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^Was that a spam?
Anyway! I believe the "International" Taiwan is near, so some support could be diverted torwards the KMT, also losing China would give the Soviets too much power in Asia and beyond, so support should be forthcoming. Another greater Pitman Act?
I do not know about the economical situation of China at that time, but a free-market orientated China could mean good buisness! But then we have a big India, so it might not matter if we lose a couple of hundred of millions of Chinese, if we have a couple of million of Indians! Of course China is a more homogenus nation, whereas India is plagued by tribal warfare and Hindu-Muslim tensions...
So what to do?
Anyway! I believe the "International" Taiwan is near, so some support could be diverted torwards the KMT, also losing China would give the Soviets too much power in Asia and beyond, so support should be forthcoming. Another greater Pitman Act?
I do not know about the economical situation of China at that time, but a free-market orientated China could mean good buisness! But then we have a big India, so it might not matter if we lose a couple of hundred of millions of Chinese, if we have a couple of million of Indians! Of course China is a more homogenus nation, whereas India is plagued by tribal warfare and Hindu-Muslim tensions...
So what to do?
Because nationalization is fun.
While everyone else is talking about China, I want to talk about the intro to the update: it was hysterical. :rofl:
Clearly the update was just too cool for footnotes, that or the disgruntled characters from the opening deleted them in a fit of pique!
I try. I've been working 80 hour weeks for the last few months, but now that things have settled time I have time to update once again.
What? There are clearly footnotes. Forward with the Five Year Plan!
Hey all,
So, the past few months I have been swamped by my last year of law school, working part time, and publishing an article. Now that my article's been accepted and I'm a graduate, I have a bit more free time. Ergo...
So, the past few months I have been swamped by my last year of law school, working part time, and publishing an article. Now that my article's been accepted and I'm a graduate, I have a bit more free time. Ergo...
Your Best is an Idiot: The Beginning of the Polish Revolution
"What has happened to that fine revolutionary upsurge of societies which stopped the massacres, brought back peace, drove out or annihilated tyrants and founded the freedom of the people?" We stopped the revolutionary process too early, [and succumbed to half-measures for national unity."-Norbert Barlicki, Left-of-Center Member of the Polish Socialist Party, in Robotnick, 1 January 1933.
"The assertion that fascism can only be broken by revolution is undoubtedly correct. All Parliamentary discussion have shown themselves to be anachronisms."-the Piast, the paper of the Polish People's Party, 1933
"“We will win a large part of the population to the idea of liberation and revolution by conducting assassinations of individuals and periodic mass actions. … Only by actions that are permanently repeated can we initiate and maintain the spirit of permanent protest against the occupying state.”-OUN Declaration, early 1930s.
Remember Poland? When we last left off, they were undergoing political trouble do to the Danzig Crisis. How have they been holding up? For an answer, take a look at that burning police station over to your right.
First, a brief discussion of Poland's opposition movements in the 1930s.
Let's take a look at the group s in Poland that are unhappy. First, there are the students. Beginning in the 1930s, relations between the Polish government and the students was poor at best. Perversely, one of the criticisms of student groups was that the regime was not right enough; the Union of Polish University Youth prohibited Jews from becoming members [1]. Unrest in 1931 had led to the closing of Warsaw University, Krakow University, and Warsaw Polytechnic, and in October 1932 student rioting led by the right wracked Warsaw, Poznan, and Lwow occurred again. This trend towards the right in the nation's universities was marked by increased support for fascism.
And what of the Polish left? In the early 1930s, the Polish Socialists moved to the left and adopted a more radical platform. In 1934 the Polish Socialists adopted, at their twenty-third Congress, a resolution stressing the importance of non-parliamentary form of struggle and stating that a dictatorship of the proletariat might be a necessary provisional stage after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. It collaborated with the Polish People's Party, many of whose leaders, notably Wincenty Witos, were in exile in Czhehoslovakia. Under the strain of the Depression, the Polish Peasant Party [2] moved to the left as well, advocating expropriating Poland's large estates without compensation. The party then led peasant strikes which took place across the nation in the 1930s.
The death of Pilsudski in 1935 was followed by important changes in the Polish opposition. There were many within the Socialists who advocated a popular front with the Communists (called "The Folks Front" by the right in a reference to Jews), and a shift towards hard-line action, and 1936 saw more strikes than any year before 1940. The Peasant Party joined the decade's shift towards dirgisme by advocating a planned economy, and the youhth of the party (the Wici) advocated peasant violence.
The right is not much better. The major party on the Right were the National Democrats, who were themselves divided between older, parliamentary politicians and the more openly fascist members of the party, led by Roman Dmowski. Dmowski, whose articles warned that democracy was a shield for a "Jewish-Masonic conspiracy" and that Poland should emulate Italy's national revolution. In 1936, the government established a new political organization to unite the nation, the Camp of National Unity (OZON). OZON's youth movement was headed by Jerzy Rutkowski, the head of the Polish Falangist movement.
Yet as OZON adopted increasingly totalitarian trappings, it faced increasing opposition in the press, by the Socialists and Peasant Party, and by "traditional" conservatives. Before the Danzig Crisis, the latter had the upper hand. And then in 1940 the leading "inside" reformer from the clique that governed Poland was assassinated. [1] What happened next?
For a while, nothing. But the regime's credibility was shot; all that the generals that ran Poland could rely on was their history of protecting the nation (now eliminated), and protecting the nation form fascism (since those who assassinated Slawek were never caught). And as the aforementioned discussion indicates, there were numerous players who were willing to step outside of legal means to change Poland's future.
And then there's the East, where a group of unruly nationalities lie along a border with the USSR. A USSR with spare guns.
Since the fall of the Habsburgs, Galicia had been a troubled land, whose problems can be summarized as follows: its far right nationalists wanted union with a people who had an autonomous republic in the Soviet Union. Thus, Ukrainian extremists (The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, or OUN) had, in their first wave of terrorist activity in the 1930s, attempted to assassinate the Soviet consul in Lwow. Indeed, some historians have argued that the famine in the Ukraine was induced intentionally to crush Ukrainian intelligentsia who aspired towards a Ukrainian homeland and sympathized with OUN; hence, the movement (which was busy shooting Polish officials) as followers of the "fascist Pidluskite clique."
But necessity makes strange bedfellows, and the Rhine Diktat required Germany to shut off its aid to the OUN. Seizing the opportunity, took a risky gamble, and agreed to fund aid to the movement, along with a (very) limited number of NKVD advisors. Neither party was happy with the arrangement, but it provided both what they sought.[3] By the March of 1940 OUN was back to its old habits, and blowing up several police stations and shooting two army officers. When the army landed on the region in July of 1940 in what some decried as another pacification, things looked grim indeed.
Soviet success in Galicia was mixed at best; whtatever achievements the OUN achieved were those of a fascist movement which was as hostile to the USSR as it was to Poland. But in Poland's Belarussian territories, and Volhynia, they enjoyed much greater success. Volhynia had been settled with thousands of Poles since the nation's independence, and these new settlers had been the ones to benefit from land reform. This had thrown the region's support to left-wing movements which advocated a union with the Soviet Ukraine. [4] Poland banned the crypto-communist Ukrainian Peasant Worker Union in the early 1930s, and news of famines in the Soviet Ukraine had diminished Volhynian support for reunion with the USSR, but the notion remained. And the situation was even more stark in Belarus, where intellectuals remained attracted to union with Soviet Belarus for years to come. [5]
So, we have Soviet backed terrorist groups and intellectuals in the east, crypto-fascists arguing that Poland was stabbed in the back by the Judaic-Masonic influence at the Rhine Diktat, and a Socialist Party willing to engage in strikes to bring down the regime. The funny thing is that it was a damned yid started the movement that would topple the generals' clique, make a pianist president, and almost lead Poland into civil war. [6]
(Background on Poland can be found here: http://alternatehistory.net/discussion/showthread.php?p=2150601&highlight=Rydz#post2150601).
This is the first of several posts that depict the "Revolutionary Wave" of Early 1940s Europe. From Rome to Belgrade to Warsaw, the people overthrow the shackles of despotism to replace it with... well, that's not clear yet. But some peasants will stare down tanks, and at the end of the day that's always a good thing.
[1] I want to put this down to Nazism's influence, and to an extent it is. But I don't think you can attribute all of Polish antisemitism to malignant German influence.
[2] Oddly the Polish People's Party is sometimes called the Polish Peasant's Party. I know there are Polish speakers reading this; is this a translation thing?
[3] Also, now that Stalin has broken (or believes he has) broken the Ukrainian intelligentsia within the USSR he feels less nervous about fomenting trouble in Poland.
[4] One weird thing I learned recently; there were Soviet raids into Volhynia well into the 1920s.
[5] Eastern European ethnography from this period is a very controversial issue, but it's been estimated that the USSR was able to subvert Polish Belarus's education system to indoctrinate students towards union with the USSR.
[6] Magnificate and I disagree on the plausibility of a Polish Civil War, with Magnificate's argument being that everyone in Poland was too horrified of the consequences to risk it. I think this has some merit, but I'm not sure anyone's gone broke underestimating human stupidity.
Yet another post-Versailles state goes under...It's been a while, good to see an update. What is the status of Lithuania after the recent crisis? Are they still looking for a chance to include Vilniaus kraštas to their territory?
Edit: I recall the Vilnius Crisis started the whole mess, but what was the outcome?
Edit: I recall the Vilnius Crisis started the whole mess, but what was the outcome?
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I'm sure they'd like to, but when will they get a chance?
Poland didn't lose that much, actually. The Free City of Danzig is now the German City of Danzig; and Germany gets extraterritorial rights to cross the corridor. But no territory was actually lost. The problem is that Poland has suffered an embarrassing diplomatic blow. France, Germany, and England are leading a League of Nations atomic project based in the Rhineland (which leaks like a sieve), as you'd expect.
The problem is that Poland perceived of Danzig as Polish, so even if it's not a real loss it's a hugely symbolic one in a state whose government's legitimacy is based solely in being the guardians of the nation. I still haven't decided how this ends, but I wouldn't rule out a civil war...
Yeah, tons of thumbs up for the resurrection of this project. Have the nationalists changed greatly from the OTL? I'm reading Norman Davies' book on Poland and it seemed to be that while Pidluski was kind of center left, he advocated violence, and the nationalist Dmowski was in general more of a parliamentarian. The perspective I got from reading about the Second Republic is that their government had more similarities to a political machine than it did to a parliamentary system.
I think reading Dmowski as a parliamentarian is very, very difficult. He was much more of a Polish nationalist, favoring explusion and forced assimilation, and had far fewer qualms about tying himself to the far-right than some of the other Polish leaders.
I agree with the nationalism thing, though the Davies doesn't show his willingness to ally with far-rightists, but then I feel that the Davies, as a Pole-centric history, hesitates a bit too much on pointing out flaws and problems. He did seem to have some very odd ideas about national identity and governance, but that's a crime that nearly everyone from the 30s committed. Overall I can completely understand the perspective you're coming from--without a German threat to keep the Sanitation government together, there's nothing stopping the more violent forces from taking over.
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Wonderful AAR. Just spent the whole day reading it. I hope that it will continue soon! 
However, I have one point that annoys me:
You've written on several occasions something totaly different, and I remember that some updates were ambivalent about the Rhine dictate, too. (Did you mention a referendum to determine the new Polish-German border, somewhere? I'm not sure ...)
So, what is it, then? Considering your rigorous accuracy in other parts it is quite astonishing that you are so contradictory and vague about the results of the Rhine dictate. The map of Germany you recently posted clearly does not reflect what you have written before -- in fact, claiming that Poland didn't lose any territories from the Rhine dictate seems to be false unless you can come up with a very creative interpretation of what you have written before, where, according to the Rhine dictate, Danzig and the Corridor are ceded to Germany and the Polish receive extraterritorial rights to access Gdynia. Considering that you are not stingy with precise numbers and statistics when it comes to economy or elections, I would welcome a definite outline of the Rhine dictate. Especially because, you know, the term "corridor" can be interpreted in various ways, ranging from "just Pomerelia" to "all German territories ceded to Poland after World War I with the exception of Polish Upper Silesia").
However, I have one point that annoys me:
You've written on several occasions something totaly different, and I remember that some updates were ambivalent about the Rhine dictate, too. (Did you mention a referendum to determine the new Polish-German border, somewhere? I'm not sure ...)
So, what is it, then? Considering your rigorous accuracy in other parts it is quite astonishing that you are so contradictory and vague about the results of the Rhine dictate. The map of Germany you recently posted clearly does not reflect what you have written before -- in fact, claiming that Poland didn't lose any territories from the Rhine dictate seems to be false unless you can come up with a very creative interpretation of what you have written before, where, according to the Rhine dictate, Danzig and the Corridor are ceded to Germany and the Polish receive extraterritorial rights to access Gdynia. Considering that you are not stingy with precise numbers and statistics when it comes to economy or elections, I would welcome a definite outline of the Rhine dictate. Especially because, you know, the term "corridor" can be interpreted in various ways, ranging from "just Pomerelia" to "all German territories ceded to Poland after World War I with the exception of Polish Upper Silesia").
Wonderful AAR. Just spent the whole day reading it. I hope that it will continue soon!
Yes, I am taking the NY and NJ Bars next Tues-Thurs, but that weekend I hope to do a post on either Italy and Carlo Rosselli or the League Mandates in Africa.
Oh, it's not contradictory; it's flip flopping
.I was persuaded by a few posters that Poland wouldn't accept a Corridor loss, or the loss of Upper Silesia. So Germany got an extraterritorial right in the corridor and Danzig, and the earlier posts are retconned.
Well, I don't know if this is so good at all -- together with the unrest in Poland and closer Franco-German cooperation it makes a German-Polish war more probable (after all, it is an excellent possibility to stage an invasion to "protect" ethnic Germans), as the continuing separation of the German territory by the Corridor wouldn't be accepted by Germany, too, even if there are extraterritorial routes. The German hysteria about the corridor was historically during Weimar as strong as Polish hysteria about Danzig -- and I had really hoped that we won't see a war in Europe, just because any other AAR ends in this way. Especially if Poland turns Fascist, it is almost inevitable that the 1914 borders will be restored by force.
EDIT: And why does La Rocque claim during the emergency meeting with Stresemann before the Rhine dictate, that there are 90 million Germans? Even in your timeline, in 1939 there shouldn't be more than 74 million Germans (counting the Austrians in) under Weimar control and additional 11 million ethnic Germans around the world.
Especially if Poland turns Fascist, it is almost inevitable that the 1914 borders will be restored by force.EDIT: And why does La Rocque claim during the emergency meeting with Stresemann before the Rhine dictate, that there are 90 million Germans? Even in your timeline, in 1939 there shouldn't be more than 74 million Germans (counting the Austrians in) under Weimar control and additional 11 million ethnic Germans around the world.
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I actually don't think you'd see the 1914 borders; even by OTL's 1929, a lot of the German right didn't want those. The corridor, yes. But certainly, if Poland is distracted they might not mind a bid to seize the Corridor.
That's 85 million, no? Besides, why would La Rocque be immune to misspeaking?
A Sacred Trust
"Where the German is master economically, there, God willing, the German flag will someday fly again"-Gustav Stresemann, 1926
"I wish to correct the idea that there is something transient in our hold upon Tanganyika. It is essentially a part of the British framework as any other province"-British Colonial Secretary Amery, 1925
"No nation has the right to make decisions for another nation; no people for another people"-Julius Nyerere, leader of Tanzania's independence movement. [1]
Much has been made of Germany's pursuit of colonies, and being a bunch of bright lads, I do not need to tell you colonies were viewed as a way to build national unity in Germany since the era of Bismarck. As a strong proponent of Weltpolitik and the navy before the Great War, Stresemann was no exception, and had adopted a pro-colony plank. How else, he argued, could Germany find an outlet for the energy of its youth? [2]
Hence throughout the 1920s, Stresemann advocated the return of German colonies, argued that the mandates should be treated as mandates (and not run as colonies, as they actually were in Africa), suggested an Anglo-German agreement to partition the Portuguese Empire, and generally made a ruckus. [3]
The Great Depression only increased German interest in colonialism, as great empires, with their living space in the American midwest, the Russian steppes, or India, all prospered while Germany struggled to find markets. Stresemann, who had gained his first seat in the Reichstag in 1907 [4] on the basis of a pro-naval, pro-colonial policy, had no problem supporting the German Youth's efforts to expand in Tanganyika, making noises about colonies, and arguing that a European settlement would require taking into account Germany's interests in Africa.
Yet Stresemann never pursued the issue as aggressively as he might have; a serious settlement of Germany's colonial claims would have meant a settlement with Poland, something Stresemann would not arise until after the Vilnius crisis. While Stresemann raised the issue of colonies at the Conference, Britain was not willing to address the issue then and there. It would fall to Stresemann's successor to bring the German flag back to Africa, in a way that Bismarck could have never foreseen.
________________________________________
The Bismarck steamed out of the Kiel Harbor, and Schumacher refrained from glaring as the ship passed. The bastard Stresemann had named the ship after had instituted Germany's Anti-socialists laws, in a bid to strangle the German masses and keep them prostrate before the Kaiser. But, Bismarck and the Kaiser were dead, and he was president. Let the old fart have his ship. He had bigger plans.
"Admiral Raeder, this is indeed a splendid ship. Clearly the millions of deustchmarks poured into it were well worth it. And the Naval Plan calls for several more, you say?"
If Raeder noticed that the President failed to refer to him as a Grossadmiral, he gave it no heed. "Yes, another by 1944 and then two more by 1947."
"Excellent! And what do you plan to do with them."
"Mr. President?"
"Well, can they beat the British?"
Nobody had ever called Raeder a fool. Although at the moment Schumacher wasn't sure why. "Well, Mr. President, they could handle a British ship easily, but as for the Royal Navy as a whole, no."
Unconciously, Schumacher began reaching into his pocket for a cigarette, then caught himself. "So, the Kriegsmarine could beat the French navy, am I right? Except any naval battle would be in the North Sea or Channel, meaning that it's an even question as to whether the British go to war with us or the French once we start accidentally blowing up British ships."
"Well, I wouldn't put it that way..."
Continuing as if Raeder hadn't spoken, Schumacher continued. "And of course we need to beat the Russians, but if we're at the point where the Russians can build a decent navy we're all fucked, right?"
"The French and British were expanding their navies, Mr. resident. Would you want us to lose again?"
Our military, Schumacher reflected, and not for the first time, is run by idiots. Looking out at the Bismarck, he thought of a line from some American movie. "Everyone was doing it, I just wanted to be popular."
"Mr. President?"
"Nothing, Grossadmiral Raeder." The chickenshit, Schumacher noted, smiled at the mention of his proper rank. "This has been most illuminating."
________________________________________
The British response to German demands was contradictory, self-centered, and riven with an idealism that only the British could pull off. The Conservative Party's stance was perhaps summarized by Chamberlain, who proposed in 1938 a plan that would have all of sub-Saharan Africa, excluding the Cape, subject to a system of international control and supervision.
The plan would require the demilitarization of the region, commercial equality, and certain administrative safeguards. It was a clear to Chamberlain that this would be a "new experiment in colonial administration," [5] one that would show the world that the British Empire was a force for good in the world. This sort of shiny idealism could have only been conceived in Britain; and to the surprise of many, it was taken up by much of the left and the right.
If one looks to the Left, the main criticism of the Labor Party was that Chamberlain's proposal was too limited. The Labor Party, over a series of memoranda written in 1938 and 1939, held that the current cause of international tensions was an inequitable distribution in raw materials and markets. Shortly after the Vilnus Crisis the Labor Party issued a manifesto calling "not for the redistribution of territories, but rather by applying to all colonies not ripe for self-government the principle of trusteeship for the international world."
This proposal, to extend the League system to all subsaharan colonies, caught the Tories in a sticky position. They opposed the notion that the League Mandates were different from any other colonies, but they could not very well do that without admitting the League's Mandates were a farce. And far-right Tories, such as Colonel Ponsonby, warned that it would be foolish for Britain to claim that the primary purpose of the colonies was "the welfare and progress of the natives." "It is only by the capital, initiative, and energy of the white men that these realms can be developed, if they can be developed at all." [5] Somewhat more sensibly, Ramsay Macdonald, the Government's Colonial Secretary, to note that "We cannot regard the peoples of Africa as mere chattels, to be disposed of at the will of others." In 1939, the motion was defeated handily, by 127 to 253.
Yet astute observers would note that since the Labor Party only had 54 seats in Parliament, this was a significant victory; almost half of the votes had come from the Liberal Party or liberal Tories. And when the 1940 General Election ushered in Labor majority, the stage was set for a plan to reshape the map of Africa. It didn't work as intended, but it was worth a shot, wasn't it?
The Maximalist Proposal
La Rocque's reply was considerably more brusque, as the French military was insistent that the security of France required maintenance of the Sub-Saharan colonies. Indeed, the 4th Republic's treatment of colonies, to be the subject of a later post, laid the groundwork for the Generals' Coup of 1956, and France's dark decade. But that is a tale for another time. (Perhaps the next post, if there's interest).
Ultimately, the Second Congress for Africa, as the meeting in Geneva became known, led to the Declaration of African Rights, with the following principles:
1) The participants would work for the material improvement of Africa, for the development of Africa and the world.
2) Efforts to lower tariffs across Africa, to encourage an open door policy towards trade and investment.
3) Respect for freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly.
Mere words, at the time; but they would prove to play a crucial role in the course of African independence.
There were also more immediate results. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement had hinged upon recognition of German interests in Africa. To that end, Attlee proposed the establishment of a League of Nations Mandate over the Kenya Colony, which would be merged with the Belgian mandates of Rwanda-Urundi and the British Mandate of Tanganyika. Controlled by a League of Nations Police Force, a joint protectorate of the League, it provided for the first administrator to be a German appointee. There was some debate as to whom it should be. Von Lettow-Vorbeck was tossed aside, because the British might object to a former military commander running the colony, but then the most prominent officials were all members of the German army, and at this point getting up in years. Schumacher's own instincts, as an anticolonial Socialist, was to send a member of the SPD, but that might be too objectionable. At the end of the day, Schumacher needed someone who was vain enough to leave Germany to run East Africa as their own fief, with delusions of megalomania, and preferably someone Schumacher would like to see out of Germany for a few years.
[1] There are many people who think that decolonization would have been delayed by the absence of World War II, because it exhausted Europe or something (even though Europeans were richer in 1960 than they'd been in 1938). My reply to this: The Soviets are also less exhausted, and have guns for all!
[2] Off base what if: Videogames in the Roaring 20s.
[3] Interestingly, the South Africans wanted to cede the Germans the Portuguese colonies in return for a promise that the Germans would stay away from Southwest Africa.
[4] As its youngest member, actually.
[5] This is all OTL. One could argue that Germany is less aggressive in this timeline, so there'd be less noise about coming to terms with Hitler, but looking at people's view of Hitler in OTL's 1930s, it doesn't look that much darker than how people view Stresemann in ATL, at least in terms of his foreign policy goals. He's still a German nationalist, it just turns out that unlike Hitler, when the chips are down he doesn't reveal a 6 year plan to conquer Europe.
I admit that looking at Attlee's proposal, I was severely tempted to go with it because the idea of a British created mittelafrika based on internationalism and cooperation is a cute subversion of the Kaiserreich. But I couldn't see how to get La Rocque or Salazar on board.