Let The Eagle Scream Version 2: Star-Spangled-Boogaloo

[Murica1776]

Erin Go Bragh

General George "Blood and Guts" Patton, Commander of the Canadian Front and Liberator of Ireland
​

With Japan on the ropes by mid 1943, Washington turned their eyes to the European theater. America had mostly stayed out of Europe to focus on Asia, much to the annoyance of their German allies. However, President Richardson pointed out that Germany didn't have a substantial presence in Asia, and that only America could take out Japan. Nonetheless, he committed American troops to liberating Ireland, which would put even greater pressure on an already crumbling British Empire. An unspoken part of this idea was the fact that it would guarantee America a toehold in Europe. Even as America and Germany cooperated on the broad strokes and shared a few technologies (mainly pertaining to jet engines and machine guns) both continent straddling superpowers were working to secure the largest possible sphere of influence for themselves. America needed to liberate Ireland themselves if they didn't want to be completely shut out of Europe.

Leading the charge to liberate Ireland was General George S. Patton, the man responsible for America's rapid victory in Canada, and his two favored colleagues from the Marines and Navy, Lieutenant General Pedro del Valle, and African-American Vice Admiral Marcus Booker. All three men shared common personality traits and backgrounds. They were all Southerners, they all believed in aggressive strategies designed to wear down the enemy, and all were fierce patriots and imperialists who were paranoid about a coming German or Soviet world order. Since they shared the same idiosyncrasies, they were perfect colleagues for a joint liberation effort, and perhaps the only two people who could have worked as effectively with Patton as they did. Their plan was a simple one. First, the US would need to either get permission to land in Greenland or would have to simply land there, to use as a launching pad into Ireland. The ports of Kilronan and Fenit would provide a good staging ground to punch into the majority of Ireland. The Protestant North was to be dealt with last, as resistance there would be fierce.

President Richardson was able to get German permission to use Greenland as a launching point, partially by implying that the "Triumvirate of Crazy" would just seize it if they didn't. The Americans would later buy the island from Denmark for a relative pittance. Having established bases in Greenland by February of 1943, the 180,000 troops and 40,000 sailors devoted to the mission would hunker down until April to begin the offensive. The exception to this were the submarine "Wolf Pack" of the North Atlantic Fleet, which spent months crippling British shipping and the Royal Navy in Ireland. There would also be New York launched airstrikes against Irish ports delivered by V-56 bombers, who also targeted London to both terrify the British and demonstrate their long reach to the world. The increasingly decrepit Royal Navy and Air Force were unable to combat these efforts effectively, and had basically resolved to protect Britain proper from German invasion, and leave everyone else to fend for themselves.

In April, after the last winter freeze, the Americans attacked. Landing in Kilronan and Fenit almost simultaneously, the Americans were greeted as heroes by the Irish. Despite local support, entrenched British positions and the Protestants were determined to fight for as long as they could. Despite the deployment of a large army, complete with tanks and air support, it took until October to completely secure the Emerald Isle, including Ulster. The Battle of Dublin in July was particularly brutal. As the Americans sped through Ireland, they also uncovered the Erstwhile Camps. By 1942, they had transitioned from labor camps into death camps. Some 775,000 Irish would perish in the camps. There were further discoveries in Africa by the Germans, where Britain is estimated to have killed over 4 million Africans. These discoveries came on the heels of the American Liberation of Hong Kong in June of '43. The general public was furious. Not only had the British and Japanese started a violent war of aggression against the United States and her Liberian allies, they had committed ruthless genocides against innocent peoples the Americans admired, or in the case of the Philippines and Hong Kong, against American citizens. Even as the United States government tested its new superweapon in the deserts of American Mexico, public opinion against Britain and Japan was boiling over. They had sown the wind, and now it was time to reap the wild whirlwind.

After the end of the war, Ireland was made a free and independent Republic. The Ulster Protestants were loaded onto ships and deported to Britain and South Africa. American bomber based would be constructed in the country in 1947, which Berlin protested as a threatening gesture. However, the Irish were broadly supportive of the American military presence in the country, which would grow for years. With their continent straddling, nuke lobbing superpower buddies behind them, the Irish slept easy knowing that no foreign power would dare to threaten them again. Ireland would go on to be one of America's closest and most loyal allies. It was the least they could do for the country that crossed the ocean to free them.

American troops cavort with Irish girls in Dublin (August, 1943)

An American soldier and Irish auxiliary pose at the opening of Fort Patton in Ireland (1947)

American MPs give military honors to a rebel leader turned Erstwhile Camp victim outside Kilkenny (1943)​

 

[Murica1776]

Reaping the Whirlwind

The Filipina Lady explodes over Osaka (May 8th, 1944)
​

By May of 1944, the American people were getting extremely impatient. Despite constant bombings and strengthening blockades, Britain and Japan refused to surrender to the Central Powers. Clearly, a couple invasions were warranted. However, Washington had been playing mum about their plans: many people wondered if there were plans at all. They had the enemy on the ropes, so why in the hell hadn't Richardson finished them off yet?

The President knew two things that the American people didn't. First of all, he knew that invading Japan and Britain would probably cost some 2-3 million American lives, and leave millions more injured, crippled, or traumatized. That was a non-starter except in the most desperate of circumstances. Secondly, he knew about the Seattle Project and the wonder weapon it had produced. He had immediately ordered the construction of five bombs after seeing the test run in New Canaan, and by May 4th, they were finally completed. Three were secretly flown to the Philippines, while two more were sent to American occupied Greenland. By May 8th, plans had been drawn up for a truly dramatic display of force.

At 6AM EST on May 8th, 1944, five V-56 bombers took off simultaneously. Their targets were Osaka, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Liverpool, and Newcastle. The Richardson Administration had originally planned to hit Edinburgh instead of Nagasaki, but after reading detailed accounts of Japanese atrocities in American Hong Kong WTR decided to make Japan the harsher example. The planes all reached their locales within hours of each other. They didn't even draw attention from the enemy air forces, as one plane was hardly enough to inflict major damage. Then, the payloads dropped. The Filipina Lady on Osaka, the Knuckleball on Nagasaki, the Strikeout on Hiroshima, the Yankee Doodle on Liverpool, and Washington's Fist on Newcastle. Five bombs, five cities, and the apocalyptic dawn of a new age, delivered in 4 hours or less.

Getting an accurate death toll from the attacks is difficult. However, educated money puts the number at somewhere around 500-650,000. At first, the British and Japanese didn't fully understand what was happening. When they did, it was pandemonium. In London, a crowd 200,000 strong gathered outside of Parliament burning Britannianist symbols and demanding an end to the war. Sensing the turning tides, the tame Tory MP's, led by Churchill, gathered up the Sons' MP's at gunpoint and handed them over to the mob, which promptly tore them apart. From a podium with plain Union Jacks behind him (as opposed to the SOB's Lion Standard) Churchill declared himself Prime Minister of His Majesty's Provisional Government, to throaty roars. In a bunker beneath the city, Mosley had become utterly psychotic. He declared that he would never surrender, that Britain would fight on the landing grounds, the beaches, the streets, that the whole country would perish in fire before he would see it defiled by the Yankees. The military brass shot him execution style, alongside several loyalists. The military took to the airwaves to pledge their loyalty to Churchill's government. The Royal Family announced that Winston Churchill was, in fact, the rightful Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He promptly surrendered to the Americans and Germans at 6pm EST. In Japan, the Emperor announced that he was ordering the military and government to unconditionally surrender to the United States. It was the first time any average Japanese person had heard their Emperor speak. The double whammy of three near simultaneous atomic strikes and the Emperor commanding an unconditional surrender broke Japan. The Empire sent a formal notice of surrender to Washington, received at 7:30pm EST. America, and the Central Powers, had won the war in time for the 8 o'clock news. As radioactive ash settled across England and Japan, in the streets of New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Havana, Hong Kong, Berlin, Warsaw, Vienna, and Budapest, flag waving crowds danced and screamed themselves hoarse. Celebrations would continue for days. The worst war in human history was over.

Formal surrender ceremonies were held a week later. The Americans rubbed some salt into the wounds. In Japan, Hirohito shook hands with Douglas MacArthur on the aircraft carrier USS Fredrick Douglass. MacArthur did not bow to him or anyone else in the delegation. This was followed by a massive flyover of the Douglass, led by the three V-56 bombers that had dropped the bombs. In London, the Americans held a separate surrender ceremony from the rest of the Powers. Patton received Churchill and the Royal Family in Westminster Abbey, the very heart of the British monarchy. Afterwards, the troops held a parade from Westminster to Buckingham Palace. A special system of loudspeakers played The World Turned Upside Down and a specially commissioned version of Yankee Doodle that concluded with the verse "A long war we fought and won, the British were defeated, and Yankee Doodle was the march to which their troops retreated!" With the ceremonial insults out of the way, it was now time to carve up the globe.

On June 13th, 1944, the German and Tripartite Kaisers, alongside their respective heads of government, met with President Richardson and General-Secretary Stalin for the Conference of Milan. Stalin's USSR hadn't been a combatant, but had invaded former Japanese Manchuria after Japan's defeat. Furthermore, it was implicit acknowledgement of the Soviet Union as a Great Power. The Tripartite Empire's claims were simple enough. They wanted, and received, acknowledgement of their de facto hegemony in the Balkans. They also took British Ceylon as a reward. The Germans took all of the African colonies they were currently occupying, with little complaint. Ethiopia would soon be sold to the Italians as part of the upcoming Berlin-Rome Accords. The Germans also claimed the right to unilateral dominance over France with little complaint, and reasserted their dominance over Mitteleuropa and Nordeuropa with grumblings from Stalin. The Germans and Americans got into heated disputes over Liberian Africa and the British Isles. Germany wanted unilateral control over the Isles, and wanted to seize Liberia's client states and the Ivory Coast. The Americans, alongside Liberian ambassadors they invited, refused. The Germans were forced to compromise quite lopsidedly when it became apparent that Richter's Tripartite Empire wasn't going to back any African claims. He's alleged to have said "Have we not fought enough wars over Africa yet?" The Germans backed down, and ultimately conceded an American sphere of influence over all of Ireland, as well as the deportations of Protestants. Undeniably, part of America's ability to get such a good deal was their continued atomic monopoly. America unilaterally asserted hegemony over the Western Hemisphere with little dispute (Stalin hinted that he would be willing to back Communists but stopped short of saying it). This offended Brazil, who wasn't invited to Milan anyway, but caused little uproar elsewhere. America was also able to secure a majestic swathe of Asia. Japan, Korea, non-Soviet China, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Guinea, Australia, and New Zealand were all recognized as part of the American sphere of influence by Germany and the Tripartite, and the Soviets backed off their criticisms somewhat after the Americans promised to leave them to Manchuria without incident. The Americans would also buy Indochina from Germany for the hefty sum of $200 million and created three independent states in the form of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Completing the American goody bag was the annexation of Fiji, Singapore, and some assorted leftover islands in the Pacific. The only places in Asia that America wanted but did not receive were Burma and Thailand. Burma and Thailand were both to become a German sphere of influence. The Germans and Soviets immensely resented this massive new Asian empire, but given that the bulk of America's million man Navy, 600,000 strong Marine Corps, and an unknown quantity of atomic warheads (really none, but the US wasn't going to say that) were scattered in or near these areas, all parties involved felt it best to try and chip away at this sphere later. India was left an open question, aside from the other powers denying Stalin's offer of a "unilateral humanitarian intervention." Soviet hegemony over Persia and Afghanistan was acknowledged without debate. With negotiations concluded on the 20th, the powers bid each other adieu. For all intents and purposes, the Shadow War had just begun.

A crowd in NYC rejoices after the bombs are dropped on what will be dubbed V Day (May 8th, 1944)

Winston Churchill addresses the crowd on May 8th

https://imgur.com/a/S0pPGBm

 

[Murica1776]

Eurasia Triumphant

Stalin announces the reorganization of the USSR into the unitary Eurasian Union (November 7th, 1944)
​

The Soviet Union and her leader, Josef Stalin, were by far some of the biggest victors of the Second World War, despite having not actually fought in it. Thanks to Stalin's ruthlessly shrewd leadership, Russia was more powerful and respected than it had been since at least the Russo-Japanese War. From the start of Japan's war to the Milan Conference, Stalin had added 2,009,914 sq. miles to the Soviet Union. Moscow's de facto sphere of Persia, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, and Afghanistan (Nepal and Bhutan had Communist coups in '41 and '43, Afghanistan was more of a mercenary state) measured in at 1,434,551 sq. miles, and included massively rich oil fields, land perfect for growing cotton, and other natural resources. More than that, the Soviets had gotten fabulously wealthy off of shameless war profiteering. The Allies and Central Powers had both bought weapons and especially raw materials in massive quantities from Moscow for the duration of the war. The exception to this rule was America, a fellow continent-straddling juggernaut. Stalin had invested much of the proceeds into improving living standards and the economy. Every Soviet citizen was given fairly decent housing, complete with running water and electricity. By 1944, the USSR was beating all of Germany's Eastern European puppets in terms of things like per capita car ownership, a source of great embarrassment to Berlin. This even inspired some anti-nationalist movements, mainly among the region's increasingly alienated Jewish population, to rejoin Russia. These movements would have no effect other than to decrease the Jewish community's already plummeting popularity, but their existence is proof of the Soviet Union's surprisingly impressive performance. Stalin had also invested heavily in science, and successfully adapted German missile technologies as well as developing more uniquely Soviet technologies like the first mass produced military helicopter, the Z-67. With all these successes, his totalitarian security apparatus, and his personality cult, Stalin was quite possibly the most beloved and powerful ruler in Russian history. However, he was going to make his biggest internal power play yet.

As Stalin invented his Eurasian Communist ideology, he came to hate the structure of the USSR. The separate republics dispersed power to ethnically determined states and local elites. Furthermore, they inhibited the ability of Russian culture and ethnic Russians or the Russified to dominate. So it was that on the annual celebrations of the October Revolution on November 7th, Stalin stunned the nation and the world by announcing the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and all SSR's. In it's place, would rise the Eurasian Union, a unitary state. There would be no silly hogwash of minority culture rights. There would be no inefficient divide between the Soviet Party, the Republic Party, and the Local Party. No elites who didn't fit Stalin's worldview. And no one would challenge the man calling himself General-Secretary, Vozhd, and perhaps his most outrageous titles yet, The Personification of Eurasia and the People's Tsar. There were stragglers in most non-Russian areas (the Chinese conquests had been directly run by Moscow and thus saw little rebel activity). Those elites who resisted were promptly tried and shot. There were small rebellions that occurred, but these mostly stopped after Stalin made an example of 5,000 Uzbek rebels by effortlessly wiping them out with poison gas. The Eurasian Union would brook no rebellion, and Stalin would tolerate nothing short of total obedience. Now, more than ever, Stalin had total control of this vast realm. However, to ensure true immortality, he needed a worthy successor. He found one in Georgy Zhukov.

Zhukov had been the strategic genius behind most of Moscow's military actions since the 30's, only sitting out Persia and Tibet. From 1938 onwards he had been the de facto ruler of Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Manchuria under Stalin's auspices. Aside from overseeing ruthless collectivization programs and the liquidation of thousands of local nationalists, he created a new template for Soviet imperial rule. Stalin was a well-known anti-Semite. However, deporting all the Jews was impractical, as was killing them. Instead, Zhukov came up with a solution. Regardless of the specifics of Jewish culture or faith, Russian Jews were overwhelmingly European Ashkenazi. This meant that they could be a vanguard in Asia. Zhukov encouraged or coerced over 300,000 Russian Jews, and 30,000 Belarusian Jews, to move to Mongolia. Due to family migration and destruction, the majority of Soviet Jews were single. Zhukov encouraged, indeed sometimes forced these Jews to intermarry with Mongolians. This actually worked extremely well, with a large number of participants marrying Mongolian men and women thanks to the sheer numbers. What this meant is that by 1950, a majority of Mongolian children were half Mongolian, half Jewish. This group had no ethnic group it could fully call their own. Many Jews are against marrying outsiders, and Jews were despised, so you can't claim Judaic identity. You're the partial descendants of people colonizing Mongolia so you're not Mongolian. This created a large new ethnic group that would soon be begging for an identity. The Soviet/Eurasian state could give it to them. Zhukov, with Stalin's enthusiastic permission, began exhorting this cohort as the founding generation of a Eurasian Race. The Eurasian Race was a new kind of race, whose soul and blood was uniquely suited to the work of Communism. Working alongside their Russian brethren (to whom they were to be considered equal) they would guide the EU, and the world, to a new era of civilization, prosperity and harmony. All they had to do was embrace their state invented designation and Russian culture. By the 1950's, the program was bearing fruit, as this generation of children and teens identified themselves as Eurasians, spoke Russian, and embraced both Russian culture and the Eurasian state, often to the quiet chagrin of their parents.

While the parents might have been displeased, Stalin was overjoyed. The Eurasian Race Doctrine became official Party policy in 1951, and Stalin exhorted party officials in restive areas to encourage or mandate racial mixing. Population transfers would be done to precisely this effect. In 1951, 80,000 single Kazakh women were deported to Georgia, and in '52, 40,000 single Armenians of both sexes were deported to Manchuria. On top of this was the fact that years of warfare in Manchuria and other parts of China had created a gender imbalance, with there being 56 women to 44 men across the region. This was even the case in the Eurasian puppet state of Tibet, which got flooded by Russian colonists as a result. Long-term, Moscow hoped to use colonialism and demography to fully integrate Tibet into the Eurasian Union. By the time of Stalin's death in 1955, there were over 1.2 million Eurasians in the EU, and it was by far the fastest growing demographic group, followed closely by the Russians. Under the Zhukov regime, growth would only continue.

When Stalin died on June 9th, 1955, the nation went into a frenzy of mourning. Portraits of the deceased tyrant were plastered on walls, automobiles, schools, barracks, and even children's lunchboxes. Behind the scenes, a three way power struggle had broken out. Lavrenty Beria, head of the NKVD, was an unreformed Stalinist, but one who had megalomaniacal dreams of attaining even greater control of the EU than Stalin. He had the powerful NKVD behind him, and nobody else. Nikita Khrushchev was favored by party elites, and called for both limited reforms and an end to the Eurasian Race Policy in favor of a more traditional approach. Privately, he hoped to restore the old USSR. Finally, Zhukov had the backing of the big man himself, and the entire Soviet military. He was obviously in favor of the Eurasian Race Policy, albeit with a couple tweaks, and had his own set of reforms to pass. In the end, Zhukov would triumph. The Red Army surrounded NKVD HQ on June 11th and executed Beria alongside much of the NKVD brass. Red Army Military Police would kidnap Khrushchev and key supporters on the 11th and 12th for show trials and executions. In the aftermath of Zhukov's seizure of power, he would absorb the NKVD into the Eurasian military, and conduct another round of targeted purges to rid the Party of USSR sympathizers. By August, he had a level of control similar to Stalin's, albeit with a budding as opposed to developed personality cult. In fact, his cult was strongly tied to Stalin's, with the anniversary of Stalin's death (June 9) declared Eurasia Mourns the Great Comrade Day, and Stalin's birthday (Dec. 18) made into Eurasia Day, which became a massive celebration modeled after American Christmas. However, to ensure he built an independent brand and brought a new level of prosperity to the people, he announced unexpected reforms.

On October 1st, Zhukov gave the "A Civilization, Not A System" speech. While Stalin was a very ardently committed Communist, Zhukov had always been cooler on the Communist system. He was no free marketeer, but as a military man he had developed tremendous respect for America's logistics and war machine, fueled by capitalistic endeavor. Above all, Zhukov was a believer in Eurasianism and the Great Destiny of the Russian and Eurasian peoples to spread their race and civilization across the Earth. So it was on October 1st that Zhukov announced "Eurasia is open for business," and announced that private business, investment, and property were to be allowed. However, the State would create mechanisms to make investments in the country almost impossible to withdraw, and ensured the primacy of many State corporations, as well as announcing that the State could seize private businesses or property in the name of the national interest. Despite these caveats the reforms were radical enough to spark both worldwide interest and a purge of the most devoted Communists. Above all, Zhukov desired closer investments and ties with the United States. Although he found America's liberal democratic ideals both silly and dangerous, as he put it in private correspondence, "The only people who can truly compete with the Russo-Eurasian people in the realms of conquest and colonization are the Americans." While their ideas about freedom might be anathema, Zhukov had a healthy admiration for their imperial accomplishments. Americans were more ambivalent. On the one hand, Stalin's treatment of Jews and the Chinese had done little to win him fans with the Sinophilic and the philo-Semitic American public, to say nothing of the large diasporas present. On the other hand, the EU was a useful check against Germany, had not been overly aggressive to the United States, and Zhukov's reforms were a pretty big break with Stalin. Another factor in Eurasia's favor was the fact that Zhukov, like his boss, was a fan of American Westerns and had helped create Eurasian "Eastern" equivalents, and thus spoke to Americans in the kind of folksy, pioneering, Manifest Destiny talk that tugs on American heartstrings throughout the multiverse. In the end, Zhukov did attract a good amount of American investment and increased sympathy. There was even a highly publicized group of 500 Americans who dubbed themselves the "Socialist Pioneers for Eurasia" who settled in Manchuria and founded the town of Progress. Later, Tripartite and Brazilian investors would throw cash into the country.

By the start of the 60's, the Eurasian Union was in the best shape any Russian Empire had perhaps ever been in. The economy was taking flight, the population was experiencing a post-war style Baby Boom without the war part, and Eurasia was getting involved in the budding Space Race. This tremendous prosperity sparked a level of loyalty and patriotism not typically seen in Russia. Sure, throughout the centuries the Russians had faithfully obeyed the Tsar or Leader, and felt assured of Russia's special place in the world, but much of that was top-down ideology. Here, patriotism was swelling from the bottom. Eurasian citizens of their own accord were praising the state and Eurasia. In budding planned suburbs, it was common to see citizens flying the Hammer & Sickle on their front porch of their own volition. This isn't to say that the EU wasn't totalitarian. Dissent was still illegal, and the Central Asians resented Moscow's rule tremendously. Dissenters of course disappeared, and Central Asians were increasingly being placed into gulags and their women forced into mixed race marriages to create Eurasians who would grow to despise the culture of their mothers. There would be no disharmony, no rebellion, and certainly no pesky minority cultures in the Eurasia of The Future. Only the endless advance of a brave and superior new civilization.

Georgy Zhukov, 2nd Vozhd of the Eurasian Union

Eurasia Day postcard, exulting Eurasian progress in the Space Race

Armenian nationalists are shipped to Manchuria (1952)​

 

[Murica1776]

For Zion's Sake

The Flag of the State of New Zion
​

Post-war Europe had a problem. A Jewish problem. For decades, Berlin had been pushing a mixture of nationalist and civilizational propaganda on herself and her allies and puppets. Pride in being German, Polish, Baltic, Scandinavian, etc had also been blended with pride in European values and culture to help justify German dominance. These values and cultures had been constructed by gentiles, for gentiles, and they had mostly done their damnedest to keep Jews in a permanent second-class status. It didn't help that since Jews produced an abnormal number of intellectuals, they were disproportionately caught up in things like Communism, Nietzscheanism, and atheism. Ironically, it wasn't Germany that turned on her Jewish population, but rather her puppet states in Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltics who were turning on the Jews in a fit of anti-Eurasian paranoia and post-war nationalistic fervor. Policymakers in Berlin realized that they needed to resettle the Jews of Eastern Europe somewhere, lest pogroms erupt.

Initially, the Germans had their sights on Israel. However, Spain controlled Israel, and even as Berlin and Madrid were reconciling, it would have been a cold day in Hell before the Croixist Spanish regime took in millions of Jews. Germany and the Tripartite Empire were relatively ok with their Jewish populations, but bringing in millions of them was politically untenable. Relocating them to Africa would be deeply impractical, and could potentially make the colonial empire unstable. A frustrated German official made a casual overture to the American embassy in December of 1945 for help. No one expected to have anything come of it. But history is made by the unexpected.

Post-war America had a problem. A Canadian problem. There were 8 million Canadians to absorb, covering an area broader than the original mainland US by quite a bit. Although Washington had a long term plan to assimilate the country, in the short term they needed a solid settler population somewhere. Manitoba and Saskatchewan especially, as they had escaped most of the damage of the War. When President Richardson heard about the ongoing plight of the Jews, he felt both empathy and opportunity. He genuinely disliked the fact that the Jewish people were being oppressed and put in danger, believing them both to be innocent and God's Chosen. Simultaneously, he saw in Europe's Jews a golden opportunity. On January 9th, 1946, he announced to Congress his intention to turn Manitoba and Saskatchewan into a special state set aside for the oppressed Jews of Europe. Many Americans were at least somewhat skeptical of the plan. That's not to say there wasn't broad support (even quite a few skeptics were at least somewhat on board) but taking in a distinctive ethnic and religious group from outside the Americas and giving them their own state made some people nervous. To get Congress on board, Richardson enlisted the Protestant Lobby.

It was an unspoken truth on Capitol Hill that the most bellicose imperial lobby wasn't the military, it wasn't big business, it wasn't even defense contractors; it was Protestant ministers. Protestant ministers, Black and White alike, had ardently pushed expansionism. "The American," famous AME Pastor William Brownings once said, "conquers the world for Christ with a Bible in his hand and a pistol on his hip." Their authority over their flocks meant that when the churches united, the most powerful people in the country listened. Within much of American Protestant theology, there were undercurrents of both philo-Semitism and American Exceptionalism. God said the Jews were the Chosen, so they were the Chosen consarnit. Furthermore, by protecting the Chosen, they were doing God's will and receiving his blessing as a result. Existing alongside this was an idea that, if the American people weren't the outright Chosen, they were a very close second. Some prominent Black and White churches alike held that the Jews and Christians had separate covenants with God, allowing each to be Chosen in a different way. They were the perfect allies for Richardson's efforts. In response to the President's call, prominent ministers joined with prominent Jewish leaders to hold the March to Save the Jews on February 4th, 1945. Over 70,000 Christians and Jews stood in the snow to hear pastor and President thunder that if America left the Jews behind in their hour of need, he would remove his protection from the country. Over 1,000 participants would later gather outside Congress to loudly blow shofars, disrupting legislative business. Congress got the message, and the rally made headlines across the country, swaying millions in support of the Jews. On April 17th, 1945, Congress unanimously passed the Exodus Act, creating the Territory of New Zion out of old Manitoba and Saskatchewan. There were riots in both territories, which were put down by the Army. Meanwhile in Europe, local authorities were ordering millions of Jews to begin packing their belongings. The Second Exodus had begun.

Ship after ship of Jews arrived in American ports throughout 1945, '46, '47, and '48. They were greeted the same way: by cheering crowds. People came from as far as the Midwest to voice their support. Millions of Jews used to oppression were greeted with hugs, clothes, billowing flags, and sign after sign reading "For Zion's Sake, America Will Stand Up!" which was the official slogan of the March to Save the Jews. From the ports, they would register with the newly created Office of Resettlement and Assimilation and hop on a train to New Zion or elsewhere (about 20% of Jews went to either American Mexico or the Philippines due to the constraints of Canada). In something eerily reminiscent of what happened to Native Americans (ironically as America began trying to make amends with them) many Canadians in now New Zion were forced off their land into other parts of Canada. Some 190,000 would voluntarily leave for Australia, New Zealand, Britain, or South Africa. The entire region was "De-Canucked." Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and Regina became Jerusalem (the capital of New Zion) Tel Aviv, and Bethlehem. Jews took over abandoned farms, mining facilities, and logging camps. Others founded agricultural communities known as kibbutz, planned communities based on Jewish and socialist principles, and which mainly focused on industrial scale rye and winter wheat production. Propaganda extolled the Jews as "making the tundra bloom."

There was, in fact, a large propaganda effort around the early years of New Zion. Much of it was from genuine enthusiasm, but it was also partly to drown out complaints from displaced Canadians. The two most famous products of this effort were the movie Exodus and the genre of the "Kosher Western." Exodus, an epic film released in 1951, detailed the fictional story of a young Polish Jewish woman named Esther Loeb as she survived the loss of her parents and the abuses of life in post-war Poland, then came on a boat to America to settle down in New Zion. There, she fought off a pack of wolves and founded a farm in the (real) new settlement of New Eliat. At the midpoint of the film, secret Sons of the Maple Leaf loyalists (portrayed as Brits) besieged her farm. She was rescued by Captain Rick Snyder, a wholesome German-American boy from Iowa. They fall in love, and Esther helps him round up the last loyalists in the area around New Eliat. The film concludes with their wedding, and the epilogue states that they have 6 children, who Rick and Esther agreed to raise Jewish. The movie was a smash hit, and also the first action/epic film to feature a true female lead. Exodus would shape much of the public's perception of the colonization project in New Zion. The "Kosher Westerns" played a role in that as well. These were essentially classic Western stories, but told through the eyes of Jews settling in New Zion in the modern day. All in all, Americans viewed the project in New Zion as wholly heroic on the part of the Jews, and altruistic on their part.

This sense of righteousness was not unwarranted. Not only had the Americans legitimately saved millions of people from oppression, they were helping the Jewish people revive their culture. Jewish Folk songs not played outside the privacy of homes and weddings for fear of persecution were now being played in the White House to clapping crowds. Jews were given the full franchise of any Territorial citizen in good standing. American officials and Bible scholars teamed up with rabbis to properly revive Hebrew, and New Zion became the first part of the Union to be allowed full bilingualism in 1956. Protestant missionaries were actively discouraged from evangelizing in the territory. Charities and government organizations donated necessities for people and communities. America did right by the Jews.

The Jews wouldn't forget it either. In the coming decades New Zion would consistently rank among the most patriotic states in the Union. The sons and daughters of New Zion served in the armed forces at the same rates as the famously bellicose Southerners. And the good people of New Zion wore their love of country on their sleeve. As Esther Loeb put it in Exodus:

"America might not be the Promised Land, but she's in strong contention for the title."

Members of the New Zion National Guard (1953)

A scene from a kibbutz outside of Jerusalem (formerly known as Winnipeg) (1949)

Settler women on a kibbutz outside Tel Aviv (old Saskatoon) drill in Minutemen style maneuvers. Men and women on the frontier learned how to fight in the event of a Canadian terror attack. Even after the threat to New Zion was neutralized in 1949, the culture of readiness remained.​

 

[Murica1776]

The Land of the Romans

Women look at newspapers in Libya (1955)
​

Post-War Italy was a Great Power on the level of the Tripartite Empire. The Italians hadn't participated in either World War, instead selling to both sides like the Soviets turned Eurasians, and had invested in internal reforms and development. Italy now had some of the best counter-insurgent forces in the world, top-notch engineering schools, and a legitimately efficient bureaucracy. For once, Italy was actually very well run. Another boost to the Empire would come in the form of a new social movement cementing its rule in Libya, Tunisia, and the Middle East.

Italy had, like so many versions of the country, become enamored of their ancient Roman past as they expanded. By the mid 1930's prominent scholars, especially those of Sicilian and Southern Italian origin, were pointing to the fact that Rome survived and thrived without strict race laws. If anything, it was a common phenomenon to witness intermarriage between Roman soldiers and local women, and broader intermarriage over the long run. This did nothing to weaken the Empire, and if anything strengthened ties to the local populations. Why couldn't it happen again? The movement was fairly controversial in Italy, until a turning point came in 1941. In a widely publicized event, supporters of the Romanitas Movement, as they called themselves, got an audience with the Italian Royal Family. They presented the Royal Family with a Sicilian, Libyan, and Arabian subject of the Empire. They each honored him in Italian. Then, the supporters asked the Royals to pick which one of their subjects came from where. They got all three wrong. The argument from the Romanitas supporters was that if a North African, an Arab, and a Sicilian all look and behave similar enough that even the most pureblooded family in the nation can't accurately discern their origins, why shouldn't they be allowed to intermarry? Indeed, what prevented them from all becoming full citizens? It should be noted, however, that East Africans in Italian Somaliland weren't included in this doctrine, and their status in the Empire would become a subject of great debate. However, by 1943, as the world was erupting in war, the Romanization Laws were passed opening up marriage laws, citizenship laws, and laying the foundation for a federal, multicontinental Italian Empire.

For their part, Italy's North African and Arab subjects were enthused about getting their citizenship. There had been Islamist insurgencies in the 20's (hence Italy's top notch counter insurgency forces) but by the 40's independence was an increasingly unattractive prospect. Even if they could actually beat the Italians, the Germans would swoop in, or the Americans and Communists would try and create puppet states. For fairly unindustrialized and unpopulated regions, the prospect of fighting a bloody independence war and then having to resist foreign occupation wasn't appealing or even realistic. The Italians were fairly lackadaisical masters even before the Romanization Laws. The one sticking point after Romanization began was, of course, religion. Catholic hardliners wanted to make conversion a mandatory prerequisite for receiving Italian citizenship. More flexible people, including Islamic leaders, pointed out that it would slow down integration by decades. In the end, conversion would not be a prerequisite for attaining Italian citizenship, but Rome began pushing a very secular kind of Islam in the region, where maybe it was ok to eat pork and drink every once and awhile. In the end, some would convert, some would become secular Muslims, and others would remain more traditional, albeit moderate, Muslims. This helped tamp down religious tensions in the region overall, and accelerated assimilation. By 1959, 35% of Italian Libya (OTL Libya and Tunisia) and 27% of Italian Arabia (Yemen, Oman, and most of OTL Saudi) were assimilated Italian citizens. The upcoming federalization of the Empire would be in response to this growing population's demands for autonomy.

In foreign affairs, Italy began weighing its options. Italy, strong as she was, needed to join one of the big blocs to truly be anything more than a regional force. Germany's budding Europa League was the best option, and the one they ultimately went with. The Eurasians were outright Communists, a fact which immediately struck them from contention, although Italy did invest in the opening Eurasian economy. The Americans were too far away to be helpful in the event of German aggression, and America's aggressive expansionism, lingering Islamophobia, and anti-monarchism made them unpopular with both the public and the elite. Germany, however, was the vanguard of Europe. Furthermore, Berlin was in a more defensive posture these days, as they correctly identified that they needed time to fortify and absorb their truly spectacular holdings before being aggressive again. This meant that Germany would not be overly interested in meddling with Italian affairs, so long as Italy wasn't actively betraying and undermining the League. Italy became a founding member of the Europa League, and sent representatives to join the First Europan Conference in Berlin in 1953. There the Italians, alongside the French, British, Spanish, Dutch, Scandinavians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Baltics, Poles, Tripartite representatives, Albanians, Serbians, Romanians, Bulgarians, and Greeks joined a continent spanning alliance devoted to the defense of traditional European culture and Europe's centuries old hegemony against the ever increasing tempo of American and Eurasian aggression. They also acknowledged Germany's incredible domination of the European and African continents, in fact if not in word. Italy and the Tripartite Empire were close to being Germany's partners, but even they acknowledged a degree of German hegemony. Italy marched into the future a mostly independent Great Power, and a committed German ally.

Italian settlers in Libya (1950)

​

Colonial troops on display in Arabia (1951)

A painting of the famous March on Rome, led by Romanitas advocates as they called for a "More Truly Roman" Italian Empire. Over 13,000 Arabs and North Africans were among the ranks.​

 

[Murica1776]

Post-War America Part I: Asians and Anglos

American troops at Fort Madison in the Territory of Erikson (1949)
​

Post-war America had a vast new domain to contend with. Direct annexations alone had added over 3,260,000 sq miles and 9 million people to the American Empire. The powerful new sphere America had built in China and Asia, came to an astonishing 6,565,926 sq. miles peopled by 649,484,877 inhabitants. Between the American Empire proper and its vast spheres of influence, Washington held some kind of sway over around 1 billion people. Ordering this vast domain, specifically in Canada and the Pacific, was a huge priority. Washington was up to challenge.

In the Pacific, America embarked on a massive nation-building project. There were numerous plans for organizing the region. MacArthur advocated for annexing Okinawa and New Zealand, and forcing Australia and Japan into a de facto protectorate status with no control over foreign affairs. This was attractive to the hardcore imperialist wing of Richardson's Administration, but was ultimately deemed impractical as others feared overextension. Others advocated for a loose alliance in the region, with American troops in a few key locations. This was deemed too laissez-faire, and opened a door for Germany and Eurasia to gobble up more of the region. Instead the so-called Marshall & Marshall Plan, devised by two renowned experts, was implemented.

Thurgood Marshall was a 36 year old Black soldier, military leader, and spy from Baltimore, MD. He had spent most of his time in the service in and around Asia and the Pacific, and had skyrocketed to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corps. He was one of the leading officers in the Liberation of Java, and helped direct strategy against New Zealand and Australia. Marshall was also a very learned man, and a proud graduate of Howard University, the "Black Harvard." Having been a devoted student of history, political science, and economics, he recognized a golden opportunity for the United States in Asia. However, he needed an ally to get it in front of the President. Calling on a buddy in the Army, he got an audience on July 6th, 1944 with George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff turned Secretary of State. He proposed a $21 billion economic aid plan, combined with a reduction in trade barriers, economic modernization program, and a military alliance. At the conclusion of the presentation the Secretary of State said "The only problem I have with this idea is that I didn't think of it first." The two men worked for a week straight, and then presented the idea to the Richardson Administration proper. The President signed off on the Plan, the largest economic aid package in human history.

$12 billion of the plan was allocated to China, by far the biggest recipient of aid. China was not only the largest and most country in the region, it was the combatant most damaged by the War, excluding Japan itself. After the Japanese were kicked out, American troops poured in to secure the rule of the Nationalist regime run by the duo of Zhou Enlai and Chiang Kai-Shek against both Sun Yat-Sen's ongoing Han supremacist insurgency and Hu Songshan, a Hui warlord running rampant in Gansu. There were two more years of fighting in China, but the presence of American air power rapidly rolled up the underfunded and exhausted opposition. The prospect of economic benefit alone had brought mass defections and surrenders. Once the rebels were defeated on March 4th, 1946, money really began flowing. Shanghai, Beijing, Nanking, and other cities were completely rebuilt. Ancient Chinese farming methods were modernized, and farmers provided with modern equipment. Formerly moribund Chinese industry got a boost, particularly in the steel industry. Even as these improvements were being made to China, Washington anxiously began considering the future. While Americans were happy to bring the world's most ancient civilization into the future, even the most altruistic American had to look on China's potential with anxiety. Privately, the Richardson Administration drew up plans both to tie China's economy to America's and to strategically cede parts of the Asian sphere in the future. This would prevent China from having either the desire or the ability to make a break from the United States to become a fully independent and potentially hostile great power. These calculations aside, America legitimately had a huge humanitarian accomplishment in China. Although it would be decades before China attained a First World standard of living, America's intervention improved the lives of tens of millions and prevented more bloodshed.

Outside of China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, the Khmer Republic, Laos, Australia and New Zealand all got a slice of the pie. Furthermore, American occupation forces established independent democratic republics in each country, with American-style or inspired constitutions in Indonesia, Korea, Vietnam, the Khmer Republic, and Laos, while Japan, Australia, and New Zealand had alterations made to their existing constitutional structures. Both Japan and New Zealand had their militaries stripped except for strictly limited self-defense forces. Australia was allowed to re-militarize, but the post of Special Advisor to the Commonwealth's Armed Forces was created to allow Washington to keep an eye on the Australians. Indonesia, Korea, and the Indochinese Republics were allowed and encouraged to militarize. A separate aid package was created for these states to build competent modern armies, navies, and small air forces. America was determined to make its Asian allies and clients a formidable economic and military force, for reasons equally humanitarian, propagandistic, and self-interested. By in large, they would succeed, and the Asian Miracle owes much to the American policymakers who made it happen.

In Canada, a very different process was occurring. Although the Canucks had been quiet throughout the war, the formal annexation of the country sparked protests and terrorism from segments of the Canadian population. At the same time, American troops discovered records revealing that had September 11th not distracted the Canucks, the Sons had planned to carry out a full-on genocide against the First Nations. The graphic and cold descriptions the Sons laid out shocked American society. It also sparked a moment of self-reflection in America in regards to their own sordid history with the Native Americans. Responding to public sentiment and his own moral convictions, President Richardson proposed and passed the Native Reconciliation Act. Half of Oklahoma was declared native land to be jointly administered by tribal and state officials and the Administration pledged a 10 year $250 million commitment to developing reservations. In Canada, this manifested in the creation of the Territory of Tutchone. Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut were all merged into one gargantuan Territory, and much of the Anglo-Canadian population bought out or just removed. The territory (later state) was explicitly set aside for the First Nations as their domain, although to boost population, the tribal governments would actually welcome limited settlement from the Sioux and Blackfeet nations, along with a few others. Tutchone would become a unique mixing pot of Indigenous cultures and colorful characters.

The rest of Canada received a decidedly colder treatment. The American government viewed the ongoing existence of a Canadian national identity as nothing short of an existential threat. So, it needed to be diluted. The New Zion settler colony was one aspect of this that's already been explored. However, the government took strident actions elsewhere. There was of course, the change in provincial identities. British Columbia and Alberta were merged into the Territory of Jefferson, with a capital in Franklin (Edmonton). Fairly empty after the war, Jefferson would be heavily settled by Southerners and Hispanics in the following years. New Brunswick was absorbed by Maine and flooded with poor New Englanders. Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island were all merged into the Territory of Erikson, named in honor of explorer Leif Erikson, with the new capital in Halifax. However, it was in Ontario where the Americans made their most aggressive De-Canucking efforts. The province was made the Territory of Madison, and the new capital of Toronto was dubbed Madisonburg. This is even less subtle when one considers that Toronto is located where York once was, Canada's capital in 1812 burned down by the Americans. However, the altering of regional identities was only part of the American campaign to make Canada American.

Even as counter-insurgencies and deportations were raging, the American government rewrote history in front of the world's eyes. Historians, politicians, and newsmen all began repeating a new line: the Canadians were never really separate people from the Americans. Rather, they had been brainwashed and turned against their brothers by the rapacious British. Americans had tried to help Canada throw off the Royalist yoke in both 1776 and 1812, only to be stopped by the nefarious colonizers and their brainwashed collaborators (very small in number of course). Despite what the deportations and waves of settlement might indicate, this hadn't been a conquest, but a Liberation. Americans had risked life and limb to liberate their brothers. Canadians are and were rightfully Americans. Canada was and is rightful American soil. The War had been fought for their benefit, to liberate them and their land from the abusive British. They should welcome annexation, not resist it. One might think this was wholly unpopular, but it wasn't. By casting the Canadian people as victims, it also cast blame for Canadian atrocities or planned atrocities against Asian-Canadians, French-Canadians, and the First Nations as being the fault of the British. Canadian troops who participated in genocide in Africa, India, and Ireland had been brainwashed by evil men with posh accents and redcoats. It couldn't possibly be their fault. Maybe the Yanks were right. Maybe they were Americans who had been brutalized and made to attack others. The campaign, combined with settlement and counter-insurgency tactics worked beautifully. By 1949, there were no more protests or bombings. By 1980, Canadian had mostly become a signifier like Midwestern or Southerner. Canadians were always Americans. Canada has always been American.

Joe Ariak, 1st Territorial Governor of Tutchone (1950)

Zhou Enlai, Nationalist President of China (1946-1966)

Flag of the State of Jefferson, adopted in 1958​

 

[Murica1776]

Post-War Canada

https://imgur.com/a/rLSmVzG

​

 

[Murica1776]

Post-War America Part II: The Comforts of Today

Revelers in a Havana nightclub (1949)​

America after the war was a prosperous nation, the most prosperous in human history. The war had kicked America out of its post-war funk, and now America only had competition in the form of Germany and Eurasia. With unchallenged economic dominance over practically the whole of the Western Hemisphere and most of Asia, America had massive markets to sell to, and American naval dominance allowed goods, immigrants, and tourists to flow unimpeded. The GI Bill passed in 1944 also allowed for a massive boom in college admissions, home purchases, and general income. This all contributed to a massive post-war Baby Boom as well. Out of a population of about 161 million, Americans had about 83 million babies in the period from 1944-1964. With such tremendous growth also came massive changes in various aspects of American life and culture.

In 1947, an enterprising young man named Fidel Castro got a loan for a new kind of community outside of Havana. The son of a plantation owner, Castro dropped out of business school to pursue his dream of building a new empire from scratch. Specifically, the town of Castroville, a planned suburb of 15,000 homes. Castro borrowed the assembly line procedures used in factories everywhere to build identical houses quickly. The results were better than anticipated: 1,400 homes were purchased within three hours of Castroville breaking ground. There would be 20 Castrovilles built by 1954, two more in Cuba, one in Santo Domingo, one in Puerto Rico, twelve in the mainland US and Occupied Canada, and three in the Philippines. Fidel Castro would house over 200,000 American households by the time he was 28, and he rapidly became one of the island's wealthiest men and a powerful force in Cuban Democratic politics. The housing tycoon had not only started America's craze for suburbia (some 30% of Americans purchased a home in the suburbs) he had made himself a man of influence in the largest Caribbean state. America's suburbs blossomed as people bought low-cost housing, and the free-for-all nature of the real estate market actually helped weaken the system of de facto segregation in the South at a time when other parts of the Cackalack Compromise were being challenged in court.

With the birth of suburbia came the birth of car culture. In 1945 the Richardson Administration passed the National Highways Act, starting construction on the National Highway System. Tens of thousands of mile of roads would be paved connecting the Mainland states, Canada, and the Mexican Territories (soon to be states themselves). Additional highways were built in Cuba, Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Meanwhile, Ford, Oldsmobile, Booker Automotive, and Chrysler made Detroit a shining temple to industry, and Davao City into the Detroit of the East. The city was actually the richest in Asia from 1948-1956, as Hong Kong recovered and the city's lower wages made car manufacturers sprint to build factories. Filipinos would soon have the highest per capita car ownership rate of anyone in Asia, even beating lightly touched Australia and New Zealand. With the boom in car purchases and highway construction came the rise of drive-in movie theaters and fast food. For a truly low price, millions of Americans drove to drive-in movie theaters and had popcorn, sodas, and even full sit down meals in the comfort of their own cars. However, it was fast food that really changed the scene. There were four major chains that emerged in this time period, all with delicious, unique, and unhealthy menus.

Gauthier's Quebec Restaurant, founded by French Canadian immigrant Martin Gauthier, had a truly dazzling array of options. In the morning, strong coffee and espressos could be found alongside donuts, croissants, and Gauthier's Famous Croque Madame. Lunch/Dinner featured sodas, Gauthier's Famous Croque Monsieur, Gauthier's Famous Jambon Beurre, burgers, and Gauthier's World Famous Freedom Fries, his name for poutine. Started in Rhode Island, where he had moved just before the War, Gauthier's Quebec Restaurant became a sensation in the post-war era, pioneering the drive thru in 1947. By 1960 Gauthier's dominated Old Canada, Quebec, and New England, and had made inroads in the West and Mid-Atlantic. Gauthier's is also responsible for popularizing poutine across the country, and much of the Free World. On the West Coast, MacArthur's Burger Bar was founded by Filipino-American Agapito Ocampo, and named after General Douglas MacArthur in gratitude for his efforts to liberate his homeland and integrate it into the Union. MacArthur's had a truly unique menu that reflected the fusion of Filipino and American cultures. For breakfast, MacArthur's offers Tapa (beef tenders) Tocino (sweet pork) Longansia (pork sausages) and corned beef with a fried egg and steamed or garlic rice. For the main menu, there were your typical sodas, burgers, the Big Mac(Arthur) (2 1/3lbs patties, bacon, cheese, lettuce, and pineapple), fried chicken, palabok, and CAMP (TTL's SPAM) with rice and fried eggs. MacArthur's also popularized the Halo-halo dessert, a colorful drink made with shaved ice, condensed milk, and various sweets. Founded in 1948, the distinctive Golden Arches of MacArthur's spread up and down the West Coast, from SoCal (OTL Baja California) to Juneau, and as far east as Chicago. Down South a way Roscoe's Quik Smokehouse, founded in Savannah, Georgia by Roscoe P. Coltrane in 1949, became a national sensation. With quick pulled pork and brisket sandwiches and platters served alongside steaming mounds of french fries, Mac n Cheese, and hushpuppies, and of course gallons of sweet tea. Roscoe's dominated the South and Caribbean, adding fried chicken, jerked meat sandwiches, and Caribbean style BBQ by 1958. Rounding out the collection was Burger Kaiser, founded by Wilhelm Von Helmut in Bemidji, Minnesota in 1945. A descendant of German immigrants with pretensions of Junker lineage (which was never independently verified) Von Helmut gave his restaurant a Prussian theme, complete with mascot Billy Bismarck. Despite tensions with Germany, the restaurant's schnitzel sandwiches, potato salad, burgers, brats, dogs, and pretzels made it a Midwestern staple. By 1970, all four chains would be national (and indeed global) but would remain the dominant chain in their regions of origin.

This is obviously a McDonald's. Picture this look with a sign that says MacArthur's Burger Bar, and the chef is replaced by a cartoon looking General.

Interior of Roscoe's Quik Smokehouse, with drive thru operations hidden in the back (1955)

Martin Gauthier of Gauthier's (1960)​

Speaking of food, the post-war era saw the rise of supermarkets and TV dinners. Regional and national supermarket chains like Wally's World of Food, Smart-Mart, Brite-Mart, and Porkily Workily spread across the booming suburbs to service the grocery needs of millions of America's hungry families. Each of these chains offered huge varieties of produce, with Brite-Mart especially being famed for spreading tropical fruits to the masses. Even more revolutionary was the invention of the frozen TV dinner in 1948 by Chester Wong, a Honk Kong born Chinese-American scientist. Using preservation techniques devised to freeze and ship rations to the troops, Wong's Roast Beef TV Dinner soon became a hit with harried housewives trying to feed their kids and husbands. They were called TV dinners because Wong designed them to be easily consumable in front of the TV, which had exploded in popularity.

In 1944, most American households didn't own a television. By 1952, only a statistically insignificant minority didn't own a TV. The TV craze had taken off in the years immediately after the boom started, and it only accelerated with the introduction of color TV. Harold Clyburn, of Camelot-cracking Goliath Machine fame, had long been a tinkerer with vacuum tubes and cathode ray tubes in particular. He developed the so-called Clyburn Tube in 1947, and collaborated with GE to create the Colorama TV Set in 1949. The Colorama was expensive, and the picture quality wasn't as good as some of the more expensive black and white sets, but it was still a revelation. As technology improved, color sets proliferated more and more widely. By 1960, 1 in 3 Americans had a color set, and the technology would only continue to take off. Television sets made in America would spread throughout the world as Germany fought to catch up. Across the Free World, TV shows produced in Beaconsfield spread American cultural influence. The US government actually set aside money to send TVs to China for free in order to promote the Nationalist government there, with decent success. Similar programs would be forthcoming in Latin America.

In other entertainment news, the film industry experienced a renaissance. Having been mostly turned towards propaganda during the war, the post-war era saw an explosion in comedies, family friendly musicals, romantic comedies, and crime dramas. The latter two incited some Protestant groups in the South and Caribbean, but were still broadly popular across the country. For those who wanted a more active experience, there was tourism. The new highway system made it easier than ever to traverse the country, including newly annexed Canada. Families drove all over the United States to see this great big country of theirs. Attractions sprung up everywhere, including new amusement parks like the world-famous Disneyland outside of Miami. For more exotic locales, cruise liners once again steamed to Cuba, Manila, and Hong Kong, among other places. The creation of the Valdez 177, the first commercial jet plane, in 1948 would bolster the tourism trade, as flying to places across the world rapidly became cheaper and quicker for all involved. Commercial flying soon captured the national imagination, with airlines hiring beautiful stewardesses and providing high quality meals even to people in coach. As improvements came in jet aircraft, by the mid 1960's, about 30% of Americans had flown commercially at least once, and the trend would only continue to grow.

America's post-war boom not only drastically improved the lives of Americans, it increased American power dramatically. America's economy was the envy of the world, attracting investment and enamoring puppet states languishing in poverty. Even Europe and Eurasia, who were experiencing their own booms, were impressed. Meanwhile, American prosperity trickled to its client states and allies, furthering bonds between Washington and the others. Finally, the technological advancement the boom fueled kept Washington in the lead or near it on a variety of competitive areas.

A Valdez 177 at Roosevelt Airport in NYC (1953)

The GE Colorama Mark II, released in 1951

Beijingers observe radios and TVs at a shop selling American electronics (1958)​

 

[Murica1776]

Post-War America Part III: Containing Brazil

Valdez Raptor Helicopters in Bolivia (1954)
​

It might be easy to think that America was entirely at peace in the post-war period. The popular image of the era is of growing prosperity and social progress, not bombs and guns. However, America in fact fought a proxy war turned undeclared war against Brazil. Although America didn't achieve a total victory, it was nonetheless a strong victory. America preserved her dominance in the Western Hemisphere, and Brazil looked to Africa and Europe to expand her power, de facto ceding control to the US for the time being. However, the Americans did learn a newfound respect for their rivals.

Bolivia in 1952 was not a happy place. Roiled by ethnic tensions and torn between parties that were in turn Croixist, Communist, Nationalist, and pro-American, the country was tottering. All it took was a push. On February 3rd, Brazilian agents and the powerful Croixist faction of the Army assassinated the President along with the legislature and welcomed 12,000 Brazilian troops into the country. The new ruling junta announced that Brazil would be establishing an alliance with their newly declared National State of Bolivia. This was a clear threat to American power and America's allies in Latin America, and it could not go unanswered. President Patton announced that the United States would not recognize the new regime in Bolivia on February 5th. At the same time, 4,000 troops stationed in Argentina were moving rapidly toward Bolivia, even as the President was ordering another 50,000 troops to deploy into the country via Peru. The first "advisors" made contact with Bolivian government troops on March 2nd. Despite the unfamiliar terrain, the superior American forces routed the enemy. However, they would soon get bogged down in other, less fortuitous circumstances. The dense Bolivian jungles were a boon to the defenders, and even as the larger force of 50,000 troops marched into Bolivia in May, the beleaguered initial force was surrounded and running low on supplies. Clearly, allies would be needed.

They were found in the Katarismo movement and Afro-Bolivian communities. Bolivia had long dominated its Native and Black communities in favor of a kind of general White-Mestizo dominance. By the 50's, they were sick of it. The Americans took advantage of this and reached out to both communities, sending Native and Black emissaries in full dress uniforms to communities. It caused quite a stir among these groups to see people like them as a proud and respected representative of one of the world's most powerful empires. By July of '52, most of the Native communities and Afro-Bolivians were at least sympathetic to the Americans, if not outright supporting them. Native guides helped American troops navigate the terrain, helping to keep more troops alive. However, the fact of the matter was that the jungle was an even worse enemy than the Brazilians and Bolivians. Something needed to be done.

The Eurasians developed the Z-67, the first mass produced military helicopter, in the mid 40's for use in Central Asia. America and Germany had both since aped the technology. One of America's most prominent defense contractors, Valdez Aviation Industries, developed the RA-2 Valdez Helicopter, nicknamed the Raptor, in 1953, after a flood of government money spurred completion of the 4 year old project. Designed as both gunship and troop transport, the Raptor was a real workhorse. The Patton Administration invoked the Defense Production Act and was able to have 5200 units in operation by war's end. Surveillance planes would find suspected encampments and then choppers would go in. However, President Patton, like many others in the JCOS, viewed the jungle itself as a hindrance. The new V-88 Stratocaster Bomber was deployed with incendiary bombs for one reason and one reason only: to burn down the jungle. Other aircraft would be deployed for tactical strikes of a similar nature. The newly created USAF actually got its unofficial anthem from this experience. As part of a propaganda film, veterans of the wars in Cuba and Mexico joined in fly alongs with bomber crews (on safer missions). After witnessing the awesome power of one of these fiery payloads, Captain Zion Carlton of the famous all-Black Buffalo Soldiers began stomping his dress boots and clapping as he sang an old ditty popular with the boys in Cuba and Mexico:

Come along, get ready, wear your grand brand-new gown,
For there's going to be a meeting in this good good old town.
When you know everybody and they all know you,
And you get a rabbit's foot to keep away them hoodoos.

When you hear the preachin' has begin,
Bend down low for to drive away your sin;
When you get religion you'll wanna shout and sing,
There'll be a hot time in old town tonight!

My baby when you hear those bells go ding-a-ling,
All join 'round and sweetly you must sing.
And when the verse is through, in the chorus all join in:
"There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight!"
​

The song would catch on with the airmen, especially the bomber pilots, and it became tradition to sing the song before and after every flight, and would sometimes be sung on long-range or risky missions to calm nerves. In 1965, being able to perform the song would be a requirement for graduating Air Force boot camp or from the Air Force Academy. While the bombing missions did help the American war effort, they were devastating to Bolivia. An estimated 40,000 square miles of jungle was incinerated or damaged by bombing, some 10% of the country's landmass. The Patton Administration also flattened La Paz, Sucre, and Santa Cruz de la Sierra with strategic bombing as part of the war effort. In 1954, this would actually expand to include targeted strikes against Rio Branco in Brazil and Asuncion in Paraguay, a long-time Brazilian puppet. Despite decades of investment, Brazil was mostly powerless to prevent these strikes, as American jet technology was cutting edge. For all intents and purposes, the United States held air superiority over the continent as a whole. Furthermore, any attempts to attack American allies in a devastating way would just see the rest of the continent gang up on them with American backing.

This didn't mean the war was easy for the Americans per se. Although the devastating strikes hurt Brazil and the Bolivian government, they could only do so much. The Americans couldn't simply burn Bolivia down to the ground. Furthermore, despite Patton's wishes he couldn't unleash a total war on the continent, public opinion wouldn't allow it. There was even consideration of an atomic strike or two, but this was shot down as both overkill and making the United States look like a psychotic bully. Instead, the Patton Admin decided they wanted to wear the Brazilians down by striking at shipping and making the war too costly to sustain. This is part of what inspired the strikes against Rio Branco and Asuncion, whereas before engagements with Brazilian forces outside Bolivia had been limited to skirmishes between American allies and the Brazilians and their allies. Enduring heavy casualties and fearful of actually inciting a full on war with the United States, the Brazilians sat down with the Americans and various Bolivian factions on August 1st, 1955 and struck a deal.

Bolivia would be a neutral republic under the control of the Bolivian National Rally, a big tent center-right party. Neither the US or Brazil would be formally aligned with the Bolivians. However, Bolivia was also forbidden from seeking a partner outside the hemisphere. Instead, the US and Brazil would both allow Bolivia to access their markets and receive capital aid. The Americans also demanded, and got, protections and privileges for their Native and Afro-Bolivian collaborators. Language schools for various Native groups would be opened, partially financed by the United States, and an American style racial power-sharing agreement would keep the peace. There was also an implicit threat in that: any alterations to the deal designed to disenfranchise Native or Black Bolivians would likely inspire another American intervention, one in which Brazil might not intervene. The protections made Patton a hero among Native and Black Americans, cementing his run for a third term. There was also an implicit agreement reached between Rio and Washington in the small phrase "Both the United States of America and the Second Empire of Brazil are committed to the maintenance of the ongoing climate of peace and order." Essentially, America would stop pushing against Paraguay, Uruguay, or Brazil itself (at least formally) and the Brazilians would no longer try to expand in the Americas (formally). It was a de facto recognition of American hegemony in Latin America, even if Rio would continue to pick at it occasionally. Instead, they would cast their eyes abroad, and massively expand Brazilian power in the wake of the Great Portuguese Crisis of 1961. America would actually back Brazil in this endeavor, and although Washington came out of the Bolivian War looking better than Brazil, they developed a healthy respect for the Lusophone power. They just wouldn't share Latin America with them.

President Patton visits the troops in Bolivia in dress uniform (1953)

A young Captain Zion Carter, seated, in Buffalo Soldier dress uniform (1915)

A V-88 Stratocaster bombing Rio Branco in Operation: Curveball (1954)​

 

[Murica1776]

Post-War America Part IV: President Blood and Guts

President Patton's official portrait​

When President Richardson announced that he would retire in 1948, all eyes turned to the Democratic primaries. The Republicans were still struggling to find footing in the Richardson era, and it would take over a decade for the GOP to stabilize. Although a proper nationwide two-party system would emerge again in the 60's, for now the Dems had an insurmountable advantage. The Democratic Primaries of 1948 became incredibly competitive, with 6 candidates jumping in. In the end, the outsider would win and dominate the Party and the United States for over a decade, arguably even more powerful than Richardson. It's not for nothing that George S. Patton would earn the nickname "The American Caesar." Let's review the primaries.

Senator Harold Truman of Missouri jumped in first, positioning himself as the ideological heir of Richardson, promising economic interventionism, racial moderation, and a bipartisan consensus of sorts. Frank M. Dixon, Governor of Alabama, became the standard bearer of the conservative wing of the party, promising harsher enforcement of the Cackalack Compromise in the face of growing federal intervention and a return to more business friendly policies. Dixon had to compete with Robert Welch Jr, a Tennessee businessman and ardent conservative who went even further, calling for federal codification of the Cackalack Compromise and cutting back on welfare. Kenneth Wherry, a Nebraskan Democrat, was a strong economic populist, calling for broader union powers, more regulations on certain industries, expanded benefits, and cutbacks to military spending. William Lee O'Daniel combined Wherry's populism with pro-Richardson rhetoric. Finally, there was Patton.

Patton's campaign was a dramatic shakeup for the party, equally progressive and conservative. He was actually a racial liberal, supporting the ongoing efforts to help Native Americans and supporting alterations to certain parts of the Cackalack Compromise. Although he was formerly a conservative on this issue, observing mixed units trounce the British in Ireland had changed his tune. He also called for massive investment in the nation's infrastructure, including passenger rail, roads, ports, and bridges. Patton was also ardently in favor of investment in schools, universities, and technological research of all sorts. On the conservative end, he viewed nascent language rights movements in parts of the Philippines as suspect, as well as Mestizo advocates in the burgeoning movement in the Caribbean. He was also, by far, the most belligerent President of the Shadow War era. Although his paranoia towards Eurasia had cooled slightly, he still viewed the United States as being a fortress besieged by Germany, Eurasia, and Brazil. This would result in a heavy emphasis on the military, as well as Patton having a heavier hand with America's vast collection of allies and clients than they were used to. President Patton also continued Richardson's tendencies towards centralizing power, having developed an authoritarian leadership style in the Army.

When Patton entered the primaries, he became the whipping boy. Every candidate took a potshot at the General Playing President and implying that he didn't know how to be a politician. He relished their attacks. In an energetic coast-to-coast campaign, Patton whipped up crowds of thousands with his epic and roaring speeches. His opponents were "vigorless worms inhabiting suits," and would be run over by the "ruthless operators who inhabit Washington." He lobbed insults in a manner unseen in American political history. Truman was a "trumped-up cobbler who couldn't run a grocery store much less a country," Dixon was a "lifeless and no-energy product of the Alabama machine," Welch a "deranged paranoid who can't control his wife," Wherry a "fat corn-fed parasite," and O'Daniel "a smooth-talkin' no-good hillbilly with the morals of a Frenchman." To complete the spectacle, Patton campaigned in dress uniform on stages in front of truly gargantuan American flags, often attended by marching bands. The media and public loved it. The Liberator of Ireland was flashy and entertaining, yet still had substance to his campaign. He was rough-and-tumble son of a bitch who manhandled his opponents, terrified America's enemies, and promised to "build a new empire worthy of this Republic." He dominated the field and won the nomination in a landslide. He then made history by nominating fellow General Benjamin Davis Sr. as his VP, the first Black VP in history.

In the general election he was actually campaigning against fellow former General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Unlike in the primaries, Patton actually respected Eisenhower, and the two men ran a fairly clean campaign. However, Eisenhower did dislike Patton's habit of campaigning in uniform, arguing it politicized the service. Patton retorted that they were both politicizing their service, he was just letting folks see the medals. This spat aside, both men had formed a friendship in the service and were determined not to let politics interfere. When asked why he was more respectful to his partisan opponent as opposed to his primary opponents, Patton said "Ike Eisenhower is a patriot of the highest and most vigorous quality, and I will treat him as such." Patton beat Eisenhower pretty thoroughly, although Ike did better than any GOP presidential candidate since before Richardson. When Patton took the oath in January, 1949, he pledged that America would boom on his watch.

It did, in fact, do that. Patton kept a strong level of government involvement in the economy, but repealed outdated and onerous regulations, sparking even more growth. He also poured billions into closing the "Rocket Gap" with Germany, who was a good 5-7 years ahead of the United States in this area. This precipitated the Arms and Technology Race that would define much of the 20th and 21st centuries. Aiding the United States in this area was the use of analog computer technology, which American Information Machines (AIM) began developing at a rapid pace. Using these computers, it became easier and easier for the Americans to calculate sophisticated flight trajectories for missiles and rockets, as well as work on controlling them once they were up in the air. Although the Germans built the first ICBM in 1953, they didn't yet have the nuclear prowess to strap an atomic warhead to it. The US did, building the W-6, the first working atomic ICBM, in 1956. This would directly lead to the start of the Space Race a year later. The US did lead the pack in nuclear technology, detonating the first hydrogen bomb in 1950. Patton issued a televised address stating "My fellow Americans, the Hydrogen Age is here, and America shall lead it!" America built a massive nuclear arsenal, reaching 8,000 warheads by 1954, and a staggering 14,276 by 1960. This dwarfed the arsenals of Germany and Eurasia, although combined they collectively had more. Barely.

The Uppercut, the world's first hydrogen bomb, detonated in the Pacific (1950)

An ICBM base in Jefferson Territory (1958)​

On the foreign affairs front, aside from the aforementioned Bolivian War, Patton actually helped start the thaw with Eurasia. Although he had been very suspicious of Stalin, he found a kindred spirit in Zhukov. Both men were bombastic, nationalistic military men with no time for niceties and a firm desire to lead their nations into the future. Zhukov's de facto abandonment of Marxist Communism and his belief in a nationalistic and imperialist Eurasia, as opposed to the old revolution-exporting USSR, made Patton much less suspicious of Eurasian intentions. Zhukov promised Patton that Eurasia wouldn't further interfere in China, and he kept his word, even if most Chinese had ideas about Tibet and Manchuria. Patton and Zhukov were also both very suspicious of Germany and the Europa League. Zhukov knew that the likely wanted Persia back, and might even target Eurasia proper. Patton had formed a strong dislike of Berlin in the aftermath of the War, as they had scrambled to block American goals. To thwart German ambitions, the Eurasians successfully launched a April1957 coup against Berlin's unpopular puppet regime in Turkey, founding the People's Republic of Turkey, a Communist state with neo-Ottoman ideological and territorial ambitions. Shockingly, Patton had known about the coup, and had actually given the Eurasians a few key pieces of intel. The Bulgarians broke off the few remaining pieces of Turkish Europe that existed, but all in all, Europa had lost Turkey. Washington recognized the regime in June, a sufficiently lengthy period of time to avoid looking friendly. In later years, people would question whether Patton knew the full extent of Moscow's brutality, especially in Central Asia. Sources indicate that Patton thought Soviet operations in Central Asia resembled the Redeemer War more than a crime against humanity. Most American spying in Eurasia during this time was focused on technology, not on military operations or prisons.

Meanwhile in Africa, the Patton Administration was working with Liberia to weaken European power on the continent. In the border regions near Liberia's sphere of influence, Francophone Africans now under German rule were supplied with weapons and supplies as they attempted to break free. These efforts would fail, but they did sour German-American relations. Despite Patton's individual paranoia and dislike of the Germans, he was forced to remain broadly friendly. There were millions of German-Americans in the US, and while they were "Amerikaner Uber Alles," they still had a certain fondness for their ancestral homeland, and a full 10% of the American population spoke some level of German. The effort in Africa would die down by the mid-50's, as Patton didn't want to risk escalating things past a tenable place. Patton still viewed Germany as the biggest threat to American power, as Germany's dominance of one the world's most industrialized continents and control over most of the rich African continent made them a formidable foe. Still, relations were cordial, if a bit cold. Patton also backed China in its ongoing industrialization drive, developing a great fondness for both the country and its leader President Zhou Enlai. Finally, Patton tied China, the Indochinese Republics, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Quebec, Haiti, Mexico, the Central American States, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Ireland, Liberia, Mali, and Mauritania into the Alliance for Liberty, founded in 1950 and headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The AFL was a massive military alliance and trade bloc that was dedicated to the advancement of global democracy and freedom. Unofficially, it was, in essence, an organization designating who was part of the American sphere of influence. Even as Patton was organizing the world abroad, events at home were afoot.

Patton and Zhukov meet in Petrograd (1955)

Nationalist militias in Niger, equipped by the Patton Administration (1953)​

Patton's third and fourth terms saw the dawn of social movements in the United States. In 1957, the Supreme Court (which hadn't been unpacked yet) ruled 12-7 against the State of Georgia's anti-race mixing laws in the case of Kowalski vs. Georgia. Protests rocked the South after the ruling. To the surprise of many Northern liberals, White and Black conservatives marched together in peace against the ruling. What many outsiders failed to grasp was that both Whites and Blacks had their own reasons to resist such changes. Despite decades of racial progress, and despite the fact that interracial friendships between Whites and Blacks weren't uncommon, race mixing was the Great Taboo. Every state in the Old Confederacy had a few dozen "unsolvable murders" of Black and White men alike who had violated this taboo. The reasons why were complex. In the White community, despite being much less racist than their Confederate forefathers, fears of a kind of "racial degeneration" that might come from marrying Black people were still extant. This was a phenomenon unique to the relationship between Whites and Blacks, as many White soldiers from the South had brought home Asian and Hispanic brides from the various wars in the Caribbean and Pacific, and intermarriage with White Hispanics was fairly common, as were more limited mixings with Mestizos. However, the South had a centuries long history of White supremacy specifically over Black people, and that doesn't die easily, even if it is moderated significantly. Sufficient intermarriage would also threaten the still somewhat dominant position Whites held in state governments. Among the Black community, there were similar yet different reasons for the divide. Racially there was less fear of "degeneration" per se, but it was thought that large infusions of White blood would weaken the genetic ties among Black Americans, who most held to be a distinct ethnic group from both other Americans and most Africans. There was also a fear that a large influx of mulattos would destroy Black power over their communities and force them back to the bottom of a new racial hierarchy.

Patton had a complicated view of the subject. On the one hand, he knew from personal experience that there was no harm in Whites and Blacks intermixing in most situations, so marriage shouldn't be different. On the other hand, he was still a son of the South, and it made him personally uncomfortable. However, he took his oath seriously and was committed to enforcing the Kowalski ruling. When the government of Alabama threatened to annul the decision, Patton marched 10,000 troops into Montgomery and prevented legislators from voting on a bill that would have defied the Kowalski ruling. In the face of such overwhelming force, fighting the Kowalski decision became untenable. The Supreme Court also ruled in the 1957 cases of Grant Parish vs. Roland and American Voting Rights Union. vs. The State of Mississippi that racially motivated gerrymandering and school district drawing was illegal. This de facto destroyed the basis of the Cackalack Compromise, which was built around giving each race their own districts to run. This sparked further protests, and the elites of both the White and Black communities worked to undermine the AVRU and Grant rulings. One symptom of these rulings was the rise of the Religious Right. For decades, Protestant ministers had wielded power in America, and nowhere were they more powerful than the Bible Belt. The Black and White churches didn't have a rivalry but also didn't cooperate, having never found a reason to. Now, however, they needed to circle the wagons. Yankee activists and judges were forcing them to destroy their system. White and Black preachers held rallies calling for the unpacking of the Court and for Patton to ignore SCOTUS. Patton actually considered it for the AVRU ruling, thinking it radical. Instead, he merely expressed disappointment with the ruling. Powerful Black and White churches would coordinate with state Democratic parties in the coming years to challenge these ruling, and to fund systems of private religious academies that coincidentally seemed to be almost all-Black and all-White, and run by boards that were the same.

Even as the Cackalack Compromise was falling by the wayside, in the Caribbean, Panama, and to a slightly lesser extent American Mexico, the Mestizos were restless. Unlike White Hispanics and Black Hispanics, they had been quietly, and stubbornly, resistant to Americanization. This is because, simply put, they didn't fit neatly into any of America's boxes. They weren't Black, so the well oiled Black political machine had no interest in them. They weren't fully White, so Whites had no reason to treat them well. They weren't fully Native, so they weren't entitled to protections offered to Native Americans. It was also hard for them to culturally merge into the American story. White Hispanics could just as easily picture themselves as crusading White colonizers or liberty-loving patriots as much as any blue-blooded Anglo-Saxon. Black Hispanic kids could envision themselves as proudly fighting in Union Black regiments against the hordes of slave whippin Johnny Rebs, or clearing the savages and Mexicans from the frontier alongside the Buffalo soldiers. They could point to statues, murals, and textbooks and say "That could be me." Mestizos couldn't. Their whole culture and identity was the product of Spanish colonialism and its aftermath, something which textbook after textbook slammed as an exercise in autocracy and depravity. Even if they converted or learned English, they would still be different unless they married into the White population. It was either accept whitening, or accept outsider status. They wanted neither.

None of this is to suggest that Mestizos were secessionist or unpatriotic by any means. Secession hadn't exactly worked out for the first bunch that tried it, now had it? Plus, being American was still pretty nice: they were proud to have fought for the richest and most powerful free nation in human history. They actually made the Constitution a fetish in their La Raza movement. After all, the Constitution doesn't state that Americans are English-speaking White and Black Protestants. It states that all loyal citizens are to be treated equally. So, where's the equality? They marched in the streets of Florida, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Carib, Panama, California, New Canaan, Durango, Lincoln, Texas, and Sonora, starting in 1961. They called for Spanish language rights, Spanish language ballots, alterations to textbooks, and government support for Hispanic cultural institutions. When La Raza members began training their members for the 1962 midterm elections, things got ugly. A La Raza candidate for the House in Texas had cans of baked beans thrown at him, requiring hospitalization. La Raza protestors were frequently screamed at and harassed by biracial mobs. On the day of the election in 1962, Artesmia Province Sheriff Jack Lewis, a Black man raised in Georgia, sicced dogs and riot police on 5,000 La Raza members helping Spanish speakers vote. Over 40 people were injured, and one woman died. TV news anchors alternated between revealing that the Democrats had regained the majority in the House and showing footage of Mestizos in Cuba rioting over the brutality witnessed earlier. The Cuban National Guard was deployed on November 8th and put down the riots within several days, sometimes opening fire on rioters. Jack Lewis was fired and indicted for inciting a riot, although a mistrial was declared.

Patton forcefully condemned the actions of Jack Lewis as anti-American. However, the Midterm Riots had hardened Patton's formerly moderate stance on the La Raza movement, which remained mostly peaceful. The FBI began spying on the movement at his direction, and several cells of the organization in Panama were busted up by the federal government. Planned La Raza protests in Washington in '63 were greeted with a uniform-wearing Patton directing 30,000 troops and 500 tanks to greet 80,000 protestors. Things remained peaceful, but the sight of such overwhelming force shocked the nation. Patton privately debated designating the La Raza movement an insurrection, something that hadn't been done since the Civil War. La Raza leaders were harassed by the authorities at Patton's direction, including several jail sentences on trumped up charges. The President openly mused on the possibility that La Raza was a Brazilian, Spanish, or Croixist-in-exile plot to destabilize the nation. Even as Patton declined to run for a fifth term, the President accidentally sunk the Democrats' chances at keeping the White House by declaring San Juan, Carib to be in a state of insurrection over a minor La Raza riot in May of '64 and having the Army round up over 20,000 of the city's Mestizo residents, who were detained for over 48 hours without formal charges. Reforms would come, but not under Patton.

The Aztlan banner used by some La Raza radicals in the First Mexican Cession, used as evidence by the Patton Admin to justify a crackdown.

Mexican-American La Raza supporters protest in California (1964)

Black and White counter-protestors prepare to confront La Raza supporters in Santo Domingo (1963)​

 

[Murica1776]

Pan-America's Guide to All-America Chapter 1: Greater New England

Jolly vacationers in Cape Cod shop for groceries and mementos!
​

Greetings jolly travelers! Welcome to Pan-America's Guide to All-America, your favorite airline's travel guide to the various parts of this great country of ours. America is as broad and dazzling as the morning sun, and she deserves a travel guide that captures her splendor. This guide will take you on an in-depth tour of each census and culturally designated region of our country, explain history, key landmarks, local cuisine, and the unique spirit of each region! By the time you've finished this guide, you'll truly understand each part of our country, and be ready to explore her majesty, from Bangor, Maine, to Davao City, Philippines! Let's start where it all began.

Ah New England! The birthplace of liberty and the cradle of the American Revolution! The region's grown a little in recent years, as our recent liberation of Canada has rejoined our Northern kin in the Territory of Erikson with their New Englander brothers. The New England region is defined as Erikson, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Although fairly small territorially, the region's dense population and world-class educational institutions mean that it can punch above its territorial weight with ease! Rich in history and vibrant scenery, this quaint part of our country is a perfect family vacation destination, where you, the Mrs, and the kiddos can enjoy nature and relive our glorious past.

The epicenter of New England is Boston, Massachusetts. Site of the Boston Tea Party, the Boston Massacre, and Bunker Hill, Boston is a history lovers paradise. There is also a beautiful museum at the home of Robert Gould Shaw funded by the VFW and Congressional Black Caucus, honoring him and his men for their bravery in breaking the race barrier and the Confederacy alike. The city has a powerful Irish influence, having been a top site for Irish immigration for decades. Top o' the mornin' to yah, how's about da Sox? St. Patrick's Day is obviously a treat here! Another interesting immigrant community to visit would be Little Persia, a fairly new neighborhood. During the brutal war which tragically eviscerated Persia, the Richardson Administration allowed 25,000 immigrants from the country into the United States, and they overwhelmingly settled in their port of entry, Boston. A Shia Moslem population (NOT to be confused with the Sunni troublemakers in the Philippines) the population of Little Persia has built several beautiful mosques which are just perfect for photographing. For a taste of the East, Little Persia has become famous for "American Kebabs" consisting of hot dogs and brats ground up and seasoned onto a kebab. Mmmmm, delicious! For sports fanatics, there are of course the Red Sox, as well as frequent prizefights, the Boston Flyers Hockey team, and Harvard's variety of sports teams. However, let's get out of the city and explore the rest of New England!

The penultimate New England experience is going to a sugar shack, or a "cabane a sucre" as our friendly Quebecoise neighbors say, and having some pancakes covered in freshly harvested maple syrup. There are dozens of sugar shacks across the regions, and many of them offer tours, dining areas, and even the ability to help harvest your own maple syrup! For Mom and Dad, a new maple based product that's sweeping New England is the Quebecoise drink of Caribou. Consisting of 3 parts red wine to one part whiskey, and mixed with maple syrup, this delicious beverage can be consumed cold or hot, and served with cinnamon or nutmeg. Many sugar shacks have their own in-house formulations, so go wild and try them all (but maybe leave the kids with the grandparents). Caribou will keep you warm and happy no matter the season! Of course, for the less maple inclined, New England has a rich and diverse culinary scene. There are of course the Olde New England staples of lobstah, chowdah, and traditional fishes. However, with the recent liberation of both Canada and Quebec, these already delicious foods are now being complemented by new additions!

From the Territory of Erikson, down into the rest of New England, one will now find moose and bakeapple! Moose was popularized amongst our boys during the military occupation period in Erikson, and can be barbecued, made into steaks, or if you want the true GI Experience, you can eat bottled moose! Moose is similar to venison, but is quite gamey, so it isn't for the faint of heart. However, if you have the palate for it and want something new, moose is a savory new meat that anyone can enjoy! Just make sure to get to New England during moose season, and be prepared to pay up, as the Territorial and Federal government have both begun to impose strict limits on moose harvesting to ensure the preservation of the species. For something a little less pricey, most roadside diners will have a bakeapple cheesecake or bakeapple jams. Not found outside of arctic tundras, this honey sweet berry gets its name from a French phrase that roughly means "what are these berries?" Bakeapple cheesecake has become a dessert staple in New England, and offers a nice, sweet fruit flavor to this classic dessert. If one is feeling more French, our Quebecoise friends have contributed much to New England's regional cuisine. Tourtiere is a traditional Quebecoise pie that has caught on among the New Englanders. Similar to many English savory pies, this pie is made with minced pork, veal, beef, or venison along with potatoes. For a unique breakfast food, one can't go wrong with feves au lard, beans mixed with bacon and maple syrup (or molasses) and then slow-cooked in the oven. Warm, sweet, and protein filled, you can't go wrong with a side of feves for breakfast!

If you really want to educate the kiddos, the New England Liberty Trail is a must-see. Tying together the American Revolution and the Abolitionist Movement, this trail will take you to prominent sites in both movements. New England prides itself on being the vanguard of American liberty in both the Revolution and the War of Treason, helping to construct A More Perfect Union for all our citizens. Aside from the aforementioned Shaw house in Boston, one will see Boston Harbor, Bunker Hill, Lexington and Concord, several prominent abolitionist churches, the site where the Republic of Vermont was formed (the first part of the US to ban slavery), and several areas where Fredrick Douglass spoke. The New England Liberty Trail will remind our nation's youth that our liberties, far from being an easily given birthright, have been fought and bled for by hundreds of thousands of dedicated Patriots down the ages, and that the work of our country isn't finished until liberty, justice, and prosperity are the state of the whole human condition. The sturdy children of New England surely hold their heads high as they see the work of their ancestors!

For the culturally inclined, New England is home to world-famous opera houses, concert halls, and high-class tourist destinations. New England is often considered the intellectual capital of the United States, and many families of the Old Colonial stock from here play a prominent role in our nation's intellectual, cultural, and political life. Providence has become famous for its Philharmonic Orchestra, which has been conducted by the same family for over 100 years! In Boston, one can find a lively Irish folk music scene that is growing to accommodate traditional Persian music as well. The harpsichord experienced a resurgence in popularity in the Golden 20's as New England musicians sought ways to put their own stamp on the era's high-flyin' music scene, and you'll hear some truly lively melodies. Finally, if one wishes to vacation amongst the elite, Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod will allow you to rub shoulders with the likes of Roosevelts, Richardsons, and more! Just remember your tux and tennis whites!

Frederick Douglass, adoptive son of New England, icon of American liberty

Play ball!

Modern pic of a Bakeapple Cheesecake​

 

[Murica1776]

Pan-America's Guide to All-America Chapter 2: The Great Lakes Region

Wowzers! The City That Never Sleeps sure looks swell!
​

Many people call the Midwest the "Heartland" of America. Well, if the Midwest is the Heart of America, the Great Lakes Region is our great nation's toned, steely muscles! More than any other region, the Great Lakes provide the raw manpower, wealth, and industrial might that keep this country strong. The US Government defines the region as consisting of New York, New Jersey (despite it not bordering the Great Lakes) Pennsylvania, Madison, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The Great Lakes are defined by large, vibrant cities: Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Detroit, Madisonburg, Douglass (OTL Ottawa), Chicago, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Newark, Albany, and of course, the inimitable New York City. Here in these sprawling lairs of progress, fortunes are made, wonders produced, and millions of people work to keep the nation moving forward.

Let's start in New York City, the City That Never Sleeps. You could spend a lifetime in New York and not discover all her wonders, so we're going to give you the highlights. If you're a cultural sort of person, Broadway provides the best night at the theater on God's Green Earth. Family musicals, comedies, and serious dramatic shows are all here for affordable prices to the average Joe. There's also Radio City Music Hall and the world-famous Rockettes, whose incredibly talented dancers are so beautiful, one of them is even engaged to President Patton's grandson! Moving on from culture, every true child of the Red, White, and Blue should visit the Statue of Freedom at least once in their life. This gift to the United States from the German Empire in 1918 has greeted millions of immigrants with the stern but kind face of Father Freedom, as he holds his torch in one hand, the Constitution in the other, and a pistol hangs on his hip. Of course, who can forget the words inscribed at the bottom "For Freedom's Sake, America Shines Her Light Unto The World." This statue is a reminder of our nation's sacred duty to welcome the stranger craving freedom, and to shine the light of Civilization and Liberty across the world, no matter the cost to ourselves. To complete the Star-Spangled Experience, the ancestral home of President Theodore Roosevelt has been preserved as a museum free of cost to you, courtesy of the Roosevelt family and the City of New York. Experiencing such intense patriotic feelings is bound to make you hungry, and New York has plenty of dining options! Little Italy has fantastic pasta and traditional cuisine that will have you crying "Mamma Mia!" For simpler food, you can't beat one of the dozens of Juanita's Cuban Sandwich Stands across the city. Even your harshest, most go-getting New Yorker has a soft spot for a couple of Juanita's Spicy Cuban Brats and a Jupinã, a delicious pineapple soda straight from Cuba itself! There are also, of course, many famous Jewish delicatessens who produce some of the world's most delicious sandwiches. It's a sign of one's prominence to have a deli name a sandwich after you!

Heading into Pennsylvania, one finds the bustling cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, two centers of industry. In Philadelphia one can, of course, go to Independence Hall and see the Liberty Bell, two great symbols of our nation. For baseball fanatics, the Hawks are currently on an epic win streak, having taken their third consecutive World Series Pennant at printing time, thanks to slugger Ezekiel "Zoomin' Zeke" Fernandez. Of course, no trip to Philly is complete without a world-famous Philly Cheese Schnitzel! Invented by German immigrants Leonard and Ethel Hoffman, the Cheese Schnitzel is fried pork schnitzel covered in gooey, delicious melted cheese, with lettuce, tomato, and onion, served on buttered toasted bread. Hoffman's, the original Cheese Schnitzel, is still around! Out in Pittsburgh, there's the Space Age Carnegie Science Center, which now features in depth exhibits on color television, rockets, and atomic weaponry. Truly a wondrous and educational stop! Pittsburgh is also home to the Phipps Conservatory, one of the finest places to hear classical music in the civilized world. After such an intellectual day, don't forget your pierogis!

Madison, the newest addition to the region, is a place that has richly recovered from the depredations of wartime. Throughout the Territory (soon to be state) you will find monuments to the hard fought effort to liberate our benighted brethren from genocidal Redcoat oppression, and take back this rightfully American territory. In Madisonburg, on the site of the old Canuck capital of York that tragically burned down during the First Campaign for Canadian Liberation, there is a monument to the lives lost and to the doomed efforts to liberate the territory. Another interesting monument to see is Mackenzie Island (OTL Navy Island) which was the site of the short-lived Republic of Canada, founded by Canadian-American William Lyon Mackenzie in 1837. Formed during a period in which Canada almost broke free of Britannia's sadistic spell, the monument honors the life of this great freedom-loving patriot, who did what he could for his country. Across the landscape of Madison, there are monuments to the victims of London's rapacious rule and to the troops who died to end it. Sic Semper Tyrannis! Aside from this rich but tragic history, Madisonburg and Douglass have both become thriving centers of commerce and industry. In Madisonburg, one will find a large (160,000 strong!) community of Sikhs in Little Punjab. Formed from refugees from the recent devastation in India, this community has faithfully bought into the American Dream while also preserving their rich, if rather alien, heritage. Although most prefer Western dress these days, some old-timers can still be seen in kartas, turbans, or salwars. Little Punjab is also an epicenter for cuisine, with Chicken Tikka being a staple, and the yogurt based drink lassi actually becoming a Territorial favorite. Of course, there's plenty of traditional Canadian fare as well. Madison Butter Tarts, an old Canadian dish, have caught on at diners across the Great Lakes, while caribou has become popular in Upstate New York, Minnesota, and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Douglass is home to the newly founded Douglass Canucks baseball team, and also features the largest Black population of any city outside of Arizona or the Greater South.

In Michigan, you'll see that glistening temple of industry, Detroit. Home to a huge portion of America's auto industry, as well as arms manufacturing and appliances, Detroit is called the City of Progress for a reason! Make sure to grab a Detroit-style deep dish pizza, topped with sausage, peppers, onions, and pepperoni! It's a truly delicious and spicy meal for the whole family. For the car lovers, be sure to go to the Ford Automotive History Museum, where you can see cars from the most primitive models to the cherry-red sports cars of today. For those with a more futuristic bent, the Valdez-Oldsmobile-GE Futarama Hall, a 120,000 sq ft. exhibition hall, is a must see. In there, one will find proof of concepts for futuristic Valdez jets, both military and civilian, a primitive working electric car from Oldsmobile, and dozens of futuristic gadgets in GE's Home of Tomorrow, all of which could be coordinated by high-tech analog computer wizardry! America will truly experience Better Living Through Science! Finally, the Detroit Gallery of American Art boasts over 1300 pieces of sculpture, paintings, sketches, porcelain, and even needleworks, all of which were made right here in the United States of America.

If you want to make a quick jaunt next door, Milwaukee, Wisconsin is like a slice of Old Prussia in America. Out of all America's cities, Milwaukee narrowly beats out Minnesota for the highest concentration of German-Americans. This is strongly reflected in the city's culture. There are dozens of breweries, including the nationally acclaimed Landsknecht Lager, founded in Milwaukee in 1889. Beer is such a strong part of life here, that like Germany, the State of Wisconsin does not have a minimum drinking age. In the food scene, one can find all the old fashioned Germanic favorites, with a Yankee twist. The Milwaukee Dog, which is actually a bratwurst served with sauerkraut, mayo, and mustard is the ballpark favorite of the city. It pares well with the German-style potato salad that is the favored side of the state. In music, there is a vibrant polka scene in Milwaukee, with multiple festivals and over 500 polka bands in the city. Roll out the barrel! There's even German-American heritage week from Jan. 14-21, which honors the unification of Germany by Bismarck and the German heritage of the residents. Lederhosen optional, but fun! You can even pick up a few words of German while you're there, as a plurality of the city's population speaks, reads, and writes the language fluently!

Down south in the Windy City of Chicago, you'll find a vibrant and mixed population. The city has the largest population of Orthodoxers in America, a full 40% of the city. This is because Chicago has been the number one destination for Serbs, Montenegrins, and Greeks fleeing their shellackings at the hands of the Hapsburg Empire in Europe. Despite their alien religious practices these citizens are as loyal as any normal American family, and some have in fact converted. The "Chyro" or Chicago Gyro, is a delicious take on the traditional Gyro, stuffed with the traditional kebabed pork as well as tomato, onion, tzatziki sauce, and fries. The Serbs have also contributed the number one street food of Chicago, the Cevapi, a grilled dish of minced meat served on a traditional Serb flatbread alongside diced onions, sour cream, feta, and kamjak and avar, two traditional Serb condiments. The Windy City has also become an epicenter for prizefighting, as these fiery sons of the Balkans put their passions to constructive use in our nation's boxing arenas. Another worthy endeavor regardless of one's opinions of foreign religions, is to visit the Orthodox cathedrals around the city, which are true wonders of Byzantine architecture.

We conclude this guide with the Twin Cities region, dominated by Minneapolis. Although almost as German as Milwaukee, as seen by the invention of schnitzel hotdish, Minneapolis and Minnesota generally have even stronger Scandinavian and Canadian influences. Caribou (when in season and in legal amounts) is available in the grocery store. Smoked fishes of several varieties native fish, such as smoked sturgeon, are popular here and are prepared in traditional Scandinavian style. Hockey, skiing, and biathlons are fanatical obsessions up here as well, a product of the great sporting heritage of the Nordic peoples. We strongly recommend checking the schedule and attending one of these events! There are also several Scandinavian Heritage Centers throughout the region, and even a recreation of Leif Erikson landing in the Americas in Minneapolis! Above all though, whether you fish, hunt, take in a concert in Minneapolis, engage in sport, watch sport, or just want to sightsee, you couldn't find friendlier folks to meet. It ain't called Minnesota Nice for nothin! So, get in the Family Limousine (TTL's name for sedans) and start exploring!

State Street in Chicago!

Madisonburg, rebuilt with American ingenuity!

William Lyon Mackenzie, founder of the Canadian Republic and a patriot before his time.

A depiction of the Kitchen of Tomorrow from a poster in the Detroit Futurama!​

 

[Murica1776]

I'm baaack!

Post-War Europe Part I: The Eastern Clients

A German Army General inspects soldiers of the Ukrainian Army (1947)
​

One of the areas most and least effected by the War was the Mitteleuropa sphere of Germany. This sphere, consisting of Poland, Ukraine, Crimea, and the United Baltic Duchy had been spared from pretty much all war damage. However, Ukrainians, Poles, Crimean Tatars, and non-German Balts had been conscripted en masse to fuel the German war effort around the world. Ukrainian wheat and butter fed the whole war effort. Polish coal powered homes and factories across the German world. Baltic iron and timber was used for a dozen purposes. Germany had called upon her puppet states, doing everything to shift as much of the costs of the war onto them as possible, and they answered. However, dissatisfaction was growing with the arrangements between Berlin and her puppet states. They had sacrificed much, and they wanted compensation.

Germany did concede to this rising nationalism, albeit in limited ways. The deportation of the Jews to America was a big one. Anti-Semitism had been rife in the region since the Russian Revolution, in which many of the leading revolutionaries had been Jews. The fact that the hated Stalin was a raging anti-Semite did nothing to ease these feelings among the region's ethnic groups. Jews were viewed as Communists, anti-nationals, un-European, and anti-Christian. During the war years and following, Kiev and Warsaw were home to some particularly vicious anti-Semitic pogroms. Germany "solving the Jewish Question" for her clients did much to restore goodwill. However, deporting a despised ethnic group wouldn't be enough. Reluctantly, Berlin made more concessions. Firstly, they cut their clients in on the war booty taken from across three continents. Gold bullion totalling $40 million was transferred to the Bank of Poland. Ukraine received $25 million in silver. Crimea had 130 French factories and power plants shipped piecemeal into the country and reassembled, vastly increasing the country's industrial base. The United Baltic Duchy received $20 million in war indemnities, and had another $25 million in debt forgiven by Berlin. This doesn't include the millions of dollars in goods pilfered by these troops during their time campaigning. Many Ukrainian peasant women wound up with mink coats and exotic produce like mangoes. Another, larger concession made was a slightly increased degree of political independence. The cord between Berlin and the capitals of Eastern Europe was by no means cut, but the practice of certain government officials having German "Big Brothers" was ended. Finally, Germany declared its unending opposition to Soviet Communism, then Eurasian Communism, and finally just Eurasianism. Strict though the Teutonic yoke might be, it had been positively delicate in comparison to the Russian knout. Eastern Europe was perhaps the most Russophobic place on Earth, and keeping them happy meant the odd bit of saber rattling against the Eurasians. Having covered the general picture, let's now evaluate these countries on an individual basis.

Poland thrived in the post-war era. The expulsion of Jews hampered economic growth some, but the appropriation of Jewish assets by Poles also helped reduce Polish poverty at the cost of Jewish rights. Meanwhile, Polish industry furnished many of the goods Scandinavia and their fellow Eastern Europeans craved, including steel and TV sets. Polish coal fueled electrification projects across Eastern Europe. Warsaw underwent a cultural renaissance in Polish language literature, creating works that were even lauded in Berlin and Vienna. One work in particular "A Pole's Odyssey," by Ksawery Wasyluk became Poland's modern national epic as it detailed the life of Andrezj Kaminski, born a Polish subject in Imperial Russia, who suffers greatly under Czarist rule. His family is beaten by Cossacks, taxes are heavy, and he is beaten in school for speaking Polish. Upon reaching adulthood, he is conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army, serving under the command of Colonel Nikolai Abakumov, a vicious megalomaniac who beats his Polish troops with a knout as he fantasizes about leading a future Russian charge across Europe to Lisbon. After narrowly escaping a German gas attack, he defects and serves as a scout for Colonel Martin Schiller, who is depicted as honorable, if something of an imperialistic boor. Andrezj is crucial to several victories, earning an Iron Cross after saving Colonel Schiller. When the war is over he married his sweetheart Jolanta. However, they have little money, and Andrezj's family farm is sold to a German homesteader after it's revealed that his parents are dead and siblings scattered. He simply can't afford it. Andrezj enrolls in the new Polish Army attached to the Germans, and Andrezj serves in the Congo, Latvia, and Mesopotamia while raising a family. Despite the adventures and good pay, he desires nothing more than to return to his beloved Poland. He insists that his three children, growing up in the melting pot of German imperial forces, learn two words of Polish for every foreign word they learn. When war breaks out in '39, Andrezj's sons Damian and Bartek enlist. He himself, now a captain, is recalled to Germany and leads Polish and German troops as they contain the French advance and slowly turn the tide. Andrezj is among the troops who conquer Paris, and loots a fabulous 120 carat ruby. Shortly before the war's conclusion, he is promoted to the rank of Colonel by his old commander, now General Schiller. He sells the ruby in Berlin. The novel concludes with Andrezj buying his family farm back from the homesteaders, and the announcement of his son Bartek's wife's first pregnancy. The novel won international acclaim as an allegory for the struggle of Polish nationhood, a twisting tale of adventure, and a work of literature. In 1975, it would be made the national novel of Poland by the government.

Ukraine was considered something of the "powerful idiot" of the Eastern European nations. The country's struggle to create a native intelligentsia and comprehensive high culture was an ongoing slog. Centuries of Russification had strangled the development of native cultural ideas, and the post-war deportations of Jews decimated what buds of a cultural class were there. However, Ukraine did have a strong sense of national identity, and although there was little in the way of high culture, the culture of Ukrainian peasants had a richness all its own. Even many city dwellers brought some of the old ways with them. What Ukraine lacked in high culture, it made up for in muscle. Pre-war Ukraine had a population of 40 million, but after the war it exploded. In the period from 1944-1964, 25 million Ukrainians were born, making the country one of the most populous in Europe. The rich agricultural soil of Ukraine, although often dominated by German agricultural corporations, fed this massive population and have a solid foundation for prosperity. Ukrainian industry, both native and German owned allowed for upward mobility. Although the country still lagged Poland and the UBD (Ukrainian car ownership rates were particularly abysmal) the country grew faster and more consistently than much of Europe. Militarily, Ukraine had the largest Army of any of Germany's puppets, clients, or minor allies, actually exceeding even the size of Portugal and Italy. Ukraine's somewhat backward industrial base meant that the Germans equipped much of this Army, but it was still formidable. Getting command of Ukrainian divisions within the German Army was seen as a special privilege second only to the Crimean Tatars. Furthermore, Ukrainians provided the bulk of the Eastern European auxiliary forces, and it was overwhelmingly Ukrainians who stared down the ravenous EU.

Crimea underwent a transformation in this period. Once considered little more than a glorified warm water port and vacation dacha for the Russian and German elites, the plunder of French factories and power plants allowed Crimea to take full advantage of rich deposits of minerals, resulting in a miniature industrial revolution. The government also began reforming the Tatar language, complete with an alphabet styled on the German one. Aside from this, the tiny republic continued to be Berlin's most fiercely committed ally in the region, and instituted mandatory national service for both sexes, furthering their warrior reputation.

The United Baltic Duchy was Berlin's favored client in the East. This is largely thanks to the region's sizable German ruling class, and it's high level of economic development. The UBD was on par with most European powers, and even outperformed the hated EU. This prosperity hid tensions within Baltic society. In the years before the war, the German ruling class instituted de facto segregation against the native Balts. After the war this policy continued, but had to be tweaked significantly. Part of this was due to changes in Germany. The old racialized view of Slavs as inherently inferior was being discarded. This meant that should significant ethnic violence break out, Germany wouldn't necessarily back an openly racist and oppressive ruling class, and if it did, might enforce reforms or even annex the region (although some Baltic Germans favored this). Instead, there was a process of cultural and linguistic Germanization implemented. Native Balts weren't forced to Germanize, but those who refused were still segregated into other communities. Germanized Balts, however, enjoyed all the privileges of the elite, although there was still some bigotry. Another development in this era was a privileging of the Lutheran Estonians and Latvians over the Catholic Lithuanians. This system would eventually be replaced, but that's far down the road.

In the post-war era, Germany's client states in Eastern Europe became true nations again. Even if they were still subservient to Berlin, these nations were allowed greater political, economic, and cultural freedom than in years past. Despite Berlin's continued hold on the region, the Eastern Europeans were broadly satisfied with German control. They were independent(ish) and prospering. Germany guaranteed their security against the increasingly alien Eurasian Union. German trade brought wealth. Although some resentment was inevitable, Germany's Eastern flank was very secure in the post-war era.

Members of a Ukrainian border unit display their colors (1948)

Warsaw, 1951

An Estonian Lutheran couple poses with their church's new shuttle (1953)​

 

[Murica1776]

As penance for my long absence, enjoy this special Juneteenth chapter.

A Cuban Jubilee

The official banner of Jubilee Day, informally known as Juneteenth
​

June 19th, 1965

Roosevelt Park in Downtown Havana is positively festooned in Red, White, and Blue. A foreign observer could be forgiven for initially thinking they had landed in the middle of an Independence Day celebration. In a manner of speaking, they would be right. However, this is not a celebration of America's independence from Great Britain. It is instead a celebration of the end of Black slavery. On June 19th, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger freed the last remaining enslaved Southern Black Americans in Galveston, Texas. The next year, church centered celebrations of this event were found throughout Texas. The event spread through the South during Reconstruction, although the Redeemer War tamped down celebrations for fear of terrorism. However, with the last rebels crushed and the institution of the Cackalack Compromise, the celebration alternately known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, and Juneteenth would explode in popularity among Black communities in the South. Large food festivals almost akin to a county fair would emerge. There would also be competitions between gospel choirs, parades, speeches by community leaders, and one lucky citizen would dress in Union Blues to recite the Emancipation Proclamation for their friends and neighbors to hear. These traditions have broadly remained in place ever since.

When America took Santo Domingo, Cuba, Panama, and Puerto Rico, Black colonists known as "Exodites" took Jubilee Day with them. For several years, these celebrations were Exodite exclusive as Black settlers cemented their political power over the colonies alongside White settlers. However, by the late 1880's, some Afro-Hispanics began attending. On a practical level, the Black populations of these territories were useful to co-opt and give the enticement of integration in order to deal with "racially alien" Latino majorities or pluralities. On an ideological level, the American public, especially the Black American public, became seriously attached to a vision of America as a multiracial guarantor of freedom, and even initially exclusionary American rule was leagues better than Spanish or strongman rule. In these territories, Jubilee Day transformed into a pan-Black celebration of freedom and the New American Way. A few particularly tolerant pockets in the region actual had bilingual readings of the Emancipation Proclamation, but this would remain fairly limited. Jamaica is a unique case thanks to its massive English speaking Black majority, and Jubilee Day there is more akin to the South than the Greater Caribbean. Jubilee Day was an informal celebration until the Roosevelt Administration where rising racial consciousness and nationalism prompted the institution of Jubilee Day as a federal holiday celebrating "The expansion of American freedom and the unique genius of the Black Race in this country." It isn't uncommon to see troupes of Black Rough Riders at Jubilee Day celebrations in honor of both Roosevelt and the Black troops in his Rough Riders, a prototype for the future integrated American military. In the post-war era, Jubilee Day celebrations have become more lavish than ever, a reflection of the huge increase in prosperity among Black Americans.

This takes us back to our Jubilee Day celebration in Roosevelt Park, Havana, State of Cuba. Roosevelt Park is a massive area, clocking in at 300 acres. The entire area has essentially become a fairground. Vendors sell rice and beans, fried chicken, and bbq. One might notice a large amount of red foods. Red velvet cake, red peppers, red bbq sauces, red beans, and cherry and strawberry flavored sodas and lemonades that are various shades of red. Red foods are eaten as symbols of the blood of the enslaved who have gone before, never to be forgotten by their descendants. Across the park turned fairgrounds, endless Red, White, and Blue banners float in the wind. First and foremost there is, of course, the Star-Spangled-Banner, the emblem of the Union, the Flag That Makes You Free. There are also replicas (and a few original banners) of the banners flown by various brigades of United States Colored Troops flying or on display in tents. Also omnipresent is the Jubilee Banner, a flag invented by Spanish-American War veteran Reginald Brown in 1915 for the 50th anniversary of Jubilee Day. The Red, White, and Blue symbolize that the African American community is, in fact, American, while the bursting star symbolizes the dawn of a new age of freedom. Finally, there are a large number of Liberian flags around. Liberia is the only other country on Earth to celebrate Jubilee Day, both in celebration of the freedom and struggles of the Americo-Liberians and their ancestors, as well as the ongoing integration of Native Africans. Liberian food and culture is frequently celebrated at Jubilee Day events across the country as kindred Black people.

Among the star studded list of speakers you have the old mobster owners of the Havana Rough Riders, Elle Davis (Beaconsfield's "Black Aphrodite"), star slugger Zeke Gutierrez, and Arnold Johnson, an elderly veteran of the Spanish-American War decked out in full dress uniform. The First Havana AME Zion Church Choir will perform a comprehensive set list of gospel songs including Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, When The Saints Go Marching In, and Steal Away to Jesus among others. Harold Clinton, a 2nd generation Exodite and Mayor of Havana, will recite the Emancipation Proclamation. A massive parade has been planned, featuring thousands of Black veterans of the World War, the Mexican War, the Brazilian War, and led by the still living Spanish-American War veterans and Black Civil War Reenactors. At nightfall, a spectacular fireworks show will occur to commemorate 100 years of Emancipation. The all-Black Havana Veterans Choir will perform "Yankee Doodle" and "Marching Through Georgia" as fireworks and cannon are shot off. The sky will light up with dazzling color, including words spelled out like "100 Years Free," "Slaves No More," and "Americans All" while down below thousands of Black men, women, and children shout:

Hurrah, Hurrah, we bring the Jubilee
Hurrah, Hurrah, the Flag That Makes You Free
So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the Sea
While we were Marching Through Georgia!

A massive Jubilee Day celebration in Santo Domingo (1912)

Modern Jubilee Day celebrations in Wisconsin​

 

[Murica1776]

I finally have some ideas for Europe again, which will come soon. In the meantime, enjoy this small update. I might do another one closer to 2020:

Summary of United States Census, 1960
​

Total Population: 242,178,378
Men: 120,245,622
Women: 121,932,756

Race:

​

White: 158,626,837 (65.5%)*
Black: 21,796,054 (9%)**
Asian: 31,483,190 (13%)
Mestizo and Indigenous: 10,898,027 (4.5%)
Mixed and Other: 19,374,270 (8%)

Religion:

Protestant Christianity: 75%
Catholic Christianity: 18%
Other: 7%

Language:

English Only: 174,368,432 (72%)
English and Filipino Dialect: 24,217,837 (10%)
English and Spanish: 21,796,054 (9%)
English and German: 9,687,135 (4%)
No English and Other: 12,108,919 (5%)

Largest Self-Reported Ethnic Groups:

German: 30%
English: 26%
Spanish: 20%
Irish: 17%***
"American": 10%****

Trends:

• The racial group currently experiencing the quickest growth is the Mixed category. The majority of these children have one white parent.
• Despite media focus on White-Black marriage, these unions are both the smallest in number (excepting certain small Native tribes) and are growing slowly. Most White-Black unions are between Blacks of already mixed ancestry and Whites.
• The fastest growing interracial union type is White-Mestizo, tilted slightly (52%-48%) toward White Male-Mestizo Female unions. Some demographers believe this rapid "whitening" is behind much of the outbursts of La Raza and other groups who fear total sublimation into the American mainstream.
• The Asian population of the United States is expected to both increase rapidly and become more diverse. As of now the Asian-American population is predominantly Filipino with large populations of Chinese and Japanese. However, a large increase in immigration from Indochina, China, Korea, and Indonesia is beginning to occur. Most of these immigrants are heading for the rapidly developing Philippines, and cultural conflicts might be on the horizon.
• Debate is emerging over whether a so-called "browning of America" is inevitable. Others argue that the nature of America's white majority is changing.

Notes:

• No distinction is drawn between Hispanic Whites and other Whites.
• Includes Afro-Hispanics and mixed "Irish Jamaicans."
• Among the Irish population is a sizable minority of Jamaica's Black population
• The so-called "American" ethnic group, originally a Scotch-Irish phenomenon, has grown to encompass populations of mixed-race people as well, particularly light skinned Blacks. For cultural reasons, this "ethnic group" is predominantly Southern.

 

[Murica1776]

I still can't think of anything for the Tripartite so I'm gonna kick it down the road. This will be a good, longish overview of Europe generally.

Post-War Europe Part II: Germany, Master of Continents

1950's Berlin
​

Germany after the War was the uncontested master of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The German Empire controlled hundreds of millions of people via direct and indirect means. The German Empire controlled a majority of the world's oil and diamonds, as well as trillions of dollars worth of other natural resources and the world's most industrialized continent. On paper, Germany might seem like a shoe-in for global hegemon. However, the fact of the matter is that Germany had unique weaknesses that her American, Eurasian, Chinese, and Indian rivals didn't. For one thing, German rule outside of Europe was almost exclusively dependent on minority colonial rule, outside of the Martial States and a few lonely puppets. Eurasia, China, India, and America all had large populations of people with which to hold their vast territories, even if as in the case of Eurasia, there were restive minorities. German Africa was always one bad case of Pan-Africanism away from major instability, to say nothing of the ongoing religious insurgencies in the Middle East. Even within Europe, Germany's insistence on a strict ethnic and national hierarchy was beginning to grate on allies. For Berlin to remain competitive, serious reforms were needed.

To bolster colonial rule in Africa and elsewhere, Germany did several things. First of all, it created three new Martial States, the Sukuma Martial State (Tanzania), the Arab State of Greater Soudan, and the Nilotic State of South Soudan. The Sukuma Martial State is governed via a consensus between the Sukuma people, White Germans, and several other larger ethnic groups who together constitute a powerful plurality. In Greater Soudan, the Sunni Arabs essentially ran the place as a theocratic ethno state. This was welcomed by Berlin in spite of the expulsions of minorities to German colonies because it served as useful release valve for Arabs in Germany's Middle Eastern colonies. South Soudan was predominantly governed by the Dinka and Nuer people in conjunction with a notable population of Russians who chose to emigrate from the United Baltic Duchy rather than face life in the Eurasian Union (then the USSR). This freed up German military resources to focus on more restive provinces, specifically Arabia and the Francophone lands bordering Liberia and Co. It also held out the promise of internal autonomy and even a military force to large ethnic groups in other territories. Elsewhere, Germany bolstered South Africa and Algeria's white minorities. Algeria in particular needed logistical help, as approximately 1.1 million French left for the nation as part of "Le Grand Depart," a mass emigration of Frenchmen and women out of France that will be covered below. Both nations had fairly brutal apartheid systems, although Algeria began to open up to intermarriage (between Frenchmen and native women) as a way to cement French cultural power in the region. South Africa had no such ideas, and ruthlessly suppressed budding African resistance across its enlarged realm. Infusions of Whites and Anglo-Indians who received Honorary White status helped cement South Africa. Despite some general distaste with the South African regime, Berlin found the status quo there agreeable enough. In colonial Africa, poor non-German Whites were allowed to settle en masse, with there being large influxes of Greeks, Serbs, and Spaniards especially. Combined with some concessions to enhanced Native input in government, Africa was fairly stable by 1955.

The Middle East, on the other hand, remained a constant quagmire. The first thing the Assyrians and Kurds did after receiving their Martial States was deport the Arabs living there. This resulted in a tidal wave of several million pissed off Arabs straining the resources of colonies filled with even more pissed off Arabs. On May 8th, 1949, a carbomb in Riyadh destroyed a German police station, killing everyone inside. The Islamic Arab Revolutionary Army (IARA) claimed responsibility. Germans were furious, and 30,000 troops flooded the colony. They would never leave. Although the bulk of the IARA would be rolled up by 1951, a dozen small organizations took its place. The Middle East would be in a state of eternal low-level insurgency for many decades to come. Many of the insurgents would be jihadists, but many Arab ethnic nationalists would emerge as well. Some would try and use Greater Soudan as a hidey-hole, but the government would always crack down brutally to prevent their German overlords from marching back in. Over time, some Germans questioned why they were in the Middle East. However, the tremendous oil profits from the region both made the war financially sound and palatable to the majority of the German public (propaganda didn't hurt either).

In Europe proper, there were also major events underway. Most notable was the formation of the Federated Kingdoms of Scandinavia. Pan-Scandinavian sentiment had been extant before the War, and was most notably expressed in Scandinavia's joint management of a small, oil-rich colony in Arabia. The War dramatically boosted the idea. Germany had more or less left Norway to the mercies of the British until it was convenient to boot them out. Swedes, Danes, and Finns had been the ones to hold the line. Many came away from the experience believing Scandinavia needed to be united to protect "The Nordic Fatherland" from foreign aggression. While still broadly favorable toward Germany, an unspoken belief of the movement was the idea that a united Scandinavia would be harder for Berlin to bully. After years of public pressure, referendums were held on August 17th, 1952 in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland to determine whether or not a united Scandinavian state should be formed. The results came as something of a shock to Berlin and the world. The region voted by a 2/3rds majority to unite. Straws were drawn to determine the new capital. Oslo won out. It was decided that each Kingdom could keep their royal families as heads of state, and to perform local governmental functions in the (now) local parliaments. A federal Parliament was established and the system ironically resembled the American federal system, albeit in a Parliamentary form. The new state, with important natural resources and a not unsubstantial military, was a force to be reckoned with once unification was finalized in 1956. Germany begrudgingly adjusted its policies in Scandinavia to be more accommodating of the boisterous new power.

Flag of the Federated Kingdoms of Scandinavia, formerly used by the Kalmar Union

IARA members in German Arabia (1950)​

Elsewhere in Europe, German ethnic supremacy was beginning to erode outside of the United Baltic Duchy. This wasn't because Berlin was becoming less powerful, but rather because decades of propaganda about defending "The West" was being taken seriously. This would seem to imply that all Europeans were unified in their defense of Western Civilization. Indeed, much of the continent was horrified by the rise of non-white India and China, as well as the multiracial Eurasia and America. Although the Germans themselves were less concerned with skin color, having had the best experience with non-white soldiers and subjects, the average citizen was still fairly racist. Furthermore, most of Europe was actually a decent bit worse. However, old ethnic boundaries within Europe began to blur in the face of this collective "threat." How much this happened depended on where one was. In Scandinavia, there was a huge post-war uptick in marriages between Scandinavians, but outsiders were still shunned. Eastern Europe and Britain were similar in this regard. However, in the rest of the continent, old rivalries and prejudices were starting to be put aside as Europeans felt they had to unite in some form. This is not to say that the Germans suddenly treated everyone as equals. However, they blunted their impulses toward dominance to unite the continent more securely beneath them, and part of this was an erosion of racism between Europeans.

Another part of this was the foundation of the Europa League in 1954 as a response to the Yankee AFL. Germany, Italy, and the Tripartite Empire were the so-called "core members," an acknowledgement that they de facto ran the entire continent. Even within this group, Germany was clearly dominant, but behaved with more humility than in the past. Beneath the Core Members there was Scandinavia, Bulgaria, Britain, and the United Baltic Duchy, who were powerful, privileged by Germany, or both. Beneath these powers were Romania, Greece, Serbia, Albania, Ukraine, Crimea, and France. Spain and Portugal were non-committal observers to the pact, something that would bite Portugal in a matter of years. The hierarchy within the alliance was unofficial, but very much present.

Rounding out this overview of Europe, let's examine Germany, Britain, and France in closer detail. Germany domestically boomed after the war. Population growth picked up dramatically. However, in an increasingly crowded and expensive Germany, there were concerns about how to accommodate this growth. While new construction at home did much, over 300,000 young German families left for the colonies, mainly settling in the Congo. This development overjoyed the government, who offered tax incentives and painted pictures of German families sunning outside big Bavarian styled homes while natives brought them cold drinks and towels. Thousands more moved to the Tripartite Empire (itself experiencing a baby boom) and the United Baltic Duchy. Germany developed a popular culture complex centered in Berlin, mainly to counter the Yankees and unite the continent. Notably more refined and traditional than American pop culture, Berlin handcrafted a "European Sensibility" to unite the continent as it began the "Long Crusade for Western Civilization." Next door in France, the country was experiencing the exact opposite of Germany's boom times and optimism. Having suffered from a 70 year losing streak, the loss of their empire, and now being a de facto vassal of Germany, France had what can only be described as a nervous breakdown. Communists overthrew the city government of Nice in 1949 before being crushed. Individualist Nietzscheanism exploded in popularity and would never fully fade, prompting a widespread cynicism and a hedonistic attitude towards life. In culture, film noir and livres noir, "black film" and "black books" became popular. Exploring themes of death, decay, decadence, and lost youth, they captured the soul of the nation. Suicides spiked from 1946-1955 before leveling off, as did drug abuse. Most dramatically, Le Grand Depart, or "The Great Leaving" unfolded from 1946-1960. Over 3.2 million French left Europe, never to return (as French citizens anyway). 1.1 million left for Algeria, mainly conservatives and Croixists. 1.6 million left for Quebec, especially artists, fashionistas, and business owners. They would drastically alter Quebecoise culture. The remaining 500,000 packed up for America, predominantly French Protestants, favoring Cuba, the Filipino states, and the Mexican territories (themselves on the path to statehood). They would merge seamlessly into the grand American Melting Pot. Britain, on the other hand, fared better. The loss of the Empire was blamed on Mosley, while many took a perverse pride in the fact that "the Yanks had to resort to nukes to beat us." Britain proper did, technically, go uninvaded. Finally, Britain's economy and military came out stronger than France's did, and Berlin actually encouraged rearmament to stare down America's Irish allies. London became the secondary hub of European finance. However, there was still a good deal of pessimism after the War, and Britain experienced a smaller, 2 million person Leaving. Of these, 900,000 went to South Africa (which bribed them generously), 700,000 to Australia, 300,000 to America, and 100,000 to New Zealand. Although Britannia would survive, and thrive, her time in the sun was over. Forever.

A Quebecoise steamer docks in Nice to take thousands of French people to new lives in Quebec (1952).

The French Communist Party Annual Meeting (1950). The PCF would grow to over 2 million before dramatically collapsing in 1954.

Europan troops training in South Africa (1958)​

 

[Murica1776]

Colonizing the Colonizer

Chaos during the failed Portuguese Revolution of '61
​

By 1961, it was clear that Portugal was a declining power. Government propaganda trumpeting the continued success of the Portuguese race and assimilation efforts in the colonies could not cover up the truth. The government was unresponsive and riddled with factions from competing parts of the military, bureaucracy, and industry. The economy was stagnant and offered few opportunities for upward mobility. The national debt had ballooned during the Depression and was still abnormally high. The bloodbath in the colonies was unending and increasingly vicious. Liberian backed rebels were in the 5th year of waging a grinding, brutal guerilla war against their colonizers, and oftentimes committing war crimes against mixed race Africans. The Portuguese government responded with increasingly brutal and repressive measures, committing war crimes themselves. The government of South Africa was getting increasingly aggressive in their offers of "help" for the beleaguered Portuguese, something that was rightly seen as a move to try and absorb those colonies. In short, something had to give.

On March 25th, 1961, Captain Cristian Esteves was found dead in his Lisbon home. The official reason for his death was a heart attack. The truth soon came out, however, that he had been poisoned on the orders of none other than Salazar himself. Captain Esteves was a young, handsome war hero who led a popular and powerful faction of reformist Army officers. His poisoning seemed to indicate that there was no hope of the system being reformed, much less of saving Portugal from eventual collapse. At a memorial service for Esteves in Lisbon on the 27th, his grief-stricken and unhinged widow Gloria whipped up the crowd into a riotous frenzy. All afternoon and evening, thousands of Lisboners attacked storefronts and government buildings. On March 28th, 1/3rd of the Army and 1/4th of the Navy mutinied. On March 30th, pan-African rebels marched into Luanda (capital of Portuguese Angola) with the help of native citizens. By April 2nd, the whole country and empire was tottering. Momentum against Salazar slowed after this point, but it was clear that without external intervention, the regime and empire would utterly collapse. Something had to be done.

Who to ask for help was soon clear. The Eurasians were out of the question, both due to Portuguese anti-Communism and the fact that Zhukov had been giving marginal aid to Portuguese socialists in hope of acquiring influence in a new Portugal. The Germans would want to annex Portuguese Africa and de facto turn Portugal into a vassal. Spain would likely try and do the same. There was no chance of the Americans helping a Croixist state, and their Liberian allies had been behind the destabilization of Portuguese Africa. India wouldn't help a colonial power. No, Portugal's only chance for survival lay in her young, boisterous son across the sea. Only Brazil could save Portuguese speaking civilization. On April 3rd, Salazar formally telegrammed Rio and asked for assistance. The conservative monarchy in the country had been hoping for just such a summons, and had already begun mobilizing a 100,000 man expeditionary force. Another 75,000 men would enlist for "The Great Crusade to Save the Motherland." Surprisingly, the United States assured the Brazilians that they could use American and allied ports in their quest. This was not done out of altruism, but rather because Washington correctly believed that this action would weaken Germany's hold on Europe and provide an outlet for Brazilian imperialism away from core American interests.

Although it took time, by May 3rd Brazilian soldiers were steaming en masse into Porto on the mainland and Luanda in Angola. It was just in the nick of time. Although Salazar had managed to hold out and blunt rebel momentum, things were beginning to pick back up. The fresh and well armed Brazilian soldiers dispatched the underequipped and increasingly disorganized rebels in the Portuguese homeland with relative ease. Meanwhile, hardened veterans of the war against America proved to be experts at punching through Angolan rebel groups that had over-extended themselves trying to kick out the Portuguese and wage war against white and mixed-race inhabitants. In Mozambique, the South Africans were invited in by the white colonial government, and the region was lost to the Lusophone world. However, Portugal and Angola could be preserved, and they were. It took a year of hard fighting, but by June 3rd of 1962, the situation had stabilized enough for a new regime to be announced. Salazar remained in power in Portugal..... technically. In reality, a clique of military officers loyal to Rio could and would kill him in his sleep if he defied the Brazilians. Furthermore, the Portuguese royal family was re-enthroned and Princess Mariana was engaged to the aged Emperor Lucas I's grandson Adalberto. Portugal and Brazil would be united into a Dual Empire that was theoretically "One Monarch, Two Kingdoms, Two Systems." In practice, Brazil had de facto annexed Portugal. Freedom of movement and trade between the two was allowed without a passport, and one could easily transfer citizenship between the Kingdoms (if you were white or mestizo). Angola became "An independent republic in free association with the Kingdom of Portugal." In reality it was also, in essence, a Brazilian colony. Brazilian troops maintained order while the Brazilian government used the territory as a laboratory to experiment with the effects of whitening. The Angolan leadership was all either white or mixed, and answered to Rio.

This all happened without much comment from the rest of the world. The Spanish had considered illegally invading before the Brazilians arrived, but reneged, fearing blowback from Berlin and destabilizing their own increasingly precarious colony in the Holy Land. The large powers had no great sympathy for the Croixist regime. Germany wasn't thrilled at having another New World power with a foothold on "their" continent, but also didn't consider it a real threat. The real tensions were between Brazil, Liberia, and South Africa. Liberia stopped funding the Angolan rebels under pressure from Washington fearing a second war with Brazil. However, Liberia continued to do what it could to undermine Brazilian power in Africa, and relations between the two deteriorated. The Brazilian-South African border was quickly militarized, and both powers resented the other mightily for interfering with their individual imperial aspirations. War would actually break out in the 1970's, but that will be covered later on. The intervention had been a coup for Brazil. The country had built an overseas empire at minimal cost and without interference from the world powers. The de facto conquest of their former colonizer also filled Brazilians with civilizational pride, as they envisioned reuniting the Lusophonic world in its entirety and then annexing other lands. The de facto annexation of Portugal also brought millions of white citizens under Brazilian control, something that shored up ever-present demographic anxieties. Avante, Brasil!

A Brazilian soldier in Angola (1962)

Flag of the Republic of Angola

Brazilian policemen in a rebuilt part of Lisbon (1965)​

 

[Murica1776]

The Space Race Part I: Rocket Gaps and How to Close Them

The Lincoln VI, America's first rocket to successfully reach space (June 1st, 1949)
​

On April 22nd, 1947, Germany shocked the world by being the first nation to successfully launch a rocket into outer space. The craft, dubbed Goth III (in honor of the ancient Goths), was nothing short of a warning shot to the world. Germany had already developed rockets that were then deployed in war to ever-increasing effect. The prospect of Germany being able to launch such missiles into space brought obvious military implications. Both Eurasia and America realized they had been caught utterly flat-footed. However, they had an advantage: Germany was still pre-occupied with reorganizing her empire and fighting off various insurgencies. If they devoted enough resources to the fight, they could catch up before Germany was able to refocus. Both Eurasia and America began this process immediately, using various methods.

In America, the Patton Administration would create the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which had the United States Space Corps attached to it. Beginning work in late 1947, NASA and USSC would utilize updated Goliath machines to crunch numbers and run scenarios more quickly than their German and Eurasian counterparts were able to. Working outside of Ciudad Juarez, Territory (soon to be State) of New Canaan and Cape Canaveral, Florida, NASA began building the first of the Lincoln-class rockets by April of 1948. Although there were repeated setbacks, including faulty mechanics, issues with fuel refinement, and attempted bureaucratic shenanigans by the Aeroforce (who were eventually threatened by Patton) the Lincoln VI launched from United States Space Corps Command in Juarez was the first American rocket to reach space on June 1st, 1949. They beat the Eurasians by exactly one month, to the great annoyance of Zhukov. The Lincoln VII, Lincoln VIII, and Lincoln IX would all be successfully launched by April, 1950. Having proven that their rockets worked, the NASA Rocket Development Team, headed by Irish Bostonian Matthew Riley and Black Floridian Donald Clark began using ever more sophisticated Goliath Machines (increasingly called computers) to develop newer, more sophisticated rockets. The Zeus class Rocket, which they envisioned as being capable of carrying warheads into space before dropping on a pre-selected target. This was the birth of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, which would be first launched by the United States in 1955. The Zeus-class ICBM program would be transferred to the Aeroforce, as another concern rapidly engulfed NASA.

Eurasia was extremely displeased that they had been last to get a rocket into space. They lacked the head start of the Germans or the increasingly sophisticated computer wizardry of the Americans. What they did have was land, people, and money. Large, large quantities of land, people, and money. The Eurasian Space Exploration Corps, headquartered in Kazakhstan, pushed ahead with a gargantuan budget, spending more than the Americans and Germans combined in 1951-1954. After getting a rocket into space in July, 1949, the Eurasians pushed ahead on launching an actual satellite, and even people, into orbit. These massive investments would pay off tremendously. On January 1st, 1955, the world was stunned as radios across the world picked up a simple message on repeat: "A most joyous New Year to the world from Sputnik 1, an orbital project launched by the Great Eurasian People." Sputnik 1 was also equipped with a primitive camera that brought the first pictures of outer space, however blurry and ill-defined, to the human race. The success of Sputnik launched America and Germany into pandemonium. While the United States launched an ICBM later that year, both powers now believed that the Eurasians might actually have the Space Age ability to launch an explosive into orbit and drop it anywhere at will. Germany was especially terrified, fearing a wave of orbital explosives could herald an invasion of Mitteleuropa by the Eurasian hordes. Far from being ahead, Germany was now behind in the Rocket Race, soon dubbed the Space Race.

Germany responded with vigor. The city of Fredericksburg, Congo Colony (OTL Mbandaka) sprung up overnight as the city's location right along the equator made it ideal for launching spacecraft. The new German space agency, the Agency for Cosmological Exploration, moved thousands of employees to the middle of Africa virtually overnight. The stakes were clear; national pride and survival. Due to logistical delays and a slight bit of unrest due to the influx of whites to the colony, America beat the Germans to launch the American satellite Falcon 4 on September 1st, 1956. Germany's own Mecklenburg VI would be launched on October 4th, 1956. However, the Germans still had an edge, however slight, in technology. More importantly, a disproportionate number of rocketry's most brilliant minds were German. Germany clawed back her pride by launching Weltraumeroberer (Space Conqueror) Jonas Maier into space in Hohenzollern IV on April 3rd, 1959. He was the first human being to successfully enter space, orbit the Earth, and return. Eurasian cosmonaut Igor Sidorov became the second person in orbit on August 17th, 1960. Now, the Americans were lagging. However, breakthroughs were coming. On July 4th, 1961, America launched the 4th and 5th man (Germany having since launched Weltraumeroberer Martin Zimmermann) into space aboard Colfax VII. These men, Space Troopers John Glenn and Abraham Lawrence III, captured the national imagination. In even better news, Harold Clyburn, inventor of the original Goliath Machine, had come out of retirement to work alongside Aries Smith, a half-Filipino, half-White computer scientist from the "Detroit of the East," Davao City, Libertalia. On October 3rd, 1961, they announced to NASA and the world that they had created the first Minicomputer, the American Information Machines PDP-8. Dozens were ordered by NASA to accelerate rocket construction and aid rocket scientists. This would spur foreign interest in computers soon enough. The Space Race, Computer Race, and Arms Race were all in full swing as the world's great powers raced into the future.

Abraham Lawrence III, US Space Trooper

The AIM PDP-8, manufactured by the conglomerate's Digital Equipment Corporation

Weltraumeroberer Jonas Maier, first man in space​

 

[Murica1776]

A little shoutout to @Napoleon53 for inspiring Patton's "interesting" speech about the moon.

The Space Race Part II: Onward to Luna

The Liberty XII rocket
​

On July 4th, 1961, President George S. Patton issued a challenge to America: to beat the foreigners to the moon. He couched it in his inimitable style. "We will go to the moon in this decade not because it is easy. It is not easy, it is hard. But I say we will go to the moon in this decade, not because it is easy, but because it is rightfully American! We will go to the moon for the same reason we went to Louisiana, to Arizona, to California, to the Philippines and Canada! We will go to the moon to colonize, to spread freedom, to enhance our wealth, and we will go to the moon because if any dumb bastard is going to spread his seed across her face, by God, it will be Uncle Sam!" This colorful and somewhat obscene metaphor only enhanced what many felt was the ridiculousness of Patton's boast. America had fallen badly behind in the Space Race. She had never once been in the lead. How exactly was the United States going to pull ahead so dramatically? Fortunately for the United States, she had two weapons, one secret, one known. These were money and computers.

The United States was the richest nation in the world, in human history. It had the money necessary to fund what Patton was calling "The Liberty Mission to the Moon." However, money alone cannot defy technological gravity. Fortunately for the Americans, they had a genius of their own on their side to counter the likes of Germany's Werner von Braun. Harold Clyburn, the 50 year-old inventor of the Goliath Machine, unveiled the minicomputer alongside his partner, 26 year old Aries Smith in 1961. Patton invited Clyburn, by this point the wealthiest Black man in the world, to the White House and gave him two things: a mission and a $180 million, 4-year contract. His mission was to work as fast as possible to develop cutting edge computers for NASA and the USSC. Patton knew firsthand the utility of these machines and knew that in lieu of German expertise or Eurasia's shocking tolerance for experimental and deadly flights, this technology would be the key to getting Yankee boots on the moon. The contract was essentially a massive preliminary budget to build the best computers conceivable, and Patton tossed the incentive of more money in the future. Clyburn, both a capitalist and a patriot, eagerly assented. He built a new venture, American Computing Equipment, in the deserts of New Canaan. He employed over 4,000 people at his facility, which was a classified location, and got to work building computers for NASA.

The company got to work building ever more powerful computers while NASA began preliminary work on building Liberty I, the first rocket in the Liberty program. Liberty I was a spectacular failure. It exploded on the launchpad during the first test on January 13th, 1962, in front of the national and world media, prompting global derision. However, in its own way, it helped ensure American success. Complacency in Germany and Eurasia set in, and they were content to try and go to the moon on a seemingly more doable 12-15 year timeframe. NASA charged ahead, even as Liberty II and Liberty III were similarly catastrophic, the latter actually killing American Space Trooper Jim Greene. Some Republicans derided the space program as an expensive boondoggle as the Patton-less '64 Election season came upon America, but the de facto leader of the party and soon to be GOP nominee John F. Kennedy mostly quieted such rhetoric as defeatist and un-American. He pledged that he would do everything in his power to achieve Patton's goal, even as he gradually set up the rhetoric to blame Patton if the program failed to accomplish this goal. However, after initial setbacks in everything from the Liberty rockets to spacesuit design had actually been overcome, and while the program was still slightly behind schedule, it could have been much worse. Furthermore, a technological miracle was about to accelerate American progress beyond what was thought possible.

The ACE 2966 mainframe computer was unveiled to NASA on March 11th, 1965. It was a truly space age invention, developed before its time thanks to the sheer concentration of capital and brainpower focused on ACE. A 32-bit minicomputer with a 128-bit accumulator and packing decimal arithmetic, by the standards of the rest of the world it was like a jet aeroplane compared to a handcart. It was the first mainframe computer to use floppy disk technology and the first computer ever to be operated by terminals. The terminals had been made possible by Harold Clyburn's earlier experimentation with cathode ray tubes, such as those that had led to the adoption of color television. Far more powerful than what NASA had been using, and much more efficient than those systems as well, it completely revolutionized the space program. Formulas that might've taken hours to create and solve on chalkboards could be done in much less time with the ACE 2966. Disks were also a more efficient way to store data as opposed to punchcards. ACE also developed some smaller punchcard operated minicomputers that would allow NASA engineers to casually crunch some numbers at home while they showered and shaved. It's hard to overstate how important these breakthrough were to the American space program. Able to make more, and more precise calculations in a shorter time accelerated timetables on everything from fuel acquisition to the design of the lunar module. Now working overtime and with more vigor than ever, NASA managed to catch up to its timetable by February, 1966. By the end of 1966, NASA had pulled ahead.

On April 13th, 1967, NASA launched Liberty VIII as a test. Although the test revealed that additional fuel was necessary due to the weight of the module and prompted some redesigns of the craft, it put Germany and Eurasia on notice. They had once laughed at America's claim that they would land on the moon in this decade. They were no longer laughing, and began accelerating their own timetables. It was too late. Thanks to American computing power, they could simply out-calculate and out-engineer their problems to an extent well beyond that of their rivals. Exactly one year after the Liberty VIII launch, the Americans launched Liberty XI. While there was no landing, Liberty XI became the first craft to successfully complete an orbit of the moon and return to Earth. It was a dress rehearsal for the next launch. Germany and Eurasia panicked, rapidly increasing funding to their own space programs while trying to sabotage NASA. It was of no avail. America was ready. On Jubilee Day, 1968, Dick Armstrong and William Howard Jr, a Scotch-Irish boy from North Carolina and a self-made Black man from Mississippi respectively, became the first human beings to stand on the face of the moon. William Howard Jr's speech from the lunar surface would soon live in American legend: "My grandparents were born in chains. My ancestors lived in chains. Now, I plant the Flag that Makes You Free on the surface of the moon. My fellow Americans, my fellow Black men, know this: our chains are broken!" The American flag and the Jubilee flag were planted on the lunar surface. Down below, already raucous Jubilee Day celebrations erupted as they merged into the general brouhaha of celebration. Across the world, foreigners stood slack jawed in awe, envy, and fear.

There would be 5 more American missions to the moon. They would follow up on observations made by Armstrong and Howard, and concluded that the moon's equator would be an ideal place to put future settlements, as a relative abundance of sunlight meant that budding solar technology could one day power bases or even full-fledged colonies. While it would be decades before the first military bases were established on the moon, the data gathered on these expeditions would provide a strong foundation for future development. Germany would land the Bismarck XV on the moon on June 27th, 1972 while Eurasia would follow on August 11th, 1973 with the landing of Cosmos XII. The First Space Race was over, and the Americans had come up from behind to win in a spectacular fashion. America's Space Race performance also kickstarted the budding Computer Revolution and heralded the dawn of the Computer Age. The Space Race also had a tremendous impact on popular culture, and would inform a generations long American fascination with space and the dashing Space Troopers.

William Howard Jr. becomes the first man on the moon (Jubilee Day, 1968)

ACE 2966 Mainframes like the ones that would help lead NASA to the moon.

The 7500 console attached to the ACE 2966

Dick Armstrong honors the American flag before William Howard Jr. plants the Jubilee Day flag (Jubilee Day, 1968)​

 

[Murica1776]

The Space Race Part III: Space in Pop Culture

A still from the 1967 film "Destiny in Space I" (Digital Remaster from 1996)
​

The First Space Race touched every aspect of American, Russian, and German life. No analysis of the First Space Race would be complete without discussing the effect of the Race on pop culture across the world. Storytellers in film, TV, comics, and print novels were fascinated by the beginning of humanity's quest to conquer the greatest, largest frontier in existence. The endless frontier. However far away the settings might have been from Earth, their formulas, stereotypes, and ideologies were firmly rooted in the Great Power competition raging between America, Eurasia, and Germany. Government propagandists on all sides played a role, especially in totalitarian Eurasia where they actually took the lead. This great adventure into the unknown was both shaped by human ideas, and in turn shaped the future of many cultures.

It would be a disservice to neglect the role of the Cosmonauts, Space Troopers, and Weltraumeroberers in shaping this Space Age pop culture. Every nation lionized their explorers as heroes and patriots of the highest order, and this was expressed in many ways. In the United States, Space Troopers and their families became celebrities of the highest order. John Glenn and William Howard Jr. were especially favored by the USSC for press coverage, with both men appearing on the cover of Time magazine and getting front page interviews in the New York Times and Washington Post respectively. This is because, quite simply, both men fit the mold the government wanted all their Troopers to fit. They were devout Protestants (Presbyterian and AME) and fervent patriots. They were devoted, loyal, husbands. They had adorable and functional families. Neither man drank or smoked to excess. Their ideas of a perfect day were, respectively, "Performing my duties as an elder at my church, then leaving to have a nice picnic lunch in the park with the family. Annie makes the best cherry pie, and she packs it with a quart of whole milk for the family" and "Going down to the Gulf Coast with my family and having chicken salad sandwiches with Cherry Cokes on the beach. I also enjoy showing the children memorials to the great Colored Troops that have gone before so they have a fuller appreciation for our hard-won freedoms." The rest of the Troopers were decidedly less wholesome. Dick Armstrong, second man on the moon, was an excellent example. When he wasn't working, his favorite thing to do was hop into his navy blue Ford Mustang (courtesy of the Ford Motor Company) and cruise with attractive young women who were not his wife. He infamously got entangled in an affair with Beaconsfield sex symbol Esperanza Cortez, "The Dark Argentine" who he would later leave his wife and three children for. Most Troopers didn't go quite this far in terms of leaving their wives, but infidelity was rampant among most Troopers. Furthermore, in the younger class, the heavy drug use and partying that characterized much of the Kennedy years was readily apparent. The media ate it up, covering any dalliance with Beaconsfield sex symbols, impromptu drag race, or boozy party they could. The worst of it was somewhat suppressed in the Patton years by heavy-handed censorship, but such things were well-known by the mid-70's.

Germany did not have quite the same celebrity culture as the Americans. What they did have was a cult of aristocracy. The doings of the royal families and aristocracies of Germany, France, Britain, Scandinavia, Bulgaria, the UBD, and the Tripartite Empire were followed as closely by Europeans as the doings of actors and athletes were by Americans. German Weltraumeroberers soon found themselves courting the duchesses, baronesses, countesses, ladies, viscountesses, and even princesses of the European nobility. Kaiser Bernhardt I, now pushing 60, declared all Weltraumeroberers to be members of a new order of "Teutonic Knights of the Cosmos" in 1961. This meant that every Weltraumeroberer was a member of German aristocracy based on "martial merit" and could freely intermarry with the European aristocracy. Most prominently, Elias Scholz married Crown Princess Helena of Bulgaria in 1965, and their wedding was a European obsession. Sofia was crushed by over 750,000 guests and well-wishers on the June 11th wedding date. Many Weltraumeroberers engaged in indiscretions similar to those of their American counterparts, but like in Eurasia, news of these indiscretions was completely stamped out by the state in favor of presenting a solid image of state values. Finally, Eurasia especially made their cosmonauts propaganda tools of the State. Many of the younger ones were actually of the Eurasian Race, and presented as the vanguard of humanity's future going into the stars. Many Russian cosmonauts took Asian brides to help further Moscow's plans to mix the races in Central Asia, Mongolia, Tibet, and Manchuria. There were several cosmonauts who objected to Moscow's control of their personal life in this fashion, who would mysteriously disappear afterwards. All merchandise with their likenesses would be "returned for quality evaluations" and never seen again.

It wasn't just the square-jawed men of the stars who captured the world's imagination, their journey did too. While some imagined that the Space Race could unite humanity, the majority of the American, German, and Eurasian populations didn't see it that way. With explicitly imperialist and expansionist foreign policies a feature of all these nations' lives since the 1860's or before, the Space Race and its future promise was seen in explicitly imperial terms. Many policy experts predicted future Scrambles for Mars and the Moon. In pop culture, this was reflected in an explosion of stories and films about explorers and armies going into the stars to conquer in the name of civilizations that were little more than thinly veiled representations of Earthly nations. In America this was especially reflected in two popular film and TV franchises. The first was the TV show "Captain Roy Lightstar's Adventures." Roy Lightstar, played by brown-haired, green-eyed Texan Buck Champion, was an independent filibuster from the Lightstar Nebula (space Texas), a proud member of the United Federation of Humanity. He traveled around the galaxy with his loyal crew seeking new cultures and races, and then using means both peaceful and violent to incorporate them into the Federation for Country, Freedom, and Glory. Many of the races he did encounter were, again, somewhat veiled versions of various human cultures both ancient and present. Many of Roy's adventures took place in the Del Gloria Galaxy Cluster, filled with a variety of similar but distinct races that closely mirrored many Hispanic cultures, including Mexicans, Hondurans, Colombians, Peruvians, and Chileans. The adventures in these areas would all follow a similar formula: Roy Lighstar would arrive in a part of the cluster torn by strife or poverty, he would use his phaser and wisdom to crush wrongdoers and establish peace, and somewhere along the way he would become involved with a strong, lusty, but ultimately kind local woman. In other adventures, he would fight off rapacious Space Germans, seduce and imprison a spy from Space France, and help protect the ancient Empire of Zondorf (Space China) from traitors and evil neighbors. Although the episodes could be formulaic, the writers were brilliant, and after Lightstar's 1961 debut, the show became one of the most popular on TV, later spawning several film franchises.

Roy Lightstar with his longtime on-off human girlfriend Delilah Friedmann (promotional still for the 1974 film Roy Lightstar: Beyond the Ethereum)
​

The other major franchise spawned by the Space Race was "Destiny in Space." Set in the year 2325, the films revolve around the stories of Union of Humanity's Space Marines fighting ruthless wars against vicious space empires who would trample humanity and several weaker species increasingly under human protection. The first film, Destiny in Space I, was basically a World War II movie set in the stars as the Union of Humanity waged war against the Lizard People of Zylon-9 (who ruled Earth in the very distant past, Brit-boy), the Bouncing Slugs of Elyion-5 (Bonjour, France), and the Cosmic Octopi of Neron-12 (Hi, Japan). The movie was a 3-hour bloodfest filled with battles, monologues that were thinly veiled celebrations of the American Way, and bombastic, swaggering generals willing to "Bomb the bastards from the Space Age to the Stone Age!" It was a runaway hit, and became the top-grossing movie ever, a title which it held until the second one came out two years later. The second and third Destiny in Space films, released in 1969 and 1972, were very different. Filmed during a time of tremendous tension with Eurasia over China and the true extent of their genocidal campaigns, these films instead focused on the Union of Humanity's grueling war with the Empire of Ru-Caldaria. The Empire was portrayed as a race of humanoids with abnormally large foreheads and tremendous body hair. They became the antithesis of the liberty-loving, Brahmin burger eating Union of Humanity. The Ru-Caldarians under the control of aged warlord Zeres the Terrible, were a vicious, expansionist regime from another galaxy. According to a revelatory monologue by Union President Samuel Banasik, the Empire's modus operandi was to conquer a territory, either colonize it with their people or "use various methods to alter the DNA of the locals" (as close as one could get to mentioning mass rape in a mainstream film), suck the territory dry of all resources, and then conquer more territories to sustain their new populations. Ru-Caldarian culture was stiflingly conformist and collectivist, allowing no room for difference or thought, and ruled over by corrupt, decadent warlords. In OTL terms, picture a combo of Space Soviets, Space Romans, the Borg, and the Combine. Destiny in Space would be popular for decades, and would see reboots and prequel series.

Although the Americans were the most prolific in their output, spawning many books, comics, and series besides these two, the Germans and Eurasians were no slouches. In Berlin, the TV serial "Star Voyage" was immensely popular. Captain Johann Spitta of the Empire of Humanity's Starfleet, led a pan-European crew including an Austrian Lieutenant, a Polish medic, an Italian Gunnery Sargent, and several Ukrainian soldiers, including a female trooper named Anastasia Tereshchenko who Captain Spitta later married. Although several American films and shows had shown women in combat, this was the first German media to do so. This pan-European imperial force voyaged across the stars looking for "savage planets to spread civilization to." While there are some similarities to American TV and film, German TV was much less tolerant and forgiving. While a Roy Lighstar show would obviously celebrate imperial expansion, and depicted foreign/alien peoples in a stereotypical manner, those people were also generally shown to be good people, or to have good people among them. American space heroes frequently befriended, cooperated with, bedded, and even married aliens. Roy Lightstar was famous for being able to adapt to alien cultures as well, even if he clearly preferred "Human" culture. The pan-Europeans of Star Voyage were not so benevolent. Starfleet made it their "Prime Directive" to use all necessary force to overawe and subjugate the "uncivilized creatures of the cosmos." There are several episodes were Spitta, upon judging a particularly savage race to be irredeemable (often these races were mishmashes of Russians and Jihadists), simply exterminates them and declares the opening of the planet to unlimited settlement. When they weren't exterminating natives wholesale, Spitta and Starfleet were "helping" these pitiful savages eliminate their own cultures to begin the process of assimilating into the Empire. There was little intermarriage in German sci-fi, as it instead focused on Berlin's policies of preventing any mixing between races while attempting to assimilate and co-opt them via various mechanisms. One 3 part series actually featured the decaying Republic of Arianas, declining thanks to the mixing of its "pure humanoid strains." The Republic was, of course, a thinly veiled reference to America. Mixing among (white) humans was, however, portrayed positively. Like their American counterparts, Star Voyage would spawn films, toys, and other media.

Eurasian sci-fi was perhaps the most blatant, and sinister, of the cultural products of the three powers. The most famous was Eurasia's TV series "Comrade Orlov's Cosmic Travels," first released in 1968 after much refinement and some panned imitations of German and American serials. This was also an imitation, but the writing and production values were much better. It was also used to justify some disgusting crimes against humanity. As knowledge of Eurasia's gulags and forced race mixing became known, the state didn't confess or deny. Instead, it justified. Comrade Orlov did a lot of work in this regard. Over the course of the second season, Comrade Alexei Orlov of the Union of New Humanity suppressed rebellions in recently "liberated" lands. He was openly depicted as mass imprisoning civilian populations and forcing alien women into marriages with his "New Union Men." These were depicted as good things, with the imprisoned thanking Orlov for enlightening them (they were then freed) and forced mixed marriages were portrayed as leading to harmonious unions. Comrade Orlov was denounced in the United States and banned in the German world, not that it was very popular outside of Eurasia anyway. Within Eurasia, however, the show's abnormally high quality made it a hit among the population. It also absolutely helped justify Eurasia's brutal race policy and ongoing expansionism. Rather than deny what was so plainly happening, Comrade Orlov and other media justified it for the Eurasian people. This propaganda helped steel the country for the downturn of the early 70's as American and European companies pulled some (but not all) investments out of the country. Once the economy picked back up in the latter part of the decade, a full-feature Comrade Orlov film would be made, the first of many.

Admiral Schmidt, Captain Spitta's superior and mentor in Star Voyage (1971)

Comrade Orlov prepares to order the invasion of a "backwards and disharmonious planet" (1973)

Promotional artwork for Destiny in Space I (1967)​