- Location
- Albany, NY
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- She/Her
nOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo
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Lists of Heads of Government and Heads of State
- Thread starter Mumby
- Start date
[FRANZ JOSEPH AND SISSI ARE SCREAMING WHILE THANOS WIPED AND HELENA LAUGHS OUT OF CONFUSION]
(Note:this reference only makes sense if you saw Princess SISSI on Fox Kids/Jetix back in the day)
- Location
- Derbyshire
Oh I love that.
Thanks that means a lot! I’ve really enjoyed reading your Thirty Years War article series, and seeing those and having studied the war in very great depth this term at university inspired me to do a piece of TYW AH. My draft notes for a write up are very, very long, and if I have time over this coming holiday (much of which I have to devote to writing an extended essay on the war anyway and thus taking copious notes from books on it) I will be very tempted to write this up as a sort of TLIA* style timeline.
- Location
- Derbyshire
Well drop me a mention if and when you do.
I've been considering some AH maps for the period once I've got more time.
36. Lyndon B. Johnson Democratic Vice president Hubert Horatio Humphrey
November 22.1963-Jan,20.1973
37. Charles Percy Republican Spiro Agnew 1973-1974(resigned) Gerald Ford 1974-1977
1. Lyndon Johnson does not send combat troops into Vietnam, Remembered more for great society ,defeats Nixon in 1968.dies of heart attack soon after leaving office .
2. Defeats Hubert Humphrey first Republican president in 12 years loses to candidate in otl is nota professional politician.
November 22.1963-Jan,20.1973
37. Charles Percy Republican Spiro Agnew 1973-1974(resigned) Gerald Ford 1974-1977
1. Lyndon Johnson does not send combat troops into Vietnam, Remembered more for great society ,defeats Nixon in 1968.dies of heart attack soon after leaving office .
2. Defeats Hubert Humphrey first Republican president in 12 years loses to candidate in otl is nota professional politician.
- Location
- Tamaki Makaurau
Leaders of the Democratic Labour Party
1940-1947: John A. Lee
1947-1960: Colin Scrimgeour
1960-1962: Norman Douglas
1962-1973: Alf Allen
1973-1984: Keith Hay
1984-2009: Roger Douglas
Jack Lee founded the DLP to support Social Credit and oppose the timid and slightly venal leadership of the official Labour Party. In 1943, riding a wave of opposition to rationing and the hardships of the War, the DLP gained several seats from Labour, and in 1946 they defeated the Prime Minister, Peter Fraser, in his own seat, taking the balance of power in the process. Lee's relations with Labour were still noxious, so he took the DLP into coalition with Holland's Nats, taking the Defence portfolio for himself.
However, Lee had been becoming more of a conspiracy theorist with each passing year, directing his ire at the Catholic hierarchy and other powerful (and not-so-powerful) interests. In 1947, he was pushed aside from the leadership in favour of the man who had decapitated Peter Fraser - radio personality Uncle Scrim. Scrim's Christian Socialism carried the DLP through the next decade, although he had to deal with the backlash against the party for backing the Tories, and did not hold the balance of power again (although Labour only had a majority of 1 in 1956 and formed a decent relationship with the DLP during that term).
Uncle Scrim retired in 1960, and was followed briefly by Lee's protege and successor as Grey Lynn MP, Norman Douglas. Douglas, however, lost his seat to Labour in 1962, the electorate their having tired of two decades of relative irrelevance. Fortunately, he had prevailed upon Prime Minister Shand to finally implement the Legislative Council reform which had been pending for fifty years, and took one of the Upper North Island seats there at the '65 election - much to the chagrin of his successor as leader, Alfred E. Allen.
Allen, the long-serving MP for Franklin, shifted the DLP into a more rural and conservative phenomenon, gaining seats like Hobson and Waitotara which had strong legacies from the Country Party and Social Credit movements of the 1930s. Allen took up the struggle of wool exporters, who began to receive much worse prices for unfinished wool from 1966 onwards as the global economy recalibrated. Making a joke of the party's name, Allen began to promote economic liberalisation - but it worked, and the 60s and 70s were a boom-time for the DLP. Allen's successor as leader was the more suburban Keith Hay, who returned a little to Social Credit (and Jack Lee) policy in demanding a house-building programme funded by interest-free loans from the Reserve Bank.
But Hay was increasingly elderly, and lost a lot of the rural support built up by Allen. He handed the Party over to Norman Douglas' son, Roger, who had inherited his father's seat in the Legislative Council and was a doctrinaire free-marketeer. His intemperate demands for tax cuts and privatisations got him the support of Bob Jones, but the electorate seemed to think that the Talboys government was quite enough for them, as far as economic reform went. And then they put Palmer in in 1988 and watched him go even further down the neoliberal track.
In the 90s, the DLP was reduced to the upper house seats of Roger and Malcolm Douglas, and increased competition among minor parties put both of them out in the first years of the 21st century. In 2009, the Democratic Labour Party - New Zealand's pre-eminent third party of the post-war years - was wound up, paid little heed by the thrusting young guns in the Greens and New Reform.
1940-1947: John A. Lee
1947-1960: Colin Scrimgeour
1960-1962: Norman Douglas
1962-1973: Alf Allen
1973-1984: Keith Hay
1984-2009: Roger Douglas
Jack Lee founded the DLP to support Social Credit and oppose the timid and slightly venal leadership of the official Labour Party. In 1943, riding a wave of opposition to rationing and the hardships of the War, the DLP gained several seats from Labour, and in 1946 they defeated the Prime Minister, Peter Fraser, in his own seat, taking the balance of power in the process. Lee's relations with Labour were still noxious, so he took the DLP into coalition with Holland's Nats, taking the Defence portfolio for himself.
However, Lee had been becoming more of a conspiracy theorist with each passing year, directing his ire at the Catholic hierarchy and other powerful (and not-so-powerful) interests. In 1947, he was pushed aside from the leadership in favour of the man who had decapitated Peter Fraser - radio personality Uncle Scrim. Scrim's Christian Socialism carried the DLP through the next decade, although he had to deal with the backlash against the party for backing the Tories, and did not hold the balance of power again (although Labour only had a majority of 1 in 1956 and formed a decent relationship with the DLP during that term).
Uncle Scrim retired in 1960, and was followed briefly by Lee's protege and successor as Grey Lynn MP, Norman Douglas. Douglas, however, lost his seat to Labour in 1962, the electorate their having tired of two decades of relative irrelevance. Fortunately, he had prevailed upon Prime Minister Shand to finally implement the Legislative Council reform which had been pending for fifty years, and took one of the Upper North Island seats there at the '65 election - much to the chagrin of his successor as leader, Alfred E. Allen.
Allen, the long-serving MP for Franklin, shifted the DLP into a more rural and conservative phenomenon, gaining seats like Hobson and Waitotara which had strong legacies from the Country Party and Social Credit movements of the 1930s. Allen took up the struggle of wool exporters, who began to receive much worse prices for unfinished wool from 1966 onwards as the global economy recalibrated. Making a joke of the party's name, Allen began to promote economic liberalisation - but it worked, and the 60s and 70s were a boom-time for the DLP. Allen's successor as leader was the more suburban Keith Hay, who returned a little to Social Credit (and Jack Lee) policy in demanding a house-building programme funded by interest-free loans from the Reserve Bank.
But Hay was increasingly elderly, and lost a lot of the rural support built up by Allen. He handed the Party over to Norman Douglas' son, Roger, who had inherited his father's seat in the Legislative Council and was a doctrinaire free-marketeer. His intemperate demands for tax cuts and privatisations got him the support of Bob Jones, but the electorate seemed to think that the Talboys government was quite enough for them, as far as economic reform went. And then they put Palmer in in 1988 and watched him go even further down the neoliberal track.
In the 90s, the DLP was reduced to the upper house seats of Roger and Malcolm Douglas, and increased competition among minor parties put both of them out in the first years of the 21st century. In 2009, the Democratic Labour Party - New Zealand's pre-eminent third party of the post-war years - was wound up, paid little heed by the thrusting young guns in the Greens and New Reform.
- Location
- Sandford, Gloucestershire
- Pronouns
- She/They
More TLIA*s are always a good thing.
Bene Tleilax
Well-known member
Maximilian of Bavaria accepts the Imperial Crown in 1619. Does this make things better or worse?
Sort of hard to tell - there’s no reason he won’t pursue a strategy of re-Catholicisation because he’s already fully onboard with Contzen’s Jesuit reinterpretation of the Religious Peace well before 1619. We often forget (because he denied it later) but the Edict of Restitution (1629) was actually originally backed by Maximilian, so if he’s Emperor rather than Ferdinand and we still see the run of Imperialist victories of the 1620s then he’s just as likely to try for the restitution of ecclesiastical property. On the other hand, I’m not sure if Maximilian would appoint Wallenstein (though their rivalry largely came after the latter’s run of victories so its possible that he does and there’s no breech because Wallenstein has built a parallel Wittelsbach rather than Habsburg army ITTL) and equally the war might not expand so fast without fears of Hispano-Austrian Habsburg hegemony.
Further, I’m not sure Maximilian will have the same interest in Straslund as the Habsburgs did (because they have no dynastic interest in the Baltic) so Sweden could stay out of the war. So you could see an earlier and worse confessional war in the empire with an earlier and stricter restitution, though the war may not so quickly internationalise if at all, and if Sweden especially doesn’t come in its unlikely Brandenburg and Saxony will revolt unless Maximilian really overplays his hand and the provisions of an Alt-Leipzig Convention come into play to stop the use of force to take back converted Church lands. Likewise, you could see a revolt of minor states like Hesse-Kassel, but without French support (which is unlikely because France will no doubt want the Wittelsbach’s to keep the Empire so the Habsburgs can’t encircle them) this won’t go very far.
Bene Tleilax
Well-known member
Would the war even happen at all? He does seem rather reconsiliatory.
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I wouldn’t say he was conciliatory at all in the earlier part of the war (and actually for all that Ferdinand is seen as the archetypical 17th century Catholic Confessional Absolutist, Maximilian was just as bad), but I’m not sure the dynamics which produced the war are there if he’s Emperor. Though I’m not going to go full Steinberg and say that there was no Thirty Years War, we do have to situate the war within the 50 Year Struggle between France and the Habsburgs (1609-1659), and without that tension permeating the Empire, war is a lot less likely. I think it really depends on what John George of Saxony does. If he decides it’s no point shedding Lutheran blood to retrieve the electoral title for the Palatine Calvinists an imperial civil war is unlikely, but if Restitution happens and is even worse you could see him revolt, and then Brandenburg et al will follow. Equally I think there’s a chance that Maximilian might enforce the outlawry of Calvinism (though it’s unlikely) and we could see Brandenburg rise alone with the minor Calvinists, but this probably wouldn’t happen. Frankly though, the hardest part of all of this would be getting Maximilian elected.
Bene Tleilax
Well-known member
My original idea was 1612 but I had a brainfart and deleted it.
1612 again I think it’s unlikely that Maximilian would be elected (I think barring a war that goes very badly it’s unlikely to be any non-Habsburg) but if you did get him elected you could see the dynastic problems of the House of Austria play out very differently - if Ferdinand still rules Austria and Bohemia we could see a revolt still, but then it still runs into the same issues described above which make war unlikely.
- Location
- Albany, NY
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The Ancient Moose
1913-1921: T. Woodrow Wilson / Thomas R. Marshall (Democratic)
I was hoping to get the write up together but its looking more and more like something that would be a fun Vigenette or TLIAD but the idea is that the old man doesn't die in 1919, be it because he didn't go to South America or that Quintin didn't die. His 1916 securing of the GOP nominee in a hard pro-war platform precluded him from what IOTL would have been his inevitable 1920 run had he not died and thus finds himself shut out in the 1920's. In 1932 there was some talk about the Republicans nominating Roosevelt and solving the Depression with Emergency Powers but a battle with Herbert Hoover at the convention meant that the party instead nominated a compromise ticket with lackluster results. TR became a regular in DC speaking with President Reed as he battled the Depression but more and more became a grand old man, half forgotten and mostly a relic of an older time.
Until 1940. With War underway in Europe and Isolationism on the march in the GOP and across the nation at large, the Old Bull Moose returned to the national forfront with his own take on what needed to be done, and a desperate, final, and in many ways flawed race to the White House from Sagamore Hill began again.
1913-1921: T. Woodrow Wilson / Thomas R. Marshall (Democratic)
1912: Theodore Roosevelt / Hiram W. Johnson (Progressive), William H. Taft / James S. Sherman (Republican), Eugene V. Debs / Emil Seidel (Socialist)
1916: Theodore Roosevelt / Charles W. Fairbanks (Republican), William D. Haywood / C. Kathrine Richards O’Hare (Socialist), Robert M. La Follette, Sr. / Victor Murdock (Progressive)
1921-1925: Warren G. Harding / Irving L. Lenroot (Republican)1920: William G. McAdoo / Francis B. Harrison (Democratic), Parley P. Christensen / Seymour Stedman (Farmer-Labor & Socialist)
1925-1933: Frank O. Lowden / Nicholas M. Butler (Republican)1924: Alfred E. Smith / Charles W. Bryan (Democratic), Maximillian S. Hayes / William Z. Foster (Farmer-Labor-Socialist)
1928: Oscar W. Underwood / Thomas J. Walsh (Democratic), Burton K. Wheeler / Norman M. Thomas (Farmer-Labor-Socialist)
1933-1941: James A. Reed / Harry S. Breckinridge (Democratic)1932: Charles E. Dawes / John Q. Tilson (Republican), James P. Cannon / James V. O’Leary (Farmer-Labor-Socialist), Earl R. Bowder / C. E. Ruthenberg (Worker’s)
1936: Robert M. La Follette, Jr. / Benjamin F. Gitlow (Popular Front --- Farmer-Labor-Socialist, Worker’s, Socialist Labor, Congressional), Herbert C. Hoover / Charles L. McNary (Republican)
1941-1945: W. Francis Murphy / Wendell L. Willkie (Democratic)1940: Theodore Roosevelt / H. Styles Bridges (Republican), Huey P. Long / Norman M. Thomas (Farmer-Labor-Socialist), William F. Kruse / A. Philip Randolph (Labor)
1944: Robert A. Taft / Leverett A. Saltonstall (Republican), Henry A. Wallace / Harry S. Truman (Farmer-Labor-Socialist)
1946-1949: W. Francis Murphy / vacant (Democratic)I was hoping to get the write up together but its looking more and more like something that would be a fun Vigenette or TLIAD but the idea is that the old man doesn't die in 1919, be it because he didn't go to South America or that Quintin didn't die. His 1916 securing of the GOP nominee in a hard pro-war platform precluded him from what IOTL would have been his inevitable 1920 run had he not died and thus finds himself shut out in the 1920's. In 1932 there was some talk about the Republicans nominating Roosevelt and solving the Depression with Emergency Powers but a battle with Herbert Hoover at the convention meant that the party instead nominated a compromise ticket with lackluster results. TR became a regular in DC speaking with President Reed as he battled the Depression but more and more became a grand old man, half forgotten and mostly a relic of an older time.
Until 1940. With War underway in Europe and Isolationism on the march in the GOP and across the nation at large, the Old Bull Moose returned to the national forfront with his own take on what needed to be done, and a desperate, final, and in many ways flawed race to the White House from Sagamore Hill began again.
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I ended up talking to a mate in the pub the other day about this article I wrote for the blog earlier in the year and one or two things got expanded upon. As far as I can recall.
---
Chiefs of the French State
1940-1945: Philippe Petain [1]
1945-1945: Francois Darlan [2]
1945-1946: Marcel Bucard (Mouvement Franciste) [3]
Governor of France via ABC Command Commission
1946-1948: Mark Clark [4]
Presidents of the French Fourth Republic
1948-????: Charles de Gaulle (Paix et Liberté) [5]
[1] The aged war hero who installed himself as dictator of France following the armistice with Germany in the Summer of 1940 would divide French society even further when in October 1940 he announced that France would be joining the Axis, citing unprovoked British aggression and the need to hammer down a proper peace deal with Germany. In return his regime gets to install itself in the Palace of Versailles and German control of France is limited to coastal areas but it is now clear, if it wasn't before, that the prospects of No-Longer-Based-In-Vichy France are entirely tied to those of Germany.
The Revolution Nationale goes ahead with gusto; French prisoners of war return home to a land where unions are smashed and then the remnants are cobbled together into compliant "Syndicate Correspondance Boards", French Africans, Arabs, and other minorities are subject to harsh economic and social disenfranchisement, Jews are ghettoised. Women bear the brunt of clericalist and natalist policies.
Even by 1941 it was getting hard for supporters of Petain's regime to unequivocally defend it. Rommel's advance on Suez, thought to be inevitable thanks to the Italian fleet receiving access to Tunisia, stalls in the climactic battle of Alexandria. With American entry into the war things gradually turn more and more against the Axis in North Africa until Torch finally provokes Petain's regime to declare war outright. By the beginning of 1943 there are increasing numbers of German troops coming into France, as well as French bodies returning back with the collapse of their African empire. Goebbels declaration of total war means more sacrifices for the French economy in the aid of Fortress Europe, "Voluntary Workers" sent to Germany are effectively treated like prisoners with little to no return for the regime and conditions in French factories aren't all that better as quotas go up and rations go down.
Resistance is slow to develop ITTL and when it does it takes on a rather peculiar form. Soviet neutrality leaves the actions of the PCF rather restricted and resistance remains mostly passive for longer. Organic, violence prone French resistance becomes the domain of the Left Oppositionists of Eugene Lanti and Pierre Monatte, who manage to recruit many disaffected Marxist-Leninists to their ranks alongside Frenchmen looking for a more direct solution to the Petain regime and, oddly enough, some German soldiers* who happen to have a lot of weapons to hand.
Most French, however, find hope in the Allies. In the skies over France they're increasingly taking control and thoughts of liberation loom as an armada assembles across the Channel. Unfortunately this brings its own sort of torment as well. There are over 2 Million German soldiers in France by 1945 and once the Allies have control of the air they begin to hammer them relentlessly, with little distinction to be made between civilian and military infrstructure. This leaves many people wary but most are confident that liberation is coming, and soon!
Petain becomes increasingly withdrawn both due to the demands of dictatorship and his advanced age however he remains the regime's best example of legitimacy and it is he who reassures the French people that everything is in hand when a joint American, British, and Canadian task force lands on the shores of Normandy in June 1945. Even if his speech had to be written for him and it's not entirely clear whether he understands what he's saying it will require an even greater crisis for his own No.2 to stab him in the back.
[2] Francois Darlan embraced full cooperation with Germany without any knife being held to his throat and the peace deal that he had convinced Petain to sign has been a source of positivity for the Admiral even as the war turned against the Axis. His enthusiasm had a certain intoxicating aspect to it, particularly with Petain increasingly shirking the day to day running of the state and many had begun to wonder who truly wore the trousers in Versailles even before the Allied landings.
The landings themselves aren't enough to put Darlan off his stride, the Germans can bring enourmous resources to bear ITTL and whilst they fail to dislodge the beacheads the resultant Allied advance becomes a meatgrinder of hedgerows and fixed fortifications. By September there has been no breakout from Normandy, casualties on both sides have climbed into the hundreds of thousands and it appears obvious to Darlan that the decadent western democracies won't be long in accepting a negotiated settlement. Privately he entertains hopes that perhaps he will be the one to facilitate it.
Then the sun happens to rise over Nuremburg, for the second time in one day.
Although the regime's official line on the destruction of the city is almost as unfazed as that of the Nazis themselves Darlan's own confidence is badly shaken. As cracks begin to appear in the German defences and Hamburg shares a similar fate to Nuremburg it becomes clear that the Allies will win the war and that he has to make sure he still has a chair when the music stops. By the end of October this is a view that has spread beyond Darlan's clique and it is relatively easy for Darlan to amass sufficient support to confront Petain with the ultimatum to resign to save France from destruction.
With his position secure internally Darlan's first act is to assure the Germans that Petain was simply too old to go on in such challenging times and his commitment to continuing the war is beyond doubt. The Germans do have doubts however, and some of the more sociopathic elements of Petain's old regime have spent the last five years transforming their views from "Rather Hitler than Blum" to "Hitler. Period." Berlin finds out about Darlan's "secret" peace feelers before the Allies do and neither London nor Washington have had time to consider a response before Otto Skorzeny has already captured Versailles and arrested much of Darlan's regime. What happened to Darlan himself has been the subject of some intrigue over the years and many prominent theories abound to this day, although the match between the Admiral's dental records and one of the many, many cadavers that resulted from the atomic breakout over the Seine appear to be fairly conclusive.
[3] With French autonomy largely being rendered a fiction the Nazis install the most trusted fanatic they could find as a puppet whilst the day to day running of the nation falls to the hands of OKW and the SS. Deportations of Jews and other "undesirables" into the Nazi's machinery of death begin almost immediately and with the Allied advance stalled over the Winter it is left to the French people themselves to remove their oppressors.
The "Ondes de choc" were originally conceived by the Left Oppositionists as a series of uprisings in urban France to ensure that revolution would break out prior to the Allied arrival, the operation isn't ready to go by February 1946 but events are carrying on without it and many have become sick of waiting to be freed. It begins with German converts fragging their commanding officers, then riots act as cover for the seizure of key buildings in major cities, where radio broadcasts call for nationwide revolution. The Wehrmacht are left running around like headless chickens for weeks on end as more and more French join in the cathartic violence, even as it becomes clear that the revolution itself is uncoordinated and undisciplined. It ends in nationwide massacres. With the Allies being unable to exploit the disruption the SS finally assume full control of the situation and assert their authority with their standard murderous zeal. The surviving revolutionaries are driven underground, alongside many slated for the death camps who managed to escape amidst the chaos. The remainder of France under Nazi occupation is placed under a state of permanent martial law.
Bucard, for his own part, continues to happily rubber stamp whatever the Nazis tell him to. The parroting of his idol in Berlin that German victory is just around the corner never comes into contact with reality even as he is forced to flee across the Rhine, then the Elbe, untl eventually he is shot out of hand by remnants of the Polish Home Army who didn't even know who he was at the time.
[4] Although practically all of France has been liberated by 1946 the war still isn't over. With France having been led by an Axis regime and with the Nazis still in possession of a puppet claiming to lead it the situation is tricky, particularly with so manyCommiesTrots running around. In the end its decided that, until the final defeat of Germany, France requires the firm but fair hand of Allied oversight and who better to take on such a role than the General whose appointed staff have recently threatened to mutiny if they need to go over the Rhine under his command?
Mark Clark's arrival in Paris actually goes down fairly well; the city is wrecked like much of the country and the individual whose role it was to resolve that situation was always going to get a fair hearing even if the general's first impression appears to be various attempts to style himself as the liberator of the city. His first major blunder is to install his administration in Versailles, managing to draw parallels with the previous regime. Similarly he retains much of the old hierarchy of the civil administration and police, including some who had previoulsy been removed by popular outrage. His policy, as it is, appears to be focused on restoring Paris to a tourist capital despite serious food and housing shortages. Protests over these oversights are ignored until they turn into bread riots, which are subsequently put down with a great deal of violence.
The Left Oppositionists fail to infiltrate the American army as they did with the Germans. Victory is close for the new occupation forces, many are jaded with what they've seen in Europe and even larger numbers are simply desperate to go home. It isn't long before many French start agreeing with them. Amidst their disillusionment many Americans end up on the take, most with black marketeers and other rackets. It isn't long before a certain stench of corruption begins to stick to the administration. Clarke doesn't take this lightly but he seems more focused on redirecting the problem rather than taking active steps to address it. He complains that Eisenhower is the Supreme Commander after all and that the main priority needs to be directed to assisting the war effort rather than rebuilding before the war is over.
What's left of Germany does, finally, collapse and this excuse no longer holds any weight whatsoever.
The subsequent Allied options for France are almost universally awful: continue to rule by military governor and face a potential guerilla war when families are clamouring for their sons to be brought home as soon as possible? Allow a free and fair election where the LO is likely to be the victor? Or, most difficult to countenance, try and unite the remaining credible centre-right and centre-left forces around an individual who can espouse enough appeal that the election result might not come across as too rigged?
[5] The latter is the least worst option but even the most amoral men in Western intelligence will spend the next few decades pondering whether or not it really had to be him
* OTL, on a small scale. Allegedly.
---
Chiefs of the French State
1940-1945: Philippe Petain [1]
1945-1945: Francois Darlan [2]
1945-1946: Marcel Bucard (Mouvement Franciste) [3]
Governor of France via ABC Command Commission
1946-1948: Mark Clark [4]
Presidents of the French Fourth Republic
1948-????: Charles de Gaulle (Paix et Liberté) [5]
[1] The aged war hero who installed himself as dictator of France following the armistice with Germany in the Summer of 1940 would divide French society even further when in October 1940 he announced that France would be joining the Axis, citing unprovoked British aggression and the need to hammer down a proper peace deal with Germany. In return his regime gets to install itself in the Palace of Versailles and German control of France is limited to coastal areas but it is now clear, if it wasn't before, that the prospects of No-Longer-Based-In-Vichy France are entirely tied to those of Germany.
The Revolution Nationale goes ahead with gusto; French prisoners of war return home to a land where unions are smashed and then the remnants are cobbled together into compliant "Syndicate Correspondance Boards", French Africans, Arabs, and other minorities are subject to harsh economic and social disenfranchisement, Jews are ghettoised. Women bear the brunt of clericalist and natalist policies.
Even by 1941 it was getting hard for supporters of Petain's regime to unequivocally defend it. Rommel's advance on Suez, thought to be inevitable thanks to the Italian fleet receiving access to Tunisia, stalls in the climactic battle of Alexandria. With American entry into the war things gradually turn more and more against the Axis in North Africa until Torch finally provokes Petain's regime to declare war outright. By the beginning of 1943 there are increasing numbers of German troops coming into France, as well as French bodies returning back with the collapse of their African empire. Goebbels declaration of total war means more sacrifices for the French economy in the aid of Fortress Europe, "Voluntary Workers" sent to Germany are effectively treated like prisoners with little to no return for the regime and conditions in French factories aren't all that better as quotas go up and rations go down.
Resistance is slow to develop ITTL and when it does it takes on a rather peculiar form. Soviet neutrality leaves the actions of the PCF rather restricted and resistance remains mostly passive for longer. Organic, violence prone French resistance becomes the domain of the Left Oppositionists of Eugene Lanti and Pierre Monatte, who manage to recruit many disaffected Marxist-Leninists to their ranks alongside Frenchmen looking for a more direct solution to the Petain regime and, oddly enough, some German soldiers* who happen to have a lot of weapons to hand.
Most French, however, find hope in the Allies. In the skies over France they're increasingly taking control and thoughts of liberation loom as an armada assembles across the Channel. Unfortunately this brings its own sort of torment as well. There are over 2 Million German soldiers in France by 1945 and once the Allies have control of the air they begin to hammer them relentlessly, with little distinction to be made between civilian and military infrstructure. This leaves many people wary but most are confident that liberation is coming, and soon!
Petain becomes increasingly withdrawn both due to the demands of dictatorship and his advanced age however he remains the regime's best example of legitimacy and it is he who reassures the French people that everything is in hand when a joint American, British, and Canadian task force lands on the shores of Normandy in June 1945. Even if his speech had to be written for him and it's not entirely clear whether he understands what he's saying it will require an even greater crisis for his own No.2 to stab him in the back.
[2] Francois Darlan embraced full cooperation with Germany without any knife being held to his throat and the peace deal that he had convinced Petain to sign has been a source of positivity for the Admiral even as the war turned against the Axis. His enthusiasm had a certain intoxicating aspect to it, particularly with Petain increasingly shirking the day to day running of the state and many had begun to wonder who truly wore the trousers in Versailles even before the Allied landings.
The landings themselves aren't enough to put Darlan off his stride, the Germans can bring enourmous resources to bear ITTL and whilst they fail to dislodge the beacheads the resultant Allied advance becomes a meatgrinder of hedgerows and fixed fortifications. By September there has been no breakout from Normandy, casualties on both sides have climbed into the hundreds of thousands and it appears obvious to Darlan that the decadent western democracies won't be long in accepting a negotiated settlement. Privately he entertains hopes that perhaps he will be the one to facilitate it.
Then the sun happens to rise over Nuremburg, for the second time in one day.
Although the regime's official line on the destruction of the city is almost as unfazed as that of the Nazis themselves Darlan's own confidence is badly shaken. As cracks begin to appear in the German defences and Hamburg shares a similar fate to Nuremburg it becomes clear that the Allies will win the war and that he has to make sure he still has a chair when the music stops. By the end of October this is a view that has spread beyond Darlan's clique and it is relatively easy for Darlan to amass sufficient support to confront Petain with the ultimatum to resign to save France from destruction.
With his position secure internally Darlan's first act is to assure the Germans that Petain was simply too old to go on in such challenging times and his commitment to continuing the war is beyond doubt. The Germans do have doubts however, and some of the more sociopathic elements of Petain's old regime have spent the last five years transforming their views from "Rather Hitler than Blum" to "Hitler. Period." Berlin finds out about Darlan's "secret" peace feelers before the Allies do and neither London nor Washington have had time to consider a response before Otto Skorzeny has already captured Versailles and arrested much of Darlan's regime. What happened to Darlan himself has been the subject of some intrigue over the years and many prominent theories abound to this day, although the match between the Admiral's dental records and one of the many, many cadavers that resulted from the atomic breakout over the Seine appear to be fairly conclusive.
[3] With French autonomy largely being rendered a fiction the Nazis install the most trusted fanatic they could find as a puppet whilst the day to day running of the nation falls to the hands of OKW and the SS. Deportations of Jews and other "undesirables" into the Nazi's machinery of death begin almost immediately and with the Allied advance stalled over the Winter it is left to the French people themselves to remove their oppressors.
The "Ondes de choc" were originally conceived by the Left Oppositionists as a series of uprisings in urban France to ensure that revolution would break out prior to the Allied arrival, the operation isn't ready to go by February 1946 but events are carrying on without it and many have become sick of waiting to be freed. It begins with German converts fragging their commanding officers, then riots act as cover for the seizure of key buildings in major cities, where radio broadcasts call for nationwide revolution. The Wehrmacht are left running around like headless chickens for weeks on end as more and more French join in the cathartic violence, even as it becomes clear that the revolution itself is uncoordinated and undisciplined. It ends in nationwide massacres. With the Allies being unable to exploit the disruption the SS finally assume full control of the situation and assert their authority with their standard murderous zeal. The surviving revolutionaries are driven underground, alongside many slated for the death camps who managed to escape amidst the chaos. The remainder of France under Nazi occupation is placed under a state of permanent martial law.
Bucard, for his own part, continues to happily rubber stamp whatever the Nazis tell him to. The parroting of his idol in Berlin that German victory is just around the corner never comes into contact with reality even as he is forced to flee across the Rhine, then the Elbe, untl eventually he is shot out of hand by remnants of the Polish Home Army who didn't even know who he was at the time.
[4] Although practically all of France has been liberated by 1946 the war still isn't over. With France having been led by an Axis regime and with the Nazis still in possession of a puppet claiming to lead it the situation is tricky, particularly with so many
Mark Clark's arrival in Paris actually goes down fairly well; the city is wrecked like much of the country and the individual whose role it was to resolve that situation was always going to get a fair hearing even if the general's first impression appears to be various attempts to style himself as the liberator of the city. His first major blunder is to install his administration in Versailles, managing to draw parallels with the previous regime. Similarly he retains much of the old hierarchy of the civil administration and police, including some who had previoulsy been removed by popular outrage. His policy, as it is, appears to be focused on restoring Paris to a tourist capital despite serious food and housing shortages. Protests over these oversights are ignored until they turn into bread riots, which are subsequently put down with a great deal of violence.
The Left Oppositionists fail to infiltrate the American army as they did with the Germans. Victory is close for the new occupation forces, many are jaded with what they've seen in Europe and even larger numbers are simply desperate to go home. It isn't long before many French start agreeing with them. Amidst their disillusionment many Americans end up on the take, most with black marketeers and other rackets. It isn't long before a certain stench of corruption begins to stick to the administration. Clarke doesn't take this lightly but he seems more focused on redirecting the problem rather than taking active steps to address it. He complains that Eisenhower is the Supreme Commander after all and that the main priority needs to be directed to assisting the war effort rather than rebuilding before the war is over.
What's left of Germany does, finally, collapse and this excuse no longer holds any weight whatsoever.
The subsequent Allied options for France are almost universally awful: continue to rule by military governor and face a potential guerilla war when families are clamouring for their sons to be brought home as soon as possible? Allow a free and fair election where the LO is likely to be the victor? Or, most difficult to countenance, try and unite the remaining credible centre-right and centre-left forces around an individual who can espouse enough appeal that the election result might not come across as too rigged?
[5] The latter is the least worst option but even the most amoral men in Western intelligence will spend the next few decades pondering whether or not it really had to be him
* OTL, on a small scale. Allegedly.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Location
- Municipal Commune of Bourne
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Location
- Municipal Commune of Bourne
- Pronouns
- He/Him
levels of gladio not yet thought possible
also, a japhy list followed by a the red list what is this, 2013