AHC: African-American "Betrayal of the Cossacks"

[MerryPrankster]

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have a large number of African-Americans in Japanese territory at the end of WWII who don't want to be sent back to the United States ending up being sent back by force and being killed en masse.

(This whole thing is basically an analogy for Operation Keelhaul, one of the most supremely dick moves of the Western Allies during and after the war.)

In OTL despite the 1940s U.S. being a "white man's country," the only anti-American agitation among blacks I can recall was Elijah Mohammed getting jailed for sedition for preaching in favor of the Japanese. At the time there was the "Double Victory" campaign and many blacks viewed fighting the Axis as an effort to ensure their own civil rights.

However, since not all the ones sent back to Stalin to be killed were Axis collaborators, you could have black civilians captured in the Philippines or elsewhere who aren't guilty of war crimes.

 

[HeavyWeaponsGuy]

To be fair, groups like the Lienz Cossacks only managed to make it to where they eventually did because they collaborated with the Nazis, I'm not sure how much of a dick move it is to send back people who were already pretty unsympathetic.

 

[MerryPrankster]

To be fair, groups like the Lienz Cossacks only managed to make it to where they eventually did because they collaborated with the Nazis, I'm not sure how much of a dick move it is to send back people who were already pretty unsympathetic.

There were people who were never Soviet citizens sent back.

 

[Enigmajones]

To be fair, groups like the Lienz Cossacks only managed to make it to where they eventually did because they collaborated with the Nazis, I'm not sure how much of a dick move it is to send back people who were already pretty unsympathetic.

Considering the Soviets treated the Cossacks like shit from the get go, I think they're willingness to collaborate can be understood.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Considering the Soviets treated the Cossacks like shit from the get go, I think they're willingness to collaborate can be understood.

To be fair, a lot of the times the Cossacks were head-bangers for the Czar and liked to go after Jews in particular.

That doesn't justify maltreating whole ethnicities, but it does provide some background.

 

[Enigmajones]

To be fair, a lot of the times the Cossacks were head-bangers for the Czar and liked to go after Jews in particular.

That doesn't justify maltreating whole ethnicities, but it does provide some background.

Oh Im aware, I wasn't excusing the Cossacks in totality, just saying it's not like Russia got invaded, and these guys were all "I know things are going peachy, but let's collaborate with the Nazis."

 

[The Red]

Something similar to the protests and riots caused by the Red Fort Trials.

 

[Georgepatton]

If we go here, and you fiddle the boxes on the right to 1940 census, race, and % black, you get a map showing the vast majority of African Americans lived in the South and East. Certainly some lived west of the Mississippi, but most of them did not.

The Japanese staging a landing on US soil is pretty out there, realism-wise, and them ending the war after doing such a thing as anything other than a brutally-depopulated collection of minor Pacific islands is even further out there.

I'm not seeing some situation that doesn't rely on the players being nigh-unrecognizable from the outset.

Maybe, if the war somehow ended in a negotiated peace, and black GIs didn't want to be shipped back (to a country that had decided to go with the 'blame the minorities, they stabbed us in the back' route), maybe it could happen, but this is pretty tenuous.

And given the way the Japanese could treat prisoners in the Pacific War... even more tenuous.

I'm not saying it couldn't be done, alt-historically speaking, I just don't see how.

 

[HeavyWeaponsGuy]

Considering the Soviets treated the Cossacks like shit from the get go, I think they're willingness to collaborate can be understood.

The Cossacks were a difficult case.

A lot of the Cossack hosts declared for the Whites in the Civil War, there were lots of rank-and-file lower class Cossacks who did wind up siding with the Reds, but the leadership pretty much to the man went for the Whites. As for the idea that all Cossacks hated the USSR, I'll let the example of the Kuban Cossacks and others who fought for the Soviets in the Great Patriotic War speak for itself.

When you have a group that is basically solidified in its resistance, and isn't simply going to accept integration into the new system, there's not much alternative to crushing them as a political force.

 

[superjames1992]

Weren't the Japanese pretty damn racist at the time, anyways (perhaps even worse)?

 

[Enigmajones]

Weren't the Japanese pretty damn racist at the time, anyways (perhaps even worse)?

The Japanese were around 100 times worse then America. But not in Racism. The average American had around the same amount of racism as the average Japanese. The Japanese just have less of a self censor when it comes to that sort of stuff.

 

[Rex Mundi]

The Japanese were around 100 times worse then America. But not in Racism. The average American had around the same amount of racism as the average Japanese. The Japanese just have less of a self censor when it comes to that sort of stuff.

100 times? That's a bold, bold claim. I'd say like, thrice as bad tops.

 

[Georgepatton]

Are y'all really trying to quantify how racist some people felt on average 70 years ago?

We can look at the things Japan did to the Chinese (Nanjing and Unit 731 prominent among them), or at what US troops did to captured Japanese soldiers sometimes, but putting a number to racism is kinda silly.

 

[Kome]

American Goldeneye would be cool.

 

[WhatIsAUserName]

This analogy doesn't stand up. Operation Keelhaul was between members of the Allies. Unless Japan and America are both Allies, it won't work. Furthermore, the Cossacks were associated with the Nazis. Unless there's a large population of African Americans working for the Axis side, I'm not sure how Keelhaul applies.

 

[whitecrow]

That doesn't justify maltreating whole ethnicities, but it does provide some background.

Nitpick: are Cossack actually considered an ethnic rather than a cultural group?

 

[Enigmajones]

100 times? That's a bold, bold claim. I'd say like, thrice as bad tops.

Considering we weren't responsible for the Bataan Death March, I would say so.

And I wasn't talking about racism. Obviously America was racist.

 

[MerryPrankster]

When you have a group that is basically solidified in its resistance, and isn't simply going to accept integration into the new system, there's not much alternative to crushing them as a political force.

They HAD to do it, they HAD to do it.

(Sarcasm off)

The Bolsheviks didn't HAVE to seize power in the first place and they didn't HAVE to be as despotic as they were once they had it (dispersing the Soviet once they lost elections, etc).

 

[MerryPrankster]

Weren't the Japanese pretty damn racist at the time, anyways (perhaps even worse)?

I don't know if they necessarily hated black people the way the Nazis did, but they were certainly Japanese supremacists.

 

[MerryPrankster]

This analogy doesn't stand up. Operation Keelhaul was between members of the Allies. Unless Japan and America are both Allies, it won't work. Furthermore, the Cossacks were associated with the Nazis. Unless there's a large population of African Americans working for the Axis side, I'm not sure how Keelhaul applies.

Well, it could be that a bunch of black collaborators or black civilians from the Philippines or other Pacific islands end up in Korea somewhere and fall into the hands of the Soviets, or China and end up in the hands of Chiang Kai-Shek.