How Silent Fall the Cherry Blossoms

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To bad about Mussolini. I've always had a relatively soft spot for Il Duce, when compared with Germany and Japan. At least he goes out with honor.

Question. Did the OTL Nurnmberg trials deal with anyobe who was ot German - or directly working for Germans? If the tribunal is going to try Mussolini, what about the leaders of Hungary, Croatia, and so forth who were probably more willing assistants of the Nazis than Mussolini?
 
While one can quibble a few details, the "Silent March" update is outstanding and one of the reasons this timeline remains so fascinating and well executed.
 
Does anyone have any figures on survivors liberated from the camps OTL?

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005131 is a good place to start, though that article doesn't contain exact numbers for each camp. The first line is

"As Allied troops moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Nazi Germany, they began to encounter tens of thousands of concentration camp prisoners."

Now, looking at the numbers by camp, it appears that the overall total may be above 100,000, but that gets into the question of whether if someone was alive when the British/Americans got to the camp, but dies within the week of Typhus should count or not. :(

In short, the Nazis considered the work to be more or less completed by the time the first significant butterflies occur in Nov 1944 (I know the actual POD iTTL is back whenever the submarines didn't get delayed).
 
Interdict

IMVHO, the threat of an interdict wasn't because of the secular matters, but because the French were making demands of the pope in maters of who can hold what position in the church hierachy. The church is very touchy about the powers it has--and threatening the interdict for barring an archbishop from his cathedral, and for arresting priests who were at a cathedral to pray, seems very in character for the organization.

Great stuff.

Did the laeteran Treaty survive the end of Mussolini's dictatorship? If the Italian government wanted, it could argue that the treaty was not actually valid, since Mussolini wasn't a legitimate ruler...
 

Geon

Donor
Answers to Two Questions

Zoomar

To answer your question on the Nuremburg Tribunal and other participants in Nazi crimes, the answer is yes other nationalities were tried there too. After everything that happened the Allies, especially, the U.S. is determined to make certain that this sort of thing doesn't happen again.

NHBL

The Lateran treaty stays in effect. I don't see any reason it would have been abrogated by the Italian government afterwards.

Geon
 
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005131 is a good place to start, though that article doesn't contain exact numbers for each camp. The first line is

"As Allied troops moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Nazi Germany, they began to encounter tens of thousands of concentration camp prisoners."

Now, looking at the numbers by camp, it appears that the overall total may be above 100,000, but that gets into the question of whether if someone was alive when the British/Americans got to the camp, but dies within the week of Typhus should count or not. :(

In short, the Nazis considered the work to be more or less completed by the time the first significant butterflies occur in Nov 1944 (I know the actual POD iTTL is back whenever the submarines didn't get delayed).

Again Mittlewerk as example
for the needed conversion into V2 and V1 production, site then work in them.
around 44000 concentration camp prisoners, are move from Death Camp KZ Buchenwald. at 66 km distance with train
from 44000 prisoners, died 22000 during factory construction & expansion and mass production of V2 & V1 during august 1944 to march 1945.
on march 1945, the V2 production was stop do lack of Fuel and electric current.
3&4 April 1945 the SS "evacuated" Mittlewerk, the concentration camp prisoner with Death march to KZ Bergen-Belsen
a distance of 150 km to walk !
who stop was shot, who could not stand up after night rest or were too sick to walk was shot, or like 1016 prisoner burned alive in barn of Gardelegen
there was no water or food for concentration camp prisoner during this horror.

as US army reach on April 11, Mittlewerk. They found only sick and dying concentration camp prisoner, who the SS could murder do lack of time.

This give you, a scale who many died during the construction of fortification on West and East front.
note those work were made during the winter, so the Death-rate is extreme higher as in Mittlewerk !
 
IMVHO, the threat of an interdict wasn't because of the secular matters, but because the French were making demands of the pope in maters of who can hold what position in the church hierachy. The church is very touchy about the powers it has--and threatening the interdict for barring an archbishop from his cathedral, and for arresting priests who were at a cathedral to pray, seems very in character for the organization.

Note that the issue is not nearly so clear cut.
Portugal, by the Concordat of 1940, retained,
wiki said:
in Article 10, the right to a political veto of prospective bishops.

Even in France, the Concordat of Bologna (1516), largely reinstated in 1817, allowed the king to nominate bishops, archbishops, etc., subject admittedly to a papal veto. I don't know if that was still in effect in Republican France, but I don't see a newer Concordat with France.

So... I really, really doubt that this is something the Pope would go to the wall on. Excommunication of a few individual people, even an entire class of people happens. Excommunication (or interdict, which is similar, but not identical) of an entire nation is really a nuclear option, and one that, AFAIK hadn't been used for centuries.

If the Pope refused to take a stand over the Nazis, and insists on taking a stand on, essentially linguistic issues, however it's dressed up, the reputation of the papacy will be in tatters.

Any pope who was so hard-nosed as to implement this wouldn't be a pope who allowed vernacular masses, anyway.

So, no, I really, really don't think this is anywhere near being plausible.
 
Note, the last national interdict I can find was Scotland, lifted in 1328. If you count Italian cities, Florence suffered an interdict later that century, and Venice had several, the latest being 1607.

No Pope is going to institute a nation wide interdict in the 20th century, unless some nation develops a widespread practice of cannibalism or something.

So, no, its NOT happening under these circumstances.
 
Note, the last national interdict I can find was Scotland, lifted in 1328. If you count Italian cities, Florence suffered an interdict later that century, and Venice had several, the latest being 1607.

No Pope is going to institute a nation wide interdict in the 20th century, unless some nation develops a widespread practice of cannibalism or something.

So, no, its NOT happening under these circumstances.

I concur. The Vatican can ratchet up pressure more realistically, any number of other ways.
 
So the department of the Sarre is not just the Saarland but most of the Rheinland if it extends to Koeln. :eek:

Nice touches though.
 

Geon

Donor
East German and the Marchers

Here is an update of how the Silent March effected East Germany.
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Eastern Germany and the Silent March:
As noted earlier in East Germany the Soviet policy was one of not simply removal of German culture but replacing it with a Soviet/Russian culture. During the Phoenix War thousands were relocated to gulags in Siberia and their places were taken by émigrés from other Eastern European nations. As a result the East German people found themselves more and more aliens in their own country. By 1960 the population of native Germans was only 48 percent of the entire East German population with the rest being from other eastern European nations. These remaining Germans were determined to hang on to their culture and customs.
Ironically this growing grass roots movement to preserve German culture in East Germany was helped by the passive Phoenix cells. As the years passed many of the cells began to lose their fervor for National Socialism and its theories of race while holding onto a staunch German nationalism. The second generation raised by many of these cells was taught about the pride their parents had in a united Germany but not about the darker aspects of that history. While they would learn those aspects in the state-run schools the parents would be quick to point out that National Socialism was more of an aberration then anything else, thus disavowing the very reason for the Phoenix cells to be put into existence.
When news of the “Silent March” reached East Germans through various underground media the idea had instant appeal, especially to the young who were seeking some meaning for their lives other then what they were being taught in the state run schools. The Catholic and Lutheran Churches were still allowed to exist and so in cities throughout the East German People’s Republic the Silent March began on October 7, 1960.
Unlike the French the East German/Soviet police acted quickly and brutally. Within an hour of the march starting the streets were cleared and many of the marchers were arrested. Many would be shipped off to East German prisons to spend long prison terms. But if the government thought that they had stamped out the movement they were sadly mistaken. The next year on October 7th the marchers were back. This time they were also bearing placards asking Soviet troops which were now flowing into East Germany in response to the U.S. attempted coup in Iran to leave. Again there was a brutal crackdown.
For four years the process was repeated and for four years the silent marchers continued to risk arrest and appear on East German city streets to march and to pray. Finally in 1968 in September the president of East Germany received an envoy from the Vatican who carried a letter from Pope Pius XIII. The letter was a request that the marchers not be hindered this year from going to their local churches to hear Mass. The Pope had timed his letter to arrive three weeks before the arrival of the U.S. President George Wallace marking an American President’s first visit to a communist nation since the start of the Cold War. Wanting to make a good impression the East German president agreed to allow the March.
On October 7th the largest crowd of silent marchers recorded since the marches began in East German formed in the center of the major East German cities and carrying German flags walked silently to Catholic and Lutheran churches to hear Mass and to pray for the unity of their nation. This time they were not harassed. The marches coincided with the week that the U.S. President was visiting and the media were quick to telecast the event. The U.S. President paid a tribute in one of his speeches to “the courage of the marchers standing up for freedom year after year,” and even attended services at one of the Lutheran churches in Dresden following the march, much to the discomfort of the East German government.
From this point on the Silent March was unopposed by the East German government as the western media came each year to cover it. While Moscow was definitely not happy with western media in East Germany covering a group of dissidents it also was mindful of trying to cultivate a more “tolerant” image. Thus the marchers were allowed to continue their yearly activities.
The marchers would form the core of a new pan-Germanic movement. Their willingness to march each year in a totalitarian state and their forming of study groups that studied German history helped them to face the darker chapters of German history and yet be proud of the better aspects of it. Thus seeds would be planted that would years later bear fruit in a reunited Germany.
 
"President George Wallace"!!!!

Please, Geon, say it aint so. If this is true, US History 1945-1968 (or George Wallace himself) must have inexplicably diverged from OTL reality. This is weirder than whatever Dathi says about the Pope!
 

Geon

Donor
President George Wallace

I will mention just this to whet your appetite for the United States postwar section later down the road. Three factors lead to Wallace becoming president [spoiler alert]. I will elaborate on all of these in the U.S. section much later.

  1. Eisehnower's death during the war means a president other then Eisenhower holding term from 1952-1960. Let me make that perfectly clear!:D
  2. Kennedy will be president but he does have health problems.
  3. The civil rights movement starts much earlier then in our timeline thanks inadvertantly to our friend in St. Louis, Daryl Cleaver.
Geon
 
  1. Kennedy will be president but he does have health problems.
  2. The civil rights movement starts much earlier then in our timeline thanks inadvertently to our friend in St. Louis, Daryl Cleaver.
Geon

Thus...Wallace remains in the Demcoratic party but a wing that has adapted to the victories of the early Civil Rights movement. Essentially going through his later life "conversion" to being 'pro-civil rights'. Thus more milder, gentler, Wallace.
 
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