Alternate Wikipedia Infoboxes VI (Do Not Post Current Politics or Political Figures Here)
- Status
Would the Confederates have approved the Hippo Scheme? Probably not, but I had fun making this and like to imagine they would have for the lols.
(Fictional character, real proposed plan)
(Fictional character, real proposed plan)
Last edited:
Death via hippo. Gotta say that I haven't seen that one before.
This could go better in the Alternate Pictures Thread, imo
The More Things Change - The Royal Republic
"As every child in the Union knows, 16 June 1940 was when the First Declaration of Union between Britain and France was signed, making 'every French citizen a British subject, and every British subject a French citizen.' However, contrary to popular belief, this was not the event which led to the formation of the Franco-British Union as we know it today. Following the war, there was still a strong desire from the French to retain independence, even though the war had led to Franco-British relations being closer than ever. This closeness led to a desire to keep certain formal bonds between the two powers, but as a general rule the French still desired self-rule and feared becoming yet another British colony. This contradiction in goals led to the formation of the French Fourth Republic in 1946, often referred to by historians as 'the False Republic.' This is due to the fact that despite officially being a republic, it was agreed upon that in order to maintain close bonds with the United Kingdom, the British monarch would be retained as head of state under the title of President of France. While the monarch would hold this title, it was largely a figurehead position, with the King having even less power in France as President than he did in the UK as a constitutional monarch. Power instead was largely invested in the French Parliament.
This arrangement however would prove to be very instable. Despite only existing for a decade, the Fourth Republic would see no less than 17 different administrations in power, with only one of those administrations lasting more than a year. Calls were increasingly made for a stronger executive, be that an elected President or the newly crowned Queen, to restore order to France and to give consistent governance. These concerns were compounded by the geopolitical concerns brought about by the prelude to the Suez Crisis, which put both France and the UK increasingly at odds with not just the Soviets but with the Americans as well. In light of both of these concerns, in 1956 an agreement was reached between French Prime Minister Guy Mollet and British Prime Minister Anthony Eden to sign a Second Declaration of Union, bringing about the modern Franco-British Union. By combining the strength of France and the UK under one banner, it was believed that the new Union would be able to stand up to the other great powers and maintain some level of hegemony, and in France the accession of Elizabeth II as not just President but Queen was widely celebrated as a restoration of political order after the chaotic republic and as the dawning of a new age. And a new age the 20th century would certainly prove to be."
- Excerpt from a Franco-British history textbook
Last edited:
Is this a reference to Hearts of Iron 4 where Britain gets the decision to annex France after it surrenders?
Only in the sense that both myself and HOI4 are referencing the same historical proposal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-British_Union
Can't say the idea's been explored well enough in spite of the vast historical background to it.
A Union Made with Iron
A Teaser Of A Future ASB Timeline
A Blood Sacrifice Seals the fate Of America, a blessing or a curse?
A Massacre that shook the very foundations the 13 colonies stands upon
Oh Canada, Rise with your brothers of the south, throw off the shackles of oppression and hear the cry of liberty far and wide
A Teaser Of A Future ASB Timeline
A Blood Sacrifice Seals the fate Of America, a blessing or a curse?
A Massacre that shook the very foundations the 13 colonies stands upon
Oh Canada, Rise with your brothers of the south, throw off the shackles of oppression and hear the cry of liberty far and wide
Decided to make something for my MCU head canon
EDIT: Got the Bushes mixed up. Whoops
EDIT: Got the Bushes mixed up. Whoops
Last edited:
Eh, not the end of the world. Mistakes happen.
A Union Made with Iron
A Teaser Of A Future ASB Timeline
This Union Bound By Iron and forged by fire Will Survive the trials of time
A Teaser Of A Future ASB Timeline
This Union Bound By Iron and forged by fire Will Survive the trials of time
Last edited:
The 1955 German federal election was held on the 6th February 1955, with the SPD-led government of Erich Ollenhauer seeking a third term as Chancellor.
Ollenhauer’s government had been greatly influential in the preceding term, as it had produced substantial reforms to expand the German welfare state, most notably the introduction of statutory health insurance (SHI) to cover pensioners, the disabled and other marginalized groups and reformed income taxes to cut individual income tax rates for the poor in favour of only affecting incomes above 250,000 Deutschmarks. The country’s economic output rose significantly in the early 1950s, and many Germans were becoming more prosperous- Ollenhauer’s government is said to have started the boom period known as the Wirtschaftswunder, meaning ‘economic miracle’ or as it is more commonly known in English, ‘Miracle on the Rhine’.
Despite these successes, international relations and social issues were proving to be contentious. Ollenhauer continued the policy of ‘denazification’ by convicting senior officials connected to the Nazi regime and its war crimes, as well as seeking to distance the postwar German state from Nazism through actions such as paying compensation to the Jewish Claims Conference and the Israeli government and replacing the infamous Deutschlandlied national anthem with one by the poet and anti-Nazi Rudolf Alexander Schröder entitled Hymne an Deutschland (‘Hymn to Germany’).
These moves were met with significant backlash, as they angered conservatives who felt former Nazis should be allowed to return to public life and that continuing to punish them would foster nationalism and make them martyrs, and Ollenhauer subsequently angered those on the left when as public pressure on his government grew he began to commute the sentences of more minor offenders, as they saw him as a Nazi apologist for doing so.
A major policy plank of Ollenhauer’s government in terms of foreign policy was what became known as Mittelpolitik (‘middle politics’), by which Germany sought to renounce its militaristic past and adopt a more peaceful and anti-imperialist role in the Cold War. With the encouragement of the Western Allies, Germany’s army was restored and the US established a military presence in Germany, but Ollenhauer and President Huss passed a reform to the constitution somewhat inspired by Article 9 of the Japanese postwar constitution that renounced declaring or deploying its army for war and rejected the offer of nuclear armament. The SPD also rejected overtures to join NATO or sign the Treaty of Paris and tried instead to establish trade links with both western and eastern European nations alike, which the opposition vocally criticized them for and would ultimately reverse by retroactively joining the European Coal and Steel Community and signing the Treaty of Rome.
By 1955, hopes of a more cooperative relationship with eastern Europe after new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev came to power were not coming to fruition, and the opposition CDU/CSU and more conservative voices in the FDP saw Ollenhauer’s leadership as a threat to Germany’s position both economically and with the West.
The CDU had, in the early 1950s, had a leadership struggle between Jakob Kaiser and Adenauer’s heir Ludwig Erhard after Kaiser led the party to a resounding defeat in 1951. Erhard won the leadership, but conceded a lot of major political stances to Kaiser’s wing of the party, which promoted views influenced by Christian socialism and was popular with poorer religious voters. Most notably, despite his support for Adenauer’s lifting of price controls, he advocated for what he called the ‘social market economy’, an economic model he claimed was influenced by Bismarck to represent an egalitarian support for welfare for the poorest in society.
While the CDU was moving to the centre, the right started to be occupied by more extreme forces aided by the softening of denazification. The German Party (DP) had won seats in the prior two elections and carved out a recognizable profile for itself as a Protestant, monarchist and state’s rights party most powerful in its home state of Lower Saxony, but since the 1951 election had merged with a small party called the All-German Bloc/Expellee’s Rights Party (GB/BHE), which ostensibly advocated for the rights of Germans expelled from the eastern regions that had been annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union after the Second World War but was in danger of being outlawed as unconstitutional for its sympathies to Nazism. The BP ran on a platform opposed to economic intervention, supporting the establishment of a constitutional monarchy as a bulwark against communism and increasing the amount of people to be pardoned for involvement with the Nazi regime.
Ironically, some figures have suggested that the DP’s surge- which did not correspond to holding the balance of power as many politicians feared- actually benefitted the CDU, as it caused Ollenhauer to vocally denounce it and alienate voters, distanced Erhard and his party from the German right’s past and helped convince President Heuss to allow the FDP’s leadership to choose not to commit to continuing the party’s coalition with the SPD.
Further hurting the SPD was a shift in philosophy in the KPD. The large membership in the east had grown dissatisfied with Max Reimann’s leadership and the hardline Stalinist Walter Ullbricht successfully challenged him for the leadership, but after Stalin’s death in 1953 Ullbricht was himself challenged by the more moderate Stefan Heym. Heym would begin the process of reforming the KPD’s policy platform into what would later become known as ‘Eurocommunist’ ideology, and the Khrushchev Thaw and the marginalisation of Stalinists in the party had temporarily softened public fears about the KPD. As a result, it would enjoy its best performance since before the Second World War in the 1955 election, and Heym would serve as party leader for almost two decades.
When the election was held, the CDU came out comfortably ahead of the SPD in a near-reversal of the latter’s 1951 victory; it was the first time since 1907 that a party besides the SPD or the Nazis had won the most seats at a German election. The CDU only took 238 seats, 43 short of a majority, but formed a coalition with the FDP and the Centre Party (Z), the latter alliance with the moderate Catholic party being a largely symbolic move as it was taken reinforce the cordon sanitaire against the more extremist and Protestant BP.
This election would be the last one before the Saarland was reincorporated into Germany in 1957.
Last edited:
One of the main differences between Earth-based Thanksgivings and Martian-based Thanksgivings is culinary. Due to the high expense of many traditional Thanksgiving dishes, such as turkey and cranberry sauce, alternative dishes are prepared. Potatoes take center stage on the Martian Thanksgiving table. Mashed Potatoes, Stuffing made from Potatoes, and potato pie crust which was filled with either canned pumpkin or Martian grown blueberries. Speaking of blueberries, that is what is usually substituted over cranberries in the making of a sauce. To substitute the turkey, domestic pigeon, plant-based meat, or insects were used. Eggs also come from domestic pigeons and soy milk is used where necessary.
Unlike some of their Earth-based counterparts, the dates of Martian Thanksgiving are fixed to specific dates on the Martian calendar: Tula 11th, Scorpius 23th, and Scorpius 27th. This means that they are often out of sync with the Earth-based holiday.
The 2012 United States presidential election was the 57th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. The Republican ticket of former Illinois Governor Alan Schiro and North Carolina senator Edward C. Hartley defeated incumbent Democratic President Scott McKay and Vice President Frank Agnos. Schiro took office as the 45th president on January 20, 2013, becoming the first Italian American and third Roman Catholic (after John F. Kennedy and McKay) President of the United States. It was the first election since 1992 in which an incumbent President lost re-election, and the first since 1968 in which the winning candidate triumphed despite losing his home state.
McKay had alienated many members of his party by pursuing the 'First In Peace' Doctrine, which many Democrats considered isolationist, overly friendly to dictatorships, and poorly planned, as well as through a number of insulting comments he made in interviews and online, some of which were criticized as sexist, homophobic, and vulgar. Nevertheless, he was able to fend off primary challenges by retired General and University of Texas President Jack Jones and New York Congresswoman Karen Callahan. Schiro, who had been a frontrunner in the 2008 Republican primaries before bowing out to "focus on leading Illinois through this crisis", defeated five other Republican candidates, most notably Governor of Kentucky C. Harris Walker, by April. He selected Senator Hartley, a Vietnam War veteran and former astronaut, as his running mate.
Schiro ran a low-key campaign focused on economic policy, promising to balance the federal budget by reforming welfare policy; he also promised to take a tougher line on Russia and Jaysh al-Islam and to restore 'decency' to the White House in the wake of Schiro's gaffes and scandals. McKay promoted ambitious plans to implement universal healthcare, negotiate an international agreement to limit warming to 1.5º Celsius, and promote economic growth in the 'Rust Belt'; critics noted that many of these proposals had been pursued during McKay's first term and had failed in Congress.
Schiro led McKay narrowly in polls throughout the race, aside from a brief period after the Democratic National Convention in September, but his lead substantially narrowed in October after the Supreme Court upheld McKay's use of Section 1498 to authorize imports of drugs such as insulin. However, Schiro managed to win by a slightly larger margin than the polls suggested, which some analysts have attributed to 'the Callahan effect' of low turnout for McKay among women voters. Of the states McKay had won in 2008, Schiro won Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wisconsin, as well as Nebraska's 2nd congressional district.
McKay returned to politics in 2018 by announcing his candidacy for President in the 2020 election. As of May 2019, polls indicate that he is the leading Democratic candidate.
- Status