So this idea came about not so much in a desire to write TL-191 fanfiction but it began from a discussion about Mussolini "doing better." The Italian army adopts reforms from the Spanish civil war, they make more economic solid moves, etc, etc. Namely it was a list of longer then a page of what was needed for Italy to be ready to sweep into the Balkans taking Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia and giving Hitler the chance to move into Russia three months early. The discussion shifted to "WI Franco joins the war" or "WI Hitler did X and not Y" and more and more.
Eventually this started to form in my head this rather weird idea of what I did not see a lot in AH. Namely someone is a fascist and someone is authoritarian and someone is in charge... but they suck. Like, not they are not that good but they are awful. Cause more often then not when we get AH involving fascism it ends in some fascist world state or a cold war involving said fascist states. So I wrote out what I felt was an awful leader and gave him power. Petty pointless power. A few outlines later... Vernon Smeade.