TL-191: Filling the Gaps

Pangur

Donor
Considering both the US and Germany extensively used them, probably not as controversial as it IOTL. It probably depends on how wide spread an environmental movement became after the war, how widespread Atomic/Nuclear energy became after as well for how acceptable it was. Unlike IOTL I doubt Germany and the US did any major arms race to gather as many as they could, so who can say.

My assumption... itll be like the Fallout Universe.. just as an accepted part of war and life.
I thought there something about the Japanese empire having nukes which could give you an arms race between them & the US
 
Just another musing, I wonder how controversial the superbombings are in TL 191. Seeing how controversial things like the Atomic bombings and even the bombing of Dresden seem to be these days.
The Confederates committed the first bombing in North America, so there's no real grounds for calling it "unprovoked." The stain of letting that particular genie out of its bottle will forever be on Featherston's Fuckers.

Given that the CSA started the war without provocation, committed major war crimes and crimes against humanity, and was also the first to use the bomb, I don't think there will be any real criticism of the atomic bombings by the US except by thinly-veiled neoconfederates. For the majority of the population, the general sentiment will be along the lines of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes."
 
So a while ago now, I made a little table trying to calculate CS and US casualties in the Second Great War by comparing them to German and Russian/Soviet casualties in both wars in OTL. The experiment produced what I thought were some pretty interesting numbers, but I've come up with a new idea for looking at how we might compare GWI and GWII casualties; the ratio of civilian to military PoVs in Breakthroughs and In At The Death, at the height of both wars.

Firstly looking at Breakthroughs;

Reggie Bartlett · Combatant
Flora Blackford · Civilian (Historical Figure)
Sam Carsten · Combatant
Anne Colleton · Unclear
Abner Dowling · Combatant
Cincinnatus Driver · Field Personnel
George Enos · Combatant
Sylvia Enos · Civilian
Jake Featherston · Combatant
Lucien Galtier · Civilian
Roger Kimball · Combatant
Chester Martin · Combatant
Arthur McGregor · Unclear
Gordon McSweeney · Combatant
Irving Morrell · Combatant
Jonathan Moss · Combatant
Jefferson Pinkard · Combatant
Scipio · Unclear
Nellie Semphroch · Unclear

We see we have 11 direct combatants, 2 "home front" civilians, 1 civilian who already qualifies as a historical figure by the start of the book (Flora), 1 serving non-combatant (Cincinnatus), and 4 people who are technically civilians but for one reason or another (spying, partisan warfare, anti-partisan warfare) I choose to classify ambiguously.

Now lets compare to In At The Death;

Flora Blackford · Civilian (Historical Figure)
Sam Carsten · Combattent
Jerry Dover · Combattent
Abner Dowling · Combattent (Historical Figure)
Cincinnatus Driver · Field Personnel
George Enos Jr. · Combattent
Jake Featherston · Civilian (Historical Figure)
Armstrong Grimes · Combattent
Cassius Madison · Combattent
Chester Martin · Combattent
Irving Morrell · Combattent (Historical Figure)
Jonathan Moss · Combattent
Leonard O'Doull · Field Personnel
Jefferson Pinkard · Unclear (Historical Figure)
Michael Pound · Combattent
Clarence Potter · Unclear (Historical Figure)
Jorge Rodriguez · Combattent

Here we have 9 direct combatants, no-one on the home front, 2 officers of historical significance (Morrell and Dowling), 2 leading politicians (Flora and Featherston), 2 non-combatant field personnel (Cincinnatus, O'Doull), and 2 members of the confederate military with ambiguous combat roles, both of whom are historical figures (Pinkard and Potter). Note that while Cassius Madison is certainly a historical figure by the end of the book, I choose not to list him as such because he's not of great importance at the start of the book.

What interests me most about these numbers is the complete lack of "average people" on the home front of GWII, and the extreme influence in importance of the remaining characters from the Great War Trilogy.

Lets play some games with these numbers; lets suppose the fraction of combatant PoVs in both books represents an arbitrary "mobilisation level". Full combatants have a value of 1/the total number of PoVs, while unclears and non-combatants count for 0.5, while full civilians count for 0. With these values we get these numbers:

Breakthroughs/GWI: 13.5/19 (0.71)
In At The Death/GWII: 13/17 (0.76)

Pretty similar at first glance right? Now lets see what happens when we remove all historical figures:

Breakthroughs/GWI: 12.5/18 (0.69)
In At The Death/GWII: 10/11 (0.91)

It might seem a bit arbitrary, but Morrell and Featherston's experiences aren't really representative of most people in the war, and counting this way essentially makes it a ratio of how many average people Turtledove presents are involved in the war, which is best for what we're about to do next.

This is the ratio between the "mobilisation levels" of each of the books:
(10/11)/(12.5/18) = 1.31

Multiplying each country's GWI casualties by this number gets us:

USA: 1.1 Million*1.31 = 1,440,000
CSA: 0.9 Million*1.31 = 1,178,182

These numbers aren't perfect; the method to achieve them is admittedly very arbitrary, and they seem a bit low for my liking, but I think they are interesting, and the premise of looking at the proportion of characters directly involved in the war effort is probably the best evidence we can hope to glean from the text.
 
It's been a while since I've contributed to this thread, so I decided to make another leaders list.

List of CS Presidential and Vice-Presidential Candidates

1861: Jefferson Davis (W-MS)/Alexander Stephens (W-GA)
1867: P. G. T. Beauregard (W-LA)/James Seddon (W-VA) def. Roert M. T. Hunter (I-VA)/Richard Taylor (I-LA)Robert E. Lee (I-VA)/[various]
1873: Fitzhugh Lee (W-VA)/def. Braxton Bragg (I-LA)/John Goode (I-VA),James Chesnut (I-SC)/Henry Foote (I-MS), Zebulon Vance (I-NC)/Herschel V. Johnson (I-GA) & Joseph E. Brown (I-GA)/Thomas A. R. Nelson (I-TN)
1874: Fitzhugh Lee (W-VA)/Henry S. Foote (I-MS)
1879: James Longstreet (W-GA)/Lucius Q. C. Lamar (W-MS) def. Joseph E. Brown (I-GA)/Isham Harris (I-TN) & John H. Morgan (I-KY)/John S. Barbour, Jr. (I-VA)
1885: Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson (W-VA)/Joseph C. S. Blackburn (W-KY) def. Rufus W. Cobb (I-AL)/John B. Gordon (I-GA)
1891: States Rights Gist (W-SC)/Stephen Mallory II (W-FL) def. Daniel Lindsay Russell (R-NC)/William E. Cameron (R-VA) & John P. Buchanan (L-TN)/Benjamin Tillman (L-SC)
1897: Robert Love Taylor (W-TN)/Thomas G. Jones (W-AL) def. Daniel Lindsay Russell (R-NC)/William E. Cameron (R-VA) & Benjamin Tillman (L-SC)/Charles Macune (L-TX)
1903: Champ Clark (W-KY)/Henry W. Grady (W-GA) def. Thomas E. Watson (RL-GA)/Louis Brandeis (RL-KY)
1909: Woodrow Wilson (W-KY)/Gabriel Semmes (W-AL) def. Thomas E. Watson (RL-GA)/James K. Vardaman (RL-MS)
1915: Gabriel Semmes (W-AL)/Luke Edward Wright (W-TN) def. Doroteo Arango (RL-CH)/Marion Butler (RL-NC)
1921: Wade Hampton V (W-SC)/Burton Mitchel III (W-AR) def. Jake Featherston (F-VA)/Ferdinand Koenig (F-AL) & Ainsworth Layne (RL-GA)/Plutarco Elías Calles (RL-SO)
1922: Burton Mitchel III (W-AR)/VACANT
1927: Burton Mitchel III (W-AR)/Jonathan Jackson (W-VA) def. Jake Featherston (F-VA)/Ferdinand Koenig (F-AL) & Joseph Taylor Robinson (RL-AR)/Cordell Hull (RL-TN)
1933: Jake Featherston (F-VA)/Willy Knight (F-TX) def. Cordell Hull (RL-TN)/Huey Long (RL-LA) & Samuel Longstreet (W-VA)/Hugo Black (W-AL)
1939: Jake Featherston (F-VA)/VACANT
1939: Jake Featherston (F-VA)/Don Patridge (F-TN) def. Kenneth McKellar (RL-TN)/Abelardo Rodríguez (RL-SO) & Walter F. George (W-GA)/Byron Patton Harrison (W-MS)
 
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MaxGerke01

Banned
It's been a while since I've contributed to this thread, so I decided to make another leaders list.

List of CS Presidential and Vice-Presidential Candidates

1861: Jefferson Davis (W-MS)/Alexander Stephens (W-GA)
1867: P. G. T. Beauregard (W-LA)/James Seddon (W-VA) def. Roert M. T. Hunter (I-VA)/Richard Taylor (I-LA)Robert E. Lee (I-VA)/[various]
1873: Fitzhugh Lee (W-VA)/def. Braxton Bragg (I-LA)/John Goode (I-VA),James Chesnut (I-SC)/Henry Foote (I-MS), Zebulon Vance (I-NC)/Herschel V. Johnson (I-GA) & Joseph E. Brown (I-GA)/Thomas A. R. Nelson (I-TN)
1874: Fitzhugh Lee (W-VA)/Henry S. Foote (I-MS)
1879: James Longstreet (W-GA)/Lucius Q. C. Lamar (W-MS) def. Joseph E. Brown (I-GA)/Isham Harris (I-TN) & John H. Morgan (I-KY)/John S. Barbour, Jr. (I-VA)
1885: Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson (W-VA)/Joseph C. S. Blackburn (W-KY) def. Rufus W. Cobb (I-AL)/John B. Gordon (I-GA)
1891: States Rights Gist (W-SC)/Stephen Mallory II (W-FL) def. Daniel Lindsay Russell (R-NC)/William E. Cameron (R-VA) & John P. Buchanan (L-TN)/Benjamin Tillman (L-SC)
1897: Robert Love Taylor (W-TN)/Thomas G. Jones (W-AL) def. Daniel Lindsay Russell (R-NC)/William E. Cameron (R-VA) & Benjamin Tillman (L-SC)/Charles Macune (L-TX)
1903: Champ Clark (W-KY)/Henry W. Grady (W-GA) def. Thomas E. Watson (RL-GA)/Louis Brandeis (RL-KY)
1909: Woodrow Wilson (W-KY)/Gabriel Semmes (W-AL) def. Thomas E. Watson (RL-GA)/James K. Vardaman (RL-MS)
1915: Gabriel Semmes (W-AL)/Luke Edward Wright (W-TN) def. Doroteo Arango (RL-CH)/Marion Butler (RL-NC)
1921: Wade Hampton V (W-SC)/Burton Mitchel III (W-AR) def. Jake Featherston (F-VA)/Ferdinand Koenig (F-AL) & Ainsworth Layne (RL-GA)/Plutarco Elías Calles (RL-SO)
1922: Burton Mitchel III (W-AR)/VACANT
1927: Burton Mitchel III (W-AR)/Samuel Longstreet (W-VA) def. Jake Featherston (F-VA)/Ferdinand Koenig (F-AL) & Joseph Taylor Robinson (RL-AR)/Cordell Hull (RL-TN)
1933: Jake Featherston (F-VA)/Willy Knight (F-TX) def. Cordell Hull (RL-TN)/Huey Long (RL-LA) & Samuel Longstreet (W-VA)/Hugo Black (W-AL)
1939: Jake Featherston (F-VA)/VACANT
1939: Jake Featherston (F-VA)/Don Patridge (F-TN) def. Kenneth McKellar (RL-TN)/Abelardo Rodríguez (RL-SO) & Walter F. George (W-GA)/Byron Patton Harrison (W-MS)
What were the pre 1903 parties-other than Whig ?If someone ran as an Independent what was it about the Whigs that they were typically not in line with or was it always different depending on the candidate ?
 
It's been a while since I've contributed to this thread, so I decided to make another leaders list.

List of CS Presidential and Vice-Presidential Candidates

1861: Jefferson Davis (W-MS)/Alexander Stephens (W-GA)
1867: P. G. T. Beauregard (W-LA)/James Seddon (W-VA) def. Roert M. T. Hunter (I-VA)/Richard Taylor (I-LA)Robert E. Lee (I-VA)/[various]
1873: Fitzhugh Lee (W-VA)/def. Braxton Bragg (I-LA)/John Goode (I-VA),James Chesnut (I-SC)/Henry Foote (I-MS), Zebulon Vance (I-NC)/Herschel V. Johnson (I-GA) & Joseph E. Brown (I-GA)/Thomas A. R. Nelson (I-TN)
1874: Fitzhugh Lee (W-VA)/Henry S. Foote (I-MS)
1879: James Longstreet (W-GA)/Lucius Q. C. Lamar (W-MS) def. Joseph E. Brown (I-GA)/Isham Harris (I-TN) & John H. Morgan (I-KY)/John S. Barbour, Jr. (I-VA)
1885: Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson (W-VA)/Joseph C. S. Blackburn (W-KY) def. Rufus W. Cobb (I-AL)/John B. Gordon (I-GA)
1891: States Rights Gist (W-SC)/Stephen Mallory II (W-FL) def. Daniel Lindsay Russell (R-NC)/William E. Cameron (R-VA) & John P. Buchanan (L-TN)/Benjamin Tillman (L-SC)
1897: Robert Love Taylor (W-TN)/Thomas G. Jones (W-AL) def. Daniel Lindsay Russell (R-NC)/William E. Cameron (R-VA) & Benjamin Tillman (L-SC)/Charles Macune (L-TX)
1903: Champ Clark (W-KY)/Henry W. Grady (W-GA) def. Thomas E. Watson (RL-GA)/Louis Brandeis (RL-KY)
1909: Woodrow Wilson (W-KY)/Gabriel Semmes (W-AL) def. Thomas E. Watson (RL-GA)/James K. Vardaman (RL-MS)
1915: Gabriel Semmes (W-AL)/Luke Edward Wright (W-TN) def. Doroteo Arango (RL-CH)/Marion Butler (RL-NC)
1921: Wade Hampton V (W-SC)/Burton Mitchel III (W-AR) def. Jake Featherston (F-VA)/Ferdinand Koenig (F-AL) & Ainsworth Layne (RL-GA)/Plutarco Elías Calles (RL-SO)
1922: Burton Mitchel III (W-AR)/VACANT
1927: Burton Mitchel III (W-AR)/Samuel Longstreet (W-VA) def. Jake Featherston (F-VA)/Ferdinand Koenig (F-AL) & Joseph Taylor Robinson (RL-AR)/Cordell Hull (RL-TN)
1933: Jake Featherston (F-VA)/Willy Knight (F-TX) def. Cordell Hull (RL-TN)/Huey Long (RL-LA) & Samuel Longstreet (W-VA)/Hugo Black (W-AL)
1939: Jake Featherston (F-VA)/VACANT
1939: Jake Featherston (F-VA)/Don Patridge (F-TN) def. Kenneth McKellar (RL-TN)/Abelardo Rodríguez (RL-SO) & Walter F. George (W-GA)/Byron Patton Harrison (W-MS)
Was never a huge fan of Stonewall in the 1885 slot, I preferred to put Lee there, but a cool list nonetheless. Only thing is Samuel Longstreet is described as a Senator from Virginia in TCCH, so he can't be Mitchell's VP.
 
What were the pre 1903 parties-other than Whig ?If someone ran as an Independent what was it about the Whigs that they were typically not in line with or was it always different depending on the candidate ?
The Radicals and the Liberals, who later merged to form a party who's name now seems far less creative with such an origin in mind.
 

bguy

Donor
Interesting.So what made the Liberals liberal and the Radicals radical ?

I've always assumed the Liberals were "good government" urban progressive types who wanted political reforms (e.g. things like civil service reform, direct election of senators, women's suffrage, and the use of primary elections) while the Radicals were agrarian populists who wanted economic measures to help poor farmers (e.g. farm subsidies, nationalizing the railroads, increased taxes on the wealthy.)
 
Could go with this character from HFR, if one wants to continue with the Turtledove style of not using actual people for C. S. office holders past Wilson -- would also be 67 in 1933, which would neatly explain why he isn't running.
Good idea. I added him in and also added him into my old CSA Presidents and Vice Presidents list.

I'm currently working on some articles for Germany's Eastern European puppet states. Poland will be the first I write about. I also hope to write articles about all of the major nations in the world of Timeline-191.
 
Interesting.So what made the Liberals liberal and the Radicals radical ?
I've always assumed the Liberals were "good government" urban progressive types who wanted political reforms (e.g. things like civil service reform, direct election of senators, women's suffrage, and the use of primary elections) while the Radicals were agrarian populists who wanted economic measures to help poor farmers (e.g. farm subsidies, nationalizing the railroads, increased taxes on the wealthy.)
From https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/tl-191-filling-the-gaps.148857/page-124#post-13612754 :
All the while, Governor Russell of the Radical Party once again ran on a platform of worker's rights, labor rights, currency reform and keeping in check the power of the Confederate planter class. On the other hand, Senator Tillman of the Liberal Party ran on a platform of agrarianism, bimetallism, isolationism and keeping in check the power of Confederacy of the planter class. It should be noted that ever since the Haitian Crisis of 1895 there had been a number of attempts to merge the Radical and Liberal parties into one political party, with many in both parties attempting to bridge the ideological divide between the "hillbilly progressives" of the Radicals and the isolationist Agrarians of the Liberals. However, all of these attempts had so far ended in failure. All in all, most of the members of these parties preferred to try and win the Confederate presidency alone without being obliged to go to the effort of compromising ideologically, much to their eventual determent.
In short, it seems like the Libs were the OTL anti-Planter Tillmanites, whereas the Rads were the Southern Republicans, Populists, Readjusters, and generally the whites who participated in the last stand against Jim Crow in OTL (Russel specifically was one of the last pre-1960s Republican Governors in the former Confederacy, and as part of his program he extended the franchise both to poor whites and black people. His fusionist (Populist-Republican) wave led directly to the disenfranchisement of black people in North Carolina, due to the threat it posed to ruling white Democrats.).
 
I've been thinking about this a bit, and what happens if Operation Coal Scuttle succeeds with the CSA reaching Pittsburgh?

Would this be enough to make the USA sue for peace and if not what are the follow on operations by the CSA Army?
 
I've been thinking about this a bit, and what happens if Operation Coal Scuttle succeeds with the CSA reaching Pittsburgh?

Would this be enough to make the USA sue for peace and if not what are the follow on operations by the CSA Army?
Since the US is extremely unlikely to sue for peace under any circumstances, the CSA probably pushes further towards Philadelphia.

Contrary to Featherston's expectations, the overextended Patton is defeated by Morrell in central Pennsylvania, and the USA still wins the war anywhere from a few months earlier to a year later than in OgTL-191, depending on how severely Patton gets beaten.

If one were to look for a PoD that might more feasibly lead to a Confederate victory in GWII, I might be inclined to suggest having a Coolidge victory in '28 lead to a more severe depression in the USA, never alleviated at all by Blackford's interventionist economic policies, unable to save his presidency as they were. This is the PoD I've advised the person who made the "TNO-191" maps to use, and its with a Presidents list that essentially reverses Blackford and Coolidge that him and I have built a lot of the parallels to TNO.
 
Since the US is extremely unlikely to sue for peace under any circumstances, the CSA probably pushes further towards Philadelphia.

Contrary to Featherston's expectations, the overextended Patton is defeated by Morrell in central Pennsylvania, and the USA still wins the war anywhere from a few months earlier to a year later than in OgTL-191, depending on how severely Patton gets beaten.

That still works very well for my story as I have the three Mexican divisions guarding the CSA Army flanks being better equipped with arms and actual armour than in OG TL 191 peers. My head cannon have them using Valentine tanks...

Nevertheless, they get chewed up pretty bad stopping the bulk of the Union forces during their counter attack, and are withdrawn out of the line to reconstitute after the battle. As you suggest Patton pushes eastwards chomping at the bit and has his clock cleaned by Morrell.

Which creates enough butterflies for me to have fun with the post war settlement.
 

bguy

Donor
I've been thinking about this a bit, and what happens if Operation Coal Scuttle succeeds with the CSA reaching Pittsburgh?

Would this be enough to make the USA sue for peace and if not what are the follow on operations by the CSA Army?

The loss of Pittsburgh itself is probably survivable. (After all in the canon timeline Pittsburgh was pretty thoroughly wrecked without seriously impeding US war production, thus the US clearly either evacuated much of the Pittsburgh industrial plant before the fighting got there or had sufficient coke production elsewhere to do without Pittsburgh.) The critical question is how much of the US Army defending Pittsburgh managed to slip out of the city before it fell. If the Confederates captured most of that army then the US is in a real bad way. They'll have to strip their forces on the Virginia front to the absolute minimum to get a new defensive line together in Pennsylvania. The reassigned troops will be battle seasoned but probably have a serious morale problem. (Seeing how they are coming from a defeat in Virginia to try and staunch the bleeding from an even worse defeat in Pennsylvania.) They also presumably won't have Irving Morrell as a commander. (If he isn't killed/captured in Pittsburgh then he will presumably be relieved of command over the fall of the city.) Not sure who ends up commanding US forces in Pennsylvania (General Ironhewer perhaps), but he presumably won't be as good a commander as Morrell.

Still, it's not all bad for the US forces in Central Pennsylvania. The Confederates, even after a victory in Pennsylvania, should be pretty worn down themselves and (as Hexcron alluded to) are at the end of a very long supply line. And I could easily see an aggressive commander like Patton trying to drive forward before the Army of Kentucky has had a chance to properly recover.

If the US Army is able to hold the line in Central Pennsylvania (protecting the critical coke plants of that region) then the US probably still wins the war. President Smith knows he can't trust Featherston, so I don't see him negotiating even after the loss of Pittsburgh, and if the US keeps fighting then eventually its greater industrial strength and population will begin to tell. (Though the war probably lasts at least another year which means a lot more atomic bombs going off on US and CS cities.)

If the Confederates break the Central Pennsylvania defense line then the war is probably over. The US will lose (or in the best case scenario be forced to relocate) the critical coke production plants of the region, which will cripple US war production, and with the last major veteran US Army formations mauled, it is hard to see how the US keeps fighting.
 
Was never a huge fan of Stonewall in the 1885 slot, I preferred to put Lee there, but a cool list nonetheless.
You know, I've actually come around on this over the last few days.

I looked through the books for how Jackson is described, because I very much agree with Craigo’s logic on why he should be President after Longstreet, and I found a couple of interesting things.

First off, literally 90% of his mentions are about him being on the $5 coin, but that’s less important than the fact that he’s only ever described as “Jackson” or “Stonewall” without a title. He isn’t called “Stonewall Jackson, famous general”, or even “General Jackson”.

Since he's described so ambiguously, I now think its totally possible that the characters could be thinking of him both as a General and a President.
 
Stonewall Jackson as President would be an interesting choice. How would he perform as President - as imho he'd need a good Chief of Staff to smooth over any ruffled feathers from his lack of tact.
 
I noticed recently that there are a few mentions of a car maker named Manassas in American Front. This caused me to realise that no one apparently has covered Confederate automotive industry in the thread yet. Or did I miss it somehow...?
 
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