Making History

Would that support of Edward not be because Edward was an avowed Imperialist and not because Edward was pro-Nazi? It might be revisionist history but I always thought Churchill was anti-nazi from before Munich back into the late 20s? Might have been the way Winston wanted us to remember him however.

GreatScottMarty

I agree that Churchill detested the Nazis and I'm not sure on what basis he supported Edward during the abdication crisis. Hence that's why I said, if Edward is more clearly pro-fascist then, it could mean a chance in stance of Winston on the issue.

Steve
 
Hey guys, new update coming soon (no, really this time :p). It'll probably be up on Thursday.

EDIT: Constantinople - they're in double digits, which is actually fairly good, all things considered. Rumors of a comeback abound, however.

As for whether the United States is ready for a socialist system, there's a few important things t note. Firstly, it's more of a souped-up New Deal than any proper socialist system - the Breckinridge Democrats wouldn't stand for anything too extreme, but also, given a Depression that was even worse than that IOTL, more people are willing to vote Socialist that you might expect. ;)
 
Hey everybody. :eek:

Firstly, I'm

A) Still alive, at least technically,

B) Still working on this TL, at least technically.

Problem is I'm genuinely really busy these days - college stuff, mainly - and I don't always get the opportunity to sit down and write. Fortunately, I've got a pretty good outline of where Making History is going, it's just a matter of putting pen to paper, so to speak.

Honestly, I really feel terrible about this - I don't mean to keep letting you guys down. :(

Anyway, I can't promise an update this week, but I will try to knock a couple out before the end of the month, and before I reach statichaos levels of inactivity. :p

Again, sorry, really. I appreciate you all for commenting on this, and I don't want you all to think for one second that I take your readership for granted. Good news is my schedule clears up around December, so I might be looking at a more reasonable pace. :)

- oakvale

PS: tl'dr version: Sorry for being so tardy with my updates, I'll have at least two new chapters - because I am actually writing this thing, believe it or not, and probably more, before the month is out. :eek:
 
Well, it's back from the dead, guys. A little later than I'd have liked, but they're two pretty major chapters, I think.




May, 1939 - May, 1940




"I grew up in a world that was - although I didn't know it - built upon the great things that the socialists did - Upton Sinclair's noble efforts at desegregating the United States, the National Health Service... it would be no exaggeration to say that my first glimmers of socialist principle came from the occasional mentions of President Sinclair in my history classes..."

- From the maiden speech of Christopher Hitchens MP, June 5th, 1986

"...a fine example of this is Upton Sinclair's famous bid to desegregate the South, which could be described as the right decision at the wrong time."

- From The role of ethics in a political world by former Supreme Court nominee Richard Posner, 1992

"WHITE HOUSE IN DISARRAY AS SOUTHERN DEMS REBEL AGAINST RACE LAW REPEAL"

- Headline of The New York Times, 5/7/1939

"Mr. Pelley was a regular, but none of noticed him much. He kept to himself, just sat there most days... drinking coffee, smoking, doodling."

- Testimony of Julie Vanderbilt, former waitress at 'Big Jim's' bar, Kansas City, 1948

- William Dudley Pelley's attempts at starting some kind of new, improved "America First" movement - albeit with more obvious fascist overtones - met with little interest, and his personal fortunes have turned distinctly for the worse. With an increasingly obvious alcohol problem, he was unceremoniously fired from his job as an occasional journalist and screenwriter, and spends most of his time loitering in an inconspicuous little bar called 'Big Jim's' in one of the sleazier areas of Kansas City, only arousing the attention of the disinterested patrons with his semi-monthly rants against communism, race-mixing, the 'Jewish bankers', and whatever else happens to be on his mind that particular day.

- As for the main target of his drunken bile, President Upton Sinclair is not having a wonderful year either. Facing a resurgent Republican Party that managed to increase its seat total outside of the double digits in the House in the disappointing 1938 House and Senate elections, his increasingly fragile coalition in Congress looks ready to shatter at any moment, with the powerful 'Dixiecrat' wing of the Vice-President's party howling about Sinclair's politically seismic push for a 'civil rights' bill which would, amongst other things, bring down the Jim Crow walls that have stood in the South since Reconstruction.

The announcement that the White House would be introducing such a bill - via Wisconsin's Senator (and former Presidential candidate) Hugh Doan, as it happens - earns Sinclair praise in the New York Times, the support, however temporary, of the Republican Party, and accolades from around the world. It also causes the man American papers have been so cautiously referring to simply as 'Mr. Hitler' to deliver a screeching radio address showing how the decadent Bolsheviks are bringing the once proud - and Fordite - United States to its collective knees.

While Sinclair is lynched in effigy in countless backwaters throughout the Old Confederacy, the entire Southern delegation of the Democratic Party publicly announces their vehement opposition - 'in blood', in the ominous words of one Georgia Congressman - to what segregationist voices have taken to calling the 'so-called civil rights bill' despite Vice-President Breckinridge's strictly neutral stance on the whole affair. It is also in spite of the pleas from the Secretary of Public Works, a man who still commands considerable support in the party, and has given his public support to the President's move.

In private, however, he has been urging Sinclair to take a more incremental, less divisive approach to the civil rights issue. The Secretary is hardly an admirer of Jim Crowd - no segregationist is Franklin Delano Roosevelt - but he's arguably the most savvy politician of his generation, and he joins much of the liberal intelligentsia in sadly accepting that Sinclair has something of a political tin ear. Many intense, late night Oval Office conversations have ended in bitter shouting matches between Roosevelt and the President.

Indeed, right-wing commentators have taken to caricaturing Roosevelt - or 'Rosenfeld' as some of the more unsavoury elements insist on saying - as something of a 'power behind the throne' in the administration, which displays a severe lack of understanding of the Sinclair government. It is true, however, that in the wake of the desegregation mess Roosevelt has become much more influential within the White House as Breckinridge manoeuvres and Sinclair's star wanes somewhat.

- The problem is not that the would-be Civil Rights Act of 1939 can't pass - indeed, with unanimous Socialist and Republican - and, yes, some Democratic - support it is more likely than not to. However, it will ensure a Democratic Party permanently and radically opposed to anything Upton Sinclair touches, a deep and likely irreparable schism in the (always weak) coalition, and the end of the New Deal. At the worst of the crisis, there is speculation that Sinclair will be forced to resign, his credibility shattered.

In the end, of course, the coalition holds together - just. But Sinclair is reduced to almost an irrelevancy, the figurehead of a lame duck administration just waiting for the hale and popular Breckinridge to take the reins of power in '40. The Civil Rights Act of 1939 that passes has its positive points, to be certain, and is more radical than any other President would have dared, but it is neutered severely. Jim Crow remains, to the glee of the smug Southern Democrats who successfully held Sinclair to ransom. It is a bill with many redeeming qualities, and is rightly given praise - albeit somewhat lukewarm - in many quarters, but it is in effect an anti-lynching bill. A moral victory, yes, but as a political development it is a disaster. Although the President is outwardly enthusiastic about the law, he knows as well as anyone that he's just been in a metaphorical staring contest with the Democrats, and, so to speak, blinked.

In the years since, a popular theory has emerged amongst some historians - most notably Stephen Ambrose - that holds that Sinclair knew he would never get such a revolutionary bill through Congress in the first place, and his intention was always to get the watered-down edition passed. The idea being that the Democrats would never accept an anti-lynching bill - more or less - normally, but when faced with the prospect of a fully-fledged, segregation-smashing Civil Rights bill, they would find the anti-lynching proposition much more acceptable.
While this might seem plausible, it vastly overstates what we know about Sinclair's political savvy. While an intelligent and genuinely principled man of considerable vision, Sinclair paid little attention to the political realities of getting his more idealistic proposals through the slaughterhouse that was Congress. It's possible, however, that Roosevelt, ever the political genius, saw the furore over the Civil Rights Act as an opportunity to get a relatively modest anti-lynching law passed. Certainly it seems more in character for FDR than Sinclair, but all of this has been mere speculation in the decades after...

One thing is for sure - the Civil Rights affair has been an unmitigated disaster for the government. The Democrats are outraged that the bill was even proposed in the first place, the Socialists are angry that the eventual product was so toothless. A friend of Sinclair notes that the President seems to have aged ten years in two months.

It's widely agreed upon, then, that the way forward is obvious -- run out the clock on the beleaguered administration, allow Sinclair to leave office to a dignified and quiet retirement, and let the prince ascendant, Henry Breckinridge to ride into office--whatever about the recovery of the GOP, there's no chance a Republican can win the Presidency again, not yet--and deal with the economy, the South, and, should it come to it, the growing tension in Europe...

- Practically the only person who doesn't concur with this analysis is President Sinclair himself. Holed up in the White House, under siege from a gloomy media and a hostile Congress, Sinclair and his small, close, circle of advisors have taken an entirely different approach to his present problems. Sinclair believes he can save his Presidency not by receding into genial 'elder statesman' mode and quietly standing down after the next election, but by running for, and winning, by tooth and nail if necessary, a third term in office.

It might seem absurd on the face of it, but it's not as ridiculous as it sounds. Approval polling may be in its infancy, but what data there is shows his popularity remaining fairly robust--it's taken a hit in the South of course, but then Sinclair was never hugely popular there, anyway--and the nation's economy is making a reasonably strong recovery from the worst Depression in living memory. Sinclair's political problems are primarily with Congress and elected officials, not the people - the public are still confident in his abilities, if somewhat less so after the Civil Rights debacle.

Still, no-one thinks that a third term will be easy. Not only is it a feat unprecedented in American history, but the Democratic Party, who have long had their hopes pinned on Breckinridge, will be apoplectic. Franklin Roosevelt will be put in the uncomfortable position of having to stay neutral should the Democrats run a candidate - he may be a former chairman of the party, but he has deep misgivings about the idea of Henry Breckinridge ever becoming President.

When Sinclair tentatively tells the Vice-President about his plan to seek a third term, Breckinridge is predictably livid. "We had an agreement!" he roars several times in the Sunday morning meeting in the Oval Office. Sinclair's aides wince as the shouting from both sides continues for upward of two hours. But, despite Breckinridge's fury, Sinclair is--with some timely intervention from Roosevelt--able to dissuade Breckinridge from running against Sinclair. This is done primarily not by arguing the virtues of loyalty and the national interest, but by convincing Breckinridge that he would both lose and, worse, possibly even elect a Republican, and by granting massive concessions to the betrayed Vice-President, who successfully veto power over virtually all of the next Cabinet--with his personal choices for Secretary of State, Treasury, Defense...--and on any major foreign and domestic policy decision that will be made in a third Sinclair term. In effect, Henry Breckinridge will, in a third term, choose most of the United States' executive branch of government. With Sinclair exhausted, retiring for dinner, a dejected Breckinridge leaves the White House to inform his wife and his staff that the Presidency will have to wait another four years.

- And so it comes to be that, despite all the chaos and premonitions of doom political and otherwise, Upton Sinclair will be running for an unprecedented third term as President of the United States. A brief, suicidal, flirtation with dropping Breckinridge as his running mate, a thought only seriously entertained amongst the socialist fringes, it is agreed that the ticket will remain the same. Breckinridge gives his word that at least most of the Democratic Party will support a third term.

Sinclair announces his intentions in a speech in Philadelphia in May, two months before the Democratic convention - in Houston - and the Socialist convention - in Madison - are due to open. "This is an unprecedented step, but we find ourselves in unprecedented circumstances," he says to an enthusiastic crowd.

And, with that, the Presidential election of 1940 begins.
 
And the promised second chapter!



May, 1940 - October, 1940



"SINCLAIR TO SEEK THIRD TERM, PUBLIC DIVIDED"

- Headline of the Washington Post, 5/11/1948


"Yes, he got a lot more... talkative after Sinclair said he was going to run for another term. He'd been gone from the bar-- out of town or something -- for most of that desegregation stuff, to everyone's relief, but when he slouched back in to spend his days slumped in a booth by himself, he was even angrier than ever. At God, at the government, at us... we were all worried about what he might do. Used to be he was just a run-of-the-mill drunk. Now it was different, somehow. He seemed more alert, more on edge. It scared me."

- Testimony of Julie Vanderbilt, former waitress at 'Big Jim's' bar, Kansas City, 1948




Any hope that Sinclair, Roosevelt et al had of facing a token Republican opponent as they had in 1936 quickly disappears when the congenial, if somewhat unknown, Senator from Maine, Frederick Hale announces his intention to run for his party's nomination. He won't win the White House, of course, but he's as good a sacrificial lamb as any, and might take the votes of moderates who would have otherwise opted for Sinclair instead of that other candidate...

Because the real problem for Sinclair - and the only person with a genuine chance of defeating him, despite his political weaknesses - is the self-proclaimed 'Share Our Wealth' candidate.

Yes, that old fraud and fascist, Louisiana Governor Huey Long has been a perpetual, if, until now, irrelevant, thorn in the side of the Sinclair administration since he successfully bribed and cheated his way out of the Attorney General's investigation into his not inconsiderable, ahem, financial impropriety. Long has been hitting at Sinclair from all conceivable, and often contradictory, angles. He has become a darling of Southern Democrats for his vitriolic attacks on the 'so-called Civil Rights bill' and similarly earned the admiration of many Socialists-- who quietly overlook his bile at the Civil Rights bill -- with his slamming of the New Deal as a sell out to vested interests, bankers and the other shadowy forces conspiring against the 'little man'. With his fire-and-brimstone, apocalyptic sermons against the dangers of electing 'this failed President' to another four years in office, Long has captured the public imagination.

An unabashed, and conniving, populist he announced for President earlier than any other candidate, once it became apparent that Sinclair would run again, and has been travelling the nation- if focusing largely on his areas of strength in the South, a region which he should handily sweep- vowing to rage against the banks, against the corporations, against the 'establishment', against the 'elitists'. In response to withering editorials in such august publications as the New York Times, he denounces the 'establishment, business-owned media'. His rallies draw thousands of devoted followers, whom he whips into a frenzy of anger at the establishment, at the 'liars and cheats' in Congress, at, well, almost everything. Sure, Long bellows from the political pulpit at his rallies - termed 'Tea Parties' [1] by his campaign - the economy may be recovering - but not fast enough, and to the benefit of fat cat bankers and Wall Street tycoons, not ordinary workers. "I'll tell y'all what we need," Long will shout, a picture of moral fury, "we need a new American revolution, that's what we need! We need to throw those liars and cheats out! Ever last one of 'em!"

"A New American Revolution" becomes the slogan of Long's steamroller of a campaign, which is quickly tapping into the same populist, nationalist and isolationist veins the defunct America First party did - because those elements have never gone away, and have mainly voted for the Breckinridge Democrats- albeit with a much more left-wing slant and without the taint of Ford and Bilbo, although some sharp pundits note that the late President Bilbo would have found the Long campaign a perfect political home...

To the horror of the Socialist and Democratic parties, who, despite the threat of delegate rebellion, nonetheless seem likely to nominate President and Vice-President Sinclair and Breckinridge for a third term in office in August, what opinion polling there is shows Long trailing Sinclair by the narrowest of margins, with the forgotten Republican nominee, Fred Hale, left in the dust (the Maine Senator, never really with much of a chance, is pinning his hopes on the 'left' destroying itself with the internal Sinclair-Long battle, or, failing that, at least a dignified defeat).

The danger for Sinclair, of course, is that Hale's support will not, as the campaign fervently hope, drift toward Sinclair as the lesser of two evils, but will stay home on Election Day instead of bothering to vote, allowing the archetypal demagogue that is Huey Long to ride a wave of somewhat contrived voter anger into the Oval Office...

Yes, it's an interesting election indeed, and one watched on tenterhooks throughout the world. Most Western governments, are, as one would expect, hoping that Sinclair can fend off Long - stuck in a position he sincerely hopes will be only temporary as Neville Chamberlain's Chancellor, Winston Churchill, waiting somewhat impatiently for the increasingly besieged Chamberlain to retire so he can, he hopes, muscle his way into No. 10, describes Long in his diaries as "arguably the most dangerous man in the Western world". Churchill, never one to shy away from hyperbole, may be exaggerating somewhat, but it's not a million miles away from the prevailing opinion in Whitehall, and, indeed, throughout most of Europe.

August is nerve-wracking for the 'liars and cheats' in the administration. While Sinclair is nominated by both the Socialist and Democratic conventions, it is not, as was hoped, unanimous. Although a last-minute whispered nomination challenge from Senator Doan at the Socialist convention - an idea which almost gives the Sinclair campaign an en masse heart attack - fails to materialize, large numbers of protest votes are cast, and considerable numbers of delegates walk out of the Madison, Wisconsin convention in protest of what they see as Sinclair's insufficiently left-wing administration. Most worryingly, the candidate whom receives the highest number of protest votes is none other than Huey Long.

But the dramatics at the Socialist convention pale to those that take place at the Democratic convention in Houston, Texas. Since it was reduced to something of a regional, Southern and, well, exclusively white, party, the Democrats have gotten increasingly bitter at their supposed allies in the Socialist Party, and, predictably, most of this anger is vented at President Sinclair. It takes a long, almost supplicant speech from Henry Breckinridge, to calm the riotous convention down enough for a delegate vote.

On the first round of voting, amid shouts of treachery and talk of surprise candidacies, Breckinridge, not even running and avowedly not seeking the nomination, leads Sinclair by a considerable margin. Pandemonium erupts in the convention hall - rumours swirl that Breckinridge will accept the nomination after all - but Breckinridge is acutely aware that his candidacy would only elect Long, a man he detests, to the Presidency. He makes a quick statement thanking the delegates for the support but reiterating he will not accept a nomination and urging a vote for Sinclair.

In the second round, Franklin Roosevelt can wipe the sweat off his brow at last - Sinclair is nominated. But the margin is disturbingly close - Sinclair beats, who else, Huey Long by just a handful of votes. In protest at Sinclair's nomination, several delegations march out of the convention hall in protest, pledging their support to Long's firebrand campaign.

A Gallup poll puts Long ahead of Sinclair, by one point, on September 1st, 1940.

The Sinclair campaign is in full-fledged panic - Wisconsin's junior Senator, Hugh Doan, icon of the, well, 'left' of the party, is dispatched regularly to shore up flaking Socialist support. Thousands of leaflets are distributed to would-be Long voters on the Governor's track record on racial issues. A young, idealistic state Senator named Woody Guthrie personally goes door to door in rural Oklahoma urging people not to vote for Huey Long. As October dawns, some newspapers - even though virtually all endorse either Hale or Sinclair - are predicting a President Long come next year. It doesn't hurt Long's heroic image that he narrowly escapes an assassination attempt by a troubled man in Baton Rouge.

President Sinclair is aghast at the idea that Huey Long - Huey Long - could spell the end of his administration. Wanting to make a speech on relatively friendly turf, it is arranged that the President will deliver an address to the students of William Jewell College, obstinately non-political, on the virtues of an open society. The kind of society, the implication goes, that Huey Long doesn't want.

October 11th, 1940 is a beautiful day in Liberty, Missouri. It's cold, but crisp, and the slight breeze is more invigorating than uncomfortable. Not cold enough to move the event indoors - it will be held as planned, on the college green, where a stage and podium, and plenty of chairs, have been set up. The announcement of the President's visit has been in the local newspapers for weeks, so by noon - shortly before Sinclair arrives - the seats are already all taken, and much of the crowd has to stand in the October afternoon for the speech.

Sinclair arrives with the usual fanfare that accompanies the President of the United States - Hail To The Chief blares, the large, pleasant, crowd applaud and cheer. A few people murmur of how old the President is looking, but, really, he looks better than he has done in months - he practically bounces onto the stage, and, grinning broadly, he exchanges the obligatory pleasantries with the assorted senior members of the faculty. It's a relief for Sinclair to be in friendly territory - a welcome respite from the bitterness of the close campaign, and the crowd, mostly young students, are mostly Sinclair supports, to the extent that they're political at all, and whoop and holler appropriately when the college president formally introduces him - "ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States!".

The university bell tower tolls noon, the audience burst into applause, Sinclair strides toward the podium, and, cloistered in the window of a vacant room overlooking the green, William Dudley Pelley shoulders his rifle and squeezes off a single shot.

***

"I, Henry Skillman Breckinridge, do solemnly swear..."







[1] Excuse me the 2010 reference, but it struck me as I was writing that some of Long's rhetoric, about the 'establishment'-- uh, 'lamestream' media seemed positively Palinesque...
 
oakvale

Two interesting chapters. I had a feeling from the start of the last one that
Pelley was going to try an assassination. Given how much political capital Sinclair has spent it might actually be for the best. Breckinridge is by the sound of it going to be in on a sympathy vote as well as being less divisive than Sinclair. [Although that could be him being sworn in as President until the election]. However the Socialist/democrat alliance has been weakened and the Dixiecrat element of the latter politically strengthened. [Although to a large degree their sharing their core vote with Long].

How are things going elsewhere and especially in Europe and E Asia? There have obviously been huge butterflies but by the sound of it no [major] war in either area yet. Not just that but how is the world economically and politically with the changes in the US and their knock-on effects?

Steve
 
oakvale

Two interesting chapters. I had a feeling from the start of the last one that
Pelley was going to try an assassination. Given how much political capital Sinclair has spent it might actually be for the best. Breckinridge is by the sound of it going to be in on a sympathy vote as well as being less divisive than Sinclair. [Although that could be him being sworn in as President until the election]. However the Socialist/democrat alliance has been weakened and the Dixiecrat element of the latter politically strengthened. [Although to a large degree their sharing their core vote with Long].

How are things going elsewhere and especially in Europe and E Asia? There have obviously been huge butterflies but by the sound of it no [major] war in either area yet. Not just that but how is the world economically and politically with the changes in the US and their knock-on effects?

Steve

I've got an awful habit of tackling "foreign" stuff in isolated updates, but I promse I'll shed some light on the, uh, hilarity in the rest of the world in the next chapter. :eek:
 
It's a pity Sinclair is dead.:(
Long's survival atracts a section of the electorate who would vote Democratic (mostly) and Socialist, but if Populism fails (and a depression and other events of life have a way of showing the failures of populism), and if the Democratic Party suffers a realignment, that vote along other more regular democratic votes may end in the Socialist Party.

Edit: The attention on Civil Rights will benefit the Socialists in the future.
 
Last edited:
I'll have a new chapter or two in the first couple of weeks of the new year.

In the mean time, let me recommend a relevant book - Fordlandia:The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin. Buy yourself a Christmas present - it's enthralling. :)
 
Sorry to make a bump, but I had to point this out.

"Ford was an elitist who ran a populist campaign"

"...had delivered an inaugural address which received much acclaim from political pundits and the general public alike, in which he reiterated his campaign promise to 'make America great again'"

"
In the meantime, Davenport agrees with Ford’s proposal of ‘freeze’ on immigration into the United States. "

Its uncanny...
 
Also sorry for the bump, but I want to say that this is an excellent, very well-written, and absolutely terrifying dystopian timeline--I read this as a lurker as it (and its beta version, which the better title) came out in real time, and it left a strong impression on me even back then. And yes, it's especially worth revisiting considering its eerie uncanniness as Matt the Czar pointed out, and I hope that jacopo also revisits this timeline soon.
 
Top