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Covering the last two chapters:
Well done George.
I thought they were going to get a Night of the Long (pun intended) Knives moment there! Smith going the way of Ernst Rohm, etc. Long may eventually regret not acting more conclusively there, but at least he did act against this noisome rabble.
OK, so just desserts.
Nice!
I liked the look into the PSA's politics. Very interesting, especially since it is the only democracy out of the other CW participants.
The Land of the Lakes – October 1937 – January 1938
The Land of the Lakes – October 1937 – January 1938
While in the autumn of 1937 the Pacific Staters were engaged in the first bloody battle of Denver, that many hoped would open up the entire Great Plains to their forces, Sacramento’s armies were also making progress in the lightly defended territories of Nebraska and pushing the Longists back towards Omaha, swinging southward from South Dakota after their defeat of the syndicalists there. In Colorado and Nebraska, and Kansas beyond them, the Pacific Staters were entering a region in which Longism’s roots were comparatively shallow and there was significant sympathy with their cause. Indeed, all three states had voted for Alf Landon in the 1936 Presidential election and returned votes for Huey Long of less than 30%. With Baton Rouge’s authority in the region wavering, these anti-Longist elements grew emboldened – beginning an insurgent campaign to undermine the Longist armies at the front.
From the fall of Chicago in July until the autumn, the Combined Syndicates of America regrouped and restored a firm footing under the overall leadership of Earl Browder. His military reforms had done away with the traditional autonomous structure of the Red Guards, and allowed for far greater cohesion and a more solid front line – defined by deeply dug trenches across much of the Mid West and mostly stable frontlines. During this time, Philadelphia remained proud and defiantly Red – MacArthur’s superior numbers and firepower unable to break into the city or cut off its vital supply lines from the Great Lakes.
There were also substantial political shifts under the new leadership. Browder wished to move the syndicalist movement away from revolutionary politics and towards a broad mobilisation of society towards the war effort. This took a number of different forms. The state greatly expanded, pushing out the power of the union bureaucracies that had dominated the movement for so long to allow for close central coordination. Across society, while political discourse and debate were stamped out in favour of single line defined by the leadership; the class-based revolutionary violence and conflict of the first period of syndicalist rule was pushed aside. Upon its seizure of power in the Great Lakes, the Combined Syndicates had promoted extensive reappropriation of property and extensively persecuted class enemies and those deemed to at odds with the revolution – including certain unfriendly minority groups, notably Canadians and Irish, pious Christians, property-owning middle classes and rural populations, all of whom were seen as bastions of reaction. Under Browder, propaganda and state practice would redefine the conflict from one of social revolution to a defence of American values against the barbarism of Long and MacArthur – whose atrocities, most glaringly in Chicago, were demonstration enough of the threat they posed.
For the irascible George Patton, holding responsibility for the large Mid Western front stretching from Iowa to Ohio, the long period of inaction and defensive posture from the Longist camp was unbearable. His philosophy, so pithily explained during his famous speech at the onset of the war in March, was of constant and aggressive advance. Nonetheless, since the fall of Chicago the army had stalled. Shorn of numbers by the need to surrender troops to other fronts, and engaged in a time consuming process of dismantling the Silver Legion as an autonomous force within the Longist military and dispersing its personnel into other units; there was no capacity to push on. Equally, and as Patton warned his superiors they would, the Reds on the other side of the battleline were growing stronger and more dug-in. However, this very recovery from the syndicalists would provide the opening for a return of mobile warfare to the Mid West once more. In September, the Reds had launched limited offensives in Ohio and Illinois – briefly capturing Columbus and putting the Longists on the defensive around Chicago – which, while initially putting Patton’s troops on the back foot, would provide the opportunity for him to strike back.
The first of these counterattacks fell in the far west of Patton’s sector. The syndicalist drive towards Chicago that had started the previous month was putting the Longist lines around the city at serious peril as heavy fighting erupted across its northern suburbs. In an effort to distract and outflank the Reds, Patton pushed for an incursion into Minnesota alongside allied Russian troops. By this point, the state was already being threatened on its western frontier by Pacific Staters. As such, its southern boundary was undermanned and vulnerable – with troops having been redeployed towards Wisconsin for the Chicago offensive and to the west to defend against Sacramento.
Against this weak force, the Longists breached syndicalist lines with ease and between 7 and 24 October pushed deep into the state to reach its core urbanised conurbation, and the heartland of syndicalism in the state, in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. While Patton’s men captured Saint Paul on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, they faced strong resistance in their efforts to push on to downtown Minneapolis on the west bank of the river – seeing their advances grind to a halt after heavy losses attempting to take the city.
Having outrun their supply lines, lacking uncontested control of a major rail route into Saint Paul and facing the onset of the punishing Minnesotan winter, the Longists were in a challenging position. Whatsmore, their initial military advantage in the area was being fast eroded as the syndicalists peeled off troops from elsewhere to counter the bulge in their line. Importantly, this redeployment forced the Reds to call off their push on Chicago – securing the Minnesotan campaign’s primary objective – however ultimately their position in the state proved untenable. After holding on under constant pressure for several more weeks, in early December the Longists beat a retreat back from the Twin Cities towards the Iowan frontier once more.
The second, and far larger, Longist offensive would come along the Great Lakes. At the same time as the syndicalists strike at Chicago, they had briefly captured Columbus, Ohio, before being pushed back amid heavy fighting in the city. These battles had notably depleted the syndicalist line – creating a window of opportunity that Patton was determined to exploit. After days of probing attacks, in mid-October the Longists broke through the syndicalist network of trenches to the northwest of Columbus and rushed into the breach. By the end of October, the Longists had reached reached the shores of Lake Erie while their troops were moving towards the outskirts of Detroit and the western approaches to Cleveland. The new syndicalist capital was now under direct threat, a possible mortal danger to the cause, while tens of thousands of troops lay exposed to the south west in the north western corner of Ohio and north east of Indiana.
With disaster appearing to be a strong possibility, Browder once again rallied the syndicalist armies to resist. In Ohio, a largescale counteroffensive was launched out of Cleveland, with very heavy fighting across the north east of the state. Although this would not be enough to push the Longists back from their October gains, it forced them to divert troops to hold the line and reduce the scale of their planned operations in Michigan. To the west, Longist incursions against Detroit were swatted away, while the syndicalists held back efforts to encircle their troops in Indiana and north western Ohio to undertake an orderly withdrawal into Michigan.
As the New Year dawned, the Ohio front would return to the sort of trench warfare seen in the Great Lakes region through much of the late summer. In Michigan, the front remained more fluid – with the line ebbing back and forth across southern Michigan and the borders of the neighbouring states without Detroit or the state capital of Lansing coming under serious threat of capture.
As the speed of battle settled down one more, the syndicalist state had been bisected into three sections connected only by the waters of the Great Lakes. In the west, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Upper Peninsula Michigan; in the centre the main of Michigan including the centre of power in Detroit; and in the east the most populous chunk featuring the north east of Ohio around Cleveland, the largest part of Pennsylvania and the north western corner of New York state around Buffalo and Rochester. To date, the syndicalists had avoided the extensive destruction of their army, and remained in control of substantial industrial and agricultural production and major population centres. However, after months of defeats, morale was low, losses had been high – totally 43% of all casualties in the Civil War up to the beginning of January, and their strategic position was highly precarious. The revolution was not dead yet, but it appeared to be on the precipice.
Baton Rouge’s shift to the front foot was not limited to Patton’s Mid Western front. In the first two weeks of October, the Longists unleashed a counteroffensive against the Federalist positions in North Carolina. Faced mostly with poorly armed militias, the Longists sliced through the enemy lines – dividing the Federalists into three distinct pockets. After these initial attacks, Baton Rouge began to redeploy troops from the front while the slow process of closing out the front began. In all, around 40,000 Federalists soldiers would surrender – with the largest part of this force giving in on 20 November after the fall of the port at Wilmington cut off all access to supplies and ended any hope of evacuation.
As January 1938 arrived, the Second American Civil War reached the grim milestone of its second calendar year. One year after the shadowy dramatics of Huey Long’s contingent election victory, total military casualties for all American factions had surpassed half a million, in excess of 140,000 of whom were fatalities. Tens of thousands more civilians had died while millions had been displaced by fighting, persecution or fear – with particularly large numbers fleeing westward towards California and north deeper into syndicalist territory in response to the Longist northern advance. While the preceding months of warfare had allowed the Baton Rouge government to establish itself as the leading power in the conflict, the war was far from over with millions mobilised across the nation.
The late 1930s were a period of unprecedented chaos globally as the geopolitical balance of the world shuddered and shifted with each passing month. Of tremendous consequence was the fate of the ancient Habsburg crown in Central Europe. Vienna had been an unexpected and early backer of the Baton Rouge government in the United States, playing a key role in increasing the legitimacy of Huey Long’s regime in international diplomatic circles. Unfortunately for the Longist cause, Austria’s routine Ausgleich negotiations over the terms of its union with Hungary devolved into civil war in the spring of 1937. What began as a limited conflict, escalated into an existential threat as neighbouring powers including Serbia and Romania involved themselves in the fighting and the Habsburg realm’s many ethnic groups were set against one another. In October, Czechoslovakian troops entered Vienna and imposed the dismantling of the centuries old empire. For a period of several weeks, the Emperor hoped to at the very least retain his throne over a diminished Austrian state – only for anti-monarchist elements in the military launch a putsch in November that sent the entire royal family into flight to Switzerland. The new Austria would remain independent for only a few more months itself, joining into union with Germany early in 1938.
Austria’s collapse had important effects for America. For one, Baton Rouge’s only major European ally outwith Wrangel’s revanchist Russia was now gone and Germany, a state hostile to Long’s regime, had now greatly enhanced its hegemony over all of Europe between the syndicalist states in the west and the Russian frontier in the east. This would effectively shut the door for significant involvement by the nations of this part of Europe in the American Civil War, with Berlin unwilling to involve itself or the lands under its influence in the ongoing conflict.
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Austria's fall is bad news, especially since I think that the syndicalist nations of Europe are still aiding the CSA. Hopefully the CSA's fall will put an end to all European interference in the war... and that fall looks more likely.
Maybe the AUS should sign a peace or ceasefire with the PSA? They look like the greatest threat that remains...
Maybe the AUS should sign a peace or ceasefire with the PSA? They look like the greatest threat that remains...
In the PSA the Democrats were a pretty marginal force by the outbreak of the civil war. In the 1936 election they only got 9% in the PSA states - lower than the Republicans, America First, Socialists or Farmer-Labor/Progressives. There are still politicians from the party about in the new state, but to remain in elected office they largely need to align with one of the larger Republican or Progressive factions depending on whether they lean left or right themselves.
The North Carolina front didn't become as large a threat as it might have been as the Federalists didn't really sufficiently back it up. They landed solely with militia divisions and only added one extra cavalry division through the life of the landing - they kept their better troops in reserve.
I'm glad you enjoyed this exploration of my idea of the PSA. I kind of preferred the PSA as a breakaway entity in older versions of KR - only moving to become a restorationist faction if pushed. I recall an old DH game where I won independence (largely with these PSA borders in the AAR) in 1937, then lived happily independently for several years until the CSA won the civil war and invaded in the early 40s. That led to an eventual restoration - but you were forced into it rather than it being the original goal.
Your encouragement has had been playing some Kaiserredux over the past week. I do really quite like the dynamics of the ACW with the additional tags. I'm not wholly convinced by the 'Old Democrats' as their alternate far right tag - I think you could keep that faction, but rebalance the lore so they are just standard conservative Southern Democrats who oppose MacArthur's coup but also dislike Long and the syndies. Almost a democratic restorationist faction, but conservative and pro-segregationist. That would feel more organic that the lore they have for them. I haven't seen the Black Belt revolter in my playthrough yet - I'd hope to see them appear!
We will keep an eye on the PSA going into the future too. We've got some incredible contrasts in the natures of the different factions across America at this point.
We've certainly not heard the last of Smith, the Christian Nationalists and this wider 'Rowdy' caucus of the Longist movement. Long is seeking to distance himself from this tendency, without renouncing their valuable manpower and avoiding a violent confrontation. We shall see if they rise above political irritant to become a direct threat in the future.
I'm glad you enjoyed! The one faction we haven't heard much about in terms of their internal goings on to date is the Federalists - so I will be looking at a chance to explore them at some stage in the coming updates too.
The CSA is in an unenviable position. It's territory is split into three parts and constantly under pressure. The only thing they have going for them is their large army and industry, plus the slog that urban-guerilla warfare is for the Longists and Macarthur.
How did you calculate the number of killed, instead of just total casualties which is what HOI4 shows?
One suspects losing Austria as a sympathetic government is more of a disappointing diplomatic development than anything to significantly affect the AUS cause. If Long defeats the rump US and the CSA, the Pacific will presumably be doomed, even with Japanese help. They’ll either have to come to terms (if that’s a possibility in this scenario) or will eventually be worn down without some other kind of major external intervention.
Austria being annexed by the German Empire after overthrowing the Kaiser creates quite an odd situation for the Germans. Remember, almost all of the constituent states of the empire are still ruled by monarchs, with Elass-Lothringen being the exception as a federal territory (and I don’t even know if this bit is true anymore In Kaiserreich lore). Incorporating such a large new state as a republic, while technically possible, is going to cause major ripple effects.
There's three republics within the German Empire, the Free and Hanseatic cities of Hamburg, Bremen and Lubeck. But the entrance of Austria into Germany isn't just going to be a issue about the form of government for them but also on federalism
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Yeah, and if the CSA falls Europe has no way of supporting the remaining regimes over the Atlantic other than if Canada joins.
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Down with the Traitors, Up with the Stars! – January 1938 – February 1938
Down with the Traitors, Up with the Stars! – January 1938 – February 1938
20 February 1938 marked the solemn anniversary of Douglas MacArthur’s coup d'état in Washington DC. The past year had been one of consistent gloom for the would-be American Caesar. What had been intended to be a surgical seizure of power had instead turned into a protracted and bloody conflict in which MacArthur’s own Federalist forces had, with the exception of the capture of New York, secured precious few victories and lost control over the large majority of the nation. Indeed, having failed to fully secure its landings in North Carolina, most Federalist troops had been absorbed for months in static battlelines against the Longists just south of the capital and against the syndicalists surrounding the besieged Red bastion of Philadelphia.
Although the General was well-respected in the military, his Federalist regime struggled to find an animating purpose to rally mass opinion behind it in the way the rival regimes in Baton Rouge, Chicago and even Sacramento managed to do with great success. MacArthur had always framed his coup as a restoration of constitutional democracy in the face of Huey Long’s demagogic government and the looming syndicalist menace; yet the image of a military dictator presiding over the nation’s capital while the elected President, however controversial and unpopular, led a rebel army did little to furnish this image.
Indeed, for much of the first half of 1937, the Federalist regime was tormented by the murmurings of New England regionalism – with some leaders quietly discussing the possibility of breaking with Washington, sparing their lands from the ravages of war, with the aid of the Canadians. This was a prospect made only more threatening by the tense relationship between Washington and Ottawa for much of this period. Indeed, the threat of New England separatism only truly dissipated after bridges were rebuilt with the Canadians, leading to their recognition of MacArthur’s regime in the summer and even beginning to supply arms for his war effort by the autumn.
While diplomacy played an important factor in quelling New England’s dissent and winning the wider North East public to the Federalist cause, the General’s regime would also make extensive political efforts to build a broad popular base. The natural supports of the Washington government were the advocates of the old American order who were opposed to both Longism and syndicalism. This formed a very large constituency in the region under Federalist control – most notably in New England, where the six states east of New York had provided a vote of nearly 70% in favour of the Republicans and Democrats. Although the traditional parties were somewhat weaker in the Mid Atlantic states of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and New York, these areas still provided backing for the old parties notably higher than the national average.
Herbert Hoover, President in his own right from 1929 until January 1937 and one of the earliest and closest allies of Douglas MacArthur’s coup, played an invaluable role in reaching out to forge pro-Federalist political coalition that would capture the backing of this public. In the regime created in February and March 1937, Douglas MacArthur was both head of a military junta coordinating the war effort and Acting President of a civilian administration. However, given his weak position and the attention of the Civil War, MacArthur took a step back to allow Hoover significant authority to build the political foundations of his administration. Still immensely respected by Republicans and the wider East Coast establishment, Hoover was able to win the loyalty of large numbers of Congressmen and all the Governors of North Eastern states. Crucially, he would not limit himself to the support of his own party but reached out to the Democrats with open arms in the name of national unity against the extremists.
The shift in fortune of the Democratic Party over the course of the decade leading up to the Civil War was astonishing. When it left office in 1929, it did so after a two decade-long domination of America’s political institutions and on the back of consecutive two term Presidencies under Woodrow Wilson and William McAdoo. As late as 1932 it had been strong enough to run Hoover so close as to force a contingent election for his re-election. Yet by the outbreak of Civil War in early 1937 it was an irrelevance across most of the country.
Indeed, by the time that fighting commenced in the spring, Democrats were only truly a relevant political organisation in two very different parts of the country. In the South, where it had won a fifth of the popular vote in 1936, and in New England, where it had scored more than a quarter of the vote and even taken its only state-wide victory in Rhode Island. The party in these two centres of power was very different. The Southern wing was deeply conservative, Protestant, rural, staunchly segregationist and, after initial reluctance, had largely rallied behind the Baton Rouge administration – offering an organised opposition to America First within the Longist legislature. The New England Democrats were far more urban and liberal and contained a large Catholic element. With the advent of civil war, these two surviving wings of the party, representing divergent poles of the broader Democrat tradition, would be totally severed.
Eager to bind the Democrats into the Federalist cause, several leading lights of the party were invited into the Hoover-led civilian administration. Chief among these were Robert Wagner, Al Smith and Joseph Kennedy. Senator for New York for a decade, Wagner had been one of the architects of the Garner-Wagner Act of 1936, an ill-fated attempt to ward off the after-effects of Black Monday with a programme of unemployment relief and spending commitments. He would play a crucial role in rallying a large block of Democrat Congressmen to back the MacArthur government. Al Smith had spent a decade as Governor of New York prior to his heavy defeat to Hoover in the 1928 Presidential election before later overseeing the construction of the iconic Empire State Building. As the first Catholic to ever run for President on a major party ticket, Smith remained highly popular with Catholics and his backing of the regime was crucial to winning the confidence of the North East’s very large Catholic population, many of whom had drawn towards America First and the influences of Father Coughlin in the preceding years. Smith would be offered the senior role of Secretary of the Treasury in the administration. The most controversial of these three figures was Jo Kennedy. Like Smith, Kennedy was an influential figure among North East Catholics, especially the Irish who formed the largest group in Boston, Kennedy had in the past flirted with America First with his conservative views, anti-Semitism and American nationalism. To a significantly extent it was his great wealth and personal disdain for the Coughlin and Long that had kept him loyal to the Democrats. Nonetheless, the Federalist government would be rewarded for its trust in him. In the spring he had travelled to Ireland and whipped up strong support for Washington, including the formation of a Fenian Legion that would draw tens of thousands of Irish to support their kinsmen across the Ocean. Later in the summer he had acted as Washington’s ambassador in Ottawa and participated in negotiations that led to Canadian recognition of MacArthur’s government before returning to America in a cabinet role.
Alongside these actions, over the summer of 1937 Washington would further strengthen its appeal to liberal Democratic opinion, and indeed many liberal inclined Republicans, as well as the sizeable Black population living under Federalist rule by pushing forward a programme of civil rights – in part following the actions of the recently formed Pacific States of America. At the start of 1937, segregation laws were still present in Maryland, Delaware and Washington DC while Federal services and the military were also largely segregated. In the course of a few short months, these laws were roundly abolished. This decision was not only made for political concerns, to undermine syndicalist influence and promote affinity with Washington among Blacks and garner sympathy with liberals, but also with the practical aim of increasing the efficiency and recruitment pool of the army. These changes would mean that by the end of the year, Baton Rouge was the only one of the four rival American governments that retained segregation in military and civilian life.
These various efforts would bare significant fruit. As the war raged on, the substantial ‘enthusiasm gap’ between the Federalists and their enemies appeared to close as a core identity emerged around the regime that combined appeals to Yankee feeling, American tradition and a sought after return to the United States of old.
While finding success in binding the supporters of the old America together with the regime ensured mass support in New England, in the Mid Atlantic states in the southern half of the zone under Federalist control this message was more divisive. Longism was rife across New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware, with New Jersey even having been the site of a Longist uprising in March 1937. Meanwhile, New York City was one of the most powerful centres of American syndicalism – with revolutionary ideology deeply imbedded in its vast Jewish and African American communities and popular far beyond them. Home to more hostile populations and far closer to the front, these areas would be forced to endure martial law, heavy militarisation and constant investigation for and denunciation of traitors aligned with the Baton Rouge and Chicago regimes. This would prove a very different experience to New England, where American liberties and freedom were only modestly disturbed and life for the common folk continued much as it did before February 1937.
Politically, Federalist America continued to evolve over the course of the first year of war. In the first months after the 20 February coup, MacArthur had been absorbed by the military aspects of his role and was threatened by the grave narrowness of his support base. As such, he had been comfortable ceding significant authority to Former President Hoover to manage civilian affairs, build a governing coalition and fashion a popular appeal for the regime. However this situation would change over the course of the year. MacArthur himself began to take an increasing interest in the civilian side of government – seeing the desperate need to organise all aspects of society behind the war effort – and was growing increasingly irked at Hoover’s sense of self-importance in the regime. Significantly, MacArthur’s image as the embodiment of the American nation and the saviour of democracy had been furnished by months of propaganda – allowing him to transform himself in the eyes of the North Eastern public from Sulla to Cincinnatus, leaving him a popular leader in his own right. Simply put, by early 1938 MacArthur no longer needed Hoover and he would move to push him aside – leading ultimately to Hoover’s retirement in March – to complete his control over the government in Washington.
The removal of Hoover had been accompanied by a rare but crucial Federalist military victory in late February and early March. After many long months held back on a static front by syndicalist trenches across southern and eastern Pennsylvania, MacArthur’s forces finally achieved a key breakthrough to capture the city of Harrisburg. The city was of great importance to the long-running siege of Philadelphia as the only major railway line connecting the great city to the syndicalist heartland along the Great Lakes ran through it. Without Harrisburg, the only route in and out of Philadelphia was through by road through an ever thinning neck of territory to the east. Cut off from a reliable supply line, at great risk of encirclement and with Federalist attacks continuing to bare down on it – the future of Red Philadelphia appeared bleak, even as its defenders continued to resolutely hold their attackers at bay.
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We finally get the chance to have a closer look at what's going on inside the Federalist held territory, where MacArthur has grown stronger politically even as his military position has stayed fairly stagnant since the spring of 1937. This experience, and particularly New England's, will be important to America's future once the Civil War is through.
The European syndies have tens of thousands of troops in CSA territory, but with the Feds now effectively cutting of Philadelphia's only effective supply line - there ain't going to be any more help coming - at least unless a Mexican intervention comes up on the cards.
But at present, aside from the syndies, the main foreign players are the Russians backing Baton Rouge, the Japanese backing Sacramento and now the Canadians starting to grow closer to the Federalists - without backing them to the same extent as the other players here.
Yes, of the lands they have left the CSA's territory is by far the most urbanised faction - which will have a number of advantages when on the defensive. We shall see how their fortunes evolve in the second year of war.
As for the killed to casualties ratio - I kept a record of all-faction HoI4 casualty stats and just looked to loosely apply a ratio for deaths based on some RL ratios for American forces in WW2. So take the deaths with a greater pinch of salt than the pure casualty figure.
Given the Austrians were unable to offer active material support due to their own problems, this isn't a critical and immediate loss for the Long regime. The bigger problem is the diplomatic isolation, with Baton Rouge's only major foreign ally now being the Russians - when he had once hoped to court much broader alignments.
At this point at the start of 1938, the AUS now controls comfortably the largest part of the American population and the single largest army. But is still outnumbered by the other factions combined. This war's not won just yet!
The messiness of all of this is surely only added to by the fact that it is an SPD-led left-leaning government in power in Berlin. Many conservative may worry that the German left may get ideas from the admittance of a battered Austria that has just dispensed with the Habsburgs into the Reich. The obvious benefit of ending the chaos in Austria in terms of building strength for the impending collision with the syndicalists and Russians has to factor in though.
With the railway line out of Philadelphia now severed, the CSA might as well be land locked in everything but name now as it has no reliable route to the sea anymore. The continued trading access between the AUS and Europe will be another concern that the Federalists may seek to take a look at given their dominant naval position.
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I dont know very well the games mechanics. It is possible to have a partial victory, and having at the end a certain number of America's ? Or there can be only one for putting an end to this civil war ?
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But which flag to rally around? That is the question in scenarios like this.
This will presumably cause a mass emigration to Canada for a lot of African-Americans should the AUS win. That is unless Long (or his replacement) sees the writing on the wall and decides to end Jim Crow.
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It's nice to get a closer look at MacArthur's regime...
Are elections within the rump US continuing on normal election years, or is democracy ("temporarily") suspended?
How self-important was Hoover being? Did he see himself as vital to the nation's continued existence?
Are elections within the rump US continuing on normal election years, or is democracy ("temporarily") suspended?
How self-important was Hoover being? Did he see himself as vital to the nation's continued existence?
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This may be crucial to the US' continued viability (even if it won't get them the winners trophy). If Canada intervenes directly, they will need considerable further support to overcome a victorious American regime (presumably the AUS).
Oh, so he was the bridge-builder. Nice alt-hist twist.
They needed something. They really need to at least eliminate Philadelphia and widen the thin strip of territory they currently control.
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No matter how MacArthur spins it, he is a military junta leader. Any American claims of spreading democracy if he wins would be tainted.
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MacArthur is ironically the greatest traitor in American history. Not even Arnold or Wilkinson would applaud him, for he had opened Pandora's box and forever tainted American democracy. He and his regime must be destroyed for the greater good.
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The Dream Will Never Die – February 1938 – May 1938
The Dream Will Never Die – February 1938 – May 1938
As the capacity of the syndicalist regime was degraded, its many internal enemies bad become increasingly emboldened. This led to the formation of a variety of anti-syndicalist partisan groups in rural areas across the states still under Detroit’s authority. In the northern and central parts of Wisconsin, a particularly well organised operation had emerged under the leadership of a young man named Joseph McCarthy, who had amassed an extensive network in the area. McCarthy’s men sought to cooperate closely with the Longist military across the state border and provided Patton’s troops with detailed intelligence on the syndicalist military position in the state.
Although they had pulled out of their Chicago offensive in October 1937, the syndicalist continued to spar along the Illinois frontier for months thereafter. Entering the new year, their troops remained heavily concentrated in the south of the state around the cities of Madison and Milwaukee – including tens of thousands of elite French and British troops and an entire French tank division. Further north, little more than Red Guard militias maintained the Mississippi river line, with an extreme paucity of troops maintained in the rear at all.
Ever eager to take advantage of an opportunity to go on the attack, Patton devised a strategy. On 30 January, the Longists forced crossings of the Mississippi at La Crosse and Winona and then began a forced march east through central Wisconsin. The Longists moved with incredible pace, taking advantage of the cooperation of McCarthy’s men to evade directly engaging the limited syndicalist troops kept in the rear. After just one week, they reached Green Bay, and with it Lake Michigan, on 6 February. With that, they had completed the largest encirclement of the war to date – trapping the majority of the remaining European troops, with their superior equipment and training, and no fewer than five American Red Guard divisions. Even before the Longists had entered Green Bay they had begun a huge attack from the south towards Madison and Milwaukee – forcing the syndicalists in the Wisconsin pocket to fight for their lives and foregoing any possibility of a serious breakout attempt.
Already worn down and demoralised before the lightening Longist campaign had even begun and a relentless assault from the south, the syndicalists tried vainly to hold their position and await support from the north that would never arise. Over the next six weeks, the slowly gave ground, losing Madison and Milwaukee in early March before a final surrender of the 43,000 men still left fighting was agreed on 20 March. In a single campaign the Longists had not only captured a key state from the shrinking syndicalist regime, but inflicted manpower losses on their army that they could hardly replaced, captured the majority of the expert foreign soldiers and many of their skilled commanders that they had come to rely upon and set off an existential crisis for American syndicalism.
In this dark moment, the Combined Syndicates of America had little hope for its own continuation as a fighting force. With Pacific Staters continuing to push on Minnesota, and the terrible defeat in Wisconsin, the syndicalists faced the very real prospect that the Longists might sweep northwards into Upper Peninsula Michigan to cut off and destroy their entire western front within weeks. Given this threat, on 31 March Bowder gave the order for a complete evacuation of the western territories – with all syndicalist troops who could, alongside everything they could carry, to escape through Upper Peninsula Michigan into the main part of the state.
The abandonment of the western territories was a humiliation for the wider movement, but was particularly traumatic for syndicalists in these states. It would become the prelude the desertion of tens of thousands of syndicalist militiamen in these areas, as many had no desire to travel through harsh terrain and bitter fire to fight for a regime that was surrendering their homelands.
With resistance melting before their eyes, the race for Minnesota was on between Sacramento and Baton Rouge. With the Pacific Staters marching from the west and the Longists from the east, the two armies would meet in the twin cities in early April – with Californian militiamen camping in Minneapolis while Arkansan and Missourian infantry secured Saint Paul. Without adequate reinforcements, the Pacific Staters were pushed out of Minneapolis itself after two weeks, but thereafter the two armies settled into a stalemate while mopping up the remnants of syndicalist resistance. The Longists in particular had worn themselves out after their spectacular successes in the first quarter of the year, and were eager to redeploy troops to other more pressing fronts. The chaotic collapse of syndicalist power in Minnesota would be accompanied by another spate of mass surrenders by those troops that had failed to escape through Upper Peninsula Michigan as nearly 50,000 soldiers across the state would lay down their arms to surrender to Pacific and Longist forces.
The economic and geopolitical instability of the 1930s had shaken much of the world – sparking civil wars and upheaval across lands home to hundreds of millions around the world in an unprecedented churn of revolution and counter revolution. One such upheaval would take place in one of Europe’s least populous, by geographically largest, nations – Norway. The Nordic nation had emerged from its century-long union with Sweden in 1905 as an apparently stable parliamentary monarchy. However, from the 1920s it would start to come under threat from the fast rising spectre of socialism – with the examples of Britain and France increasingly turning the Norwegian workers’ movement from reformism to revolution. As the Reds gained influence, the ultranationalist Nasjonal Samling was formed in the early 1930s under the leadership of Vidkun Quisling to spearhead the Norwegian counter-revolution with its own vision of physical force nationalism.
As in much of the world, the extremist movements took great strides forward through the 1930s, and especially after Black Monday plunged Europe and the world into depression. Competing in an alliance with right-agrarians and conservatives, Quisling secured the largest share of the vote in national elections in October 1937 and would soon be awarded the premiership. Over the following months he quickly overstepped his authority, harshly persecuting syndicalists and democrats, sidling his more moderate allies and entering into a ferocious conflict with the monarchy that culminated in King Haakon abdicating and fleeing to Germany in early 1938 – leaving a Quisling-led regency council to fill his place.
Given its crucial strategic position – controlling access to the White Sea and key bases along the North Sea – the downfall of Norway’s long neutral democracy had a number of international consequences. The British in particular had been sponsors of Norwegian socialism and responded to its persecution with sabre rattling and threats of war – violating Norwegian territorial water repeatedly and even launching limited raids aimed and releasing leftist political prisoners. Oslo might have looked to the Germans for protection, but the Social Democrat-led government in Berlin was almost as disgusted as the British at the Quisling dictatorship and had no intention of riding to its aid. Instead, Quisling turned to the Black Baron Wrangel, heading to the Russian capital in April 1938 where he entered into a comprehensive military alliance with Russia – the Moscow Accord. This involved the stationing of Russian troops, aircraft and naval vessels on Norwegian soil and the agreement to a shared foreign policy that would be decided in Moscow.
For America, the chief impact of the creation of the Moscow Accord was the turning over of the vast Norwegian merchant marine, one of the largest civilian fleets in the world, towards Russian strategic ends. The great beneficiary of this was Baton Rouge, as Russia’s capacity to provide aid to Huey Long’s government was greatly enhanced, drawing Long closer in the Russian orbit internationally. With tensions continuing to rise in Europe, Baton Rouge’s continued tight association with Wrangel was fostering increasingly hostile relations with the Germans – who would ultimately, if reluctantly, follow the lead of the Entente nations in offering recognition to General MacArthur’s Washington administration as the rightful government of the United States in June 1938. With both Germany and Canada now united on this question, the Federalists now enjoyed the status as the de-facto continuation of the United States among the international community.
By late spring, it appeared that the syndicalists were on their last legs. They had lost around 100,000 men in Minnesota and Wisconsin, barely escaping with the remainder of their troops from the western theatre across the Lakes, while the entire movement was weighed down by the inescapable dread of apparently inevitable defeat. In Michigan, the Longists had followed up on their victories on the other side of Lake Michigan by advancing along the more rural western side of the state – capturing the cities of Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo. Baton Rouge’s military planners, not leas the ever aggressive Patton, believed that a final push could well finish the Red menace off for good.
Two controlled offensives were planned with the aim of isolating and capturing the vital cities of Cleveland and Detroit. In Michigan, Longists troops would seek to destroy the syndicalist defence of the state capital of Lansing before marching on to the shore of Lake Huron – cutting off Detroit from the rest of the state and laying the way for a siege of the city. Similarly, in Ohio troops would seek to isolate a weak point in the syndicalist line to make a breakthrough to the south east of Cleveland before storming on to reach to shore of Lake Eire to the east of the city – completing its envelopment.
The two attacks were launched simultaneous on 15 May. In both cases, initial operations were carried off without a hitch as the syndicalists lines broke and the Longists poured into the rear. In Michigan, Lansing was captured and Patton’s men moved on north east of the city, confident of victory. Even greater success was found in Ohio, where in a little over a week the Longists charged all the way to the Lake Erie and cut Cleveland off from the Pennsylvanian front. However, while beaten to within an inch of existence, the spirit of the American Workers’ Revolution was not dead just yet. In both offensives, the Longists had over committed at the spearhead of their attack and left the flanks of the salience produced exposed. Just as their men were washing their boots in Lake Erie east of Cleveland, the syndicalist counterattack cut them off – leaving two full, heavily equipped, professional infantry divisions encircled east of Cleveland and the syndicalist connection to the city restored. It was a similar picture in Michigan, where the Longists had not even successfully pushed all the way to Lake Huron before the syndicalist counter recaptured Lansing and left them cut off behind enemy lines. All told, nearly 50,000 Longist soldiers, including many of their finest troops on the Mid Western Front, had been cut off and risked destruction. The prospect of an immediate drive to destroy the syndicalists once and for all was over.
The reaction to these unexpected reversed in Baton Rouge military Headquarters was apoplectic. General Moseley directly blamed Patton and his gung-ho approach for failed to adequately support the attacks and leading to these disastrous results. In return, Patton was enraged by the disregarding of his many previous triumphs throughout the Mid Western campaign and attempted to pass of blame onto his subordinate commanders. The fall out involved a substantial reorganisation of Longist forces across the northern United States and the de facto demotion of George Patton. Having previous enjoyed wide ranging authorities over the largest force in the Baton Rouge army, covering the entire Mid Western region; Patton’s responsibilities were limited to the western theatre and the troops in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Upper Peninsula Michigan with a largely defensive brief to man the Canadian border, hold position against the Pacific Staters and root out remnants of syndicalist resistance. The syndicalist-facing fronts in Michigan and Ohio-Pennsylvania were removed from his control and put under the command of promoted commanders who had excelled in previous campaigns – William Simpson in Michigan and Lewis “Chesty” Puller in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
From its start, the Second American Civil War had displaced civilian populations in vast numbers. While, especially in the early stages of the war, tens of thousands of Americans fled the country fearing political persecution from the regimes that had taken shape in different parts of the country, most Americans showed little inclination to leave the United States behind. The large majority of these displaced people moved around internally within the United States – with especially large numbers drawn to the peaceful West Coast, while New England and the Deep South – both relatively peaceful parts of the country far from active frontlines – attracted notable numbers. However, by far the largest population on the move were the inhabitants of the Mid West and Mid Atlantic states that had aligned with the Chicago government at the onset of the conflict and seen the heaviest fighting of the Civil War to date. The horrors of the Chicago Massacre of July 1937 in particular had turned this mass movement into a stampede, with millions fleeing northward deeper into syndicalist territory, in particular Jews and African Americans who feared the violence Longist forces had inflicted against their communities earlier in the war. The Reds faced this massive influx, at a time when their state was straining, challenging to accommodate. While men were drawn into the military or put to work, the state had limited ability to adequately care for and house the women, children and elderly.
From the second half of 1937, the syndicalists had negotiated with the deeply hostile administration in Canada to allow for the evacuation of significant numbers of women and children into Canada. But the end of 1937, this American refugee population in Canada already numbered in the hundreds of thousands. A cold and hungry winter and the collapse of faith in syndicalist victory that accompanied their disasters in Wisconsin and Minnesota in the first part of 1938 drastically changed the nature of the exodus out of Red America. Replacing the controlled flows of women and children only of the previous years, in the first half of 1938 alone in excess of a million Americans would cross the frontier – overwhelming Canadian capacity to control or administer the influx or enforce rules on who would be admitted into the country. Remarkably, by the summer, one in ten people living in Canada were American refugees.
Deeply suspicious of the new arrivals, the American refugees were houses in several dozen sprawling ‘slum cities’ hastily constructed through Ontario and Quebec which were kept deliberately segregated from the rest of Canadian society, for fear that the syndicalist contagion might spread. Conditions in these slums were awful, Canada only being capable of providing meagre rations and little else to sustain and fulfil the refugees. Eager to stem this flow, by the middle of the year the Canadians had heavily militarised the border with syndicalist America – with soldiers at times firing on crowds of angry refugees who threatened to storm border posts. This use of force would have its desired impact, once again limiting inflows and allowing for a greater level of control, even as the dislocated American population north of the border continued to rise.
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