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While distasteful to our modern sensibilities, the 3 birth policy makes sense when you have to replace war dead and fill up mostly empty but rich lands like Canada and Australia. Canada could hold and sustain 100-150 million people so the policy is sound from that point of view.
You are joking, right? Those 100 million would have to live in squalid poverty. You can't just breed up millions, you need to invest into housing and infrastructure,very heavily so given the climatic conditions of Canada and the remoteness of the land.

You don't actually need much manpower to extract wealth from the Canadian wastelands. But you need railroads, bucket excavators, air ports, housing with powerful heating, icebreakers, nuclear power plants. Human civilization in he arctic wastes is not self sustaining. It's very capital intensive. The projects require enormous investments uo front and may incur shocking amounts of cost overruns. And may frequently be losing businesses even so. Just ask the Russians how all those 1970s and 1980s industrial towns and military complexes in northern Siberia are doing now that people can't be forced to move there any more.

If the Canadians really won that war against the AUS and are now masters of North America, they wouldn't pour money into mega expensive projects in Canada anymore, they would just go invest it into ventures in the former US regions instead and have a much easier time with it. The climate is so much better down south, the manpower is so much more readily available, and there's bound to be a lot of idle capacity around that just needs a bit of modernization and repair to churn out huge profits for the crown corporations.
 
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Obviously guy, it's not like they're all going to be born at once. It's a century plan, not a 5 year plan. The housing and infrastructure gradually increase with the population. Even with the AUS defeated, It's not like they're going to annex the mid-west or hold down the successor states forever. The Empire needs more citizens and Canada and Australia have the room. Even confined to a 100 mile strip along the US border there is an insane amount of room to expand.
 
While distasteful to our modern sensibilities, the 3 birth policy makes sense when you have to replace war dead and fill up mostly empty but rich lands like Canada and Australia. Canada could hold and sustain 100-150 million people so the policy is sound from that point of view.

The 3 child policy isn’t even that bold. Population replacement is something like 2.4/2.5 children, so a 3 child policy would only ensures that the population keeps moderately growing. If it even works. Pro birthrate policies are pretty hit and miss even for authoritarian governments

You are joking, right? Those 100 million would have to live in squalid poverty. You can't just breed up millions, you need to invest into housing and infrastructure,very heavily so given the climatic conditions of Canada and the remoteness of the land.

You don't actually need much manpower to extract wealth from the Canadian wastelands. But you need railroads, bucket excavators, air ports, housing with powerful heating, icebreakers, nuclear power plants. Human civilization in he arctic wastes is not self sustaining. It's very capital intensive. The projects require enormous investments uo front and may incur shocking amounts of cost overruns. And may frequently be losing businesses even so. Just ask the Russians how all those 1970s and 1980s industrial towns and military complexes in northern Siberia are doing now that people can't be forced to move there any more.

If the Canadians really won that war against the AUS and are now masters of North America, they wouldn't pour money into mega expensive projects in Canada anymore, they would just go invest it into ventures in the former US regions instead and have a much easier time with it. The climate is so much better down south, the manpower is so much more readily available, and there's bound to be a lot of idle capacity around that just needs a bit of modernization and repair to churn out huge profits for the crown corporations.

I think the idea would be that you maximize the use of the southern arable land (which is still very large and underpopulated even if it’s a small fraction of Canada as a whole) plus making a bit more use of marginal land as well. It’s not like Canada is only arable land and arctic wasteland.
 
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Canada has a similar fertility rate of 3 children for a women up until around about the 1970s so by the population would be roughly the same maybe one or two million more from British and American refugees and the fact it will lasted for longer.
So it’s not like the policy going to lead to mass slums
 
In general, encouraged 3-child policy isn't really all that major. However it might seem that to our own sensibilities and our own time, where per family child numbers are so much smaller due to various SPICY matters that might not be quite forum friendly due to modern politics, economics, media, woman right movement politics, the state of a western marriage and breaking of nuclear family, among others.

You are joking, right? Those 100 million would have to live in squalid poverty. You can't just breed up millions, you need to invest into housing and infrastructure,very heavily so given the climatic conditions of Canada and the remoteness of the land.

Those Kids wouldn't grow up instantly, and there is also the natural decline in turn from old age and what have you that makes you not live anymore. And as @annsan said. Canada is pretty huge, so And Crown Atomic Canada is bigger than OTL Canada as well.

And even your infrastructure argument is somewhat bad, as Canada has already done quite alot of expensive Canadian development schemes in order to get its hands to resources the wastes hide, as well as general urbanization and development.
 
I would like to point out that the three child policy is a minimum, not a limit. combined with other natalist programs and propaganda, as well as a until recently growing population, the average Canadian household may well have four or five children. I still dont think that this would cause slums though, Im sure that the canadian planers are competent enough to have something to do with children once produced.
 
I mean, a totalitarian dictatorship based on a literal king emperor ruling through divine right would not give a shit about people living in poverty in general because SERVENTS OF THE CROWN or whatever

As seen a few updates ago, theres barely even enough jobs for anyone anymore already especially since the army is winding down due to not being THAT needed after dealing with the former US, you basically have a genaration with tons of young men who dont have the nepotism to get a job or education or any of the life the propeganda promises them.
 
Tbf we see in London the u underclass have it bad, I would say the description of the 1950s BRA was worse than IRL mostly because there were specific programs to help the disadvantaged post war. Probs analogous to 1990s Eastern Europe. Now how that has developed into the 1970s I dunno.
 
Tbf we see in London the u underclass have it bad, I would say the description of the 1950s BRA was worse than IRL mostly because there were specific programs to help the disadvantaged post war. Probs analogous to 1990s Eastern Europe. Now how that has developed into the 1970s I dunno.

One of the recent updates suggested that Britain and Ireland stayed pretty miserable through the 50s but then rapidly caught up to the rest of the Empire in the 60s

Even as other parts of the Imperial economy began to reach their growth ceilings in the late 1950s and 1960s, the DoI and DoB quickly rebuilt their capital stocks, increased their economic output at rapid rates, and absorbed the other Dominions’ excess production capacity, holding off overheating in the wider Imperial economy. Living standards also rose steadily, with the purchasing power of wages increasing by 73% from 1955 to 1965. Spurred on by IBOL inducements and official propaganda, the population became avid consumers, snapping up cars, televisions, refrigerators and other markers of Imperial prosperity at record rates

I also took the fact that the Brits are mentioned as being one one of the pro-Reform Dominions after Edwards death to mean that they are leading economically

Broadly, Reformists favored liberalization of the Imperial economy, including increased foreign trade and investment, the privatization and contracting out of much state-owned industry and the lifting of price controls, protectionist policies, and regulations...Within the Imperial Parliament, the delegations of Australasia and Canada were generally Hardliners, while Britain and India favored Reformists.
 
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Per popular demand, and presented with an extra-special request to keep your comments/discussion on-topic and forum friendly :)

===============


Epilogue Four (Part One)

The American Wars (1962-1968) - The War in the East


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A boy observes a Fundamentalist tank, Virginia, 1965.
The American Wars, also known as the Third American Civil War, the East-West War, and the Union State War, were several distinct but closely-related sectarian conflicts, wars of independence and insurgencies fought in the territory of the former United States from 1962 onwards, following the collapse of the American Union State established after the preceding Second American Civil War (1938-1940). After the death of Huey Long (1893-1961) and the Fundamentalist Revolution led by Charles Coughlin (1891-1979), various constituent states and regional blocks within the AUS declared independence, with sectarian and regionalist tensions fueling the ongoing conflict. Initially, Coughlin’s Christian Republic of America (CRA) sought to preserve the unity of the former AUS and USA by crushing the secessionist governments, but increasingly came under the influence of Southern nationalist movements who used the AUS-cause to assert a neo-Confederate state. As a result, the CRA ultimately lost support in the breakaway northern and western regions. The wars also saw foreign interventions by the Reichspakt, Entente, and Empire of Japan. Most of the conflicts petered out in the mid- to late-1960s, after massive humanitarian and economic costs forced ceasefires between combatants, although some historians have argued that the black nationalist insurgency in Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta, which continued until 1988, should also be regarded as part of the conflict. International recognition of the new states and the postwar status quo was achieved by the 1968 Treaty of Havana, which agreed North America’s contemporary borders.

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Last known photograph of Huey Long, arriving in Florida, 1961. As Long’s health had begun to fail in the 1950s, the AUS regime became severely splintered between competing factions.
As Huey Long’s health began to fail in the 1950s, the AUS regime became severely splintered between a secularist-corporate faction that supported decentralized federation and economic libertarianism, versus Coughlin’s fundamentalist-populist faction which sought to impose a theocratic ethno-state across the entire country. Since the birth of America First, these two constituencies had sat together unhappily, united only by Long’s unifying charisma and their mutual hostility to the liberal and left-wing forces of the old United States. After the Second Civil War, Long’s attempts to unite them into a governing agenda proved incoherent. The hybridization of libertarian economics with conservative populism made a mess of the Share Our Wealth program and other central initiatives and succeeded only in leaving the AUS economy limping far behind its international competitors. This, in turn, made Long more and more reliant on Coughlin’s brand of racial and sectarian demagoguery to explain away the regime’s failures and maintain popular support, and allowed Coughlin and his faction to accrue further powers and directional control over the state. Moreover, while the elite, secularist-corporate faction remained relatively static as a proportion of the population, the fundamentalists were demographically productive, and gradually assumed an iron-grip on the proportional elements of the AUS constitution, including the House of Representatives and the southern statehouses. “By the time of Lindbergh’s murder, which was almost certainly engineered by Coughlin himself,” German historian Hans Koonz notes, “The elitist portion of the AUS hierarchy found themselves demographically and structurally trapped, forced to make greater and greater concessions to Coughlin to implement an agenda that was less and less their own. Like many before them, they found a deal with the devil often leaves much to be desired.”

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Charles Lindbergh, once the great hope of the AUS moderates and secularists, shortly before his assassination in 1954. Most historians agree the assassination was orchestrated by Coughlin to smooth his path to power.
By the late-1950s, the secularist-corporate faction was demographically sequestered in the Union State’s northern and western regions, which had themselves been reluctantly corralled into the nation following their defeat in the Second Civil War. Coughlin’s imposition of fundamentalist doctrine and Southern-style Jim Crow on these areas stoked regionalist and ethnic identification, which had the unintended side-effect not only of diluting residual pan-American identity, but also of promoting the regionalist-nationalist underground as the primary alternative and opposition to the regime itself. Blocked out of power in the south and bunkered in regions with little love for the AUS, many secularist-corporate figures embraced the new regional-nationalist opposition. By the time of his death in 1961, Huey Long was little more than Coughlin’s captive figurehead, and the secularist-corporate elite were a faction without a natural constituency.

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Scene from the funeral of Huey Long, 1962. Long's death left the Union State dangerously divided between elites with little in common.

As Coughlin ruthlessly moved to consolidate and constitutionalize Fundamentalist rule, the remaining secularist-corporate grandees faced complete marginalization. The suspicious death of Curtis LeMay, and the widespread vote rigging against Charley Eugene Johns, a traditional ‘Longist’ figure who nonetheless barely held together the anti-Coughlin coalition in the highly contested special presidential election of 1962, convinced them radical opposition to Coughlin was necessary. After Coughlin’s dissolution of the Supreme Court and the House of Corporations, reliably secularist-corporate institutions, in favor of his new Fundamentalist hierarchy, planning began for a coup. On April 14th, 1962, a cadre of secularist-corporate officers under the directorship of Gen. Barksdale Hamlett attempted to take control in Atlanta, mobilizing several divisions to seize the capital. Despite initial success in securing the city, the plan called for Coughlin’s quick capture and assassination, and quickly fell apart when it became clear Coughlin had successfully escaped. Having rallied his loyalists, Coughlin was able to recapture Atlanta on April 18th, unleashing an orgy of reprisal against anyone suspected of sympathizing with the secularist-corporate cause. Hamlett, his co-conspirators, and hundreds of others were stoned to death in the Atlanta Botanical Gardens – the Old Testament punishment for a rebellious son.

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Barksdale Hamlett (1908-1962). Hamlett's failed coup represented the last gasp of the LInberghian secularist faction.
One of the reasons for Hamlett’s defeat was the failure of anti-Coughlin forces in the rest of the AUS to rally to his aid. Partly, this was a failure of organization, but there is also considerable evidence to suggest that the regionalist-nationalists were content to allow Coughlin to liquidate Hamlett and the last of the secularist-corporate faction in order to fully seize the mantle of opposition for themselves. One such figure was Gen. John K. Waters, who would emerge as the principal leader of the anti-Coughlin junta in the north.

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John K. Waters (1906-1989). Waters was part of a new generation of regionalist-nationalist officers, and principal caudillo of the Secularist opposition to Coughlin.
Waters was born in Baltimore, Maryland in December 1906, and graduated from West Point in 1931 as a cavalry officer. In the Army, he had a front row view of the convulsions shaking the United States in its last painful decade, and was personally present at several notorious episodes, including the Peoria Mill Massacre and the Buffalo Riots of 1937. In 1934, Waters married Beatrice Patton, daughter of General George S. Patton, and it was through his father-in-law that Waters first became inducted into the growing ranks of America First sympathizers in the military. According to his later biographers, Waters saw Long as a figure who could be used to crush the Syndicalists while paving the way for a restoration of Constitutional rule by the traditional American elite. In the first months of the Civil War, Waters distinguished himself in the so-called Miners’ Campaign against the Syndicalists in West Virginia. Following the break between Long and the Federalists, Waters reluctantly followed his father-in-law over to Huey Long’s side, having become disillusioned with the erratic leadership of President John Nance Garner and Douglas MacArthur. Waters subsequently assisted Patton in some of his most famous campaigns, including the Siege of Washington, the Virginia Advance, and the Mississippi River Run.

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George S. Patton (1885-1957). Viewed as a national hero in the AUS for his victories in the Second Civil War, Waters both benefitted and suffered from his association with his famous father-in-law.
From these successes, Patton became an AUS national hero in the aftermath of the war. In peacetime, however, Patton had a difficult personality and the ascendant Fundamentalist faction regarded his charisma and unusual spiritual beliefs with suspicion. By the end of the 1940s, they had succeeded in forcing his retirement from public life. Meanwhile, Waters had continued to view Long as a means-to-an-end for restoring elite rule. He was deeply troubled by the harsh treatment of the former Federalist territories, including his native Maryland, and spoke out against the Richmond Trials and the execution of MacArthur and other Federalist leaders. For this, he was sidelined in the new AUS army. After his famous father-in-law’s death in 1957, Waters was left politically exposed, and was twice detained for questioning regarding subversive plots. Two of his aides-de-camp were drummed out of the military and imprisoned on spurious Fundamentalist morality charges. Sensing danger, Waters went into hiding, and thus escaped Coughlin’s purges following Long’s death. Concealed by friends and allies in the north, he became a leading figure in the regionalist-nationalist movement seeking to restore northern autonomy. Following Hamlett’s failed coup, the remaining secularist elements in the military evacuated northwards, and Waters and a cabal of like-minded officers seized their chance to declare themselves the new and rightful AUS government.

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Flag of the Philadelphia government. Some confusion surrounds the naming of Waters' government, as it initially continued to call itself the American Union State. To differentiate, historical sources often use the terms Secularist junta, Secularist government, or Philadelphia government.

Setting up its capital in Philadelphia, Waters’ new government continued to call itself the American Union State (in contrast to Coughlin’s newly declared Christian Republic of America) and presented itself as the rightful heir to Long’s legacy. It maintained some of the appearance of the old regime, assembling and seating a new, corporatist Congress and appointing Russel W. Peterson of Delaware as its president. However, true power lay with Waters and the other officers of the junta. They promoted regionalist-nationalist policies and had a primary goal of establishing their own independence rather than seizing control in the South. The new secularist government turned back Coughlin’s neo-segregationist policies, adopted a new flag and coat of arms, and banned the remains of America First and all other political organizations. It swiftly and harshly liquidated not only Coughlin's northern fundamentalist allies, but also the so-called 'New Left', a loose collection of post-Syndicalist democrats and socialists which had also been gathering support in the region as Long and his regime decayed.

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A secularist tank crew stands guard in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, c.1962. Many of the tanks involved in the conflict had seen service in the Second Civil War, or were even older, at least until the arrival of cheap foreign designs and surplus.
The junta proclaimed itself the rightful government of all the AUS above of parallel 36°30′ north – the so-called ‘slave line’ of the Missouri Compromise – and while this included Federalist and Rust Belt states hostile to Coughlin’s government, it also included states like Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky where there was considerable Fundamentalist support. Regionalist and sectarian tensions rose to a fever pitch, fueled by propaganda on both sides and Coughlin’s refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the Philadelphian regime. In late April 1962, the first armed clashes between Fundamentalist paramilitaries and Waters’ troops occurred in the Battle of Bowling Green, and in early May the CRA army began a full-scale assault into southern Virginia and Kentucky. This campaign escalated into an all-out war over the summer of 1962, with fronts formed along the Great Appalachian Valley. By the winter of 1962, the CRA had deployed an estimated 400,000 troops into the conflict zone, and the fighting rapidly escalated, eventually spanning almost eight hundred miles from western Kentucky through Virginia and into Greater Appalachia.

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Secularist troops mobilizing, winter 1962. The Philadelphia government scrabbled to repel or at least hold back the 400,000 troops the CRA had moved into the conflict zone.
For his part, Coughlin saw the outbreak of war as chance to strengthen his position and consolidate his Fundamentalist revolution, presenting it in domestic propaganda as a glorious crusade and a test of national character. The CRA regime followed a policy of total war from the beginning, and attempted to mobilize the nation as a whole. Coughlin’s government was able to build up a substantial war chest by raiding private bank accounts via a ban on ‘usury’, while workers’ pay was docked one day a month to fund the war on an ongoing basis. The elderly, the impaired, and various political prisoners were sent into the countryside to work on farms to replace the men serving at the front, and the regime relaxed its prohibitions on women’s work. Many Secularists hoped that the war would draw Coughlin's elite forces away from Atlanta and other vital territories, leading to a counter-revolution in the South by moderates that would cause Coughlin's government to collapse and thus ensure their victory. However, rather than turning against the Fundamentalist government as Secularists had predicted, many rallied in support of what they now saw as the Southern regime, although the CRA was bedeviled by black nationalist militant groups throughout the conflict.

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A CRA prayer rally, 1963. Coughlin saw the outbreak of war as chance to strengthen his position and consolidate his Fundamentalist revolution by aligning it to neo-Confederate sentiments.
In November 1962, the Battle of Lynchburg began, marked by fierce fighting as 180,000 Secularists attempted to hold back the Fundamentalist advance on Richmond. By the end of January 1963, the city was almost completely devastated by shelling and air bombardment, and the Secularists were forced to withdraw after running out of ammunition. Having lost most of its heavy equipment in its evacuation north, and with its base of support in areas the AUS regime had deliberately deindustrialized, the Secularist junta was at a disadvantage when it came to weapons and supply. This was aggravated by the Anglo-Germans weapons embargo imposed at the outset of the conflict, which did not affect the CRA forces significantly, as they already had a large arsenal at their disposal, but caused serious difficulties for the regime in Philadelphia. Worse still, the Japanese continued to supply the CRA covertly in defiance of the Anglo-German blockade, sometimes via Amérosulian and Centroamerican intermediaries. (The Syndicalists being willing to put aside their ideological antipathies in favor of much-needed hard currency.) The Secularist government urgently sought ways to win international support.

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Canadian marines show off America-bound weapons intercepted at the Panama Canal, 1963. Due to the Anglo-German blockade, many American factions turned to smuggling and international criminal elements to obtain armaments, principally from Asia.
With Germany heavily committed in Africa and wary of further entanglements, the Secularists knew they would have to reconcile themselves with the New American Order. However, this effort faced strong headwinds. Canada and the NAO republics had constructed thirty years of military doctrine around a defensive, rather than offensive, posture towards the AUS. This strategy relied on a small but highly disciplined standing army supported by an extensive system of reservists, an emphasis on concentrated air- and firepower, area-denial weapons such as anthrax, and the enormous fortifications of the George Line, which made full-use of geographic bottlenecks. None of these elements were easily reconfigured for an offensive posture. Within the NAO and wider Entente, there was deep institutional wariness about anything that could commit the alliance to a long-term offensive war in North America, which Entente strategies had long believed would be geographically and demographically unsustainable. In such a scenario, Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker warned PSA President Richard Nixon in the spring of 1961, “The French would abandon us, and the Indians would own us.” Caution was therefore the watchword.


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Troops of the New England Republic patrol a section of the AUS-NER border, c. 1962. The Entente powers responded cautiously to the outbreak of the war.
In April 1962, Canada, the Pacific States and the New England Republic jointly issued the Regina Declaration, stating their neutrality and "respect for the independent sovereignty of all of the nations of the Americas." This was followed by a declaration of a state of emergency and a partial, ‘preventative mobilization’. This included readying the reserves, activating the border forts, and a steady stream of expeditionary forces from the wider Entente, including 770,000 troops from Australasia and the other white Dominions, 480,000 from India, 230,000 from the Empire of France, and many smaller contingents. (This was the largest ever gathering of foreign troops in North America, and the largest agglomeration of Entente forces since the Liberation of Britain. In the disruptive cultural and political effects, many social scientists have seen a seed for the social and cultural transformations that would affect the Empire and New American Order in the 1970s and 80s).

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Australasian troops arrive in Canada, c.1962. The Entente's 'preventative mobilization' was the largest agglomeration of Entente forces since the Liberation of Britain.
For a period, Canada and the NAO made what most historians categorize as a sincere and consistent effort to apply their neutrality. This included the fair application of the weapons embargo, the open announcement of military activity such as the sighting of submarines or aircraft, the internment of military personnel who arrived in neutral territory, and leaning back in their support for the black nationalists and other subversive elements within the CRA. The geographic position of the NAO and Empire, however, tended to benefit the Secularists more than Coughlin. For example, Secularist airmen who crash-landed in the New England Republic were generally let go if they could claim not to have been on a combat mission, and the New England authorities permitted the Philadelphia government to retrieve crash-landed aircraft. Still, at the outset of the war, the NAO and Entente powers had reasons to mistrust both sides in the AUS conflict and may have even favored Coughlin as a known-quantity. They had not forgotten that the secularist-corporate wing of the AUS had always been more in favor of American revanchism and restoring the borders of the old United States, directly threatening the NAO’s integrity. (Some conspiracy theorists have suggested it may even have been Imperial Intelligence who assassinated Curtis LeMay – a vocal American revanchist – in November 1962.)


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Imperial Avro Arrows of the New England Air Force intercept a foreign incursion over New Jersey, c.1964. The Entente powers made sincere efforts to maintain their neutrality.

However, after LeMay and Hamlett’s downfall, many secularists had come to see American revanchism as a dead end and blockage to toppling Coughlin, including John K. Waters and his colleagues in the junta. Throughout 1963, Waters attempted to foster backdoor connections with old West Point comrades now serving in the NER and PSA governments. In January 1963, President Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. of the NER had been succeeded by Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr., and the Philadelphia government had some hope that the new administration might be more favorable to their cause. After positive initial contacts, Roosevelt did indeed lobby favorably for Waters at a meeting of the NAO leaders in Mexico City in August 1963.

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. (1914-1988), President of the New England Republic (1963-1971). Roosevelt's administration favored direct support for the Philadelphia government.
At the same time, CRA provocations and wider geopolitical affairs strengthened Waters’ position. In December 1962, HMS Chicoutimi, an Imperial Quebec-class guided missile cruiser, struck a CRA mine while traversing the Florida-Cuba Strait and sank with the loss of hundreds of crewmembers. Although they officially accepted the CRA’s explanation of an unfortunate accident, many Imperial hardliners regarded the placement of the mine as a deliberately hostile act, given the Secularists had no particularly naval force and the strait was heavily trafficked by Entente shipping. Several weeks later, CRA aircraft ‘mistakenly’ strafed the Betty, a Bahamian trawler, killing two Imperial civilians. Then, throughout the next year, PSA and Imperial navy ships had several confrontations with Japanese convoys in the Drake Passage and South Atlantic. With the Entente carefully inspecting all trade passing through the Panama Canal for contraband, these convoys were widely suspected of smuggling the CRA weapons, although the Japanese maintained they carried mineral shipments for peaceful purposes. Entente attempts to inspect, shadow, and harass the convoys resulted in angry encounters at close quarters. The last of these incidents resulted in the Japanese cruiser Inazuma colliding with the PSA frigate David A. Rosenberg, crippling the vessel. A subsequent fire killed two seamen and injured 37, resulting in the PSA ambassador in Tokyo lodging a formal complaint with the Japanese Imperial Court.

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PSS David A. Rosenberg listing and on fire after colliding with the Japanese cruiser Inazuma during anti-weapons smuggling operations. The Entente nations had grown increasingly aggravated with Japanese interference in what they regarded their sphere of influence.
Meanwhile, the war continued to rage on the ground. The summer of 1963 saw the beginnings of the Richmond campaign in the east, while in the west, Kentucky was gravely impacted throughout this period, starting with the Campbellsville Massacre in August 1963 and continuing with CRA victories at the Battles of Danville and Elizabethtown as the CRA advanced on Louisville. In October 1963, after months of costly skirmishing over the Appalachians and Chesapeake Bay, CRA air forces successfully penetrated Secularist air defenses and launched destructive bombing raids on Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia itself. This attack on civilian targets, and the Siege of Richmond that began in December, were final contributing factors that led the New American Order to impose economic sanctions and an expanded blockade on the CRA in January 1964, and to endorse German proposals for a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

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Government buildings in Philadelphia on fire after the CRA air raids of October 1963. The raids led to increased international pressure for a negotiated settlement to the conflict.
At the same time, the NAO announced it would begin selling the Philadelphia government ‘protective’ weapons to deter further attacks on civilians, though in practical terms Entente governments made little distinction between offensive and defensive armaments. Shipments to the junta included ammunition, small arms, howitzers, flamethrowers, bombs, and even tanks. (There is some evidence to suggest that Imperial Economic Planners came to view producing weapons and ammunition for the American war as a useful sink for the excess industrial capacity of the Imperial economy, which was by then in its overheating phase.) While German diplomats criticized this as war profiteering, it was also true that both the Secularists and Fundamentalists funded arms purchases through the sale of coal and mineral resources to resource-hungry Mitteleuropan markets. Throughout the war, Germany also made considerable profits selling both sides pesticides and agricultural poisons that were easily reconfigured to create chemical weapons.

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A CRA soldier on the front lines, c.1965. The widespread use of poison gas and relatively static, entrenched warfare was reminiscent of the Weltkrieg.
Equipped with modern Entente equipment and plentiful supplies, the Secularist army succeeded in lifting the Siege of Richmond in February 1965, after thirteen months of grueling fighting. During the siege, an estimated 50,000 civilians trapped in the combat zone suffered enormous deprivation, and the historic city - the once-capital of the Confederacy - was totally destroyed. For the next ten months, both sides were on a defensive footing as they worked to reorganize their forces. During this period, fighting consisted mainly of artillery duels and raids. The war bogged down into Weltkrieg-style trench warfare, albeit with the destructive power of modern weapons. Although both sides were equipped with foreign tanks, including the outdated Imperial Lionheart III, Japanese M456 and Chinese Xuanwu-B, the ready availability of cheap Amérosulian RPGs and other anti-tank weapons made armored maneuvers very costly, and both forces consequently entrenched their tanks into static positions. This period was also marked by several internationally-brokered ceasefires, none of which ultimately proved lasting. Full-scale fighting would resume by the early months of 1966.

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A secularist soldier inspects war damage in Virginia, c.1965. After a defensive lull, full-scale fighting would resume in the early months of 1966.
 
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Well, that was certainly worse than I expected. One thing I can take away from this is LONG IS TITO!:p

A boy observes a Fundamentalist tank, Virginia, 1965.
There is so much wrong with this sentence, I don't know where to start.
The American Wars, also known as the Third American Civil War, the East-West War, and the Union State War, were several distinct but closely-related sectarian conflicts, wars of independence and insurgencies fought in the territory of the former United States from 1962 onwards, following the collapse of the American Union State established after the preceding Second American Civil War (1938-1940). After the death of Huey Long (1893-1961) and the Fundamentalist Revolution led by Charles Coughlin (1891-1979), various constituent states and regional blocks within the AUS declared independence, with sectarian and regionalist tensions fueling the ongoing conflict. Initially, Coughlin’s Christian Republic of America (CRA) sought to preserve the unity of the former AUS and USA by crushing the secessionist governments, but increasingly came under the influence of Southern nationalist movements who used the AUS-cause to assert a neo-Confederate state. As a result, the CRA ultimately lost support in the breakaway northern and western regions. The wars also saw foreign interventions by the Reichspakt, Entente, and Empire of Japan. Most of the conflicts petered out in the mid- to late-1960s, after massive humanitarian and economic costs forced ceasefires between combatants, although some historians have argued that the black nationalist insurgency in Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta, which continued until 1988, should also be regarded as part of the conflict.
I guess we have our Yugoslav Wars now, only even worse.
A CRA prayer rally, 1963. Coughlin saw the outbreak of war as chance to strengthen his position and consolidate his Fundamentalist revolution by aligning it to neo-Confederate sentiments.
That rally looks like it's taking place in a football field. Makes one wonder what happened to American sports if their stadiums have been taken over and used like this...
In the disruptive cultural and political effects, many social scientists have seen a seed for the social and cultural transformations that would affect the Empire and New American Order in the 1970s and 80s
Foreshadowing...

What happened to George Norman Rockwell, the founder of the OTL American Nazi Party? Would he have been one of Coughlin's supporters?
 
No, Tito isn't Long, because he probably exists in Crown Atomic and definitely does not fill in either his OTL role or Long's.
Didn't the former Austro-Hungarian Empire collapse in a manner similar to the AUS awhile back, with Ultra nationalists seizing power in Austria and forming a regime similar to Coughlin?
 
Didn't the former Austro-Hungarian Empire collapse in a manner similar to the AUS awhile back, with Ultra nationalists seizing power in Austria and forming a regime similar to Coughlin?
Yeah, but they were more like Nazi-style fascists instead of Christian fundamentalists.
 
Didn't the former Austro-Hungarian Empire collapse in a manner similar to the AUS awhile back, with Ultra nationalists seizing power in Austria and forming a regime similar to Coughlin?

Yeah, but they were more like Nazi-style fascists instead of Christian fundamentalists.

IIRC the Ultranationalists staged a coup while Coughlin was the legitimate (evil) vice president. Coughlin didnt really 'seize' power he just elbowed the other factions out

Per popular demand, and presented with an extra-special request to keep your comments/discussion on-topic and forum friendly :)

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Epilogue Four (Part One)

The American Wars (1962-1968)


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A boy observes a Fundamentalist tank, Virginia, 1965.
The American Wars, also known as the Third American Civil War, the East-West War, and the Union State War, were several distinct but closely-related sectarian conflicts, wars of independence and insurgencies fought in the territory of the former United States from 1962 onwards, following the collapse of the American Union State established after the preceding Second American Civil War (1938-1940). After the death of Huey Long (1893-1961) and the Fundamentalist Revolution led by Charles Coughlin (1891-1979), various constituent states and regional blocks within the AUS declared independence, with sectarian and regionalist tensions fueling the ongoing conflict. Initially, Coughlin’s Christian Republic of America (CRA) sought to preserve the unity of the former AUS and USA by crushing the secessionist governments, but increasingly came under the influence of Southern nationalist movements who used the AUS-cause to assert a neo-Confederate state. As a result, the CRA ultimately lost support in the breakaway northern and western regions. The wars also saw foreign interventions by the Reichspakt, Entente, and Empire of Japan. Most of the conflicts petered out in the mid- to late-1960s, after massive humanitarian and economic costs forced ceasefires between combatants, although some historians have argued that the black nationalist insurgency in Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta, which continued until 1988, should also be regarded as part of the conflict. International recognition of the new states and the postwar status quo was achieved by the 1968 Treaty of Havana, which agreed North America’s contemporary borders.

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Last known photograph of Huey Long, arriving in Florida, 1961. As Long’s health had begun to fail in the 1950s, the AUS regime became severely splintered between competing factions.
As Huey Long’s health began to fail in the 1950s, the AUS regime became severely splintered between a secularist-corporate faction that supported decentralized federation and economic libertarianism, versus Coughlin’s fundamentalist-populist faction which sought to impose a theocratic ethno-state across the entire country. Since the birth of America First, these two constituencies had sat together unhappily, united only by Long’s unifying charisma and their mutual hostility to the liberal and left-wing forces of the old United States. After the Second Civil War, Long’s attempts to unite them into a governing agenda proved incoherent. The hybridization of libertarian economics with conservative populism made a mess of the Share Our Wealth program and other central initiatives and succeeded only in leaving the AUS economy limping far behind its international competitors. This, in turn, made Long more and more reliant on Coughlin’s brand of racial and sectarian demagoguery to explain away the regime’s failures and maintain popular support, and allowed Coughlin and his faction to accrue further powers and directional control over the state. Moreover, while the elite, secularist-corporate faction remained relatively static as a proportion of the population, the fundamentalists were demographically productive, and gradually assumed an iron-grip on the proportional elements of the AUS constitution, including the House of Representatives and the southern statehouses. “By the time of Lindbergh’s murder, which was almost certainly engineered by Coughlin himself,” German historian Hans Koonz notes, “The elitist portion of the AUS hierarchy found themselves demographically and structurally trapped, forced to make greater and greater concessions to Coughlin to implement an agenda that was less and less their own. Like many before them, they found a deal with the devil often leaves much to be desired.”

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Charles Lindbergh, once the great hope of the AUS moderates and secularists, shortly before his assassination in 1954. Most historians agree the assassination was orchestrated by Coughlin to smooth his path to power.
By the late-1950s, the secularist-corporate faction was demographically sequestered in the Union State’s northern and western regions, which had themselves been reluctantly corralled into the nation following their defeat in the Second Civil War. Coughlin’s imposition of fundamentalist doctrine and Southern-style Jim Crow on these areas stoked regionalist and ethnic identification, which had the unintended side-effect not only of diluting residual pan-American identity, but also of promoting the regionalist-nationalist underground as the primary alternative and opposition to the regime itself. Blocked out of power in the south and bunkered in regions with little love for the AUS, many secularist-corporate figures embraced the new regional-nationalist opposition. By the time of his death in 1961, Huey Long was little more than Coughlin’s captive figurehead, and the secularist-corporate elite were a faction without a natural constituency.

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Scene from the funeral of Huey Long, 1962. Long's death left the Union State dangerously divided between elites with little in common.

As Coughlin ruthlessly moved to consolidate and constitutionalize Fundamentalist rule, the remaining secularist-corporate grandees faced complete marginalization. The suspicious death of Curtis LeMay, and the widespread vote rigging against Charley Eugene Johns, a traditional ‘Longist’ figure who nonetheless barely held together the anti-Coughlin coalition in the highly contested special presidential election of 1962, convinced them radical opposition to Coughlin was necessary. After Coughlin’s dissolution of the Supreme Court and the House of Corporations, reliably secularist-corporate institutions, in favor of his new Fundamentalist hierarchy, planning began for a coup. On April 14th, 1962, a cadre of secularist-corporate officers under the directorship of Gen. Barksdale Hamlett attempted to take control in Atlanta, mobilizing several divisions to seize the capital. Despite initial success in securing the city, the plan called for Coughlin’s quick capture and assassination, and quickly fell apart when it became clear Coughlin had successfully escaped. Having rallied his loyalists, Coughlin was able to recapture Atlanta on April 18th, unleashing an orgy of reprisal against anyone suspected of sympathizing with the secularist-corporate cause. Hamlett, his co-conspirators, and hundreds of others were stoned to death in the Atlanta Botanical Gardens – the Old Testament punishment for a rebellious son.

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Barksdale Hamlett (1908-1962). Hamlett's failed coup represented the last gasp of the LInberghian secularist faction.
One of the reasons for Hamlett’s defeat was the failure of anti-Coughlin forces in the rest of the AUS to rally to his aid. Partly, this was a failure of organization, but there is also considerable evidence to suggest that the regionalist-nationalists were content to allow Coughlin to liquidate Hamlett and the last of the secularist-corporate faction in order to fully seize the mantle of opposition for themselves. One such figure was Gen. John K. Waters, who would emerge as the principal leader of the anti-Coughlin junta in the north.

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John K. Waters (1906-1989). Waters was part of a new generation of regionalist-nationalist officers, and principal caudillo of the Secularist opposition to Coughlin.
Waters was born in Baltimore, Maryland in December 1906, and graduated from West Point in 1931 as a cavalry officer. In the Army, he had a front row view of the convulsions shaking the United States in its last painful decade, and was personally present at several notorious episodes, including the Peoria Mill Massacre and the Buffalo Riots of 1937. In 1934, Waters married Beatrice Patton, daughter of General George S. Patton, and it was through his father-in-law that Waters first became inducted into the growing ranks of America First sympathizers in the military. According to his later biographers, Waters saw Long as a figure who could be used to crush the Syndicalists while paving the way for a restoration of Constitutional rule by the traditional American elite. In the first months of the Civil War, Waters distinguished himself in the so-called Miners’ Campaign against the Syndicalists in West Virginia. Following the break between Long and the Federalists, Waters reluctantly followed his father-in-law over to Huey Long’s side, having become disillusioned with the erratic leadership of President John Nance Garner and Douglas MacArthur. Waters subsequently assisted Patton in some of his most famous campaigns, including the Siege of Washington, the Virginia Advance, and the Mississippi River Run.

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George S. Patton (1885-1957). Viewed as a national hero in the AUS for his victories in the Second Civil War, Waters both benefitted and suffered from his association with his famous father-in-law.
From these successes, Patton became an AUS national hero in the aftermath of the war. In peacetime, however, Patton had a difficult personality and the ascendant Fundamentalist faction regarded his charisma and unusual spiritual beliefs with suspicion. By the end of the 1940s, they had succeeded in forcing his retirement from public life. Meanwhile, Waters had continued to view Long as a means-to-an-end for restoring elite rule. He was deeply troubled by the harsh treatment of the former Federalist territories, including his native Maryland, and spoke out against the Richmond Trials and the execution of MacArthur and other Federalist leaders. For this, he was sidelined in the new AUS army. After his famous father-in-law’s death in 1957, Waters was left politically exposed, and was twice detained for questioning regarding subversive plots. Two of his aides-de-camp were drummed out of the military and imprisoned on spurious Fundamentalist morality charges. Sensing danger, Waters went into hiding, and thus escaped Coughlin’s purges following Long’s death. Concealed by friends and allies in the north, he became a leading figure in the regionalist-nationalist movement seeking to restore northern autonomy. Following Hamlett’s failed coup, the remaining secularist elements in the military evacuated northwards, and Waters and a cabal of like-minded officers seized their chance to declare themselves the new and rightful AUS government.

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Flag of the Philadelphia government. Some confusion surrounds the naming of Waters' government, as it initially continued to call itself the American Union State. To differentiate, historical sources often use the terms Secularist junta, Secularist government, or Philadelphia government.

Setting up its capital in Philadelphia, Waters’ new government continued to call itself the American Union State (in contrast to Coughlin’s newly declared Christian Republic of America) and presented itself as the rightful heir to Long’s legacy. It maintained some of the appearance of the old regime, assembling and seating a new, corporatist Congress and appointing Russel W. Peterson of Delaware as its president. However, true power lay with Waters and the other officers of the junta. They promoted regionalist-nationalist policies and had a primary goal of establishing their own independence rather than seizing control in the South. The new secularist government turned back Coughlin’s neo-segregationist policies, adopted a new flag and coat of arms, and banned the remains of America First and all other political organizations. It swiftly and harshly liquidated not only Coughlin's northern fundamentalist allies, but also the so-called 'New Left', a loose collection of post-Syndicalist democrats and socialists which had also been gathering support in the region as Long and his regime decayed.

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A secularist tank crew stands guard in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, c.1962. Many of the tanks involved in the conflict had seen service in the Second Civil War, or were even older, at least until the arrival of cheap foreign designs and surplus.
The junta proclaimed itself the rightful government of all the AUS above of parallel 36°30′ north – the so-called ‘slave line’ of the Missouri Compromise – and while this included Federalist and Rust Belt states hostile to Coughlin’s government, it also included states like Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky where there was considerable Fundamentalist support. Regionalist and sectarian tensions rose to a fever pitch, fueled by propaganda on both sides and Coughlin’s refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the Philadelphian regime. In late April 1962, the first armed clashes between Fundamentalist paramilitaries and Waters’ troops occurred in the Battle of Bowling Green, and in early May the CRA army began a full-scale assault into southern Virginia and Kentucky. This campaign escalated into an all-out war over the summer of 1962, with fronts formed along the Great Appalachian Valley. By the winter of 1962, the CRA had deployed an estimated 400,000 troops into the conflict zone, and the fighting rapidly escalated, eventually spanning almost eight hundred miles from western Kentucky through Virginia and into Greater Appalachia.

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Secularist troops mobilizing, winter 1962. The Philadelphia government scrabbled to repel or at least hold back the 400,000 troops the CRA had moved into the conflict zone.
For his part, Coughlin saw the outbreak of war as chance to strengthen his position and consolidate his Fundamentalist revolution, presenting it in domestic propaganda as a glorious crusade and a test of national character. The CRA regime followed a policy of total war from the beginning, and attempted to mobilize the nation as a whole. Coughlin’s government was able to build up a substantial war chest by raiding private bank accounts via a ban on ‘usury’, while workers’ pay was docked one day a month to fund the war on an ongoing basis. The elderly, the impaired, and various political prisoners were sent into the countryside to work on farms to replace the men serving at the front, and the regime relaxed its prohibitions on women’s work. Many Secularists hoped that the war would draw Coughlin's elite forces away from Atlanta and other vital territories, leading to a counter-revolution in the South by moderates that would cause Coughlin's government to collapse and thus ensure their victory. However, rather than turning against the Fundamentalist government as Secularists had predicted, many rallied in support of what they now saw as the Southern regime, although the CRA was bedeviled by black nationalist militant groups throughout the conflict.

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A CRA prayer rally, 1963. Coughlin saw the outbreak of war as chance to strengthen his position and consolidate his Fundamentalist revolution by aligning it to neo-Confederate sentiments.
In November 1962, the Battle of Lynchburg began, marked by fierce fighting as 180,000 Secularists attempted to hold back the Fundamentalist advance on Richmond. By the end of January 1963, the city was almost completely devastated by shelling and air bombardment, and the Secularists were forced to withdraw after running out of ammunition. Having lost most of its heavy equipment in its evacuation north, and with its base of support in areas the AUS regime had deliberately deindustrialized, the Secularist junta was at a disadvantage when it came to weapons and supply. This was aggravated by the Anglo-Germans weapons embargo imposed at the outset of the conflict, which did not affect the CRA forces significantly, as they already had a large arsenal at their disposal, but caused serious difficulties for the regime in Philadelphia. Worse still, the Japanese continued to supply the CRA covertly in defiance of the Anglo-German blockade, sometimes via Amérosulian and Centroamerican intermediaries. (The Syndicalists being willing to put aside their ideological antipathies in favor of much-needed hard currency.) The Secularist government urgently sought ways to win international support.

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Canadian marines show off America-bound weapons intercepted at the Panama Canal, 1963. Due to the Anglo-German blockade, many American factions turned to smuggling and international criminal elements to obtain armaments, principally from Asia.
With Germany heavily committed in Africa and wary of further entanglements, the Secularists knew they would have to reconcile themselves with the New American Order. However, this effort faced strong headwinds. Canada and the NAO republics had constructed thirty years of military doctrine around a defensive, rather than offensive, posture towards the AUS. This strategy relied on a small but highly disciplined standing army supported by an extensive system of reservists, an emphasis on concentrated air- and firepower, area-denial weapons such as anthrax, and the enormous fortifications of the George Line, which made full-use of geographic bottlenecks. None of these elements were easily reconfigured for an offensive posture. Within the NAO and wider Entente, there was deep institutional wariness about anything that could commit the alliance to a long-term offensive war in North America, which Entente strategies had long believed would be geographically and demographically unsustainable. In such a scenario, Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker warned PSA President Richard Nixon in the spring of 1961, “The French would abandon us, and the Indians would own us.” Caution was therefore the watchword.


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Troops of the New England Republic patrol a section of the AUS-NER border, c. 1962. The Entente powers responded cautiously to the outbreak of the war.
In April 1962, Canada, the Pacific States and the New England Republic jointly issued the Regina Declaration, stating their neutrality and "respect for the independent sovereignty of all of the nations of the Americas." This was followed by a declaration of a state of emergency and a partial, ‘preventative mobilization’. This included readying the reserves, activating the border forts, and a steady stream of expeditionary forces from the wider Entente, including 770,000 troops from Australasia and the other white Dominions, 480,000 from India, 230,000 from the Empire of France, and many smaller contingents. (This was the largest ever gathering of foreign troops in North America, and the largest agglomeration of Entente forces since the Liberation of Britain. In the disruptive cultural and political effects, many social scientists have seen a seed for the social and cultural transformations that would affect the Empire and New American Order in the 1970s and 80s).

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Australasian troops arrive in Canada, c.1962. The Entente's 'preventative mobilization' was the largest agglomeration of Entente forces since the Liberation of Britain.
For a period, Canada and the NAO made what most historians categorize as a sincere and consistent effort to apply their neutrality. This included the fair application of the weapons embargo, the open announcement of military activity such as the sighting of submarines or aircraft, the internment of military personnel who arrived in neutral territory, and leaning back in their support for the black nationalists and other subversive elements within the CRA. The geographic position of the NAO and Empire, however, tended to benefit the Secularists more than Coughlin. For example, Secularist airmen who crash-landed in the New England Republic were generally let go if they could claim not to have been on a combat mission, and the New England authorities permitted the Philadelphia government to retrieve crash-landed aircraft. Still, at the outset of the war, the NAO and Entente powers had reasons to mistrust both sides in the AUS conflict and may have even favored Coughlin as a known-quantity. They had not forgotten that the secularist-corporate wing of the AUS had always been more in favor of American revanchism and restoring the borders of the old United States, directly threatening the NAO’s integrity. (Some conspiracy theorists have suggested it may even have been Imperial Intelligence who assassinated Curtis LeMay – a vocal American revanchist – in November 1962.)


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Imperial Avro Arrows of the New England Air Force intercept a foreign incursion over New Jersey, c.1964. The Entente powers made sincere efforts to maintain their neutrality.

However, after LeMay and Hamlett’s downfall, many secularists had come to see American revanchism as a dead end and blockage to toppling Coughlin, including John K. Waters and his colleagues in the junta. Throughout 1963, Waters attempted to foster backdoor connections with old West Point comrades now serving in the NER and PSA governments. In January 1963, President Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. of the NER had been succeeded by Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr., and the Philadelphia government had some hope that the new administration might be more favorable to their cause. After positive initial contacts, Roosevelt did indeed lobby favorably for Waters at a meeting of the NAO leaders in Mexico City in August 1963.

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. (1914-1988), President of the New England Republic (1963-1971). Roosevelt's administration favored direct support for the Philadelphia government.
At the same time, CRA provocations and wider geopolitical affairs strengthened Waters’ position. In December 1962, HMS Chicoutimi, an Imperial Quebec-class guided missile cruiser, struck a CRA mine while traversing the Florida-Cuba Strait and sank with the loss of hundreds of crewmembers. Although they officially accepted the CRA’s explanation of an unfortunate accident, many Imperial hardliners regarded the placement of the mine as a deliberately hostile act, given the Secularists had no particularly naval force and the strait was heavily trafficked by Entente shipping. Several weeks later, CRA aircraft ‘mistakenly’ strafed the Betty, a Bahamian trawler, killing two Imperial civilians. Then, throughout the next year, PSA and Imperial navy ships had several confrontations with Japanese convoys in the Drake Passage and South Atlantic. With the Entente carefully inspecting all trade passing through the Panama Canal for contraband, these convoys were widely suspected of smuggling the CRA weapons, although the Japanese maintained they carried mineral shipments for peaceful purposes. Entente attempts to inspect, shadow, and harass the convoys resulted in angry encounters at close quarters. The last of these incidents resulted in the Japanese cruiser Inazuma colliding with the PSA frigate David A. Rosenberg, crippling the vessel. A subsequent fire killed two seamen and injured 37, resulting in the PSA ambassador in Tokyo lodging a formal complaint with the Japanese Imperial Court.

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PSS David A. Rosenberg listing and on fire after colliding with the Japanese cruiser Inazuma during anti-weapons smuggling operations. The Entente nations had grown increasingly aggravated with Japanese interference in what they regarded their sphere of influence.
Meanwhile, the war continued to rage on the ground. The summer of 1963 saw the beginnings of the Richmond campaign in the east, while in the west, Kentucky was gravely impacted throughout this period, starting with the Campbellsville Massacre in August 1963 and continuing with CRA victories at the Battles of Danville and Elizabethtown as the CRA advanced on Louisville. In October 1963, after months of costly skirmishing over the Appalachians and Chesapeake Bay, CRA air forces successfully penetrated Secularist air defenses and launched destructive bombing raids on Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia itself. This attack on civilian targets, and the Siege of Richmond that began in December, were final contributing factors that led the New American Order to impose economic sanctions and an expanded blockade on the CRA in January 1964, and to endorse German proposals for a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

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Government buildings in Philadelphia on fire after the CRA air raids of October 1963. The raids led to increased international pressure for a negotiated settlement to the conflict.
At the same time, the NAO announced it would begin selling the Philadelphia government ‘protective’ weapons to deter further attacks on civilians, though in practical terms Entente governments made little distinction between offensive and defensive armaments. Shipments to the junta included ammunition, small arms, howitzers, flamethrowers, bombs, and even tanks. (There is some evidence to suggest that Imperial Economic Planners came to view producing weapons and ammunition for the American war as a useful sink for the excess industrial capacity of the Imperial economy, which was by then in its overheating phase.) While German diplomats criticized this as war profiteering, it was also true that both the Secularists and Fundamentalists funded arms purchases through the sale of coal and mineral resources to resource-hungry Mitteleuropan markets. Throughout the war, Germany also made considerable profits selling both sides pesticides and agricultural poisons that were easily reconfigured to create chemical weapons.

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A CRA soldier on the front lines, c.1965. The widespread use of poison gas and relatively static, entrenched warfare was reminiscent of the Weltkrieg.
Equipped with modern Entente equipment and plentiful supplies, the Secularist army succeeded in lifting the Siege of Richmond in February 1965, after thirteen months of grueling fighting. During the siege, an estimated 50,000 civilians trapped in the combat zone suffered enormous deprivation, and the historic city - the once-capital of the Confederacy - was totally destroyed. For the next ten months, both sides were on a defensive footing as they worked to reorganize their forces. During this period, fighting consisted mainly of artillery duels and raids. The war bogged down into Weltkrieg-style trench warfare, albeit with the destructive power of modern weapons. Although both sides were equipped with foreign tanks, including the outdated Imperial Lionheart III, Japanese M456 and Chinese Xuanwu-B, the ready availability of cheap Amérosulian RPGs and other anti-tank weapons made armored maneuvers very costly, and both forces consequently entrenched their tanks into static positions. This period was also marked by several internationally-brokered ceasefires, none of which ultimately proved lasting. Full-scale fighting would resume by the early months of 1966.

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A secularist soldier inspects war damage in Virginia, c.1965. After a defensive lull, full-scale fighting would resume in the early months of 1966.

Awesome update! Thank you for doing it ;) America is certainly in a big ol mess

Will the next update be a part two for this or a part two for the post-Edward Empire stuff?
 
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