Wallace was not going to run alongside a man who based his career off of being pro-segregationist. Truman was chosen because he was just sympathetic enough to Civil Rights for Wallace to be happy while being vocally Anti-Communist and Southern enough (being from a Confederate State) that the Southern Democrats thought they could keep Wallace in check. Needless to say, it isn't a match made in heaven.
The Footprint of Mussolini - TL
Wallace was not going to run alongside a man who based his career off of being pro-segregationist. Truman was chosen because he was just sympathetic enough to Civil Rights for Wallace to be happy while being vocally Anti-Communist and Southern enough (being from a Confederate State) that the Southern Democrats thought they could keep Wallace in check. Needless to say, it isn't a match made in heaven.
marathag
Banned
Presidents Picking their VP and not the Party bosses was yet to come. Even FDR had limits, and Wallace has a lot less pull with the Bosses.
2nd, the VP role still wasn't seen as all that important at the time, even after the example of Teddy Roosevelt taking over. It was still all about balancing the ticket. Truman's positions were a lot farther from FDR than Wallace's were.
Wallace was honestly very popular with Democrats outside of the South, but that didn't keep him on the ticket, the Bosses wanted balance, and Truman was pushed onto the ticket, and FDR accepted it.
I can confirm that whoever is Vice-President for now won't matter to the overall running of the story, so it doesn't make any difference overall.
I would argue that Truman would be a more attractive balancer than Byrd could be (Dixiecrats not being too popular outside their native territory), but if you still think it is a bad decision then bad decisions have happened before at party conventions. Rest assured, it won't make too large a mark on the many, many incidents that are about to befall American Democracy.
Fascist Methods
Fascist Methods
Mussolini: The Twentieth Century Man by Joseph Manderlay
Mussolini: The Twentieth Century Man by Joseph Manderlay
With Munich surrounded and getting pounded by chemical weapon attacks by the Regia Aeronautica, the Italian army advanced ahead and decided to leave the city to wither in the vine. On August 1st, Italian forces came face to face with Dachau, which would be by far the most prominent concentration camp discovered by the Fascist Bloc. Similar camps were discovered by the Soviets, Americans, British and of course the Jewish Army. What distinguished the discoveries was what the Italians did next. When the German Commander came to see the Italians, he saw that they weren’t Italian troops – they were Blackshirts … and they definitely had Semitic features.
The Italians roughly knew what to expect walking into Dachau, as Auschwitz’s horrors had been replayed across the world. The Pope’s open condemnation of the Nazi regime as a result led Himmler to gleefully execute his plan of ridding Germany of Catholic influence by imprisoning and executing a significant number of German Priests. Any who were suspected of aiding the Beck government, and many who weren’t but were still seen as great guinea pigs, were shot out of hand. Himmler, being obsessed with German Paganism and Occultism, saw Christianity as an un-German hindrance that had to be opposed. The last few months of his reign would be characterized by mass confiscation of Church property in Berlin, which did little but sever the Nazis from everyone yet further. Needless to say, the Italians looked upon the Nazis as abominations. As Mussolini declared in a speech to his faithful shortly after Auschwitz’s discovery, “They would have put Capri there to be murdered”. While Balbo continued overseeing the siege of Munich (his own use of chemical weapons being highly criticized since), Graziani was on the move north. Mussolini had ordered blood for blood, and though Graziani himself would always be suspicious of Jews, he was more loyal to his leader than anything else. Especially for the occasion, Mussolini recruited every Jewish Blackshirt he could find (whose numbers had swollen since Capri’s death since it was seen as a ticket to respect in a still Anti-Semitic world) and put nearly three thousand of them (though many had been willing recruits from the Jewish refugee groups who wanted to state their loyalty to the regime) on the road to Dachau.
The Blackshirts, though they had seen the newsreels of Auschwitz, would record that they were still mortified by what they saw at the camp. Half-dead people shuddering and convulsing, train carriages full of skeletal corpses to the ceiling and the brain matter of crushed skull on the ground. Some Blackshirts, some who had even participated in the Rape of Lubiana, threw up and wept at the sight of such unrepentant evil. This was of no matter, of course, as the plan had always been the same. SS-Untersturmfurhrer Heinrich Wicker met the Blackshirts at the gate and was quickly ordered to gather every SS guard at the camp. After doing so, roughly three hundred men had been presented, stripped of their weapons and gathered in the coal processing facility while Jewish inmates stared in awe and bewilderment at these healthy, helpful people – reacting all the more with joy when they realised they were Jews. The SS members didn’t know what to expect when suddenly, they were ordered to stand up and rushed to the wall. They hurriedly did what they were told … only for the Blackshirts to open fire and spray the wall with machine gun fire. Those who were unlucky enough to survive were left to the tender mercies of the inmates, who finished them off so brutally that the SS men would surely have wished to die by the bullet. As if terrified by the prospect of the Dachau Blackshirts coming to them, Munich surrendered to the Italians on August 2nd.
As news of the Dachau Reprisals swept the world, Mussolini had achieved his purposes. Firstly, he had totally detached the notion that Fascism and Nazism were inherently sympathetic to one another. Fascism and Nazism had been seen (and would continue to be seen in the Communist world) as if not identical then extremely close on the political spectrum. However, Nazism had come to be seen more like Islamic Fundamentalism – an evil without a clear space on the spectrum, while Fascism dominated the Far-Right. Many in the Democratic world would praise ‘Fascist methods’ being used on the Nazis (and would continue to justify them against Communist insurrection.). Secondly, he had further cemented his leadership of the Jewish people. Many Jews were outraged with Britain for putting Zvi Brenner on trial for his reprisals at Auschwitz – Mussolini’s defence of the Dachau reprisals as “not just morally acceptable but morally neccessary” would serve to increase Jewish sympathy to Mussolini’s Italy over Britain, which would become a serious question of early Israeli diplomacy. As an added bonus, Kurt Schuschnigg was discovered in Dachau. Mussolini was thrilled – he now had a solid basis for his ideas of an Austrian state in the Post-War world. This would give him more than enough to talk about later that month in Vienna.
The Making of the Fascist Bloc by Jodie Rutkins
August 10th 1944 in Vienna would be one of the most important dates in the history of the war. It was there that the leaders of the Fascist Bloc would meet and plan their strategies for opposing Communism in the years to come. Indeed, the meeting ended up being about substantially more than that. In attendance were Mussolini, Salazar, Franco, Pavelić, Bulgarian Prince Kiril (acting regent after the death of Tsar Boris III, whose death would bring the country to a standstill) and representatives of the Turkish Junta. However, this was only the official greetings list. In fact, recent evidence now proves there were other diplomats at the meeting, which would mean serious effects on the wider world – there were representatives of both Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. Many had investigated Libya and were astonished by the large Jewish presence as well as the development of the cities. What was once arid desert now had a kibbutz in every direction. Jewish engineers and scientists were hard at work trying to extract oil from the desert and astonishing progress was already being made. Perhaps most incredible was how Italian even the Jewish settlements were. It seemed that, recalled Ian Smith while strolling around Tripoli on leave, “there were as many pizzerias as there were synagogues”.
Firstly, the plans for what to do in the face of the Soviet menace hung in the air. As the members of the council agreed that the Wallace Presidency meant Europe would be left to fend for itself, they began to draw up plans for how to oppose the Soviets. Mussolini announced his intention of restarting the Austrian army under Schuschnigg, but this would still be little in the face of the onslaught expected. Mussolini was also convinced Hungary and Romania would fight against the Soviets, but knew again that this was little. The unanimous conclusion of the meeting was that the Roman Alliance had to remain on friendly terms with Britain and France, not to mention the minor European nations to the north. Further military plans were laid out, explaining how they fight together against the Soviets with or without help.
But the next topic would be the more important one. It began when Salazar, with the support of the Southern Rhodesian and South African representatives, enquired about the Jewish population of Libya. Salazar was curious about the effect of a large non-Italian but still European presence in the colony. Mussolini enthusiastically reported that the Jews had massively built up Libya, which meant that it would be easier for Italians to move in. As Israel was expected to come to fruition in the meantime, the Jews would move there and leave their development behind. They couldn’t take buildings with them, after all. Mussolini thus affirmed and endorsed the idea to the representatives. In his own words, “Build it up to bring them in”. Mussolini had no intention of having Libya be a Jewish state forever, but he felt that in allowing so many Jews in to build up the country, he had created the conditions to attract Italians by the millions.
Until then, Southern Rhodesian and South African governments actually had a very restricted immigration policy, including to whites. They only wanted a very specific type of white immigration – upper class British. It was extremely hard to immigrate to Rhodesia especially, which required stupefying deposits and a general suspicion that bringing in too many continental Europeans would damage the minority government by diluting the British character of Rhodesia. But the experience of Libya had changed everything. Now a belief arose that if they brought in enough continental Europeans in the short term, they could attract millions more of the British they actually sought. As Southern Rhodesia was expanding at an unprecedented rate at the time, it wasn’t like there was much competition for jobs – they were everywhere. Coupled with the poor post-war economy in Britain and a massive advertising campaign in British newspapers, the Rhodesians had begun their great immigration push. Coupled with the post-War Baby Boom, and the upsurge of European refugees in the conflicts following World War 2, the white population of Rhodesia would begin to soar, though remaining a minority. With the justification of ‘Keep Rhodesia White’, the government did its best to weaken opposition to the immigration movements. It would be a game-changer in 1948. South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts, likewise impressed with Libya, began his own push after the war - paving the way for the misery that would follow.
Salazar, for his part, began his own campaign to increase his colonial grip over Angola and Mozambique especially. Some historians suggest he wanted to present himself as the second most powerful force in the Roman Alliance and wanted to increase his prestige by holding a vast colonial empire to rival the Italians. Given the overwhelming poverty Portugal faced, with reports that nearly half of the Portuguese population was illiterate, it wasn’t hard to convince people that there were greener pastures. Salazar began a mass movement to take his poor rural population and move them to the heartlands of Angola. This would be to start an agrarian revolution there to modernize the colony. In order to pay for this, however, he enlisted outside help – specifically the Catholic Church. In return for the Church’s help in establishing healthcare, education and other settlements in Angola and Mozambique, the colonies would become borderline Catholic theocracies – only Catholics could immigrate there, for example. No churches bar Catholic churches could be built and all education services were left to the Priests. Of all the settler countries, Portugal's colonies would maintain a unique culture (and general tolerance to Catholic natives) that distinguished it from the cruelties of South Africa and Italy.
The Madhouse: Germany After Hitler, Before the Occupation, by Ronald Hines
Operation Ragnarok would be the last major Nazi offensive of the War. Once the genie was out of the bottle with respect to chemical weapons, the Germans found themselves hopelessly outgunned on that front. While the Western allies (with Rommel’s pleading) did much to reduce the civilian casualty count, there were only so many who could be spared. By the end, the most retarding force on the American military was not the SS attacks but the waves upon waves of civilians and soldiers fleeing and surrendering wherever they went. SS soldiers, however, were lucky if they surrendered – many were shot out of hand by other Germans to prove their loyalty to Rommel’s Free German Army. There were even cases where SS members shot Wehrmacht soldiers, switched clothes and pretended to be Valkyrie loyalists having done service for the Allies. It is unknown as to what the average character was who fought for the Free German Army, with the Soviets especially alleging the force were overwhelmingly war criminals looking for a post-war amnesty. However, what is known is that by the time the Battle of Berlin began the Ragnarok backlash and hope that a strong showing of the Free German army could produce more lenient peace talks led to the Free German Army totaling nearly half a million soldiers under Rommel. This only increased when the British liberated Hamburg in September. Tales of how the SS treated the local population, their own people, once the lines broke sounded more like something the Soviets would have done, or so the Germans thought. With the Jewish Army itself now moving into Germany – with Churchill having no choice but to get the troops moving after the attack – and moving northward, people wanted the War over with sooner rather than later.
In order to simplify the situation, and as a further testament to the mental state Himmler had created for himself and others in Berlin, Himmler ordered on August 15th that the Wehrmacht and SS were to merge. This was hard to pull off practically with resource and command starvation, but oftentimes merely taking a paintbrush and putting ‘SS’ on the helmet was enough to show one’s loyalty. Tragicomic situations would be encountered, such as one Wehrmacht company running out of paint before the last few helmets could have their letters painted on, and SS commanders coming in and shooting those unlucky few for ‘mutiny’. Wehrmacht generals would often find themselves reduced to the lower tiers of the officer corp with SS hacks young enough to be their grandchildren in some cases being put in charge.
As the Americans and Free Germans approached, the defence of Berlin was prepared for in earnest. The women were conscripted in building defenses, boys in some cases as young as eight were given weapons and told to fight and leaving the city without a permit was an immediate death sentence. Likewise, members of the Free German army would be shot on sight as mutineers – no mercy. In the meantime, Himmler had prepared one final act of vengeance against the Allies, even as both himself and – with strong prodding – Goebbels prepared their escape from the city while they shot anyone else who tried to do just that. By the end of September, the Americans and Free German Army were at the gates of Berlin. [1]
[1] - Appropriate Music (with some details changed):
Thank you to whoever namedropped Sabaton earlier in the thread - I doubt I would have disovered them if not for you.
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Very interesting- this postwar world is going to be messy as hell when nationalist movements kicks in across the colonies.
Britain might escape the worst if they build up their colonies and help raise the natives more, but Rhodesia and South Africa will be hellholes for the natives as the whites will resist hard.
Britain might escape the worst if they build up their colonies and help raise the natives more, but Rhodesia and South Africa will be hellholes for the natives as the whites will resist hard.
I find even more interesting that Smuts and the Rhodesians decided to send delegates to the fascists even before the war was ended - something that London certainly won't see well. After all despite being all allies the allegiances of the Union technically should be still with Britain and their king. A matter is to bypass Churchill, another is George VI and I don't see the King if previously informed, to allow it so easily - and worse the Rhodesians who are still under a colonial administration.
I suspect that Churcill's alliance with Mussolini and the fascist block will have disastrous consequences for the British Empire: not only it has alienated the United States, but now London has to deal with hostile governments backed by either Rome or Moscow.
It is also safe to assume that the Arab world is going to be pissed off even more than OTL (especially in Lybia and Algeria)
I think some that will depend on whom replaces Churchill in 1945. Plus the situation in the USA.
If the British Empire and Fascists are presenting a strong face to Communism then I suspect the USA will back them, even help prop up the British rather than insist on decolonisation as OTL. It won't be so much opening up the world for US markets as stopping 'The Reds' from getting a toehold anywhere. Will be made worse if Stalin is far more bonkers about 'spreading the Revolution' everywhere than OTL.
Oh, just thinking: how would Wallace face the Second Red Scare? I mean, if he will be too pro-soviet, he would be crucified by the avarege american. With J. Edgar Hoover holding the nails in place.
I can also see the japanese going for a quicker surrender, them being scared of chemical attacks on the Home Islands. As the nazi already cleared the use, it's not unproblable an allied reiteration in the Pacific, at least in the minds of the japanese govern.
I can also see the japanese going for a quicker surrender, them being scared of chemical attacks on the Home Islands. As the nazi already cleared the use, it's not unproblable an allied reiteration in the Pacific, at least in the minds of the japanese govern.
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South Africa I can see having the autonomy and pull to manage something like this, but Rhodesia? Seems far fetched - they should be easy enough to punish if they step too out of line. Also, they surely see the difference between 'these people are thankful to have been saved and are working here until they are ready to move to their new homeland' and regular settlers?
This is getting to silly levels of stupid evil now. Anyone other than himmler or beria, I would not believe it.
marathag
Banned
Depends if Wallace would act the same at Yalta as the dying FDR did in giving Uncle Joe a pass on everything he wanted. I'm not so sure Wallace wanting to give the USSR a fair shake in 1944 is the same as rolling over for them in 1945 when President.
They’re the definition of Stupid Evil. I half expect Himmler to start backstabbing people for teh lulz.
EddyBoulevard
Banned
I expect people to think of Hitler as the lesser of two evils compared to Himmler.
More a case of Mad King Aeyres versus King Joffrey. You’re still boned no materr who’s in charge.
So Schuschnigg will be returning to power in Vienna? Interesting.
So Tsar Boris still died leaving young Simeon with a long regency. While Tsar Boris has likely gone to the grave with immense popularity I wonder how the royal dictatorship will fare in the next years?
The text indicates their presence was unofficial and I am guessing behind the back of the British:
'Recent evidence' implies the knowledge of their attendance at this historic conference was only something that recently came to light.
Also at this point they re more observing and asking for advice from the Fascists it seems rather than making formal alliances. These might not even be serving government officials from their governments attending.
Ohh, that doesn't sound good. Hmm, since Romania apparently avoids war through the Cold War they seem safe. And the text calls the war against Greece the Fourth and so far final Balkan War. So where will the fire erupt next?
Hmm, while it seems South Africa is going to be worse than OTL we aren't clear how Rhodesia's efforts will turn out.
So Tsar Boris still died leaving young Simeon with a long regency. While Tsar Boris has likely gone to the grave with immense popularity I wonder how the royal dictatorship will fare in the next years?
The text indicates their presence was unofficial and I am guessing behind the back of the British:
'Recent evidence' implies the knowledge of their attendance at this historic conference was only something that recently came to light.
Also at this point they re more observing and asking for advice from the Fascists it seems rather than making formal alliances. These might not even be serving government officials from their governments attending.
Ohh, that doesn't sound good. Hmm, since Romania apparently avoids war through the Cold War they seem safe. And the text calls the war against Greece the Fourth and so far final Balkan War. So where will the fire erupt next?
Hmm, while it seems South Africa is going to be worse than OTL we aren't clear how Rhodesia's efforts will turn out.
Im personally guessing that with the Free German army running around, Germany will feel alot less ashamed then they are OTL and will probably have similar issues to what Japan has now with pretty much everyone in Eastern Europe hating their guts and open Nationalism quite acceptable.