TL-191: Filling the Gaps

[Alexander Hamilton]

Mr. Marty,

Brandeis was, indeed, a Kentucky boy in OTL. The law school at the University of Louisville is even named after him. Mr. Craigo certainly appears to know his 19th and early 20th century stuff. I wonder if he has read the new biography of Brandeis which is sitting, unread, in my bookshelf?
Having Brandeis move to Palestine is a good twist because of Brandeis' involvement with Zionism in our timeline.

AH

 

[Craigo]

I'm really enjoying these, excellent work Craigo!

Thanks. And thanks to everyone who's commenting with suggestions and quibbles, too.

Arango, Doroteo 1878-1950

Born in Chihuahua to Mexican immigrants who had fled the fighting following the French Army's withdrawal in 1871, Arango, by his own account, had a very rough childhood, and in 1894 had to flee the estate on which his family worked after fighting and badly injuring the son of the patron. He moved to Austin, Texas, and was surprised by the relatively egalitarian atmosphere compared to the quasi-aristocracy of the former Mexican states. Contrasting the two experiences, Arango resolved himself to become and enemy of entrenched privilege everywhere.

He returned to Chihuahua in 1900, and despite threats from the landowners who remembered him as a "bandit," he became an organizer for the Radical Liberal party, and pushed for policies breaking the power of the big estates and protecting small farmers and merchants. He was elected to Congress in 1901, and when he returned in 1903 to campaign for re-election, he survived an assassination attempt in Paso del Norte, killing his attackers in the process. He was catapulted to fame throughout the Confederacy, and after serving a term as Governor of Chihuahua he was returned to Congress, becoming the unofficial leader of the Radical Liberals in that body.

Deeply patriotic, Arango heartily supported the war effort, and in 1915 was nominated to run for the Gray House against Vice-President Gabriel Semmes. Along with the usual Rad Lib egalitarian platform, he attacked the "aristocrats" of the Confederacy (Semmes was the son of a famous navy captain and Alabama Senator) and vowed to prosecute the war more vigoruously. He even suggested that the CSA draft blacks in order to serve as soldiers. However, the black rebellion which broke out in October 1915 sealed his fate. Confederate voters turned violently against the Negro conscription proposal, and Arango lost the election by 20%, taking only the usual Rad Lib strongholds of Sonora, Chihuahua, and Cuba. (He could take some solace in the fact that Semmes had turned to Negro conscription after less than a year in office.)

Arango returned to Chihuahua, and after the war he hoped to make the Radical Liberals the new majority party, displacing the discredited Whigs. The rise of the Freedom Party disrupted his plans, even though it wasn't especially popular among Hispanics in the early 1920s. Arango declined a second run for the Gray House in 1921, and to his dismay, the nomination was won by the Harvard-educated Virginia congressman Ainsworth Layne. A milquetoast, Layne failed to capitalize on the situation and placed third, after Wade Hampton V and Jake Featherston.

Deeply disappointed, Arango, left the Confederate States to volunteer in the Mexican Civil War. He was joined by thousands of other Southerners, but unlike the vast majority he fought for the rebels, rising to the rank of General. Despite his best efforts, Emperor Maximilian III enjoyed the illicit support of the CSA, while the USA gave the rebels only token help. The Republican cause went down to defeat in 1925, and Arango drifted back to the CSA as a pariah.

When the Freedom Party began organizing in Hispanic states in the early 1930s, Arango was initially supportive of their efforts to break the power of the landowners. But he was steadily disillusioned by their methods and views, and by being ostracized for his support of the Mexican Republicans. Arango campaigned for Radical Liberal Cordell Hull in 1933, but to his shock and dismay the ticket was defeated everywhere but in running mate Hury Long's Louisiana. Even Sonora and Chihuahua gave Featherston a plurality.

Arango retired to his ranch, which was attacked twice throughout the 1930s by Freedom-supporting bandits. Arango and his hands repulsed both, though he took a bullet in the arm in the first fight. With the population reduction beginning in the late 1930s, Freedom Party attention moved elsewhere.

In 1943, sensing Freedom Party weakness, he traveled incognito through Mexico to Veracruz and then to Cuba, joining the anti-Freedom rebellion there and rising, as he did in Mexico, to general. By the time of the Confederate collapse in mid-1944, this US-supported, multiracial uprising had liberated Habana and all but taken over the state, as the Confederate government had retreated to Guanatanamo Bay on the island's eastern tip.

Under President Dewey's "Integration" policies, Cuba became the first occupied territory to join the United States on July 4, 1946. Arango was appointed to the United States Senate by Governor Carlos Prio, and took his seat in the legislature of a country he had once vowed to crush. During his three years in office Arango did not join either of the country's three major parties. He died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1949, and was buried near his birthplace in Chihuahua.

 

[Craigo]

13th Amendment (1884): Abolition of slavery. Passed in response to Confederate law providing for gradual manumission of that country's slaves. The amendment had prevoiusly stalled in the 1860s, and by the time of its adoption no US state permitted slavery.

14th Amendment (1888): Empowers federal government to conscript its citizens. The Conscription Act had passed in 1886, but Hard-Liners were concerned about possible Supreme Court challenges, given that most Justices had been appointed by Soft-Liners.

15th Amendment (1890): Established that the line of succession runs through the Cabinet, instead of the President pro tem and Speaker. In response to the Thurman Presidency, following the deaths in office of Hendricks and Hancock. The order of succession is prescribed by legislation.

16th Amendment (1894): Permits the Federal government to exercise its police power in any manner not explicitly prohibited by the Constitution, 1894. Passed in response to private and state challenges to federal rationing laws. As a sidenote, it incorporated the Bill of Rights to the states.

17th Amendment (1894): Permits a direct income tax, 1894. Needed in order to fund the military budget, which ballooned under Reed and Mahan.

18th Amendment (1923): Provided for the direct election of Senators, and shifted the meeting date for Congress from December of the the year after the election to the next March. Originally part of Theodore Roosevelt's Fair Deal, it had faltered and fallen by the wayside when the war began. President Sinclair revived it, to the dismay of some in his party who preferred democratic centralism to direct election.

19th Amendment (1928): Granted the right to vote to women. Introduced repeatedly by various Congresswomen over the decades, it finally passed in 1925. A startling number of opposition politicians reversed their stance after its adoption.

20th Amendment (1933): Moved the date of presidential inauguration from March 4 to February 1, and the first Congressional session from March to late January. An urban legend arose that if this amendment been in force, Calvin Coolidge would have served as the 31st President. In fact, Coolidge died in early January of that year.

21st Amendment (1937): Provided for the appointment, with the advice and consent of the Senate, of a Vice-President in case of vacancy. When Hoover was sworn in as President following Coolidge's death, there was some controversy over whether the 15th amendment mandated that the vacanct office be filled. Hoover had taken the narrow view, and thus had no Vice-President.

22nd Amendment (1945): Lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. As Vice-President Harry Truman, a veteran of the Great War, said, "If you're old enough to fight, you're old enough to vote."

23rd Amendment (1945): Provided for equal rights and due process under the law for all Americans. Passed in response to the Destruction to protect the remaining blacks, its broad language had sweeping implications for American jurisprudence.

 

[bguy]

I'm enjoying these a great deal as well. Of course the big question is can Craigo come up with good explanations for the big question:
How did Southener Josephus Daniels end up as the US Secretary of the Navy?

 

[Craigo]

The Hearst Award

The fabulously wealthy newspaper mogul, in an effort to combat his reputation as a "yellow" journalist and unsavory, cutthroat businessman, created the Hearst Award for Excellence in Journalism in 1920, empowering a committee of Columbia University academics to grant it. The number of Awards quickly grew, and in 1924, its most famous category, the Hearst Award for Fiction, was created. Its first winner was Stephen Crane's famous novel of the Great War, A Walk in Hell. Other winners include John Reed's fictionalization of the 1920 campaign, Crossing the Jordan; Robert Lincoln III's How Few Remain; and, controversially, the Georgian Margaret Mitchell's novel of the antebellum Confederacy, Tomorrow is Another Day. Following this award, Hearst mandated that the recipient be an American citizen.

 

[GreatScottMarty]

Nice one on Pancho Villa. I am enjoying this as well. I am also eager for you to answer Josephus Daniels issue.

 

[Craigo]

Ummm, I've been avoiding that one.

A few big problems:

He was born in North Carolina, pre-POD. His father was killed by Confederate soldiers, yes - but after the POD. It's hard to move him to the US - maybe, with US naval expansion in the 1880s and 1890s, he moves the family north in order to take advantage of the better business climate?

He was a journalist and a pacifist with no naval experience or even, as far as I can tell, any maritime experience at all aside from his late father's occupation as a shipbuilder. An odd choice for the Navy Department in OTL, and more so in TL-191.

My own take is that Turtledove got lazy, pulled a contemporary Cabinet secretary out of OTL without researching him, and inserted him where he didn't belong. But I guess I don't get off that easy.

 

[GreatScottMarty]

He sells the biz. Moves North to New York or Boston or west to San Fran and gets involved in shipbuilding like his late father and wants to strike back at the those "Reb Bastards" for killing his father. Sort of a Sylvia Enos with nuts (the real ones that is)

 

[Arkhangelsk]

As a Mexican-American, what you did with Arango/Villa pleases me to no end

Also nice that you reconciled HT's mistake on Arango's birth and simply have his parents move out of Durango due to the Intervention...

May I ask, will you also be making some of these snippets on Europeans, or are you just concentrating on North America?

Again, keep up the good work

 

[Craigo]

May I ask, will you also be making some of these snippets on Europeans, or are you just concentrating on North America?

Just North America for now, although suggestions for Europe are welcome. For that matter, Canadian suggestions would help too.

 

[bguy]

My own take is that Turtledove got lazy, pulled a contemporary Cabinet secretary out of OTL without researching him, and inserted him where he didn't belong. But I guess I don't get off that easy.

Seems likely. Robert Lansing as TR's Secretary of State is also kind of hard to explain.

And if you are taking requests for Europe chapters then the two things I really wondered about were:
-Winston Churchill's career.
-How Italy managed to stay out of both Great Wars.

 

[Craigo]

Daniels, Josephus 1862-1918

It might seem surprising that such a staunch opponent of the Confederacy should have a North Carolinian in his Cabinet, but Theodore Roosevelt knew talent and drive when he saw it. Born to a Confederate shipbuilder shortly before that country won its independence, Daniels was little different from any other Southern youth.

But his life was upended in 1872. His father, despairing that the Confederate States woud ever become a maritime power, was cheated out of a contract when his bid, the lowest, was set aside in favor of a much more expensive offer by a crony of the Secretary of the Navy. Incensed and dodging creditors, Daniels' father packed the family up and moved North, to Boston.

The gamble paid off, and the senior Daniels grew wealthy in the more lucrative Northern industry. By the time of the Second Mexican War, the family were proud supporters of the Union (though Josephus himself never lost his North Carolina accent). His son, in contrast, became interested in the newspaper business, and after studying at Harvard he entered the industry as a reporter, then editor, and then, with his father's financial backing, owner or part-owner of several papers, including the Hartford Courant and the Boston Globe-Journal.

His unique editorial style and opinions (promoting a hard-line against the Confederacy, naval primacy, opposition to political machines, and progressive policies such as a ban on child labor)won him a fervent audience and political admirers. He was said to be the only man in Boston who could enter a shipping executive's office and a longshoremen's union hall, and fell completely at ease in both.

After a failed bid for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Massachusetts in 1908, Daniels showed little interest in public office (aside from the profitable position of state printer) until 1912. That years his papers were a bulwark of support for Theodore Roosevelt, and thanks to Daniels' efforts, TR was able to enter the convention having swiped a number of New England delegates from under Henry Cabot Lodge's nose.

Daniels was rewarded with the Department of the Navy. As the two-ocean navy was well established by this time, his first year in office saw little more than an order allowing blacks to serve as cooks, firemen, and coal haulers (it had previously been left to the discretion of each skipper), and ban on alcohol throughout the fleet. Neither measure was popular with ordinary seamen.

Daniels was an able adinistrator throughout the war, though much of the strategizing was left to the Navy Chiefs of Staff (a revolving-door office that saw William Sampson, George Dewey, and William Benson during three years of war). Although he could claim no credit for the concept of the aircraft carrier, he supported the USS Remembrance project over the objections of naval brass, who believed it was a boondoggle and a waste of the service's resources. It was through his maneuvering that the Navy obtained a decommissioned ocean monitor hull from the War Department, as he found it difficult to find the funds for a purpose-built ship.

Josephus Daniels was traveling aboard a light plane that was set to land aboard the Remembrance, idling near US-held Bermuda. The plan never arrived, and Daniels, the pilot, and Daniels' aide are all believed to have perished when it crashed into the ocean between Baltimore and Bermuda. An empty casket was buried in Philadelphia National Cemetery, and the destroyer Josephus Daniels, one of the few new vessels to be commissioned in the 1920s, was named in his honor.

 

[GreatScottMarty]

nice one. Good to see you worked that out.

 

[manofsteelwool]

I was wondering about von Lettow-Vorbeck, Gandhi, Mussolini, John Muir, Charlie Chaplin, the Red Baron, Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Orson Wells, William Lyon Mackenzie King, John Diefenbaker, Francisco Franco, Lester Pearson, and Lyndon Johnson.

Long list, I know. hopefully that gives you a lot of people to work on.

 

[Craigo]

German politics, 1914-1944

Although Kaiser Wilhelm II had visions of himself, supreme leader of the great German Reich, crushing his enemies on the battlefield, in practice his power steadily eroded during the Great War. While Marshal Paul von Hindenburg reaped the glory of the battlefield, Germans tended to lay blame for the horrendous casualties and brutal famine at Wilhelm's feet. The Supreme Army Command of Hindenburg (who had been promoted as result of his great victory at Verdun) and his deptuy, Quartermaster-General Erich Ludendorff, steadily accrued power in its hands. It was the Army's decision, for example, to replace Chancellor Bethman von Hollweg with the more pliant Georg von Hertling, a decision that was supposedly the Kaiser's alone.

Following the French mutinies of 1917 and the imminent return of peace, the ambitious Hindenburg and cunning Ludendorff feared that their influence would decline and that the Kaiser's position would recover. They used their influence, along with the Social Democrats, Centre, and Progressive parties, to force the Kaiser into making the Chancellorship a position responsible to the Reichstag. Wilhelm would still make the appointment, but it must be approved by a majority of the legislature, and could be removed by it in turn.

The two generals expected this to work to their benefit and that of the conservative Reichstag coalition, as they believed that the millions of victorious soldiers idolized the man who had led them to victory. But to their great shock, the election of 1918, the first in nearly seven years, resulted in an increased majority for the SPD, Centre, and Progressives - a foreshadowing what would occur in the US later that year. The leader of the SPD, Friedrich Ebert, became the new chancellor. In office, the SPD proved less revolutionary than its left-most adeherents and right-most opponents had hoped and feared, likely because it did not command anything close to a majority by itself.

Chancellor Ebert was assassinated in office by crazed right-wing Army officer Ernst Rohm in 1920. Noting the outpouring of grief for the controversial socialist leader, Ludendorff convinced Hindenburg to use the situation to his advantage by finding scapegoats, while simultaneously coming down hard on the socialist street-fighting that erupted. Five right-wing officers were found, tried, and quickly executed (as a leader in the movement, Ludendorff knew of several convenient candidates). After Wilhelm (whose reputation had improved with peace, victory, and plenty) took to the streets of Berlin and begged both sides to put down their guns, the fighting died down, though the sporadic violence continued in Bavaria.

When the elections of 1923 rolled around, Hindeburg and Ludendorff had prepared the ground well. Ludendorff, now a private citizen, ran as a member of the new Reichspartei and won a seat from East Prussia. The SPD gained seats, but the Centre, liberals, and conservatives, grateful to the old general for the war and the chaos of 1920, had enough votes to make Hindenburg Chancellor.

His conservative government rolled back many of the measures that the SPD had instituted, though it had attempted no large-scale policies of its own. Hindenburg was re-elected in 1928, and thus had the misfortune of being in office in 1930, when the economic chaos of North America spread to Europe. He fell in a no-confidence vote the next year, and Max Weber of the Progressive party briefly replaced him before new elections ushered in another SPD government, led by Otto Wels. This government fell in 1937, and was replaced by a Centre administration under Bruning.

When the crisis of 1941 erupted, Bruning invited the SPD and Reichspartei, both previously in opposition, into the government. The War Cabinet initially consisted of Bruning (Centre), Wels (SPD), Konrad Adenauer (Centre), Theodor Heuss (Progressive), and Manfred von Richthoften (Reichspartei). Following the Entente invasions of that year, Bruning was forced to resign by Wilhelm III in early 1942, and was replaced by Richthoften, the famous "Red Baron" fighter ace of the Great War and the first Chief of Staff of the German Imperial Air Forces. Richthoften saw the war to the end (it was he who made the decision to respond to the destruction of Hamburg by dropping superbombs on not one, not two, but three British cities) and was retained after the elections of 1944.

 

[Craigo]

Cardozo, Benjamin 1870-1931

Born in New York City to Sephrardic Jewish parents, Cardozo, as a child, originally dreamed of a career as an attorney. But men born in 1870 were the first to be conscripted under the 1886 Act, and Cardozo soon traded his love of the law for that of the military. At the end of his two-year hitch he attempted to re-enlist, but was rejected by an anti-Semitic War Department clerk. While waiting for his appeal to wind its way through the system, he attended Columbia University. Finally, new Assistant Secretary of War Theodore Roosevelt intervened, and he re-enlisted as a corporal.

Cardozo served in a regiment on the Ohio River before being promoted to sergeant, and transferred to Camp Hancock in Valley Forge for a stint as a training sergeant. He then served as aide to Lieutenant-Colonel William Dudley Foulke, commander of a regiment in First Army. Foulke, well-educated himself, encouraged the intelligent, widely-read Cardozo to take the Officers' Exam. Cardozo, only 25 at the time, aced the test and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant.

Following an assignment with Third Army in Vermont, Cardozo was invited to join the General Staff. He excelled in staff work, and became well-known not just for his administrative acumen but for his agile, inventive mind - he is one of several men who is credited with independently inventing the idea of armored warfare in 1910s, in an Army Staff College paper on "Self-Propelled Artillery." He rose rapidly, attaining the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in 1912 and re-joining Brigadier General Foulke in First Army. Foulke's divisional staff was derisively referred to as "The US Army Department of Literature," but it attained a good combat record in Kentucky under Custer, and in the General Staff shake-up of 194-1915, Cardozo was invited back to Philadelphia as a Colonel.

Cardozo soon proved himself invaluable to Major General Leonard Wood, and became the Chief of Staff's personal troubleshooter. This closeness was conspicuous, and envious General Staff officers such as John Abell (whose career would much resemble Cardozo's) were known to remark upon "Wood's kike sidekick." Cardozo is known to be one of the few officers to support massed-armor attacks, along with Custer, Morrell, and MacArthur, but he was overruled by senior military and civilian officials.

Cardozo ended the war as a Brigadier General, and his mentor Wood retired in 1921. Wood's successor Hunter Liggett, perhaps hoping to ingratiate himself with the Sinclair Administration, promoted Cardozo to Major General and Deputy Chief of Staff. (As the rare high-ranking Socialist officer, Cardozo had been mentioned as a possible running mate for Sinclair in 1920, before Hosea Blackford's selection.)

Cardozo oversaw the shrinking of the 1920s Army, and when General Custer retired in 1923, Cardozo replaced him as occupation Governor of Canada. He was in that position during the uprising of 1925, which under his watch was swiftly extinguished. When Hosea Blackford won the Powel House in 1929, he appointed Cardozo as Ambassador to the Republic of Quebec, citing his years of working in tandem with that nation's leadership. Unfortunately, in 1931 Ambassador Cardozo was killed by a bomb blast at the American Embassy in Quebec City, believed to be the work of an Anglophone diehard group. To this day, no one has officially been held responsible. He was buried with full military honors in New York City.

 

[GreatScottMarty]

another good one. and one close to my heart, my mom went to Benjamin R Cardozo High school in Queens New York and became a lawyer herself. very interesting, I see almost everyone is serving in the military, I understand that is because of the Conscription Act but it would be interesting if you could get a fairly prominent soldier from OTL into a strictly civilian life.

Keep her coming.

 

[Craigo]

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 1882-1945

The scion of a wealthy Hudson Valley family, Roosevelt was a distant relative of the famous President. He served in Second Army in 1900-1902, and attended Harvard afterwards. A gregarious man with a healthy sense of public service and noblesse oblige, he considered attending law school, but in 1906 the New York Socialists asked him to run for Congress against Democrat Hamilton Fish II. He shocked his family and the wealthy gentry of Hyde Park by accepting. Roosevelt lost, but he far exceeded any previous Socialist's vote share. His healthy showing convinced many that he had a future.

In 1910 he ran for Congress again, this time from a Manhattan district, and won. He was re-elected in 1912, but in 1913 his cousin Theodore, now President, graciously asked Franklin to serve as Assistant Secretary of War. (He may have also intended to give the Democrats a better chance at Franklin's seat.) He was, at the time, the highest-ranking Socialist official in history.

When war broke out in 1914, Roosevelt received permission to join his reserve unit, and saw action on the Quebec front. He returned to office in 1916, and when the war was over he ran for his old seat and took it back from the Democrat who'd held it. He was an early supporter of Upton Sinclair, and had hoped to be his running mate. Roosevelt was bitterly disappointed when Sinclair decided to gamble on New York and choose Hosea Blackford instead, but still campaigned heartily for the ticket.

Roosevelt had yet another setback in 1921. He was on a Congressional fact-finding trip in Kentucky with State Police Chief Luther Bliss when the party was fired upon by Confederate diehards. A bullet brushed Roosevelt's spine, paralyzing him from the waist down. (His friend and Hyde Park neighbor, the Democrat Hamilton Fish III, was killed while traveling in the same car.) Roosevelt never regained the use of his legs, and was confined to a wheelchair.

Roosevelt had yet another setback in 1921. While on a Congressional fact-finding trip to Maritime Canada, Roosevelt fell out of a Coast Guard cutter off the coast of New Brunswick. Later that a fever struck, and paralysis crippled his legs. He would never walk unassisted again, and would spend the rest of his life confined to a wheelchair or leg braces. The diagnosis at the time was of poliomyelitis, but the disease was rare in adult over the age of thirty. The true cause may always remain unknown.

With his own political career seemingly in shambles, Roosevelt resolved himself to be a source of support for others. Working out his Hyde Park home or a Manhattan office, he became a letter-writing machine, dispatching advice, mediating disputes, gathering intelligence. He supported Socialist policies of public power, works projects, and a minimum wage, as well as a strong Army. As a man with national experience, he guided his more parochial colleague Governor Alfred Smith, nominating him for President in 1928 (famously calling Smith "the happy warrior"), and recommending that he let Blackford be renominated in 1932 without oppositin.

When Hoover took over the Powel House in 1933, he adhered to bipartisan tradition (both Sinclair and Blackford had appointed Democrats and Republicans to their Cabinets) by returning Roosevelt to the War Department, this time as Secretary. The parsimonious military budget stifled Roosevelt's creativity (he had a mind, his friend and colleague Hamilton Fish III once said, like a stream in flood: "Fast and broad, but not particularly deep"). The Pacific War was fought entirely by the Navy, but the War Department received an increase in funding that allowed Roosevelt to restart the Barrel Works at Leavenworth, Kansas. He vigorously protested Hoover's decision to let the Confederate States re-arm but was over-ruled.

He resigned late in 1935, as his protege Smith was preparing for the election next year, so he wouldn't be working against his chief. He managed Smith to a convention win over Senator George Norris of Nebraska, and over Hoover in November. Instead of an official position, he became an informal advisor to Smith, spending so much time at the Powel House that he became known as the "assistant President." However, he differed from the more conservative Smith in several areas, most notably economics.

When war became a strong possibility in 1940, Smith jump-started a project that had been languishing in the War Department, bringing Roosevelt back into government service to oversee it, as an Assistant Secretary of War. It was kept top-secret - Flora Blackford (S-NY) was one of the few in Congress to learn of its existence. Infused with knowledge from the German Empire, which was blessed with scientific talent, Roosevelt's project succeeded in creating a superbomb in 1944, but not before being beaten to the bunch by both the Germans and the Confederates, surprisingly enough. The US dropped two superbombs, on Newport News and Charleston, before Featherston was killed.

The stress of the superbomb project, in addition to his lifetime habits of smoking and overworking, taxed Roosevelt's health to the breaking point. He resigned the day after Donald Partridge official surrendered the CSA, and died in April the next year. Former Presidents Sinclair, Hoover, and La Follette attended his funeral, and President Dewey ordered that flags be flown upside down for a day.

 

[TR1]

A bullet brushed Roosevelt's spine, paralyzing him from the waist down. (His friend and Hyde Park neighbor, the Democrat Hamilton Fish III, was killed while traveling in the same car.) Roosevelt never regained the use of his legs, and was confined to a wheelchair.

to be continued

I'm afraid Turtledove was explicit in TCCH and in RE that it was indeed polio that paralyzed FDR. He did flirt with the idea of a war wound early in TCCH, but ditched it quickly.

If there's more to the story (the shooting was hushed up for some reason), then I apologize for jumping the gun.

 

[Craigo]

My mistake. A cover-up would be clever, but at this point I'd just be covering my own tracks. Thanks for the correction. We'll give Hamilton Fish a stay of execution, while we're at it.