For the Future: A New Oral History Collaborative TL

OOC: I doubt he'd sit out. He's grieving now, sure, but it's February of 1962. I can't imagine Nixon sitting out 1964.
 
"Tell the Major what you told me yesterday"


"Ach, again? OK. I was wounded in the war, see? An Ami antitank gun, clipped my Pz IV pretty good, took the rest of the cfew and my leg with it, see? So, in our glorious Völkische Republik, war cripples can have jobs as well, eh, lucky bastards that they are. The State's not satisfied unless you died at your job. Anyway, me, I take care of the litter in the Rosa Luxemburgsplatz, it's little more than a derelict yard where they haven't bothered to rebuild anything. Kids go there to do mischief, and not so young kids do the same, if you catch my drift. The young these days, they have the blood boiling all day long, so they sometimes look for a quiet place to..."

"All right, all right, we get it, Stick to the point, Hermann"

"Well, it began last week. I started hearing them at night, and you don't spend years around them without them leaving their mark on you. The sound of the tracks on the concrete, there's no hiding it. We had been ordered not to light our windows at night, or to peek at our windows - supposed to be a passive defense drill. But when the rumbling came so loud that the walls of my little flat started shaking, I couldn't resist and went to the windows."

"What did you see, Hermann?"

"Sixty-four tanks, Herr Major. A column of sixty-four T-55 tanks, advancing without a single light on. There were our police guiding them with small torchlights. And behind the tanks came a long line of trucks, dozens of them, all military."

"Okay, so the Soviets have shuffled some tanks and infantry at night. That's something, but seriously, Halley, I don't understand why you're raising such a big stink about it."

"It's the next day, sir. Herm, tell the Major what happened the next day."

"The next day, I went to work as usual, but the PLats was surrounded by riot police. They said the area was off-limits for a few days because of old bombs that had been discovered. But I knew they were lying, it made no sense - see, I knew the area had been used as a mass grave just after the war, so unexplosed ordnance my Berliner ass! I don't know what possessed me, but instead of going back home and enjoying a State-sanctioned day off, I hobbled to that building next to the Platz - the lovers use it as a secret passage, there a door in the boiler room that leads you to a yard in the next block, and the hedge of the yard leads into the Platz. So I went there to have a look. And that's where I saw them."

"Saw who?"

"Not who, what. The GAZ trucks I had seen the night before, a dozen of them. They were not carrying troops, Herr Major, they were carrying big sacks."

"Sacks?"

"Sacks of cement, you know, to mix concrete. And cinder blocks as well. And they were guarded, not by ordinary german conscripts, but by Minister of Interior Grenztruppen, the border guards. And there were two Russian officers. So I thought maybe they were building something secret, and I slipped into the Ami sector to report it. The Amis who took my leg, you know, they treated me correctly after that. Took the fire out pf my clothes, took me to a hospital as well. The Russkis, they would have watched me burn and pissed on my corpse"

Transcript of a conversation held March the 11th, 1962 at the US Berlin Garrison headquarters, between Captain George Halley, Major James Stemper, and a German informant called Hermann XXXXXXXX.

Two days later, Allied troops in Berlin signalled the East Germans were establishing a permanent barrier between the Eastern and Western parts of the occupied city as well as fortified checkoints at the highways leading into Berlin.

"The initial idea, you know, was never to just tighten pour grip in Berlin. The hardliners at the Politburo were pressuring Khrushchev into being firmer with the West. Ha! Firmer! A bunch of senile geezers who couldn't raise a boner together! Anyway, there were other options on the table these days, some of which did make my hair turn white."

"Really?"

"Oh, yes. The geezers were about to craok, they didn't care much about millions others dying as well, you knows? The hardliners were composed of two clans : the optimists who said the moment was more favorable than ever, with France and Great Britain deprived of their colonies, the Middle-East massively pro-Soviet, Latin America in the midst of revolutions... And well, the pessimists, saying we were losing our grip on the peoples of the Union, and that we needed to play our cards while we still had them. Nixon was seen as a strong, experimented opponent. So all options were discussed: Berlin, Cuba, and a surprise strike through the Fulda Gap."

"Gosh. What happened then?"

"Mrs Nixon was shot. Khrushchev seized the opportunity like an hungry wolf. He told the Politburo realized that if one of the most extreme options was exercised, the American President could very well think there was a link with the stupid assassination of his wife - and then we would deal with a rabid dog, a madman. He made it sure a few of the hardliners knew he'd sacrifice them on the spot rather than to risk the destruction of the Soviet Union."

"He threatened them directly?"

"Of course not. He had men like me to do that. So I went and met a few of these, how would you call them now? Chickenhawks? I remember Plezhanov, a junior Politburo member, and a firestarter. I met him in his home, in the presence of his kids, and told him that unless he saw the light I would accuse him of being a Zionist spy. When he realized I had the full authority of the First Secretary, he started blabbering about the burden of proof and other things like that."

"And what did you do then?"

"Why, I laughed! Burden of proof? Burden of proof? I was a KGB colonel, First Directorate, with orders from the SecGen. If I had accused Plezhanov of having fucked with Lenin's mummy the next day a thousand witnesses would have confirmed it. And so, Khrushchev dodged that bullet, and the Politburo wisely picked more reasonable options. Not that it did the world much good, mind you."

Excerpts of a conversation between then-retired KGB General Leonid Grezhko and British Journalist Keith Holbert in the mid 1980s.
 
"I'd like to paraphrase Mark Twain and say the rumors of my resignation have been greatly exaggerated. I do not intend to resign the Presidency, and I fully intend to seek a second term in office come 1964."
- US President Richard Nixon in a televised address to the nation on March 3rd,1962.


Amendement Repealed
President can now run for over two-terms fallowing key vote

OOC: A little bump. I'll leave it to you guys to figure out how the repeal was passed. I just thought it would make things a little more interesting. :p
 
"...God Bless Her."

-Final Words in Richard Nixon's Eulogy for his wife, March 16, 1962


"By the time Pat Nixon was buried, the brief honeymoon enjoyed by President Nixon was over. Debate over matters of policy began; Johnson wasted no time in asking whether then, when the President was so obviously shaken and out of whack, was the best time to abolish term limits.

"Fortunately, Dick was up to it. It seemed that he had given himself a month to mourn; now he was back as boistrous and lively as ever. He went back to his duties with relish; imy opinion, then and now, is that he was trying to distract himself with menial work.

"Fortunately, there was quite a bit to do..."

-Former Presidental Aide H.R Haldeman, quoted in The Silver Age: America Under Nixon
 
"This is Grissom, god you can see the stars!"- Virgil Grissom, 13th July, 1961- Earth Orbit

"Yuri Gagarin, on April 12th, would've been the first man into orbit, but a major failure in a booster, caused the destruction of the launchpad, after rolling right over upon itself. NASA, was receiving a higher budget than before to compete with the Soviets, but once they knew the Soviets were planning on getting into Earth orbit, they quickly picked up the pace.

"Alan Shepherd, was the first man in a suborbital flight on the 31st of April, and flew on a Redstone to test the Mercury's manned capacity. The Atlas LV-3B's first maiden flight with a man was to be Virgil Grissom's flight. The flight was normal, but after impacting the ocean, the door blew open, but thankfully the capsule was saved. It was shown at an electrical problem caused it to blow in the first place.

"With that, the Americans began to pick up the place. On August 29th, Gherman Titov, become the first Soviet astronaut in space, but problems with the rocket still continued, putting a nail in the Vostok programme."

-Former Head of NASA James E. Webb, quoted in A Space Race: The American Victory

OOC: I will be mostly focusing on the Space Race stuff, someone can mess with the politics of this.
 
Perhaps we could have Nixon sit out in '64 (mourning and all that), and then make a come back in '68? I've always found the idea of another nonconsecutive termer quite awesome.


ooc: on the one hand, I like non-consecutive terms, especially with Mrs. Cleveland telling the staff, keep the White House looking nice, because we'll be back... comebacks are almost always a treat, at least story-wise, and in otl Nixon wrote movingly of having benefitted strongly from his "wilderness years" out of office.

on the other hand, I have a kind of fetish for establishing an American "tradition" of epic presidential tenures, like, Nixon 1960-1976, maybe a one-term "exception" or two, maybe even one of the Kennedy brothers doing 1976-1980 and somehow bringing down Wrath for something awful bungled or undertaken, perhaps a primary challenger like James Earl Carter usurping the Kennedy party's nomination and then Carter 1980-1992, etc.

This could allow some Major Achievements standing out in history, maybe. Think of Nixon passing universal health care and getting approval for an American supersonic jetliner and maybe establishing a base on the moon...

This admitted would-be Nixon-wank is based on the fantasy that Nixon would hold back from getting deeply into Vietnam. Nixon of 1960 could still be deeply adherent to the Eisenhower foreign policy school, mistrustful of Europeans striving to hold onto their colonies (see Suez 1956) and of the consequences of such actions, let alone following in their footsteps.

Without the otl drain of the Vietnam War, American federal fiscal health is much more robust, and, without the cultural malaise and divisions from the Vietnam War, well, more resources and enthusiasm for prosperity and world-leading science etc.

Oh, heck, it could even be Jerry Brown 1980-1996, or (trying to think of a Republican who could handle being president for three or more terms without some kind of implosion, yes I'm awfully horrifically biased) George H. W. Bush not ticking off Perot and thus reigning 1984-1996 or to 2000, calmly and masterfully overseeing a strong American international role without causing near the amount of blowback that his dear son did in otl, etc et al...

What would Jerry Brown with 12 or 16 years as president do with the United States? Coast to coast maglevs? Freaking space-stations by Pluto? Who knows.
 
where did everybody go?

fiddlesticks!




1984, one fine summer, proceeding rapidly over New York City...

"...and if you look out the window, you'll see the twin towers and the Statue of Liberty! What a beautiful day. We'll be up to cruising altitude shortly, and, we'll be landing in Tokyo in just over six hours! Sorry for the delay, but we are flying into a headwind. Dinner will be served in twenty minutes! After that, we'll be showing 'Police Academy 2,' starring Lenny Bruce. We hope you enjoy your flight, and, thank you very much for flying Pan Am!"
 
"The Central Intelligence Agency's ability to gather information about the Soviet Union and its satellite, and to present this information in a way that can be effectively used by the President and the National Security Council remains abysmal. Buoyed by its so-called success in Iran and Guatemala in the early 1950s, the Agency has resisted any attempt to divert resources from inefficientclandestine operations, and has repeatedly disregarded instructions to reinforce its modest team of intelligence analysts.

Given the time necessary to recruit and train such analysts, as well as to design and build the tools they will need, it is this subcommission's duty to inform the President that the United States' government will have no usable instrument to efficiently detect, analyze and combat Soviet moves against American and Allied interests throughout the globe in this decade. The Agency's failure to do the job it has been created means the United States of America will only be able to react to our adversaries' moves, and to see their choice of options dictated by mere circumstances. In this respect, and despite its current might and its past achievements, America might well deem the 1960s the most dangerous time in its young History."

Confidential report of the Senate's subcommittee on National Intelligence Assets, 1962.
 
Transcript of conversation between LBJ and President Nixon.

LBJ: You're gonna run in '64'?
Nixon: I am Lyndon.
LBJ: You're sure? With the death of your wife...

Nixon: My decision's final.

LBJ: If you're sure you're up to it.
 
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