li Jinglin would receive Shanghai, Li Zongren the Chinese interior and Feng Yuxian would claim the Fengtian heartland of North-East China. This group was to be known to posterity as the Jiangning Cabal, so named for the city in which they had secretly met, and was to set the conditions for a fundamental reshaping of China, laying the groundwork for an end to the lengthy and murderous Warlord Era (3).

    Knowledge of the planned coup remained tightly controlled by the Jiangning Cabal, who proceeded to covertly amass forces, particularly in Shanxi and around Wuhan where Fengtian support was limited, while a select few troops, numbering no more than a couple hundred, were smuggled into Beijing in preparation for the coup. With everything set, the plan moved forward on the 4th of August. Raids by masked men occurred across Beijing, during which firefights erupted with the greatly strengthened Beijing Garrison and Beijing Police, while the Forbidden Palace was attacked by a force of nearly two hundred men in a bid to secure the Emperor, resulting in a four hour firefight before the attackers were subdued. Assassinations occurred across the city, with Wu Peifu's wife being killed in an attack aimed at her husband while Zhang Xueliang was forced into an extended firefight outside of a opium bar he was known to frequent before swiftly mustered armed police could kill the attackers. Zhang Zuolin narrowly escaped when a bomb was thrown into his car as he was being driven to his office, only for the bomb to prove a dud.

    The chaos unleashed on the 4th would take days to quell, with Beijing only properly pacified by the 7th, while declarations that Zuolin had been killed, that the Japanese had invaded, that the Communists had taken Shanghai and various other falsehoods flooded the Chinese airwaves under Feng Yuxiang's direction. Claiming to be liberating Beijing, Yan Xishan marched his troops into Hebei and immediately drove back the dispersed military forces in the region. At Wuhan, Chiang Kai-Shek gathered an army and set off down the Yangtze, making for Jiangning wherefrom the plan was to take Shanghai in a coup de main. At the same time, revolts erupted across the south and Chu Yupu was attacked in Guangzhou, taking a bullet to the knee which would leave him lame for the rest of his life (4).

    However, the Fengtian leadership were not caught completely by surprise. In July, suspicions about a buildup of forces in Shanxi had prompted Zhang Xueliang to begin mustering Fengtian forces north of Beijing and to meet with his father about his suspicions regarding Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan relationship, which was the reason he was in Beijing on the 4th of August in the first place. Thus, when Yan Xishan's forces entered Hebei, Zhang Xueliang had nearly 100,000 men of the North-East Army on standby north of the capital who could be rushed into Beijing. Even as word of events in the south were arriving, Xueliang and Zuolin were repelling Yan Xishan south of Beijing. The resultant three-day Battle of Beijing saw not only Yan's forces pushed back, but totally overrun as the heavily armed and armored Fengtian North-East Army completely routed the Shanxi forces. The bloody pursuit soon saw the situation turned completely on its head in the north, with Feng Yuxiang forced to flee south to Wuhan while Yan Xishan put up a brave struggle in Shanxi itself.

    In the south, Guangzhou found itself cut off from the countryside as rebel warlords rose up, occasionally under the Kuomintang banner but just as often in an independent capacity, none of them having been party to the Cabal's plans, while Shanghai came under siege after Zhang Zongcheng massively beefed up the garrison. Notably, Zhang Zongcheng negotiated an agreement with the powerful Communist presence in the city to aid in its defense, in return for a blind eye towards their activities in Shanghai in the future. At the same time, the South saw a surprising number of peasant armies and local warlords emerge flying the Fengtian Banner and declaring their allegiance to the Xuantong Emperor, soon leaving the region riven by internecine conflict. Thus, by the start of September, the Fengtian North-East Army was forcing its way into Shanxi, the Yangtze Valley had fallen into the Cabal's hands except for Shanghai which was put under siege later in the month even as the south collapsed into bloody chaos (5).

    The shocking speed at which China degenerated into all-out war caught foreigners by complete surprise and filled countless news columns around the world with stories of horror. Particularly harrowing would prove to be the three month siege of Shanghai, as quickly drafted conscripts from across the Yangtze River Valley were thrown headlong against the city's defences in human waves. Armed communist militia brigades fought side-by-side with the garrison troops under Zhang Zongcheng while the Japanese navy provided supplies and indirect fire by sea, keeping the defenders well supplied in food and arms while the meagre rebel air force launched strafing runs along major city thoroughfares, including into the foreign quarters, to the great outrage of the international community.

    In the meanwhile, the Zhang Xueliang-led North-East Army slammed through Shanxi, breaking through one line of defences after another by sheer technological advantage as Yan Xishan was forced into constant retreat, eventually holding a last stand at Yuncheng in southern Shanxi following a month of bitter struggle. After a day of intense and bloody fighting the last remaining position under Yan collapsed and he committed suicide. The loss of Shanxi would prove to be a critical turning point in the Jiangning Rebellion, as it reopened contact to the northern interior and cleared out all opposition north of the Yangtze River Valley. This in turn allowed Zhang Xueliang to launch a cross-country campaign - crossing Henan into Anhui in ten days before slamming home against the defensive lines around Jiangning.

    The Battle of Jiangning would last another month, during which the Siege of Shanghai reached its highest intensity as the Jiangning Cabal sought to end the threat to their rear so that they could turn to deal with Xueliang. However, this effort was to prove in vain, for on the 18th of November the defensive line north of Jiangning collapsed while the city's commander, Li Jinglin, fled incognito, disappearing into the countryside, wherefrom he would only emerge years later when a routine military inspection in southern Hunan led to his discovery, capture and execution. The collapse of Jiangning fundamentally undermined the Jiangning Cabal's positions, cut off the besieging army at Shanghai and reopened the south to Fengtian forces. Chiang Kai-Shek, who was leading the army at Shanghai, ultimately found himself and his army surrounded and forced to surrender after weeks of intense fighting, having been trapped against Shanghai's defenses by Xueliang. Chiang was soon conducted to Beijing, where he was put on trial and executed as a traitor to the Chinese Empire.

    At the same time as the Siege of Shanghai came to an end, on the 11th of December, the two remaining conspirators, Li Zongren and Feng Yuxiang, came to blows in Wuhan, with each convinced the other had betrayed the plan. Supporters of either general soon began firing upon each other, quickly escalating further as the forces in the defensive lines around the city heard word and turned their guns against each other, when they didn't simply desert. Even as the North-East Army approached the city, Wuhan was descending into open warfare. During the fighting Li Zongren was killed and Feng Yuxiang's forces were driven to the outskirts of the city. Realizing the situation was hopeless, Feng Yuxiang and a few of his closest guards took the opportunity to make their escape into the chaos of Southern China, wherefrom they would eventually make a reappearance in Singapore two years later. From Singapore Feng would direct a small resistance movement against the Fengtian regime while dodging assorted assassins hoping to cash in on the substantial cash reward offered by the Fengtian government for Feng's murder. The arrival of the North-East Army would finally bring peace to Wuhan, as the remaining forces surrendered in the face of Fengtian power and the deaths or desertion of their own commanders - marking the official end of the Jiangning Rebellion on the 18th of January 1928 (6).

    The Chinese state which emerged from the ashes of the Jiangning Rebellion would prove to be an entirely different beast from that which preceded it and would come to be seen as the end of the Warlord Era. With centralised Fengtian might unquestionable and any potential challenger to power killed, coopted or in exile, a number of actions became possible for the government of Zhang Zuolin.

    The first of these initiatives was to be the mass disarmament and demobilisation of the dozens of warlord armies which had troubled the Chinese state so grievously, an action conducted with limited success over the course of 1928 and 1929 as more and more of Southern China was brought to order. New legal strictures were put into place which prevented the holding of civilian and military offices while the elite forces of the various warlords were inducted into the main Fengtian Army, where they were split apart from each other and placed under the command of trusted graduates of the Baoding Military Academy, which had been re-established in 1924 by the Fengtian government with German, White Russian and Japanese instructors. The governors of every state were changed regularly, with a strict term limit of 3 years being imposed for the civilian governorships while military governorships were ordered rotated on a biannual basis, with the general staff following their commanders while the military forces themselves remained in place in order to weaken ties of loyalty between individual armies and their commanders.

    The sole exceptions to all of these initiatives were to prove the North-East Army and civilian governorships over North-East China, all of which remained under the control of Zhang Xueliang, and thus by default answered directly to Zhang Zuolin himself. In order to benefit from the surge in popular support for the regime as China began to settle once more, Zhang ordered the creation of a National Congress to represent popular will and provide advice and aid to the government - although sharp restrictions on accepted parties limited how representative the new body would actually be.

    A notable exception to these restrictions would be the Communist Party of Shanghai, where Zhang Zongcheng's promises to the communists were upheld by the government as long as they abandoned their overt support for the revolutionary overthrow of the government. The party was allowed to be represented from the Shanghai seats in the National Congress, even if it remained outlawed across the rest of China alongside the Kuomintang. The result of this was to create a unique and changing branch of Communism in Shanghai which espoused fierce loyalty to the Fengtian regime and sought to become an effective part of the emerging government while clashing with those who remained committed to revolutionary change. The Communist Party of Shanghai would experience considerable growth during this time as the only permitted left-wing political party in China, as figures of the KMT left-wing like Wang Jingwei, Liao Zhongkai and Zhou Fouhai joined the party in order to find a national platform to promote their ideas.

    The result was that in the first series of elections to the National Congress held on the 11th of December, the anniversary of the end of the Siege of Shanghai, the Communist Party was able to secure nearly ten seats, more than half of the seats from Shanghai itself, with figures like Wang Jingwei, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao successfully elected. More than half of the seats in the congress would go to the loyalist Royalist Party, officially a supporter of the resurgent Qing Dynasty but in effect little more than Zhang Zuolin's personal following, while smaller progressive, conservative and liberal parties would make up the most of the rest of the difference - none securing more than 5% of the electorate (7).

    Footnotes:
    (1) This section of the update is to mostly set up what follows, give an overview of the major actors and outline the situation. The relationships here take into account both OTL developments and relationships with the divergences in TTL, most prominently the central position of Wu Peifu in the Fengtian government and the inclusion of Chiang Kai-Shek following the fall of the KMT. Probably a good idea to mention here that Jiangning is the name for Nanjing/Nanking under the Qing Dynasty - it doesn't change to Nanjing (meaning Southern Capital) because the Fengtian government remains in Beijing (Northern Capital) whereas the KMT government moved to Jiangning - resulting in its name change IOTL.

    (2) This is partially modelled on Guo Songling's OTL revolt against the Fengtian government at Feng Yuxiang's instigation in 1925 during the Second Zhili-Fengtian War. The circumstances are radically different, but many of the factors leading up to the revolt are similar. The key here is that Guo's rebellion ITTL will come to be viewed by historians as the instigating point for the crisis which follows, while IOTL it had little actual importance to the larger developments of the Chinese Warlord Era.

    (3) Feng Yuxiang was known by another moniker in addition to "Christian General" - that of "Betrayal General". IOTL he betrayed basically anyone he ever worked with at one point or another, so I strongly doubt he would ever accept just letting matters lie. Chiang Kai-Shek was a born schemer and seems to have had a reasonably good relationship with Feng IOTL until his betrayal, so I am carrying that over and merging it with a sense of loss at the position he was forced to give up with the fall of the KMT pushing him to action. Li Zongren was part of the OTL coalition involved in the Central Plains War, which this conflict is partly based on, and I have carried that over here, while Yan Xishan reacted violently to anyone who even thought of messing with his domain in Shanxi, which, given how close it is to Beijing, has caused considerable headaches for Zhang Zuolin and Wu Peifu.

    (4) The Jiangning Cabal's plan is far reaching, complicated and exceedingly ambitious, which naturally means that a good deal of it fails. The fact that they were able to smuggle forces into Beijing is impressive, but after the Guo Songling Rebellion the Fengtian central leadership beefed up their defences considerably. Beyond that the Fengtian leadership gets lucky, with Wu Peifu's wife biting a bullet for him while Zhang Xueliang survives a gunfight, it should be noted that Xueliang was noted to visit opium dens on a regular basis with Zhang Zongcheng and others until he kicked his opium addiction.

    (5) So that went well. The sudden and rapid collapse of China into open civil war hopefully doesn't come as too big of a surprise. Fengtian control of the south was never particularly strong - contrast to OTL's KMT government which struggled heartily against the constant rebellions of northern warlords even after the Northern Expedition, and the people it chose to strengthen its grip on the south weren't exactly the most reliable. Fengtian rule was established on the basis of its strong military power, and the moment that seemed threatened everyone made their bid for power. It is, however, notable that Fengtian actually had supporters in the south willing to fight for them - it goes to show that the ideological foundation Zhang Zuolin is trying to build on has its supporters.

    (6) The Jiangning Rebellion really becomes Zhang Xueliang's big coming-out party and marks his rise to prominence outside of his father's shadow - he even gets a Time Magazine cover out of the affair. The fates of the conspirators are quite different from when similar situations occurred IOTL because of the fact that in contrast to the KMT IOTL, the Fengtian are considerably stronger industrially and militarily, with control of the best arms and armies, while IOTL CKS constantly struggled to deal with the powerful warlords he had subordinated. The industrial heartland of China was in Manchuria at the time, under the control of the Fengtian government, and they have spent the last half decade building one of the largest, best trained and most well-equipped armies in Asia, even the Japanese Army would have to think twice before starting a fight with the North-East Army. The Soong family jumped ship along with Chiang Kai-Shek when the KMT collapsed, and have since ingratiated themselves with the Fengtian regime but remained loyal when CKS turned against the Fengtian government, the marriage between him and Soong Meiling (Madame Chiang of OTL fame) had not happened yet, mostly due to Soong's mother disapproving of Chiang's Buddhist background as IOTL. The escape of Feng Yuxiang is a mark of constant shame to the Fengtian government, and there will be more than one attempt on his life in the years to come, but with his disappearance the last effective resistance to the Fengtian regime has come to an end.

    (7) There is a lot going on here, so I will try to clarify. The Fengtian government, having secured complete victory, are now able to use the leverage they have won to disarm the various warlords, while this is by no means a peaceful affair, with more than one army needing to be crushed and its leaders executed, it has the effect of firmly solidifying Fengtian power. The reforms to term limits on specific posts are also placed so as to prevent anyone from developing too close of a bond with their territories - preventing a situation like what occurred with Yan Xishan, and keeping the military outside of trusted hands (those of Zhang's own son) disconnected from factionalising within the army. While the exclusion of Zhang Zuolin and Zhang Xueliang from these new strictures cause comment, they are accepted without too much opposition. It is also worth noting that in times of crisis and emergency many of these strictures will end up being eased should the need arise and it be in the best interests of the ruling part. I actually hadn't expected the developments that occurred in Shanghai with the Communists when I first started working on the update, but I find this an interesting direction for events to go. The exclusion of Shanghai from a wider prohibition on Communist, Anarchist, Socialist and KMT-aligned parties creates a powerful draw towards the city which will with time make Shanghai one of the premier cities of leftist thought - if a distinctly different brand of it than that present in Russia, Italy or elsewhere.

    545px-Chichibunomiya_Yasuhito.jpg

    Crown Prince Yasuhito of Japan

    A Most Nipponese Intermezzo​

    The government of Yamamoto Gonbee during the 1924 to 1928 period experienced constant fracturing and reformation, the ruling Kenseito, Kokuminto and Kenseikai coalition barely lasting long enough for the government to find its footing. Over the course of the two years, from May of 1924 when the elections were first held and until August of 1926, the ruling coalition would see its member parties change more than fourteen times as party members clashed over platform, leadership and role in the coalition itself. Throughout this period, Yamamoto remained at the centre of the constantly shifting coalition, eventually deciding to bring order to the chaos by forcing together his partners in order to form a unifying party which he pledged to take leadership of personally, thereby forcefully ending the constant jockeying for leadership in the lesser parties. The result was the establishment of Rikken Minseito, a liberal center-left party dedicated to constitutionalism, democratic reforms, liberal economic policies and support for the Navy (8).

    The formation of Rikken Minseito would prove vital to the consolidation of the centre of Japanese politics, ending its fractured state and forcing together rivals against their will but in the interests of their party. With his ruling coalition unified under the Minseito banner, Yamamoto was able to push forward with a series of policies which included successfully redeeming the discounted Kanto Earthquake Bonds which had been issued in the aftermath of the earthquake, Yamamoto personally appealing to order when rumours that the bonds would not be repayable spread and nearly triggered a run on the banks. This was followed by a series of industrial rationalisation programs supported by the Mitsubishi and Yasuda Zaibatsu, the two major Zaibatsu supporting Minseito. A major foreign policy endeavour of this period proved to be the strengthening of diplomatic ties to the Fengtian Government prior to an after the Jiangning Rebellion and while increased naval spending, primarily spent on naval aviation efforts, caused anger to erupt in Army circles. Finally, Yamamoto would sponsor a women's suffrage bill in late 1927 which would open the franchise to women over the age of 25 and allow them to stand for office with the permission of their husbands or fathers (9).

    The years in opposition to the Minseito government allowed the conservative Rikken Seiyukai a chance to develop its ideological basis as a contrast to the government - allowing it to build closer ties to the Army, increase its support from the Mitsui Zaibatsu and voice an opposition to the increasingly liberal initiatives of the Yamamoto government. The unemployment troubles provoked by industrial rationalization and growing power of the business elites in the Minseito government proved another topic of great interest to Seiyukai politicians, who blithely ignored their own ties to the Mitsui Zanbatsu. Most importantly, it was during this period that Seiyukai found their next leader as a result of the roiling political clashes of the governmental coalition in its first years of government. This came in the form of Inukai Tsuyoshi, founder and leader of the Kokuminto, who had found himself marginalized in the unification of parties into Rikken Minseito. Angered at this development, and clashing personally with Yamamoto, he had left Minseito alongside his supporters and directly entered into the Rikken Seiyukai, swiftly emerging as the party's leader by mid-1927. By the time the elections of 1928 neared, the political situation in Japan had finally begun to settle, coalescing around the center right-leaning Seiyukai and center left-leaning Minseito (10).

    The mid-late 1920s was a period of marginalisation and internal dissent for the Japanese Imperial Army, which saw the Navy emerge as the dominant military arm under the Admiral-Prime Minister Yamamoto Gonbee. With the stain of failure hanging over the Army from the assassination of the Crown Prince, which had led to the retirement of the preeminent military figure Tanaka Giichi, the Army was left with a leadership vacuum. While the Navy's political left-wing proved ascendant, with men like Navy Minister and Yamamoto's son-in-law Takarabe Takeshi, Admiral Taniguchi Nomi and Vice Admiral Sakonji Seizo finding a patron in Admiral Yamamoto, it was the right-wing of the army, already a right-wing institution by any definition of the word, which saw the greatest gains. The appointment of Minami Jiro as Minister of War, wherefrom he would be responsible for a drastic reduction in Army funding, including the dismissal of nearly 2,000 officers, would make Minami a hated man in the Army, and soon saw widespread protests across much of the army. This would culminate in early 1927 when Minami was gunned down by one of those very officer dismissed by his cost-saving programme. The crisis that resulted, known as the Minami Incident, would eventually see Yamamoto forced to accept the appointment of the Army's favored choice for minister in the form of Sugiyama Hajime, a protege of a prominent General, who had first been suggested for the post but had been rejected by Yamamoto, Ugaki Kazushige (11).

    The appointment of Ugaki's protégé was to truly set a course for internal conflict in the Army as opposition to Ugaki, who many in the army viewed as too moderate in outlook, began to coalesce around the form of the prominent general and political thinker Araki Sadao. In 1924 Araki had founded the Kokunhonsha, a secret society of prominent right-wing figures from political, military, business and governmental spheres, which soon came to dominate the ideological framework of the Japanese ultra-right wing with its focus on a rejection of foreign ideals, a strengthening of Japan's militarist soul and ultimate loyalty to the Imperial family. It was the last of these which would prove most crucial, because Araki found his most important supporter in the figure of the new Crown Prince and Regent Yasuhito, who threw his full-throated support behind the Kokunhonsha and its associated organizations, participating in club meetings held at the palace and participating in an avid exchange of letters with Araki and his followers.

    The only thing keeping Yasuhito in check would prove to be his father Emperor Taisho who, despite a bout of pneumonia in 1926 which nearly killed him, undermined the Crown Prince's ability to act completely according to his own wishes for fear of finding himself set aside when the time of succession came, Prime Minister Yamamoto having built a strong rapport with the disabled Emperor, potentially significant enough for Yasuhito to be replaced by his brother Nobuhito, who was popular with the Navy due to his background as a Navy man. The efforts of Araki and Yasuhito were therefore primarily turned towards securing firm control of the Army itself, which came to expression in three attempted assassinations of Ugaki and two of Sugiyama, which left the latter with a paralyzed left arm, by fringe supporters of the Kokunhonsha and the sponsoring of various attacks both violent and non-violent on government figures and policies by the organization (12).

    The term of Saito Makoto as Governor-General of Chosun was to last uninterrupted throughout the 1920s. During this period Chosun, known to the west as Korea, remained in a largely peaceful state. The loosening of military rule and institution of civilian government, as well as the loosening on cultural strictures, was to prove key in the flourishing of Korean culture which resulted. The further influx of White Russian refugees from the instability of Siberia and growth in Japanese settlements, while resulting in tensions, were to bring a further flavour to these cultural developments. Amongst the most significant developments of the time was the establishment of the Korean History Compilation Committee, which aimed to compile Korean history, if with a variety of creative Japanese additions, and the protection of an independent Korean culture.

    Despite Japanese involvement, major archeological excavations were undertaken and countless priceless artefacts were preserved as a result of the colonial administration's efforts, allowing for the further ferment of Korean culture during this period. Furthermore, the 1920s saw a flowering in Korean music as occurred with Yun Simdeok, a talented soprano singer educated in Tokyo in classical western music who was eventually forced to abandon such efforts given Korean unwillingness to embrace the genre - stymied, she became a pop singer and actor to support herself while maintaining a tumultuous relationship with the married author and playwright Kim U-Jin. After recording the song "In Praise of Death" in Tokyo, the pair took sail back to Korea, however, on the trip back the pair were discovered on the deck preparing to jump overboard, causing considerable scandal. Yun Simdeok returned to Korea with a shattered relationship, Kim U-Jin being forced to return to his wife or risk disinheritance, but with a shocking musical super-hit. Yun Simdeok would soon find herself catapulted into stardom, among the first real modern musical stars of Korea. During the next years she would record a series of major musical hits, seeing a growing interest in her classical music passion while fundamentally rejuvenating the Korean musical scene (13).

    During this time, Saito Makoto was faced with a complex and shifting situation as the Korean Independence Movement experienced infighting and fracturing as leadership, ideology and methodology all became contested matters. This period saw the authority of the Korean Provisional Government, founded in exile in 1919 by Rhee Seungman and Ahn Changho, prove insufficient to coordinate the resistance and the development of competing resistance movements. This was particularly the case with the Heroic Corps, revolutionary groups aligned with Kim Wonbong's ideological framework of violent resistance to the Japanese which refused any compromise with the occupiers, who conducted a series of bombings and assassinations throughout the 1920s while outraging the Japanese colonial government and resulted in bloody reprisals against imprisoned revolutionaries. By the end of the decade, Japanese land ownership crossed 50%, a growth of nearly twenty percent during the decade, which left large sections of the Korean population farming land owned by Japanese landlords.

    Japanese Communism finds its origins in 1922 when a collection of Japanese leftist activists united to establish the Japan Communist Party, Nippon Kyosanto. The new party united former rivals, with anarchists, syndicalists, Marxists, Christian socialists, national socialists and other more esoteric socialist factions uniting, inspired by the developments of Muscovite Communism. Of particular note were the syndicalist Yamakawa Hitoshi, the anarchist Osugi Sakae, the Marxist Nosaka Sanzo and the national socialist Kita Ikki, who led their respective factions at the founding of the party (14).

    The two most prominent figures of the foursome, Yamakawa and Osugi, would clash over leadership of the party during its first year of existence, only to be cut tragically short when Osugi was brutally murdered together with his lover Ito Noe and his six-year old nephew during the Kanto Earthquake massacre. The killings of such well known leftists, Ito herself having been a prominent feminist and anarchist figure, alongside a child, provoked scandal and outrage, ultimately leading to Lieutenant Amakasu Masahiko, who had led the death squad, being jailed for ten years. Osugi's death left the anarchist wing of the party in shambles just as the Peace Preservation Laws of the Yamamoto Government were passed and Nippon Kyosanto was outlawed alongside every other socialist, anarchist and communist organisation in 1924, resulting in a major weakening of the anarchist movement in Japan.

    Nevertheless, it wouldn't take long for the Communist Party to be restored, as the recently arrived Marxist Fukumoto Kazuo, who had spent time studying in Europe since 1922, made common cause with Nosaka Sanzo to re-establish the party in 1926, while Hitoshi united with Kita, the trade unionist Noda Ritsuta, who chaired the powerful Hyogikai trade union alliance, and Ritsuta's friend Oyama Ikou to establish the rival Labour-Farmer Party, named Rodonominto in Japanese. These two parties, Nippon Kyosanto and Rodonominto, would soon begin to diverge in their ideological foundation, most prominently over the issue of the Emperor. The most significant disagreement between Fukumoto and Yamakawa lay in the issue of whether a Communist Japan could exist under the rule of the imperial house, with Yamakawa in favour of retaining the monarchy while Fukumoto vocally opposed such ideas, believing that it would undermine the efforts at equality inherent to their movement.

    Further, Rodonominto would soon find itself sweeping to unprecedented popularity amongst the peasantry as Kita Ikki's flamboyant nationalism, which built on pre-existing State Shinto efforts, united with a powerful agrarian land reform platform and a militant pan-Asianism to closely fit what many Japanese peasants wanted out of their government. Nippon Kyosanto would find its niche to a greater degree in the factories and industrial cities, although even there it found itself challenged by Rodonominto as well as other, smaller, proletarian parties, who also possessed alluring labor platforms. The most significant development during this period would prove to be the unexpected, but welcomed, success of Kita Ikki and Rodonominto's ideology amongst the common soldiery of the Japanese army, wherefrom it would slowly begin to seep into the lowest ranks of the Army's officer corps - even finding a niche following in the Imperial Military Academy. By the end of the decade, it had become clear that Rodonominto would emerge as the foremost Communist party in Japan, leading Fukumoto and Nosaka to throw in the towel and merge their party into Rodonominto in return for positions of considerable power within the unified party, once more operating under the name of Nippon Kyosanto (15).

    Footnotes:
    (8) While they share a name, there are definite differences between the Rikken Minseito of OTL and TTL. Most significant is the fact that it aligns much more closely to Yamamoto Gonbee's ideological position, which means less emphasis on business, much more focus on democratic and constitutional reforms and finally a significantly closer relationship to the Navy than IOTL. It is less overtly opposed to foreign entanglements but retains its vocal opposition to the involvement of the bureaucracy and remaining Genro in political affairs.

    (9) The most significant changes from OTL present here is that Japan is able to avoid the Showa Financial Crisis which IOTL saw the Japanese economy sputter to a halt. ITTL the economic situation is somewhat better in Japan and, most significantly, Yamamoto cuts a significantly more trusted figure than the OTL leadership of Wakatsuki Reijiro, preventing a panicked run on the banks. Furthermore, Minseito is able to attract more support from the Zaibatsus than IOTL, bringing the Yasuda in to support their party alongside Mitsubishi which was the sole sponsor IOTL. Finally, Yamamoto passes a women's suffrage bill four years earlier than OTL.

    (10) It is important to note that the Seiyukai and Minseito are not the only parties in the Japanese political system, they are just the two most significant at this point. There is a large, and growing, labor movement which struggles to make itself heard despite the legal ban on socialist, communist and anarchist parties, while there is a wide range of right-wing parties with varying degrees of extremity. It is also worth mentioning that the legal ban on leftist parties largely falls apart within a year or two of its passage.

    (11) There are some rather significant differences in who is appointed, when and to what positions here. The most important things to note are that the OTL Treaty Faction of the Navy (although they aren't called that ITTL) are firm supporters of Yamamoto and as a result have risen to dominate the Navy. They are politically aligned with Minseito and belong to the left-wing politically within the Navy itself. Jiro Minami was a moderate IOTL, and as a result came to the attention of Yamamoto and was appointed by him to counter the virulence of the Army. The dismissal of officers was conducted by Kazushige IOTL which ultimately led to him losing his position of prominence in the Army, as such the appointment of Jiro keeps Kazushige in play within the army and eventually sees him emerge as one of two leaders in the Army.

    (12) The most significant divergences are in this section, namely the fact that the Crown Prince, now being Yasuhito, is a firm backer of the Army, and specifically of Araki Sadao, which suddenly bumps up Araki's profile quite considerably. The second major divergence here is that Emperor Taisho survives his bout of Pneumonia in 1926 and as a result the regency continues. It is important to note that Yasuhito is not anywhere close to as popular as his brother Hirohito was and that his position as Regent is far more precarious. As long as Taisho lives, he will be unable to really make much in the way of major moves.

    (13) IOTL the story of Yun Sim Deok and Kim U-Jin ends tragically with the pair committing suicide on the trip back from recording "In Praise of Death" - in the running for most tragic title of the century. The story of the dual suicide would result in a skyrocketing in the popularity of the song, which has come to be considered the first Korean "Popular" song. Here things play out more happily, if with the relationship with Kim U-Jin ended. Yun Sim Deok ends up performing both western and pop music to audiences as highly placed as Governor-General Saito. If you are interested there is a six episode series on Netflix under the title "The Hymn of Death" which covers the story.

    (14) It is absolutely critical to note that the Nippon Kyosanto of TTL is an entirely different beast from that of OTL. In OTL Kyosanto was a strictly Marxist-Leninist platform of the Comintern, founded to represent the communist ideology out of the USSR. ITTL, the divergent development of Russian Communism results in a far broader coalition coming together to create the first Communist Party in Japan. Of particular note here is the fact that you have figures who might otherwise be considered far-right, like Kita Ikki, who are part of the party.

    (15) It is important to note that the disagreement between Fukumoto and Yamakawa over the role of the Emperor in a Communist state is an OTL one which Fukumoto "won", although both of them were condemned by the Comintern. ITTL, there is no real external ideological determinant to decide the matter either way, which leads to a temporary dividing of the Communist party over the issue. During this period Kita Ikki really rises to prominence as one of the Communist Party's foremost ideologues - a sharp contrast to OTL - and that Kita's ideological structures still prove as popular in the Army and with the peasantry as IOTL. A couple things to note beyond that; (1) most of the far-left eventually coalesces around either Kyosanto or Rodonominto during the four year period from 1926-30, and as such when the two parties merge there are very few other alternatives on the far left, (2) Yamamoto Gonbee significantly loosened the strictures of the Peace Preservation Laws when Rikken Minseito was formed, or at least didn't enforce them actively, and embarked on a larger struggle with the military instead, and (3) despite Rodonominto winning the struggle with Kyosanto, the merger ends up using the latter name. This is because Nippon Kyosanto as a name allows for comparisons to the global Communist movement and as such has a rather hallowed status in left-wing ranks - this is also part of why Fukumoto's Kyosanto was able to hold out for so long against Rodonominto.

    End Note:

    And with that we close out the first half of our first update back from Hiatus. I hope you enjoyed the delving into Chinese and Japanese developments. I have been on something of a deep dive into East Asia for about a year and a half at this point, so it was where I started when I went back and got to work on the TL again. The first few updates are a bit rough compared to later updates, but I hope that it lives up to people's expectations.

    Oh, I recently realized that I absolutely loathe working with Japanese names in Wikipedia. Where Chinese and Korean names are written ordinarily "last name, first name", on Wikipedia pages about Japanese figures the specific usage of first name, last name or last name, first name is completely and totally arbitrary. I have had to go back through and correct more than 20 different names because they had been written in the wrong format. While I can usually recognise the difference in Chinese and Korean, I for some reason have a lot harder of a time figuring out differences between last names and first names in Japanese. /end rant. I have been using the last name, first name format to the best of my knowledge as that is how names are structured in Japan, but there could be a couple mistakes left behind.
     
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    Update Twenty-Eight (Pt. 2): The Balance of Asia
  • The Balance of Asia

    507px-Barrister_Chittaranjan_Das_in_1909.jpg

    Chittaranjan Das, Founding Member and Leader of the Swaraj Party

    Swaraj Divided​

    The impact of the Chauri Chaura Incident would prove to be of earth-shattering magnitudes to the development of India. Not only did it see the Non-Cooperation Movement, and to a lesser extent the Swaraj movement as a whole, discredited internationally and amongst more moderate Indians. It also saw the most prominent leader of the Indian Independence Movement imprisoned, in the figure of Mohandas Gandhi, and broke apart the already fragile relationship between the All-India Congress Party and the All-India Muslim League. As a result, the mid-1920s were to prove a time of considerable factional strife within the independence movement as divisions over India's path forward erupted into the open, just as the Montagu Declaration's promises were slowly put into practice, further weakening popular support for the independence struggle. Even as Montagu himself was replaced as Secretary of State for India in 1924 by F.E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead, the liberal-conservative policy towards India of slowly establishing limited Indian Home Rule continued, despite Birkenhead's own misgivings on the issue (16).

    Greater power was slowly devolved to the Imperial Legislative Council's two houses and legislative efforts soon followed. Business regulation, a particular hobby horse of the recently elected Democratic Party, were amongst the first pieces of legislation to pass, soon followed by agricultural reform and public health guidelines, all topics permitted to be legislated on according to the Diarchy system established in the reforms. This was as opposed to the areas of finance, military and the like which remained at the total discretion of the Indian Secretary of State. It was notable that the legislative agenda of the Democratic Party and its League allies were quite regionally and class focused, with particular effort given to the interests of the Bombay Elite and centred on the interests of north-western India as a whole, while the east was left to languish.

    The result was to see a growing divide between eastern and western sections of Northern India, with the Bengal as the primary region of social and political foment against the new status quo. While many Indians felt the gradual improvement of Indian power and authority to govern themselves sufficient, there remained a considerable portion of the population agitating actively for more independence, for a greater say in government and for similar rights as those enjoyed by the White dominions. It was with this impetus behind them that the Congress Party's representatives to the legislative council sought to push for greater autonomy, particularly emphasizing a need to end the Diarchy and to secure greater representation of the interests of the wider Indian population. However, these efforts largely floundered before the Democratic Party-Muslim League alliance, whose complacent position on the issue of Indian independence and self-interested political accomplishments, caused considerable dissatisfaction with the Legislative Council as a whole and would in time result in the slow revival of Swaraj fortunes, if in a changing guise (17).

    The imprisonment of Gandhi had given an unprecedented blow to both the All-India Congress Party and the Swaraj movement. The result was the gradual splintering of the independence movement over the disagreements ranging from the role of Gandhi in the movement to the use of violence and the ethnic and religious divides which engulfed the movement. What erupted following the official end of the Non-Cooperation Movement was thus not only a collapse in relations between the Congress and League but a wider-ranging collapse of unity within the independence movement. Between 1922 and 1926 there were several hundred riots, attacks and massacres between Hindus and Muslims as communal violence spiked drastically - more than a hundred riots occurring in the United Provinces alone during this period. Muslim participation in the officially non-denominational Congress Party collapsed completely and would eventually bring to prominence the idea of a Two-State Solution to resolve Hindu-Muslim divisions in segments of the Muslim leadership.

    At the same time, several important figures, including both Motilal and Jawaharlal Nehru as well as the Bengali Chittaranjan Das, Huseyn Suhrawardy and Subhas Chandra Bose, would leave the Congress Party entirely to form the rival Swaraj Party, dissatisfied with those who had abandoned the Non-Cooperation Movement. Given that this abandonment had been spurred on by Mohandas Gandhi and his more rabid acolytes, it was felt by many that the Congress Party was descending into little better than a platform for Gandhi to dominate the struggle for independence, a role of leadership which he had just proven himself patently unsuited to (18).

    Amongst the most impressive accomplishments of this nascent independence party would be its successful quelling of religious violence in the Bengal, where Das, Suhrawardy and Bose all campaigned relentlessly on an explicitly ethnocentric platform of unity between Hindu and Muslim Bengalis. While both the Congress and Swaraj Parties sought wholeheartedly to avoid a schism, as had occurred in 1907, it would prove impossible to reunite the two as the clear weakening of the Congress Party, partly resulting from a lack of clear leadership without Gandhi's guiding hand, the perceived weak will of the party leadership for independence following Chauri Chaura and the disastrous clashes with the Muslim League all combined to hamstring the senior of the two parties.

    The rapid growth of the Swaraj Party, especially as anger at the elitist Democratic Party grew, particularly in the Bengal, along the East Coast and in the United Provinces, and memories of the effectiveness of non-cooperation rose to the fore resulted in the gradual diminishment of the Congress to a subordinate position to the Swaraj Party. The 1923 Indian General Election would see Swarajist members elected to a number of councils, most importantly securing a majorities in the Bengal and Madras Presidencies, but would find themselves stymied on a All-India basis by the Congress Party contesting elections even as the Democratic Party worked with the Indian Liberal Party and All-India Muslim League to secure control of the Legislative Council for a second term (19).

    These electoral failures, coupled with the suspension of the Bengal and Madras Legislative Councils in 1926 in response to Swaraj Party legislation seeking to undermine the Diarchy, specifically legislation which would ease the difficulty of securing permits for public demonstrations, would lead the Swaraj Party to disdain the British-established and sponsored electoral system as a whole, instead emphasising the development of a parallel system led by Indians for Indians. During this period, the Swaraj Party would find itself divided on how to proceed in their struggle for independence, with shrinking support for a moderate position of working within the British-outlined Diarchy, while support for the development of parallel structures and pushing for full independence either as a Dominion of the British Empire or, amongst the more radical wing of the party, entirely independent of the colonisers gaining significant backing. This would culminate in the final speech of Chittaranjan Das' life at the 4th Swaraj Party Congress in Calcutta on the 3rd of April 1927, where in he committed the Swaraj Party to "Purna Swaraj" - Total Independence from British Rule (20).

    While the Congress Party experienced schism and turmoil, Muslim India had largely sought to come to terms with the facts of British rule. The end of the Great War and subsequent rejuvenation of the Ottoman Empire, coupled with the collapse of the Non-Cooperation Movement, would ultimately prove the end for the Khilafat Movement. Following the Chauri Chaura Incident, the Khilafat Movement distanced itself from the Congress Party and would ultimately dissolve in early 1923. However, Muslim India remained divided, just as Hindu India was, by the issue of Home Rule and Independence. The Muslim League's decision to ally with the Democratic Party, which eventually turned into a coalition with the explicitly anti-Independence Indian Liberal Party, would send shockwaves through Muslim India and draw immense criticism from those who remained committed to Independence.

    While many of these figures would ordinarily have joined the Congress Party, communal violence and a feeling of betrayal towards both the Congress and Swaraj Parties would ultimately mean that very few outside of the Ethnocentric Bengali Muslims would join either party. Instead, the end of the Khilafat Movement would see the rise of a pro-independence Muslim Party - the All-India Muslim Independence Party, under the leadership of many prominent former members of the Khilafat Movement. Amongst the most significant of these figures the Ali Brothers, Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali - who had led the Khilafat Movement, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Dr. Mukhtar Ansari, but they also included people such as Abul Kalam Azad, Syed Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Chaudhry Afzal Haq (21).

    The Muslim Independence Party would prove considerably more populist both in ideology and rhetoric than the more staid, high-class Muslim League on the basis of their origin as a popular protest movement. This grass-roots connection would be closely tended by the Ali brothers, Jinnah and Dr. Ansari, with the result that the party rapidly grew in popularity across much of Northern India. By the time of the 1926 elections, the party was able to find representation in the United Provinces, the Punjab, the North West Frontier, the Bombay Presidency and in the Bengal, although lacking control in any of these provinces. When Chittaranjan Das held his Purna Swaraj Speech, the effects were soon felt in the Muslim Independence Party. Already in agreement on the need to push for greater independence, the two parties now found that they could unite around the ideal presented by Das, a one-time member of the Khilafat Movement himself.

    The result was that over the course of 1927 and 1928, the Swaraj Party and Muslim Independence Party began a series of intense negotiations which ultimately led to the declaration of a All-India United Front between the two parties on the 16th of April 1928, a long-hoped for reconciliation between the two major religious denominations which would allow for united action in the name of independence. Four months later, on the 10th of August 1928, a memorandum was published jointly by the two parties - known to posterity as the Nehru-Jinnah Report for its two principal authors. Written in response to Lord Birkenhead's demand for an Indian alternative to British-laid plans for India's future the report outlined a Bill of Rights, the end of the princely states - and a guarantee of uniform autonomy to all provinces, the end of Diarchy - and handover of authority to an Indian-elected federal government which would thereby transform India into a Dominion, the reservation of minority seats in all provinces and the central government, the use of Indian languages as languages of government, the formation of provinces along linguistic lines, full religious and cultural liberty, equal rights between men and women as citizens and more. In effect, the Nehru-Jinnah Report called for the end to British Rule, and for the transformation of India into a co-equal Dominion on par with South Africa, Australia or Canada while promising sweeping social, cultural and political changes to the Indian Sub-Continent (22).

    The reign of Amanullah Khan as ruler of Afghanistan was exceedingly uncertain during its first decade. Having come to power following the assassination of his father and his defeat of his uncle, Nasrullah Khan, in a struggle for the throne in 1919, Amanullah was more aware than anyone of his need to secure his position. Having risen to power on a promise of modernisation, secularisation and democratization, Amanullah had secured a strong base of support, but in the process alienated the immensely powerful conservative forces of the country which had lined up behind his uncle. With this in mind, Amanullah began to consider a way in which he might placate the conservatives, for a time considering an invasion of British India as civil unrest in the British colony escalated under the Non-Cooperation Movement. However, he was eventually forced to abandon such hopes, and instead settled on a less risky policy of distancing Afghanistan from the British (23).

    Convinced that the British had more critical things to deal with, Amanullah instigated contact with foreign powers, first Bukhara and Khiva but soon extending to most of Europe and the Middle East, in breach of the Treaty of Gandamak which handed Afghan foreign policy to the British and rejected the subsidy presented for that right in August of 1919, a time when British attentions were fully focused on Copenhagen. While waiting with trepidation for the British response, Amanullah ordered preparations made for the passing of a modernist constitution and a variety of other legislative initiatives. As the Congress Year came to an end and the British Empire was stretched from end to end by the hard task of demobilization, it became increasingly clear that Amanullah had calculated correctly. Realizing the opportunity he had been granted, Amanullah ordered his father-in-law, Foreign Minister Mahmud Tarzi, to initiate diplomatic relations with the Turks and Germans while working to create a new cosmopolitan education system for both boys and girls in Afghanistan while preparing to overturn old traditions, such as the strict dress codes for women, and creating a small Air Force in 1921.

    In 1923, Amanullah finally succeeded in passing his ambitious new constitution which not only declared Afghanistan a Kingdom and Amanullah himself King, but incorporated equal rights for men and women, a bill of rights, the abolition of slavery and forced labor, the adoption of the solar calendar and the institution of a national registry with identity cards for all citizens. He would follow this with economic reforms including a restructuring, reorganization and rationalization of the entire tax structure, multiple anti-smuggling and anti-corruption campaigns, a livestock census for taxation purposes, the first national budget, a new currency and the implementation of the metric system. He would further order the establishment of a legislative assembly, a court system to enforce new secular penal, civil and commercial codes of law, instituted prohibitions on the payment of blood money and abolished subsidies and privileges for tribal chiefs and the royal family. Most importantly for the course of his reign, Amanullah determined that he would need to continue military spending at its former levels, further boosting military strength through conscription into regiments formed from men of different tribes, for fear of the reactionary opposition despite his initial hopes of using savings from the army to finance his reforms (24).

    Amanullah's worries were soon to be proven correct, as rebellions began to erupt. The first region to experience this was the region of Zamindawar in the south where the influential Alizai Tribe rose in protest against Amanullah's reforms on taxation and conscription in June of 1923. The rebellion would last longer than initially expected as the conscripted battalions in the region refused to fight the Alizai, many of the soldiers sharing ties of blood and kinship with them. It would take the arrival of troops from Herat for the rebellion to be crushed, with the leaders executed and the Alizai tribe broken up and deported to Afghan Turkestan.

    The next revolt came barely three months later, and would prove a far greater task to resolve. The instigating event would prove to stem from Amanoullah's constitutional abolition of polygamy and child marriages, and came about when a man of the Mangal tribe in the Afghan Southern Province claimed he had been betrothed to a woman from childhood, only to have a rival on love bring the dispute to the governor and the qazi-magistrate, in effect pulling in both secular and religious authorities to determine the matter, while the supposed fiancée rejected the claim of the first man. While the governor ruled in favour of the fiancée, the qazi-magistrate Mullah Abd Allah declared for the man of the Mangal Tribe claiming that the governor's rejection violated Sharia, a complaint which would be ignored and subsequently served as the instigating incident of the rebellion.

    In mid-March of 1924 Khost, which had been seeing widespread popular protests since the previous autumn in support of the Alizai rebellion and against the government's reforms, erupted into open rebellion under Mullah Abd Allah. With the new constitution in one hand and the Koran in the other, Abd Allah called on the tribes to choose between God and Man, spreading the revolt like a cancer across south-eastern Afghanistan. Within a month the entire province was in flames and other tribes were rushing to the banners, laying ambushes of government troops and spreading word of the revolt in all directions (25).

    Distraught at the situation, Amanullah sought to call a council of tribal and religious leaders to help legitimise his reforms and counter Abd Allah's claims, but was to meet with heartbreak when the resultant Ulama demanded a retraction of the constitution and an end to Amanullah's reforms. While initially considering withdrawing some of his policies to appease his opponents, the arrival of news that some of the tribes at the Ulama had already joined the rebellion and that Abd-al Karim, the son of one of Afghanistan's many ex-kings, had crossed the border and linked up with the rebellion caused Amanullah to change his mind. It was during this period that a young fighter and former goat-herder by the name of Habibullah Kalakani began making waves following a series of successful raids and ambushes of government troops. Finally convinced that there could be no compromise, King Amanullah declared holy war against the rebels in August and ordered Nadir Khan, Minister of War and a descendant of a rival branch of the royal dynasty, to take personal command of the army. The following two months would actually see the intensity of the conflict reduced significantly, with Nadir Khan initiating secret contact with Mullah Abd Allah in hopes of using the movement against Amanullah to rise to power himself, hoping to sideline Abd-al Karim as the claimant of choice for the rebels. However, it was at this point that Nadir Khan was suddenly assassinated by a rebel tribesman during a secret meeting with the Mullah.

    The scandal of the Minister of War getting killed while in illicit talks with the rebels served to enflame Amanullah's modernist supporters and provoked a rallying-to-the-flag effect amongst the military, with Ali Ahmad Khan Luynab of the Barakzai tribe bringing in many of his tribesmen to supplement government forces. For his contributions he was given the post of Minister of War with the task of suppressing the Khost Rebellion. The conflict immediately flared up once more, growing in intensity over the winter to the point where hundreds were being killed each week. In late February Ali Ahmad Khan was finally able to trap Abd-al Karim and Mullah Abd Allah in a valley with some 800 rebels and proceeded to trap them there. Bitter fighting followed, as the rebels threw themselves at the government positions in an effort to break out over the course of three days, finally surrendering on the 2nd of March 1925. More than forty rebel leaders, including Abd-al Karim, Habibullah Kalakai and Mullah Adb Allah, were executed soon after - with the last embers of rebellion having been extinguished by summer (26).

    Footnotes:
    (16) Birkenhead was particularly dour about the feasibility of Hindu-Muslim cooperation IOTL, and much of that has proven true ITTL already. However, the ability of the Democratic Party to cooperate with the League has come as a significant surprise to him and has left him willing to allow the experiment to continue.

    (17) In contrast to OTL, the Imperial Legislative Council has a considerably greater degree of legitimacy in Indian eyes. This has its benefits, as people begin to buy in, but at the same time it also has some issues. The fact that the Democratic Party, which rules in coalition with the League, is dominated by the Anglicized-Bombay business elite and western-focused League, where most Muslims in India lived at the time, means that the legislation actually passed by the council is something of a disappointment to many. The Congress Party's representatives do what they can to push for greater autonomy, but can't really accomplish much under the current circumstances.

    (18) This is still pretty similar to the developments in the Congress Party IOTL, if with a few major divergences. Most important to note here, is that rather than remain with the Congress Party and Gandhi as he did IOTL, Jawaharlal Nehru joins the Swaraj Party with his father. The Swaraj Party on the whole is also more explicitly opposed to Gandhi, who they view as having abandoned the movement he started.

    NOTE: I recently realized that I described the Non-Cooperation Movement as the Swaraj Movement in Update Twenty-One, when India was last covered in the TL, which is something of a misnomer on my part. The Non-Cooperation Movement was the protest movement ignited by Gandhi in the immediate post-war period which came to an end with the Chauri Chaura Incident. There is a separate Swaraj Movement which advocated for Indian Independence (In effect Home Rule) which was heavily involved in the Non-Cooperation Movement - which is where the confusion stemmed on my part. We now have a third Swaraj entity - the Swaraj Party, which is an actual political party. Thus, when I discuss the Non-Cooperation Movement here it is in reference to the protest movement; when I mention the Swaraj Movement it is in reference to the ideological movement which swept the Congress Party and Muslim League and led to their temporary alliance; and finally, when I mention the Swaraj Party it is in reference to the political party which emerged due to the splintering of the Congress Party when Gandhi was imprisoned.

    (19) The Congress Party contests the 1923 elections, as contrasted with OTL where they sat them out. This is due to the continued lack of Gandhi's leadership allowing the party to follow pre-existing patterns rather than completely disregard the elections as occurred IOTL. The result is that while the Swaraj Party proves very successful on a provincial level, their candidates end up splitting votes with the Congress at an All-India level, and they are unable to secure victory. This is a divergence from OTL, where the Swaraj Party actually secured a majority of votes, as the Congress had in 1920.

    (20) With the Congress Party still crippled without Gandhi to lead it (I know that there were other figures in the party, but if you look at what the party did between 1922 and 1924 when Gandhi was released IOTL, it becomes clear that those who hadn't left for the Swaraj Party were largely extremely close adherents of Gandhi's and as such were unwilling to do anything which would break with his wishes.) the Swaraj has a chance to continue distinguishing itself. ITTL the Swaraj Party has fallen further under Bengali influence than IOTL, with Chittaranjan Das having become the undisputed leader after quelling the Bengal, whereas IOTL it was Motilal Nehru who emerged as the main leader. Finally, where Das' death IOTL weakened the Swaraj Party and paved the path for Motilal to leave, here he becomes the first "martyr" to the cause of Purna Swaraj. In Swaraj Party mythology, the accomplishment of Purna Swaraj comes to be seen as his last wish (Note, Das lives two years longer ITTL and as such is able to remain as a party leader for the 1926 elections). It is worth noting here that the declaration of Purna Swaraj is actually quite unclear, it could mean "total independence" as a Dominion of the British Empire, but it could also mean "total independence" outside the British Empire. This lack of clarity is on purpose, because the Swaraj Party is pretty divided on which they would prefer, at this point Dominion status has the greater level of support, but the alternative has some support. What the Purna Swaraj announcement does do is clarify that the Swaraj Party rejects working within the Diarchy structure.

    (21) It is important to note that IOTL the Khilafat leadership splintered following the end of the movement with Bukhari forming the Ahrar Party, the Ali Brothers joining the Muslim League and the rest of those mentioned joining the Congress in support of Gandhi. It is really important here to note that Muhammad Ali Jinnah does not leave India ITTL, nor does he join the Swaraj Party. He is instead a founding member of the Muslim Independence Party. IOTL he flirted with the idea of founding a new party after Chauri Chaura, here that impetus is greater and he therefore remains politically involved in India. The Khilafat Movement itself fell apart over a longer period of time, its final embers dying in 1931, IOTL, here it is less of the movement collapsing, and more a matter of transition from a protest movement to a political party. The All-India Muslim Independence Party is a figment of my imagination, but is meant to represent the fact that with Gandhi imprisoned and Hindu-Muslim relations in tatters, those who sought out the Congress Party would likely be stymied while the Muslim League has lost a good deal of legitimacy and gravitas as a bastion of the independence movement by allying with the Democratic Party. I could have gone with the Ahrar Party, but from reading up on it - it seems like the first thing they did was declare an entire sect of Islam heretical, not exactly a great way of building an All-Muslim alliance.

    (22) The two preceding sections really come together here to spell out the direction wished for by the MIP and Swaraj Party, with the formation of an alliance between the two. IMO reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims is critical for there to be any chance of success in any Indian independence movement, and that is something everyone on either side was aware of both ITTL and IOTL (you can see various efforts at improving communal relations between the two denominations during this period). The result is the Nehru-Jinnah Report - an expy of the OTL Nehru Report which mostly remains similar to the OTL report but is merged with Jinnah's Fourteen Points resulting in a few key differences. The most important of these is the inclusion of minority seats, while every point with specific reference to Muslim representation has been changed to minority representation instead and the fraction of representatives omitted. Note, the Nehru mentioned here is Motilal Nehru, not his more famous son, while the Jinnah mentioned is the famous Muhammed Ali Jinnah.

    (23) This is where things diverge in Afghanistan as a result of differences in the events of India. By avoiding the Amritsar Massacre, which IOTL was what convinced Amanullah to launch the Third Anglo-Afghan War, India is spared a hard blow but at the same time Afghanistan is forced to find another way of resolving their differences than an external conflict.

    (24) I may have things going a bit too much Afghanistan's way, with the Afghans accomplishing most of their goals from the OTL war without having to fight it, but considering how busy Britain was at the time I believe it would be possible. This does delay some things for Amanullah, for example Afghanistan hasn't declared itself independent and Amanullah remains Amir until 1923. Perhaps the most important divergence which comes of avoiding the Third Anglo-Afghan War is that Afghanistan doesn't accept the Durand Line as its border - while not immediately impactful, it could cause issues in the future. Amanullah has to be one of the most ambitious reforming rulers of the age - all of the reforms mentioned here are OTL. I can honestly see why the conservatives screamed bloody murder over Amanullah. Also important to note is that IOTL Amanullah cut military spending which caused him to lose the support of the military - I am assuming that he thought he had solved his issues with the reactionaries and that was why he did so, allowing me to use the lack of a Third Anglo-Afghan War to keep Amanullah from getting lulled into a false sense of security.

    (25) This is all mirroring the events of OTL quite closely, with a series of tribal revolts in response to Amanullah's reforms requiring military might to suppress. I have simplified the story of the start of the rebellion a bit, but it is basically exactly the same situation as IOTL. I don't see why it would have changed given TTL's divergences (I could have gone with an equivalent but Alt-TL instigating event, but I think this works better), and it allows the conflict to play out relatively similar to OTL. One thing to note is that the rebellion is spreading a bit quicker than OTL, the potential rebels more primed to go off without the appeasement of the Third Anglo-Afghan War.

    (26) There are a lot of things to note here, the first of which is that the Khost Rebellion becomes significantly larger than IOTL. Second, the council Amanullah called IOTL led him to withdraw some of his reforms, ITTL he considers it but the spread of the rebellion and sense of betrayal at the actions of the Ulama cause him to reconsider (yes, it is a bit shoe-boxed, in but I don't think it falls into the realm of implausibility). Habibullah Kalakani who IOTL led the revolt which saw Amanullah deposed in 1929 never enters the Army ITTL because the Anglo-Afghan War is butterflied, as a result he isn't fighting with the government forces at Khost but instead joins the rebels alongside various other tribesmen. Next, Amanullah makes the decision to order Nadir Khan to directly lead the effort against the rebels ITTL, when IOTL Ali Ahmad Khan was given the task.

    This decision is made because Ali Ahmad Khan didn't have the chance to make himself noticed in the Anglo-Afghan War (starting to notice a trend here?) and as such Nadir Khan is viewed as the only trustworthy option to command the government forces. Nadir Khan demonstrated IOTL that he was more than willing to abandon Amanullah (ITTL the better relations with the army slow Nadir's departure from his post long enough for him to lead the effort against Khost) and had the ambition to take the throne. While the assassination is a bit deus ex machina, it doesn't seem implausible given the numerous officials and royals who were gunned down in Afghanistan, not least Amanullah's own father in 1919. In contrast to OTL Abd-al Karim also doesn't flee into India but is instead killed alongside Amanullah's various OTL opponents. The end result is that while the Khost Rebellion is significantly worse than IOTL, Amanullah ends up having a clean sweep of all his enemies. He thus goes into the latter half of the 1920s able to continue his reforms uninterrupted, with a loyal Army under Ali Ahmad Khan and his reactionary rivals in shambles.

    580px-Lieutenant-General_H.H_Shaikh_Khaz%E2%80%99al_Khan_ibn_Haji_Jabir_Khan%2C_Sardar-i-Aqdas%2C_Amir_of_Mohammerah.jpg

    Sheikh Khaz’al Khan Ibn Haji Jabir Khan of Arabistan

    A Fateful Course of Events​

    Persia under Mohammad Taqi Pessian was a state divided unto itself between two major factions and an insidious, if smaller, third faction. The first of these factions was the one to which Pessian had welded himself at the outset and which he continued to find the greatest degree of support from, the conservatives, dominated by powerful religious leaders and tribal figures. The second were the modernists, those who preached secularism, democratisation and modernisation and looked to Afghanistan and the reformer king Amanullah for inspiration, and were concentrated in the cities of Pessian Persia and amongst the tribes of the north, whose ties to Afghan tribes would prove a crucial tie to the modernising efforts in Afghanistan. The final faction was to be found in the slums of Persia's cities and the cottages of the countryside, amongst the poor and disenfranchised - the Socialists. Closely tied to the Jangal movement of Socialist Persia to the west, the Socialists found themselves part of a hunted underground, clashing constantly with Pessian's secret police forces as they sought to provoke popular agitation and unrest in the Shahdom in a bid to weaken it.

    Ministers like Abdolhossein Teymourtash and Ali Akbar Davar spoke out critically against the conservative influence on government and pushed for the implementation of a modern judiciary and educational system, the ending of more archaic traditions and religious customs, and the strengthening of parliament. Shah Pessian would prove highly resistant to such efforts, knowing full well who his most important supporters were. Mohammad Hossein Naini Gharavi and Abu l-Hasan al-Isfahan, the two current Marja of Twelver Shia Islam, were to prove immensely influential in the direction of Pessian's reign serving on his royal council as advisors and at times even directly intervening in policy formulation and implementation. This would be demonstrated most clearly when Naini took personal leadership of the formulation of a modern law code, infusing his personal beliefs and view on Sharia into the code, most significantly ensuring the establishment of a Supervisory Council of "wise men", in effect the Marjas and eight other prominent religious leader, which would hold veto authority over any policy or law set out by the Royal Council. In return, the mosques across Pessian Persia erupted in ecstatic support of Pessian's law enforcement and political reforms which would see the parliament reduced to less than a fig leaf.

    Over the course of the half decade between 1927 and 1932, Pessian relation with the British government grew increasingly volatile, as the Macdonald Labour government clashed with the wider colonial establishment in London, resulting in rapid increases and decreases in British aid depending on the course of the internal British struggle. This instability would climax twice, once in 1930 when governmental spending by the Colonial Office spiked to fund the Pessian government, just as tensions were reaching a high point and socialist agitation provoked strikes in Birjand and Ferdows, in a move met with significant hostility by Labour figures. This increase in funding was sufficient to pay off strike leaders as well as provide payroll for secret police informants, with the result that the strikes were brought to a swift end and the ringleaders were captured, interrogated and executed. The second would occur in mid-1931 when Labour appointees swept through the colonial office on a mission aimed at reducing expenditures, triggering a major clash as funding for semi-colonial dependencies like Pessian Persia and Arabistan were slashed. While Pessian and his supporters were able to continue funding most government operations for the remainder of the year, by early 1932 the situation had become increasingly worrisome as payroll for the Khorasan Gendarmerie was delayed for two months and the officer corps saw its pay reduced by a third (27).

    While not in as precarious a situation as that present in Pessian Persia, the Socialist Republic of Persia was far from united in ideology, policy or even on fundamental questions such as whether to pursue representative collective leadership in the model of the Muscovites or the more autocratic leadership exemplified by the Yekaterinburg Reds, an issue of considerable debate within Persian circles at the time. Perhaps most significant of these divisions lay in how distant Kuchik Khan, leader of the Jangal Party, was in his ideological beliefs from many of his supporters and allies in government. This was most clearly illustrated in Kuchik Khan's continued clashes with others in his party over the role of religion in Persian society, Kuchik Khan being a man of faith and religious convictions while many in his party aimed for a secular society with some of the more extreme figures in the party even wishing for enforced state atheism.

    The result was that even as the Jangali government undertook slow and methodical land reforms, developed local defence force militias in the model of the Russian Black Army and implemented major governmental reforms to increase the government's democratic base, clashes over the Religious Question increasingly began to spill out into the wider public. With the Pessian government's alliance with the Shia Marja weakening trust in the Shia religious institutions in Socialist Persia, this proved to be a lost cause for Kuchik Khan - who saw his support, and that of the Jangal movement as a whole, dwindle over the course of 1929 and 1930.

    This culminated in the fracturing of the Jangal Party over the Religious Question in late 1930, with Kuchik Khan's supporters remaining in the party - around 1/3 of the party membership - while the remainder split between a variety of opposition parties, such as the Socialist Party under Sulayman Eskandari, the Revolutionary Republican Party under the young Taqi Arani and Abdossamad Kambakhsh and most importantly the Party of the Masses, the Tudeh Party, under Haydar Khan Amo-oghli and Soleiman Eskandari. It would be the Tudeh Party which emerged as the largest party in parliament following the collapse of the Jangals and a vote of no-confidence on the 3rd of January 1931, which brought Kuchik Khan's government to an end. The next Premier of the Socialist Republic of Persia would be Haydar Khan and the Tudeh Party in coalition with the Revolutionary Republican Party, the latter being a relatively unstructured youth party, its leadership barely older than 30 at the time.

    The Tudeh Party was swift to pass legislation establishing a new modernist legal code, prepared during the previous decade by Soleiman Eskandari and his nephew Iraj Eskandari, and an ambitious legislative slate which saw large swathes of the economy nationalised, most prominently all utilities, medical services and resource extraction sectors, declared the enforcement of legal edicts on the basis of Sharia a crime, established the state as a secular actor and enforced freedom of religion. Within the year, the Tudeh Party had reduced the Revolutionary Republican Party to the status of Youth party affiliate of the Tudeh Party and formally merged the two while rapidly escalating the speed at which land reforms were undertaken and re-establishing a professional military, which had been abandoned in favour of militias by the Jangal Party in the post-civil war period, with aid from Ottoman and Russian advisors, with particularly Yekaterinburg providing the largest number of advisors. The Tudeh Party further bolstered popular support by enforcing a change in the naming of their state internationally by abandoning the foreign designation of Persia in favour of the indigenous Iran. As 1932 dawned, the Socialist Republic of Iran found itself increasingly in a position of power in the Middle East (28).

    The Khanate of Khiva was probably one of the most peculiar states to emerge from the bloody chaos of the 1920s. A tense mélange of often hostile religious, ethnic and ideological minorities ruled by a clique of Caucasian communists controlling a puppet Khan, it was at constant odds with itself and yet was able to slowly begin to settle onto a course which would allow the state to consolidate itself. Most significant in the leadership of Khiva remained Sergo Ordzhonikidze, who had taken over directing almost every aspect of the Khivan state, from taxation and agriculture to industry and commerce, while Anastas Mikoyan focused his efforts on foreign affairs, strengthening ties to Socialist Persia and the increasingly united Russian Communists while working to normalise relations with the Ottomans, as Kirov took a leading role in the establishment of a Commissariat which ensured that the orders of the central government were followed across the anarchic steppes of Central Asia.

    It was from this Khivan Commissariat that a rising star would emerge in the form of Lavrentiy Beria, one man among many who had been forced to flee Ottoman persecutions for the Khivan Khanate. There, he had at first joined the army, quickly rising in rank through his demonstrated intelligence, ruthlessness and willingness to do anything asked of him by his superiors, before being inducted into the Commisariate following the crushing of the Bukharans. In this role, Beria had personally commanded the forces executing the Bukharan leadership, while at the end of the Revolutionary War he was given charge of hunting down the last remaining Bukharan and Basmachi supporters, a task at which he would excel, resulting in the imprisonment, torture and often execution of more than 3,000 individuals by late 1925. At this point Beria was promoted once more and put in charge of organizing a secret police and spy networks in Khiva. This would be followed soon after by an expansion of responsibilities to include espionage in foreign nations, most prominently Pessian Persia, Afghanistan and the Ottoman Empire, but also western China and the Russian states, in response to the Urtatagai Crisis with Afghanistan (29).

    The Urtatagai Crisis erupted in late 1925 when a Khivan Commissariat force hunting Basmachis attacked the island of Urtatagai in the Amu Darya River. The status of the island was a matter of some dispute, as the Afghan army had already tried to enforce their claim to the island unsuccessfully in a border clash in 1913 and had later successfully captured the island unopposed in 1920. Since then, the island had been used as a hideout by Bukharan, Basmachi and even White Russian forces, who repeatedly crossed into Khiva to wreck havoc. Therefore, when yet another raid saw Basmachi rebels flee onto the island the local Commissar decided to pursue, clashing and defeating the island's garrison, resulting in 12 killed and 5 Afghans captured, while the 12 Basmachi rebels were summarily executed by the commanding Commissar. Outraged, the Afghans demanded an explanation, reparations as well as a return of the island and prisoners. When the Khivans proved slow to respond, Amanullah Khan called up the Afghan Army under Ali Ahmad Khan to reclaim the island if no response had been given by the new year.

    Thus, by the start of 1926 the prospect had suddenly emerged of a new conflict in the heart of Asia, drawing considerable international attention and worry. It would eventually prove to be the intervention of the League of Nations which would resolve the dispute, with diplomats from Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands all arriving to mediate. Over the course of February, March and April the two sides would thus negotiate in an effort to avoid conflict, ultimately resulting in the official handover of Urtatagai into Afghan hands, the payment of a widow's pension to the dead soldiers' families and a return of the captured prisoners in return for an Afghan pledge to help end the raids of the Basmachi movement, the Afghans taking on financial liability to repay damages should such efforts fail. The successful conclusion of negotiations would prove to be one of the League of Nation's early successes and helped significantly improve relations between Khiva and Afghanistan. The miscalculation which led to the crisis, and the lack of understanding of their neighbors it exposed, were what prompted Beria's expansion in authority (30).

    The States of Basra and Kuwait were the sole parts of the central Middle East under direct British supervision, and as such were tied even more firmly to the course of events in the British Empire than elsewhere in the region. Perhaps most important about this relationship were the distinctions present in how the two protectorates were governed, as Kuwait fell under the Secretariat for India while Basra was governed directly from London. This distinction was to have an immediate and concerning impact on relations between the two states as Kuwait City had, until the Great War, been the sole naval port outlet for the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. The sudden inclusion of Basra, and its extension into Khuzestan, suddenly created a contending force to this trade route which saw direct sponsorship from London. Thus, while Kuwait remained the main focus of investments early in the Austen Chamberlain government, the strong relationship between the government and Indian Secretariat proving critical in keeping focus aligned. This alignment began to slowly crumble once Sheikh Khaz'al Khan Ibn Haji Jabir Khan and Khuzestan were joined to Basra, not only greatly increasing its oil production capacities, but providing clearer local leadership to the protectorate and a change in name, the protectorate coming to be referred to as the Sheikhdom of Arabistan, in effect an extension of Khaz'al's domains.

    The result was that Basra City suddenly began to emerge as a contending port of call to Kuwait City, and rapidly began to overtake the latter. By late 1927 the relationship between the two protectorates had degenerated to near-war, with Sheikh Ahmad Al-Jabar Al-Sabah of Kuwait openly threatening Khaz'al with a drawn blade during an attempted mediation by British interlocutors. This state of affairs would further worsen with the change in government which saw Labour come to power. Much as in Pessian Persia, the incipient Labour government came to clash with the Indian Secretariat over Arabistan and Kuwait, ultimately resulting in London throwing their support behind Khaz'al and Arabistan while the Indian Secretariat continued to back Kuwait. This escalation in tension would result in several armed clashes between the two protectorates, with the British authorities doing little to help resolve the issue, over the course of the years between 1928-30 (31).

    That said, even as relations between the British protectorates deteriorated, there were changes occurring further to the north-west along the Tigris and Euphrates. The immense injection of money which came with the claiming of Baku, and subsequent end of Ottoman support to the Pan-Turkish movement, was to have profound effects on Mesopotamia as further oil fields in the region were prospected and work begun on them. These discoveries, and the shift in Ottoman priorities to securing those regions as a result, were to have unexpected consequences as the Ottomans under Kemal Pasha turned towards Germany for aid in the construction of a series of dams and river barrages which would allow for the irrigation of Mesopotamia, turning the desert green once more, as it had been before the depredations of the Mongols. Thus, over the course of the latter half of the 1920s and the early 1930s, the Ottoman Empire would begin work at Mosul, Kut and Dicle on the Tigris and at Keban, Aleppo, Raqqa, Ramadi and Fallujah on the Euphrates, on a series of dams which would fundamentally reshape the geography of the Middle East. The first of these dams, at Kut and Aleppo would finish work in early 1931 (32).

    Footnotes:
    (27) We are pretty far off the beaten path here as Mohammad Taqi Pessian goes in almost the exact opposite direction of Reza Pahlavi. IOTL the Pahlavi government threw its lot in with the modernists and actively provoked the religious establishment on multiple occasions. In this case Pessian leans on the conservative forces at his back for support, even going so far as to give the religious leaders of the country a veto on legislation. Further, we here see how vital British funding is for Pessian activities and get our first look at the increasingly contentious situation in Britain's colonial, dominion and foreign offices.

    (28) The Socialists in Persia show themselves capable of successful elections and see a fragmenting of the once monolithic Jangal movement. I just couldn't work out how Kuchik Khan would be able to hold on to power for much longer given his pro-religious influence stance of OTL given that the Pessian government is trending that way in this period. Ultimately, the Jangal Party ends up on the conservative end of the political spectrum in Persia, the Socialists at centre-right, Tudeh in the Centre, the Revolutionary Republican Party on the centre-right and an amorphous collection of parties on the far-left. I realize going with Tudeh as the ruling party is a bit lazy on my part, but the name would seem to fit the circumstances and I am leaning on some of the same figures who determined the OTL naming at the party's establishment. It is worth noting that Haydar Khan ended up allied with the Jangal Movement throughout the revolutionary struggle and is less tied to the Russian revolutionary scene ITTL, part of why he wasn't gunned down my Jangal supporters as occurred IOTL, and has actually become something of a national hero for his service during the war.

    (29) It is important to note that all of the figures mentioned here are from the Caucasus, there are no native Khivans in government outside of the insular and powerless court of the Khan, who enjoys a life of leisure with numerous concubines. I know that some are probably wondering why the Khivans aren't uniting the state with the Russian unification orchestrated by Trotsky and the Muscovites, and the answer to that question is that the Caucasian Clique would rather be big men in a smaller lake than small fish in a massive ocean. The large influx of Georgians and Armenians, as well as the numerous subsequent waves of refugees, have fundamentally reshaped the demographics of the region resulting in Caucasians actually making up a slight plurality of the population, something like 25%, while the Turks make up around 23%, the Russians around 14% and the Assyrians around 8% with the rest made up of various smaller minorities. We also run into Beria for the first time. He has had a somewhat different career to OTL, but still ends up doing what he was good at, intrigue and murder.

    (30) The Urtatagai Conflict as it is known IOTL plays out quite similarly to what happened IOTL. Hell, even the results of the negotiations are pretty close to those of OTL and don't really leave anyone feeling put out (except for the salty Basmachis). A notable difference is that the conflict is mediated by the League of Nations ITTL, which brings it significantly more international attention and is another feather in the LoN's cap. I did play around with the idea of the conflict escalating to open war, given that an Afghan-Khivan conflict is much more even than the OTL Soviet-Afghan conflict would have been, but ultimately decided that cooler heads would come out on top. Amanullah wanted to send a message so that he could continue focusing on his reforms, not get entangled in a bloody war just after crushing the Khost rebels. While he is somewhat sympathetic towards the Basmachis, it isn't enough to fight a war for them - and after this crisis they are not even worth what little support they were being given previously.

    (31) Sheikh Khaz'al was highly supportive of the British IOTL, and actually played a key role in supporting the foundation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. He was even considered as a candidate to take the Sheikhdom of Kuwait when the then-Sheikh launched an ambush against the Saudis in breach of British interests. Kuwait falling under the Indian Secretariat while London retains control of Basra is basically OTL except that Basra was part of the wider Mandate of Iraq IOTL, whereas here Basra is a smaller state. One thing to note is that the Iraqi Revolt of 1920 does not happen ITTL because of the changes to the post-Great War period in the Treaty of Copenhagen. Basra was already strongly influenced by the British, and rule follows more along the lines of that in Kuwait than the OTL treatment of Mandate Iraq. Note that Arabistan was actually what Khaz'al's domains were called IOTL, I am just extending them to include the Basran Dominion ITTL. The result is that we have two, almost equal sized, Sheikhdoms backed by rival parts of the British establishment competing over much of the same resources (oil and financial aid from Britain) and trade.

    (32) This is largely a TTL affair and is a result of the injection of cash that comes with access to the Baku Oil Fields for the Ottomans. The Ottomans under Kemal Pasha have come to the realization that leaving their peripheries to rot can have disastrous consequences and as such are using this opportunity to strengthen their hold on these regions. These dams and irrigation works are combined with a massive Turkicization effort through schooling, changes to official languages and massive migration efforts into Mesopotamia - amongst other efforts - in an effort to turn Mesopotamia into something which can strengthen the Ottoman Empire rather than hinder it. The consequences of such shifts are going to be quite profound as we will come to see.

    Summary:
    After a bitter conflict with insurgent powers, Fengtian China strengthens its grip on power over the Middle Kingdom.
    Japan rumbles on under the increasingly secure leadership of Yamamoto Gonbee, even as military, communist and Korean factions make moves.
    In India the Independence Movement undergoes transformation while in Afghanistan modernist attitudes rise rapidly to the top.
    Across the Middle East and Central Asia, powers seek to consolidate their hold on power with varying degrees of success.

    End Note:

    And with that we end the first full update back from hiatus. I really hope that you have enjoyed this look into the developments of South Asia and the Middle East. I have found it quite interesting to play around with the political developments of this period, particularly digging up the Swaraj Party, which I had never heard of before, was quite fascinating. There is a lot of set up in this update and many of the developments which have occurred during these four sections are going to play important roles in the coming updates.

    I would like to thank @Sardar for beta-ing the South Asia segment and helping to smooth out a few of the issues that were left in the text, as well as @Ombra for beta-ing everything I have written this time around.
     
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    Update Twenty-Nine (Pt. 1): The Victorious Red Banner
  • The Victorious Red Banner

    MNRA_soldiers_1939.jpg

    Chinese and Mongolian Troops Repel Russian Forces at the Battle of Kosh Agach

    A Siberian Conflagration​

    The sudden escalation of events in Russia over the course of 1928 were to send shockwaves around the world, as what had started as seemingly yet another popular uprising against the unstable tsarist regime in Siberia amongst many, quickly turned into the re-ignition of Russia's long and bloody civil war, barely four years removed from the signing of the Treaty of Tsarskoye Selo. Even as forces were rushed eastward by the Communists, differences in military doctrine between the two allied Red factions became an issue of considerable debate, ultimately resulting in the use of the offensively-minded Moscow Doctrine which had been championed by Tukhachevsky. As such, Tukhachevsky took overall command of the coming military campaign and directed the war effort from Yekaterinburg while Trotsky took on the immense task of ensuring a total mobilization of the Yekaterinburg lands in support of the offensive to come.

    The result was the creation of three mighty army groups consisting of a combined arms force of soldiery, cavalry, armour, artillery and aircraft all held under the unified command of the generals of each force. The central, and largest, of the three army groups was to be commanded by Iona Yakir, a close associate of Mikhail Frunze who had later befriended Tukhachevsky following the improvement in relations between the two Red factions. A man trusted by both military factions, Yakir had played a role in the development of both military doctrines, first as part of the Yekaterinburg officer corps and later in providing a critical eye to Tukhachevsky's theories, and as such was largely trusted by all sides. Most critically, he had demonstrated an ability to coordinate across military branches and across factions - making him the ideal person to command the central effort. The southern arm would be given over the August Kork, yet another Yekaterinburg commander who had copious experience fighting on the steppes of Central Asia against both the Bukharans and the Basmachi, and had led forces in repelling Tsar Roman's counter-attack across the steppes. This force would see a predominance of cavalry and air forces, the vast steppes of the southern front requiring swift movement more than weight of arms.

    This left only the northern force commanded by Mikhail Frunze's closest associate in the entire army, Vasily Blyukher, a man who had demonstrated his military capabilities time and time again over the course of the civil war. Of note would be the collection of officers who ended up under Blyukher's command, men such as Konstantin Rokossovsky, Georgy Zhukov, Semyon Timoshenko and Nikolay Voronov, and as a result congregated in the northern front where many of them were to make their names. It is worth noting the balance of factions which had been achieved in the new army as Tukhachevsky was left to command three forces led by protégés of Mikhail Frunze, a clear effort on the part of the military to ensure cooperation between the factions in the army. By late July the three forces had reached their planned size, the combined troops across all three army groups numbering nearly two million in all, and army operations in Siberian territory could begin once more (1).

    The Vanguard of the Revolution crossed the Siberian border on the 29th of July 1928, encountering next to no opposition in the crossing, Kutepov and the Siberian armies having been concentrated to quell the last of the rebellious forces in the Cisbaikal. However, this was not to say that the Siberians were caught completely by surprise, merely that they had surrendered the border marches and retreated eastward, eventually setting up a defensive line on the Yenisei River with Krasnoyarsk at the centre of their line. At the same time, Olga Romanova engaged in a piece of deft diplomacy when she was able to call upon Zhang Zuolin and Bogd Khan to honor their defensive responsibilities towards Siberia, resulting in the dispatch of a mixed Chinese-Mongolian army to Kyzyl and its environs on the southern flank under the command of General Sun Chuanfang, a protege of Wu Peifu, which was soon reinforced by various Cossack, Turk and Mongolic fighters.

    The first major clashes of the new conflict would occur in the south when August Kork's forces ran head long into these forces west of the Altai Mountains. The fighting proved fierce, marked by continual skirmishes and engagements rarely numbering more than a few thousand men at a time fought across the southern Steppe. At first the Communists were able to make considerable gains, their vast superiority in air power leaving the defenders vulnerable to aerial scouting and strafing runs, and as a result the forces under General Sun were soon pressed back into the Altai Mountains. It would be here that the course of the fighting began to shift considerably, as landing fields grew scarce, defensive positions became less exposed and the landscape in general took a turn for the rough, a development which would clearly demonstrate a key miscalculation in the dispersal of forces by the Communists, as a lack of infantry forces greatly impacted the effective fighting power of the southern front. This matter culminated in the three week Battle of Kosh Agach, fought from mid-August into September, which forced the Communist advance to a halt after a series of daring Chinese counter-attacks. Despite several subsequent assaults, and attempts at maneuver to the north and south of Kosh Agach, the Russians would find it impossible to break through the defensive line built on the Altai Mountains of western Mongolia (2).

    Even as this was occurring to the south, the central force under Iona Yakir advanced straight down the Trans-Siberian Railway, capturing Omsk and then Novonikolaevsk before encountering stronger resistance west of Krasnoyarsk. During the month it took to advance this distance, Alexander Kutepov had been able to construct a considerable defensive line stretching south to Mongolia with the aim of holding them in the Cisbaikal while Olga sought to rally international aid and popular support to oppose the Communists. The result was a series of major battles as the Siberians threw everything they had into their defenses, with clashes at Sharypovo and Achinsk lasting a week before the outer defenses of the Siberians were pulled back to around Krasnoyarsk. The following Battle of Krasnoyarsk, which began on the 19th of September, quickly came to be viewed as the most critical struggle of the conflict to date and as a result saw immense resources martialed to the fighting on either side. In sweeping armored hammer blows, a constant aerial assault and massed infantry charges on positions across the city, in the first true showcase for the new Communist Army. Tukhachevsky, with everything on the line, sought to demonstrate the effectiveness of his new military doctrine and in the process securing his ascent to eternal glory.

    In response, Kutepov was to lead a masterful defensive action, holding when holding was possible, retreating and delaying where necessary, constantly counterattacking when opportunities presented themselves, and in the process demonstrated his capabilities as one of the most capable military minds in Russia. His defensive action would see the Central Front first slowed and then forced to a halt at the gates of Krasnoyarsk, even as the fighting grew ever more bitter as more and more lives were thrown into the cauldron of war, and in the process catapulted Kutepov to international fame. As September turned to October, and October turned to November, it became increasingly clear that the formidable first thrust of the Revolution had been ground to a halt (3).

    With the southern and central fronts stalled out, the impetus and focus of the campaign turned to the north, where Blyukher's forces were gradually fighting their way through the harsh tundra and forests of northern Siberia after crossing the Ob River, facing no direct opposition other than nature itself. The lack of roads slowed the northern advance further, requiring a major investment in manpower to clear the path of advance under the direction of Nikolay Voronov, building the very infrastructure which they would have to rely on, and slowed supplies to a trickle, resulting in considerable shortages in food, fuel, clothing and machine parts despite Blyukher's best efforts. Because of the harsh barrenness of the region into which Blyukher and his men were advancing, the Siberians had made little to no preparations in the region and would only discover this third force in late September when the northern forces first crossed the Yenisei River far to the north of Krasnoyarsk near the village of Krivlyak, brushing aside a company's worth of Siberian garrison soldiers in the process.

    Suddenly behind the Siberian front line, Blyukher turned southward along the river, rushing up river to Lesosibirsk where he next crossed the Angara River on the 8th of November. It was only at this point that Kutepov was able to divert forces north to meet the sudden emergence of the northern Army. However, under the aggressive advances of Zhukov and Rokossovsky, the Northern Army Group was able to sweep aside these defenders with ease and continue their southward advance. Rather than aim for Krasnoyarsk itself, Blyukher decided to push further into Kutepov's rear and made for the town of Kansk on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. As they pushed forward, Zhukov and Rokossovsky ran into ever greater opposition, resulting in three major battles at Kurysh-Voznesenka, Astaf'yevka and ultimately Kansk itself on the 21st of November.

    The fall of Kansk on the 23rd was to prove disastrous for the Siberian cause as the sudden cutting of Krasnoyarsk's supply lines resulted in immediate resource shortages. Efforts at attacking back up the rail line were undertaken at Kutepov's direction four times over the following week, but despite severe losses and their own shortages the Communist Northern Army Group was able to hold the line. Word of the capture of Kansk arrived quickly at the headquarters of Iona Yakir, who ordered an immediate escalation in operations, resulting in another series of attacks on the Krasnoyarsk defences, which soon began to crumble as Siberian resources began to run low in Krasnoyarsk.

    Realising that his position had become untenable and unwilling to abandon his army, Kutepov eventually made the fateful decision to withdraw southward to Mongolia, where he hoped to secure transportation back to Siberia with his army. Therefore, beginning on the 2nd of December, as the already horrid weather took a turn for the worse, the Siberian Army at Krasnoyarsk began a slow retreat up the Yenisei River unpursued, making for the Southern frontier. It would take another day before Yakir's forces realised that Krasnoyarsk had been abandoned, and for the city to fall into Communist hands. Considerable debate ensued at Military Headquarters over whether to pursue Kutepov or push eastward into the now undefended Siberian heartland - ultimately seeing the dispatch of a shielding force to shadow Kutepov under Ivan Belov while the main Central Front Army Group linked up with Blyukher in Kansk before proceeding down the Trans-Siberian Railroad (4).

    The Fall of Siberia was to proceed with shocking speed following the end of the Battle of Krasnoyarsk, leaving the Siberians no time to react. Bratsk fell two weeks after Kutepov's retreat, Irkutsk the week after and by Christmas the vanguard forces under Zhukov found themselves across Lake Baikal on the approach to Chita itself. In the blink of an eye, Siberian Cisbaikal had disappeared. In Chita, word arrived of the fall of town after town with rapidly decreasing delays, prompting fear and panic across the city. In the Chita Palace, Olga sought desperately for a solution, only able to content herself with having dispatched her sister and children to safety before this cataclysm. Rapid messages between Chita and Beijing eventually saw the extension of a promise of safety by Zhang Zuolin as troops were mustered along the Russo-Chinese border in a warning to Moscow. Eventually, Olga decided to depart Chita for the Amur region, hoping to buy enough time for Kutepov to transfer his army eastward through China in order to rebuild a redoubt for the Tsarist cause, and began a wide-ranging evacuation of the capital which was still ongoing as Zhukov approached the city.

    Of interest was the fate of Tsar Roman, who had remained imprisoned in the palace since his capture and who refused to leave the city despite Olga's entreaties and threats of using force. Ultimately, he was handed an armed pistol and left to his fate. On Zhukov's capture of the city, Tsar Roman von Ungern-Sternberg would be found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head in his palatial chambers in Chita. Tsar Roman was not the only person still in Chita at the time of Zhukov's arrival, for the ambitious and talented commander had exceeded all expectations and closed the more than 800 kilometers between their landing point on Lake Baikal and Chita in twelve days, and as a result caught the Siberians still in the process of evacuation, resulting in the capture of nearly a third of those scheduled for departure alongside vast caches of government documents and much else. Olga herself and her closest supporters were barely able to avoid capture, having departed the city the day prior to its fall, and would eventually make a run across Manchuria to Vladivostok, as the rest of Siberia fell steadily under Communist control.

    By early March the Communists were crossing the Amur when they finally ran into armed opposition, Kutepov and a severely weakened Siberian Army having made the immense trek from Krasnoyarsk to Vladivostok through Mongolia and China in just one of the many incredible feats of logistics which dominated the Fall of Siberia. The renewed fighting centered on the city of Khabarovsk, but Kutepov was eventually forced to retreat when the Amur was forded further down river. As March turned to April and the situation grew ever more dire for the Siberians, Olga still sought against all hope to call upon the international community for aid, meeting with little success as governments in Britain, Germany, France and America all proved disinterested in intervention. The final fighting of the campaign would occur east of Lake Khanka, not far from Vladivostok, as Kutepov and the ragged remnants of his forces fought to buy time for Olga even as her rivals and opponents in the White Russian government and bureaucracy fled for China, Japan and points further afield. Olga's struggle finally came to an end on the 9th of May 1929 when a gang of do-nothing officers led by one of the many contenders for Olga's hand prior to and after Rodzyanko's rise and fall from grace, Vladimir Kislitsin, broke into her weakly guarded residence and assaulted her - an attack from which she would die the following day while Kislitsin and his band fled for Japan. News of Olga's shocking violation and death broke the last slivers of Siberian resistance, with Kutepov fleeing across the Russo-Chinese border to Manchuria, vowing to one day restore the Romanovs to what they had lost. By the 13th of May, the Communists were in Vladivostok and the Siberian Campaign had come to an end. At the direction of Blyukher, in direct opposition to Trotsky's orders, Olga Romanova's still-unburied body was laid to rest in a quiet ceremony at the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God in Vladivostok (5).

    Footnotes:

    (1) I really hope this isn't too messy, but I wanted to lay out a disposition of forces on the side of the Communists. The most important thing to take from this is probably that Tukhachevsky is commanding armies led by men who he has ordinarily not had authority over and is unused to working with. While Military Headquarters are filled with Tukhachevsky's own men, the armies are commanded and composed of men from the Yekaterinburg faction who are now being asked to follow a new military doctrine, Frunze's Yekaterinburg doctrine having been judged too defensive in outlook for the campaign. Expect this to cause trouble, and likely to result in considerable recrimination down the line, but given the sheer weight of numbers and resources it is looking very dire for the Siberians.

    (2) It is a bit of a funny story, I had originally planned for the southern campaign to be a ton of cavalry actions across the steppes and had written that up, only to discover that the defensive line I had outlined ran into the Altai Mountains, some of the harshest terrain in the region. Instead of retconning this mistake, I thought it would be interesting to include as a Communist miscalculation. Much like me, they expected the fighting on the southern front to centre on the vast steppes south of Omsk and Novonikolaevsk (Novosibirsk, the name changes after the city falls into Soviet hands) which were so contested during the Civil War, only to find their opponents retreating far to the east instead. This mistake costs them dearly as the composition of their forces, while ideal for steppe warfare, is horrendous in hard terrain.

    (3) Alexander Kutepov is noted for having been a decisive and talented military leader who was able to restore order almost on arrival to the front during the Civil War and a willingness to apply swift and ruthless actions even against his own men when necessary to restore order and morale. IOTL he ended up forced into exile with the fall of the Crimean Peninsula, during which he was able to keep the stranded and abandoned forces in order even as everything seemed in collapse. In 1928 he was actually chosen as successor to lead the Russian All-Military Union after Pyotr Wrangel's death and was killed in an attempted kidnapping by Soviet OGPU agents in Paris in 1930 - that is apparently the esteem to which the Soviets held him. All of these are indicators, in my eyes, that he had the potential to be amongst the upper tier of Russian Generals at the time - and that is how I am treating him here. Outnumbered, outgunned and with his back to the wall he is able to force the massive Communist army to a halt indefinitely. I think that there is a potential for greatness in everyone, and this is an opportunity for Kutepov's greatness to emerge - I hope that this explains why he does so well in this instance.

    (4) Ultimately it is the smallest and least valued of the three forces which ends up swinging the conflict in the Communists favor. It should be noted that crossing northern Siberia is the great achievement of the Siberian Campaign and comes to be glorified in propaganda, being turned into numerous movies and brings its participants to the heights of military fame. The several months-long trek across the harsh north into an ever worsening autumn and winter, with supplies constantly delayed or lost, results in the loss of almost 5% of the entire force - but ultimately the gamble it represents proves successful. Note also how long it takes them to make the crossing compared to the two other fronts, not for nothing do the Siberian defenders overlook the north: it is a barely viable path of advance. Ultimately, however, the campaign is decided by this surprise sickle cut, coming around from the back to cut the single most important supply line in Russia, the Trans-Siberian Railroad. With the loss of Kansk, the Siberian defenders are doomed to failure and Kutepov does the only thing he can when he tries to salvage the army as he retreats into Mongolia.

    (5) And so, White Russian Siberia comes to an end. We bid farewell to Olga and Tsar Roman while Kutepov escapes to join the ranks of the Siberian Romanov faithful under Boris Savinkov in America. The issue at play here is that the Siberians were never going to be able to go toe-to-toe with the Red Russians without considerable foreign intervention, as happened earlier during the Civil War, and despite the hard work done by Olga and her supporters during the years preceding the Siberian Campaign it simply proves to not be enough. I had planned for Olga to die during this conflict, but as I was writing it out I kept pushing it and pushing it, even considered keeping her around, but ultimately I went back to my original plan, which may help explain why Olga's end is so tragic. As to Kislitsin and the others who participated in the assault on Olga, they are gradually killed over the course of the next five years as Anastasia, Savinkov and others identify them and dispatch killers. Olga's death, and particularly how it played out considering the fates of her other sisters, leave a deep mark on Anastasia's psyche and will affect her for the remainder of her life.

    flagofsovietrussiaadibljug.png

    Flag of the Soviet Republic of Russia

    Red Russia Ascendant​

    The Fall of Siberia was met with wild enthusiasm across Red Russia as long neglected church bells were sounded, victory parades were organized and a flurry of ecstatic celebration engulfed the entire country. Trotsky's gamble had payed off, and the result was the extension of Communist power into the Far East, opening up for the long-dreamt possibilities of Asia under the Red Banner. The sudden conquest of Siberia would take time to absorb into the increasingly unified Communist Russia, as Trotsky decided the time had come to break down the barriers between Yekterinburg and Moscow, ending independent policy making in the region and bringing to a close the distinct policies of the Yekaterinburg government in return for a seat on the Central Committee for Lev Kamenev and another seat for the man behind Yekteringburg's successful industrial and agricultural development, Lazar Kaganovich. This had the effect of bringing the Trotskyite clique up to par with the Governing and Anarchist cliques, with Lazar's appointment to manage the absorption of Siberia and Kamenev charged with managing the dissolution of Yekaterinburg as a state-within-a-state. Trotsky, believing that the sacrifices undertaken by the people under Yekaterinburg had ensured the future of the revolution, swelled with pride and joy at the incredible successes his plans had led to and would, as a result of these successes, see his popularity skyrocket across the Soviet Republic of Russia, as the young state came to be called.

    While Blyukher, Zhukov and others of the Northern Front Army Group were rightfully celebrated for their achievements in the Siberian Campaign, the man who would reap the greatest glory from the matter was Leon Trotsky himself. In the news, cinema, radio and tracts on revolutionary zeal produced by Bukharin's ideological engine of the revolution, Trotsky was celebrated as the man who brought about the destruction of the Siberian Whites and, once and for all, drove the Romanovs from Russian lands. His theories on perpetual revolution, militant revolution and Asia as the future of the Communist movement would all become widely read in this period and came to influence the thoughts of many young revolutionary minds in the years that followed. The sudden rise of Trotsky soon began to threaten to eclipse the Central Committee itself and gradually drew together the Governing and Anarchist cliques for fear that Trotsky's personal ambitions might threaten the integrity of the revolution. Whispers of Bonapartism spread in the ranks of the Communist Party while rumors of Trotsky and his followers' harsh treatment of the populace of Yekaterinburg drew ever harsher criticism. Questions of how one justified sacrificing the masses for the masses, and of what must be done should an overbearingly ambitious man seek to become dictator of the revolutionary state spread like a cancer through the ranks of the party membership and would gradually see the followers of Trotsky clashing with the wider party discourse, in effect resulting in a gradual internal segregation by a party designed to welcome all leftist ideas. While Red Russia, and Trotsky, had never stood stronger nor faced a brighter future, storm clouds were gathering in response to Trotsky's overshadowing of every other revolutionary figure (6).

    If the reaction of Red Russia was ecstatic jubilation at the defeat of White Siberia, the response across the various White émigré factions and amongst the Don Whites more resembled abject horror and terror. With the Siberian Campaign, the Reds had demonstrated a shocking capability to not only put a massive, well armed, force in the field but had further shown that they possessed numerous exceedingly talented military commanders. Beyond that, they had shown themselves dissatisfied with the state of affairs outlined at Tsarskoye Selo and a willingness to attack without warning should their enemies demonstrate the slightest sign of weakness.

    Pyotr Wrangel thus found himself balanced precariously atop an ever more paranoid and terrified state, having to manage a realistic response to the very real threat posed by the newly unified Communists while at the same time ensuring that malcontents and bad actors didn't exploit the crisis to push him out of his position and overturn the fragile political situation. This was not a fantastical fear on the part of Wrangel, for over the course of the years since he had come to power, he had seen his rivals increasingly tied to various foreign powers and émigré factions. Particularly the emergence of actual political parties and the revitalisation of the civilian government begun under Brusilov, and continued under the leadership of Milyukov, Rodzianko and Guchkov, had finally begun to see effects by late 1928, and as a result was perfectly placed to whip a newly politicised populace into a frenzy.

    While the Constitutional Democratic Party, reformed under Milyukov, the Liberal Democratic Party, established by Rodzianko and Guchkov, and the Russian Conservative Party would secure the most support, it would prove to be parties formed by people outside of this trio which increasingly took center stage in the aftermath of Siberia's fall (7). Perhaps most significant of these would be the Union of Young Russians, The Union of Monarchists and the Russian National Union. The Young Russians, and their associated parties and émigré factions, would take the fall of Siberia as a sign that while the Communists had been wrong in breaking violently with the state and breaking apart the inherent unity of the Russian domains, they had been right in their claims that Russian society must be changed at a fundamental level. As a result the Young Russians advocated a radical program of land reforms, income redistribution, a break with foreign powers and a gradual rapprochement with the Communists which would eventually lead to the reunification of the disparate segments of the motherland on peaceful terms. This program, while ridiculed and attacked by almost every other political faction in the Don Republic, would see a considerable increase in their support as fears of a Communist invasion peaked in mid-1929.

    In sharp contract to this proposed surrender to the Reds were the Monarchists who, while deeply divided over whether to support the Vladimirovich or Siberian Romanovs, could at least agree on the fact that the Don Republic should crown an Emperor for themselves to lead the struggle against the ascendant Communists, rather than rely on piecemeal arbitrarily-selected military dictators and a weak civilian government , backing it up with a political program inspired heavily by the Integralist movements in Spain and Portugal.

    Finally, the Russian National Union would come to draw on the traditions of the Black Hundreds and other ultra-nationalist movements in Russia, rejecting monarchy as hidebound tradition, and instead campaigning on an anti-Semitic, anti-Communist, anti-Democratic, pro-Orthodox and pro-Authoritarian platform. They portrayed themselves as supporters of a radical modernist approach which would forcefully bring Russia into the future on equal standing to the exploitative European powers. All three of these movements would see a surge in support in over the course of 1929 and 1930, and showed no signs of abating any time soon, but nevertheless remained outside of government ranks, looking with envy and greed at their more mainstream rivals (8).

    Considering the immense investment in lives, finances and resources to support and maintain the Siberian Whites by the powers of Europe and America, its collapse was met with a surprising degree disinterest in these states. In America, the Siberians had been the particular project of the Wood administration, and the subsequent meddling in American politics by Anastasia and Savinkov had proven exceeding unpopular, making even the suggestion of intervention political suicide. This issue was further disregarded by the incredible tensions which emerged during the 1928 elections and which ended up completely absorbing the attentions of the American political establishment to the complete disregard of all else. Even so, the support for the Siberian Whites remained significant, not just in the Russian-American community which had exploded in growth with the arrival of multiple waves of refugees from Russia, but also in the high society of New York in which Anastasia had built a web of contacts, allies and even a few friends, most prominently Quentin and Alice Roosevelt.

    Siberia had always been more of an American initiative than French or British, and while its sudden and unexpected collapse before the Communist menace provoked fear and anger, the recent discrediting of the Conservatives over the Channel Tunnel Scandal, who were the most vocally opposed to the Communists, and rise of a Labour Party government in Britain with little interest in refighting the wars of their predecessors meant that there was much talk but little action. In particular, there was a great deal of comment made in the more right-wing British newspapers about Labour party members celebrating the fall of Siberia, setting a spark to worries of Communist infiltration in the governing party.

    Ultimately, it would be France which reacted most viscerally to events in Russia of the former Entente powers, with Action Francaise, the Ligues and even Jean d'Orleans himself publicly denouncing the development and renewing fears of a Communist tide out of Italy and Russia sweeping all of Catholicism and Morality into the Atlantic. Pope Gregory would publicly denounce the Communist regime in Russia, calling upon all true Catholics to stand against the godless in the face of their expanding threat (9).

    As to Germany, the fall of Siberia was viewed with considerable ambiguity. Russia was, and had been since before the wars of Frederick the Great, the single greatest threat to German freedom and security, but in recent years the Moscow government had significantly improved relations with the Germans and had, until the invasion of Siberia, convinced the German government of their containment. Communist ideology, and Communist Russia with it, was not viewed as some hostile threat to society by most ordinary Germans, but rather as the source of a new popular culture which had captured the zeitgeist of the German worker through Proletkult cinema, art and writing. There was a feeling of fellowship between the two states, which had each gone through considerable change and reform in recent years, and a belief that each wanted the best for the other. Further, the Siberians and their Romanov leaders had for a long time been viewed as stooges of the Americans and British, a view reinforced by works of art circulating out of Red Russia, and were increasingly seen as little different from oriental tyrants, as tales of Tsar Roman's depravities and the constant suppression of the Siberian population spread. The Fall of Siberia was to introduce a new level of hesitancy to the Russo-German relationship as the sudden demonstration of military might, seemingly without provocation, put a new spin to Russian activities since the Tsarskoye Selo negotiations. The further rise of Trotsky, who was viewed with considerable worry and distaste amongst even the left-wing of German society, was to weaken relations further and result in a gradual increase in military readiness on the part of the Germans as they began to consider the threat of a hostile Russia to their Eastern European clients (10).

    However, more than any state outside of Russia, the place most directly impacted by the fall of White Siberia was China. As the sole external participant in the Siberian Campaign, excluding their Mongolian clients, the Chinese saw the loss of their allies to the north as a major blow to China's national security and as a result were forced to significantly strengthen their military might along their northern border, just a couple years after they had sought to reduce military spending and weakened military authority. Furthermore, the course of events to the north were to have profound consequences for the increasingly divided Chinese Communists as the Shanghai Communists declared their full-throated support for the Fengtian government's participation in the struggle against the Reds.

    Angered at this betrayal of their cause, and further enraged at a faction of their party that those outside Shanghai were increasingly coming to see as little better than traitors to the revolution and collaborators with an imperialist government, the Communists of China formally splintered into two violently opposed factions. On one side were the Shanghai Communists, whose ideological foundations increasingly came to rely on democratic participation, reform of the state, an extension of government services to the people in the model of the Social Democracy emergent in Prussia and a wholehearted support of Chinese nationalism, while on the other hand were the Jiaxing Communists as they came to call themselves, the first Chinese Communist Party Congress having been held in the two cities of Shanghai and Jiaxing.

    The Jiaxing Communists were to bitterly, and in time violently, oppose the Fengtian government, agitating amongst the peasantry and workers for a true People's Revolution which would overthrow the Qing monarchy and Fengtian state in favour of a revolutionary government built on Revolutionary Communist principles. The reemergence of a Russian state capable of challenging Chinese might for the first time in over a decade would provoke considerable fears in the government and upper classes of China, and resulted in a gradual hardening of attitudes towards Communism, although continued lee-way was made for the Shanghai Communists who had more than demonstrated their loyalty when they aided in the negotiated end of a major strike in Nantong, where the successors to the business magnate Zhang Jian had so mismanaged their business empire that it had provoked a general strike across the city, and had further bolstered their credit with the government when they dispatched a volunteer Red Guard regiment from Shanghai to join the expeditionary army fighting in the Altai Mountains.

    At the same time, the fall of Siberia would result in a significant influx of White Russian refugees, who would either make their way further afield or settle into the flourishing émigré community in China. Harbin, Shenyang, Beijing and Shanghai would all experience significant growth in their Russian populations, with Harbin coming to be known as Moscow on the Songhua, in reference to the city's efforts at preserving pre-revolutionary Russian culture in the form of Russian language newspapers, journals, libraries, theatres and even a couple opera companies, and as the Paris of China, in reference to the city's explosive growth as a fashion capital, it being the place where new designs from Europe made themselves known to the East Asian market (11).

    Footnotes:

    (6) There is a ton of stuff happening behind the scenes which I am not really going into any greater detail with in this update. Not only is Siberia being absorbed into Red Russia, which requires an immense amount of work to accomplish, but Yekaterinburg is also being incorporated fully into the Muscovite framework. In effect, this means the end of the intense militarization efforts in the region and implementation of Muscovite policies of local self government and the like, but make no mistake - the societal changes brought about by Trotsky and his supporters in the region are going to mark the region for decades to come. The Urals and western Siberia will be known for their industriousness, militantly revolutionary zeal and exceedingly collectivist life styles, and the use of military campaigns as a framing device for public works will remain widely used in the region. Beyond that, the most important development here is the rise of Trotsky to prominence. This has its benefits and its weaknesses in that it on one hand allows Trotsky to take on a unique role in the revolutionary struggle while at the same time presenting a threat to the revolution by his rising influence and subordination of segments of the Russian left-wing.

    (7) It is worth noting that the Kadets are ordinarily viewed as German-aligned, the Liberals as British aligned and the Conservatives as French aligned. Yes, the major political parties have become a vehicle for foreign influence - surprise, surprise the Don Republic is not exactly the most healthy democracy around.

    (8) The Young Russians are based on the OTL Mladorossi movement which advocated a hybrid monarchy over a soviet government. While ITTL, the movement doesn't quite conform with that, having dropped the support of monarchism in favor of a union with the Reds where the political spectrum is expanded right-ward, they are still a relatively marginal group which is rapidly expanding in this period, their policy of compromise and eventual reunion with the rest of Russia proving popular particularly on the left and amongst those weary of the constant struggle against the Communists. There are other, smaller, movements with similar goals but the Young Russians end up emerging as the largest of them and the one I will be using as representative of that fringe of movements for now.

    The Monarchists are a very amorphous collection of figures whose sole unifying belief is the need for a Tsar to lead the Don in the struggle against the Communists - there are Siberians, Europeans (supporters of Kiril Vladimirovich), constitutionalists, supporters of autocracy and just about everything else you can imagine within the royalist sphere. However, they find themselves forced into union with each other in order to avoid marginalisation and after the successes of the Communists, find their stock rising as they begin to find a footing through support for an integralist platform, although who exactly is supposed to ascend to the throne remains an issue of considerable debate. That leaves us with the National Unionists who fall firmly in the ultranationalist camp, they basically want a powerful dictator ruling over an autocratic state but reject the monarchy as an archaic and hidebound institution which would only hamper the rise of the new state, basically think of them as falling in the same camp as OTL Nazism, actually more so than Fascism due to their rather virulent anti-Semitism. They are hungry for an all-powerful strongman to take over leadership, purge the Jews, massacre the Communists and bring Russia to Superpower status. It is worth noting that there are also various minority/regional parties representing the Cossacks, Ukrainians and more who also play an important role in the emerging political system of the Don Republic.

    (9) I hope that my reasoning behind the muted Entente reactions make sense. I have been considering the relationship between Siberia and the rest of the world quite a bit in the writing of this update, and came to the realization that the date I had set for the Siberian Campaign really put all their potential saviors in a bit of a bind. As has been detailed previously, the Wood Administration's support for Siberia has proven to be an ever more unpopular state of affairs, and after the end of the Civil War, American focus has become ever more insular and isolationist resulting in a gradual abandonment of Siberia. The British and French were less involved in the region, having focused their efforts on the Don, but even so with Labour in government and the present divisions in French society the fall of Siberia only sets the stage for a gradual growth in anti-Red sentiment.

    (10) Germany's relationship with Moscow is very unique and causes them to react quite differently to Russian developments. The new developments to the east begin a number of different developments which we will gradually see emerge, but for now there is just a growing hesitancy regarding whether the Moscow regime can actually be trusted to act responsibly.

    (11) We will deal more with the Jiaxing/Shanghai divide in Chinese communism in the next section, so I will set that aside for the moment. China experiences considerable changes as a result of events in Russia, given that their allies in Siberia were just replaced by a hostile Communist power that seems like a pretty natural reaction. It should be noted that China as swiftly emerging as one of the most stridently anti-Communist states in the world (again, excluding the Shanghai Communists who had achieved a pretty unique status and are rapidly diverging from the rest of the world's communist movements, to the point that there is significant debate over whether it is even communist at all, as we will come to see) and that the expedition to the Altai Mountains, while part of a wider failure, is widely regarded as having been a major success for the Chinese. They demonstrated the capabilities necessary to go toe to toe with a modern army like that of the Russians, in the process chipping away at the long-running humiliation resulting from the Chinese inability to fight off their colonial exploiters. The Altai Mountains Campaign is widely celebrated across China and sees much the same treatment in government media and propaganda as that given to the wider Siberian Campaign in Russia, and makes Sun Chuanfang a household name in China.

    End Note:

    With this we bring to a close an important chapter of the timeline, as a clear superior power emerges in Russia and the divisions between Yekaterinburg and Moscow are finally brought to a close. In many ways this is the starting point for the events of everything I have been working on for after the hiatus, setting in motion a series of important shifts which will gradually reshape the geopolitical context of the world. I really cannot understate the immense importance Trotsky in particular will have for the shape of international and domestic events take in the post-Siberian Campaign years. Every Communist movement will be impacted to some degree while a gradual shift begins to occur. Trotsky's success in forcing his fellow Soviets to action by activities outside their purview will not be forgotten, and you can expect Trotsky to begin acting with greater independence, forcing his compatriots to follow along as he tries to forcefully bring about World Revolution.

    I am really looking forward to seeing what everyone has to say about this update, as it is a key turning point.
     
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    Update Twenty-Nine (Pt. 2): The Victorious Red Banner
  • The Victorious Red Banner

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    Jiaxing Party Leadership at a Party Conference in the Countryside

    Asian Communism​

    Events in Russia were to have a profound impact on the development of Japanese Communism at the turn of the decade as admiration of Trotsky and his theories resonated powerfully not only with Kita Ikki's own ideological framework but with the wider militant spirit of the Japanese people. Kita Ikki had already been an avid reader of Trotsky's writings prior to the Fall of Siberia, but with the demonstrated efficacy of the Trotskyite model he made the decision to begin to draw ever more heavily on Trotsky for inspiration. Speeches came to be littered with Trotsky's quotes on the importance of a militant revolutionary spirit to ensuring the success of the revolution, the need for a permanent international revolution which would allow the cause to eventually sweep across the world while also adopting an emphasis on approaching any societal challenge like a military campaign, harkening back to Japan's own history under the Shoguns to provide a familiar framing for these concepts.

    All of these elements came to feature heavily in Kita Ikki's own writings and as a result began to crop up in stump speeches by Nippon Kyosanto politicians from one end of Japan to the other as he gradually ascended to a preeminent position as Nippon Kyosanto's ideological centre. It was during this time that Kita Ikki's writings first began to circulate more widely amongst younger army officers, particularly those of less elite origins, alongside various other radical writings, mostly of a far-right extraction. Here, Kita Ikki's decision to build on Trotsky's theories would prove vital in promoting the spread of Communist ideology into the military academies and amongst their recent graduates - a movement which would grow unabated as a result of the Army's own willingness to ignore the politicisation of their officers towards far-right ultra nationalism and an inability to comprehend the development of support for Communism within the Army itself, resulting in a neglectful censorship effort within their own ranks. Of particular importance would be Kita Ikki's success in securing the following of the recently dismissed Captain Nishida Mitsugi and Lieutenant Hashimoto Kingoro, who held positions of informal importance amongst the younger officers of the Imperial Japanese Army.

    Nippon Kyosanto was to experience considerable growth in the years following Siberia's fall under Yamakawa Hitoshi's political stewardship, with particularly the merging of the Rodonominto and Nippon Kyosanto organisations requiring competent management and organisation talent given the tensions which had emerged in the relationships between the two parties and their leaders during their multi-year conflict. This normalisation of relations would be accomplished successfully for the most part through Yamakawa's graciousness in victory, giving positions of power and authority within the party to Fukumoto Kazou and Nosaka Sanzo and other prominent ex-Nippon Kyosanto members, most importantly giving Nosaka the task of further developing the party's economic reform platform and passing the task of managing relations with the international revolutionary movement to Fukumoto. However, despite these efforts there would remain significant tensions within the party leadership - particularly between Nosaka Sanzo and Kita Ikki, with Nosaka regarding Kita as little better than a reactionary faux-revolutionary and Kita viewing Nosaka as a foreign shill, willing to sell out Japan to the western imperialists should it allow him greater political prominence.

    It was also during this time that the decision was made within the party leadership to work towards developing ties with Rikken Minseito with an eye toward becoming part of the accepted political establishment in a move greatly criticised by Kita Ikki, who felt it a betrayal of the unique role he believed Nippon Kyosanto to hold as the Vanguard of the Japanese People, the Nihonjin no Zen'ei, a term which featured strongly in Kita's writings on the purpose of the party. A contentious topic within both Nippon Kyosanto and Rikken Minseito, Prime Minister Yamamoto Gonbee remained exceedingly cautious towards these feelers. However, Kyosanto was able to meet with greater success with others in the party and naval establishment, most significantly in the form of Yamamoto's own son-in-law and Minister of the Navy, Takarabe Takeshi, and Admiral Hori Teikichi, who would bring his proteges Yamamoto Isoroku, Inoue Shigeyoshi and Yonai Mitsumasa into this leftist clique of the Navy. Within Minseito itself, the Communists were to find a number of allies including the influential Saito Takao and his clique of supporters, the diplomat Yoshida Shigeru, Isu Abe and most significantly the youthful and charismatic Adachi Kenzo. As Nippon Kyosanto pushed forward into the new decade, they slowly but steadily found their base of support growing and increasingly found themselves accepted by important segments of the political establishment (12).

    The division of Chinese Communism into Shanghai and Jiaxing factions would prove to be amongst the most important developments in China during this period, creating a crucial and long-lasting source of division and tension in a political movement already under immense pressure. For the Shanghai Communists, this division was to lead them steadily further away from the mainstream movements of Communism, finding inspiration elsewhere on the international left as they found themselves increasingly ostracised by other parties and movements on the far-left. Perhaps the single most important event in the early ideological development of the Shanghai Communists was to come in early 1928 when the translation of a series of articles, theoretical papers, reports and party platform of the German Social Democratic Party were completed and published anonymously under the pen name of Li De, later discovered to be the work of a lapsed German Communist by the name of Otto Braun, who had drifted into the orbit of the SPD in recent years and been dispatched to China after demonstrating a remarkable capability for languages. These writings, which included a detailed description of the work done under Friedrich Ebert on the Prussian Welfare State, the role of national pride in the German social democratic tradition, the powerful vehicle which the state represented, the necessity of democratic rule and institutions as well as the importance of pushing towards a socialist society through reform rather than revolution, were all to find fertile ground in a political movement which had already absorbed a good portion of the Kuomintang's left wing.

    As a result, Shanghai Communism increasingly began to resemble a social democratic movement rather than an outright communist movement over the course of the late 1920s and 1930s. The first, and possibly most meaningful, demonstration of this shifting ideological foundation was to make itself felt in the dispatch of Red Guard forces to aid in the Altai Mountains Campaign, but were soon followed by a series of legislative initiatives in the National Congress aimed at strengthening the Chinese state's capacity to aid and protect its citizens. Ambitious educational reforms which would revitalize the collapsed Imperial bureaucracy were proposed by Wang Jingwei, and were eventually passed into law after some modification, and a Board of Mediation was established in Shanghai in 1929 to manage negotiations between employers, unions and the government - an effort led by Liao Zhongkai and clearly modeled on northern European three-party negotiations system which sought to regulate employer-employee relations and reduce class-based strife.

    However, it is important to note that not everyone was equally happy about these shifts and the matter was far from clear cut for the first years of the divide. Constant clashes with the Jiaxing Communists, first in writing and debate but later in blood, and anger at the forceful entry of ex-Kuomintang figures into the party posed major challenges to the party and led to persistent factional infighting within the Shanghai Communists which would only really begin to sort themselves out near the middle of the 1930s. Nevertheless, the example set by the Shanghai Communists was to leave an avenue for left-wing thought and expression within the otherwise firmly right-wing Fengtian regime which helped alleviate some of the popular pressure upon the government and redirected many of the urban poor in particular away from violent opposition to the government (13).

    In sharp contrast to the Shanghai Communists, their rivals the Jiaxing Communists found themselves constantly under threat from the authorities. While the Shanghai Communists found their centre of support in Shanghai and the surrounding cities on the Yangtze where they would eventually be allowed to stand for office as well, the Jiaxing Communists were to prove a predominantly southern Chinese movement led primarily by young firebrands such as Zhou Enlai, Zhang Guotao, Mao Zedong, Li Lisan, Cai Hesen, Chen Tanqiu, He Shuheng and the two military men Lin Biao and He Long. These men operated a wide net of contacts and supporters across the south in the post-KMT period leading up to the Jiangning Rebellion and worked to develop a popular Communist movement in the region. During the chaos of the Jiangning Rebellion, these men were able to significantly strengthen their authority by working as peace-keepers in the towns, cities and villages of southern China, fighting off warlord bands and maintaining public services, in the process gaining a great deal of renown and recognition in the region.

    The subsequent banning of the Communist Party outside Shanghai therefore came as a brutal body blow to these ambitious young men, who suddenly found their movement outlawed and themselves in an increasingly precarious position, even as their less ideologically rigorous comrades departed for Shanghai in search of safety from prosecution. This period would see a significant hardening of attitudes amongst the Jiaxing Communists, culminating in the 1927 Communist National Congress arranged by Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong and Hu Shuheng at which the Shanghai Communists were censured as traitors to the revolution and moved to expel the Shanghai leadership from the Communist Party, although this second motion would fail in the face reluctance to shatter the party entirely.

    Over the course of the next two years, relations between the two factions steadily degenerated until 1929 when an assassination attempt was made on Wang Jingwei by a Jiaxing Communist known to be part of Zhang Guotai's clique of supporters turned the conflict violent. This marked the first shot in what quickly proved a stunningly bloody party conflict which would last well into the 1930s and saw men such as Chan Tanqiu, Wu Yuzhang and the prominent Communist ideologue Xu Teli, who was a teacher to Mao Zedong and Cai Hesen, killed. Xu Teli himself was killed in retaliation for the murder of Li Dazhao, a founder of the Communist Party, member of the National Congress and leader of the Shanghai Communists at the hands of a murder squad led by Cai Hesen in 1933, itself an act of revenge for Li Dazhao's unwillingness to save Cai's wife Xiang Jingyu from execution after she was caught in the French Concession in Shanghai (14).

    This state of open conflict within the Communist Party was to make the Jiaxing Communists amongst the most militant in the world, with Chinese militants making up a majority of the men trained by the Yekaterinburg Trotskyites between 1925 and 1929. The result was a ideological framework which took Trotsky's and Nestor Makhno's ideologies of militant self-sufficiency and peasant-oriented communal structures and blended them with preexisting trends in the Chinese Communist movement. With the Jiaxing Communists increasingly driven from the coastal cities, they instead turned to the countryside where they were able to develop a powerful base of support, building self-reliant communes which rejected government authority and worked in consort to ensure each others' safety and security. Given the limited and fragmented authority of the Fengtian Government in the south, and the fact that what resources they had were dedicated to eradicating the last remnants of the Jiangning Rebels, these peasant communes were largely allowed to grow and expand unmolested for much of the 1920s, few realising that they were an outgrowth of the Communist movement.

    The Fall of Siberia changed all of this, as the threat posed by Communism emerged as a primary concern of the Fengtian government, resulting in a series of repressive measures in the coastal cities which drove the last of the Jiaxing Communists into the countryside where they soon turned their attentions towards educating the peasantry on their rights and role in the international revolutionary movement. The Jiaxing Communists would largely go unnoticed by the government until June of 1931 when a series of clashes between tax collectors and the peasant communes brought the issue to awareness with the local government in Guangxi and led to the militarisation of tax collection, the government seemingly unaware that these communes had spread across most of Guangxi, Guangdong, Yunan, Guizhou and Hunan. The result was an armed clash between tax collectors and local Commune Militias which began to slowly spin out of control. The remainder of 1931 would see the steady growth of popular unrest as arms missed in the government's weapons collection programme and looted from district and county armories were brought out to resist tax collectors (15).

    The communist movement in India was extraordinarily diffuse and, in its early stages, riven by divisions. At heart, this could be attributed to the way in which communism on a larger scale first made its inroads in India following the start of the Russian Revolution. One important avenue of Communist influence came about as a result of the Khilafat movement's dispatch of volunteer fighters to fight in defence of the Ottoman Empire against the British, which eventually saw them influenced by the Russian Reds they came into contact with in the lead-up to and during the Russian Civil War. Travelling back to India through Communist influenced and controlled areas, there were many Muslims who found themselves impacted by their experiences of the revolutionary state.

    A second vector came about through the rapid industrialization which had occurred during the Great War, and the resultant growth of a poor and repressed urban and industrial proletariat. As the financial shocks of the early 1920s, the Swaraj Movement and various other politically divisive events played out, the discontent within this group of people grew rapidly. In 1920, the All-India Trade Union Congress was founded under powerful socialist influence, beginning the development of what was to become a powerful trade union movement connected to both the Swaraj and Communist movements.

    Worried about the rapid growth of communist sentiments even as they involved themselves deeper in the fighting of the Russian Civil War, the British Colonial Authorities began to make various counter-moves to resolve the issue. A fatwa was declared against communism in early 1920, soon followed by the establishment of a special colonial office to monitor communist influence while a ban on all imports of communist, socialist and anarchist literature was imposed. 1924 would see the first attempt at unity within the wider communist movement in India in the form of formation of the Communist Party of India by the revolutionary Manabendra Nath Roy and a number of others, most prominently Shaukat Usmani, Ghulam Hussain and Shripad Amrit Dange, in Bombay. While these party leaders would largely lead their factions semi-independently across the vast Indian Subcontinent, the formation of the Communist Party of India allowed for the creation of a united party platform drawing primarily on the Muscovite Communist movement for inspiration.

    This decision, alongside the decision to work with the various independence movements, were to tie the Communists of India directly to the wider struggle for independence, particularly with the Swaraj Party and their Muslim Independence Party allies. Most notably, the communists made contacts with the Anushilans and Jugantars, violent revolutionary groups in the Bengal, and came to serve as independent middle men between the Swaraj Party and the violent revolutionaries on the few occasions they decided to work in concert.

    The late 1920s would see a series of four major conspiracy trials against the Communist movement, the most significant of which would prove to be the Kaunpur Communist Conspiracy Case which saw all of the Communist Party's leaders indicted on charges of fomenting revolution. Luckily for the Communists, none of the party leaders were captured in the initial attempt at capturing them, and they would soon make their escape abroad, travelling to Moscow where they were warmly welcomed and supported in the maintenance of their movement at a distance. While M.N. Roy would struggle with the decision to rely on foreign powers for protection, he would ultimately remain the leader of the party and steadily began to consolidate his position amongst the exiles, even as within India word of the conquest of Siberia provoked a surge in recruitment for the communists.

    In the meanwhile, the Communist Movement in India proper was left to develop without much in the way of guidance or unity - resulting in the proliferation of various communist groups and movements of varying violence and legitimacy, some connecting to the independence movements and anti-colonial struggle while others saw themselves as part of a world revolution aimed at uniting the entire globe under a single universal communist government. Ideological orthodoxy proved next to impossible to maintain and while the declarations issued from Moscow by M.N. Roy and the Communist Party leadership would hold an important role in the actions of the varied communist movement, they were viewed less as orders and directives and more as suggestions for internal debate and discussion (16).

    Footnotes:

    (12) Japanese Communism is beginning to really develop into its own ideological construction drawing not only on Trotskyite ideology and the will to work within a big tent coalition from the Muscovites and merging it with their own militarist, pan-Asianist and nationalism to produce a unique form of Communism. Perhaps most important to note here is the way in which the Communists are beginning to make inroads amongst the military and navy while finding allies in the political establishment. This is slowly paving the way for a the Communists entering into the political establishment themselves and becoming an accepted part of society. It should be noted that the very idea of the Communists becoming accepted in Japanese society, particularly after the fall of Siberia, is viewed as utterly repellant by the Rikken Seiyukai and the wider right-wing of Japanese politics, to say nothing of the military leadership and Crown Prince Yasuhito.

    (13) Shanghai Communism really ends up abandoning a lot of its communist foundations when it declares its allegiance to the government, resulting in a period of soul searching in search of an ideological framework which can make sense of their movement's current position. This is ultimately found in German Social Democratic ideology. I know that Li De is popping up earlier than OTL and that he hasn't fallen into the Communist camp ITTL, but given the changed circumstances in Germany and a resultant weakening of the Communist movement in the country, I think there is a good argument to be made for him deciding to back the SPD rather than KPD. An important detail which this section also helps to illuminate is that the Communists are not the only left-wing movement to begin actively proselytising around the world. To my knowledge, China never really had a social democratic movement or tradition, the KMT left-wing was probably the closest and they were more in the socialist vein than social democratic, so when considering what direction the Shanghai Communist (and isn't that name going to be causing more trouble than it is worth) movement this seemed like an interesting way to go about it. The Shanghai Communists hold onto their communist label for the time being mostly out of a sense of continuity with the party established earlier in the 1920s but as we move forward and events elsewhere play out that label is going to become an increasingly contentious matter.

    (14) I know there are a ton of names here, but the thing to note is that most of these are the young firebrands who IOTL guided the CCP through its early travails and eventually came to lead the party. Given the rapidly growing divide between Shanghai and Jiaxing, I don't think it is out of the realm of possibilities for their disagreements to turn bloody and as a result we see a bitter, internecine civil war within the Chinese Communist movement which leaves both sides ever more embittered and divided from each other, pushing the Jiaxing Communists into an ever more radical and militant position while the Shanghai Communists cling ever more tightly to the government and state. By the way, Cai Hesen's wife was captured and executed IOTL as well, soon to be followed by Cai Hesen himself.

    (15) When I mention Makhno here, it is in reference to the work he has done organising village communes in Russia and the literature that has been written in left-wing circles about that work. With the cities denied them, the Jiaxing Communists throw everything into their rural efforts and as a result experience considerable growth - especially in the far south where minorities and marginalised populations make for a perfect source of support. This section also demonstrates the way in which the government disarmament efforts have proven of only limited success - while they got rid of most of the warlords, who they at the time saw as the problem, they largely overlooked the increasingly radical village communes which developed self-defence forces and harboured Jiaxing Communists from their enemies. IOTL the KMT government were heavily oriented towards the south and drew most of their support from that region, fighting bitterly with the factions in North China. ITTL the situation is almost exactly reversed, the government is strongest in the north and weakest in the south, which means that it is only in the 1930s that you start having things like regular taxation and government services in the region.

    (16) There are a lot of similarities to what happened IOTL, but there are some key divergences to make a note of. IOTL the conspiracy cases happened far earlier - between 1921 and 1923, while here the distraction of an imploding Swaraj movement draws the focus away, allowing the Communists to build a better foundation for their movement. They end up serving as middle men between the "clean" wing of the independence movement and the "dirty/violent" wing, ensuring that there is at least some overlap in their goals. Particularly Subhas Chandra Bose plays a major role here, managing the Swaraj Party's relations with the communists and passing on messages through them to the violent revolutionaries. A second point to note is that with a much less dictatorial Communist International, the national communists aren't as alienated - most significantly meaning that M.N. Roy remains a part of the communist party. In contrast to OTL, all the major leaders also make their escape from the authorities when the conspiracy case comes up - which is a result of the greater degree of time they have had to lay down roots and build a support network, thereby buying themselves time to make an escape. It is worth noting the complete fragmentation of the far-left which follows the flight of the Communist leadership, with anyone and everyone interested in the cause taking their own leads.

    496px-Don_Luigi_Sturzo_1919.jpg

    Don Luigi Sturzo, Leader of the White Socialist Movement in Italy

    Revolutionary Catholicism​

    Italian Communism as a unified ideology only really began to find its footing as a governing framework in the aftermath of Errico Malatesta's expulsion from the party and Antonio Gramsci's subsequent entreaties to other sections of the left which had emerged as independent factions following the end of the Italian Civil War to cooperate in creating a free and equitable Italy.

    The most significant of these parties was to prove the Italian People's Party founded by Don Luigi Sturzo, a Christian Democratic-Socialist party which had gone through considerable internal turmoil and division in the aftermath of the Fall of Rome and the Papacy's embrace of its most conservative forces. A former supporter of Pope Benedict and the liberal wing of the Church, he had been amongst the far-left within the clergy for years prior to the Italian Civil War. Various discoveries in the undisturbed parts of the papal archives by the Commission on the Abuses of the Catholic Church, established by the Communist Party in an effort to discredit the Church, of stories of clerical abuses, physical, emotional and sexual in various cases, and a litany of other horrors and abuses of the faithful shook popular beliefs in the Catholic Church both at home and internationally, calling into question the legitimacy of the Catholic Church and its institutions. In response to these findings, many of which horrified even the clerical community itself, would prove central to spurring on a movement aiming to reclaim the Church of Christ from the sinful abuses of the papacy. In response to these abuses, undeniable in the face of public testimonies, archival documents and much more, there emerged a push within the Italian clerical community, foremost amongst them Sturzo, for a new church purged of the horrors and abuses of the past, purified of sin and aware of its debt to the peoples of the world. While ordinarily, this growing clerical movement might well have met with opposition and suppression from the Communist Party, it would be Sturzo's personal relationship with Gramsci and their subsequent collaboration on the development of Italian Communism as an independent movement which helped to shield the Christian Democratic-Socialists, increasingly termed White Socialists, from attack.

    Antonio Gramsci had never quite fit the Marxist mould of Socialism, by and large rejecting the determinism of the historical dialectic, the idea that the working classes were destined to rise to power, and the industrial prerequisites for revolution outlined by Marx had been firmly disproven by the revolutions in Russia, Central America and Italy itself, Gramsci referring to historical materialism by the disparaging term of "economism" for its narrow-minded focus on money and wages. In Gramsci's eyes, capitalism was not simply an economic system but an entire socio-cultural hegemony which convinced the working classes that their subordination to the whims and wishes of the bourgeoisie was for their own benefit. It was by challenging this hegemony through words and deeds, helping the working classes to develop their own morality and values independent of the capitalist hegemony, that it would become possible to form a true capitalist society.

    To Gramsci and his followers the foundational elements of bourgeois culture rested upon religion, folk myth and legends which allowed them to shape a holistic social culture. For working class culture to achieve the same vigour, it needs to go beyond purely material question of one's wage or wealth, and address people's unquantifiable needs like spirituality, social relations and the like. Thus, where the bourgeois culture had the Catholic Church, which Gramsci admired in many ways, then the working class would need something akin to Luther's Reformation, combined with Marxist theory, to form a new socio-cultural hegemony for the working classes. This would allow the Italian socialist experiment to bypass the single greatest failure of economism in Gramsci's eyes, namely the way in which it reduced everything to the size of one's wage, where trade union leaders and political representatives, to say nothing of the working classes themselves, would simply be satisfied with improvements to their material standard of life without any greater appeal to justice, representation or equitability.

    As such, Gramsci and some of his closest supporters soon came to believe that the new church structures campaigned for by the White Socialists would accomplish exactly what they were looking for in helping overturn the old hegemony, and might further become a useful vehicle for the spread of the international revolutionary cause. Having already begun to formulate some basic tenets during the Civil War, working on the basis of a call to restoring the Catholic Church to its roots, it proposed to fight poverty by addressing its source, the sin of greed, while exploring the relationship between Christian theology and political activism in the name of economic justice, poverty and human rights. It was to marry populist ideas with the social responsibility of the Catholic Church under the claim that God had been revealed to have a disproportionate interest in the poor, the marginalized, the insignificant, needy and despised. It adopted a heavy emphasis on practice over doctrine, allowing considerable leeway in the interpretation of its emergent doctrines, but always with an emphasis on condemning the oppression and injustices faced by the poor and marginalised.

    Over the course of 1929, this nascent Revolutionary Catholic Church as it came to be called would find itself granted the use of some of the many church buildings confiscated by the state for their use - most of which had sat empty since their confiscation, while a thorough walkthrough of Church Canon was undertaken to shift the emphasis onto a focus more aligned with socialist values. Over the course of the early 1930s, this revolutionary theological framework would find itself spread to every church and parish in Red Italy wherefrom revolutionary ideals were now to be espoused on a foundation of both Christianity and Communism. Similarly, large new seminaries were established to recruit and train missionaries for duty internationally, where they were to spread both Christ's message of salvation and the Communist Revolution alike.

    This move, so reminiscent Anarchist training camps shut down by Antonio Gramsci, would result in calls of hypocrisy and betrayal aimed at Gramsci his clear antipathy towards anarchism. The result was the formation of the Anarchist Unity Front led by Malatesta in a direct challenge to the Communist Party, which would go on to form the second largest political party in Red Italy in the aftermath of the first Italian elections held in 1930, the Italian People's Party making up the third major party affiliation in revolutionary Italy at the dawn of the 1930s (17).

    The development of the Revolutionary Catholic Church did not come out of nothing. Across Latin America, particularly in Mexico and Central America, the Italians had been witness to a rapidly growing number of powerful and influential Catholic-Socialist movements, most prominently the Cristeros and Sandinistas. As a result, these countries would be amongst the very first to receive priests from the Italian seminaries, marking the early beginnings of the Catholic Communism as an international force and ideology.

    In Mexico, the state had entered into an increasingly precarious balance with the end of de la Huerta's Presidency, which had resulted in the election of Manuel Antonio Romero as president. Romero, who had served as governor of Tabasco for de la Huerta and had supported him during the war with Obrégon, had emerged as one of de la Huerta's closest supporters in the period which followed the defeat of Obrégon and was part of a powerful clique of politicians connected in various ways to the radical socialist ideologue Francisco José Múgica Velázquez. This group included men like Lázaro Cárdenas of Michoacan, Salvador Alvarado Rubio of the Yucatan and General Carlos Greene, and was closely connected with Russian Communism, being fiercely opposed to de la Huerta's surrender on the issue of the Catholic Church.

    As such, Romero's election was to result in a gradual hardening of attitudes towards the Catholic Church, with his fellow delahuertista governors in the south implementing steadily more stringent anti-Catholic policies, in the Yucatan even venturing over into outright closures of religious institutions and confiscation of church property alongside the murder of politically active clergy. This slowly rising current of violence was to see the Villistas, Cristeros most prominent amongst them, protest government inaction with increasing outrage, only to receive a blank response from Romero to mind their own states. Dissatisfied with the situation, the Villistas nevertheless focused their efforts in their own states, working to deal with their own internal divisions and factional disputes. These divisions stemmed from the deeply divided position of many Mexican Catholics on the emergence of the Revolutionary Catholic Church and the concurrent hardening of the conservatism of Papal Catholicism. There were many who clung wholeheartedly to the church of the papacy, but the arrival of missionaries from Italy was to set the fox amongst the hens. Having been trained vigorously in not only theology, but also rhetoric, pedagogy, social work and socialist ideology, these young firebrand preachers were to present a variation of Catholicism much more in line with the values of the Revolution, in sharp contrast to the harsh conservatism of the Papal Church, which had already begun to issue increasingly stringent guidelines on doctrine in line with integralist ideology.

    Already a fertile ground for religious foment, Mexico would see a sharp divide emerge within its large and vibrant Catholic community. In many ways, the Catholicism preached by the recent Italian arrivals shared more in common with the poorer, more rural and syncretic Catholicism of Mexico than the stately, tradition-bound Catholicism of Europe. As a result, the Italians found themselves met with considerable success in their efforts, securing not only support from the populace but also large sections of the Catholic hierarchy in Mexico who saw this as an opportunity to save their beloved church from oppression by the overbearing anti-theistic southern government. However, those who remained loyal to the Papacy were quick to point to the depredations committed by the Italian Socialists during the 1920s as proof of the missionaries' bad faith, and presented the Revolutionary Catholic Church as little more than an a vehicle for the Italians to undermine the Catholic Church, throwing them all into the pits of hell regardless of whatever good intentions any of them might hold (18).

    Further to the south, there was another government which was to be profoundly impacted by the introduction of the Revolutionary Catholic Church. The Central American Workers' and Farmers' Republic had from the outset been heavily influenced by Christian Socialism, with Cesar Sandino having embraced such beliefs even prior to the start of his rebellion, a belief which had been further cemented by the critical role played by Archbishop Augustin Hombach in his revolutionary endeavours. While land expropriations and redistribution were underway, and radical educational reforms were undertaken to create a class-conscious revolutionary citizenry melded together across the national divides of the preceding nation states which made up the republic, the impact of Hombach and his fellow priests were not to be underestimated.

    With the Catholic priesthood deeply embedded in both urban and rural society, they became the best vehicle for the reconstruction and reorganisation of the Central American Republic in its new revolutionary guise. Priests led Sunday schools teaching of the eucharist and salvation alongside Christ's benevolence towards the poor and his wish for equality between all peoples, a message which went over very well with an already energised and firmly anti-American population which viewed this condemnation in the light of their colonial struggle for independence from Spain and the United States. This anti-American bias extended to the American educated and influenced upper classes as well, with harsh repressive measures taken to ensure that all Central Americans received their fair share of their young state's wealth. Despite their socialist foundations, the Sandinistas would prove remarkably difficult to work with for most other Communist movements, their xenophobia, religiosity and fierce nationalism all leaving a distinctly bad taste in the mouths of visiting Russian and Italian representatives.

    The latter of these groups, however, proved determined in their efforts at building a relationship with the nascent Sandinista state, finally finding a path towards building a relationship with the Central Americans when Hombach met in person with Luigi Sturzo to discuss their beliefs in April of 1933. This meeting, which would ultimately see the Revolutionary Catholic Church permitted to dispatch seminary students to preach under the watchful eye of Hombach and his fellow churchmen, was to firmly align the Central American Republic with the Revolutionary Catholic Church, even though Hombach and his supporters largely took charge of reorganizing the Central American Church to their liking.

    In general, the Central American Church would prove itself resistant to the influence of the Italians and relied far more heavily on their own theological and ideological writings to form their movement, borrowing more sparingly from the Italians than their Mexican compatriots in the Cristero movement to round out their doctrines. The result was the creation of a unique, Central American theological framework for revolution which, while influenced by the Revolutionary Catholic Church of Italy, proved distinct from it. It drew heavily on the syncretic church practices of the rural populace for inspiration and railed loudly against the injustices of colonialism and neocolonialism, developing an extensive collection of writings, both secular and religious in nature, with which to prove that colonialism was not only exploitative, but also downright unchristian. They further worked to build a role for the Central American Church as a guardian of the villages and townships of Central America in response to the Sandinista government's attempts at building a functioning economy on the ruins of a neo-colonial exploitative economic system (19).

    Much as with the rest of the Catholic World, the Philippine religious establishment had been thrown into turmoil by the Vatican's flight from Rome and the perceived loss of authority and legitimacy which resulted. As a result, while the Papacy had been struggling to get back onto its feet and back into the fight against the Italian Communists, the Catholics of the wider world had largely been left to their own devices. While in the United States this had led to the slow but steady development of a modernist, progressive Catholic movement within the bounds of the church hierarchy of the Papal Catholic Church, and to violent revolutionary zeal in Central America's Revolutionary Catholic Church, in the Philippines it had resulted in utter chaos and turmoil.

    The Church was a central institution in the lives of many Filipinos, but was led primarily by American and European bishops and archbishops whose efforts varied widely in quality and quantity, many seemingly viewing the posting as little better than an exile. There was, however, a growing number of native prelates who began to make their voices heard on issues extending beyond the tight confines of theology. Most prominent was the Bishop of Cebu, Juan Bautista Gorordo, who also happened to be the second native bishops appointed to a diocese in the islands, having come to his post in 1910.

    Originally a man noted for his dedication to the work of the church, the fall of Rome was to have a profound impact on his trust and belief in the wider Catholic Church which, when coupled with the constant barrage of racism of his fellow prelates of European and American origin, was to forge him into one of the foremost supporters of Filipino independence in both church and state. Amassing an ever growing following of native-born priests and preachers, Gorordo emerged as a prominent speaker in favor of independence, making common cause with the various secular independence forces, who would find themselves in turn shifting towards an alliance with the native Church institutions in the struggle for independence.

    In Manila, where the archconservative Michael O'Doherty sat as Archbishop, this growing nativist movement within the Filipino Church was to prompt considerable worry and gradually saw the foreign church leadership begin to act directly against their native subordinates. In 1929, the matter would boil over when the Irish-born Bishop of Nueva Caceres, John Bernard MacGinley, asked the American authorities to arrest several of his subordinates for sedition, having used the pulpit to preach in favor of independence.

    The matter was brought to Governor-General Henry L. Stimson who quickly gave his agreement. It is worth noting here that Stimson, who had been appointed by McAdoo following his successful brokering of the Agreement of Ometepe which brought the Nicaraguan Civil War to a close, had found himself to be a firm opponent to the Filipino Independence movement, believing the Filipinos to be fundamentally unfit for popular self-government and unable to handle the responsibilities of independence. He had thus proven a harsh guardian of American rule of the archipelago and had sunk more than one expedition aiming to ask for independence from the American Congress. The events in Nueva Caceres simply proved his point for him, and gave him an excuse to begin moving more forcefully against the independence movement within the Catholic Church.

    The arrests proved far from the last, for over the course of the following year and a half more than fifty priests would find themselves investigated and imprisoned on charges of sedition, with Gorordo himself indicted and imprisoned in early 1930. While the protests which resulted would ordinarily have run their course relatively swiftly, the sudden collapse of Juan Gorordo's health after his imprisonment and subsequent death two months into his imprisonment were to truly enrage the Filipino people. Protests and riots erupted across the islands, with significant sections of Manila burned to the ground, before martial law was imposed and the crisis brought to an end. The Philippine Riots of 1930 were to prove a critical moment in the development of the Philippines and the struggle for Filipino Independence. It at once convinced the Filipino people of the ill wishes of the American colonial government and simultaneously ensured that any talk of Filipino independence in Congress was met with disbelieving laughter, the Filipinos having proven themselves incapable of acting in a civilised manner in American eyes, in effect resulting in the end of Filipino efforts at independence by legislation and a shift towards more forceful methods (20).

    Footnotes:

    (17) Gramsci had something of a fascination with the role of the Catholic Church even if he viewed it as hostile to the interests of the working classes. He apparently had a pretty good relationship with Luigi Sturzo and other Christian Democratic-Socialists and whatever other combination of the three you can imagine (White Socialists as they come to be known in an Italian context). He is further notable for wanting to build a broad left-wing coalition and emphasis on democratic trends, as such I think he would see some interesting possibilities when presented with the idea of a revolutionary church which sheds all trappings of the corrupt and abusive church and instead becomes a tool for the spread of the revolution. While Gramsci is not necessarily convinced of the White Socialists' beliefs, he does see the potential gains that could emerge if he could support the creation of something capable of challenging their greatest enemies in the form of the Papacy.

    I am working in part off of Christian Democratic ideals and Liberation theology, particularly ideas formulated by Gustavo Gutiérrez, for the structure of the church. The RCC is going to be spreading quite widely but I do think it is important to note that while these missionaries being trained are strong adherents of the doctrines formulated in Red Italy, the same might not necessarily be true internationally. The RCC is a lot looser than the Papal Catholic Church (that is the term I will be using to distinguish the two from each other) and will be adopted as a framework by a variety of other Christian socialist movements who might not necessarily agree completely with what is being formulated in Italy. At the moment there is no Pope or Cardinals in the RCC, the structures are still pretty vague and uncertain, as it will take time for clarity to emerge on how exactly to run the organization. At the moment it is directed by an ad hoc collection of left-wing clerics in Italy without clear rank or structure other than that Sturzo serves as their outward representative. There are talks about adopting a council of elders or the like, the conciliarist movement is pretty strong in the RCC, but no decision has been made at this point.

    (18) Alright, so Mexico as a whole sees its divide between Villista and Delahuertista further consolidated with the Villistas not really contesting national government - being well aware that a Villista President would present a far more threatening image to their northern neighbour than an associate of de la Huerta. Ironically, Romero and his clique are actually significantly more socialist in outlook than either de la Huerta or Villa. The result of this is that the Delahuertistas look towards Russia for inspiration, while the Villistas increasingly look to Italy. At the same time we start to see the first of many divides within the Catholic Church as the Revolutionary Church makes its entry. The ascension of Romero is not viewed with any degree of happiness by the Americans, but given that Mexico is divided and decentralised under the new regime they are willing to let it pass, busy with their domestic issues.

    (19) I think it is important to maintain the development of the Sandinista movement as an independent Catholic-Socialist movement, while acknowledging the way in which foreign movements have a distinct impact on the development of theology and ideology. While the Mexicans are wary of foreign influence, they are far more open than the Central American Republic, which has seen extreme levels of exploitation compared to Mexico. The scars left by the years as Banana Republics are deep and cause the Sandinista movement and their religious allies to be extremely wary of foreign influence of any kind. They see the Villistas and Cristeros as allies, but believe them to have lost their way when they decided to content themselves with state-level power while leaving the federal government to the Delahuertistas, and view themselves as a vanguard for an anti-colonial crusade which they hope to spread across the Americas, at least to start. They view the Russians with horror for their abandonment of religion and are wary of the Italians for their anti-Clerical atrocities in the 20s. It is important to note that the Papal Catholics have almost no influence in the Central American Republic, with Hombach essentially directing religious affairs like a latter-day Patriarch of the Church.

    (20) This reading of affairs is probably a bit unfair towards the Americans and the foreign prelates, but everything mentioned in Stimson's outlook stems from his own views on the Nicaraguans IOTL, which seems to have been similar to his views on the Philippines. Gorordo also has a quite different trajectory from OTL, becoming involved deeply in the independence movement whereas IOTL I have been unable to find much information on what he was doing. Gorordo died in 1934 IOTL and was into his seventies at the time of his TTL death, which occurs a year before his OTL resignation, so I think it is plausible that he find imprisonment in a colonial prison too much for his health to bear. In general, this section was about the growing radicalisation of the Filipino independence movement and their disillusionment with the American colonial administration, which will pave the path for a more radical independence movement more open to more radical ideological movements moving forward.

    Summary:
    The Fall of Siberia plays out in dramatic fashion, culminating in the death of Olga Romanova and the surrender of the Siberian Whites.
    The world reacts in multifarious fashion to the incredible events in Russia, from jubilation to horror and ambiguity.
    Asian Communism makes major strides forward even as divergences in beliefs grow ever clearer.
    Italian Communism spawns a Revolutionary Catholic Church and begins to influence movements such as the Cristeros and Sandinistas. In the Philippines, the independence movement begins to radicalize even as American repression increases.

    End Note:

    I hope everyone enjoyed this section and that it helped people get a better idea of the independent communist movements around the world which are emerging. As anyone who has read my prior TLs, particularly Their Cross to Bear, will know I have a definite fondness for messing around with Christian theology and ideology which the Revolutionary Catholic Church is most definitely an example of. There are some new actors for us to deal with an a demonstration of exactly how much factional divisions continue to play into the various movements.

    All credit to @Ombra for helping give me a deeper insight into Italian affairs, and particularly Gramsci himself, as well as general beta-ing of the update.

    I should probably have addressed the development of the Indochinese Communist movement in this segment, but not to worry there is extensive coverage of the region in a few updates.

    I really look forward to hearing what everyone thinks!
     
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    Update Thirty (Pt. 1): The Gathering Storm Clouds
  • The Gathering Storm Clouds

    486px-William_Gibbs_McAdoo%2C_formal_photo_portrait%2C_1914.jpg

    William Gibbs McAdoo, 31st President of the United States of America

    An Election of Fear and Loathing​

    The American elections of 1928 were to prove amongst the most contentious in recent times and, while not completely redefining, were to set a new paradigm which would come to dominate the following decade. As with previous years, one of the defining political conflicts of the 1920 centred on the clashes between the Interventionist and Isolationist wings of American politics, with the former having been dominant early in the decade under President Wood and the latter having come to power with President McAdoo. Key to this conflict were the surging conflicts around the world which put American interests and foreign investments increasingly at risk, from Central America and Mexico to Siberia and China. The failures of the McAdoo presidency in the eyes of most commentators were almost entirely of an international nature, with the president able to point to a booming economy, the implementation of moral codes of conduct on entertainment, a successful campaign against bootlegging and a resolution of the western farmers' economic woes through the signing of the 1925 Anglo-American Trade Deal as proof of his successes.

    As a result, the focus of the campaign against McAdoo came to centre primarily on international issues while McAdoo and his supporters repeatedly dismissed such efforts as attempts to distract from the President's impressive domestic record. Even as the Siberian Campaign began and the Fruit Companies found themselves increasingly invested in a bloody and expensive struggle with the Sandinistas, McAdoo continued to trumpet his successes, questioning why America was even involved in all of these far flung places and turning the matter on its head by demanding that his opponents justify their wasteful interventionist policies. McAdoo's position within the Democratic Party grew ever more stable as a result, even as calls for him to break with the nativists in the party grew louder amongst progressive Democrats.

    In fact, it was this divide over the Democratic Party's nativist tendencies which would rapidly grow to dominate the clashes within the party as the elections neared, with progressive heavyweights like Joseph Taylor Robinson, Al Smith and Henry A. Wallace all undertaking considerable efforts to push back against the nativists. Perhaps the most influential result of this effort on the part of the progressive democrats was to be the selection of Huey Long as keynote speaker at the Democratic Convention and a general strengthening of progressive sentiments in important segments of the party in the leadup to the convention. The nativists were far from willing to let this lie, and in the months leading up to the convention they would significantly improve their own positions with men like Theodore Bilbo, Walter F. George and James T. Heflin condemning the progressives as un-American, un-Democratic and fundamentally un-Christian, a dig particularly aimed at the Catholic Al Smith and other Irish-Americans in the party.

    While still limited mostly to party insiders, the clash within the Democratic Party was becoming increasingly clear to the public even as their rivals in the Progressive and Republican Parties were consolidating their positions in the lead-up to the coming election. The Republicans, while dealing with the growth of nativists within the party themselves in the form of Indiana Klan-aligned politicians, were far more united than the Democrats. However, the question of who exactly would rise to become their nominee remained in question as the two great figures of the party, Charles Curtis and Frank Lowden, both hoped to be nominated in what they believed to be their best chance at unseating the Democratic Party. The situation in the Progressive Party was more disarrayed, a result of their undisputed leader, Robert M. La Follette, having died in 1925 just as the influx of Republican Progressives entered the party alongside a smaller number of democrats. The result was a free-for-all between the countless factions of the party which left everyone dissatisfied and, far more critically, left the electorate confused as to what exactly it would mean to vote Progressive (1).

    The first of the party conventions to kick off was the Republican Convention, held in Kansas City from the 15th till the 18th of June 1928, and was dominated by the figures of Charles Curtis and Frank Lowden. The four day convention would see a good deal of back and forth, as the two party leaders both held considerable support, but ultimate it would be Frank Lowden who emerged victorious. Key to the decision to back Lowden had been the sudden entry of Edward Jackson of Illinois into the debate, who reacted with horror at the prospect of a Curtis candidacy, viewing the Native American-descended senator with ill-disguised disgust. While Lowden was happy to see his primary rival sunk by white supremacists, the sudden rise of a known member of the Indiana Klan to prominence within the part was to cause considerable unease amongst Republican supporters. The result was that while Edward Jackson and his Klan backers put in a great deal of effort, and more than a little graft, to try and secure the vice presidency for Jackson, it would be the cold, silent Calvin Coolidge who secured the nomination in a powerful rebuke of Jackson and his compatriots.

    The Democratic Convention, which kicked off on the 26th of June, was to prove one for the ages, leaving behind a completely changed political party. With the news that Lowden had been selected by the Republicans and the continued public recrimination caused by the Indiana Klan's involvement in the Republican Convention, the Democrats felt confident in victory, and as such went into the convention with an air of inevitability. Not only was McAdoo a certain lock, but his Vice President Pat Harrison had proven himself a surprisingly active campaigner in the south, ginning up support for McAdoo, and was widely liked by large segments of the party. The one fly in the ointment was the progressive wing of the party who refused to go quietly into the night.

    As with so many other major events in America in the decade to follow, it all began with Huey Long. The maverick governor of Louisiana was already well on his way to clinching a second term as governor and had, during the floods of the previous year, emerged as a wildly controversial national figure in the progressive camp of the Democratic Party. While derided as authoritarian, verging on dictatorial, in his rule of the state, he was widely praised for his industrial, infrastructural and educational reforms - but was viewed with fear and worry by his nativist neighbors in the south for his desegregationist and populist ways. His selection as keynote speaker had been met with considerable opposition and if not for a massive investment of political capital by the progressives would likely have never happened. It was to prove a fateful occurrence. Taking the stage after the initial festivities, Long began to speak. He was eloquent, bombastic and more than a little foulmouthed, and if his speech were to be summarised into one sentence it was this: "The Ku Klux Klan is a Cancer upon America and must be eradicated root and stem!"

    Understandably, Long's speech was met with more than a little outrage as Klan-affiliated party figures cried out in rage, seeking to shout down the young governor. Blistering rants and ravings erupted, all of which were bellowed down by the famously loud-mouthed governor, even as the progressives arose with cheers and the rat-tat-tat of claps. Finally, after more than fifteen minutes of speaking, Long came to an end with a plea, no, a demand, that McAdoo condemn the Klan and free the party of their toxic influence. When McAdoo took the stage later that evening, he did not mention the Ku Klux Klan a single time. The following day, Huey Long and the progressive delegates walked out of the convention hall and the Democratic Party (2).

    While McAdoo and Harrison were endorsed by the Democratic Party, the damage had already been done. The walkout of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party would not only see Joseph Taylor Robinson, Al Smith and Henry A. Wallace leave the party, but also the prominent West Virginian John W. Davis, the young and popular Georgian Richard Russell Jr and Huey Long himself depart for the open embrace of the Progressive Party. Not only did this mean the consolidation of the Democrats under the nativist and isolationist wing of the Democratic Party, it resulted in the fundamental reshaping of the Progressive Party, who the progressive Democrats joined.

    The Progressive Party had always been seen as something of an outgrowth of the Republican Party, with its basis in the Roosevelt machine and the later addition of Farmer-Labour and Social Democratic forces from the Great Lakes region. However, the addition of the Democratic Progressives were to bring several important new constituencies - most prominently Catholic Americans, Louisianians and sections of the poor and working classes of the south of both light and dark skin. The arrival of Long and the Democratic Progressives was also to prove vital for the reconsolidating of the Progressive Party, resulting in the nomination of the former Republican Hiram Johnson of California and the selection of Huey Long, despite the misgivings of some in the party, as Vice Presidential candidate (3).

    The chaos and vitriol which began with the party conventions only escalated as the presidential campaigns came under way. In Louisiana and surrounding states Huey Long campaigned openly and often against the Ku Klux Klan alongside various other prominent former Democrats in a bid to undermine Democratic power and Klan backing in the south, even as Hiram Johnson took the lead in securing support from the Progressive heartland in the north and north-west, as well as in his home state of California. Al Smith and other prominent Irishmen took up the progressive cause as well, campaigning widely in the Irish bastions of Massachusetts and New York, while efforts at mustering the Italian vote proved less important and successful.

    At the same time, the McAdoo campaign's supporters turned their vitriol against the Progressives, drumming up anti-Catholic sentiments and claiming that Huey Long was planning to abolish segregation, miscegenation laws and the poll tax in order to strengthen the Progressive in the south and allow the Blacks to run rampant. While his supporters engaged in race baiting and ever more forceful attacks on his enemies, McAdoo himself primarily ran an overtly clean campaign focusing primarily on his administration's successes and promising a strengthening of the government efforts against bootleggers and Wets alike.

    By comparison, the Republican campaign of Frank Lowden seemed lost in the early stages of the campaign, focusing their efforts primarily on foreign affairs, reduced government spending and intervention, but compared to the titanic clash between the Democrats and Progressives they were largely sidelined by the political fireworks between Democrats and Progressives. It was under these conditions that a Klansman, of uncertain affiliation, attempted to assassinate Governor Long in early September of 1928. The scandal which erupted over the attempted assassination of a vice presidential candidate putatively undertaken by a paramilitary force allied with either or both of their rival parties was to have immense consequences not only for the Klan and the course of the elections, but also for American politics for decades to come.

    The first to act was D.C. Stephenson, who on learning of the attempted assassination issued a public condemnation of the Old Klan and publicly made the distinction between the Indiana and Old Klan clear to the public. Not to be outdone, Hiram Evans was swift to claim that the assassin had been personally dispatched by Stephenson and that his subsequent efforts were just an attempt at smearing the Old Klan with the Indiana Klan's own radicalism. The destruction of the assassin's body by the enraged mob would leave it impossible to determine either way, and all police efforts to ascertain the assassin's identity would prove for naught. Hardly one to let such an opportunity go unexploited, Long refused to make any distinction between the two Klans and held both equally responsible, pointing to them as a great cancer which was eating away at the heart of American freedom and democracy by drawing in both major parties and infusing the politics of America with violence.

    Already roiled by the attempt on Long's life, McAdoo would find his position further weakened with the advent of the Siberian Campaign, which proved right all of the Republican's talking points of how McAdoo had neglected foreign affairs, and the increasingly troubled economic straits of the Fruit Companies involved in the Central American Banana Wars. Nevertheless, McAdoo continued to make his case on domestic prosperity and successful support for the cause of prohibition, strengthening the latter case by ordering the arrest of the Gustin Gang in Boston in late-October, thereby at once demonstrating the links between the Irish Catholics, the Wets and Bootlegging operations, in the process tarring all three groups with one broad brush.

    While Lowden was able to strengthen his position in the polls by continuing to attack McAdoo on foreign affairs, he was hampered by a largely inactive vice presidential candidate, vote splitting with the Progressives and factional strife with Curtis supporters, who found Lowden's support from the Indiana Klan loathsome, particularly in light of events in the months leading up to the election. This connection to the Klan had come into focus during October, as the Indiana Klan's efforts to expand into Ohio, in order to influence the election there, had run into a radical faction of the Old Klan.

    The Ohio section of the Old Klan was dominated by a paramilitary faction known as the Black Guard and led by William Shepard and Virgil "Bert" Effinger. The intrusion of Republican-supporting Indianans, intruding onto Ohio Klan territory, would result in violent reprisals already beginning in August, but steadily escalating until these clashes hit their climax in the Indianapolis Southside Massacre, where a heavily armed parade by Indiana Klansmen marched through the predominantly minority neighborhood in a show of force and intimdation, only to be attacked with grenades, Thompson Machineguns and pistols by Ohio Klansmen in dressed in black robes. The resultant struggle would leave 16 Indiana Klansmen dead and another 28 wounded while the attackers took an unknown number of losses, having taken their dead and wounded with them when they escaped. The resultant firestorm of public outrage would ultimately fall primarily on the Indiana Klan, and the Republicans by extension, as a result of which Klansmen were arrested on the scene (4).

    On election day, the 6th of November 1928, proceedings came under way across the United States under a cloud of fear and tension, poll projections varied wildly and all contenders seemed to have a path to victory, and there were some who even questioned what would happen if no party was able to secure the 266 electoral votes that it would require to emerge victorious. However, when the results were finally published it would see a return of the McAdoo government. The chaos and violence which had engulfed the nation had seen voters stream towards safety and security, finding it in the clear domestic successes of the current administration. While the situation in Russia was worsening and states south of the border were acting out, such issues had little direct impact on the majority of Americans.

    Even still, the opposition to McAdoo had found itself divided between Republicans and Progressives in many states, with the result being that the Democrats were able to win out in several key states. Ultimately, those who lost out the most would be the Republicans, who saw their already rapidly shrinking support west of the Mississippi reduced to a few states in the Southwest, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Nevada, while California turned towards the progressives. In fact, the Progressives were able to counter the Democratic surge resulting from the passage of McAdoo's Farmers' Assistance bill, and even extended their grip further south to include Kansas and Colorado, while Huey Long was able to wield his indomitable political machine to turn Louisiana to the Progressives, the sole southern state to break with the Southern Democratic powers in the election.

    The Republicans were successful in turning Indiana in their favour, but saw their midwestern bulwark collapse in the face of vote splitting with the Progressives and a surge in support for the Democrats in Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, shocking the Republican establishment to its core. In fact, while the Democrats were actually able to secure more electoral votes in the 1928 elections than in those of 1924, improving from 274 to 281, the Republicans saw a calamitous fall into third place as the Progressives secured 133 electors to the Republican 117. At the same time, the Progressives extended their seats in the senate to 25, with the Republicans reduced to 36 while the Democrats fell to 39 seats, ensuring that McAdoo would need to work with the other parties if he wanted to pass any significant legislation. At the same time, the Democrats saw their gains from the mid-term elections of 1926 consolidated with a firm majority of 224 seats, while the Progressives secured 91, the Republicans fell to 118 with minority parties securing 7 seats (5).

    Footnotes:

    (1) It is worth noting that while the attacks on McAdoo on foreign policy are warranted, prior to the convention the situation abroad isn't actually all that bad. The Agreement of Omtepe has recently been signed and has the Sandinistas on the run, and the Siberian Campaign is only just nearing its starting date. McAdoo goes into the convention with a string of domestic policy successes, a major trade agreement with the British and an increasingly clear direction for the party, namely nativism, a strong government and isolationism. Now we know that things aren't going to stay rosy for long, but it should be clear that in the summer of 1928 McAdoo is widely viewed as a shoe in for the election.

    (2) I may have had a tiny bit too much fun there, but here we are. The Democratic Party was split firmly between progressive and conservative/nativist factions IOTL as well and the 1920s were a period of considerable intra-party conflict which hampered them immensely. Now IOTL it was the conservative/nativist wing of the party which ended up getting the worst of it, with the KKK, Catholicism and the rise of progressive voices like FDR, Al Smith and the like all causing a shift in progressive favour. In this case the situation is quite different. Under McAdoo, the nativists have emerged as one of the strongest factions in the party while the progressives have been steadily marginalised. Thus, where IOTL it was the segregationists and nativists threatening walkouts, here it is the Progressives who decide to abandon ship. The existence of the Progressive Party had already siphoned some of the progressive Democratic support, but the refusal of McAdoo to do anything about the Klan and the general feeling that the party has been taken over by nativists, ultimately drive them to follow Huey Long out of the party.

    (3) Our man Huey Long is nothing if not ambitious and with the notoriety gained at the Democratic Convention, he is able to secure a VP nomination for himself. As the most famous anti-Klan crusader in the country, he becomes an obvious choice for a party which seeks to paint both the Republicans and Democrats as being in bed with the Klan (There are some pretty salacious satirical drawings emphasising these links which become famous during the 1928 elections). The result is a significant boost to the Progressive Party, which goes into the coming elections looking less like a third wheel and more like a true contender. Just to reiterate the contenders: The Democrats have McAdoo/Harrison, the Republicans have Lowden/Coolidge and the Progressives have Johnson/Long.

    (4) Just a reminder that the attempted assassination of Huey Long mentioned here is the same attempt as that mentioned in Update Twenty-Seven, Explosive Americana. While the escalation in violence seen during 1928 might seem shocking, the entire decade has been marked by a growing trend towards violence between groups and factions in the United States. From the Anarchist bombings, Red Scare and race riots to an active long-lasting guerrilla war in West Virginia, violent clashes between protesters and military men during the Chicago parades, growing Klan authority, we have been following a trend of radicalisation and increasing use of violence for political means throughout the timeline. Now granted, the actions of the Black Guard and Klansmen in general are not directly controlled or directed by the Democratic or Republican party, but it doesn't look good for either party. At the same time you have Huey Long and the Progressives as a whole railing against the Klan and the parties they support.

    (5) I know that some might be surprised by the Democratic surge, but honestly - in times of crisis people tend to flock to trusted leaders and McAdoo has, at least so far, done a pretty good job domestically, which is what is valued highest at the time outside of elite New York and Washington circles. The Republicans really limp their way out of this while the Progressives surge onto the stage as a full-on major party. While the 1924 elections come to be seen as the Progressive Party's coming out party, 1928 is seen as the moment in which they emerged as a direct competitor to the Republicans and Democrats. Perhaps the most consequential development, however, is the further growth of the Progressive Party in the Senate, which has resulted in a situation in which the government cannot pass legislation without support from one of the other parties.

    1928 Elections:
    Senate: Dem - 39, Rep - 36, Prog - 25, Other - 0
    House: Dem - 224, Rep - 118, Prog - 91, Other - 7

    640px-Dust-storm-Texas-1935.png

    Dust Storm in Texas

    The Storm Before The Storm​

    More than anything else, the second term of President McAdoo would be characterised by political gridlock as the ugly wounds of the 1928 election continued to fester. The rise of the Progressive Party, which was fervently hostile to both the other parties, exposed a fundamental weakness of the American political system when no party was able to secure a majority. While the Democrats had had to deal with this in the 1924-28 period, they had largely been able to pass their policies by working with factions in the other parties to pass legislation, only needing to peel a maximum of five senators from any one party to pass legislation. However, with only 39 senators they now needed to peel away between half and a third of their rivals' senators if they wanted anything passed. While this might have been possible in more congenial circumstances, it would prove next to impossible in an era of partisanship.

    Despite this situation, McAdoo had initially been hopeful and sought to entice the Progressives into supporting his efforts with a further farm relief bill and increased financing for the census, both of which were met with curt refusal by Hiram Johnson and William Borah, who took the lead for the Progressives in the Senate. The collapse of the Siberian Whites in early 1929 would send shockwaves through the Republican Party, whose backers had invested heavily in the region and had just seen many millions of dollars go up in flames in a couple months, and turned what had initially been a dislike of the Democratic government into a fervent hatred.

    With Congress hopelessly deadlocked in the Senate, and as a result the legislative branch frozen fast, McAdoo turned to Presidential Executive Orders to ensure the passage of policy beginning in 1930, most prominently tasking the AILE to turn its focus on the links between the Irish-American criminal underground and the Irish independence movement, a move which would prove critical to weakening the ties between the Presidency and the AILE, as its director August Vollmer outright refused the order, viewing it as an infringement upon his agency's hard won independence from external interference. The issue would steadily escalate over the course of 1930 before being brought to the Supreme Court for judgement - where the independence of the AILE from the Presidency was entrenched.

    Even so, the AILE would still increasingly turn its attentions towards the Irish criminal organisations, although the increasingly covert activities of the White Hand would see the focus primarily turn towards the Great Lakes region. During this time, Vollmer yet again demonstrated his increasing opposition to McAdoo through the creation of the Anti-Klan Taskforce, which began to investigate the involvement of the various Ku Klux Klan factions on a federal scale, and placed growing attention to the problem of armed and violent paramilitary movements around the United States.

    Hamstrung in Congress and increasingly at odds with the Supreme Court, which proved a determined challenger to McAdoo's efforts at extending the power of the Executive Order, the position of the national Democratic Party and McAdoo himself experienced a steady decline in support, a fact which was first demonstrated in the Mid-term elections of 1930 which saw the Democrats fall to 183 seats, the Progressives grow to 121 and the Republicans to 129 seats in the House, while two Democratic Senate seats fell to the Progressives (6).

    Despite the political situation, the American Economy continued to boom throughout the second McAdoo Administration, factories blooming, powerplants burning and new businesses sprouting up by the day. Exceedingly lenient loan schemes, at least partly financed by a guarantee on the part of the government to underwrite the finances of smaller banks, which resulted in an explosion in the number of small, often rural, banks and a resulting development of new leasing and rental arrangements, allowed countless ordinary Americans to live a life of immense comfort when compared to the pre-Great War era. Having gotten a taste of a new quality of life, many would take out further loans with which to further improve their lives, an arrangement which was often structured around a lower rate of interest in the first couple years before it increased dramatically.

    While there were plenty of Americans who were able to improve their lives, finding an ever growing number of jobs in a vast and expanding number of industries, without these loans a sufficient part of the populace would fall into a growing spiral of debt which gradually began to slow economic progress. Additionally, while the American farmers had found an outlet for their agricultural goods in the trade agreement with the British, this would simply result in even more money being put into expanding capacity - massively extending an already over-supplied sector of the economy and drawing calls for further government support in the form of a Farmers' Assistance Bill.

    The expansion of American agriculture could not have come at a worse time, for beginning in the summer of 1930 the favorable climatic conditions of the 1920s gave way to an unusually dry era which would in time lead to drought stalking the heart of America. From Texas in the south to the Northern Prairies, some of the best farmland in the world suddenly fell under the dry spell to end all dry spells - showing no sign of ending any time soon. While most farmers made it through 1930 and 31 mostly intact, the following years would see the situation grow increasingly dire as water sources shrank, the earth dried out, the crops died and the livestock with it. Going into the 1932 elections the situation was becoming so dire that the ongoing drought was producing large dust storms across large parts of the continent and forcing people from their land.

    The economy would experience further hardships as the McAdoo government's neglect and mismanagement of foreign affairs grew ever clearer and impactful, with the collapse of the Fruit Companies at first causing shortages in tropical fruit, although this could be alleviated by primarily Colombian and Venezuelan fruit plantations, and unemployment, which was further exacerbated in the slowly expanding ripples of economic calamity as the impact of losing the immense investments in White Siberia played havoc with the high finances of the New York elite. Gradually, these consequences and subsequent international crises would make themselves known as increasingly desperate elite financiers looked for any and every possible source of income to alleviate their financial straits, with due process and diligence largely set aside in the struggle for profitable investment and capital growth (7).

    Just because the elections came to an end, did not mean that the conflict both between factions of the Klan and the wider struggle against anti-Klan forces under Huey Long came to an end. In Ohio, the growing debt of blood between the Black Guard and Indiana Klan would see an escalating cycle of violence following the Indianapolis Southside Massacre which would shock the region to its core. While D.C. Stephenson and Hiram Evans both sought to tamp down on the violence, equally aware of the damage it was doing to the Klan as a whole, they proved largely unsuccessful in their efforts. At the heart of the matter lay the relatively weak central authority of the Old Klan, which largely allowed chapters to run themselves in order to achieve a national presence, and the resultant opposition of Ohio Klan figures to interference from the National leadership.

    Such clashes had already lead to the Indiana Klan's breach with the Old Klan, and while the Ohioans remained staunchly Democratic in affiliation, they soon began to ape their Indiana neighbours by moving in an increasingly independent direction. Noted for their fanaticism, propensity for violence and the distinct black Klan robes worn by their elite Black Guard, the Ohio Klan soon began to garner national attention. As bombings, shootings and stabbings occurred with frightening regularity along the border between Indiana and Ohio between the two factions, the need for new recruits would see the Black Guard turn to particularly unsavoury methods, kidnapping people off the street and bringing them to rural training camps for indoctrination and training, with a graduation ceremony, and resultant freedom, requiring the murder of a minority person. With public outcry over the violence growing across the Midwest and anti-Klan sentiment entrenching itself in the communities hit by the intra-Klan strife in the new decade, August Vollmer spied an opportunity to further distinguish the AILE as an independent law enforcement institution through the dispatch of more than 200 agents to Indiana and Ohio, who began a wide-ranging investigation to identify and bring to justice the perpetrators of the countless crimes being committed in the region (8).

    Not to be left out, Huey Long would take a break from his near-constant anti-Klan campaigning in the South, primarily in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Mississippi, to do a tour of the Midwest. Undertaken in early-1932, at the height of the intra-Klan violence, Long would speak before massive crowds on the terror and destructiveness brought upon their communities by the Klan, citing the names of those killed in the individual communities in an impressive display of memory while openly daring the Klan to take another shot at him. It wasn't long before someone took him up on the offer, with unsuccessful assassination attempts occurring at rallies in Fort Wayne, Muncie, Dayton and Columbus before Huey Long was convinced to end his tour. Nevertheless, despite the violence that these rallies engendered, they would be seen widely as a roaring success and a demonstrable blow to the power and authority of the Klan in the Midwest. More and more, the sentiment seemed to be that the Klan was playing a critical role in the degeneration of American society into violence and chaos.

    While Long made Klan membership an imprisonable offense in Louisiana in early 1930, only months before securing a seat as Senator for Louisiana in the 1930 Midterm elections, and campaigned nationally to secure similar legislation was passed elsewhere, the Klan found its position in both the Republican and Democratic Parties increasingly in question. While Hiram Evans was able to maintain his position as powerbroker in the Democratic Party, the same could not be said for D.C. Stephenson and the Indiana Klan, whose publicly known members would find themselves ejected from the party under the direction of a resurgent Charles Curtis in 1931, his animosity towards the Klan had been stoked beyond measure by the Klan's interference in the 1928 Republican Convention (9).

    While Huey Long had been able to develop a national profile, soon becoming one of the most recognisable men in America, he had come to find that his hold on Louisiana itself was shakier than originally believed. The issue, more than any other, stemmed from the personage of Long's Lieutenant Governor Paul Narcisse Cyr, a man appointed to appease the Old Regulars who he had pushed from power in 1924. Cyr, who had developed the frightful habit of declaring himself in charge of state affairs the moment Long left the state, gradually eroded what little relationship he had with Long after his appointment in 1928. This collapsing relationship was further escalated by a series of events in 1930, as Long was elected to the senate but refused to leave his seat of power in Louisiana to Cyr. The clashes between Cyr and Long rapidly worsened as Long continually delayed resigning as governor. Throughout the spring and summer of 1931, Cyr threatened to take the oath of office as governor but did not do so.

    In October 1931, Cyr filed suit in a bid to oust Long as governor and declared himself governor, having a justice of the peace in Shreveport give him the oath of office in the Caddo Parish courthouse. Cyr next departed for Baton Rouge where he threatened to take over the governor's mansion. In response, Long ordered the National Guard to mobilise and had troops surrounded the state capitol with strict orders not to admit Cyr, replacing the guardsmen with state police a few days later. For a time, the city turned into an armed camp, with both Long and Cyr packing pistols. However, without police power, Cyr soon realized that he was beaten and returned to his home of Jeanerette while Long, who had dubbed Cyr the "tooth puller from Jeanerette" in reference to his background as a dentist, flatly deposed his former Lieutenant governor - even ordering Cyr removed from the state payroll, resulting in the forfeit of all pensions and wages. When Cyr began to protest that he remained Lieutenant Governor, Long was swift to claim that the rightful Lieutenant Governor was not Cyr at all, but rather that his close ally Oscar K. Allen had taken up the post already and was now the legitimate successor to Long - a fact which would be confirmed in a closely managed special election in late 1931 which saw Oscar appointed to succeed Long.

    Affairs in Louisiana now organised, Allen being so closely tied to Long as to be viewed as little more than a stooge, Long was able to turn his complete attentions to the Midwest and the national sphere as a whole, taking up his senate seat full-time in DC after having spent more than a year shuttling between Louisiana and the Capital. It was during this time that Long set out on his Midwestern tour and, perhaps most significantly, made contact with the ascendant Catholic radio star Father Charles Edward Coughlin, who would prove critical to boosting Long's contacts in the wider Catholic, particularly Irish-American Catholic, circles. As fierce a denouncer of the Ku Klux Klan as Long himself, Coughlin had emerged initially in 1926 in response to cross burnings on the grounds of his church and the rise of the Klan in his home town of Detroit, where they menaced his Irish-American congregants. In the lead-up to the 1928 elections, he had shifted his focus from religious topics to politics, and rapidly saw a growth in his following, vocally supporting the Progressives as the only force standing up to the Klan in America. He would soon extend his messages into anti-Capitalist topics and by the early 1930s had grown his support to number in the hundreds of thousands. The meeting between Long and Coughlin would soon see the development of a close partnership as the two began to discuss their views on the politics of the day and the role of the Progressive Party in a future America (10).

    Footnotes:

    (6) As is stated in the update, the American political system really isn't equipped to handle three major parties - especially if they cannot figure out how to work together. With Huey Long and the Progressives as a whole in an openly declared war with the Klan, and the Republicans horrified at McAdoo's total failure to deal with foreign affairs. The President is unable to gin up the support he needs for the legislative branch of government to function. When this is coupled with a Supreme Court staffed primarily by judges put in place by progressive governments or Republican conservative judges, it becomes hard for him to accomplish much of anything. Finally, unlike in the modern day where the American President can use Executive Orders on an incredibly wide array of issues, at this time executive orders have not seen broad use outside of wartime and are rarely active policy initiatives. This was one of the major changes which occurred under FDR, and McAdoo just doesn't have the same level of support as FDR had.

    1930 Midterm Elections:
    Senate: Dem - 37, Rep - 36, Prog - 27, Other - 0
    House: Dem - 183, Rep - 129, Prog - 121, Other - 7

    (7) While the economic situation is quite different from OTL we still see many of the developments which occurred in the American economy IOTL, such as reckless consumer spending. One thing to note is that this is further worsened by the government's promise of underwriting banks' finances, which occurs as part of the McAdoo government's efforts to boost economic growth even further to shore up their faltering support. At the same time we see the beginnings of the drought which will lead to the Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s and the growing economic disruption which results. While the economy is still booming going into 1932, it has definitely begun to weaken, as more and more warning signs begin to emerge of a pending economic recession. Finally, we have the desperate elite financiers investing their money in increasingly harebrained schemes - particularly the countless small banks popping up all over the country prove targets of this financing, which in turn results in further unsustainable consumer and small-holder debt.

    (8) The situation with the Klan is deteriorating quickly, but Ohio and Indiana are really hotspots for the strife, and the effects are being felt in the societies that they claim to protect. The part about abducting people off the street in order to recruit them is actually an OTL practice of the Black Guard, who were later rebranded as the Black Legion, and were probably amongst the most extreme of the various Klan affiliates at the time. Also note that by bombings, I am mostly referring to people throwing grenades or sticks of dynamite through a window or the like, not massive car bombs or anything of that scale. It is mostly just skirmishing between feuding factions after the Southside Massacre draws attention to the conflict. It is worth noting that the AILE agents dedicated to the anti-Klan Taskforce in Ohio and Indiana are amongst the largest in the agency's history.

    (9) Is Huey Long being exceedingly lucky here, in surviving this mad caper across the Midwest and campaigning elsewhere? Yes, definitely. But, when you consider the amount of attempts made on various prominent political figures both at the time and since IOTL, it should remain plausible. Huey Long is overtly reckless with his own safety, as he was on occasion IOTL, but in fact maintains a highly trained and disciplined bodyguard who are able to deal with most threats and wears various protective gear to reduce the danger where possible. That said, the thing to take away from this part is that the support for the Klan is crumbling as their promises prove hollow and they begin to directly harm the communities they claim to protect.

    (10) Huey Long's struggle with Cyr is almost entirely OTL and gives a better idea of his disregard for norms and willingness to use state resources in his personal feuds. It is worth noting here that the Coughlin-Long relationship forms earlier than IOTL and that Coughlin takes a significantly less anti-socialist outlook ITTL. He is far more concerned with the rise of the far-right than with the left, viewing the Red Scare and subsequent demonisation of communists and socialists as an effort on the part of the far-right's efforts to distract from their own misdeeds. He is by no means a socialist or communist, but he isn't overtly hostile as he was IOTL, which is what makes it possible for him to align with the Progressives. He does take an anti-Semitic tone, but it isn't anything people really make a note of with him ITTL. In general anti-Semitism just isn't as much of a hot button topic as it proved to be IOTL during this era, it is present and widespread but not something notable - much as it was prior to the Great War.

    End Note:
    I know that I have been in the weeds for a lot of people during these latest updates, but this should be a topic which plenty of people have sufficient knowledge to get into the nuances. The American political and economic systems are beginning to crack under the pressure as partisan politics rise to the fore and the issue of the Klan rises to dominate the national consciousness.

    I really hope that people enjoyed this update and that we can get a good discussion going on these developments.
     
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    Update Thirty (Pt. 2): The Gathering Storm Clouds
  • The Gathering Storm Clouds

    534px-Zewditu_and_favored_priest.png

    Zewditu of Ethoipia, Empress Regnant of the Ethiopian Empire

    Colonia Africana​

    The most impactful development of the 1920s on British Africa would prove to be the establishment of a trade deal with the United States which opened up the empire to American exports. Already producing vastly above demand and with European markets largely hostile to their efforts at market entry, American agricultural exports soon began to stream into British Africa, serving as an outlet for American agricultural overcapacity. Of high quality and dirt cheap, the impact on the nascent agricultural industrial sectors of British Africa could not have been greater. In the span of five years, from when the trade deal was first agreed upon in 1925, almost every commercial agricultural initiative in the British African colonies was wiped out. Out of work and unable to find farms on which to work, these agricultural workers sought refuge in the towns and cities where economic opportunities might present themselves, resulting in a significant swelling of British Africa's previously minuscule urban landscape as migrants settled into massive slums in search of opportunity, fighting against disease, overcrowding and horrendous work conditions.

    While subsistence farmers were less impacted, they still saw the worth of their small surpluses of crops lose considerable value and the gradual loss of economic activity fuelled by roaming merchants who would ordinarily have bought this surplus to sell in the towns and cities. The collapse of native agricultural production beyond subsistence farming would have a profound impact on native cultures and societies, as traditional ties of kinship and authority frayed in response to economic hardships and mass migration while others exploited the sudden availability dirt-cheap produce to embark on commercial adventures fundamentally reliant of the availability of cheap produce. Furthermore, this collapse in agricultural business opportunities in Africa would result in a dramatic shift in colonial settlement and economics, as plantations were re-tasked towards the production of cash crops and settlement efforts turned towards the extraction of mineral wealth rather than agriculture.

    These hardships, and the slow collapse of traditional societies which followed, were to see the development of growing nationalist sentiments in places as far removed as Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, with Nigerian nationalism marked by a pluralistic Pan-Africanism and South Africa marked by European settler domination while in East Africa the live-stock dependent tribal economy went into overdrive on the back of cheap animal fodder. At this time, European interpretations of Christianity had in some cases refused to allow the incorporation of local customs and practices, although the various mission denominations interpreted Christianity in different ways and tended to overlook their own differences when they surprised by the development of native denominations independent of European control. Political opposition to colonial rule now came to assume a religious dimension, as independent Christian churches took up leadership in the cause of decolonisation and independence, an effort in which they were soon joined by a variety of associations, such as professional and business associations, which not only connected native populations across their ethnic and religious divides but also presented an opportunity to connect with each other, soon beginning to develop leadership skills in these organisations, as well as form broad social networks with which to promote the cause of independence.

    However, the inauguration of the next decade soon saw the impact of the drought in America upon British Africa as food exports began to shrink, leaving an overgrown urban population and a devastated native agricultural sector behind while sending British authorities scrambling for solutions to what was increasingly clear would be a devastating famine (11).

    French Africa in the 1920s and early 30s was marked by the realisation in the Metropole that their state had become reliant upon the population of their colonial empire in Africa. The result was a turn from direct economic exploitation and neglect towards a colonial policy firmly anchored in the assimilation and association of their colonial populace with France. Based on the assumed superiority of French culture, in practice this assimilation policy meant the extension of French language, institutions, laws, and customs to the colonies and the gradual erasure of traditional culture and society. The policy of association affirmed the superiority of the French in the colonies, but it entailed different institutions and systems of laws for the colonizer and the colonized. Under this policy, Africans were allowed to preserve their own customs insofar as they were compatible with French interests, such as the recent abolition of the slave trade but saw the forced end to traditions felt to be incompatible with French values.

    To serve as mediators between the French and African populace, the colonial government trained an elite indigenous group which was slowly granted citizenship as they came to adhere to French culture. Most Africans, however, were classified as French subjects and were governed under the principle of association. As subjects of France, natives outside the above-mentioned civilised elite had no political rights and were drafted for work in mines, on plantations, as porters, and on public projects as part of their tax responsibility. They were expected to serve in the military and were subject to the indigénat, a separate system of law which had first been introduced in Algeria as an expansion and modernisation of the Code Noir in 1865 and had since spread to most of French Africa.

    This period further saw massive French investments in the expansion of the Congo, with major transportation infrastructure works coming under way, while waves of French settlers descended on the formerly Belgian colony in search of riches. While the colonial government focused on tying together the region, these private settlers focused their efforts on the development of extractive industries. Mining boomed as diamonds in Kasai and gold in Ituri were unearthed while so-called vacant lands - land not currently in use by the local populace - were handed over for exploitation by French companies. In this way an extensive plantation economy was developed from palm-oil and tropical fruits to rubber, coffee and cocoa.

    A key development during this period was the French acceptance of League of Nations resources in the development of their colonies, which would see the opening of schools, development of famine relief systems, a constant issue in French Sudan and Niger regions, and the dispatch of doctors and healthcare workers to clinics opened in various towns and cities across the vast French colonial domains in Africa.

    While inequalities between citizens and subjects were vast, with forced labor and second-class rights imposed upon the latter, on the whole the quality of life improved across much of French Africa during this period and an avenue to upward social mobility emerged by way of the League school system which extended scholarships to the most talented students for study in Europe. French culture and social norms also made significant headway during this period, often taking on syncretic elements of local traditions as they were adopted, and in the process caused a slowly growing cultural unity in the colonies which crossed religious and ethnic lines. Even as the agricultural sector in British Africa was collapsing and widespread famine began to threaten, France saw itself in ascendancy and closer unity with its colonial possessions (12).

    The most notable development in Portuguese Africa under the Sidonist regime was the strengthening of control over their colonies. At the start of the century, the Portuguese state had devolved much of their administration to large private companies controlled by primarily British interests which, alongside the Portuguese, established railroad lines to neighboring colonies and sought to foster economic development. While slavery had been legally abolished in most if not all Portuguese colonies at the end of the 19th century, these chartered companies relied heavily on cheap and plentiful forced labour to man their mines and plantations, not only in Portuguese holdings but also in nearby parts of the British empire, particularly South Africa drawing heavily from Portuguese Africa. The Zambezia Company, the most profitable of these chartered company, took over a number of smaller prazeiro holdings, colonial estates, and requested Portuguese military outposts to protect its properties. The chartered companies and the Portuguese administration built roads and ports to bring their goods to market including a railroad linking Rhodesia with the Mozambican port of Beira.

    However, the development's administration gradually started to pass directly from the trading companies to the Portuguese government itself as the Sidonists took an ever firmer grip on the course of events. Similarly to the French, the Portuguese government would undertake major assimilation efforts, at times even exceeding the efforts of the French, as they sought to turn the African colonies into an extension of Portugal. During this process they gradually began to abandon the conception of an innate inferiority amongst Africans, instead setting as a goal the development of a multiethnic society in Portuguese Africa. The establishment of a dual, racialized civil society was formally recognised in Estatuto do Indigenato, The Statute of Indigenous Populations, adopted in 1924, which was based on a stark division between civilisation and tribalism. In the colonial administration's view, the goal of this Estatuto was to gradually turn Portugal's colonies from tribalism to civilization through a period of Europeanization and a reformation of native cultures to align with Portuguese norms and social structures. The Estatuto established a distinction between the colonial citizens, subject to the Portuguese laws and entitled to all citizenship rights and duties effective in the metropole, and the native indígenas, subjected to colonial legislation and customary African laws. Between the two groups there was a third small group, the assimilados, comprising native blacks, mulatos, Asians, and mixed-race people, who had at least some formal education and were not subjected to paid forced labor. They were entitled to some citizenship rights, and held a special identification card, used to control the movements of forced labor.

    The indígenas were subject to the traditional authorities, who were gradually integrated into the colonial administration and charged with solving disputes, managing the access to land, and guaranteeing the flows of workforce and the payment of taxes. In effect, the Indigenato regime was a political system that subordinated the immense majority of Africans to local authorities entrusted with governing, in collaboration with the lowest echelon of the colonial administration, their native communities described as tribes under the assumption of them having a common ancestry, language, and culture. The colonial use of traditional law and structures of power was thus an integral part of the process of colonial domination. Ultimately, the goal was to slowly turn the indigenas into assimilados while gradually expanding their rights, improving their access to modern education, healthcare and science, in time creating a full extension of Portugal on the African continent in which race did not matter. Only culture and civilization (13).

    Germany's efforts in Africa would undergo a transformative development in the years following the end of the Great War. By concentrating their colonial ambitions on the Kamerun, German East Africa and German Somalia, and extending the term of the talented colonial administrator Wilhelm Heinrich Solf as Colonial Secretary, the Germans would prove themselves one of the most successful colonial power in Africa during the 20s and 30s.

    A liberal, detailed, culturally sensitive and capable administrator, Solf had originally distinguished himself as the first Governor of German Samoa, which he had turned into a model colony by including native traditions in his government programs and encouraging the development of a self-sufficient colony through education, economic development and the construction and expansion of a healthcare system staffed by trained natives. Appointed as Secretary of the German Colonial Office in 1911, Solf had gradually proven that he could take his small-scale Samoan experiment and expand it to a continent-wide endeavor. While Solf had been forced to focus his attentions elsewhere for the duration of the Great War, its end had allowed him to resume his duties and even expand them significantly.

    The Treaty of Copenhagen, and the colonial readjustments which resulted thereof, had allowed Solf to secure a greater share of the state finances and thereby expand the Colonial Office and its administrative apparatus in the colonies considerably. Having personally selected the governors in all three African colonies, Solf had turned an already strong grip on African affairs into an iron hand. Under his direction, the development of plantations and mines took on a fervent pace while rail tracks were laid down like never before and the recently conquered province of Katanga in western East Africa saw its immense mineral wealth rapidly exploited, swiftly growing into one of the greatest copper mining regions in the world.

    Throughout these efforts, the Germans would eschew the use of forced labor and instead sought to draw in native tribes as shareholders in the nearby economic developments, a particularly sharp departure from former practices in Kamerun, which had relied heavily on forced labor on their plantations and would require nearly a decade to fully wean itself off it. Schools were established on a wide basis and, in East Africa, the language of Swahili, which was spoken across numerous ethnic groups as a lingua franca, was included as a language of government alongside German.

    This was mirrored in German Somalia, where Somali was adopted as a second language of government, even as the administrative language shifted from Italian to German, while effective government control was steadily extended inland from the coast as the Somali Dervish movement collapsed in on itself in the post-Great War period. This resulted from the death of Mullah Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, the political, military and ideological leader of the movement, and a resultant struggle between his lieutenants - of which the one to emerge victorious in German Somalia, Haji Sudi, negotiated a settlement with the Germans using Ottoman intermediaries which saw the Dervishes allowed to follow their radical Sufi Islamism under German auspices.

    In contrast to the French, the Germans would closely monitor and control the use of League of Nations funding and administration within their colonies, ensuring that they buttressed Germany's own goals without usurping control of the administrative apparatus, although this resulted in a significantly lower level of investment by the League. The German investment in Africa would come to be known for its inclusive, collaborative and ultimately productive nature, following the Solf Doctrine of colonial administration. Ultimately, Solf's good work would see him pushed on to other things, with his appointment to Minister of Foreign Affairs under Karl Jarres, but the framework laid down by Solf and his handpicked successors would stand Germany in good stead in the decades to follow (14).

    As the sole uncolonized African state in the early 20th century, Ethiopia was a state ever balanced on the edge of catastrophe. A country deeply divided between feuding factions of the royal Solomonic dynasty as well as between conservatives and modernisers, it had already experienced several recent and rapid changes in rulership by the start of the 1920s, the most recent of which had seen the suspected Muslim Emperor Lij Iyasu removed from power by conservative Christian nobles in favor of his aunt, who crowned the 40-year old Zewditu Empress in his place in 1916. However, the prospect of handing over actual governing power to Zewditu proved unacceptable to many of these nobles, with the result that Zewditu's young second cousin Ras Tafari Makonnen was appointed to serve as regent in her place while her father's, former Emperor Menelik, and Iyasu's grandfather, favourite general Hapte Giorgis Dinagde was named Commander-in-Chief of the Army.

    While the conservative Ethiopian aristocracy was generally supportive of Zewditu, they were less than enthusiastic about many of her relatives. Zewditu's stepmother and the aunt of her husband Ras Gugsa Welle, Dowager Empress Taytu Betul, had withdrawn from the capital after Menelik's death, but was still distrusted somewhat due to the favoritism she had practiced towards her family during the reign of her late husband. There was even some speculation that she had been planning to secure the throne for Gugsa Welle over Iyasu when her husband died. In an attempt to limit the Dowager Empress' influence, the aristocracy arranged for Gugsa Welle to be appointed to a remote governorship, removing him from court and sought to nullify his marriage. This move, while intended as a strike against Taytu rather than against Zewditu, upset the Empress greatly for she dearly loved her husband. This, coupled with the total collapse of her relations to Iyasu, who she was fond of despite his mistreatment of her during his reign, resulted in a growing depression for the Empress which saw her increasingly withdrawn from public affairs over the course of the 1920s.

    The early period of Zewditu's reign was marked by a war against Iyasu, who had escaped captivity soon after Zewditu's ascension. Backed by his father, Negus Mikael of Wollo, a powerful northern nobleman, Iyasu attempted to regain the throne. However, the father-son duo failed to effectively coordinate their efforts and, after some initial victories for the rebels, Iyasu's father was eventually defeated and captured at the Battle of Segale. The Negus was paraded through the streets of Addis Ababa in chains, carrying a rock of repentance upon his shoulders, before entering the throne room and kissing the Empress' shoes to beg for her mercy. Upon hearing of his father's defeat and humiliation, Iyasu himself fled for foreign lands, but was caught in the attempt by Ras Gugsa Araya Selassie, the son of Zewditu's first husband by another woman. From there, Gugsa Araya Selassie transferred Iyasu to Tafari Makonnen's lands in direct opposition to Zewditu's wishes, who had wanted to keep Iyasu in the palace where he could receive religious counsel and hopefully recover from his fall into heathenry.

    As Empress Zewditu's reign progressed, the difference in outlook gradually widened between her and her appointed heir. Tafari Makonnen was a modernizer, believing that Ethiopia needed to open itself to the world in a cautious but intelligent manner in order to survive in the modern world, and on that basis built up a significant backing amongst many younger nobles. By contrast, Zewditu was a conservative, believing in the preservation of Ethiopian tradition and had the strong backing of the church in this belief. However, as Zewditu slowly withdrew from active politics, leaving more and more power to Tafari, the modernists grew ever more powerful. Under Tafari's direction, Ethiopia entered the League of Nations, dispatched fact-finding missions to Europe, introduced westernized education on a limited basis and abolished slavery while Zewditu busied herself with religious activities - sponsoring the construction of a number of significant churches as she grew ever more distant from secular affairs. The death of Commander-in-Chief Hapte Giorgis Dinagde in 1926 removed the last major conservative figure capable of challenging Tafari Makonnen, in the process lighting a fuse which was to finally explode in 1928 (15).

    The cause of this explosion, while caused on an underlying level by the increasingly power of Tafari Makonnen and his modernists, was directly linked to the signing of the German-Ethiopian Treaty of 1928. This treaty, which saw Ethiopia granted a concession in Mogadishu allowing Ethiopia access to the sea, in return for permitting the construction of a jointly-owned railroad from Mogadishu to Dodola, south of Addis Ababa, while fixing the border between German Somalia and Ethiopia slightly in German favour, was to serve as the final spark which set of the crisis which was to slowly come to consume Ethiopia whole. The treaty came about following a series of failed efforts by the French and British to negotiate similar agreements for a road between French Somaliland and Ethiopia in 1925 which so worried Tafari that he went to the League of Nations for arbitration. This resulted in a Anglo-French withdrawal from the negotiations while raising awareness to the negotiations in Europe. This was to open a path for the Germans, whose reputation in Ethiopia was not yet poisoned by past colonial intrigues, to make their successful bid to the Ethiopians (16).

    Outraged by the treaty, which the conservatives saw as a modernist folly which would open a path towards colonial domination by the Germans, the conservatives began to plot a coup, believing that only by removing the cancerous Tafari Makonnen could they restore order to the country. However, before the attempt could be made, the coup planners found themselves preempted by the bellicose old general Balcha Safo who marched on Addis Ababa with a thousands-strong army to protest the treaty directly to the Empress. However, even as Balcha was meeting with the Empress and promising his support to her, Tafari Makonnen was making his countermove. Rushing to the parade grounds beyond the city, Tafari Makonnen informed Balcha's soldiers that the crisis had been resolved and that they were being rewarded for their services, paying out a considerable sum of money to secure their dispersal. Thus, when Balcha returned, it was to an empty camp and Tafari Makonnen's men, who placed him under arrest.

    Worried that Balcha's failure would lead to the discovery of their plot, the coup makers went ahead and moved on Tafari barely a week after the Balcha Affair. Originally planning to capture Tafari Makonnen as he made his way to the palace, it was not long before plans went horribly awry. Having gathered a number of arms and gone in search of the Regent, they soon encountered him. However, when they ran into Tafari Makonnen they soon discovered, to their horror, that he had a company of soldiers with him who took this attempted coup against their leader rather poorly. As a result, the conspirators were forced to flee, eventually making their way onto palace grounds where they took refuge in Menelik II's mausoleum. Tafari Makonnen and his men surrounded the conspirators in the mausoleum and were planning to storm the building, when they were themselves surrounded by Zewditu's personal guard, who were shocked by the sudden intrusion of armed men into the palace. However, as more of Tafari Makonnen's men rushed to the scene in response to garbled messages dispatched by Tafari Makonnen, the situation began to turn against the conspirators and Zewditu's guards, who now found themselves surrounded in turn. With guns pointed in all directions, it only took a hothead to set off disaster. While it is unclear who fired the first shot, the result was a bloodbath which left not only most of the conspirators dead alongside Zewditu's guards, but also Ras Tafari Makonnen and many of his men.

    The sudden eruption of violence and decapitation of both modernist and conservative factions would have caused utter chaos if not for Zewditu's quick mediation. Drawing on her personal gravitas, she met the surviving Tafari-aligned soldiers in full regal dress and asked them to take up the duty of guarding the palace and preventing word of the disaster from getting out until the situation could be resolved. This accomplished, she sent a secret message to her exiled husband Ras Gugsa Welle, who rushed to Addis Ababa, arriving in the city before word got out. As a result, Gugsa Welle was able to sweep in and set things up to his liking, calling up Balcha Safo to take the post of Commander-in-Chief while reaffirming his marriage to Zewditu, which had never officially been ended, and taking up the role of Regent formerly held by Tafari Makonnen.

    Of course, this was not met with equanimity on anyone's part, and both conservative and progressive factions were soon set to plotting. While Zewditu was able to use her influence amongst the conservatives to calm things on their part, the modernists rallied around Ras Gugsa Araya Selassie who had captured Iyasu previously and was the legitimate son of Emperor Yohannes IV, last emperor of the Tigrean Cadet branch of the Solomonids. The rushed marriage of Tafari Makonnen's eldest daughter Romanework Tafari Makonnen to Ras Gugsa Araya Selassie's son Haile Selassie Gugsa further cemented these ties and served to set the stage for civil war. Over the course of late 1928 and all of 1929, Gugsa Welle was able to mostly keep the situation in check, but as 1930 came under way the situation drastically worsened as the Empress contracted typhoid on top of a preexisting case of diabetes - dying on the 2nd of April 1930 without any children. The will which was produced upon her death specified that her husband Gugsa Welle was to succeed her to the throne (17).

    Footnotes:

    (11) I was beginning work on what had been happening in Africa during the 1920s, when it dawned on me the sort of devastation an improperly managed trade agreement between the British and Americans might have. We have seen multiple instances of western agricultural industries dumping their cheap produce on the African market and devastating native industries in the years since decolonization was implemented, so it does not seem out of the realm of possibility to me that something similar would happen with this trade agreement. Neither the British nor the Americans really even considered that the agreement might mean disaster elsewhere when it was passed, and did nothing to protect native industries which were just getting up and running when the trade agreement was signed. While there are some mitigation efforts - mostly the shift into tropical and inedible cash crops and a refocusing of colonial settlements around mining, animal husbandry and resource extraction rather than plantation management - there really is little to mitigate the impact on Africans in the British Empire. While the continent might have been able to find a new equilibrium if trade volumes from America had remained steady, the Dust Bowl prevents this and results in a sudden drop off in the quality and quantity of produce exported to Africa - leading to sudden and massive food shortages. I am sorry to cut us off before we can deal with the crisis that follows, but I can promise a full section on how it plays out across British Africa in Update 34.

    (12) A great deal of this is at least reminiscent of OTL's developments. Many of the divides from OTL, particularly the citizen/subject distinction, remain in place and flourishing, but there are some important differences. The French annexation of most of Belgian Congo opens up new avenues for colonial expansion on the part of the French, who at least somewhat follow the avenues undertaken by the Belgians in their expansion of the transportation network and development of vacant lands - although they are not quite as willing to just hand it over to various corporations as the Belgians were, and instead nationalize the lands while leasing it to companies on decades-long contracts. Additionally, we see the expansion of the League of Nations into tasks we would IOTL associate with the UN, particularly aid, education and healthcare, all under the auspices of the French state. The unique difference between the French and League school systems however are that the French cater almost exclusively to the elites while the League schools take in orphans, rural and urban poor, and various others who they hope to put through school and one day use to staff their ever expanding bureaucracies in Africa. Due to the French and, as we will later see, German support for the League's efforts, the League of Nations will in time become one of the great movers and shakers on the continent - unless something should occur which disrupts that rise. It should also be noted that the collapse of the British African agricultural sector has, at least to a lesser degree, spilled over the border into other colonial nations, with particularly the Congo and Ivory Coast plantations receiving a good deal of migrant labor from British Nigeria.

    (13) Again, the developments in Portuguese Africa remain pretty close to OTL, although at a faster pace. The ascension of the Sidonist government means that much of the political chaos in Portugal of the 1920s is avoided, while many of the initiatives undertaken by the Estado Novo the decade after match up pretty well with Sidonio's ambitions. The Estatuto is passed five years earlier than IOTL while the impact and influence of the chartered companies are reduced considerably. In general, the most significant trend here is that with the Portuguese are better control of their state and colonial affairs, they are able to enact a much more comprehensive and detailed effort than IOTL. I also think it is notable to point out that while there are still some pretty hefty taboos in French and British society about mixed-race children and couples, it is much lessened in Portugal and its colonies. They view their assimilado population, primarily made up of such mixed-race children, as one of their greatest strengths in strengthening their hold on the various colonies and often employ them in the colonial administration.

    (14) Wilhelm Solf never really got a chance to implement his colonial policies IOTL, despite sitting as colonial secretary from 1911 till 1918. Here he gets to push forward following his own approach, which comes to characterize German colonial policy in general. While the British largely neglect their African possessions, and the French and Portuguese try to turn them into an extension of their metropoles, the German approach becomes more about a cooptation of their native populations. They work to make them self-sufficient and profitable by making them a shareholder in their own colonial ambitions and by creating systems based on pre-existing local norms, laws and traditions. Now, this process is by no means perfect and there are plenty of examples of exploitation in German Africa, but on the whole and as colonial policy they seek to make their colonial populations invest themselves in the colonies. It is worth noting that the Dervish revolt in British Somaliland continues until the late 1920s under new leadership (not Haji Sudi) when the British finally find the time to dispatch forces to crush the rebels, most ultimately fleeing over the border to Haji Sudi, settling down in German Somalia.

    (15) This is honestly almost all OTL, I just needed to get the background in place before we could get to the divergences. Ethiopia is a fascinating country which was going through a series of formative tumults during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Just to clarify, a Ras holds a similar position to a Duke in more European settings, a Negus is the equivalent of a King and when I write Empress or Emperor it is actually a title translated as King/Queen of Kings. Zewditu is honestly a rather pitiable figure from what I have been able to read. She was married three times in her youth to various members of the Solomonic dynasty before marrying Gugsa Welle, who she seems to have come to care greatly for. Their marriage actually seems to have been quite happy, when it wasn't disrupted by others, but turned tragic when Iyasu came to power. Welle was imprisoned on charges of murder and held in horrid conditions for months while Zewditu begged her nephew for his release, which was denied, Welle only being released after the coup. In fact, Zewditu seems to have been a surprising loving and forgiving woman considering the cutthroat environment she was in, wanting to reform her nephew despite his trespasses and trying to protect her beloved husband when possible. Oh, and for those who do not know, Ras Tafari Makonnen is OTL's Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia who also gave his name to Rastafarianism.

    (16) Alright, so this is a bit of a mix and match between OTL and TTL events. With the Italians out of the picture, they obviously are not part of the negotiations for access to the Ethiopian markets - instead the French, British and Germans take up that role. Like IOTL the 1925 Anglo-French/Italian efforts falter because of Tafari's suspicions of their motivations and threat of using the League (much more effective ITTL than IOTL), but while it was the Italians who made a second attempt in 1928 here it is the Germans who push forward and secure an agreement. Further, in contrast to OTL where the Italians effectively bribed Tafari to take the agreement, here it is more a matter of Tafari viewing partnership with the Germans as the best of a lot of bad options on the basis of their treatment of the Dervish movement in Somalia and general approach to African relations.

    (17) The start of the coup all plays out basically like IOTL - it is worth noting that there are about two months between Balcha's appearance and the actual coup attempt (I highly recommend reading up on Balcha's failed march on Addis Ababa, he really ends up falling flat on his face), and the tragicomic nature of the coup makers apparently not having expected Tafari Makonnen to have a company of soldiers with him is all OTL. The retreat to the palace mausoleum and consecutive rings of surrounded men are also OTL (I have taken the liberty of assuming that Zewditu was unaware of the coup and that her personal guards turned up to figure out what was going on, but ultimately there is no way to know) but where things diverge is that the outer ring of Tafari forces are not anywhere as well armed as IOTL. IOTL Tafari had received a great deal of modern small arms and an outdated Fiat 3000 tank given to him by the Italians during their negotiations which proved sufficient to scare Zewditu's personal guard into surrender, here they never got those arms and as such are unable to threaten the guards into compliance with overwhelming force, resulting in a bloodbath. The death of Ras Tafari Makonnen is a defining moment in Ethiopian history ITTL and is where things really begin to diverge from OTL. Zewditu proves that she has an impressive level of gravitas by turning her one-time rival's forces to her own protection and is able to call in her husband (I am honestly uncertain of what exactly their marriage status was - I haven't seen mentions of a divorce, just that Welle was set aside) back from effective exile. Zewditu dies on schedule as I am working on the assumption that her death was by disease as believed in modern readings of events - and not poison as was originally suspected IOTL. Her death and apparent decision to select Gusga Welle as successor light the fuse. We will get back to both the British African Crisis and the Ethiopian Crisis in Update 34.

    Mount_Lebanon_Great_Famine.jpg

    Victims of the South Mesopotamia Famine

    The Two Rivers Crisis​

    As with so much else, the construction of major dams on the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers in the late 1920s and early 1930s were to have surprising secondary consequences. Specifically, the successful construction of major dams at Aleppo and Kut would result in the slackening of the waters in both rivers and the drying out of a few subsidiary rivers as largescale irrigation endeavors were undertaken in northern Mesopotamia. The consequences were soon felt down river when the rivers failed to bring sufficient water for the farms and plantations in western Arabistan and Kuwait. Now, while neither state was a major agricultural producer, they depended primarily on the produce of their domestic farmers to feed most of the population, and when the harvests of 1931 failed, it caused considerable worry across the region. Efforts were undertaken to purchase foodstuffs from British India and protests were lodged with the Ottoman provincial governments in northern Mesopotamia over the excessive damming efforts. Nevertheless, the two states made it through the first round of harvest failures relatively intact, if with a serious financial loss. When the spring floods of 1932 failed, the water accumulating above the Kut and Aleppo dams, for a second time it proved devastating.

    Having already run up considerable debts the previous years, and having leveraged their modest rights to the oil being pumped by British companies, neither Sheikh Khaz'al of Arabistan nor Sheikh Ahmad of Kuwait were able to muster the domestic resources to tide over their population for a second year in a row, and instead saw themselves forced to turn to the British for aid. It was at this moment, with the populace increasingly worried about the prospect of a famine, that the feud between the two states and their connections to rival parts of the British government, reared its ugly head. While the Indian Secretariat proved themselves swift to act, dispatching famine relief and medical staff to support the Kuwaiti state, the Colonial Office in London felt itself too far removed from the situation and thus directed the Indian Secretariat to extend its famine relief to Arabistan as well.

    Now, in most circumstances this would not have been a major ask, but over the preceding four years the conflict between the Indian Secretariat and Colonial Office had escalated to the point at which dispatches between the two could barely be considered civil. Any attempt by the Colonial Office to direct Indian efforts had come to be seen as a wedge which the Labour government could use to push the Liberal-Conservative administration in India from their posts, and further, the emerging agricultural crisis in British Africa required assistance as well to deal with their sudden food shortages. The result was that while Kuwait saw the arrival of significant support to combat the growing crisis, Sheikh Khaz'al was left without any aid at all, stuck in the midst of a bureaucratic feud with seemingly no end in sight. With relations already dismal between Kuwait and Arabistan, it should come as little surprise that cross-border raids from Arabistan in an effort to secure famine relief rose rapidly, soon resulting in open skirmishes between Kuwaiti and Arabistani forces and a resultant hampering of relief efforts in Kuwait, as the situation degenerated further (18).

    The escalation of tensions between Kuwait and Arabistan caught the British off guard and severely worsened the situation in both states. The raids on famine relief deliveries resulted in the formation of large armed convoys, greatly slowing the efforts, while the Arabistanis sought to rob their neighbors of food to feed their own families on a larger scale. In response to Kuwaiti entreaties, British representatives from the Indian Secretariat met in person with Khaz'al to protest the attacks and demand that he bring his people back under control. While Khaz'al was ostensibly open to the suggestion, he was swift to point out that there was little he could do to stop starving peasants and pastoralists from trying to survive in a crisis, adding that considering the availability of resources to deal with the Kuwaiti famine, the same effort should be extended to his own people. With this added pressure motivating them, the Indian Secretariat ultimately decided to expand famine relief efforts by half, and then split it evenly between the two middle eastern states.

    However, far from resolving the issue, it enflamed the situation further as the Kuwaitis suddenly saw their famine relief cut by a quarter, resulting in new protests being lodged with the Indian Secretariat, which it turn set off another round of bureaucratic infighting. Throughout this constant bickering and backbiting, the situation for the common man worsened, as emergency rations ran out and the intense heat of summer dried out already reduced sources of water on a wide scale. The result was that many shuttered their homes and sought towards the cities in hope of better access to food, the famine relief efforts having extended from the Persian Gulf Coast, up the rivers, with depots constructed in the cities and towns along the way, wherefrom relief efforts should theoretically extend into the hinterlands, although it rarely got that far.

    It did not take long before bandits began to emerge, raiding the famine relief caravans and their neighbours, and people took to the streets in public protest at the state of affairs. Even as alarms began to ring across the colonial administration, and the scope of the crisis became clear, these protests turned into riots as granaries warehouses used to store famine relief were attacked by mobs of people in towns and cities across both Kuwait and Arabistan, although the further upstream the less troops were available to guard these supplies and thus saw their greatest losses. In Kuwait City and Basra, the British soldiers guarding the warehouses opened fire on the crowds, dispersing them for a time before armed bandits could join in on subsequent attempts on the warehouses. Increasingly desperate, the two Sheikhs turned to their neighbours for aid, breaking away from British authority in the process, with Khaz'al and Arabistan securing some food stock from the Ottomans and the Persian Socialists while the Kuwaitis were able to leverage ties to Bedouin tribes in Hashemite Arabia and Oman for purchase and transportation of food, which were often sold in return for the younger children of starving peasants or what few material goods most families had (19).

    As oil production ground to a halt in the face of food shortages for the local workers and word of Ottoman famine relief coming into use by the Arabistanis, the alarms truly began to ring in Whitehall and Delhi. Not only did the sudden stoppage in oil production precipitate a sharp rise in oil prices in Britain, it also brought the crisis firmly into the public spotlight as oil futures shrank in value and the London Stock Exchange as a whole experienced a short but sharp dip in value, resulting in public warnings by economists of a possible economic slowdown.

    The response on the part of the British was swift and, by most measures, an overreaction. Two brigades were dispatched from India to supplement the already present King's African Rifles, commanded by Orde Wingate, and a wing RAF air support all coming under the command of Air Commodore Frederick Bowhill as commander of the force with orders to bring order to the situation. The arrival of this force in August of 1932 would have immediate effect, as any breach of the peace was met with harsh actions - most prominently the Basra City Massacre which saw more than 50 rioters killed when they tried to break into the recently restocked granaries, and the Safwan Air Raid in which two dozen Arabistani raiders were killed in strafing runs by RAF forces. These harsh measures were then followed by a streamlined famine relief effort, with each shipment protected by a soldiers backed up by the undefeatable force of air power.

    In this way, the famine was slowly brought under control and oil production restarted, although not before tens of thousands had died. Furthermore, the decision of the British to remove Sheikh Khaz'al from power and appoint Sheikh Ahmad al-Jabar of Kuwait as his successor, while significantly strengthening British presence on the ground, would prove immensely unpopular, with Khaz'al fleeing into the mountains of Persia before making his way northward to the Ottomans, where he found succour. The unification of Arabistan with Kuwait, undertaken in a hasty and relatively unplanned manner at the behest of the recently appointed civilian administrator of the region, Bernard Rawdon Reilly from the Indian Secretariat, caused widespread unrest across much of Arabistan and required the further use of force to implement, resulting in almost a thousand more deaths before the region was pacified. With harvest season having been disrupted by the chaos and violence of the late summer, the British soon came to realize that they would need at least another year of famine relief and a resolution to the use of water resources along the Euphrates and Tigris with the Ottomans before they could restore the situation in southern Mesopotamia (20).

    As a result of the realization that matters had to be settled with the Ottomans to resolve the crisis, the British Foreign Office lodged a protest with the Ottomans in early September, even as British arms were paving the path for famine relief. This was far from the first protest, the Kuwaitis, Arabistanis and the Indian Secretariat having all demanded restitution, aid or half a hundred other things from both provincial and national governments in the Ottoman Empire. However, this time it was Whitehall calling on the Porte, elevating the matter considerably from what had previously been seen as a minor colonial squabble to one of the most pressing international diplomatic incidents since the end of the Russian Civil War.

    Nevertheless, the Ottomans proved surprisingly lax in replying to the British, barely acknowledging any shred of responsibility for the events leading up to the South Mesopotamia Famine and questioning what right the British had to question Ottoman domestic policies. This response, coming at a time when the British were coming to view their state as being in a state of crisis, proved far too little to satisfy British demands, and drew furious responses when read aloud in the halls of Parliament. The result was a worsening of relations over the next two months, as affairs were gradually resolved in South Mesopotamia, which saw a rise in jingoistic slogans and calls for the humbling of Turkey in media and parliament. The flight of Sheikh Khaz'al of Arabistan to the Ottoman Empire, where he was received as though still an incumbent Sheikh by the Ottoman Sultan Abdulmejid II in December of 1932, turned a diplomatic tiff into an open crisis as the prospect of the Ottomans backing Khaz'al in a restoration to his throne, in addition to the ongoing conflict over the management of the Tigris and Euphrates, reached a climax.

    The result was the issuing of the January Demands, a diplomatic communiqué which set out the British diplomatic position as to the various issues causing conflict between the Ottoman Empire and the British Empire. The first demand was the handover of Sheikh Khaz'al to British authorities so that he could be persecuted in his role in the violent turmoil of South Mesopotamia. The second was a demand that the Ottomans cease all damming and irrigation efforts on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers until the matter could be resolved properly. Third, and most outrageously, this matter of how the water resources of the two rivers should be utilised was to be handed over to a Tigris-Euphrates Water Management Board with seating for the Ottomans, British, Kuwaitis and Arabistanis, which would in effect give the British three-quarters majority on the board as outlined by the British. Not only would this put an effective end to the Ottoman efforts at redeveloping northern and central Mesopotamia, it would result in the undermining of Ottoman autonomy and control over almost the entirety of their southern provinces in favor of the British. The January Demands could hardly have met with a more hostile reception in Istanbul when they arrived. The Two Rivers Crisis had begun (21).

    Footnotes:

    (18) While there were damming efforts in the region IOTL, the scale of it ITTL dwarfs those efforts. That, coupled with an explosion in irrigation projects across the region and an extended dry period, are the cause of drought further south. The crisis which emerges as a result is very much a man-made one, a fact which the British, Arabistani and Kuwaiti leaderships are all well aware of, and have protested. Never the less, while the crisis might have been manageable for a year or two longer with proper British support, the internal turmoil of the British colonial administration makes the entire situation worse. We have previously seen how the ascension of the Labour government has provoked troubles with the British bureaucracy, but the emergent crisis in Mesopotamia is, at least initially, one amongst many crises the British have to deal with in the early 1930s.

    (19) Basically, things go completely off the rails as calamity strikes and the British mishandle affairs. Now it is important to note that up until this point, the famine hasn't really come to wider attention as both the responsible parties in the Indian and Colonial Secretariats are trying to keep their bickering in-house, neither wanting to take the blame for the crisis. However, events are rapidly escalating and the crisis is beginning to enter the media and political limelight in Britain - forcing greater action. The decision to split relief between the two states, which results in a reduction of Kuwaiti aid, is an example of British failures to really grasp quite how dire the situation has become - most of the decision makers being in India and Britain respectively and communicating with each other by telegram (hardly the most expressive of mediums) - and also a failure to understand quite how hostile relations between Arabistan and Kuwait have become. It is worth noting that this crisis is overlapping with various others around the world, which I haven't gotten to describing just yet, such as the food crisis in British Africa to name one already mentioned example, which should help explain why the British are being particularly sluggish in their response this time around. However, the decision on the part of Khaz'al and the state of Arabistan to negotiate for relief with the Ottomans and Socialist Persians certainly draws British focus to the crisis.

    (20) So the situation in southern Mesopotamia has finally been brought to order, at least for the time being. However, in the process the British have pretty much pissed off just about everyone they could in the region. While they do begin to get a handle on the immediate crisis, the effort has turned a mild distaste into open hatred amongst many locals in the region. The decision to unite Arabistan and Kuwait, taken by a recently arrived civilian appointee with little to know experience in Mesopotamian affairs, is done because many in the British colonial service (particularly in India) believe that the reason the situation went so badly was the divided nature of the leadership in the region - thus, by removing the figure (Khaz'al) who has been the more troublesome (negotiating with the Ottomans and Persians, being unable or unwilling to restrain raids into Kuwait and more) they believe that they can resolve the issue in a quick and simple manner. Of course, it isn't that simple, and the move firmly alienates Arabistan from the British to an even greater extent than in the past while giving the Ottomans a weapon in the struggle to come over control of the Tigris and Euphrates river.

    (21) Yes, yes, I am sorry about ending this section on a cliffhanger as well. The Two Rivers Crisis, as it will be known to posterity, really has two distinct phases, the first phase, which centers on the South Mesopotamia Famine and the chaotic situation which results therefrom, and a second phase in which the international powers come into conflict with one another in the first major conflict between great powers since the end of the Russian Civil War, possibly the end of the Great War depending on your outlook. Neither side in this diplomatic conflict is particularly well positioned to argue that they are in the right, but the British are overplaying their hand quite a bit at this point. The Ottomans are no longer the Sick Man of Europe, a power to be bullied and exploited at the drop of a hat. They are a powerful, oil-fuelled great power which has spent the last decade modernising and expanding their capacities in all matters, while the British are dealing with colonial troubles abroad and worrying economic prospects at home.

    Summary:
    An exceedingly contentious election in 1928 sees a return of McAdoo to power and the rise of the Progressive Party.
    While the Ku Klux Klan loses a good deal of its luster as their violent tendencies become clearer, and Huey Long emerges as one of the most prominent Americans of the age, the United States experience political gridlock and an increasingly worrying economic situation.
    Colonial approaches to Africa vary widely, even as famine threatens in British Africa and Ethiopia rushes towards civil war.
    The Two Rivers Crisis erupts, first as a famine in South Mesopotamia and then as a diplomatic crisis between the British and the Ottomans.

    End Note:

    I hope you all enjoyed this segment. We are now starting to move into the sections where I start introducing somewhat new developments. I know that the Brit-Screw is a bit heavy handed in this update, but I will be giving a much more detailed explanation of what is actually happening in both Britain and the Ottoman Empire to justify these developments.

    It is for that reason it will take some time before we actually get back to the Two Rivers Crisis though.

    I particularly enjoyed digging into Ethiopian history when researching for this update. I ended up finding just the right blend of court factional politics, religious tensions and strife over modernisation, really just hit all the right buttons.

    I am really looking forward to hearing what everyone thinks of this update.
     
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    Insight One (Pt. 1): Germany In The Postwar World
  • Dear readers, this Sunday's timeline update is brought to you by yours truly, as form of a guest contribution. We had foreshadowed this, and the time has come!

    A timeline like A Day In July is more than just a chronology: it's also a setting, a lived-in, fleshed-out world that feels real because it is detailed and grounded. For my first guest contribution to this timeline, therefore, I'm bringing you an Insight. This is a type of guest update @Zulfurium and I have designated with an eye in particular to the fleshing out of the setting. An Insight does not advance the main story: it's an in-depth exploration of developments previously covered in the timeline in a more cursory manner. The topic of this first Insight is the German Empire - arguably one of the early protagonists of ADiJ, and one of the countries most affected by the butterflies. In this and next Sunday's update, we will be taking a long, deep look at ITTL Germany into the 1920s: its economy, labour market, gender and ethnic relations, its academia and popular culture, its hobbies and hopes and fears. Germany is the country whose history I am most familiar with from my own studies, and it made sense for me to start with it as I dip my toes in alternate history writing. With that in mind, obviously, if you spot any mistake or factual error, please be so kind as to flag it.
    Without further ado - let's take a look at Germany.

    Insight: Germany In The Postwar World

    d378f4ee161cac0e62b050b255c37d06.jpg

    Berlin's Friedrichstrasse in 1920

    Uneven Development
    In the years and decades following its unification, Germany had been the up-and-coming player in international great power politics, and a country that held considerable promise for the future. As the Reich went from strength to strength, however, an unspoken truth haunted the German political landscape - that the country's industrial, economic and demographic growth was so rapid only because it was still behind the likes of Britain and France, not to mention the United States, and trying to catch up. In the aftermath of the Great War, and the promise had seemingly been fulfilled. Germany had fought an overwhelmingly larger international coalition to a standstill, deftly maneuvered the diplomatic games of the Peace Conference at Copenhagen and the postwar period, expanded its territory, normalised relations with its neighbours, and now straddled a vast empire in Central and eastern Europe. Even the thorny question of pan-German unification had been resolved, with Austria incorporated into the Reich, and German minorities enjoying over-representation in the political and economic leadership of Bohemia and the United Baltic Duchy.
    To many observers it seemed that the fruits of modernisation were there for the picking at last, and surely a radical change in the lifestyle of ordinary Germans could not be too long in coming. And yet, as the 1920s came to a close, the standards of living in Germany remained below those of its peers in the Western world. Not even the realisation of Germany’s new empire could solve the long term structural problems affecting the German economy – such as long working hours, slow wage growth, and low productivity in the country's beleaguered agricultural sector. Moreover, the German economy remained trade-dependent, and as world trade failed to even approach 1913 levels, that posed a series of problems to German industry.
    The problem of agriculture proved particularly intractable, and resulted in women being traditionally a larger section of the employed population in Germany than they were in most other developed countries. The need for women to help out with back-breaking labour on the farms was only compounded by the slow but steady expansion of some white collar professions to women - mostly as secretariats, typographists, office clerks, and teachers, although many would also find employment with the Prussian welfare state apparatus, or as nurses. This increased the German right's anxieties about the birth rate, which had still not recovered after the Great War, turning it into one of the most hotly contested issues of political debate in the Reich.
    The picture, therefore, was complicated and inconsistent. Ultimately, Germany in 1929 remained a country of contradictions, one that dreamed of the affluent lifestyle of the American consumer, but where significant sections of the population found themselves forced in cramped multi-family apartments with no indoor plumbing. Select German products were renowned worldwide, and for some Germans this was genuinely a time of upward social mobility, but when stacked against the horrific sacrifices of the Great War, and the living standards of Germany’s peers in the world stage, the new state of affairs hardly struck public opinion as satisfactory. (1)

    Where, then, were the fruits of victory? Germans were not oblivious to the fact that they worked longer hours than American workers, for lower wages. It was not only house ownership and real estate prices that held back access to true consumerism for ordinary Germans, but also motorisation, which was seen by many contemporaries as the ultimate index of modernity. Car prices remained high in Germany, as did prices for gas at the pump – although the latter was somewhat ameliorated by the ready availability of Romanian sources within the Zollverein, and the conclusion of favourable trade deals with the Ottoman Empire and companies exploiting the Baku fields.
    The federal set up of the Empire, and the increased democratisation of German states following the constitutional reforms of the previous decade, presented German politics with the opportunity of experimenting with different solutions, but this too turned out to be a rather contentious process. Prussia, in particular, came quickly under the national spotlight. This was only natural: Prussia was the overwhelmingly largest state in the Reich, and the one which under SPD leadership had adopted a most unconventional package of reforms. German society and politics held their breaths as the Prussian SPD government introduced a Danish-inspired model of three-party negotiations and extensive welfare provisions. While its implementation would trigger endless squabbles about qualifying criteria, the role of incentives and entitlement, and questions of public morality, the Prussian welfare system did score one major success: it shielded Prussian workers (particularly those living west of the Elbe) from the negative phases of the business cycle. To its defenders, the scheme’s most impressive achievement was its ability to offer a peaceful solution to the thorny issue of strikes and class relations, while to its detractors it was an inexcusable drain on state finances. As a result, the Prussian welfare state was in equal parts demonised and enviously admired in the rest of Germany's states. It also had profound social consequences, such as the entrance of women into the white collar workforce thanks to its constant need for more personnel to run its growing bureaucratic apparatus, and the increasing politicisation of the medical profession.
    German parties had a number of different answers and recipes to address the continued economic difficulties. To classical liberals in the NLP, and to a lesser extent in the FVP, DKP and Zentrum, Germany’s problem had an obvious solution: broad based economic development, which Germans would fuel by working hard and fairly. The more conservative echelons of the DKP, as well as the KVP, railed against the moral degeneracy that, in their view, underpinned all of Germany’s problems. The SPD maintained that ordinary Germans were merely witnessing the exploitative effects of unfettered capitalism, and could point to its own successes in Prussia as the way forward to ensure that all Germans would share the fruits of the country’s prosperity. The communists interpreted the situation as yet another example of the internal contradictions that would result in capitalism’s downfall, if with considerable internal debate and correspondence with their international colleagues. KPD observers were dispatched to Russia and Italy on fact-finding expeditions on the implementation of communism, during which the delegates discussed issues of theory and practice with their hosts, and consulted a growing mass of economic statistics. This would enable the KPD to unleash a flurry of publications, with which it aimed to convince ordinary Germans they were playing a fundamentally rigged game.
    The DFP rejected the framing of the question altogether as misleading, pointing to the superseding need to restore an age of German liberty not seen since the Holy Roman Empire. More specifically, DFP leadership argued that it was the overweaning influence of the cartels, as well as federal ad state governments, that were siphoning off wealth from ordinary Germans. The solution, they argued, was a twin effort of decentralisation to keep money in Germans’ pockets, and mutual obligations at all social levels to prevent the backroom deals between industry and government that had pushed the state in a managerial direction during and after the Great War.
    The rest of the far right followed quite a different tack. More specifically, they indulged more and more into conspirational thinking about international plots to prevent German access to world markets, and Jewish influence in OHL allowing Hofmann to oust Ludendorff when total victory was within reach. These circles also stoked considerable anxiety about Germany’s continued reliance on trade, pointing out that this very dependence on trade had made the British blockade possible – a worry which did penetrate among military figures to some degree. This conspirational narrative remained in the minority, although Ludendorff himself personally stoked it with his involvement in ultra-nationalist circles. Political power in Germany at the time became a sort of hot potato to be passed along as quickly as possible from hand to hand, with a frustrated electorate rotating parties in and out of favour while looking for a solution to their problems.(2)

    German corporate muscle remained a significant actor against this complicated backdrop. German “champions” were part of the wider trends of incomplete development that afflicted the economy. Chemical giants like Bayer, and other large entities, were well-renowned as drivers of Germany’s undeniable strides in science and production. On the other hand, such behemoths hid a reality of market inefficiency and a worrying tendency to cartelisation. It was the chemical companies that spearheaded a new round of cartelisation during the 1920s, hammering out terms for price fixing and joint research – the latter was particularly appealing to the government, since it allowed a convenient framing of industrial cooperation for the benefit of the German nation. Heavy industry followed suit, and soon large German companies were agreeing to zones of monopoly, sealing off competition from both domestic and foreign rivals in the process.
    The monopolies held one distinct appeal: they resulted in a surge in capital accumulation for the cartels. This increase in available capital allowed considerable investments into large, modern plants, built in the spirit of Fordism and rationalisation. Not all these plants turned a profit, however, with bad investments producing white elephants with no real prospect of repaying themselves. As the 1920s came to an end, stagnation and inefficiency were becoming apparent. The government was permissive of cartels since they allowed German companies to go toe to toe with their largest international competitors. The cartels also served an important political role: they provided a top-down administration of industrial production, which would be indispensable should war break out again in Europe. They also carried weight at the negotiating table when Germany (with the Zollverein behind it) hammered out terms with France to coordinate tariffs and limit American penetration of the European markets. These negotiations eventually only made modest progress, since France had no interest in binding its economy too closely to that of Germany, and German exports would suffer massively from tariffs in any event, but they did lead to frequent Franco-German consultations on trade. The price to pay for the political expediency of the cartels was repressed domestic consumption. That said, not all workers and industries were equally affected, in the positive or in the negative, by the economic climate of the 1920s. The timely adoption of Fordism in Germany immediately after the war shielded skilled workers from delocalisation to cheaper Zollverein countries, and also ameliorated some of the inherent inefficiencies resulting from the monopolies. Another element saved German cartels from immediately collapsing under their own weight: the German economy remained dependent on trade, and exports were the lifeblood of many companies. Exports, however, required competition against foreign rivals in international markets, a competition complicated by tariffs on both sides of the Atlantic. In order to export, therefore, German cartels had to be mindful of prices and efficiency to at least some degree.
    The cartels also played a social role. While German wages stagnated nationally, what progress there was came from the cartels themselves. This did not result in the degree of social pacification the government was hoping for, but it did allow German families to beef up their savings in preparation for a better future. Moreover, German companies were quick to offer their own welfare programmes to workers, often couched in paternalistic tones rather than the more aspirational rhetoric adopted by Ford in America - especially in the German states that had never introduced a comprehensive public welfare system. Cynical commentators were quick to point out that company benefits - like hikes, picnics, clubs, employee discounts etc. - were a curtain to hide the elephant in the room, the seeming inability of German wages to climb as rapidly as profits. (3)

    The Zollverein's strengthening of German companies was undeniable, as they moved to developing Central and Eastern European countries for cheap labour, new zones of monopoly, and new opportunities for investment. German corporate giants embarked on truly titanic infrastructure projects in the Zollverein Member States, which also contributed to the new hegemon’s political prestige. Poles, Romanians and others were being exposed for the first time to a narrative that had already legitimised cartelisation in Germany: organisation and leadership had allowed German industry to mass produce weapons, build railways, and mobilise great armies to fight on multiple fronts against a global coalition of opponents. And the new infrastructure did indeed provide some benefits to the Zollverein countries. However, the stranglehold of German monopolies also prevented the establishment of a domestic industry, and was met with considerable resentment from public opinion, precisely as these countries were trying to put themselves on their feet.
    The issue was exacerbated when, in early 1930, the Warsaw Institute of Research on Business Cycles and Prices published a study, penned by a young economist and statistician, Michał Kalecki. Kalecki had been tasked with compiling the first comprehensive national economic statistics since Poland’s newly acquired independence. In his analysis, Kalecki showed considerable talent, which would eventually propel him to greater fame as an analyst on the business cycle – his familiarity with the work of German thinkers like Rosa Luxemburg informing his approach, and helping his popularity in the growing field of Zollverein economic studies. The compiled statistics clearly showed the small improvement in Polish living standards and the meagre progresses in national industrial development over the past decade. It was German statesman and grey eminence Gustav Stresemann who would prevent the situation from escalating. Stresemann had retired from the stresses of political activity in 1928, and took some time off to safeguard his declining health. He recovered somewhat, and while staying well clear of national politics, he put his efforts into revitalising the Zollverein. In doing so, he was motivated by nationalist, if pragmatic considerations: Stresemann’s commitment to the cause of German power had never wavered. However, the Great War had greatly shaken Stresemann, and he was aware like few others of how close Germany had come to absolute disaster. He therefore remained sceptical of the ability of military power alone to grant Germany its security, and during his years in power he sought to integrate hard power into a wider, more sophisticated strategy that relied primarily on Germany’s indispensable role in the world economy. His personal relationship with Aristide Briand also set the groundwork for the Franco-German rapprochement after the Great War. Now, seeing the stagnation and growing unpopularity of the Zollverein, Streseman decided to act. He reached out to his former protege and current chancellor, Karl Jarres, and made extensive use of his contacts with the German corporate world and the diplomatic staff of other Zollverein Member States to pave the way for a comprehensive political settlement. The cartels eventually accepted a limited extension of cartelisation to newly created domestic conglomerates – which suited the German government, since it made the Member States more capable of producing military equipment, typically under German license. While this settlement would make only minor inroads in Romania, where the full vassalage to Germany chafed raw for public opinion, and provided no certainty as to the long term viability of the cartels, it did create a feeling of partnership within the Zollverein. It also meant that the benefits of higher pay and improved living standards were now open to citizens in eastern Europe, while giving breathing room to fledging national economies. (4)

    Footnotes:

    (1) Most content in this section leans very heavily against OTL, and is more of an overview of the German economic situation, to lay the groundwork for the inevitable consequences in the domestic and international arenas. It's important to keep in mind that, on one hand, Germany is doing immensely better than OTL: no hyperinflation, no Great Depression, no catastrophic mismanagement of the economy in an attempt to avoid paying reparations. That's admittedly a pretty low bar to surpass. Further, with the Zollverein providing favourable trade deals, its considerably enlarged borders and the retention of Alsace Lorraine, Germany has much easier access to a number of raw materials like coal and oil, and a bit more farmland to go with it. Of course, the Polish Border Strip is nowhere near large enough to make up for the glaring inefficiency of German agriculture around this time, which we will get into in depth later, but it helps alleviate the pressure on the smallest plots of land somewhat, especially since the Strip is part of Prussia, whose state government happens to be quite open to rationalisation in agriculture as well as industry. Ultimately, the long-term problems affecting Germany have not gone away as a result of the butterflies. How ordinary Germans and the political and aristocratic elites respond to this picture of incomplete modernisation remains to be seen.

    (2) Modernisation is still underway, and while the federal system has its strengths, it also makes inequalities more glaring. Oil is especially deserving of a mention, as Germany has full and unfettered access to Romanian oil. Moreover, Ottoman oil extraction has really skyrocketed after their acquisition of Azerbaijan, and since the Ottomans remain close allies of Berlin, this somewhat eases Germany's problems with fuel prices and motorisation – but does not solve them altogether. The role of women and doctors in Germany will be explored further in a dedicated section. The German federal system also comes under increased political scrutiny as the effects of the constitutional reform are now fully rippling outwards, with supporters and critics sparring on the system’s strengths and weaknesses. There are a lot of similarities to OTL, although the political landscape is much less vitriolic, and some of the ideological alignments have changed considerably. Debate within the communist camp is also a lot more open than OTL, taking its cue from the openness in Moscow. A word on Ludendorff: we know from OTL how much groundwork he laid to avoid any personal responsibility for his conduct, blaming scapegoats and then slowly embracing more and more deranged positions on the political fringes, where his leadership skills failed him. I see little reason for him to follow a different trajectory ITTL, given that he was robbed of what he thinks is his due credit from a colleague he explicitly “accused” of being a Jew. The far right finds its narrative of “mutilated victory” quite convenient, but it’s nowhere near as powerful as the stab in the back OTL given the greatly altered context, and by 1930 the NSPD and DNVP mostly see Ludendorff as a useful lunatic anyway.

    (3) A lot of this is a continuation of OTL pre war trends, and interwar to some degree, but there are some important changes. For one, German business is not as fatally weakened as it was after the war OTL, and while the economic situation might look complicated to ITTL observers it is lightyears ahead of OTL. For now, the cartels are working: they are less harmful to an export oriented economy than they would otherwise be, they provide the state with the perfect tool to sustain any future war, and they become a point of patriotic pride for many Germans, even if at the cost of purchasing power. The Zollverein and Fordism also ameliorate the issues somewhat. Keep in mind that while cartelisation works for Germany at the moment, its long term prospects are a lot more uncertain, and a lot will depend on the world economy. The point of political convenience is significant, because this isn’t about giving the rich the biggest share of the pie (although they do enjoy considerable benefits), it’s a direct continuation of Germany’s defence and industrial policies – so the cartels are actually subjected to rather high taxation for their monopolies, which allows for at least some degree of redistribution – it is the government’s view that, as German patriots who are benefiting massively from the arrangements, they can hardly complain. Of course, the flip side of this taxation regime is that it makes life really complicated for anyone who does not enjoy a monopoly, so there are a number of exemptions for smaller enterprises – but it’s a great system for gatekeeping against foreign companies. It’s also notable that the left does not oppose cartelisation: it would come in handy if a left wing regime were to try and implement a command economy, after all.

    (4) Captive markets are nice and all, until they become restive and start asking difficult questions. We’re in uncharted territories here compared to OTL of course, but hopefully the extrapolation of economic trends is plausible. Kalecki gets a lucky break ITTL which he didn’t get OTL – his work is still largely being rediscovered, whereas during his lifetime he was mostly eclipsed by Keynes, who dealt with similar themes. I authored a paper on Kalecki’s analysis of the (Nazi) German economic recovery, and I have a certain fondness for him – but his work on Polish national statistics in Warsaw is OTL, so it didn’t seem too out of bounds for it to have a different impact now that Poland is part of the Zollverein as opposed to its OTL course. There is potential here for the German economic world to begin serious work on the business cycle, just as Keynes is pushing for similar ideas in the United Kingdom. Finally, Gustav Stresemann here does not suffer the stroke that killed him OTL in 1929. Stresemann was relatively young – of an age with Adenauer – and his ideas on what course to chart for Germany in the future were very similar to those eventually implemented by Adenauer himself once he became chancellor ITTL. This makes his survival a very interesting butterfly. I think it’s plausible when you consider the incredible stress he was under OTL in 1929, especially trying to keep his party from spiraling out of control (and sliding towards failure). ITTL he retires in 1928 and brings his considerable political experience and his vision to reform the Zollverein. The cartel settlement is not an isolated effort, but part of a wider reform process. Whether it is successful or not remains to be seen, but for now Stresemann manages a limited victory, which will have significant consequences for the development of national Zollverein economies.

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    A woman serving as a tram conductor for the Reichsheer

    New Forces In Society
    Germany in 1930 had one of the strongest and most long-lived women’s movement in the world. From pioneers like Helene Lange and Louise Otto-Peters in the late 19th Century, to the securing of the right to vote after the Great War, the German women’s movement had a string of victories under their belt, a healthy network of international contacts, growing institutionalisation, and deep connections with the political scene. While politics at the high level would remain off limits to all but a handful of pioneers, the picture was more diverse at a local and state level, where the constitutional reforms allowed for more experimentation.
    However, the German women’s movement did not enter the post-war world as a coherent, singular actor. On the contrary, an increasing number of factions and parties found themselves both supported and placed under pressure by a growing cadre of women and their followers. In fact, with the key issues of voting rights and abortion secured, the women’s movement expanded in a number of different directions, where ideological differences became more apparent. The left naturally had an early start in the movement, thanks to the work of Marxist activists like Clara Zetkin, who had contributed to the establishment of Labour Day on 1st May. When she passed away in 1933, the European Proletkult scene paid homage to her life of activism through a slew of contributions that cemented her place in the pantheon of the German left-wing fight against gender discrimination. Proletkult itself was to prove greatly influential in Germany. An increasing number of theatrical plays, fiction and non-fiction texts, and in time even movies, portrayed revolutionary women struggling alongside workers to build a new society, or depicted women taking on a bigger role in society, politics, and even the army – with Russian women soldiers often lionised in Civil War movies, and even more so in the flurry of propaganda that followed the Siberian campaign. While the radical left was not without its mysoginy, and women remained a minority in the leadership of the movement, gender equality received more than mere lip service on their part.
    Other activists – primarily those of a social democratic affiliation - busied themselves with the battle for Germany's sexual liberation. They promoted Magnus Hirschfeld's cause, and the Prussian state government was to provide Hirschfeld with assistance in his activities. As such, clinics multiplied across Prussia, offering educational leaflets on sexual anatomy, contraception, and proper hygiene. These activists also occasionally joined forces with the far left in the fight against Paragraph 218 of German criminal law, which forbade and criminalised sodomy and “indecent” acts between men. An additional focus in social democratic circles was women’s participation in employment. The Great War had opened factories to female employment, and technological and bureaucratic changes had paved the way for women’s participation in white collar work, but some critical professions like law remained restricted to men, at least on paper. Activists like the lawyer Anita Augspurg campaigned to tear down these barriers, and Augspurg specifically was to acquire international notoriety due to her calculated disregard for the mores of the time. She lived with her girlfriend and fellow radical feminist Lida Heymann, cropped her hair short, practiced law with the explicitly political goal of legally representing fellow activists and women in court, ran for office in Bavaria with the SPD, and maintained an extensive network of international contacts. (5)
    Social liberalism, however, also had its share of illustrious names. Helenge Lange herself had joined the FVP after the Great War, together with her romantic partner and fellow activist Gertrud Bäumer. The two worked together as a unit, with Lange cooperating with the Prussian state even before the war to reform women’s education and advise on gender issues, while Bäumer worked with the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, the umbrella organisation for progressive feminist movements in Germany. Bäumer also took a leading role in mobilising women for the workforce during the war, through the Nationale Frauendienst (National Women’s Service) and was as such bitterly opposed to the internationalist, pacifist feminism of the radical left. When Lange passed away in 1930, Bäumer continued her efforts, campaigning and publishing while remaining politically active in the FVP. Her position, and that of her following, was that along with political rights, German women had inherited political responsibilities to defend the state through their work in the factory, the office, and at home. As the cultural influence of Proletkult increased, she could also point to the combat roles played by women in Russia as further evidence that the burden of state defence made no difference between gender. (6)
    An increasing number of politically active women, however, did not identify with the umbrella of the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine. These women were, somewhat counterintuitively, aligned with anti-feminist, conservative, nationalist, and occasionally far right forces. This too had roots in pre-war developments. A slew of associations had developed around women with nationalist, colonialist, and anti-socialist goals – like the Deutscher Frauenverein für die Ostmarken (German Women's Society for the Eastern Marches, which supported Germanisation in ethnically Polish provinces of the Reich) and the Frauenbund der Deutschen Kolonialgesellschaft (Women's League of the German Colonial Society). There was even an organisation devoted to promoting German naval power, the Flottenbund Deutscher Frauen (Naval League of German Women). However, it was only after the Great War that conservatives would budge, with the DKP and the DNVP spying the electoral gains brought to them by universal suffrage. German women who gravitated to these parties believed that by giving birth to as many offsprings as possible, rearing them as proper Germans, and maintaining an orderly household, they would do their indispensable part for the defence of the nation. They further justified their political involvement at a local and state level as the need to provide the Reich with womanly input. Some, like Paula Mueller-Otfried, proudly boasted that the home front had held against terrible opposition, allowing Germany to triumph in the Great War. (7)
    These women also generally promoted a tough stance against the many minorities now living in the Reich, proposing their Germanisation and – in some rare, fringe cases – clear demarcation lines against mixed marriages that would threaten German blood. They were overwhelmingly Protestant, and often politically organised as such, barring the KVP from the same electoral gains experienced by other conservative parties. (8)
    Other women – most famously Martha Zietz and Käthe Schirmacher – veered even further to the right, espousing ultranationalist and militarist positions, as well as the antisemitic, conspirational tone promoted by Ludendorff. Some, like Elsbeth Zander and Guida Diehl, went so far as to join the NSDP, where they pointed to Proletkult influence as the evidence that National Socialist women had to follow the example of their Marxist counterparts and take up arms to protect the nation. (9)

    Welfare programmes were not new to Germany. Dating back to the time of Bismarck, as an effort to coopt the electoral platform of the SPD, welfare provisions included health insurance, insurance against accidents etc. These had expanded to the point of covering millions of people by 1914 already. After the Great War, the need for economic conversion to a peacetime labour market, the reintegration of veterans into society, and the hundreds of thousands of former soldiers suffering from injuries due to their service gave German welfare efforts an entirely new dimension. The federal level kept a relatively light touch in relation to what the state governments could do, but even this was considerably ahead of what had been thinkable before 1914, with considerable extensions in health insurance and pensions to cover a wider portion of the population, and veteran care coming to be seen as a national duty following the sacrifices of the Great War. War widows and war orphans also received government aid, their numbers also high enough to force a fundamental rethink of Germany's welfare structure. (10)
    Germany could base such efforts in two long-standing, familiar cultural narratives: Protestant generosity towards the poor, and government paternalism. However, new ideological forces also spun the development of welfare in entirely new directions at the state level. Conservatives outside of the DFP increasingly believed public authorities had the duty to support the German family at a time of lowering birth rates, as well as protecting young people from what they increasingly perceived as the moral degeneracy of the times. As the Revolutionary Catholic Church found its footing, socially-minded Catholicism also pushed the Catholic populations of the Reich - in Austria, Bavaria, and Alsace Lorraine for instance - to support welfare extensions as a form of Christian solidarity. But it was in Prussia that the adoption of Danish-style three-party negotiations truly pushed welfare into high gear, with massive housing construction programmes, unemployment insurance, and a veritable army of new clinics and healthcare facilities, which increased hospital bed numbers by an astonishing 50%, lowering the spread of contagious diseases and extending medical access to the most vulnerable strata of society. (11)
    However, Prussia was only one state, if by far the largest in the Reich. There was only so much that could be raised on a state level in terms of taxes, especially when this ran the risk of triggering capital flights to different, more business-friendly German states. Moreover, the German Kaiser Wilhelm II was also King of Prussia. Even in his state of semi-retirement, and in his flights of fancy and paternalism which went hand in hand with at least the basic philosophy of three-party negotiations, Wilhelm was jealous of aristocratic privileges, making serious inroads into inheritance taxes and other fund-raising measures aimed at the rich quite complicated in Prussia. (12)
    This created a necessity to squeeze the needs of the Prussian welfare system into the available state budget - and here, a profession stepped into the breach: the medical one.
    Already before the Great War, eugenics had risen dramatically in popularity among doctors and healthcare professionals. Now, the Reich's largest state had a truly colossal welfare bureaucracy which frequently consulted with relevant experts in regards to welfare implementation - and doctors were high on that list. With the need to make every Pfenning count, the Prussian administration was highly susceptible to entreaties and bold promises by doctors that crime, anti-social behaviour, and hereditary diseases could be removed from society through a methodical, scientific implementation of welfare policies. However, this soon highlighted the divergent ways in which Germans interpreted eugenics.
    The SPD primarily took their cue from the Nordic countries, and saw eugenics as a tool to uplift the general population, while also acting as its caretaker. The uplifting would see a healthy, numerous German working class live long, prosperous lives thanks to the elimination of negative traits and hereditary diseases. The caretaking would involve policies like compulsory sterilisation of those deemed incompetent due to physical or mental disabilities, to prevent others from suffering from the same ailments in the future. This theoretical support would translate into a handful of trial runs, as the government conducted real world trials on sterilisation procedures and their effects. From an economic and managerial point of view, the SPD also hoped that a wealthier population would lessen the strain on the welfare budget in the future, reducing the need to haggle with conservatives and aristocrats for every last Pfenning. The Prussian medical profession was in general agreement, and eager to assist the SPD in this extension and professionalisation of welfare.
    Other Germans, however, had a completely divergent opinion of eugenics and its potential – and outside Prussia, they had the opportunity to build a platform for their ideas, as show when medical expert Theodor Viernstein created the Criminal-Biological Information Centre in Bavaria.
    The variant of eugenics pushed by Viernstein and other like-minded professionals was far darker than that of the SPD, or of the Nordic countries. Viernstein and his supporters adopted an increasingly medical language to describe the effect of eugenics, by speaking of the Reich as an organism and of social questions as diseases. In this light, ‘negative’ eugenicists referred to a sizable portion of criminals as incorrigible, hereditarily damaged, pests, moral idiots, and parasites of the body politic. A book published by forensic psychiatrist Alfred Hoche and lawyer Karl Binding went so far as to coin the phrases "life unworthy of life" and "ballast existences". Their views on involuntary euthanasia never broke into the mainstream, and met with fervent opposition from the SPD, and both the Catholic and Revolutionary Catholic Churches. However, the Prussian welfare system soon found itself with increasingly large archives of index cards and files of recipients and medical patients. These files had been collected with the intention of developing comprehensive criteria for welfare access, and ensure its distribution and targeting to the wider amount of people possible, but they also proved a tempting target for the police. Prussian law enforcement had a history of institutional opposition to the SPD, one which made its relationship with the SPD-run Prussian government very testy. Ready access to these files would allow the police to place people deemed to be hereditarily damaged under police surveillance. The SPD denied access to these files whenever it could, although the police could often count on a sympathetic ear in the courts, which were anti-socialist by instinct and packed with judges with conservative biases.
    The language of negative eugenics had also penetrated the more reactionary circles of the legal profession, a development wich the SPD vigorously denounced as denying German citizens with a fair hearing. SPD politicians were not below hitting back in this silent bureaucratic war, doing their best to sabotage police access when the courts granted warrants – files went mysteriously missing, offices wouldn’t pick up the phone, the forms required to record access were misplaced, and so on. The holding action from the SPD was largely successful in stymying the overreach of the Prussian police, but could not entirely stifle the spread of negative eugenics to other sections of the political spectrum. For instance, the increasingly vigorous political activism of the medical profession made a strong impression on multiple political parties on an All-German level, with the NSPD embracing negative eugenics as a quintessentially national socialist policy, while the DFP energetically railed against it as yet another instance of centralising impulses eroding the freedom of ordinary Germans. (13)

    In the wake of the constitutional reforms that followed the Great War, German political debate also saw the electorate split over the question of centralisation. The primary impetus for increased centralisation came from the SPD, following their experiences governing Prussia and instituting an expansive, professional civil service to tap the transformative potential of the modern state.
    Rather than just push for more powers in the hands of the federal government – which would have deprived the SPD itself from the ability to mould Prussia in their image – the party platform presented centralisation as part of a political package that included further electoral reform. This would at last ‘prise open’ the Reichstag from the hold of the pre-war order, with a more direct and proportional system of representation being the typical proposal meant to achieve this. This was anathema to the Catholic parties (which viewed a call for centralisation coming from socialist Prussians with suspicion) and the conservative parties, with the DFP in particular pointing to this development as the damning piece of evidence that the traditional liberties and local distribution of power which made Germany unique were being diluted. The KPD saw considerable internal debate on the issue, with admirers of Trotsky proposing to do away with the states altogether, so as to better implement a command economy and militarise society, while those looking to Moscow could point to their local economic experiments, networks of councils and urban-rural exchanges as a model to reconcile decentralisation and communist rule. The NSPD came hard on the side of centralisation, both due to Strasser’s formative SPD years, and due to the nationalists’ rhetoric that only by recognising every German as equal under a single government could the unification of Germany be completed at last. (14)

    This political debate did not take place in a vacuum. It centered over real policy questions. One such example, which proved particularly contentious at the turn of the decade, was education. The Reich’s constitution of 1871 gave member states of the German Empire full policy control of their education systems, and the constitutional reforms of the post-war had not altered the status quo. Every degree issued by education institutions was valid across the Reich, with very lax compatibility requirements. However, the pressure of modernity meant that this 19th Century system came under considerable strain, with increased political pressure at a state and federal level to deepen cooperation. Proponents of centralisation argued that an outdated system which only functioned because of the good will of the actors involved to ignore its flaws was one bound to crash and burn, and thus pushed a comprehensive education reform – with the proposed establishment of an all-German ministry of education, and nationwide requirements for curricula.
    The proposal, however, stalled, with the conservative parties railing against this infringement of state prerogatives. The DFP would become the standard bearer of this counter-movement, with Richthofen gaining a reputation for his tirades against the imposition of a centralised narrative to strip German students of their heritage. This was an especially sore point with the DFP, because history curricula in particular placed a strong emphasis on the medieval history of the individual state in question, which the DFP leadership wanted to preserve. Moreover, large publishers had considerable interests in remunerative contracts with the federal government to supply all of Germany with schoolbooks, and the DFP pointed to this as the ‘cartelisation’ of German education, with small publishers in states like Bremen being squeezed out of the market. Catholics were also opposed, given that Catholic states like Bavaria and Baden were interested in printing their own books. This overwhelming opposition killed the reform, but the transformation of the German education system continued along informal lines, with smaller states more and more resorting to adopting slightly edited copies of textboos printed in the largest states, and especially in Prussia.
    Curricula slowly converged over time, increasing actual, as opposed to formal, degree compatibility. An area of society where centralisation proved relatively less contentious, although by no means uncontroversial, was the military. After the shared experience of the trenches and its forging of a new German military identity, the outdated notion of distinct sub-national armies met with increased distaste from German society, and military planners saw it as a source of inefficiency to be removed – although the aristocratic, conservative officers, especially outside Prussia, remained jealous of their independence. This divide also in many ways illustrated the rapidly changing face of the armed forces, where the aristocratic values of the early 20th Century were now being challenged by an increasingly professional cohort of officers and NCOs, who possessed the vast technical qualifications required to operate trucks, field telephones, radio sets, modern weapons, and increasingly complex logistical network. These up-and-comers were often of a middle class – and occasionally even working class – background, and the armed forces represented a crucial opportunity for their social mobility, as well as a receptacle of national pride.
    Most fundamentally, the army needed them. If it was to be ready for any future European war, Germany needed engineers, cartographers, communication specialists, and people from an increased diversity of backgrounds to don the uniform. While state-level militaries endured for now, they were largely emptied of their autonomy, as leadership was coralled into a unified military command, joint maneuvers and wargames became a common occurrence. Bodyguards and retainers to the many princes, dukes and other nobles of the Reich’s member states remained largely exempt from this centralisation – but this was small consolation to the old guard. Ultimately, this development contributed to increasing social mobility, and made the armed forces less Prussian and more German. (15)

    The late 1920s were a time of considerable flux for German society and politics. The combination of old problems, new problems, old players, new players, and the increasing polarisation of German society created a climate of unparalleled activism. Economic dissatisfaction, the legacy of the Great War, debates on what constituted German-ness, and the complicated international situation combined with the traditional German enthusiasm for politics – which had already existed prior to the war – to produce a milieu where everything was a political statement. The SPD had, of course, spearheaded the politicisation of everyday life in the early years of the century – the party had its newspapers, but also its network of pubs, sports teams, trekking groups, book clubs (along with clubs devoted to pretty much any conceivable activity) and even affiliated movie theatres. After the war, this was increasingly adopted by other German parties – although with different degrees of success, as the division of the Catholic political bloc also made it harder for the relevant parties to make smooth use of their extensive contacts, with pulpits occasionally preaching in opposite directions. The NSDP showed surprising dynamism, but little success, as the network of organisations that orbited it remained small and on the fringes of society, with the more traditional DKP and DNVP enjoying support from the Hugenberg press and a number of veteran organisations – their favourite pastimes mostly centering around treks in the countryside, building campfires and singing patriotic songs.
    Reflecting its top-heavy political structure, the DFP was to give birth to (or coopt a number of preexisting) organisations and clubs primarily meant for aristocrats, although those small and medium businessmen not successfully incorporated into the national-liberal associations also found their way into DFP circles. Richthofen’s extensive network of contacts proved particularly useful in getting these networks started, although it would take time for them to expand out of their more immediate power base. German cartels also mirrored these efforts at increasing their presence in their employees’ lives, with coupons and discounts for access to movie theatres, company-run outdoor activities and seminars, day care facilities and more. These efforts were particularly successful in German states that remained without an extensive welfare programme, but made very few inroads in Prussia. (16)

    Footnotes:

    (5) It is incredible how much of this section is actually OTL. The vast majority of these developments began well before the Great War OTL, sometimes before 1900, and while the POD altered the biographies of multiple individuals, it did not fundamentally dislodge these movements from their trajectories. On the left, there are some key differences however, with women playing a somewhat bigger role than OTL. This is due to the different nature of the Central Committee in Moscow, and the increased openness towards various strands of left-wing thought. The continued survival of Rosa Luxemburg, as well as the better integration of Communist culture in wider European culture, means that activists are promptly given platforms, honoured when they pass away, and greater attention is given to unconventional female contributions (law, revolutionary leadership, and frontline combat roles).

    (6) Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer joined the DDP OTL after the Great War, and the FVP is the closest to their ideological position ITTL, so the choice should not be especially outlandish.

    (7) Female political activism on the right is the one hit more profoundly by the butterflies. OTL, defeat in the war and the experience of Versailles were deeply traumatic to right-wing women, who felt ashamed and partially responsible for the collapse of the home front. Here, with Germany surviving the war and arguably winning the peace, this shame is replaced by pride that “women did their part”. This still results in increasing political participation with conservative parties, however, as women have demonstrated their patriotism and readiness to contribute to national defence. Moreover, with the colonial empire still extant, and the HSF enduring into the postwar, the colonial and naval societies are not disbanding.

    (8) Ethnic relations are somewhat less frosty than OTL: Poles and other minorities are not part of the “bleeding border” denounced by patriotic women OTL, but are part of the nation. However, the calls to preserve German blood are all OTL, and I see no reason why they would be butterflied away, especially with the growing anxiety regarding the birthrate.

    (9) And so we come to the far right. It’s important to keep in mind that ITTL NSDP is not the same as the OTL NSDAP: it’s still trying to straddle the left-right divide in a way that the NSDAP was not at this point. They do not view Marxists as the great enemies, but as potential allies in the struggle against the established order, and as such are also influenced by the Proletkult depiction of revolutionary women. Guida Diehl’s appeal for women to bear weapons in defence of the Reich is actually OTL, although the argument is structured differently here. OTL, as she was campaigning for Hitler and the NSDAP, she cited the “collapse of manhood” in the wake of military defeat as a shock to women, and begged men to become heroes again, pledging that women would help in all ways possible – “call us to every service, even to weapons!”. Here, there is no perception of a collapse of manhood, but the increased publicity surrounding revolutionary women and women-soldiers on the left encourages National Socialists like Diehl to follow their example, and the willingness to bear arms for the cause remains the same. The NSDP leadership – especially the individuals falling more on the “national” than the “socialist” part of the movement - is unlikely to be especially moved by this plea. Nevertheless, increasing sections of the far right are coming to see rifle-bearing women in uniform as an acceptable proposal, and because of his formative SPD years, Strasser looks at the proposal with equanimity. This will have social consequences down the line.

    (10) OTL, these numbers were around 800,000 war veterans with varying degrees of wounds and disabilities, 360,000 war widows, and 900,000 children who lost their fathers in the war – as reported in Richard J. Evans’ The Coming Of The Third Reich, which has been an invaluable source for this section. ITTL, the numbers will be different due to the war lasting into 1919 – the total might be slightly higher, but spread over a new cohort which entered the armed forces in 1919, and compensated by the lower losses of Operation Georg compared to the disaster that was Operation Michael.

    (11) The increase in hospital beds is OTL (although it referred to all of Germany and not just Prussia), as is the housing construction programme. As such, home-ownership and the real estate markets ITTL start to look very different according to where in Germany you’re looking to buy. If anything, I have downplayed the extent of their achievements on clinics and public health – OTL, after all, the SPD had the entirety of Germany to operate in as the party of government, and the lofty political goals included in the constitution gave it the mandate to truly crank the pressure on reform. ITTL, the old order is alive and well, and as innovative as the Prussian experiment is, the imperial structure has not just disappeared overnight. The underpinning ideological pushes are also OTL, with the appropriate changes – socially minded Christianity was a pro-welfare voice in the Weimar Republic, and ITTL the Christian left is stronger.

    (12) OTL, the Reich’s welfare state was subject to an altogether different, and arguably much worse sort of pressure. While it’s true that the federal government was considerably more powerful and didn’t have to worry about the imperial structures any longer, it consistently had trouble raising the money required to fund its welfare state. Taxes on some well to do sections of the population essentially doubled between 1918 and 1925, but even so, there was barely just enough money to squeak by, and the SPD didn’t want to further increase taxation because it would open its flank to the accusation of raising taxes to pay reparations (I do recommend The Coming Of The Third Reich for more of this). ITTL, there are no reparations to pay – but the SPD has a relatively free hand only in Prussia, and while that means a lot given the powers of German states ITTL, it’s not exactly a walk in the park, particularly when an excessive fragmentation of taxes along state lines would raise the spectre of tax competition between German states. As such, the Prussian welfare apparatus is willing to listen to anyone with suggestions as to how to lighten the load. This also fits the modernist views of the time – the dream of an entirely professionalised society run along scientific lines has a lot of appeal for the SPD. They believe it has the potential of uplifting the working class to heights previously unimaginable.

    (13) The figures mentioned, the quotes attributed to them, and the increasing political activism of the medical profession in Germany and elsewhere are all entirely OTL. This development began well before the POD, and I see nothing that would butterfly it away. What is different is that “positive” eugenics sees a lot of traction in Prussia and with the SPD. Social Democrats OTL faced a different set of challenges to the sustainability of its welfare state, and the political climate surrounding the matter was a lot more toxic. On the whole, the Danish-inspired model is more sustainable given that it’s not just a paternalistic flow of money but crucially mediation between businesses and workers in negotiations – but it’s still a complex machinery to run, and they are profoundly interested in any proposal that will make the whole thing cheaper. This combines with the utopian potential of positive eugenics to make it official policy in Prussia. However, other proponents of eugenics give the thing a wholly darker spin – as they did IOTL in the 1920s. They don’t meet with a lot of success: euthanasia in the 1920s is seen as way too radical a proposal for the public’s tastes. They still influence political culture, though: the language employed by medical experts rapidly penetrates other strata of society and administration. Outside of Prussia, this makes life a lot tougher for the homeless and people involved in petty criminal activity, prostitution, and drugs. IOTL forensic psychiatrists recommended downright execution for vagrants and vagabonds accused of petty crime, based on their alleged “hereditary damage”, and on occasion they got it (see the case of Florian Hubher in 1920s Bavaria). The comprehensive filing system on welfare claimants and medical patients, while serving the need of refining the implementation of welfare, becomes a target for police surveillance. The Prussian police would very much like to spy on ex-convicts, prostitutes or addicts, making their reintegration into society and ability to find publicly acceptable jobs impossible. Much like IOTL, this sees opposition from the Catholic Church (both of them, ITTL)and it represents a whole new chapter in the long rivalry between the SPD and the Prussian police.

    (14) The debate on centralisation goes farther than OTL. This is because we have no clean break as we had OTL between the imperial and Weimar systems – while the latter retained a federal set up OTL, it was more centralised than the Empire had been. New players like the DFP also bring considerably new takes on the debate, and the SPD’s experience with the new constitution has essentially made it the go-to proponent of centralisation. This has a knock-on impact on Strasser. OTL, his version of national socialism included a highly decentralised system of, effectively, corporatism with neo-feudal elements. ITTL, Strasser matured as a politician inside the SPD, and as such embraces centralisation in a way he didn’t OTL. It’s important to note that issues like the oversized nature of Prussia compared to other states are as much of a thorny issue as they were OTL, but the continued existence of the German monarchies makes its reform even more anathema than it was OTL.

    (15) Education in the German Empire only maintained a small modicum of curriculum coordination, and the officer corps resisting the “proletarisation” of the army is also OTL. Again without a clean break, and with much clearer lines drawn along religious and ideological lines on the relationship between the federal and state government compared to OTL, no thorough reform happens. The system instead meanders into a workable compromise that satisfies no one – a common policy pattern for the Bismarckian system. With that said, some degree of military centralisation was effectively a given following the Great War and the professionalisation of the soldiery. Expect to see a more in-depth look at the situation in the future.

    (16) OTL, Germans were insanely active from a political standpoint – until the Third Reich, ironically given the Nazis’ passion for political fanaticism, essentially killed this activism. OTL, the trend continues, and is in some ways exacerbated now that other parties are catching up with the SPD to turn themselves into mass parties. The crucial element is the transition of conservative forces from limited movements that centre around aristocrats and survive through restricted franchise, to mass movements with a powerful press backing and very few scruples. The Prussian electoral reform, in particular, essentially forced them to adapt or disappear. The NSPD and KPD also take a leaf from the SPD in this, while liberals are somewhat more aloof, if still deeply enmeshed with their constituency. Catholics are weakened by their political division, and the DFP makes up for a relatively weak grassroot with sheer star power and extensive networks of contacts.

    End Note:
    And with that, the first half of this Insight is out of the way. Obligatory thanks go to Zulfurium who had the patience to guide me through this process, wait for the material to be sufficiently polished, and who is of course kindly hosting it here. I was really excited to get into ITTL German economic development, and its ripple effects on the Zollverein - but the social section was perhaps my favourite to write. I was expecting it to be research-intensive, but I just could not imagine what I was in for. I think you can tell from the sheer amount of times I had to mention "this is, incredibly, OTL!" in the footnotes. We tend to see the past as monochrome, and overlook so many political actors when discussing both real and alternate histories - women, doctors, welfare officials, and the education sector in this particular case - and it was very refreshing to shine the spotlight on them for a change.

    The second half of the Insight, coming next Sunday, will focus on Germany's old and new ethnic minorities, and on the cultural turmoil and rapid change unfolding across the country as the Great War recedes in the collective rear mirror. I really look forward to see what everyone thinks of this update - both the Insight format in general, and the content specifically!
     
    Insight One (Pt. 2): Germany In The Postwar World
  • Insight (Pt 2): Germany In The Postwar World

    Narodni-Dom-di-Trieste-ora-una-mostra-permanente.jpg

    The Narodni Dom, the Slovenian National Hall, in the city of Trieste, serving as a hotel, conference hall, and culture centre

    Non-Germans In The Reich​

    When German unification became a reality in 1870, the name chosen for it was no coincidence: the unified polity would be called the German Reich. It was a specific naming choice on part of the political leadership, that signalled the twin nature of the new country: on the one hand, Germany signalled itself as a spiritual successor to the Holy Roman Empire. Reich was a word with considerable evocative power in German political culture, especially among the educated in the business community and the aristocracy: it pointed to a state whose authority derived from God, one which existed immanently irrespective of its temporary political forms, and one that would succeed where its predecessor had failed.
    On the other hand, this was to be a German Reich, an ethnic empire meant to be a home to Germans in Central Europe, fulfilling the national liberals’ most coveted demand. And yet, the Bismarckian project had by necessity come up short of that in two ways: millions of Germans were left outside the Reich, and several ethnic minorities were within the Empire’s border. The continued existence of many Germans outside the Reich was seen by a critical flaw in the Bismarckian project, by an initially small, but slowly increasing number of people in Germany between 1871 and the Great War. As the 1920s came to a close, the issue had disappeared: Germans could look back on a decade that had seemingly clinched the dream of a fulfilled German Reich. The incorporation of Austria, and the elevation of German minority elites into power broker positions in a host of new countries now part of the German sphere, seemingly completed the process that Bismarck had started.

    And yet, the question of minorities remained, and if anything, grew more pressing after the Great War. Ten years on from the Copenhagen Peace Conference, Germany was not a purely ethnic country – after all, there were even more minorities than there had been in 1871. Progress had certainly been made to reconcile some of the original minorities to German rule. The Reichland of Alsace-Lorraine had given Berlin countless headaches in the decade before the Great War. If grumblings were more muted in Alsace, where regional identity was stronger, they were considerable in Lorraine, particularly the French-speaking fortress city of Metz, which had been included in the 1870 peace treaty on the insistence of the military. The situation improved considerably after the Great War, when Alsace-Lorraine was granted status as a full member state of the Reich, getting its own constitution and duke. This strengthened the regional identity of particularly Alsace, and provided extra cultural freedoms to French speakers in the new duchy. However, other relationships remained more strained. The Sorbs had been subject to intensive campaigns of Germanisation, which were possible due to their low numbers, but complicated public opinion of Germany in Slavic Zollverein Member States.
    Perhaps the “old” minority to see the most progress was the Danish population in Schleswig-Holstein. The role played by Denmark in literally feeding German civilians during the darkest days of the naval blockade, the intensive diplomatic contacts surrounding the Peace Conference, and Denmark’s status as a gateway country into the Zollverein, created considerable good will between Copenhagen and Berlin. In time, the more restrictive measures – such as the ban on flying the Danish flag, which the locals had cleverly side-stepped by breeding a red-and-white variant of pigs – were lifted, and provisions for minority rights became a part of bilateral German-Danish treaties. (17)

    By far Germany’s most numerous minority, the Poles had a long history of institutional oppression within the Reich’s borders. The Poles primarily inhabited the eastern territories of the empire, in spite of intensive efforts at Germanisation, particularly in the city of Posen. However, hundreds of thousands of Poles had also undertaken considerable internal migration, along with other Slavic minorities, towards the western reaches of the Reich – where they found employment as miners and industry workers. These Ruhrpolen were equally subject to discriminatory measures: fixed quotas determined how many Poles could be in any one city, and how many Polish pupils could sit in any one classroom. Public or private language courses were banned, and the activities of the Ruhrpolen committees in fostering cultural ties with the Polish National Council were discouraged. The Polnische Partei, on the other hand, was a fixture of German politics by the time the Great War began. As the Reich’s largest and best organised minority party in the country, the PP consistently opposed secularisation and Germanisation, seeing natural alignment with Zentrum on a number of policies.
    The end of the Great War had altered this picture greatly. Due to the annexation of the Polish border strip into Prussia, the number of Poles living within the Reich was larger. At the same time, the establishment of an independent Poland was to provide at once great inspiration and great practical problems to the Poles living in Germany. Poles – both in Poland and Germany – were divided between feelings of gratitude towards Berlin as the initiator and protector of the country’s new independence, and resentment over the lost ancestral Polish lands of Danzig, Posen, and Silesia. This growing rift in Polish politics was neatly replicated within the PP as well. While some felt that these losses had been adequately compensated by the annexation of Galicia and a generous eastern border, critics were not satisfied: Posen was a sizable city, and Silesia a crucial basin of raw materials. Moreover, the lifeline of Polish industry was the Vistula, whose outlet to the sea was entirely in German hands. This essentially forced Poland into perpetual Zollverein membership if it wanted to have an industry worth mentioning. Calmer heads in the PP labeled these views as radical and dangerous: Poland was a country sandwiched between Germany and Russia, and needed the former if it was to survive the latter – either in its White or its Red form. Moreover, the new Poland had a number of unsettled territorial disputes with its neighbours Romania and Lithuania. Germany’s role as an arbiter proved an indispensable check which prevented the situation from spiralling out of control. Nevertheless, the question of the lost lands was to remain an open wound in the politics of the PP, along with the problem of resettlement. Expectations were high that German Poles would flock to their new country – but these proved exaggerated and misplaced. Neither Germany nor Poland could have straightforward attitudes about resettlement: German leadership by instinct saw the possibility of Poles migrating into newly independent Poland as a positive development, since it reduced the number of Poles to Germanise and removed them from disputed provinces. On the other hand, Prussia’s agricultural economy relied disproportionately on Polish seasonal labour to survive, and even in the Ruhr the years of industrial and economic growth that followed the Great War, and the horrendous casualties of the latter, made the Ruhrpolen an integral part of the industrial labour market. Even Poland experienced a similar ambiguity – returnees were theoretically welcome, but nationalists were worried that this would weaken Poland’s connection to the lost lands. Moreover, contrary to the rosiest nationalist expectations, German Poles were not necessarily a good fit in Poland. If anything, the latter often found themselves in a state of limbo – being not quite German enough for the Reich, and not quite Polish enough for the heady first decade of independence in Poland.
    The constitutional reforms profoundly altered the way the PP operated. The introduction of indirect voting reduced the need for the PP to focus on Reich-level campaigning, since German Poles were essentially entirely located within Prussia – Ruhrpolen included. The introduction of proportional voting therefore greatly strengthened the PP as a permanent fixture of the Prussian parliament. On the state level, the PP consolidated its twin political pillars as opposition to Germanisation and promotion of moderate, but firm and political Catholicism. On the federal level, the PP would adopt a different approach, reaching out to potential partners whose power bases were in other states, like Alsace-Lorraine or Austria. Rallying with other centre-oriented minority parties, the PP joined the Zentrum bloc in the Reichstag, aiming to press their positions from the inside – while fully exploiting the enlarged Catholic voting bloc on the Imperial level. The splitting of Zentrum, while a shock to Poles as to any other Catholics, also gave the PP a greater say in the surviving moderate faction, and paved the way for a continued integration of the PP into Zentrum at the Reich level. The PP was to come out of this decade battered, embittered, but with a strengthened voting base and a secure place in German politics. More importantly, the internal debate would see the party come under pragmatic leadership that favoured continued Zollverein membership, and a shift of focus away from the former provinces and firmly to Poland’s future development. (18)

    With the incorporation of Austria as a new member state of the German Empire, Berlin had acquired control over even more minorities: the Italian minority in Trentino and Trieste, and Slovenes – the latter due to the inclusion of the Duchy of Carniola in the territories which Germany annexed outright. Under Austria-Hungary, Carniola had possessed its own Landtag, if with heavily restricted membership and close imperial oversight. To avoid making Carniola into a separate member state, this Landtag had been dissolved, and the Duchy fully incorporated with Austria. This was to dismay the Slovenian population, who now found themselves between a rock and a hard place – their two neighbours being respectively communist Italy, and Hungary-Croatia, with many coming to see the Anschluss as the least bad option compared to the infamous Magyar administration. Even so, longing for the good days of the Habsburgs and the Duchy of Carniola became a fixture of postwar Slovenian politics, and the Pan-Slovene People’s Party fully established itself as the prime advocate of Slovenian cultural autonomy within the Reich. The party’s Catholic roots were to facilitate its contacts with other minority parties across Germany. (19)
    The unlikely champion of minority rights across Germany, however, was to be an Italian from the Austrian, now German province of Trentino: Alcide De Gasperi. Born in 1881, De Gasperi’s formative political years were as a student and activist: while pursuing education in German at the university of Vienna, and later that of Innsbruck, he campaigned for an Italian language faculty at the latter’s university, if to little success. This experience, together with his profound interest in political Catholicism with a white socialist inclination, led him to join the Trentiner Volkspartei in 1906, coming to lead the party in 1911. The TV was a sibling organisation to the Italian Popular Party, a similarly Christian socialist party which enjoyed great support across Italy. De Gasperi remained a convinced supporter that Trentino and Trieste belonged in the Habsburg Empire, only campaigning for autonomy, and harboured hopes that Italy would enter the Great War alongside Germany and Austria and against the Entente. When Italy joined the opposing camp instead, and the Austrian Parliament in Vienna went into wartime recess, De Gasperi devoted the war years to caring for refugees, POWs, and other victims of the war’s massive dislocation – receiving a government position to do so in an official capacity. (20)
    The postwar era was to deeply shake De Gasperi: the split of the Habsburg Empire, the Anschluss with Germany, the Italian Civil War, the Papal flight and the following birth of the Catholic Revolutionary Church acted as profound shocks to De Gasperi, who came to see Germany as an island of calmness in a sea in storm. De Gasperi therefore acted on two fronts: first, he became an intermediary between the new communist government of Italy and the German Empire. This was greatly facilitated by the inclusion of Don Luigi Sturzo – De Gasperi’s primary political interlocutor in Italy – in the governing coalition. While he remained suspicious of communism, De Gasperi’s views were moderated somewhat by the inclusiveness of the Gramsci government, and during a series of personal meetings became convinced that Sturzo had not been coerced into the new regime and was an autonomous political actor. As a member of a minority, and a Catholic to boot, De Gasperi was also an easily disavowable asset for the Germans, who therefore had few qualms about using him as a middleman, until relations with communist Italy were fully normalised. (21)
    The other political front where De Gasperi devoted his energies was in domestic politics, and specifically minority representation across the German Empire. Using his Catholic credentials and his extensive Austrian contacts, De Gasperi reached out to minority parties in Carniola, Alsace-Lorraine, and Schleswig-Holstein, as well as to the Polnische Partei. Initially, before the Italian Civil War ended conclusively, De Gasperi had hoped that, together with Bavaria and Austria, a Catholic bloc could be formed to become a real power broker in the Reich. These hopes were dashed by the later events of the Civil War, and Sturzo eventually convinced De Gasperi to embrace the Revolutionary Catholic Church, which matched the white socialist vocation De Gasperi had harboured before the Great War. As such, De Gasperi devoted himself to leading the Christlich-Soziale Partei Deutschland and introducing the ideology of the Revolutionary Catholic Church to Germany. To do so, he relinquished leadership of the Trentiner Volkspartei to his lieutenant, Silvio Bortolotti – but he did not abandon the cause of ethnic minorities, acting as a mediator behind the scenes, and working closely with Bortolotti. The TV continued operating autonomously at the state level, like all other minority parties, but spearheaded the joint electoral list at the federal level which gave minorities a bigger voice in the Reichstag. (22)

    Of all the cities incorporated into the German Empire after the end of the Great War, none came to serve as a synecdoche for the Reich as a whole more than the coastal city of Trieste. The port had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and had followed Austria into Germany during the Anschluss - in so doing losing its economic privileges as a Free Imperial City, to considerable dissatisfaction for the local Italians. The city presented both a major opportunity and a headache for the Reich. The opportunity was due to its exceptional location as an Adriatic port which had been the prime shipyard facility for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. With the Anschluss, Germany inherited Austria's competent fleet of surface ships and submarines, as well as the Austriawerft shipbuilding company - originally the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino, renamed after Italy's entry into the Great War. Trieste would also allow German submarines to penetrate the Adriatic, and as relations with the People's Republic of Italy warmed, and Albania came fully under German influence, the Strait of Otranto no longer presented an insurmountable obstacle to breakouts in the Mediterranean. (23) This great potential, however, met with considerable obstacles: the city was overwhelmingly non-German, with only a small German minority living there permanently and dating back to the Habsburg days. The Italian population enjoyed a slim absolute majority - although their absolute numbers increased, as many Italians living in Dalmatia left Hungary-Croatia to cross the short distance to Trieste, hoping for minority rights closer to what they had enjoyed under Austrian rule. Slovenes represented about a quarter of the population, and were seen with great suspicion from the city's Italians, especially from the middle class. During the chaos which followed the Schoenbrunn raid, and the relatively confused first weeks after the Anschluss, Triestine fascists led by local squadrista Francesco Giunta conducted a number of attacks against the Slovenes, most famously trying (and failing) to burn the Narodni Dom - the Slovenian National Hall, a prominent cultural centre in the heart of the city. The Austriawerft expanded to incorporate the Cantiere Navale Triestino, a similar company placed in the nearby town of Monfalcone - the merged company coming under German purview in the process. (24)

    Austriawerft was not the only prize available. Austrian Lloyd also made for a powerful addition to the German civilian naval industry, and the city came to have a considerable cultural role as well. UFA established secondary movie studios in Trieste - as Germany's southernmost mainland possession, it had more frequent sunlight than Berlin, even though the weather could grow positively horrendous in the fall and winter - and as such was perfect for outdoor shootings. This, in combination with its old Viennese coffee houses, scenic plateaus and coastlines, and cosmopolitan culture made Trieste the backdrop of many German books and movies. The city's reputation for seedy, cutthroat politics between newly arrived German corporate giants, inter-ethnic hostilities, and being a port of call for international criminal shipments of hashish and opium, gave the city an especially prominent role in spearheading Germany's love story with Noir detective books and movies. (25)

    As German investment flooded into the city, and German engineers, prospectors, and movie industry bigwigs rushed to Trieste, the number of German speakers in the city grew. This was never enough to seriously threaten either the Slovenes or the Italians in sheer numbers, and with proportional voting introduced by the new German constitution, this effectively gave the Italians electoral dominance of city politics. But the German government, with the aid of business interests in the city, was clever to exploit the divisions and fears between the Italians and Slovenes, granting the German minority an outsized economic, cultural and unofficial political influence. (26) The Slovenian minority grew more cooperative, coming under the leadership of the Triestine Slovenian jurist and philosopher of law Boris Furlan, a liberal who came to represent Trieste's Slovenian political community in the Pan-Slovene People's Party, and who increasingly cultivated contacts with De Gasperi, watching his efforts at minority coalition-building with great interests. The Italians' position was more complicated. Traditionally, Triestine Italian irredentists had made use of Austro-Slavism as a threat to rile up popular sentiment - claiming that the Slovenes and Croats were seeking greater autonomy within Austria because their demographic rise would allow them to wrest dominance of the city away from the Italians. The communist victory in the Italian Civil War greatly undermined the irredentists' position. No matter how much Francesco Giunta could agitate - there was no immediate solution for a reunification with Italy on purely nationalist grounds. However, the end of the Habsburgs' reign also undermined those Italian speakers who advocated for continuing loyalty to the Empire, to which Trieste was connected by critical railway infrastructure as well as a long and well-honoured history. The latter had much less cause to love the Hohenzollerns or Germany, and were slower than the Tyrolean Italians in gravitating towards a joint electoral platform. Their mistrust of their Slavic neighbours effectively ensured their political isolation. (27)

    Footnotes:

    (17) A lot of the build up for this section takes place before the POD, but it’s important we keep this in mind. The presence of minorities was one of the perceived flaws of the Bismarckian design which Germans struggled with during the first decades of unification. It need not have been like this, but this was the late 19th/early 20th century, with all the obvious consequences. What really saves Germany’s grip on Alsace-Lorraine is the end of the Great War. After the horrific consequences of industrialised warfare, and land gains in the colonies and in Europe, no one in France is seriously willing to push the argument that the region needs to be conquered with military force any longer. The elevation of A-L to a duchy with its own constitution also finally gives the region the cultural and political space to find a new identity. The passage of time will do the rest. It’s important to note that Germanisation efforts against the Sorbs are a continuation of imperial policy and not exactly a departure from OTL, even if the nationalism involved is considerably less rabid without the poisoning of wells that followed the Great War OTL. Finally, with northern Schleswig still German, the balance of minorities between Germany and Denmark is a lot more lopsided than OTL, but that doesn’t butterfly away minority protections – it just means the set up is different. Denmark has accrued great international prestige (not to mention wealth) from its role during the Great War, and as such cooler heads prevail in Germany regarding their Danish minority. This is one area of Europe where ethnic strife is definitely on the way out.

    (18) OTL, 1919 proved to be a watershed year in the German-Polish relationship. This is obviously less true ITTL. While an independent Poland is a big deal, the situation is a lot more favourable to the status quo: the new country is small, deprived of the lands it would need the most for rapid industrialisation and standing on its own two feet. If you’re a German Pole, it is one thing to move to Poznan and quite another to move to a farmstead in the middle of the eastern marches… therefore, more Poles remain in Germany, and there is much less strife than OTL. Even so, things are not all sunshines and rainbows. Germanisation policies mostly continue as they were before the Great War. Rather than prove a panacea, Polish independence poses a different set of problems to German Poles. The PP is not dissolved, since it still has a German minority to represent, and it has to adapt to widely new circumstances. Their alignment with Zentrum was a fixture in German politics before the POD, and now that Zentrum is divided, this results in greater influence. It’s important to note that the PP are not alone in joining Zentrum on the federal level – they drag other parties and politicians with them, as you will see in the next paragraph. What’s important to keep in mind is that the PP is not dissolving into Zentrum: it’s just running on a joint electoral list for federal elections only. On the state level – well, there were about three million Poles in Prussia, so direct proportional vote has huge consequences and allows the party to act as an independent political player. It shows: while improvement is modest, the situation for Poles in Germany is getting better. Poles are still disproportionately hit by anti-terrorism and libel laws, and it remains difficult to openly teach the language or have too many overt cultural connections with Poland proper, particularly if you live in Posen. But Germans are slowly getting used to being a somewhat multi-national country.

    (19) Slovenes were generally content with being a part of Austria Hungary: they were in Cisleithania, were Catholics, had reasons to fear Italy, and were somewhat sceptical of Serbian hegemonic designs. Even IOTL they remained somewhat resistant to Serbian-centric projects for the Kingdom of Jugoslavia, initially pushing federalism and then just trying to have Slovenia survive the onslaught. ITTL, without the violent dissolution of the Empire, or the Rome Congress, Slovenian politics continues on a stabler trajectory. The incorporation into Germany is not painless, however: the Slovenes are now a tiny minority in an overwhelmingly German country, as opposed to a multinational one, and have lost their Duchy. Even so, the idea of going it alone in the current climate does not inspire confidence, so demands range from a restoration of the Duchy inside Germany to the granting of extensive cultural and political autonomy inside the Grand Duchy of Austria.

    (20) Most of this is OTL, but I feel like we needed the background to understand where De Gasperi remains the same ITTL and where he changes. In IOTL, he only dropped his support for the Habsburgs in 1918, with the Empire collapsing around him. He accepted Italian citizenship, and saw the rise of Fascism with equanimity, although he ended up spending four years in jail for criticising the new regime. After serving his sentence, he found non-political employment at the Vatican Library, where he wrote articles and devoted himself to studying the history of Zentrum, among other things. The lack of these experiences mean he has less of a conservative turn ITTL, remaining more firmly on a Christian socialist trajectory.

    (21) De Gasperi’s views are challenged in almost every direction by the political turmoil of the 1920s. IOTL, he became very suspicious of Soviet communism – not to the point of McCarthyism, mind, even in the OTL Cold War his preference was for peaceful confrontation and a pan-European defence project as opposed to NATO to prevent escalations. But in the 1930s he gained a positive outlook of the Third Reich as a counterweight to Soviet influence in Central Europe, and praised the OTL Anschluss – he quickly changed his mind when WW2 began of course. ITTL, he has a similar admiration of Germany as a safe, stable place while the rest of the continent is experiencing massive turmoil – but he is less suspicious of communism, both because of the latter’s wider inclusivity ITTL, and the crucial role played by Sturzo and Gramsci in giving Italian communism a unique direction.

    (22) The Catholic bloc is larger than ever, but it can’t exploit that because of how hopelessly divided it is. De Gasperi was deeply religious, but was also willing to put politics ahead of religion when needs must. Indeed, IOTL he became famous for asking out loud why, of all people, he had to be the one forced to say no to the Pope (this was over an electoral controversy regarding the Roman municipality in the early 1950s). ITTL, he will experience a similar “night of the soul” decades earlier, and will eventually decide to stick with his Christian socialist convictions in his politics as well. Even so, he can’t quite go pedal to the metal with political Catholicism, given the situation. This means that his coalition-building ITTL will be focused on minority rights in the Reich instead. Many Germans see him as a deeply controversial figure, with some hating his guts and others admiring his moral standing. His perfect command of German helps as well. Of course, as the public face of political campaigning for the Revolutionary Catholic Church in Germany, he becomes an extremely polarising figure. Given that he is only 49 in 1930, he basically counts as a “young” firebrand, campaigning for a new Germany. While he keeps a lower profile with the minority question, to avoid causing fissures with those minorities loyal to the Papacy in Santiago or the Zentrum moderates by whose history he is still fascinated, Bortolotti is every bit his political creature ITTL, and a relatively inexperienced figure – allowing De Gasperi to act as a grey eminence to the “minority list” all across the Reich.

    (23) The crucial addition that Trieste represents to Germany's sea access cannot be overstated, especially once placed in combination with international developments. Hungary-Croatia is neutral, but mainland Italy is now ruled by German-friendly communists, and Albania is effectively a German puppet. With the Austrian fleet neatly falling into Germany's hands, Trieste is exploitable virtually from day one as an outlet into the Mediterranean, and the city has a healthy shipbuilding industry the Germans can put to use. The change of name to Austriawerft is OTL, but of course there the company reverted to its original name after 1920, and started cranking out ships for the Kingdom of Italy. On the whole, this was a very nice windfall for German naval planners. Should a round two of the Great War ever come about, this would put the British shipping lanes in the Eastern Mediterranean under serious threat - closing Otranto would not be impossible under the circumstances, but it would be a lot more complicated.

    (24) The demographics are mostly OTL, with some changes: OTL, the fascists did their best to expel or Italianise the Germans, and as many Slovenes and Croats as they could get away with. This does not happen ITTL, and the usual tactics of Germanisation are not possible, at least initially - the Germans are just too much of a minority here to make it work, and a different approach will be required. The wave of Italian immigration to Trieste happened OTL as a reaction to Yugoslavian repression, and I would imagine the scale is somewhat smaller ITTL - but given the attachment of Italian minority communities to the Cisleithanian half of the Empire, it's hopefully plausible for them to seek a place alongside their fellow Italians under German rule rather than being ruled by Croats and Hungarians.
    The Narodni Dom, unfortunately, burned in OTL. It is now a university, with a memorial in the main hall commemorating the Slovenian community. Fittingly, it teaches languages, interpreting and translating. OTL, the strike was triggered by the annexation of Trieste to Italy, which is not a factor ITTL - but the chaotic days of 1925 do seem like a good opportunity for the local fascists to exploit the confusion.
    The merger of Austriawerft and Cantiere Navale is OTL, and I see no reason why it would be butterflied away here. The latter company was way too small to survive even with the generous Italian naval procurement of the time, and as Germany takes the reins of shipbuilding in Trieste, the emphasis on rationalisation and increasing capacity will likely see a push for a merger anyway.

    (25) Trieste was a vibrant city under Austria, and the Anschluss if anything throws even more elements into the mix. There are considerable economic prizes in the city to be divvied up, and it's conveniently located to ameliorate one of the main disadvantages the German film industry suffers compared to Hollywood - their central location is not great for outdoor shootings. Much like movie companies did OTL, UFA decides to set up secondary studios, and a recently conquered city with great landscapes, warm summers, and a nice harbour where to conveniently park giant yachts seems like a logical choice. This only helps the popularity of the Noir genre, which already had strongly favourable conditions in Germany ITTL: the cartels, the economic empire in the Zollverein, the rapid professionalisation of the police and bureaucracy under the aegis of the modern state - all those factors come together into compelling stories of world-weary detectives in trench coats, coming face to face with the darker seams of German society.

    (26) In a way, Trieste comes to resemble Germany's satellites - like Bohemia - where a small but sizable German minority wields outsized influence and power. This makes it very different from the other non-majority-German territories of the Reich, and contributes to Trieste's feel as a "unique" city where the old world of Viennese coffee houses and aristocracy, the cosmopolitan seaside life, the sheer modernity of corporate business and drugs combine into a heady mix.

    (27) OTL, Furlan was forced to leave Trieste after its annexation to Italy, making his way into Yugoslavia. Given his considerable intellectual standing, his liberal outlook and his moderate but passionate political vocation, he's an obvious go-to for De Gasperi to contact. The Slovenian community in Trieste is now firmly on the path towards participation into a broad front of German minorities looking for political representation. It's important to keep in mind that Slovenia (ITTL known as Carniola) is fully incorporated into the German Empire at this point. This means that the Triestine Slovenes are not separated from their fellow Slovenes, and as such they are fully integrated in the Pan-Slovene People's Party. The Italian position, on the other hand, is considerably more complicated. The Italians in Trieste don't enjoy a similar connection to a wider national minority - they are geographically isolated from the Italians in Tyrol, and have been on a divergent trajectory for quite some time. The Irredentists get their wings clipped by the communist turn undertaken in mainland Italy, and while the loyalists are nostalgic for the good old Habsburg days, they have trouble redefining themselves in Germany. With anxiety over the growth of the Slovene population (and now the German one, too) and lukewarm feelings at best towards the Tyroler Volkspartei and De Gasperi, they don't have any obvious path into any wider coalition at this point.



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    DKW motorcycle rider Ilse Thouret in the paddock at the newly-built Nurburgring racecourse

    The Changing Face Of German Culture​

    Germany had enjoyed a prestigious standing among fellow European nations, in cultural terms, since well before its political unification. The decades leading up to the Great War – marked as they were by rapid industrialisation, tortured foreign policy, and the coexistence of old and new political ideas – placed Germany in a unique position: the tensions produced by the uneven development of global capitalism were heightened and intensified, as strong reactionary and reformist or revolutionary movements clashed to determine the future of the Reich.
    The tumultous events of the Great War and the following decade had a profound impact on intellectual circles. Powerful figures emerged on the right: Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, while fiercely criticised in academic circles, was met with considerable popular success. His pessimistic and deterministic views with a cycle of rising and falling civilisations did not entirely align with the mood of the German right wing – after all, the Reich had proved its mettle in the Great War – but as abortion rights, new sexual morals, and social democracy made strides all over Germany, conservative voices found in the book a voice for their anxiety over the seeming collapse of the old world. Arguing that mankind has no aim or course throughout history, and that rather history is the result of the interaction between different high cultures with a natural lifecycle that inevitably ends in their deaths, Spengler set out to outline the oncoming “winter” of Western civilisation and its symptoms, as well as the growing conflict between “blood” (meaning race feeling and military power) and money. (28)
    The philosopher Martin Heidegger would ascend to greater academic acclaim, if lesser popular success, in the second half of the 1920s, particularly with the publication of Being and Time in 1927 – in which he attempted to restart philosophical debate on ontology, that is the question of being, and how thinking beings analyse the concept of being. While apolitical on the surface, Heidegger came to play a prominent political role. Building on his personal experience as a soldier in the Great War, Heidegger was to enjoy with fruitful correspondence with right-wing and left-wing intellectuals alike, and as his work on Being and Time expanded, he toyed with the possibility of incorporating an analysis of historical communities, the being as part of a given historical generation, and the quest for a Bismarckian figure to embody the new German generation and lead the community into the future. Through his correspondence – particularly with conservatives Schmitt and Spengler, and left-winger Benjamin – he eventually became convinced that this quest was unnecessary, and focused instead on “generational dialogue” among different German political cultures, to engage them in the conversation on ontology. Historical communities did make something of a return in his writing, but as part of joint research projects with other right-wing and left-wing philosophers. His belief in the nefarious role of technology depriving humans of access to being and the self, and his subsequent passion for rural communities, was to leave him frustrated with both the right and the left – which equally embraced technology and modernity – but he would come to see the DFP as a sub-optimal remedy to this state of affairs, given its advocacy for local autonomy. Nevertheless, Heidegger never firmly committed to (or alienated) any one party, and alternatively orbited multiple parties. (29)
    Ernst Juenger quickly became an established and deeply influential name on the right as well: born from a rich industrialist family, he lived a rebellious life touring Europe and the world, socialising with influential people in many national capitals – while simultaneously playing a significant political role in Germany as co-founder of the DFP, alongside Richthofen. As a proud bearer of the Pour La Merité for his bravery in the Great War, Juenger never abandoned his unshakable belief that total war and the experience of mobilisation were the best antidote to liberalism and democracy. However, there was more to Juenger than stalwart militarism and conservatism – on the contrary, he proved to be incredibly eclectic: his high society contacts made him a well respected figure in foreign circles, his virulent opposition to liberal democracy made him beloved by reactionary conservatives, and his passion for the plight of workers and farmers won him the respect of the left, up to and including communists like Berthold Brecht. His contributions to the natural sciences, particularly ornithology and marine biology, quickly grabbed headlines and won him a spot in the impressive German scientific community. But it was his military credentials, and ability to narrate the spiritual ordeal of Great War soldiery to a mass audience through his books Storm and Steel and On Pain (in the latter, arguing that the ability to withstand pain was the measure of a man), that truly cemented his political legacy. His mark on the fledging DFP, the German liberty ideology, and the conservative revolution was simply indelible, and as such, he soon became a coveted prize for ambitious political schemers. The principal attempt at wooing Juenger and his following was to come from the NSDP, with the party leadership sending out feelers with an offer to stand in elections with them. Juenger vehemently refused, publicly denouncing the party for its anti-Semitism and dismissal of rural communities in a fiery letter to any newspapers who would publish his denunciation, both nationally and internationally. (30)
    More traditional conservative thought also had its prominent names, particularly Thomas Mann – a literary giant of pre-war international fame for works such as Death In Venice, the Hanseatic merchant family tale Buddenbrooks, and his novel The Magic Mountain. These contributions would eventually win him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1929, along with great international popularity for his witty quips and his thoughtful humanism. However, his adherence to monarchical conservatism remained a constant in the 1920s – already before the end of the Great War, he had begun work on an essay, Reflections Of A Non-Political Man, which was published in 1918. In the essay, Mann argued that the Great War was a confrontation between decadent, liberal Western democracy, and the unique German system of conservative, militarist monarchism. The seeming victory in the Great War validated his views, although the great cost in human and material terms tempered his view of war as a purifying experience. (31)
    However, the bright star of the increasing cultural movement associated with the DFP would prove to be Arthur Moeller van den Bruck. A German cultural historian, he had first become known for his mammooth eight-volume recounting of German cultural history, and upon the outbreak of hostilities, he joined the army and then the Foreign Ministry’s press office. During his service as part of the office, he began making his name in young conservative circles with his essay “The Prussian Style”, which presented Prussia (and Germany by extension) as a unique political entity in world history, characterised by its “will to the state”. In early 1918, he additionally published a book, The Right Of Young Nations, in which he emphasised Germany’s uniqueness as a latecomer to the arena of great power politics, promoting its interests and its grievances, and presenting Germany as the better, balanced alternative to western (and especially American) capitalism, and to the communism that seemed to be on the rise in Russia in the wake of the September Rising. A darling of the Hugenberg press and a founder of the German Gentlemen’s Club which furthered the networking opportunities of German conservative politicians, van den Bruck began tilting away from the traditional conservatives and more towards what he labeled the “true conservative revolution” of the DFP in the aftermath of the Treaty of Copenhagen. This slow drift became an irreparable break in 1923, when van den Bruck published an extremely controversial book, titled “The Third Reich”. In the book, van den Bruck points to the Holy Roman Empire as a spiritual model, an empire that is not just a political entity or a state in the modern sense, but an immanent entity that is home to all Germans – in other words, a Reich. And yet, the failure of the Holy Roman Empire had not been entirely vindicated by Bismarck’s creation, which left so many Germans outside the Reich, and was nevertheless beset by modernity, materialism, and party politics. The new Germany, the titular “Third Reich” would need to unite all German speakers in Europe under the guidance of a hero-figure, but this was only part of the picture – it would have to be an aesthetic, spiritual regime based on the aristocratic way of life and the sophisticated local autonomy and mutual obligations that characterised the Holy Roman Empire. Van den Bruck died by his own hand in 1925, following a long illness which severely damaged his mental health – but his legacy would remain, in the form of a small and extremely active “Third Reich movement” which continued developments on his ideals for a Holy Roman restoration, while cultivating ties to the DFP leadership. (32)

    But, as the new decade came to a close, intellectual momentum in the Reich also started building within the left: benefiting from the opennes and experimenting attitude of international leftist movements, as well as their success, German philosophers of a leftist persuasion quickly gathered in an influential political circle – the Frankfurt School – which enumerated such heavyweights as Theodore Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Loewenthal, and Juergen Habermas, among others. Together, they were to make the Institute For Social Research a groundbreaking and highly controversial academic institution. (33)
    The Institute’s initial groundbreaking work focused primarily on technology and violence. The traumatic experience of mass mobilisation and the Great War was to prove the starting point for a highly critical view of technological progress and the process of alienation in capitalist societies. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, in particular, would devote their intellectual firepower to the Paris of Baudelaire and Proust, and its tumultous period of change under Baron Haussmann – with a resulting analysis in how alienation occurs in modernity. This negative view of technology allowed for considerable overlap with some right wing philosophers, primarily Martin Heidegger, although Benjamin would also conduct a joint research programme that saw Benjamin and Schmitt explore the history of communalism and violence, with a particular eye to the brutal Russian Civil War. (34)
    In spite of these joint efforts, the School’s intellectuals ultimately remained very distinct. Walter Benjamin in particular fielded a unique contribution that mixed the great idealist German philosophical tradition with Marxist thinking and some elements of Jewish mysticism, although he remained sceptical of both the KPD and SPD, and was especially fearful of Trotskyite communism for its systematic politicisation and exploitation of art – if with a more moderate outlook towards the Muscovite variant. (35)
    Theodore Adorno was to prove the more well-connected of the two however, his pre-war correspondence with Gramsci greatly intensifying as Adorno took an interest in Italian communism – while maintaining critical positions on modernity and technology, which inevitably came to play a part as the Italian communist regime became increasingly absorbed by developmental government efforts. Becoming an enthusiastic student of Nietzsche and pursuing his pianist vocation, Adorno would become the public face of a very eclectic institute, and the go-to reference for any thinker dealing in alienation through technology and modernity. While the Institute remained far from a monopoly of left-wing thought, it became the nucleus of a well-established leftist academic circle in Germany, now fully able to participate in the intellectual quest to explain, and in the cultural battle for, the soul of the Reich. (36)


    The intellectual confrontation between left and right, however, soon moved on from the relatively isolated realm of academia and into popular culture – itself a sign of Germany’s aspirations towards the affluent, consumer lifestyle of a modern mass society. From the left’s point of view, this popular culture war represented the intellectualisation of the working class, and a foundational step in cementing the proletariat’s class consciousness. As Proletkult ran rampant in Moscow, and spread like wildfire to other countries, domestic and international organisations soon sprang up to support it. Internationally, the Kultintern was set up in 1925 to promote and foster Proletkult in other countries, with a particular eye to capitalist countries which had proven surprisingly receptive to proletarian culture – a list very much topped by Germany. Domestically, the Reich had even seen an early Proletkult organisation, called the League For Proletarian Culture (Bund für proletarische Kultur). Founded in 1920, it had gotten off to a sluggish start, until the treaty of Tsarskoye Selo and the emergence of Kultintern provided it with much needed funds and international contacts. In recognition of the great promise represented by the receptive and increasingly sophisticated German proletariat, Germans also occupied important positions on Kultintern’s International Bureau, with Karl Toman, Wilhelm Herzog and Max Barthel all gaining seats. (37)
    Under these auspices, Proletkult could truly shine in Germany, and it did so primarily through experimental theatre, where such names as Ernst Toller, Max Horkheimer, Reinhard Sorge, Leopold Jessner and Arnolt Bronnen experimented with expressionist plays. Ernst Toller’s plays on the plight of workers all over the world, and the horrors of the Great War, sought to shock audiences as well as educate them. Replacing a well-crafted set for a crude flat set against a black backdrop, and shining bright spotlights unto the seated audience itself during plays, Toller’s works such as Transfiguration brought home the utter mental and physical breakdown the author had suffered merely a year into his voluntary military service on the Western Front. Cementing his plays’ weirdness, scene cuts were not marked by the traditional theatrical curtain, but by blackouts of the glaring spotlights used during the scenes themselves. (38) Bertolt Brecht was to achieve even more national and international popularity, with a long series of similarly agitprop plays focused on offering a socialist critique of capitalism, and extolling the virtues of Soviet – particularly Muscovite – communism. As one example, his play The Measures Taken, which debuted in 1930, followed a group of Soviet agitators being congratulated by the Central Committee for completing a mission in Pessian Persia – but confess that they were forced to execute a young comrade whose fiery passion and disregard for order endangered the entire movement. The play being a retelling of these events, it’s concluded with the Central Committee passing on justice – reassuring the agitators that their actions were correct, and that the young comrade had, by taking matters into his own hands and endangerind the mission, committed the cardinal mistake of allowing personal interests to interfere with his revolutionary duties. While the play was widely praised in communist circles, some came to frown upon it as veiled criticism of Trotsky’s flair for independent action in the wake of the Siberian campaign. (39)
    Proletkult works often set out to provide the proletariat with pedagogical and educational tools: art was meant, not just to break down the conservative barriers of expression and style, but to equip the working class with the intellectual and moral tools it would need to clinch its rise to class consciousness. But theatre was not the only avenue for the dialectical tension between left and right to unfold. A similar role was occupied by cinema. Here, too, expressionism and agitprop were to play a part, with a close friend of Toller and Brecht, Karlheinz Martin, directing avant-garde movies with hand-drawn, distorted sets, and bizarre and heavily symbolic plots. But the panorama was a lot more diverse than that – with plenty of more money making the rounds.
    As the 1920s came to a close, the Tri-Ergon sound system had become so widespread that most major German theatrical releases featured sound. With the UFA cranking out daring and experimental productions that veered more and more into genre fiction, and the rival industry-sponsored DLG sticking to more traditional and conservative productions, the German film scene became as healthy as ever – with central studios in Berlin (and particularly UFA’s Babelsberg studio) increasingly developing their own economic gravity well. The secondary studios in Trieste further provided a fashionable location for glamour and gossip, and a number of smaller and independent producers – particularly in the environs of Berlin – rushed to try their hand at the new profitable business, with minor producers specialising in silent movies so as to attract foreign actors and directors, allowing their low-budget productions to punch above their weight – Danish actress Asta Nielsen quickly becoming a veritable star to German audiences. (40)
    Of course, in a way, everything had begun with Robert Wiene and Fritz Lang. The two heavyweights of German cinema at the beginning of the 1920s, they had respectively penned The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari and Metropolis – the two movies that catapulted cinema to the attention of a true mass audience. The former, the story of a hypnotist conditioning a sleepwalker into a murderous rampage, became the face of expressionism in German cinema, with its over-the-top costumes, distorted geometrical set, and incredibly dark ambience. While the Vienna-born filmmaker Fritz Lang was originally sympathetic to this style, he gradually shifted towards Universalist notions – alongside his wife Thea von Harbou – embracing the overtones of Proletkunst cinema while emphasising class peace as an alternative to class strife. (41)
    Both movies tapped into the growing German fixation on crime – a consequence of the public debate on eugenics, the troubled return to peace of a generation that had been socialised in the trenches of the Great War, and the fledging networks of international crime that wound their way into Germany across the Mediterranean and the newly minted eastern member states of the Zollverein. Both movies would prove seminal to the future development of new and beloved genres in German storytelling: Metropolis paved the way for science fiction and, more generally, interrogations about the future, while The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari became the precursor to German horror movies – which primarily dealt with the psyche, uncontrollable compulsions, and violent crime. While Wiene would dabble in a variety of genres after his big 1920 breakout, the largest movie he worked on ended up being I.N.R.I., an epic religious feature in which Judas acted the anachronistic part of the social revolutionary, pushing Jesus to take up the mantle as leader of an anti-Roman insurrection army, only to betray him to the Romans out of disillusionment after Jesus’ refusal. With the film openly adopting the Russian civil war (which was still raging when the movie was released in 1923), the movie enflamed German public opinion, and was more often shown with the Judas scenes censored than not. Not content with bringing German science fiction to the big screen, Fritz Lang did the same with fantasy – with his two part movie Die Nibelungen achieving great international success. However, it was to be the movie he devoted his energies to for the remainder of the decade, to eventually come to be regarded as his highest contribution. M – A City Searches for a Murderer came out in 1931 as the most mature example of a German noir movie. Set against the dark, cold, rainy backdrop of the cosmopolitan and seedy Trieste, the movie follows the horrifying exploits of a serial killer whose victims are only children – and the resulting manhunt for said killer, conducted simultaneously by world-weary, greatcoat-sporting German detectives, and the international criminal empire of White Russian emigres and Sicilian smugglers, whose cooperation only came at a price. The movie ended with the serial killer being caught and tried, but the mothers of the victims warning the attendants – and the audience – to watch over their children more closely. (42)
    As these famous productions took up the spotlight, smaller endeavours that were more closely connected to the ongoing political confrontation in the Reich operated in their shadows. The liberal atmosphere of the 1920s, and the city of Berlin in particular, was reflected by the growing influence of cabaret, documentaries such as Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (1927). The left, however, was far from the only force operating in German cinema, with New Objectivity providing material for the middle classes with the gritty, hyper-realistic “asphalt movies” dealing with topics ranging from the antisemitism in the old Russian Empire and prewar France to the reality of prostitution. The right also employed its considerable access to funds and political connections to churn out edifying, safely nationalist movies. Those were usually the so-called Bergfilmen, depicting lone German mountaineers climbing, purifying their souls and bodies through contact with nature, and battling against the elements – a genre which was to launch the career of Leni Riefenstahl. However, taking their cue from the incredible popularity of Eisenstein’s revolutionary epics, the right wing was also to focus expanded energies and funds on the development of historical period-dramas aimed at furthering fierce nationalist pride. While less politically controversial period-dramas, focused on topics like the French Revolution and the life of Anne Boleyn, also enjoyed great success, the largest hit of the time proved to be a Prussian patriotic period drama starring Otto Gebühr in the role of Frederick the Great.
    The deep relationship between this less starry, but equally contentious section of German film industry and German political culture was best exemplified by the role of women in these productions. Phenomenal careers were launched from this dialectical tension – such as that of actress Marlene Dietrich and that of filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl – but the imagery was the truly powerful coded message of any given movie. Conservative films showed women embracing traditional roles as nurturers and bedrocks of the home and family, wearing modest clothing and conducting primarily chaste interactions with the remainder of the cast. Asphalt movies showed women as operators who needed to survive in the harsh reality of the modern world, resorting to all means from those deemed legitimate to the extremes such as prostitution. Cabarets and left-leaning movies displayed confident, assertive women wearing boots, leather jackets, and scanty clothing, mixing sexual femininity with quasi-military iconographies of power, and period dramas showed women as historical political actors (like in the case of Anne Boleyn) or even outright soldiers (as in the case of Russian Civil War movies).
    Ultimately, the German film industry at the end of the decade represented more than the country’s aspirations to a glamorous life of affluence. To conservatives, it represented the new possibilities for defence of the old order opened up by mass media, and to the left, it promised to be the ultimate avenue for the education and mobilisation of the working class. Irrespective of these divisions, however, the industry made money hand over fist as it roared out of the 1920s, and could look to the coming decade with hope and ambition about what would become technically and commercially possible. (43)

    As Germany aspired to the status of a true mass consumer society, it found entertainment in places further afield than theatre or cinema. Some of these entertainment forms were traditional, like hunting and dancing, while others were newer products of a changing media landscape, like paperback novels. Perhaps no form of entertainment came to represent the new, “modern” German of the 1930s than national and international sporting competitions, however. Lovers of the outdoors and all manner of competition, from professional to gentlemanly and amateur, the Germans had been avid consumers and practitioners of sports even before the Great War, and the trend was only to intensify when the Copenhagen Conference put an end to the fighting – with domestic and international political battles, debates on eugenics and physical health, and class conflict finding in sport a peaceful vehicle of expression. Football, already a nationally renowned game in Germany at the turn of the century, rapidly became part and parcel of German sports life, with the number of registered players multiplying tenfold to surpass a million in 1929. (44)
    German football was not very organised, however. Reflecting the great regional diversity of the Reich and the appreciation of amateur sportsmanship, attempts to professionalise football made only limited inroads in the 1920s, with regional team associations and informal leagues remaining the (literal) name of the game for much of the decade – although the prewar practice of the best teams competing for the Viktoria, a national championship trophy modelled on the Roman goddess Victoria, returned following the end of the Great War. This national trophy, combined with examples from abroad, favourable economic conditions, booming audiences, the large number of teams following the country’s expansion, and the decline of gentlemanly ideals of competition led to the consolidation of German football as the 1930s dawned. Initially, regional clubs offered ferocious opposition to this consolidation, fighting a seemingly successful rearguard action in defence of their autonomy. A sudden change of heart from the regulatory body, however, overturned this opposition virtually overnight, and plans for consolidation went ahead under intense media coverage. The newly inaugurated Reichsliga held its opening season in 1932, quickly building a reputation as one of the most hotly contested football leagues worldwide. (45)
    The aforementioned decline of gentlemanly ideals reflected the way in which sports became a vehicle for politics in postwar Germany. Even before the war, sports in Germany had seen a growing reflection of class conflict within the country, with gymnastic, football, and rugby clubs firmly aristocratic in outlook and shutting out middle and working class membership whenever possible. This had led to the creation of the Arbeiter-Turn- und Sportbund (Workers’ Gymnastics and Sports Federation) in 1893, forming alternative clubs and even breakaway championships meant for working class athletes and audiences. Mixing a heavy brew of socialism and “modern” all-German nationalism, the ATSB failed to challenge the popularity of traditional clubs, but it did provide an avenue for the professionalisation of sports, which was to accelerate the demise of amateur clubs. When regional vetoes were finally overturned and the Reichsliga came into being, the ATSB would merge its breakaway championship with the newly formed league – its clubs being admitted in the league to compete against their bourgeois rivals. (46)
    Unlike in football, Germany was a relatively late adopter to ice hockey, only joining the International Ice Hockey Federation (based in Paris) in 1909. The federation’s birthing pains, which led to constantly shifting regulatory set ups and conferences marked by politicking, came to an end after the Great War, with a firmly established European championship and a world championship for Germany to compete in. Even with the Anschluss providing a larger player base, Germany didn’t make much of an impression on ice hockey, with the Canadians usually dominating international competitions, the United States close in second. European championships were more contested, with Sweden, Switzerland, France, Bohemia – and, eventually, Soviet Russia – as heavyweights. Whenever their team was outperformed, Germans could find a measure of consolation in Bohemia’s success, the country often becoming a plan-B-choice for German fans, given the ethnic Germans from the Sudetenland playing in the Bohemian team – the close alliance between the two countries didn’t hurt, either. Karel Hartman, one such Bohemian player, quickly became a household name all across the Reich. (47)
    Rugby had pretty much the opposite trajectory in German collective consciousness, as a game whose spread in Germany had begun two decades before the country was even united. In the postwar world, therefore, rugby enjoyed a long tradition in Germany, as well as a regulatory independence acquired before the war, when regional rugby associations split from their football counterparts. This healthy environment hadn’t translated in mass audiences before the war, but over the 1920s rugby in Germany saw a steady and seemingly unstoppable increase in popularity, especially as its newly formed international team started claiming win after win against opponents like France. The cities of Heidelberg, Hanover, and Frankfurt further established themselves as the premier centres for rugby activity in Germany, helped along by their small but active cohort of expat Anglo-Saxon students. This steady rise in popularity failed to translate in the establishment of a national championship on the model of football’s Reichsliga, but the annual rugby event of national importance for Germany remained the ultimate fight between regional clubs, divided along geographical lines – in a North vs South match that sublimated the country’s confessional and regional divides on the playing field. (48)
    In the late 19th and early 20th century, Germany had also played an instrumental role in the birth, codification, and internationalisation of modern handball – together with Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Not even the war managed to halt this development, with the modern rulebook for the game published in Berlin on 29th October 1917 – henceforth a date marked as the day of birth of modern handball. In the postwar years, Germany and its northern neighbours were to fully reap the prestige of having brought new life into the game, with international matches involving all four and early-adopting opponents, for both men and women, becoming a common occurrence by the mid-1920s. The crowning of this development was to be handball’s inclusion in the Olympics, as well as by the increased popularity of the indoors – as opposed to field – variant of the game as the decade came to a close. (49)
    A sport with a small but dedicated following before the Great War, boxing was to see a rapid rise in popularity in Germany, as a nascent star drew up the spotlight on himself. Max Schmeling, a Prussian born in 1905, had fallen in love with boxing when his father had brought him to see a film displaying the fight in which two boxing stars, Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier, contested the world heavyweight title. Deciding to imitate his idol Dempsey, Schmeling set himself upon a path that would lead him through amateur, then professional boxing, and to a slew of national championships, as well as a string of victories against famous European boxers. Upon winning the European title, to much celebration from boxing fans in Germany, Schmeling left the Reich and departed for the United States – where boxing was considerably more popular, the circuit was considerably less provincial, and paychecks were on a wholly different scale. An unknown quantity to the American boxing world, which tended to look down upon European players, Schmeling ascended to international fame in 1929 by defeating the aging, but nevertheless fearsome star Johnny Risko at Madison Square Garden, in front of an incredulous audience which eventually burst in roaring applause. Following their new unexpected national hero, Germans began to discover and appreciate boxing more than ever before, and wondered what was next for Schmeling as the new decade dawned. (50)
    Mixing the traditional German passion for the outdoors and sporting competitions, with the technical complexity and consumer appeal of sophisticated and fast racing cars, motorsports became a national fever in Germany during the 1920s, although Germans were to be in good company in this respect, as Europe as a whole and the United States participated in the growing enthusiasm for racing cars. Much to the delight of the enthusiastic German audience, the Reich was to play a large role in the newly minted European championship of so-called Grand Epreuves which finally took root in 1930 – being the only country to field two tracks, the legendary Nurburgring and the fan-favourite Spa Francorchamps, which was located in former Belgian territory. (51)
    Germany also contributed more teams than any other country, with BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and (starting in 1932) Auto Union fielding fast, powerful, and reliable cars which immediately contested wins and titles with their French Bugatti rivals, although Italy and Britain would also field impressive national teams. All three manufacturers had their distinct identities. Based respectively in Würtemberg and Chemnitz, Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union leaned more on an all-German identity, with Auto Union in particular(a merger of four smaller manufacturers Wanderer, DKW, Audi, and Horch) being innovative in their use of motorsport as a flagship, prestige campaign for their firm as a whole. The Auto Union Rennabteilung, as their racing team was known, soon developed a fearsome reputation. While still convincingly German, BMW was unapologetic about its Bavarian identity, and received a degree of official support from the Bavarian Kingdom, as it sought to race its own international profile. (52)
    True stardom was not on hand for racing teams alone – it was there for drivers as well, who soon attained cult status across all countries which followed motorsport. As motorsport became part and parcel of popular culture, Germany did not lack for heroes to cheer on: Hermann Lang, Bernd Rosemeyer and Rudolf Caracciola, widely recognised as two of the most talented drivers of their generation, became household names in the Reich, and came to embody the aspirations of a whole generation of Germans. As individual, daring risk-takers from middle class (or lower, in the case of Lang) backgrounds who mastered technological beasts and brought sporting glory to their country, they personified the promise that the Germany of the future would need ambitious, hard-working people with technical background to shine, regardless of their family backgrounds. Here was an arena where the stranglehold of the nobility on prestigious appointments held no sway, and only results mattered.(53)
    Motorsport also opened the door to rather unconventional heroes, as Germany was to find out when two controversial figures made their way to national and international popularity. They had one thing in common – they were both women. The first, Clärenore Stinnes, was the daughter of industrial magnate Hugo Stinnes, and across the early 1920s she had stomped across Europe from the Atlantic to the Vistula and from Sweden (home to her husband, photographer and cinematographer Carl-Axel Söderström) to Socialist Italy, grabbing race cars by the scruff of the neck and collecting trophy after trophy. Come 1927, she ranked among the most successful racing drivers in the world, and decided to embark upon a truly epic journey – attempting to be the first person to circumvent the world via automobile. Together with her husband and a crew of mechanics, Stinnes made her way down the length of the Zollverein, then into Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire, driving north through Don lands and into Moscow. The outbreak of war in Siberia was to force a major deviation from the planned route – which involved driving over a frozen Lake Baikal for good measure – as Stinnes turned southward into China. A series of ferries brought her to the Japanese Home Islands, then Hawaii and South America. Driving through the Andes into Argentina, and then north until reaching Vancouver, the couple journeyed across the entirety of South and North America, with a reception by President McAdoo in the American capital. The final leg of the journey saw the crew disembark from a Transatlantic ferry at Le Havre, and drive the remaining way back to the Reich. Stinnes’ exploit won her immense popularity in Germany just as the European Championship was taking off in its inaugural season – and it was thus no surprise when the Frankfurt-based manufacturer of the car, Adler, decided to enter the European Championship with an underfunded but technically creative operation, and offered Stinnes a seat. (54)
    Another woman who made a reputation for herself as an indomitable racer was Ilse Thouret. A motorcycle racer who overcame a ban on women competing in motorbike competitions, she went from victory to victory in the 1920s racing for DKW (a part of Auto Union), additionally serving as an advertiser to fuel, oil, tyres, and other related products. Born in Hamburg to a wealthy Franco-German Protestant family, Thouret impressed wherever she went: she was at ease in the ballrooms of high society, where she had a reputation as a talented conversationalist in multiple languages and across a variety of fields. But she was equally at ease trackside, wearing leather gear when riding and driving, and more than once changing into a mechanic’s coveralls to get her hands dirty fixing or tuning her bike or car. Soon, DKW was to offer her full factory support, turning her into a lead rider for the manufacturer’s efforts in motorbike racing. Thouret’s stellar popularity in Germany would eventually see the addition of car racing to her motorcycling portfolio, with a full-time seat with Auto Union in the European Championship in the 1930s. (55)


    Footnotes:

    (28) The first volume of Decline Of The West was written during the Great War, and only finished in 1917, so it’s unaffected by the butterflies. The second volume (Perspectives of World-History) is more heavily affected by international events, as it was written between 1917 and 1922, but the general patterns remain similar: heightened tensions and conflicts the world over ultimately reinforce Spengler’s view that military might is dismantling the market- and export- centered world that came before the Great War, and still identifies Caesarism (the emergence of strong leadership) as a symptom that mankind is in its “winter” season. It’s important to note that the book has less success than OTL, due to the lack of a Versailles Treaty – but enough Germans are sufficiently anxious about the future that the book resonates anyway.

    (29) Sorry if this got a bit dense at times, Heidegger’s philosophy is incredibly hard to parse. The important takeaway when comparing to OTL is that the lack of the shock of the German defeat alters Heidegger’s thinking on a number of important points. While he is still focused on being, there is less emphasis on the role of a being in its own generation – because Germany, for all its transformations, is not living through the same kind of systemic shock it underwent in OTL. There is also no quest for a saviour or hero figure (which OTL Heidegger identified in Hitler, at least briefly) to embody the national spirit and act as the being revealing itself in history. While he is no stranger to cultural anxiety, Heidegger ITTL is not so apocalyptic or focused on the Volksgemeinschaft/racial community as he was IOTL. Instead, Heidegger focuses more purely on ontology, and seeks to restart a new German philosophical tradition on the matter, with contributions from different parts of the spectrum: in the much more relaxed climate of Germany ITTL, he is not such a militant anti-communist as he ended up being in OTL, and this is true for other ring wing philosophers as well. It’s also important to note that, as a philosopher dealing with being, the question of apocalyptic identity-quest of OTL is somewhat replaced by a calmer pursuit for the meaning of “German-ness” in the ITTL context of multicultural Germany. This is in part what drives Heidegger to further dialogue across the aisle with a multitude of colleagues. The correspondence is OTL, even with the intense culture war of Weimar – therefore, it is expanded ITTL. As for his party relations, Heidegger’s enthusiasm for the Third Reich ITTL was tempered when it became obvious that they fully embraced violence, technology, and technology as a means to violence. Given his very specific beliefs, he is condemned to frustration no matter what – but he has a wider selection of parties to choose from ITTL. The statement on the “inner truth and greatness of National Socialism” which caused such debate in philosophical circles (and which continues to this day) might well apply to how Heidegger sees the DFP ITTL: an imperfect movement corrupted by technology, that nevertheless holds a kernel of truth and purity that makes it worthy of at least partial support.

    (30) Ernst Juenger’s life is the least affected by butterflies so far, although this is destined to change significantly, given how very specific OTL circumstances completely reshaped his life and political involvement OTL. His stature as a conservative figure and German literary giant cannot be overestimated, and in the less acrimonious context of ITTL, he’s in for a good time of intellectual correspondence and productivity. His refusal to endorse the NSPD is based on the OTL repeated attempts by the Nazi party to court him, which he always rejected, to the point of assisting Jewish refugees during the war when in his power, and intimating the Voelkischer Beobachter to never dare publish his works again.

    (31) OTL, Thomas Mann had the same views, but the German defeat fundamentally undermined them. Moreover, when Weimar emerged, he gave a very peculiar interpretation of the Republic based on his literary experience, which meant he became a rather unusual supporter for somewhat atypical reasons – and motivated other German intellectuals to do the same. In time, exposure turned him more and more into a Social Democrat, and into the firm enemy of Nazism we know him for OTL. ITTL, as the 1920s come to a close, Mann has not had exposure to Weimar, obviously, and neither to German defeat, which means his earlier views are unchallenged – although the Great War proved a sobering experience for him as well.

    (32) Hard as it is to believe, this is 90% OTL. The primary difference is that OTL, van den Bruck had little to no political interlocutor for his aesthetic-spiritual Third Reich ideal, and mostly had to content himself with criticising (and occasionally giving credit to) the fledging Nazi party, until his suicide in 1925. Here, the natural fit between him and the DFP gives him a huge popularity boost, and establishes the Third Reich movement as a small circle of academics interested in the German liberty ideology, and with the right party connections. It’s significant to mention that ITTL, van den Bruck gets to witness the Anschluss of Austria – which overjoys him, but is not sufficient to sway him off his path: political unity was always secondary to the spiritual and eternal Germany he had in mind. His book “The Third Reich” therefore, while celebrating unity with Austria, would caution that this is only a superficial achievement – the more important one being to refound Germany, as only thus it can become a spiritual home to all Germans.

    (33) This is a largely OTL overview, with some important differences in context. The right wing thinkers we have seen thus far are nothing to sneeze at – their legacy remains large even IOTL, where our Second World War placed many of their works firmly outside the boundaries of respectable politics and philosophy – but the tidal wave of modernity and the emergence of social studies means that the rise of influential left-wing intellectuals is really hard to butterfly away. However, the context is considerably changed, primarily due to the different Russian Revolution and later Civil War. OTL, the feeling that the revolution had been betrayed, the dystopian turn rapidly taken by the USSR, and the CPSU’s determination to stifle any and all “unorthodoxy” which deviated from party doctrine, were profoundly influential to the establishment of the Frankfurt School. Without such reasons for pessimism, ITTL their philosophy is a lot more optimistic about epistemiology and debates, and while the general mood is still anti-capitalist, some of its illustrious members maintain their bourgeois lifestyles – as you will see in short order.

    (34) Of course, both Adorno and Benjamin actually worked on these topics IOTL as well. The primary change is that their outlook is less bleak than it was at a time of rising anti-semitism and economic convulsions, which was the case IOTL. This also means they are more open to collaboration with right wing philosophers, especially since those in turn are less driven by anti-communism. It’s important to note that the Schmitt-Benjamin dialogue happened OTL as well, and is only expanded ITTL. Schmitt makes his first appearance here, rather than in the right wing section, because his corpus is arguably the one more catastrophically affected by the butterflies. Without the “Versailles diktat” he doesn’t have the same focus on the change to the nature of war from a gentlemanly struggle that ended in negotiated peace terms to a war of annihilation of opposing political systems in which the victor becomes the arbiter of what is right and wrong (a position that was only reinforced after WW2 OTL, and saw him permanently excluded from respectability and banned from teaching, as he refused to denazify). ITTL, the Treaty of Copenhagen is exactly the sort of negotiated peace conference Schmitt would cite as in continuity with a better past, and he is left to focus on research avenues where he has considerable overlap with the Frankfurt School – primarily communalism and violence.

    (35) Butterflies hit Walter Benjamin straight in the face. Firstly, his view is somewhat less eclectic than OTL, where he ended up mixing German idealism, Jewish mysticism, and Marxism. Here, the second of those three components is reduced – he embraced the kabbalah and mysticism OTL as a response to the rise of National Socialism. Secondly, his OTL view that Soviet communism was a mortal threat because it politicised art is partially reduced by the fact that the Muscovite governing clique is much less interventionist when it comes to artistic expression – but it fully applies to Trotsky, whom Benjamin fears and repeatedly warns against. OTL, he paired this with a mirrored analysis of fascism, which according to him did precisely the opposite – turned politics into an exercise in aesthetics. Sidonist integralism, while a powerful ideology in its own right, does not have quite the same visual impact.

    (36) Both Adorno and Benjamin came from wealthy, bourgeois families. They were Marxist in the sense that they believed that history had to provide some kind of redemption through violence, or that a "divine violence" would shatter all suffering and prevent its return – a break in the dialectical dynamic of history. Even OTL, their reaction to more practical problems like the question of land reform would have been less than orthodox from a Marxist perspective. ITTL, they are not shocked out of their wealthy backgrounds and into horrified pessimism as they were OTL, which means they continue developing the pursuits they grew up with in their backgrounds – music, literature, and the philosophy of aesthetics. Adorno’s correspondence with Gramsci is OTL, and expanded here as Gramsci becomes an obvious person of interest – although it’s really impossible for Adorno to get behind any one regime squarely. It’s important to note that a lot of Adorno’s (and the School’s) legacy OTL came from the experience of Auschwitz as the end point of modernity. We are still in the 1920s, with Adorno embracing Nietzsche and setting forth a much more traditional “modernity thesis” rooted in a more recognisably German philosophy of history. How this changes in the 1930s and 40s of ITTL is something we will have to find out ourselves.

    (37) In OTL interwar Germany, proletarian art enjoyed success in spite of the movement’s early suppression in the USSR, with Kultintern mostly existing on paper, and essentially unable to actually accomplish the tasks it was set up for. ITTL, Proletkult is left to flourish in Russia, and as a result it is that much livelier in Germany. While the authors involved are the same and the productions similar, their impact is larger, and their institutional support stronger – not from the government, but in terms of their ability to organise themselves. IOTL, for example, the League For Proletarian Culture collapsed a mere year after its establishment, due to the sudden turn against Proletkult in Russia. ITTL, Russian support is not immediately forthcoming due to the longer Civil War, so the organisation survives – if barely – until after the treaty of Tsarskoye Selo, where more efforts are devoted to spreading Proletkult internationally. German Kultintern board membership is all OTL, with the difference that Toman represented Austria IOTL.

    (38) The artists involved are all OTL – most of them from Germany, but some are from OTL Austria, and obviously find themselves operating within the Reich at this point in time ITTL. Experimental theatre was not without its critics, even among the left, as its “pedagogic” mission was sometimes criticised as bourgeois in disguise. While Dadaists have by and large been absorbed in the wider Proletkunst wave ITTL, as detailed in previous updates, they still remain critical of the more “indoctrinational” impulses of their fellow artists. ITTL, the increased success of Proletkult goes beyond more plays being written and produced, or more households making it a habit to attend Proletkult theatre on a free evening – or sometimes, during a factory shift, out in the streets, or in many other unusual locations targeted by agitprop playwrights. Toller’s section is very close to OTL, except that increased funding grants him access to wider audiences – but it’s good to get an idea of what Proletkult theatre looks like in practice.

    (39) The OTL version of the play has the four workers returning from a mission to China. ITTL, China in 1930 is not the warlord-riven mess it was OTL, and especially its northern border is nowhere near as porous. On the other hand, Persia/Iran is close, in flux, and an interesting hunting ground for volunteers and spies to enact their ideological struggles on the ground. This also gives more resonance to the play compared to OTL, because ordinary Germans follow news about the Middle East somewhat more assiduously than they do China at this point ITTL. Another crucial difference is that, while OTL the four workers were also absolved – with the Central Committee commenting that this went to show what a wide gulf communism needed to cross so it could change the world – ITTL, the more communal leadership style of left wing ideologies makes the young comrade’s individual initiative even less orthodox, a strong-headed individualist mentality that sought to hijack the mission through pure, but ultimately misguided intentions combined with personal charisma. The reception to the play is greatly favourable, but it helps to highlight a rift in communist political thinking that is inevitably linked to the rising star of Trotsky, and the disquiet about his exploits in some circles.

    (40) Most of this background information is detailed in the timeline’s Update 25 – Society In Flux. OTL, German films were very late to adopt sound, which provided a nice haven for foreign directors and artists who wanted to work with the lucrative and vibrant world of German cinema. ITTL, with no loss of patents in 1919 and a much stronger German economic situation, Tri-Ergon tech is adopted from the get go, and by the time we get to 1930, the true blockbuster theatrical releases in Germany all feature sound. However, a niche market remains for high-brow silent films, which make use of the lack of a language barrier to attract non-German speaking personalities.

    (41) For a better description of how Metropolis differs from OTL, see Update 25 – Society in Flux. As for Cabinet, Wiene did dabble in horror again, but his major focus was on dramas – both OTL and ITTL. The horror genre therefore takes a lot of inspiration from the movie, but goes on largely without Wiene himself. OTL, the economic dislocation of the Great Depression was one of many factors pushing the German film industry to make for the United States. Right now, prospects are rosy, and while still very young, horror looks set to become a staple of the German film diet – alongside other genres. German horror movies are less about the supernatural and more about the pressures and grinding gears of modern society driving people insane and/or to violent crimes and psychotic breaks.

    (42) Both movies exist OTL, but look different ITTL. For a start, I.N.R.I. is altered by the fact that the Russian Civil War is still ongoing, with far greater horrors. This ultimately makes the movie grimmer and more depressing, and the figure of Judas even more sympathetic than in the OTL film. There is further an element of religious controversy far beyond the scope of OTL, because the Christian world is a lot more interested in its relationship with revolutionary movements – therefore the film is seen as blasphemous and intolerable by some, and as a cult by others, and fiercely censored by authorities wherever they get a chance to get away with it.
    M was set in a nondescript German city OTL, but ITTL the evocative power of Trieste as a den of crime, plus UFA’s extensive outdoor shooting in its environs, convinces Fritz Lang to adopt it as the setting. This cements the city’s role as the backdrop par excellence for German noir stories.

    (43) There are a lot of similarities to OTL, so it’s useful to summarise what the greater divergences are. The early adoption of sound and the greater funding available means that German productions are a lot more technically impressive than they were OTL (which is saying something) and makes Berlin/Trieste a true peer of Hollywood in terms of international audiences and blockbuster appeal. It also means that productions are more daring, as they are less constrained by financial restrictions, with an early expansion into genre fiction that will make German cinema look increasingly divergent from its OTL counterpart. Finally, the impact of Eisenstein’s large epic is that period dramas and multi-part historical movies take root in European and German filmmaking in a way they simply never did IOTL. You can expect ambitious filmmakers with access to funds to try and replicate Eisenstein’s success – which will make themed historical movie nights in the future of TTL world very interesting and extremely long-winded affairs!

    (44)In OTL, this number was reached in 1932. Here, with an extra year of war (but smaller concentration of casualties) the manpower pool might actually be slightly smaller to begin with, but Germany is considerably larger than it was IOTL, especially after the Anschluss – so the one million milestone is surpassed ahead of schedule.

    (45) Close to OTL. Here, two things balance out to ultimately produce a different outcome. On the one hand, regional organisations are actually stronger, given that the Empire is a more decentralised structure still clinging to local identities in a way Weimar did not. On the other, the economic context, extremely large cohort of clubs (given the much larger territorial extent of the country) and the increased cultural fervor create an additional motivation to finally professionalise football. IOTL, the creation of a Reichsliga was vetoed by regional associations – but then the German Football Association had an overnight change of heart, and decided to ignore the vetoes and consolidate competition into a league anyway. The Nazi seizure of power scuppered the plan just as it was beginning to set out. Here, the proposal comes somewhat earlier than OTL, and the consolidation is pushed through just as the new decade dawns.

    (46) Hey, it’s early 20th Century Germany we’re talking about, so of course everything has to be insanely politicised. The ATSB was an OTL organisation, forcibly incorporated during the “coordination” policy of the Third Reich which replaced these associations with singular party structures. The ATSB joining the new Reichsliga might seem too generous on my part, but do consider that the merging does not mean the working class football identity gets diluted – on the other hand, it is strengthened. The parallel championship was always on rocky footing as the “bourgeois” teams were simply more popular and had a lot more media coverage. Now, teams from all social extractions are going to square off against each other in the same league. That should make for some… exciting coverage in the future.

    (47) Karel Hartman really was a famous ethnic German player IOTL – for the Czechoslovak team, of course. The German relationship with ice hockey OTL was brutally cut short when the Federation decided it was a great idea to expel Germany from the game following the Treaty of Versailles. That’s never the case ITTL, and given the larger playerbase Germany can count on, the team is likely a bit stronger than OTL – but it’s hard to see them becoming an unstoppable juggernaut.

    (48) Anglo-Saxon students introduced rugby to German cities as early as 1850, and the sport had a long tradition and a small, but dedicated fanbase before the Great War. Of course, after the war, the butterflies start flapping. Rugby IOTL saw steady and promising growth in interwar Germany, but following the Second World War the sport’s popularity collapsed, and never completely recovered to pre WW2 levels. The rise is following a similar trajectory ITTL, but some developments come about earlier – for instance, Germany only created a national team in 1927 OTL, and does so years ahead of schedule ITTL due to its considerably improved domestic, international, and economic context. Just like IOTL, there is no immediate prospect for a national championship, and the sport remains heavily tied to regional identities.

    (49) This happened OTL as well, although Germany’s status as a pariah nation somewhat delayed the full international adoption of modern handball rules, and it took until 1928 for the formation of an international federation. Under northern European auspices, the game has a quicker rise to popularity (and regulatory codification) ITTL than it did IOTL.

    (50) Of all the events mentioned in this section, the career of Schmeling is the one to track more closely against OTL, as it’s an upward trajectory relatively independent of butterflies. It’s still worth including, not just for its obvious cultural significance, but because it represents a crucial empirical example of how even in this timeline, for all that is going well for it, Germany’s uneven economic development makes the option of seeking fortune elsewhere attractive – particularly so in those sections of entertainment that remain much livelier in America than they do in the old world. Schmeling OTL became a symbol for German-American relations in the 1930s, and he lived an extremely long life that saw him involved with the country’s turbulent history – his name will definitely be one to check out ITTL for similar, and yet different effects.

    (51) Motorsport is my jam, and something I intend to cover from a more international perspective in the future – but it’s also an incredibly significant phenomenon for Germany ITTL, as it was IOTL. The European Championship you see mentioned here is a product of ITTL butterflies – but details are best left to future coverage. Other motorsport fans in the audience will immediately notice other butterflies related to Germany: with its Copenhagen Treaty borders, the country is more awash with human and technical potential than it was even OTL. Hell, Spa counting as a German, rather than Belgian circuit would already count as an “OMG” butterfly to most motorsport fans, given the legendary nature of the circuit. Do note that, with regulations preventing two races from holding the same geographical denomination, ITTL the Nurburgring is still home to the German Grand Prix. Spa goes a number of sad “creative” naming solutions which never really stick and most people tend to forget about, such as “Grand Prix of the Frontiers” or “Trophy Of The German Reich”. Ultimately people just call the race “Spa” and call it a day.

    (52) Mostly as OTL, although BMW enters racing – both in cars and in motorcycles – much earlier than they did OTL. During the interwar years, BMW was already a dominant force in motorcycle racing, but their car production only began in 1928, and various economic and political factors pressured BMW into not pursuing car racing until well after WW2. Here, the more favourable situation, the patronage of the Bavarian state, and the simplified technical rules for the European Championship, means that BMW is willing to throw their hat in the ring in the early 1930s. It is arguable whether Auto Union would form without a Great Depression, but my money is on yes: the corporate consolidation that made it possible had already began three years before the OTL Great Depression, and given the German insistence on Fordism and rationalisation ITTL, it’s a reasonably safe bet that a streamlining would take place.

    (53) As per OTL. This trio was immensely talented, and got involved with cars and motorcycles – tinkering them, driving them etc – in contexts effectively under the radar of the butterflies, with the significant exception that better economic conditions will make it somewhat easier for them to go through the initial stages of their racing career, before fame and the popularity that went with it. Their exploits are still known to motorsport fans today, and that’s quite rare for most pre WW2 motorsport feats. Together with the Italian Tazio Nuvolari, Rudolf Caracciola in particular is still frequently mentioned today OTL when discussing the most talented racing drivers of all time.

    (54) Stinnes’ record of race wins in the 1920s, and her journey around the world driving an Adler 6, are all OTL. The journey here ignores Siberia to avoid the fighting there, and her reception in America is with McAdoo, not Hoover, but otherwise goes as OTL. The Adler company never raced OTL, so this is entirely speculative on my part – but I can see how, awash with the popularity of such an enterprise just when a motorsport series with a simpler entry bar is launched, might convince Adler to give racing a go. Stinnes is, of course, a natural choice for the seat. At this point, I should add that the near-total preponderance of men in motorsport IOTL was actually challenged more often before WW2 than it has been in the postwar years. Given that this update has focused on the rapid evolution of German political culture, the emergence of new social forces, and the effect of butterflies on gender relations, focusing on real-world examples of women who made their name in motorsport seemed more thematically relevant to me than providing the Nth rundown of Rudolf Caracciola’s life.

    (55) Again, the most implausible details of Thourer’s life are those belonging entirely to OTL. The only major divergence here is that she gets more involved in car racing. While we might consider it weird from our perspective, the early decades of motorsport were a time when drivers and riders switched bikes for cars (and viceversa) multiple times across their careers, often racing in different championships at the same time – something made possible by the lower professional requirements and relaxed schedules of racing series at the time. OTL, Thouret also raced for DKW in motorcycling – and got around to driving their racing cars in the 1930s. So ultimately, this development has just been bumped forward by a few years.

    End note: And with that, the Insight on Germany comes to a close at last. With the more familiar background of economy and wider society firmly established, we can move off the beaten path and into the weirder, but hopefully just as interesting butterflies for Germany in the inter-ethnic and cultural realms. This took a monumental amount of research to get down, but it was an intensely rewarding experience. A lot of these developments are not isolated to Germany, and will see further callbacks in the future, but the important takeaway is that Germany (and by extension its sphere) is in considerable flux, with staunch adherence to the past mixing with a genuine hunger for a different future. Looking forward to hear what everyone thinks of this update!
     
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