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Any tips to improve the AAR?
To be honest nothing immediately springs to mind. The updates are easily digestible, with a good use of images and clear presentation of text. You have offered up a number of interesting letter-pictures of some of the chief characters with some hints to the future.

All in all I am enjoying this AAR very much.
 
Republican Party (Part 2)
The Republicans: The Roosevelts (Part 2)
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“No matter how honest and decent we are in our private lives, if we do not have the right kind of law and the right kind of administration of the law, we cannot go forward as a nation.” -Theodore Roosevelt.

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Quentin Roosevelt in his U.S. Army Air Service uniform and his future wife Flora.

Quentin Roosevelt was the youngest son of President Theodore Roosevelt and Quentin would eventually become President himself. Quentin was only four when his father became president and he grew up in the White House. Quentin was the favorite son of his father and he remained the closest one to his father. He was known in the Theodore White House as the leader and most rebellious member of the White House Children’s gang. The gang regularly defaced White House property. His father was an honorary member. Quentin’s most famous childhood act was taking a pony up the White House elevator to cheer up his sick older brother Archibald. He was also noted for his tendency to make humorous and vaguely philosophical remarks throughout his life. He was reckless as a youth and a teenager. He later mellowed out but this tendency never fully left him.
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"Archie" Roosevelt and his pony Algonquin. Once inseparable during their childhoods, Archibald and Quentin Roosevelt became divided over bitter political differences as Archibald became associated with a series of far-right organizations such as the American First Union and the John Birch Society and Quentin's lifelong association with the progressive and liberal Republicans. During the Second World War, Archibald along with his other brothers were allowed by their brother and President Quentin Roosevelt to fight in the war. He fought bravely in France during the war. After the end of Quentin's presidency in 1949, the two brothers reconciled to a degree. However, the brothers split for good after Archibald edited a highly incendiary biography of their father Theodore and sent a letter expressing openly racist opinions to every U.S. senator in the 1960s.



In his teenaged years, Quentin showed natural talents in mechanical repair and in his abilities as a writer at Harvard university. Quentin became engaged to Flora Payne Whitney. Quentin’s college career was interrupted by the First World War. During the war, there was great concern that America would join the war. Quentin was outraged by German U-boat attacks and wrote to Flora saying that “We are a pretty sordid lot, aren’t we, to want to sit looking on while England and France fight our battles and pan gold into our pockets.” Quentin and his brothers joined the military. Quentin became a pilot although he did not enjoy the training. In his time in training, Quentin showed his characteristic touch with ordinary Americans despite hailing from an aristocratic family with a coat of arms. The war never came to America and Quentin never went overseas to fight. Only Quentin’s brother Kermit joined the fight as a supply officer and Arabic translator in the British army in their Mesopotamia campaign. In 1920, with the war dying down, Quentin and his brothers were discharged. Quentin also married Flora shortly after being discharged. Their marriage was a happy one and they had three children. Quentin continued his flying career and happened to cross paths with Charles Lindbergh.

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Kermit Roosevelt in British service. Before the First World War, Kermit accompanied his father in the River of Doubt expedition in 1913-1914 and almost died in the process. In the British army, Kermit proved himself valuable in the Mesopotamia campaign but the British High Command placed himself in charge of transport to avoid risking his life. When Canada announced the campaign to "reclaim the birthright" at the start of WW2, Kermit convinced his friend the exiled statesman Winston Churchill to give him a job in the Canadian army. Kermit suffered from a lifelong struggle with depression and alcoholism and started to drink again during his Canadian service. He was discharged for health reasons and he returned to the US. Kermit's family lost tracked of him so they appealed to President Roosevelt, who ordered the FBI to track him down. The President gave his brother a job as an U.S. army officer to order to help him. Alas, Kermit ultimately killed himself despite his family's best efforts. His mother was told her son died of heart disease.


Quentin knew many subjects by heart but politics was what really interested him. Quentin was known by his peers for his deep research into the area of the basis of public support or lack of support for various policies including the ones he did not personally support. Of Theodore’s children, Quentin, Ted, and Ethel remained faithful to their father’s liberal Republican politics. Quentin would slowly drift more to the left but he never, despite attacks to the contrary, identified himself as a socialist. Alice and Archibald became strongly conservative Republicans. Kermit was relatively apolitical. All the Roosevelt children, except for Archibald, had a strong personal if politically limited sympathy for the plight of non-white Americans and had no trouble personally associating with non-whites. The Roosevelts never had any qualms about publicly attacking and embarrassing each other over their political differences. Alice once publicly declared during the 1936 election that she “would sooner vote for the Kaiser than my brother Quentin. The only things we have in common politically are our surnames.” In private, the Roosevelts remained friendly and the brothers continued to travel on nature expeditions and vacations together. The only unfortunate exception to this was Archibald. He became involved in various paranoid far right anti-socialist movements and he blamed problems with race relations on socialist subversion. In 1936, Archibald joined the America First Party. This ruined his once very close relations with Quentin. Quentin took Alice’s comments in good humor. Quentin took Archibald’s joining of America First as a deep personal betrayal. Upon hearing of Archibald’s registration with America First, Quentin flew into a rage and wrote a letter to Flora that “my once dearest brother Archie is dead to me. He has betrayed me and my father’s most deeply held values by joining that band of frauds and autocrats! He's a maverick! He does not wear the brand of our family. Our family has always strongly disagreed on politics, but all the branches of this great family have always believed in democracy and the wisdom of this country’s founders. He is a traitor to this family and should no longer be welcome in our house!”
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Alice Roosevelt Longworth and her daughter Paulina. Theodore's eldest daughter and Quentin's half-sister, she was widely known for her rebellious nature and "brilliantly malicious" sense of humor. It was widely suspected by Washington society that the father of her child Paulina was actually Senator William Borah and not her husband Nicholas Longworth. Her wicked humor and jokes caused her to be banned from the White House by several administrations including that of her half-brother's.


Quentin first became notable in his own right in 1920 and 1921 when he publicly criticized the expulsion of the socialists from the New York assembly and the heavy crackdown on socialists by the McAdoo administration as undemocratic and playing into the hands of the Socialist party. Quentin Roosevelt helped in the creation of the international Legation cities in China in 1926 after the German intervention there. The Legation cities represented America’s “Open Door” policy towards China. Quentin’s shift toward the left began after the 1925 British Revolution and the resulting American crash. Originally, Quentin’s political beliefs strongly matched his father’s. The elder Roosevelt had passed the Square Deal in his term. Theodore had believed that the rules of the economy should be oriented to prevent cheating, monopolies, and to equalize the relationship between businesses, consumers, and employees. However, he did not believe in directly helping the poor and unemployed because he believed such situations are the affairs of the individual to fix. The elder Roosevelt argued, unless the hand of fate has truly harshly struck a man, any person could escape poverty by his own labor. As the depression dragged on, Quentin began to think that the harsh hand of fate had indeed struck the entire nation and that there were systemic problems with the American economy that prevented hard working Americans from escaping poverty through labor or even finding work. Quentin saw that President Hoover’s policies were not enough. However, Quentin never lost faith in the idea of a capitalist economy. In his debates with Norman Thomas in the race for governor of New York, he strongly defended capitalism even as he called for strong reform. He won the governorship. Quentin increasingly believed that his father’s Square Deal required a follow-up. Americans needed a fairer and newer deal.

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A hand drawing of Quentin Roosevelt for the American Legion. Quentin would eventually prove a valuable domestic policy attack dog for Curtis and he is popular in his own right with most Americans for his WW2 and post-war leadership. He is considered America's most successful president's son to become president himself. However, he has been criticized for his somewhat economically imperialistic approach of promoting American interests in post-war Europe in exchange for American recovery aid as such his successful efforts to steal Ireland away from the German economic sphere and his outright blatantly imperialistic approach in crushing syndicalism and driving out German businesses in favor of American businesses in Latin America such as the invasion of Centroamerica.
 
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I rather like how this update constantly references Quentin even whilst addressing other Roosevelts, as appropriate given his eventual career. The end result is a view of the man from several different angles.
 
Ah, the Roosevelts. Perfect micro chasm of a nation changing from continental hegemon to imperialist entity and all the internal divisions and spats that this caued. :p And with Quentin getting his shot at fame unlike his fate from OTL, it looks like they'll have an ever more prominent place in the new mythology of America.
 
Republican Party (Part 3)
The Republicans: The Convention (Part 3)

The Fair Deal is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social collapse in America”-H.G. Wells in 1939.

The Republican National Convention of 1936 was held from June 9 to June 12. There was great pessimism in the air because many Republicans doubted that any Republican could win the election. The main candidates at the convention were Vice President Charles Curtis, Governor Quentin Roosevelt, Senator William Borah, and Governor Alf Landon. There was a progressive air at the convention. Landon fell away in the running. Roosevelt and Borah were popular but the party machine backed the centrist and experienced Curtis. However, Curtis knew he had to distance himself from the failed policies of Hoover. The Republicans decided to pick the less experienced Roosevelt as the progressive vice-presidential candidate because Borah had been involved in the murder trial of the late Bill Haywood of the Industrial Workers of the World. Haywood was a hero of the CSA and the progressive Republicans needed left-leaning voters. Roosevelt accepted the VP nomination on the condition that he have an active role in the Curtis campaign and administration. Roosevelt did not want to be sidelined like his father was in the McKinley administration. The selected candidates pledged a fair deal for America and a radical break from the ways of Hoover. Of course, the Fair Deal was nowhere near as radical as the policies of the CSA and the AFU party. As a quick side note, Quentin would have preferred the name “second Square Deal” but the name “Square Deal” had been become associated with a fiercely militarist anti-Long group in the South so that name was out. After Garner’s nomination for President on July 27, and with both radical candidates already running, the general election had begun.
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The two unsuccessful candidates of Governor Alf Landon and Senator William Borah. Although a progressive Republican, Governor Landon was considered too lukewarm as a reformer and in personal appeal to be a successful presidential candidate. He would eventually come to support the Fair Deal. A firm member of the internationalist wing of the Republicans, he would urge the federal government to help the German Empire and the Danubian Federation's war efforts against the Third Internationale by sending the nations money directly instead of sending weapons. Senator Borah had hoped to lead the reshaping of the Republicans into a progressive party but his prior history with Bill Haywood, his alienation of the party establishment by his longtime maverick act, and his tendency to abandon causes after initial enthusiasm undercut his bid for the presidential nomination. Borah supported President Curtis's efforts to negotiate with Reed. When war broke out between France and Germany, Borah lamented that he could have prevented the war by talking to the leadership of both sides.

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A short update but the story is about to truly began folks! I am glad people enjoy my little written portraits of the characters of Kaiserreich.

Trivia and Sidenotes: Landon was the historical Republican nominee in 1936. FDR crushed Landon in the election. The Kaiserreich developers briefly considered using Borah as the game's compromise candidate in place of Curtis but ultimately rejected him. The Wells quote obviously referred to FDR's New Deal in real life. The words "Fair Deal" refers historically to Harry Truman's domestic program program in real life.
 
A nice little breakdown of the convention, and how we get our 1936 candidates.
 
Any tips to improve the AAR?
You're doing good.:) Only thing I can think of is you sometimes overdo the same words in the start of your sentences. Point in case, the update I'm quoting: "Curtis" is used massively.:) If you sometimes used for example "he" and changed the sentence structure here and there, it would flow much better.:) But this is a minor point.
 
General Election and the Political Crisis
The General Election of 1936 and the Political Crisis of 1936-1937

The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice.”- The Twelfth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The general election of 1936 was perhaps the most contentious election since the election of 1860 and many feared it would end the same way. The candidates all railed against each other as a threat to the United States and each party promised that they would solve the problems of the nation and end the Great American Depression. The Republicans promised a middle ground to solve the nation’s problems and cooperation with the more radical parties to end the crisis. Given Curtis’s poor health and general lack of public speaking skills, Roosevelt served as Curtis’s main political attack dog. He defended the Fair Deal firmly against the three sets of criticism from Reed, Long, and Garner. The finer details of the election can be found in the latest book of the excellent book series Critical Elections: The People’s Voice.
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Lawlessness and protests regularly popped up through the country throughout the summer. The tensions were also fueled by the Great North American heat wave of 1936. More than one American fiction authors writing on the Depression period has taken the Great heat wave as a metaphor for the nation's fear, worries, and anger during the summer.

Interestingly, certain historians have begun to claim that the crisis that gripped America in the late 1930s was primarily a crisis of confidence in democracy that was caused more by the political radicalization of America than the actual economy by the time of the election of 1936. Contrary to the words of the radical candidates and the common belief of Americans at the time, the economy was slowly and steadily improving in the last year of Hoover’s term. The Black Monday crash in Germany in 1936 further shook the average American’s faith in capitalism. The damage to the American economy was actually limited thanks to the German embargo. The embargo that helped crash America’s economy in the late 1920s would also unintentionally shield America from the worst effects of the German caused worldwide Great Depression. Both right-wing conservative and radical Marxist economists have further suggested for different reasons that the American Fair Deal, the government intervention by the Austrian social democrats, and other moderate left-wing programs were nothing but mere national placebos that did nothing to help or even prolonged the economic crises in their countries. Naturally, moderate left-wing economists and politicians vigorously dispute these claims. These economic programs were not always effective in retaining popular support for governments either. The Spanish Kingdom's "Jobs for the People" failed to avert the Spanish Civil War there, Regardless of the actual effectiveness of the mentioned programs, there is something to the idea that the 1936-1937 American political crisis was growing increasingly divorced from the economic realities. That is not to say that we should dismiss political concerns just because they might not be grounded in reality. In democratic elections, such concerns can easily take a life of their own and eventually surpass the true reality of events in importance.

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This CSA-affiliated political song book and their AFU counterparts helped fan the flames of disillusionment with traditional American democracy and capitalism even as the economic situation actually slowly improved in 1936.


In the 1936 election, the electoral college was hung again and sent to the House of Representatives again. The House had to pick a president from the top three candidates. They were Curtis, Long, and Reed. Garner lost out of selection. The House, still largely Democrats and Republicans, selected Curtis to avoid the two radical candidates. The unexpected survival of the Republicans to make it to the top three slots and resulting election was due to the appeal of the moderate Fair Deal and the popular Governor Roosevelt claiming his home state from the socialists. The progressives were loathed to admit it but Hoover’s second term programs had also helped a little. It also had to do with the fact that the CSA and AFU mainly split their supporters from the Democratic voting base and the strongly conservative Garner’s utter lack of appeal beyond Texans and rabid southern Long haters. Of course, the election would never have happened if different decisions had been made in a day in late September 1936.
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The fact that a second president have been elected by the House of Representatives and the Twelfth Amendment process in a row dropped the faith of Americans in democracy and the Constitution to perhaps the lowest point it has ever reached. However in the years afterwards, the results of the election have been touted as an example of the importance of the Twelfth Amendment and the House of Representatives in stopping would-be revolutionaries and dictators.

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Thanks for the tips and comments! Keep them coming. Next is MacArthur and a brief but relevant detour to Russia. See you soon.
 
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So Curtis - but he and Roosevelt have their work cut out to navigate the fractured land.
 
The safe candidate won. But will he govern well?
 
It depends on your definition of safe. Curtis is the only American presidential candidate ingame that can die in office and with potentially far more serious consequences than the historical and base game of FDR to Truman.
 
Of Generals, Tsars, Kings, and Emergency Measures
Of Generals, Tsars, Kings, and Emergency Measures

While the Prime Minister and I have no desire to spoil the stability of the good relations between the United States of America and the Commonwealth of Canada, we advise your Excellency to do whatever is necessary to prevent any choosing of the radicals in the November elections. If any undesirable elements were to claim the Oval Office, you should know that Canada and her Entente allies will take all drastic measures necessary to defend Canada from any destabilizing forces south of our common border.” – King Edward VIII in a letter to Hoover.

On September 26, 1936, a secret and private meeting occurred between President Hoover and his chief of staff General Douglas MacArthur. This meeting would remain strictly classified until 1989. General MacArthur discussed the security situation of the country with Hoover. He revealed to Hoover that elements of America First were recruiting Long’s supporters into right-wing militias called the Minutemen with Long’s secret blessing. These militias were beginning to talk of a great crusade to save America from the syndicalists and the corrupt establishment. MacArthur also revealed that the CSA was beginning to store arms for a possible revolution. The syndicalist powers of the Third Internationale were sending spies and agents to train Americans to fight a revolution. The loyalty of the National Guard in the syndicalist and AFU dominated states was questionable. Meanwhile, the new revanchist totalist Mexican government were preparing to attempt to reclaim and invade the so-called “lost territories” of the American Southwest if the US collapsed into civil war. Back a few months earlier, King Edward VIII and Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King had sent to a private letter to Hoover’s desk. Knowledge of the Canadian letter had been leaked to the public and while the actual contents remained secret, everybody knew the Canadians and their Entente allies had threatened the United States with vague extreme measures if Reed or Long won the incoming elections. No one wanted Canadian intervention in internal American affairs.

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The relationship between King Edward VIII and the Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King was very tense on its best days. The battle for the supremacy of the King and the British Exiles versus the supremacy of the elected Canadian parliament and prime minister, the so-called "War of the two Kings of Canada" had just by won by Prime Minister King and the Canadian parliament was busy stripping Edward and the exiles of any real powers with the Canadian Constitution act. Nevertheless, both King Edward and Prime Minister King in early 1936 were deeply concerned about the tensions in the United States. The Defense Schemes to defend Canada and intervene in the event of a second American civil war were canceled in 1941 and declassified in the 1960s. They called for the seizing of Alaska, New England, and the Panama Canal and direct Entente intervention if the American federal government seemed about to collapse before the syndicalists and Longists.

With all these factors in mind, General MacArthur advised President Hoover to suspend the constitution and invoke martial law to crackdown on the two extremist parties threatening American democracy. He argued that Reed and Long would not respect the election results if they lost and they would not preserve democracy if they won. Hoover had come to distrust MacArthur. MacArthur was a showman of a general and did not always obey his commander-in-chief. MacArthur had hired a public relations staff to promote himself and his ideas. He believed America needed a strongman (such as himself) to crush the syndicalists and America Firsters. He also believed that the future of America belonged in Asia and not Europe and he expressed dislike of the Entente alliance. More concerning to Hoover, MacArthur had a massive ego. MacArthur promoted officers based on personal loyalty to himself and referred to himself as “MacArthur” and not Douglas. Could MacArthur be trusted with unlimited power?

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The would-be military dictator of the United States and one of the most controversial American generals in history. Historians continue to debate the possibility of MacArthur as a military dictator, his possible effectiveness in stopping Long and Reed, and if he would have become an American Caesar or Cincinnatus. Had he become dictator, a civil war would have surely broken out in protest to the end of American democracy. MacArthur would go on to lead the American campaign in Italy and he would prove vital to the establishment of a democratic Italian republic after the war.

The general cited the example of Peter Wrangel in Russia. After President Alexander Kerensky’s assassination in January 1936, the moderate general Peter Wrangel assumed power. Wrangel retained members of Kerensky’s liberal and right-SR cabinet in his own provisional government. Wrangel had brought order to the unstable republic through a multifaceted approach. First, Wrangel recreated the Russian secret police and sent the army to hunt down the neo-Bolsheviks and Boris Savinkov’s national populist party. Second, Wrangel and his cabinet enacted sweeping reforms to appease the Russian people. He fulfilled his promises to striking Russian workers to improve labor rights. Through these actions, Russia was stabilized. Hoover was not impressed. Hoover rejected MacArthur’s plan. He believed MacArthur’s raging ego might result in the general becoming a dictator for life. Hoover also gambled that Reed or Long would not win the presidency. Besides, General Joseph Hooker had wanted to set up a military dictatorship to fight the Confederates on the behalf of the Union during the American Civil War only to fail to defeat Robert E. Lee and that a dictatorship had proved unnecessary for victory back then. MacArthur was enraged by the President’s refusal. He told Hoover that “when we have lost the coming civil war, and an American boy, lying in the mud with an syndie bayonet through his belly and a French supplied boot on his dying throat, spat out his last curse, I want the name not to be MacArthur, but Hoover!" MacArthur then stormed out of the White House and vomited on the front steps.

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Baron Peter/Pyotr Wrangel (left) was the most respected White general in Russia. He was and remains considered a just and skilled administrator both during the Russian Civil War and his time as Russia's dictator after Kerensky's death. However, he is controversial for betraying his promises to the Russian democrats and his own beliefs as a constitutional monarchist by reestablishing the absolute tsarist monarchy under Grand Duke Kyril (right). Wrangel did so because he believed that the government needed the support of the ultraconservative nobility and peasantry more than the support of the unpopular republicans and constitutional monarchists to survive.

In early 1937, General Wrangel restored Grand Duke Kyril Romanov as Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias in Russia to the outrage of the liberals and socialists. The Duma was reduced to an advising body. Tsar Kyril was not a complete conservative despot. He appointed Felix Yusupou as prime minister but otherwise retained the liberal cabinet. Tsar Kyril desired to modernize and liberalize certain aspects of Russia as a benevolent autocrat in the tradition of Catherine and Peter the Great. Still, Hoover privately wrote that he was glad that he turned down MacArthur’s plan and that he was not living under an American Tsar or Caesar. September 26, 1936, is often said to be the day that democracy came closest to being ended in America. Nevertheless, MacArthur was right that neither Reed and Long would accept the election results.



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Trivia: Wrangel originally played the Russian Hitler role in the older versions of the Kaiserreich mod. This was widely considered character assassination of Wrangel and so Boris Savinkov assumed that role. Wrangel replaced General Anton Denikin as the moderate general choice after Kerensky's death.
President Lincoln replied to General Hooker's efforts to become dictator by saying "I have heard, in such way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the Army and the Government needed a Dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain success can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship." Hooker was eventually defeated by Robert E. Lee and then sacked by Lincoln.
 
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I very much am enjoying these little hints to the future.

Grateful for the trivia about Wrangel - I have never followed the ins and out of KR development.
 
Sore Feelings?
Fraud or Sore Feelings or Excuses for Rebellions?

There is insufficient proof of electoral fraud for a recount!” – countless election officials in 1936.

Soon after the House election on December 1, both Reed and Long would contest the results. Long declared that when Reed and the Socialists draw that they were going to lose the election, they decided to rig the election to make both the CSA and the AFU party lose the elections. Long demanded a recount of the vote. The traditional parties and MacArthur expected the radicals might cause trouble with rioting and accusations of electoral fraud. They were all surprised by the nature of Long’s claims. Former Speaker Garner had graciously conceded the election and he ridiculed Long’s accusations. Garner said “so the big strong gentleman from Louisiana claims Mr. Reed had the power to rig the election and Reed would chose to trip himself and Long from winning like a jealous child instead of simply rigging a victory for himself. Long has spoken from the trash before but this is the purest nonsense I have ever heard from his lips.” Modern readers often express disbelief at Long’s statements, but to many southerners in 1936, Long’s word was the gospel truth. Long was the leader of and object of an unofficial cult of personality around himself. President Hoover and the government refused to do a recount. President-elect Curtis promised reconciliation with America First and the CSA but there would be no recounts without convincing evidence of wrongdoing.

Of course, Reed denied any wrongdoing on the part of his party. Reed also contested the results. Reed’s claims focused on New York State and Tammany Hall. Tammany Hall of “Boss” Tweed fame was the infamously corrupt Democratic political machine in New York. The Curtis/Roosevelt ticket had narrowly defeated the CSA in Roosevelt’s home state of New York in the electoral college and House elections. Tammany Hall’s power had declined with the election of the socialists and progressive politicians but it still had a fair amount of power in New York and national politics. Shortly after the House election, Reed published a letter that supposedly detailed a scheme that would have the Democratic political machine deliver New York to the Republicans in exchange for federal patronage. Roosevelt and incoming cabinet member Fiorello H. La Guardia ardently denied any wrongdoing and said they were fierce opponents of Tammany Hall. Their political records before and after the election would bear that out. Reed replied that “the capitalists would gladly sell out their so-called principles any time for another chance to profit off the labor of the proletariat.” Many have accused Reed, at the time and afterwards, of fabricating the letter wholesale. Later analysis would reveal the handwriting did not match the men who supposedly wrote the letter. Reed’s journal, published after Reed’s death in October 1940, revealed Reed truly believed the letter was real at the time. Reed was a man inclined to believe the worst of capitalist politicians. After the famous negotiations, Reed stopped pressing the issue and privately doubted the letter but never retracted the accusation. As for the letter, no one knows its true origin. Some believe the letter was created by an anonymous member of the CSA to help the cause. There is questionable evidence suggesting the letters was created by the intelligence agencies of the syndicalist powers. There is no evidence suggesting the Long campaign created the letter despite suggestions at the time. At the time, the contesting of the election caused an uproar.

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A cartoon of the legendary "Boss" Tweed and the symbol of Tammany Hall. Formerly one of the most powerful political machines in country during the age of Tweed, Tammany Hall was a dying shadow of its former self by 1936. Nevertheless, it was an easy place and target for Reed and the syndicalists to unleash their rage on.

In early January 1937, the CSA launched a massive general strike to pressure the government to appoint socialists to offices and cabinet positions or to topple the government and launch the revolution. The strike was a sit-down strike. The workers occupied the factories in the steel belt and refused to work. The AFU party did similar actions in the South with Long’s massive southern rallies in the cities. President Hoover declared his support for the new president. Interestingly, it would also be the last time Hoover would support his successor’s policies. All of this occurred before Curtis was even inaugurated as President.

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President Herbert Hoover and his press secretary Theodore Joslin attempt to prepare a statement to reassure the American public in the crisis. This was a near impossible task for secretary Joslin. Joslin's diary and record of Hoover are valuable resources for historians researching the Hoover administration.
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My first update back in college. I regret that the rate of updates for this AAR and the quality of my comments elsewhere on this forum may decrease but school comes first. Leave comments please.


Inspiration for using Tammany Hall in the Kaiserreich story must go to TC Pilot and his use of Tammany Hall in a slightly different manner in his classic HOI2 AAR "Prophets of a New Order" featuring a living FDR (FDR is dead in normal Kaiserreich) and Harry Truman's journey through the dangerous twists of the Kaiserreich universe. Sadly, that AAR was another victim of Photobucket.
 
This is the time of the hydra - so many problems face the new government, and I feel every time one is resolved another will rear its ugly head.
 
Inauguration and the Proto-Fair Deal
The Inauguration of Charles Curtis and the Proto-Fair Deal.
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Hail to the Chief, as we pledge cooperation
In proud fulfillment of a great, noble call.
” -Part of the rarely sung lyrics of Hail to the Chief.


On the inauguration day of January 20, Charles Curtis had the massive challenge of regaining the confidence of the American people whose faith in the federal government was at the lowest point since the election of Abraham Lincoln. When Curtis looked over the tense crowd, he knew that many of the American people did not support him and failure in office might make him the last president of the United States. Curtis’s speech making skills generally paled compared to Lincoln or to his own vice president, but Curtis’s speech was a strong speech calling for calm and unity. Curtis briefly reviewed the economic crisis in his speech while avoiding mentioning the political crisis and he promised to break from the failed policies of the past to work with both the CSA and AFU to resolve the Great Depression. After the end of the inauguration, President Curtis and the Vice President met with General MacArthur to discuss the crisis. MacArthur expressed relief that he was not talking to Reed or Long. He moved on to discuss the state of the divided Union. The general said that, while he respected Curtis’s efforts, he believed the situation was bad enough that no man could prevent the outbreak of rebellion or civil war. He warned that the authority of the civilian government was eroding by the hour and perhaps only the military could save the country as it was the case in 1861. He declared that Curtis had roughly a hundred days before the radicals launched their revolutions or the authority of the civilian federal government collapsed completely. There was a hundred days to save America from ripping itself to pieces.
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Charles Evans Hughes was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by President Hoover in 1930 in order to replace Chief Justice and former president William Howard Taft. Justice Hughes administered the oath of office for Curtis. Hoover's chosen justice would eventually prove to be both a powerful friend and foe of the Fair Deal. In 1939, the Supreme Court would strike down elements of the Reed-Curtis compromise and the Fair Deal. Reed raged against the Court and many people briefly feared the Supreme Court had just reignited the by then solved political crisis. President Curtis dismissed any suggestions from Vice President Roosevelt and Reed to try to pack the Supreme Court with new favorable justices. The constitutionally acceptable National Labor Relations Act of 1939, or the La Guardia Act, was swiftly passed to replace the Reed-Curtis compromise to prevent any renewed tensions with the unions.

President Curtis had no desire to simply wait for Reed and Long to make the next move like Hoover might had done. During Hoover’s “lame duck” period between the election and the inauguration, Curtis and his team drafted bills for Congress that would be later changed beyond recognition or failed to make it to the floor of Congress and are generally not considered part of the Fair Deal. Nevertheless, the contents of these bills give an insight into the minds of Curtis’s team before the talks with Reed. The first of these bills was the early version of the Economic Relief Act. The act was simply a moderate expansion of the economic plans of President Hoover. It was more of the public works projects and slightly more intervention in the economy than Hoover would have done. Curtis later realized that this act would upset both the conservative wing and the progressive wing of the Republicans. For the conservatives, the act was too much. For the progressives, the act was more of the failed policies of Hoover. The early act shows the potential pitfalls of a centrist position in politics. It also suggests a possible degree of truth to the criticism, later made by both conservatives and hardline radical socialists, that the Curtis administration was simply desperately fishing for any solution to the Depression on the fly and had few concrete plans in place to deal with the crisis. The poor reception of the bill within the cabinet would influence the formerly centrist Curtis to side with the progressive wing of the Republicans later. The second act of the proto-Fair Deal was the Civil Liberties Act. This act was primarily focused on appeasing the CSA. It provided for the civil liberties of the members of the radical movements and hoped to end injustices like the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti. It also had provisions to protect and expand the rights of African Americans and other minorities. Alas, the Civil Liberties Act died before it was even born. Although Curtis himself was Native American and Roosevelt had his family’s usual sympathies for minorities, the act would never get pass by Garner’s conservative Southern Democrats and Curtis’s team gambled that the average Steel belt union worker did not truly care for the CSA’s platform of radical racial equality. The chance of civil rights and liberties for all would not pass for the next twenty or so years. The negotiations with Reed would prevent any more work on the proto-Fair Deal acts. These bills were eventually fully replaced by the Fair Deal.

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Thanks for the continued support audience! Sadly stnylan, the hints of the future are basically my AAR's version of RPG flavor fluff. It is doubtful I will have the time to cover the world beyond the passing of the Fair Deal to the same degree as the main short AAR. I do have vague plans to cover the world beyond 1937 by a different shorter style if I find the time but no promises.
The proto-Fair Deal is my take on the various acts in the Curtis focus tree to lower tensions before the main talks with Reed.
 
Definitely sounds like Curtis tried to be pro-active and take back the initiative that Hoover had squandered.