There is always Halleck of Indiana.... At least for VP.
I'd offer Reagan, but he could be a Conservative Democrat here for all we know due to the PoD.
People have suggested Reagan before but there are two problems with that. First, He would historically not have entered politics at this point. While that could be explained away by the point of divergence, there is another challenge. That challenge is that he was still a Democrat in 1960, and actually endorsed Nixon's candidacy for President.
First: Cambodia is worth $15,000. I find that funny for some reason. :laugh:
Second: I nominate Nelson Rockefeller to be the Republican who will lose to President Truman.
Please let me know what you decide to do about the election via PM and I will gladly make you another election map.
I myself am considering either going semi-historical and using Nixon or going with an alternate scenario and using Rockefeller. The main problem with Nixon is that his main claim to fame in this timeline is his stint in the senate and two failed VP runs.
Ooh nice to see this back, with Eternal Emperor-President Truman benevolently ruling all until the glorious mushroom cloud will take us to the Mid-Western farm in the sky. I say that as a Truman fan of course.
I imagine in this 1960, de Gaulle would settle for a VW with a full tank of gas for Cambodia!
I think his people might have a few issues with that trade though.
General Patton was experiencing something he had not experienced since the beginning of the European Campaign: Defeat. In a few short weeks, he had watched his brilliant campaign North of the Yellow River fall apart. What had started as a brilliant campaign aimed at breaking the stalemate on the Yellow River had now become a fight for survival, as he and his men were now cut off behind enemy lines and in danger of being destroyed. They had been informed that Stillwell was ordering a transport fleet to the area so they would be able to retreat if they had to but the indignity of it all still grated on Patton. For a man who had gone from strength to strength and from victory to victory ever since the breakout from Spain, this was not how he believed his campaigns were supposed to go. This campaign was his brainchild and thus the failure was all the more personal. to make matters worse, Bradley, his longtime rival, had seized upon this and had started making statements that either his victories in the war in Europe had made him overconfident or that maybe he was not the military genius people seemed to believe he was. Normally, this would not have bothered him too much except the allocations of overconfidence had actually hit a little to close to home. The truth of the matter was, since he had finally managed to break out of Spain, the war had largely gone his way and he had not had to face any real adversity. Patton was beginning to think that this had caused him to get to used to victory and to just expect his efforts to always bare fruit. The only way to silence both his own concerns and the accusations of Bradley was to come up with a way to fix this disaster. However, in his zeal to reach the coast during the opening months of the campaign, his men were tired and demoralized. They needed a break and he could ill afford to give them one. Therefore, it was incredibly likely that he and his men would have to be evacuated before long. If that happened, the city of Tianjin might fall back into Japanese hands and the Americans would lose any chance at preventing the Japanese forces in Yucheng from escaping North. If, however, fresh troops could be brought into replace his, the Americans might be able to buy enough time for the forces advancing towards them from the southwest to break through the encirclement, thus salvaging his plan. It was a gamble, but Patton had never been afraid of such moves. Still, he determined to hold on as long as possible in hopes that he would not need to enact this plan.
As it turned out, the back up plan would prove very necessary not long after, as he and his men were soon under a brutal attack by the Japanese. Outnumbered and exhausted from the long march, it soon became apparent that they would not be able to hold and Patton gave the order to retreat to the ships.
Patton could only hope that Stillwell would give him one more chance to salvage his campaign and thus endorse his plan b.
While the campaign in China hung in the balance, the eyes of everyone would being to fix on the Japanese Home Islands. This was because the Americans had managed to secure the Nagoya region. That meant that the Americans were now in a position to march on the beating heart of the Japanese Empire, the city of Tokyo itself. MacArthur, not wanting to give the Japanese any more time to fortify the capital then was absolutely necessary, ordered the attack to commence immediately. What followed was a battle that would rival the battle of Hiroshima in ferocity. The Japanese soliders, while outnumbered, were fighting under the eyes of their emperor and were fighting to defend not only their capital, but their emperor as well. As such, they were determined to hold the city no matter what. Thus, the Japanese soldiers fought like demons spawned from hell, refusing to give up a single inch of ground. The Japanese would not retreat or fall back for anything and there were even rumors of Japanese soldiers to weak to stand having themselves propped up against the nearest wall, strapped to light posts, or just leaning against the nearest upright object and continuing to fire against the Americans. This led to wild, but false rumors, of dead men who continued to fire their weapons like vengeful spirits. The Japanese soldiers in general would keep shooting until they had run out of ammo and even then, they would refuse to give up their positions, either launching devastating banzai charges against the American lines or an even more devious solution. The Japanese soldiers would all fall silent, attempting to sucker the Americans into believing that they had killed them. Then, when the Americans approached the position and got close enough, the Japanese, who would often play dead to enhance the illusion, would spring up and attack, using the momentary shock of the American soldiers to close the distance and try and kill them with bayonets. Some units even reported Japanese forces allowing the Americans to pass by them, only to get up after the Americans had taken up new positions and attack them from behind with bayonets. As the Americans got closer and closer to the heart of Tokyo and the Imperial Palace itself, the resistance only got more and more fierce. The Japanese were determined not to let the Imperial Palace be "desecrated by the footsteps of the accursed American devils", and thus they fought with dogged resistance. Soon, American forces began to quip that it was not enough to kill the Japanese soldiers, you then had to go up and knock them over, so determined was the Japanese defense of the palace. As the battle engulfed the halls of the Imperial Palace, the Japanese would conduct brutal ambushes, hiding behind every corner and generally anything large enough for them to hide behind, popping out only when the Americans were at point blank range in order to conserve ammo and maximize casualties. The Japanese considered it an honor to die defending the Palace and had been told by their commanders that any soldier who fell defending the palace would gain high favor with the Gods and would thus live like Kings in the afterlife and telling them that the Emperor had promised to build and dedicate a shrine to every soldier who died defending the Palace (He hadn't, but the soldiers did not know that). However, despite the heroism of the Japanese soldiers, the battle was never going to end in anything other then a victory. There were simply too many Americans and not enough Japanese to hold the city and they had not had enough time to fortify the city to compensate for their lack of numbers. Thus, after several hours of the most brutal fighting that the Americans had seen, they finally managed to seize the city of Tokyo. This news was greeted with massive amounts of fanfare throughout the country. Truman himself, upon hearing of the capture of the city, proclaimed the war won and the rest of the fighting to be "clean up". However, if the war was over, no one had told the Japanese, as they continued to fight with just as much ferocity. Apparantly, the fact that they no longer had any hope of winning the war was completely lost on them. Their, was however, one exception: The Emperor himself. The Emperor of Japan was becoming more and more disillusioned with the war with each passing day. Time after time he watched the flower of Japanese youth sacrifice itself on the altar of Japanese pride and ambitions to no avail. To him, if to no one else in his government, it was glaringly obvious that Japan was not going to win the war and that all of the brave Japanese soldiers dying in the battles with the Americans were dying for nothing. Tired of watching his people get slaughtered in a war that was clearly going to end in a defeat, he made an announcement to his government shortly after the defeat in Tokyo that he would be seeking a peace with the Americans. "Enough men have died for this hopeless war and I will no longer sit by and watch my people get killed over and over for nothing. This war has got to end and I will be the one to end it." These were the words he delivered to his shocked cabinet from his provisional capital in Sendai. However, the Emperor had made a critical error. Given the huge amount of respect and reverence placed on the position of Emperor, Hirohito had assumed that his cabinet members would all fall in line once he made a clear statement of his will. He had been wrong. While they all proclaimed that they would do as he asked, they began plotting stop him. While the battle for Japan was likely going to be lost, these men still hoped the Japanese Army would be able to fight on in China. In addition, they believed, to a man, that the only surrender the Americans would accept would be an unconditional surrender, and that was simply something they were unwilling to give. To them, to accept peace under such circumstances would be the very height of humiliation and it would render all the sacrifices of the soldiers who had fought and died for the empire meaningless. Surely, they believed, these men would rather die honorably fighting to defend their emperor then have themselves be betrayed like this by the person they trusted most. Furthermore, they also feared the reaction of the Japanese people. Several decades of propaganda meant that an entire generation had grown up absolutely believing the Japanese to be a superior people and being extremely distrustful, even downright hating and fearing in some cases, foreigners. They had been repeatedly told that they could expect nothing but horribly painful death at the hands of the Americans for so long that many, if not most, Japanese, came to believe that they were the spawn of the devil himself. Now, after all that propaganda had poisoned them into thinking that being defeated by the Americans was a fate worse then death, they would be told that their government was going to simply give up, basically abandoning them to their fates. To them, this might seem like the ultimate betrayal from the man they had been taught to worship as a God, who was now selling them out to the devil. Given this, it would not be hard to imagine that they might chose to reject the surrender and, quite possibly, turn on the government. That the Emperor seemed to be completely blind to the very real possibility of the monster they had intentionally created now trying to eat them alive shocked them. Whether this would have actually happened has since become a matter of some debate, but what mattered was that, to the Japanese Cabinet, it was a threat that was all too real. In order to save themselves, and the Emperor, from what they perceived to be his own ignorance, they began plotting against him. The plan was simple. Before the Emperor could communicate his wish to surrender to the Allies and the Japanese people, the Japanese High Command would marshal a select force of troops, whose loyalty they could count on absolutely. They would then storm the temporary residence of the Emperor, putting him under house arrest. Unfortunately for them, the Emperor got word of their intentions by way of a soldier who still remained loyal to him. Realizing that their was no time to stop the coup, the Emperor fled the city, escaping just moments before the lead elements of the rebels entered his compound. Realizing that the Emperor had escaped, the plotters realized they had to act fast. If the Emperor managed to get to a broadcasting station or find his way to a unit sympathetic to their cause, he could inform the nation of what had happened. If that happened, one of two things would happen. The first was that the people would rally behind their emperor, which would see all the plotters quickly parted with their heads. The second was that the people, outraged that the Emperor would even consider surrender, in which case, he had just signed his own death warrant. While the plotters could assuredly use the rancor against surrender to their advantage, they still did not relish the idea of the Emperor, who they still professed loyalty to, being murdered by his people. Furthermore, letting the Emperor make such a proclamation would be finding out the hard way which of them was right and none of them liked the idea of suddenly being shorter by a head if they lost that particular gamble. In order to prevent this, therefore, they circulated a message to all army units and radio stations stating that their had been a coup against the emperor and that the Emperor had, unfortunately been killed. They further stated that the plotters had planned to install an imposter on the throne and use him as their puppet and that the imposter had escaped. When the Emperor, who was traveling incognito to try and reach an army unit he believed still remained loyal, heard the broadcast, he immediately realized that any hope of taking back control of the country from the instigators of the coup was now gone. Without any way of proving his identity as the Emperor, any army units he might approach would assume he was the imposter, as would any radio station he attempted to broadcast from. However, he had no intention of turning himself in. Thus, he decided that he would lay low and see if an opportunity presented itself to retake his country, or at least exact revenge on those who had stolen it from him.
While the capture of Tokyo briefly drew the attention of the American people, the attention of General Stilwell and Patton remained fixed on the city of Tianjin. With the retreat from the city, they would have to hold out by any means necessary, but no one knew how best to do that. While Patton wanted to personally lead his men back into the city by sea, his men were to exhausted to do it. Thus, it was decided that Admiral Leahy would take General Shepherd back into the city. soon after, he arrived, Shepherd went on the offensive, marching on Shijizhuang to try and break out of the encirclement.
Meanwhile, back in Japan, MacArthur's men, after taking a brief rest, are ordered to commence an attack against the Fukushima region. Despite valiant resistance from the Japanese, they lose the battle and they are forced to withdraw.
However, soon after the attack succeeds in driving off the Japanese, American lead elements make a remarkable discovery. While in the process of securing the province, they stumble across the fugitive Emperor Hirohito. Mistaking him for a Japanese officer, they send him back to be interrogated. During interrogation, he reveals his identity to the Americans. The Americans are of course skeptical, so they send for a member of the diplomatic corps that had met with the Emperor shortly before to confirm or deny it. Upon meeting him, he confirms that it is indeed the Emperor. Shocked and unsure on what to do with the man, they send word back to MacArthur and the President inquiring on what to do with him. Instantly, the two men have a meeting to determine what to do with their windfall. They had heard the announcement of the Emperor's death, and this could definitely be used to embarrass the Japanese government. Furthermore, a direct appeal from the Emperor to the people in the conquered territories might be enough to calm them and get them to stop causing problems. Still, the attraction to have the Emperor put on trial was strong. Eventually, they decided to see if they could make use of the Emperor. Thus, MacArthur summons him to a meeting in the Imperial Palace, which he had appropriated as his headquarters. The irony of having the Emperor summoned to a meeting in his former home was not lost on either of them. It is then that the General tells the Emperor that if he will make an appeal to his people not to resist the Americans, then he will be given immunity from prosecution after the war. The Emperor then states that he would be more then willing to do so and also states that he will actually do more then that, by urging them to reject the Japanese Government. Curious as to how vehemently he seemed to hate his former Cabinet and as to why they lied about his death, MacArthur asked why the Emperor had found himself hiding out in Fukushima. The Emperor then relates the tale about the coup attempt and how he had planned to surrender to the Americans and end the war. MacArthur asks him to tell the people just that, to which the Emperor wholeheartedly agrees.
Soon thereafter, the announcement is made. The people meet the announcement with mixed emotions. Here is the man they had been brought up to worship as a god telling them of his plan to surrender to the hated Americans. Many are resentful of the thought of the Japanese even considering surrender. However, many still are outraged that the Cabinet would actually attempt to kill him (They hadn't, but he had told them they had) outraged many at the Cabinet. However, another factor that causes many to rally behind the Emperor is that the thumping lie of the Cabinet is now revealed to them. This blatant lie endears many to the Emperor. Thus, there are now few who remain willing to fight for the government that, either was willing to abandon them if they disagreed with the Emperors decision, or blatantly lied to them, if they agreed with the Emperor. However, while the announcement proves a great help in reducing partisan attacks, it has little effect in the areas still under Japanese control, as the Cabinet jams the broadcast hard after receiving it and then loudly proclaims that it is the imposter who has somehow taken in the Americans. On the Mainland, where some soldiers in areas that signals from Japan cannot reach had not even heard of the coup, the announcement also goes unheard as the Americans see no need in trying to project it into Japanese held territory when the locals are already sympathetic to the Americans.
While all of this is happening in Japan, the campaign in China continues to rage. After meeting surprising success early in his attack, General Shepherd now finds himself on the wrong end of a massive Japanese counterattack, forcing him to withdraw.
Determined to hold out until the forces advancing from the interior can break through to the city of Tianjin, the Americans hurredly make arrangements to bring in yet more reinforcements.
Back in Japan, The Japanese seem to now be totally unable to stop the Americans, no unencumbered by having to put down the once massive partisan activity taking place in their rears. a whirlwind offensive sees both the regions of Niigata and Shikoku fall to the Americans.
With this success, the Japanese holdouts on the Island of Honshu are driven into the rugged Tohoku region. The Japanese are now driven to the fringes of the largest of the main islands, hoping to make use of the rugged mountainous terrain to allow them to hold off the Americans, or even be able to carry out guerrilla attacks in the area. However, MacArthur, unwilling to give the Japanese time to dig in and prepare their troops for these two eventualities, does not even stop the offensive to give his troops a rest after the fall of Niigata and Fukushima. First, the area of Akita is assaulted. Despite making excellent use of the Mountains to hold off the Americans, carrying out hit and run attacks. However, without having time to set up proper defenses, the only thing this succeeds in doing is putting off the inevitable, as the Japanese defenders are eventually hunted down and destroyed.
This then left the Japanese forces in the city of Sendai as the only Japanese forces left on the Island of Honshu. As such, MacArthur decides to not leave anything to chance, throws everything he has available into the attack. Despite the Japanese proving to be adept at urban warfare, they simply don't have the manpower or the firepower to hold out and the defenders are eventually destroyed.
With the success of these offensives, their now remain no Japanese soldiers left on the Islands of Honshu or Shikoku. This means that once the regions of Shikoku, Akita, and Sendai are secured, Japanese presence on the Islands will be totally confined to the island of Hokkaido, which is not expected to hold out long. The Americans have thus largely succeeded in cutting the beating heart out of the Japanese empire, now all that remains is to see if the Japanese soldiers can maintain their will to fight with their homeland lost.
While MacArthur goes from success to success in the Campaign for the Home Islands, Stillwell and Patton finally get some good news when the Americans finally manage to take the region of Shijizhuang, thus managing to break the through to the beleaguered city of Tianjin. Further, since the Japanese in Yucheng had not had time to escape before this happened,
32 divisions of Japanese soldiers are now trapped in the Yucheng region. Not wanting to waste this opportunity, an attack is immediately ordered, with Stillwell and Patton throwing everything they have at the Japanese defenders. The Japanese fight desperately to hold onto the city, knowing that there can be no escape and determined to sell their lives as dearly as possible. Despite mounting casualties to the fanatical Japanese soldiers, Stillwell refuses to let this opportunity escape him and thus resists all requests to call off the attack. Finally, after several hours of brutal street to street combat, the Japanese soldiers, now completely out of ammunition, are wiped out. The Japanese forces have lost 32 divisions that they could not afford to lose. This is a massive blow to Japanese forces. The only question that remains is whether it will be the fatal blow to the Japanese forces in China.