Palmera (An African Resettlement AH)

[Shevek23]

I note that the parallel but not identical pattern of your ATL means one Franklin Delano Roosevelt is at best an ATL cousin, a relative of the same name with a different appearance, biography and character, and it is only the quasi-aristocratic nature of his family that would make even that close a correspondence possible--men like Huey Long or Upton Sinclair are quite butterflied away though the parallelism of the TL which has called the Italian Fascists and German Nazis into being under another name has placed ATL men into the roles of Mussolini and Hitler. Is there an American analog to FDR then, and if so do you judge it taking parallelism too far for this one person to span the entire period from the debacle of the Depression to nearly witnessing victory in WWII?

Because of course the US stance on the fascist threat will depend in part on the opinion of the US President. It was a matter of chance I think we had a President who reacted to the rise of European fascism the way Roosevelt did OTL; any President who was half awake should have had some concern but it was not totally outside the spectrum of US respectability to offer a tolerant indulgence to the bombastic extremism overseas; men like Henry Ford or Charles Lindbergh OTL would be supporters of a President who regarded Mussolini and still more Hitler as legitimate and even good, certainly for their own country. Offering them active partnership and support would be quite a different matter; enough Americans were offended or threatened by fascism or anyway its peculiar choice of scapegoats to make a pro-Axis stand in the White House politically very risky, especially in the potentially volatile tendency to class warfare the Depression would indicate if not seen to be being dealt with handily. So much of OTL's characteristic American mood of the later '30s would hinge on the nature of the national response to the challenge of the Depression in the earlier thirties, so the relationship of Palmera to the USA is very dependent on how near or far the US course here is from OTL.

If we have an American top leadership that is both concerned about the rise of the Axis and feels threatened by it, if only because the Vultist movement seems liable to horn in on spheres of American ambition, I think it is conceivable that Cayton will find his play being backed to an increasing degree by very quiet but increasingly extensive support from the north. If our own Franklin Roosevelt were somehow ISOTed there as a President first elected in 1936, he would not of course be a firebrand on the subject of racial integration, but on the subject of a vigorous opposition to Craxi and Krieger, he would I think offer the Palmeys involved all manner of quiet US good offices, within the limits of plausible deniability anyway--because even if the USA does enjoy leadership with a visionary level of opposition to the European madness, the more reactionary sectors would have powerful allies in the Jim Crow South opposing the Palmeys as leading actors. If a person of Rooseveltian mind with a similar ruling coalition were elected or re-elected in 1940, and something as decisive and unifying US opinion as Pearl Harbor would happen, then once the USA declares war the Palmeys can expect the aid and support to become massive and open; American shipyards and aircraft works can be expected to supplement whatever level of key war materiel Palmera itself can churn out or purchase from British works with gifts of US models. To be sure the whole issue of managing relations with Palmera as a favored ally versus US white supremacists fearing the disruptive impact of good press for the nation of color will be something the US establishment is not willing to face by means of a mass repudiation of white supremacy.

I do think though that on the whole, versus OTL the stock of the Palmeys as a people will rise among many if not all white Americans and with them a notable improvement of the perception of the status and rights of African-Americans in the USA would also follow; US civil rights movements will be strengthened and the trend of public opinion more strongly against Jim Crow.

But it could be quite otherwise if US top leadership does not appreciate the importance of an early and strong, consistent stand against European fascism. A USA that reluctantly if at all fights the European axis under whatever name it adopts might find itself doubling down on Jim Crow, making the struggle appear weaker but also more existential.

 

[CeeJay]

To answer your question briefly, I am undecided as to how far to take parallelism with FDR. It's one of the big turning points that has been something of a quandary for me, because basically without FDR, the whole modern character of America is different. And yet having a figure that just happens to be as dominant as FDR would seem to be taking parallelism too far. I'm mulling having my rough Huey Long analogue, Teton Wallace (who is actually a Texan) function as a kind of proxy Huey Long WI for purposes of the scenario, but it's a radical enough change to take me into deep waters. It's part of what has delayed the WWII part of this TL so long.

 

[Sceonn]

Did you post the latest chapter before finishing writing it?

 

[CeeJay]

I basically have two possible scenarios "written." Even at the last moment I'm still vacillating between them. But I'll pick one and finish that post shortly, promise.

 

[CeeJay]

Heh, by some relaxed definitions of "shortly." That post is finally finished now.

 

[CeeJay]

Previously in the timeline:
The Spanish Period to Home Rule. A curious twist of fate results in a British resettlement project for Black freedmen going to the depopulated southern reaches of an alternate Florida named Palmera.
The Lion's Cub, Part One. The Union of Palmera battles tides of unrest washing out from America after the Civil War, culminating in the traumatic rebellion called the Third Border War.
The Lion's Cub, Continued. The Gilded Age unfolds in Palmera in a mingling of glory and tragedy.
The Lion's Cub, Conclusion. The Union cautiously begins to carve out a place in the international orders of politics, finance and trade.
The Hinge of History, Pt. 1 ("Unseen Pressures Build"). On the eve of the Great War, new forces of nationalism, religion and activism are growing.
The Hinge of History, Pt. 2 ("We Shall Do What Must Be Done"). The Great War erupts, and the full cost in blood and moral compromise of Palmera's "lion's cub" aspirations becomes plain.
The Hinge of History, Pt. 3 ("Lift Every Voice and Sing"). Football, baseball and beach-side leisure provide windows onto three different episodes of postwar social change.
"Ayo Perline!" ['Nonwar' & The Sunset of the Haiti Mission], Introduction. A brief summary of events in the totally-not-an-occupation of Haiti.
The Dawn of a Tumultuous Decade. More than six decades of Jucker dynasty in Palmera come to an end as the ominous stormclouds of Vultism menace the globe.
For The Honour of His Imperial Majesty, Pt. 1. A new political order in Palmera takes an aggressive stance against the rise of Vultism.

Resource Posts:
Palmera at the End of the Belle Epoque: A Snapshot. A map and a demographic summary of the Union of Palmera in the year 1914.
Glossary of Palmey English Terms. A glossary of Palmeyisms or otherwise unfamiliar language occurring in the text. Periodically updated as the timeline advances.

Other Story Posts:
The Deal. Tequesta County's rural isolation is set to make way for an age of development... but who will benefit?
Song of Songs. Though times are tough in the wake of the Great Tequesta Hurricane, little has changed in the rarified world of the social elite. Or has it?
A Dinner in Daltonville. Organised crime and corruption hit the headlines in Palmera in a truly spectacular way.
Cocktails with a King-Maker. A Palmeran officer en route to his command encounters the all-seeing eye of Special Branch.
The Parisiana. Jack Heyland's later adventures in "Perline."

For the Honour of His Imperial Majesty, Part Two: The fresh complexities of politics in the Thirties didn't just manifest on the battlefields of distant Ethiopia. They also manifested in sports and popular culture. Here, too, Horace Cayton's Palmera sought to flex her muscles on the world stage as never before, with results that loomed large in the national consciousness ever afterwards.

3. Sport As Diplomacy As War By Other Means: National funding for sport was not formally part of the mandate of the so-called Gideon Project. It was, however, well recognized in the Touladi as an important part of the general spirit of national unity and morale that on the whole was judged a necessity for Palmera to play a role on the international stage. It thus rose higher in the priorities of the Cayton Government than it had ever done through the rather scattershot patronage of the Juckers, seen particularly in the establishment of a formal Ministry of Education, Culture and Tourism in 1934 which hosted its own Department of Physical Recreation[1]. Again, there were sleepless nights in more than a few quarters over the potentially ruinous borrowing involved to help further develop local sporting programs across the Union. The full outcome of this borrowing spree would remain a question mark for some time, but the dividends in terms of athletic prominence were much more immediate and tended to mute some of the criticisms.

The absence of segregation had allowed Palmey sport to siphon off some of the finest Black American athletic talent from its northern neighbour for some time, as well as better developing its own, but spotty funding had limited the nation's sporting potential on the world stage. Now, paired with high-standard training facilities, Palmera became an X-factor in major competitions that blindsided many contemporaries. Perhaps the most spectacular example of this in terms of global popular consciousness was the 1936 Berlin Olympics where Palmera, formerly a very minor presence in the Olympic movement, repeatedly embarrassed Karl Krieger's quest to showcase Aryan athletic dominance. Perhaps none was more famous than track athlete Jack Lassner[2], who topped the podium in four separate events and became a worldwide sensation.

Looming just as large in Palmey national consciousness was the FIFA World Cup of 1938. Still in the early days of its evolution, the World Cup had never before seen a qualifying Palmey national side, international football having hitherto taken a back seat to the intimate drama of the Nation's Cup. The vagaries of business had led to the Lucky Boys Combo side in Livingston changing ownership, and in turn changing their name to the Livingston Arsenal (for arms production was emerging as a major industry in Daltonville). The national side took up the now-iconic Lucky Boys Combo moniker and staged an historic run that shocked the world, reaching the semi-finals to put on a thrilling match against Italy that Palmeys would ever after aver they had only lost due to crooked officiating. That match was, in some estimations, every bit as much a source of national pride and a part of the battle for "His Imperial Majesty's honour" as the resistance movement in Abyssinia itself, a movement the Palmey squad honoured by wearing Resistance armbands bearing Abyssinian flags during play. The Lucky Boys Combo went on to very nearly capture a third-place finish before finally succumbing to Sweden. Even reaching that point had been such a heady tonic that crowds in the home country honoured the Lucky Boys in defeat almost as rapturously as if they'd won.

4. Refuge, Jazz and Dreams in Helena: For a long time it had been common wisdom that Tequesta, the "County of the Future," was forever going to be stunted in its development and a general laughingstock as a result. Quietly, however, the various development projects that popular opinion deemed "boondoggles" had improved life and prospects in the county far more than had been admitted elsewhere -- certainly enough to secure Executive Magistrate Moses Goff's place as the longest-tenured government official in Palmera's history -- even if they hadn't yet delivered on their full promise. They had also lain a groundwork of gradual drainage of wetlands and improvement of infrastructure that would make feasible the seemingly quixotic project of turning Helena into a major port and naval base.

In its early days, the "new" Helena was a small addition to the ranks of existing Palmeran metropoleis like Daltonville, Hillsborough and Eleutheria. But it swiftly began to loom large as a fixture in the Union's culture. Anti-trust action against the Union Mercantile empire, which some had predicted would stunt the region's economy yet further, had the opposite effect as a multitude of companies competed for the labour that came flooding in to support the port's construction and produce goods for the growing population of navy men and their families residing and training there. Helena's brand-new artificial beaches were already surprising and delighting travellers from abroad and year after year, as some of the only non-segregated beaches of their kind--at least not explicitly segregated, save in terms of wealth--in the western hemisphere, drew increasing numbers of visitors from across the Union and the Marcher states. A town numbering a few thousand people at the dawn of the decade had grown to a population of more than thirty thousand by 1939[3]. By the time the Forties hit, Helena's future primacy as the Union's "dream destination" was already assured.

The early city's small but thriving entertainment district was centred on the Royal Casino, run by one Teddy Royal who it was not widely-understood at the time was in fact an organized crime figure representing the very moment of the transition of the county's backwoods booney-man operations into something much wealthier and more powerful. From the day it opened, the Royal Casino's bandstand assumed an importance as a musical destination far out of proportion with the size of its direct audience, especially because Royal had laid out considerable funds to provide a dedicated recording studio and a lavish permanent contract to one Tej Telemaco[4]. The trumpeter and his Sweet Sounds Orchestra came to be a fixture, recording their own hit records through the Grand Duchess Records label managed by Tej's famous formerly-aristocratic wife and playing with a rotating cast of increasingly prominent names from abroad whose presence helped cement the Royal's growing legend. One of the earliest and most famous was American trumpeter Gate Kincaid[5].

Another population that came to influence the growth of Helena were Jews fleeing persecution abroad, especially in Europe within the reach of Krieger's Germany and from Ethiopia, where the Vultists had outlawed Judaism and the Freedom Brigades had taken to smuggling Beta Israel believers out of threatened areas. The plight of the Beta Israel was impossible for Palmera to ignore, which made it likewise impossible to ignore the related plight of Europe's Jews despite an otherwise pronounced ambivalence about European migration and the threats it could pose. Both efforts, in Ethiopia and Europe, were vocally championed by the Rohakar Society, the Union's increasingly vocal and connected Bene Israel minority, and leveraged fellow-feeling for the persecuted Jews among people who had made whyrah to escape Jim Crow, which described a broad swathe of the current generation. From Ethiopia, some twenty-two thousand Beta Israel Jews were evacuated to Palmera over the course of the war; and in Europe, when a major refugee crisis hit in 1938 as Krieger's persecutions escalated and the Verkampfers annexed Austria, Palmera turned out to be one of only two out of 32 nations to agree to accept extra Jewish refugees in significant numbers, as a result of which nearly eighty-six thousand German and Czech Jewish refugees eventually landed in Daltonville by 1939[6].

Palmera thus acquired, at considerable speed and with some degree of domestic controversy[7], perhaps the world's most ethnically-diverse Jewish community by the onset of the Forties. Of the European refugees especially, many hoped to go on to the United States or Canada, only to be disappointed. Increasingly they made their way to other centres in Palmera, with the sunny clime and hopeful image of Helena becoming one of the popular destinations. Many of those who eventually arrived at Helena would go on to play major roles in shaping the culture and entertainment industry of that city, and of Palmera as a whole.

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[1] Culture ministries IOTL tend to be a latter Twentieth Century phenomenon. Here, Palmera is an early pioneer motivated by its unusual circumstances and inspired by a surprising fascination in the Touladi with certain Scandinavian models of governance, possibly inspired by the part-Scandinavian heritage of some of those who made whyrah. Scandinavian countries are sometimes seen as having "hitch-hiked" their way to the fruits of imperialism through frameworks previously established by other powers and did in fact have a presence in the Caribbean of OTL, and just as IOTL they have a weird form of exotic appeal as ideally-governed societies, an appeal that will turn up repeatedly in Palmeran policy-making. In this particular case the direct source of inspiration is Finland, which hosted one of the world's first culture ministries from as early as 1809.

[2] Obviously an alternate Jesse Owens, whose family made whyrah in this timeline instead of migrating to Cleveland.

[3] This matches the growth posted by IOTL urbanism in Miami in the Twenties.

[4] The jazz trumpeter and crooner previously encountered in "Song of Songs."

[5] Kincaid and Telemaco record a seminal jazz album called "The Sweet Sounds of Helena" in 1938. Telemaco's manager and wife is in fact the former Anastasia Romanov, now outcast and enduring a tempestuous relationship with the ever-faithless trumpeter but having discovered a surprising talent for show business. Grand Duchess Records becomes the Palmey equivalent of famous jazz labels like Columbia, Savoy, Prestige and Blue Note.

[6] The Rohakar Society's efforts on behalf of the Beta Israel in Ethiopia are parallels of efforts made by IOTL Ashkenazi Rabbis like Faitlovich and Kook in the early 20th century. This timeline assumes versions of those efforts still took place, too, but the Bene Israel in Palmera has the advantage at this time in terms of a dedicated country to which to evacuate them and forces on the ground in Ethiopia who can engage in that effort. The number of Beta Israel thus evacuated is just under half of those estimated to have been extant in Ethiopia at the time and is a bit larger than the population transported by Israel's famous Operation Solomon IOTL.

The plight of European Jewish refugees meanwhile, largely unwanted abroad, mirrors that seen in our timeline. Palmera is hardly their first choice as a place of refuge, but winds up proving a far more welcoming destination than most. Indeed Palmera's existence and reputation as a place of freedom for the unwanted may well reinforce the tendencies of other countries to reject them, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. The number of refugees mentioned here amounts to over a fifth of the emigres from Germany and Austria. I like to think one salutary effect of this is that this timeline is spared many stories like that of the St. Louis... although it surely does not avert all such tragedies.

[7] Palmera's Jewish population has abruptly increased by some 293% as a result of the refugee crisis. This will lead to some tensions and complications both surrounding and within Palmeran Jewry, which will be addressed in a future post.

 

[CeeJay]

Previously in the timeline:
The Spanish Period to Home Rule. A curious twist of fate results in a British resettlement project for Black freedmen going to the depopulated southern reaches of an alternate Florida named Palmera.
The Lion's Cub, Part One. The Union of Palmera battles tides of unrest washing out from America after the Civil War, culminating in the traumatic rebellion called the Third Border War.
The Lion's Cub, Continued. The Gilded Age unfolds in Palmera in a mingling of glory and tragedy.
The Lion's Cub, Conclusion. The Union cautiously begins to carve out a place in the international orders of politics, finance and trade.
The Hinge of History, Pt. 1 ("Unseen Pressures Build"). On the eve of the Great War, new forces of nationalism, religion and activism are growing.
The Hinge of History, Pt. 2 ("We Shall Do What Must Be Done"). The Great War erupts, and the full cost in blood and moral compromise of Palmera's "lion's cub" aspirations becomes plain.
The Hinge of History, Pt. 3 ("Lift Every Voice and Sing"). Football, baseball and beach-side leisure provide windows onto three different episodes of postwar social change.
"Ayo Perline!" ['Nonwar' & The Sunset of the Haiti Mission], Introduction. A brief summary of events in the totally-not-an-occupation of Haiti.
The Dawn of a Tumultuous Decade. More than six decades of Jucker dynasty in Palmera come to an end as the ominous stormclouds of Vultism menace the globe.
For The Honour of His Imperial Majesty, Pt. 1. A new political order in Palmera takes an aggressive stance against the rise of Vultism.
For The Honour of His Imperial Majesty, Pt. 2. The ongoing conflict manifests in the arenas of sport and culture.

Resource Posts:
Palmera at the End of the Belle Epoque: A Snapshot. A map and a demographic summary of the Union of Palmera in the year 1914.
Glossary of Palmey English Terms. A glossary of Palmeyisms or otherwise unfamiliar language occurring in the text. Periodically updated as the timeline advances.

Other Story Posts:
The Deal. Tequesta County's rural isolation is set to make way for an age of development... but who will benefit?
Song of Songs. Though times are tough in the wake of the Great Tequesta Hurricane, little has changed in the rarified world of the social elite. Or has it?
A Dinner in Daltonville. Organised crime and corruption hit the headlines in Palmera in a truly spectacular way.
Cocktails with a King-Maker. A Palmeran officer en route to his command encounters the all-seeing eye of Special Branch.
The Parisiana. Jack Heyland's later adventures in "Perline."

Of Course You Know, This Means War: The incentives to try to temporize with Krieger's Germany, given the still-fresh memories of the epochal bloodletting of the Great War, were as powerful in this timeline as those faced by Hitler's opposite numbers in ours. It was true in Washington, where by March of 1939 Vice President Charles Garner was taking the reins from a President Fulker in clearly failing health (Fulker would be dead by mid-April). It was true in Westminster, where Prime Minister Wilfrid Conant had led the effort to sign a Bremen Pact in 1938 with the Krieger regime meant to guarantee Czechoslovakia's continued independence in exchange for the German-majority Sudetenland. It was true in Moscow, where the paranoid and ruthless Comrade Narodin -- now unchallenged master of Soviet Russia -- had nevertheless concluded a non-aggression pact with Berlin by 1939.

However, Horace Cayton's fiery anti-Vultist rhetoric and actions had done more than just draw irritation from Westminster and Washington. They had also (however reluctantly) raised alarm bells, encouraged closer examination of the Vultist threat in Europe and abroad, and set the trigger points of Allied action sooner than they might have otherwise come. Theories that President Garner would be more sympathetic to an isolationist stance and more fearful of electoral backlash than his mentor Laurence Fulker proved groundless; in fact it was Garner who moved ahead definitively, albeit covertly, with American military aid to those already engaged in battling the Vultists, most particularly Palmera[1], Britain and France in the early stages.

Ridgewell Spencer, the old Royal Navy hand who'd conceived the Gallipoli campaign during the Great War -- now a member of the Conservative cabinet in Westminster and a similarly determined firebrand in Britain to Horace Cayton in Palmera -- had pushed for definitive "red lines" in the Bremen Pact. He had gotten them from a reluctant Conant amidst much ranting from Krieger's diplomatic corps. Secret service experts in Britain, America, France and Palmera were all coming to the conclusion that war in Europe was more probable than not, and Britain in particular tried (in vain) to warn a suspicious Moscow that the oil reserves of the Caucasus would be an extremely likely target for German arms.

For all that, the speed with which the Verkampfer regime went for the throat still wrong-footed everyone. Unable to find the kind of diplomatic pretences a different German dictator might have used to break up and consume Czechoslovakia piecemeal, Krieger nevertheless had that state at his mercy after assuming control of the Sudetenland and shortly thereafter launched a blitz attack that shocked the world. When Britain and France failed to muster a coherent response despite a "red line" of the Bremen Pact having been crossed, the Verkampfers went on to attack Poland. There was no escaping it: the "tumultuous decade" of the Thirties had given way to all-out war in the Forties.

Wilfrid Conant, weary and appalled to see his diplomatic efforts come to naught, resigned as his deputy Ridgewell Spencer took the reins of government. Britain and France finally declared war, with various countries of the British Commonwealth -- including Palmera -- swiftly following suit. Cayton's own declaration, which consisted rather archly of "welcoming" others to the struggle, raised more than a few hackles; but his attempts to prepare against the outbreak of all-out war proved valuable even if it had come sooner than he'd anticipated.

Palmera's population had grown swiftly in the interwar years thanks in no small part to whyrah from the Great Migration out of the American South[2], and at the outbreak of war numbered over three-and-a-half million souls, just over half that of Australia. As a proportion of her population, the forces she eventually sent into the various theatres of the Second World War were some of the most ambitious fielded by any nation. Nearly seven percent of the Union's able-bodied men and women would ultimately take part.

The expense of supporting and equipping troops had changed drastically from the days of the Great War, however, and Cayton gratefully acknowledged military assistance from President Garner as playing a significant role in making the scale of this effort--which otherwise would surely have outstripped the Union's financial resources--possible. The Union's shift from acting within a British Imperial sphere of influence to a global American hegemonic sphere of influence had well and truly begun, though this fact and its place in Garner's political calculus was subtle yet and would not be fully appreciated by all parties until after the war.

1. The Big Picture: In its basic outlines, this version of WW2 looks similar to our own. Japan, Italy and Germany still form an Axis of fascist spoiler powers who are motivated to take insane risks to secure resources. There is a fascist government in Spain, supported by the Axis. France falls with similar rapidity to the Blitzkrieg. Craxi's Italy performs in the field in similar fashion to Mussolini's.

Verkampfer Germany's hubris and initial sense of invincibility parallels that of Nazi Germany. So, too, its desperate drive to knock Russia out of the war and acquire its resources, as well as to gut the British Empire with a similarly large-scale Battle of Britain to what happened in our timeline. The Japanese, driving for resources in the Pacific, cannot avoid eventually providing the United States a pretext to disregard the isolationist faction on the home front and fully enter the war, and this happens around 1941 -- in this case with an attack on the Philippines rather than Hawaii.

There are some important differences, though in the vast sweep of things they are more differences of detail in reaching the ultimate outcome.

• Krieger's Germany isn't able to enlist a credible collaborationist government in central and southern France. There is still an attempt to set up a puppet state governed from Vichy, but the Legitimist cause fights on vigorously from France's overseas territories, Algeria in particular. France is therefore spared the disgrace of a figure like Petain. The struggle to pacify France is far more difficult and expensive, the Axis position in North Africa is correspondingly weaker, and the legacy of Algerian war heroes fighting alongside the Legitimists changes the postwar dynamics of France's empire.
• In balance to this Karl Krieger turns out to have better gifts for tactics and strategy than Adolf Hitler did, and to be able to resist the temptation to abandon workable tactics in favour of bravura personal gestures of revenge. The Battle of Britain, in which the Luftwaffe focused mostly on degrading the RAF's infrastructure and capabilities, is never diverted into the odd mischance of the London Blitz. Krieger's Germany eventually does manage to launch a land invasion of Britain, although the Royal Navy is quickly able to starve that invasion of resources and Allied forces unite to repel it. The war leaves indelible memories and images of Verkampfer forces on the streets of London, engaged in house-to-house fighting against a multinational force of Americans, Canadians, Brits and Palmeys.
• Likewise, events similar to Dunkirk or the invasion of Russia aren't hampered by inexplicable interventions from the top in Germany. Krieger is generally better at seizing the initiative and actually manages to capture Moscow, although much like Napoleon before him he isn't able to hold it long.
• Krieger does make a serious attempt to develop an atomic bomb, though his attacks on "Jewish science" and resulting bleed of intellectual talent hamper his efforts. Despite this, there is a close-run race for the bomb between America and Germany which the Allies only narrowly win.
• The Allied landing at the beaches of Normandy is part of a pincer action with the toppling of the comparatively weak collaborationist facade in the south of France by a coalition of French Legitimists and other Allied powers fighting northward through the Axis "underbelly" of Italy. Krieger again makes the smarter tactical choice here, falling back to fortify Germany and focus on the race to acquire the bomb.
• Germany's final collapse is delayed as a result of this; the German heartland is a tough nut to crack as it's heartened by a careful consolidation of forces and the hope of a forthcoming super-weapon that will lay low all its enemies. A decidedly mixed blessing because this makes them rather than Japan the first candidate for the dropping of the atomic bomb, especially because everyone involved has an eye toward the postwar situation and this is also meant as a caution to the rapidly-advancing Soviets (who under Narodin will eventually swamp the Germans much as the OTL Red Army did). Krieger dies in nuclear fire, and Frankfurt becomes the capital of Germany going forward.
• The Soviets decide to stop their advance after engulfing East Prussia, establishing a communist bloc state with its capital at Konigsberg.
• Japan, given considerable pause by the destruction wrought on Berlin, surrenders in advance of having the atomic bomb turned on them.

Basically, the Axis rises and falls in much the same overall way, but the war produces very different turning points and Japan in particular comes out of it much less ruined than it might otherwise have been. The postwar position of the non-Soviet Allies is somewhat stronger vis a vis their Red Army soon-to-be-opponents.

2. Palmera's War: The National Militia Naval Service was without doubt the most combat-ready arm of Palmera's military at the outbreak of general war. It had grown to support the mission, still not a fully declared war, in Ethiopia, providing protection for arms shipments into that country and refugee shipments out of it. That said, as the Battle of the Atlantic commenced, the NMNS was still modest. It consisted of about twenty major combat vessels, half of them corvettes and the remainder divided between frigates and destroyers, supported by an ardently patriotic merchant marine.

By 1942 it was heavily engaged against the U-Boat fleet of the Kriegsmarine. Its assets and personnel had trebled in scale and, though in popular imagination it was always David to the Goliath of its opponents, it well outstripped the Italian navy. It employed over 25,000 officers, men, and women who crewed hospital ships, ran logistics services and even provided staff and engineering support on combat vessels[3]. It even sported an aircraft carrier, the fleet's crowning glory and originally a Bogue-class escort carrier out of Seattle[4]. Called the NMS Empyreal Skylark, she was one of the most famous Palmey ships of the war due to her prominent role in support of the North African and Italian campaigns and the Allied counter-stroke to Operation Jormungand (the invasion of Britain) [5]. By the war's end, ships of the Naval Service had served in almost every major theatre of the war, though the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean were where they saw the most action.

The main National Militia Service coordinated closely with the National Militia Air Service in campaigns throughout the war, with impressive results. The presence of Palmeran troops freed up substantial British resources for defence of the home front and allowed the Palmeys to play a more prominent role than they might otherwise have done in confronting Craxi's regime. They effectively led the charge to liberate Italian East Africa, and the driving of Italian troops out of Ethiopia -- and the subsequent coronation of symbolic Ethiopian Resistance leader Ras Seyoum Mengesha as Emperor Yohannes VI, while a comparative sideshow to the other Allies, was a moment of profound national catharsis in Palmera, the subject of endless propaganda reels and documentaries[6]. (Even the expeditionary force's near-capture of Pietro Craxi himself in the subsequent Italian campaign ranked a close second[7].)

Palmeran forces had fought particularly prominently in North Africa, Italy, Britain and France by the time of the war's end. Times had changed: any opposition to the role of the Black Zion as a force in the European theatre was muted by urgent necessity, and there was much less question of Palmey troops having to prove their worthiness[8]. Palmera's contributions were sometimes recognized reluctantly by other Allies, but they were recognized, and France and Britain in particular would go on to faithfully maintain dedicated cemeteries for fallen Palmey soldiers who had aided their nations' causes.

Palmera's Secret Service played its own prominent role in the war, in particular generating legends of spy rings in the African theatre to help obscure Allied interception and decryption of Axis signals intelligence. They engaged and frequently out-duelled Craxi's Sezione Prelevamento or Section P[9], a canny infiltration unit that stole codes and ciphers from Allied embassies. They mobilized Seminole code-talkers to help safeguard actions in various theatres[10], and worked closely with Britain to counter the German Birkenfeld cipher, in the course of things developing their own early-generation supercomputer -- code-named OLORUN -- at their facility in Amherst Gardens[11].
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[1] This can effectively be considered an early start to an equivalent of the Lend-Lease program of OTL.

[2] The demographic shifts we've seen hinted at in earlier chapters, "The Hinge of History" and "A Dinner in Daltonville" in particular, are now very advanced and accelerating. Black Americans who have made whyrah within the current generation are more than a fifth of the electorate and have more than quadrupled their share of the populace since 1916.

[3] The confrontational stance between popular labour movements and anarchist-socialist feminism and the government has, for the time being, receded amid the general anti-Vultist fervour of the Thirties and Forties. The Famous Five feminist leaders we met in "The Hinge of History" have not stopped their work but have receded from the public eye in favour of the Prime Minister's politically active and vocal wife, Aurinda Cayton, who has become a general inspiration to the nation's women and has advocated tirelessly for the Allied Mothers of the Nation and the place of women in the war effort.

One result of her advocacy and that of the AMN is the establishment of the National Militia Women's Naval Service, which served in a wider set of roles than perhaps any other service of its kind among the Western allies, partly motivated by Palmera's need to punch above her weight. It's a branch of a more general National Militia Women's Service which, while still segregated from the main service and largely excluded from combat roles, is nevertheless hugely important and highly publicized as a part of the war effort.

[4] American shipyards play a significant role in designing and building ships for multiple Allied navies thanks to this timeline's equivalent of the NAME program. The IRL Bogue-class escort carrier saw action in the Royal Navy through Lend-Lease, and several of them are in service with the British in this timeline as well.

[5] The Skylark was damaged by U-Boat action late in the war and deemed irreparable when towed to a friendly port; at the end of hostilities she found her way home and became a museum ship. Her name would eventually be attached to the hero ship of a famous science fiction show of the Sixties, as we'll see.

[6] Yohannes V gave his blessing for Ras Seyoum Mengesha's accession to the throne from his deathbed in Palmera in 1941, though he would not live to see the liberation of his country. In point of fact Yohannes VI would prove a disastrous choice to sit that particular throne, but it would not become clear until years afterwards.

[7] Palmey troops made a point of charging into Italy as fast as Allied coordinated strategy would allow in search of Craxi himself, the ur-villain of Vultism for them despite Krieger's far more menacing potential power. Craxi, naturally, committed suicide rather than face the prospect of captivity at the hands of the troops of the "upstart Nero" he'd once disparaged.

[8] This is not to say that racism didn't rear its ugly head from time to time. Tensions with fellow-"allies" sometimes brimmed close to violence. Palmey commanders struggled to be adequately heard at Allied command councils, and often had to resort to creating their own facts on the ground, giving them something of a maverick reputation and leading to their being sidelined in the final actions of the war against Germany proper. There were minor local hysterias in both Britain and France at the first landings of Palmey troops in either country, and Palmey prisoners of war received the same harsh treatment by adversaries that their predecessors in the Great War had done, although more than one commander saw an upside of this in the extreme motivation their troops had to win.

[9] Same name as a similar unit that worked for Mussolini IOTL.

[10] Navajo code talkers will still be the most famous example of the phenomenon in this timeline as they are in ours, but Palmera has a patriotic and vital ethnic Seminole minority to draw from for this purpose, in similar fashion to famous Seminole code talker Edmond Harjo.

[11] OLORUN is a parallel to Colossus in Britain, and the Birkenfeld cipher is TTL's analogue of the Lorenz cipher. Amherst Gardens is Palmera's analogue of Bletchley Park.

 

[Shevek23]

...

• Krieger does make a serious attempt to develop an atomic bomb, though his attacks on "Jewish science" and resulting bleed of intellectual talent hamper his efforts. Despite this, there is a close-run race for the bomb between America and Germany which the Allies only narrowly win.

I'm pretty skeptical this is reasonably possible. The hard part of making the first A-bomb is to accumulate the weapons grade fissionables, either U-235 by laborious isotope separation from the mostly U-238 of natural uranium ores, or conversely generation of plutonium from natural uranium (it might be possible from thorium maybe, ask an expert, but I think if this were a possible approach, or thorium could yield U-235 or some third candidate high fission rate isotope, we'd have tried that too in MP OTL. No one does this to my knowledge so provisionally scratch out thorium!) which is then much more easily separated chemically from the different-element parent matrix. But it is trickier to get plutonium to fission; only the implosion design works at all, and that was technically risky to bet on, though more efficient than the gun design used at Hiroshima, which works, quite inefficiently, with U-235. Pursuing both elements and by several parallel diverse strategies to separate out U-235, at great cost the US effort managed to produce suitable supplies of both pretty much neck and neck, I gather. Obviously some time traveller giving someone the benefit of hindsight can raise the cost effectiveness and speed of the operation by setting them on the best single track from the get go. Even then, it simply take a lot of time to pursue either strategy, and accelerating rate of accumulation by duplicating facilities in parallel is obviously very costly, far more so when you don't know in advance which track to concentrate on. With a "Waste Anything But Time" attitude similar to Apollo's, the very deep pockets and vast territory of the USA including large wastelands which nevertheless had decent infrastructure, railroads running through and so forth to build on could afford to just pile on the financial and precious resource "coal" to put it on overdrive in the desperate race against what OTL turned out to be a largely imaginary rival.

Krieger's Vultist Germany is clearly pretty close a parallel to the OTL Third Reich and suffers from the same liabilities, more or less. Apparently they couldn't stay off the drug of anti-Semitism any more than Hitler could--I may have overlooked it, but is there a Shoah much as OTL too? Even without that excess, an Austrian Jewess like Lise Meitner is not going to be trusted by nor trust Krieger, and lots of other ATL Jews will have emigrated rather than risk life under his thumb, though here apparently those crossing the Atlantic mostly wind up in Palmera! I suppose the individuals with doctorates, not all Jewish either, might be an exception and found in the USA much as OTL, but then again the critical mass of fellow Jews in larger numbers in Palmera might entice more of them to stop in the Commonwealth protectorate and stay there. So as OTL, although the German scientists and engineers are quite good, Krieger has slimmer pickings than if the regime did not muddy the waters of Germany's university prestige, while Britain, the Commonwealth generally and especially Palmera, and the USA get the benefit of the emigration and refugees. As OTL check.

Vultist Germany is no doubt as effectively isolated from critical materials on the world market as the Reich was OTL, at first mainly for lack of goods able to find export markets and later from being blockaded and surrounded, don't see any loopholes that benefit him here. In fact the failure to pacify southern France as completely as OTL may mean serious interference with supplies such as tungsten derived from Spain and Portugal, or any back door access to global markets that might have filtered through RN contraband blockades to these nations. I gather South France is still conquered territory on paper, and maybe this means most shipments by rail from Iberia get through to more securely held territory, but they are going to suffer some extra attrition I think!

As far as uranium itself goes, of course with the fall of Czechoslovakia, the main European source known has fallen into their hands. OTL they still had trouble obtaining heavy water, perhaps the successful OTL operation denying them that from Norway fails here and this helps explain better German success.

In order to have a credible bomb project, you need the facilities which are large, extensive, expensive and liable to be identified by any foe working on something similar from aerial photographs if not from human intelligence on the ground. Just as they targeted Peenemunde OTL, I daresay the Western allies will seek to bomb out these facilities, and camouflaging them would be tough, not to mention being betrayed by human sources as well. Krieger can't return the favor to the Western allies except by unlikely success of some covert commando act of sabotage--and the OTL MP used duplicated facilities against this very kind of mishap.

I can see only one way Krieger's bomb project can possibly be running neck and neck with the Americans (I presume the effort winds up being centered in the USA, though more on perhaps better British participation below) and that is if
1) by great good fortune (for German glory if not success) they take a gamble on choosing one possible approach and focus on it come what may, not knowing except perhaps by intelligence on the Western project if they made a mistake and chose the wrong path. This allows limited resources to go farther obviously, and can only be justified mainly by them winning the lottery. Not entirely so--these are German scientists, and it is possible that very meticulous analysis enables them to foresee reasons which turn out to be sound why one approach is the way to go. This works best with
2) a lot of extra time. It requires a bit of another Hail Mary Pass bit of good fortune for them in various key scientific discoveries happening some years earlier. If Krieger can get the ball rolling in say 1936 where OTL the USA started in 1940, the extra time can offset some of the inherent limits of Germany to compete with the prodigal capacity of the USA. In their perception Americans have it easy, but they are working smarter and with tight focus.

Here is where Krieger being a different guy than Hitler can really matter. Given that the basic science is accelerated (and it might well be so only in Germany, with the rest of the world having to separately stumble on the same stuff no later than OTL but outside German influence) I figure Krieger is more Saturnine versus Hitler's more Mercurial nature. And he is more patient with understanding serious technical stuff, less impulsively romantic. He won't blow as much resources on every half-baked wunderwaffen scheme that crosses his desk, but will look seriously at it and have sober, smart experts to back his hunches as well, and when the Bomb proposal comes along, as OTL he will hear people tell him as they told Hitler, "but my Leader, we are bound to win the war long before these wonder bombs can be made; let's deal with it after we have won!" Unlike Hitler, Krieger is more of an Eeyore and considers the possibility he might need these bombs to win this war after all, and orders a large (but not so large it can't be kept tightly secret) effort be launched immediately. When the Germans eventually learn how much later, by nearly half a decade perhaps, the Yankees get started they will laugh, even learning the British got going a bit earlier, but with much slimmer resources--even realizing the Allies will combine forces (maybe with some extra French exile help too) they still will feel quite pleased to be so far ahead of the game. Hopefully Anglo-American counterintelligence, perhaps with the Russians helping in this matter (from outside the Western allied operations of course, where they are not welcome at all) can so muddy the waters that it is a long time before the Germans learn what leaps and bounds American resources could enable and perhaps right to the day Berlin is bombed assume they have the lead still.

Now on the matter of Anglo-American cooperation--OTL Churchill wrapped up Tube Alloys in a nice ribbon and gave it to Uncle Sam, who reciprocated by squeezing visiting British boffins like so many oranges and sending them home with pulp. Churchill trusted that postwar his gentleman's agreement with FDR would reward Britain with the inside secrets both nations had worked toward, only to find that 1) Truman claimed to know nothing of the deal and 2) for various reasons rifts were forming and Congress ultimately made it a crime to share the secrets with anyone.

But in this ATL, quite a few people whom the US project would like to recruit will be living more or less happily down in Palmera--those that is whom Tube Alloys had not previously drawn into to the effort in Britain already--Tube Alloys should be a somewhat bigger thing. In fact, in addition to Canada which was envisioned as the place where the project would move to as its scale outgrew available locations in Britain itself, the Empire has at its disposal the equally or nearly so well developed dominion of--Palmera. Where a lot of the foreign born boffins who already are largely up to speed have fled and settled, as protected wards of the Crown down in the tropics where their kin also live, with bittersweet pleasures of a congenial expatriate community. And I do not doubt the self-improving Palmeys include some aggressive efforts to put Palmera on the map in terms of world class scientific institutes, and have taken advantage of the wretched refuse of foreign shores they have welcomed to jump start such an institute or two, or simply adopted them to one they had long before, and some lucky Palmeys with an aptitude for math and physics and chemistry and engineering overlooked and overshadowed in OtL Jim Crow conditions have been taken on as students and are shining as they could have in a better America OTL. I am not saying Palmera would tend to pull ahead of Cambridge and Oxford and Edinburgh naturally, but perhaps in the context of Tube Alloys, instead of starting in Britain or starting up something new in Canada, instead Spencer sends the TA team parallel to OTL's down to Palmera from the start, for reasons of security. And so when the notion arises to join forces with Uncle Sam, most of Britain's offering is right there across the border. Including a bunch of people who OTL were already in the USA in 1940-41, but here are happily settled in Palmera and already working on the project.

I think in these circumstances, the UK is in a stronger negotiating position than OTL. As OTL, the Commonwealth will pass the baton on to the Americans, and focus on other things...but the people involved in TA will physically go to Los Alamos and other sites (the Palmeys among them being somewhat problematic in many US locations, the Palmera sites will be included in the nominally American network, and thus intelligence and high level command will necessarily be bi-national, with HQ somewhere on the Palmera side of the border, despite the Americans dominating overall. Dominating, but not able to exclude Britain and with Britain, Palmera and other Commonwealth governments, as partners. Thanks to Palmera, Britain will share the bomb secrets post war--and so will a handful of officials aside from the many Palmeys directly involved in Palmera's government. I do not suggest that Palmera will ever afford to own any bombs, but there will be Palmeys involved in both the USA and Britain's postwar establishments!

I have similar thoughts about rockets, but I suppose we can wait for postwar discussion on that.

...2. Palmera's War: The National Militia Naval Service was without doubt the most combat-ready arm of Palmera's military at the outbreak of general war. ...By 1942 it was heavily engaged against the U-Boat fleet of the Kriegsmarine. Its assets and personnel had trebled in scale and, though in popular imagination it was always David to the Goliath of its opponents, it well outstripped the Italian navy. It employed over 25,000 officers, men, and women who crewed hospital ships, ran logistics services and even provided staff and engineering support on combat vessels[3]. ...

I think the Palmey navy or conceivably air division would be lend-leased some Blimp squadrons too. It is possible to butterfly away the USA's OTL airship development. But with the degree of parallelism you have emphasized I do think the LTA boys in the USN as well as their overlooked counterparts in the Army (not wanted or included in the OTL separating off USAAF) would work as OTL, recruit German airship experts as OTL, develop the more advanced blimp type familiar today, and the Navy would employ them as very effective coastal scouts looking for and thus heavily deterring U-boat activity. With Palmera in the war from the same day the UK is, the Palmeys would have a couple years jump on the OTL USN of experience in patrolling mid Atlantic semitropical waters, which should help impede an ATL version of the unfortunate OTL "Second Happy Time" for the U-boat raiders, who roamed around the US coast gleefully sinking American coastwise tonnage, because OTL the USN was too interested in grand naval battle glory to be bothered with setting up serious convoy operations or otherwise worrying about anything so mundane as defending merchant ships. The USN was very slow to learn the lesson of taking that seriously. The blimp fleet that they ordered, about 200 small airships all told, was a major part of their eventual effectiveness.

I suggest that starting from the get go in 1939, the Palmeys would be grateful to procure a squadron or so of "K ship" types from the ATL analog of Goodyear, and that firm would be most pleased to have an active at war customer; with Garner proving pro-Alliance Palmera could have as many blimps as they could buy, and with them expert advice in setting up coastal bases for them too. Eventually they would not be limited by funds either as Garner cheerfully throws money at Palmera to buy as much products of American factories as they like. The art of using these airships in the WWII context would be more advanced, I daresay they would leapfrog to other Caribbean and Atlantic island British bases, and perhaps from Guyana even make the Atlantic crossing to Gambia or someplace like that--indeed all of West Africa is allied. From there, Goodyear blimp airships could wind up serving in the Med much earlier than OTL (they did do service there OTL, but arriving earlier might do a lot more).

There is plenty of helium for all this in the US heartland. In a pinch though Goodyear models could also be flown with hydrogen! They would then be far more vulnerable of course, but overall not tremendously more at risk than in general.

Postwar the Americans might not be so free with their helium. But I do know that meanwhile it has been later discovered in Algerian natural gas as well. A more fraternal relationship between French and Algerians is something I found heartwarming, and it might pay off well in terms of French access to Algerian resources!

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

When Civil War wracked America, it was the Juckers' turn to harry the Slavers' Pale. Unofficial parties of raiders and freebooters struck deep into Georgia and Alabama in nuisance slave rescues that, while small, were reputed to drive the Confederate leadership near to apoplexy and might have led to a direct retaliation had not fighting the Yankees been far more pressing. The Crown remained officially neutral and condemned the actions, but again did not exert any great effort in stopping or punishing them.

This overlooks a gigantic effect that Palmera would have on the Civil War: it would be a wide-open conduit for trade between the CSA and the outside world, which the USA could not choke off.

OTL, the Union had a problem with goods destined for the CSA being shipped to Matamoros, the port on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. The US Supreme Court ruled that the US blockade could not apply to Matamoros, even if the goods were clearly intended for re-shipment to the CSA.

This had limited effect on the war, because any goods shipped to Matamoros had to be hauled long distances overland to reach the important parts of the CSA, and there was no railroad anywhere that part of Texas. ITTL, Palmera is adjacent to the heartland of the CSA, and there would be rail and river lines of communication. It would be trivial for traders to meet in Palmera to swap Confederate cotton for British rifles and locomotives.

The Juckers and other anti-slavery men in Palmera might find it distasteful to enable CSA trade. But even strong principles may crumble in the face of enormous profits. Historian Bruce Catton noted that salt sold for 50 times as much in Confederate territory as in Union-occupied New Orleans, while cotton sold for six times as much in New Orleans as in CSA territory. Palmeran brokers' profits would be comparable.

 

[CeeJay]

@Shevek23 Thanks for those remarks, especially developing the possible circumstances of Krieger's race for the bomb in much more detail. I think the possible scenario with Krieger pursuing the bomb from much earlier would probably make the most sense. I'll consider those details and solidify that scenario a bit going forward, that's very useful.

(Yes, unfortunately there is a Shoah in this timeline as well. This aspect of Krieger's character is not different from Hitler's.)

EDIT: Also... airships! Yes, I've definitely got to get some airships in. Palmera has some early history with the "aerostat" that I believe I haven't even touched on, so it'll be fun to get into that.

@Anarch King of Dipsodes An intriguing idea. I've written up a few responses to it as my thinking evolves, so this reply is much edited from the first.

Running such a trade in the open would in essence involve the Crown signing off on flouting the Union blockade, which was not going to happen.

However, it's a fair bet that the blockade runners operating out of the Caribbean would find many like-minded profiteers in Palmera, especially in the north. So there would probably be a lively set of smugglers' operations in business for at least some of the war, and in fact so long as such a route was open it would be vastly preferred to otherwise "running" the blockade. There should probably be a specific and separate name for such operators.

Of course, in all probability such operations would be aggressively targeted by the Juckers. I can imagine not a few political figures making their early names in just this way. Thanks for bringing that idea to mind.

 

[generalurist]

I haven't read everything yet, but this is an absolutely unique and spectacular timeline!

The Sixty-Minute War is between fifteen and twenty-two minutes off-pace from our timeline's shortest recorded war, the Anglo-Zanzibar War.

Did the Anglo-Zanzibar war not happen here? If not, what is the status of Zanzibar?

 

[Unknown]

How many Palmerans died in TTL's *World War II?

 

[CeeJay]

@generalurist Glad you're enjoying it!

In broad outline I expect the history of the Swahili Coast and Zanzibar to be similar to OTL, save where Palmera's activities specifically impact them. I haven't gone into much detail as to Zanzibar's fate but it probably winds up as a British Protectorate on a similar timeline and there's likely to be some gunboat diplomacy involved, whether or not there's anything quite as spectacular as the Anglo-Zanzibar War our history knows.

 

[CeeJay]

How many Palmerans died in TTL's *World War II?

Just over a quarter million would have served. Of those 11,000 would be killed in action and another 12,000 wounded.

 

[CeeJay]

Additional for @Anarch King of Dipsodes -- just in case you happen to miss the addition in the original piece, here's how I'm developing the idea of pro-Confederates and war profiteers smuggling goods to the CSA through Utina.

When Civil War wracked America, it was the Juckers' turn to harry the Slavers' Pale. Unofficial parties of raiders and freebooters struck deep into Georgia and Alabama in nuisance slave rescues that, while small, were reputed to drive the Confederate leadership near to apoplexy and might have led to a direct retaliation had not fighting the Yankees been far more pressing. The Crown remained officially neutral and condemned the actions, but again did not exert any great effort in stopping or punishing them.

Of much greater significance to the war were smugglers' operations that sprung up in Utina in response to the Confederacy's urgent need for goods, even commodities as basic as salt. Palmera presented a large opportunity for less scrupulous operators, or those actively sympathetic to the cause of the Slavers' Pale, to profit from this demand. The Union blockaded Confederate ports but could not blockade Daltonville, which became a major centre for an illicit trade whose tendrils swiftly spread across the north.

These smugglers were the first individuals to wear the name of wildcatter, owing to the riskiness of their ventures and predating the term's application to oil wells by a solid decade. Not a few of them were women, and were also called hoop-skirters or hoop snakes after their practice of hiding goods and money under their crinoline skirts. These operations attracted directed attention from the Active Militia in concert with various Jucker vigilante groups, and led to ever-escalating strings of arrests and seizures of property**** until the "wildcatter trails" to the CSA out of Daltonville were all but completely shut down by 1863. The alternately famous and infamous Overton Security Agency was founded and achieved its first fame in anti-wildcatter operations.

(**** These property seizures led not a few of the wildcatters to denounce the campaign against them as being more akin to greed-motivated banditry than enforcement of the law. They would be among the major grievances behind the Third Border War.)

The era of the televised Western is coming up... or in Palmeran terms the "northern." So I think I'll have opportunities to dig into that a little further as we progress.

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

@Shevek23

@Anarch King of Dipsodes An intriguing idea. I've written up a few responses to it as my thinking evolves, so this reply is much edited from the first.

Running such a trade in the open would in essence involve the Crown signing off on flouting the Union blockade, which was not going to happen.

However, it's a fair bet that the blockade runners operating out of the Caribbean would find many like-minded profiteers in Palmera, especially in the north. So there would probably be a lively set of smugglers' operations in business for at least some of the war, and in fact so long as such a route was open it would be vastly preferred to otherwise "running" the blockade. There should probably be a specific and separate name for such operators.

Of course, in all probability such operations would be aggressively targeted by the Juckers. I can imagine not a few political figures making their early names in just this way. Thanks for bringing that idea to mind.

I very much doubt that there would be any British restriction on CSA-Palmera trade. OTL, Nassau in the Bahamas became a boom town, as the base of operations for blockade runners. AFAIK, the British authorities never did anything to hamper the blockade runners.

Beyond that - British shipyards built ships designed for blockade running - fast, low, and painted in camouflage colors. The British government did nothing about it. The CSA contracted with a British shipyard for two ironclad warships (the "Laird rams"); the British government allowed construction to go forward until they were almost finished, and finally seized them under US pressure in mid-1863.

The simple fact is that Palmera, as a neutral territory bordering the CSA, makes the blockade a dead letter, unless the British authorities in Palmera choose to join the blockade officially. Otherwise, there is absolutely no legal basis for preventing such trade.

And there are numerous reasons why Britain would not take any such position. In the first place, it would amount to taking sides in the war. Second, the trade would be of great benefit to Britain, by supplying British textile mills with cotton and providing a market for British goods, especially arms. And third, Palmerans would make huge amounts of money off it and protest vehemently if prevented.

 

[CeeJay]

And there are numerous reasons why Britain would not take any such position. In the first place, it would amount to taking sides in the war.

Openly allowing a territory the size of Palmera to supply the CSA would amount to taking sides in the war.

Naturally there were ambivalent feelings about the war in Britain IOTL, and ITTL too, and there's no doubt that not much effort was expended against blockade runner activity. But the Royal Navy wasn't building blockade runners. It was all private activity, and more importantly the blockade runners were not having war-changing effects and were thus not a source of serious tension. A little low-level backdoor war profiteering was one thing. Turning Palmera into a CSA supply hub would be something else entirely; if that kind of thing was really worth it to Britain, the efforts of King Cotton diplomacy IOTL to secure British recognition and intervention would have worked.

It would also amount to deliberately setting one of their own territories on fire. A majority of Palmera's population at that stage wasn't just anti-slavery in some theoretical sense, but hailed from backgrounds that would have reason to view slavery as a personal, existential threat. It is simply not plausible that they would take lying down the proposition that their country--which by now they are coming to see as their country--was being used to prop up an expansionist slave power. That would effectively be risking Haiti all over again.

Matamoros of course had none of these issues, since it was effectively part of the CSA.

So, no, my thinking is that it's not going to happen. However, it's indeed worth remembering that this would be a particularly awkward test of what "British neutrality" means in circumstances unlike anything faced during the actual Civil War. The assumption I'm running with is that this phrase in the Declaration of Neutrality -- which will read much the same ITTL -- is interpreted as making violation of the blockade or supplying the CSA illegal:

"And we do hereby strictly charge and command all our loving subjects to observe a strict neutrality in and during the aforesaid hostilities, and to abstain from violating or contravening either the laws and statutes of the realm in this behalf, or the law of nations in relation thereto, as they will answer to the contrary at their peril."

And that in Palmera in particular it will have to be actually enforced, thereby limiting such activity to smuggling. I'm sure alternate-history buffs in the timeline will theorise a great deal about what might have happened otherwise, though.

(Addendum: if it makes you feel any better, we do have a kind of test case for this IOTL. One British shipyard did out-and-out violate the Declaration of Neutrality, whence came the CSS Alabama. That affair alone could have very easily become a much costlier embarrassment to Britain than it was. So, you'd want to basically multiply the issues surrounding that by several orders of magnitude in considering the costs of using Palmera as an alterante Matamoros.)

 

[CeeJay]

Another problem does occur to me, though. In this timeline, the French attempt to install a Second Mexican Empire has not happened. The disruptions relating to that effort turn out to have arguably been part of what made the whole Matamoros thing possible, which was something I wasn't thinking about when I "butterflied" that development basically in order to have Prince Maximillian around for the beginning of the Great War. I may need to revisit Mexico's alternate history in this setting at some point and work out what impacts that might really have had.

 

[Shevek23]

@CeeJay , glad to see you reminding people that Palmera is sociologically and pragmatcally speaking a very different proposition from places like Bermuda OTL. The majority of Palmeys have a deep stake in a Union victory. Indeed early in the war, they are in a sense checked and overruled by the British elite tendency to regard the secession as an opportunity to take upstart Cousin Jonathan down a few notches--but this was an upper class point of view and even there abivalence about favoring a lot of outspoken slavers gave the whole thing a bit of a sour taste. Lots of ink was spilled in such journals as The Economist trying to buck up robust self-interested Britons against such sentiment, on the grounds that the Union was absolutely morally just as bad, but from the beginning lower class Britons already thought differently, at least, a great many of them did. War on the USA openly would be a political hot potato of the first magnitude even if it actually went quite well militarily speaking. So British neutrality was as much a matter of domestic political expedience as proper principle. The Palmey majority is the opposition of the British lower classes writ large and squared--not all of them of course, some, the "white" quasi-Dixie types, would be quite keen to get a share of those smuggling profits, not just for the money itself but to assert themselves, and the colonial government is not yet legally responsible to the of-color majority and probably more of the anti-Yankee for fun and profit mentality as well. But provided one refrains from poking dirty sticks in their eyes the majority of Palmeys are good subjects and agitating them is clearly problematic. Early in the war, when Lincoln is still ordering slaves be returned to their masters and so forth, the situation is pretty unsettled, and I do suppose a certain amount of profitable smuggling can happen as long as HM's governmental agents have plausible deniability and can point to a few apprehensions to show willing.

Once Lincoln radicalizes though, Palmera will seal right up. The right wing case for favoring the secessionists will evaporate in the face of the moralism of the Union finally coming out against slavery, and the Palmey majority will be more than happy to assist the Union cause as the government shifts to a more proper neutrality--indeed the Palmerian colonial regime, out of expediency, might tend to take neutrality as close to outright cooperation with the Union as it can. For instance if the OTL Union Navy policy of seizing control of the Gulf Coast ports early on is somewhat diverted by the need to skirt around Palmeran shores, which turns the Apalachicola River mouth border with Alabama into a specially hot zone of battle, I daresay Union sailors and marines who stray too far east will be given a fair opportunity to return to the border and cross it again rather than be interned; if HMG firmly insists on the proprieties of neutrality, such strays will get help from common folk that Confederate soldiers will find are firing on them, maybe even facing highly organized militias to pick off or capture such Rebel strays. The Yankees will surely not be allowed to freely make port or linger on Palmey shores, but if they can get a foothold with their backs to the river, they need not fear attacks circling around to them from that direction. Surely they will not be permitted as bodies of troops to strike at Confederate borders either. They cannot strike at the southern Georgia border through Palmera for instance. But if they drive north to reach Georgia's western border and then strike eastward along the national frontier but north of it, again they have a safe right flank as long as they keep stumbling over it to a minimum--no Rebs will allowed the same leeway for offsides staggering on their left flank! Union armies driven south in retreat into Palmera might be formally interned but will be pretty safe as regards being protected from fire and having their wounded tended to and being held in comfortable conditions, and I think will be able to be quietly released back into the ranks later in the war. Confederate ones--at best will be safely interned if they surrender right off; they will be under heavier fire and more grudging if interned and never released. Indeed maybe HMG will come around to Lincoln's contention the Confederacy is not a real thing and the Union armies are engaged in suppressing armed criminal insurrection, and hand over interned Confederates to Union custody as traitors--probably with a gentleman's agreement the Union will keep that they will not actually be executed as such, but taking them off British hands and not letting them back into the fray.

Meanwhile, any Union forces on the Palmey border can I think rely on being allowed to trade across it for hard money, and the Union has pretty sound money. They can't land US Army supplies in a Panhandle port and have it shipped across to the border to support units fighting there--but private traders, perhaps even flying the US flag, can land at those ports, sell a bunch of supplies to local teamsters and point out there is a good market for them on the northwest border, something these Palmey traders need not be told twice!
----
I think keeping Maximillian out of the hemisphere is just plain good. Why should not Juarez be permitted to show what he might have done for Mexico without that terrible drain and distraction?

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

Openly allowing a territory the size of Palmera to supply the CSA would amount to taking sides in the war.

No, it's entirely passive.

Naturally there were ambivalent feelings about the war in Britain IOTL, and ITTL too, and there's no doubt that not much effort was expended against blockade runner activity.

That is, none whatever.

But the Royal Navy wasn't building blockade runners. It was all private activity...

As would be trade between Palmera and the CSA.

Turning Palmera into a CSA supply hub would be something else entirely...

Britain isn't turning anything into anything. Trade through Palmera is private and spontaneous.

if that kind of thing was really worth it to Britain, the efforts of King Cotton diplomacy IOTL to secure British recognition and intervention would have worked.

??? You're arguing that not ordering Palmera to enforce the Union blockade is equivalent to sending ships and troops to attack Union forces (intervention).

It would also amount to deliberately setting one of their own territories on fire. A majority of Palmera's population at that stage wasn't just anti-slavery in some theoretical sense, but hailed from backgrounds that would have reason to view slavery as a personal, existential threat. It is simply not plausible that they would take lying down the proposition that their country--which by now they are coming to see as their country--was being used to prop up an expansionist slave power. That would effectively be risking Haiti all over again.

Palmera has been adjacent to the heartland of US slavery for decades. They've learned to live with that. Trade with the adjacent South would be an old story.

Matamoros ... was effectively part of the CSA.

Legally, Matamoros was part of Mexico, and was never occupied by CSA troops, so I have no idea what you mean by this.

"And we do hereby strictly charge and command all our loving subjects to observe a strict neutrality in and during the aforesaid hostilities, and to abstain from violating or contravening either the laws and statutes of the realm in this behalf, or the law of nations in relation thereto, as they will answer to the contrary at their peril."

"Neutrality" means "not taking up arms for either side". It does not mean obeying a blockade or embargo proclaimed by one side.

(Addendum: if it makes you feel any better, we do have a kind of test case for this IOTL. One British shipyard did out-and-out violate the Declaration of Neutrality, whence came the CSS Alabama. That affair alone could have very easily become a much costlier embarrassment to Britain than it was. So, you'd want to basically multiply the issues surrounding that by several orders of magnitude in considering the costs of using Palmera as an alterante Matamoros.)

Wiki sez British neutrality law was not violated, because Alabama was not armed or commissioned till after leaving Liverpool.

The nearest we have to a test case is that during WW I and WW II, Britain asserted the power to control imports by neutral countries which bordered the Central Powers or Axis, and bar passage of goods intended for their adversaries by stopping and inspecting all ships entering or leaving European waters. This was a dubious proposition under "the law of nations", but Britain made it stick - because Britain had the largest navy in the world and was far more powerful than any of the affected neutrals.

ITTL, the US would be attempting to impose its blockade on a British colony.