Unfortunately, this is the last chapter of this AAR. Originally I hadn't planned for 12 chapters, but this one seemed to be necessary to give a look on the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution. As always, I will post an epilogue, but that'll be for next week.
Chapter XII: El Presidente
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3rd of July 1964 – 24th of January 1965
With Huey Long and his Golden Circle gone from Cuba, President Fidel Castro, or as he was known by his popular name: El Presidente, found the Cuban economy in a state of chaos. American investors and businessowners were gone and many companies were shut down in the aftermath of the Revolution. It had effectively led to a brain-drain. Educated workers who had worked for the Golden Circle Americans fled with their employers, along with a considerable part of the Cuban elite who was opposed to Castro’s Marxist-Leninist ideas. But in this chaos, an opportunity presented itself. All these foreign industries could now be nationalized by the state. The abandoned sugar plantations could be redistributed among Cuba’s farmers. The true syndicate state could be achieved! But Castro knew that he couldn’t drive it too far, NATO was still known for its adversity towards syndicalism and the US had only supported him to get rid of Huey Long. El Presidente had to come up with a way to keep his regime viable. Castro found the answer abroad.
First, Fidel Castro found an equal in Che Guevara, now President of the Yucatan Republic. On the 10th of July, Castro and Guevara formally declared their alliance. Not only would an alliance help them in their common defense, the economic cooperation following the alliance would also help Cuba’s need for a foreign consuming market for Cuban goods.
Castro and Guevara became more than allies in their common struggle against imperialism and capitalism.
Castro’s next step was to seek entry into the Non-Aligned Movement. The NAM was founded in 1961 by countries who didn’t want to side with either the US or Russia in the Cold War. Among these countries was Egypt, a republic after the sultanate was overthrown in 1952, Indonesia, independent from Belgium since 1945, Ghana, independent from Britain in 1957, and India. On the 5th of October, Castro attended the start of the Second Non-Aligned Movement Summit in Cairo. Throughout the Summit, Castro met with several world leaders, such as Sukarno from Indonesia and Nasser, who was hosting the whole thing. The Cuban President managed to interest some countries into trading with Cuba. This would give some breathing room for the Cuban economy, which at the moment heavily depended on exports to the US. On the last day of the Summit, terrible and disturbing news arrived from the Russian State.
Castro and Sukarno on the Summit in Cairo.
On the 10th of October, the Russian Vozhd Khrushchev narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. It was clear that some people within the Party did not appreciate Khrushchev’s foreign policy, and in particular the détente which followed the Cuban Missile Crisis. Less fortunate however, was the Prussian President Joseph Goebbels, who was on a state visit to Russia and was sitting next to Khrushchev in his car when a sniper tried to shoot the Vozhd. A government crisis erupted in both Russia and Prussia. In Russia, Khrushchev held a meeting with his most trusted advisors. Following this meeting, a huge amount of arrests were made. Most notably, Konstantin Rodzaevsky was apprehended in Finland while trying to escape to Sweden. Rodzaevsky was a prominent member of the Party and one of the hardliners when it came to US-Russian relations. Just three days after the assassination attempt, Rodzaevsky was executed in the Finnish countryside. With him and many of his followers gone, the factions within the Party who preferred détente had temporarily triumphed. In Prussia, Leni Riefenstahl took over the presidency. Many people tried to work against her, for several reasons, either because she was a woman, or because she had no history of political engagement. It didn’t matter, as she quickly gained the trust of the Landtag in Königsberg by using her charms and the fact that Goebbels had chosen her long before he died. Under her presidency, Prussia would continue to be an authoritarian state known for its heavy indoctrination through the use of the media.
Nikita Khrushchev denouncing the enemies of the State after the failed assassination attempt.
While in Russia, the leadership was challenged through violent means, the US prepared for a peaceful and democratic way of transferring power. By October, the electoral campaign for the presidency was at its height. For the Democrats, Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson won the primaries as expected. Johnson and his running mate Hubert Humphrey took on Republican candidate Barry Goldwater and his running mate William E. Miller. The hot topics of the election campaign where among others the Indochinese war. The war had escalated on the 2nd of August when German Imperial ships attacked the USS Maddox. The Tonkin Incident, as it would be known as, enraged the American public and demanded retaliation. President King ordered a more active position in Indochina. Where before, their troops would only be involved in rescue operations and acquisition of German war criminals, the US would now start to bomb the North and start using its troops more aggressively. Johnson supported these actions and preferred this tactic, but Goldwater was more in favor of ending the conflict with one big sweep, using nuclear weapons. Regarding Cuba, Johnson respected King’s actions, because it had led to the end of Huey Long, while Goldwater criticized it because of the fact that King had brought back syndicalism to the Americas in doing so. But what dominated the debates the most was the Golden Circle. Every day, new names started appearing in the media. Most of them were rich Southern planters or people with ties to the old guard of the Republican Party. On the 27th of October, just mere days from election day, a major scandal involving Goldwater leaked to the public. Apparently, Goldwater had accepted a large sum of money from an alleged member of the Golden Circle. At that moment, Johnson had practically already won the elections.
The USS Maddox managed to survive the Tonkin Incident relatively unharmed.
On the 3rd of November, the American people went to the polls. 61.4% of the American enfranchised voters turned up, a slight drop in comparison to the 1960 elections. When the first results came in, it was clear who won the elections. In the end, Johnson won every state except for Arizona, Louisiana (Huey Long’s home state), Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. Not surprisingly, almost every one of these states were former American Union State members. The Democrats dealt a similar blow to the Republicans in the House of Representatives (295-140), while the victory in the Senate was more moderate (65-31). This victory meant that the Democrats would hold a two-thirds majority in Congress for at least the next two years. It was expected that the revelations surrounding the Golden Circle would continue to influence US politics for at least another 5 years. On the 20th of January 1965, just 4 days before news arrived from Britain that Winston Churchill had died from a stroke, Lyndon B. Johnson was inaugurated as the 37th President of the United States.
The result of the 1964 US presidential elections.
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And with that, a new age is about to begin. The Cold War might enter a period of Détente, but both the US and Russia will go through a period of internal unrest in the aftermath of the Golden Circle and the assassination attempt on Khrushchev.
