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- Thread starter Napoleon53
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BigBlueBox
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I was half expecting Rudolph Hess getting accused of plotting with the Czechs to have Hitler asassinated so that he could take over and end the demands for the Sudetenland.
I have to disagree. IMO, if it became known, it would blow his chance.
That said, I don't think the odds of him being "outed" were high. "Gotcha" journalism wasn't typical then, as it is now. Journos would routinely keep the secret for him then--but that was after he became PotUS; before, IDK. Also, FDR was pretty good at keeping it quiet; AIUI, it didn't become known until after the election.
Could you do it by having an avowed enemy of FDR find out? (I'm thinking of the Chicago paper, name I can't recall...
Trib?) Or would that (still) violate the "covenant of silence" that was typical, then?As for your analysis of the prospect of authoritarian victory, it was interesting & IMO completely accurate. I wouldn't expect a GOP connivance to succeed in producing the "man on horeseback", & I don't see the radicals (of any stripe) being organized enough.
Could FDR be bumped? Yes. Would that lead to a GOP victory? Not unless Hell froze over...
I have to disagree. IMO, if it became known, it would blow his chance.
That said, I don't think the odds of him being "outed" were high. "Gotcha" journalism wasn't typical then, as it is now. Journos would routinely keep the secret for him then--but that was after he became PotUS; before, IDK. Also, FDR was pretty good at keeping it quiet; AIUI, it didn't become known until after the election.
Could you do it by having an avowed enemy of FDR find out? (I'm thinking of the Chicago paper, name I can't recall...
As for your analysis of the prospect of authoritarian victory, it was interesting & IMO completely accurate. I wouldn't expect a GOP connivance to succeed in producing the "man on horeseback", & I don't see the radicals (of any stripe) being organized enough.
Could FDR be bumped? Yes. Would that lead to a GOP victory? Not unless Hell froze over...
Okay, that is your opinion that the mere knowledge of disability would torpedo hm. Would you care to unpack that a bit, to run the scenario in which people go from "OMG! The Governor of New York can't walk!" to "OMG! He must be removed from office immediately, no matter what his policies are and no matter how clever he is or how good a speaker! We can't have a cripple running the government!" Just why are what turned out to be a landslide of voters going to be forced to drop his candidacy and vote for someone else in the Democratic primary (never mind that without FDR the rest of the spectrum is the same old losers who lost all through the Twenties) or if he gets the Dem nomination, vote for the Republican or some third party?
I agree that there was not as much respect then for the idea that a person with disabilities can perform, but if the person has in fact already performed, why not accept them and back them?
You seem to be thinking it would work to torpedo Roosevelt by mere exposure of his paralysis. But then some other Democrat--who?--gets the nomination and wins. OK, who would that be? Would they pretty much take FDR's place ideologically? If so the Liberty League wants them just as gone as FDR. (They might not realize this Demo is going radical over time and in their complacency miss their moment to be sure--but that is as OTL I think). Is the Democrat more conservative? If so, why should people have hope in them? That seems to pave the way for an extralegal civil war between radical leftists and the Liberty League.
I think anyone who wants to claim the public was kept ignorant of FDR's disabilities because if the "secret" got out his supporters would feel forced to abandon him ought to lay out how exactly that works, in terms of voters and their interests and their sympathies.I think that is like saying people did not know Liberace was gay just because no one said he was on live television in prime time. Indeed there were people who didn't really understand the idea of "gay," just as most people tend to shy away from thinking about disability if they can avoid it. But for the large number of people who did I don't think Liberace fooled anyone, nor was he trying to. Rather the "silence" of the media on his personal sexual preferences (which was not unbroken by any means; certain gossip tabloids did out him insofar as printable language of the 40's and 50's allowed) related to concepts of public decency--there were all sorts of topics you just don't discuss, not because their existence is top secret, but because people "don't want to talk about those things." I think FDR's disabilities fell into that category, and therefore that anyone who is so crass and crude as to bring it up in print would wind up being the one people shunned in resentment. There would be no giant banners touting FDR as a token hero of the disabled--but there would be giant banners totally ignoring the obvious known unfortunate facts and instead touting him as a champion, and a bunch of extra verbiage about him being for the forgotten.
I suppose he would lose some support, but also gain some he didn't have OTL.
I must say that this interesting, but dystopian TL remind me some about Philip Roth's novel, but with a better development and of course a better (in my opinion) 'built world'... However the scientific advance in general and in specific the US universities will would lack of the great contribution made both to science and American technological leadership and to their war effort in OTL by the scientists who found a refuge in the US of the racial policies of the Axis powers.
Given that in TTL this refuge wouldn't exist, it is to be assumed that this role could be fulfilled by Great Britain and / or France?
I also think it is likely that given the prevailing dictatorial regime in the US and its warm relations and political affinities with the Nazi regime of Germany that the reverse of OTL can happen, that in addition to the artists, a 'wave' of American scientists would seek or will would have sought refuge in Canada and / or Great Britain.
Given that in TTL this refuge wouldn't exist, it is to be assumed that this role could be fulfilled by Great Britain and / or France?
I also think it is likely that given the prevailing dictatorial regime in the US and its warm relations and political affinities with the Nazi regime of Germany that the reverse of OTL can happen, that in addition to the artists, a 'wave' of American scientists would seek or will would have sought refuge in Canada and / or Great Britain.
I'm working off the belief of others better informed than me. FDR, healthy, was fine; the "cripple", no. And keeping it hidden would do as much to sink him as the polio: I don't think the public would like (or accept) the deceit, however well-intentioned.
Am I wrong? Maybe. IDK how we'd know. Except, even today, I don't think acceptance has (quite) reached the level he could get elected...& we're a lot more accepting today.
I really have no idea who else might get the job. I'll leave that for the political junkies.
Given the climate, I think you'd have to have someone ideologically very close to FDR; you might well get away with someone further left. Would he be socially more radical, more willing to break with Southern Democrats who support segregation? Maybe... Does that gain him allies among centrist Republicans? Maybe. Does it piss off the Klan? I certainly hope so.
Too risky. The Party knows Hess is pretty loyal to Hitler. Accusing him of that makes them suspicious. Which is bad.
How are Turkey and Persia (Iran) taking these developments? I know that Persia was pro-Axis OTL, while Turkey was neutral.
Persia was anti Russia anti uk. Palavhi senior wanted no part of fascism. He was an ataturk style authoritarian reformer.
Ataturk provided refuge to expelled Jews. He regarded racial discrimination as the keystone of backwardness.
I figure a lot of Authoritarian governments may start looking towards the US as an alternative to the German version of National Socialism.
His heir Innou, kept up most of his liberalism while democratizing.
Why? Aside from the fact that the USA is going to be strong in the Western Hemisphere and as long as they leave Canada and other British possessions alone, having a free hand to act in that sphere. So yeah, authoritarian Latin American regimes had better butter up El Norte, especially in these circumstances where the Nazis and Yanks have explicitly allied with each other--it means an egotistical would be caudillo in Brazil or Uruguay can't play them off against each other.
But what reason is there for third party wannabe dictators to prefer the American model? I suppose to be honest the American model is on paper plutocratic but regarding plutocracy as a natural kind of meritocracy, whereas Hitler had this whole Aryan Race nonsense going; the American model is exportable and in principle integrateable--an Argentine or Chilean dictatorship can partner with the USA without logical dissonance while the same dictators subordinating themselves to Hitler have the whole racial purity thing to be questioned on, and only white dictators can hope to get by on the personal purity of themselves and their clique. An Idi Amin or Mobutu would be SOL with the Nazis, while on paper the American Liberty League was not founded on a racist principle.
But in fact the LL types in America are a bunch of white supremacists anyway, just by the way as a formality with regard to LL and the pragmatic philosophy of overriding democratic unruliness in the name of quarterly corporate profits, but of course LL was partnered with bodies like the Klan that were founded on white supremacy principles, and Lindbergh's partnering with Heydrich in formation of the Sons of Liberty as America's SS further weaves in the whole racial hierarchy principle. Not unambiguously, as the author has shown specific individuals bucking the stream of formal rule by racist principle but given that the Nazis were capable historically of bending their Aryanism and contorting it into knots when it suited them, to try to recruit some Arabs or to proclaim the Japanese to be on an honorary equal racial level, practically speaking American fascism seems largely interchangable with German fascism. Really, at this point the class of people admitted to have the privilege to dissent and advocate for alternative policies in the USA is much broader; narrowly speaking in Germany no one has that privilege at all; the Fuerher sets policy and all Germans naturally must implement it without quibbling, whereas in the USA people with enough wealth or other basis of social standing who have not been singled out for suppression and who do not advocate certain ranges of forbidden options are quite free to argue with others and hold dissenting opinions--within a certain range, and the boundaries of that range are under the control of a few figures. In short, in America you have (if you are of the right classes but millions of people do fall into those classes) freedom to speak (as long as you have the decency to speak without treading on widely known taboos) but your freedom after you speak is retroactively in doubt--maybe the Constitution still says Congress shall make no ex post facto laws, but the effective government has no such restriction on it. So you have to think carefully both how some view you have might look if it were remembered some years hence, and whose powerful toes your maverick opinions might be stepping on. Because if someone up there does not like what you just said they can change the rules so your opinion is now out of bounds and you are liable to punishment for it. Thus the American model is not really a lot freer than the Nazi model--at least when dealing with a Nazi regime there is already a bunch of books out about what you are supposed to believe and do, and learning to mimic that keeps you pretty safe; in America it could be anything on a whim that hangs you.
But yeah, for the moment, the American form is more flexible and less monolithically threatening. We'll see how the war evolves the perception of both!
I just read this TL inside and out, and I am very terrified. It is astounding how close America could have come to this madness.
I am waiting, with both dread and anticipation, for what will be a more bloody and terrifying Second World War.
I am waiting, with both dread and anticipation, for what will be a more bloody and terrifying Second World War.
More that no FDR is the damage a little worse GD and an infamous event like shooting the protesters, plus here a weaker political FDR was something unique, i would like not coup and just FDR lost 1936 because he techically not rule at all with so much controversies(if long or someone else won for extra fun)
I agree with you that it can change rapidly. But so far i haven't really discovered a clear totalitarian ideology in the regime. The main reason of existence is keeping order. They are anti-socialist, but maybe more because they see them as a disruptive force, than a real hate. Those who show that hate are kept on a leash in the internal at least. They are very repressive, but they are also strongly against mob-rule. Most important they haven't made specific laws yet to isolate groups (at least not more than in OTL) nor spoken out against a group (Lindbergh excepted, but he isn't the one really in power. That is the military) Also no clear influencing of the next generation through youth groups and education. The Nazi's started with isolating and influencing from day one.
I likened in an earlier post this regime to Salazar Portugal, and i think that is still right. That makes it not so different from many junta's in S-A in OTL. So I can see it as a model.