New Deal Coalition Retained: A Sixth Party System Wikibox Timeline
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I am proud American Jew, but sadly I don't know what makes Moshe Dayan so cool besides the eye patch. While I'm tempted to go to Wikipedia, I'd rather my comrades in counterfactual narratives explain it to me in their own ways.
A Continent of Caesars
“Europe in the days of Caesar was nothing but a den of vipers. Not much has changed.”
-Julian Amery-
“Europe in the days of Caesar was nothing but a den of vipers. Not much has changed.”
-Julian Amery-
Unlike in the United States or United Kingdom, Liberty Conservatism proved a tougher sell on mainland Europe where statist policies were far more entrenched on the right. Aside from minor parties and elements in the German Christian Social Union (post-1973), communonationalism in the vein of George Wallace or Richard Crossman was the dominant ideology on the European right. Nowhere could this be better seen than in the French Fourth Republic.
Surviving the Constitutional Crisis of the late fifties and early sixties under the 1963 amendments and the peace treaty ending the Algerian War, President of the Council Charles de Gaulle kept the disparate factions together until stability slowly returned. Despite the right wing nature of his coalition government, as the premier hero in a war that didn’t produce many for France De Gaulle commanded respect and loyalty from even the Communists (a vast majority of which had renounced Soviet domination and were pursuing a more democratic form of it). It was through the sheer force of his will that the Fourth Republic survived and thrived as one of the premier minor powers of the world. Under his watch the French Community had formed, inflation was curbed, and the economy began to crawl back up with the end of the expensive colonial wars.
Thus, it shook the nation to its core when De Gaulle was grievously wounded in a 1966 assassination attempt by Pierre Lamarck, a disgruntled Pied-Noir settler and Algerian War veteran sick at how the FLN was allowed representation in the Assembly. De Gaulle would survive, but chronic pain would cause him to resign – he would be unanimously elected as President and Co-Prince of Andorra by the Assembly, in which he would serve until 1980. Elections were called and the Gaullists were humbled greatly. A socialist-communist coalition under François Mitterrand assumed power while second place went to the right-wing communonationalist National Front under former General Jacques Massu.
The Mitterrand Government inherited a France on the upswing. Economic growth was skyrocketing due to the post-war boom and trade within the Community – the French media would call the period between the end of the war an 1974 the Trente Glorieuses (Thirty Glorious Years). Utilizing this growth, the socialist-communist coalition implemented a series of expansive social programs including the mandate of all companies to provide five percent of their net income to their employees, regulations were made to industries in Algeria to prevent exploitation of Harki workers, cooperation with other members of the EEC was expanded, and a governmental quote system was established to mandate a certain percentage of women received government jobs. Military funds were cut by a quarter while Mitterrand invested in a more robust nuclear force.
While his domestic reforms were popular, the crisis of confidence in Mitterrand’s foreign and defense policies in regards to Soviet Militarism, the ongoing terrorist insurgency in Algeria and Algeria-littoral, and the mainland communist terrorism led to the “Rose-cramoisi” coalition falling to an electoral surge by the National Front in 1970.
Unlike Mitterrand, as the former Commander of French forces in Algeria Jacques Massu did not see his priority as promulgating domestic reform. With the economy chugging along quite well, he delivered a televised address to the nation proclaiming that there had been enough reform to ensure all French citizens were well cared for (d’Estaing would in fact repeal much of the more radical elements from the Rose-cramoisi government). Instead, his priority was making France one of the world’s premier powers – to do what Napoleon tried and failed to accomplish – “This time, the English are on our side,” he would mention to Foreign Minister Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour.
Fully committing to the 35-35-30 plan promulgated by American President George Wallace (he, Massu, Amery, and later Richard Crossman would become close friends), Massu shifted funds into the defense budget. Defense Minister Raoul Salan and Chief of the General Staff Jean Bastien-Thiry oversaw the expansion, coordinated with massive French aid to building up the various armies of the French Community nations. After Cameroon withdrew after a Communist coup in 1968, quick thinking by Salan and Tixier-Vignancour foiled similar uprisings in Niger and Ubangi-Shari in 1971. France’s first ballistic missile submarine, FNS Napoleon Bonaparte, was launched in 1973 to much fanfare.
Bolstered by these and the strong economy, Massu’s government was nevertheless weakened by the rise in Communist terrorism following the German Autumn. Heralding the new season, a French Army barracks in Oran was assaulted by a dozen armed men with RPGs and explosives, killing seventeen soldiers. The perpetrators were identified as nine members of the Algerian Communist Front, while the other three were female members of the French terrorist group Action Directe. Massu ordered martial law in Algeria-Littoral, leading to a vicious tirade from Saadi Yacef on the floor of the National Assembly. Further attacks began to sap the will of the war-weary French populace, none eager to plunge back into war.
As the new elections approached, the Trente Glorieuses sputtered to an abrupt halt with the oil crisis and stagflation. Military spending could only prop up the economy for so long, and the fall of the export market due to the worldwide recession and the strengthened Franc only worsened the situation. Despite furious moves by d’Estaing to cauterize the bleeding with Keynesian moves, the French economy would slump at the worst possible time for the government.
The Fourth Republic’s knack for shaky coalitions held once more. However, the switcharoo between Massu and Mitterrand couldn’t compare to the political chaos occurring east of the Rhine.
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Only interrupted by four years under Erich Ollenhauer, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU, the Bavarian branch) had controlled West Germany uninterruptedly since Allied occupation had been ended following the Second World War. First under Konrad Adenauer, then Ludwig Erhard, the ordoliberal economic policies – in which much of communonationalism would be based on – of the Freiburg School of economics would result in economic growth the scale of which was unprecedented for a nation so devastated. Erhard would retire in 1970 with approval ratings unmatched in Western Europe.
Normally, the leader of the CDU would assume the position as Chancellor. However, a bruising battle for leadership between Minister President of Baden-Württemberg Kurt Georg Kiesinger and All-German Affairs Minister (a position that managed relations with East Germany and the Weimar territories ceded to Poland and the USSR) Rainer Barzel caused the federal party to accept a compromise. CSU leader and Foreign Minister Franz-Josef Strauss was elevated to the Chancellery, the first Chancellor from Bavaria in the new Bundesrepublik.
The strong start for Strauss and his government would continue into the first few years after the election. Refusing to compromise in regarding relations with the Communist regimes of East Germany or Poland, the German military was modernized in a similar manner to that of Massu in France to conform to the 35-35-30 strategy. In a popular move on the domestic front, the Coalition created a system of student education grants in order to increase university enrollment – part of his robust effort to modernize the German economy.
All of this progress came to a screeching halt with Der Zweite Deutsche Herbst. The initial wave of terrorist activity by the Rotkampferbund, unlike that in other nations, did not let up as it had in the first attacks in 1971. In what seemed as yet more Soviet revenge for WWII, KGB and Stasi-directed militants renewed their signature kidnappings, bombings, and shootings in the most spectacular manner possible. Paul Lücke, the Interior Minister, was decapitated in a car bombing in Bonn in April 1973, followed only days later by Rainer Barzel, drilled through the head by an unapprehended sniper – the All-German Affairs Minister was particularly hated by the East Germans for his hardline stance. The death of two prominent ministers led to a general panic in the German economy, stock prices plummeting. The leaking of a secret report from the Bundeskriminalamt condemning lackluster security procedures only hurt the government further.
The hammer blow would happen in October when the RKB staged a particularly daring kidnapping – combined with the SLA kidnapping of Patricia Buckley and murder of Mickey Hargitay as the crimes of the decade – of Strauss’ wife Marianne. Despite a nationwide effort to locate her, the East German government would announce on Halloween that they had discovered her body at a farmhouse in rural Thüringen, along with the corpses of five Hamburg businessmen kidnapped in August. After the funeral, at which most in the government and his family found him to be eerily stoic, Strauss’ Secretary discovered the Chancellor in his office – dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Suffering from acute stress and depression following the murder of his friend Barzel, the murder of his wife had tipped Strauss over the edge, and with it the entire Federal Republic.
At a somber meeting, the CDU elected Kurt-Georg Kiesinger as Chancellor and party leader. Struggling to drag a fearful country back from the mental brink (the worst it had been since 1945), Kiesinger was forced to warm relations with East Germany and Poland in hopes that they would cool off terrorist activity. It worked, to an extent, but the populace viewed it as a capitulation. Additionally, tensions between the CDU and its Bavarian affiliate were reaching a boiling point. The CSU was increasingly adopting American-style Liberty Conservatism, causing tension with the communonationalist CDU. Strauss had kept the factions in his party in line, but with him gone a group of young CSU leaders under the direction of one Helmut Kohl approached Kiesinger with an idea to turn the economy around with free market reforms and he turned them down, a series of ever escalating squabbles led to the sundering of the longstanding electoral alliance between the two. Government in tatters, Kiesinger was forced to call for early elections.
Assailed on the right by the CSU running outside of Bavaria for the first time and by the far-right nationalist National Democratic Party, the Kiesinger government was in danger from the resurgent SPD. Ditching Willy Brandt for the energetic and charismatic Helmut Schmidt, the Hamburg native crisscrossed the country with promises of instituting a government stimulus to get the economy going, broad social reform, and a noncompromising stance on left-wing terrorism. “Verbrennen sie! Zerstören sie!” Schmidt famously proclaimed at a rally in Cologne. The country, in the mood for blood, lapped it up.
As for the German right, the darkness that had begun with the CDU/CSU split only blossomed into complete hell. On the strength of their energetic campaign (Kohl on point for much of it) and latent strength among the south German Catholics, the CSU took most of the seats in the south to catapult into triple digits and second place to the SPD. The FPD benefitted greatly from the collapse of the old right – many of its members had begun to adopt American-style minaprogressivism, earning them huge vote totals from the counterculture in Germany. Unpopular and moribund, only the scale of the CDU’s fall shocked onlookers, Chancellor Kiesinger’s party collapsing to a mere thirty-six seats – falling behind the shocker of the night, the NPD which advanced into the Bundestag with forty-seven seats.
In this new Germany, shaken by a political earthquake, one man looked upon the nation that he so loved and saw an opportunity. One that he felt was the chance it had to fully atone for the evils of the past – and to become great and honorable once more.
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Francisco Franco was not a well man as the new decade dawned. Ruling Spain with an iron fist since the conclusion of the Civil War thirty-five years before, after Salazar’s fall in Portugal he was the last great Fascist leader remaining. Hitler, suicide. Mussolini, lynched. Tojo, tried for war crimes and hung. Only el Caudillo survived, and even he was on borrowed time. Riddled with cancer and slowly succumbing to Parkinson’s disease, the longtime dictator greatly worried that the resurgent kingdom he had built out of the ashes of the Civil War would crumble.
By the days of the Carnation Revolution right across the border, Spain was at a crossroads. Robust economic growth following the institutions of major economic reforms had jumpstarted the economy to great lengths in the late fifties and sixties – aided by a flood of American military aid from the Rockefeller Administration. Spanish colonies in Africa (Western Sahara, Ifini, and Guinea) welcomed an influx of settlers seeking new starts and to exploit natural resource deposits – Franco would often speak to his confidants about retaking Spanish Morocco, though it was scrapped once the aforementioned nation joined the French Community. However, social reforms were not forthcoming for much of Franco’s later reign. For the most part it wasn’t too big an issue as the people were complacent with the economy and colonial inducements, but as Franco’s health declined his inner circle started to worry.
Following a narrow brush with death in an attempted assassination by the Basque nationalist ETL, Prime Minister and Franco-advisor Luis Carrero Blanco joined the increasing cadre of Falange leadership desiring liberalization in order to save the system. Fear of communist takeover given the Carnation Revolution and Soviet garrisons in Portugal presented them with the opportunity of a lifetime, and none were willing to let it go. Thusly, a delegation headed by Blanco and Foreign Minister Carlos Arias Navarro met with the Caudillo to present him with the terms they had drawn up. On his sickbed, Franco was in no position to refuse the bloodless putsch – backed by leading elements of the Spanish Army.
Originally planning to name King Juan Carlos I as his successor, in August 1975 Franco (through spokesmen, him being too sick for public appearances) announced the scheduling of elections for October under the auspices of the King. Blanco resigned as Prime Minister in favor of Navarro, who would lead the newly formed Falangist National Democratic Party into the elections. Navarro, a close friend of Estado Novo Prime Minister Caetano and an ally of Richard Helms and James Callaghan, had been a major proponent of liberalizing reforms even while Franco had been the one truly in charge. Together with Blanco and the King, they made a list of acceptable parties (African nationalist groups and Communists were obviously excluded) that could run in the elections free of interference from the government. To opposition parties that were barely allowed to exist, the short timeframe hurt them compared to the robust effort of the PDN.
Franco would continue to lead both the nation and the PDN until his death of pancreatic cancer in 1977, after which Carlos Navarro would take over as leader of his party. The entire Cortes Generales would band together to amend the Spanish Constitution, eliminating the post of Caudillo and installing Juan Carlos as head of state and the Prime Minister as head of government. The Falange had democratized, remaining intact.
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Good update, The Congressman! 
I think there may a typo here. I think you meant CDU.
While Salazar and Franco were far-right and incredibly harmful for Portugal and Spain respectively, there were not fascist, more like ultra-conservative with corporatist traits, an half-way between ultra-conservatism and fascism.
ThanksGood update, The Congressman!
I think there may a typo here. I think you meant CDU.
While Salazar and Franco were far-right and incredibly harmful for Portugal and Spain respectively, there were not fascist, more like ultra-conservative with corporatist traits, an half-way between ultra-conservatism and fascism.
Given their close ties to Germany in WWII, I went with the label to make a point. However, I know they drifted from fascism to right-wing authoritarianism as the years passed
In Salazar's case, he was never fascist, you can call him a clerical-fascist (if you prefer a technical name), but he was essentially a product of absolutist "pre-liberal" ultraconservatism, that copied some fascist ideas to ender himself to Italy (and to promote social and economic control and entrenchment for the benefit of the upper classes), but contrarily to fascism, he loathed industrialization, and distrusted fascism as contrary to Christianity.Thanks
Given their close ties to Germany in WWII, I went with the label to make a point. However, I know they drifted from fascism to right-wing authoritarianism as the years passed
Edit: and it's good to see that Spain is following a path towards democracy, even if a bit slower than OTL.
Should rather have been anxious about Germany, lol
Bulldoggus
Banned
It is unfortunate that so many confuse "Right-Wing Dictator" with "Fascist." There have only been three fascist states: Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany, and DPR Korea.
Why such a leap forward for the CSU?
Why do they adopt liberty conservatism, when they're to the right of the CDU socially?
Did they split over this alt-Ostpoltik?
Why did the CDU fall by nearly Canadian PC levels?
How come the NPD nearly got 10% of the vote, surely they weren't neo-nazis at this stage and were more national conservatives (couldn't that publicist you used for that third way ideology be used as their leader?)
Why do they adopt liberty conservatism, when they're to the right of the CDU socially?
Did they split over this alt-Ostpoltik?
Why did the CDU fall by nearly Canadian PC levels?
How come the NPD nearly got 10% of the vote, surely they weren't neo-nazis at this stage and were more national conservatives (couldn't that publicist you used for that third way ideology be used as their leader?)