Echoes of A New Tomorrow: Life after Revolution in the Commonwealth of Britain

[TheButterflyComposer]

It’s not looking good for the capitalists on this showing…

Well...its such that neoliberalism isn't going to happen as it did. Looks more likely that a new right forms instead along today's lines much earlier, making the cold War much colder and the world a bit more chaotic because the US will have to chose between facism and socialism again (at least moreso than they have before) whilst at the same time being in proxy war with communism abroad...and not liking it much.

What a confusing time. The left in liberal democracies is going to go harder left, the right is going to go harder right, and there isn't much chance of a strange mix of liberal and right wing capitalism coming to smooth it all over for a few decades.

What does seem clear is that black rights, women rights and lgbt rights aren't going to stop in this kind of atmosphere, but get a lot more hard-core. If it stays like that until the AIDS crisis (if such a thing happens), then the 80s are going to be akin to a very uncivil war between the left and right in the US, whilst everyone else is struggling to convert to another form of socialism/communism as more and more former colonies enter the global stage properly.

 

[DensleyBlair]

What a confusing time. The left in liberal democracies is going to go harder left, the right is going to go harder right, and there isn't much chance of a strange mix of liberal and right wing capitalism coming to smooth it all over for a few decades.

Yes, you’re on the money as ever. Where we are now is more or less the compromise position (although it hardly looks that way now) and things will begin to diverge again in new and exciting(?) ways going into the 80s. Without a Cold War to fight Bevan and Kennedy probably would have been the best of friends, but they would never admit to it…

If it stays like that until the AIDS crisis (if such a thing happens)

The virus itself is around and about from the 20s at least iirc, so it’s definitely a case of when not if. I have factored it into my planning, anyway. LGBT+ stuff will come to more prominence in the next couple of decades, basically the further we get from Mosleyite paternalism. But then the first London Pride marches were 1970 anyway, so we’re not too far off track in Britain. The main factor would be Stonewall, which pride marches stem from in one way or another, and which I have no idea whether KH is thinking about – but it would be hard to see the US situation not being at least as bad as OTL.

 

[Carol-Niko]

Buckley continuing the proud tradition of our intellectual class being made of freaks.

 

[DensleyBlair]

Buckley continuing the proud tradition of our intellectual class being made of freaks.

Something the Anglosphere does fairly well as a whole, in fairness. Lord knows the British offering is not much better.

 

[DensleyBlair]

Victoria 3 may or may not be imminent, but what is more certain is the onwards march towards a finale here. After a lengthy absence from writing I’ve finally got a couple of thousand words under my belt for the next chapter, so with any luck that will be publishable by next week. I’m pretty happy with how it’s shaping up, so hopefully you’ll all enjoy it too.

In the meantime, the next instalment from Mr Buckley is almost ready to go. I’ve got a few Nam-based maps to make over the weekend, but I imagine KH will be in a position to post fairly soon. Do keep an eye out!

 

[99KingHigh]

Victoria 3 may or may not be imminent, but what is more certain is the onwards march towards a finale here. After a lengthy absence from writing I’ve finally got a couple of thousand words under my belt for the next chapter, so with any luck that will be publishable by next week. I’m pretty happy with how it’s shaping up, so hopefully you’ll all enjoy it too.

In the meantime, the next instalment from Mr Buckley is almost ready to go. I’ve got a few Nam-based maps to make over the weekend, but I imagine KH will be in a position to post fairly soon. Do keep an eye out!

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored

 

[DensleyBlair]

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored

 

[DensleyBlair]

Going back over the Vicky 3 announcement stuff, I have to say I am grateful to Pdx for marketing the game with the “[noun] of a [adjective] tomorrow” formula, thereby retroactively imbuing Echoes with a whole new layer of textual meaning. Who would’ve thought that the ‘new tomorrow’ doing the echoing was in fact Victoria 3?

Anyway, work on the next chapter continues. I’m having a bit of trouble working out the tone for some of it, managing a few grand shifts of emotion without tipping over into bathos, but on the whole things are coming together in a way I’m pleased with. With any luck I’ll have something publishable by this time next week.

For now, I’ll leave you all with a teaser video:

 

[99KingHigh]

Chapter 1: Disaster on the Rao Quan​

Among all the bright young things who swooned about the White House, Senator Fulbright seemed quite out of place. A Southerner, first, his silvery glare and vintage academicism confounded his presidential associates, who could neither pin his motives nor contain the publicity of his principles. These attributes were all to his advantage in earlier days, when he strutted about Germany on the coattails of Richard Nixon warning about the danger of “Russian imperialism.” He loved to provoke his audiences by stripping the Cold War of its essential qualities, the conflict between liberty and communism, all the while letting slip the dogs of war whenever the Kremlin reared its ugly head. He really seemed as if he preferred to live in Bismarck’s world. These views served him well enough when he was out evangelizing the President’s gospel in Europe, which he understood very well, but not so much when the President thought of the ideological centrality of the world struggle, which he understood not all. His departure from the White House was the most acrimonious and justified I can recall, for it sometimes seemed as though he was becoming more than flesh and blood could bear. He tottered off to John Hopkins University shortly before the New Year to give a series of lectures, during which he wandered all over the lot, but seemingly arrived home at the conclusion that the United States’ role in Vietnam and Indonesia was not only unjustified legally and morally, but that it was to be understood historically as one of those spasms of aimless military exuberance which are characteristic of great nations overgrown in the arrogance of power. The Senator cited other civilizations similarly addicted, in an effort at historical analogy which left students of history mystified by the strained connections—indeed mystified at what became to look like personal mania.

Mr. Fulbright, during his tenure as Secretary of State in 1966.​

Senator Fulbright appeared not to be able to think about anything else but Southeast Asia, and his statements concerning it were like a fanatic’s, growing stronger and stronger, more and more disorderly. At his final lecture, for instance, he sputtered that “both literally and figuratively, Saigon and Jakarta have become American brothels.” Most of the criticism he received for that statement zeroed in on the literal applicability of the word. But it was the figurative applicability of the word that was most astounding. The Senator insinuated that Saigon and Jakarta were engaging in a great act of immortality so as to please the United States. In order to justify this metaphor, it becomes necessary to assert the proposition that Saigon and Jakarta, as the headquarters of the movement to resist the Vietcong and the PKI, were acting immorally. And to assert the propositions that the United States enjoyed sending its soldiers there to be killed and its dollars there to be spent by the billions. Anyone who seriously believed that it was immoral to resist the Communist terrorists or that the United States is such a power that enjoys such hideous experiences as those in Southeast Asia, or the other in Korea, had lost his hold on reason. Here was the personification, however much exiled from the Presidential palace, of America’s foreign policy for over three terms; how could we expect our international difficulties to be remedied if they had been brewed with such incoherence? Earlier that decade, the White House had greeted Diem’s distaste for American intervention with a barely concealed delight. Fighting a ferocious war without the need for much Yankee blood delighted the mathematicians of the New Frontier. Eight years later the official line had mutated into one of severe annoyance at the apparent lack of vigor with which Diem was prosecuting the war. At the same time, we were said to be “very cross” with Saigon for his dictatorial twitches, even though to all parties it was perfectly clear that he was beset by insurrectionists whose chief objective was the triumph of North Vietnamese communism. There were murmurs of imposing sanctions on the Diem family and in November 1967 the administration went so far as to partially refuse to provision South Vietnam with an exceedingly reasonable request for further reinforcements and supplies. Worst of all, despite Diem’s entreaties to apply forcible military pressure on the North Vietnamese, the State Department and the President preferred to fight as if the war was regulated by a gentlemen’s agreement--only one ratified by a single party, ourselves. I am still not sure whose side the Kennedy administration pretended to serve.

President Diem with supporters in Saigon (1967).​

The laundry list of various penalties which the administration employed to discipline Diem for his August 1967 electoral malfeasance appeared very modest to the White House. Yet to any sane critic, we were adding bullets to a dangerously progressed game of Russian roulette. The administration was already responsible for raising the stakes by allowing its support of the South Vietnamese government to assume a begrudging disposition. How we were to defeat the enemy while fighting our ally, no one was able to resolve. It was that very inconsistency which prompted our defeat. Still, the signs of disaster were not apparent, for the public was constantly deceived, or if not deceived, shamefully ignorant of our true position. Over the spring of 1967 the French Communists doubled their commitment to the North in manpower and equipment. Kennedy was urged to launch a bombing campaign but he feared, much in the same way he feared Peking, that strong action against external parties (i.e. the French) would internationalize the conflict and risk reopening the nuclear crises of the mid-decade. He had won the first round and indicated, by his apathy towards the Baltic crisis, no desire to tempt another. Paris did not seem to share his concerns; French public opinion was insistent on waging a liberation struggle against America, and votes counted on it too. Throughout March, he watched, certainly with horror but without much inclination to action, the communists invade neutral Laos and then in September depose a government whose principal fault was its refusal to allow the North Vietnamese free access through their territory for illegal purposes. Washington’s sheepish reaction to Prime Minister Phoumi Nosavan’s overthrow centered around a half-hearted “disruption” campaign during which the Air Force occasionally disputed France’s attempt to procure air supremacy over Laos. Secretary Rusk appeared to prize the avoidance of anything that might be construed as an escalation over a forthright pursuit of military objectives. Our leaders neglected to remember that our enemies were global revolutionaries; escalation is their preferred medium of political expression.

Vietnamese and French troops marching through Laos during the invasion (1967).​

The ambivalence of our situation was for two-reasons. The first, though not the foremost, was the long-since-identified professional pride invested in the dogma of South Vietnamese military incompetence. If the government of President Diem were to succeed in taking the war into North Vietnam with American assistance, requiring the enemy to negotiate a peace, many political and journalistic reputations would be severely wounded; and if vanity can cause wars, as everybody agrees is the case, why shouldn’t we agree that vanity can be the cause of prolonging wars. But for the great majority, the ambivalence had to do with Fear. Fear of the giant, Red China. It had been a widely used argument by American doves that NVN’s independence of Red China was a real independence. Obviously it was at the sufferance of Red China, even as the independence of Bulgaria is at the sufferance of Russia; but it was independent just the same. By that one means that the war policies of the North Vietnamese were determined by the North Vietnamese, not by Peking. Now this independence was partly the result of Ho Chi Minh’s historical afflatus, and partly the result of the heavy participation of the Soviet Union and France in the aggressive efforts of the North Vietnamese. To the extent that the latter is the cause of it, there is bound to be, and indeed we know that there is, tension of a certain sort between China and France, which flows naturally out of the tension between the Soviet Union and Red China. Provided that the United States were not themselves engaged in an independent military action against North Vietnam, what is it that would have caused China to enter the war? Mrs Nguyen Thi Bing, the chief Viet Cong delegate to the syndicalist powers, said that China is after all “a paternal and a socialist neighbor,” and implied that itself would be sufficient to bring China into the fray. To which the objection was: why hasn’t it been sufficient so far to bring China in before? After all, the NVN’s position was that there was only one Vietnam, that the southern part of it had been imperialized by American troops. So why did not China come in during 1964? And why did Chinese troops not move south directly against what was left of the free government of Laos? Since nothing would be more preposterous than to suppose that the South Vietnamese would attempt to attack North Vietnam in preparation for an assault on China, what was the reason for supposing that China would react now, if she did not react to the landing of American troops in South Vietnam? And then, suppose that this analysis was incorrect. Suppose that China did then move. How was South Vietnam any worse off? If South Vietnam’s struggle for independence was foredoomed by great-power considerations, the sooner South Vietnam could discover that fact, the better. If Chinese soldiers were needed to protect North Vietnam against retaliation from those upon whom she was aggressing, let that fact stand out. If the South Vietnamese were supposed to endure endless aggression...because they are forbidden to move against the source of that aggression...because China might enter the war: why not find out? How would it be worse off? When we should have been encouraging the South Vietnamese to take the fight to the enemy, we were busy grieving over the absence of democratic trappings. When we should have exhibited solidity, we were busy sanctioning our friends.

AKVN soldiers detain two suspected insurgents near Da Nang (1967).​

The military situation, it was oft repeated, was encouraging. General Westmoreland, though dismayed by the itinerant attitude of his government towards Saigon, believed (and continues to) that the heretofore futile attempts by the North Vietnamese to tip the balance demanded only patience and resolve on the long road to victory. If we could convey the determination of our country to the cause of Saigon’s independence by warding off further offensives, the revolutionaries would resign themselves to the futility of their objectives. Whether or not French assistance corrupted these calculations was apparently unknown to an administration inclined to drawdown, even though the New York Times indicated on October 13 that “France’s commitment has reached proportions that warrant comparison to its employments during the African War.” [1] What was happening in Indochina was a contest of wills. Ours had been bent on establishing that a modest, non-aggressive alliance continued to be tenable in a remote part of the world, suggesting that our other alliances, in closer parts of the world, would also prove tenable. The enemy was bent not only on simple aggression, but on proving that the United States could not dispatch a responsibility she willingly and intelligently entered into. If the Communists established that the United States could not do that, then, and as of that very moment, the United States would abdicate as a first-rate power. Those who wished to abandon the war at that moment would force themselves to ask: What will make us convincing, tomorrow, when facing the Middle East, we tell the Soviet Union that we desire a balance of power there? What prestige will be brought to the Organization of American States when we discuss the virtues of stability in Latin America? The advisability of continuing America’s responsibility for the Panama Canal? What, a very few years after our collapse in Asia, would our partners in Europe think when the Soviet Union presses its advantage, and elaborates its expansionist doctrines to authorize, say, the occupation of Hungary?

Pro-war demonstrations in Washington D.C. (1966).​

The Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese enjoyed a benefit, however, that we could not dispute. An estimated 100,000 healthy males not designated for specialized training turned eighteen every year in the north. That is about how many soldiers, on an average, had been killed per year over the course of the war. The bright side of it, in the macabre figuring of the military statisticians, was that something like an entire generation of North Vietnamese males had been killed during the past seven or eight years. The sobering side, and the fatal one for our own purpose, was that they grew ‘em as fast as we could kill ‘em. One recalls the blood-chilling comment of Wellington surveying the carnage after a great battle against Napoleon in Spain, and sniffing that the English dead were no greater than the number of men who would be conceived the next Saturday night in London. The enemy had enough men to keep 50,000 of them engaged in Laos, where, as in South Vietnam, they shouldered the overwhelming burden of pressing their imperialism. There were less than 150,000 Vietcong by 1968. Moreover, another grim statistic, the material that crossed over the borders of North Vietnam en route to the slaughter of Americans and South Vietnamese did so with less than the difficulty—thanks to Kennedy’s refusal to launch a bombing campaign in Laos—that an American tourist experiences in crossing over, say, to Canada.

Viet Cong fighters in the Central Highlands during the Battle of La Dang (1965).​

Furthermore, we are talking, for the most part, about Soviet and French goods; weapons, trucks, and oil. There were more North Vietnamese infiltrating into South Vietnam in 1968 than in 1966 or 1967. As of December 1 1967, 7,500 vehicles were landed in support of the Communists, nearly 3,000 more than the figure a year prior, primarily from the French buildup. During October, 62,000 tons of fuel went into North Vietnam from Russia and France. It was generally supposed that all of the infiltration of the goods of war came down through Laos and the Ho Chi Minh Trail and then insinuated east across the long frontier. In fact, a great deal of material was lapping into the port of Sihanoukville in Cambodia and then trekked its way leisurely east into the Delta region, which is what the war was all about, that being where the rice is cultivated. Why, why we did not ourselves close off that port, or with a salute to Diem’s preferences, allow the South Vietnamese the means to do so remains a mystery, too subtle for me or Richard Nixon to understand. But the point is made. The enemy neither gave up, nor apparently, was disposed to give up; our estimations were far too defensive. Any military authority capable of neutralizing a pea-shooter would have proceeded to do at least some, and probably all, of the following: (1) block the harbor at Haiphong; (2) block the harbor at Sihanoukville; (3) effect an amphibious landing north of Haiphong cutting a swathe across central North Vietnam and dividing the country; (4) march a column of troops west extending (roughly) the Demilitarized Zone, thus cutting off the Ho Chi Minh Trail. A greater commitment was demanded and not provided.

North Vietnamese delegates discuss collaboration with the French government in Paris (1967).​

Perhaps the strongest case for liberating ourselves from self-imposed restrictions was the effect it would carry in Saigon. It would demonstrate our resolution to South Vietnamese independence, both in the effect of firming up the population and in deterring Soviet-French intervention. Instead, the White House thought to appease the demonstrators at home, believing that by flattering the cause of South Vietnamese democracy at its least convenient moment, it would ease the agitation at home and soften the regime in Saigon. The effect was quite the opposite; the government intensified the pressure of insurrectionists on Saigon while inflating the contradictions at home for the war, which, as Secretary McNamara had insisted, was being fought for the democratic institutions of South Vietnam. The results were predictable to the critics of the administration’s conduct. On January 9, President Diem and his wife were the victims of a serious assasination attempt by Viet Cong sympathizers during an official ceremony. Their momentary incapacitation, though short-lived, inspired all the opponents of the regime to gather their strength. Diem attempted to regain the initiative by reiterating his tactics of the previous summer with prohibitions on large demonstrations and military deployments. But with the United States wracked with a sort of self-flagellatory guilt at his conduct, he could not rely upon our support as he had in earlier confrontations. Within two weeks, Diem was besieged by a wave of violent protests and strikes, mainly propagated by fellow-travellers and Buddhist radicals. Finally, on January 19, when he ordered the army to impose a state of martial law on Saigon, the South Vietnamese army consented, only to employ that power to orchestrate a coup d'etat and murder the Diem family in gruesome fashion.

President Diem, minutes after he was assassinated by ARVN officers (1968).​

The beginnings of the new regime were not propitious. The architects of the overthrow foolishly dissolved the Personalist Labor Revolutionary Party (PLRP)—through which, as in many emerging states, privileges and patronage bind the nation together—and established a military directorate. The constitution of 1956 was abolished, as was the National Assembly, long derided by American liberals as a “rubber stamp” (and what if it was?—given time and peace it might not have been). The leadership was a cadre of vain opportunists without a care in the world for democratic reflections. At the helm of the junta was the absurd figure of Lt. General Dinh. This profligate officer celebrated his new powers by lifting Madame Nhu's bans on nightly festivities before commencing his long march round the Saigon nightclubs, dancing and ordering champagne for all visitors. His lieutenants and senior officers were such magnificent grifters as to make even Cardinal-Nephews blush with distress. And though they were greeted at first as liberators, “poised to liberalize the country” as the New York Times reported on January 24, Dinh and his national police chief, General Xuan, instead embarked on a fantastic campaign of en masse arrests, only releasing the detainees in return for bribes and pledges of loyalty. It looked as though we were doomed to sink with Diem.

General Ton That Dinh reviews a regiment of ARVN soldiers shortly after the coup (1968). ​

The military government established a bifurcated system of administration with a civilian cabinet practically supervised by the junta’s executive committee, chaired by Dinh. An appointed “Council of Notables” (ah, what democratic advances we had made!) was designated to replace the Assembly in an advisory capacity while it considered the production of a new constitution. Furthermore, though the State Department had expeditiously approved Ambassador Lodge’s recommendation to recognize the new regime, the White House discovered that Dinh was just as skeptical of American interference as Diem had been at his most obstinate. It was reported that Dinh’s delusion was of such extraordinary proportions that he believed the Viet Cong were principally southern nationalists opposed to Diem and American involvement. His colleagues, cut from a similar cloth of the PLRP’s military wing, betrayed little discomfort with these views. Worse yet, the Buddhists reacted to Dinh's appointment with utter dismay, for the General was a Catholic convert (in the loosest possible application of the term). They openly took responsibility for organizing demonstrations, and publicized a proclamation that declared the country to be in a “state of emergency.” Their demands included civilian rule, negotiation with the Viet Cong (not that Dinh was unsympathetic), and the relaxation of all Diem-era restrictions on Buddhist practices and civil freedoms. The White House was beginning to understand the extreme precariousness of the situation, and its own role in affecting the establishment of a military government in lieu of a long-standing, civilian apparatus. President Kennedy did not have long to compose a response.

President Kennedy discuses the movements of the French, Vietnamese, and Laotian communists shortly before the coup (1968).​

If it was our expectation that the enemy would remain idle through these tribulations, we were soon to be surprised. The destabilization of the South Vietnamese state tempted the Viet Cong, the French, the North Vietnamese, and the Soviets with the odor of triumph. Preparations had been conducted for a Viet Cong offensive in January throughout the latter half of 1967. But with the evident chaos in the South disrupting the military stalemate, Paris and Ho Chi Minh augmented their plans to land a decisive blow, and prepped for a coordinated offensive of the Viet Cong and the Franco-Vietnamese Army. In the early hours of 30 January 1968—the beginning of celebrations for Tet, the lunar New Year—North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched a coordinated assault on more than 100 cities and towns across South Vietnam. The attacks sought nothing less than to force a collapse of the Saigon government. Within a few days, it was apparent they would succeed. By January 31, the Viet Cong had seized large pockets of Saigon, while the old imperial capital of Hue was captured by a massive Franco-Vietnamese thrust backed by guerillas, regular forces, and French air support. At Khe Sanh, aside the DMZ, Viet Cong besiegers were reinforced by regular forces and the French air force, which disrupted the usual provisioning of the Marines by the USAF. The communists achieved total surprise on all fronts—military attention had been fixed on the siege of Khe Sanh and the rippling civil disturbances, not on the potential for a large combined offensive across the Laotian border. U.S. bombers scrambled and inflicted substantial casualties on conventional North Vietnamese and French forces wherever air power was not in dispute and the enemy could be located, but the utter confusion of the multitudinous strike confounded the American and South Vietnamese armies and hindered a coordinated defense. On February 2, Khe Sanh was forced to surrender after enduring devastating losses the previous two nights in the greatest American military disaster since Pearl Harbor. The Buddhist rebels played their own brilliant role in this drama. Receiving the news of the Viet Cong uprising with treacherous delight, they took to the streets to drive the nail into the coffin of the military regime.

U.S. Marines are overrun during the Battle of Hue (1968).

An ARKN infantry squad defends a highrise during the Battle of Saigon (1968)

The American defenders from Khe Sanh, gathered by the Rao Quan river, shortly after the surrender (1968).

French paratroops outside Can Tho (1968).
​

The situation was becoming so dire that the Pentagon began to speak very sincerely about a general retreat. President Kennedy, cracking under the weight of his responsibility (and his barbiturates), feared that the entire American presence in South Vietnam would be “pocketed.” This terror was only accentuated when it looked as though protestors and the Viet Cong were nearing the successful overthrow of the junta in Saigon. While urging the South Vietnamese government to continue and maintain forward positions, the White House debated concentrating all American forces in Saigon province, lest the center succumb and leave hundreds of thousands of American soldiers stranded in the Vietnamese periphery. On February 4, Kennedy relieved General Westmoreland from command and charged General Creighton Abrams with salvaging the dire condition of American forces. Abrams immediately set about executing a concentration of force, withdrawing U.S. forces from areas where regional capitals had fallen to revolutionary committees of Buddhist dissidents or to direct occupation by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese. The effective desertion of the DMZ opened a route for a frontal assault across the North Vietnamese border. Three days later, the Franco-Vietnamese Army invaded South Vietnam over the DMZ, encountering little resistance as they pushed through demoralized ARVN divisions in the North, abandoned by the United States.

NVA tanks roll through Da Nang in the days after the invasion.
​

Dinh, still fighting for Saigon, offered to open peace negotiations with the Viet Cong on February 9. This precipitated a fracturing of the South Vietnamese leadership, which opened a window for the United States to assert some control over the political situation. With assistance from the recaptured embassy, General Nguyễn Khánh arrested Dien on February 18 and implored the United States to countenance a full counter-offensive. But the ARVN no longer had the strength to conduct independent operations, and even so, the American public were in no condition to countenance a bloody intensification of the war in Southeast Asia as mass protests, brimming with the distraught and the resigned, swarmed over Washington and New York. Abrams instead determined to prevent the fall of Saigon, and reorganized his withdrawn divisions into Saigon province to suppress the Viet Cong offensive and ensure uninterrupted supply lines. Kennedy approved the plan, cognizant that he was effectively conceding most of South Vietnam to the French and the Vietnamese, now approaching from the north and from the east. American fighters and bombers secured Saigon airspace as the army established a defensive perimeter around the province. Hundreds of American soldiers perished during the difficult retreat, harangued by vengeful guerillas and defecting ARVN troops.

This image, taken by photographer Eddie Adams during the Long Retreat, was awarded the 1968 World Press Photo of the Year. ​

Our shock at the disaster in Vietnam had no precedent in American history. Large crowds gathered to console each other. The flippant among the pro-Communists wasted no time in celebrating the ruin of this country, or, if they felt that excessively indiscreet, urged its ruin by demanding immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, and Indonesia too. Congressman shouted down spokesmen of the administration in the House and formed inquiries at an amazing pace. The Senate demanded MacNamara and Rusk appear to justify the defeat—their defenses were frail and lacking, really, a satisfactory explanation. The New Frontier was broken; how it might have survived was beyond any mortal. Kennedy knew that he could not go before the convention that summer, and the White House sank into despondency. The New York Times, the handmaiden of the liberal establishment, reflected that “the calamity that has befallen this country, and our ally in South Vietnam, has brought an abundance of disbelief and despair. It is painful proof of the limitations of American power in Asia.” No, still they were unprepared to hold the guilty men to account. But the American people were not so dormant in their expressions of outrage…

--

[1] Compiler's note: The conflicts commonly referred to as the “Anti-Fascist Wars” in Western Europe are usually described by American scholars in an itemized style. Thus we refer to them as the “North African War” and the “Spanish Civil War.” When addressing them collectively, historians will typically employ the term “Mediterranean Crisis (or Emergency)” to emphasize the lack of open military confrontation on the European continent as well as to extend the categorization chronologically to the Italian Revolution.

​

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

This is the begining of the end for stability in the US, one presumes.

 

[DensleyBlair]

This is the begining of the end for stability in the US, one presumes.

I’ve been told there is a Lindbergh chapter coming…

 

[Bullfilter]

On BUILDING THE ALLIANCE, 1928–1929

Inching my way along, but I always feel I shouldn’t rush when addressing such substance.

I was dissuaded from his adoption by friends within the Conservative Party who impressed upon me Allen’s reputation as an eccentric, given at times to fascistic inclinations.

Well, Oswald should never tolerate such types!

As for the old guard, it was during this period that I grew to know Lloyd George well and to appreciate gifts unique in his generation, which at this conjunction of events at home and abroad I judged would again be of immeasurable benefit to our country.

Lloyd George almost always pops up somewhere along these lines in British-based AAR alt-histories of this period: he seems unavoidable.

and it was with profound regret that I had to break with him over our policy towards Germany in spring 1936.

I will be interested to see the nature of the break over Germany when the time comes.

The Fascisti noted immediately the power we held and feeling themselves threatened made great noise about our movement, with Lintorn-Orman denouncing me as an ‘enemy of the people’ and all sorts besides.

Damned Fascists! They’re probably all dashing about in black footer-bags and making right tossers of themselves. I bet you liked the irony of Mosley confronting them this way in this divergent time line.

 

[DensleyBlair]

On BUILDING THE ALLIANCE, 1928–1929

Inching my way along, but I always feel I shouldn’t rush when addressing such substance.

Always glad to hear you're thoughts on the older stuff, Bullfilter! Going by the reactions I'm getting on some of those posts at the moment, there are a few people out there inching their way along too. It makes me very happy to know that there are still those finding this thread and plugging away at it two years in.

Lloyd George almost always pops up somewhere along these lines in British-based AAR alt-histories of this period: he seems unavoidable.

Lloyd George pops up just about everywhere in the interwar, trying to 'enter the conversation by any door', as Joyce would put it. But then he's very useful for ambitious anti-establishment types: comes with an extraordinary amount of cachet as 'the man who won the war', and willing to throw it in just about any direction.

OTL, he was certainly aware of Mosley's plans at the point, and if you believe Mosley (not always advisable) DLG was tacitly supportive. What horrors could have been?

I will be interested to see the nature of the break over Germany when the time comes.

This again is an event that is quite popular with writers of alt-histories of the period. (@Le Jones gives his own authoritative telling in A Royal Prerogative.) How it plays out in the topsy-turvy world of Echoes, mind, is another question…

Well, Oswald should never tolerate such types!

Damned Fascists! They’re probably all dashing about in black footer-bags and making right tossers of themselves. I bet you liked the irony of Mosley confronting them this way in this divergent time line.

I've grouped these two thoughts together because to my mind they imply a similar sort of thing.

The Fascisti are, in many cases, very Spodian indeed. Before Mosley, the British fascist movement was a truly bizarre phenomenon that brought together eccentric heiresses, old-school imperialist racial purists, and the usual crowd of thugs and antisemites. Together, they made up a sort of farcical scouting movement who were regarded as something of an oddity by much of 'the Establishment' but not really censured – probably because there were so few of them. (Certainly, they were sometimes applauded. I can't remember where exactly it falls in the chronology, so my apologies if this spoils anything, but Churchill really did structure his strikebreaking force along the lines of the Fascisti 'Q Divisions' in 1926…)

Mosley's own move towards fascism OTL comes after having exhausted his opportunities in both of the major parties, and becoming deeply enthusiastic about the 'example' being set by Mussolini in 'rebuilding' Italy. In this, he was not exceptional. The British interwar establishment, infamously, were prone to sharing this enthusiasm. (Churchill covers himself in glory here once again with some particularly effusive praise of Il Duce…) When Mosley eventually set up the BUF it turned fascism into a serious problem in Britain – not because it had been okay to dismiss it before, but because now it was well-drilled and unified around something like a coherent programme. Along the way, Mosley alienated just about every single established figure in the pre-BUF far-right, who really resented the fact that he had stolen their thunder. (There were other disagreements too, like on the subject of what degree of antisemitism was necessary for a fascist party.) This went so far as fash-on-fash street-fighting and inter-party sabotage so in a sense Mosley confronting the pre-1930 fash in this story is nothing new.

That said, there is of course the very important caveat here that Mosley found an alternate route to mass notoriety before deciding to become the British Mussolini. So you're right, there are ironies. As to whether I liked them… let's just say I'm in favour of fash being bashed by any means, but I don't take any particular joy from the fact that an historical fascist leader happens to be doing the dirty work.

In the end, it's all about power. That seems to have been Mosley's most sincere and long-lasting fixation.

 

[Carol-Niko]

I would hate to see a Communist Buckley put in place to explain the importance of continued Russian resistance to American imperialism in Cuba, despite the possibility of nuclear catastrophe, all in the name of nebulous prestige.

 

[DensleyBlair]

I would hate to see a Communist Buckley put in place to explain the importance of continued Russian resistance to American imperialism in Cuba, despite the possibility of nuclear catastrophe, all in the name of nebulous prestige.

Pitching Buckley against some sort of supercilious Tankie does sound like the surest way imaginable to create a black hole.

 

[99KingHigh]

I would hate to see a Communist Buckley put in place to explain the importance of continued Russian resistance to American imperialism in Cuba, despite the possibility of nuclear catastrophe, all in the name of nebulous prestige.

shortly, you'll be rooting for Buckley, i assure you

 

[DensleyBlair]

shortly, you'll be rooting for Buckley, i assure you

the anti-hero and the primary antagonist teaming up for the final boss battle

 

[Carol-Niko]

I'm sure Kennedy would prefer having a bullet in his head right about now.

 

[DensleyBlair]

I'm sure Kennedy would prefer having a bullet in his head right about now.

No doubt he's achieving something like a comparable effect with a heady cocktail of barbiturates and the intimate company of Marilyn Monroe…

 

[DensleyBlair]

Once again we are at the bottom of the page, and once again this means an update is inbound. This time it's my turn; I'm back in action with the first bit of what will be a two-parter. Look out for that later on tonight.

KH will be along at some point over the next few days with the long-trailed Buckley-on-Lindbergh chapter. I've only seen the first draft so far, but what is apparent is that, as a critical discussion of the white supremacist movement in 1968, reader discretion will be advisable. I'll do a proper content note before it's published, but I thought I'd mention now just to give some forewarning.

In the meantime, please sit back and enjoy the beginning of the end…