New Project: the Alternate History Online Biographical Dictionary 1870-1950

OOC: I don't know if this goes here. Anyway, I'll explain the jist of it. This project is an Alternate History online biographical dictionary of the 19th and 20th centuries. This database details the lives in an alternate TL of famous historical figures born and/or living roughly between 1870 and 1950. I'll start. Feel free to contribute (shortest entry 100 words). This way we will build up a TL piece by piece, following the direction set by previous posters, in a completely new and original way. This is a collaboration in which all board members may contribute if they ever feel like writing about a historical figure.

EDIT: up to 1914 ITTL history remains similar to ours, but after that, I'll l'll leave that up to you...

IC:

Entry: Joe Steel (1878-1949)


Joe Steel, born Iosif Dzugashvili, (Born: December 6 1878 [O.S.]. Died: January 16 1949) was not expected to turn out the way he did in spite of where he grew up. He was born in Gori, Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire and it was a lawless and violent place with gang wars, street brawls and clandestine wrestling matches and young Iosif was frequently involved in brawls as a child. He was son of a Georgian cobbler named Besarion and a woman born a serf Ketevan Geladze, both poor people. His father had a reasonably successful business until he became an alcoholic and violently abused his wife and child. Iosif fell ill with smallpox at the age of seven and around this time his mother decided she wanted her son to have a theological carreer as a priest for the Russian Orthodox Church. Besarion wanted his son to become his apprentice and succeed him in running his cobbler business and exploded in rage upon hearing this. In a fit of rage he nearly beat his wife to death and broke the windows of the nearby tavern before attacking the town police chief, killing him accidently. Besarion was sentenced to death for murder and upon this, Ketevan decided that she would have to find a better life elsewhere since she and her son were no longer welcome in Gori. She decided to leave for the United States. After a long and hazardous trip in the cargo space of a Russian ship, she arrived in New York and managed to get into America and settled in East Hills, Long Island where a large community of Russian Americans lived.

Ketevan, badly beaten by her husband could only perform light jobs, but had to accept a job in a shop as a cleaning lady to feed her ten year old son. Young Iosif Dzugashvili proved to be adept at learning and quickly mastered Russian and English although he failed to get rid of his strong accent in either language. He went to school in spite of his poor situation and quickly showed his leadership skills as he, despite his short stature and pockmarked face, gathered a group of loyal friends around him through his high intelligence, charisma, organizational skill and determination. To support his mother, Iosif went into crime in his teens so she wouldn't have to work anymore and was arrested a number of times although police considered him a small-timer at the time.

His gang beat up fellow students in school and forced them to pay protection money, part of which Iosif Dzugashvili donated to his mother who never asked where the money came from. He quickly started to engage in other forms of racketeering than just small scale extortion and protection money when his gang started to organize illegal lotteries for the Russian émigré community in Long Island, starting around 1900. His gang, however, remained small with only a few people in the inner circle and less than a hundred actual members although many more profited from this small syndicate engaging in marginally criminal activities like racketeering, lotteries, selling alcohol and organizing a number of brothels (although prostitution was still legal at this time) in Long Island all of which had legal fronts. It was around 1900 that Dzugashvili changed his name to Joe Steel and his gang came to dominate East Hills. This was just the start of the carreer of the so-called 'Tsar of Crime' as time has shown us.

The rapid growth started with the ratification of the eighteenth amendment in 1919, more commonly known as Prohibition. It was around this time that the major Italian crime families started to rise too, mainly under Salvatore Maranzano and Joe "The Boss" Masseria who started to bootleg liquor en masse. The Italians outnumbered the Russian-Georgian gangs by far and Joe Steel made a strategic alliance with Maranzano who had his base in Brooklyn on the south of Long Island where he used his business as a real estate broker as a legal front for his numerous illicit activities, including the production of vodka by his subordinate Joe Steel. Joe had great organizational skill and due to his allegedly sociopathic and paranoid nature combined with high intelligence (shrewdness) he was able to manipulate people. According to a contemporary "he knew exactly which buttons to push with which people", including police officers and politicians. His paranoid nature also led to his masterful use of informants and him getting rid of competitors of his own as well as those of Maranzano who sought to expand at the expense of Masseria into the Bronx and the rest of East Side Manhattan.

His skills as an organizer, manipulator, intimidator and his ability to point the police in the wrong direction quickly made him Maranzano's second hand man, giving him and his Russian-Georgian clique of comrades a lot of power. The mafia war was being won by Maranzano and Joe Steel who terrified Maranzano's opponents, including Masseria. Masseria offered peace and Joe Steel, in the greatest ruse in mafia history, pretended to accept in order to take the east coast. Joe "The Boss" Masseria was assassinated, taking twenty bullets from a Tommy gun at close range in a restaurant on Coney Island in bright daylight along with his own second in command, Charlie Luciano in 1929. Joe Adonis and Bugsy Siegel were killed as well and Vito Genoveso was intimidated into joining Maranzano.

At this time, Joe Steel felt powerful enough to take over Maranzano's criminal empire and by now Joe Steel couldn't be called anything else than a gangster. In 1930 Maranzano was killed and dumped in New York harbor to wash up later. Steel proceeded to take over this crime syndicate and expanded his business of bootlegging liquor (including Scottish whiskey, Caribbean rum and Russian vodka among others), running hundreds of illegal brothels, bribing high officials, gambling, assassinations, gun running and racketeering over the eastern seaboard. His influence went so far that he intimidated John P. O'Brien not to run for mayor of New York so Joseph V. McKee won because he was more compliant and thus got Joe Steel's endorsement. Less commonly known is his charity work, providing food to the poor and running a number of shelters for the homeless, all funded by his illegal activities though. And so Joe Steel went from criminal to controversial as many Russian Americans still uphold his legacy as a do-gooder.

He made another strategic alliance with Chicago mobster Al Capone, but he was caught for tax evasion in 1935 although by now he was decidly in Joe Steel's influence anyway even if Joe Steel left him in the illusion he was still in charge of Chicago. His mental capacities had been declining from neurosyphilis which caused him to lose his grip on reality and in Alcatraz he was isolated from the world. Joe Steel took over in Chicago and spread his criminal empire into Illinois and Ohio. His syndicate made billions a year by now. He was virtually untouchable and his power was signified when he had New York's District Attorney Gregory Francis Noonan assassinated. Being an idealist he opposed Steel because he was morally wrong. Steel's crime syndicate found its first threat as Noonan ordered police raids and started to move against Steel's operation, uncovering a number of fronts. There were several lawsuits although, frustratingly, Steel received low sentences and made bail every time. Noonan, however, arrested a number of lower ranking mobsters like Vito Genovese. After a mere year in office, Noonan was killed in what was dismissed as a robbery gone wrong although everyone knew where the order had come from.

Vito was quickly released on parole although by now Georgian-Mingrelian émigré Lavrenti Beria, known as Laurent Beria after his name change, had risen to power. He was attracted to Steel because he allowed him to act out his violent and sadistic tendencies. By now Steel's mother had died although Steel's motives for crime by now were no longer providing for her. He had taken a blow when Probition was ended although the vastness of his network allowed it to survive. He spent the 1940s consolidating his east coast empire while trying to keep his people from being drafted for the war in Europe and Asia. At the height of his power he was assassinated himself by Laurent Beria, a not glorious end for the greatest crime boss ever. He had entrusted his righthand man with too much power, his only mistake and it had proven fatal.

Beria would oversee the relative decline of the Russian-Italian syndicates against new gangs although the enormous size to this day prevents the gangs from taking over their home base of Long Island and East Side Manhattan. Joe Steel has thus left us with a legacy of crime. His fame, however, is universal as is expressed by the soon to be released movie "Steel", a remake of the legendary 1972 movie of the same name by Francis Ford Coppola. Steel left no wife or children and was ironically outlived by a retired sickly Al Capone.

Joseph_Stalin.jpg


Joe Steel in 1945, at the pinnacle of his power.

Further reading:
T.E. DEWEY Jr., The Tsar of Crime: the life and times of Joe Steel, New York, 1990.


EDIT: I double-dare you to do an original alt-Hitler ;)
 
Last edited:
I have an alternate biography of the 37th President of the United States from the AHN Universe (as soon as I get around to expanding it). Don't know if that would fit in here.
 
I have an alternate biography of the 37th President of the United States from the AHN Universe (as soon as I get around to expanding it). Don't know if that would fit in here.

I think so, as long as it doesn't disturb the continuity of the TL (this will form one whole TL in the end). Btw, I'll be adding a new biography today or tommorrow.
 
OOC: I take up that gauntlet OW


IC:
Entry: Adolphus Shickelgruber (1889-1951) 2nd Lieutenant

Adolphus was born into a middle class home to a postmaster named Alois and Klara Shickelgruber. He performed well at school and took a keen interest in history, particularly that of Latin America. But his greatest talent was drawing, and he showed himself to be a good drawer at school. His father slowly became abusive as he beat both his wife and their children. This had a detrimental effect on the young man as he took beatings at home and beatings at school, mostly for rude behaviour. After his father died in 1904 due to a drunken bar brawl, Klara took her children with her to America. Here, they lived in the suburbs of Chicago where their mother eked out a living in the factories. However, her son Adolphus was beginning to make money through his drawings. But it wasn't enough to ensure that food wasnt coming home to his mother, so he decided to enlist in the US Army. He was assigned to California, where he would meet the future General Patton.

His first great moment was in the Pancho Villa expedition, when he joined an expedition of men into Mexico to seize the warlord Pancho Villa after a few raids on the US/Mexico border. While the expedition was a failure, his role in ensuring that no raids took place again ensured his favour with the Military brass in Washington.

At home, Corporal Schickelgruber's exploits ensured that his mother got food on the table at home.

Eventually, he went to active service again in the Central American War of 1921-23, when Colombia tried to seize the canal. Shickelgruber's exploits in the Bogota campaign were publicised across the US to boost American morale.

One such event was the Battle of the Arato River, where he and a squad held down a river bank against a company of Colombian soldiers for three days. Shickelgruber even got shot in the chest, but still managed to live. His actions earned him an honorable discharge and a a dinner with the US President, Calvin Coolidge. Shickegruber mused that he was "glad his father wasnt around to see him at the white house, otherwise he'd have a heart attack"

But even that wasnt enough to see his family through, and when the recession struck in 1928, he decided to go into comic production. He still retained his artistic skills, even while in the Army. His ideas were not of fantastic superheroes, but generally of modern variety, but soemtimes doing ancient themes. His works were known to be quite dark for their time and met with great acclaim, especially his The Dark Shadow, an alternate history series of Graphic Novels which dealt with a nightmarish dictatorship in South America.

Eventually, he met the famed author H P Lovecraft and they worked together on several projects. Not least of which was a graphic novel based on the Chthulhu mythos. Adolphus even went to Lovecraft's funeral in 1940.

He agreed to work with Timely Comics in 1941 to create the comic series Henathos, set in a swords and sandals world. It was described as one of the darkest comics in history with one of the most depressing endings ever. It was set in a very dystopian world where evil triumphed over good and the hero died at the end.

However, Shickelgruber realised something in 1944. he was beginning to feel ill and was suffering from frequent headaches. This led to him going to the Mayo clinic where he learned the worst. He had a brain tumour, and had 10 years left to live. But this didnt distract him from writing the two Americas series of alternate history graphic novels, which were met with great acclaim.

Shickelgruber died in his California mansion in 1951 at the age of 62. He had no children and only his sister survived him.
 
Last edited:
OOC: OK, I promised an update so here's one. Btw, everyone please use the same format ;).

IC:

Entry: Leon Trotsky (1879-1947)


Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronstein. (Born: October 26 1879 [O.S.]. Died: March 5 1947) was a communist revolutionary and later Premier of the Soviet Union. His parents were David Leontevich Bronstein and Anna Bronstein. He was born in the Ukraine to Jewish parents although they were not practicing Jews and spoke Russian and Ukrainian at home instead of Yiddish. His father sent him to Odessa to a German school for education at the age of ten which shaped is international outlook greatly because, unlike most cities in the Russian Empire, Odessa was a bustling cosmopolitan city and it was here that young Lev Bronstein came into contact with revolutionary Marxist writings. Instead of pursuing a mathematics degree, he followed his ideological convictions and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1898 and attended the First Congress in 1900 and became a fervent believer in orthodox Marxism, thereby supporting Lenin's cause.

He was imprisoned and exiled a number of times as he engaged in revolutionary activities such as spreading socialist propaganda, recruiting, organized terrorist attacks, sheltering known revolutionaries and organizing strikes and protests against the capitalists. It was around this time that he met his future wife Alexandra Sokolovskaya while also arousing enmity from the old guard under Plekhanov who had spent two decades in exile at this point. He decidedly sided with the younger generation under Vladimir Lenin and bekwame a writer for the revolutionary tabloid/newspaper Iskra or 'Spark' under the assumed name Trotsky. He was again exiled in 1903 to Siberia and his wife Alexandra Trotskyeva, pregnant of his first son who he would call Lev, followed him. They remained until 1905 when he escaped and his made his way back to the west after the Russo-Japanese War and the events of the Russian Revolution of 1905. He reassumed his role as propagandist, spouting antimonarchist propaganda, claiming that the end of capitalism had come with this uprising and that the workers should unite to create the dreamed of classless society.

In the end, this revolution was a pipedream because the Tsar's army still supported him. It was around this time that another break occured in the RSDLP between the 'Mensheviks' under Julius Martov and the 'Bolsheviks' under Vladimir Lenin. Trotsky once again sided with Lenin over the matter because he despised the parliamentary road. The newly created Duma was a farce and Martov would have no real influence. Both Lenin and Trotsky knew this.

The Russian Empire toddled along under Nicholas II until the outbreak of the First Great War (1914-1918) after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, leading to war with Serbia and subsequently Russia. From the start the Russian Army performed terribly, losing millions of men in useless offensives against the Germans and their Habsburg and Ottoman allies. Due to inflation, food scarcity, fuel scarcity and the terrible defeats in the war compounded by longstanding dissatisfaction about the Tsar's autocratic regime and the backwardness of the country, the February Revolution erupted in 1917, putting a leftist democratic republican regime in power in Petrograd under Alexander Kerensky. He, however, continued to uphold Russia's obligations to the Entente with Britain and France. After his Kerensky offensive in July was defeated, the Russian army was broken. It ceased to be a cohesive fighting forceand mutinies erupted and general chaos followed. The Bolsheviks, the only party not tainted by involvement with Kerensky and vociferously opposed to the war, seized power in the September Revolution on September 17th 1917 [O.S.]. The clash of capitalist powers had brough the much feared revolution to the world or so it seemed. Trotsky's printing presses were running non-stop to spread the revolutionary fervour.

He assumed command of the Red Army and fought the Whites (the term used to identify a wide variety of counterrevolutionary forces) while also signing peace with the Germans in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Realizing the military situation, he didn't accept the initial proposal to cede Congress Poland in December 1917 because of of Lenin's promise of 'peace without conditions', highly unrealistic at the time. He accepted the second proposal andvthis caused friction between the two, but the militarily more inclided Trotsky convinced him of the necessity because the Red Army would lose against Germany. He proceeded to defeat the disunited White forces while Nicholas II and his family fled to Great Britain to Nicholas's relative King George V of the United Kingdom to form a government in exile. Victory was proclaimed in 1921 although some fighting was still going on in Central Asia. And so the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was founded which encompassed al formerly Russian territory except for the Baltic states and Poland. Lenin became Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars in which Trotsky was People's Commissar of Defence as well as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, bringing the Cheka into his grasp.

With Lenin alive, he didn't openly seize power, but he did side with Lev Kamenev who was married to Trotsky's sister Olga. The triumvirate of Kamenev, Trotsky and Zinoviev usurped power in the Central Committee, the legislative organ of the party through Trotsky's control over the Cheka and Zinoviev's position as secretary-general although they didn't move against Lenin. When the latter died of a heart attack in 1927, Trotsky assumed power and made himself Premier of the Soviet Union, a new function above that Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, the position which Kamenev received. Ironically, Lenin's opposition to anti-Semitism had put Trotsky in this position of power. He proceeded to implement his own ideas and discarded almost immediately of the New Economic Policy. Its proponents Bucharin, Tomsky and Rykov were sidelined and Trotsky assumed full control. He started to support the world revolution again. His most notable effort was in Germany where the KPD revolution of 1930 was squashed by the military junta under Hindenburg and Von Schleicher. He did succeed in toppling the unpopular Hungarian government and replace it with a communist regime. Mongolia was annexed at this time since it was de facto part of the USSR anyway.

During the 1930s he pushed industrialization in his Four Year Plans, leading to massive increases in the production of petroleum, coal, steel, iron ore, pig iron and electricity and a massive growth of the heavy industry sector. Trotsky also organized farms into farming communes governed by councils of farmers as a precursor to full collectivization in 1932 and introduced modern farming equipment. The industrial growth gave the USSR the teeth to spread the revolution. In his foreign policy he grew more aggressive, for example, he got involved in the Spanish Civil War which led to a Republican victory although not the desired communist state. As we all know, worse came to worse and Trotsky unleashed the Second Great War (1942-1947) in an attempt to further the revolution and relieve the oppressed workers of Europe. Unfortunately, they thought differently and Trotsky started with a massive repression campaign. Despite resistance and severe reprisals such as reprisal executions, confiscations and deportations, Trotsky reached the Stettin-Trieste line before being stopped by a newly rearmed Germany under a restored German Emperor Wilhelm IV, grandson of Wilhelm II.

After a bitter struggle deep into the Soviet Union, the Allied powers of Germany, Italy, France, Britain and the US defeated the Soviet Union and its partner of convenience Japan, resulting in the nuclear attacks on Minsk, Smolensk and Trotskygrad (modern day Kiev) and the overthrowing of the by now highly unpopular regime which had fallen into totalitarian excesses by now. He committed suicide in Omsk in his bunker while Tsarevich Michael (Nicholas II's brother, Alexei's uncle) was crowned Tsar Michael II, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, thus ending the short-lived but violent communist experiment. His son Lev survived him to write My Father Trotsky and Me.

Further Reading:

L. Johnson, The Communist Experiment in Russia, 1917-1947, New York, 1977.
 
Top