I’m new to this thread, but Mussolini wasn’t a General. He was a journalist and a politician.
How far along is this TL?
The Footprint of Mussolini - TL
How far along is this TL?
Thanks. There are a lot of pages, so I’m trying to keep up. In most Cold War fascist Italy TL’s that I’ve seen, he has an alliance with Portugal or at the very least good relations with Portugal. How did he react to the annexation of Goa?
We don't know how Mussolini personally reacted. It was met with resistance from much of the Roman Alliance, but it's not like they could do much to prevent India from annexing the territory anyway.
On another note, have you used the threadmarks to make finding the chapters easier?
If Italy didn’t align itself with the Axis, presumably they got a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. They had a permanent seat in the League of Nations and they were promised one OTL in 1940. If they haven’t given up Italian East Africa, they probably have a Naval presence in the Indian Ocean too. Couldn’t they try a mix of gunboat diplomacy along wth UN sanctions? By the early 1960’s, they probably have tested at least a few nuclear weapons. Isn’t there a possibility that they’d back down from the pressure?
Thanks man. I didn’t even know that was there.
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The Indians were led by a nationalist fanatic who the West was obligated by treaty to defend - no one wanted a nuclear war over Goa so they had India 'buy' the place - which pretty much everyone who wasn't Portugal acknowledged was rightfully Indian. Britain had nukes and UN vetoes - didn't mean anything when the far more prosperous Hong Kong was given to China.
The Third World Fights Back
The Third World Fights Back
Extract from ‘The Screams of a Continent: Africa after WW2’ by Ayaan Ferguson
Extract from ‘The Screams of a Continent: Africa after WW2’ by Ayaan Ferguson
As the 1960s went on, the fighting in Africa began to pick up. New waves of immigration were beginning to move in, especially to the Portuguese regions. In 1964, a military coup was attempted in Brazil against Left-wing President Goulart, under suspicion of his being a Communist-sympathizer by elements of the military and landed elite. The coup was funded and supported by the Roman Alliance, hoping to swing a UN Veto state in their favour. Goulart was rescued by vocal American support and even air strikes called in by the President, which terrified enough of the plotters into giving up. The failed coup would gut the Brazilian Right, which was now seen by much of the population as disloyal and traitorous. Goulart decried the Roman Alliance in his return address as a consortium of gangsters, expelling the Italian Ambassador. Italy, describing attempts by Goulart to compare it to the Mafia as ‘Anti-Italian racism’, responded by ordering an OPEP boycott which devastated the Brazilian economy. This led to a gigantic brain drain that the country still feels the effect of even today. The landed elite, more religious and entrepreneurs in Brazil would leave, overwhelmingly to Angola and Mozambique, where Portugal promised free land. Goulart would closely align with Savarkar in India and support the Afro-Fascists more so for their contempt of the Roman Alliance than any ideological alignment. In the 1966 World Cup in England, Italy and Brazil would meet in the quarterfinals in a match so infamous that it was called ‘The Battle of Liverpool’. The match more resembled a military conflict, with the Italians taking turns to regularly racially abuse the black Brazilian players, which instigated multiple fights on the pitch. Multiple players on both teams were injured. Two players on both teams were sent off as fists went flying. Though Italy won, it was so weakened from injuries and suspension that they were easy meat for the English hosts in the semifinals, leading to the final where England would ultimately win. The new immigrants to Portuguese Africa were much needed educated types, with most white immigrants to the region being undereducated peasants whose only virtue was having an absurd amount of children (a fertility rate of 6 compared to 5 for the native Africans). White Mozambicans had significantly worse education on average than the Whites of any other settler state, with many barely getting a rudimentary primary-school education. This sometimes led to astonishing squalor that was ironically seized upon by the Roman Alliance to ‘prove’ that Whites were not treated any better in their states than Blacks. Angola was soon destined to be a prime destination for Right-Wing Brazilians that felt unwelcome at home, with Luanda even having its own Carnaval to rival Rio. The Church kept its monolithic grip on society, with its insistence on having Africans being ordained as priests and let into the inner-circle of the local elite being treated as gospel by Salazar despite South Africa’s misgivings.
In South Africa, the response to the Goa Crisis was swift. President Verwoerd ordered the total expulsion of the Indian population from South Africa, as they were ‘agents of an enemy state’. They were overwhelmingly deported to India by the middle of 1963, slightly increasing the white minority’s demographic hold. The move was seen as inflammatory by Rome but it had little repercussion – even India was secretly pleased that it could boost the number of Hindus in Kashmir, which was where they were sent. More important was the system of Apartheid and how it was complicated by the Roman Alliance having multiple Non-White states in their midst. To that end, the status of ‘Honorary White’ was created to try and square the circle. Japanese, Chinese, Thai and Kingdom of Saba citizens would be the first to be so declared. Turks, North Egyptians, the Druze, Alawi, Lebanese and Iranians were to be considered Whites period. However, while Honorary White status could get you in the country for tourism or business, immigration was explicitly reserved for Whites. At the same time, Honorary White status would sometimes reach ludicrous extremes, such as an arrival of Katangan Mining Executives to Pretoria to discuss the issue of mining for the Uranium that would power South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons. The Black Katangan businessmen were given slips that declared them ‘Honorary Whites’, with their being protected by Italian mercenaries. The fiasco was so embarrassing that by 1970 all reference to ‘Whites’ had been replaced by ‘Settlers’, though the meaning remained obvious. Despite all its contradictions and international infamy, that both South Africa and Rhodesia could trade freely with the Roman Alliance ensured not only that both states could economically survive, but also due to their immense material resources, actually thrive. They had the highest growth among the settler states and significantly higher rates of immigration, although that had ironically become a problem. Rhodesia had heavily advertised in the American South to disaffected, poor Whites that in Rhodesia they could still have a place at the table. Tens of thousands of American Southerners would move to Rhodesia in the 1960s, but quickly became reviled among the population. The Southerners, bitter after the American Troubles, were phenomenally racist, even in the opinion of the native Rhodesians. They would sometimes attack Blacks at random, made public nuisances of themselves and badly damaged race relations within Rhodesia. When it was announced that a Rhodesian division of the Ku Klux Klan had been formed, Prime Minister Smith had finally had enough, sending the army in to arrest the Klan leaders and deport them to America where they were tried for membership of a terrorist organisation. American immigrants were forced to go through mandatory ‘Cultural courses’, to explain to them that just because Rhodesia was obviously preferential to Whites did not mean they could raise hell. American immigrants protested about these ‘discriminatory practices’ without sense of irony. All the same, in both South African and Rhodesia, the White share of the population continued to rise, though the Brazilian and Indian backed Afro-Fascists, such as Robert Mugabe in Rhodesia, were continuing to gain steam.
With respect to Nuclear Weapons, the 1960s would see three new nuclear states come into being, with a substantial number moving closer and closer to that day. On June 2nd 1964, twenty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, Israel publicly detonated its first Nuclear Weapon in the Wadi Rum Desert. Roughly a year later, South China would likewise test its first Nuclear Weapon. In 1969, just before the decade was through, India would be able to create its own as well. At the same time, work was going on behind the scenes to extend that yet further. In the Roman Alliance, both Spain and South Africa anxiously raced to create a nuclear weapon, the former to restore their pride as the official Number Two in the Roman Alliance and the latter to ensure the eternal survival of their Apartheid system. Katanga made sure to squeeze them for every cent for the Uranium they were so rich in. Balbo was not pleased with either project but did not want to rock the boat when there was a serious war afoot in Africa, and not just in Ethiopia.
In 1967, after years of discrimination against the primarily Christian Igbo people in Biafra, there was an uprising by the minority to declare independence in the south of Nigeria. This followed a series of coups and counter-coups in Nigeria, with pogroms so intense that it’s estimated 100,000 Igbo were murdered in 1966, half of them children. Under command of Colonel Ojukwu in Enugu, the south launched an uprising against the Nigerian government that successfully cleared out Biafra of Nigerian federal forces. They also declared a Republic of Benin in the neighboring, ethnically mixed province to stop Non-Igbo residents in the region from aligning against them. Nigeria was a member of the Commonwealth and a British protectorate, as well as awash in offshore oil – the British had no interest in surrendering it so easily. To that end, both the British and Nigerian navies closed off Biafra from the outside world by quickly launching a blockade. But one thing Biafra did have going for it was help. Colonel Ojukwu, cognizant of the need to appease the Roman Alliance to fulfill his ambitions, publicly decried ‘The Fraud of Pan-Africanism’ as a way of suppressing the unique culture of the Igbo minority beneath a generic label of ‘Africa’. His defence of his own ethnic group against the racial collectivism of Pan-Africanism was widely reported. “They tell us to hate the White Man – yet they tell us to love the people who burn and starve our children. They tell us to hate those who would help us and love those who would harm us,” said Ojukwu in what has become one of the most famous and divisive speeches in African history. Naturally, this quickly determined the sides of the conflict, with Zaire and Liberia both openly condemning Biafra as ‘Race-Traitors’. The accusation was met with outrage in Biafra, making Ojukwu’s subsequent actions far more understandable. He would secretly travel to Spanish Guinea to meet with representatives of the Settler States. In return for membership of the Roman Alliance and OPEP, as well as a pledge of silence on the race issue in Rhodesia and South Africa, the Roman Alliance agreed to pay for scores of mercenaries both White and Black. Katanga, Italy and South Africa had more than enough mercenaries for the task. France also supported the Biafrans to undermine the Pan-Africanists, thus allowing an unhindered string of supplies to enter Biafra and relieve the starvation that had infested the country. The Nigerians proved no match for the battle-hardened mercenaries, who quickly punched a hole in the line of the federal troops with the Biafran troops following in from behind. On April 20th, mercenaries entered the suburbs of Lagos, forcing the central government to flee north. Due to the Roman Alliance airlift, the Biafrans had not only endured their lack of supplies but had won the PR war in Britain as well. The British public were increasingly mortified by the tales of starvation coming out of Biafra and broadly sympathized with the objectives of the rebels. In 1962, Hugh Gaitskell had lost the election to MacMillan’s Conservative Party on the issue of Rhodesia and South Africa – now MacMillan’s successor in Alec Douglas-Home, who had taken over in 1966 due to a series of government scandals, was faced with more protests over Britain’s role in Africa from both the Left and Right. With Nigeria at risk of total collapse, Douglas-Home agreed to throw in the towel on British support. Without British support, Nigeria reluctantly agreed to a truce themselves on April 28th 1968. In the final treaty, Biafra indeed became an independent, Roman Alliance state that was in OPEP, though ‘The Benin Republic’ (as the new state would be named to avoid confusion with the other Benin, named ‘The Republic of Benin’) would remain neutral. Biafra would soon join the list with Katanga for Africa’s most despised country among the continent’s native nationalists, but the Biafrans were more than happy with that so long as they were independent. Replete with oil wealth, they would be a great fit into OPEP, increasing the organisation’s already considerable power. The remainder of Nigeria, now overwhelmingly Muslim and devoid of the oil that was its great chance of growth, was convulsed by a series of de-habilitating Islamist revolts. ‘The Benin Republic’ would be the only democracy to emerge from the chaos, with Biafra being a Fascist dictatorship. With Biafra joining the Roman Alliance, the first Black-run state in the organisation, the Luba Kingdom officially joined as well at the end of 1968. Of course, Katanga continued to do business with the Settler States while never formally declaring for them in a way much like Israel, a position that would make it extremely important in the 70s and 80s.
But of course, there could be no discussion about Colonial Wars in Africa without mentioning the big one: Ethiopia. While Libya attracted many Italians, was relatively affluent and the locals were basically integrated, the same could not be said of Ethiopia. It closer resembled Hearts of Darkness than Libya. The settlers were only the most scavenging and base, the economy run by a series of Italian corporations and state enterprises that created a system little better than forced servitude. It was a common sight for managers to beat – even occasionally kill - their workers and any of them not being open racists was considered miraculous. The Ethiopians were just as abused by Eritrean and Somalian soldiers as they were any native Italian. The Beta Israeli minority had overwhelmingly left to Israel as the conditions were so appalling – Israel accepting them as a favour to the Italians to increase their demographic stranglehold on the country. By the mid 60s, roughly 15% of Ethiopia was settler, overwhelmingly concentrated closer to the borders of Eritrea and Somalia. The spark for deeper Italian involvement in Ethiopia came on May 17th 1965, when a mine just outside Addis Abba collapsed killing fifty Ethiopian workers. There had been warnings for months that the mine was not stable, but Italian managers ignored it. Their deaths began a nationwide strike by Black laborers initially demanding better work conditions but soon expanding the demands to include representation in government, allowing unions to operate freely and if those demands could not be met then to give Ethiopia independence. The terms were thrown in the garbage before Balbo had even finished reading the letter. In the name of ‘restoring safety to the Italian settler population’, the tanks rolled in to Addis Abba. What they didn’t expect was for it to take a week to pacify the city, as it went up in flames. The tenacity of the Ethiopians was far more intense than the Italians expected, with weapons far more advanced than what had been seen before. It would later turn out that Indian and Brazilian money had paid for American and British guns being funneled through Sudan and the EAF (East Africa Federation) into the waiting hands of the Ethiopians. In response, the Italians began a system of formal segregation, dividing the city clearly along racial lines with the Ethiopian side living under an even more severe for of Jim Crow segregation as opposed to the 'Settlers'. It would be on November 2nd 1965, thirty-five years after a certain coronation, that news came that stunned the Italians, Ethiopians and the whole world - Haile Selassie made a speech in Overtureville in Zaire, commanding Ethiopians to rise up against the Italians 'In the name of Africa'. When Balbo finished watching the video, he reportedly told Ciano, "I don't know which of us will own Ethiopia at the end of it, but one thing's for sure - whoever wins it won't have much of an Ethiopia left".
Extract from 'After Aflaq: The Middle East 1957 - 1980' by Roberto Colombo
As the 60s ground on, the Middle East was slowly coming back to itself. North Egypt had fully joined the Roman Alliance and moved increasingly away from its Southern neighbor. They were soon the beneficiaries of a certain percentage of the Hydropower created from the Balbo Canal, which greatly aided reconstruction in Alexandria. By now, the first serious amounts of Italian and Israeli tourism were coming into the country and the effect was becoming noticed in terms of the resurging economy. Lebanon likewise had become fully integrated with the Fascist economies, being included on the famous Rome-Jerusalem railway that was finished in October 1967 to mark the 45th Anniversary of the March on Rome. Balbo took the first train all the way from Rome, across the Dardanelles, through Beirut and into Mussolini Station in Jerusalem. Lebanon was raised to a Balkan-Europe standard of living by 1970 if by no other reason than necessity. South Iran had gone one better and had a living standard almost the equal of Italy herself. These were the main success stories of the Middle East, though others continued to trundle along. The Arab Federation (the name given to the conglomerate of British territories remaining in the Middle East with the exception of thoroughly punished Oman) had reluctantly combined their resources in the face of Roman Alliance domination and had become important partners of ITO in the region. As more and more of the world’s oil was in the stranglehold of the Fascists, any non-Fascist, non-Communist partner was looked on kindly.
Of course, the main problem was the Islamist one. In South Egypt, it took the Muslim Brotherhood’s attack on British servicemen in Cairo in 1964 to have Whitehall seriously commit to exterminating the organisation. Successfully appealing for ITO support (mostly because the organisation wanted to show Balbo that they were a force to be reckoned with), British, French, American and Japanese troops came to the country to work alongside the South Egyptian military. Japan was determined to show its military potential after their loss in WW2 and the other states were glad to let someone else take the slack. Qutd mocked the deployment as ‘Useless against the will of God’. Against the combined Air Force of ITO however, his organisation was indeed the one made useless. Cut off from their suppliers across the Red Sea in Hejaz by the combined ITO fleets, it was only a matter of time before the Brotherhood was faced with serious existential crisis. By early 1965, the entire Nile Basin was declared secure and the first moves were made to crush those forces deeper in the desert, which was declared secure in 1966. With French help given their experience in obliterating the FLN in Algeria, both the Italians and British jointly cleared out Cairo of any serious Brotherhood threat. Qutd was captured in January 1967 as he attempted to cross Sudan into Zaire. Qutd assumed he would have a common ally with the Zaire government in their opposition to the West – he was swiftly taken out of his delusions when Zairian government handed him over to the East African Federation who swiftly handed him back to the British and South Egyptians. Qutd was put on trial but denied the last pleasure he wished for – martyrdom. Instead, he was placed in solitary confinement in jail for the rest of his life, a jail specifically made for him where he could talk to one nor promote his message. The prison guards employed to watch over him were Shiite to ensure that he would never corrupt them with religious invocation. Qutd was condemned to life imprisonment from which he would never escape except in insanity. The months of solitary confinement sent him insane by the end of 1967. He would perish a gibbering wreck on August 16th 1975.
When it came to the Ikhwan, the influx of Turkish troops into the Kingdom of Hejaz would be the beginning of a prolonged, brutal insurgency with the high point of suffering being when almost 40% of the country’s population were living in concentration camps to minimize the area of operation for the insurgents. Even still, some of the Ikwhan’s worst atrocities would happen both there and abroad. The worst included bombing buses frequented by Western tourists, attacking El Al stations in airports around Europe and even successfully managing to detonate bombs on the Paris Underground in January 1966, killing thirty people and fully committing France’s President Pompidou (De Gaulle’s successor after his resignation in 1965) into the effort. But it was the siege of St. Peter’s that would send Italy fully into the conflict.
On April 10th 1966 (Easter Sunday), members of the Ikhwan stormed St. Peter’s Basilica, killing several of the Swiss Guard and ultimately taking Mass takers within the chapel hostage (including the Pope). They even smashed the Pieta of Michaelangelo, which was painstakingly rebuilt once the situation was mended, and desecrated many of the tombs while demanding the release of all Ikhwan prisoners around the world. The event stunned the entire international community, with even the Soviet Union (especially Malenkov) issuing a rare formal denunciation of the Ikhwan. The world in its millions prayed for the safety of the Pope and the other people who had been taken. The Easter Hostage Crisis was a heavy load upon Balbo, who had always been dismissive of the internal terror threat that Italy had faced from Islamists, focusing all his energies into Berlinguer’s Socialists. He would always consider the Crisis to be ‘My Goa’, in reference to Mussolini’s duel with India. Finally, after four days of negotiation, Balbo ordered Italian Special Forces to storm St. Peter’s in conjunction with the Swiss Guard, who came down. Romans watched aghast as gunshots and explosions rang out in the Home of the Holy. When the chaos was over, all but two of the fifty Ikhwan troops were dead, three of the Italian paratroopers were dead and about ten of the hostages had died as well. As the Pope had ultimately survived the exchange, the world rejoiced and quickly forgot about those who had died in the fighting. The Folgore (the Paratrooper division of Italy, meaning ‘Lightening’) would soon become the most revered force in all of Italy for its televised role in the saving St. Peter’s. The international news media watched with stunned amazement at the speed and efficiency of the Italian effort, which would become a good lesson for British forces in Northern Ireland and Cyprus in the coming years. Balbo had survived the crisis and proceeded to move his attention away from the Socialist to the Islamists. He also ruthlessly reformed Italian internal security given its disastrous performance in preventing tragedies like the Easter Hostage Crisis. “I was one Pope away from an uprising,” he would reportedly tell President Pompidou. After the Vatican II Reforms, the Church had a much more troubled relationship with the Fascists, with Evola demanding it be used to clamp down on the institution. However, international sympathy in the aftermath of the Crisis forced Balbo to stay clear of any conflict.
Ultimately the Italians, who were more used to this sort of guerilla warfare, trained the Turks on how to deal with the menace in the Hejaz region. Once that was done, only then did serious results start to come to fruition. The streets of Hejaz soon became relatively safe to walk along and international terrorist attacks fell off a cliff – but Bin Laden remained missing. That was finally put to bed in 1968 when a traffic cop in Sudan pulled over a car with a man in the back that he swore looked awfully like Bin Laden. After almost refusing to tell his superior out of embarrassment, his report was pushed up the chain of command and further intelligence work was undertaken. Prime Minister Douglas-Home was then informed of a likely hideout (a pleasant apartment complex outside of Khartoum) and subsequently ordered the SAS to make the hit. They landed and proceeded to clear out the complex one by one. Bin Laden attempted to run and escape by going to the basement to reach an underground escape route but he tripped on the stairs and broke his neck going down. This somewhat embarrassing way to go marked the end of the Ikhwan as a serious terrorist force, as their paymaster vanished and no state wanted anything to do with them. Sudan had privately allowed the hit though they publicly condemned it as a violation of their sovereignty, while Italy lodged a complaint that it didn't get to kill Bin Laden itself. By the early 1970s, the Hejaz was considered safe from the Ikhwan menace, with King Hussein finally able to risk going out in public (unlike his still thoroughly reviled cousin in Syria).
Of course, no fate was as well deserved as that of the Islamic State of Arabia, a country with the same diabolical reverence as Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. The country had continued to fall apart while still standing as if by black magic. On June 18th 1969, an Israeli border post saw a camel approaching them with a boy on it, clearly on the brink of death. After being nursed to health, he claimed that he had been sold into slavery to the Mufti along with his sisters, several of whom had been made ‘property’ of the increasingly cruel and unpredictable master. He said that he had come to find someone who could help free his sisters. It was the first successful escapee from the region in five years, which was bound to cause a stir, no less because of how miraculous it was that such a boy could have survived the journey. By now however, tempers from the Second Arabian War had cooled to a point where few were willing to countenance allowing this abomination of a state to live much longer. Feverish meetings began with all the border states of the ISA, as well as their protector states such as Britain, Iran and Italy. It was ultimately agreed that troops of Saba and the Hejaz (no Turkish among them) would perform the operation. On July 30th of the same year man had walked on the Moon, the ISA was invaded by both Hejaz and Saba. No explosions marked the intrusion – there were no targets to hit. Helicopters would go over villages and spray bullets down on those who uselessly thrust their spears and fired their arrows against their metal underbellies. One tank could subdue an entire village, with the Islamists cracking their swords against the tank’s armor while the crews were too piteous to laugh. The only form of communication between villages was by camel or horse, thus almost all villages had no advance word that the troops were moving in. As they moved closer and closer to the centre of the ISA, the films and pictures that returned to the West were those of unparalleled horror. Polio, intense starvation, boys and girls of Kindergarden age with iron chains around their necks. Plague, leprosy and madness were stamped in every corner of the settlements; often with piles of corpses just outside the village of those who had either passed away in the famine or had done something ‘Un-Islamic’. Many of the children who had reached the age of puberty had never seen or heard of tanks, phones or even the differences between other countries before. To them, the coming of the foreign soldiers was so incredible an event that it was literally beyond their comprehension. The chocolate the soldiers gave them was also the first they had ever heard of it, let alone taste it. The shock of the situation soon made its way to murderous contempt for the architects of this mad state. In Buraydah, where the Mufti had resided, the troops of the Hejaz marched into the Tyrant’s quarters … only to find him stabbed to death. Beside the corpse stood one of the escapee boy’s sisters, weakly holding a knife while covered thoroughly in blood. She was 16 years old and had become of the Mufti’s many ‘Wives’ many years ago. “I stabbed him once for every time he had me,” she said. The soldiers looked to the corpse and saw more gauges than flesh. Of the Mufti’s associates, much like Qutd, martyrdom escaped them. As gunpowder was outlawed for being Un-Islamic, the suicide-bomber method of martyrdom was impossible. Thus, old men charged the troops, only to find that they were easily overpowered and locked up. In the entire course of the invasion, only sixteen Hejaz and Saban soldiers were killed with two of those being friendly fire. Many of the soldiers for the ISA were so starving and broken that they could put up no fight. By now, the zeal for the Mufti that had characterized the birth of the ISA had long disappeared. Instead of praying for Divine Deliverance from Satan, the people had prayed for Divine Deliverance from the Mufti. Roughly 750,000 people lived in the ISA when it was first announced. Roughly 100,000 people were left alive by the conclusion. It was the most awful casualty rate of any country in history, even worse than Paraguay in the War of the Triple Alliance. The country was annexed to the Hejaz Kingdom – many had claimed the territory, but by the end none wanted such a haunted, godforsaken desert. King Hussein would get a much-needed popularity boost, with his UN speech condemning the Mufti and defending Islam in December 1969 going down as one of the most acclaimed speeches in UN history. “I used to believe God had made Hell for the Devil and his Angels,” Hussein said, “but now I know it was made for that snake who dared call himself ‘Mufti’!” Balbo, eager to keep his Muslim minority in Libya happy, likewise stressed the difference between normal Islamic sects and the Ikhwan and ISA, which he described as 'Extensions of the Pan-Arabist plague'.
In 1970, eight surviving, orphaned children between ages six and fourteen who were born in Central Arabia without memory of the Pre-ISA age were taken to London for the BBC series ‘Seeing the World’. It had them go to several places in London that were common sights to most Westerners but beyond the comprehension and belief of the children. Things like Harrods, Amusement Parks and even the zoo. Millions around the world saw the first time the children tasted ice cream, saw a Disney film at the cinema – or indeed any film – and even the first time they heard Rock and Roll Music. At the end of the series, the children woke up on Christmas morning to see the first snow they had ever seen with their own eyes. The series would become popular around the world, especially in Israel, inspiring significant altruism towards Arabs for the first time since the War. Re-integrating the ISA’s population was an immense difficulty for the Hejaz Kingdom on top of its many other problems. The documentary series would help inspire millions to give to charities supporting those re-integration efforts. Though even today Central Arabia is essentially empty, with Riyadh still a ghost city, the surviving population would be an important source of wisdom on the folly of religious extremism. Though most Islamic denominations, even Islamist, considered the Mufti’s philosophy totally alien to Islam and humanity in general, by association almost all Islamist groups suffered by association. As the victims were overwhelmingly Muslim, the backlash would be primarily an internal one in Islam. The Islamist Wave that had spiked in the late 50s through the 60s had begun to decline with the fall of Qutd, Bin Laden and the Mufti. The increased fear of Islamists would prompt stern action by other leaders. For example, Mossadegh would ask the French to assassinate Ayatollah Khomeini in Paris, which the French readily agreed to for his incitement of Shiite terrorism in the Kingdom of Arabia and Iraq, not to mention Iran itself. Khomeini’s death would likewise damage the cause of Islamism in North Iran, but by now the West had no interest in supporting Islamists of any stripe.
Extract from 'The American Century' by Cindy Piper
Kennedy’s second term would be nowhere near as momentous as his first – defined by the success of the Arlington Agreement and the birth of the Cool War. However, many of his more quiet actions would end up being of immense worth. His strong defence of the ‘equality’ side of the Arlington Agreement meant the construction of countless schools and public services in primarily Black Southern areas that had never had a dime sent their way before. In foreign policy, he was greeted by success on July 8th 1961 when the Somoza Clan was defeated in El Salvador, paving the way for democratic restoration. His defence of the Brazilian state against the attempted Fascist Coup ensured that no further states in Latin America would go Fascist beyond Venezuela, Paraguay, and Argentina – the remainder strongly settling down on their democratic institutions. He struck a sensible note during the Goa Crisis and helped mediate a settlement between India and the Roman Alliance. His small commitments of American troops to Indonesia (which ultimately was agreed to be a non-aligned, neutral dictatorship under Suharto once it was cleared of Communists and Islamists by Thai, Italian and American troops in 1962 with Timor going fully to Portugal and the New Guinea being united under Australian leadership) and South Egypt helped to restore American military confidence after the immense bloodbath of China. Scared of OPEP pressure, Kennedy announced in 1962 that America would have to go energy independent to ensure its survival and prosperity. To that end, nuclear power plants began to be constructed up and down the country at a breakneck pace to keep America free from foreign oil, or at least OPEP oil. He is also generally credited with being the President most instrumental in putting America in the lead during the Space Race due to his enormous funding for NASA – leading to the successful American Moon Landing in 1969 before any of the other parties in the race could reach there. All in all, coupled with the economic bonanza of the late 50s and early 60s worldwide (half due to the opening of India and China’s markets), America was in a substantially better place in 1964 than it was in 1956. Americans remember President Joseph Kennedy mostly fondly, with historians having the same general opinion.
The 1964 Presidential election was the first truly competitive presidential election in America for perhaps thirty years given the collapse of the Democrats after their own dominion over the electorate. The Republicans had their candidate, Vice-President Richard Nixon, with the Freedom Party having theirs in George Corley. Corley was a different Southerner than any that had run for the Freedom Party before and voters could see it. He eschewed any explicit mention of race in his literature and emphasized his support of the Arlington Agreement. His relative moderation was naturally due more to a desperate desire to sit in the big seat than any form of altruism. Nixon knew he was up against a far craftier opponent than any the Freedom Party had yet thrown – George Corley was no Bull Connor. Many Blue-Collar workers in the North who had never seen the Freedomites as being in their corner. But their condemnation of Kennedy’s tax cuts for top earners as well as support for expansion of federal support for ‘the working man’ seemed to promise the parts of the New Deal most fondly remembered while being sufficiently wrapped up with the Right enough to make any talk of Communism seem nonsensical. When Gallup recorded a poll in August showing Corely ahead of Nixon, even if by just a point, the Republican Party finally woke out of its wanton complacency. Things came to a head in the first televised debates in Presidential history between Nixon and Corely. In this first contest, Nixon was considered the definitive winner by pointing out the many extremists who remained in the Freedom Party and Corely’s allegiance with them. At the time, the 1964 TV debate was considered to be the event that decisively won the election for Nixon. Little did anyone know, of course, how important it would be in the fate of the 1968 election too. Nixon won the 1964 election with 300 electoral votes, still far closer than many Republicans would have liked, and by now killing any suggestion that the Freedomites could never gain power in the White House. Corely was disappointed as he sincerely wished for power. Nixon and Corely had developed a strong interpersonal animosity on the campaign trail, and the latter was determined to make the Republicans remember what it was like to lose power. All the same, the Freedom Party’s seizure of the Senate was their first major political coup, enough to isolate those on the fringes of the party who demanded a return to the more demagogic racial politics of the 1940s and 1950s. Even though he lost, George Corely had more than won his own personal war within the Freedom Party to modernize it.
Nixon intended to continue Détente with Balbo, hoping to pass the buck off for taking on the Fascists entirely to the Third World Resistance networks with their Indian and Brazilian sponsors. He was in for quite a shock, as was most of the world, when in August 1965, Chiang Kai-Shek landed in Rome to announce that South China would formally join the Roman Alliance. This had always been Chiang’s ultimate intention but he was simply too dependent on American economic investment. Now that China was seeing growth of unprecedented proportions, had nuclear weapons and restored national pride (not to mention being very wary of India), Chiang finally felt it was time to join the Bloc. The addition of such an economy into the Roman Alliance would provide many opportunities and challenges to the Bloc (especially in terms of leadership) but it was certainly seen at the time as a game-changing move. Thailand’s reluctance to admit the behemoth into their midst was assuaged by Balbo’s promise to build the Kra Canal in the same way as the Balbo Canal had been created – peaceful nuclear detonations. Upon completion in 1968, Singapore’s port traffic reduced by almost 30% and Thailand’s much safer waters would become a source of the country’s newfound economic strength. American dependence on Japan as a bulwark against Fascist China would only increase, whose military was the best man-for-man in the whole of Asia. The good news was that Indo-China had reluctantly shelved plans to move away from France given their long-standing animosity to the local northern giant. At home, Nixon was a strong supporter of Kennedy’s Nuclear program and would begin to dip America’s toes in the renewable energy market while continuing to reduce the top tax bracket to about 45% (from 60% in 1956 to 50% in 1964). The first real signs of trouble began on Columbus Day on October 11th 1965 in Newark. The Italian community celebrated the occasion with a large march throughout the city centre, but the parade ran into a counter-protest of African-Americans who protested anything to do with Italy due to the slaughter that was only beginning in Ethiopia. The confrontation quickly spun into a violent altercation where ten people were killed. The event shocked the nation and polarized the two communities. Unfortunately, given the sad future that laid ahead for Ethiopia, things were only about to get worse.
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I assume various Apatheid state in RA are too afraid to do anything thing like accepting KKK due to fear of becoming another Croatia.
I assume The siege of St. Peter will prove to many that their new leader Italo Balbo is a competent one.
I am starting to think that RA will survive on but instead of being purely Fascist bloc it will also include right wing republic.
Also kra canal nice!
I assume The siege of St. Peter will prove to many that their new leader Italo Balbo is a competent one.
I am starting to think that RA will survive on but instead of being purely Fascist bloc it will also include right wing republic.
Also kra canal nice!
While we know the Mufti was killed by one of his concubines, what happened to his subordinates? How many of them would end up captured alive (and presumably executed)?
Partly that, and while Smith was a racist he's smart enough to know that nothing good will come of allowing White Supremacist terrorists to strut around the street.
A majority were captured alive and were executed to the last by Islamic Councils (the RA very much DID NOT want this to turn into an Anti-Islam thing) who denounced them as traitors and heretics.
How much of the largely empty Central Arabia has been set aside as a nature reserve by TTL's 2020 considering how empty the place is?
Dolan
Banned
China joined RA?
Oh well, the only chance Facism would "fall" is for Italy to democratize internally due to slow but steady, more humanist reforms.
Considering China OTL is able to hold their power despite all their tyranny...
Well, we could see Fascism actually stays, with another, also conservative party (perhaps Christianity-based) being the counterbalance.
Oh well, the only chance Facism would "fall" is for Italy to democratize internally due to slow but steady, more humanist reforms.
Considering China OTL is able to hold their power despite all their tyranny...
Well, we could see Fascism actually stays, with another, also conservative party (perhaps Christianity-based) being the counterbalance.
The whole place is empty apart from military bases and the odd village -no one who did live there wants to go back and those who didn't don't want to go. Riyadh is a tourist site much like modern Chernobyl.
I hope that facist italy stays around beacuse it would make More sense to me atleast if china and north Korea can keep their system then italy can do it aswell. I think that Rhodesia is probaly going to win their Bush war why first unlike otl they actually som support secondly mugabe and his cohorts are idiots really when it comes to the the war there the natvies where kinda stupid when it came to fighting.
Dolan
Banned
I think it was implied that Facism never die, just fades away, perhaps with the Party itself staying as major Political Party and still holding power sometimes, but in a (semi) Democratic system against whichever conservative party Italian Monarchy will support.
No flashy fall, no what could be pinned as "the disaster", only gradual democratization from within.
I am surprised the Saudis didn't try to reclaim their old territories back after the IRA's collapse, but i immagine neither Turkey nor Israel would have liked the idea.
Also i don't think Portugal will be able to keep Timor in the long run: unlike Angola and Mozambique, it doesn't have any ally in the region and at one point or another keeping the territory may become too expensive
BTW talking about the potential causes of the RA's collapse, i think we should add "excessive military spending" to the list: in OTL it was one of the key reasons behind the collapse of the Soviet Union and ITTL Italy has been involved in numerous conflicts around the planet that may lead to the same ending.
Add the fact Ethiopia will probably make OTL's Afghanistan look downright pleasant and you get a giant black hole comsuming huge parts of the italian treasury each year.
Also i don't think Portugal will be able to keep Timor in the long run: unlike Angola and Mozambique, it doesn't have any ally in the region and at one point or another keeping the territory may become too expensive
BTW talking about the potential causes of the RA's collapse, i think we should add "excessive military spending" to the list: in OTL it was one of the key reasons behind the collapse of the Soviet Union and ITTL Italy has been involved in numerous conflicts around the planet that may lead to the same ending.
Add the fact Ethiopia will probably make OTL's Afghanistan look downright pleasant and you get a giant black hole comsuming huge parts of the italian treasury each year.
I actually know a Goan that told me that feelings in Goa were much more mixed than that. Also, China in the late 1990’s isn’t really comparable to India in the early 1960’s. The action was also widely condemned by both western politicians and the press. JFK famously said, “the Priest has been caught in the brothel”.
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