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Intro
  • Bored Student1414

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    A Fair Deal For America: A Kaiserreich AAR
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    Every American deserves and expects from their government a fair deal” - Quentin Roosevelt.

    This prolonged crisis has laid bare the many weaknesses and flaws of America. But this crisis is also an opportunity to address these flaws and to create a more perfect union. My administration, together with your support, plans to make the most of this chance. America can be great again!” - Charles Curtis.

    “Mr. President, I can’t stress enough on how bad it really is out here. With Reed in the planning stages of a revolution, and Long whipping his supporters into a frenzy even he might not be able to control, and with respect for the government and the norms of our Constitution crumbling, I reckon we have roughly a hundred days at best to save America from itself and the greatest bloodletting since the Civil War.”-Douglas MacArthur.

    To the causal foreign observer watching the United States in the years of 1936 and 1937, the Americans had carried on with their great democracy as they always had since the end of the American Civil War in 1865. Oh there had been a little more pushing, screaming, and violence than usual in that time but the duly elected government had calmed the situation with a few deals and reforms like always before. In the years afterwards, the United States was a beacon of democracy as the tide of left-wing socialist dictatorships and right-wing autocracies swept through whole continents. As the cause of freedom faltered before the totalist and communist armies in Europe, the exiled British statesman Winston Churchill predicted that one day that the United States with all its power and might would one day awaken to step forth to the liberation of the old world. In 1942, the United States would indeed awaken and would eventually remake much of Europe in its own image. To Americans in 1936 and to astute foreign observers, the future that would come to pass seemed impossible. This is the story of how American democracy was saved and how the nation was spared a brutal second civil war.

    Welcome to my little AAR. My first AAR is inspired by far superior AARs focused on certain event chains in the Kaiserreich mod. While the Kaiserreich mod prides itself on its dynamic nature compared to the vanilla game, certain events are usually predictable such as the Second American Civil War occurring. However, there are rare event chains that radically alter the world even by the standards of Kaiserreich such as the syndicalist Union of Britain being overthrown and being replaced by a restored United Kingdom in 1937 or the divided India reuniting peacefully or the American government preventing a civil war from occurring. We will focus on the last event. While I have seen other AAR authors avoid the civil war by accident and quickly played on, I have not seen anybody explore in detail what it would take to avoid a civil war. I have already written the whole AAR over the summer but feel free to leave feedback and criticism.
     
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    In the Shadow of Germany's Place in the Sun
  • In the Shadow of Germany's Place in the Sun

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    “We, who are Socialists, must hope — we may even expect — that out of this horror of bloodshed and dire destruction will come far-reaching social changes — and a long step forward towards our goal of Peace among Men. But we must not be duped by this editorial buncombe about Liberalism going forth to Holy War against Tyranny. This is not Our War.” - John “Jack” Reed on the First World War.

    For readers who are new to the Kaiserreich universe, the Great War to English speakers, the Weltkrieg to Germans, and the First World War to early pessimists and later generations carried out much like in our world until the eighth of January 1917 when the Germans decided to not provoke the United States and President Wilson with unrestricted submarine warfare. The Germans decided to wage a propaganda war to promote anti-war and anti-Entente sentiment (Entente refers to the WW1 Allied Powers). The Germans were greatly helped when the British sank an American aid ship by accident. Instead of the Germans launching a failed spring offensive in 1918, it is the Entente. The Russian Revolution and the resulting Civil War still happened. The Germans managed to break the British blockade just in time to avoid the starving of Germany into submission at the Second Battle of Jutland. The Germans launched a 1919 spring offensive that forced the British off mainland Europe and forced the surrender of the French Third Republic. The Germans would celebrate Christmas in the streets of Paris. The defeated Republic was toppled by the anarcho-syndicalist trade unions and French Jacobin communists. The Commune of France was born. The Republican remnants fled to French North Africa into a bitter exile. Here, the democratic republican government collapsed and was replaced by a series of nationalistic military juntas.

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    The Flag of the Commune of France

    After the fall of France, the Germans would decide the Bolsheviks had outlived their usefulness after the fall of the provisional government and they helped the Russian Whites win the Russian Civil War in exchange for accepting the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The fall of the Bolsheviks weakened the standings of the communist movement and the creation of the Commune of France strengthened the anarcho-syndicalist movement. The outmaneuvered French communists would bid their time. The Germans and their allies harshly treated the defeated continental Entente powers with the removal of colonies, core lands, and sometimes total dissolution in the case of the Kingdom of Italy. Southern Italy would fall to syndicalist revolution as well. The syndicalist nations created the Third Internationale alliance to plot revenge against Germany and the exiled Entente powers. In 1921, the holdout Entente powers of the British Empire, Japan, and Portugal and the Central Powers signed the so-called “peace with honor” returning the captured colonies of the other side and a promise to respect the other side’s remaining lands. Meanwhile, the weakened British dealing with Irish unrest were forced to release the whole of Ireland including Protestant Northern Ireland, unlike real life. In 1925, the heavy-handed response of the British government to a coal miners’ strike caused a general strike by the Trades Union Congress. Unlike the real life 1926 general strike where the well-prepared British government just waited out the strike, the British government sends in the military to break the strike. Soldiers mutinied which caused massive chaos in the United Kingdom and the evacuation of the Royal family and government to Canada. Many world powers seized British imperial possessions in the name of stability or to settle old grudges. The empire was no more. The United Kingdom was replaced with the Syndicalist Union of Britain.

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    The Flag of the Union of Britain

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    The German Navy was vital to the expansion of German power in 1920s.

    In 1926, Chinese monarchists in war-torn China requested the intervention of the German Empire to restore the Qing dynasty and the former emperor Pu Yi. The Germans did so but at the price of Southern China being handed to German economic firms and the wealthy coastal Legation cities to the joint control of various foreign powers.

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    The existence of the Legation Cities enraged many Chinese but they were currently helpless to do anything about them yet.

    As for the United States, the German Empire and its Mitteleuropa system of puppet nations embargoed the US to punish the Americans for economically supporting the Entente powers during the war. The American economy remained strong until the 1925 British Revolution and the US economy collapsed after the loss of trade with the now syndicalist powers. The Germans were delighted by the American economic collapse.

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    A bank run and protest in the wake of the American economic collapse.

    The jealous Kaiser Wilhelm II had been determined to bring down the American economy since the start of the century. They snapped up America’s position as the economic engine of the world and America’s remaining trade partners. The bitter and petty Germans attempted to drive the Americans off their high spots in almost every conceivable area. Even the studios at Babelsburg would attempt to steal Hollywood’s place as the cultural engine of the Western world. As far as the Kaiser was concerned, everybody had to understand the 20th century was the German century and nobody would remove the Fatherland from its place in the Sun. Not the Communards and certainly not the upstart Yankees. The Great American Depression dragged on for seemingly without end. The unemployment rate remained stuck between 20 to 25 percent. The conditions of the US were a fertile nesting ground for firebrand radicals who promised relief at the expense of traditional American values and democracy. Democratic President William McAdoo and Vice President Alexander Palmer, from 1920 to 1928, harshly attempted to suppress the socialist movement but only succeeded in inflaming the situation. All too many Americans were willing to listen to the radicals in the polarized atmosphere of America. The Republican President Herbert Hoover's policies failed to help the situation as well. By New Year's Day of 1936, the whispers of rebellion and a possible second civil war were in the homes of every American.

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    Attorney General and later Vice President Alexander Mitchell Palmer and his "Palmer Raids" terrorized and unwittingly radicalized thousands of leftists during the Wilson and McAdoo administrations.
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    Note: The plausibility of the German intervention in China and the potential for a second American civil war has been greatly questioned by non-fans but these things are core parts of the lore. Small bits of history and the fates of certain people in the lore changes from update to update but the above history has remained largely unchanged.

    I thank you all for your support now and in the future. I welcome comments.
     
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    Ideologies
  • What is there for the Poor Common Man to Believe In?

    The Special Ideologies of Kaiserreich
    National Populism is basically fascism by a different name because the founding Italian Fascists such as Mussolini who created the name remained socialists in the Kaiserreich universe. The main inspiration for most national populists in the Kaiserreich universe is the Iron Guard or Legionnaire Movement ruling Romania in 1936. The followers of the movement wear green uniforms and thus were nicknamed the “Greenshirts.” In real life, they were Romania’s local fascism movement and they can also pop up in the base Hearts of Iron game as well. The Iron Guard was a very violent ultra-nationalist, anti-semitic, anti-socialist and pro-Christian organization. The national populist movements of Kaiserreich tend to be weaker than the syndicalist movement or their OTL fascism counterparts but remain a powerful and terrifying threat to unstable governments around the world.
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    Corneliu Zelea Codreanu is the founder of the Iron Guard. He is the Căpitanul (Captain) of the Iron Guard and the feared Conducător (Leader) of Romania in 1936.

    Anarcho-Syndicalism or Revolutionary Syndicalism is a radical socialist ideology centered on the idea that workers and industrial organizations should be organized into democratic confederations called syndicates as a replacement for capitalism. It also proposes the traditional nation state be replaced by a federation of syndicates through a general strike to topple the national governments. A syndicalist society such as the Commune of France would be much more democratic than Stalin’s Soviet Union but such a society would be very harsh on any nonsocialist dissent and any “counterrevolutionary” elements. You can expect book burnings. The elections would have real choices for the common people, unlike in the Warsaw Pact countries, but the losing faction might be repressed or even be purged. Indeed, a syndicalist society would be more democratic economically than a liberal republic or constitutional monarchy but it would be less free in the political and personal sense. The long-term efficiency of a democratic business syndicate beyond the local level has also been questioned. Historically, the syndicalist movement was always heavily suppressed and its proponents never had really had the chance to establish a working syndicalism society. Thanks to the 1919 French Communard Revolution in Kaiserreich, syndicalism has replaced communism as the dominant revolutionary socialist theory. The weakened communists plot their return to the leadership of the Internationale. Many syndicalists pride themselves on syndicalism’s supposedly democratic nature but even syndicalism is not immune to the poisonous authoritarian undercurrent of the 1930s.
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    Originally a symbol of the Industrial Workers of World union, the black cat was also adopted by the syndicalist movement as one of their symbols as well. The black cat or "sabo-tabby" represents sabotage and bad luck for the capitalist factory owners.


    Totalism or totalitarian socialism is a Kaiserreich specific ideologue created by Oswald Mosley, the real life would be fascist British dictator who also remained socialist in the Kaiserreich universe. It is a form of syndicalism heavily influenced by Marxist-Leninist communism and other more authoritarian socialist movements. It calls for total control of the economic, political, social, and military affairs of national society from one very powerful centralized trade union. It explicitly rejects the trend of socialist and syndicalist democracy. It also calls for the promotion of nationalism, the creation of a cult of personality and the spread of socialist revolution. It is basically Stalinist communism but with a powerful central trade union replacing the vanguard communist party. There would be little actual difference living under a communist or a totalist society so the game tends to lump totalism and communism together.
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    Comrade Oswald Mosley is one of the most polarizing men in the Union of Britain. His supporters claim he will lead the Union into a bright future. Others claim he is a British Napoleon ready to hijack the people's revolution for his own self-serving purposes.
     
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    Workers of the World, Unite!
  • Workers of the World, Unite! You have Nothing to Lose But Your Chains!

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    The most heroic word in all languages is revolution. - Eugene Debs

    The Combined Syndicates of America was the primary left wing socialist movement and party in the US in 1936. It was a collection of social democratic, syndicalist, anarchist, and communist groups united under the leadership of John “Jack” Reed who was a former journalist turned socialist. The legacy of the CSA remains controversial to this day. Most conservative Democrats and some liberal Republicans consider the CSA to be largely a band of unpatriotic communists and syndicalists who once threatened to destroy American democracy and who were barely tamed by President Curtis’s diplomacy. Modern socialists and some of the very left-wing progressive members of the modern day Republican party consider the CSA vital to the advancement of the cause of the American union man. Other Republicans would rather exclude and downplay the legacy of the CSA in making the 1930s Fair Deal possible for good reason. The legacy of the CSA has been heavily stained by their eager association with the Communards and British Unionists who eventually became America’s WW2 enemies and who destroyed the Brandenburg Gate and countless other icons of European culture in their ultimately unsuccessful bid to conquer Europe. The different elements of the CSA had united in 1920 at the Emergency Congress of the Socialist party in response to the 1919 French Commune revolution and the unity of the French left in their revolution. Before the Congress, the Industrial Workers of the World union and the Socialist party had separated over differences in tactics while the communists were in mourning over the collapse of Soviet Russia. The Socialist party was not sure to what to make of the new Commune of France. The many factions of French socialism had united to successfully overthrow the Third Republic in their revolution and form a worker’s state although the anarcho-syndicalist trade unions had slowly sidelined the once dominant French Jacobin communists. The young journalist Reed declared his sorrow at the fall of the Soviets but pointed out that the unity of the French left had created the first successful worker’s state. Should not the American left follow the example of their French comrades to gain freedom for the American worker? The Socialist party presidential candidate Eugene Debs praised Reed and threw his support behind Reed’s suggestion. The communists grumbled but the American left agreed to reunite under one roof. Once more, America and France would exchange the ideas of revolution. Reed himself was considered something of a modern Benjamin Franklin or a red Lafayette on both sides of the Atlantic since Reed was an active member of the 1917 and 1919 revolutions.

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    Eugene Debs addresses the Emergency Congress of the American Socialist Party

    The socialist movement grew in strength after the 1925 British Revolution and the resulting American Great Depression of 1925. Providing hope and relief to the exploited, unemployed, and underemployed workers of the Northern industrial cities, the CSA won many converts to socialism. By 1936, most politicians in the Great Lakes region claimed loyalty to the CSA. The eternal problem of radical socialism was and remains to this day is that there were many competing fractured ideas about the ideal of the future worker’s paradise. Despite the grand gesture of unity back in 1920, divisions within the supposedly Combined Syndicates quietly continued back away from public view. On one end of the CSA were the totalists and communists who proposed an all-controlling state. The other end had anarchists who wanted the eventual destruction of any state or central authority. Some socialists were devoted Christian pacifists like Norman Thomas who only signed the declarations threatening the government with revolt to scare the capitalists. Others were diehard atheist revolutionaries prepared to fight to their final breath and bullet for the revolution. Without Reed’s leadership, the various factions would not have sat down in the same room on the best days and would have shot at each other on the worst days. While the actual leadership remained with Alexander Berkman until his death, Reed was the unifying leader and face of the CSA. Reed’s actual placement on the socialist spectrum in 1936 remained unclear and somewhat mysterious. By his death in 1940, he would be called a champion of the American working man, a failed would be American Oswald Mosley, and a weak-willed revisionist traitor by other socialist groups. Reed had been originally a firm supporter of the Bolshevik Revolution and on the left wing of the Socialist Party. After a visit to the French Commune, Reed expressed admiration for French syndicalism. Reed also stated that the enemies of the Bolsheviks deserved their deaths. However, Reed also associated himself with anarchists who were fierce critics of the Bolsheviks such as Emma Goldman. Benjamin Gitlow, Reed’s longtime friend, claimed Reed privately expressed deep disgust with the authoritarian and heavy-handed conduct of the Bolsheviks near the end of the Russian Civil War. Reed expressed doubts about liberal democracy and would speak of a violent revolution, but he remained friendly with the social democrats like Norman Thomas. The social democrats were greatly disliked by the radical wing of the CSA, but the social democrats were generally the members of the CSA actually elected to the state and federal government. In public, Reed skillfully avoided the deep divides by speaking a broadly acceptable and vague socialist language. Reed was helped by the fact that foes of the CSA usually viewed the organization as a monolithic bloc.

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    Once a sickly bourgeoisie boy born inside a mansion and tended to by Chinese servants, John "Jack' Reed became a charming firebrand playboy socialist revolutionary and the hope of millions of desperately poor working class Americans by 1936. His actions in 1937 would make him even more polarizing to Americans and socialists around the world today.


    The union base was the vital core of the CSA but their devotion to violent revolution was questionable in 1936. Americans talked and still talk a lot about overthrowing an oppressive government because it is part of the American national myth. However, actual real efforts to overthrow the federal government are rare. The number of unions in the CSA really operating as syndicates was rather low. Many workers and their unions joined for and cared only for better jobs. They gave little real thought to socialist ideology. Most factories in even the most socialist of cities remained in the ownership of private business. The CSA had plans to capture the factories in the event of revolution but not before to avoid provoking the premature wrath of the federal government. By the election of 1936, enough union men had been radicalized to revolt if the government performed a harsh crackdown. How many workers truly believed in world revolution, international solidarity, and so on was open to question. A skilled politician could potentially exploit the divisions of the CSA and rid it apart.

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    The 1925 British Revolution was and remains much mythicized by foreign syndicalists and other revolutionary socialists as a mass movement of the British people. In fact, only a small faction of the radicalized union base participated in the revolution and only the fact that many Britons are apathetic to who was ruling them allowed the revolution to succeed. Such apathy did not exist in the United States and it was unclear if the American union base was radicalized to the same unstoppable degree that the British unions were.

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    Notes to the Audience from Your Author

    In the interests of full disclosure, I am a dirty American liberal who votes Democrat in real life and would probably vote for the Kaiserreich version of the Republican party. That said, I will try to be fair to all the parties of the story.

    Despite having played to the fall of the Union of Britain in 1945, this AAR will be a relatively short and focused AAR centered around the events to prevent the SACW in 1936 and 1937 because I am about to become a full time college student again at summer's end. That said, I will occasionally drop hints to later events and the wider world in this AAR. I may create short interdules about interesting people in my version of the Kaiserreich universe after he conclusion of the main story if I find the time. Thank you all for your support and comments. Feel free to comment, ask questions. and give suggestions. I can still edit and add to the story.
     
    Every Man a King But No One Wears a Crown
  • Every Man a King but No One Wears a Crown (except for Huey Long)!
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    “God called: 'Come to my feast.' Then what happened? Rockefeller, Morgan, and their crowd stepped up and took enough for 120 million people and left only enough for 5 million for all the other 125 million to eat. And so many millions must go hungry and without these good things God gave us unless we call on them to put some of it back.”- Huey Long

    The American First Union Party was the primary right-wing populist party in the election of 1936. It has often accused of being America’s own national populist party like the ones in Russia and Romania. The truth is a little more nuanced than that. The party was an odd collection of supporters of the “Share Our Wealth” program, bandwagon former conservative southern Democrats, isolationists, anti-Semites, desperately poor farmers, corporatist economists, and genuine national populists held roughly together by the charismatic leadership of former Louisiana governor and senator Huey Long. The AFU party was much more centered around its leadership than the CSA.

    Huey Long was a populist opposed to the power of big business. Long started his career crusading against Standard Oil. Long portrayed himself as the protector of the common and poor man. Long’s devotion to the poor seems to have been genuine despite his battleship-sized ego and regularly eccentric behavior. When Long once saw a shoeless poor boy at his rally burning his feet on the ground, he got the boy shoes. He was nicknamed the “Kingfish.” Long had dictatorial control over Louisiana and the “Share our Wealth” plan won many loyal supporters but he was not universally popular. The former governors John Parker and Ruffin Pleasant and their supporters openly fought with Long’s “Minutemen” paramilitary force. Long’s “Share Our Wealth” promised to redistribute America’s wealth, supposedly stolen by the rich, to the poor. The plan called for a progressive tax code and income caps for pay for a guaranteed income for the poor. The economic viability was greatly questioned by economists. However, Long was not a socialist despite what his program may sound like. Long claimed his plan was the only thing that would save America from communism and syndicalism. In 1934, Long held a public debate with Norman Thomas on the merits of socialism and the “Share Our Wealth” program. Interestingly, Long was fairly progressive in race relations in private. However, Long refused to publicly discuss race relations in public to avoid alienating supporters. This action may have cost Long victory in the 1924 Louisiana governor elections because he refused to either publicly support or denounce the Ku Klux Klan. He was considered by President Hoover to be along with John Reed and General Douglas MacArthur to be the top three threats to American democracy.
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    The would be dictator of America. His legacy remains influential in Louisiana to this day. People continue to debate on how close Long was to seizing power over America. He is one of the go-to models and inspirations for dictators for American authors to use today.

    Father Charles Coughlin was a popular Catholic radio personality and ally of Huey Long. Coughlin was the one who had named the party. He named the party after Abraham Lincoln’s 1864 Union party election ticket, comparing what he called the “financial slavery” of his time to the “physical slavery” of Lincoln’s time. Coughlin’s addresses reached millions of eager listeners and he would foreshadow the modern televangelist. Coughlin and his followers attacked modern capitalism and socialism as the twin faces of the Devil. More infamously, Coughlin was a conspiratorial anti-Semite and sympathizer for national populism. Much of the Catholic church greatly disapproved of the “radio priest.” Pope Pius XI and Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli desired to silence Coughlin. Cardinal Achille Liénart, the socialist-leaning future Pope John XXIII, also opposed the statements of the anti-socialist priest. However, only Coughlin’s direct superior, Bishop Michael Gallagher, had the canonical authority to shut down Coughlin and Bishop Gallagher refused to do so. Coughlin fully backed the Long campaign. Long approved of Coughlin but disagreed with anti-Semitism. The priest was a powerful and ambitious leader within the AFU.
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    The Canadian-American "radio priest" was a vital part of the AFU media machine and Coughlin whipped up much unchristian hatred to the displeasure of his Holiness.

    William Dudley Pelley was the leader of the Silver Legion which was a white-supremacist, anti-Semitic, Christian national populist group, modeled after the Green Shirts of the Iron Guard Movement in Romania. Pelley was perhaps Reed’s right-wing mirror. Pelley was originally a respected American journalist and writer who aided the Whites in the Russian Civil War before becoming a screenwriter in Hollywood. Here, Pelley developed a sense of anti-Semitism. Pelley gained fame with claims of an out-of-body experience meeting with God and his unorthodox Christian beliefs. Long was very reluctant to allow the Silver Legion into the Union party but he relented. This unholy alliance was mocked by outsiders. Long was right to fear Pelley. Pelley, not so secretly, saw himself as the true leader of the America First movement and he plotted a “silver revolution” to install himself as dictator of America. The Silver Legion was a small, but an influential group within the Minutemen paramilitary.
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    Reed's sinister America First counterpart bids his time to overthrow Long and to start his national populist takeover.
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    Theodor Seuss Geisel, the future popular children's author, mocks Long's various unholy alliances within the AFU party. Credit obviously goes to Dr. Seuss and to the reddit member Dork of York on the Kaiserreich subreddit for this version of a classic political cartoon.

    Charles Lindbergh is more famous to later generations as the man who first flew a non-stop flight across the Atlantic from America to France in the Spirit of St. Louis. However, he also joined the America First movement after a German immigrant kidnapped and killed his infant son in the infamous “crime of the century.” Lindbergh was a comparatively moderate member and one of the leaders of the moderate faction of the America First party. He expressed a belief in American democracy and was an isolationist opposed to America joining any alliance. But Lindbergh also expressed beliefs that would be repugnant to most Americans today and at the time. Lindbergh was yet another strong anti-Semite and he saw authoritarian national-populist movements in Europe as bulwarks against communism and syndicalism. He held that the survival of the white race was more important than the survival of democracy. "Lucky Lindy's" star power aided the respectability of the AFU.
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    Charles Lindbergh's entry into and role within the AFU has damaged his legacy in the years after the AFU's collapse.

    Considered by some members of later generations to be basically a 1930s version of a high profile frustrated blogger, Doctor Francis Townsend was a single-issue member of the AFU party with a great degree of public support. He is known for promoting an old-age pension in response to the poverty of the elderly in the Depression. He argued that every person over 60 should be paid 200 dollars every month and the elderly would have to spend the money to boost the economy. This amount was a great deal at the time. The plan would be supported by a sales tax. The plan was also criticized by economists. Townsend responded by saying that his plan was too simple to be understood by their minds.
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    Popular and affable even with non-AFU supporters, this old doctor was genuinely determined to better the lives of the elderly poor and while improving the economy as the same time through Long's populist movement.

    Finally and certainly the oddball of the bunch, there was Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company fame. Ford was associated with the corporatist economic wing of the party. Long disagreed with this wing but he accepted their support. Ford was known for “Fordism” or the mass production of cheap goods such as the Model T car and corporate welfare in the form of very high wages for his workers. Ford was noted for being an anti-Semite. Ford was also famous for being very anti-union. Ford’s men harshly repressed any attempts to unionize. Ford threatened to close the company than to allow unionization. The America First Union party was a deeply unstable and contradictory organization. While not every member was a racist, authoritarian, or anti-Semite, the party was a gathering place for the uglier aspects of American society. Only Huey Long’s leadership held the party together and Long was, at times, a prisoner of his own supporters. In the shadows, the other leaders plotted to seize the throne of the party. The party was a frightening organization, but also a fragile house of cards.
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    The black sheep of the America First Union. Nevertheless, Ford's support was too great an asset for Long to turn down in his bid for the presidency.


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    Well Volkmarschall, vote for Huey Long to make EVERY Man a King!
     
    Democratic Party
  • The Heirs of Andrew Jackson
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    "Should have stuck with my old chores as Speaker of the House." -John Nance Garner after the end of his political career.


    The Democratic Party was one of the two main traditional parties of the 1936 election. It stressed the defense of American traditional values and offered an alternative to the radicalism of the CSA, the progressivism of the “New Republicans”, and the authoritarian populism of the AFU party. Its candidate for the presidency, against the wishes of the liberal Democrats, was former House Speaker John Nance Garner IV. Garner or “Cactus Jack,” was a strong-willed Texan who fiercely opposed the attempts of the other parties to change the status quo. Garner entered politics by running for county judge. Here, Garner met his political opponent and future wife, a woman named Mariette Rheiner. They married two years later. Garner developed his career in the “Solid South” era of Democratic politics. In 1901, Garner voted for the poll tax to disenfranchise minority voters and this further turned Texas into a single party state. Reed called the “law and order” Garner, “the arch-reactionary of this age.” This characterization was popular in the election but somewhat unfair to Garner. Time magazine more correctly described him as a conservative member of the new South. He represented the South that was “moneymaking, industrial, hardboiled, still expanding too rapidly to brood over social problems. He stands for oil derricks, sheriffs who use airplanes, prairie skyscrapers, mechanized farms, $100 Stetson hats. Conservative John Garner appeals to many a conservative voter.” Nevertheless, Garner was considered very out of touch with the concerns of Americans suffering in the Depression. The number of those conservative voters was drying up. Garner genuinely believed that the CSA and AFU were democracy-threatening unamerican elements that the government needed to crush with military force if necessary. He believed these radical populists and radical trade unionists needed to be removed to give American businesses the freedom required to restore the economy. Garner opposed heavy federal intervention in the American economy and he railed unsuccessfully against the Fair Deal as well in the 1936 and 1940 elections. John L. Louis, leader of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and associate leader of the CSA, described Garner as "a labor-baiting, poker-playing, whiskey-drinking, evil old man." Nevertheless, “Cactus Jack” remained personally popular within Congress and many lawmakers of all parties joined Garner regularly for drinks. Garner retained appeal to his home state, and to “law and order” conservative Southerners who fiercely hated Long’s political machine. While Garner would lose the election in a landslide to the vindication of the liberal Democrats, he and his base could not be wholly discounted by the new leadership…
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    It is generally considered fortunate by most American historians, even by some conservative Democrats, that Garner did not win the election of 1936. His refusal to “brood over social problems” and heavy-handed plan for the radicals would have assuredly provoked rebellion or even civil war. While a sincere devotee of American democracy and the Constitution, he was seriously out of touch with many a poor and desperate American.

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    Next up are the Republicans. Audience! I require help and suggestions to improve the AAR. Leave comments if you wish.
     
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    Republican Party (Part 1)
  • The Republicans: The Last of the Old and the First of the New (Part 1)
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    Good times are just around the corner.” - Charles Curtis in 1930. This quotation was later erroneously and disastrously attributed to Herbert Hoover.


    The ruling Republican party in 1936 were a traditional big tent party with conservative, populist, liberal, and progressive wings. The party was deeply divided on its future direction and many had little expectation that the Republicans could keep the White House. While the Depression had started under the Democrats, Hoover’s inability to solve it caused him to become the face of failure for many Americans which naturally dragged the Republicans. A new course was required to save the party and maybe the country. The decisions at the Republican national convention would change the party for many years to come.


    President Herbert Hoover has long been viewed rather incorrectly as callous or indifferent to the plight of the American people in the Great American Depression. Hoover was originally a part of the progressive Republicans but he would later be regarded as the face of the conservative wing of the party. Hoover had started his career as a mining engineer who once worked in China in his career. Hoover also learned Mandarin Chinese and was one of the foreigners trapped during the Boxer Rebellion. Hoover and his wife would later use Mandarin in private discussions in the White House. Before the presidency, Hoover was famous for being a humanitarian miracle worker during the First World War and its aftermath. Hoover would oversee a series of American aid organizations. At the height of his work, Hoover’s organizations fed 10.5 million people daily in Russia regardless of their politics. In 1928, Hoover ran for president promising a limited government intervention to fix the economy in the aftermath of the 1925 British Revolution and American market crash. He did exactly that. Hoover created public works projects and tried to strengthen existing business. However, Hoover opposed more direct federal intervention, believing more intervention would violate the prerogatives of state governments and charities and that welfare programs would weaken the character of the nation. Hoover was forced by his party to pass the Smoot-Hawley Tariff to try to boost American business. Instead, the act greatly reduced trade with America’s few trade partners such as Canada after the Syndicalist revolutions and the post-war German trade embargo. These acts did nothing to help Hoover's popularity. In 1932, Hoover seemed certain to lose reelection, but the opposing electoral votes were split between the Democrats and the Socialists. Hoover was narrowly selected by the House of Representatives to be president again. After reelection, the tariff was repealed and Hoover signed more intervention and public work bills. However, Hoover still refused to touch the fundamentals of the American economy. During Hoover’s presidency, the 19th amendment was passed. It moved the presidential inauguration to January 20th (Prohibition never passed in Kaiserreich so the 18th is the women’s suffrage amendment). The Star-Spangled Banner also became the official national anthem. Hoover would later be a bitter opponent of his successor’s policies, but his desperate last actions and gambles in his second term would help made Curtis’s and Roosevelt’s terms even possible.
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    Once a celebrated figure, Hoover's inability to solve the Great American Depression and to halt the polarization of American politics made a mockery of his humanitarian reputation. However in the aftermath of the Second World War, President Roosevelt and other subsequent presidents would enlist Hoover's expertise to help direct American efforts to aid the recovery of post-war Europe and to improve the efficiency of the federal government. Hoover would join the ranks of presidents as John Quincy Adams and William Howard Taft as men who were far more successful and happier outside the White House than inside it.


    Charles Curtis was and remains the only Native American and the oldest man to be president at the age of 76. Curtis managed to escape the legacy of his predecessor Hoover in order to create his own impressive legacy. He competes with James K. Polk for the spot for America’s most important one-term American president. His wife Annie Elizabeth Baird died in 1924 so Curtis’s half-sister Theresa “Dolly” Curtis Gann acted as his official hostess and First Lady. Curtis was born to a white father and a Native American mother of the Kaw nation in 1860. His mother died when he was three. When he was eight, rival Cheyenne warriors invaded the Kaw reservation. Curtis rode 60 miles with an interpreter to seek help from the local governor. He became a lawyer. Curtis was elected to the House in 1893. During his time in the House, he introduced an act for the extension of the Dawes Act which ended the self-rule of American Indians and divided up tribal land to individual Native Americans. Curtis was a strong supporter of assimilation of Native Americans into white culture. The so-called Curtis Act was twisted beyond recognition by the time of bill was voted on the floor of Congress. Curtis was later disappointed by the results of the act. At the same time, he was a proud open Native American and had a Native American jazz band play at the inauguration of Hoover and himself. This early aspect of President Curtis’s legacy would receive more critical attention in the 1970s but that is beyond the scope of this lesson. Curtis later was elected to the Senate. In the Senate, he served as the Republican party whip. Curtis was a highly effective reconciler and driver of bills. He was not known for making big speeches. Curtis was more comfortable doing backroom deals than being in the public spotlight. Curtis was originally a centrist Republican but he had good relations with the progressive Republicans and the Democrats. After his move to the left during his presidency, he continued to have good relations with the conservative Republicans and Democrats. This ability would serve him well in the White House. Curtis was also noted, by his fellow congressmen, for his well-maintained notebook and card index of the names and jobs of all the people he met. He always diligently and quickly answered the letters of his constituents. This self-imposed duty would be much more unpleasant in the early days of the presidency. Charles Curtis was perhaps the most effective congressman of his day, but his effectiveness as a possible president was an open question in 1936.
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    A bust of Charles Curtis. Most American consider Charles Curtis have been the man the nation needed in the turbulent later years of the Great Depression but the legacy of the only Native American president is more controversial with Native Americans today.

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    Next up are the Roosevelts. Quentin Roosevelt is only a mid level character in the main AAR between 1936-1937 but if I later get the chance to expand the story beyond, he would become more important. In any case, the Roosevelts are an interesting bunch.

    Any tips to improve the AAR?
     
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    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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    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.
     
    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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    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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    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.
     
    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.
     
    Questions and Solutions
  • Questions and Solutions
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    “[A] mob is coming to hang the other ninety-five of you damn scoundrels and I'm undecided whether to stick here with you or go out and lead them.”- Huey Long to the U.S. Senate.

    The general strike by the CSA and Long’s southern rally halted much of the work in the Steel belt and across the South. Together, the two events threatened to prevent any possible recovery and to undermine the federal government. The use of the military to break up the strikes as Garner suggested was quickly ruled out by the cabinet. Using the army to crush the strikers would inflame the situation and possibly incite Reed and Long to rebellion. There was also some concern over the army and the National Guard’s loyalties. While most of the standing army was loyal, there was real questions to the loyalties of the National Guard units in the CSA and AFU dominated states if the order to federalize the guards came down from Washington D.C. No one in the American government had forgotten that the British government’s attempt to break the coal miner’s strikes in Wales with the British army had kicked off the 1925 British Revolution. So other ideas were considered by the cabinet. Vice President Roosevelt floated the idea of using the army to take over the factories and run them temporarily instead of breaking the strikes much as his father had threatened to do so if it was needed in the 1902 coal strike to force negotiations between the unions and owners. The cabinet decided the political atmosphere was too charged to try such a thing or even threatened to try to do so in 1937. Curtis kept tabs on America’s political climate in his daily letter reading. Curtis’s self-imposed daily reading of letters send by common people had become quite unpleasant. The CSA general strike was a sit-down strike and the militant strikers threatened to shoot anybody who tried to remove them. Besides, the CSA was no longer merely interested in workplace reform anymore. They wanted extreme political changes as well. Long’s secret proposal to the White House to send unemployed southern AFU supporters as strikebreakers was rejected for similar reasons to rejecting Roosevelt’s proposal. It was clear that accommodations with the CSA and AFU were necessary to end the crisis. The question was how to even start the talks and with whom to talk to?
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    Use of military force to crush the strikes and rallies was swiftly rejected despite it being the go-to tool of many other governments.

    President Curtis and his team had to either try to bring Reed and Long together for a grand deal or to try to deal with them separately. A grand deal was a tempting option. It would be great if one big meeting in the White House could save America. However, Curtis eventually rejected this option as a mere fantasy. Curtis had been one of the best dealmakers in Congress but even he believed it would be impossible for him to control two men with hot tempers, big egos, armed supporters, who were radically far apart on the political spectrum, and had promised armed revolt if the other won the election to peacefully agree to a grand deal. Instead, Curtis hoped to divide and conquer the men. He would cut one deal pleasing to Reed and another deal pleasing to Long hoping get the two men to swallow their pride and allow the other’s deal to pass to get what they wanted. Now, the choice was which man to talk to first? Pick one and the other would object and feel snubbed. Curtis would have to pick the man who would easier to convince to accept a deal because if he failed with the first man, then the attempts to get with talks with the other would certainly fail. So who to pick?
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    To meet with Reed first or to meet with Long first? That was the question.

    Curtis and Roosevelt decided to talk to Reed first for various reasons. Firstly, Reed had more influence over America’s industry due to his control of the Steel belt which was much more industrialized than Long’s South. Secondly, Curtis and Roosevelt had a better feel for Reed and the CSA. While Reed had a distrust of all capitalist politicians, progressive Republicans and Democrats got surprisingly well with the socialist representatives and senators in Congress. Roosevelt had also crossed paths with and debated with Reed’s VP candidate Norman Thomas in his political career and the two had developed a degree of respect for the other. Huey Long was a less appealing option to talk to. While Long’s rhetoric was slightly more within American political norms, he was considered a dangerous egotistical demagogue by the political establishment. While a tiny handful of socialist legislation managed to pass through the Democratic and Republican controlled Congress, not one of any of Long’s motions, bills, or resolutions passed in the Senate in Long’s time there as either a Democrat or AFU member. A senator sneered to Long that “I do not believe you could get the Lord’s Prayer endorsed in this body.” Thirdly in favor for Reed, Vice President Roosevelt had carefully read over Reed’s life story and discovered a pragmatic streak in Reed even in his most radical days. Reed had occasionally worked with capitalist and non-socialist newspapers and businesses to get what he wanted in the 1910s. Fourthly, Curtis and Roosevelt believed or at least hoped that Reed had moderated since his days as a firebrand and politically intolerant journalist in Soviet Russia. Reed, since getting an elected office as a senator in the early 1930s, had expressed a better opinion of liberal democracy than during the Great War and Bolshevik Revolution although many critics charged Reed of simply using democratic elections as a mere bus to the dictatorship of the proletariat. While Reed’s election platform was rather extreme, he did not advocate for a dictatorship of the proletariat in the 1936 election. Finally, in any case, the CSA’s political influence in the state and federal government was primarily managed by the social democratic wing of the CSA. These social democrats were vital to running Reed’s political and election machine. Some believed revolt was the absolute final option, others were pacifists, but they all greatly preferred to achieve reform without revolution if it was possible and Reed needed to make some attempt at peaceful reform to make them happy. Thus a meeting with Reed in Chicago was set for January 31, 1937.
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    Strikers amused and entertained themselves by creating bands and orchestras as they waited for a deal to be made.

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    Sorry for the delay. I have returned to college.
    I think you guys are being a little unfair to Hoover. A numbnut would not have been able to help feed millions of people. Hoover was a prisoner of his own beliefs and his politics. By the time he realized that laissez-faire free market policies were not working, he had run out of political capital with the public and party both in real life and Kaiserreich to change things around. Nevertheless, Hoover served his country much better outside the White House and presidency than in it. The same thing happened to R.B. Bennett in Canada in the OTL.
     
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    Let's Make a Fair Deal
  • Let's Make a Fair Deal
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    “Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
    For the union makes us strong.”
    -Solidarity Forever

    The meeting with Reed was tense as expected. Security was tight but it was still not as tight as it is for a modern president in times of calm today. The negotiations between the Secret Service, Chicago police, and the CSA’s paramilitaries for the security was tortuous in of itself. The meeting took place inside the CSA controlled Chicago City Hall. The President and the Vice President did not truly know what to expect. Of course, they had researched the CSA’s election platform carefully but they did not know which parts of Reed’s platform were simply political red meat for the socialist base and which parts were non-negotiable to Reed. There was also the delicate matter of the Soviet-style paramilitaries working openly in the streets of the Steel belt cities. Curtis was determined to reestablish federal control over the Steel belt but he had to find a way to do to while placating the distrustful Reed and saving face for everybody. When the teams met before the official start of the meeting, Curtis had the chance to see Reed for the first time since the election. Mr. Reed’s health, always poor, had clearly worsened since November. He had gained a fair amount of weight and he moved slowly than before but he could still walk. The stress of the election and possible civil war was harming his health. His ability to talk remained unchanged and fiery as ever. On the January 31 Meeting, Reed and his team laid forth their demands for the end of the general strike to Curtis and his team. The demands of the CSA were numerous. The demands ranged from the reasonable by modern standards to the intolerably radical. The first demands were for a nationwide minimum wage and the old union promise of the 40 hour and five day workweek be made federal law. Reed also demanded an unemployment relief and welfare system be created. There were many more smaller demands of a similar nature. Reed’s demands later in the meeting were much harder for Curtis and Roosevelt to accept. Reed demanded that the federal government force the business owners of the Steel belt factories to recognize the unions of the CSA as the representatives of workers of the factories. Curtis quickly saw that the Supreme Court might strike down such actions as a violation of a business’s freedom of association. Reed also wanted protection of the civil liberties of socialists and protection of the rights of minorities. Curtis and Roosevelt had already foreseen the problems with these demands. Reed’s final demands was simply unacceptable to Curtis. Reed wanted official recognition of the worker’s councils as legitimate governments. These councils or soviets unofficially controlled parts of the Steel belt. Reed was proposing essentially a dual power system like the system in Russia during the provisional period before the Bolshevik Revolution. Long would certainly rebel if Curtis accepted this proposal and no one had forgotten how Lenin had undermined the support for and the authority of the provisional government with the Russian soviets in preparation to overthrow the provisional government in his revolution. Curtis could sense the tension in the room skyrocket when Reed made this proposal so he asked Reed for a one-day break to cool tensions and to allow both sides to review their notes. Also sensing the tension, Reed decided to accept Curtis’s suggestion.
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    The location of the famous talks. In the 1960s, it was decided that the room where the negotiations happened would be preserved as a historical site. The room contains wax figures of the people present at the talks and copies of the notes of both sides. It is a modestly popular attraction today in Chicago.

    The break day on February 1 was meant as a day of backroom reviews and that would happen but it was also interrupted by Senator Long demanding a seat at the talks to prevent “the honorable and senile old President Curtis from handing over our beloved country to those damn reds.” Everybody at the talks knew putting Long and Reed in the same room would destroy the talks altogether. Curtis knew the two men could not stand the other and a public spat in the newspapers might incite a fight between their supporters. So the White House issued a short statement saying that “the issues that are being discussed with the Combined Syndicates are separate issues from the issues of the America First Union and President Curtis welcomes Senator Long to discuss the issues important to him in a separate meeting at a later date.”
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    Senator Long was enraged by the decision of the White House to exclude him from the talks and regularly questioned the motives of negotiators in public. The President's team gambled that it was still a better choice than letting Long and his supporters enter Chicago City Hall to face Reed.

    Curtis went back to discussing the negotiations with his team. Several members of Curtis’s team questioned Reed’s sincerity to negotiating an end to the strike and suggested that Reed had no intention to make peace with the federal government. They argued Reed was only holding talks as a token gesture to the pacifists and social democrats of the CSA before launching his revolution. The talks were useless or were a socialist plot to capture the federal leadership and they should leave immediately. Curtis and Roosevelt ignored these suggestions. Curtis noted that Reed had started with his less extreme demands and sounded like he might be willing to pull back on his more extreme demands. Roosevelt argued in his experiences showed to him that the average American union worker and CSA supporter only wanted a stable job and decent working conditions. The Great Depression had dragged long enough for the union workers to be willing to fight for those things. He doubted the average American union worker was radical enough to fight for vaguely defined and conflicting revolutionary socialist ideals if he and his family had food on the table and a well-paid good job. The violent diehard anarchists, syndicalists, and totalists were simply a loud minority. Curtis and Roosevelt had to trust in the sincerity of their fellow Americans for peace. Through several more days of patient diplomacy, an acceptable compromise was created. Reed would have his workplace reforms, his workweek, and a basic system of social security to be set up with potential to expand at a later date. The federal government would encourage and pressure companies to recognize the unions of the CSA as representatives of their workers. Not doing so would mean the government not doing business with them. However, the companies would not be forced to do so. While these parts of the negotiations were the relatively easy parts, both parties would not consider the constitutionality of these reforms beyond a surface look. This would mean trouble later. The issue of soviets had almost destroyed the talks. Curtis decided while the federal government would not forcibly disband the soviets, the government would not recognize them. The federal government would manage the Fair Deal programs and do business with solely the constitutionally provided state and local governments. While Curtis had desired to totally disband the CSA militias, he knew Reed would not accept a complete disarming. So he asked that the CSA surrender all their foreign weapons at a time shortly after the start of the Fair Deal and not accept any more weapons from the foreign syndicalist powers in the meantime. Areas that failed to do so would have their local Fair Deal programs be suspended. Reed reluctantly accepted this demand. The deal contained no previsions on the rights of minorities. Both the federal team and Reed have been criticized for basically selling out minorities by later generations. While both sides personally supported better rights and conditions for minorities, it was a sad necessary concession to Garner's Southern Democrats because the grudging acceptance of the Southern Democrats was vital for any deal to pass Congress. Truthfully despite the efforts of the more radical CSA leadership to change it, the average white union worker did not really care about the ideals of egalitarian socialist solidarity with non-whites and they were more than happy to sell out their black comrades in order to get a better deal for themselves. On February 5, a tentative deal was made public. Curtis and Reed would have the challenging task of selling the agreement to their respective sides and the American public.

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    2,000 Views. Thanks guys. Leave any questions or comments you wish.
     
    Reaction and the Reactionaries
  • Reaction and the Reactionaries
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    “With nothing of learning, knowledge nor experience to lead us through a labyrinth that has perplexed the minds of men since the beginning of time... These two men are raging up and down this land preaching not construction, but destruction-not reform, but revolution!” -General Hugh S. Johnson on Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin.

    The news of a possible successful agreement with the CSA to end the strike in exchange for water-downed but still relatively sweeping reforms shocked and relieved the nation. Progressive Republicans and Democrats were pleased by the deal and promised to pass it through Congress as soon as possible. The reactions of the socialists in Congress was mostly positive but some believed it did not go far enough for their liking. Nevertheless, even the socialists in Congress who were disappointed believed it was enough to halt plans for revolution and that the CSA should try to work to expand it by democratic means in the future. The reactions of the other CSA leadership will be covered in a later chapter. The reactions of most of the conservative Republicans and Democrats was muted. They were appalled by the proposed amount of federal intervention in the economy but they realized that conservatism was currently weak in America and this deal was the best chance to halt radical revolution. They decided to bid their time and to try to repeal the deal as soon as the radicals were weak. However, people really wanted to know Long’s reaction. They would soon get a earful.

    Long’s reaction on February 6 was absolutely venomous. In front of a massive crowd of supporters, he publicly accused President Curtis for selling out to the socialists and declared that the deal would destroy the very fundamentals of the American free market economy. The southern rallies increased even more in size. Long and his supporters pledged to filibuster the deal with the CSA to death. Long’s critics accused him of great hypocrisy. Long’s “Share Our Wealth” also threatened the free market. Historians are still not sure of Long’s motives for his actions. Some believed that Long felt that Curtis and Reed were stealing his thunder. The CSA deal and other parts of the Fair Deal were similar to the platform of the AFU. Many years later, Quentin Roosevelt admitted that he and Curtis had wanted to steal Long’s support away by taking the better ideas of the AFU platform. For example, Social Security was a response to Francis Townsend’s popular old age plan.
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    The America Firsters claimed that the Fair Deal was only the first step to a syndicalist takeover and the destruction of America.

    There are more strange theories to the motives of Long. The historian T. Harry Williams has argued that Long never expected to win the election of 1936. Instead, Long wanted to split the progressive vote to ensure a conservative candidate like Garner would win. Then Long would run to win in 1940. Long’s behavior after the 1936 election was in response to his secret plan failing. He suggested Long was trying to sabotage the Fair Deal because a successful Fair Deal would have undermine his base of support and make him redundant. Others suggest that Long’s massive ego and desire for power had finally gotten the better of him. They argue that Long was trying to incite a second American civil war by destroying the Fair Deal. They claim by this point, Long had convinced himself that he was the only man that could save America and now was the time to whip his fanatical supporters into an army to overthrow a corrupt system and destroy the socialists. In response to Long’s criticisms, President Curtis gave public assurances to Long. In light of later events, a third group of historians believe Long’s behavior and rhetoric was an attempt to prevent an internal party coup by elements that believed Long was too weak and moderate to lead the AFU party anymore. Father Charles Couglin, William Dudley Pelley, Charles Lindbergh, and even Francis Townsend were plotting to remove Huey Long and Gerald Smith for failing the party. Of the pretenders to the throne, Pelley was the most dangerous because he had the Silvershirts who were a group of supporters loyal only to him. In time, these divisions would destroy the AFU.

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    Sorry for the lateness and short update. Thanks again audience members.
    Note: The Williams theory is a modified version of a real theory by T. Harry Williams about Long's supposed plan to sabotage FDR's 1936 reelection with a third party run to pave the way to a 1940 Long victory. FDR and the Democrats were seriously concerned that Long might do that before Long was killed.
     
    The Kingfish Falls: The Death of Huey Long
  • The Kingfish Falls: The Death of Huey Long
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    Classified”


    On February 7, President Curtis was back in Washington D.C. to rally support for the deal with the CSA and the Fair Deal. Curtis hoped to find the votes to override Long’s planned filbuster if the planned meeting with Long on February 14 in Atlanta failed. Curtis was also going to have his security briefing with General MacArthur on the situation in America. The meeting was one on one and the details of the proceedings would die with the two men and a small chain of conspirators in the FBI. Even Vice President Roosevelt and the cabinet would never learn of the discussions. General MacArthur was going to made his second highly illegal and unconstitutional proposal to a president in just a few months. This time he would not fail and he had carefully prepared his arguments and a mountain of evidence to support his arguments. First, MacArthur discussed the situation with the CSA with President Curtis. He congratulated Curtis on his successful negotiations with Reed. MacArthur said “I am pleased and shocked you managed to talk some sense into Mr. Reed. I honestly did not believe anybody alive could have pulled off those talks and create a bill that could please the syndies and pass on Capital Hill. I will be frank with you. I do not like your deal with Reed but we all must make sacrifices to save our nation. Our intelligence reports suggest a reduction in the militancy of the Steel belt areas since the announcement of your deal. The average union worker is feeling cautiously hopeful about the situation. Our spies are reporting quite a fuss in the backrooms of the CSA. The hardline communists, totalists, syndicalists, and anarchists are calling the deal treason to the revolution but most are listening to Reed’s pleas to give one more chance for peace. Apparently, I was wrong about Mr. Reed. You can read the transcripts if you want sir. However, if the current deal fails, I predict the militancy would shoot to uncontrollable levels from a sense of your administration betraying them. Tread carefully, Mr. President. Now sir, the real problem now is Huey Long and his America First Union. You will not be able to compromise with him. I know I said that about Reed but listen to me, sir. Our spies have evidence that Senator Long will repudiate your assurances as mere appeasement and call for armed attacks against the government and Reed’s followers in one day unless you rip up your agreement with Reed at his next speech in Atlanta in a few days. You are between a rock and a hard place sir. You can’t make both Reed and Long happy. It is an impossible equation, Mr. President. You have already managed to figure out to somehow make Reed happy so the answer is to remove Long from the equation.”

    President Curtis was taken back by the suggestion. He objected that killing Long was illegal and the blame for the killing would certainly fall on the government or Reed’s followers and that would cause the uprising they were trying to prevent.

    MacArthur had foreseen this objection. He said “I knew you would say that but please be patient with me. Long has a big problem and it might also be our solution to him. Despite the name of the party, the AFU is not united in their cause. Most of the leaders in that party hate each other’s guts. Long is the only man who is charismatic enough to hold the party together. But as you said, killing Long is not enough. The party leadership would make us or Reed into the common enemy to drive their rebellion. However, there is a way I believe to cause the party faithful to turn on each other instead of the government or the reds. You know of William Dudley Pelley and his Silver Legion? Apparently, the madman is secretly plotting to overthrow Long and claim control of the party and country if the America First rebellion seizes control. We can speed up Pelley’s timetable for his plot ourselves. Our boys in the FBI have infiltrated Pelley’s Silver Legion and has a small degree of influence there. They can fabricate orders from Pelley to some particularly gullible minions of Pelley to kill Long at his next speech and allow Pelley to try to seize power. We will ensure that the local police discover the membership of the assassins and the orders. These fake orders and the real plot will damn Pelley. Yes, this is entrapment, sir. However, the agents will be gone and with new identities. The Minutemen and the Silvershirts will kill each other in the streets of the South and bloody riots will certainly happen. The AFU leadership will enter a vicious power struggle. However, bloody riots are preferable to an organized uprising led by Long. Even if uprisings occur, they will be disorganized and likely hostile to each other as well as the government. The southern governors and the southern National Guard units would rather remain loyal instead of joining a disorganized and overgrown mob. You might ask why not simply expose Pelley’s plot and let them fight each other. I am sure that Long is clever enough to see the knife Pelley is preparing but Long still needs Pelley for now. If we tried to expose the plot now, both men would repudiate the government’s claims as lies to divide them. My plan is the only way you can get rid of Long and keep the syndies in line. Finally, if the government’s involvement was somehow exposed, I would gladly fall on my sword to protect you and the White House. I would claim I alone was the mastermind of the Long killing and you the President had no knowledge of this planned killing.” MacArthur’s arguments managed to win over the reluctant President and Curtis secretly sent his approval. Long’s next speech would be his last.
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    One of many of February 10’s headlines.

    “Huey Long killed in front of Atlanta City Hall. Silvershirt Plot Exposed”

    “Shocking news out of Atlanta, Georgia today. Shortly before noon, the infamous Louisiana senator and former Governor Huey Long was shot twice and died during a speech to his supporters criticizing the policies of President Curtis. Long reportedly cried out “God, don’t let me die. I have so much to do” before succumbing to his wounds. Long was declared dead on arrival at Atlanta General Hospital. The two assassins were killed at the scene. Five other people were killed and seven more were wounded when Long’s Minutemen bodyguards fired into the crowd in an attempt to stop the assassins. The scene quickly devolved into a massive riot around the city. Similar riots started around the South and Midwest. Atlanta police managed to retrieve the bodies of the assassins and identified them as Irving Burden and Carl Stanton. These men were members of the Silver Legion of America or the Silvershirts. Their private writings and letters detail a plot from the Legion’s leadership to kill Long to allow the Silver Legion’s leader, William Dudley Pelley, to assume control of Long’s America First Union party and launch a so-called “Silver Revolution” to take over the United States. Pelley was not available for comment on these allegations. The Silver Legion’s headquarters in Los Angeles was raided late afternoon today by federal authorities after the discovery of the papers of the assassins. William Dudley Pelley is wanted by federal authorities in connection to the killing of Huey Long and the public is urged to report him to police if they see him.”
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    Wanted Posters of Pelley were common in the aftermath of the Long killing. The ruins of the Silver Legion headquarters today.

    Excerpts from a 1965 interview with former President Quentin Roosevelt (1941-1949).

    Reporter: Sir, what do you make of the conspiracy theories claiming you and your predecessor Charles Curtis was involved in the killing of Huey Long back in 1937?

    Roosevelt: The government had nothing to do with the death of Senator Long. As vice president, I did not attend the secret security meetings as was the custom at the time. As for President Curtis however, I am absolutely certain that he could never order an illegal killing like these people have suggested. Curtis was one of the finest politicians I ever had the pleasure of working with. Curtis was a great man who took great pride in saving the country without resorting to the extralegal or unconstitutional measures many said was necessary to do so. Many people believed he was too weak to do what was necessary to save the nation. He saved the country without throwing out the constitution and America’s most important values. These theories are nonsense and I should not have wasted my breath addressing them. Let us move on.

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    A nice update you fellows. I greatly expanded the process of Long assassination event chain. Did any of you catch the my reference to All the King's Men?
     
    The House of Cards
  • The House of Cards: The Fall of the America First Union.
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    Patronage, in all its forms, deprivation of perquisites, economic pressure, political coercion in one form or another, and now and then outright thuggery... Long commanded the intense loyalties of a substantial proportion of the population... [Supporters] came to believe that here was a man with a genuine concern for their welfare, not one of the gentlemanly do-nothing governors who had ruled the state for many decades.”-V.O. Key. Jr. on Long’s hold on his supporters.

    The Long assassination riots were the worst wave of civil unrest in U.S. history since the American Civil War and not even the unrest during the civil rights movements of the 1960s would surpass the scale of the Long riots. Police around the South and the Midwest were quickly overwhelmed by the scale of the riots and many formerly rebellious pro-Long officials begged for the aid of President Curtis and the federal government. Diehard supporters of Long and Pelley killed each other in the streets and looted the businesses of the supporters of the other. Many innocents were also targeted and caught up the wave of violence. Blacks and Jews were particularly at risk of being harmed. President Curtis federalized the National Guards to attempt to stop the violence and MacArthur prepared the army for possible uprisings. Prayers for peace were held at the Washington National Cathedral. Strict orders to not fire on rioters were enforced to try to avoid inflaming the situation even if it took longer to suppress the riots. The few CSA affiliated unions in the South were also targets for angry Southerners. Curtis sent a private message to Reed begging him to not interfere and to let the government to handle the situation in the interests of peace. Reed decided to merely release a statement condemning the killing of Long and the riots. The killing of Long was apocalyptic for the America First Union party. The seemingly unified front of leadership collapsed within hours of Long’s death. With the Silver Legion discredited and Pelley on the run, the other factions of the AFU attempted to seize control of the party leadership and each faction’s supporters clashed with each other outside the AFU headquarters. Gerald Smith’s followers attempted to claim and rally around the legacy of Huey Long. However, Smith’s lack of charisma and association with the Silver Legion undermined Smith’s attempts to seize Long’s legacy. Father Coughlin and his supporters also attempted to claim Long’s legacy. The charismatic Coughlin had more success but Coughlin’s Catholicism and abrasive nature limited the size of the base of his supporters. Turned off by all the post-Long violence, many AFU members looked to other factions for leadership. The moderates Charles Lindbergh and Francis Townsend attempted to gather these members in a bid for the AFU chairmanship. While Townsend was widely respected in the AFU, his single-issue nature prevented him from having serious prospects of claiming the chairmanship. Lindbergh quickly claimed these turned off AFU members. Lindbergh promised to carry out the populist policies within the democratic process and without the help of the now out of control paramilitaries. He begun to seriously challenge Smith and Coughlin for the leadership position. Meanwhile, the two traditional parties did not simply sit on the sidelines during the riots. They both attempted to snap up disillusioned members of America First. The Republicans added more provisions in the Fair Deal to aid economically depressed areas of the South and provisions to rebuild areas damaged by the riots. The riots proved great political fodder for Garner’s “law and order” conservative Southern Democrats. They appealed to Southerners disgusted by the violence and the growing anti-Long elements. Other Democrats would add the less extreme parts of the AFU platform to their own platforms.
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    These men all tried to seize the throne of the fallen Kingfish.

    It would take one and a half weeks for the government to halt the riots. Over 200 people were dead, over 4000 were injured, and over 23,000 people were arrested at some point in the rioting. Huey Long’s funeral was originally supposed to be public but fears for public safety caused it to be a private service led by Gerald Smith as the minister. Charles Lindbergh won the power struggle and assumed the chairmanship of the party but he was unable to repair the AFU’s ruined reputation. The inner party power struggles that had led to public bloodshed alienated the public. Long had constructed a house of cards that only he could hold together and no one else had the talent to rebuild the fallen house. Lindbergh proved completely incapable of rebuilding America First. It was doubtful even Huey Long if he could come back from the dead, could have rebuilt the party. Lindbergh and his family was endlessly hounded by the press and federal investigators. Lindbergh was a strongly private man and he greatly disliked all the public attention. The mailbox of the Lindberghs was flooded with death threats. On April 4, 1937, Americans woke to the news that Lindbergh had resigned the AFU chairmanship and had secretly fled to Canada with his family by train the night before. Vice President Roosevelt, despite some sympathies for his fellow aviator, publicly hoped that Lindbergh would not return for a very long time. The America First Union party dissolved shortly after Lindbergh’s resignation and flight to Canada. While the individual leaders of the AFU party continued to be active in American politics, never again would they seriously threaten the political establishment and pose the risk of causing a civil war. The AFU’s collapse left the CSA as the only surviving major non-traditional political party. While the Combined Syndicates of America were celebrating the implosion of their mortal rival and their political victory of their deal with the federal government, that very victory had started forces that would tear the CSA apart.
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    Lindbergh and his wife Anne. Time has dimmed America's memories of Charles Lindbergh's time in America First and most Americans prefer to remember his time as a universally admired airmen than as head of one of America's most divisive organizations in the country's history. But for people who do remember, it is a serious black mark on his reputation.

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    Soon next is the effects of the Curtis-Reed deal on the CSA.
    Audience! A question. Do you think the highly illegal assassination of Huey Long by Curtis and MacArthur in an attempt to prevent the Second American Civil War as the right and moral thing to do? The President and MacArthur did manipulate a few people to committing a extrajudicial killing of an American elected politician and framed an still innocent if loathsome man for ordering the act. On the other hand, Long was about to incite mass rebellion against the federal government and the CSA with his speech but he was killed before he could do so and Pelley was planning to kill Long anyway.
     
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    Interlude: Kaiser Wilhelm II
  • Interlude: Kaiser Wilhelm II
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    Kaiser Wilhelm II was born on January 27, 1859, and died in exile in Africa on June 4, 1941. Wilhelm is one of the most controversial German emperors in the country’s history. His long reign from 1888 to 1941 is one of the defining moments in German and world history. His reign saw the ascension of the German Empire to superpower status after the aftermath of the First World War or Weltkrieg and the collapse of Germany’s foes during the syndicalist revolutions to Germany’s inglorious collapse at the hands of the Third Internationale. Once among of Germany’s most beloved monarchs, the revelations after his death and the fall of Germany has caused him to be viewed as a lesser man who benefited from the efforts of greater men and the misfortunes of his grandmother’s empire to gain fleeting glory. The glory of the Kaiserreich was built not on top of a firm foundation created by Germany’s own efforts but on top of the ruins of the empire’s foes. Wilhelm’s death in exile marked the inglorious end of Germany’s time as a superpower and ended an era but who was he really?

    There are several things about Wilhelm II’s background you must know to understand him. He was a grandchild of Queen Victoria and his own mother was British. Wilhelm had a deeply psychologically unhealthy relationship with his British relatives and all things British. Secondly, Wilhelm had a withered left arm due to Erb’s palsy caused by a breech birth. His withered arm caused severe feelings of inferiority and embarrassment which he was desperate to overcome with success in life. Contrary to popular belief, Wilhelm was actually quite intelligent but that was repeatedly undermined by his emotional instability to Germany’s severe detriment. Wilhelm’s intense love-hate relationship with the British started with his British mother and his withered arm. Victoria, Wilhelm’s mother and daughter of Queen Victoria, was obsessed with the condition of her son’s arm and the potential inability of the future monarch to ride a horse thanks to it. She decided to force her son to learn to ride a horse anyway. For weeks on end, the terrified young prince was strapped onto a horse and put back on despite his endless tears and falls until he learned to control the horse. This was the start of Wilhelm’s lifelong dislike of his mother. He grew up learning about two different schools of being a modern European monarch. There was the education of comparably liberal minded British-style constitutional monarch favored by his father Frederick and his mother Victoria. There was also the more autocratic and militaristic Prussian monarchy. Wilhelm completely preferred his Prussian education and was soon rarely seen out of uniform. In the military, he shed his boyhood politeness and Wilhelm despised his mother’s liberal and pro-democratic influence over his father. Wilhelm’s wife Augusta Victoria also shared her husband’s dislike of her mother-in-law. Wilhelm’s preferences were encouraged by Otto von Bismarck who opposed the liberal thought of Wilhelm’s parents and mistakenly believed the young prince could turned into a puppet and a weapon against his parents. It was a serious mistake for Bismarck and Germany.
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    The young Wilhelm II and his father Frederick III

    In 1888, Kaiser Wilhelm I died and the liberal-minded Frederick III reigned for only 99 days before dying of cancer putting the 29-year-old Wilhelm II in charge. The young monarch desired to strengthen Germany and make it a world power. He promoted German sciences and medicine. He attempted to modernize German public education. The emperor was the patron of many charitable organizations and societies. However, his attitudes towards peoples and policies were often contradictory and changed on a whim. Originally, the Kaiser desired strong labor reform and benefits for German workers. Later he said that he wanted strikers shot and repressed. After the syndicalist revolutions, Wilhelm sometimes annoyed members of the Reichstag with his ever-changing plans to deal with syndicalists by calling for strong reform and cooperation with unions on one day and hunting down all the union workers another day. The Kaiser had a most peculiar relationship with his Jewish subjects. He saw often in his mind, Jewish plots controlling Germany and the nation’s foes and he occasionally grumbled his desire to get rid of the Jews violently. Yet he expressed great disgust at attempts to pass anti-Semitic laws and he used his powers as Kaiser to protect Jewish academics and scientists such as Albert Einstein in 1920s and 1930s. This type of behavior is a sign of his unstable personality. Foreign policy was the area where Wilhelm caused the most trouble for Germany. Once a great admirer of Bismarck, the Kaiser fired “the boorish old killjoy” because Wilhelm opposed Bismarck’s pragmatic peaceful foreign policy and desired for Germany to assume her “place in the sun” by wars of aggressions. Wilhelm allowed the alliance with Russia to end and Russia allied with France much as Bismarck feared. Germany would have to fight a two-front war thanks to Wilhelm. The Kaiser allowed his relationship with the British to negatively cloud his foreign policies. He fiercely hated his uncle King Edward VII and was deeply jealous of the British Royal Navy. Wilhelm’s aggressive efforts to build up Germany’s navy to match the British navy soured Germany’s relationship with Britain and caused a dangerous arms race which was a leading factor to the outbreak of the First World War. The Kaiser was a tactless gaffe machine who often offended other nations needlessly. Wilhelm congratulated Paul Kregur of the Transvaal Republic in suppressing the British Jameson raid which greatly offended Britain. He handed a ready-made epithet to Germany's foes when urged German troops to be merciless in the spirit of Huns in crushing the Boxer Rebellion. His ill-advised visit to Morocco and comments in favor of its independence almost started war with France. The Daily Telegraph interview was his serious gaffe. The Kaiser’s emotional outbursts in an interview meant to improve Anglo-German relations managed to alienate the British, French, Japanese and the Russians and lead to serious calls for Wilhelm’s abdication in Germany which sent the Kaiser into depression and cost him much of his authority.
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    Wilhelm as the Protector of the Order of Saint John.

    In 1914, Wilhelm’s management of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand from his North Sea vacation and his “blank check” for Austria-Hungary’s dealings with Serbia helped start WW1. As the war dragged on, the Kaiser was reduced to a figurehead passing on medals for the junta of generals of Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. His mood moved back and forth from defeatism to crowing about the coming victory with the fortunes of war. In 1918, the great Entente spring offensive failed and the losses sustained at the inconclusive Second Battle of Jutland caused the British command to lose their nerve and totally lift the blockade of Germany. In 1919, with any hope of American intervention long gone, the Germans crushed the armies of all continental Entente powers and effectively won the war although the final treaty was only signed in 1921. Victory in the war was a much closer thing than most Germans would have admitted. Even without American help, and the losses suffered at the Second Battle of Jutland, the Royal Navy was more than able to maintain the blockade. Had the British command not lost their nerves, Germany would have been ingloriously forced to surrender from hunger during the winter of 1918-1919. Despite the victory, Germany had serious problems. The appalling conditions in Germany caused a major socialist uprising in November 1918. It was crushed and the junta further entrenched itself. The rising of the Commune of France foiled most German designs on France. The Communards ripped up the surrender treaty and the German Reichstag debated crushing the new Commune. Reluctance to basically restart the Weltkrieg and fears of the syndicalist revolution spreading to Germany ended any efforts to crush the Communards when they were still weak. The famous 1919 German Christmas victory party in Paris was followed by a hasty evacuation of the German army from France. The junta then dismissed the Reichstag. The permanent junta ended in 1923 when Ludendorff was implicated in a massive corruption scandal which destroyed all support for the junta. Ludendorff was arrested and dragged before the Kaiser who thanked the general for his service before forcing him into retirement. The Reichstag was restored and Alfred von Tirpitz became the new chancellor.
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    The Kaiser with Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff
    In sharp contrast in his behavior before the war, Wilhelm largely withdrew from an active role in government and abandoned his warlike image. Wilhelm had his “place in the sun” for Germany and he was deeply shocked and disgusted by the bloodshed of the war. The Kaiser was largely content to rubberstamp the decisions of the chancellors and the Reichstag so he could focus on tending his garden, playing with his grandchildren, and his charitable activities. Wilhelm’s wife died in 1921 and he married Princess Hermine who was 30 years his junior and already had children of her own. However, the Kaiser reserved the power to intervene and he did so on the issue of the United States.
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    Wilhelm with his second wife and youngest stepdaughter.

    One of the few things Wilhelm was consistent on was his intense jealousy and hatred of the Americans. While not as notable as his hatred of the British, the Kaiser deeply resented the growth of American power in the late 19th century and 20th centuries. In the turn of the 20th century, Wilhelm ordered the drawing up of three plans to knock the Americans down a peg. The plans called for the destruction of the U.S. Navy and major American Atlantic naval base as well as the invasion and shelling of East Coast cities to cripple the United States. German command was convinced the plans would end in disaster and never took them seriously. During the First World War, the Americans traded with both sides but vastly more with the Allies than the Central Powers to Germany’s deep resentment. The issue of restricted submarine warfare aggravated German-American relations and the threat of possible American entry was a constant fear of the Germans. The decision to end unrestricted submarine warfare and the Kaiser’s decision to not resume in January 1917 helped prevent American entry into the war. The infamous Zimmerman telegram and the deadly German sabotage effort against American factories nearly drove America to enter the war anyway but a new German anti-Entente propaganda campaign and a promise to totally cease any and all hostile acts against the United States of America managed to prevent war. After the war, many Americans were disappointed by the defeat of the Allied Powers but they are more than willing to trade with Germany. However, the outraged Kaiser demanded an embargo be placed on the U.S. to punish the Yankees for supporting the Entente in the war. German trade businesses were appalled but apparently, enough Germans shared their emperor’s opinion for the Reichstag to pass an embargo act against the United States. This embargo combined with the 1925 British Revolution helped cause the Great American Depression and the resulting political crisis. The Germans were quick to dance on the remains of the American economic empire.

    In the 1920s and the early 1930s, the German Empire grew and grew in its golden age feeding on the remains of fallen empires. However, not all was good. The military was dangerously overextended. The army was complacent as the victors of the previous war and neglected by the Kaiser in favor of his beloved navy. The golden age of the German Empire ended on February 3, 1936, or “Black Monday” when the Berlin stock exchange collapsed and started a worldwide Great Depression. Fortunes vanished overnight and Germany’s grip over its Mitteleuropa puppets loosened and some cases collapsed altogether. In the worst case, Ukraine became syndicalist and war broke out. Chancellor von Papen was out in the 1937 elections and replaced by Henrich Bruning. The Internationale saw their chance and the Communards demanded Switzerland cede Romandie to them. Bruning and the Kaiser were more than willing to appease the Internationale to prevent a world war. However, in October 1939, the Communards demanded Alsace-Lorraine and German honor would not allow it so war broke out. Despite the entry of the Danabian Federation on the German side and massive American lend-lease aid, the Communards grinded down the German army and reached the gates of Berlin on February 3, 1941, or 5 years after Black Monday. On February 27, 1941, Berlin fell to the Commune following more than three weeks of battle and the Communards destroyed the Brandenburg Gate to the tune of the Internationale song for the whole world to see. Germany was divided into four syndicalist puppet states. The Kaiser and remains of the German government were forced into exile in Africa just like the French Republicans twenty years before. Wilhelm II died on June 4, 1941, of a blood clot. Crown Prince Wilhelm became Wilhelm III but he would be sidelined by a junta of Alfred Hugenberg and Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck the Lion of Africa. The return of the German government and the body of Wilhelm II to Germany was made only possible by Germany’s former foes of the Entente and the United States. Berlin was liberated by American arms. However, there was a price. Alsace-Lorraine was placed under American administration to prepare a plebiscite in 1948 to decide if the region would join the French Republic or the German Empire. Germany would have to adopt democratic reforms and hold a referendum on the monarchy’s continued existence. All of Germany’s Eastern European puppet states would fall under the influence of the reborn Russian Empire. The exiled government accepted and the monarchy barely survived the referendum. However, the people of Alsace-Lorraine would pick to rejoin the French Republic due to the harsh suppression of the people there by the German government since the start of WW1. Germany’s time as a world superpower was clearly over.
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    Entente forces with American made tanks during the liberation of Germany from syndicalist rule.
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    Wilhelm II’s reputation generally lies in ruins after the fall of Germany and his death revealed his serious flaws although a small minority of Germans fiercely defend the Kaiser. All agree his reign marked both the highest and lowest points of Germany’s existence as a united country.

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    Surprise! I thought you guys needed a spotlight on the ruler of the namesake of the mod. Wilhelm and Germany is partly responsible for the American Great Depression and more than a few Americans viewed the Kaiser as the architect of America's misery. This AAR focuses on America 1936-1937 but the Germans are the reigning superpower and their actions helped set the stage for the rise of Reed and Long into more serious threats than OTL. I hope I was not too harsh on Wilhelm. Americans in both OTL and KTL hold very negative opinions of the Kaiser. Thoughts?
     
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    The Strikers and the Radicals
  • The Strikers and the Radicals
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    You'll either be a union man or a thug for J. H. Blair.”- Which Side Are You On?

    While the general strike paralyzed the entire Steel belt, we shall focus on the efforts of the famous Flint sit-down strikers because they are emblematic of the events leading to the success and eventually the collapse of the CSA in 1937. The Flint strikers were organized by the United Automobile Workers union. The UAW was part of the Congress of Industrial Organizations who were former American Federation of Labor unions who had broken away to pragmatically ally with the CSA. John L. Lewis was not a socialist but he was willing to tolerate them to win deals with businesses. The CSA was not the “One Big Union” its creators hoped it would be. Many union wanted the aid of the CSA without losing their independence so the “Combined Syndicates” was more of a patchwork of radical unions centered around the core former IWW union. There were tentative plans to finally fold all the unions into one when the revolution broke out but until then the associated unions had a strong degree of autonomy from Reed and the Central Committee.

    Setting up the strike was challenging because General Motors effectively ruled Flint, the existing local unions were full of corporate spies, everybody knew a strike was coming and GM was not afraid to threaten physical harm to union organizers. The UAW decided to ignore the local unions and recruit workers in their own homes in secret. On December 30, 1936, the workers seized control of some of the factories and begun the sit-down strike. The strikers expelled management and blocked strikebreakers from entering the factories. About two thousand workers were part of the strike. In the mockingly named “Battle of Bulls Run”, local police attempted to expel the strikers but the workers drove off the police by pelting them with car parts and equipment.
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    The Governor's National Guard troops establish a protective perimeter around the seized factories

    In both a practical necessity and practice for forming a syndicalist government in the event of revolution, the strikers established their own government to maintain order within the factories. A mayor was elected to lead the government. Government departments for organized recreation, information, sanitation, and a postal service was established. A “Kangaroo Court” was created with the power to punish disobedient strikers with dish washing to removal from the plants. The strikers were supplied by friendly vendors and restaurants at little to no cost. GM refused to negotiate with the strikers so on February 1, 1937, another plant was seized by the strikers. This forced GM to bargain with the strikers but they still refused to talk to the UAW so John Lewis of the CIO and the governor of Michigan acted as intermediaries. The Governor also send in the National Guard, not to remove the strikers, but to protect them instead. GM eventually gave in and recognized the UAW as the representatives of the strikers. GM also gave a five percent pay raise. With the Curtis administration and the state governments backing the CSA-aligned unions, most businesses followed GM’s example and recognized the unions of their workers. The stubborn Henry Ford was the last holdout. The former AFU supporter fiercely hated and violently resisted the efforts of the unions. It was his men who were behind the infamous “Battle of the Overpass.” He resisted unionization for years on end and he almost closed his business in 1941 rather than recognize the UAW, but his wife Clara threatened to leave him if he destroyed the family business to spite the unions. Ford finally folded and he ended up giving the most favorable union contract terms of all the auto makers. However, the CSA would not be around to enjoy the final victory over Henry Ford because the earlier victories would rip it apart.
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    The UAW mark and celebrate the end of the general strike and their deal with General Motors. After the general strike, the UAW's membership swelled thanks to their proven effectiveness as a bargaining unit and newfound ability to recruit workers openly.
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    The final holdout of the major automakers. Henry Ford was forced to discard one of his firmly held beliefs and bow to the tide of unionization in 1941. At least however, Ford could take solace in the fact that the Combined Syndicates of America had broken before he did as Ford once predicted.

    The trouble started shortly after the death of Huey Long. With the AFU in chaos and the federal government distracted by the massive rioting, the communist and totalist elements led by William Z. Foster and Earl Browder demanded Reed seize the chance to spring a massive uprising against a federal government that had believed the CSA had been appeased. The chaos was the best chance to topple the federal government. Foster and Browder were originally considered unlikely choices to attempt to inspire a violent revolution suddenly when the CSA had gotten most of its demands. Foster and Browder had been syndicalists before it was popularized by the 1919 French revolution. They had converted to communism after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and reconverted back to syndicalism after the French revolution. They had supported the unions of the CSA and the CSA’s efforts to win power through the ballot despite their personal distaste for the electoral process.
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    Foster and Browder led the charge against Reed and the deal with the federal government in the backdoors of the CSA Central Committee.

    However, the publication of the “Totalist Charter”, and the elections of the communist Jacobins in the Commune of France and Oswald Mosley’s totalist Maximists in the Union of Britain had converted the two and a loud minority of CSA supporters to the cause of violent revolution at any cost. Jacques Duclos of the Jacobins had published an influential letter, on the behalf of the Third Internationale, warning against efforts to settle for mere accommodations and reforms within the capitalist system as dangerous “revisionism” and a betrayal of the coming socialist revolution. Foster and Browder were shocked when Reed refused to break his word and agreement with President Curtis. They had believed that Reed was merely stalling for time to prepare the revolution with talks and the efforts were not genuine. Foster and Browder denounced Reed as a revisionist, a coward, a liar, a counterrevolutionary, and a traitor to the coming revolution. The totalists and communists walked out of the Combined Syndicates. These extremists reformed an American communist party independent from the Combined Syndicates. The new communist party newspaper ran a headline of “Jack the Liar” and launched blistering criticism of the once beloved CSA leader. Of course, Reed lashed back against the totalists and communists. He railed against the men who would try to throw out the painstaking work of creating a workable deal with the federal government benefiting millions of workers. He criticized the hawkishness and eagerness of his critics for a needless violent revolution when most of them had never bothered to participate in the 1917 and 1919 Revolutions and had never suffered like he did in those revolutions. Across the Atlantic, the Jacobins and the Maximists denounced Reed’s “treacherous revisionism” and charged, ultimately correctly as history would play out, that his deal would undermine perhaps the only chance of a socialist revolution in the United States.

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    Jacques Duclos was the Jacobin Chairman of the Comité de Salut Public or effectively the head of government of the Commune of France and leader of the Third Internationale from 1936-1941. Although he was a devoted communist, Duclos was willing to work within the syndicalist structure of the Commune despite pressure from some Jacobins to abolish syndicalism right away and create a communist vanguard government. However, Duclos would not tolerate any attempts to compromise with the capitalists and viciously condemned Reed's actions in America. Duclos led France to victory over Germany and the red flag flew over the Reichstag under his tenure in office. However, French voters grew tired of the authoritarianism and attempts to subvert syndicalism in favor of communism during the rule of Jacobins and voted them out in 1941 in favor of the anarchists. Likewise in Britain, the TUC in 1941 removed Oswald Mosley in favor of the more moderate Eric Blair. Duclos from exile blamed the "weak-willed" moderates and anarchists stabbing their leaders in the back for the defeat of the Third Internationale in WW2. He declared his previous willingness to work in the democratic syndicalist system was a mistake. He urged all surviving radical socialist parties to purge all moderates, to seek the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and destroy any bourgeoisie or syndicalist "democracies." Thanks to Duclos and his influential "stab in the back" idea, radical socialist parties today tend to be hardline communists or totalists.

    Reed’s deal with the federal government was not much more popular with radical anarchists. The respected elderly French anarchist, former head of the Commune of France, and one of Reed’s personal idols, Sebastien Faure spoke for many anarchists when he criticized Reed. Faure railed against Reed’s “weak half-measures and cowardly pity” for dealing with the government. To this day, Reed’s actions are cited by countless would be violent revolutionaries as proof that moderates and social democrats are nothing but traitorous counterrevolutionaries who must be ruthlessly purged to protect the coming revolution. However, the totalists, communists, and anarchists were merely a very loud minority and lacked the numbers to start a revolution even if they had tried to do so. Most of the union leadership were happy to accept Reed’s deal and the Fair Deal in the interests of peace. The general strike ended and the CSA would later surrender all its foreign weapons on a chosen date as agreed with Curtis. A French cargo ship loaded with weapons that was due to arrive on St. Valentine’s day was forced to turn around. That is not to say that Reed was a secret pacifist and that he never thought about betraying Curtis. Had Long never been murdered and if Long had launched his organized rebellion, Reed would not have been far behind even if Curtis had accepted all of his demands. But with the specter of a Longist uprising turning into mere disorderly riots, the army fully mobilized and the American people flocking to the federal banner and the Fair Deal as a refuge from disorder and chaos, Reed saw that the support for violent socialist revolution drop off dramatically. Reed also saw if he called for rebellion anyway, that much of the base pleased with the Fair Deal might not join him in revolt and instead perhaps betray him to the federal government for the sake of peace. It was far better for Reed to lead the CSA in further improving the lives of the workers in the hall of Congress than risk everything in a revolt that would be now much less popular and much less likely to succeed anymore. However, the leadership of the associated unions soon discovered that the very notion of syndicalism itself would threaten the implementation of the deals. Perhaps the syndicalists had outlived their usefulness...
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    Sabastien Faure was one of Reed's personal idols next to Lenin who Reed once met in person and was one of last major radical socialists or anarchists to personally remember the Paris Commune. His harsh criticism of Reed badly hurt the CSA leader but Reed stuck to his guns on the deal with Curtis.

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    Kaiserreich lore mentions Reed is a big fan of Faure. Faure's criticism has to hurt him.
    Question to the audience! If Reed successfully deals with Curtis and avoids starting the Second American Revolution, is Reed a traitor to socialism and the revolution and a cowardly sellout to the capitalists or a hero who greatly advanced the cause of the working class man in America without needless violence?
    It is not over yet for the CSA folks. See you next time.
     
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