Rosenberg's Reich: The Myth of The Twentieth Century

[The Southeast]

The major differences to our 1950s are:

No break-up of Germany into West and East as, upon the insistence of Stassen, Attlee and de Gaulle, the Western Allies would occupy the entirety of the reconstruction zone. Moscow's use of biological weapons had raised grave concerns in the west of Soviets potentially committing war crimes against German Civilians in occupied territory, though the Soviets would keep control of all land the Slavs had won back over Germany before Berlin's surrender.

Italy is neutral and continues to be under fascist rule, as does Albania.

Yugoslavia has warmer relations to the Soviet Union, despite the differences in ideology between Tito and Molotov, and is considered a major European ally to the Soviets.

Portugal is neutral.

Finland is under control of the communists as the Soviets won the Winter War.

Sweden is an ally of the West rather than being neutral. This is because it shares a large oceanic border with a Soviet ally.

If Italy is neutral, it would have its pre-1939 borders. That means keeping the Julian March and Istria, as well as the Dodecanese islands.

The German-Polish border wouldn't be the Oder-Neisse line unless the Soviets were at the River Oder itself at the point of Germany's surrender. OTL West Germany did not recognise the Oder-Neisse line as the legitimate border of Germany until the 1970s.

If all of Germany west of the Oder-Neisse is occupied by the Western Allies, it makes more sense for the Soviets to establish an East German state in Pommern and Schlesien for political and propaganda purposes.

 

[X_X]

“The world was engrossed with the story of more than two dozen men who had been captured and sentenced to trial in Hamburg, Germany. The accused, all Nazi war criminals, faced justice head-on as their crimes were exposed to the world in great detail. Weekly updates on the trials lasting from 1951-1952 were published in newspapers throughout the world, and the allowance of cameras in the courtroom made for sensationalist fare in magazines and movie house newsreels. Realizing the historical significance of the trials to European history, it was permitted for the prosecution to film some of the defendants during the questioning in private rooms; these reels were later shown in court. These “Candid Nazi” films, as they were nicknamed, were only first screened to the public in the 1990s as part of a BBC television documentary, celebrating 45 years since the end of the war.

“Many of the accused were found guilty and forced to either live life in prison or be sentenced to death. Among those who received the rope were the trials’ “Big Three” as they were referred to by the British press.”

-Excerpt from The Continent of Blood: The History of War, Authoritarianism, and Terrorism in 20th Century Europe



“May history not ever forget, that everything I did, I did for the German people…” - Hermann Göring

“Though my eyes will be shut, henceforth I will experience an eternal state of unrest…” -Rudolf Hess

“And with the gallows near, the final die is cast. But I know the public will not rest. May the black sun rise once more in Germany once the people have discovered the hypocrisies of their ‘saviors’!” - Heinrich Himmler

 

[stirlingdraka]

Great update on the Big Three of the Hamburg Trials.

 

[Alpha-King98760]

Wonderful update! I think Hess’s quote was the best, there’s something about it that I can’t describe.

 

[X_X]

A happy '19 to all!

“The American people need a healthcare program that provides for all, to ensure that the working class remains healthy in body and mind alike without fearing the financial costs any illness might bring. This is not about “an encroaching socialism” as my critics have referred to it as it is about ensuring the survival of the American family from the problem of sickness. Unlike our enemies, we do not seek a government that kills its people, but one that protects them.” -Estes Kefauver

“Right from the start, President Kefauver came swinging, releasing his ambitious list of government programs that were to be part of the Fair Deal. The largest of these would be a universal healthcare system with the state being the primary fund holder; with a newly founded Department of Health and Human Services to manage it. Backlash to such an idea was intense, but so was the support for it. After all, healthcare was the main platform of the Kefauver/Humphrey ticket. A positive public relations push by Democrats, now with both house and senate majorities, helped the public perception of the proposal, though the opposition was not without big names, some being larger than most senators.

“Actor Clark Gable, a member of a group of conservative Hollywood power players that included John Wayne, lead his stardom in a crusade against Kefauver’s healthcare plan. In a bestselling 1953 LP titled “Clark Gable Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine”, the great thespian, a loyal conservative Republican, let it be known his own objections to the Democrats’ healthcare plan.

“Senate Majority Leader Harry Truman, a liberal lion, however, was able to persuade many skeptical members of the Democrats of the benefits of passing such an ambitious and controversial project would have on the party. National polling throughout the country found that was slightly larger support than disapproval among the people, with the blue-collar working class of Democratic strongholds being especially supportive. Conservative Republicans remained Kefauver’s main opponent in the war against his aims for a Fair Deal, but this proved to not be enough. Not even a few conservative Democrats voting against it could get the number of senators The Right required. By 1954, the United States had a universal healthcare system, complete with Congressman Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut as the nation’s first Sectary of Health and Human Services. At the time nicknamed “KefauverCare” by opponents and fans alike, it remains to this day the foundation of American healthcare.”

-Excerpt from They Who Built Modern America: The Kefauver Presidency

 

[stirlingdraka]

A wonderful update it`s great that Kefauver got a universal healthcare system passed. Can`t wait to see what else is in the Fair Deal.

 

[X_X]

“Yukio Mishima got his start in politics in the late 40s, working as a censor under the now state-owned film studio Shochiku Company Limited. Shochiku, under the ownership of Otani Takejiro and Shiro Kido, had released propagandist films against the Russians and Chinese during the Great War. After the Japanese surrender and the continuation of far-right authoritarianism under the Ishi dictatorship, the company still produced nationalistic content, with all films submitted to it under close observation. It was then a gross irony that Mishima, a great fan of cinema, would devote his early career to clipping its wings. But such paradox was lost upon a young man consumed by nationalism. Japanese art continued to suffer under the Ishi years, an infamous example of this being Akira Kurosawa committing suicide due to the government never approving of his dream projects because of their “subversive elements”.

“Meanwhile, Mishima’s passions in fascism and art earned him well. In 1959, he had upgraded to being Ishi’s Minister of Propaganda. By the 60s, his influence upon the Japanese government’s state-owned press earned him the nickname “The Japanese Goebbels” in the United States. By the 1970s, Prime Minister Mishima was building up the government he had only long dreamed about.”

-Excerpt from Gingko and Cherry Blossom: Japan in the 20th Century



“An attack on Moncada Barracks in Cuba by communist guerrillas, believed to be backed by the Soviets and Brazilians, was successfully stopped, with half of the estimated 120 assailants killed. Among these include the group’s leaders, the brothers Fidel and Raul Castro…”
-New York Times, 1953

 

[stirlingdraka]

Wow the Castro brothers are dead can`t wait to see how that affects Cuba.

 

[X_X]

“After Labour won the 1952 UK elections with a reduced majority, many Britons had hoped that domestic affairs would be the top priority of the second Attlee administration. But the elephant in the room was the great Indian subcontinent. While Attlee was mostly occupied in the construction of the welfare state, narrowly predating Kefauver’s own, he did mind special attention to Indian independence, virtually the only post-war geopolitical situation he was personally invested in. The British had no means to continue to monitor this titanic colony, the greatest colony that was or would ever be. Thus, in 1952 it was declared by Prime Minister Attlee that India would become independent in 1953.

“Issues of ethnicity and religion ran fierce in the coming months, eventually with a Hindu-majority India in the center with the Muslim-majority Pakistan on both west and east. Many were displaced by this conflict and it is believed that two million directly died as the result of the partition of India. But as long last, Indian and Pakistani alike were free from European rule. Mahatma Gandhi lived long enough to see his dreams realized, dying a few weeks after independence in 1953. He was 83 years old, the cause of death was colon cancer.

“The first President of what was now, and remains, the most populous country on Earth [1] was Jawaharlal Nehru, who placed his new nation forward into socialistic economics and neutral foreign affairs, not favoring either the West or East. The latter of those would prove to serve India quite well, but it remained a struggle for the Hindus to reach their full economic potential…”


-Excerpt from the BBC documentary India: Heart of Asia


[1] Recall that China is divided in this TL between the Communist North and Nationalist South

 

[Unknown]

This is an amazing TL when you can make me feel sorry for TTL's Goebbels (someone who normally doesn't deserve sympathy)...

 

[X_X]

“Today, a jury in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia reacts. Their verdict: guilty. On trial, the brutal killers who lead a murdering spread of countless civilians, entire villages wiped out by a brutal, fanatical regime.

“The men on trial for crimes of ethnic cleansing the Serbs and Jews included Ante Pavelić, Jure Francetić, Vjekoslav Luburić, Mile Budak, and Archbishop Ivan Šarić, the last one being the first and only head of the Croatian Catholic Church offshoot to exist following Pope Francis’ ex-communication of the Ustashe. All listed above were sentenced to death. In total 600,000 ethnic Serbs were killed by the Croatian ultranationalists turning the war-years.

“The last 50 years have seen shocking amounts of bloodshed in the Balkans from various conflicts; Yugoslavia hopes that such ethnic tensions will be eliminated under Titoism. Indeed now, we see Tito, a Croat, ruling peacefully over the capital of Belgrade, a Serbian majority city. Such a scenario a few years ago would’ve been unthinkable…”

-New York Times



“The death of Will Rogers in 1954 greatly saddened the American people. It was a loss of one of the most original voices in American observation and wit. President Kefauver joked in his radioed statement that: “Perhaps things would’ve gone better had Rogers been our nominee back in ‘28”.

“For Rogers Jr., now in his second term as a senator in California, it was also the loss of a father, the man who shaped his son into who he was. After being in retreat for the days following his dad’s sudden death, Senator Rogers went back to work in Washington. His colleagues would say that something changed in him that day, but not for the worse. The senator was now more determined than ever to prove himself as a “people’s icon” as his father had. Where Henry Wallace stumbled, where the La Follette family failed, Rogers was determined to succeed.”

-Excerpt from the PBS documentary The Rogers Family

Senator Rogers and a statue of his father

 

[X_X]

It’s come to my attention that I’ve picked up quite a few new readers over the past few months! Welcome along for the ride!

“It was a Supreme Court decision that kicked every off every next.

“In 1951 a class action lawsuit was filed by a group of African-Americans based in Houston, Texas against the city’s board of education, claiming that the city’s segregation policy was unlawful and unjust. The named plaintiff, Mr. Ford, joined the suit because he had been upset that his daughter had to go to an inferior school that was farther from their house than the better staffed and managed whites-only school. In a unanimous supreme court decision under Supreme Court Chief Justice William O. Douglas, it was ruled that such “separate but equal” establishments in public education were federally unlawful, essentially revoking the infamous Plessy v Ferguson verdict of 1896.

“Reaction in the south was swift and fierce from reactionary Dixiecrats over Ford v. Board of Education (1954). Organizations like the White’s Citizens Council held public protests and demanded a response from the White House in some desperate plea to overturn it. Three days after the Court decision, President Kefauver gave his speech to the nation…”

-Excerpt from They Who Built Modern America: The Kefauver Presidency


“I’ve lived in the South my whole life. I understand the concerns of the Southern working-class white man like perhaps no other in Washington. But I also understand, as a man of law, the integrity of the Supreme court and the reasons for these respectable men to have made their verdict. I will thus uphold the decision of Ford v. Board of Education. I know that will not be a popular decision among some, including many within my party, but I hope such people were already aware that I was elected to be the President of the United States, not president of the Ku Klux Klan.” -Estes Kefauver

“Jesus Christ, this fucker’s putting socialism in our healthcare and now in our schools. I gotta stop him!” -Senator Joseph McCarthy


“There was a demonstration in downtown Houston that day, a bunch of people from the suburbs come to tell us how to live in our neighborhoods. Holding up signs that said things like: “Integrated we fall, segregated we rise.” My friends and I were part of the counter-demonstrators, you know if they can walk around with their picket signs and silly chants, then why can’t we? My neighbor, Mr. Green, his old dude in his 60s, was there as part of our lot of a few dozen blacks who had could down to peacefully stand up against Jim Crow in the schools.

“Over with the segregationists, this guy was yelling some vile stuff at the kids who had come to counter-protest with their parents, the really little ones. Mr. Green, he had had enough. He walked up to that white guy and said, in such a polite tone, ‘I don’t appreciate you saying those words towards children. Please, stop.’

“He spit on Mr. Green. Now, I would see worse years later, actual punches, crossing burning, more use of the word “nigger” in a single day than most hear in their entire life. But that spitting thing still stays in my mind years later. The dude didn’t know he had spit on a WW1 veteran, but I doubt he would care. And my neighbor, he didn’t put a punch though I know he wanted to. Just walked on back to us, the biggest glob of spit on his blue shirt.

“That evening I saw Mr. Green smoking cheap cigarettes from his patio.

“I’d never seen him smoke before that day…”

-Excerpt from the documentary To Our Last Breath

 

[stirlingdraka]

Now I really like President Kefauver. Hopefully this doesn`t have too violent a backlash from the KKK and Dixiecrats.

 

[X_X]

“Russia had long been a dark and violent interior of Europe, a land of endless insanity and bloodshed, of sin and suffering. The aftermath of the war now provided the Russians a chance to prove themselves on the international stage. Molotov was determined to not only maintain the power of Stalinist socialism upon his great union but to spread red power throughout the earth. Finally, Moscow would be the center of the universe and the east would long last get its day in the sun. The long eternal winter was waning on the taiga, the tundra, and the Kremlin.

“In remote and unpopulated areas of Kazakhstan, scientists worked hard under the instruction of Igor Kurchatov in the construction of Soviet nuclear bombs. When the first of these was detonated, the ground both literally and figurately shook. Now two countries had access to the most destructive weapon in human history; at once it was realized the awesome and destructive power that such a war between the two of them could bring. If Kefauver thought that healthcare and civil rights were tricky, now there was the threat and paranoia of commies both at aboard and at home.

“America would soon be seeing red everywhere it turned…”

-Excerpt from They Who Built Modern America: The Kefauver Presidency

“POGROM AGAINST ETHNIC GREEKS IN ISTANBUL LEAVES 30 DEAD, US GOVERNMENT CALLS TO TURKISH GOVERNMENT TO DO BETTER JOB PROTECTING MINORITIES” -New York Times



“In Communist Korea, a prominent critic of the regime was executed in the capital city of Seoul. Sun Myung Moon, one of the most prominent anti-communists was killed by the state over charges of treason related to his speeches and published writings comparing communism to the Biblical devil.” -London Times

 

[M. A. Dickens]

Now I really like President Kefauver. Hopefully this doesn`t have too violent a backlash from the KKK and Dixiecrats.

Looks like the 101st Airborne might get called up again.

Marc A

 

[stirlingdraka]

So the Soviets now have nuclear weapons .

 

[X_X]

“If you had asked back in 1953 who to place your bets on who would be the Republican nominee for the 1956 election, odds are you would pick California governor Earl Warren. A happy, intelligent man in the mold of the martyred Thomas Dewey who was running one of the largest states in the union like a dream. His presidential ambitions were perhaps Sacramento’s worst kept secret. Then as the 50s came into its middle years, conservatism began to turn in new directions and do funny things. There was a boiling hatred in some parts of the country over the liberalism of this new Democratic Party. They hated Kefauver and Humphrey with a zealous fashion: their love of the “pinko unions”, their promotion of school desegregation, the support those stuffy Hollywood types gave them, and most of all that “commie healthcare plan” that had passed in congress.

“Yes, red was the color to be vilified and shunned, and for the paranoid anti-intellectual you had a hero in Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. When McCarthy in 1955 took up the crusade of running for president, he would soon become a household name for his very vocal and fanatical concerns about communism in the United States and how it was according to him everywhere. The Cold War was in its first few months, following the testing of the first Soviet atom bomb, and it looked like the damn reds were going to burn the whole country down in a wave of fire and fury. With the loyal backing of the American far-right, McCarthy went toe-to-toe to Warren. Polls soon showed a surprisingly tight race between the two. Once the primaries began, the Warren campaign found the had overestimated their abilities in winning voters over, especially in the Midwest. McCarthy’s fervid radio appearances in which he violently bashed everything the left held dear- civil rights, healthcare, labor unions- had made him a smash-hit. By some pollings, 50% of Americans thought he would make a good president.

“At the infamous Republican national convention in Denver, Colorado, Warren and the liberal Republicans tried their best to avoid a McCarthy nomination. But in that hectic year 1956, McCarthyism was what the people wanted. Delegates for the two clashed outside the convention hall, and a mass walkout of Warren delegates occurred as McCarthy was about to make his acceptance speech. One heckler interrupted the speech two minutes in with the now infamous line: “Fuck you, Thomas Dewey didn’t die for this shit!” That perhaps summed up the general tone of the evening more than any talk about communists in the entertainment or healthcare industries ever could.

“For a running mate, McCarthy picked Arizona senator Barry Goldwater, the first ethnic Jew on a major party ticket. As the weeks went on towards the showdown against President Kefauver, McCarthy began to spiral in his personal life, much to the delight of many a scorned Earl Warren fan…”

-Excerpt from Alcoholics, Philanders, and Crooks: The Complete Guide to American Presidential Candidates

 

[stirlingdraka]

A McCarthy / Goldwater ticket. While that cartoon is excellent.

 

[Alpha-King98760]

God dammit!

 

[X_X]

“The first televised presidential debate would go down as the most infamous in history, material for satire even to this day. The stress of running a nation-wide campaign had placed unbelievable pressure upon McCarthy, who had always struggled with alcohol. Though his handlers worked carefully to prevent him from drinking in public, in the hours before the sole debate between him and President Kefauver the senator, to calm his nerves, drank a fair amount of gin. Appearing intoxicated and having some trouble answering the moderator’s questions, McCarthy had made a fatal mistake that the president’s men would at once jump upon. “Do you want a wino to pick up the phone when Moscow’s calling?” asked one Kefauver television ad that showed still images of the drunken McCarthy. Polls showed that this televised inebriation severely hurt the senator’s public image, with millions now doubting his ability to lead the country. Still, the worse was yet to come.

“In October, at a campaign stop in Minnesota, McCarthy was confronted by a CBS television team. Journalist Walter Cronkite used the opportunity to question him on the fairness of the accusations McCarthy had made about “reds” in the Kefauver administration. The senator got visibly frustrated when Cronkite confronted him with the lack of evidence on his claims, to which he soon exploded. “I’m sick and tired of you pinkos! Get out of my face!” “Senator, you are a public official, you should answer the questions of the press…” responded the reporter. With the cameras rolling, McCarthy threw a punch at Cronkite hitting square him in the forehead and leaving a bruise before speed walking away in the chaos. Nobody could believe what had just occurred and the fact that a popular anchorman had been assaulted by a presidential candidate stunned the nation when it was reported that evening. Kefauver hardly had to put on a spin on it, who wanted a paranoid drinker who punched nice men as their commander-in-chief?”

-Excerpt from They Who Built Modern America: The Kefauver Presidency