The Century of the Common Man

[WolframandHart]

The War Ends​

Henry Wallace was, for the First American Republic an unusual President, a progressive New Dealer he was to the left of much of the political establishment and easily the second most popular politician in the country, second only to his President; Franklin Roosevelt. When Roosevelt had chosen to break precedent and run for a third time Wallace had been his hand picked VP, it had nearly gone down in smoke only Roosevelt’s instance had put the progressive Secretary of Agriculture on the ticket. The next time the corrupt, conservative and downright reactionary party bosses weren’t against back-room coups to push someone else into his place but fortified by his wife Eleanor’s support and encouragement he persevered yet again with Eleanor reading an explosive letter to the convention all but threatening to resign if they didn’t go along with the wish of most of the party members.

Thus a day after sending the following telegram to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill:

I would minimize the general Soviet problem as much as possible because these problems, in one form or another, seem to arise every day and most of them straighten out as in the case of the Bern meeting.​

Roosevelt passed away, thrusting Wallace into the position conservatives and reactionaries throughout the world were dreading, the US Presidency.

Thrust into a position of power he found himself with one war winding down and a second approaching its endgame, feeling little need to intervene there he instead took to assembling his own post war domestic policy according to the ‘economic bill of rights’ and fulfilling and renewing the New Deal for a post War World.

Meanwhile the War in Europe after the deaths of so many came to an end with the Red Army smashing Berlin, following a pleasant conversation with People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR Molotov regarding the reparations due from Germany and a potential post war loan to assist in rebuilding. Wallace headed to San Francisco for the founding of the United Nations chaired by Nobel Peace Prize winner and future Secretary of State Alger Hiss, where he assisted in dealing with a diplomatic crisis over the admission of Argentina to the UN, itself a direct violation of the Yalta accords, due to his warm relations with the South American Republics he was able convince them to back down on UN membership for the present.

After that was the Potsdam Conference, delayed till after the British General Elections it saw the first meeting of the new big three; Clement Atlee, Henry Wallace and Joseph Stalin. They made major agreements regarding German reparations, territorial changes and German neutrality, the three also convened due to pressure from Atlee and Stalin a separate set of talks over post war reconstruction aid that ultimately led to a $3.75 billion loan for Britain and a $7 billion loan for the USSR, a billion more than Molotov’s original request. In turn Secretary of State Henry Morgentau was set loose with the cooperation of the USSRs GRU and NKVD and the UKs MI5 and SIS on Operation Safe Haven to track down fleeing Nazis and their money while also working to trace their downers.

Wallace also faced the big choice, what to do with Japan, his own intelligence reports suggested the Japanese where on the brink of defeat and they’d been sending out peace feelers, including a telegram Stalin had brough to the conference confirming unconditional surrender was the only obstacle to peace. Feeling political pressure he kept to the principle of Unconditional Surrender and thus focused on the Soviet route to victory negotiating the agreed Yalta concessions with the Chinese. Thus three months later the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, Sakhalin and Kuril islands forced the Japanese to surrender.

Jubilant celebrations overtook the allies with jubilant Americans celebrating outside the Soviet Embassy, the war was over at long last peace had arrived…

 

[chestanewmitz]

Watching it with interest

 

[peeter]

If this is going to be a plausible successful Henry Wallace presidency I am so in

 

[Josh e b]

Loving this so far curious on wallaces views on public transport and nuclear plants and etc energy in general.

 

[WolframandHart]

An American Dreyfuss?​

No case continues to case divides and acrimonious disagreements than that of Secretary of State Alger Hiss, even with the opening of the Soviet Archives and the confirmation that he wasn’t a Soviet Agent many on the right continue to proclaim that he must have been even if the only evidence they have is the multiple choice testimony of Whittaker Chambers, himself perjured and arrested for Contempt over his contradictory and inconsistent testimony.

Unlike other Soviet Agents such as head of the British SIS Harold Adrian Russell ‘Kim’ Philby, and the other members of the Soviet espionage such as Colonel Ursula Kucysnki, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Klaus Fuchs or Anthony Blunt whose details have been passed out since the opening of the Soviet archives repeated searches have found nothing connecting Hiss with the organisations.

As with many on the right the accusation serves merely to further the claim that the New Deal was entirely a Soviet/Communist plot that lead directly to the constitutional crisis’s of the 1970s and the dawn of the Second American Republic in much the same

way the fall of the Monarchy in Britian is usually implied to have been a grand scheme of the NKVD ever since Anthony Blunt collected letters incriminating members of the Royal Family giving military secrets to the Third Reich, despite the fact that the fall of the Monarchy is generally seen as a spontaneous reaction to events as the attempted coup against the Labour government in the 1950s.

Others hold that the case known to the public as the Nazi Brothers where the real Dreyfus’s, John Foster and Allen Welsh Dulles, arrested for sabotaging the American War effort and collaborating with the Nazis during the Second World War where according to the right framed by the communist New Deal administration. In reality both had well recorded Nazi sympathies and while not ardent Nazis they both saw the German state as firm bulwark against Communism and were willing to look the other way at the ‘excesses’ of the regime.

Both cases were held in part to influence the American electorate ahead of an election, the Republicans hoped to use to swing the electorate away from a renewed Social Democratic project under the Wallace administration while the administration used the Dulles case as the first move in the chess game that followed the American backers of fascism from the defunct Bank of International Settlements, still known as the foreign branch of the Reichsbank, to the numerous corporations and interests that had helped build the German military such as Ford and GM held up as arsenals of both Democracy and Fascism.

---

Picture Guide
1. Secretary of State Alger Hiss
2. The Cambridge Five: John Cairncross, Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, Donald Maclean
3. Colonel Ursula Kuczynski GRU
4. The Dulles Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Welsh Dulles

 

[mcginnis2002]

Do you have any proof that the Dulles brothers were Nazi collaborators?

 

[WolframandHart]

Do you have any proof that the Dulles brothers were Nazi collaborators?

Direct evidence is if course tricky but I recommend The Brothers by Stephen Kinzer and The Devils Chessboard by David Talbot

 

[WolframandHart]

Postwar Settlements​

In the aftermath of the Second World War statesmen of the big powers once more descended on a city for a peace conference to settle the new geopolitical arrangements for the world with the final lapse in power of the Old Empires of Europe and the ascendancy of the US and the USSR.

Unlike the previous big powers conferences conceived by FDR to keep the allies together this conference took place in Singapore with dignitaries from multiple countries, despite arguments against this had been Wallace’s idea to ‘democratise world power’ and was closer to the format of the infamous 1919 Paris conference, although the assembled leaders took pains to avoid the same mistakes, apparently each world leader was given a copy of Lord Keynes “The Economic Consequences of the Peace”.

The conference had been convened largely at Wallace’s initiative who had wished to broaden the war settlement beyond the Big Three, finally bringing together many of the United Nations, beyond the big three including the Chinese representatives including both the KMT and CCP, representatives of the provisional French government, representatives of the newly established Democratic Republic of Vietnam and numerous others.

Hosted by the British Empire in Singapore, the Conference would see the finalisation of many of the aspects of the Post War world with the authority and influence of the conferences falling to the United Nations, central to Wallace’s view of the postwar world. Despite the worries of many involved of a repeat of the Paris 1919 fiasco the Singapore Conference the results actually proved to be a success, the French government begrudgingly entered into negotiations to free Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh’s leadership. Another miraculous achievement of the conference was the coalition between the KMT and CCP for a Provisional Government in China with powersharing elections heading off a Civil War, essentially restoring the KMT-CCP alliance that Chiang had betrayed, long thought impossible given the past betrayal and brutal White Terror personally led by Chiang Kai-shek against the CCP after the last coalition, Wallace would note that he felt extremely uncomfortable bullying Chiang to accept the arrangement, as a result two years later the CCP overwhelmingly took power democratically in China easily outpolling the corrupt KMT as part of the United Front.

Germany, Austria and Japan were key issues, in fact the issues; an allied occupation Council was established much to General MacArthur’s chagrin giving the allies direct command of the occupation with the mission to create a Constitutional Monarchy under the Imperial Household, at some points not necessarily Hirohito although at the end the Emperor would remain on the throne. Both Germany and Japan would end up with Constitutions largely written at this conference with both banning he countries from possessing militaries with many of the powers saw German and Japanese militarism to blame for the war with assigning UN forces responsible for maintaining their security as part of the transfer that became de jure in the Wallace administration that saw a large UN military footprint based in

Wallace also acted to block Dutch attempts to reconquer Indonesia, many Europeans began to realise just how anti-Imperialist Wallace was much to the delight of former Colonised Nations that began to stumble their way to freedom.

 

[Josh e b]

Loving this so far real negotiations instead of corrupt opportunism with usa backing foreign nations rights.