TLIAM: When the Nation Falls

Huh.

Is writing with a time limit better? I'd hardly have time to set up the world in a month, not even talking about a week or day.
It can be helpful motivation.

As far as setting up the world is concerned, I've been working on this TL on and off for close to a year, so while I still have a lot of writing to do, I know what I'm doing - more or less.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
Huh.

Is writing with a time limit better? I'd hardly have time to set up the world in a month, not even talking about a week or day.
Pressure of deadlines spurs writing and forces creativity. Given what we've had from TLIA*'s, it works.
 
It's basically the Oder-eastern Neisse line, with Lower Silesia (especially Breslau) remaining part of the DDR to make up for Lwów remaining Polish (basically a prerequisite for the Polish government-in-exile to accept any settlement with the Soviets).

Thankfully the majority of Breslau was/is west of the Eastern Neisse. Does the border only follow the river? Because using only the river would likely be a bit awkward.
Oder-neisse.gif
 
Thankfully the majority of Breslau was/is west of the Eastern Neisse. Does the border only follow the river? Because using only the river would likely be a bit awkward.
Oder-neisse.gif
It deviates slightly for the reason you cite, I was using a convenient shorthand.

How did Taft win the POTUS election? Just butterflies?
Eisenhower died in a car accident before 1952 and the moderate wing of the GOP couldn't find a strong enough challenger, so Taft won the nomination and beat Stevenson in a fairly close election.

Interesting, so only Rumania, East Germany, Hungary and now Yugoslavia are in the Soviet sphere?
Yep, with the caveat that Yugoslavia isn't really Yugoslavia as we know it.
 
Update coming either late tonight or tomorrow, I would have posted it even earlier but I decided to substantially revise it.
 
Andrzej Witos
Andrzej_Witos.jpg

Andrzej Witos
Polish People's Party
1957-1958

A Good Man At a Bad Time

Andrzej Witos was, in retrospect, not the best person to steer the People’s Party away from the brink of catastrophe. The younger brother of legendary agrarian PM Wincenty Witos, Andrzej served as an MP for some time in the 20s and survived a stint in a Siberian gulag during the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland. He became Minister of Agriculture - an obviously important post for the People's Party - after the 1950 election and managed to stick around in the post, seeing off some perhaps more competent rivals. When Mikołajczyk was forced out, his position within the party as well as his family name made him the natural successor, and he carried the parliamentary party ballot by a landslide in the first round over a token rival, Minister of Forestry Bolesław Podedworny. Podedworny would retire to the backbenches after his defeat.

Witos' time in office coincided with the signing of a treaty with the government of the newly reunified Germany, in which both states agreed to recognise each other's borders - something that enraged many Germans who had been expelled from the 'Recovered Territories' but that the SPD was willing to grant, as no one - least of all CPSU General Secretary Malenkov - was particularly interested in a war in the neutral buffer. While this provided the government with a brief boost, the constant drumbeat of scandal continued to undermine the People's Party, and one (rather unscientific) opinion poll showed its support dropping by 10%. With Witos busy with foreign policy and stabilising his own party, the 'zastój' continued, as actual policy was largely left in the hands of the increasingly conservative Labour Party. This angered Podedworny, who defected with a handful of left-leaning MPs to form a revival of the Second Republic-era left-wing PSL "Wyzwolenie" (Liberation).

Under Witos' leadership, the People’s Party somehow stumbled towards the election of June 1958. The party leaders steeled themselves for the worst, but the actual result was worse than they could ever have imagined – for the first time, the PSL was relegated to third place, dropping to less than 20% of the vote and overtaken by Labour as well as the resurgent Socialists, while Podedworny's Wyzwolenie splinter just about made it into the Sejm with 5%, all in an election where many urban constituencies saw their highest turnout since 1946 or earlier as voters turned out in droves to vote for anyone but Witos' PSL. In a state of shock, Witos became the first Polish Prime Minister to concede defeat on state radio even before the results had finished coming in.

While a Labour-Socialist coalition had been considered before the election, it quickly became clear that this was not politically possible due to tensions between the parties’ leaders. Instead, a new centre-right coalition government featuring Labour, the People's Party and the Nationalists (the Democrats, despite their hopes, proved unnecessary, Wyzwolenie was unwiling to rejoin the mothership just yet and the sad remnants of Independence were beyond the pale) was put together, in which Witos, despite some speculation, refused to serve, fearing that his presence would be a distraction. The election of a non-agrarian PM was, of course, a revolution in and of itself to many Poles who could not recall a government led by anyone other than Mikołajczyk. Witos would continue to serve on the backbenches until his death in 1969. His name would resurface at one point as a potential presidential candidate, but he politely refused the offer, seemingly content to fade into obscurity. In any case, he would most likely have proven even less well-suited to navigating the turbulent 60s.
 
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