TLIAW: Against the Grain

Most apologised, Warren refused to. While broadly people may have supported it, Warren took an active part in it, more so arguably than even DeWitt. After internment, he still fought to keep them out of California. Even Stimson wasn’t that detestable, and he signed off on the damn executive order.
He was regretful of it by 1944, at which point he stopped advocating against the internees being allowed to return home. Looking into it it does seem he was significantly worse than many others, but you're still overstating things as even without a public apology (which he should have made) he was regretful before the war ended
 
35. Eleanor Roosevelt (D-NY), 1953-1961
35. Eleanor Roosevelt (D-NY)
January 20, 1953 - January 20, 1961
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"A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water."

Eleanor Roosevelt needs no introduction. She had spent twelve years as a historically unique First Lady, taking an ornamental role and converting it into one of the fiercest bully pulpits in the nation for progressive causes. Then, even as her husband passed on, she remained a force to be reckoned with, championing Henry Wallace’s plan to rebuild Europe as a goodwill ambassador. Even as Wallace left office, she never strayed far from the public eye. Notably, during her wilderness years, she pushed the newborn United Nations until it enshrined a universal standard of human rights, becoming a mainstay in Geneva even as she served in no formal position. In supposed retirement, she was still a political force.

A political force would be necessary against the Republicans that year. Despite President Winant’s choice to not run for re-election and the economic downturn, the party was still in remarkably good standing, and then in early 1952 General Patton announced his intent to run. Beloved by conservatives for his tough image and universally respected for his role in the European campaign and competent administration in Germany, Patton easily swept aside token liberal opposition from Harold Stassen to claim the nomination of his party. After a first-ballot victory and a triumphant address from Ol’ Blood and Guts, conservatives finally felt that they were in charge.

With the looming specter of President Patton, the 1952 Democratic Convention was already set to be a show. The liberals fielded Claude Pepper, Henry Wallace’s Secretary of State and a unicorn among southern Democrats, but his campaign foundered early as he seemed too much a southerner for Wallaceites and too much a Wallaceite for southerners, and even though Soapy Williams attempted to pick up the slack for the New Deal, the progressive bloc would remain disorganized. Senator Richard Russell, the conservative Georgian grandee, saw himself as the man to reunify Dixiecrats and New Dealers save for the most ardent progressives, but his legs were quickly cut out from under him by Estes Kefauver in the south and Frank Lausche in the north. On and on it went until five serious contenders held delegates in New York City, with none planning on giving ground. As the ballots dragged on, eventually the party grew desperate and looked for a draft, and Eleanor Roosevelt was all too willing to arrange a second voice from the sewers to save the party.

Certain Democrats did not appreciate this. While Senator Russell, himself the main holdout on endorsing Roosevelt out of the five key candidates, held fast with his party after Roosevelt selected a southerner as her running mate, the same bloc that had voted for John Crommelin enthusiastically four years prior rose as one and walked out over Roosevelt’s stirring endorsement of the forceful civil rights plank introduced by Henry Wallace. However, they also knew just the candidate to ensure conservative rule: General Patton. Dixiecrats no more but instead calling themselves National Democrats, they endorsed a separate Democratic ticket of George Patton and notable segregationist Senator Benjamin Laney of Arkansas. In a handful of states Patton was able to become the sole Democratic nominee, but in others local party officials simply endorsed him over Roosevelt. The impact was the same regardless: the Deep South was contestable.

With all of this in mind, it was no surprise polling directly after the conventions showed a blowout for Patton. He was a respected general, middle-class Americans blamed “Big Labor” for the economic situation, and many publicly doubted whether Americans could possibly elect a woman. But Eleanor Roosevelt was perhaps one of the most devious minds in American politics, and she made it her mission to undermine Patton. Shell groups such as Republicans For Roosevelt put out mailer after mailer lambasting Patton’s conservatism and opposition to Democratic civil rights proposals. An infamous poster portrayed General Patton slapping a soldier in reference to the real-life 1943 incident, asking voters if they wanted a man like that representing them to the world, directly contrasting the often-stated idea that a military man like Patton had more sound judgement than a woman. Roosevelt campaigned with an unexpected fervor, railing against the poor economy as the start of a second Depression and promising that she would uphold her late husband’s legacy. Patton did much of the work for her, too. He was a poor campaigner, and gaffe after gaffe cast Patton as unfit for office, allowing Roosevelt to portray the anti-communist stalwart as a hotheaded warmongerer and herself as the calm, competent alternative.

Notably, 1952’s debates were televised in addition to being broadcast over radio as more and more Americans owned televisions. While the myth that those who watched the debate believed Patton to have won and those who listened to the debate on radio believed Roosevelt to compose herself better is all too common to this day - normally followed up by the thesis that sexism meant men didn’t believe a woman was competent when watching her speak as opposed to listening to her - the actual polling taken then shows that the debates were pivotal in swinging voters towards Roosevelt as Patton’s posturing seemed belligerent and he came off as simply uninterested in the nuances of domestic policy. The most important statement would come from Patton on foreign policy. Patton indicated that he believed Israel to be an illegitimate state and David Ben-Gurion to be “deceitful.” Roosevelt did not let New York’s Jewish voters forget that, arguably costing Patton the election.


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Roosevelt was hardly subtle about what she intended to do as president during the campaign, but the speed at which she pursued her agenda despite relatively slim majorities shocked many. Vowing to replicate the first hundred days of the previous Roosevelt administration, the Fair Wages & Childcare Act both raised the minimum wage, mandated that men and women must be paid equally for the same work, and established paid childcare leave for working women. The federal housing programs started by Winant grew to become a sweeping urban revitalization and suburban expansion program with the Housing Act of 1953. The largest piece of early legislation would be the Truman-Dingell Act, or simply the National Health Insurance Act. Vice President Lister Hill, an Alabamian and segregationist but a more economically liberal sort of southern Democrat with an intense focus on health-related issues, needled his fellow southerners left and right to back a bill he helped craft to not just nationalize healthcare but also ensure that poor communities in their states had proper medical infrastructure in place. After perhaps the fiercest congressional debate in years and shrewd whipping by Truman’s leadership, the bill cleared the Senate - albeit without the original bill’s provisions on nationwide access to contraception that Roosevelt had badly wanted - and found itself on Eleanor Roosevelt’s desk. One of the universal human rights she had brought to the United Nations had become law in her own nation.

Americans barely had time to focus on the healthcare debate when the German occupation came to mind. Henry Wallace had objected little to the postwar occupation of Germany, seeing joint administration as a way to manage the rebuilding of a ravaged nation. In his eyes, this was a temporary status that would be resolved within a few years. Stalin nominally agreed but in practice seemed more keen on enforcing his influence in the Soviet occupation zone, preferring a dismembered Germany with a communist portion to a united, non-aligned Germany. Then in 1950 Josef Stalin died, and amidst the power struggle the ever-popular Red Army Marshal Georgy Zhukov emerged as the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union. After ensuring his rule would not be challenged by Stalin’s jilted deputies, Zhukov sent an offer to Winant: simply put, he would happily reunify Germany so long as the new Germany was “the China of the west.” It would be independent, a buffer between the Soviet and NATO spheres of influence. Winant’s administration promptly laughed an annoyed Soviet delegation out of the room, seeing cooperation as possible but this proposal as clear deception. When Roosevelt entered the White House, she sent Secretary of State Dwight D. Eisenhower, perhaps Zhukov’s best friend in the western bloc, on an immediate diplomatic mission to Moscow to formally continue Winant’s Austrian reunification talks but to informally hear out this offer. After several meetings, Eisenhower returned with reportedly just two words: “he’s serious.” After a few months of wrangling British and French buy-in, the German and Austrian State Treaty was signed in Berlin, reunifying the occupation zones and soon electing the pre-existing SPD government of Kurt Schumacher as the first postwar all-German Chancellor.

As the talks to reunify Germany and Austria concluded at the same time MacArthur was called home to end his dances with Soviets in the nine-year occupation of Japan, the 1954 elections were upon America. Despite the surprising progress made by narrow Democratic majorities, the campaign against them was intense. Mailers from the Wide Awakes decried Eleanor Roosevelt as a communist sympathizer for “giving away Germany” and bringing socialized programs, fiscal conservatives railed against the ballooning cost of the welfare state built over the last two decades while social conservatives attempted to whip voters into a frenzy about the death of traditional family structures and the mere presence of a woman doing the most powerful supposed man’s job, and narrow gains made against Winant in 1950 seemed to be wiped out to begin with. Previously Patton-aligned Democrats fought with DNC loyalists for control of the South and largely faced temporary setbacks. Come November both chambers swung Republican as expected, but the results yielded some surprises. Notably, Independent Conservatives claimed their first Senate seat with Bracken Lee winning an upset in a special election in Utah, expanding their numbers to over a dozen members between both houses.

Losing Congress was hardly an impediment. Though the Taylor Court’s nearly thirty-five year run would be known as the apex of liberal jurisprudence, the largest liberal majorities on the bench were undoubtedly during the third Roosevelt administration. The first sign of what was to come came in 1955. In a decision Roosevelt praised publicly as a step towards the equality guaranteed by our constitution and privately as “about damned time,” the Supreme Court handed down a 9-0 ruling in Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (commonly known as Davis v. Board) in which they decided school segregation was inherently unequal and that southern schools must immediately desegregate. The resistance was fierce as southern Democrats decried the ruling over the staunch approval of their party’s leader and previous National Democrats talked about permanently walking out as they fought to halt integration of their schools.

There was barely time to adjust to the divided government before another divided government stirred up trouble. The Chinese coalition government created as WWII ended had always been shaky. Chiang Kai-Shek had served as president and Mao Zedong as premier since 1945, allowing the republic to sustain itself under a national unity government. On the tenth anniversary of the Double Tenth Agreement that formed the coalition in the first place, Chiang announced that he would contest the presidential election that year, undermining his pledge to two terms and no more. Mao, already mostly seeing cohabitation as a chance to rebuild, planned to immediately withdraw from the national unity government and resume hostilities. His ailing heart had another opinion, and that attack proved fatal. Communists the nation over accused the Kuomintang of assassinating Mao to cement one-party rule over the nation just as Chiang intended. Maoists took up arms to begin the revolution, to march on Nanking and kill all who stood in the way of true progress for China. Chiang doubled down, planning to outlaw the CCP and arrest the troublemakers outside his palace. A world away the most powerful woman and man in the world respectively both held their breath as the linchpin of the Wallace Doctrine wobbled.

Just as quickly as it started, it stopped. Mao’s deputy Zhou Enlai quickly outmaneuvered more Soviet-style revolutionaries and became chairman of the CCP and premier accordingly. Upon being sworn in, he immediately sent an order to not fire and went to Nanking to quell a revolution. With no stage to speak from, he simply claimed a tank from befuddled soldiers who thankfully recognized their superior when they saw one and stood atop it, from which he spoke of Mao’s revolution. The speech, later known simply as Zhou’s Eulogy of Mao Zedong, was truly pivotal in stopping a resumption of the civil war as Zhou encouraged the communists and soldiers alike to lay down their arms. Ironically using the foremost revolutionary in the republic to justify democracy, he called for peace and mutual respect for the pact of democracy. Chiang turned to his allies in Washington, to which he saw no recourse: despite intense lobbying by American anti-communists such as Senator Walter Judd, in the eyes of Eleanor Roosevelt, the Wallace Doctrine’s very foundation required the Kuomintang blink first. Within a day, Chiang Kai-Shek had announced he would go quietly into retirement, converting communist would-be revolutions into celebrations. From there, Zhou called for a new constitutional convention, and one that depowered the presidency and empowered the Legislative Yuan was quickly passed. In the first non-coalition elections, Zhou’s platform of radical economic reform and adherence to what he termed the Doctrine of Active Neutrality abroad earned a CCP majority and was sworn in by replacement president Sun Fo, whose family name was enough to buy the support of all but the most extreme nationalists and communists alike.

While China accepted its communists, Europe had a far less conciliatory approach. Italy’s communist Prime Minister Palmiro Togliatti was assassinated by a fascist sympathizer, ironically only solidifying the public’s approval of PCI leadership. France had already begun to see its center-to-right turn against communism as a result of both the ongoing quagmire in Algeria and the withdrawal from Southeast Asia (the latter very much encouraged by the Americans on behalf of their prior anti-Japanese ally Ho Chi Minh). But the true anti-communist hysteria would begin at Cambridge. A ring of academics known today as the Cambridge Five had been spying on behalf of the Soviet Union since the 1930s, and in late 1954 Kim Philby was arrested attempting to flee the country. Philby admitted that he had been a spy and that he was not alone, that the Soviet Union had eyes and ears all across the country. The public went into an immediate frenzy, with parliamentary offices overwhelmed by letters from constituents demanding Philby and his comrades’ execution for high treason. Harold Macmillan, scarcely nine months into his tenure in 10 Downing and still something of a new face on the frontbench, acquiesced to public demand and created the Un-British Activities Committee modeled after its American counterpart. However, where HUAC had become an all-encompassing internal security committee opposed to all manner of extremism after it began its ultimately fifteen-year campaign to destroy the Ku Klux Klan at then-President Wallace’s behest, UBAC would solely feed the Red Scare. Sir Waldron Smithers, a thirty-year Tory backbencher known for his longtime anti-communist stance placed upon the committee, became a household name as televised hearings saw Smithers level salacious accusations. While Smithers would die of liver failure in 1957, the mark “Smithersism” and UBAC - ultimately disbanded as notions of communist conspiracy became more and more far-fetched - would leave on British society would last for decades.

America could not have been further from Europe’s paranoia. The 1956 election season was a surprisingly subdued affair. While the economy was good and the NHI proved nearly as popular as Social Security, for better or worse Eleanor Roosevelt was still a trailblazer, and for many voting for a woman derisively dubbed the “Red Queen” was a bridge too far. Regardless, her accomplishments and Vice President Hill’s pre-empting of an attempt by the Dixiecrats to deny her had all but ensured her the nomination of the Democratic Party to Roosevelt. Certain Dixiecrats were once again displeased, and as had become a tradition as common as a leap year they announced their intent to walk out. This walkout was different, though. Flanked by a handful of other notorious segregationists, Senator Benjamin Laney spoke for them all in issuing what became known as the Little Rock Manifesto. The Manifesto decried integration, federal intervention, Davis v. Board, and the Democratic Party’s continual support of such, announcing their intent to convert the Dixiecratic splinters of 1948 and 1952 into a legitimate regional-interest party. Dropping the Democratic from their 1952 epithet and announcing their intent to contest the entire south, the National Convention adopted the manifesto as the core of their beliefs and nominated Governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi as “the only candidate opposed to negro communism.”

The Republicans saw this and felt that their lane was not to, as Patton attempted, pander to disaffected southern conservatives but instead win as Winant had: by taking the reasonable center. To that end, Earl Warren was the obvious frontrunner. Governor of California and Vice President to John Gilbert Winant, Warren believed firmly in efficient liberal government and slow but meaningful social change. Despite a quixotic challenge from South Dakota’s Joe Foss, largely backed by the Wide Awakes for his strong anti-communism and support for gun ownership, Warren pulled a majority on the first ballot and quickly reunited the party with the suggestion of conservative Senator William Jenner, a choice which ultimately would aid in his undoing.

The general election was a respectable affair. Warren chose not to attack the programs passed by Roosevelt, instead focusing on waste and corruption within the engorged federal government. A tack to a moderately more confrontational stance on the Soviets and promises of renewed aid to France in Algeria may have won some over, but Roosevelt had already maintained the aid provided by Winant’s administration. Indeed, a common theme of the Roosevelt campaign was simply that a vote for Warren was functionally the same, so why switch? The lack of the nastiness of the campaign between Roosevelt and Patton was apparent in the debates between Roosevelt and Warren - Barnett had not been invited - where the mutual respect between the two candidates and their clear policy knowledge led to a surprisingly productive, if slightly intellectual and wonk-minded, debate. The same could not be said for their running mates. While no Vice Presidential debate had been held yet, William Jenner made news for himself with an extreme foreign policy doctrine. Jenner believed that the Soviets were not to be trusted, that the US should intervene in Algeria, and that the US should have backed Chiang Kai-Shek to the hilt in the Chinese Crisis. Furthermore, he called for HUAC to drop everything and focus immediately on communist subversion, speaking highly of the UBAC across the Atlantic. With most Klan-affiliated Democrats officially endorsing Ross Barnett, Democratic surrogates played this as letting KKK “pseudo-fascism” win and Roosevelt accused the Republicans of wanting to undermine civil rights progress. Though Republican votes were better distributed than in 1952, allotting them more electoral votes, growing signs of Democratic dominance in the highly-unionized Midwest and severe underperformance by the National ticket saw Roosevelt returned for a second term.


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Civil rights would ultimately be the focus of the beginning of Roosevelt’s second term. South Carolina, run by Strom Thurmond’s National machinery, had been the largest holdout by far in integration. In particular, Clemson University had admitted its first black student, complying fully with the end of school segregation. Governor Timmerman pledged to not allow this and deployed the South Carolina National Guard to blockade the university, denying this first student his education. After weighing her options, Roosevelt chose to threaten to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy national troops to Clemson unless Timmerman stood down. While Timmerman himself left, the day that class enrollment started, a Klan bombing killed several students, but only one death out of them mattered to the Klan.

Furious was an inadequate word to describe Eleanor Roosevelt upon learning of the Clemson bombing. In an address to an emergency session of Congress, she gave perhaps the finest speech of her career. The Our Hope Will Never Die Speech, named for its most famous quote, called for Congress to finally pass a comprehensive civil rights bill, announced her intent to order the Department of Justice to prosecute the KKK parallel to HUAC’s pre-existing work in undermining their influence, and overall promised no rest until justice was achieved. While Dixiecrats loyal and disloyal alike spewed fire and voiced their intent to block such a bill, large majorities of liberal-to-moderate Republicans and Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1957, a comprehensive bill ending segregation, disenfranchisement, and all discrimination on the grounds of race and sex. Senator Laney, seemingly never far when causes of white supremacy called, staged the longest filibuster in Senate history, talking for twenty-six hours against the bill. By this point, though, Clemson had changed southern Democratic rhetoric. “Modernizer” governors like Ralph Yarborough, George Wallace, and Frank Clement, who saw reform as inevitable and better if directed by them than the federal government. While some Little Rock-approving southern Democrats still backed Laney’s filibuster, enough had either seen where the wind was blowing or been told exactly where that was by the Vice President, time and again the White House’s favorite somewhat-reformed segregationist to vote in favor of ending the filibuster. A show of bipartisan unity between Leaders Truman and Saltonstall saw the filibuster closed, the bill passed, and segregation defeated on Roosevelt’s desk. Though Truman’s narrow majority would be lost in a stalling economy and a spectacular six-year itch and he would retire soon after his entry into the minority, until his death in 1974 he would call the Civil Rights Act his proudest achievement.

Even after such a domestic victory, Roosevelt would be drawn away from domestic affairs after that. The war in Algeria had reached a true boiling point. The French public had gradually turned on the war after repeated claims that the war was almost won seemed unfounded, with the ever-present Communist Party leading the anti-war bloc. That year, for the first time in the Fourth Republic, the right feared they might form a government. In 1958, these fears came true, and Maurice Thorez was sworn in as Prime Minister, announcing his intent to negotiate in Algeria and pursue decolonization. This was unconscionable to many fighting in Algeria, and soon a plot began to form. The OAS soon selected General Raoul Salan, the decorated commander of French forces in Algeria, as its leader and collected its troops to march on Paris. The March 27 coup saw Thorez and the PCF government detained. Addressing the nation, Salan announced his intention to defeat the communists and revise the constitution to stop the partisanship that had burdened the Third and Fourth Republics. There would be no surrender on the OAS’ watch.

Reactions to the French putsch ranged from mild relief to abject horror. While the UK had ceded many colonies, including the Raj, under the Attlee government, Macmillan redoubled troop commitments to Algeria, considering Algeria a domino in a long line of dominoes that could fall, strip the European empires of their African colonies, and turn them over to the communists. US policy on Africa was more parallel to their strategy in Southeast Asia and Latin America, where they aligned with left-wing anti-imperialists like Ho Chi Minh and Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre to keep them from running to Moscow, so their response was to pull support until negotiations were reopened. But it would not be Algeria that invested the Americans in Africa.

It was no secret that the Belgian Congo was one of the most brutal colonies on earth. Throughout the fifties, as anti-imperial and pan-Africanist movements arose across the continent, the Congo saw the greatest yearning to break free, and harsher and harsher force publique repression - notably the arrest and subsequent death of Leopoldville independence-supporting politician Joseph Kasa-Vubu - culminated in a brief revolution that drove the Belgians to flee. The first free Congolese elections, in a stunning display of interference by the Americans, Western Europeans, and Soviets alike, saw American-backed Moise Tshombe serve as the nation’s first Prime Minister. However, the Tshombe plan for federalism only allowed rival power bases to fester, and many northern groups did not approve of being governed from Katanga. Within months, the government had collapsed and the constitutional renegotiation saw the presidency established and Lumumba elected. Unwilling to let the Soviets take the crown jewel of European Africa scarcely six months after independence, Joseph Mobutu’s military putsch backed by the United Kingdom, France, and Belgium saw Lumumba deposed. Former Prime Minister Tshombe fled to Katanga with anti-Mobutu military forces to form a national salvation government. Radicalized Lumumba supporters led by Pierre Mulele organized into an explicitly communist movement in the east. While Roosevelt only sent aid and arms to the Tshombe government, America would only become more intertwined with Congo’s fate in the 1960s.

But Eleanor Roosevelt would not be president to see that happen. The 22nd Amendment had been ratified under John Gilbert Winant, barring any president from the very way her husband had held power for twelve years. Even if she could, though, Roosevelt did not want it. She was the oldest president in history at 76 years old and did not wish to die in office the way her husband had. So, as the conventions kicked into gear in 1960, Roosevelt and an ailing Lister Hill simply planned to aid the Democrats in attaining a third term. Ultimately, she would die in December of 1961, not a year after leaving office. While more controversial than her husband, especially with conservatives who oppose her expansions of the welfare state and adherence to the Wallace Doctrine, Eleanor Roosevelt’s lasting legacy of human rights ensured her a place as a feminist and progressive icon in America to this day.
 
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Presidential review time.

Well that was pretty based of her. We have an earlier Civil Rights act, as well as health reform and housing reform.
 
Wait, Palmiro Togliatti is Italy's PM? Given his Stalinist sympathies IRL, well... is Italy a one-party communist state here?

The shift of Italian communism away from the USSR happened only later on, after all.
 
With the US courting left-wing anti-colonial movements and Western Europe adopting a "anyone slightly to the left us is the enemy" mindset, I wouldn't be surprised if we see a complete split later on down the line.
 
At this rate we'll have President Harvey Milk by the eighties, and George Takei as Mayor of San Francisco, and that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.
 
Wait, Palmiro Togliatti is Italy's PM?
He was assassinated in office (also do note that he probably would’ve won 1948 democratically OTL without Gladio), so he was but Italy is not a one-party state - also do keep in mind his term basically only coincides with Stalin’s death and Zhukov isn’t great but isn’t exactly Stalin either.
 
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He was assassinated in office (also do note that he probably would’ve won 1948 democratically OTL without Gladio), so he was but Italy is not a one-party state - also do keep in mind his term basically only coincides with Stalin’s death and Zhukov isn’t great but isn’t exactly Stalin either.

If Italy can elect an openly communist PM without the CIA backing a coup and/or the KGB being behind it all, that's going to be a far better Italy than the one we got IRL, if only because decades of de facto one party dominance by Christian Democracy resulted in a lot of corruption, mysteriously disappearing funds, and mysterious... mysteries, not to mention the influence of organized crime over it all... :p
 
Christian Democracy resulted in a lot of corruption, mysteriously disappearing funds, and mysterious... mysteries

Discrimination of sexes, divorce available only since 1970, jeans as consent for rape, forcing actual people to marry their rapists. Much "Christian", much "free" and much "liberal". CPI victory might be an improvement for millions of Italians, especially half of the population. And there was no communist one-party dictatorship being elected in the first place - all of them were forced by the Soviet invaders (again, other hypocrites claiming to establish an equal society and destroying workers' rights).​
 
Really liking the trajectory of TTL so far; while I know this isn't supposed to be a utopia, following up Wallace with Winant and Roosevelt is probably the best way to institutionalize the New Deal and keep the Cold War hawks at bay. A conservative swing might happen eventually, but policies like universal healthcare are notoriously hard to get rid of once they attain mass popularity. The neutrality of Germany and China is also very nice to see, although keeping Mao and Chiang on one side for that long must have taken an ungodly amount of international pressure.

Honestly, if the US keeps following its present trajectory, we might eventually see the somewhat absurd outcome of a US-Soviet alliance working against the remaining vestiges of Franco-British imperialism. I'm especially curious if and how an eventual New Left (perhaps inspired by French street rebels and a more democratic Red China) will respond to these developments. It's sure to be interesting in any case!
 
Salan in power, so de Gaulle died?

Surprising development. I guess the French did withdraw earlier from Indochina in the context of this TL's Wallace doctrine, sparing them the humiliation of Dien Bien Phu. Yet, even if the alt Algerian independentist uprising is dominated by the Communists, I don't see how much French fortunes on the ground would diverge that dramatically from OTL, since the defeat in Algeria was a political one more than a military one. And in the state France was in after ww2, the Communists would have needed an absolute majority in the National Assembly for Thorez to become premier, and if an election would have ever given such a result, the chances are that the putsch would have happened before the president of the Republic would be compelled to appoint a communist, like the coup of 1797 launched after Royalists won majorities in the elections (that's far, but still a valid precedent).
 
You just activated my trap card.

(I am a 56 specialist from the "Humanitarian socialist" perspective).

The federal housing programs started by Winant grew to become a sweeping urban revitalization and suburban expansion program with the Housing Act of 1953
So ban-lews all over the place. Named of course after the bowdlerisation of a Mississippi phrase for the imposing towers.

and amidst the power struggle the ever-popular Red Army Marshal Georgy Zhukov emerged as the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union.
Well. Georgy Zhukov emerged as the delegate in chief of the Political Committee. Delegated with the full knowledge that he was executable by any of the three major factions. Unlike Stalin, Zhukov never managed to pre-organise the line that would be found to be correct in committee, as, being a military man, any attempt to "massage" lower party institutions was viciously resisted as Bonapartism. Zhukov held himself above the fray of party fractionalism and instead represented the majority position of the central committee honestly and in summary. His only commentary occurred early in meetings (as demonstrated by minutes) and only to comment specifically and particularly on negative possibilities of military grand strategy, strategy and operations suggested by non-military specialists. These interventions were uniquely proved to be correct when the Political Committee voted in a manner that implemented the hostile situations Zhukov presupposed. To this end Zhukov has been seen post-archivally*1 as the model of the Leninist Servant of Party Mindedness: the leader as the highest servant of the movement.

Zhukov sent an offer to Winant: simply put, he would happily reunify Germany so long as the new Germany was “the China of the west.” It would be independent, a buffer between the Soviet and NATO spheres of influence.
Poor westerners. Poor poor westerners. I expect that Zhukov here has been pushed by hards and subtle workerists around the issue of expanding socialisation.

After several meetings, Eisenhower returned with reportedly just two words: “he’s serious.” After a few months of wrangling British and French buy-in, the German and Austrian State Treaty was signed in Berlin, reunifying the occupation zones and soon electing the pre-existing SPD government of Kurt Schumacher as the first postwar all-German Chancellor.
the pre-existing SPD government of Kurt Schumacher, an effective "fusion" party, much like the "workers parties" of Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, etc. The fact that this party is called Social Democratic rather than Workers is telling only that the conflict is continuing. Not that the conflict isn't continuing in the Soviet party………

The Chinese coalition government created as WWII ended had always been shaky. Chiang Kai-Shek had served as president and Mao Zedong as premier since 1945, allowing the republic to sustain itself under a national unity government. On the tenth anniversary of the Double Tenth Agreement that formed the coalition in the first place, Chiang announced that he would contest the presidential election that year, undermining his pledge to two terms and no more. Mao, already mostly seeing cohabitation as a chance to rebuild, planned to immediately withdraw from the national unity government and resume hostilities.
Well, yes. Inopportune ultraleftism is pretty much a hallmark of Mao Zedong. More so in that Korea's situation is complexly negotiated.

Mao’s deputy Zhou Enlai quickly outmaneuvered more Soviet-style revolutionaries and became chairman of the CCP and premier accordingly. Upon being sworn in, he immediately sent an order to not fire and went to Nanking to quell a revolution. With no stage to speak from, he simply claimed a tank from befuddled soldiers who thankfully recognized their superior when they saw one and stood atop it, from which he spoke of Mao’s revolution. The speech, later known simply as Zhou’s Eulogy of Mao Zedong, was truly pivotal in stopping a resumption of the civil war as Zhou encouraged the communists and soldiers alike to lay down their arms. Ironically using the foremost revolutionary in the republic to justify democracy, he called for peace and mutual respect for the pact of democracy.
Ah yes, Zhou Enlai the Togliatti of the East, a loyalist workerist and competent administrator who kept the guns…buried…but who kept the guns…buried. What happened to Toggs here…eww.

I guess nobody even knows who Nagy Imre is, given that Poland and Hungary have been allowed Humanism, given that Germany is "safe."

And the whole Togliatti thing.

In 1958, these fears came true, and Maurice Thorez was sworn in as Prime Minister, announcing his intent to negotiate in Algeria and pursue decolonization. This was unconscionable to many fighting in Algeria, and soon a plot began to form. The OAS soon selected General Raoul Salan, the decorated commander of French forces in Algeria, as its leader and collected its troops to march on Paris. The March 27 coup saw Thorez and the PCF government detained. Addressing the nation, Salan announced his intention to defeat the communists and revise the constitution to stop the partisanship that had burdened the Third and Fourth Republics. There would be no surrender on the OAS’ watch.

Oh no. I guess the Indochinese Party Communist will be supplying aid.

I guess what I'm saying is that the "eastern" hypothesis here about humanist socialism triumphing in a situation where fear of the West is not manifest is quite adequate: that socialist humanism will be tolerated despite its ultraleft workplace deviation because the military threat is lessened.

yours,
Sam R.

(Actually read like an AH by someone deeply interested in European party life east, west and central rather than an american electoralist timeline. Except for the beautiful concrete towers where everyone manages to live will together. That's just fantasy. Eight story fantasies of concentrated poverty.)


*1 Please note I am not predisposing anything *other than archival access*. Which could include digital blow outs.
 
Wait, Palmiro Togliatti is Italy's PM? Given his Stalinist sympathies IRL, well... is Italy a one-party communist state here?

The shift of Italian communism away from the USSR happened only later on, after all.
I believe Togliatti was the one who came up with the "Italian road to socialism", ie. every country (including Italy) has different standards that must be accounted for when pushing for communism, it was a very useful justification for Berlinguer pushing his Eurocommunist beliefs later down the line as you said.
Obviously Togliatti himself would never go those lengths and his loyalty to democracy remains questionable, but if you're already in power, why screw up a good thing? He'd still have to be accountable to the PSI (which was roughly equal to the PCI in terms of party size back then), and it's not like they didn't work with far more right-leaning parties during WWII, the monarchy referendum and that brief interim period before the 1948 elections.
 
Madam President, we salute you! First female president, universal healthcare, this USA is looking pretty good!

The emergence of a separate 'National' ticket as a home for southern white conservatives does pose some interesting questions for the GOP. Do they go after the South? Patton's failure in 1952 would suggest they have evidence that wouldn't work, but maybe they'll try again. Or do they count on the Democrats swinging further to the left and they take the 'sensible centre'?

Quite interesting to see Macmillan go hard on preserving direct European control in Africa, given his OTL role to the opposite effect. With such a staunch anti-communist culture in Britain exemplified by UBAC, maybe we'll actually see a coup against an eventual returning Labour government after all...
 
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