Very interesting post war setup, looking forward to the Southern Roaring Twenties.
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Aww, too bad neither Ukraine nor Armenia is independent but, oh well. Surprising to see Austria-Hungary is still going strong. Also, am I correct in guessing that one Huey Long will not die before '36?
That still-united Hapsburg Empire will probably put a crimp in Adolf Hitler's "Anschluss" and Sudeten Landgrab plans. I'd like to see how that would affect things, especially if the Hapsburgs are able to put together a "Balkan Coalition" to resist the Axis powers.
Above: A Flapper - symbol of the Roaring Twenties
XXIII. The Roaring Twenties (1921-29)
Before the Great War the Confederate States of America had been fairly wealthy. The decade after the war saw it become one of the wealthiest nations in the world. It was perhaps the most colourful period in the nations history and certainly the most prosperous.
The first cause was oil. The Twenties saw the rise of the automobile - by the decade nearly 7 million of them in the Confederacy alone, millions more abroad and all running on Texan Black Gold. Cotton, the chief Dixie export for 60 years fell to second place as unprecedented wealth came through the oilwells. Tobacco too underwent a Rennaisance - more men and women smoked them ever before causing Virgina to undergo a boom of its own.
Despite this and the new roads being paved across the nation the Confederacy remained an overwhelmingly rural nation, especially compared with the North. Of all the cities in Dixie only two - New Orleans and Havana had a population above 400,000 and only nine had a population above 250,000. Overwhelmingly the Confederacy was a world of proud and prosperous small and medium towns with their local newspapers, baseball teams and churches, their quiet airs and relaxed beauty. Even here though the modern world intruded in at least two ways: soon every town worth its name boasted a movie theatre (or two) and every proper home a radio.
There had been movies made in the Confederacy before but it was really D. W. Griffith's founding of Confederate Artists the South's first major movie studio in Jacksonville, Sonora in 1917 that began the Dixie movie industry that some became a serious (and in Dixie dominant) rival to the Northern Hollywood. Other studios followed and soon such directors as King Vidor, Tod Browning and Leon De La Mothe and such actors and actresses as Joan Crawford, Will Rogers and Lupe Vélez brought the silver screen to life all across Dixie. Movies ran the gamut from lavish period pieces and dramas set amongst the Planter aristocracy to slapstick comedies and Westerns.
Just as popular and innovative was the birth of the wireless as entertainment which beginng in the middle of the decade soon spread wildly. Many houses bought their first radio to listen to the 1927 Presidential Election and again that year to hear the Louisville Grays win that years World Series* but it was dramas, radio plays, comedy, music and news that kept them glued. Soap operas and other radio serials would have to wait for the thirties but in the mean time there was plenty to hear from on the wireless.
Jazz, the defining music of the decade, was born in Dixie and though it horrified many conservatives (and was banned in many places) it would inspire musicians, both white and black for many years to come. This was also an era of unprecedented participation of women in the labour force and public society. The self confident woman of the Twenties - at the least the archtypical Flapper - smoke and drank in public, exercised her vote and wore her hair short.
Yet for all this the Confederacy remained a deeply conservative place. Prohibition, just defeated in Congress was the law of the land in seven of the seventeen states - though those who remained 'wet' made a fortune from tourism by thirsty Northerners. Isolationism had so become the default policy of the land that in the 1927 Election even the Whigs made little mention of foreign policy.
*The Southern World Series that is. Baseball, the shared passion of both North and South was played mostly seperately though the 30's would see the beginnings of an Pan-American system.
But it's all going to come crashing down in '29. Also, this is just a nitpick but Greater Syria should probably own the Hejaz (red coast region of Saudi Arabia) as the Hashimites (the family Faisal was part of) owned the land during the war.
Specialist290 said:
I think Hitler is far less likely to pull off the sudeten land grab. A Hapsburg border is very different to a Czech one.
The British backed Ibn Saud as a counterweight to the Syrians during the Twenties which is why Hejaz is still part of Saudi Arabia.
RossN said:
OK, now i get it, that does make sense, seeing as the British often played one small power against another in order to magnify their own power.
Patrick O'Harte said:
Hmm, that's a very good idea, but maybe his idea's of racial superiority will be changed since most of his nation (and by definition, his soldiers) will be non-aryan/german.
Patrick O'Harte said:
Highly doubtful - Hitler was from the school of thought of Austrian nationalists which drew it's inspiration from the ideas of Georg Schönerer, and was anti-Catholic, anti-Habsburg, and highly pro-German. Indeed, these people even denied that Austria should exist as a seperate state; salvation was to be found in Wilhelmine Germany, not in Austrian particularism. So you'd have to radically change Hitler's historical political views to see him engaging in Austria politics.
The Green part is not so ridiculous as it may first seem, since the Nazis had a tendency to idealise the countryside and promote 'healthy' living. There was a good deal of 'Green' thinking in Nazism.
Looks like a roaring decade there, and Richmond really should have won the World Series.
Vincent Julien said:
Indeed; Hitler himself was both a vegetarian and ardently anti-tobacco, according to a few sources I've read. (Or maybe I'm thinking of some other high-ranking Nazi Party official, but regardless, the point is made...)
Above: The 1927 Confederate States Presidential Election
XXIV. The Election of 1927 (1927-28)
Vice President von Habsburg had died in 1925 and his replacement North Carolina Senator Furnifold McLendel Simmons proved a dissapointment meaning that for once the incubent party faced a Presidential election without a clear cut candidate. After a close battle South Carolina Senator Coleman L. Blease was the surprise victor. The colourful if polarizing Blease and his running mate Virginian Senator Matthew M. Neely played heavily on the unprecedented economic boom that had begun under President Davis.
The Whig's a party in some dissary after such a long period in power had gone with Oscar Underwood, Alabama senator and Senate Minority Leader. Underwood's considerable experience and that of his running mate Arkansas Senator Joseph Taylor Robinson would counterbalance the strong Democrat position on the economy.
The Populists had suffered an internal schism between 'wets' and 'drys' (anti and pro prohibition respectively) in the early 20's and compromise candidate John M. Parker inspired little enthusiasm in a party many already believed to be on it's way out - the rural poor that voted Populist had done very well under the Democrats and where unlikely to return in such large numbers.
Coleman L. Blease (Democrat) 5,458,032 votes (56.18%) Electoral College: 175
Oscar Underwood (Whig) 3,201,004 votes (32.95%) Electoral College: 22
John M. Parker (Populist) 890,268 votes (9.16%) Electoral College: 0
Other 165,081 votes (1.69%) Electoral College: 0
Total Votes 9,714,385 (76% turnout)
The election results, a Democrat landslide reflected a nation that was willing to attribute the economic boom to the Democrats - or at least give them credit for not messing it up. Conversely the election was an absolute disaster for the Whigs - their worst result in almost 60 years. Rock solid Whig states like Kentucky and Sequoyah had voted with their wallets and abandoned the interventionist policies of the Wilsonian era and their second defeat in a row pointed out the mountain the Whigs had to climb, particularly if the economy stayed robust as all indications seemed to indicate it would.
Many pundits saw the poor showing of Parker as confirmation that Populist success under Butler had been anomaly. Clearly, considered opinion had it, the Populists were a party on their way out.
The Deomcrats win as expected. I'm waiting to see what will happen when the depression hits (If it hits 
).
).
east_emnet said:The Deomcrats win as expected. I'm waiting to see what will happen when the depression hits (If it hits
I think the populists are going to win an election they weren't expecting to under a new Louisianian Senator named Huey Long
.
Last edited:
And I don't doubt the Democrats will pay at the ballot next time round for screwing things up.