The Great Crusade (Reds! Part 3)

"Were it so easy"
I didn't say it would be easy to do. Just saying it would give the traveler a new purpose and reason to live. Where as he may feel life is too dull in TTL America.

Burke, get to work then. I still have to finish my 1967 Batman plot in my AHC Premade Classics thread and work on a guest segment for Ry and Nivek's Player Two Start TL. And I still don't have a PC. Which is why I have'nt messaged you back Libertad. Sorry I am not ignoring you. Anyway Burke, I will help you out though if you'd like.
 
Last edited:

E. Burke

Banned
I did't say it would be easy to do. Just saying it would give the traveler a new purpose and reason to live. Where as he may feel life is too dull in TTL America.

Burke, get to work then. I still have to finish my 1967 Batman plot in my AHC Premade Classics thread and work on a guest segment for Ry and Nivek's Player Two Start TL. And I still don't have a PC. Which is why I have'nt messaged you back Libertad. Sorry I am not ignoring you. Anyway Burke, I will help you out though if you'd like.


Give me a link?
 
So, what would you guys rather have me contribute?

A profile on a Soviet Destroyer class or quotes and speeches from people in the era?

I've looked into the Rhetoric of Hitler and Mussolini in particular so I think I'd have a good idea of what they'd have to say on this alternate world war two. I think it'd also be interesting to see things from the perspective of the Capitalist side of the Allies and the Axis powers.
 

E. Burke

Banned
So, what would you guys rather have me contribute?

A profile on a Soviet Destroyer class or quotes and speeches from people in the era?

I've looked into the Rhetoric of Hitler and Mussolini in particular so I think I'd have a good idea of what they'd have to say on this alternate world war two.

Quotes! I love that shit
 
Right, I'll get to them tomorrow, bit late today though hahah.

I'll try mostly to focus on the Axis perspective but I'll sprinkle in stuff from the Allies and the Comintern.
 
Comics in WW2 by Mr.E
I PM'd Jello about posting this here, and it was approved, I think, so here it is:
Excerpt from unedited interview with comic creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for documentary, The Cultural History of the Second World War, (1974)

Interviewer: Let's get into our main topic: how did Captain America come into existence?

Jack Kirby: I think Joe should answer this. He was the first to think this up.

Joe Simon: Well, it was in 1939. We, like many others, were caught up in that post-revolutionary fever. You know, we were putting red flags everywhere, we were marching in the streets, we were tearing down old bourgois monuments. And during that time, one man became the villain.

I: Hitler?

JS: Yes. (Laughs). He represented everything that we opposed. Dictatorship, oppression, racism. I suppose that sudden flurry of patriotism and revolution spurred me to create someone who embodied those ideals and fought for them, especially against some one like Hitler. In a way, Hitler was the ultimate comic villain. You just couldn't compete with that.

JK: He's right. This was a time, when everyone was patriotic. You couldn't go one day without hearing words like socialism and revolution being thrown around. We were especially horrified by Hitler, because we were Jewish, and we met other Jews fleeing fascist tyranny. We would get news flashes about what Hitler was doing to Poland, and Russia. That's when we talked about the spirit of the revolution, and how we could embody it in the purely American comic book. That's when the idea of Captain America came about.

JS: Right. I made this quick drawing of this superhero with this very patriotic look. His costume was completely red and black, wearing a black mask, with this red wings on top. He had a large yellow star on his chest, and he had a shield with the sickle and grain on it. Sort of the ultimate socialist American soldier. I named him "Super American," but since Superman started the trend of Supers, I decided to name him "Captain America," because there weren't many captains around at that time.

I: Was Jack always the artist in mind for Cap?

JS: Well, at first, I considered having other artists make it. I had gotten the approval vote of Martin Goodman [then-publisher of Timely Publications], to write this, but it needed to be finished in a short deadline. I thought Jack couldn't work to get to the deadline, but he pushed to work on the book, and he was able to reach the deadline.

I: And it was successful?

JK: I'd say so. (Laughs). That cover of Cap smacking Hitler right in the face sold nearly a million.

I: What was the reception to Captain America?

JK: People loved it. We would get tons of fan mail for the character. The issues sold out regularly. It tapped a nerve with the revolutionary masses, who were ready to protect the world from Nazi fascism.

JS: There was one letter we were particularly proud of, that came from Fiorello LaGuardia, a prominent leader in Metropolis, who told us we were doing a fine job, and to keep up the good work.

I: It must of have been an honor, getting a letter from such a figure.

JS: It was.

I: So, how did you two write Captain America?

JK: We got some inspiration from the New Soviet Man. That sort of perfect Soviet man, that Superman and others got inspiration from. Cap is sort of a better fit for that, than Superman. He was the perfect proletariat hero. A guy of perfect physique, helped by his fellow comrades, ready to defend the revolution at all costs. I took some inspiration from my upbringing in the Lower East Side, in writing about this working class, revolutionary kid, Steve Rogers, who was born on May Day, who decided to go and fight for the people. He was then assigned to receive this formula, which made him the perfect specimen of man. He led a team of other humans, who would also hold some abilities, and would switch out with Cap. However, he, as the first amongst equals, would be the leader.

JS: He was the man of the people, for the people. He fought against tyranny to protect them, but he also needs their support to permanently defeat threats. He was their soldier.

I: Do you think that's why he became an icon?

JK: Oh, absolutely. He was fighting the battle in Poland before we even entered to save our Russian comrades.

I: How did the supporting cast come along?

JS: Honestly, I had only one of the guys who was also Captain America named. That was Bucky Barnes, named for a classmate of mine. It was only later that we were able to fill out the cast with other able bodied men.
[...]
I: What do you think of the Captain America books of today?

JK: I haven't read many of them, since 1971, when I left Marvel. Even before then, from 1957, Sam Wilson was more [Stan] Lee's character than mine. Honestly, who ever is writing the story should do what they feel is best for the character.

JS: I haven't kept up with the character either. However, I feel that he, and the values that he embodied, of revolution, democracy, and socialism, are still valuable and especially important in this age, as we reach turbulent times.

I: What are you two up to these days?

JS: I have been doing work for Harvey and Riverdale comics. I did a few stories for the Fly for Riverdale, and Spyman for Harvey. I am also working on a story for the Fighting American for ADC Comics.

JK: I'm working on an independent work, called The Fourth World, about this new mythology of gods, based off the revolution against the old ones. I have released the first few issues, and intend to work towards a conclusion sometime soon...
 
"The Americans think that they can intimidate us into stopping our quest to put down the Bolshevik dogs in Russia once and for all. They think that their revolution has made them strong, strong enough to quench the flame of civilization and hoist the banner of anarchist rabble over Europe. They believe that their marriage of Liberty and Socialism will give them an advantage. I say now that they are wrong. When I look at America I do not see a strong nation, I see a nation where the men act like women and the women pretend to be men, where the people are so deprived of morals that they dance naked in the streets and turn a blind eye to sexual deviancy, I see a nation without tradition or a fire for war in its belly. They and their pets in South America do not know real strength, they so love the flabbiness of pleasure that they cannot imagine the pain of war. They speak of labour when they are a lazy people who live off their few hard workers, fattening themselves on sloth and gluttony.

Even the Russians whom our brave soldiers now make war against know something about hardship. But these Americans? They have gotten fat on their plenty, they are a people who have not seen a great war on their doorstep in almost a hundred years and even that was would be but a skirmish before the great contests our nation has seen. They would call their few months of skirmish a civil war when Italy has been purified by vast contests of arms since Romulus laid his city on the seven hills. Our people once conquered the world and defeated all other powers who met it in arms, while they have conquered nothing more than backwards savages who did not even know how to forge iron and some pitiful islands. These lovers of peace and pleasure do not frighten me, they have nothing but numbers in their army, a vast horde of feminized men and out of place women called forth from their dens of sin to protect a nation of savages who know nothing of high culture. We are nation of hard men who can make the hard decisions, ours is the iron will that will see the cancer of Communism scourged from the world. When we have finished our accounts with the Bolshevik bear, we shall forever clip the wings of the DeLeonist Raven and return to them proper values.

No, Italy will not give into their ultimatum. If Reed and Browder believe that the nation that birthed the greatest empire that had ever graced the world will bow to the demands of a nation of the fat and the lazy then they shall see where their demands shall lead them. Men and women of Italy, this will not be a war like the last one fought for just the gain of Italy, this will be the war where Italy shall be remembered as one of the great saviors of civilization. This war shall not be stopped until the red tide is broken upon our knee and a higher culture flies its flags over the dens of Marxism. If it is war that the Americans want, then it is war that they shall have! War until we forever smash their menace to civilization and religion, war until the works of Bolshevism lie dead and Italy's name shall be forever remembered as a new Rome which took a stand against Barbarism and triumphed!" - Mussolini announcing Italy's intention to ignore the Ultimatum.

"On this day, America has sought to bully us. To save their bestial allies in Russia they have sought to scare us with an ultimatum threatening war unless we leave the Bolsheviks be. But what do we say to this? Those of us who have sworn on this sacred mission to cleanse the greatest den of Judeo-Bolshevism in Europe? We say no! We shall say that we defy the threats of a nation of mongrelized and effete men, a race where Jews and Negroes have been allowed to contaminate the noble Nordic soul, where man and woman do not know their rightful place, and where the morals handed down by providence that have built civilization are mocked! We defy this transatlantic bastion of Judeo-Bolshevism, this land of weaklings whose masters decided that to better rule their mongrel slaves that they should do away with their old banks and pick up the banners of anarchists. We will never accept the will and the word of a land of whores, deviants, and bastards!

The Americans say that their advantages in Industry and Manpower and their beliefs shall lead them to victory. All I see is an industry rotten by communism, manpower softened to uselessness by mongrelization, and a belief in anarchism where no man or woman has a duty to their nation. This is no nation capable of threatening the Reich, whom has grown strong and pure in our unity, our commitment to our duty, our devotion to racial purity, and our appetite for glorious conflict. They have numbers, but like the mongrel hordes of Persia that sought to enslave the Greeks they have nothing but numbers. So lacking in manly and noble virtues are they that they rely on negroes, red indians, and women to fight where their pathetic population of diluted nordic men cannot. This Red Army is worthy only of laughter, them and all their allies in the underbelly of the new world.

By standing beside their animalistic allies in the steppes of Russia, America and its slaves have invited their own destruction. I promise you that one day soon, we shall come to their shores and make them reap the seeds that they have sowed. We shall crush whatever aid they send to the savages of Stalin, and then the day of reckoning that mister Browder and Reed have brought upon themselves will be inevitable. No more shall the populations of the pure, especially America's great mass of oppressed Germans who languish under Red chains suffer the yoke of Jewish Communism. This will be a war where the hammer and sickle shall be cast into the pits of history and forever forgotten! We shall show the world the power of our Reich and save it from the proleterian abyss that it stands at the precipice of. We can, must, and shall be utterly victorious in this crusade of civilization against degeneracy! SIEG HEIL!" - Adolf Hitler in response to the American ultimatum.

"So it comes to this. Britain and France, who had every power to stop the Hun from arising in a new and more terrible form than ever; stand by and let the jackboot tread the steppes of Russia and damn hundreds of millions to certain annihilation and slavery. In our fear of Red America, China, and Russia, we have once again consigned millions to the fascist crocodile in hopes that they will be satisfied. And in their hopes to destroy Stalin, Jinwei, and Sinclair they forget that creatures like Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Hirohito's Japan and Salgado's Brazil will never be satisfied. Ever shall they look for more to devour, until the whole world is theirs, and even then I doubt that they will not lust for more.

We fear and hate America and the other red states so much that we can no longer see the true threat. The new system that America has created is far from beyond reproach, that is true. They accept their state's involvement in all things and have surrendered a right to free enterprise in the search of equality. They recklessly go forwards in hopes of finding Utopia without ever looking back and considering the path they are taking. Many have perished in their enthusiasm to break with the past and create their new system. And yet America remains a place where Liberty is cherished. There are open and fair elections in a multiparty system. You would not find Stalin's strongmanship there, nor Jinwei's lack of certainty for the future. Though we may disagree on economics and many moral policies, we still cherish liberty and democracy, and perhaps through America's influence, the rest of the comintern can be guided away from the Stalinist model to something better.

And yet thanks to our short sighted folly, we would risk allowing vast portions of the world fall into the darkness of hateful and greedy men. I am no friend of Communism, anyone who knows me is aware of that, and earlier in my career I have indeed made comments in favor of the Fascist system as a bulwark against Marxism, comments I now deeply regret. And yet when I think about the war engulfing Russia and China and the war that looms over South America and the war that the Americans are committing themselves too, I can only think about how millions are suffering or shall suffer. I can only see people rushing to defend their homes, people gathering around any source of news they can to see what future awaits them, human beings receiving the letter that all families dread to hear and looking over the horizon with terror of what may come from it.

What manner of men are we to not only do nothing against fascism, but supply them the arms, money, supplies, and even volunteers to permit their hordes to amass and strike where they please? To enable them to bring horror and death to those who have done nothing to wrong them so that they can build empires on a foundation of blood and skulls. I warn you all against allowing the words of the fascists from the Americas to Europe and Asia to bend your ear and fill it with lies; that these attacks are simply an attack against the radical left to save civilized life. I warn you all that they will lie to us as they have lied to their own people in hopes that the free nations of the world will join them in making war on the Red banner. These are people who have proven their perfidy time and time again, and if they build their new world order, I guarantee you that our place in it will not be as equals, but as slaves.

So I stand before this parliament pleading to you all to do what is right. I beg that you do not let yet another people be crushed under the Fascist Jackals' boots. Already we have let Abyssania, China, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Poland, Spain, Yugoslavia, and Greece be crushed by fascist invasion. Already we have stood by and let fascists seize control of Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil, Siam, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Bulgaria and while Turkey, Sweden and Finland are being browbeaten into joining or at least facilitating Hitler's mad crusade. It is the duty of nations such as Britain and her vast commonwealth, France and her dominions, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Belgium to take a stand for liberty against Tyranny. Whatever our agreements with the comintern are, we must stand with them so that there will be a hope for the future.

But thanks to this parliament, the fascist monster has been allowed to grow. A four headed beast darkens the whole of the world, three heads have already struck and the fourth bides its time. And we have fed this beast with whole nations of people. Thanks to this government, the fascist monster is strong and healthy. Thanks to the policies of short sighted appeasers, volunteers from the free world are marching with those who should be our enemies, British made weapons are in the hands of a Barbarian horde unlike any the world has seen, British money helps the fascists buy what they want while British machine tools modernize their factories, British fuel generously feeds the jackbooted war machine while British lorries ferry his troops. I say that this government has failed not only in its duties to Britain and her Commonwealth; but to the entire world." - Winston Churchill criticizing the decision to step up trade with the Axis powers.

"This will not be like the last war, where we simply sought to take a few chunks of land for a Mitteleuropa, not will it be like the assault of Napoleon where the goal was to simply chastise Russia into bending knee to a policy of blockade. We intend to take the whole of Russia for our greater German reich and make the very name of the Soviet Union forgotten for the rest of history. We are not just conquerors, but civilizers who shall bring to Russia the lessons of German civilization. In short, we shall take the task that the Teutonic Knights brought on themselves centuries ago and succeed where they failed. " - Erich Koch, Reichskommissar of Ukraine.

"This war is not an ordinary war, it is a war of all the peoples of all parts of the Comintern. Not only to eliminate the danger that stands over our heads, but to aid all people groaning under the yoke of fascism. We stand together as a great alliance of many worker's states; Soviets, Americans, Mexicans, Chinese, Chileans, Peruvians, Nicaraguans, Colombians, Venezuelans, Argentines, Dominicans, Spaniards, El Savadorans, Panamanians, Ecuadorans, Mongolians, Costa Ricans, and Guatemalans all stand in solidarity that shall last for eternity to defend the gains of their revolutions from the fascist hordes from around the world. Fascists that the Capitalists of western Europe and their colonial empires have enabled and aided with finance, machinery, munitions, supplies, and even volunteer regiments. Fascists who have seized vast portions of South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia through force, fear, and cloak and dagger, placing hundreds of millions under the worst kinds of slavery.

They have started this war, believing that our love of peace, freedom, human dignity, and equality would make us weak when faced with their mechanical militarism, their rigid autocracy, their cold hearted callousness and their worship power for its own sake. They have made a grave error in this thought. We are not weaker for our commitment to the liberation of the Earth from the burdens of capitalist oppression, that we may live in a world where none may divide us. We are stronger for it, whereas their power is built on oppression and will crumble when their workers realize how they have been lied to and throw down their chains, ours is built on the solidarity of our workers and their commitment to a better world. They brought this war upon us by striking when we were in the midst of a great program of modernization in violation of a peace agreement we had made with the best of faith. They will find that this war will not end in the death of socialism, but the end of fascism. They will not crush the spirit of revolution, but they shall instead find that this was the war that forever sealed the fate of reaction. Workers, peasants, soldiers, victory is inevitable!" - Joseph Stalin.

"I fear that this war will be far more terrible than the one before it. And I dread to imagine where it will end. Never before have I feared more for my country, and now all I can do is watch." Former Kaiser Wilhelm von Hohenzollern.

"This war will be won in the factories. Every asset of the anti-comintern must be mobilized if we are ever going to see the menace of communism and Judaism ended. To that end, I have done all I can to turn the nations of Hitler's righteous crusade into the most efficient industrial powerhouses I could. America's freedom from the red menace hinges on the axis having the factories to deal with the production of the Soviets and the DeLeonists. I sided with fascism not because I hate America, but because I love it enough to want to see it freed from the grip of Bolshevism. That I was welcomed with open arms by the fascist nations who have the guts to stand against Judeo-Bolshevik tyranny simply made my choice clear. Thanks to the efforts of me and other patriotic entrepreneurs, we have created the arsenal of capitalism." - Henry Ford explaining his decision to defect to Nazi Germany.


I've got more planned but I just want to get these out of the way first.
 
Last edited:
Fun quotes, although I think hitler talks too much about Italian greatness in his speech about the declaration of war. I did like though that the very american sounding speech was coming from Stalin though.
 
Fun quotes, although I think hitler talks too much about Italian greatness in his speech about the declaration of war. I did like though that the very american sounding speech was coming from Stalin though.
I think you blended together Mussolini and Hitler's speeches.

Also Stalin tried pretty hard to make himself sound like a democratic man of the people OTL.
 
Last edited:
"This war will be won in the factories. Every asset of the anti-comintern must be mobilized if we are ever going to see the menace of communism and Judaism ended. To that end, I have done all I can to turn the nations of Hitler's righteous crusade into the most efficient industrial powerhouses I could. America's freedom from the red menace hinges on the axis having the factories to deal with the production of the Soviets and the DeLeonists. I sided with fascism not because I hate America, but because I love it enough to want to see it freed from the grip of Bolshevism. That I was welcomed with open arms by the fascist nations who have the guts to stand against Judeo-Bolshevik tyranny simply made my choice clear. Thanks to the efforts of me and other patriotic entrepreneurs, we have created the arsenal of capitalism." - Henry Ford explaining his decision to defect to Nazi Germany.


I've got more planned but I just want to get these out of the way first.

I remember in the pre-revision version, Ford (the company, not the man) was actually a collectivized "design bureau." If that's still true, maybe he's bitter that he lost his company.

I wonder what will happen to him, when the Nazis are defeated?
 

E. Burke

Banned
Fucking A quotes man. Great work. I liked Churchills speech, but then I've always been a sucker for British conservative aesthetics. Waistcoats, cigars, brandy and great speeches for the unwashed masses are my jam. Basically, my political aesthetic is the barbarians barbarizing Rome
 
Top