‘This is a special bulletin from BBC television in London. Buckingham Palace announced a few moments ago that His Majesty the King has died, peacefully in his sleep, at the age of 77. Normal programming has been suspended for the remainder of the day…’
Robert Dougall, 28 May 1972
Irrevocable Determination
A collaborative TL by RogueBeaver and Meadow
‘V. troubling day at Balmoral. HMK was shooting pheasant until very late in the day and his coach was held up on the way back in frosted mud. He retired to bed immediately on his return and complained of a bad cough and aching cold. If my fears are correct, he is developing pneumonia. I dare not think what will come of it if this is the case.’
Personal diary of Bertrand Dawson, Viscount of Penn and Physician-in-Ordinary to George V, 27 January 1930
The King in his study, 1929.
‘They want me to go all the way to Balmoral tonight? What could possibly be so important?’
Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 28 January 1930
‘It is as I feared.’
Scrawled note on an otherwise blank page of personal diary of Bertrand Dawson, circa. 29 January 1930
‘As the days went on, he grew weaker and weaker, often lapsing into unconsciousness for hours at a time. He would return to lucidity only for a few brief moments, and even then only to make some kindly but irrelevant remark inquiring into someone else’s whereabouts or health. On one occasion he did ask his secretary the somewhat queer question of “how is the Empire?”, the response to which pleased him. By the first day of February, it was clear to all present what was going to happen, and I was taken to one side by Stamfordham (to this day I swear I saw the beginnings of tears in his eyes) and asked to “make the necessary preparations”.
I contacted the Accession Council personally the following morning.’
Ramsay MacDonald, interviewed in
The Passing Of A King, 1935
‘David had this unfathomable look in his eye when the doctor was explaining everything to him. Bertie was, as ever, like an open window through which all his thoughts could be seen. David, though – I could not put my finger on what it was that bothered me. To think that he’d delayed coming up to the castle for a day so he could arrange to make some of the journey in one of those wretched flying contraptions! But I think it was the contrast between that and the man I saw now, who, like so many men before him, was being told his father was dying. He looked almost sorry that he’d not come up earlier, but at the same time there was something in his eyes that unnerved me – something powerful and determined, something… burning. Burning from the back of his irises. I never quite looked at him in the same way after that.’
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, interviewed in
The Windsors, 1973 (segment modified prior to publication)
‘It is done.’
Single-line diary entry by Bertrand Dawson, 7 February 1930
‘The King is dead. Long live the King.’
Part of proclamation issued by the Accession Council, 8 February 1930
‘What now?’
His Majesty, Edward the Eighth, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland, and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India, 8 February 1930
The Prince of Wales on the causeway, 24 January.
The Prince of Wales with Stanley Baldwin outside No 10, 6 February. Prime Minister in all but name, Mr Baldwin is widely suspected to be the Prince's closest ally in Cabinet.
Of all the Democrats then considering a presidential run for what was likely to seem an easy victory over President Hoover, the one who most Democrats favoured was New York Gov. Franklin Roosevelt. However Roosevelt, who for many years had cherished presidential ambitions, had lost by a razor-thin margin- 12,542 votes [1]- in the 1928 gubernatorial election to Republican Attorney General Albert Ottinger. His subsequent victory in 1930 had been too late and now he had to hope that the eventual nominee would be amenable to offering the vice-presidential nomination. Or at least that 1940 would be the year he won the presidency on his own. It had been a hard-fought campaign, with then-Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover easily holding the White House for the Republicans, crushing New York Governor Al Smith by twenty points, 59.1-39.6, in the popular vote and 474-57 in the Electoral College. [2] By 1930 the Republicans’ hold on the presidency interrupted solely by Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson for 13 of 17 elections since the Civil War was greatly weakening due to the severe recession that was well underway. Smith had lost his home state of New York and traditionally Republican Massachusetts, despite widespread Catholic support, by 2 points to Hoover. Even staunchly Democratic Alabama, which had never voted for a Republican since the party was founded 72 years earlier and despite the presence of Senate Majority Leader Joe Robinson (D-Ark.) on the ticket, fell to Hoover by 2 percent [3], a Republican breakthrough in the heart of the old Confederacy. Or at least it was thought a breakthrough at the time: Hoover had ordered the GOP’s Southern operatives to focus on outreach to the white-collar, pro-business professionals [4] instead of the largely disenfranchised African-Americans who had long been the bedrock of Southern Republican support.
Newt Gingrich,
The End of A Mirage
Franklin Roosevelt concedes the gubernatorial election to Attorney General Ottinger shortly after midnight on Election Night. The Republican wave that swept President-elect Hoover into office also washed over the Empire State this evening.
NEWT GINGRICH, Hoover biographer, Professor of American History, Princeton University:
“In retrospect historians see it as the birth of the modern Southern Republican Party, an event that is usually postdated to after World War II. At the time it was dismissed as a fluke due to Smith’s Catholicism or the national wave. In the short term, the Democrats carried the 10 largest cities in America by a net margin of 24,000 votes where Coolidge had won overwhelmingly, despite a three-way race four years earlier. [5] The urbanites were awakening. So were the farmers, as Hoover knew well: that is why both parties supported higher agricultural tariffs, especially the Republicans. But Smith could not access them, and in 1928 the Republicans’ message of peace and prosperity outweighed all the other factors- anti-Catholicism, Smith’s wetness or Tammany association." [6]
From Ken Burns'
"American Experience: The 1930s"
[1] OTL margin of roughly 26,000 votes. The Congressional elections went as per OTL.
[2] OTL 58.1-40.6 and 444-87.
[3] OTL margins of 2% in Alabama and 3% in Massachusetts.
[4] Otherwise known as "Hoovercrats."
[5-6] Black,
Champion of Freedom