The Day of the Jackal

August 22 1962 Paris France
Jean Batien-Thiry watched the gunmen lined up their sights. Wait for it he muttered as the car came closer in it was President Charles de Gaulle. Fire! Thiry yelled at the top of his lungs. Machine gun fire raked de Gaulles car and the nearby shops. Then it was all over de Gaulle was dead and France would never be the same.....
 
From The Enemy's House Divided by Robert Eden
Shortly after de Gaulles death the President of the Senate Gaston Monnerville became President untill new elections could be held. Monnervilles Presidency is unusual because being from French Guiana he was black.

A historic Presidency Gaston Monnerville 1947
The OAS led by Raoul Salan was not happy and so began the 1962 Algeirs coup. The OAS which had planned de Gaulles assassination was not going to let it slip away.
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Raoul Salan chief of the OAS 1962
The OAS however had no popular support at all with the French population. The attempt to take control of Paris failed dramatically and street fighting raged on the night of the 23rd. Salan was arrested after flying in at the airport although fighting would continue untill the 26th.
A resounding victory for Monnerville Salan was sentenced to life imprisonment the OAS was disbanded and order was restored meanwhile the French Presidential election was just around the corner......
 
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From The Enemy's House Divided by Robert Eden
In the general election there were 2 major canidates
Prime minister Georges Pompidou UNR

Pompidou was popular do to his role in ending the 1962 Algeirs coup
Former minister of justice Francois Mitterand FGDS

Mitterand had been minister of justice during the Fourth Republic
results:
Georges Pompidou 73%
Francois Mitterand 25%
others 2%
 
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Goddamn, you stole my idea! As I'm working a bit on it, I have to point some of these:

-The Algeria War was completely over with the Evian Accords which were signed in March, Salan had been arrested in April, and the rest of the OAS Staff was on the run or arrested. The assassination attempt on De Gaulle was part of a terrorist campaign to make some sort of "gallant last stand" from the Algérie Française proponents, and would have led to a massive crackdown against the OAS, not a coup: even if many French high ranking officers were still put out by Algerian independance, the complete failure of the Generals' Putsch the previous year would have forced them to back down.
-The 1962 presidential campaign, due to the Constitution then, would have been decided by an electoral college composed of prominent elected politicians. Pompidou was Prime Minister for less than six months by August 1962 and was a political nobody then, with no previous executive experience: Jacques Chaban-Delmas had the military record, the experience as Mayor of Bordeaux and was quite young, Robert Debré had been tired by four years as Prime Minister and was known for his Algérie Française personnal positions. Don't forget that the French Communist Party was making more than 20% in elections by the time, but they will put forth a sacrificial lamb candidate for the biased structure that the electoral college is. Most of the conservative right which then composed the French elected landscape, seeing no providential man as De Gaulle among the Gaullists, would have aligned behind a moderate-to-conservative politician: I think of Pierre Pflilmin, last Prime Minister of the Fourth Republic, or Antoine Pinay, former Minister of Finance.
 
As I wrote in one of your previous threads: the special presidential election following De Gaulle's assassination would have been organized according to the electoral law of 1958. The president would have been elected not by the French citizens, but by an electoral college (composed of the members of both chambers of parliament, members of the general councils (assemblies of the départements) and the overseas assemblies, plus 80,000 delegates of the city councils). Due to the over-representation of rural France, the electoral college could only elect a conservative - that is why Antoine Pinay would almost certainly have won. Plus he was soooooo reassuring!

Pinay.png
Le Président Antoine Pinay

Regarding your 3 candidates:

Pompidou had just been appointed Prime minister (14 April) and had absolutely no political background. He had never been elected to anything. As such, he was not particularily popular with the parliamentarians and the local office holders - in other words all those who would elect the new president. Michel Debré, Pompidou's predecessor as PM, and staunch gaullist, could have decided to run, and Pompidou would have deferred to him.

Lecanuet was a non-entity in 1962 - he was a non-entity when he ran in 65, but then the electoral reform had been passed; the President would be elcted by the people. For the first time they had campaign spots on TV, and that's how Lecanuet became known by the average elector.

I'm not sure Mitterrand would have run if the election was to be decided by an electoral college. He would have known that he had no chance to win (especially if Pinay was a candidate). Maybe Mendès France could have been persuaded to be a candidate, despite his dislike for the Fifth Republic. As for Mitterrand retiring from politics after a defeat... in your dreams!

Finally, the Communist Party was quite strong at the time and would have likely presented a candidate.

Pinay.png
 
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comments criticisims


Expand your posts and explain what is happening. Pretty pictures don't make up for posts which are nothing more than single paragraphs containing three or fewer sentences. Prose "haikus" aren't enough.

Don't attempt any "slice of life" or "viewpoint" writing such as the in your first post describing the assassination. You don't write well enough to pull it off and can't punctuate it correctly either.

Do some research. Asserting there will be a general election when French law of the period specifically calls for an electoral college is something that shouldn't happen.

Presentation counts. The best ideas in the world are crap if wrapped up in crap.

Good luck.
 
Expand your posts and explain what is happening. Pretty pictures don't make up for posts which are nothing more than single paragraphs containing three or fewer sentences. Prose "haikus" aren't enough.

Don't attempt any "slice of life" or "viewpoint" writing such as the in your first post describing the assassination. You don't write well enough to pull it off and can't punctuate it correctly either.

Do some research. Asserting there will be a general election when French law of the period specifically calls for an electoral college is something that shouldn't happen.

Presentation counts. The best ideas in the world are crap if wrapped up in crap.

Good luck.

Don,

Thank you for the constructive criticism. I must admit I'm a bit of a novice and pretty young (12) also I don't have MicroSoft Word which would allow me to spell check. That said I'll do my best to make my posts more historically accurate and gramatically correct.
Cheers
Christian Kellum
 
Don Lardo, while your points were valid here the manner in which you presented your criticism was rude almost to the point of trolling. We're all here to help, not to wound. Be gracious.

Abe, for being 12 I'd say you've got a helluva start. I'm very impressed, young man, keep up the good work.

But...

As Don said, research is your friend and although it can be tiring, it is essential to developing a believable and intriguing timeline. Great idea in theory, though. Extremely original for someone of your age as most 12 year olds I know would be stuck in the mire of Confederate-wank or Nazi victory TL's. Hats off to you. Still, however, there is some degree of feasibility that must go alongside your ideas and therefore it is best to know as much as you can about your subject matter before posting.

We're all here to help at any time and please don't hesitate to ask for advice or extra knowledge from any of us here at AH.com. Welcome to the board, by the way!
 
Most 12 year olds I know are still stuck in the mire of "what happens if we put 4 WWII soldiers-a German, an American, a Japanese, and a Russian (no British, because they didn't do anything, obviously) in an ingeniously designed warehouse together and chucked waves of zombies at them? How effective would the following weapons be: Kar 98, MP 40, Colt 1911..." Abe, good luck! (This is more TLs than I've ever done.) Sadly, I agree with the others. More detail is required.
 
Hah, spell check! Spell check is for cowards. Real men use the OED in its entirety. It takes physical strength lift the damn thing off the shelf and x-ray vision to read the microscopic text without a hand lens. OXFORD ALL THE WAY!

edit: helpful hint. If you don't have Word, get Open Office. I've been told it kicks ass at word processing.
 
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johnjcakos, I've got pretty much the impression that you repeat exactlywhat I'm saying, as if I had posted anything. That's certainly because of my poor English.
 
From Wikipedia the free ecyclopedia Quebec History Front de liberation du Quebec Beginning in 1963, a terrorist group that became known as the Front de liberation du Quebec (FLQ) launched a five year campaign of bombings, robberies and attacks directed primarily at English institutions, resulting in at least five deaths. On July 25 1967 their activities culminated in events referred to as the August crisis when James Cross, the British trade commissioner to Canada, was kidnapped along with Pierre Laporte a former Government House Leader and Minister of Municipal Affairs In their published Manifesto, the terrorists stated: "In the coming year Johnson will have to face reality; 100,000 revolutionary workers, armed and organized."At the request of Premier Daniel Johnson, Prime Minister Lester Pearsons invoked the War Measures Act. In addition, the Quebec Ombudsman[36] Louis Marceau was instructed to hear complaints of detainees and the Quebec government agreed to pay damages to any person unjustly arrested (only in Quebec). On December 3 1967 Pierre Trudeau the Minister of Justice of Canada, reported that 497 persons had been arrested throughout Canada under the War Measures Act, of whom 435 had been released. The other 62 were charged, of which 32 were crimes of such seriousness that a Quebec Superior Court judge refused them bail. The crisis ended on September 23 with the release of the hostages.
 
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