I can see various veterans groups supporting the republican nominee or a Democrat nominee against Wallace. As for Europe and the colonies I can see the us and Europe drawing out spheres of interest against the Soviets.
The Footprint of Mussolini - TL
I think China will end up divided in a few years. Nationalist South and Communist North; classic flavor in a different dish.
The two sides will get tired of compromise and someone will strike first. This may be the equivalent to the Korean War.
Decolonization will definitely go differently. For Asia I am not sure how things will balance out with the lack of America using leverage to support decolonization, vs the need to arm up more back home without American aid. Maybe it will lead to a stabler decolonization in Asia with the Europeans pulling out and trying to establish stable countries they can do business with and contain the communists?
Africa I can see being a very different story though. If the Europeans withdraw from Asia I think their motive would in part be to keep their hold on Africa.
The two sides will get tired of compromise and someone will strike first. This may be the equivalent to the Korean War.
Decolonization will definitely go differently. For Asia I am not sure how things will balance out with the lack of America using leverage to support decolonization, vs the need to arm up more back home without American aid. Maybe it will lead to a stabler decolonization in Asia with the Europeans pulling out and trying to establish stable countries they can do business with and contain the communists?
Africa I can see being a very different story though. If the Europeans withdraw from Asia I think their motive would in part be to keep their hold on Africa.
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Thomas Wilkins
Banned
I hope Chiang Kai Shek wins the civil war. Since it was said that Stalin would regret not backing Mao, I wanna see the commies get crushed.
Dolan
Banned
Guomindang China who win with perceived US betrayal (and likely British-French-Italian advisors on their back), would be very likely to enter Roman Alliance instead of mending ties with US.
Especially if Britain end up sweetened the deal with giving back Hong-Kong and Macau early on in exchange of being yet another Bulwark against Communism.
US could end up being an international Pariah this time around.
Seems like there’s a couple inconsistencies here with Kluge and Rundstedt.
Probably yes - he still gave more legitimacy than any other Quisling figure would, while being still a good orator. But not by a large margin.
Yup, my bad. Just assume they’ve both died in Operation Ragnarok. I’ll clean up in the finished TL.
Exit Stage Right
Hey all. This will be my last update for a week or two. April is going to be insanely busy for me but I wanted to have one final entry - forgive its shortness. Consider this the end of Act 1 (please don't take this for me saying the story is exactly one third done because I keep coming up with new ideas), with the Nazis passing into history. Act 2 will go through the Cold War and the Arabian Wars - see you then!
Exit Stage Right
We Brave Few: Europe 1945-1949 by Abraham Ferguson
The most interesting thing about the Nuremburg Trials was that despite everything happening around it, all the diplomatic chaos, the actual cooperation between the Allied authorities never faltered. Even the representatives of the Italian and Soviet judiciaries got along well, despite the uproar between the two blocs outside. The world’s press was particularly drawn to Himmler, the head of the Nazi state during its even worse conclusion. With the Nazis kept under lock and key for so long, by the time they emerged for Trial that July many had sobered up in their life experiences. Their being trialed while the Japanese War went on merely an attempt to distract the Home Front from the lull of news.
Many expected merely a rubber stamp moment – almost victor’s justice if the defendants weren’t so obviously, horribly guilty. Instead, the trial unearthed entirely new information that stunned the world, including Allied leaders. The main moment was during the cross-examination of Roland Freisler by Associate Justice Robert Jackson. Freisler, as if expecting a reversal of the situation he would so often subject his victims to in court, was incredibly on edge and accidentally blurted out about a reference to the Wannsee Conference. Eichmann was visibly infuriated from across the dock. After stern interrogation, Freisler identified the members of the meeting. This started a hunt, turning the official documentation of Germany upside down in an attempt to find the minutes of the meeting. Roughly a month later, the minutes of Martin Luther were found – who had killed himself rather than be captured. While Eichmann had written his report in a way that minimized the directness of what it was talking about, there was no disguising the meaning. This was a document detailing nothing less than the absolute obliteration of millions of people. It’s discovery was heralded around the world as the ‘smoking gun’ of the case – despite the case already being slam-dunk before. “Luther, if you weren’t dead I’d kill you myself,” Eichmann was heard to growl.
Eichmann’s own trial was particularly noteworthy. In order to try and get away with it, he presented the image of a drab bureaucrat, lazily and halfheartedly paying attention to affairs. His involvement in the newly discovered Wannsee Conference had excited attention. However, he maintained his banal form, continuously explaining he was only doing his orders as a soldier and that he had no particular ill will towards Jews. Finally, the British prosecutor, Hartley Shawcross, came up with a way of breaking Eichmann down. Shawcross began by asking Eichmann about his role in the killing of Hungarian Jews who had failed to escape with the rest of their brethren to Italy. Eichmann merely explained that the Jews who had stayed were partisans who had to be routed out and defeated. Shawcross then asked about Trieste, but started to irritate Eichmann by asking him how he felt when he heard that “those people you call sub-human were able to resoundingly and totally defeat your so-called master race?” Eichmann started to growl his replies. Finally, Shawcross asked if Eichmann begged when the Jews came to capture him. Eichmann leapt up and angrily screamed, “I never begged to those disgusting vermin! I’ve done nothing wrong! The fact that we killed five million of them is the greatest thing we ever accomplished! I’ll go into my grave with a clean conscience that I did so much to remove those cockroaches from the face of the Earth!” It beggars belief that there were still more incredible moments of drama at the Trials.
One of those was the story of Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels was the only member of the Nazis that the prosecutors genuinely feared. Whenever he was brought up, he forcefully defended himself and his country while condemning any and all Allied infractions. His attempts to sow discord between the Soviets and Western powers were so good that news reports deliberately censored them to stop them getting spread around. He called Hiroshima and Kokura’s nuclear bombings “the greatest war crime in history with half a million wiped out by Jewish sorcery, and yet our bombings were supposedly immoral”. He asked how it was wrong to treat the Jews as enemies when they “created an army, slaughtering our men in the thousands after they had already surrendered”. He asked how the invasions by Germany of her neighbours were immoral when, “here stands the slaughterer of the Baltic states, the rapist of Greece and Serbia, the subjugator of the Indian Americans and enslaver of negroes, the tyrant of Ireland and the thief of Alsace-Lorraine”. Goebbels had developed a cult following among Pro-Nazi Germans who heard about his speeches and were thrilled that someone was giving as good as he got. The Allied authorities needed a way to kill Goebbels’s popularity before it took off again. At this rate, he could easily become a martyr for Neo-Nazism. The solution by Robert Jackson was as unconventional as it was genius.
When she came onto the stand, Goebbels was mortified. He thought he would never see her again. Her name was Lída Baarová, a Czech actress with whom he had an affair. The testimony itself was, in name at least, merely to give statements about Goebbels’s hatred of Jews. Of course, in reality, the plan was to destroy Goebbels’ image of a straight-line Aryan and have him be known as a ‘race-mixer’ with a Slav. Goebbels stayed quiet for the whole of the proceedings. He was informed the next day that his wife, Magda, had filed for divorce. Though he was certainly going to the noose, though his wife had indeed known about her husband’s doings, she was utterly humiliated enough to the extent that she wanted to get back at him. Goebbels was shattered for the rest of the proceedings and his newfound fame quickly died away.
But of course, there could be no greater star than Himmler himself. While most Nazis defended themselves at Nuremburg by saying they did what they did due to the Fürherprinzip, people were fascinated by what Himmler would say. Since he was the leader of the Third Reich, he couldn’t pretend to have had things out of his hands. His defence was as shocking as it was offensive: he argued he had continued the Holocaust out of ‘Self-defence’. Himmler shocked observers by proudly talking up the material challenges of the Holocaust and how they were able to overcome them by ‘German ingenuity’. He casually explained that the children had to die to ensure there would be no vengeance on German children and to ‘end the cycle of hatred’. He even said that there was a recorded speech on the matter from when he was in Posen, which was uncovered and played in the court to astonishment. His speeches ironically were quite helpful in historians's understanding of the Holocaust. Some people now believe Himmler’s strategy was to shock the judges so much that he would convince them that he was simply insane and get a lighter sentence. If that was the case, he ironically would be insane. Himmler’s terrifying performance at Nuremburg would put him above Hitler in most people’s minds for the more evil of the two Nazi leaders.
The sentences were announced on March 22nd 1946:
Bormann – Death by hanging (“He should be executed if only for being such a damned bore,” Goebbels was overheard saying).
Eichmann – Death by hanging
Frank – Death by hanging
Frick – Death by hanging
Freisler – Death by hanging (“SCUM! VERMIN!” he called out at his sentencing before being restrained.)
Funk – Life Imprisonment
Goebbels – Death by hanging (He just looked at his hands while the sentencing went on and had no visible reaction).
Hess – Life imprisonment
Himmler – Death by hanging (The President of the Tribunal, Lord Justice Colonel Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, almost spat the sentence due to the amount of utter hatred Himmler had generated for himself. Significant evidence exists that Himmler's noose was deliberately shortened to make the death as slow and painful as possible.)
Kaltenbrunner – Death by hanging
Ley – Death by hanging (his jail cell was closely watched for the entire proceeding due to a failed suicide attempt)
Muller – Death by hanging
Rosenberg – Death by hanging
Sauckel – Death by hanging
Schacht - Acquitted
Seyss-Inquart – Death by hanging
Streicher – Death by hanging
Von Leeb – Death by hanging (He would be the only member of the Wehrmacht at the Nuremburg Trials. Unlike many of its members, he was given the full, blunt force treatment for support for the Nazi government and his own involvement with the Einsatzruppen)
Von Neurath – 15 years imprisonment
Von Papen - Acquitted
Von Ribbentrop – Death by hanging
Von Shirach. – 20 years imprisonment
In response to the sentences, a Jewish vigil was held on Passover in Trieste on Saturday April 20th 1946 (ironically Hitler’s birthday). It was attended by leading members of the Anglo-Jewish army, Israel Zolli, David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin. It was a celebration of life after so much death. The vigil concluded with Ben-Gurion saying, “The only thing that we can take joy from is that with such wickedness so totally exposed for its evils, no one would dare do such a thing again.” It would be one of the most tragic and unfortunate quotations in history.
Exit Stage Right
We Brave Few: Europe 1945-1949 by Abraham Ferguson
The most interesting thing about the Nuremburg Trials was that despite everything happening around it, all the diplomatic chaos, the actual cooperation between the Allied authorities never faltered. Even the representatives of the Italian and Soviet judiciaries got along well, despite the uproar between the two blocs outside. The world’s press was particularly drawn to Himmler, the head of the Nazi state during its even worse conclusion. With the Nazis kept under lock and key for so long, by the time they emerged for Trial that July many had sobered up in their life experiences. Their being trialed while the Japanese War went on merely an attempt to distract the Home Front from the lull of news.
Many expected merely a rubber stamp moment – almost victor’s justice if the defendants weren’t so obviously, horribly guilty. Instead, the trial unearthed entirely new information that stunned the world, including Allied leaders. The main moment was during the cross-examination of Roland Freisler by Associate Justice Robert Jackson. Freisler, as if expecting a reversal of the situation he would so often subject his victims to in court, was incredibly on edge and accidentally blurted out about a reference to the Wannsee Conference. Eichmann was visibly infuriated from across the dock. After stern interrogation, Freisler identified the members of the meeting. This started a hunt, turning the official documentation of Germany upside down in an attempt to find the minutes of the meeting. Roughly a month later, the minutes of Martin Luther were found – who had killed himself rather than be captured. While Eichmann had written his report in a way that minimized the directness of what it was talking about, there was no disguising the meaning. This was a document detailing nothing less than the absolute obliteration of millions of people. It’s discovery was heralded around the world as the ‘smoking gun’ of the case – despite the case already being slam-dunk before. “Luther, if you weren’t dead I’d kill you myself,” Eichmann was heard to growl.
Eichmann’s own trial was particularly noteworthy. In order to try and get away with it, he presented the image of a drab bureaucrat, lazily and halfheartedly paying attention to affairs. His involvement in the newly discovered Wannsee Conference had excited attention. However, he maintained his banal form, continuously explaining he was only doing his orders as a soldier and that he had no particular ill will towards Jews. Finally, the British prosecutor, Hartley Shawcross, came up with a way of breaking Eichmann down. Shawcross began by asking Eichmann about his role in the killing of Hungarian Jews who had failed to escape with the rest of their brethren to Italy. Eichmann merely explained that the Jews who had stayed were partisans who had to be routed out and defeated. Shawcross then asked about Trieste, but started to irritate Eichmann by asking him how he felt when he heard that “those people you call sub-human were able to resoundingly and totally defeat your so-called master race?” Eichmann started to growl his replies. Finally, Shawcross asked if Eichmann begged when the Jews came to capture him. Eichmann leapt up and angrily screamed, “I never begged to those disgusting vermin! I’ve done nothing wrong! The fact that we killed five million of them is the greatest thing we ever accomplished! I’ll go into my grave with a clean conscience that I did so much to remove those cockroaches from the face of the Earth!” It beggars belief that there were still more incredible moments of drama at the Trials.
One of those was the story of Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels was the only member of the Nazis that the prosecutors genuinely feared. Whenever he was brought up, he forcefully defended himself and his country while condemning any and all Allied infractions. His attempts to sow discord between the Soviets and Western powers were so good that news reports deliberately censored them to stop them getting spread around. He called Hiroshima and Kokura’s nuclear bombings “the greatest war crime in history with half a million wiped out by Jewish sorcery, and yet our bombings were supposedly immoral”. He asked how it was wrong to treat the Jews as enemies when they “created an army, slaughtering our men in the thousands after they had already surrendered”. He asked how the invasions by Germany of her neighbours were immoral when, “here stands the slaughterer of the Baltic states, the rapist of Greece and Serbia, the subjugator of the Indian Americans and enslaver of negroes, the tyrant of Ireland and the thief of Alsace-Lorraine”. Goebbels had developed a cult following among Pro-Nazi Germans who heard about his speeches and were thrilled that someone was giving as good as he got. The Allied authorities needed a way to kill Goebbels’s popularity before it took off again. At this rate, he could easily become a martyr for Neo-Nazism. The solution by Robert Jackson was as unconventional as it was genius.
When she came onto the stand, Goebbels was mortified. He thought he would never see her again. Her name was Lída Baarová, a Czech actress with whom he had an affair. The testimony itself was, in name at least, merely to give statements about Goebbels’s hatred of Jews. Of course, in reality, the plan was to destroy Goebbels’ image of a straight-line Aryan and have him be known as a ‘race-mixer’ with a Slav. Goebbels stayed quiet for the whole of the proceedings. He was informed the next day that his wife, Magda, had filed for divorce. Though he was certainly going to the noose, though his wife had indeed known about her husband’s doings, she was utterly humiliated enough to the extent that she wanted to get back at him. Goebbels was shattered for the rest of the proceedings and his newfound fame quickly died away.
But of course, there could be no greater star than Himmler himself. While most Nazis defended themselves at Nuremburg by saying they did what they did due to the Fürherprinzip, people were fascinated by what Himmler would say. Since he was the leader of the Third Reich, he couldn’t pretend to have had things out of his hands. His defence was as shocking as it was offensive: he argued he had continued the Holocaust out of ‘Self-defence’. Himmler shocked observers by proudly talking up the material challenges of the Holocaust and how they were able to overcome them by ‘German ingenuity’. He casually explained that the children had to die to ensure there would be no vengeance on German children and to ‘end the cycle of hatred’. He even said that there was a recorded speech on the matter from when he was in Posen, which was uncovered and played in the court to astonishment. His speeches ironically were quite helpful in historians's understanding of the Holocaust. Some people now believe Himmler’s strategy was to shock the judges so much that he would convince them that he was simply insane and get a lighter sentence. If that was the case, he ironically would be insane. Himmler’s terrifying performance at Nuremburg would put him above Hitler in most people’s minds for the more evil of the two Nazi leaders.
The sentences were announced on March 22nd 1946:
Bormann – Death by hanging (“He should be executed if only for being such a damned bore,” Goebbels was overheard saying).
Eichmann – Death by hanging
Frank – Death by hanging
Frick – Death by hanging
Freisler – Death by hanging (“SCUM! VERMIN!” he called out at his sentencing before being restrained.)
Funk – Life Imprisonment
Goebbels – Death by hanging (He just looked at his hands while the sentencing went on and had no visible reaction).
Hess – Life imprisonment
Himmler – Death by hanging (The President of the Tribunal, Lord Justice Colonel Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, almost spat the sentence due to the amount of utter hatred Himmler had generated for himself. Significant evidence exists that Himmler's noose was deliberately shortened to make the death as slow and painful as possible.)
Kaltenbrunner – Death by hanging
Ley – Death by hanging (his jail cell was closely watched for the entire proceeding due to a failed suicide attempt)
Muller – Death by hanging
Rosenberg – Death by hanging
Sauckel – Death by hanging
Schacht - Acquitted
Seyss-Inquart – Death by hanging
Streicher – Death by hanging
Von Leeb – Death by hanging (He would be the only member of the Wehrmacht at the Nuremburg Trials. Unlike many of its members, he was given the full, blunt force treatment for support for the Nazi government and his own involvement with the Einsatzruppen)
Von Neurath – 15 years imprisonment
Von Papen - Acquitted
Von Ribbentrop – Death by hanging
Von Shirach. – 20 years imprisonment
In response to the sentences, a Jewish vigil was held on Passover in Trieste on Saturday April 20th 1946 (ironically Hitler’s birthday). It was attended by leading members of the Anglo-Jewish army, Israel Zolli, David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin. It was a celebration of life after so much death. The vigil concluded with Ben-Gurion saying, “The only thing that we can take joy from is that with such wickedness so totally exposed for its evils, no one would dare do such a thing again.” It would be one of the most tragic and unfortunate quotations in history.
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Thomas Wilkins
Banned
Nuremberg just got more dramatic than ever. I imagine a future Netflix series on this in the future.
That was a great update. I don’t think I’ve seen the word hanging so much before though.
Yeah...not the wisest words when you're Jewish and you know the kind of world you live in. :/
Well, so long Nazi b**tards.
Great upate as usual
Dolan
Banned
Why did I image Mussolini (and maybe Franco) also asking The Pope Pius XII to get a special Commemorative Mass in Rome during either the Good Friday or Easter (or both), just to get every (nominally) Catholic Heads of State attending, in effort to paint themselves as one of the Heroes too? It would provide the opportunity to distance themselves from the Nazis too, so I could imagine Rommel's Free German Wehrmacht Officers, as well as Austrian Nobilities, to attend that Mass en-masse.
Bookmark1995
Banned
I felt this update really highlights the insanity of Nazism, and the horrific delusions of its followers.
But my favorite part was this.
Now that's how you bruise a Nazis ego: show how the subhuman creature was able to beat back your pure Aryan soldiers.
But my favorite part was this.
Now that's how you bruise a Nazis ego: show how the subhuman creature was able to beat back your pure Aryan soldiers.
Died in the Battle of Budapest fighting the Anglo-Jewish army. He was wounded and his retreating comrades abandoned him in the city. His last memory before bleeding to death was a Jewish doctor (Who didn't know who he was) attempting to revive him. He gave one last flash of fury, enough that ironically weakened him so much he died. Once he died, others recognised who he was and tossed his naked corpse unceremoniously into the Danube.
I was kind of hoping that he'd be horrifically mutilated by Jewish or Russian soldiers as revenge for his crimes and his remains end up being strung up for everyone to see what happens to monsters like him, but I'll take what I can get.
Honestly, I thought that he was probably sick enough to enjoy being cut-up/mutilated whatever. I thought the sight of a Jewish person trying to help him would fill him with enough disgust and internal pain would ironically be the greatest punishment he could get.
Bookmark1995
Banned
I would've just locked him up for life, while constantly playing Hebrew and Yiddish songs.