So far it seems the CSA and PSA has gained the most powerful allies by far.
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Your progress in the war is steady and Coughlin's trip to Europe is good. Although you did end up allying with two groups that Long's base hates (Catholics and Slavs). I wonder what their reactions will be to receiving support from Italy and Russia? Or has the situation on the ground trumped political ideals for the moment?
Did Hawaii join the CSA? Will the PSA and/or Japan invade them?
The syndicalists have a lot of support, but the AUS has Russia's aid now. That might offset a bit... Did anyone court an alliance with Germany?
The syndicalists have a lot of support, but the AUS has Russia's aid now. That might offset a bit... Did anyone court an alliance with Germany?
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A Strike at the Heart of the Revolution – May 1937 – July 1937
A Strike at the Heart of the Revolution – May 1937 – July 1937
While the opening months of the Second American Civil War had seen great battles contesting the fate of cities of millions on the east coast and Mid West, the long western front stretching from Canada to Mexico through the spine of the Rocky Mountains was largely forgotten. Both the syndicalists and Longists had de-prioritised the front in favour of more immediately significant battles, leaving their forces in a defensive posture, while it would take some time for the Pacific Staters to find themselves in a position to conduct more general offensives. The exception to this was the state of Colorado, where General Henry Arnold took personal command of an operation aimed at capturing Denver – the largest city of the Rocky Mountain Region, the command headquarters of Longist forces throughout the west and the great symbol of Sacramento’s ambitions east of the continental divide.
Robert Danford, one of three Brigadier Generals appointed by Moseley at the onset of the war alongside George Patton and Courtney Hodges, had responsibility for thousands of miles of geographically diverse frontline across Nebraska, Colorado and New Mexico with little beyond Minutemen, cavalry and outdated artillery with which to defend it. Despite this, Danford could count on the defensive advantages of inhospitable terrain, most obviously in Colorado itself. The western half of the state rose from desert to the snow capped peaks of the Rockies, with Denver nestled between the end of the mountains and the opening up of the state to the fertile plains in the east.
This first stage of the long battle for Colorado would be divided into two main parts. Just to the east of the mountains, Arnold launched a direct attack south from Cheyenne Wyoming towards that would succeed in capturing Fort Collins, not far from the state border, before petering out by the summer. Out in the rugged west, a complex battle of manoeuvre was fought between Pacific Rangers and Longist cavalry that saw the Pacific Staters make able use of reconnaissance aircraft to slow capture the supposedly impenetrable mountain passes. By mid summer, Sacramento forces had gained firm control over most of north western Colorado – bringing the crucial threat of an unexpected second access for attack on Denver opening up from the west.
In Illinois, between the syndicalist counterattack, led by poorly armed militias drawn directly from the industrial neighbourhoods of Chicago to the front in April, and the mopping up operations conducted by the Longists against the encircled forced in the south of the sate in May, vanishingly little had been done by the Reds to strengthen their defensive line in the centre of the state. Instead, with attention drawn to battles further east in Ohio and Pennsylvania, the very same militia bands equipped with little more than rifles had been left to guard the area around Spingfield.
With his troops now freed up after the surrender of the last holdouts in southern Illinois, George Patton sensed an opportunity to strike hard and fast once again. Between 24 and 28 May his troops unleashed a concentrated infantry assault around Springfield, supported by targetted aerial bombardments. The Longists themselves were surprised at just how fragile the Red line proved to be, not merely retreating under the pressure of this assault but breaking apart completely – by the end of the month a large gap had opened up north of Springfield, within striking distance of the Chicago suburbs.
Into this opening the famed Black Horse Motorised Division would drive with great pace. After just three days, the Black Horse reached the shores of Lake Michigan, almost half way between Chicago in the south and Milwaukee in the north. The capital of American syndicalism was now in mortal threat, while the entire western third of syndicalist territory – featuring Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Upper Peninsula Michigan and the Dakotas – were now accessible to the more populous eastern portion only by ship over the Lakes and a single bridge in the Michigan wilderness.
After the speed of Patton’s breakthrough at the end of May, Baton Rouge’s military high command had been excited by the prospect of an immediate collapse. However, once again the syndicalists, now heavily directed by European advisors, reorientated their forces to resist a broader collapse. To the west, with their lines buckling, the syndicalists engaged in a fighting retreat from Iowa through June – establishing a new battleline along the southern boundaries of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Meanwhile, to the east, it took an entire month for Longist forces to complete the encirclement of Chicago with the capture of the city of Gary and the northwestern corner of Indiana at the very beginning of July. As the United States moved towards its first Independence Day since the outbreak of Civil War, the first major factional capital appeared certain to fall.
Despite these gains around the Red heart of America, other portions of the front were largely static through May and June. In Ohio, the syndicalists were well dug in and supported by disciplined French leaders, while the Longists’ focus on Illinois ensured that their opponents had little desire to go on the front foot. On the east coast, the trench warfare south of Washington and endless urban fighting at Philadelphia continued uninterrupted, with both battles absorbing casualties in their tens of thousands with almost no territory changing hands on either side. In both battles, the Federalists’ superior firepower appeared to give them a clear advantage, and allowed them to inflict greater losses on their enemies at a ratio of 3:2, yet despite this the front lines showed no lines of cracking.
At the onset of the Civil War in early 1937, while the Federalists had taken the lion’s share of the US Navy, their east coast rivals in Baton Rouge and to a lesser extent Chicago had still been able to gain control over sizeable naval assets. The Longists in particular had been able to sail with a modest size fleet along their own coastline with relative security. This would change after the Federalist fleet pinned the Longists to a pair of decisive engagements not far from the port of Norfolk in June 1937 – bringing their massive numerical superiority to bare at once. Horrendously outnumbered, significantly outgunned and lacking the aircraft carrier resources of the Federalists, the Longist fleet was totally savaged – losing three battleships and a heavy cruiser among a number of smaller vessels. Henceforth, even coastal defence would largely be beyond the capacity of the Longist fleet. The Atlantic belonged to MacArthur.
America’s inward retreat into Civil War left the Western Hemisphere without the policeman that had held up the existing order across the Americas for decades. The greatest beneficiary of America’s retreat was to be international syndicalism. Mexico had been a close partner of the Third International since the PPM came to power under revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata in 1932, but after the party secured another term in office in July 1937 under his fellow renegade of the revolutionary period two decades before, Mexico took step of applying to join as a full member of the Third International. The largest Spanish-speaking nation on earth had gone Red, and this was only the first step of a wider Red Tide that would sweep the region over through to the end of the decade.
The PPM’s success would later be followed by syndicalist electoral victories in Venezuela and Colombia, and the subsequent entry of those states into the International in 1938. However, even more significant events were taking place in the southern cone of the continent. There the often forgotten Patagonian Workers’ Front and their allies in Chile had been enduring a trying and isolated existence for many years as they looked northwards towards the riches of Argentina. War came to this southerly frontier in late 1937, and to the shock of the world result in the fall of Argentina, and their Paraguayan allies, to syndicalist arms by September 1938. Without America’s presence, half of the continent had fallen to the Reds with Brazil and Peru-Bolivia left as the only major anti-syndicalist Latin American powers.
The shifting strategic situation in North America, had reshaped Ottawa’s priorities as spring turned into summer. With the defeats summered by the Combined Syndicates, above all the siege of Chicago, the terrifying threat of outright syndicalist victory had diminished. Yet equally, Baton Rouge appeared in a far strong position than in the spring – particularly in light of MacArthur’s failure to capture Philadelphia and push on into Red territory. As such, the need for Canada to move off the fence and choose a side had become far more pertinent. In June a series of bilateral meetings would be held between MacArthurite and Canadian officials in Montreal in an effort to overcome political differences. Washington would be forced into making key concessions – recognising Panamanian administration of the nominal internationalised Canal and restoring the historic commitment to freeze all British Great War debts until the restoration of the Home Islands. But in return, on 18 July MacArthur’s government would receive full diplomatic recognition from Canada and the rest of the Entente, providing a precious international lifeline to the General’s regime that had struggled to find willing partners on the global stage earlier in the year.
The envelopment of Chicago and bisection of the territories under syndicalist controlled placed the fate of the entire American Revolution at existential risk, a crisis that would bring about key changes in the nature of American syndicalism. The Revolution had hardly been a peaceful affair during the first half of the year, with the Red Guards having forcefully confiscated property, targetted class enemies for execution and victimised entire communities including the internment of the Great Lakes’ large Canadian population, feared to be in league with Ottawa, in labour camps during the spring. But the troubles in Illinois would make a point of escalation.
The most immediately visible change was a restructuring of government – that was evacuated through the Chicago docklands to Detroit. While Jack Reed, who the Reds still claimed to have been the legitimate victory of the 1936 Presidential election, would retain his status as President, hi position in government would be significantly sidelined – with the military failures of the syndicalists in New York, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio blamed on his own indecisive leadership. With strong encouragement from British and French advisors who preferred a more centralised and dynamic administration, a new role of Chairman of the Combined Syndicates of America was established and Earl Browder appointed to take up the position. This role would allow Browder to bypass many of the slow moving and consensus-seeking organs of syndicalist government in favour of a fast moving executive leadership. This followed a trend in European syndicalism in the 1930s that increasingly favoured centralised states over the inefficieny union-based bureaucracies and quasi-democratic organs of the 1920s.
From his new post, Browder would seek to extensively reform the American syndicalists. One target for his ambitions were the Red Guards, whose decentralised and ‘soldier democracy’ made prosecuting a war effort almost impossible – henceforth there would be a move towards centralised command structures and military discipline. As in the army, so in society – with the state assuming an increasingly directive role over the unions and workforce in a manner that concerned many defenders of traditional syndicalism. Equally, the room for dissent and open debate within syndicalist lands would significantly shrink after July, with the state bringing an end to a fairly free period since the establishment of syndicalist rule in Chicago in February. The blooming of a thousand flowers was over, now was a time for war.
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I'm glad you have enjoyed it so far and hope to see you continue to follow along!
There's certainly a hell of a lot more story to tell!Indeed, its really keeping the CSA afloat at this point - but with how tenuous their strategic position is they desperately need it. For the PSA, having a single backer as enthusiastic as Japan is really gamechanging.
Indeed, although the only ally Long's base would have probably liked - the Canadians, given the South's strong Anglophilia of the time - simply were not interested in a Baton Rouge regime. The next update after this one is going to have a longer look into internal affairs in Longist controlled America, so I will await that one
. Hawaii became independent and joined the Third International as a full member of the alliance, rather than joining up with the CSA (although I believe they get that option if the CSA wins the civil war). That should keep the Pacific Staters and Japan at bay unless they want to get into an early war against the Syndietern.
Both MacArthur and Long would probably rather like German support - and in game the Germans are often inclined towards the AUS while the Entente prefers the Federalists - but given the current left wing government in Berlin, neutrality and aloofness seems Germany's preferred option rather than aiding either possibility. The PSA might have been more appetising for them had they not already thrown their lot in with the Japanese.
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Troubling developments inside the CSA, but thankfully they're on the retreat. Interesting that Canada chose to support the - after the CSA - least likely winner of the civil war, in MacArthur.
Given that MacArthur controls the Atlantic, I wonder if he will try to attack regions closer to the core of the AUS by sea. Maybe he can use the Mississippi? An attack on Louisiana could be disastrous for Long...
Will these new syndicalist states attempt to invade either the PSA or the AUS from the south?
Will these new syndicalist states attempt to invade either the PSA or the AUS from the south?
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I silently started to follow and I must say, whilst I've taken to dislike the classical and modern setups to the SACW after being introduced to HotB, I really like the way you've pulled off the buildup to it. Not only that, but the continuous focus on other factions during the civil war as well as you have shown now with the internal devellopments within the CSA. Eagerly looking forward to more!
MacArthur launching a strong naval invasion somewhere on the exposed underbelly in the south would be absolutely disastrous for the AUS. Caution would be needed to protect the coastline from this potential threat. A choice between defending the south or going straight for the kill against the AUS is something that high command would struggle with I believe.
The CSA seems to be in a very bad way unless pressure from the East or West forces Longist forces away. Still, I reckon the syndicalists have enough industry left to be dangerous if given the time - why I'm sure you'll be pushing to try and finish them off!
Back up to date again as the outside world gets its fingers into the American Pie. I wonder how many will get them burned? Most of the players have some safety in distance, but Canada has the most to gain or lose from their exposure, especially if it comes to direct conflict rather than proxy support. And if Mexico were to get directly involved in support of the CSA, that would of course be a huge distraction for both the PSA and the AUS. Not sure how likely such a broadening of the conflict is.
The Chicago Massacre – July 1937
The Chicago Massacre – July 1937
The Battle of Chicago had started a month before the final encirclement of the city was completed with the capture of Gary at the beginning of July, but it was only after this that Longist forces would turn their full attention towards overwhelming the city’s defences. Over the preceding month the syndicalist commander Benjamin Davis, an incredibly rare figure in his own right as one of very few senior African American officers in the pre-war US Army and one of only a handful of professional commanders to defect to Chicago at the conflict’s onset, had sought to learn from the success Red forces had had in turning the urban landscape of Philadelphia into an impenetrable death trap by fortifying his positions. Unfortunately for Davis, the concentration of forces in Chicago was notably smaller than in Philadelphia – making it impossible to properly make use of every possible building as a defensive position while facing attack from all sides.
Over the next three weeks, George Patton would make methodical progress through the city. The strongest resistance to the Longists was found in the heavily Black, South Side area of the city – where the local population enthusiastically supported their defenders and fought the attackers with all means at their disposal. It would take heavy artillery and aerial barrages – levelling much of the housing on the South Side and forcing most of the local population to flee from the area – to break this strongpoint of resistance. However, little could delay the inevitable. Outnumbered nearly 2 to 1, surrounded on three sides and with the only source of supplies to feed his army and a civilian population in the millions coming from ships across Lake Michigan; Davis gradually lost ground as he fell back towards the docklands. Finally, on 16 July he would offer the surrender of his army of 20,000 men alongside the great city of Chicago, for a decade American syndicalism’s central seat of power and the second largest city on the continent.
In an echo of the experiences following the capture of Indianapolis in March, victory in Chicago sent the Minutemen footsoldiers of the Longist army descending into uncontrolled bloodlust. Militias were seen to round up surrendered syndicalists fighters and activists for summary execution, and fires raged through overcrowded residential areas. But, as ever, the very worst violence was associated with the Silver Legion. The most senior Legion commander in Chicago was a particularly sadistic young man named George Lincoln Rockwell. His men had played a key role in the bitter fighting on the South Side, helping to finally break through syndicalists defences in the region. A fanatical racist and anti-Semite, upon final victory in the city he moved the men under his command towards a laser-focussed assault on the city’s Jewish community – which Rockwell and the Legion saw as the festering backbone of the syndicalist movement.
The acts committed by Rockwell’s men in the hours after the surrender shocked the entire world. Men, women and children shot on sight and in cold blood, hideous tortures inflicted on victims and most infamously of all, after several hundred civilians looked for shelter from the fighting inside a large synagogue – the Legionnaires barricaded the entrances to the building and set it alight, killing all in side as their agonised screams for mercy filled the street.
This atrocity occurred at a point when Patton was losing control over his troops in large parts of the sprawling metropolis. News of the synagogue mass murders had enraged the Brigadier General who knew his victory would now be stained by the worst pogrom in the history of the continent and feared a further escalation in violence. To the surprise of many of his officers, who had at times been willing to turn a blind eye to the Legion so long as they produced battlefield results, Patton brought Rockwell and two dozen senior Silver Legion commanders before him, providing a swift martial trial and had them executed by firing squad and their bodies displayed in Wrigley Square. Patton would thereafter deliver a message to locals that his army was one of liberation, to free them from syndicalist tyranny – not to impose new horrors upon them and promised to punish any who harmed civilians.
To understand the political fallout of the events in Chicago, a discussion of the internal politics of Baton Rouge and the emerging ‘Five Families of America First’ is necessary. While the party was bound together by shared values including anti-syndicalism, American nationalism, anti-elitism and an economic reform agenda – like all great parties of American history, it was home to a multitude of competing factions. The most important cleavages in the movement can be surmised with reference to the idea of the ‘Five Families’, which highlight the more important divisions within the movement – although boundaries between these factions were porous, with many individuals taking part in two or more without contradiction while they themselves contained their own internal tensions. Nonetheless, they represented the main currents within the wider Longist movement, in the Baton Rouge Congress and Huey Long’s government.
Key leaders in the Five Families from left to right: Huey Long (Longist Core); Charles Coughlin (Coughlinites); Charles Lindbergh (New Nationalists); Martin Dies (Bourbons); and Gerald Smith (Rowdies)
Longist Core
The core of the wider America First movement were the most direct followers of Huey Long himself, who looked to the President for leadership and direction. Like their leader, the Longist Core prioritised the central policies of the Share Our Wealth, alongside a broader anti-establishment ethos that was suspicious of much of the ‘Old America’ and its iniquities and a close attentiveness to the perspectives and needs of the rural poor. While, as a predominantly Southern movement, it defended the existing Jim Crow social order, the politics of race did not play a central role in its platform. Equally, while anti-Semitic prejudices were common – as in much of the wider movement – they were not an animating motivation in the way they were for others. While following a generally Southern and conservative line on most religious and moral issues, these were generally seen as less important than social reform goals, with the exception of prohibitionism – which remained very popular throughout the core of Longist Core, carrying on the tradition of Progressive reformers of the first decades of the century.
The Longist Core represented the largest party of America First at both the grassroots and Congressional level, however it lacked the strength to completely dominate the party without cooperating with the other members of the Five Families.
Coughlinites
There was a time in the early 1930s when Father Charles Coughlin, having made a name for himself with a widely listened radio show and his distinctive anti-elitist and redistributive message, appeared to be a rival to Huey Long to lead a future populist revolt against the American establishment. However, after the two formed an alliance during the 1932 Democratic Presidential primary campaign; the pact between the two was set. Despite this, Coughlin and his large following always maintained a distinct identity within the America First movement. Its distinctive elements including the deep intellectual influence of Catholic Social Teachings and the wider international world of political Catholicism, an unwielding commitment to social reform and the full implementation of the America First programme at the earliest opportunity, an emphasis on the interest of the urban working class and the future reconstruction of industrial America – with most of Coughlin’s Catholic followers living to the north under syndicalist and Federalist rule, adherence to strict conservative Catholic social values and fierce opposition to prohibition of alcohol. The Coughlinites, naturally, also had an eye for the distinctive interests of America’s Catholics and their integration into American society. Since Coughlin’s own famous mission to Moscow earlier in the year, the Priest had also developed growing links with Orthodox Christian organisations in America – with whom many of his views were already aligned. On race, the Father Coughlin himself was infamous for his own anti-Semitism that saw Jewish conspiracy behind both the financial elite and syndicalist movement, and these views were common across his caucus. But on the African American question the Coughlinites, with their mostly Northern origins, were at best passive and in some cases actively hostile to the structure of Jim Crow in the South.
Politically, the Coughlinites had been gravely weakened by the outbreak of war. This faction of the movement was the backbone of Longism north of Mason-Dixon but had limited appeal to its south. While the advance of syndicalist armies into a number of Mid Western states had made the importance of the Coughlinite appeal to the Catholic working classes apparent once more, ultimately their grassroots weight within the movement had been significantly decreased the conflict. Congressionally, most Northern America Firsters, including many Coughlinites, had fled to Baton Rouge – providing a strong base of support for the party in provisional capital. Meanwhile, Father Coughlin himself had been kept close to government – rewarded for his diplomatic successes with the role of Secretary of State – and his allies provided with key roles.
Bourbons
The Bourbons bled across party boundaries, encompassing both the continuing rump Democratic Party – many of whose members continued to serve in the Baton Rouge Congress and in state capitals across the states under its control – and more conservative elements of the party that had defected to America First both before and after the 1936 election. The rump Democratic Party, despite it near collapse in 1936, was the largest opposition force in Baton Rouge owing to the party's relative reliance in the South and the willingness of many of its Southern-based politicians to recognise Huey Long's government, with key operators including losing 1936 Presidential nominee Nance Garner and Virginia’s Harry Byrd having shown a willingness to take their Congressional seats in the exiled Congress by the middle of 1937. These Democrats were able to cooperate effectively with many of their ideological bedfellows in America First, giving the Bourbon significant legislative and political weight. Of those who had jumped ship to America First, Texas Representative Martin Dies was among the most well-known, having played an important role in securing Texas for Long during the 1936 election, he had earned the trust of the President and become his main intermediary with the Bourbon faction within and without the party.
The key priorities of the Bourbons echoed those of conservative Southern Democrats of old. They had a scepticism towards the Share Our Wealth programme – with those outwith America first actively hostile and those within in it tending to be reluctant supporters at best and were generally shy on large uncosted spending programmes and high taxes; like many in the Longist-coalition they carried a strong rural interest; they were among the staunchest defenders of the Jim Crow system of white rule in the South; and held many generally pious Protestant viewpoints – including a slant towards favouring prohibition. The Bourbons were also distinct in the relative weakness of anti-Semitism, at least as an animating force, among their number, their defence of law and order and their friendliness towards Canada and the British world over the continental European powers. In contrast to many other groups within the movement, not least the New Nationalists with whom they shared much, they tended to be close adherents of the American Constitution and its strictures.
New Nationalists
The New Nationalists were a grouping that were somewhat late to the Huey Long movement – only truly becoming a coherent force under the influence of Charles Lindbergh after 1935. Lindbergh had been attracted to the party through his hostility to immigration, syndicalism and Jewish influence rather than any belief in economic redistribution and social change, and this was typical of an element of America First that in essence nationalist rather then ideologically Longist. While the New Nationalists were generally conservative, they tended to be far less religious than many other parts of the Longist coalition – speaking in the technocratic language of the modern world above all else. Like the Bourbons, the New Nationalists generally held a view of the American nation as being rooted in its British-descended Protestant core and disliked any dilution of this America through Catholic, Jewish or other incomers – calling not just for a re-emphasis of the strict 1922 Immigration Act but an almost complete shut down of America’s borders. However, their greatest distinction within the movement was over economics, with the grouping being generally hostile to the Share Our Wealth programme in its fullest form and favouring far more modest social and economic reforms. Likewise, they tended towards an elitism that was suspicious of much of the party’s grassroots, but unlike the Bourbons had little faith in the historic structures of American Constitutional Government.
While Lindbergh’s faction lacked numbers in the grassroots or Congress of the other key groupings; it more than made up for it connections and influence over government. Indeed, Lindbergh had made strong connections with key industrialist players and military leaders. He had been instrumental in bringing Henry Ford to relocate to the South, and enter Long’s cabinet, as well as the defection of George Moseley and his Third Army to Baton Rouge – with the now Chief of Staff having saved Long’s regime from oblivion. Given his influence to date, Long had been content to grant significant power to Lindbergh and his allies – following his lead in a number of key policy areas.
Rowdies
The Rowdies might be considered a somewhat amorphous grouping, predominantly found at the grassroots of the party and particularly the Minutemen militia movement that was now mobolised at the front, but also among elements of its elected officials. Some of this faction were members of sympathisers with distinct extreme organisations like the Silver Legion or the Klan, while most had no formal affiliations with any groups outwith the Party and Minutemen. In many ways they were defined less by distinct ideology, than by their tendency to uncouth and unsophisticated language and violence. What clear political ideas existed among them tended to borrow from other elements of the wider America First movement and take them to extremes – ultra-militancy in the war and defence of the men at the front, demands for urgency around Share Our Wealth and alcohol prohibition and frustration at the President’s delays with his domestic agenda until the war was through, racial and religious animus towards Blacks, Jews, Catholics and foreigners, virulent anti-elitism, annoyance at the new influence of the Russians and intense religious conservatism.
The main figure who sought to channel the views of the Rowdies into political discourse was Gerald L K Smith. Smith had lived an itinerant life throughout his childhood and early adulthood, first as the son of a travelling salesman and preacher and then as a Congregationalist Minister himself. In early 1928 he settled in Louisiana, where he became involved in the local wing of the William Jennings Bryan campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination and met a young up and coming politician named Huey Long who would change his life. Impressed by Long, Smith became a key supporter and soon played an important role in Long’s Louisiana political machine – aiding him in winning the Governorship and then building his first Presidential campaign in 1932, as he sought the Democratic Party nomination. After falling short, Smith stood by Long and acted as the national organiser for the new America First Party during the 1934 midterms before being elected to the House of Representatives for a district in Arkansas in 1936. However, in the months since November 1936 his relationship with Long had grown tense – disturbed by his apparent accommodation with the establishment and the cold shoulder he had provided towards more radical elements of the movement.
By the summer of 1937, racial violence had already moved to the centre of political debate in Baton Rouge. Lynchings, the extrajudicial killing and torture, usually by hanging, carried out by communities had been a common feature of American life for decades. In the late twentieth century, as the legal framework for white supremacy was reimposed on the American South with the construction of Jim Crow Laws and other mechanisms, lynchings reached the peak of their prevalence with between 100-200 killings carried out each year and increasingly targetting Blacks. The most frequent cause for lynchings were accusations of rape by Black men against White woman, although many were killed for a variety of reasons. This sorry feature of Southern life declined in the early 20th century – with lynchings at less than a tenth of their late nineteenth century level by the 1930s.
The onset of the Civil War had brought about a surge in this form of irregular violence across the South. Between February and June 1937 there were more than 300 lynchings recorded. In a marked contrast to historic practices, the primary motivations were not accusations of sex crimes across racial lines, but of syndicalist agitation with the terrifying spectre of a Black uprising to form the feared Black Syndicalist Republic looming across the region. This violent terrorisation of African Americans, which the state appeared uninterested in controlling, was badly impacting Baton Rouge’s international standing and was fast emerging as a premier home front issue, with questions asked over the ability of the government to maintain law and order.
The rise in lynchings was associated in the public and international consciousness with the rising prominence of extremist racist organisations like the Silver Legion. Although the Legion had been put into the military chain of command in April, its stature had only continued to grow with the Legionnaires earning a reputation for incredibly bravery and military feats. While much of this was down to effective promotion by the Legion’s leader, the eccentric Dudley Pelley, the group’s fighters’ reputation was based in reality, where they were increasingly used as stormtroopers to spearhead offensive operations – showing a fanatical willingness to taken on the most dangerous tasks alongside a terrible brutality towards their defeated foes. On the home front, Pelley had continued to recruit for the Legion, expounding in detail his political philosophy that called for a Christian National Revolution that would bring about a pious, racially hierarchical and egalitarian society purged of all corrupt and opposing elements. In the days after the Chicago events, the Legion and Pelley had been at the forefront of an anti-Patton public campaign, denouncing the commander as a traitor and calling for justice – which demonstrations in a number of Deep South cities drawing together not only followers of the Legion, but elements of the Klan and other Minutemen-affiliated organisations.
The rise of the Legion, their terrible atrocities at the front and the spread of racial violence in civilian society in the South was a cause of serious concern for most of the Five Families of America First – with pressure growing, in particular from the Coughlinites and New Nationalists – the reign in these worst excess lest they threaten the stability of society. For this side of the party, George Patton’s actions were entirely justified and represented a strong stance against the extremists. However, on 20 July, Gerald Smith stood up on the Baton Rouge House of Representatives building to deliver an explosive address that condemned Patton for “murdering the greatest of American Christian Patriots, who had conquered the house of Satan himself. That man has shown himself to be nothing more than a N****r lover, a K**e lover and a closet Red. We’d be better burning the whole city down, with George Patton in it!” While Baton Rouge was hardly scandalised by racist language, such a personal attack on a leading figure in the army, the defence of the level of depravity that had been displayed in Chicago and insinuation that the syndicalist occupied lands in the north should be extensively destroyed was too much. In unedifying scenes that would be reported across America and ultimately the world, the House descended into a physical brawl which saw the Smith, badly outnumbered, have to be saved from his attackers – themselves fellow elected Representatives – by security.
President Long knew he had to intervene. On 23 July, he would make a famous radio address seeking to restore unity to America First and rebuild his regime’s tarnished image. He swore to continue the fight to restore the unity of the United States to its very end, to destroy American syndicalism and defend the American way of life, including the particular way of life enjoyed in the South. But he warned of the lead for orderliness and respect for the American Constitution – something of an irony for a man who had spent his career butting up against its confines. After days of silence on the matter, he offered his unreserved backing for George Patton and publicly announced his promotion to the rank of Lieutenant general, which would make him the second highest ranking member of the Baton Rouge government’s military behind Chief of Staff Moseley. More strikingly, Long claimed that the Legion had grown into a constant source of insubordination at the front that was undermining the war effort and an actively destructive force at home and announced its disbandment – calling for existing Legion militia detachments to be dissolved and their troops dispersed through the military. Finally, a new organisation was announced that would receive powers to investigate both syndicalist activity, other political subversion and politically-motivated lynchings on the home front, as a means of bringing peace and order behind the lines.
As might have been expected, Smith was enraged by the repudiation of his old ally and could see that America First was moving away from him. Just two days after Long’s radio address, Smith declared the formation of the new Christian Nationalist Party, which sought to tap into dissatisfied Rowdy wing of the America First movement. Adapting many of the tenets of the Legion and other parts of the American far-right fringe, it would criticise Long for his softness before the enemy and mistreatment of his most enthusiastic supporters. It would also complain about the compromises in America First’s domestic agenda: demanding the immediate implementation of nationwide prohibition, the dissolution of alliances with business leaders and adoption of the Share Our Wealth Programme, a break with Father Coughlin and his Catholic caucus at the expense of Anglo-Saxon Protestants, the repudiation of foreign – specifically Russian – influences and a definitive policy to expel America’s Jews back to their European countries of origin once the war was over. Smith would carry with him a handful of allies within the Baton Rouge Congress, making his Christian Nationalist Party the third force in its legislature behind America First itself and the surviving Democratic Party caucus.
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A close look into the ugliest side of the Longist movement and its dalliance with violent extremist forces. For those who don't clock him, Rockwell was the leader of the RL American Nazi Party in the 50s and 60s - he served in the military in WW2 and Korea and is just about old enough to be a Legionnaire in 1937, so I thought he would make a good candidate to be the grassroots leader of a pogrom like this and would 100% be the sort of person attracted to the Silver Legion.
We also got a broader look at the different currents involved within America First - between those who would rather just be getting on with the social reform agenda once the fighting is out of the way, to old southern conservatives, technocratic authoritarians, interwar European-style Political Catholics and outright fanatics on the fringes. It is quite something that everyone other than Coughlin from the figures I listed as 'key leaders' of the Five Families can actually become President through one path or another in the AUS. Long has taken a firm stand against the extremes, time will tell what role the new Christian Nationalist Party will play in the future of America.
Next time we are going to see how the war progresses over the late summer and into the autumn and take a deep dive into the political development of the Pacific States of America.
MacArthur is perhaps somewhat stronger than he appears at this point. His troops are high quality and he has a lot of them - his big weakness at present is that his geographic position is very defensible but hard to push out from.
Now that he has naval supremacy MacArthur has huge opportunities to squeeze the AUS. He will be able to basically naval invade at will from now on and will be in a position to basically cut the South off form international trade if he chooses to concertedly target its sealanes.
And we will have to wait and see what way the Latin American syndicalists go in the future.
I'm not familiar to HotB, what is the set up there?
I'm glad you enjoyed that build up part. I've seen many dismiss the ACW as completely unrealistic, but I hold to the view that there is a great range of alternate history scenarios that are perfectly plausible - some just need a bit more unpacking to be made sense of.
And there will be much more to come on those looks at the internal developments of the factions. We'll be off to the sunny climes of California, discussing progressive reforms, the new PSA's political system and intellectual currents at UC Berkley next time.
He's now perfectly primed to do just that. Having committed a great deal of energy to our big victories in Chicago, Indiana, Ohio and Virginia - we are really committed on every front and can't really afford to maintain much forward energy should another one be opened.
The syndicalists have lost a fair whack of troops through encirclements in Southern Illinois, Chicago and a few in places like Ohio and West Virginia. But it is far from enough to be fatal - they still have a very large army in the field and strong industrial resources with the likes of Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Minneapolis all still under their control. Their biggest problem now is the fact they are still being pressed on three fronts and coordination between them is going to be much harder from this point. But they are far from a dead duck just yet.
Yes. It's odd that at this point, despite this war being so existential for Canada, they are much less directly involved than the likes of Japan, Britain, France, Italy and Russia who all have troops on the ground. The punishment for them getting things wrong would be far greater though.
We also got a broader look at the different currents involved within America First - between those who would rather just be getting on with the social reform agenda once the fighting is out of the way, to old southern conservatives, technocratic authoritarians, interwar European-style Political Catholics and outright fanatics on the fringes. It is quite something that everyone other than Coughlin from the figures I listed as 'key leaders' of the Five Families can actually become President through one path or another in the AUS. Long has taken a firm stand against the extremes, time will tell what role the new Christian Nationalist Party will play in the future of America.
Next time we are going to see how the war progresses over the late summer and into the autumn and take a deep dive into the political development of the Pacific States of America.
MacArthur is perhaps somewhat stronger than he appears at this point. His troops are high quality and he has a lot of them - his big weakness at present is that his geographic position is very defensible but hard to push out from.
Now that he has naval supremacy MacArthur has huge opportunities to squeeze the AUS. He will be able to basically naval invade at will from now on and will be in a position to basically cut the South off form international trade if he chooses to concertedly target its sealanes.
And we will have to wait and see what way the Latin American syndicalists go in the future
. I'm not familiar to HotB, what is the set up there?
I'm glad you enjoyed that build up part. I've seen many dismiss the ACW as completely unrealistic, but I hold to the view that there is a great range of alternate history scenarios that are perfectly plausible - some just need a bit more unpacking to be made sense of.
And there will be much more to come on those looks at the internal developments of the factions. We'll be off to the sunny climes of California, discussing progressive reforms, the new PSA's political system and intellectual currents at UC Berkley next time
.He's now perfectly primed to do just that. Having committed a great deal of energy to our big victories in Chicago, Indiana, Ohio and Virginia - we are really committed on every front and can't really afford to maintain much forward energy should another one be opened.
The syndicalists have lost a fair whack of troops through encirclements in Southern Illinois, Chicago and a few in places like Ohio and West Virginia. But it is far from enough to be fatal - they still have a very large army in the field and strong industrial resources with the likes of Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Minneapolis all still under their control. Their biggest problem now is the fact they are still being pressed on three fronts and coordination between them is going to be much harder from this point. But they are far from a dead duck just yet.
Yes. It's odd that at this point, despite this war being so existential for Canada, they are much less directly involved than the likes of Japan, Britain, France, Italy and Russia who all have troops on the ground. The punishment for them getting things wrong would be far greater though.
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Well... Chicago is going to be great for syndicalist propagandists. It's good that Patton and Long moved to mitigate the damage...
The AUS appears more divided than it initially appeared. What will this new Christian Nationalist Party do if/when it's repudiated at the ballot box? Is any of its members or leaders considering creating another side of the civil war?
For that matter, what would happen to the AUS if Long died before defeating MacArthur, the syndicalists, and the PSA? Would it just outright collapse?
The AUS appears more divided than it initially appeared. What will this new Christian Nationalist Party do if/when it's repudiated at the ballot box? Is any of its members or leaders considering creating another side of the civil war?
For that matter, what would happen to the AUS if Long died before defeating MacArthur, the syndicalists, and the PSA? Would it just outright collapse?
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Home of the Brave, it's integrated into Kaiserredux. The US is split 5 ways. West to east its the PSA, Western Command Center which is the federalist military in the area, the AUS stretching from Louisiana to the border with Canada, the Constitutional American Republic led by the Old Democratic Party in the South, the CSA and then the USA limited to around DC. Ofcourse it also includes New England and even a Black Belt revolter if the CAR goes racist enough and makes some mistakes. The main thing it does is split Huey Long from the Southern Base that KR always associates him with. It's also quite dynamic in the way it treats the war. Long can ally the CSA. The CAR and the federalists can have a truce for the start of the war. The PSA can ally the victor of the election, go at it alone of even embrace the secessionist sentiment of older versions of the mod.
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It's good to see Long take a stand against the more radical elements of his own party. And having the CNP as opposition helps legitimize Long as a president instead of a dictator. I doubt many Silver Legionnaires will integrate smoothly into the rest of the armed forces.
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Don’t Tread On Me – July 1937 – October 1937
Don’t Tread On Me – July 1937 – October 1937
Fighting on the Potomac Front had fallen in to a pattern of trench warfare in April after the Longist advances across Virginia were halted just south of Washington DC. Since then both sides had become heavily entrenched in the narrow plains between the Appalachian Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay that separated the national capital from Virginia. After months of lower intensity fighting mostly defined by the trading of artillery fire, in July, the Federalists unleashed a concerted offensive aimed at pushing the Longists back towards Richmond. The fighting would last through the entire month and claim the lives of around 10,000 men. Under heavy pressure, the Longists would seek to divert their enemies’ attention with attacks against exposed Federalist positions to the west in the Shenandoah Mountains. Ultimately, both sides would largely exhaust one another, resulting in no major territorial changes.
While the Longists were somewhat satisfied with their success in holding the line in Virginia, the Federalist assault had been aimed at masking a planned attack by sea on the state of North Carolina. The naval supremacy that MacArthur’s fleets had won in the preceding months had opened up a raft of new strategic possibilities with which to strike against Huey Long’s regime and its long and exposed coastlines. However, understandings of large scale amphibious operations remained basic in mid-1937, and MacArthur was only willing to spare a relatively modest force of around 30,000 lightly armed New England militiamen for his operation. Nonetheless, as they made landfall in mid-August, the Yankee squadrons took the Longists by surprise and were able to capture most of the North Carolina coastline within the space of the next week.
Unfortunately for the invasion, General Moseley was quick to react – pulling troops from the Mid Western and Virginian fronts and from other parts of the Atlantic coastline to respond quickly to the incursion. After battles around Raleigh and Charlotte at the end of the month, the advance of the invasion was largely halted. Despite this, with access to the port of Wilmington on the North Carolina coast, the Yankee troops were able to dig in fairly effectively around their exist gains as they entered the month of September.
Optimistic Longist planners had hoped that the fall of Chicago in July would precipitate a wider collapse of syndicalist forces across the front. It had in part been this confidence that had pushed Baton Rouge to react swiftly to the landings in North Carolina – as troops were stripped from the Mid West at pace to counter the landings. However, under the renewed leadership of Earl Browder and with an emphasis of centralisation of military leadership taking hold, the risk of disintegration was warded off and as early as September, seeing the Longist line thinning, the Reds were ready to counterattack.
September would see two limited and concentrated attacks, one in Ohio and the other in Illinois. The attacks in Ohio achieved the greatest success as the Reds breached the frontline that had held static for months to capture Columbus on 17 September. Control over the city was vital as it served as the key supply hub for Baton Rouge’s forces in central Ohio and was strategically positioned on a key railway intersection. Its loss risked the Longists’ wider position on the front. Fortunately for Baton Rouge, despite their initial withdrawal from the city, they maintained significant strength in this sector of the front and the syndicalists – particularly the valuable detachment of well-drilled French troops that had spearheaded the initial attack – had endured significant losses in capturing Columbus. Quickly, Longist forces were repositioned along the line to launch a counteroffensive of their own – reclaiming Columbus on 3 October after bitter street-to-street fighting that restored the previous frontline positions.
To the west, the Illinois offensive into northern Illinois initially appeared to have greater prospects for success. There, the syndicalists had built up a significant numerical advantage after a build-up of troop numbers in Wisconsin and were able to pierce through the frontline along the Illinois-Wisconsin border in late September. The offensive reached the northern suburbs of Chicago by the end of the month, but there it met stiff resistance from well equipped and heavily entrenched Longist troops. These soldiers were able to hold up the syndicalists for over two weeks despite being outnumbered by two to one throughout the battle. It was only as battles further to the west began to threaten syndicalist control in Minnesota in mid-October that the attack on Chicago was called off.
Out in the west, the first six months of the Civil War had predominantly been a war of manoeuvre with very few large-scale pitched battles. In the Dakotas, the syndicalists had left a skeletal force to engage in a slow-moving fighting retreat, along the arid Arizona-New Mexico border Pacific Stater and Longist armies engaged in little more the occasional sparring match along the border while the heaviest fighting was in Colorado where Pacific troops had slowly advanced through the incredibly harsh terrain of the Rocky Mountains in the north-western portion of the state while also pushing along the main road to the east of the mountains towards Denver.
By October, this phase of combat was beginning to come to an end. The middle of that month would see Pacific forces cross the border into Minnesota for the first time – bringing with it far more concerted syndicalist resistance than they had previously face. More importantly, during the same month the long struggle for the mountain approaches to the west of Denver was finally won as Japanese special forces and air support proved decisive in allowing the Pacific Staters to capture the highland position. Now, Pacific and Japanese troops controlled both the western and northern approaches into Denver and were ready to begin their assault. The great mountain city would prove to be one of the most bitterly contested in the entire civil war. The First Battle of Denver would last for the next three months and involve close to 100,000 soldiers on both sides as Sacramento and Baton Rouge locked horns over the gateway to the Great Plains.
The very fact that the Pacific States were entering their first truly heavy fighting as late as October 1937 spoke to the West Coast’s very different experience of Civil War than the rest of the nation. East of the Mississippi, Americans had been forced to grow used to coastal raids, bombing campaigns, and for those unfortunate to live in the battleground states of the Mid West and Mid Atlantic the ravages of rampaging armies. All these concerns were a world away from the majority of the PSA’s population living in its three continental coastal states, for whom the front line was thousands of miles away. Indeed, even the sparsely populated inland states of the western Republic had been spared from any major fighting on their own soil or even aerial bombardment – both the syndicalists and Longists concentrating limited air power elsewhere. Instead, the PSA, or more pointedly California, was enjoying a period of renewed prosperity – benefitting from a glut of cheap labour as hundreds of thousands had fled westward from the war; high demand for its oil, agricultural and industrial outputs; and the relocation of a significant number of wealthy individuals and their capital from the east.
The Pacific States were not only unique in America for their relative comfort, but for the lack of an underpinning for the regime in Sacramento. The syndicalists in Chicago and later Detroit and the Longists in Baton Rouge had deep philosophical roots and political movements gathered around them, while even MacArthur’s anti-radical putsch had a clear ideological basis behind it. The Pacific States, meanwhile, had in large part been founded as a practical measure to shield the west from Civil War and in a repudiation of the rival regimes rising east of the Mississippi rather in support of an alternate vision of the future in itself.
This lacking of identity provided ample room for political introspection and for the leaders of the new state to define its meaning and purpose. Prior to the war, the politics of the West had been notable different to the rest of the country. The syndicalist and America First were notably weaker, the Democrats were just as much as a hollowed-out shell of mostly conservative stragglers as they were in much of the rest of the country, the coastal states had a powerful Progressive Party and the inland areas were home to much of the national strength of Farmer-Labor while the Republican Party was fairly strong across the region – Alf Landon having carried two thirds of the new Republic’s states in the 1936 Presidential election. However, politics had not remained static in the intervening period. Upon their declaration of independence, the Pacific States had banned American First and the Socialist Party – aligned as they were to hostile rival administrations – while Farmer-Labor had collapsed as key leaders of the party in the east were split between supporting Chicago and Baton Rouge. This would leave the ground clear for the PSA to be defined by the Republican Party, and most specifically the Californian Republican Party and a core alliance between conservatives grouped around the Acting President Frank Merriam and progressives both within and without the party led by Chair of the California Republican Party Earl Warren and long-serving Progressive Senator Hiram Johnson.
The Earl Warren would be granted significant autonomy to act as the architect of the new Pacific States of America’s constitution. For the most part, his role would be to transpose the old United State constitution onto the new republic, but he made a number of notable exceptions. For one, the Territory of Alaska was granted full statehood as the tenth state of the union – a decision heartedly approved by the Acting President. But more significantly, Warren would shape the constitution to guarantee a level of racial equality before the law that had never been seen before in American history. The most symbolically significant element of this civil rights agenda was in the rolling back of miscegenation laws. Although the non-white population of the Pacific States was much lower than other parts of the America, most obviously the South, every single state of the new republic with the exception of Alaska and Washington, still had anti-miscegenation laws in place that forebode marriage between whites and other race. Warren would oversee a sweeping away of all these laws at a Federal level, while also outlawing the segregation of schooling – present in some inland states, alongside protections from discrimination and the unequal provision of government services.
Despite the momentous nature of these changes, and the controversy they caused among many Pacific States citizens, these social policies would not prove to be the main dividing line in Pacific politics. Differing conceptions of economics and the role of the state in the America of the future would prove far more contentious.
While shielded from the unfolding American catastrophe, California was the centre of the entire world in many other fields. Hollywood cinema was booming and shaping culture globally – continuing to pump out new output even as the nation descending into war. Meanwhile, intellectually, California was the hearth for a fizzing revival in classical liberal free market ideas. Much of this energy was based at University California Berkley, the foremost academic institution on the West Coast.
Berkley had been emerging as a hub for right wing economic theory for the best part of a decade. Some date the origins of the Berkley scene to the arrival of the outspoken Austrian economic Friedrich Hayek at the institution in 1931, where he took up a professorial post. Hayek had had a distinguished career in his native Austria, working under the great Ludwig von Mises in the 1910s and 1920s – a key economic advisor to the Austrian Imperial Government and senior academic at the University of Vienna. Upon coming to California, Hayek would further spread the heterodox ideas of the individualist Austrian School of economics – stimulating a flourishing of free market ideas at Berkley. Hayek joined a department that already had influential opponents of interventionist government in its ranks – with Jacob Viner having left his tenured position at the University of Chicago the previous year, having come under pressure from the increasingly syndicalist-leaning institution after offering economic advice to the Hoover administration. Through the 1930s a number of younger minds would join them to study and eventually take up posts in the institution themselves, most notably the Milton Friedman and George Stigler.
In sharp contrast to so many movements on both left and right of the time that were calling for larger, even totalitarian, state intervention to transform societies and right economic wrongs – the emerging Berkley School had the clear opposite diagnosis. Government was not the solution to America’s problems, it was the problem.
The swirling activity of these intellectuals combined with the desire of many Republican activists in California to define a distinctive vision of the Pacific State’s future. This was encapsulated in a set of ideas that contemporaries called the ‘Californian Ideology’ that envisioned a dynamic, modern and fast growing California, shorn of the prejudices of old America and unleashed from the shackles of government interference to achieve a level of prosperity never before seen. It was a seductive idea to many, and Frank Merriam would latch on to it – notably becoming closely involved with Berkley minds in designing his policy programme. While accepting that sweeping tax cuts would not be possible in a time of war, Merriam would propose a rolling back of the frontiers of the state in other fields – cutting back on social programmes, public works and government waste and passing through a wave of industrial deregulation designed to unshackle the power of private industry and allow all resources to be focussed on the military until a peace accord could be reached.
The Pacific States were also being fast shaped by the overarching presence of Japan throughout society. After entering into treaty arrangements with Tokyo in April, Japanese military personnel and advisors began to arrive in the country in their thousands. But their influence was far from limited to a single sphere, as these soldier were joined by products, businessmen and immigrants as the Far Eastern nation’s presence expanded into every sphere of Pacific life. The West Coast states had a long history of anti-Oriental sentiment, with elements of segregation and racial discrimination often being more targetted at East Asians than at Blacks in these states. Moreover, the political class of the region had been the driving force behind the ban on all Asian migration in 1924, and the chief protestors against the relaxation of these strictures later in the decade. As such, Japan’s growing influence was a source of significant popular disquiet.
While many Pacific politicians had long careers of Asian-baiting prior to the Civil War, there was very limited room for the PSA’s political class to speak to this growing uneasiness given the Republic’s heavy reliance on its sole major ally so long as fighting continued. It was for this reason that a number of voices in the Acting President’s camp began to speak of the possibility of a ‘short war’ – which would secure Pacific independence at the expense of surrendering the dream of restoring the old United States and allow for Sacramento to assert its independence from Japan. These ideas tended to grow interlocked with advocates of the Californian Ideology – who saw in the prospect of Pacific independence the prospect of building a whole new nation in their own image.
In order to secure its democratic legitimacy, the Pacific States had scheduled a Presidential election for November. Frank Merriam, the putative father of the nation who had led the rebellion of the western states and formation of the new Republic in February and March, was widely expected to win easily with America First and the Socialist Party banned and no other political force capable of competing with the Republican Party. This was until Hiram Johnson chose to break with the government in August. Johnson was the grandfather of west coast politics. Turning 70 years old that month, Johnson had been Governor of California between 1911 and 1917, was Teddy Roosevelt’s running mate on the Bull Moose ticket in 1912 and had been a Senator for California from 1917 until the Pacific rebellion, after which he had joined Merriam’s administration. Although a member of the separate Progressive Party, he was closely intertwined with the progressive wing of the Republican Party and was immensely influential throughout California and the western states.
Johnson held a low opinion of Merriam as a political leader, but he was driven to break with him by disagreements over domestic policy and attitudes to America’s future. Domestically, Johnson had no time for the free market ideologues that Merriam had surrounded himself with and pushed for urgent rural relief, assistance for war refugees and the still numerous Okies who had been displaced by the Dust Bowl even prior to the Civil War and support for the poor. In addition to this, Johnson held to the view that the Pacific States were a temporary administration only, and that ultimately they would be dissolved through the defeat of three anti-democratic regimes in the east – a victory only a long war could achieve. Ironically given his long history of strident opposition to Asian immigration and foreign entanglements, this left Johnson as a stronger defender of the Japanese alliance than the incumbent.
Although a well-kent face across the country, Johnson had a clear structural disadvantage to Merriam. While the Acting President had the Republican machine, Johnson’s own Progressive Party was only active in the three coastal states while its traditional Farmer-Labor allies had been scattered. Nonetheless, over the following months Johnson invested heavily in building a broad alliance – seeking to absorb many former Farmer-Labor organisations into the Progressive Party and win their endorsements, reaching out to sympathetic progressive Republicans – with Earl Warren signalling to his allies on the left of the party that he was open to a Johnson Presidency by refusing to offer a public endorsement to Merriam, and seeking to speak to the social concerns that had fuelled the support of the radical parties in 1936.
By October it was becoming clear that the election was no foregone conclusion, with Johnson making impressive inroads – particularly in the smaller states outwith California. What was widely seen as the decisive moment in the campaign came in the final week of October when a diplomatic note containing a message from Sacramento to Ottawa enquiring about the possibility of Canada acting as an intermediary in negotiations with General MacArthur was leaked to the press. Johnson would seize upon this by saying that for Merriam, the Denver campaign was merely seeking a pawn to be given up while for him it represented a first stepping stone towards restoring the United States.
The election proved more closely contested that anyone could have predicted. With the Pacific State’s media so concentrated in California, and the state holding so much weight, it had been assumed that Merriam’s strength there would carry him to a clear victory. Yet, while Merriam did indeed storm to a wide victory in California, he ran far weaker elsewhere – picking up only two other states in Wyoming and Utah. Instead, Johnson’s strength in the smaller states would carry him to an incredibly narrow 30 to 29 electoral college victory. This was achieved despite Johnson trailing Merriam by more than 2% in the popular vote – a discrepancy largely caused by California’s significant under representation in the electoral college system that had been carried over from the old United States in the Pacific constitution. Ironically, given the close margins, Merriam had been defeated as a direct result of Alaskan statehood – a cause he had approved of himself mere months before. Turnout in the election was low – with a shortfall of almost a million voters from the US Presidential election of a year before, with the abstention of large numbers former Socialist and America First voters the largest factor in this drop-off.
While Merriam’s defeat was stinging, it was far from fatal for the proponents of the Californian Ideology – as rightwing Republicans secured a strong majority in the Pacific House of Representatives on the back of their landslide in California, while the Senate was fairly evenly balance after down ballot Progressive candidates in the inland states had undershot Johnson’s support. While the incoming President would have the power to change course on a number of key issues, he would be pushed to share power with Merriam’s old allies – allowing the Berkley set the chance to continue exerting substantial influence over the government in Sacramento.
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Yes, of course I did the full state-by-state calculation on the Pacific election! To get these numbers what I did was take the figures I'd put together for the 1936 election and apply a calculation to each state result. This gave a portion of each party's 1936 figure to either candidate - Merriam got 90% of the Republican vote (the rest not voting), got a slight majority of the Democrat vote (with the rump 1936 Dem vote being fairly conservative) etc; Merriam got 90% of the Olson Farmer-Labor/Progressive vote and a sizeable minority of America First and Socialist votes (the rest not voting) and a share of Democrat votes too. It was quite satisfying how those figures tracked into both an incredibly close race, but also results that feel fairly realistic and the actual in-game result.
As for the rest of the update, after big successes over the spring and summer, the AUS has spent this period solely on the defensive with major attacks in Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina and the Mid West - although it has largely been holding the line. We shall see if they can regain some momentum at the end of the year.
The idea of California becoming this hotbed for free market ideology isn't something out of the official KR lore, but is an idea I've had for a very long time and have always found really interesting. I particularly like the idea of the Chicago School developing in California - the foundation of that school of economics was starting to come together in this period in OTL, but of course Chicago is hardly going to be a suitable location for that intellectual current to emerge in 1930s KR America - why not Berkley? With that mix of a more socially liberal atmosphere (with Earl Warren taking on elements of racial discrimination that are still strong in the west), a modernist energy associated with the incredible economic dynamism of mid-century California and this fizzing hotbed of right wing economic ideology - you can see a sort of proto-libertarian school of thought starting to show its first greenshoots.
"Remember Chicago" is the best recruiting sergeant the syndicalists ever had. There remain dozens of large, heavily syndicalist cities in Red hands - the Longists will need to avoid pushing their defenders into seeing the defence of every one as a life or death battle.
As for the Christian Nationalists - there is more we shall hear from them in future updates.
Long himself is a crucial part of the wider movement. There's no one who could act as a direct replacement, with the charisma, popular appeal and ability to hold all key factions together. Whether his death would lead it all to collapse is another question, but a chaotic struggle to replace him would be a certainty. You may be aware that there are a couple possible paths in KR that do lead to his assassination as well.
I will have to give the Kaiserredux version of the ACW a go at some point, I've seen screenshots of the more splintered scene you get but don't know much of the detail around it. I don't necessarily have a problem with the idea of Long being rooted in that Southern base and sharing power with Southern conservatives - but I can see the argument for splitting them up. A Black Belt revolter is something I think they really lack in KR - there should be some option for syndicalists to stoke rebellion among Southern Blacks in some way or another to create that real danger for the AUS of a threat from within. New England is always an interesting inclusion in the conflict - although when you get to a certain number of factions it starts to become hard to keep up with them all!
We will return to look at how this break with the Legion and Smith's Christian Nationalists shape Baton Rouge America in future updates. The worst elements of the Longist movement are now on the outside looking in - time will tell whether that is a more or less dangerous place for Huey to have put them.
As for the rest of the update, after big successes over the spring and summer, the AUS has spent this period solely on the defensive with major attacks in Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina and the Mid West - although it has largely been holding the line. We shall see if they can regain some momentum at the end of the year.
The idea of California becoming this hotbed for free market ideology isn't something out of the official KR lore, but is an idea I've had for a very long time and have always found really interesting. I particularly like the idea of the Chicago School developing in California - the foundation of that school of economics was starting to come together in this period in OTL, but of course Chicago is hardly going to be a suitable location for that intellectual current to emerge in 1930s KR America - why not Berkley? With that mix of a more socially liberal atmosphere (with Earl Warren taking on elements of racial discrimination that are still strong in the west), a modernist energy associated with the incredible economic dynamism of mid-century California and this fizzing hotbed of right wing economic ideology - you can see a sort of proto-libertarian school of thought starting to show its first greenshoots.
"Remember Chicago" is the best recruiting sergeant the syndicalists ever had. There remain dozens of large, heavily syndicalist cities in Red hands - the Longists will need to avoid pushing their defenders into seeing the defence of every one as a life or death battle.
As for the Christian Nationalists - there is more we shall hear from them in future updates
. Long himself is a crucial part of the wider movement. There's no one who could act as a direct replacement, with the charisma, popular appeal and ability to hold all key factions together. Whether his death would lead it all to collapse is another question, but a chaotic struggle to replace him would be a certainty. You may be aware that there are a couple possible paths in KR that do lead to his assassination as well.
I will have to give the Kaiserredux version of the ACW a go at some point, I've seen screenshots of the more splintered scene you get but don't know much of the detail around it. I don't necessarily have a problem with the idea of Long being rooted in that Southern base and sharing power with Southern conservatives - but I can see the argument for splitting them up. A Black Belt revolter is something I think they really lack in KR - there should be some option for syndicalists to stoke rebellion among Southern Blacks in some way or another to create that real danger for the AUS of a threat from within. New England is always an interesting inclusion in the conflict - although when you get to a certain number of factions it starts to become hard to keep up with them all!
We will return to look at how this break with the Legion and Smith's Christian Nationalists shape Baton Rouge America in future updates. The worst elements of the Longist movement are now on the outside looking in - time will tell whether that is a more or less dangerous place for Huey to have put them.
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It was nice to get a closer look at the PSA's internal politics. Are the Democrats still a party (if probably a rump one) over there, or have they been supplanted everywhere in the former United States?
Things aren't going amazing for the AUS. How bad is the front in North Carolina?
Things aren't going amazing for the AUS. How bad is the front in North Carolina?
I actually really like this idea. Whilst now the PSA is just the democratic tag in opposition to the authoritarianism of the USA under MacArthur, it used to be just a breakwaway state. PSA nationalism was very much something fueled by the relative isolation of the three Pacific states from the misery affecting the US since 1925. Trade with China, with a stability enforced by German arms since the Intervention, is very much a source of wealth for the West. It's a natural place, one profiting from free trade, to really devellop this idea of a offshoot of the Austrian School. And, as you said, it really fits with this modernist energy going on there.
I consider it a very nice continuation in spirit of the older versions of KR. The (in)famous Deal with the Devil is back. Long is this beautifull pragmatist, and in the oldest versions of KR the AUS occupied the space that it does in HotB and the USA was concentrated in the South. The Black Belt revolter is also really a doozy. Can basically go with any political path and be a ally for any of the tags except the CAR. Though the CAR does have content about the new guard of the far right and the Klan working together with certain sections of Black leadership. It's honestly worth just taking a look at once since it introduces a lot of more niche historical figures and gives them a time to shine.