Dewey defeats Truman, as expected TL

Solid update MP, I like the whole death for a death, Krustchev dies while Beria stays alive...He may have a goood 10 to 15 years left on him, assuming that his Sadistic interets don't become Bathorian in nature (As in the 16th Century Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory). We're getting pretty close to the '56 elections...Keep it comming MP
 
1955

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Strom Thurmond (D-SC), leader of segregationists in Congress and declared opponent to President Kefauver

On January, 8, for his Third State of the Union Address, President Kefauver decided to strike a hard blow by directly referring to the ongoing desegregation issue, that had taken a new turn with the Brown vs Board of Education decision. "The recent Supreme Court decision gave us the unprecedented opportunity to get rid of the last and tragic remnants of the Civil War that shaterred our country a century ago", he said, and later adding that "a nation that devoted his entire energy to defeat the evil Hitlerian Reich can not seriously pretend to retain a racist and anachronistic document that the Jim Crow Laws are". President Kefauver' speech was all the more dramatic that it was pronounced by a Southern Democrat, and the Congress' reaction was well remembered: progressive Republicans and Democrats applauded the President, joined by Democratic Tennessee Senator Al Gore, Sr. and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson, while Dixiecrat Senators and Representatives booed and disturbed the speech. 1948 States' Rights Party presidential candidate and Senator of South Carolina Strom Thurmond reportedly shouted: "Remember 1948!", reminding everyone that the Dixiecrat presidential bid in 1948 had split the Democratic vote in the South and was responsible for Truman's failure in this election.

Thurmond's threats came to an application on March: the Southern Manifesto, prepared by the latter and Georgia Senator Richard Russell, was signed by 19 Senators and 82 Representatives,
including the entire congressional delegations of the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia, among them two Republicans from Virginia. This document accused the Supreme Court of abuse of judicial power and pledged all means to reverse the decision and keep segregation laws in the Southern States. Thurmond also announced that he would challenge President Kefauver at the 1956 National Convention, increasing the risk of a new secession within the Democratic Party.

In the same time, on December, 5, under the authority of Secretary of Labor George Meany, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged into the AFL-CIO.

Abroad, the Cold War concentrated in Asia, where the United States Seventh Fleet evacuated Nationalist Chinese armies from the Tachen Islands to Taiwan, that was now under protection of the US. On October, 26, in South Vietnam, Roman Catholic and republican Ngo Dinh Diem won in a referendum against former Emperor of Indochina Bao Dai, too compromised with the French, and proclaimed South Vietnam as a Republic. Diem immediately asked the United States for support against communism, as the Pentagon was sending "military advisors" to South Vietnam since the beginning of the year. Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk, viewed as too leftist, is deposed and replaced by his father Norodom Suramarit and pro-democrat Prince Youtheyong.

On February, 24, the Baghdad Pact is signed between Turkey, Iraq, United Kingdom and United States. On May, 14, a year after the creation of the European Community of Defence and five days after the entry of West Germany into NATO, Soviet Union and eight East European countries signed a mutual defence treaty called the Warsaw Pact,
considered as a military response to the NATO. Five days later, Austria recovered its independance but remained neutral. Hungarian Premier Imre Nagy, partisan of reformism, was ousted as being too moderate, proving that despite Beria's call for reforms, nothing had changed behind the Iron Curtain. On December, sixteen countries, such as Spain, joined the United Nations.

But another position in the bipolar world came to an existence the same year: the Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, from April, 18 to 24, gathered heads of state, government and representatives from 29 countries from the Third World, including Nasser's Egypt, Nehru's India, Mao's China and Soekarno's Indonesia, and representatives from independantist movements in Africa such as the Algerian FLN. The Non-Aligned Movement announced his refusal to consider itself as either the capitalist or the communist bloc, and pledging to fight colonialism and imperialism from any great power, France and Great-Britain as United States and Soviet Union.

The French were having terrible troubles in Morocco and Algeria, succeeding to the war in Indochina: on November, 6, the La Celle Saint-Could agreements recognized the end of French protectorate over Morocco, returning sultan Mohammed V to his throne. On April, 7, the old British Prime Minister Winston Churchill decided to resign due to his old age and his cancer, and was succeeded by his Foreign Minister,
Anthony Eden, who had also taken this position during WWII. On September, 16, three months after the Plaza de Mayo bombing in Buenos Aires, that saw coupsters bombing a gathering in honor of President Juan Peron, the latter was deposed by a military coup led by General Eduard Lombardi; Peron managed to escape. Among other news, the rising movie star, James Dean, survived a car accident.

But above all, the desegregation movement continued further in the United States. On November, 5, racial segregation on trains and buses in US interstate commerce is declared as illegal; but on December, 1, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks, secretary for the city NAACP's chapter, refused to leave her seat for a white man, in a segregated bus. She was prompty arrested and fined. On December, 5, Baptist minister Martin Luther King, Jr. began to organize with other Black ministers a boycott of Montgomery buses...
 
DuQuense: I'm not an expert for US judicial decisions, but I imagine that a Supreme Court with liberal appointees would've voted in favor of the Brown vs. BoE, and even if it's not important, a devoted desegregationist like Estes Kefauver would've relied upon it to begin his fight against segregation. In the same way, I considered that Dewey, having lost the popular vote, would make everything in the Cold War, in a desperate attempt to win the Americans' approval: with Dulles as Secretary of State, he emphasized even more the Containment doctrine, deciding to make an example with the invasion of South Korea as an application of the Roll-Back doctrine.

Historico: I think Beria will act a bit like Stalin, minus the hawkish foreign policy: killing all his opponents (Khruschev above all), only retaining stooges (like Molotov and Malenkov), and trying to be a bit sympathetic to the Americans, fearing that they decide to drop an A Bomb in Moscow...I imagine he will keep his disgusting manners in private like, but what about a terrible scandal, like for Klansman D.C. Stephanson in 1926? Wait from him a "KGB diplomacy": all political dissidents inside and outside are victims of terrible illnesses and poisons. Let's how does he deal with Budapest and Suez...
 
Hmm...What is Estes going to do about the Boycott...I think he may feel with him being a Southernor more able to go down to Montgomery to try and resolve the issue. Or with it it being an election in '56 year, Im pretty sure he'll take a hands off approach to dealing with the Civil Rights issue to make sure he doesn't get a challenge from another dixiecrat.
 
I'm sorry to announce that I have no more the time nor the interest to further continue this TL. I think I have taken a bad format for this story. I will try to take a better one next time.

Here we go for a list of alternate Presidents.

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34. Thomas Edmund Dewey
Tenure: 20/1/1949-20/1/1953
Party: Republican
Home State: New York
Previous function: Governor of New York
Age at Inauguration Day: 46
Vice-President: Earl Warren (CA)
Religion: Episcopalian
Particular remarks: Lost the electoral vote.
Defeated in 1948: Harry S. Truman/Alben Barkley (D) - Strom Thurmond/Fielding Wright (Dixiecrat)

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35. Carey Estes Kefauver
Tenure: 20/1/1953-20/1/1961
Party: Democrat
Home State: Tennessee
Previous function: Senator of Tenneesee
Age at Inauguration Day: 49
Vice-President: Francis Eugene Walter (PA)
Religion: Baptist
Defeated in 1952: Thomas E. Dewey/Earl Warren (R)
Defeated in 1956: Joe McCarthy/Christian Herter (R) - Strom Thurmond/John Sparkman (Dixiecrat)

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36. James Vincent Forrestal
Tenure: 20/1/1961-22/5/1962
Party: Republican (former Democrat)
Home State: New York
Previous function: Senator of New York
Age at Inauguration Day: 68
Vice-President: Hubert Humphrey (D-MN) (on his ticket: Harold Stassen (MN))
Religion: Roman Catholic (lapsed)
Particular remarks: Election bring to the Congress; died in office
Defeated in 1960: Francis E. Walter/Hubert Humphrey (D) - Orval Faubus/Richard Russell, Jr. (Dixiecrat)

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37. Hubert Horatio Humphrey
Tenure: 22/5/1962-20/1/1965
Party: Democrat
Home State: Minnesota
Previous function: Vice-President
Age at Inauguration: 50
Vice-President: None
Religion: United Methodist
Particular remarks: Only Vice-President to succeed a President who hadn't shared the ticket with him.

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38. Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller
Tenure: 20/1/1965-20/1/1973
Party: Republican
Home State: New York
Previous function: Governor of New York
Age at Inauguration Day: 56
Vice-President: George W. Romney (MI)
Religion: Baptist
Defeated in 1964: Hubert Humphrey/John Connally (D) - George Wallace/Russell B. Long (Dixiecrat)
Defeated in 1968: George Wallace/Daniel Brewster (D)

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39. Henry Martin Jackson
Tenure: 20/1/1973-22/9/1975
Party: Democrat
Home State: Washington
Previous function: Senator of Washington
Age at Inauguration Day: 60
Vice-President: Wilbur Mills (AR, 1973-1974) - Edmund Muskie (MA, 1974-1975)
Particular remarks: Assassinated by Sara Jane Moore; Vice-President forced to resign after a public scandal
Defeated in 1972: John A. Volpe/Ronald Reagan (R)

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40. Edmund Sixtus Muskie
Tenure: 22/9/1975-20/1/1977
Party: Democrat
Home State: Maine
Previous function: Vice-President
Age at Inauguration: 64
Vice-President: Robert Byrd (WV)
Religion: Roman Catholic
Particular remarks: First President to have never been elected, as President or Vice-President

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41. Howard Henry Baker, Jr.
Tenure: 20/1/1977-30/3/1981
Party: Republican
Home State: Tennessee
Previous function: Senate Majority Leader
Age at Inauguration Day: 51
Vice-President: Donald Rumsfeld (IL)
Religion: Presbyterian
Particular remarks: Assassinated by John Hinckley, Jr.
Defeated in 1976: Ed Muskie/Robert Byrd (D)
Defeated in 1980: Ernest Hollings/Dale Bumpers (D)

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42. Donald Henry Rumsfeld
Tenure: 30/3/1981-20/1/1985
Party: Republican
Home State: Illinois
Previous function: Vice-President
Age at Inauguration: 48
Vice-President: William E. Simon (CA)
Religion: Presbyterian

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43. John Herschel Glenn, Jr.
Tenure: 20/1/1985-20/1/1993
Party: Democrat
Home State: Ohio
Previous function: Senator of Ohio
Age at Inauguration Day: 63
Vice-President: Mario Cuomo (NY)
Religion: Presbyterian
Particular remarks: First astronaut to reach the Presidency
Defeated in 1984: Donald Rumsfeld/William E. Simon (R)
Defeated in 1988: George H. Bush/Paul Laxalt (R)

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44. Henry Ross Perot
Tenure: 20/1/1993-20/1/1997oo
Party: None (later Reform)
Home State: Texas
Previous function: None
Age at Inauguration Day: 62
Vice-President: Colin Powell (NY)
Particular remarks: First Independent to be elected President; first African American Vice-President
Defeated in 1992: Bob Dole/Pete DuPont (R) - Mario Cuomo/Dick Gephardt (D)

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45. Lawrence Douglas Wilder
Tenure: 20/1/1997-11/9/2001
Party: Democrat
Home State: Virginia
Previous function: Former Governor of Virginia
Age at Inauguration Day: 66
Vice-President: Warren Beatty (CA)
Religion: Baptist
Particular remarks: First African American President; killed by an unknown Islamist Fundamentalist terrorist
Defeated in 1996: Lamar Alexander/Pete Wilson (R) - Ross Perot/Colin Powell (Reform)
Defeated in 2000: John McCain/Paul Wellstone (R)

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46. Henry Warren Beatty
Tenure: 11/9/2001-20/1/2005
Party: Democrat
Home State: California
Previous function: Vice-President
Age at Inauguration: 64
Vice-President: Bob Kerrey (Nebraska)
Religion: Baptist

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47. Patricia Campbell Hearst
Tenure: 20/1/2005-...
Party: Republican
Home State: California
Previous function: Governor of California
Age at Inauguration Day: 50
Vice-President: Rudolph Giuliani (NY)
Particular remarks: First Female President
Defeated in 2004: Warren Beatty/Bob Kerrey (D)
Defeated in 2008: Mike Gravel/Joe Biden (D)
 
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