Hey all! There are about two or three chapters to go in the story before the round-up post. I'll tell you when the penultimate chapter is published so you needn't worry about a blindside.
The Poisoned Chalice
Extract from ‘The Decade of Freedom: The 70s Remembered’ by Abigail Francis
The Fall of Communism was trumpeted far and wide by the Fascist powers, with October 30th being declared a national holiday in some of the Roman Alliance nations. By now, the resistance to Fascism was almost entirely devoid of Communist influence to the extent that even the imprisoned Enrico Berlinguer wrote a letter to Balbo to thank him for his part in opposing the Stalingrad Pact and called on him to ‘Enter history with as much praise as Malenkov will surely get’ by ending the reign of Fascism. Unsurprisingly, Balbo did not take him up at that offer. The Fascist powers used Communism’s fall as a way of demonstrating their own superiority, or arguing that it only fell because of their combined forces. One major argument was that OPEP flooded the oil market, which caused the price of oil to plummet and thus killed the Soviet ability to sell their oil to finance their programs. Others argue that the Italian Space Program was what really killed the Soviet Union by forcing them to overstretch. These arguments still inform the view of most Italians, who regularly put their own country’s efforts as first when it comes to the question of how the Cold War was one (a view shared by most of their Mediterranean neighbours, though naturally far less in the UK and US). Yet even as dictators from the foot of the Andes, the African Savannah, the sands of Arabia, the jungles of Asia and the heart of Europe cooed in glory, privately they remained concerned about what was happening in their own countries. As far as could be gathered, there was no appreciable uplift on the pressure to their own regimes after the fall of their uniting enemy. And now, without a uniting enemy, things were about to get very interesting.
Over the course of the 1970s, the old Fascist leaders began to fade away. In Portugal, Salazar would die in early 1970 to great sadness among the Fascist Bloc, and even among many ITO members who considered him a sensible politician all in all. Salazar had ordered that King Duarte II succeed him, given the uninspiring cast that supported him in the Portuguese government. Duarte continued a hardline policy in Angola and Mozambique that was being increasingly questioned by the Portuguese Middle Classes, baffled why so much money was being spent on what they considered to be backwards peasants living in a miserable Africa. A clear cultural line was staring to be dug between mainland Portugal and the African colonies, and it even crossed into the army. On April 25th 1974, this would explode into a failed revolt of the officers known as the Lisbon Uprising. Initially successful, the officers thought they had successfully secured the capital and mostly without bloodshed. Their plan was to broker a peace in Africa with the Afro-Fascists and finally free up the Portuguese economy, perhaps even aligning with ITO eventually. Instead, King Duarte pleaded with Balbo to send a contingent of soldiers to crush the uprising. With Franco’s support as well, Italian helicopters flew into Lisbon and strafed the rebel positions. To the horror of the Fascist loyalists, an unanticipated popular revolt had begun in the capital, siding with the revolting army. Italian shock troopers landed in the centre of Lisbon and began to mercilessly slaughter the resistors. By May 1st, the insurrection had been totally crushed in Portugal, much to the broader world’s disgust. Eight hundred people had died in the carnage, with many more arrested. Though the Colonial Portuguese supported the King, it was now clear that the mainland Portuguese had grown tired of Fascism and were looking for a way out. Balbo soon stationed men in Portugal to ensure no such disaster could be allowed to form again. The Lisbon Uprising was the first serious challenge to Fascism on the continent, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. This would be considered the moment the Cool War officially restarted after the end of the Cold War forced ITO and the Roman Alliance to work together. They even worked together militarily without Communism, as was seen in Afghanistan in 1973. There an attempted coup by Republicans who were seen as influenced by Communists took charge of the country when King Mohammed Zahir Shah was away for medical reasons. Not wanting any instability floating around the region, and wanting to impress the new Central Asian Republics to come to their side, Iran, Turkey and India worked together to move in and flush out the rebels. The King was swiftly returned to power, with the Roman Alliance and ITO swearing neutrality in the region despite their mutual attempts to cajole the Afghans economically. This would prove fortunate for the Afghans, who were able to industrialize at a decent pace, stuck between the two economic behemoths of Iran and India and reaping the benefits of both.
In 1974, Menachem Begin would finally step down as Israeli Prime Minister, having become almost synonymous with the gigantic Leviathan his country had become. When one British reporter asked him how he could stay Prime Minister for so long, he would infamously reply, “Spite”. His spite towards Communism was Biblical, and he had vowed he would fight Communism as long as he lived. When Communism finally fell in October 1973, Israel found itself in the near incomprehensible position of not being hatred by an existential threat. The Nazis? Gone. Pan-Arabists? Gone. Communists? Gone. There was now no power on Earth to justify Israel’s militarism, no territorial possession they could wish for and no material want that embarrassed them. As Begin supposedly told Shimon Peres soon after Kim’s surrender in Pyongyang, “Maybe the world doesn’t need me anymore”. In February 1974, Begin would announce that he was resigning in the Summer and would call new elections. He had at least suspected his Herut Party would win the upcoming election. Instead, both he and the whole world was shocked. He had underestimated the amount of support Herut had gotten just for his name and national loyalty towards him - most people wanted a new form of government for a new era. They would award the election to the head of the Israeli Mapai Party, the first female Prime Minister, Anne Frank. Frank won the Labour leadership after another defeat in 1970, her explicitly Anti-Fascist campaign being boosted by the horror of what happened in Addis Ababa. Initially dismissed as a crank for her hostility to Balbo who couldn’t win the election, the horror of what happened in Portugal proved yet another convenient opportunity to take advantage of Anti-Fascist sentiment. She would enter many legendary shouting matches in the Knesset with Lehi Leader, Meir Kahane. Kahane accused Frank of being an Anti-Semite, participating in effigy burnings against her and waving placards of Frank in Nazi, Soviet and Arab clothing to argue her election would lead to the destruction of the Jewish people. By now, even Herut was mortally disgusted with Kahane and wanted nothing to do with him, but the backlash against Kahane was especially poignant among Israeli youth, for whom Holocausts and War were alien to their lives. That many had been on Kibbutzim in their youth had also made them more open to the Labour Zionist doctrines Frank supported. While Israel had certainly had a gigantic economic boom from the late fifties onwards, lingering failures in social services were beginning to be noticed. Upon her election that Summer, panic swept Rome, as a now avowedly hostile, nuclear power stood firm in the Mediterranean against them. Frank quickly upended the conventional doctrine of Israeli noncommittal to the alliance system by applying for membership to ITO, which was quickly supported by the Western powers. Furthermore, it greatly challenged the moral legitimacy of Fascism, which had to large extent existed on its salvation of Jews in World War 2. She also created a stern boycott against South Africa as well as sanctions against members of the Rhodesian leadership. Frank called for a global summit to abolish nuclear weapons after the obliteration of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. The Fascists once again dug their heels in, terrified of the loss of influence that would come with such a move. By now, Italy had a roughly one thousand nuclear weapons, with the Americans alone being more than ten times the number, not to mention the addition of the British, Israeli, Indian and French stocks. Italy could not hope to intimidate the West with such a small deterrent and neither was it truly justifiable given the fall of the Soviet system. Frank furthermore demanded freedom for the still imprisoned Enrico Berlinguer, who had become a cause of celebration across the Western world for his defiance against the Fascist system. Frank’s statements quickly caused backlash across the Fascist world, with Israel being banned from the Global Fighting Championship in Rome for 1975 until 1978 despite having the reigning champions for two years running [1]. Her foreign policy also emphasised building genuine ties with the regional powers, speaking to the discomfort many Israelis felt after the extent of destruction unleashed in Operation Samson. She developed strong working relationships with Anwar Sadat in South Egypt, the Emirs of the Arab Federation and King Hussein in the Kingdom of Hejaz. But it was in Syria where she had the best effect, meeting King Faisal, who had suffered from depression and repeated attempts at suicide due to the horrendous position he found himself in as the loathed puppet of an eternally chained state. Frank’s correspondence would prove miraculous to his mental health and confidence. With Frank’s support on the matter, he would finally go public with his mental health struggles in March 1982, becoming one of the pioneers in supporting mental health support around the world. Frank’s visits were harshly criticised by the Israeli Right for meeting with formerly hostile powers while seeming to thumb her nose to the countries who fought with Israel to save it. At the same time, she was adored by the Left for seeking to move Israel away from its alliance with the bloc that contained all the world’s rogue states (from South Africa to the Greek puppet state under the universally hated Dimitrios Ioannidis, whom even Balbo had infamously described as “A man made of meat that a dog wouldn’t eat”). Frank's upending of traditional Israeli neutrality in the Cool War could hardly have come at a worse time for the Roman Alliance, which was now beginning to see its unravelling much as the Communists had predicted though without being able to forecast their own fate.
Extract from ‘The Screams of a Continent: Africa after WW2’ by Ayaan Ferguson
But it was 1975 that would prove an annus horribilis for Fascism. That year would see three deaths that would fundamentally change not just their own countries but the world at large. The first came that April, with the death of Chiang Kai-Shek. He famously died with a smile on his face, saying, “How lucky I am that I saw China’s finest generation” with reference how China had fought so long and hard against the ‘European import’ of Communism. Chiang’s funeral was a rare event where both Roman Alliance and ITO leaders would gladly attend. Vice-President Wayne sat close to Italo Balbo as the procession commenced. Chiang’s son, Chiang Ching-kuo, would take control of the new, united China (though extremists pushed for the military re-annexation of East Turkestan, Tibet and even taking Tuva - all of which were considered far too risky. The new Chiang was of a much more liberal breed than his father, relaxing some of the restrictions that had been placed in Mongolia to force the native population to adhere to the new ways of life (though continuing internal settlement programs on the basis of finding a home for North Chinese refugees). At the same time, he didn’t want to alarm the Roman Alliance with sudden democratisation - as while there was technically nothing forbidding a Roman Alliance state from being a democracy (with a few outright claiming to be so), a genuine democratic wave was feared even among Pro-RA democrats that it would cause so much disruption that the Bloc would break. The second death would be that of Franco in Spain, the leader who had made Spain a nuclear power and died in August - many suspect his obsession in getting nuclear weapons harming his health in that respect. He had also been one of the more successful colonial nations, being able to ensure White majorities in all his African holdings by 1970 with some of the most abhorrent expulsions and deportations on the whole continent. As the final surviving head of state of the original Roman Alliance when it was declared during World War 2, Franco’s death was in many ways seen as the end of an era. While the Roman Alliance was certainly far stronger than it was originally, few could argue that their subsequent leaders had as much force of will over their populations. Much like Portugal, authority was placed with the King, but unlike Duarte, King Juan Carlos I would not be interested in continuing the Fascist legacy. He had been revolted by the strike on Addis Ababa and was on poor terms with Italy because of it. With Italy’s ongoing, hopeless military effort in Ethiopia (who were now flushed with Soviet guns bought from the Russians by India which were then sent to Africa), Balbo could ill-afford another headache.
In Ethiopia, the full scale of the carnage had now become apparent. Fifty-thousand Italians had died (alongside another 50,000 non-Italians on the same side, including some 5,000 Greek consripts), as well as four million Africans either civilian or fighting for Ethiopian independence (a fifth of them foreign volunteers from the EAF and Zaire). While once Italian cinemas had shown many movies related to the Ethiopian War in the late 60s and early 70s, by now the order came straight from the top to minimise any public discussion of the war owing to how phenomenally unpopular and embarrassing it had become. Some 80% of Ethiopians had been displaced in the conflict while the once beautiful landscape had become desolate and poisoned by napalm and chemical weapons. Discipline among Italian soldiers had collapsed, with drug and alcohol abuse rendering whole units inoperable. Suicides were becoming increasingly common both at the front and among veterans returning home. By now, Balbo had long since-acknowledged the stupidity of using a Hydrogen weapon on Addis Ababa, but it was still much too late. He was mortified to see that far from life becoming easier after the fall of Communism, life had been made significantly worse. By now, even President Corley was forced to go after Italy much more than he had before without the excuse of focussing on Communism. ITO military resources were moved towards the Mediterranean and away from the Baltic. The economy, already on fumes from the life-sucking nature of the Ethiopian conflict, was now met with far better coordinated sanction efforts from foreign governments who didn’t have to worry about presenting a united front against the Red Bear. By now, more moderate countries within the Roman Alliance like Bulgaria and Biafra (who always pledged neutrality over support in respect to the Ethiopian conflict) privately pleaded with the Balbo regime to begin peace talks with the Ethiopians. Balbo would have none of it, arguing that even a moderate success for the rebels would lead to a continent-wide uprising that would overwhelm the Roman Alliance and overturn the entire basis of the Salisbury Plan to seize Africa’s resources for the benefit of Fascism.
Elsewhere on the continent, Rhodesia had pulled out any help they had given in Ethiopia owing to a worrying development in their own country. The main rebel in Rhodesia, unrepentant Afro-Fascist Robert Mugabe, had initiated the infamous strategy of ‘Kill one and a hundred run’. This meant that Mugabe, believing that a White-majority would be a deathblow to his chances of running Rhodesia (or ‘Zimbabwe’ as he would have seen it), began a campaign of deliberately targeting white civilians to scare off potential white immigrants to Rhodesia and encourage others to flee. Afro-Fascists justified the killings in the name of bringing the war to a quick end - a frequent excuse of their European Fascist enemy as well. Mugabe was so avowedly brutal in this approach (targeting school buses, tourist groups and retirement homes) that the EAF, Sudan and Botswana cut off all relations with his ZANU movement, which he was indifferent to since most of his support came from Zaire and Liberia. While it worked, in that immigration to Rhodesia significantly slowed in the mid-70s after a brief spike from East European migrants, the response by Smith’s government would be overwhelming, with the Rhodesian army committing a slew of their own atrocities.The resistance to Apartheid in South Africa had likewise descended into a far more intense struggle. The armed wing of the ANC (uMkhonto we Sizwe - abbreviated MK) massively increased their own campaign against the Apartheid state with tactics similar to those of Mugabe. South Africa responded with typical mercilessness in using chemical weapons on villages suspected of housing MK troops. When Nelson Mandela, a former MK commander in prison since 1961, tried to demand his movement stop their new, bloodthirsty tactics in favour of earlier sabotage campaigns, he was outright expelled from the ANC and called ‘An Uncle Tom’ in May 1975. The ANC also changed its official program from being based on Socialist Non-racialism to one which effectively mimicked the Afro-Fascism of Zaire. While it had bitterly condemned the prior deportation of Indians during the Goa Crisis, it now claimed that the decision was ‘The best thing the Boer ever did’ according to one of their commanders soon after Mandela’s expulsion. White sympathy to the indigenous population plummeted to non-existent among the South African public, with most simply emigrating to ITO nations to escape the dire forecasts that many were making for what was quickly becoming the world’s ultimate pariah state without Communism or the ISA.
Balbo had grown increasingly stressed and concerned about the direction the Bloc was heading, even with the death of Communism, or perhaps even because. The Italian public had grown absolutely sick of the conflict in Ethiopia, with veterans often reduced to begging on the streets of major Italian cities. Italy had declared a War on Drugs in response to the terrifyingly high rates of drug addiction of its soldiers, but the demand was simply too large for the trade to disappear. Not to mention, the resources didn’t exist because so much was involved in tearing the Ethiopian landscape to the ground. It was in this environment that Balbo decided to fly to Turkey, hoping to secure Turkish ground support in Ethiopia to help lighten the burden on the Italian state. On December 2nd 1975, Balbo’s plane left the ground from Rome and began to fly towards Istanbul. He had joked to Ciano at the runway (who had to stay to attend to his own meetings) that he ‘must have been getting old’ in that he didn’t trust himself to fly the plane anymore.
Those were the last recorded words Italo Balbo ever made.
That evening, as the plane flew over the Adriatic, the escort fighters looked in horror as Balbo’s plane suddenly swung downwards into the Sea. Refusing to respond by radio, the plane never broke from its descent, as it fell nose-first into the stormy ocean with an explosion. With that came the third and perhaps most important death that year for Fascism - the death of Italo Balbo. Subsequent investigations from flight recorders, suicide notes and background investigations finally put the tale together. Bernardo Provenzano was a Sicilian born in 1933, and was taken in by the Mob at a young age. However, his friends would soon be killed in the Anti-Mob crackdowns of the regime, which gave him a burning hatred of Mussolini and anyone in his government. He would ultimately join the air force, since he considered it a fairly apolitical institution compared to the army while also feeling entranced by the ‘power of killing’. He would certainly have his fair share, being on the plane that dropped the nuclear bomb on Cairo. This would endear him to his superiors and would soothe some of the rage against the regime he had. Finally however, it came to a point where he would serve in Ethiopia, and seeing the horror inflicted upon the local population reminded him of the suffering his friends went through. He finally resolved to take out his vengeance on the Italian regime, even if it meant taking his life. He asked the co-pilot to leave and subsequently locked the door, before sending the plane (and Balbo) hurtling into the Adriatic. The reaction around the world was one of panic and confusion, with everyone scrambling around to try and work out what had gone on. Obviously, Italy needed a new Duce, and almost everyone was in agreement. In 1963, when Mussolini was coming to his end, half the Council wanted a shot at the big chair. But by 1975, no one wanted to inherit such a crazy situation with China competing for control over the Bloc, Spain considering leaving, Portugal being a powder-keg, a new rabid dog in South Africa and of course an endless sea of carnage in Ethiopia. The only man in the Party who was seen as having sufficient stature was the 72 year old Count Ciano, but he knew the international situation as well as anyone else and knew he was inheriting a mess. However, after finally being convinced by King Umberto, Ciano announced just before Midnight that he had become the third Duce of Italy. The announcement was met with some relief in Western circles, who had a long history with the Italian (who had served an unheard of forty years as foreign minister). Balbo’s body was never recovered, but a funeral was undertaken in Rome all the same. The crowds, though still huge, were noticeably smaller than at the death of Mussolini, and the stature of the international guests were likewise nowhere near as immense as those at Mussolini’s departure. Balbo has nowhere near the levels of support Mussolini enjoys in modern Italy, being a much more decisive figure. While he is still adored by (or at least having apologetics from) the Italian Right, the Italian Left consider him the worst of Italy’s three dictators. He has also become something of a modern meme among young Italians for his joie de vivre persona that many associate with the 1960s. By contrast, among many indigenous Africans, he is considered one of the most evil men of the 20th century. Whatever Balbo’s legacy, one thing was for sure - he had a better stack of cards given to him in 1963 than Ciano did at the close of 1975.
[1] - Another of Evola’s ideas - a yearly fighting competition in Rome with all the different martial arts of the world competing against each other. Effectively, it’s UFC twenty years early and with state support. The competition is dominated by Israelis doing variations of Krav Maga and Japanese doing Judo and Jiujitsu while the South Chinese were humiliated to see their Kung-Fu masters go down sometimes in seconds because they had never even sparred before. This failure of Kung-Fu in practice significantly cooled the Kung-Fu craze in the Fascist Bloc, where the craze was far stronger than in democratic nations.