The North Star is Red: a Wallace Presidency, KMT Victory, Alternate Cold War TL

TBQF, the entire Three Years War cost the USSR as much as basically a week of the Great Patriotic War.

To be also quite frank this type of evaluation it's only possible in the internal soviet document created for the leadership by the middle management to avoid being purged; it's modern warfare that we are talking and there are been a lot of land battle so no cheap (even in a relative term) it's a word that can't be used unless your name is 'OTL USA in the immediate post WW2' and this is not the case.
Even using proxy in Jugoslavia mean just that your allies are much much more weaker than OTL and you need to prop them up more and this mean more cost, replenish the equipment after the war mean other cost (not only what directly destroyed but also what cannot be more used as it's too worn out), divert production mean other cost, losing even more young men (both dead and crippled) mean other economic and social cost...all in a moment when they can't affor any (expecially from the population pow).
All that while mantaining an high military alert due to the possible expansion of the conflict and supporting communist and revolt in other country...aka spending even more money in something different than economic recovery
 
Chapter 142 - The French Union
The French Union
By the 1960's, the importance of France's colonies had significantly declined. In 1954, 70% of France's agricultural imports came from its "overseas countries", while the majority of its industrial exports went to its colonies as well.[1] By the 1960's, increasing integration into a (Western) European common market quickly reduced France's economic dependence on trade with Africa. One major journalist, Raymond Cartier, was a vociferous critic of the French colonial empire, arguing that the African colonies were economic sinkholes for spending. In a famous article published after the war in 1957, Cartier quipped "Corrèze before the Zambezi." The debate sparked a total break among the Poujadists, as Poujade himself agreed with the arguments, although the radical youth wing, led by Le Pen, rejected the notion that France should focus at home. Charles de Gaulle, who was not a Poujadist but desired Poujadist support for his government, more or less played the two groups off against each other. De Gaulle wanted out, but the Opportunist Gaullists didn't.

As a result of France's leading role in the European Economic Community, De Gaulle was able to eventually secure preferential access of all French colonies to the European market. Many observers theorized that De Gaulle's support for British entry into the EEC was to gain an ally in this endeavor, as the Italians notably objected. With British support, British colonies were included as well, while Somalia and Libya were allowed to sign association agreements that gave them a backdoor into the European market.

De Gaulle was a believer in the idea of a French empire, but he was notoriously reticent to spend much blood on it. Moreover, his opinions on race and ethnicity were complex. De Gaulle's famously stated in writing that:

"'It's a very good thing that there are yellow French people, black French people and brown French people. It's a sign that France is open to all races and that it has a universal vocation. But on condition they stay a minority. If not, France wouldn't be France anymore. After all, we are an European people from white race, Greek and Latin culture, and Christian religion. Try to mix oil and vinegar together. Shake the bottle. After a while, they get separated again. The Arabs are the Arabs, the French are the French. Do you believe that the French nation is able to integrate ten million Muslims who shall be twenty million tomorrow and forty million the day after? If we integrated them, if all the Arabs and Berbers were considered French, how could we prevent them from moving to our home country where the standard of living is so much higher? My village wouldn't be named Colombey-les-Deux-Églises (Colombey of the Two Churches) anymore, but Colombey-les-Deux-Mosquées (Colombey of the Two Mosques)!"[2]
De Gaulle was sympathetic to the stated goals of the French Union and the many African intellectuals who supported such an ideal of racial equality, while being deeply unsympathetic to what he saw as an oppressive, racist settler society in Algeria. In addition, he had established a true bond of friendship with the late Félix Éboué, the black Governor of French Equatorial Africa who was the first major politician to declare for Free France. However, he was also deeply fearful of a truly multiracial, multiethnic France. His vision for the French Empire was truly neocolonial - the idea that most Africans would be largely self-governing and ostensibly free, but France would retain its influence, including strategic territory and access to rare natural resources. A consensus emerged in the government to decolonize most of the nations with the highest populations (under close French tutelage), but to retain low-population colonies where the local leaders (or even better, local residents, though this was unlikely) could be convinced to stay.

After an inter-government quibble, the decision was made to tinker with the French Union (most of the Opportunist Gaullists who fled the mainstream center-right to support De Gaulle were okay with his overall plans, but opposed an outright constitutional revision for fear that De Gaulle would become a strongman). Overseas countries, overseas territories, as well as the UN trust territories, were required to choose between becoming 1) French overseas departments, 2) protectorates of France (a status held by Tunisia, Vietnam, Cochinchina, and until 1955, Cambodia), or just 3) independence. In short, 6-tier system of the French Union (metropolitan departments -> overseas departments -> overseas territories -> overseas countries -> protectorates -> UN trust territories) was compressed to three tiers. Notably, citizens of protectorates did not enjoy French citizenship.

French special services and colonial administrators tried their best to make sure the results would end out just the way De Gaulle wanted. It quickly became obvious that French officials couldn't stop Ahmed Sékou Touré from voting the French out, and it was decided to have Guinea vote first, whereupon it voted for independence. Immediate sanctions from France followed in hopes of scaring the rest into line. All of the Overseas Territories voted to become overseas departments under French muscling. The UN Trust territories all had to go simply because De Gaulle didn't want to openly flaunt international law and because Cameroon had a growing insurgency against the French that De Gaulle did not want to develop into outright war. The various colonies of French West Africa all chose to become protectorates, starting a process of independence under French tutelage. Madagascar, still stinging over the brutal crushing of the 1948 Malagasy uprising, opted to be a protectorate, but would unilaterally declare independence a few years later.

In the end, only one colony chose to become overseas departments: French Equatorial Africa. At the time, French Equatorial Africa was actually a unified colony. The French found significant local interests, especially in Gabon and Brazzaville, who sought to remain with France. To De Gaulle, their population seemed minor enough. At the time, Gabon had under 500,000 people, the Congo around 1,000,000, Chad somewhere under 3,000,000, and Ubangi-Shari around 1,300,000. Five and a half million Africans, compared to nearly fifty million white Frenchmen, seemed a perfectly acceptable ratio to De Gaulle (he quipped it was about equal to the % of blacks in the United States). In addition, he personally went to bat for French Equatorial Africa, claiming that their support for the Free French made them "fully French by blood." Ironically, in the largest region, Chad, it was primarily the Muslim and Ouaddaïan nobility that voted to become French, largely because they feared atheist socialism arising from France leaving (the list of eligible voters in all of these departments was very low, as it required literacy and an address, which disenfranchised almost all of the nomads).

Interestingly, the new Department of Dijibouti was one of the few regions that genuinely voted for French integration - ethnic Afar (roughly 40%) voted en masse to become part of France, in fears of ethnic Somalis (55%) dominating an independent Djibouti. Similarly, in Comoros, the smaller islands all voted en masse for integration out of fears that the residents of Grande Comore (the largest island) would dominate the other islands. In many cases, the vote was driven not by love of France, but fear of what might replace her. When the radical right was told that many colonies had been retained, they generally endorsed the decolonization of West Africa, placating them, for now.

De Gaulle seemed perfectly content that he had settled most colonial issues for France. Except for the Algerian War, where the death toll continued piling up.[3] De Gaulle personally was fine with leaving, but he knew that he would be eaten politically alive - pretty much everyone else on the French right was loathe to part with Algeria. However, De Gaulle saw no path out. With French deaths piling up, De Gaulle sought to open peace negotiations with the insurgents. However, there were now two major insurgent groups, roughly equal in strength, the FLN (National Liberation Front) and the PCA (Algerian Communist Party) - and his own supporters in France would never allow him to talk to either. In 1962, with the British facing an absolute disaster in the Middle East, De Gaulle saw a path out of the morass - and that path led him directly to Moscow.
---
[1] Cited here.
[2] An OTL quote.
[3] Death toll is pretty OTL.
 
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It's good to see French Equatorial Africa survive alongside Felix Eboue, though I wonder how Djibouti will look under continued French rule and how that'll impact the Horn of Africa.
 
I wonder if it's possible that there would be uprisings in Africa over colonialism.

It’s already happening in the Congo and North Africa.

I meant in the other places like French sub-Saharan Afica.

There's definitely uprisings - they're just pretty OTL so I kind of glossed over them.

There's the Malagasy Uprising of 1948 - crushed just as brutally as OTL. There was also a minor rebellion in Cameroon in OTL that was suppressed. I'll probably mention both of those later.

OTL, there weren't actually a lot of rebellions in 1945-1960 French Africa. Most of the French anticolonial wars were outside of SSA - such as Indochina and North Africa.
 
There’s no reason for that all. France has already granted the colonies self-determination.

I don't think that strictly prevents violence - a lot of anticolonial rebellions aren't even directly aimed at the occupying power, but are just as class-based (revolting against local elites who happen to be aligned with the colonial power in question).

The harshest anticolonial rebellions are really in societies where the colonial power is ALSO the local elite (like...the Algerian War or the Mau Mau rebellion).
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
I don't think that strictly prevents violence - a lot of anticolonial rebellions aren't even directly aimed at the occupying power, but are just as class-based (revolting against local elites who happen to be aligned with the colonial power in question).

The harshest anticolonial rebellions are really in societies where the colonial power is ALSO the local elite (like...the Algerian War or the Mau Mau rebellion).
Certainly true, but France would be instituting majority rule during the process of decolonization right? Or is that being too optimistic?
 
Chapter 143 - Molon Labe
Molon Labe
In 1957, Cyprus was an unusual possession of the British Empire. Cyprus was a crown colony with a predominantly European politician. In the wake of the devastating British defeat in Burma, the Fyfe Administration saw Cyprus as a rare colony that the British could retain without causing the mass immigration of non-whites into Great Britain (something he understood would be wildly unpopular in Britain, especially after the 1955 UK election where fear of such torpedoed hopes of a Labour majority). The Fyfe Administration foresaw a much smaller, leaner British Empire. As of 1960, the British Empire still officially included Malta, Cyprus, Singapore, Nigeria, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, the Central African Federation, Belize, Tanganyika, Aden, the Trucial States, Kuwait, and parts of the Caribbean. Nigeria and Sierra Leone were moving towards peaceful independence, much like Ghana had, although road blocks had presented themselves in Tanganyika and the CAF, which was still unwilling to grant majority rule. The Fyfe Ministry more or less planned on eventually letting go of most of those colonies, except for Malta and Cyprus. Earlier, Oman had more or less been humiliatingly lost to American interference. The Tory right in particular was livid at what they saw as a humiliated and collapsing British Empire and demanded that the British salvage something from this.

Upon realization that the British had designs on Cyprus, Royalist South Greece broke out in a rage. Giorgios Grivas, one of the leading generals of South Greece, was a Greek Cypriot and a staunch supporter of enosis, the unification of Cyprus and Greece proper. However, the Cyprus situation was complicated by the fact that somewhere between 20% to 25% of Cyprus was Turkish and did not want to see an annexation by Greece. Notably, both leaders of Greece and Turkey had ties to Cyprus. South Greece had been under martial law since 1949 (when the situation significantly worsened for the Greek Royalists) and the Cypriot Giorgios Grivas was one of the leading generals in the governing junta. President Alparslan Turkes, the strongman of Nationalist Turkey, was in turn a Turkish Cypriot.

British attempts to strengthen their control in Cyprus significantly worsened after John Harding, the Governor of Cyprus, was assassinated by EOKA (pro-enosis) millitants after calling off a peace meeting with Archbishop Makarios III (the meeting was canceled by the British civilian government). Harding was a relatively tough Governor and the event encouraged the British government to take an even harder line. The colonial secretary at the time, Alan Lennox-Boyd, was an ardent colonialist who tapped Evelyn Baring, the former Governor of Kenya who had crushed the Mau Mau rebellion. Baring's plan was to do whatever was possible to divide the Greek and Turkish populations of Cyprus. MI6 infamously incited several race riots against Turks (by Greeks) in order to convince the Turkish population that continued British rule would be the only thing protecting them from a violent Greek majority. Taking lessons from the French in Algeria, British paratroopers used the same urban warfare and torture methods.

Archbishop Makarios himself was assassinated in broad daylight in Nicosia. An unknown figure stabbed Makarios with a ricin-tipped umbrella, causing his death within hours from poisoning. MI6 was widely suspected as the culprit because Makarios had only recently barely escaped an obviously British-orchestrated kidnapping attempt (the British intended to exile him).[1] In reality, Makarios's assassin were actually members of the NKVD, who wanted the Archbishop out of the way to further inflame the war. By 1960, Cyprus was in a full-blown war, with British troops and Turkish paramilitaries fighting off Greek guerrillas. Civilian casualties and atrocities expanded. The war was not exactly hideously unpopular in Britain itself, as EOKA was depicted in the British press as a neofascist terrorist group with close links to the USSR (despite EOKA being ferociously anticommunist). EOKA received no Soviet support, but South Greece still received covert Soviet support as a legacy Stalin-era policy (despite its fervent anticommunism) and South Greece supported EOKA. The strangest fact was that Nationalist Turkey continued its policy of disguising Soviet arms at the Turkish straits (as Turkish) and shipping them to South Greece despite the fact that so many of them were being used to murder Turks.

Upon the outbreak of the Syro-Israeli War and the Christmas War, the British garrison in Cyprus was forced to trade away most of its heaviest weapons. First to British troops in Egypt devastated by the withdrawal of all Israeli troops - then second to the British troops desperately reinforcing the Jordanians. Immediately, EOKA declared a general offensive, trying to establish actual control over territory as opposed to its previous goals of simply launching guerrilla attacks against British guerrilla forces. Cyprus was not prioritized because by virtue of being an island, it was widely believed that no matter how bad the situation turned, the British could simply arrive later with the support of the undefeated Royal Navy and turn it around. Instead, Egypt and Jordan were prioritized, for fear that Syria could be a "new Germany", also presenting a "snowballing" threat. This theory was immediately called "Snowball Theory", but its primary supporter, Lennox-Boyd.[2] It immediately became obvious to other powers that Great Britain was simply juggling too many problems and every problem led to another new problem.

In 1962, the British gained an unwelcome surprise. When British aircraft carriers attempted to cross the Suez Canal on their way from the Mediterranean to Jordan, the Israelis denied them (and all other warships) access, stating that Israel was neutral in the war. The British decided to move north and attack the Syrian coast itself simply because there'd be nothing else for them to do. The South Greeks, given intel that was notably falsified by of all things, French secret services (who had their own agenda), saw this movement as a sign that the British were moving north to crush the Cypriot revolt.

South Greece saw an opportunity and took it. Against the wills of the King of Greece (who was conveniently waylaid by Greek soldiers and put under house arrest), the South Greek government acted. The British government was sent into disarray and disbelief - the Kingdom of Greece, citing British atrocities in Cyprus, sent an ultimatum to the United Kingdom to immediately vacate Cyprus or face war. Laughing off the ultimatum, the British cabinet, staffed with Tories who had a pretty good grasp of classical Greek, responded only with "molon labe" or in Greek, "come and take it", the famous response of the Spartans to Xerxes I after he demanded they surrender their arms. The South Greeks got the message.

A bewildered world community saw tiny, plucky South Greece (with its ardent foe to the North), nevertheless declare war on the United Kingdom. However, the South Greeks were not totally insane - they actually did have a card to play - they announced immediately that the Syrian Navy had arrived in Crete - a predominantly submarine navy constructed out of surplus Soviet ships. Although incapable of threatening any major British fleet, such a major base in the middle of the Mediterranean gave the Syrians the ability to interdict commercial and military supply shipping across the entire region, a grievous blow to the United Kingdom's attempts to supply Egyptian, Jordanian, and British troops in the Middle East. The South Greeks communicated to the British that this arrangement would end if the British were to vacate Cyprus.

In addition, in the aftermath of the Greek Civil War, the South Greeks quickly built up a not-irrelevant navy presence. Although not a particularly strong navy at all due to South Greece's relatively small population and poverty, it was still strong enough to dominate the seas in a potential resumption of war against North Greece. This was seen as necessary because ultimately, the North Greek offensive into South Greece stalled because of South Greek domination of the seas. The Royal Hellenic Navy could similarly prove a nuisance - the South Greeks focused heavily on small torpedo boats, which meant that they could evade British patrols and harass British shipping.[3] This was viewed as foreclosing a massive British amphibious invasion of Syria and making it harder for the British to reinforce Cyprus, fulfilling the goals of both Syria and South Greece. The dual setbacks of the Syrian base in Crete and the blocked Suez Canal presented a further challenge for London, both military and economic, which began to ponder its options...
---
[1] The kidnapping/exile was OTL, except it fails here as Makarios is more wary of the British.
[2] Lennox-Boyd was later a major member of the pro-colonialist Conservative Monday Club.
[3] Actually pretty OTL, though Greece develops such a fleet earlier than OTL.
 

Baldrick

Banned
Why do I get the feeling that Britain is about to find itself with a mini-Three Years War on its hands as the remnants of the Empire all simultaneously explode?
 
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