Chapter 387
Excerpt from a lecture on the influence of American exiles on British economy, culture and society held at Queen's University Belfast, 2016.
What American history books tend to describe as 'Workers spontaneously seizing the means of production' was neither carried out by workers nor was it any form of spontaneous, except of course during the initial uprisings in the old US industrial cities like Detroit and in several black-dominated areas of the rural south. As we have discovered from various reports by refugees and defectors, except for those initial seizures that really were carried out by workers in their own plants, most of the forced nationalizations during and after the civil war were done to a planned schedule, going from biggest to smallest, by government officials backed by local militias or APA regulars. Like the supposed mass defection of the various National Guard units, this is one of the closely held and guarded truisms of American reading of the war. On the whole though it must be said that when the territory of the old United States fell into the hands of the Communists during the war, they generally managed to seize the at least the factories or places of operations of most economic entities.
A few notable exceptions to this exist, one being the Springfield Armory that was defended by loyalist elements of the Massachusetts Army National Guard to the point where all the communists managed to capture were a few shells of burnt-out buildings and not a single machine tool. Another is the Colt Company that, while it never managed to find widespread success outside the United States and ceased operations in 1957, did bring the plans and first prototypes for what was supposed to be adopted by the Army but is still being produced today and officially known as the L2-series in British service or sometimes as the M2 Browning, using the proposed but never adopted U.S. Army designation. By doing so they deprived the American People's Army of a design that has done long, faithful and incredibly successful service in Allied and Eurobloc militaries for seventy years now. The story of the L2/M2s escape is one that could and did rate more than a few films.
The point of this small excursion into that part of history is that as much as the UAPR wishes to deny that anyone willingly fled before them and wanted to remain a dirty capitalist pig instead of working for the good of the people and union, it did happen and those refugees have had a massive impact on us.
It also needs to be noted that the farther away a company was from the initial core areas held by rebel forces, the likelier it was that the company or at least the owners and relevant intellectual properties managed to escape. Of course quite a few of them were merely buying time considering that Mexico was added to the American sphere in the 1950s, but several fled north instead of south, and some made it across the Atlantic. Of course not all of them managed to thrive, but a few not only survived long term but are economic juggernauts today. In the following we shall take a look at the two most well-known ones, their history after leaving America, their activities since then and where they are today.
The first one hails from Atlanta, Georgia, but for our purposes it's history actually begins with the Battle of New York, where one businessman narrowly escaped death when Communist militias formed from dockyard hands and other workers began to fight the NYPD and the New York Army National Guard in Manhattan. He had been there precisely because his company had lost some assets when the Communists seized several cities around the Great Lakes, and now his narrow escape across the Hudson River into New Jersey would end up bringing the Eurobloc one of it's most well-known brands. His name? Robert W. Woodruff, President and eventually sole owner of the Coca-Cola Company.
The ubiquity of this brand is common knowledge to you all, in fact many in this hall, including yours truly have one of the various products of that company next to them, however unhealthy they may be.
Among all the exiles the Coca-Cola company was uniquely placed for success. Whereas Raytheon struggled at first and was saved by the Commonwealth's demand for their know-how and products created by the environment of World War Two and afterwards of the Cold War, Coca-Cola, on the face it at least, had little else to do than to notify it's various international stations that from now on corporate operations would be run from London instead of Atlanta. However, the delay between Atlanta HQ becoming untenable and Woodruff re-establishing himself at Grosvenor Square in London after the USGE abandoned the building on cost grounds had done immense damage to operations, with several distributors going bankrupt or working for others.
The story how the company fled is another one worthy of a film. If you so desire, watch the 1968 version, it's the least influenced by the company and probably the most accurate.
Long story short, when Woodruff returned from New York back to Atlanta, he made a short stopover in Washington DC, and to his dying day he credited this short three-hour halt with the survival of the company. While there he took in what he called a 'despondent, already defeated atmosphere' by the troops tasked with defending the city against the Red militias everyone expected to arrive within minutes, the reality-denying way with which the Government officials conducted their affairs. If he decided then and there that the country was doomed is uncertain, as he never really said when he decided this, but it convinced him to make preparations just in care.
Once back in Atlanta, he did a number of things. First he used the few Trans-Atlantic connections not in Communist hands to advise the various overseas offices and subsidiaries to prepare for a loss of support from Atlanta, second he took the increasingly worthless US Dollar reserves held by the company and began converting them into as many Pounds Sterling as he could get his hands on. Thirdly, and this is what allowed him to eventually claim the company as his own, he took the hard currency he had raised as well as the most critical parts of the company archives and loaded them onto ten freight cars that he had hired. As payment he used what ready reserves of Cola Syrup were available as well as part of his personal fortune that he had converted into gold coins some years ago during the height of the economic woes the country had found itself in. During the remaining months he had in the old corporate headquarters as much of day-to-day operations was shifted to the United Kingdom as was possible, including a transfer of the 'original formula' to the vaults of the Bank of England, escorted by a few of his most trusted employees. Something else he did was to keep on much of the core staff needed to run the company, continue to pay them with as much inflation adjustment as he could afford and generally, when the time came, offering all of them a ride out of the country and to British territory, along with their families. A surprising number of workers accepted the offer, so when the convoy set off for first California and later Canada after the Government abandoned South Carolina, it was joined by more civilians 'than you could shake a stick at' to once again quote the man himself. That a manufacturer of fizzy sugar water, even one so known and well loved as Coca-Cola could hire an entire train from a railway company even though all rolling stock had supposedly been requisitioned by the Army tells us a lot about the increasing breakdown of public order in the areas west of the Mississippi.
Crossing that self-same river is another of the great company legends, with Woodruff himself trading twenty crates of Cola for passage over a bridge mere hours ahead of the Communists. The group shed some members when they reached San Francisco, but when the train then reached the Canadian border north of Seattle in September 1934, the United States were already effectively dead, with the last major field army under siege in San Francisco.
It was of course more complicated than just flying to London on the Shorts Clippers, even though the company did indeed own production infrastructure in several countries and an expansive distribution network across those same countries. The biggest problem Woodruff faced was that the war that had raged in America and the one that was brewing in Europe had massively disrupted trade in South America, the smaller expected cash flow of purely European operations made it difficult to import and produce the various ingredients needed for their then only product. This problem was solved eventually. Changing the formula to eliminate the use of 'spent' coca leaves and the so-called Colanut not only massively reduced costs for logistics and production but also proved to be an early solution to a second problem that would have arisen during the 1950s when Central and South America fell into the American sphere like domino pieces. This was an insanely expensive challenge in chemistry that actually advanced the field in several areas, but it allowed the company to survive, all in all an excellent long-term investment.
Expanding existing UK operations to serve what remained of the market was another problem looking for a solution, but that was solved in part by a 5% rise in price for a single bottle and the company taking advantage of the Government scheme that sought to negotiate low interest loans for formerly American companies that wanted to re-establish themselves in British territory.
It wasn't all smooth sailing from there, and the company was on the edge of bankruptcy for the remainder of the 30s, though sales began to pick up greatly during 1939, likely due to the 'still the real thing' marketing campaign that would last well into the 50s. The true saving grace however came in the form of the Navy, Army, Air Force Institute. Since the forces contained a greater concentration of Americans than any other part of British society, the demand for Coca-Cola was higher there than anywhere else, so when war seemed likely, the Institute sought to provide a steady supply of the drink on every battlefront. So they approached Woodruff to discover how that might be accomplished.
His initial idea was to have the price fixed, meaning that no matter wherever a soldier served, he would be able to buy a Cola for the same price as he would back home, but that proved to be too expensive for the struggling company. So they settled for the second half of the plan and instead worked together with the Institute to create a series of semi-portable bottling plants that would de-crease transportation to a manageable issue. The first of these would become operational in France mere days before Case Yellow, and by the time the war ended, several dozen served all over the world, serviced by the famous 'Cola-techs' that were civilian contractors but wore battledress so as to not stand out. Several were killed, and over the course of the war, the Coca-Cola company collected no less than eight George Crosses. Even though the initial idea could not be adopted, any variation in price was kept to an absolute minimum, guaranteed by both the company selling the product to the NAAFI at or, as in the case of the lengthy campaign on Formosa that saw a plant established before the island was secured, even below cost. The genius of this plan is expressed in both sales figures and in the appreciation expressed in letters.[1]
Another big legend is what happened to Coca-Cola's German operations during and after the war. When the Nazis signed the treaty with the Soviets, Woodruff stated in an interview that he considered this to be an 'Unholy Alliance of Evil' and yes, all written uppercase. Still, the company could not afford to completely withdraw from the market, so he continued deliveries of syrup. When the British Empire withdrew their Ambassador from Germany, Coca-Cola ceased deliveries, with the final orders out of London being that Coca-Cola Germany was to continue operations as long as they could.
During the war that part of the structure was effectively a company unto it's own, going so far as to develop the first variant of Fanta as an Ersatz-Cola and using it's status as a producer of foodstuffs to keep men with families away from the front. They kept away from the Nazis as well as they could, and when after the war, or at least when the front had moved far enough away the first representatives arrived from London, they found the President of Coca-Cola Germany standing in front of the factory gates. He handed them over the keys as well as a bank account where he had stashed much of the wartime profits.
After that their rise to the top seemed to be almost unstoppable.
Today they hold no less than sixty-one percent of the global market for fizzy sugar water, with their biggest competitor being Nuka Cola out of the USSR, and even they are a distant second with twenty-five percent of the world.
Now, Raytheon is a story a whole lot less interesting.
tbc
[1] Adapted from OTL. The most amazing thing is this picture of a soldier on I think Okinawa with all the grime of the fight on him, knocking back a bottle of Coke. Staged or not, it inspired me to write this. Extra credit if you figure out what I changed on that logo beyond removing the white bit at the bottom.
