The Footprint of Mussolini - TL
O Fortuna
O Fortuna
First Radio Address of President Henry Wallace, June 8th 1944
First Radio Address of President Henry Wallace, June 8th 1944
“Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a great American. He was a great man. And he was a great friend. With all his strength, he fought this terrible war against the slave world, that it may become free. We know what we’re fighting against – we’re fighting against the monsters whose trail of carnage we have seen from the fires of Pearl Harbour to the abominations of Auschwitz. We will confront this evil on all sides, at home and abroad, until evil is just a memory itself. And then not even ‘fear’ would have to be feared.”
The Dark Decade: America in the 40s by Wendy Walters
As the news of Roosevelt’s death travelled the world, the Allied and Pact leaders took stock of the new leader of the Land of the Free. Among the Nazis, a new round of ludicrous delusion swept over, that Wallace’s more open embrace of the Soviets and Communism would trigger a conflict with Britain and Italy. This was obviously not going to happen but the Nazi government had rarely had a decent grasp of reality to begin with. The Beck government in Hamburg was disappointed, as Wallace seemed even less likely to grant a peace that left Russia in the cold. Churchill and Mussolini, however, were both stunned. Churchill was by now even more convinced of the unreliability of America to stand up to Stalin during the Allied conferences, and Mussolini redoubled his efforts to minimize Soviet influence in Europe for the same reason.
But some of the most visceral anti-Wallace feeling came not just within his own country, but his own party. The Southern-wing of the Democrats were mortified that an open Civil Rights supporter had ascended to the Presidency. Wallace’s uncomfortably naïve views of the Soviet Union were also strong contributors to the utter distaste he was held in by large elements of the party. As James Eastland said to his associates, “If it was Wallace and Himmler on a Mississippi ballot, it would be a close run thing.” Harry Byrd of Virginia, seen as the spiritual leader of the conservative wing of the Democrats, had put up token resistance to Roosevelt to pressure his race policies by challenging him for the ballot at the 1944 convention. However, it couldn’t be merely ‘token’ anymore. With barely a month to go, he began sounding the alarms across the party that Wallace would be electoral poison south of the Mason-Dixon line and above. Many Democrat Party officials agreed with Byrd, even among the anti-segregationists, who saw Wallace as too naïve for the role. The idea was to get enough votes for Byrd that the convention would have to be decided in a cigar-filled room with the top echelons of the Democrat Party ruthlessly deciding on a unity candidate for the northern and southern wings.
Wallace himself, however, was quite popular with the American populace, as strange as it sounds now. He was coming off the back of the death of a popular President, was seen as on the side of the working man and people still blamed the Republicans and Wall Street for the Depression. At the same time, internal polls in the Democrat ranks showed that the convention was looking to be a bloodbath of disunity. It was only due to Operation Ragnarok that this all changed.
The Madhouse: Germany After Hitler, Before the Occupation, by Ronald Hines
Hitler, owing to his experiences with gas in WW1, would not use it during WW2. Unfortunately, Himmler would have no such objections. He had actually ordered Speer to manufacture far more Sarin and other forms of deadly chemical weapons to combat the invading forces. Speer, knowing that it would only be used on Germany as the ability for delivery had been totally diminished, not to mention the inevitable chemical retaliation, pretended to Himmler that he was carrying out the command. However, he was delaying with all the strength he could. Unfortunately for Speer, the Gestapo soon discovered his deception. Himmler considered a public execution but didn’t want to raise Allied concerns. For that reason, Albert Speer was bundled into the back of a car on June 10th 1944 and was never heard from again. With Speer’s near certain death, Himmler purged Speer’s offices, replacing them with SS loyalists. Operation Ragnarok would go as planned.
The speed of the American advance into the heart of Germany, even with Rommel’s defection, was astonishing to the world press. Patton seemed to be destined to reach Berlin without a hitch. Unfortunately, this was only half legitimate. Himmler had deliberately been holding his forces back for his final ace up the sleeve: Operation Ragnarok. The plan was to let the Americans and British rush into Germany, outreach their supply lines and be left at the mercy of the SS and Wehrmacht Loyalists. With that, a final attack would be launched with chemical weapons. This would supposedly obliterate the main element of the Anglo-American forces, as well as obliterating the last remnants of the Valkyrie government in Hamburg. It was expected (there were, as can be seens, a lot of addendums that came with this plan) that this would cause the Anglo-Americans to sue for peace. Then, Italy, being Latin cowards, would realise that they could not stand up to the Nordic might of German steel and would organize a mutual treaty with the rest of the Fascist Bloc to leave Germany alone. Thus freed of the ‘Slavic burdens’ of Romania and Hungary, the Germans would easily overcome the Soviet invasion and once more march on Moscow. It was the plan of a madman – unfortunately for Germany, he was the most powerful man there. Unfortunately still, Himmler was now ready to unleash his other hidden card – the Vengeance Weapon, as it became known in the West. It was a missile that could send explosive cargo – it wasn’t good at aiming but it packed a now chemical punch. A sequel rocket was planned (the ‘V2’) but Germany was so resource-starved by the end that none ever flew in anger. After the occupation, the technology would be divided among the Western powers, Fascist Bloc and (to Wallace’s eternal shame) the Soviet Union.
Flushed with confidence, it made the initial sting all that worse. On July 15th, a storm of hell and fire came forth from behind the Nazi lines. Vengeance missiles shot into the sky with their deadly cargos with the few Me-262 jet fighters in support. It was an all or nothing gamble, so the Nazis went all in. Ironically, the first missiles fell not on the Allies, but on Hamburg. Hamburg was coated in an appalling blast of Sarin and other chemical agents while the lines around the besieged city were likewise shelled with similar poison. Though many had masks, masks did no good against the nerve agent. Tens of thousands died in excruciating agony – needless to say there was no concern taken for the civilian population. Himmler would later say that in deciding to say in the city they had announced their allegiance to a traitorous government and the only punishment for such an action was death. It is believed that some 100,000 people died in Hamburg over the next few days, as the overwhelmed, shattered defenders were ruthlessly attacked by the SS. Beck and Von Rundstedt were never found, though most believe they died in the initial attack. The Beck government had been obliterated, which would serve to lionize it in German history. Though only a small element of the German population sided with the Valkyrie plotters for the first month, and even then it’s being debatable how large that contingent was after Rommel’s defection, the Beck government has gone down as a popular uprising of German society, which it never was.
The next stage were the front lines themselves. The British forces in the north were hit just as they made their way into Germany, with the SS intending to force the Allies back to Amsterdam. Likewise, the aim with the attack on the American forces was to trap them on the right side of the Rhine just as their forces passed over in bulk. As Patton and Rommel were both already over, the aim would then be to capture the former and execute the latter. Indeed, the first chemical weapon attacks on the Americans came just outside Frankfurt. Patton was in visual range of the first attack and narrowly escaped death. Rommel quickly realised what was going on and alerted Allied High Command that the Nazis had unleashed a chemical weapons attack. Sources disagree on whether the delayed reaction of Allied Leadership to understand what was going on was motivated by distrust of Rommel or simply the result of the total shock that the Nazis still had anything like the offensive capability they were witnessing. The American and Free German forces were sent into disarray and retreated close to Mainz with Himmler intending to have Mainz be the location of the destruction of Allied forces.
Incredibly, the Nazis may have actually fared even better on the day if not for one act of jaw dropping stupidity almost on the level of their invasion of Italy. Hundreds of Vengeance missiles were deliberately kept in reserve and fired on … Prague. The city was the primary location of the Jewish Army, though senior leadership was entirely away at the time. This was especially astonishing, as the Jewish Army had been camped in Prague for days without moving or even intending to move. It was nowhere close to the serious dangers threatening the German Reich, which included Italians in Munich and the Soviet titan devouring all in its path in Poland, neither of which received chemical weapon attacks. As Himmler would later confess, it was for no other reason than his conviction that the Jews represented the ‘ultimate enemy’. Owing to the poor aim and targeting, only an estimated two thousand members of the Jewish Army would die from the Vengeance Weapon and loaded agents, which had been almost entirely used up. A further fifteen thousand Czechs were estimated to have been killed. With Speer dead, the production capabilities that existed beforehand slowly melted away and few more were produced in any case.
Himmler was ecstatic at the victories he had gained: obliterating the Beck Government, sending the Americans on their heels, Rommel trapped and a few more dead Jews. Of course, he would soon be faced with a fate more brutal than any he could dish out on the Aliies.
Henry Wallace’s speech to the DNC, July 19th 1944
“Ladies and gentlemen, a second Day of Infamy has occurred in our lifetimes. The Nazi Party have proven that there is yet a further depth they could reach. They have unleashed the most murderous, appalling weapons ever invented on our boys and their own people. Added to the relentless invasions of peaceful, neighbouring countries for nothing more than greed … added to the despotic terror they imposed upon hundreds of millions … added to the slaughter of the Jews that we have discovered, whose dimensions are still now too incalculable to even begin to understand … added to all this, comes yet another indictment. Heinrich Himmler, perhaps an even greater evil than Hitler himself, has proven the blackness of his heart and ideology. We will fight his ilk with every fibre of our strength, until Nazi slavery is abolished forever! Let it be known that we did not start this war, but by all the might God gives us in this fight, we will end it!”
The Red and the Dead: How the Wallace Presidency Changed America by Ben Rushmore
Southern Democrats to a tee stood up and cheered Wallace’s battle cry against Nazism. If this doesn’t indicate the level of success the speech achieved, nothing else will. In the words of prominent Southern Democrat Richard Russel Jr., “The one time he didn’t screw everything up was the one time he had too.” There was no mention of Civil Rights or the future relationship America would have with the Soviet Union. In fact, he had intended to do a speech where both would be mentioned but the chemical weapons attack pushed them off the agenda to one of straight defiance and threats to the Nazis and Japan. Wallace won the support of eighty percent of the delegates – which, though hardly being impressive for an incumbent President, was more than enough for his nomination as President from the Democrat Party, with Southerner and noted Anti-Communist Harry Truman as Vice-President to attempt to unify the Party divide.
Indeed, Wallace meant what he said when he said they would fight back. On July 24th, the Americans and British launched a joint bomber retaliation attack on SS strongholds in Germany. The SS forces outside Mainz that were readying for a final showdown never got there – they were carpet bombed with chemical weapons on all sides and quickly broke ranks. Berlin itself received a terrifyingly large amount, made all the worse with the total medical supply breakdown. Anywhere that looked like storage facilities were relentlessly attacked with American, British and Italian planes. The British even considered an Anthrax attack under Operation Vegetarian, but it was concluded that by the time it would have an effect the British army would probably be the primary victims owing to their advance. It is estimated that some 70,000 German civlilians died in the initial chemical weapon retaliation attacks and a similar number of SS soldiers (owing to their coming out of concealment to attack the Allies). Many more would die in the months to come as these weapons became more commonly used. By means of this not only was Mainz successfully held but, Frankfurt was taken by the end of the month and the Americans blasted right through the heart of the Reich after initial setbacks. Patton was unenthusiastic about using “weapons that forgot the soldiers” and didn’t authorize its use himself. Mussolini and Stalin would order the use of chemical weapons in response, the former using it with far more liberality on civilian centers in Bavaria while the latter hoped it would lead to a swifter advance to beat the Americans to Berlin. Wallace was sympathetic to the Soviet wish to invade Berlin themselves, but he was so angry over Himmler’s attack that he resolved to sort Himmler out himself. For one of the few times of the war, Patton and Wallace saw eye-to-eye, though Rommel’s inclusion still disgusted Wallace and he only kept up proceedings due to the press fanfare that greeted Rommel’s arrival. If Roosevelt had died earlier, it is questionable whether Rommel’s ascension would have been approved.
While the Soviets had still entered no German land but East Prussia, the British were knocking at the doors of Bremen, the Italians had besieged Munich and the Americans were miles from Erfurt. Stalin’s already frayed mental state, rather than cooled by the arrival of Wallace actually worsened. Now he believed that he had the ability to challenge the European powers at will without worrying of American pressure – this would show up at the end of the War and certainly in the years following, the consequences of which ultimately being devastating for tens of millions.
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marathag
Banned
Big problem with WWII Sarin was by the textbook, very deadly, but in practice, less so.
In the 1990s, the Japanese Aum Cult produced Sarin to kill huge numbers of people, using the German WWII formula and improved production methods.
Didn't turn out that way, even though they released the chemical in ideal areas, streets and subways.
They had the problem of dispersing the agent, and with production exposing workers making it, a lot of Blue on Blue trouble.
It was dispersed at ground level by Truck, and in subways, theoretically the most deadly way to use it.
Few ended up killed, with more injured.
They would have killed more by shooting people, rather than the $30 million dollars worth of lab gear and precursors for chemicals, by making their own guns and just running around shooting people
In Soviet and US service, they was more emphasis in safety, to not kill the crews and workers making the stuff by making binary chemical, it would mix just before deployment, and more effort in what it takes to disperse the chemical. They were planning on using WWI methods like used for Mustard gas, that was actually a liquid and was far more persistent. They needed proximity fuzing, so the sarin would be dispersed above ground. It's harder than it sounds
Nazis didn't think that end thru. Had they deployed it, it would have been likely more workers and ground crews would have been injured that had it been used against the Allies.
In the 1990s, the Japanese Aum Cult produced Sarin to kill huge numbers of people, using the German WWII formula and improved production methods.
Didn't turn out that way, even though they released the chemical in ideal areas, streets and subways.
They had the problem of dispersing the agent, and with production exposing workers making it, a lot of Blue on Blue trouble.
It was dispersed at ground level by Truck, and in subways, theoretically the most deadly way to use it.
Few ended up killed, with more injured.
They would have killed more by shooting people, rather than the $30 million dollars worth of lab gear and precursors for chemicals, by making their own guns and just running around shooting people
In Soviet and US service, they was more emphasis in safety, to not kill the crews and workers making the stuff by making binary chemical, it would mix just before deployment, and more effort in what it takes to disperse the chemical. They were planning on using WWI methods like used for Mustard gas, that was actually a liquid and was far more persistent. They needed proximity fuzing, so the sarin would be dispersed above ground. It's harder than it sounds
Nazis didn't think that end thru. Had they deployed it, it would have been likely more workers and ground crews would have been injured that had it been used against the Allies.
Edited to clarify that Sarin was only one of the chemical agents.
SECOND EDIT: Just realised I forgot to mention that Truman remains Vice-Presidential nominee.
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I am interested in what role the Catholic Church will play in the cold war,their relationship with the Italian bloc Will be quite complicated to say the least
It's definitely too early to even think of him. Considering everything, he might be butterflied away as a character.
I must confess I thought I'd end up breezing through WW2 - I just kept coming up with ideas (or had commenters here suggest them). The actual meat of the story will show up in the late forties and fifties. The timeline will conclude at roughly the end of the century, though the detail will be a lot less intense by then, owing to most world leaders having been born past the POD. I must confess that it's been a while since I've been obsessed about history, and some of the details are a bit weak in my brain - please forgive any errors on my part.
If there's any avenue of life someone wants me to explore, please tell me and I'll do my best. (The Pacific War will be explained after V-E Day to keep flow).
I remember being on this site ten years ago, but this is still my first timeline so I'm still working it out as I go along.
If there's any avenue of life someone wants me to explore, please tell me and I'll do my best. (The Pacific War will be explained after V-E Day to keep flow).
I remember being on this site ten years ago, but this is still my first timeline so I'm still working it out as I go along.
Ramontxo
Donor
OMG thanks a lot for your work. Once upon a time a certain Greek born Lady was singing in the Scala (after having being left behind by another Greekman for a certain American Lady). Being very (very) famous for doing incredible things with her voice (and sometimes failing) all the Theatre was waiting to see how She performed. And then she went back to the front of the stage and start singing (directly looking to the public) "Et tu ingrato" I don't mind you killing Jack Kennedy or Aristoteles Onassis by if your timeline butterflies La Callas then you will find a special place in hell made only for you
Seriously thanks a lot for your hard work.
Seriously thanks a lot for your hard work.
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Not really...thanks to Himmler hitting Hamburg with chemical weapons and wiping out the Beck government - as the OP said, ensuring that it's now seen as martyrs who spearheaded popular resistance to the Nazis - could actually end up being softer on Germany post-war. The Nazis will be seen as lunatics who killed their own people, with the Clean Wehrmacht myth becoming even more popular thanks to Rommel's rebellion and the German people seen as victims.
Please tell me that Brandenbug-Prussia isn't destroyed. Maybe if the Fascists kill a Hohenzollern the royal family can gain favor and the Kaiserreich can rise again.
Didn’t Wilhelm III (I don’t know what else to call the guy) support Hitler’s rise to power? I can’t imagine the other members of the Allies would be so keen on a restored German monarchy with that fact in mind.
Great update! But man, things are just getting progressively worse.
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Wilhelm only expressed support as in congratulating him on the successful invasion of France in the hopes that the monarchy would be restored. After news of his persecution and atrocities against Jews reached his ears he said he was "ashamed to be German." Wilhelm was an antisemite like most people during that era, but he didn't favor such vile acts against them like armed thugs going around and looting and pillaging their homes and businesses. Hitler also hated the monarchy and Churchill knowing this offered him refuge after Germany invaded the Netherlands. Wilhelm also hated the Nazis because they destroyed Prussia by reducing it to just another province. He also banned Hohenzollerns from serving in the military because many in the army were still loyal to the Kaiser. The Nazis only kept the Prussian aesthetics to gain legitimacy.They wore the Prussian aesthetics like a child who wears an adults clothes that are many times to large for it. Hindenburg only granted them power in a last ditch attempt to restore the monarchy. Thankfully Wilhelm died in 1941 so he didn't have to see his beloved Prussia get destroyed by the Red army and partitioned by the allies. Even Churchill remarked that had the monarchy been in power then none of this would have happened. I think the royal family as a real case here with the Nazis trying to burn Germany down with them. They could reach out to Rommel and Kronprinz Wilhlem could come back to Germany as Kaiser or Konig Wilhelm III of Germany. He could be seen as one of the true Germans who opposed the evils of Nazism.
Dolan
Banned
I think splitting Germany into their HRE constituents should be in order, with Kings restored (except by those in Soviet occupied areas, obviously)
Westernmost area could be given to claimant of Westphalia
The Southwest would be obviously given to Bavarian King
Habsburg should return to Austria
Central Germany should go to Hanover claimant
Wilhelm should return but only as King of rump Prussia.
Bet there will be Eastern German Republic made by Soviet Union.
DO NOT FORCE OUTRAGEOUS REPARATIONS.
Forbid any sort of Union UNLESS the monarchs somehow managed to position themselves into sort of personal union (aka no unifications except through marriage of monarchs and the heirs), this alone will make German reunification technically possible but depends on some royalty agree to have only daughters AND have them married to crown prince of other German states. 50 years wouldn't be enough. Basically force them to play multiplayer Crusader Kings