True. But if the US continues persecuting anyone left-leaning (which most intellectuals/scientists tend to be), it will take a long, long time.
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That invasion will prove costly in regards to international prestiege and opinion.
Africa's Sorrow – February 1950 – June 1950
Africa's Sorrow – February 1950 – June 1950
As the United States continued to bind its allies closer to it and place itself at the head of the Western World, it deployed large numbers of technical and military advisors to its Canadian and Brazilian allies and established new and formalised programmes for the export of large amounts of military materiel on credit repayable only after the war. It was hoped that not only would these measures improve the fighting capabilities of America’s allies; but also increase their dependence on the United States and further pave the way for a postwar world with Washington at the centre of it.
In West Africa, the United States’ shock and awe invasion of neutral Togo brought the world’s focus to the long static combat theatre. Although the Togolese military was fast obliterated as a force capable to defending its nation’s borders, aided by the deeply impoverished state’s primitive infrastructure and challenging terrain, it took two weeks for the US military to traverse the small country. This was enough time for the syndicalists to swing large numbers of troops to the western frontier of the Benin-Lagos enclave and thereby prevent the Americans from fulfilling General Patton’s hope of rapidly pouring into the sector and pinning the syndicalist army to the trenches along the main frontline to the east. While the Americans did make modest gains in the syndicalist enclave – crucially cutting off the route to the Niger border through uranium and other key resources had been transported – by the middle of February, the Americans had been pushed to shift approach.
They did this be refocussing all efforts on an assault on the Porto Novo, the main city of Benin, laying just west of Lagos, and the area around it – which would allow them to bisect the Internationale’s forces between Lagos itself and their positions further north in Hausaland. The Battle of Porto Novo and the wider campaign that surrounded it exceeded in scale even many of the largest engagements of the American Civil War, with American, syndicalist armies from half a dozen different home nations, the Nigerians and other Entente forces all involved. Faced with relentless assaults from the west and north by the Americans, on frontiers where there had been no time to heavily entrench themselves, and from the Nigerians and Canadians to the east – the syndicalist hold on the city gradually loosened until it was finally abandoned at the end of March.
The syndicalists were now in a desperate position. In the north, hundreds of thousands of men were completely cut off from either escape of resupply in Hausaland, while in the south a similarly large force huddled around the great city of Lagos. Over the following weeks, the syndicalists would undergo a remarkable effort to limit the scale of the catastrophe for their forces – concentrating their naval strength in the Gulf of Guinea to such an extent that they were able to undergo a chaotic rescue mission to withdraw the majority of their troops from Lagos to the safety of Monrovia to the west. Under heavy naval and aerial attack, and with the American and Entente land forces attacking the perimeter of the city by land, the reds faced heavy losses but were able to preserve the majority of their force from destruction.
However, with the Gulf of Guinea remaining a battleground; there was not feasible way from the Internationale to transport the sensitive nuclear technologies it had been developing at its facilities in Lagos. Unbeknownst to Washington, these included an untested prototype of a nuclear bomb. As the noose tightened around the great Nigerian city, the Internationale’s leadership in Paris took a brutal decision – calling for the detonation of the bomb in order to ensure that it did not fall into American hands and to destroy all record of the work undertaken in Lagos. On 12 April 1950, the hell fire of atomic weaponry was unleashed in a military context for the first time – with the bomb utterly destroying the majority of Lagos – one of the great cities of Africa, and in an instant claiming the lives of tens of thousands. This included native African civilians, those syndicalists unfortunate enough not to have been rescued by the evacuation as well as large numbers of American and Nigerian troops that were pressing into the city.
News of the bombing was heavily suppressed in both the United States and the syndicalist world – where both sides for their own reasons had no interest in letting their publics know of the atrocity that had taken place. Nonetheless, word of it would seep out and feed into wider public anxiety over the state of the conflict.
The fighting in the Nigerian front would conclude in the weeks after the explosion at Lagos after the large syndicalist army in Hausaland, some 300,000 men, finally surrendered to the Entente powers. In total, the short campaign had cost the Internationale not far shy of half a million men, not to mention much of its nuclear programme – representing a defeat as grave as any Imperial Germany had been able to land on it in the early 1940s. The United States, for its part, had restored some confidence with its victory – albeit one that came with its own weighty cost, with casualties nearing 150,000.
Despite the glow of a hard-fought battlefield victory after the failures earlier in the war, Washington would pay a significant diplomatic price for their decision to surrender their claims to moral superiority through their invasion of neutral Togo. Their actions incensed the standard-bearers of the Third World in the Cairo Pact – whose previously fairly strong relationship with the Americans was badly soured, as the Egyptians, who had already been growing increasingly bold in its condemnation of the Entente’s support for white-minority rule in Africa, expelling American diplomats and, far more damagingly, withdrawing oil concessions in retribution. To Washington’s horror the Japanese eagerly moved into the breach to take up expired rights for oil development in parts of the Middle East under Cairo Pact authority; while joining the Arabs in their objections to rapacious Western imperialism and racism.
By the end of the Nigerian campaign, total American casualties since their entry into the conflict exceeded 300,000 and were taking a toll on the home front. The situation was made worse by the creeping mobolisation of wider American society for war, noted by the first introduction of rationing on certain goods over the winter months of 1949-1950; and dramatic increases to taxation, constraints on social spending and rising government control and direction in the economy. These changes at home might have caused difficulties in the context of a popular war effort, but by early 1950 enthusiasm for the war across wider society was fading fast with the mood of the nation turn bitter and hostile. Although America First’s political reckoning would be postponed at least until the end of the year with the upcoming midterm elections; the frustrations felt in American society eagerly sought an outlet.
As was perennially the case in American history, racial violence would serve as a major safety valve for wider discontent. The mighty nationalised firms that dominated much of American heavy industry had, in line with the policies of the PACL trade unions, kept up a consistent ‘whites only’ hiring policy that barred many key sectors of employment to Black workers. However, these strictures did not apply to their privately owned competitors, and in the circumstances of a tight labour market caused by the demands of the war – the financial rewards for such firms breaking the colour bar and recruiting from cheap pools of African American labour were obvious and significant. The Ford Corporation, the most powerful of the private industrial competitors to the state sector, would be at the forefront of this shift – actively sending recruiting agents into rural Southern states to find new workers.
These recruitment policies had been ongoing for some time by the first half of 1950, and had seen incidents of racial violence and murders reach to levels unseen for a decade. However, events would reach a head in June that year. During a period of tense wage negotiations at Ford’s sprawling Dearborn factory during which tensions between white and Black contingents of the workforce were rising; a rumour spread that a number of Black workers had assaulted the daughter of one of their white co-workers. In response a large mob unleashed a pogrom against a number of nearby Black neighbourhoods – lynching several African American workers from the Dearborn plant. While historically Black Americans had often endured violence with little response, the Dearborn attacks triggered an outpouring of fury that had rarely been seen as far more intense rioting broke out among Black residents across Detriot the next day that overwhelmed local law enforcement and spread across the country – with the largest disturbances in Chicago, Cleveland, Haarlem New York and Philadelphia. Peace was only restored after nearly two weeks by the deployment of the army and its heavy-handed repression of unrest that left a death toll in the hundreds.
The political reaction to the riots was heavy and strong. Beyond restoring order, many America Firsters saw the fears they had held since the start of the war over the socially destabilising consequences of renewed Black migration across the country come to fruition. For them, this was the core cause of the violence and had to be addressed lest the nation descend back into the internal turmoil of the 1930s. In the face of angry opposition form Liberal, Conservatives and much of civil society, each for their own reasons, Congress would take the stunning step of implementing a series of restrictions on the internal movement of people across state lines, effectively forbidding African Americans from leaving their home states entirely. Not only this, previously tolerated organisations like the NAACP were accused of stoking unrest and thereby engaging in unconstitutional un-American activities – justifying their banning and repression. Even the Liberal Party saw the eye of suspicion brought against it by authorities, even if it was too safely ensconced in Middle America for a ban to be seriously brought forward.
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And we see the first ever usage of nuclear weapons in a combat setting! In game the Nigerian bombing was a little odd - not only because it came on what might be viewed as a sideshow front and without much warning, but also because it didn't pressage a period of relentless nuclear bombings, with the Internationale seeming to struggle to get back into a position of using their nuclear weapons regularly - which explains the in-story narrative of the Lagos bomb being based on experimental technology not easily transported back to Europe.
America now finds herself rather naked in the nuclear stakes, not only does Japan have the bomb and Russia nor far behind - the syndicalists have demonstrated their only nuclear capabilities in horrific and fiery circumstances. The US is now alone among the Great Powers in how far it is from atomic armament.
Our invasion of Togo will leave a black stain on American reputation in the Third World for some time to come, that is for sure - and surely undermines its narrative to be fighting to defeat tyranny.
Well we have certainly seen the first sign that the lack of American nuclear capability could be a serious issue if not addressed, as we have had our Nagasaki in West Africa. Certainly is the syndies can get their nuclear programme back on track after the loss of their Nigerian holdings and start pumping out A-Bombs.
Diplomatically, the Togoland invasion is going to greatly tarnish American reputation among those not already aligned to one of the the Great powerblocks - and crucially undermine any efforts to assert leadership over the chaotic morass of post-colonial African states that has emerged from the ruins of Mittelafrika and National France in the 1940s. Let us hope that we don't need them, either now or after the war is over.
We shall see if the Patton of our story here can pull off any similar strategic masterstrokes!
Indeed - America is liable to be just as economically dominant in this TL as historically, with Europe than in OTL given there has been no Marshall Aid of similar to help rebuild after the first phase of WW2 (and indeed the key economies of Western Europe have remained geared for war, and will be struggling under syndicalist domination). Japan's establishment of a pretty stable empire across Asia is going to be decades away from being a serious economic rival given how poor most of Asia will still be at this point in history.
Indeed, that intellectual brain drain caused by both red scares and the violence of the Civil War will have left America very short changed in the scientific stakes compared to OTL - although the country's resources will still be very significant compared to all other international players, that is a fairly large handicap.
It has already soured relations with an important powerblock in the Cairo Pact - which controls most of the Middle East and Sahel (and is thus in a hugely important strategic and economic position). However, the syndies were so dug in that without some creative manouvere we would have been looking at gruelling trench warfare with African infrastructure - a recipe for a meatgrinder.
The fruition and progress of the various nuclear programs by opponents or at least possible rivals is a concern. One gets the impression MAD doctrine may not apply in TTL.
This looks like the most logical path, but won’t be easy and will take time…
…and a bold but morally bereft violation of an innocent country’s neutrality.
Die cast, needs must I suppose. Will there be any substantive diplomatic repercussions, or is this world now too cynical, numbed and polarised for it to make much difference?
Seems the only practical alternative. And also a good way to help nobble the Syndies’ nuclear programs.
America now finds herself rather naked in the nuclear stakes, not only does Japan have the bomb and Russia nor far behind - the syndicalists have demonstrated their only nuclear capabilities in horrific and fiery circumstances. The US is now alone among the Great Powers in how far it is from atomic armament.
Our invasion of Togo will leave a black stain on American reputation in the Third World for some time to come, that is for sure - and surely undermines its narrative to be fighting to defeat tyranny.
Well we have certainly seen the first sign that the lack of American nuclear capability could be a serious issue if not addressed, as we have had our Nagasaki in West Africa. Certainly is the syndies can get their nuclear programme back on track after the loss of their Nigerian holdings and start pumping out A-Bombs.
Diplomatically, the Togoland invasion is going to greatly tarnish American reputation among those not already aligned to one of the the Great powerblocks - and crucially undermine any efforts to assert leadership over the chaotic morass of post-colonial African states that has emerged from the ruins of Mittelafrika and National France in the 1940s. Let us hope that we don't need them, either now or after the war is over.
We shall see if the Patton of our story here can pull off any similar strategic masterstrokes!
Indeed - America is liable to be just as economically dominant in this TL as historically, with Europe than in OTL given there has been no Marshall Aid of similar to help rebuild after the first phase of WW2 (and indeed the key economies of Western Europe have remained geared for war, and will be struggling under syndicalist domination). Japan's establishment of a pretty stable empire across Asia is going to be decades away from being a serious economic rival given how poor most of Asia will still be at this point in history.
Indeed, that intellectual brain drain caused by both red scares and the violence of the Civil War will have left America very short changed in the scientific stakes compared to OTL - although the country's resources will still be very significant compared to all other international players, that is a fairly large handicap.
It has already soured relations with an important powerblock in the Cairo Pact - which controls most of the Middle East and Sahel (and is thus in a hugely important strategic and economic position). However, the syndies were so dug in that without some creative manouvere we would have been looking at gruelling trench warfare with African infrastructure - a recipe for a meatgrinder.
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The situation for the African American worsens further, and at some point it will bite White America in the behind so it hurts.
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Africa and the bombing of Lagos is just a small taste of how bloody this war will become.
I see more persecution and scapegoating ahead until the midterms. AFP is going to face the moderates of America and the anti-war movements. I really don't see them doing well at all.
I see more persecution and scapegoating ahead until the midterms. AFP is going to face the moderates of America and the anti-war movements. I really don't see them doing well at all.
300,000 casualties already is insane- if I'm not mistaken that's about total American casualties in the entire Pacific War of OTL. The US definitely should be looking into getting Russia to enter the war, otherwise I'm not sure how it can break into Europe
The nuclear attack was indeed a bit strange, but did little practical to offset the big US-Entente victory in West Africa. Will the fractious situation back home allow this hard won victory to be capitalised upon? We wait with interest to see if it does.
After so many years of war, it feels like the spring is winding down: how much longer can the world put up with all of this?
After so many years of war, it feels like the spring is winding down: how much longer can the world put up with all of this?
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Managed to catch up with this.
The AFP had the chance to turn America into a de facto one party state, what with the cult of personality behind Long, but they keep screwing up with their policies that very few people actually want.
Also, many things about President Dies (moving away from AF's agenda, failing to be renominated etc.) reminded me about a President from a century prior, John Tyler...
The AFP had the chance to turn America into a de facto one party state, what with the cult of personality behind Long, but they keep screwing up with their policies that very few people actually want.
Also, many things about President Dies (moving away from AF's agenda, failing to be renominated etc.) reminded me about a President from a century prior, John Tyler...
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A Time for Changin’ – June 1950 – January 1951
A Time for Changin’ – June 1950 – January 1951
While the campaign in Benin-Nigeria at the beginning of the year had been costly for the United States and her allies, General Patton believed that the longer an attack on the second syndicalist West African enclave – based around the syndicalist Republics of Senegal, Guinea and Sierra Leone – the stronger their defences would become as a the large numbers of soldiers evacuated out of Lagos reorganised and the Internationale readied its defences. The quick opening of a second front would be key.
The first step towards this aim wasn’t to be wielded by the United States, at least not primarily, but by their Brazilian comrades in arms in the islands of Cape Verde. The islands had been at the centre of fierce naval competition for many years, and were home to some of the Internationale’s most westerly remaining bases in the Atlantic. However, notable syndicalist naval losses over the course of 1950 – with the evacuation of troops from Lagos causing significant strain on its own – had seen the reds’ position around the islands weaken. As a result, the Brazilians would take the lead in a joint operation that involved Canadian and American naval forces to launch an invasion of the islands. While the syndicalists had strong fortifications and well-stocked garrison, with the loss of control of the seas around the islands their positions were battered by the guns of allied battleships and relentless aerial sorties – allowing the Brazilian landing forces to overwhelm the beaches on the main island of Santiago and capture the city of Praia after just a few days of fighting. With the loss of Paia, the smaller defensive forces on the other islands of the archipelago soon began to fold – leaving them under firm Brazilian occupation by early July.
The capture of Cape Verde was vital to the wider war effort, with the Brazilians happily providing support for joint Canadian and American air and naval bases on the islands that placed them in an ideal position to support a larger attack on the syndicalist enclave in the West African mainland, and constantly threaten their supply lines running into Dakar to support it.
The American invasion began on 13 August, as a sizeable marine force landed in the far south-eastern corner of what was once Liberia. Fighting was hard from the first, with the syndicalists possessing a large army in West Africa numbering in the hundreds of thousands – including both low quality African forces and crack European troops – the reds defended fiercely as they attempted to stem the American advance and push them back into the sea, inflicting very heavy losses. For their part, the Americans poured troops wildly into the fray, despite the serious risks of a disaster on a grander scale than the previous year’s ill-fated Portuguese campaign if they failed to consolidate their foothold. Salvation and security would come after a month of fighting with the fall of Monrovia to the United States. Indeed, nearly two thirds of all American losses during the West African campaign were endured prior to the capture of the former Liberian capital.
The strategic importance of Monrovia in the West African theatre could not be overstated. Second only to Dakar as the most developed port in syndicalist West Africa, its loss both provided the American forces in the sector with their first truly secure supply line; it also made a syndicalist defence of the south eastern portion of the West African region untenable – with overland transport routes insufficiently developed and no other port offering facilities capable of sustaining such a large army for a prolonged period of fighting. As such, the syndicalists began a controlled withdrawal from back towards Dakar. This retreat would result in the surrender of the People’s Republic of Sierra Leone, which included both the former British and latterly German colony of the same name and once American-aligned Liberia, on 4 and Guinea on 14 October.
While the syndicalists had initially managed their retreat well, the breakdown in morale among their African troops – many of whom were reluctant to fight on as their homelands were abandoned – opened up gaps in the front that incisive American forces hoped to exploit. After piercing through the syndicalist lines to take control of one of the few well-developed roads in central Guinea – American armour raced northwards at breakneck pace to cut off a large force of 110,000 British, French, Spanish and Swedish leg infantry just shy of the relative safety of the Senegalese border at the end of October. Already exhausted from their retreat, and with attempts to break them out from syndicalist forces operating in Senegal quickly failing, these troops turned themselves over to the Americans at the beginning of November.
Even after this great victory in Guinea, fighting in the West African theatre was not yet finished with more than a quarter million syndicalist soldiers still in the field and hastily establishing defensive perimeters to protect the port of Dakar. Unfortunately for the reds, the Americans had learned lessons from past campaigns and made highly effective use of aerial and naval forces operating from bases in Cape Verde, Ghana and even the recently captured territory in Liberia to block off any possible evacuations out of Dakar and strangle the port’s fragile supply lines.
Short of the food, fuel and ammunition to sustain such a large force, and with morale in a desperate state, the syndicalists struggled to stabilise the front in the face of relentless American attacks and steadily conceded ever more ground as November wore on. The campaign would conclude on 26 November when, with the situation hopeless, the syndicalists surrendered. This was a grand victory, and effectively ended the Internationale’s global pretensions beyond Europe and the Mediterreanen. In total, the Internationale had lost around half a million men in the West African campaign, the large majority of them captured and a similar tally to the number lost in Nigeria-Benin earlier in the year. For their part, United States suffered comparable losses to that previous campaign, with the total number of casualties sustained through the war fast approached half a million – a heavy price for the liberation of a clutch of West African states that few Americans could point to on a map.
The arrest of Francis Yockey in December 1949 and the effective collapse of the Christian Nationalist Party saw a number of splinters from the old American extreme right split off into small and increasingly radicalised sects. These included adherents to Yockey’s own revolutionary nationalist Integralism in the Organisation of the New Revolution (ORN) – and also groups focused around the ideology of Christian Identity. This was a movement that had split off from British Israelism, a centuries-old religious sect believing that the British were descendants of the Ten Lost of Tribes of Israel and therefore a part of God’s Chosen People, around militant racial beliefs that saw all non-whites, and indeed those of outwith a Germanic and Celtic Aryan origin, as subhumans. It had gained notable traction in the 1930s and 1940s, aligning with the religious revivalism and highly charged racial climate of the time and become influential in the Christian Nationalist Party. Now, many adherents of Christian Identity had drifted towards the need for revolutionary terror to spark a third American revolution and race war.
While through 1950 these small factions radicalised at pace, the nature of their political evolution only came to the attention of mainstream America in August. After a summer of race riots and rising unrest throughout society, a Christian Identity militant group going by the name the Aryan Legion orchestrated the assassination of New York Governor Herbert Lehman. A Liberal and a Jew, Lehman’s very right to occupy the office of Governor had been challenged in the supreme court after his election in 1946 and he had remained a hate figure for many long afterwards – acting as a symbol for the extreme right of the failure of the Longist revolution in the 1930s. His murder shocked America and added to a growing sense of domestic chaos in the face of the nation’s titanic struggle with the Internationale.
As the spectre of political terror reared its head again in the United States, it was notable that despite syndicalism’s very recent militant history in the country and the ongoing war with the Internationale – no similar far left terrorist organisations emerged during this period.
As the nation looked towards the upcoming midterm elections, one of the most intriguing races was taking place in Illinois. Once the seat of American syndicalism, by the end of 1940s it had emerged as a key electoral battleground between an America First establishment based in proletarian Chicago and a Conservative-leaning hinterland. However, the state was also home to a fast-rising Liberal Party – with Eleanor Roosevelt recording her best vote share in the state outside of the North East and Pacific Coast at nearly a fifth of the vote. The character of the party here was quite distinctive compared to those other heartlands; with a more working class and egalitarian character and significant influence from reformed syndicalists in a state where Jack Reed won two million votes in 1936.
In early 1950, the Liberal Party establishment was upturned by the insurgent candidacy of progressive firebrand Paul Douglas – who won the primary to be the party’s Illinois Senatorial by a hefty margin. A leftwing Chicagoan economist, while never a true revolutionary in belief or inclination, he had provided his public support for the syndicalist movement during the 1930s and even briefly served in the bureaucracy of Jack Reed’s rebel administration in 1937 until the fall of his home city to the Longists early in the Civil War. Like so many in the Mid West who had chosen the wrong side in the fighting, Douglas spent years of his life in imprison and re-education, not being released until 1941 and only having his full constitutional rights restored later in the decade during the Taft administration. Since then, he had become politically active once more – joining the Liberal Party and campaigning on progressive social and economic causes. His campaign for the Illinois Senate found great success with a highly progressive stump demanding racial equality, civil rights for all, an end to the mistreatment of ex-syndicalists – which after years of growing more relaxed had harshened since America’s entrance into the Weltkrieg, and extensive redistributive programmes. Gaining momentum even after the primary, Douglas was assembling a broad coalition of Illinois’s large pool of 1940s non-voters (remarkably, fewer votes were cast in the 1948 election in Illinois than in 1936 – largely as a result of low levels of voting by Black and ex-syndicalist voters, even after the withdrawal of legal restrictions on their voting earlier in the decade) and disaffected supporters of the two major parties.
Douglas’ candidacy caused significant tremors both within and without the Liberal Party. Internally, many Liberals in other states – particularly its North Eastern heartland – were uncomfortable with the apparent confirmation of the accusations that had dogged the party since its foundation that it acted as a vehicle for the return of crypto-syndicalist politics into America that had caused such destruction in the 1930s. Meanwhile, the strength of his rhetoric, his ostentatious multiracial political rallies and overt campaigning in deprived Black neighbourhoods added to his air of radicalism. The party’s opponents went further, challenging Douglas’ constitutional right to stand for election on the grounds that his past syndicalist associations meant that he ran afoul of the constitutional bar on ‘un-American’ political candidacies. While the Illinois Supreme Court dismissed this case on the grounds that his past history was not relevant to his present platform, soon the issue was brought forward to the Federal Supreme Court. There, the Justices offered much less sympathy – ruling against Douglas, placing particular emphasis on past connections to Britain and France before the Civil War as evidence of the dangerous and un-American candidacy.
The Court’s ruling riled Liberals, nowhere more so than in Illinois itself, as they turned the Senatorial nomination over to Douglas’s wife Emily Taft-Douglas. Unlike her husband, her connections to 1930s syndicalism and active participation in the movement were much more muted; while, as a distant cousin of former Presidents Robert and Howard Taft, her family name alone provided some degree of protection from legal challenge – ensuring that her name would appear on the ballot.
Turquoise – America First hold
Dark Green – America First gain
Dark Purple – Conservative hold
Salmon– Conservative gain
Yellow - Liberal Hold
Pale Yellow - Liberal Gain
Meanwhile, just a decade after its formation, the Conservative party secured a healthy majority in the House of Representatives, a feet that had seemed scarcely possible even in the heady days half a decade ago when it had secured the White House by a whisker. The picture for the Liberals was more mixed. The party performed well in the big cities – gaining five seats across Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City, largely at the expense of America First in working class districts with large non-white populations who were mobilised who voted in unusually large numbers following concerted campaigning. However, this was balanced against significant losses in its New England heartlands to the resurgent Conservatives in a modestly weakened position relative to 1948.
Turquoise – America First hold
Dark Purple – Conservative hold
Salmon– Conservative gain
Yellow - Liberal Hold
In the Senate elections, the swing was equally dramatic – with the Conservatives picking up no fewer than 11 additional seats. One of these came at the expense of the Liberals in Connecticut, but the other nine came from America First seats that the party had been able to win in 1944, the year of Robert Taft’s presidential election victory. These included shocking losses in states that Thurmond had won by large margins just two years before – including Florida, Kentucky and Missouri as well as William Fullbright’s impressive defence of Arkansas against the odds. The only seats America First held out in beyond their Deep South heartland were in Iowa, Pennsylvania and Indiana.
One of the most eagerly watched individual contests was in Illinois, where Paul Douglas’s wife Emily Taft-Douglas carried on the momentum of her husband’s campaign to drive the incumbent America First Senator, former Chicago Mayor Edward Kelly, into a humiliating third place even as she fell short of the victorious Conservative candidate, Everett Dirksen. Indeed, it was on the coattails of this campaign, that the Liberals cracked secured their first Congressional representation in the state as they flipped two House seats in Chicago.
While the House of Representatives elections had seen power shift entirely in the House, the Senate was now finely balanced. America First remained the largest party with 44 seats, just one more than the Conservatives, but they had lost their majority and were four seats short of controlling half the chamber – an effective working majority for the party holding the tie-breaking Vice Presidency.
With 33 of the nation’s 48 states holding gubernatorial races, it was also a bumper year in the struggle for power at a state level – which saw the same pattern of Conservative victories across much of the nation. However, with an unfavourable map that saw all sitting Liberal governors up for election, it was the leftwing party that suffered particularly badly as it was reduced to just two governorships – in Vermont and Rhode Island, with Herbert Lehman’s successor failing to retain control over the jewel in the party’s crown in the New York governor’s mansion.
As the new Congress was inaugurated in January, the Speaker’s gavel was turned over to a new figure who had now secured his place as one of the most powerful men in Washington, arguably second only to the President himself – John Bricker. Part of the Robert Taft’s Ohioan clique, Bricker owed his leadership position within the Conservative House delegation to his closeness to the former President and with it the established leadership faction within the party. However he was determined to make use of the power his party had won in Congress to push the Conservative agenda forward on a number of fronts – challenging the President’s authority in overseeing the war effort, America First’s centralist state and touchstone cultural issues, not least the increasingly unpopular and costly prohibition of alcohol.
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The Conservatives control the House, they have America First in trouble in the Senate, President Thurmond is going to be a lame duck for the second half of his term...
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A real changing of the guard as America First lose their majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time since the Civil War - a thrashing that represents a huge challenge to President Thurmond's administration and its wider agenda. Meanwhile, another costly victory is won in Africa - as we get some glimmers of real progress in the fight against syndicalism after two and a half years of fighting for out part.
There will be some hope for Black Americans that there may be some opportunities for their situation improving in the years ahead - with America First losing its Congressional majority, new Federal restrictions are unlikely, at least for now, while we see politicians with strong civil rights beliefs like Douglas gaining serious traction for the first time in a long while.
You certainly predicted the fate of America First at these midterms very accurately - a real hammering that is going to have significant consequences for how the next two years will play out.
Yes, that looks like those are the historic figures - and we've blown past those now with another bloody campaign in the second West African theatre. 1950 has been a very bloody year for America. And remember this is a country that already bears the scares of a Civil War that cause 3.3 million casualties (killed, captured, injured) a decade ago.
Now this first issue will come really into focus. AF have lost control of Congress, and the Conservatives have long held to the idea of a war with more limited aims that Thurmond has tried to pursue over the last two years. Just how far is Bricker going to push on this question now he has got his hands on some real political power?
Indeed, the Weltkrieg started in 1940, and of course that followed a whole bunch of huge wars in the 1930s (Civil Wars in America, China, Spain, wars in the Middle East and Balkans etc) - this has been a period of highly intense violence right around the world for the best part of two decades now.
Yeah, I think had Huey lived we would have gone much farther down that road of a de-facto one party state with a tolerated opposition but likely one man being re-elected over and over again by large margins and the AF majority holding in Congress for a long long time. Without the Kingfish, the party has found things much harder to hold together - and has now faced a really serious blow with an absolute hammering in the mid-terms. They will have to pray the next couple of years go well - which will in large part be decided in the battlefields - or they could be looking at a Conservative trifecta in 1952.
There will be some hope for Black Americans that there may be some opportunities for their situation improving in the years ahead - with America First losing its Congressional majority, new Federal restrictions are unlikely, at least for now, while we see politicians with strong civil rights beliefs like Douglas gaining serious traction for the first time in a long while.
You certainly predicted the fate of America First at these midterms very accurately - a real hammering that is going to have significant consequences for how the next two years will play out.
Yes, that looks like those are the historic figures - and we've blown past those now with another bloody campaign in the second West African theatre. 1950 has been a very bloody year for America. And remember this is a country that already bears the scares of a Civil War that cause 3.3 million casualties (killed, captured, injured) a decade ago.
Now this first issue will come really into focus. AF have lost control of Congress, and the Conservatives have long held to the idea of a war with more limited aims that Thurmond has tried to pursue over the last two years. Just how far is Bricker going to push on this question now he has got his hands on some real political power?
Indeed, the Weltkrieg started in 1940, and of course that followed a whole bunch of huge wars in the 1930s (Civil Wars in America, China, Spain, wars in the Middle East and Balkans etc) - this has been a period of highly intense violence right around the world for the best part of two decades now.
Yeah, I think had Huey lived we would have gone much farther down that road of a de-facto one party state with a tolerated opposition but likely one man being re-elected over and over again by large margins and the AF majority holding in Congress for a long long time. Without the Kingfish, the party has found things much harder to hold together - and has now faced a really serious blow with an absolute hammering in the mid-terms. They will have to pray the next couple of years go well - which will in large part be decided in the battlefields - or they could be looking at a Conservative trifecta in 1952.
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What a continued bloodbath. That’s 500k fewer men voting in those elections - and even more families and close friends to ponder this monstrous loss of life and vote accordingly…
… so perhaps that fed into the election result? They may have won victories… but in West where? And for what? I wonder if Liberia was worth the life of one Alabaman minuteman?
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A bad time to be divided, being in the middle of a world war. I wonder if anything might happen to unite the American people.
The President needs to get on radio (and soon TV) and tell America what and where they're fighting for. Otherwise, these losses are unacceptable. Even then, they're a hard pill to swallow.
Honestly TV might make things worse when it becomes widespread. People seeing the destruction of war in their living room doesn't tend to ingratiate them.
Who became Governor after Lehman?
Ambitious! I hope he succeeds in challenging AFP's nationalist and racial policies.
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Beer and Taxes – January 1951 – April 1951
Beer and Taxes – January 1951 – April 1951
The 1950 midterms had left President Thurmond, certainly domestically, as something of a lame duck with little hope of any substantive domestic policy achievements in the second half of his term. Instead, he would find himself on the defensive in the face of a self-confident Conservative Party, keen to test the limits of its own power and rallied behind the leadership of House Speaker John Bricker.
The Conservatives would adopt an aggressive negotiating position from the very first as the House threw out the President’s budget proposals for the upcoming fiscal year when they were presented to Congress in February. This represented a critical danger not only for the White House’s domestic ambitions, but also the wider war effort – with substantive increases in military spending included within the budget under threat. Adopting a tough negotiating stance, Bricker made almost impossible demands that the President could never accept – calling for taxes, which had risen steeply since the outbreak of war, to be reduced and for these cuts to be paid for by sweeping cuts to Longist-era social security programmes and subsidies and the opening of Federal spending to far closer audit than had been conducted before. Moreover, Bricker himself philosophically opposed the notion that foreign policy should be the sole domain of the Presidency, let alone an all-powerful Chief of Staff, and sought to bring the war effort, including the key question of what America’s war aims were, under the control of Congress.
Conterminous to the battle over the budget, Bricker championed expedited legislation to repeal the national prohibition of alcohol. The last serious attempt to eliminate the Huey Long-era national prohibition legislation had been made in 1947 on the back of a surge in Liberal Party support in the middle of Robert Taft’s presidential term. While on that occasion repeal had secured a House majority, it had been defeated in the Senate. Since then, the arithmetic in Congress had shifted dramatically – not only through the Conservative Party’s heavy gains in 1950, but through the continued retreat of ‘dry’ Conservatives as the party as a whole now had a large anti-prohibition majority.
Indeed, the realities of war had led to a significant scaling down on the expenses policing of America’s frontiers against alcohol smuggling rings, while the opening of the nation’s economy to Canada as the two powers grew more closely aligned further compounded upon the breakdown of any meaningful defence against the illegal importation of alcohol into the country. By 1951, liquor, already becoming increasingly easy to find as sophisticated criminal networks had arisen by the mid-1940s, was now more widespread than at any point since the Civil War. This, as much as anything, continued to erode support for the cause among Conservatives.
The new 1951 repeal Bill sailed through the House with an imposing majority. In the Senate, it was not such smooth sailing. Yet with some amendments, notably providing a pause before implementation to allow time for state legislatures to decide whether or not to retain prohibition laws on a state-wide basis the repeal Bill won through with a 57 to 39 majority. Now, all that stood in the way of the legalisation of alcohol was the office of the President.
The heavy defeat suffered by America First at the midterms and the wind of change sweeping across America had rallied the wider grassroots Longist movement into action – with large scale protests defending prohibition, and above all the sacred Crusade against syndicalism from domestic saboteurs. These demonstrations reached their crescendo at Easter, when several hundred thousand descended upon Washington to attend the ‘Rally for America’ organised by the Minutemen veteran groups, where speakers made fiery calls for the revival of the militant spirit of Huey Long – demanding that the President fight back against Bricker and ignore all efforts to threaten the war effort and dismantle the ‘American System’.
Despite this pressure, Thurmond was ultimately a very different character to his party’s illustrious founder. A former House Speaker who had co-habited with a President of a different party himself, he was not a revolutionary but Congressional dealmaker and sought a compromised solution with Bricker and the Conservatives. Indeed, by late April the Conservatives’ own unity was starting to fray – with many in the party fearful of being seen as saboteurs of the fighting men doing battle overseas. Their leaders were therefore open to the White House’s entreaties to find a solution to the impasse in Congress. Seeing the writing on the wall for the drinks issue, Thurmond agreed not to use his presidential veto to block the repeal of Prohibition – ending America’s decade-long experiment and providing the Conservatives with a key win. This certainly came at a cost to the administration, the first serious crack in the ‘American System’ created by the America First Party in the 1940s; and would lead to unedifying bacchanalian scenes as revellers celebrated the legalisation for which the President was heavily criticised by many of his own allies.
On the budget however, Thurmond and America First would emerge with a much more favourable deal. Alongside a number of smaller adjustments, key social security programmes supporting the poor that had been introduced in the early 1940s would be frozen – resulting in real-terms cuts in the context of high wartime inflation, while the administration swore off any additional tax rises for the duration of the war, with an up tick in government borrowing making up the difference. The additional funds demanded by Patton and his war machine were secured. But these funds came with a veiled warning that this agreement did not represent a blank cheque and their consent may not be forthcoming if no pathway to peace emerged in the year ahead.
The Republic of South Africa held a special place of affection in post-Civil War America. During the 1930s, the country had faced its own Civil War, the Third Boer War, that pitted the Afrikaners against British loyalists. This war, that saw the Entente-aligned side soundly beaten in the midst of an aborted Canadian intervention and English-speaking Rhodesia secede, left the country D F Malan and his National Party in control of the country. Over the following years, Malan proclaimed a Republic, finally severing all ties to the legacy of the British Empire, brought the country into the German orbit and instituted a strict system of racial segregation and hierarchy known as Apartheid.
Having picked the wrong horse diplomatically – leaving the country isolated in the aftermath of the fall of the German Empire – South Africa was forced into a frosty reconciliation with the Entente later in the 1940s in the face of the threat of syndicalist conquest in Africa, even deploying tens of thousands of volunteers to the Angolan Campaign of 1947. However, its relationship was always much stronger with the Americans than its former colonial comrades, with South Africa’s own experiments in strict racial laws a subject of interest and fascination by many in the America First Party in particular – many of whom looked admiringly across the ocean at a more complete system than they had been able to implement domestically.
Strom Thurmond himself was an outspoken admirer of Malan, the National Party and Apartheid and in 1951 took the opportunity to become the first American President to ever visit the African continent, leaving the Western Hemisphere for the first time in his own Presidency, seeking to bind the country closely to an emerging American sphere of influence. Having reached into the southern hemisphere for a diplomatic drop to Brazil in April, where he firmed up the commitment to cooperation between the two co-belligerents, he crossed the Atlantic for a diplomatic visit to Cape Town. There, Thurmond and Malan agreed a broad treaty of cooperation which, while stopping short of bringing South Africa into the war, saw the Republic normalise its relationship with Rhodesia (an Entente member whose independence had not been recognised by Johannesburg and whose border with its larger neighbour had been closed for a decade and a half), the dropping of mutual trade barriers, the facilitation of a network to allow for South Africa’s rapidly anti-syndicalist populace to join volunteer units in the American and Canadian militaries and an agreement to cooperate closely over the future of the African continent.
On the military front, a period of calm over the winter months of 1950-1951 followed the conclusion of fighting in West Africa in November. However, at sea the colder months witnessed a string of debilitating defeats for the Internationale – with a number of precious capital ships being lost under the waves. By this stage in the conflict, American industrial might, which gave her the ability to produce modern vessels at a rate with which the syndicalists could not keep up, and her growing military know-how after more than two years of fighting, making up for the greenness of her fleets earlier in the war, were increasingly tilting the battle in her favour. Indeed, American and allied naval patrols increasingly toured the waters west of Morocco and Iberia, with the reds struggling to contest them.
The decisive battle in this period was fought in January at the Battle of Casablanca – an engagement fought over several days that saw one of the largest naval battles in modern history involving hundreds of vessels and dozens of powerful capital ships. It was the Canadians rather than the Americans who took the lead in the fighting, as they engaged a Franco-British fleet – pinning it down to a set-piece engagement before US naval forces arrived on the scene to turn a battle into a massacre. With Entente aircraft overwhelming those of the Internationale, they remained destruction down on the syndicalist vessels – sinking no fewer than seven French and British aircraft carriers, among dozens of larger ships. Among the most decisive naval victories since Trafalgar, and not far from the site of the famous Napoleonic battle, these were losses that definitely ended any serious contest over the high seas. The oceans now belonged to the Entente.
The assertion of Entente naval power northwards would see the Brazilians embarked on a second major island-based campaign to follow on from their previous success in Cape Verde. This time targeting the Canaries, they embarked on an island-hopping assault against a string of demoralised Iberian garrisons that had already faced increasingly disruption to their supply lines from Europe and Morocco and frequent aerial sorties for weeks. Over the course of a hard-fought six-week campaign through February and March, Brazilian marine forces picked the islands off one by one and, as they had done in Cape Verde, established bases which were made available to American and Canadian forces. With Morocco now within sight on a clear day, an allied invasion of North Africa now appeared only a matter of time.
The syndicalists had little time to wait, as just weeks later the latest step in the Entente’s aggressive enclave-hopping campaign was launched against the desolate wastes of the southern Morocco on April 7. Despite the obvious threat of attack after the loss of the Canaries, the Internationale had left the southerly port of Ifni only lightly garrisoned – their hands to a significant extent forced by the logistical challenges in maintaining a large force in a region surrounded by desert, coupled by the costs of their recent defeats elsewhere in Africa. Ifni itself would fall to America marines after only a couple of days, but this would mark a significant acceleration of the wider war to a faster moving and bloodier phase as the Entente pushed itself within striking distance of Europe and the Mediterranean.
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Indeed, he's got no hope of driving domestic policy over the next two years and will be on the defensive as Bricker and the Cons seek to push forward their own agenda, already conceding on prohibition to keep the show on the road militarily. There will be a real threat if things worsen in the war, and the Conservatives try to force his hand and push for a negotiated peace.
Certainly, to suffer that level of casualties and only have some victories in largely unknown countries in West Africa to show for it is a very tough sell. Had US forces suffered badly but Britain been liberated, there might have been a very different reaction. And things are only going to get bloodier from here ...
Indeed, America really needs to get its populace behind this conflict if it is going to bare the sacrifices required to actually defeat the Internationale. Otherwise, the months and years ahead will be very difficult.
TV is something really interesting that I'll need to look into more in a future update. In OTL, it was these years in the early 50s when TV went from an unusual thing rich people had, to standard in every household - so its fair to assume, even if we are little behind, that a similar process is happening right now in this America - beaming the horrors of war into every home.
We've seen some of the backlash to the perceived weakening of pro-war sentiment - but will look at it closer in the next update.
I didn't name an explicit lieutenant governor to Lehman in the update who would have taken over after his assassination (and I'd have to take a look to see who would be a good candidate). But certainly, with the purple wave of 1950 - the Liberals would have lost control of the New York governor's mansion not long after Lehman's death. Lehman can actually become President in KR through the New England path - so this is a pretty major figure for the party to have lost.
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Of course AF loves Apartheid, let's hope they don't try to bring it to America (i.e. they never get a trifecta)
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Without a doubt, it is concerning. Has there already been any movement, disturbance, or post-civil war insurrection related to the Black population?