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*Subscribes* - Looks interesting so I'm going to follow along even if RL means I won't have to much chance to comment right now.
 
Chapter thirteen: Dirty hands

Robert Worth Bingham, US ambassador to Great Britain from 1933 to 1937, had pushed for stronger ties between the United States and Great Britain during his ambassadorship, and vocally opposed the rise of Comunism in the 1930s. Thus he was mightly surprised when he returned to the United States, after being succeeded in the post by Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr, and found the country in a state of uproar. The entire nation was stunned and Bingham, ill and old as he was, couldn't stop trembling when he was handed that morning’s Washington Post. The enormous headline leapt out at his eyes. “Soviet Spy Ring Broken in Washington.” The text was even more shocking: Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace was, apparently, implicated in the scandal. It certainly wouldn't be politics as usual anymore.

Apparently, it all began in March 1937, when the Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers defected. The beginning of Stalin's Great Purge had demoralized Chambers, who was also fearful for his own life after the disappearance of his friend and fellow spy Juliet Poyntz in the United States. Chambers, in his meetings with the FBI named 18 current and former government employees as spies or Communist sympathizers. Many names mentioned were already under suspicion, but some were more significant and surprising: Alger Hiss, his brother Donald Hiss, and Laurence Duggan (all respected, mid-level officials in the State Department) and Lauchlin Currie, a special assistant to Franklin Roosevelt. Then Walter Krivitsky also defected and the FBI began to take Chambers seriously (1).

The Treasury Department had been successfully penetrated by nearly a dozen Soviet agents or information sources, including Harold Glasser and his superior, Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of the treasury and the second most influential official in the department (2). Then the FBI began rounding up the spies and all possible “associates” in that dangerous bussines. And, somehow, Wallace found himself accused by the FBI's findings.

ill_NewspaperSpy.jpg

“CoMmIeS, CoMmIeS EvERyWhErEeEeEeEe!!!!”
At once the leaders of the Republican party, smelling blood, gathered to determine the future of their party, and possibly the nation. They had an opportunity, many of them felt, one that couldn’t be wasted. The Roosevelt administration and the Democrats were no longer all-powerful. There were small cracks on the surface, cracks that perhaps could be widened and used. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, a die-hard anti-Communist, wanted to exploit the connections between Roosevelt and the Soviet Union. Some voices disagreed with the young senator. For all his faults, Roosevelt was no fool (3). They were right. The President reacted first and fired Wallace at once and replaced him with Samuel S.Chapman, former vice chairman of the armed services defense committee and head of the “hardliners” of the Democrat Party (4).

Meanwhile, the FBI would remain busy looking for Communist spies for a long time.



(1) Again I've rushed things a bit...
(2) There goes the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund....
(3) I do wonder... with Wallace out of the race, will the Democrats refrain from releasing information about Wendell Willkie's rumored extramarital affair with Irita Van Doren in the 1940's elections?
(4) Let's hope that Chapman won't go for a sea trip around Hawai on December 7th, 1941...




@Mr. Santiago: The usual bussiness and rivalries, you know. Brazil is going a bit red, but Washington is looking closely.

@El Pip: True, the RN has no reason to complain -only to guess what to do with so many destroyers...-. About the 'interwar' destroyers... two explanations, for you to choose:

a) the RN has created a paranormal section that foresees the future
b) someone decided that, after the events in Eastern Europe, war is just a question of time.

Now I wonder... if the Admiralty is concerned now with foreign policy, what does the Foreign Office do now? To take care about the army? And the Chancellor of the Exchequer? Oh dear.

@Peti Niebla: Done, dear Peti.

@Carlstadt Boy: Indeed they do!

@trekaddict: I will only say that some modernized SSHB that has featured in another AAR will find the Queenies and the Hood and all the happy boys of the Home Fleet want to have some words with her and the rest of the Japanese navy. Once the Soviet one has been sent to rest in the bottom of the Barents sea, of course. Or will I leave that for the Bismarck? Choices, so many choices...

@Nathan Madien: I'm glad. Let's hope that you enjoy this chapter too. It's not what I planned initially, but I decided in the last minute to reduce damage and get Wallace stoned sooner than expected.

@PrawnStar: Don't worry. I know you're lurking around ;)
 
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Poor Wallace, he was a likeable guy. And the Republican party... some things never change :/
 
Well the problem with TTL is there might not be a USS Nimitz, so the Senator might still disappear only that this time there is no one to alert the authorities once the 80s roll around.
 
Interesting read so far, consider me subscribed.

Do keep Chamberlain in check though ;).
 
A few less Commies around the place can only be a good thing, plus no Dexter White means something useful might come out of any TTL Bretton Woods style meeting. I am of course using the definition of useful which means 'good for Britain', but then what other definition is there? :D
 
Seeing Wallace get kicked to the curb brought a smile to my face. :)

(3) I do wonder... with Wallace out of the race, will the Democrats refrain from releasing information about Wendell Willkie's rumored extramarital affair with Irita Van Doren in the 1940's elections?

I don't think the Democrats would release that kind of information. Historically, the Democrats used that threat to make a quid quo pro deal with the Republicans to keep Wallace's letters to themselves. With Wallace gone, I don't see the Democrats releasing that information for two reasons:
1.) Private lives back then were considered to be private lives.
2.) Releasing the information could backfire on the Democrats. If Willkie is smart enough, he could turn around the argument by saying, "Look! I want to talk about the issues! The Democrats don't! If they did, they wouldn't be digging up scandalous dirt about me!"

Of course, it would be hypocritical for FDR to attack Willkie's extramartial affair considering Roosevelt isn't exactly a role model for staying faithful to your wife. *coughlucymercercough*
 
Chapter fourteen: The shame of Prague

The silent attitude of No 10 to the Eastern events of 1936 caused a Liberal wave of criticism in the early months of 1937. Even if the Foreign Office had expressed that the government deeply deplored the Soviet actions in helping to erode the peace and order in Eastern Europe, for the Liberals it was not enough. Sir Archibald Sinclair, the Liberal shadow Foreign Secretary, argued that the imposition of economic and financial sanctions against the USSR by the League of Nations should be given serious consideration. He even called for an Anglo-French treaty and condemned the weakness of the government's response and warned of the threat of the Soviet expansionism.

When Winston Churchill added his disquiet to the Liberal criticism, Neville Chamberlain began to feel slightly angered, the more when Churchill asked if Czechoslovakia was to be the next target of Communist expansionism. Churchill went as far as calling for an alliance with all the countries threatened by the USSR, including France and Italy. Britain's honour and European security depended, Churchill said, on the system of international treaties and alliances. Britain must make clear its commitment to resist all acts of aggression, he ended. Chamberlain replied that the government would not change its foreign policy, which was in the country's best interest, and remembered to his audience that he had started a process of reorganization, modernization and improvement of the British Armed Forces.

Meanwhile, that July 1937 a small incident perturbed the inner peace of the Liberal Party when sir Richard Stafford Cripps, who had been the Liberal Solicitor-General in the 1920s, said he did not "believe it would be a bad thing for the British working class if the USSR ever defeated us". As if shooting himself on the foot in this preposterous way wasn't bad enough, he also opposed British rearmament in that delicate moment. The Liberals wasted no time to dissociate themselves from Cripps and, eventually, he was expelled from the party by late 1937, when he crossed the floor and joined the Labour Party, just to be expelled from it in 1940 for his radical ideas. [1]

SirStaffordCripps.jpg

Sir Stafford Cripps: the Man with a Mouth too Big for his time.

It is true that Cripps choose the worst moment to express his opinions about the USSR, as by then the question of Czechoslovakia was too much alive. It was obvious that Stalin was trying to repeat the bully tactics that had worked so well in Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria. Ironically, of all the new states established in central Europe after 1918, only Czechoslovakia preserved a democratic government by 1937 and, despite regional disparities, its level of development was much higher than that of her neighboring states. However, those regional disparities offered Stalin the key to take control of the country.

While the German minority of the Sudentenland began to fall in line with the radical Nationalist and pro-German politician Konrad Henlein and the Ukrainian nationalists, led by Avhustyn Voloshyn (2), threatened to proclaim an independent Carpatho-Ukraine, Stalin played with the fears of president Edvard Beneš and the rest of the nation: he simply propelled (by manipulation and bribes) to the top ranks of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Komunistická strana Ceskoslovenska, KSC) two moderate figures which, to be precise, were not quite "Stalinists", so to speak: Elias Korh and Teodor Escherich (3), two "outsiders" of Czech politics that Stalin used with Machiavellian precision to promote a moderate and peaceful vision of the KSC just the time he needed to persuade the Czech and Slovak voters to vote them into power as the only sensitive alternative to the chaos that Henlein and Voloshyn and the Bene's impotence threatened to unleash. And, hardly two weeks after the General elections of July 1937, both Korh and Escherich were removed from power and Klement Gottwald, the true leader of the KSC, became prime minister and president of Czechoslovakia.

Thus was born the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and democracy was fooled again. This time, Stalin made a small miscalculation. The manipulation of the voters had been so obvious, the "betrayal" so clear that Chamberlain rose in anger in London (not to mention the furious roar heard in Berlin): the British Prime Minister felt so insulted and betrayed by Stalin that he began to take a much harder line against the USSR: he immediately began to mobilize the British Empire and set it on a war footing. France, Germany and Italy did the same. [4]

ScreenSave11.jpg

What was going on in Berlin meanwhile?


[1] And thus I got rid of him.
[2] He ended his days in the Butyrka prison of Moscow in this ATL, too.
[3] Zombies, zombies everywhere... if any of my readers can fuc*ing explain to me what the hell a German-Austrian pediatrician is doing as president of the Czech government, I'll be mightly obliged. I won't bother to mention that he died in 1911
[4] So to speak, Prague going Commie had the same effect that the German occupation of Czechoslovakia of March 1939.


[GAME EFFECTS: Czechoslovakia goes Commie in 1937 and the Western Powers move a bit into war footing, but not too much]

@Milites: At least I didn't kill him. About the GOPs... well... you summed it up quite nicely :laugh:

@trekaddict: Too true... I'll keep him away from the sea, just in case,.:laugh:

@FlyingDutchie: Old Nev is quite calm, as you can see in this update. Angered and a bit pissed off, but calm, anyway.

@El Pip: None I can think of, dear sir.:D

@Nathan Madien: I knew you would be happy with that. And you've given me some good reasons for the Dems to keep quiet about that info :D:D
 
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When does the inevitable state visit by the German Kaiser on an (for us) historically significant date happen?
 
Speaking of which, what has Wilfred Owen been doing these past few years? And might we see a German civil war with the Gay Comminazis under Ernst Rohm fighting the Kasier? Actually thinking of impending war between Allied Europe and the USSR I can't help but imagine that you are only listening to this song over and over.
 
Oh no! Stalin made Chamberlain mad! Oh, he's asking for it now! :p

[3] Zombies, zombies everywhere... if any of my readers can fuc*ing explain to me what the hell a German-Austrian pediatrician is doing as president of the Czech government, I'll be mightly obliged. I won't bother to mention that he died in 1911

I think someone at Paradox loves that 1980s film in which two guys pretend their dead boss is alive and decided to incorporate that movie into HOI.
 
I think someone at Paradox loves that 1980s film in which two guys pretend their dead boss is alive and decided to incorporate that movie into HOI.

Which film? Moon over Parador?

Also I'm eager to see what an angered Chamberlain does,
 
[3] Zombies, zombies everywhere... if any of my readers can fuc*ing explain to me what the hell a German-Austrian pediatrician is doing as president of the Czech government, I'll be mightly obliged. I won't bother to mention that he died in 1911
Well "Escherich" is in fact a Soviet agent who has just assumed the name of a long-dead German-Austrian paediatrician as part of his cover, by pretending to be the discoverer of E-coli he can acquire an air of professionalism and intelligence and thus look all the more electable. Any difficult questions like 'Aren't you supposed to be dead?' can be brushed aside and blamed on the confusion in post-war Austria, and to be fair that was a hell of a confusing place. Besides who in Czechoslovakia would be so up to speed on the deaths of pre-war foreign paediatricians to be able to ask that question in the first place?

That or it's the usual laziness. It's probably that isn't it? I mean they even forgot the 'h' from his first name; 'Teodor'

I have to agree it's a horrible (if accurate) picture of Cripps and proof that evil is not always banal.
 
Chapter fifteen: The old warhorse

Germany had endured a long and painful ordeal after the war, as the crisis of 1922 proved: that year Germany claimed it could no longer afford the reparations payments required by the Versailles Treaty. Then Walther Rathenau, the Foreign Minister, and Aristide Briand, the French Prime Minister, came to an agreement over the payments (1), agreement that would, eventually, result in the Dawes Plan of 1924 and the withdrawal of all Allied troops from Germany over the course of 1925. Thus started the Goldene Zwanziger ("Golden Twenties"), a period of civil calm and improved economic conditions: the inflationary spiral broke down and the new currency, the Reichsmark, contributed to the growing level of international confidence in the German economy. The diplomatic relations with the USSR improved with the Treaty of Berlin (1925) and the Locarno Treaties also helped to bring Britain, France, Italy, Belgium and Germany slightly closer. The improvement in Germany's fortune, led by Chancellor Karl Jarres, was shown in 1926 when the Reich was admitted to the League of Nations as a permanent member.

bhsi1.jpg

Karl Jarres, German Reichschancellor (from 1925 to 1933)

The growing dependence on American finance proved dangerous as Germany was one of the worst hit nations in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, as the Dawes Plan was cancelled. Those were hard times for the Reich, but Britain eased the situation by grating some loans that, for a short while, helped the German economy. The German situation only continued to worsen, however, and by the end of 1930 almost three million Germans were unemployed. In 1931 it was agreed that the Saar would be reunited with Germany, in spite of the French and Belgian opposition, thanks to the pressure exercised by the United Kingdom and the United States (which needed the French to pay their debts, and Paris, in turn, needed the German money to do so).

Then came the political bickering between the conservative party of von Papen, the social-democrat of Wels and the Zentrumspartei led by Brunning, all of them too busy to replace Jarres as Reichschancellor, which was solved by the unexpected victory of Gustav Stresseman's German People's Party (Deutsche Volkspartei, or DVP) in the elections of 1933 (1). Stresseman's victory marked the beginning of a bitter-sweet period, marked by the rise in Czechoslovakia of the Deutsche Nationalpartei Böhmens, a nationalist party led by Konrad Henlein, which became a source of endless embarrasement for Berlin until the Communist takeover; the Anschluss and the success of the Disarmement conferences of 1933 and 1936, which lifted the last restrictions over the German military imposed by the Treaty of Versailles.

locarno_signataires.jpg

The end of the Locarno Conference: here we can see Vittorio Scialoja (the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs), Gustav Stresseman; Prime Minister Baldwin, Lord and Lady Chamberlain -2-; Edvard Beneš (Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia), Aristide Briand (Prime Minister of France), Aleksander Skrzyński (Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland) and Emile Vandervelve (Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belgium)
The worse bad news that Stresseman had to face was Italy's siding with France and Balbo's germanophobia. Having the British Empire backing Germany simply eclipsed this minor problem and thus Stresseman could devote himself to make Germany a true power able to defy the Soviet threat side by side with London. Enemies twenty years ago, now allied by the circunstances, one may think. Germany could boast of a quite strong economy. In fact, the Reich was enjoying a quite noticeable economic growth which had started around 1933 (the Wirtschaftswunder or "Economic Miracle"). Industrial production doubled from 1930 to 1935, and gross national product grew at a rate of nine or 10% per year. The recovery had been accelerated by Jarre's currency reform (June 1931) and the British loans, plues the breaking down of trade barriers.

The lifting of the military restrictions and this economic growth made possible that, by late 1937, the German army was one of the most powerful of the Continent. The Deutsches Reichsheer, once the armies of Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg were merged with the "Prussian" army, fielded, by December 1937, 52 active divisions -six of them armoured (3)-. It had endured a long reform that had modernized its structures. The Grosses Generalstab, which towards the end of World War had almost wholly usurped the political power of the state, saw its influence diminished by the creation of separate general headquarters by the three branches of the armed forces (the Oberkommando des Heeres, the Oberkommando der Marine and the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe, which were coordinated by the Grosses Generalstab and answered directly to the Kaiser and the Reichschancellor.

220px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-W0402-504_Generaloberst_Werner_von_Blomberg.jpg

Werner von Blomberg, head of the Grosses Generalstab from 1933 to 1937)

The defeat in the war had led to a change in strategies, too. The vicious strife of the trenches had left a deep mark in the soul of the generals. After 1918, the German Army furthered concepts pioneered during World War I, combining ground (Heer) and Air Force (Luftwaffe) assets into combined arms teams: the German army was to avoid a long struggle and gave priority to fast and campaigns aimed to annhilate the enemy might in a few weeks by means sweeping pincer and lateral movements meant to obliterate the enemy as quickly as possible. To achieve this goal the OKH gave priority to the formation of motorized and armored formations, but it was a slow process and the horse was still the main mean for transportation, the artillery also remained horse-drawn and the Grenadier still moved by foot or used bicycles. But the mechanization of the German army was a fact as it was in Britain.

New weapons were introduced, as the Flammenwerfer 35 flamethrower, used to clear out trenches and buildings; the Karabiner 98k, which replaced the Gewehr 98 while the Waffenamt began to study a self-loading rifle, like the .276 Pedersen T1 rifle or the M1 Garand whcih the US Army was beginning to introduce into service; the MP-38 submachine gun and the MG34 (used as a light machine g un or as a general-purpose machine gun) became the new automatic weapons of the German infantry; the 8.8 cm Flak 18 anti-aircraft gun and the 15 cm sIG 33 (schweres Infanterie Geschütz 33) heavy infantry gun. But the darling of the Heer were the half-track vehicles and the tanks, like the Sd.Kfz.7 or the Panzer II.

panzer2-c-norway.jpg

The Panzer II, Germany's candidate for the "Toy Tank" prize.

The same happened to the Deutsche Luftstreitkräfte, which included 7 Fighter Wings, 5 Bomber Wings and 3 Close Support Wings. Its aircraft were modern and well designed: the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive-bomber the, the Dornier Do 17 and the Heinkel He 111 bombers, and the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter. It had a weak point, however: the Luftwaffe was centered on providing close air support to the army. Thus its strenght lay in medium two-engine bombers, Stuka dive bombers and tactical fighters. Unlike the RAF, however, it lacked four-engine bombers and was thus unable to conduct an effective long-range strategic bombing campaign.

The Kaiserliche Marine was somehow neglected. It was still recovering from the beating suffered in the Great War and consisted of 2 battlecruisers, 4 heavy cruisers, 5 light cruisers, 30 destroyers and 40 submarines, plus two old battleships of the Deutschland class (Great War vintage). To short this out, it was planned to reequipe the navy with more ships (4 battleships, 2 aircraft carriers, 8 heavy cruisers, 16 light cruisers, 40 destroyers and 100 U-boats) with the so-called Plan Z, aimed to give Germany control of the Baltic Sea and protection against France (4).

On paper, the German army as a quite impressive force which, after the events of Prague, Stresseman was determined to reinforce, just a Chamberlain was doing.

(1) Nobody dies here until I say so.
(2) Is it me or even Lady Chamberlain looks more Primeministerial than Baldwin? Hell, even Austen Chamberlain looks more German than Stresseman!
(3) Light armoured, to be precise.
(4) Old habits die hard.


@trekaddict: Soon, very soon, methinks. Sooner than later, in fact.

@H.Appleby: After the war Owen returned to England around the mid 1920s, writting poetry and translating some French poets into English. Through his friendship with C. K Scott Moncrieff he met Lord Northcliffe but had to leave England around 1925 to avoid attracting unwanted "popularity" related with some kind of scandal a là Wilde. After some time touring in Italy and France he has settled in Paris. He's 45, still single and remains in good terms with Gertrude Stein. One of this days he will finish a novel, he promises.

No, there won't be a German civil war. Without Hitler, the nazis are, so to speak, like the Scottish after Culloden: too few and scattered to mean a thing. And forbidden to dress in brown.:laugh::laugh:

@Nathan Madien: Chambie iz angry... chambie wantz to kill!!!!

@Mr. Santiago: Rebuilding the army and taking tea with Winston.

@talt: He's ugly, but that's the less disgusting feature of him for me. I can't stand him.

@El Pip: It had to be you that found a suitable explanation, although I find odd that a pre-war deceased went unnoticed in post-war Austria. Anyway, cheers for the KGB. Impressive trick :D

I must confess something: I looked for the worst picture possible to post it. And when I saw it, I remembered a similar pic of Harold Wilson (a pity I can't scan it) and went for the kill.
 
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Looks like Germany can be either a valuable ally or a startegic nightmare for British high command. And I must say that the average Italian tank looks more fearsome than a Panzer II.

Out of curiosity, what the infamous duo Von Papen and Von Schleicher up to?
 
Germany is right to build up protection against France. Everyone should build up protection against France. You never know what they will do.

Weekend at Bernie's.

Thank you! The name of the movie slipped my mind.

locarno_signataires.jpg

The end of the Locarno Conference: here we can see Vittorio Scialoja (the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs), Gustav Stresseman; Prime Minister Baldwin, Lord and Lady Chamberlain -2-; Edvard Beneš (Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia), Aristide Briand (Prime Minister of France), Aleksander Skrzyński (Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland) and Emile Vandervelve (Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belgium)

I would love to be the guy who took this photo.

"Okay. How can I make this picture even more awkward-looking? Either I can move the camera up so we can have more of the naked statue in the frame...or I could focus on how gaudy Lady Chamberlain's dress is against the carpet."

Also, I love how the guy at the right end/second row is looking in the total opposite direction of everyone else.
 
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