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Chiefs of the French State

1940 - 1946: Philippe Pétain [1]
1946 - 1952: Joseph Darnard [2]
1952 - 1955:
1955 - 1964:
1964 - 1971:
1971 - 1977:

Proclamation of the 4th Fourth Republic

President of the Fourth Republic

1977 - XXXX:

[1] Appointed President of the Council of Ministers to negotiate an armistice with Germany Petain took the opportunity the purge the French State of the taint of Secularism and Liberalism. The new French State (or at least the southern part under his control) would become increasingly authoritarian and a semi-willng client of the Reich.

Upon the defeat of the Soviet Union in 1942 Petain increasingly pressed Hitler to return the northern parts of mainland France to his control. Hitler was reluctant while the UK was still officially at war with Germany but with the conflict stalemated their was an agreement for a return of control at the end of 1945. Certain conditions were agreed including a cap on the French armed forces, a permanent German garrison in key strategic areas and a quota of French males to be "guest workers" in the Reich for the next decade. Petain was prepared to pay nearly any price to have a reunited France and signed the new treaty.

Feeling his work was done upon the return of the North and feeling his age Petain resigned his position at the beginning of 1946 and passed the Presidency to his successor.

[2] Darnard had been a soldier, a French fascist before it was mainstream, and the founder of the Milice, but the biggest reason he got the presidency was he wasn't Pierre Laval, a man with many enemies and who was irking the Germans. The two men would glare at each other over the government tables as they continued to keep France on an even keel, which meant further purges of people who didn't fit Nazi ideology, further crackdowns and Milice on every doorstep (or so the propaganda went), and a construction of an independent French military force. Darnard liked Nazi ideas but didn't like Germans, and dreamed of reclaiming the colonies lost to the Free French.

It's possible Darnard could have tried to retake Francophonic North Africa, a weak point in the Free French Empire, in 1951 - however, that was when Laval attempted a coup. After three days of confused fighting in Paris, Darnard emerged triumphant but a chunk of his government & civil service were dead or in camps. (This had been exactly what MI6 and SOE wanted - it would emerge in the 1980s that they had assisted Laval, lying to him Britain would come to terms if he was in charge, with the assumption he'd lose but distract Darnard from his reconquest.) The chaos and resulting economic slump was embarrassing, and in early 1952 the German ambassador suggested maybe someone better should be President, and Darnard 'resigned' to 'spend time with his family'.
 
Chiefs of the French State

1940 - 1946: Philippe Pétain [1]
1946 - 1952: Joseph Darnard [2]
1952 - 1955: Philippe Henriot [3]
1955 - 1964:
1964 - 1971:
1971 - 1977:

Proclamation of the 4th Fourth Republic

President of the Fourth Republic

1977 - XXXX:

[1] Appointed President of the Council of Ministers to negotiate an armistice with Germany Petain took the opportunity the purge the French State of the taint of Secularism and Liberalism. The new French State (or at least the southern part under his control) would become increasingly authoritarian and a semi-willing client of the Reich.

Upon the defeat of the Soviet Union in 1942 Petain increasingly pressed Hitler to return the northern parts of mainland France to his control. Hitler was reluctant while the UK was still officially at war with Germany but with the conflict stalemated their was an agreement for a return of control at the end of 1945. Certain conditions were agreed including a cap on the French armed forces, a permanent German garrison in key strategic areas and a quota of French males to be "guest workers" in the Reich for the next decade. Petain was prepared to pay nearly any price to have a reunited France and signed the new treaty.

Feeling his work was done upon the return of the North and feeling his age Petain resigned his position at the beginning of 1946 and passed the Presidency to his successor.

[2] Darnard had been a soldier, a French fascist before it was mainstream, and the founder of the Milice, but the biggest reason he got the presidency was he wasn't Pierre Laval, a man with many enemies and who was irking the Germans. The two men would glare at each other over the government tables as they continued to keep France on an even keel, which meant further purges of people who didn't fit Nazi ideology, further crackdowns and Milice on every doorstep (or so the propaganda went), and a construction of an independent French military force. Darnard liked Nazi ideas but didn't like Germans, and dreamed of reclaiming the colonies lost to the Free French.

It's possible Darnard could have tried to retake Francophonic North Africa, a weak point in the Free French Empire, in 1951 - however, that was when Laval attempted a coup. After three days of confused fighting in Paris, Darnard emerged triumphant but a chunk of his government & civil service were dead or in camps. (This had been exactly what MI6 and SOE wanted - it would emerge in the 1980s that they had assisted Laval, lying to him Britain would come to terms if he was in charge, with the assumption he'd lose but distract Darnard from his reconquest.) The chaos and resulting economic slump was embarrassing, and in early 1952 the German ambassador suggested maybe someone better should be President, and Darnard 'resigned' to 'spend time with his family'.

[3] Philippe Henriot made his name as the jovial director of Vichy's wartime propaganda, and was briefly talked up as Petain's successor. A fervent Catholic who had more Maurras than Doriot in him, Petain's retirement put him in an awkward position, and he accepted a posting as Ambassador to the Holy See rather than fight for scraps. By the time Laval made his gambit, Henriot had been entirely sidelined from the government for several years, finding himself at odds with Darnard's distressingly sincere National Socialism. His fortunes rose with Darnard's fall, and enough voices in Berlin saw him as an appropriately empty suit that his inauguration was entirely anticlimactic. Promising to return France to a state of "Faith, Work, and Family", Henriot secured the loyalty of the GMR and attempted to govern. He did not get very far.

Since the end of the war, the French regime had pursued a economic policy which mainly served to benefit a number of German conglomerates and their local compradors. The Fremdarbeiterprogramm established by Petain's Faustian bargain was disastrous for France's already gutted economy, creating a skilled labor shortage and a mass of embittered workers who saw firsthand the depth of their nation's colonial subservience to the Boches. When French miners in Saarlouis killed their overseer and attempted to cross the border, half the country found itself seized by madness. In the end, the 1954 Revolution was a brief and bloody failure which broke the remaining liberation committees in mainland France; the Germans and their GMR lapdogs scoured the countryside and left utter devastation in their wake. Henriot was found at his desk with a gun in his hand and a hastily penned note. Nobody cared enough to call it an assassination.
 
Chiefs of the French State

1940 - 1946: Philippe Pétain [1]
1946 - 1952: Joseph Darnard [2]
1952 - 1955: Philippe Henriot [3]
1955 - 1964: Jacques Doriot [4]
1964 - 1971:
1971 - 1977:

Proclamation of the 4th Fourth Republic

President of the Fourth Republic

1977 - XXXX:

[1] Appointed President of the Council of Ministers to negotiate an armistice with Germany Petain took the opportunity the purge the French State of the taint of Secularism and Liberalism. The new French State (or at least the southern part under his control) would become increasingly authoritarian and a semi-willing client of the Reich.

Upon the defeat of the Soviet Union in 1942 Petain increasingly pressed Hitler to return the northern parts of mainland France to his control. Hitler was reluctant while the UK was still officially at war with Germany but with the conflict stalemated their was an agreement for a return of control at the end of 1945. Certain conditions were agreed including a cap on the French armed forces, a permanent German garrison in key strategic areas and a quota of French males to be "guest workers" in the Reich for the next decade. Petain was prepared to pay nearly any price to have a reunited France and signed the new treaty.

Feeling his work was done upon the return of the North and feeling his age Petain resigned his position at the beginning of 1946 and passed the Presidency to his successor.

[2] Darnard had been a soldier, a French fascist before it was mainstream, and the founder of the Milice, but the biggest reason he got the presidency was he wasn't Pierre Laval, a man with many enemies and who was irking the Germans. The two men would glare at each other over the government tables as they continued to keep France on an even keel, which meant further purges of people who didn't fit Nazi ideology, further crackdowns and Milice on every doorstep (or so the propaganda went), and a construction of an independent French military force. Darnard liked Nazi ideas but didn't like Germans, and dreamed of reclaiming the colonies lost to the Free French.

It's possible Darnard could have tried to retake Francophonic North Africa, a weak point in the Free French Empire, in 1951 - however, that was when Laval attempted a coup. After three days of confused fighting in Paris, Darnard emerged triumphant but a chunk of his government & civil service were dead or in camps. (This had been exactly what MI6 and SOE wanted - it would emerge in the 1980s that they had assisted Laval, lying to him Britain would come to terms if he was in charge, with the assumption he'd lose but distract Darnard from his reconquest.) The chaos and resulting economic slump was embarrassing, and in early 1952 the German ambassador suggested maybe someone better should be President, and Darnard 'resigned' to 'spend time with his family'.

[3] Philippe Henriot made his name as the jovial director of Vichy's wartime propaganda, and was briefly talked up as Petain's successor. A fervent Catholic who had more Maurras than Doriot in him, Petain's retirement put him in an awkward position, and he accepted a posting as Ambassador to the Holy See rather than fight for scraps. By the time Laval made his gambit, Henriot had been entirely sidelined from the government for several years, finding himself at odds with Darnard's distressingly sincere National Socialism. His fortunes rose with Darnard's fall, and enough voices in Berlin saw him as an appropriately empty suit that his inauguration was entirely anticlimactic. Promising to return France to a state of "Faith, Work, and Family", Henriot secured the loyalty of the GMR and attempted to govern. He did not get very far.

Since the end of the war, the French regime had pursued a economic policy which mainly served to benefit a number of German conglomerates and their local compradors. The Fremdarbeiterprogramm established by Petain's Faustian bargain was disastrous for France's already gutted economy, creating a skilled labor shortage and a mass of embittered workers who saw firsthand the depth of their nation's colonial subservience to the Boches. When French miners in Saarlouis killed their overseer and attempted to cross the border, half the country found itself seized by madness. In the end, the 1954 Revolution was a brief and bloody failure which broke the remaining liberation committees in mainland France; the Germans and their GMR lapdogs scoured the countryside and left utter devastation in their wake. Henriot was found at his desk with a gun in his hand and a hastily penned note. Nobody cared enough to call it an assassination.

[4] France was in the pits and it needed new leadership, so in came Jacques Doriot and the PPF, a gaggle of former Communists who were now firm National Socialists. Doriot would create the new French Politburo to deal with the crisis at hand, as all the other factions were too busy dealing with the aftermath. Vast series of concentration camps were created to deal with the revolutionaries as well as to provide work for those that needed it, any services that could be Nationalised were Nationalised or Corporatised and anyone that could was forcibly conscripted into either the Army or the new ‘Army of Builders’ which would help revive France’s problems.

And so would be the beginning of Doriot’s Five Year Plan to revive France, inspired bizarrely by the same Five Year Plans of the Soviet Union. The Nazi’s would ignore it for the most part, more interested in the ailing health of the Furher than with France, as long German corporations got the slice of bacon there wouldn’t be a fuss. Doriot’s rule would be about purging the ‘toxic elements’ of French society. Hundreds of thousands would be accused of being enemies of the state, tortured, killed or worked to death in concentration camps, children would be ruthlessly indoctrinated into the cause (leading to many families sending there children to Spain to escape) and Doriot would create a cult of personality around him.

In this violent and oppressive atmosphere, the like’s of which France hadn’t really seen Doriot would be obsessed with reviving France’s fortunes and looked to French North Africa. Building up the army, navy and making secret pacts with Italy after 8 years Doriot would strike...and fail miserably. The Free French forces (with Commonwealth help) would easily crush the fascist force. The German’s who had finally dealt with a power struggle in the aftermath of the Furher’s death turned to Doriot regime with vengeance and within the year, Doriot was stripped of his leadership and placed into one of the Concentration Camps he had built.
 
Chiefs of the French State

1940 - 1946: Philippe Pétain [1]
1946 - 1952: Joseph Darnard [2]
1952 - 1955: Philippe Henriot [3]
1955 - 1964: Jacques Doriot [4]
1964 - 1971: Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour [5]
1971 - 1977:

Proclamation of the 4th Fourth Republic

President of the Fourth Republic

1977 - XXXX:

[1] Appointed President of the Council of Ministers to negotiate an armistice with Germany Petain took the opportunity the purge the French State of the taint of Secularism and Liberalism. The new French State (or at least the southern part under his control) would become increasingly authoritarian and a semi-willing client of the Reich.

Upon the defeat of the Soviet Union in 1942 Petain increasingly pressed Hitler to return the northern parts of mainland France to his control. Hitler was reluctant while the UK was still officially at war with Germany but with the conflict stalemated their was an agreement for a return of control at the end of 1945. Certain conditions were agreed including a cap on the French armed forces, a permanent German garrison in key strategic areas and a quota of French males to be "guest workers" in the Reich for the next decade. Petain was prepared to pay nearly any price to have a reunited France and signed the new treaty.

Feeling his work was done upon the return of the North and feeling his age Petain resigned his position at the beginning of 1946 and passed the Presidency to his successor.

[2] Darnard had been a soldier, a French fascist before it was mainstream, and the founder of the Milice, but the biggest reason he got the presidency was he wasn't Pierre Laval, a man with many enemies and who was irking the Germans. The two men would glare at each other over the government tables as they continued to keep France on an even keel, which meant further purges of people who didn't fit Nazi ideology, further crackdowns and Milice on every doorstep (or so the propaganda went), and a construction of an independent French military force. Darnard liked Nazi ideas but didn't like Germans, and dreamed of reclaiming the colonies lost to the Free French.

It's possible Darnard could have tried to retake Francophonic North Africa, a weak point in the Free French Empire, in 1951 - however, that was when Laval attempted a coup. After three days of confused fighting in Paris, Darnard emerged triumphant but a chunk of his government & civil service were dead or in camps. (This had been exactly what MI6 and SOE wanted - it would emerge in the 1980s that they had assisted Laval, lying to him Britain would come to terms if he was in charge, with the assumption he'd lose but distract Darnard from his reconquest.) The chaos and resulting economic slump was embarrassing, and in early 1952 the German ambassador suggested maybe someone better should be President, and Darnard 'resigned' to 'spend time with his family'.

[3] Philippe Henriot made his name as the jovial director of Vichy's wartime propaganda, and was briefly talked up as Petain's successor. A fervent Catholic who had more Maurras than Doriot in him, Petain's retirement put him in an awkward position, and he accepted a posting as Ambassador to the Holy See rather than fight for scraps. By the time Laval made his gambit, Henriot had been entirely sidelined from the government for several years, finding himself at odds with Darnard's distressingly sincere National Socialism. His fortunes rose with Darnard's fall, and enough voices in Berlin saw him as an appropriately empty suit that his inauguration was entirely anticlimactic. Promising to return France to a state of "Faith, Work, and Family", Henriot secured the loyalty of the GMR and attempted to govern. He did not get very far.

Since the end of the war, the French regime had pursued a economic policy which mainly served to benefit a number of German conglomerates and their local compradors. The Fremdarbeiterprogramm established by Petain's Faustian bargain was disastrous for France's already gutted economy, creating a skilled labor shortage and a mass of embittered workers who saw firsthand the depth of their nation's colonial subservience to the Boches. When French miners in Saarlouis killed their overseer and attempted to cross the border, half the country found itself seized by madness. In the end, the 1954 Revolution was a brief and bloody failure which broke the remaining liberation committees in mainland France; the Germans and their GMR lapdogs scoured the countryside and left utter devastation in their wake. Henriot was found at his desk with a gun in his hand and a hastily penned note. Nobody cared enough to call it an assassination.

[4] France was in the pits and it needed new leadership, so in came Jacques Doriot and the PPF, a gaggle of former Communists who were now firm National Socialists. Doriot would create the new French Politburo to deal with the crisis at hand, as all the other factions were too busy dealing with the aftermath. Vast series of concentration camps were created to deal with the revolutionaries as well as to provide work for those that needed it, any services that could be Nationalised were Nationalised or Corporatised and anyone that could was forcibly conscripted into either the Army or the new ‘Army of Builders’ which would help revive France’s problems.

And so would be the beginning of Doriot’s Five Year Plan to revive France, inspired bizarrely by the same Five Year Plans of the Soviet Union. The Nazi’s would ignore it for the most part, more interested in the ailing health of the Furher than with France, as long German corporations got the slice of bacon there wouldn’t be a fuss. Doriot’s rule would be about purging the ‘toxic elements’ of French society. Hundreds of thousands would be accused of being enemies of the state, tortured, killed or worked to death in concentration camps, children would be ruthlessly indoctrinated into the cause (leading to many families sending there children to Spain to escape) and Doriot would create a cult of personality around him.

In this violent and oppressive atmosphere, the like’s of which France hadn’t really seen Doriot would be obsessed with reviving France’s fortunes and looked to French North Africa. Building up the army, navy and making secret pacts with Italy after 8 years Doriot would strike...and fail miserably. The Free French forces (with Commonwealth help) would easily crush the fascist force. The German’s who had finally dealt with a power struggle in the aftermath of the Furher’s death turned to Doriot regime with vengeance and within the year, Doriot was stripped of his leadership and placed into one of the Concentration Camps he had built.


[5] Once he'd been a politician and the head of Radio Vichy, but he'd fallen out of favour long ago and used these old achievements to agitate at parties and in the press that the government just wasn't being far right enough. Sometimes he'd support the new boss, before deciding they were same as the old boss i.e. not doing things the way he thought they should be done. He was allowed to do this and carry on his dwindling law practice due to his irrelevance, until he pissed off Doriot and had to flee for his life to avoid a concentration camp.

The Germans had put the aging Rommel in charge of sorting things out (some historians argue he's the real fifth Chief) and Rommel, new to the French post, believed Tixier-Vignancour was a bigger deal than he actually was. Tixier-Vignancour immediately called for a union of all "genuine fascists" of all stripes to rebuild France after "the bolshevik in black shirts", and he did successfully gather an alliance of petty also-rans of all stripes who, with everyone else of note dead or missing, had their chance. Well, they had their chance two years later, when Rommel retired and all of the messy construction had been done.

The France that Chief Tixier-Vignancour was now reorganised on German administrative and legal lines, and the Milice rebuilt as a SS. Tixier-Vignancour and his alliance couldn't touch that, so instead threw themselves into culture wars that changed their mind every other day, military displays, flag-waving, random changing laws on who could do what and when, and lots of graft. After two years of relative stability under Rommel, this was a mess. Crime and (noticed) corruption shot up; France became the sick man of the Axis. Despite all this, Tixier-Vignancour would be the first Chief since Petain to resign on his own steam, as he apparently got fed up of things not working out as he wanted and left to live in Switzerland. (A lot of money left with him, allegedly.)
 
Chiefs of the French State

1940 - 1946: Philippe Pétain [1]
1946 - 1952: Joseph Darnard [2]
1952 - 1955: Philippe Henriot [3]
1955 - 1964: Jacques Doriot [4]
1964 - 1971: Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour [5]
1971 - 1977: Jean-Pierre Stirbois [6]

Proclamation of the 4th Fourth Republic

President of the Fourth Republic

1977 - XXXX:

[1] Appointed President of the Council of Ministers to negotiate an armistice with Germany Petain took the opportunity the purge the French State of the taint of Secularism and Liberalism. The new French State (or at least the southern part under his control) would become increasingly authoritarian and a semi-willing client of the Reich.

Upon the defeat of the Soviet Union in 1942 Petain increasingly pressed Hitler to return the northern parts of mainland France to his control. Hitler was reluctant while the UK was still officially at war with Germany but with the conflict stalemated their was an agreement for a return of control at the end of 1945. Certain conditions were agreed including a cap on the French armed forces, a permanent German garrison in key strategic areas and a quota of French males to be "guest workers" in the Reich for the next decade. Petain was prepared to pay nearly any price to have a reunited France and signed the new treaty.

Feeling his work was done upon the return of the North and feeling his age Petain resigned his position at the beginning of 1946 and passed the Presidency to his successor.

[2] Darnard had been a soldier, a French fascist before it was mainstream, and the founder of the Milice, but the biggest reason he got the presidency was he wasn't Pierre Laval, a man with many enemies and who was irking the Germans. The two men would glare at each other over the government tables as they continued to keep France on an even keel, which meant further purges of people who didn't fit Nazi ideology, further crackdowns and Milice on every doorstep (or so the propaganda went), and a construction of an independent French military force. Darnard liked Nazi ideas but didn't like Germans, and dreamed of reclaiming the colonies lost to the Free French.

It's possible Darnard could have tried to retake Francophonic North Africa, a weak point in the Free French Empire, in 1951 - however, that was when Laval attempted a coup. After three days of confused fighting in Paris, Darnard emerged triumphant but a chunk of his government & civil service were dead or in camps. (This had been exactly what MI6 and SOE wanted - it would emerge in the 1980s that they had assisted Laval, lying to him Britain would come to terms if he was in charge, with the assumption he'd lose but distract Darnard from his reconquest.) The chaos and resulting economic slump was embarrassing, and in early 1952 the German ambassador suggested maybe someone better should be President, and Darnard 'resigned' to 'spend time with his family'.

[3] Philippe Henriot made his name as the jovial director of Vichy's wartime propaganda, and was briefly talked up as Petain's successor. A fervent Catholic who had more Maurras than Doriot in him, Petain's retirement put him in an awkward position, and he accepted a posting as Ambassador to the Holy See rather than fight for scraps. By the time Laval made his gambit, Henriot had been entirely sidelined from the government for several years, finding himself at odds with Darnard's distressingly sincere National Socialism. His fortunes rose with Darnard's fall, and enough voices in Berlin saw him as an appropriately empty suit that his inauguration was entirely anticlimactic. Promising to return France to a state of "Faith, Work, and Family", Henriot secured the loyalty of the GMR and attempted to govern. He did not get very far.

Since the end of the war, the French regime had pursued a economic policy which mainly served to benefit a number of German conglomerates and their local compradors. The Fremdarbeiterprogramm established by Petain's Faustian bargain was disastrous for France's already gutted economy, creating a skilled labor shortage and a mass of embittered workers who saw firsthand the depth of their nation's colonial subservience to the Boches. When French miners in Saarlouis killed their overseer and attempted to cross the border, half the country found itself seized by madness. In the end, the 1954 Revolution was a brief and bloody failure which broke the remaining liberation committees in mainland France; the Germans and their GMR lapdogs scoured the countryside and left utter devastation in their wake. Henriot was found at his desk with a gun in his hand and a hastily penned note. Nobody cared enough to call it an assassination.

[4] France was in the pits and it needed new leadership, so in came Jacques Doriot and the PPF, a gaggle of former Communists who were now firm National Socialists. Doriot would create the new French Politburo to deal with the crisis at hand, as all the other factions were too busy dealing with the aftermath. Vast series of concentration camps were created to deal with the revolutionaries as well as to provide work for those that needed it, any services that could be Nationalised were Nationalised or Corporatised and anyone that could was forcibly conscripted into either the Army or the new ‘Army of Builders’ which would help revive France’s problems.

And so would be the beginning of Doriot’s Five Year Plan to revive France, inspired bizarrely by the same Five Year Plans of the Soviet Union. The Nazi’s would ignore it for the most part, more interested in the ailing health of the Furher than with France, as long German corporations got the slice of bacon there wouldn’t be a fuss. Doriot’s rule would be about purging the ‘toxic elements’ of French society. Hundreds of thousands would be accused of being enemies of the state, tortured, killed or worked to death in concentration camps, children would be ruthlessly indoctrinated into the cause (leading to many families sending there children to Spain to escape) and Doriot would create a cult of personality around him.

In this violent and oppressive atmosphere, the like’s of which France hadn’t really seen Doriot would be obsessed with reviving France’s fortunes and looked to French North Africa. Building up the army, navy and making secret pacts with Italy after 8 years Doriot would strike...and fail miserably. The Free French forces (with Commonwealth help) would easily crush the fascist force. The German’s who had finally dealt with a power struggle in the aftermath of the Furher’s death turned to Doriot regime with vengeance and within the year, Doriot was stripped of his leadership and placed into one of the Concentration Camps he had built.


[5] Once he'd been a politician and the head of Radio Vichy, but he'd fallen out of favour long ago and used these old achievements to agitate at parties and in the press that the government just wasn't being far right enough. Sometimes he'd support the new boss, before deciding they were same as the old boss i.e. not doing things the way he thought they should be done. He was allowed to do this and carry on his dwindling law practice due to his irrelevance, until he pissed off Doriot and had to flee for his life to avoid a concentration camp.

The Germans had put the aging Rommel in charge of sorting things out (some historians argue he's the real fifth Chief) and Rommel, new to the French post, believed Tixier-Vignancour was a bigger deal than he actually was. Tixier-Vignancour immediately called for a union of all "genuine fascists" of all stripes to rebuild France after "the bolshevik in black shirts", and he did successfully gather an alliance of petty also-rans of all stripes who, with everyone else of note dead or missing, had their chance. Well, they had their chance two years later, when Rommel retired and all of the messy construction had been done.

The France that Chief Tixier-Vignancour was now reorganised on German administrative and legal lines, and the Milice rebuilt as a SS. Tixier-Vignancour and his alliance couldn't touch that, so instead threw themselves into culture wars that changed their mind every other day, military displays, flag-waving, random changing laws on who could do what and when, and lots of graft. After two years of relative stability under Rommel, this was a mess. Crime and (noticed) corruption shot up; France became the sick man of the Axis. Despite all this, Tixier-Vignancour would be the first Chief since Petain to resign on his own steam, as he apparently got fed up of things not working out as he wanted and left to live in Switzerland. (A lot of money left with him, allegedly.)

[6] France’s first leader born after the creation of it’s state Jean-Pierre Stirbois had been an underling and assistant for Tixier-Vignancour, muscling his way into the top job through sheer force of will and youthful charm and also due to most of the rest of regime being rather useless. After Tixier-Vignancour resigned the country was in a mess, corruption was rampant, crime had raised and all around the Axis was collapsing under it’s own weight. Jean-Pierre Stirbois saw the writing on the wall and decided to act (mainly to save his own skin more than anything).

As German troops were sent away to fight the revived Soviet’s, Stirbois would start implementing reform. Corruption would be heavily targeted, Crime would be cracked down upon and Stirbois would start sending feelers out to the Free French and Commonwealth. As Stirbois reached his thirties it looked like France may not collapse into a ditch. But problems would emerge.

Stirbois unlike a lot of the members of the French State wasn’t a raging Anti-Semite, even saying he would support a Jewish State (as long as it was far away from France as possible). Rumours that Stirbois was a Jew spread and in early 1977 it would reach a furious pitch when Jean-Marie Le Pen of the French SS would try to coup Stirbois believing him to be a Jew. Stirbois would manage to avoid the coup and would settle down in Lyon as France collapsed into armed conflict, as Germany tried to deal with the Soviet’s. As Free French and Commonwealth forces landed in France Stirbois would surrender to them as a way to avoid being strung up by Communists or by SS renegades. Stirbois’s last act as Chief was to declare the Fourth French Republic. Not long after Stirbois would slip away in the night and head to Chile, living the rest of his life in exile and constantly on the run from French Anti-Fascists.
 
Chiefs of the French State

1940 - 1946: Philippe Pétain [1]
1946 - 1952: Joseph Darnard [2]
1952 - 1955: Philippe Henriot [3]
1955 - 1964: Jacques Doriot [4]
1964 - 1971: Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour [5]
1971 - 1977: Jean-Pierre Stirbois [6]

Proclamation of the 4th Fourth Republic

President of the Fourth Republic

1977 - XXXX: Guy Mollet [7]

[1] Appointed President of the Council of Ministers to negotiate an armistice with Germany Petain took the opportunity the purge the French State of the taint of Secularism and Liberalism. The new French State (or at least the southern part under his control) would become increasingly authoritarian and a semi-willing client of the Reich.

Upon the defeat of the Soviet Union in 1942 Petain increasingly pressed Hitler to return the northern parts of mainland France to his control. Hitler was reluctant while the UK was still officially at war with Germany but with the conflict stalemated their was an agreement for a return of control at the end of 1945. Certain conditions were agreed including a cap on the French armed forces, a permanent German garrison in key strategic areas and a quota of French males to be "guest workers" in the Reich for the next decade. Petain was prepared to pay nearly any price to have a reunited France and signed the new treaty.

Feeling his work was done upon the return of the North and feeling his age Petain resigned his position at the beginning of 1946 and passed the Presidency to his successor.

[2] Darnard had been a soldier, a French fascist before it was mainstream, and the founder of the Milice, but the biggest reason he got the presidency was he wasn't Pierre Laval, a man with many enemies and who was irking the Germans. The two men would glare at each other over the government tables as they continued to keep France on an even keel, which meant further purges of people who didn't fit Nazi ideology, further crackdowns and Milice on every doorstep (or so the propaganda went), and a construction of an independent French military force. Darnard liked Nazi ideas but didn't like Germans, and dreamed of reclaiming the colonies lost to the Free French.

It's possible Darnard could have tried to retake Francophonic North Africa, a weak point in the Free French Empire, in 1951 - however, that was when Laval attempted a coup. After three days of confused fighting in Paris, Darnard emerged triumphant but a chunk of his government & civil service were dead or in camps. (This had been exactly what MI6 and SOE wanted - it would emerge in the 1980s that they had assisted Laval, lying to him Britain would come to terms if he was in charge, with the assumption he'd lose but distract Darnard from his reconquest.) The chaos and resulting economic slump was embarrassing, and in early 1952 the German ambassador suggested maybe someone better should be President, and Darnard 'resigned' to 'spend time with his family'.

[3] Philippe Henriot made his name as the jovial director of Vichy's wartime propaganda, and was briefly talked up as Petain's successor. A fervent Catholic who had more Maurras than Doriot in him, Petain's retirement put him in an awkward position, and he accepted a posting as Ambassador to the Holy See rather than fight for scraps. By the time Laval made his gambit, Henriot had been entirely sidelined from the government for several years, finding himself at odds with Darnard's distressingly sincere National Socialism. His fortunes rose with Darnard's fall, and enough voices in Berlin saw him as an appropriately empty suit that his inauguration was entirely anticlimactic. Promising to return France to a state of "Faith, Work, and Family", Henriot secured the loyalty of the GMR and attempted to govern. He did not get very far.

Since the end of the war, the French regime had pursued a economic policy which mainly served to benefit a number of German conglomerates and their local compradors. The Fremdarbeiterprogramm established by Petain's Faustian bargain was disastrous for France's already gutted economy, creating a skilled labor shortage and a mass of embittered workers who saw firsthand the depth of their nation's colonial subservience to the Boches. When French miners in Saarlouis killed their overseer and attempted to cross the border, half the country found itself seized by madness. In the end, the 1954 Revolution was a brief and bloody failure which broke the remaining liberation committees in mainland France; the Germans and their GMR lapdogs scoured the countryside and left utter devastation in their wake. Henriot was found at his desk with a gun in his hand and a hastily penned note. Nobody cared enough to call it an assassination.

[4] France was in the pits and it needed new leadership, so in came Jacques Doriot and the PPF, a gaggle of former Communists who were now firm National Socialists. Doriot would create the new French Politburo to deal with the crisis at hand, as all the other factions were too busy dealing with the aftermath. Vast series of concentration camps were created to deal with the revolutionaries as well as to provide work for those that needed it, any services that could be Nationalised were Nationalised or Corporatised and anyone that could was forcibly conscripted into either the Army or the new ‘Army of Builders’ which would help revive France’s problems.

And so would be the beginning of Doriot’s Five Year Plan to revive France, inspired bizarrely by the same Five Year Plans of the Soviet Union. The Nazi’s would ignore it for the most part, more interested in the ailing health of the Furher than with France, as long German corporations got the slice of bacon there wouldn’t be a fuss. Doriot’s rule would be about purging the ‘toxic elements’ of French society. Hundreds of thousands would be accused of being enemies of the state, tortured, killed or worked to death in concentration camps, children would be ruthlessly indoctrinated into the cause (leading to many families sending there children to Spain to escape) and Doriot would create a cult of personality around him.

In this violent and oppressive atmosphere, the like’s of which France hadn’t really seen Doriot would be obsessed with reviving France’s fortunes and looked to French North Africa. Building up the army, navy and making secret pacts with Italy after 8 years Doriot would strike...and fail miserably. The Free French forces (with Commonwealth help) would easily crush the fascist force. The German’s who had finally dealt with a power struggle in the aftermath of the Furher’s death turned to Doriot regime with vengeance and within the year, Doriot was stripped of his leadership and placed into one of the Concentration Camps he had built.


[5] Once he'd been a politician and the head of Radio Vichy, but he'd fallen out of favour long ago and used these old achievements to agitate at parties and in the press that the government just wasn't being far right enough. Sometimes he'd support the new boss, before deciding they were same as the old boss i.e. not doing things the way he thought they should be done. He was allowed to do this and carry on his dwindling law practice due to his irrelevance, until he pissed off Doriot and had to flee for his life to avoid a concentration camp.

The Germans had put the aging Rommel in charge of sorting things out (some historians argue he's the real fifth Chief) and Rommel, new to the French post, believed Tixier-Vignancour was a bigger deal than he actually was. Tixier-Vignancour immediately called for a union of all "genuine fascists" of all stripes to rebuild France after "the bolshevik in black shirts", and he did successfully gather an alliance of petty also-rans of all stripes who, with everyone else of note dead or missing, had their chance. Well, they had their chance two years later, when Rommel retired and all of the messy construction had been done.

The France that Chief Tixier-Vignancour was now reorganised on German administrative and legal lines, and the Milice rebuilt as a SS. Tixier-Vignancour and his alliance couldn't touch that, so instead threw themselves into culture wars that changed their mind every other day, military displays, flag-waving, random changing laws on who could do what and when, and lots of graft. After two years of relative stability under Rommel, this was a mess. Crime and (noticed) corruption shot up; France became the sick man of the Axis. Despite all this, Tixier-Vignancour would be the first Chief since Petain to resign on his own steam, as he apparently got fed up of things not working out as he wanted and left to live in Switzerland. (A lot of money left with him, allegedly.)

[6] France’s first leader born after the creation of it’s state Jean-Pierre Stirbois had been an underling and assistant for Tixier-Vignancour, muscling his way into the top job through sheer force of will and youthful charm and also due to most of the rest of regime being rather useless. After Tixier-Vignancour resigned the country was in a mess, corruption was rampant, crime had raised and all around the Axis was collapsing under it’s own weight. Jean-Pierre Stirbois saw the writing on the wall and decided to act (mainly to save his own skin more than anything).

As German troops were sent away to fight the revived Soviet’s, Stirbois would start implementing reform. Corruption would be heavily targeted, Crime would be cracked down upon and Stirbois would start sending feelers out to the Free French and Commonwealth. As Stirbois reached his thirties it looked like France may not collapse into a ditch. But problems would emerge.

Stirbois unlike a lot of the members of the French State wasn’t a raging Anti-Semite, even saying he would support a Jewish State (as long as it was far away from France as possible). Rumours that Stirbois was a Jew spread and in early 1977 it would reach a furious pitch when Jean-Marie Le Pen of the French SS would try to coup Stirbois believing him to be a Jew. Stirbois would manage to avoid the coup and would settle down in Lyon as France collapsed into armed conflict, as Germany tried to deal with the Soviet’s. As Free French and Commonwealth forces landed in France Stirbois would surrender to them as a way to avoid being strung up by Communists or by SS renegades. Stirbois’s last act as Chief was to declare the Fourth French Republic. Not long after Stirbois would slip away in the night and head to Chile, living the rest of his life in exile and constantly on the run from French Anti-Fascists.


[7] The first President of the new Republic (as he was President of the Free French Empire), he was cut down early on from a heart attack but was able to bring in elections and a new constitution & legal framework before he passed.

He'd been a socialist before having to flee with his resistance cell to North Africa, where he slowly transitioned into a centre-right figure - like many who had a damascene conversion, the Empire was necessary to ensure France could be liberated one day and socialism would lose them that empire. (Indeed, the Imperial Socialist movement failed as the "Imperial" part stuck out for the Arabs and Africans) He slowly rose to power in the Libertie Party, helping pass social reforms and being given the poisoned chalice of granting voting rights to property-owning, 'educated' Arabs and Africans.

His big move was to bring all the legal frameworks of the Empire back to the motherland, which he succeeded in, and an explosion of long-suppressed art, culture, and youth rebellion ran amok. The biggest problem Mollet would now have is that the Empire was bigger and richer than France, and he couldn't, as he wanted, simply move back to Paris and focus solely on the motherland. To his frustration, the "colonies" were making demands. It is handy for him he died before having to figure this out, and it's unlikely he'd have been happy to see modern France dominated by North Africa.
 
Top Horror Films Of The 2010s

1) At the Mountains of Madness (2014), dir. Guillermo del Toro [1]

2)

3)

4)

5)


[1] After making The Hobbit, del Toro could get anything else he wanted made and he wanted to do a pricy, R-rated adaptation of the Lovecraft horror story. Starring Tom Cruise as William Dyer on an increasingly warped expedition into the Antarctic, it is a technical tour-de-force of stunning creature effects, nightmarish surrealism, and shots of horrifying isolation in the cold & dark. Unfortunately for Universal, there wasn't that big an audience for a pircy, R-rated adaptation of a Lovecraft horror story even with del Toro's name attached and the film did not make its money back.
 
Top Horror Films Of The 2010s

1) At the Mountains of Madness (2014), dir. Guillermo del Toro [1]

2) Creature of the Black Lagoon (2017), dir. Ridley Scott [2]

3)

4)

5)


[1] After making The Hobbit, del Toro could get anything else he wanted made and he wanted to do a pricy, R-rated adaptation of the Lovecraft horror story. Starring Tom Cruise as William Dyer on an increasingly warped expedition into the Antarctic, it is a technical tour-de-force of stunning creature effects, nightmarish surrealism, and shots of horrifying isolation in the cold & dark. Unfortunately for Universal, there wasn't that big an audience for a pircy, R-rated adaptation of a Lovecraft horror story even with del Toro's name attached and the film did not make its money back.

[2] With out a doubt the lion's share of the 'Horror' for Universal's "Hammer Revival universe" went into the 2016 remake of one of its most campy originals. Originally meant to be the long-awaited Dracula remake, production was pushed back yet again after yet another Director/Actor clash saw Nikolaj Coster-Waldau drop out. The end result was the accelerated production of 'Creature', ultimately to its benefit. Forced to keep Gill-Man's onscreen presence to a minimum because of actor Peter Mayhew's trouble with movement, a group of scientists are sent to investigate a mysterious Apex predator in the Amazon, only to be slowly picked off. A series a small plot-points about possible weaknesses to the Creature constantly come up short chagrin of lead actor Nathan Fillion. The film's flurry of awards, eerie, dark jungle setting, inventive monster design and director has led many to call Creature the Alien sequel we should have got.
 
Top Horror Films Of The 2010s

1) At the Mountains of Madness (2014), dir. Guillermo del Toro [1]

2) Creature of the Black Lagoon (2017), dir. Ridley Scott [2]

3) Behind the Wall (2013), dir. Ben Wheatley [3]

4)

5)


[1] After making The Hobbit, del Toro could get anything else he wanted made and he wanted to do a pricy, R-rated adaptation of the Lovecraft horror story. Starring Tom Cruise as William Dyer on an increasingly warped expedition into the Antarctic, it is a technical tour-de-force of stunning creature effects, nightmarish surrealism, and shots of horrifying isolation in the cold & dark. Unfortunately for Universal, there wasn't that big an audience for a pircy, R-rated adaptation of a Lovecraft horror story even with del Toro's name attached and the film did not make its money back.

[2] With out a doubt the lion's share of the 'Horror' for Universal's "Hammer Revival universe" went into the 2016 remake of one of its most campy originals. Originally meant to be the long-awaited Dracula remake, production was pushed back yet again after yet another Director/Actor clash saw Nikolaj Coster-Waldau drop out. The end result was the accelerated production of 'Creature', ultimately to its benefit. Forced to keep Gill-Man's onscreen presence to a minimum because of actor Peter Mayhew's trouble with movement, a group of scientists are sent to investigate a mysterious Apex predator in the Amazon, only to be slowly picked off. A series a small plot-points about possible weaknesses to the Creature constantly come up short chagrin of lead actor Nathan Fillion. The film's flurry of awards, eerie, dark jungle setting, inventive monster design and director has led many to call Creature the Alien sequel we should have got.

[3] In the early 80s DDR a young man discovers what he believes to be an angel crawling wounded away form the Berlin Wall. He attempts to hide it from the authorities but is it what he thinks it is? After all why would an angel subsist only on raw bloody flesh? And where are the local children disappearing to?

An oppressive, doom-laden film Wheatley crafts an urban horror of unearthly monsters, Kafkaesque bureaucracy and omnipresent Stasi. A minimalist synth score only adds to the atmosphere as the movie spirals to a bleak, bloody finale
 
Top Horror Films Of The 2010s

1) At the Mountains of Madness (2014), dir. Guillermo del Toro [1]

2) Creature of the Black Lagoon (2017), dir. Ridley Scott [2]

3) Behind the Wall (2013), dir. Ben Wheatley [3]

4) Shin Yokai (2017), dir. Hideaki Anno [4]

5)


[1] After making The Hobbit, del Toro could get anything else he wanted made and he wanted to do a pricy, R-rated adaptation of the Lovecraft horror story. Starring Tom Cruise as William Dyer on an increasingly warped expedition into the Antarctic, it is a technical tour-de-force of stunning creature effects, nightmarish surrealism, and shots of horrifying isolation in the cold & dark. Unfortunately for Universal, there wasn't that big an audience for a pircy, R-rated adaptation of a Lovecraft horror story even with del Toro's name attached and the film did not make its money back.

[2] With out a doubt the lion's share of the 'Horror' for Universal's "Hammer Revival universe" went into the 2016 remake of one of its most campy originals. Originally meant to be the long-awaited Dracula remake, production was pushed back yet again after yet another Director/Actor clash saw Nikolaj Coster-Waldau drop out. The end result was the accelerated production of 'Creature', ultimately to its benefit. Forced to keep Gill-Man's onscreen presence to a minimum because of actor Peter Mayhew's trouble with movement, a group of scientists are sent to investigate a mysterious Apex predator in the Amazon, only to be slowly picked off. A series a small plot-points about possible weaknesses to the Creature constantly come up short chagrin of lead actor Nathan Fillion. The film's flurry of awards, eerie, dark jungle setting, inventive monster design and director has led many to call Creature the Alien sequel we should have got.

[3] In the early 80s DDR a young man discovers what he believes to be an angel crawling wounded away form the Berlin Wall. He attempts to hide it from the authorities but is it what he thinks it is? After all why would an angel subsist only on raw bloody flesh? And where are the local children disappearing to?

An oppressive, doom-laden film Wheatley crafts an urban horror of unearthly monsters, Kafkaesque bureaucracy and omnipresent Stasi. A minimalist synth score only adds to the atmosphere as the movie spirals to a bleak, bloody finale


[4] When Toho rejected his treatment for a Godzilla reboot, Anno decided to do it anyway - science gone amok has created a real-life, ever evolving yokai that repeatedly storms across the nation, bleeding and screaming in pain and shattering everything in its path. As Japan falls, only a team of young mavericks ignoring the usual hidebound systems can come up with any kind of response. In earlier drafts they have a 'clean' victory, but Anno was in a depressive mood by now and they fail to stop the yokai spawning faceless goblin men. The film ends with Japan being stalked by a plague of monsters, the heroes having to continue working for the long haul as society begins to collapse.
 
Top Horror Films Of The 2010s

1) At the Mountains of Madness (2014), dir. Guillermo del Toro [1]

2) Creature of the Black Lagoon (2017), dir. Ridley Scott [2]

3) Behind the Wall (2013), dir. Ben Wheatley [3]

4) Shin Yokai (2017), dir. Hideaki Anno [4]

5) Changeling (2018), dir. Nora Twomey [5]


[1] After making The Hobbit, del Toro could get anything else he wanted made and he wanted to do a pricy, R-rated adaptation of the Lovecraft horror story. Starring Tom Cruise as William Dyer on an increasingly warped expedition into the Antarctic, it is a technical tour-de-force of stunning creature effects, nightmarish surrealism, and shots of horrifying isolation in the cold & dark. Unfortunately for Universal, there wasn't that big an audience for a pircy, R-rated adaptation of a Lovecraft horror story even with del Toro's name attached and the film did not make its money back.

[2] With out a doubt the lion's share of the 'Horror' for Universal's "Hammer Revival universe" went into the 2016 remake of one of its most campy originals. Originally meant to be the long-awaited Dracula remake, production was pushed back yet again after yet another Director/Actor clash saw Nikolaj Coster-Waldau drop out. The end result was the accelerated production of 'Creature', ultimately to its benefit. Forced to keep Gill-Man's onscreen presence to a minimum because of actor Peter Mayhew's trouble with movement, a group of scientists are sent to investigate a mysterious Apex predator in the Amazon, only to be slowly picked off. A series a small plot-points about possible weaknesses to the Creature constantly come up short chagrin of lead actor Nathan Fillion. The film's flurry of awards, eerie, dark jungle setting, inventive monster design and director has led many to call Creature the Alien sequel we should have got.

[3] In the early 80s DDR a young man discovers what he believes to be an angel crawling wounded away form the Berlin Wall. He attempts to hide it from the authorities but is it what he thinks it is? After all why would an angel subsist only on raw bloody flesh? And where are the local children disappearing to?

An oppressive, doom-laden film Wheatley crafts an urban horror of unearthly monsters, Kafkaesque bureaucracy and omnipresent Stasi. A minimalist synth score only adds to the atmosphere as the movie spirals to a bleak, bloody finale


[4] When Toho rejected his treatment for a Godzilla reboot, Anno decided to do it anyway - science gone amok has created a real-life, ever evolving yokai that repeatedly storms across the nation, bleeding and screaming in pain and shattering everything in its path. As Japan falls, only a team of young mavericks ignoring the usual hidebound systems can come up with any kind of response. In earlier drafts they have a 'clean' victory, but Anno was in a depressive mood by now and they fail to stop the yokai spawning faceless goblin men. The film ends with Japan being stalked by a plague of monsters, the heroes having to continue working for the long haul as society begins to collapse.

[5] Ireland, 1923. Dealing with the aftermath of both the First World War and the horrors of the Irish Independence and Civil War the O’Connor family try to raise there children the best they can in post war landscape. However when a handsome stranger comes to the town and one of there children returns from the moors acting strange the O’Conner’s realise something is wrong and decide to investigate as the town gets restless.

Originally conceived as a live action film, Nora Twomey would see the script and pitch it as an animated film instead. A creepy and macabre film it would gain praise for it’s lush visuals, haunting performances (particularly from Jamie Nesbitt as Arthur O’Connor) and creepy music provided by Jonny Greenwood. It would be nominated for Best Animated Film at the 2020 Academy Awards (losing to Toy Story 4).
 
Top Horror Films Of The 2010s

1) At the Mountains of Madness (2014), dir. Guillermo del Toro [1]

2) Creature of the Black Lagoon (2017), dir. Ridley Scott [2]

3) Behind the Wall (2013), dir. Ben Wheatley [3]

4) Shin Yokai (2017), dir. Hideaki Anno [4]

5) Changeling (2018), dir. Norah Twomey [5]

6) The Demon's Land (2016), dir. Jennifer Kent [6]


[1] After making The Hobbit, del Toro could get anything else he wanted made and he wanted to do a pricy, R-rated adaptation of the Lovecraft horror story. Starring Tom Cruise as William Dyer on an increasingly warped expedition into the Antarctic, it is a technical tour-de-force of stunning creature effects, nightmarish surrealism, and shots of horrifying isolation in the cold & dark. Unfortunately for Universal, there wasn't that big an audience for a pircy, R-rated adaptation of a Lovecraft horror story even with del Toro's name attached and the film did not make its money back.

[2] With out a doubt the lion's share of the 'Horror' for Universal's "Hammer Revival universe" went into the 2016 remake of one of its most campy originals. Originally meant to be the long-awaited Dracula remake, production was pushed back yet again after yet another Director/Actor clash saw Nikolaj Coster-Waldau drop out. The end result was the accelerated production of 'Creature', ultimately to its benefit. Forced to keep Gill-Man's onscreen presence to a minimum because of actor Peter Mayhew's trouble with movement, a group of scientists are sent to investigate a mysterious Apex predator in the Amazon, only to be slowly picked off. A series a small plot-points about possible weaknesses to the Creature constantly come up short chagrin of lead actor Nathan Fillion. The film's flurry of awards, eerie, dark jungle setting, inventive monster design and director has led many to call Creature the Alien sequel we should have got.

[3] In the early 80s DDR a young man discovers what he believes to be an angel crawling wounded away form the Berlin Wall. He attempts to hide it from the authorities but is it what he thinks it is? After all why would an angel subsist only on raw bloody flesh? And where are the local children disappearing to?

An oppressive, doom-laden film Wheatley crafts an urban horror of unearthly monsters, Kafkaesque bureaucracy and omnipresent Stasi. A minimalist synth score only adds to the atmosphere as the movie spirals to a bleak, bloody finale


[4] When Toho rejected his treatment for a Godzilla reboot, Anno decided to do it anyway - science gone amok has created a real-life, ever evolving yokai that repeatedly storms across the nation, bleeding and screaming in pain and shattering everything in its path. As Japan falls, only a team of young mavericks ignoring the usual hidebound systems can come up with any kind of response. In earlier drafts they have a 'clean' victory, but Anno was in a depressive mood by now and they fail to stop the yokai spawning faceless goblin men. The film ends with Japan being stalked by a plague of monsters, the heroes having to continue working for the long haul as society begins to collapse.

[5] Ireland, 1923. Dealing with the aftermath of both the First World War and the horrors of the Irish Independence and Civil War the O’Connor family try to raise there children the best they can in post war landscape. However when a handsome stranger comes to the town and one of there children returns from the moors acting strange the O’Conner’s realise something is wrong and decide to investigate as the town gets restless.

Originally conceived as a live action film, Nora Twomey would see the script and pitch it as an animated film instead. A creepy and macabre film it would gain praise for it’s lush visuals, haunting performances (particularly from Jamie Nesbitt as Arthur O’Connor) and creepy music provided by Jonny Greenwood. It would be nominated for Best Animated Film at the 2020 Academy Awards (losing to Toy Story 4).

[6] 'Travelers lost in a land that would make Aguirre run screaming back to his monkeys,' as one critic put it. A deeply controversial film, it starts as what seems to be a simple if horrific retelling of the Alexander Pearce story, following Katie O'Sullivan, a young Irish convict woman (Saoirse Ronan) roped into a doomed escape attempt led by Jonathan White (Richard Roxborough,) whose desperation to survive leads the convicts down the path of murder and cannibalism.

However, this wasn't dense enough for Kent, who decided to enlist Russell Crowe as Captain Howard, a figure of the law who proves to be more terrifying than the cannibal murderer. By the halfway point Katie has already been subject to two horrific assaults by lawmen and criminals, and is forced to make a strange alliance with an Indigenous man- 'Harry'- played by David Gulpilil.

At this point, the film is explicitly dealing with the brutality of empire, misogyny and racism. And then there's the suggestion that there's something else in the forests as well.

Three hours and a thousand years long, it is not a film to try and watch alone.
 
Top Horror Films Of The 2010s

1) At the Mountains of Madness (2014), dir. Guillermo del Toro [1]

2) Creature of the Black Lagoon (2017), dir. Ridley Scott [2]

3) Behind the Wall (2013), dir. Ben Wheatley [3]

4) Shin Yokai (2017), dir. Hideaki Anno [4]

5) Changeling (2018), dir. Norah Twomey [5]

6) The Demon's Land (2016), dir. Jennifer Kent [6]

7) Evangelion (2010), dir. David Fincher [7]


[1] After making The Hobbit, del Toro could get anything else he wanted made and he wanted to do a pricy, R-rated adaptation of the Lovecraft horror story. Starring Tom Cruise as William Dyer on an increasingly warped expedition into the Antarctic, it is a technical tour-de-force of stunning creature effects, nightmarish surrealism, and shots of horrifying isolation in the cold & dark. Unfortunately for Universal, there wasn't that big an audience for a pircy, R-rated adaptation of a Lovecraft horror story even with del Toro's name attached and the film did not make its money back.

[2] With out a doubt the lion's share of the 'Horror' for Universal's "Hammer Revival universe" went into the 2016 remake of one of its most campy originals. Originally meant to be the long-awaited Dracula remake, production was pushed back yet again after yet another Director/Actor clash saw Nikolaj Coster-Waldau drop out. The end result was the accelerated production of 'Creature', ultimately to its benefit. Forced to keep Gill-Man's onscreen presence to a minimum because of actor Peter Mayhew's trouble with movement, a group of scientists are sent to investigate a mysterious Apex predator in the Amazon, only to be slowly picked off. A series a small plot-points about possible weaknesses to the Creature constantly come up short chagrin of lead actor Nathan Fillion. The film's flurry of awards, eerie, dark jungle setting, inventive monster design and director has led many to call Creature the Alien sequel we should have got.

[3] In the early 80s DDR a young man discovers what he believes to be an angel crawling wounded away form the Berlin Wall. He attempts to hide it from the authorities but is it what he thinks it is? After all why would an angel subsist only on raw bloody flesh? And where are the local children disappearing to?

An oppressive, doom-laden film Wheatley crafts an urban horror of unearthly monsters, Kafkaesque bureaucracy and omnipresent Stasi. A minimalist synth score only adds to the atmosphere as the movie spirals to a bleak, bloody finale


[4] When Toho rejected his treatment for a Godzilla reboot, Anno decided to do it anyway - science gone amok has created a real-life, ever evolving yokai that repeatedly storms across the nation, bleeding and screaming in pain and shattering everything in its path. As Japan falls, only a team of young mavericks ignoring the usual hidebound systems can come up with any kind of response. In earlier drafts they have a 'clean' victory, but Anno was in a depressive mood by now and they fail to stop the yokai spawning faceless goblin men. The film ends with Japan being stalked by a plague of monsters, the heroes having to continue working for the long haul as society begins to collapse.

[5] Ireland, 1923. Dealing with the aftermath of both the First World War and the horrors of the Irish Independence and Civil War the O’Connor family try to raise there children the best they can in post war landscape. However when a handsome stranger comes to the town and one of there children returns from the moors acting strange the O’Conner’s realise something is wrong and decide to investigate as the town gets restless.

Originally conceived as a live action film, Nora Twomey would see the script and pitch it as an animated film instead. A creepy and macabre film it would gain praise for it’s lush visuals, haunting performances (particularly from Jamie Nesbitt as Arthur O’Connor) and creepy music provided by Jonny Greenwood. It would be nominated for Best Animated Film at the 2020 Academy Awards (losing to Toy Story 4).

[6] 'Travelers lost in a land that would make Aguirre run screaming back to his monkeys,' as one critic put it. A deeply controversial film, it starts as what seems to be a simple if horrific retelling of the Alexander Pearce story, following Katie O'Sullivan, a young Irish convict woman (Saoirse Ronan) roped into a doomed escape attempt led by Jonathan White (Richard Roxborough,) whose desperation to survive leads the convicts down the path of murder and cannibalism.

However, this wasn't dense enough for Kent, who decided to enlist Russell Crowe as Captain Howard, a figure of the law who proves to be more terrifying than the cannibal murderer. By the halfway point Katie has already been subject to two horrific assaults by lawmen and criminals, and is forced to make a strange alliance with an Indigenous man- 'Harry'- played by David Gulpilil.

At this point, the film is explicitly dealing with the brutality of empire, misogyny and racism. And then there's the suggestion that there's something else in the forests as well.

Three hours and a thousand years long, it is not a film to try and watch alone.

[7] How Fincher settled on Evangelion as his next prestige project (or how he even got the live-action adaptation out of development hell) is still unclear - what is clear is that a film that initially faced bitter vitriol for 'pandering' to American audiences and, among those American audiences, widespread confusion at 'the new transformers movie with sex in it', has gradually settled in as high-concept psychological horror for the ages.

Purists (chief among them Anno himself, whose decision to steamroll Toho with Shin Yokai is sometimes attributed to frustration with Fincher's 'mistreatment' of his own work) contend that aging up the characters changes the dynamic too much, that the angel-hunting of early episodes and the various subplots are far too condensed, so on - it would be hard to put Evangelion higher on this list with such enduring discontent.

But Eisenberg's Gabriel Anker is - if not quite Shinji - still a horror protagonist for the ages, a chosen one desperately trying to escape his own skin, a child soldier unable to grow up, and by the end of the film sunken into near-catatonia under the weight of his own failures. Burdened by warfare, the film slowly but surely switches from the gory splatterfest Americans were expecting to a cold, fatiguing, mindfuck, as the toxic dependencies Anker has developed inevitably - violently - breaks down.

Most viewers would agree at the end with Kate Rose (Rooney Mara) that Fincher's Evangelion manages to provide a particular window into the human soul that is... disgusting.
 
Okay, last one for this list, and a nice easy one to follow


Top Horror Films Of The 2010s

1) At the Mountains of Madness (2014), dir. Guillermo del Toro [1]

2) Creature of the Black Lagoon (2017), dir. Ridley Scott [2]

3) Behind the Wall (2013), dir. Ben Wheatley [3]

4) Shin Yokai (2017), dir. Hideaki Anno [4]

5) Changeling (2018), dir. Norah Twomey [5]

6) The Demon's Land (2016), dir. Jennifer Kent [6]

7) Evangelion (2010), dir. David Fincher [7]

8) From Below They Devour (2016), dir. Jonathan English [8]

[1] After making The Hobbit, del Toro could get anything else he wanted made and he wanted to do a pricy, R-rated adaptation of the Lovecraft horror story. Starring Tom Cruise as William Dyer on an increasingly warped expedition into the Antarctic, it is a technical tour-de-force of stunning creature effects, nightmarish surrealism, and shots of horrifying isolation in the cold & dark. Unfortunately for Universal, there wasn't that big an audience for a pircy, R-rated adaptation of a Lovecraft horror story even with del Toro's name attached and the film did not make its money back.

[2] With out a doubt the lion's share of the 'Horror' for Universal's "Hammer Revival universe" went into the 2016 remake of one of its most campy originals. Originally meant to be the long-awaited Dracula remake, production was pushed back yet again after yet another Director/Actor clash saw Nikolaj Coster-Waldau drop out. The end result was the accelerated production of 'Creature', ultimately to its benefit. Forced to keep Gill-Man's onscreen presence to a minimum because of actor Peter Mayhew's trouble with movement, a group of scientists are sent to investigate a mysterious Apex predator in the Amazon, only to be slowly picked off. A series a small plot-points about possible weaknesses to the Creature constantly come up short chagrin of lead actor Nathan Fillion. The film's flurry of awards, eerie, dark jungle setting, inventive monster design and director has led many to call Creature the Alien sequel we should have got.

[3] In the early 80s DDR a young man discovers what he believes to be an angel crawling wounded away form the Berlin Wall. He attempts to hide it from the authorities but is it what he thinks it is? After all why would an angel subsist only on raw bloody flesh? And where are the local children disappearing to?

An oppressive, doom-laden film Wheatley crafts an urban horror of unearthly monsters, Kafkaesque bureaucracy and omnipresent Stasi. A minimalist synth score only adds to the atmosphere as the movie spirals to a bleak, bloody finale


[4] When Toho rejected his treatment for a Godzilla reboot, Anno decided to do it anyway - science gone amok has created a real-life, ever evolving yokai that repeatedly storms across the nation, bleeding and screaming in pain and shattering everything in its path. As Japan falls, only a team of young mavericks ignoring the usual hidebound systems can come up with any kind of response. In earlier drafts they have a 'clean' victory, but Anno was in a depressive mood by now and they fail to stop the yokai spawning faceless goblin men. The film ends with Japan being stalked by a plague of monsters, the heroes having to continue working for the long haul as society begins to collapse.

[5] Ireland, 1923. Dealing with the aftermath of both the First World War and the horrors of the Irish Independence and Civil War the O’Connor family try to raise there children the best they can in post war landscape. However when a handsome stranger comes to the town and one of there children returns from the moors acting strange the O’Conner’s realise something is wrong and decide to investigate as the town gets restless.

Originally conceived as a live action film, Nora Twomey would see the script and pitch it as an animated film instead. A creepy and macabre film it would gain praise for it’s lush visuals, haunting performances (particularly from Jamie Nesbitt as Arthur O’Connor) and creepy music provided by Jonny Greenwood. It would be nominated for Best Animated Film at the 2020 Academy Awards (losing to Toy Story 4).

[6] 'Travelers lost in a land that would make Aguirre run screaming back to his monkeys,' as one critic put it. A deeply controversial film, it starts as what seems to be a simple if horrific retelling of the Alexander Pearce story, following Katie O'Sullivan, a young Irish convict woman (Saoirse Ronan) roped into a doomed escape attempt led by Jonathan White (Richard Roxborough,) whose desperation to survive leads the convicts down the path of murder and cannibalism.

However, this wasn't dense enough for Kent, who decided to enlist Russell Crowe as Captain Howard, a figure of the law who proves to be more terrifying than the cannibal murderer. By the halfway point Katie has already been subject to two horrific assaults by lawmen and criminals, and is forced to make a strange alliance with an Indigenous man- 'Harry'- played by David Gulpilil.

At this point, the film is explicitly dealing with the brutality of empire, misogyny and racism. And then there's the suggestion that there's something else in the forests as well.

Three hours and a thousand years long, it is not a film to try and watch alone.

[7] How Fincher settled on Evangelion as his next prestige project (or how he even got the live-action adaptation out of development hell) is still unclear - what is clear is that a film that initially faced bitter vitriol for 'pandering' to American audiences and, among those American audiences, widespread confusion at 'the new transformers movie with sex in it', has gradually settled in as high-concept psychological horror for the ages.

Purists (chief among them Anno himself, whose decision to steamroll Toho with Shin Yokai is sometimes attributed to frustration with Fincher's 'mistreatment' of his own work) contend that aging up the characters changes the dynamic too much, that the angel-hunting of early episodes and the various subplots are far too condensed, so on - it would be hard to put Evangelion higher on this list with such enduring discontent.

But Eisenberg's Gabriel Anker is - if not quite Shinji - still a horror protagonist for the ages, a chosen one desperately trying to escape his own skin, a child soldier unable to grow up, and by the end of the film sunken into near-catatonia under the weight of his own failures. Burdened by warfare, the film slowly but surely switches from the gory splatterfest Americans were expecting to a cold, fatiguing, mindfuck, as the toxic dependencies Anker has developed inevitably - violently - breaks down.

Most viewers would agree at the end with Kate Rose (Rooney Mara) that Fincher's Evangelion manages to provide a particular window into the human soul that is... disgusting.

[8] An extremely divisive, so 'bad/gory its good' zombie-war thriller. Initially, starting life as two separate WW1 commemorative projects suddenly hijacked by Hollywood investors and welded together - which clearly shows through the sudden knee-jerk twist from serious war story to zombie survival half way through. A group of French soldiers are trapped underground in one of the Forts during the Battle of Verdun, they all undergo intense psychological strain as the viewers are shown the realities of war beneath the battlefield, abandonment and eventually chemical warfare. However, when the ominous scratching at the wall is suddenly revealed to be zombies from an experimental new gas, the soldiers are now forced to gun down hundreds of their own zombified comrades, ultimately in vain. The movie finishes with the turned soldiers taking revenge on the advancing Germans who exposed them to the gas in the first place.

-----------------

Leaders of the Conservative Party

1945-1949:
1949-1960:
1960-1962:
1962-1968:
1968-1975:
1975-1978:
1978-1986:
1986-1987:
1987-1997:
1997-2000:
 
Leaders of the Conservative Party

1945-1949: Winston Churchill [1]
1949-1960:
1960-1962:
1962-1968:
1968-1975:
1975-1978:
1978-1986:
1986-1987:
1987-1997:
1997-2000:

[1] As peace settled across Europe it was time for the long delayed General election to take place. Churchill was confident that his status as Britain's wartime leader would be enough to see the Conservatives returned with a comfortable majority. However some key aides were more cautious, noting the growing consensus within the country for change and that the the Labour manifesto was well developed to feed into that.

A more vigorous campaign strategy was deployed, giving concrete proposals for new welfare provisions, comprehensive health insurance and some retention of a state role in industry and the economy but not to the extent of Labour. Churchill memorably quipped it was "Toryism with a Human Face", an informal slogan which stuck.

Churchill himself was kept on a tight as leash as possible, difficult though that could be with Winston. He was at least talked out of describing Labour as requiring a "Gestapo" to implement it's policies, something that was seen as a step too far with the horrors of the Third Reich still fresh.

The Conservatives were content with the campaign and as the results began to pour in where upbeat that they would win a comfortable majority. It soon became clear that the election had not gone entirely to plan, they had retained a majority alright, a majority of 3. Labour had come within a whisker of taking the election (indeed they would narrowly win the populate vote) while the Liberals and National Liberals had been decimated. While a victory it was not one which would make implementing a new vision for Britain easy.

There were rumblings from within the party that the result was primarily down to Churchill, who was not seen as a man who would "win the peace". However making a move against the Bulldog with the war not fully won and the Potsdam Conference ongoing there was little appetite to depose him.

His near defeat shook Churchill and he showed a remarkable lack of energy following the election, his private papers would detail a severe occurrence of the "Black Dog" which hampered him severely. Party stalwarts such as Leo Amery and Anthony Eden did a great deal of the spade work in forcing through the new Conservative agenda, often in conjunction with the National Liberals with whom they had arranged a de facto confidence and supply are arrangement.

The Conservative government shuffled along for the next few years with the public becoming more and more disenchanted with a party that seemed to be unable or unwilling to make the country fit for heroes that had been promised. But fittingly it was a foreign affair that was to finally finish off Churchill, when the Communists managed to win the Greek Civil War. This was achieved through covert Soviet aid as they had decided to ignore an informal agreement on spheres of influence due to Churchill's weak position and lack of energy. Labour made much hay with the Tories weaknesses both at home and abroad attacks which were sticking and with an election due within the year the Conservatives finally blinked.

The knife was quickly wielded by the men in grey suits and Churchill was unceremoniously dumped. A sad end for the man who led Britain through the 2nd World War but not one who had the skills or ability to rebuild it in peacetime.

EDIT: For the love of God snip that essay out of the next reply!
 
Leaders of the Conservative Party

1945-1949: Winston Churchill [1]
1949-1960: Rab Butler [2]
1960-1962:
1962-1968:
1968-1975:
1975-1978:
1978-1986:
1986-1987:
1987-1997:
1997-2000:

[1].
neonduke said:
[1] As peace settled across Europe it was time for the long delayed General election to take place. Churchill was confident that his status as Britain's wartime leader would be enough to see the Conservatives returned with a comfortable majority. However some key aides were more cautious, noting the growing consensus within the country for change and that the the Labour manifesto was well developed to feed into that.

A more vigorous campaign strategy was deployed, giving concrete proposals for new welfare provisions, comprehensive health insurance and some retention of a state role in industry and the economy but not to the extent of Labour. Churchill memorably quipped it was "Toryism with a Human Face", an informal slogan which stuck.

Churchill himself was kept on a tight as leash as possible, difficult though that could be with Winston. He was at least talked out of describing Labour as requiring a "Gestapo" to implement it's policies, something that was seen as a step too far with the horrors of the Third Reich still fresh.

The Conservatives were content with the campaign and as the results began to pour in where upbeat that they would win a comfortable majority. It soon became clear that the election had not gone entirely to plan, they had retained a majority alright, a majority of 3. Labour had come within a whisker of taking the election (indeed they would narrowly win the populate vote) while the Liberals and National Liberals had been decimated. While a victory it was not one which would make implementing a new vision for Britain easy.

There were rumblings from within the party that the result was primarily down to Churchill, who was not seen as a man who would "win the peace". However making a move against the Bulldog with the war not fully won and the Potsdam Conference ongoing there was little appetite to depose him.

His near defeat shook Churchill and he showed a remarkable lack of energy following the election, his private papers would detail a severe occurrence of the "Black Dog" which hampered him severely. Party stalwarts such as Leo Amery and Anthony Eden did a great deal of the spade work in forcing through the new Conservative agenda, often in conjunction with the National Liberals with whom they had arranged a de facto confidence and supply are arrangement.

The Conservative government shuffled along for the next few years with the public becoming more and more disenchanted with a party that seemed to be unable or unwilling to make the country fit for heroes that had been promised. But fittingly it was a foreign affair that was to finally finish off Churchill, when the Communists managed to win the Greek Civil War. This was achieved through covert Soviet aid as they had decided to ignore an informal agreement on spheres of influence due to Churchill's weak position and lack of energy. Labour made much hay with the Tories weaknesses both at home and abroad attacks which were sticking and with an election due within the year the Conservatives finally blinked.

The knife was quickly wielded by the men in grey suits and Churchill was unceremoniously dumped. A sad end for the man who led Britain through the 2nd World War but not one who had the skills or ability to rebuild it in peacetime
Click to expand...
[2]. The aftermath of the ensuing clusterfuck that was the 1949 Conservative Leadership contest lead to Rab Butler just getting in as leader as Anthony Eden licked his wounds and prepared to try again. No sooner had Butler got in there was an election to try and win. Even with his one nation credentials and his manifesto that promised change, Rab and the Tories lost hard with Labour enjoying a 60 seat majority. Rab managed to keep his leadership due to the party agreeing he had been dropped in the deep end.

The next few years of his leadership would mainly be putting out fires as he tried to wrestle with Anthony Eden with dominance of the Conservative Party throughout the early 50s as Labour would implement a welfare state. As 1955 loomed and another election would be called and Rab hoped he would get somewhere with the party now behind him, but the painful death of his wife Sydney would take the wind out of him and his period of grief and a revived Liberal Party under Jo Grimond would mean that Tories would only gain 30 more seats.

The knifes were out yet again but Rab would manage to win another leadership contest again as Eden was suffering from infections and his successor Macmillan was convinced to stand down in return for a job on the front bench. Rab’s leadership would limp on for another few years, his aim mainly to revive the party under a new One Nation message. In 1960, Gaitskell would call an election and Butler believed his efforts may finally have paid off...they didn’t. Butler watched in horror as Labour won a third term with a majority of fifteen. Depressed Butler would resign as leader seen as a failed attempt to revive the Conservative efforts in the fifties.
 
Leaders of the Conservative Party

1945-1949: Winston Churchill [1]
1949-1960: Rab Butler [2]
1960-1962: Lord Boothby [3]
1962-1968:
1968-1975:
1975-1978:
1978-1986:
1986-1987:
1987-1997:
1997-2000:

neonduke said:
[1] As peace settled across Europe it was time for the long delayed General election to take place. Churchill was confident that his status as Britain's wartime leader would be enough to see the Conservatives returned with a comfortable majority. However some key aides were more cautious, noting the growing consensus within the country for change and that the the Labour manifesto was well developed to feed into that.

A more vigorous campaign strategy was deployed, giving concrete proposals for new welfare provisions, comprehensive health insurance and some retention of a state role in industry and the economy but not to the extent of Labour. Churchill memorably quipped it was "Toryism with a Human Face", an informal slogan which stuck.

Churchill himself was kept on a tight as leash as possible, difficult though that could be with Winston. He was at least talked out of describing Labour as requiring a "Gestapo" to implement it's policies, something that was seen as a step too far with the horrors of the Third Reich still fresh.

The Conservatives were content with the campaign and as the results began to pour in where upbeat that they would win a comfortable majority. It soon became clear that the election had not gone entirely to plan, they had retained a majority alright, a majority of 3. Labour had come within a whisker of taking the election (indeed they would narrowly win the populate vote) while the Liberals and National Liberals had been decimated. While a victory it was not one which would make implementing a new vision for Britain easy.

There were rumblings from within the party that the result was primarily down to Churchill, who was not seen as a man who would "win the peace". However making a move against the Bulldog with the war not fully won and the Potsdam Conference ongoing there was little appetite to depose him.

His near defeat shook Churchill and he showed a remarkable lack of energy following the election, his private papers would detail a severe occurrence of the "Black Dog" which hampered him severely. Party stalwarts such as Leo Amery and Anthony Eden did a great deal of the spade work in forcing through the new Conservative agenda, often in conjunction with the National Liberals with whom they had arranged a de facto confidence and supply are arrangement.

The Conservative government shuffled along for the next few years with the public becoming more and more disenchanted with a party that seemed to be unable or unwilling to make the country fit for heroes that had been promised. But fittingly it was a foreign affair that was to finally finish off Churchill, when the Communists managed to win the Greek Civil War. This was achieved through covert Soviet aid as they had decided to ignore an informal agreement on spheres of influence due to Churchill's weak position and lack of energy. Labour made much hay with the Tories weaknesses both at home and abroad attacks which were sticking and with an election due within the year the Conservatives finally blinked.

The knife was quickly wielded by the men in grey suits and Churchill was unceremoniously dumped. A sad end for the man who led Britain through the 2nd World War but not one who had the skills or ability to rebuild it in peacetime.

EDIT: For the love of God snip that essay out of the next reply!
Click to expand...

[2]. The aftermath of the ensuing clusterfuck that was the 1949 Conservative Leadership contest lead to Rab Butler just getting in as leader as Anthony Eden licked his wounds and prepared to try again. No sooner had Butler got in there was an election to try and win. Even with his one nation credentials and his manifesto that promised change, Rab and the Tories lost hard with Labour enjoying a 60 seat majority. Rab managed to keep his leadership due to the party agreeing he had been dropped in the deep end.

The next few years of his leadership would mainly be putting out fires as he tried to wrestle with Anthony Eden with dominance of the Conservative Party throughout the early 50s as Labour would implement a welfare state. As 1955 loomed and another election would be called and Rab hoped he would get somewhere with the party now behind him, but the painful death of his wife Sydney would take the wind out of him and his period of grief and a revived Liberal Party under Jo Grimond would mean that Tories would only gain 30 more seats.

The knifes were out yet again but Rab would manage to win another leadership contest again as Eden was suffering from infections and his successor Macmillan was convinced to stand down in return for a job on the front bench. Rab’s leadership would limp on for another few years, his aim mainly to revive the party under a new One Nation message. In 1960, Gaitskell would call an election and Butler believed his efforts may finally have paid off...they didn’t. Butler watched in horror as Labour won a third term with a majority of fifteen. Depressed Butler would resign as leader seen as a failed attempt to revive the Conservative efforts in the fifties.


[3] The Conservative Party electing an actual Lord as their leader in the new decade was hay for political satirists, but Boothby had been an early anti-appeaser and had an admirable service record, he was anti-Butler but not tied to the rump Edenites, he was pro-European - he was the candidate for the messy reconstruction, the best available everyone could agree on. He'd also been part of the Tory advocates for legalising homosexuality (which was done in 19580 and so could claim to be 'modern'. The fact he was himself gay, an increasingly open secret, upset some traditional Conservative figures but not enough to stop his rise.

Then he abruptly resigned in 1962 and retired to the Lords backbenches, claiming he had achieved what he'd set out to do. Several months later, the party was appalled and furious to find the Daily Mirror printing photos of Boothby at a 'party' with one of the notorious Kray Brothers, and he had to leave even Lords in disgrace. (Many years later it would turn out MI5 had caught wind of Boothby's involvement with the Krays and various Conservative grandees had forced the man to resign before it could come out.)
 
Leaders of the Conservative Party

1945-1949: Winston Churchill [1]
1949-1960: Rab Butler [2]
1960-1962: Lord Boothby [3]
1962-1968: Enoch Powell [4]
1968-1975:
1975-1978:
1978-1986:
1986-1987:
1987-1997:
1997-2000:

neonduke said:
[1] As peace settled across Europe it was time for the long delayed General election to take place. Churchill was confident that his status as Britain's wartime leader would be enough to see the Conservatives returned with a comfortable majority. However some key aides were more cautious, noting the growing consensus within the country for change and that the the Labour manifesto was well developed to feed into that.

A more vigorous campaign strategy was deployed, giving concrete proposals for new welfare provisions, comprehensive health insurance and some retention of a state role in industry and the economy but not to the extent of Labour. Churchill memorably quipped it was "Toryism with a Human Face", an informal slogan which stuck.

Churchill himself was kept on a tight as leash as possible, difficult though that could be with Winston. He was at least talked out of describing Labour as requiring a "Gestapo" to implement it's policies, something that was seen as a step too far with the horrors of the Third Reich still fresh.

The Conservatives were content with the campaign and as the results began to pour in where upbeat that they would win a comfortable majority. It soon became clear that the election had not gone entirely to plan, they had retained a majority alright, a majority of 3. Labour had come within a whisker of taking the election (indeed they would narrowly win the populate vote) while the Liberals and National Liberals had been decimated. While a victory it was not one which would make implementing a new vision for Britain easy.

There were rumblings from within the party that the result was primarily down to Churchill, who was not seen as a man who would "win the peace". However making a move against the Bulldog with the war not fully won and the Potsdam Conference ongoing there was little appetite to depose him.

His near defeat shook Churchill and he showed a remarkable lack of energy following the election, his private papers would detail a severe occurrence of the "Black Dog" which hampered him severely. Party stalwarts such as Leo Amery and Anthony Eden did a great deal of the spade work in forcing through the new Conservative agenda, often in conjunction with the National Liberals with whom they had arranged a de facto confidence and supply are arrangement.

The Conservative government shuffled along for the next few years with the public becoming more and more disenchanted with a party that seemed to be unable or unwilling to make the country fit for heroes that had been promised. But fittingly it was a foreign affair that was to finally finish off Churchill, when the Communists managed to win the Greek Civil War. This was achieved through covert Soviet aid as they had decided to ignore an informal agreement on spheres of influence due to Churchill's weak position and lack of energy. Labour made much hay with the Tories weaknesses both at home and abroad attacks which were sticking and with an election due within the year the Conservatives finally blinked.

The knife was quickly wielded by the men in grey suits and Churchill was unceremoniously dumped. A sad end for the man who led Britain through the 2nd World War but not one who had the skills or ability to rebuild it in peacetime.

EDIT: For the love of God snip that essay out of the next reply!
Click to expand...

[2]. The aftermath of the ensuing clusterfuck that was the 1949 Conservative Leadership contest lead to Rab Butler just getting in as leader as Anthony Eden licked his wounds and prepared to try again. No sooner had Butler got in there was an election to try and win. Even with his one nation credentials and his manifesto that promised change, Rab and the Tories lost hard with Labour enjoying a 60 seat majority. Rab managed to keep his leadership due to the party agreeing he had been dropped in the deep end.

The next few years of his leadership would mainly be putting out fires as he tried to wrestle with Anthony Eden with dominance of the Conservative Party throughout the early 50s as Labour would implement a welfare state. As 1955 loomed and another election would be called and Rab hoped he would get somewhere with the party now behind him, but the painful death of his wife Sydney would take the wind out of him and his period of grief and a revived Liberal Party under Jo Grimond would mean that Tories would only gain 30 more seats.

The knifes were out yet again but Rab would manage to win another leadership contest again as Eden was suffering from infections and his successor Macmillan was convinced to stand down in return for a job on the front bench. Rab’s leadership would limp on for another few years, his aim mainly to revive the party under a new One Nation message. In 1960, Gaitskell would call an election and Butler believed his efforts may finally have paid off...they didn’t. Butler watched in horror as Labour won a third term with a majority of fifteen. Depressed Butler would resign as leader seen as a failed attempt to revive the Conservative efforts in the fifties.

[3] The Conservative Party electing an actual Lord as their leader in the new decade was hay for political satirists, but Boothby had been an early anti-appeaser and had an admirable service record, he was anti-Butler but not tied to the rump Edenites, he was pro-European - he was the candidate for the messy reconstruction, the best available everyone could agree on. He'd also been part of the Tory advocates for legalising homosexuality (which was done in 19580 and so could claim to be 'modern'. The fact he was himself gay, an increasingly open secret, upset some traditional Conservative figures but not enough to stop his rise.

Then he abruptly resigned in 1962 and retired to the Lords backbenches, claiming he had achieved what he'd set out to do. Several months later, the party was appalled and furious to find the Daily Mirror printing photos of Boothby at a 'party' with one of the notorious Kray Brothers, and he had to leave even Lords in disgrace. (Many years later it would turn out MI5 had caught wind of Boothby's involvement with the Krays and various Conservative grandees had forced the man to resign before it could come out.)

[4] Handed the leadership to add fresh blood and ideas, Enoch Powell's leadership is now considered one that tacked all the way back to the Duke of Wellington. Initially starting off well, Powell cut a decent figure in the Commons, easily out pacing Hugh Gaitskell as his health began to fail and then again George Brown's slurring. The snap election of 1964 saw the Conservative's return to power with the slenderest of majorities, from which things gradually began to go down hill.

A sudden down turn in the economy saw Powell's monetarist plans for the economy put on hold as he inflicted mild austerity on the nation, which caused an immediate fight with the unions that he didn't need. Meanwhile, abroad Powell made enemies in all the wrong places. Refusing President Kennedy's request for help in the escalating war in Vietnam, Powell looked as though he was trying to reverse the efforts of de-colonisation in Africa: first extending the British 'mandate' in South Rhodesia to fight a bush war in defence of white settlers in the region, then forcing a regime change in Kenya (under the pretence of rescuing the country's Asian minority, but in reality hoping to prevent their mass immigration to the UK). These costly interventions pushed the Exchequer even further, and American displeasure was repaid by tightening pressure on Trans-Atlantic trade, which didn't help as Powell refused to budge on his Labour derived, anti-EEC policy.

As this all went on, a small cadre of MPs still loyal to Boothby gradually began to wear on Powell's nerves for their internal dissent which Powell repaid by having the Whips come down hard. The result was a leak from the Home Office on tightening the governments already controversial immigration controls, which blew apart the Powell's fragile relations with Commonwealth immigrants and their mother country's. Summer of '68 saw London, Leeds, Bradford and Manchester engulfed by race riots and Powell's government finally lost its majority in his Midland heartland. Feeling he could win a snap election on the basis of Law & Order, Powell called one only to have the Conservative campaign breakdown into "Us vs Them" Race baiting, often endorsed by certain corners of Party HQ. Disgusted, the general public delivered a resolute 'No' to Powell, who the morning after made his resignation speech under bombardment by students with eggs. The most generous assessment of Powell's tenure is that it peaked too early, but these are few at best.
 
Leaders of the Conservative Party

1945-1949: Winston Churchill [1]
1949-1960: Rab Butler [2]
1960-1962: Lord Boothby [3]
1962-1968: Enoch Powell [4]
1968-1975: John Profumo [5]
1975-1978:
1978-1986:
1986-1987:
1987-1997:
1997-2000:
[1] As peace settled across Europe it was time for the long delayed General election to take place. Churchill was confident that his status as Britain's wartime leader would be enough to see the Conservatives returned with a comfortable majority. However some key aides were more cautious, noting the growing consensus within the country for change and that the the Labour manifesto was well developed to feed into that.

A more vigorous campaign strategy was deployed, giving concrete proposals for new welfare provisions, comprehensive health insurance and some retention of a state role in industry and the economy but not to the extent of Labour. Churchill memorably quipped it was "Toryism with a Human Face", an informal slogan which stuck.

Churchill himself was kept on a tight as leash as possible, difficult though that could be with Winston. He was at least talked out of describing Labour as requiring a "Gestapo" to implement it's policies, something that was seen as a step too far with the horrors of the Third Reich still fresh.

The Conservatives were content with the campaign and as the results began to pour in where upbeat that they would win a comfortable majority. It soon became clear that the election had not gone entirely to plan, they had retained a majority alright, a majority of 3. Labour had come within a whisker of taking the election (indeed they would narrowly win the populate vote) while the Liberals and National Liberals had been decimated. While a victory it was not one which would make implementing a new vision for Britain easy.

There were rumblings from within the party that the result was primarily down to Churchill, who was not seen as a man who would "win the peace". However making a move against the Bulldog with the war not fully won and the Potsdam Conference ongoing there was little appetite to depose him.

His near defeat shook Churchill and he showed a remarkable lack of energy following the election, his private papers would detail a severe occurrence of the "Black Dog" which hampered him severely. Party stalwarts such as Leo Amery and Anthony Eden did a great deal of the spade work in forcing through the new Conservative agenda, often in conjunction with the National Liberals with whom they had arranged a de facto confidence and supply are arrangement.

The Conservative government shuffled along for the next few years with the public becoming more and more disenchanted with a party that seemed to be unable or unwilling to make the country fit for heroes that had been promised. But fittingly it was a foreign affair that was to finally finish off Churchill, when the Communists managed to win the Greek Civil War. This was achieved through covert Soviet aid as they had decided to ignore an informal agreement on spheres of influence due to Churchill's weak position and lack of energy. Labour made much hay with the Tories weaknesses both at home and abroad attacks which were sticking and with an election due within the year the Conservatives finally blinked.

The knife was quickly wielded by the men in grey suits and Churchill was unceremoniously dumped. A sad end for the man who led Britain through the 2nd World War but not one who had the skills or ability to rebuild it in peacetime.
Click to expand...


[2]. The aftermath of the ensuing clusterfuck that was the 1949 Conservative Leadership contest lead to Rab Butler just getting in as leader as Anthony Eden licked his wounds and prepared to try again. No sooner had Butler got in there was an election to try and win. Even with his one nation credentials and his manifesto that promised change, Rab and the Tories lost hard with Labour enjoying a 60 seat majority. Rab managed to keep his leadership due to the party agreeing he had been dropped in the deep end.

The next few years of his leadership would mainly be putting out fires as he tried to wrestle with Anthony Eden with dominance of the Conservative Party throughout the early 50s as Labour would implement a welfare state. As 1955 loomed and another election would be called and Rab hoped he would get somewhere with the party now behind him, but the painful death of his wife Sydney would take the wind out of him and his period of grief and a revived Liberal Party under Jo Grimond would mean that Tories would only gain 30 more seats.

The knifes were out yet again but Rab would manage to win another leadership contest again as Eden was suffering from infections and his successor Macmillan was convinced to stand down in return for a job on the front bench. Rab’s leadership would limp on for another few years, his aim mainly to revive the party under a new One Nation message. In 1960, Gaitskell would call an election and Butler believed his efforts may finally have paid off...they didn’t. Butler watched in horror as Labour won a third term with a majority of fifteen. Depressed Butler would resign as leader seen as a failed attempt to revive the Conservative efforts in the fifties.

[3] The Conservative Party electing an actual Lord as their leader in the new decade was hay for political satirists, but Boothby had been an early anti-appeaser and had an admirable service record, he was anti-Butler but not tied to the rump Edenites, he was pro-European - he was the candidate for the messy reconstruction, the best available everyone could agree on. He'd also been part of the Tory advocates for legalising homosexuality (which was done in 19580 and so could claim to be 'modern'. The fact he was himself gay, an increasingly open secret, upset some traditional Conservative figures but not enough to stop his rise.

Then he abruptly resigned in 1962 and retired to the Lords backbenches, claiming he had achieved what he'd set out to do. Several months later, the party was appalled and furious to find the Daily Mirror printing photos of Boothby at a 'party' with one of the notorious Kray Brothers, and he had to leave even Lords in disgrace. (Many years later it would turn out MI5 had caught wind of Boothby's involvement with the Krays and various Conservative grandees had forced the man to resign before it could come out.)

[4] Handed the leadership to add fresh blood and ideas, Enoch Powell's leadership is now considered one that tacked all the way back to the Duke of Wellington. Initially starting off well, Powell cut a decent figure in the Commons, easily out pacing Hugh Gaitskell as his health began to fail and then again George Brown's slurring. The snap election of 1964 saw the Conservative's return to power with the slenderest of majorities, from which things gradually began to go down hill.

A sudden down turn in the economy saw Powell's monetarist plans for the economy put on hold as he inflicted mild austerity on the nation, which caused an immediate fight with the unions that he didn't need. Meanwhile, abroad Powell made enemies in all the wrong places. Refusing President Kennedy's request for help in the escalating war in Vietnam, Powell looked as though he was trying to reverse the efforts of de-colonisation in Africa: first extending the British 'mandate' in South Rhodesia to fight a bush war in defence of white settlers in the region, then forcing a regime change in Kenya (under the pretence of rescuing the country's Asian minority, but in reality hoping to prevent their mass immigration to the UK). These costly interventions pushed the Exchequer even further, and American displeasure was repaid by tightening pressure on Trans-Atlantic trade, which didn't help as Powell refused to budge on his Labour derived, anti-EEC policy.

As this all went on, a small cadre of MPs still loyal to Boothby gradually began to wear on Powell's nerves for their internal dissent which Powell repaid by having the Whips come down hard. The result was a leak from the Home Office on tightening the governments already controversial immigration controls, which blew apart the Powell's fragile relations with Commonwealth immigrants and their mother country's. Summer of '68 saw London, Leeds, Bradford and Manchester engulfed by race riots and Powell's government finally lost its majority in his Midland heartland. Feeling he could win a snap election on the basis of Law & Order, Powell called one only to have the Conservative campaign breakdown into "Us vs Them" Race baiting, often endorsed by certain corners of Party HQ. Disgusted, the general public delivered a resolute 'No' to Powell, who the morning after made his resignation speech under bombardment by students with eggs. The most generous assessment of Powell's tenure is that it peaked too early, but these are few at best.

[5] Considered by many the man who should have been the leader over the past ten years having existed in nearly every single shadow cabinet and having an impeccable war record, John Profumo was handed a Conservative Party in the middle of a crisis. The Conservatives had lost another election, the radical Greenwood government was experiencing a popular mandate and Powell and his Powellite MPs were battling the remains of the Butler/Boothby regimes. Profumo decided that he was going to radically alter the Conservative Party under his 'Common Sense' leadership, whilst still pushing a message of positive patriotism and a One Nation rhetoric he also called for a closer relationships with America and the EEC as a way to combat the Soviet Union, to end Britain's empire and to not act in a reactionary manner. These were radical messages to many Conservatives but given how Powell had just sunk there first government in nearly twenty years they towed the line.

Under Profumo the Tories would increase there number of female MPs and attempts to heal the relationship between Conservative party and Britain's burgeoning ethnic minority population. The pinnacle of this would be in 1971 when the failed former leader Enoch Powell and five of his closest colleagues would be expelled from the Conservative party. Profumo would also democratise the party, with constituency's now being able to vote for there own parliamentary candidate for the first time and he would aim to win over the Thorpe led Liberal Party which he was able to do with the promise of Alternative Voting.

In 1972 the Conservative Party would manage to gain a majority of 12 and Profumo would prove to be right in his plans, having a majority he didn't have to placate the Liberal's and would implement his plans to finally finish off decolonisation, become closer with America, continue the One Nation consensus and would join the EEC in 1974. Profumo's passionate and intelligent reign would abruptly end when Profumo stated he was stepping down. For many years questions were asked about why this occurred until it was found out in 1990 that Profumo had been having an numerous affairs throughout the 60s which various tabloids had found out and the Conservative Party higher ups had told him to jump before he was pushed.
 
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