Dan1988
DO! YOU! HEAR THE SONG OF PEACE!
- Location
- North America
- Pronouns
- he/him
So, here’s a question that came to me recently (but didn’t know how to ask):
We all know that it would be impossible, more or less, for an Operation Seelöwe to occur as a result of many factors which would have befallen the Germans and all that. On the other hand, we are also familiar both with how the British Government of the day (until WWII actually came about) tried to avoid war as much as possible through the appeasement policy, and that Mosley and the BUF never really amounted to much in the end. But what if we looked at the 1930s through a different light?
As some of you are probably aware, both here a couple of months ago and at the other place, one of the TL projects I have been working on was The Fallen Madonna, which deals with what Newfoundland would be like had it become part of the United Kingdom. However, for the past couple of years I’ve been hit with a writer’s block on this scenario. I can figure out how Newfoundland would fare during WWI; I can somewhat figure out how to make Newfoundland politics more chaotic without steering it towards its OTL path (which was bad enough, even without the Commission of Government), and even with repercussions in Canada (and, to a lesser degree, France) I know what I’m doing. My big black hole in the whole scenario, as well as any consequences it would have for Newfoundland and Labrador, is the United Kingdom itself. Before I even figure out what close votes at Westminster would have been different if Newfoundland was present in the House of Commons, my problem - apart from a general lack of knowledge of British politics during this period - is that I don’t actually have a narrative for Britain as a whole to use. I already had a narrative that I used up where a federal UK comes about by the politicians trying to figure out how best to bring Newfoundland into the Union (for which I can never thank @Thande and @Simon enough), but now conditions are different. Then last week, while pondering over how best to apply the Technocracy movement to North America as a sort of right-wing variant of the Soviet Union, and a couple of days ago when reading the thread about Crete as a Greek Taiwan (which I had to refrain myself from posting since with my thinking alone it would have taken up an entire page), I stumbled on an idea and fleshed it out in my head, but I didn’t know how to explain it, figuring out what would happen if instead of “invading” the UK directly the Nazis decided to exert strong influence instead, indirectly?
After all, IOTL the Nazis claimed that England would be their model for how to run their new Lebensraum (and in particular they were obsessed with the Raj and how astonishing it was for England, despite small numbers, were able to conquer a large area like India). Because the Nazis claimed that they wanted to be as civilized as the English (right down to slavishly imitating upper-class mannerisms, including fox hunts), they believed that England would be a natural ally for the Nazis and the Foreign Ministry apparently repeatedly tried to get a treaty of alliance on that front (until Joachim von Ribbentrop blew the whole thing up). The end result of this thinking was that when the UK joined France in declaring war against Nazi Germany over the latter’s invasion of Poland, there were those in the Nazi hierarchy who believed that both sides were fighting “the wrong war”. Now, whether the UK in general believed that such prostrations were genuine or not is an open question, and from what I can tell, at least the Foreign Office was not interested in such a close relationship with Nazi Germany (with, as it turned out, much benefit to the British). Even with those maneuverings by the Foreign Office, obviously there were elements in British society who believed such a close relationship would be a good thing, which got marginalized relatively quickly once the war began. So I want to start my narrative in the 1930s and work from there, and because around here we have a lot of British members and Politbrits (often overlapping), I wanted to outline a scenario and see if it could work as an idea for Britain during this period.
Before I begin, I want to set a couple of parameters and assumptions. Let’s assume that in this case, since it would eventually be for my TL, that Newfoundland - defined there as including not only the Island of Newfoundland and surrounding islands (minus the then-Colony of Saint Pierre-et-Miquelon, which was part of France), but also Labrador (with its southern boundary adjusted towards Quebec’s OTL claim, which is more “natural”-looking) and those area of the Northwest Territories’ District of Ungava as it existed after the Quebec Boundary Extension Act, 1898, making the Eastmain River the land boundary here between Canada and the UK. As the Church of England, in my thinking, would have a minor but important role in this narrative (despite not knowing all the ins and outs of its because I’m not Anglican/Episcopalian) due to its role as England’s Established Church, it should be mentioned that until the 1970s, when the Anglican Church of Canada reorganized the administrative structures in Newfoundland and divided into three dioceses, it was part of a single Anglican Diocese of Newfoundland and Bermuda (then after Confederation, as a single Diocese of Newfoundland within the Anglican Church of Canada) - which was something I just recently found out. In TTL, as per my TL, Ireland is still part of the UK, divided into its four provinces for the purposes of federalism (likewise, for the purposes of devising federal constituent units, England is divided into counties as they existed circa 1900 (primarily the administrative counties) while Scotland and Wales - including Monmouthshire, an important distinction that needs to be made because of the period - are incorporated into the federation as their own nations). In addition, to make things easier to explain so that it can be adjusted later, let’s also assume that despite that change to the UK and what I’m proposing, everything else around it (as well as much of the UK itself) is more or less as similar to OTL as possible, up to 1945.
With that in mind, let’s assume that Lady Furness does not introduce then-Prince Edward to Wallis Simpson and thus Prince Edward gets romantically involved with someone else. (Who that person is would be left open to speculation, but right now I’m not naming names - because I’m in a hurry and I need to get ready for work after I post this.) This may seem like a trivial detail at first (although it would save the Royal Family much embarrassment as well as taking out a whole chapter of British history), but the reason for this is because I’m thinking that eventually Edward VIII gets compromised because the Nazis have a hold over him, both directly and also through his wife. (So one possible option would be to have a German wife for Edward VIII, i.e. Frederica of Hannover instead of her falling in love with Diadohos Prigkipas [Crown Prince] Pavlos of Greece, hence no Konstantinos II and probably Pavlos having a stronger backbone to stand up to his generals and those wanting to overturn Greek democracy.) Now Edward VIII was already notorious for causing unease in the Government due to perceived political interference; even with no abdication crisis, it’s only possible that that unease would definitely grow and create friction between the King and the Government. If he was compromised by the Nazis (which probably everyone else would not know until it was too late), that friction would presumably only get much worse if the Prime Minister and the Foreign Office want to do one thing and the King wants to do another.
Now, on top of that, let’s throw in another factor. I’m not planning on using Mosley and the BUF in this narrative; despite their presence in 1930s Britain, from my point of view they were basically a flash in the pan that wanted to try to imitate Benito Mussolini and fascist Italy and failed. Rather, because I also plan on using this movement as having an important role, even if by a passing mention, in Newfoundland’s politics (because whenever an economic crisis hits the UK, whether it be from the Depression or from the general post-WW1 malaise, the effects would be much stronger in Newfoundland and making the existing poverty that much worse), I’m also thinking of assigning a greater role here to the British Israelite movement. British Israelism, for those who are not familiar with it, is the bonkers belief that the United Kingdom, and in particular the British (and especially the English), are the real descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and thus the British are the “real” Jewish people. Their justifications involved spurious and dubious stuff that one today would consider either laughable or easily debunked, such as the belief that the term “British” actually derives from the Hebrew <berith ish>, meaning “covenant man”, for example (with even more bonkers theories claiming furthermore that the Royal Family is the direct descendant of the House of David via some connection involving Zedekiah’s daughters fleeing to Ireland and the Stone of Scone as the Biblical patriarch Jacob’s pillow stone), although it draws upon long-standing tenets of English folklore and legend dating back to the Venerable Bede about England’s “special relationship” with Christianity which have echoed throughout the ages, even as far down as “And did these feet in ancient time (Jerusalem)” which uses symbolism from that English mythology to drive home its point. All that would be needed here would be to further augment British Israelism’s presence in the UK for it to be the British version of Nazi ideology, with friends in high places (including Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, who was a big supporter of the British-Israel World Federation (BIWF), the main proponent of British Israelite theology) and even inside the Church of England itself.
Thus, Britain and WWII would have a very different relationship more similar to the Continent, although as far as the Nazis are concerned it would be indirect though no less important and thus - while nowhere like anything depicted in Knights of God - you get a split in both the British Government and the Royal Family (although a minority, to be sure), with most preferring exile to collaboration. Both would exist as something like a British version of Charles de Gaulle’s Free French, with a British Resistance inside the UK against Edward VIII and the collaborationist Government. The Labour and Communist Parties would both exert influence within this Resistance and even fight against each other as much as they fight against the régime. What ends up happening is that the British Resistance eventually gets transformed and thus eventually moves towards something akin to Greece’s own Resistance rather than France’s and thus plants the seeds of a republican Britain that would bear fruit after the War. Thus rather than accepting civil war, after the war a referendum is held on the monarchy; with Edward VIII in mind, most vote in favor of a republic instead, leading to the disestablishment of the Church of England, the formation of a Commonwealth of Britain dominated by Labour including not just Newfoundland (since the vote here would also be for a republic, although leading here to a split in the Diocese of Newfoundland and Bermuda) but also the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, and the British Government-in-Exile remaining as such for a long time to come.
My question - or rather questions - are thus:
>Could something like this narrative actually work? Is it plausible enough? Are there details pertaining to Britain in particular I’m leaving out?
>What sort of reverberations would this have on the Dominions? On the rest of the British Empire?
>While I can somewhat imagine what a British Government-in-Exile would function like, even if my mind draws a blank on how to people it, this leads to another question. How would the British Royal Family actually work when operating in exile? What sort of titles of pretense would be used? Would there be something similar to the coronation ceremony adapted to different circumstances, or would it be something different?
Thank you in advance for reading, and any constructive criticism is most appreciated.
We all know that it would be impossible, more or less, for an Operation Seelöwe to occur as a result of many factors which would have befallen the Germans and all that. On the other hand, we are also familiar both with how the British Government of the day (until WWII actually came about) tried to avoid war as much as possible through the appeasement policy, and that Mosley and the BUF never really amounted to much in the end. But what if we looked at the 1930s through a different light?
As some of you are probably aware, both here a couple of months ago and at the other place, one of the TL projects I have been working on was The Fallen Madonna, which deals with what Newfoundland would be like had it become part of the United Kingdom. However, for the past couple of years I’ve been hit with a writer’s block on this scenario. I can figure out how Newfoundland would fare during WWI; I can somewhat figure out how to make Newfoundland politics more chaotic without steering it towards its OTL path (which was bad enough, even without the Commission of Government), and even with repercussions in Canada (and, to a lesser degree, France) I know what I’m doing. My big black hole in the whole scenario, as well as any consequences it would have for Newfoundland and Labrador, is the United Kingdom itself. Before I even figure out what close votes at Westminster would have been different if Newfoundland was present in the House of Commons, my problem - apart from a general lack of knowledge of British politics during this period - is that I don’t actually have a narrative for Britain as a whole to use. I already had a narrative that I used up where a federal UK comes about by the politicians trying to figure out how best to bring Newfoundland into the Union (for which I can never thank @Thande and @Simon enough), but now conditions are different. Then last week, while pondering over how best to apply the Technocracy movement to North America as a sort of right-wing variant of the Soviet Union, and a couple of days ago when reading the thread about Crete as a Greek Taiwan (which I had to refrain myself from posting since with my thinking alone it would have taken up an entire page), I stumbled on an idea and fleshed it out in my head, but I didn’t know how to explain it, figuring out what would happen if instead of “invading” the UK directly the Nazis decided to exert strong influence instead, indirectly?
After all, IOTL the Nazis claimed that England would be their model for how to run their new Lebensraum (and in particular they were obsessed with the Raj and how astonishing it was for England, despite small numbers, were able to conquer a large area like India). Because the Nazis claimed that they wanted to be as civilized as the English (right down to slavishly imitating upper-class mannerisms, including fox hunts), they believed that England would be a natural ally for the Nazis and the Foreign Ministry apparently repeatedly tried to get a treaty of alliance on that front (until Joachim von Ribbentrop blew the whole thing up). The end result of this thinking was that when the UK joined France in declaring war against Nazi Germany over the latter’s invasion of Poland, there were those in the Nazi hierarchy who believed that both sides were fighting “the wrong war”. Now, whether the UK in general believed that such prostrations were genuine or not is an open question, and from what I can tell, at least the Foreign Office was not interested in such a close relationship with Nazi Germany (with, as it turned out, much benefit to the British). Even with those maneuverings by the Foreign Office, obviously there were elements in British society who believed such a close relationship would be a good thing, which got marginalized relatively quickly once the war began. So I want to start my narrative in the 1930s and work from there, and because around here we have a lot of British members and Politbrits (often overlapping), I wanted to outline a scenario and see if it could work as an idea for Britain during this period.
Before I begin, I want to set a couple of parameters and assumptions. Let’s assume that in this case, since it would eventually be for my TL, that Newfoundland - defined there as including not only the Island of Newfoundland and surrounding islands (minus the then-Colony of Saint Pierre-et-Miquelon, which was part of France), but also Labrador (with its southern boundary adjusted towards Quebec’s OTL claim, which is more “natural”-looking) and those area of the Northwest Territories’ District of Ungava as it existed after the Quebec Boundary Extension Act, 1898, making the Eastmain River the land boundary here between Canada and the UK. As the Church of England, in my thinking, would have a minor but important role in this narrative (despite not knowing all the ins and outs of its because I’m not Anglican/Episcopalian) due to its role as England’s Established Church, it should be mentioned that until the 1970s, when the Anglican Church of Canada reorganized the administrative structures in Newfoundland and divided into three dioceses, it was part of a single Anglican Diocese of Newfoundland and Bermuda (then after Confederation, as a single Diocese of Newfoundland within the Anglican Church of Canada) - which was something I just recently found out. In TTL, as per my TL, Ireland is still part of the UK, divided into its four provinces for the purposes of federalism (likewise, for the purposes of devising federal constituent units, England is divided into counties as they existed circa 1900 (primarily the administrative counties) while Scotland and Wales - including Monmouthshire, an important distinction that needs to be made because of the period - are incorporated into the federation as their own nations). In addition, to make things easier to explain so that it can be adjusted later, let’s also assume that despite that change to the UK and what I’m proposing, everything else around it (as well as much of the UK itself) is more or less as similar to OTL as possible, up to 1945.
With that in mind, let’s assume that Lady Furness does not introduce then-Prince Edward to Wallis Simpson and thus Prince Edward gets romantically involved with someone else. (Who that person is would be left open to speculation, but right now I’m not naming names - because I’m in a hurry and I need to get ready for work after I post this.) This may seem like a trivial detail at first (although it would save the Royal Family much embarrassment as well as taking out a whole chapter of British history), but the reason for this is because I’m thinking that eventually Edward VIII gets compromised because the Nazis have a hold over him, both directly and also through his wife. (So one possible option would be to have a German wife for Edward VIII, i.e. Frederica of Hannover instead of her falling in love with Diadohos Prigkipas [Crown Prince] Pavlos of Greece, hence no Konstantinos II and probably Pavlos having a stronger backbone to stand up to his generals and those wanting to overturn Greek democracy.) Now Edward VIII was already notorious for causing unease in the Government due to perceived political interference; even with no abdication crisis, it’s only possible that that unease would definitely grow and create friction between the King and the Government. If he was compromised by the Nazis (which probably everyone else would not know until it was too late), that friction would presumably only get much worse if the Prime Minister and the Foreign Office want to do one thing and the King wants to do another.
Now, on top of that, let’s throw in another factor. I’m not planning on using Mosley and the BUF in this narrative; despite their presence in 1930s Britain, from my point of view they were basically a flash in the pan that wanted to try to imitate Benito Mussolini and fascist Italy and failed. Rather, because I also plan on using this movement as having an important role, even if by a passing mention, in Newfoundland’s politics (because whenever an economic crisis hits the UK, whether it be from the Depression or from the general post-WW1 malaise, the effects would be much stronger in Newfoundland and making the existing poverty that much worse), I’m also thinking of assigning a greater role here to the British Israelite movement. British Israelism, for those who are not familiar with it, is the bonkers belief that the United Kingdom, and in particular the British (and especially the English), are the real descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and thus the British are the “real” Jewish people. Their justifications involved spurious and dubious stuff that one today would consider either laughable or easily debunked, such as the belief that the term “British” actually derives from the Hebrew <berith ish>, meaning “covenant man”, for example (with even more bonkers theories claiming furthermore that the Royal Family is the direct descendant of the House of David via some connection involving Zedekiah’s daughters fleeing to Ireland and the Stone of Scone as the Biblical patriarch Jacob’s pillow stone), although it draws upon long-standing tenets of English folklore and legend dating back to the Venerable Bede about England’s “special relationship” with Christianity which have echoed throughout the ages, even as far down as “And did these feet in ancient time (Jerusalem)” which uses symbolism from that English mythology to drive home its point. All that would be needed here would be to further augment British Israelism’s presence in the UK for it to be the British version of Nazi ideology, with friends in high places (including Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, who was a big supporter of the British-Israel World Federation (BIWF), the main proponent of British Israelite theology) and even inside the Church of England itself.
Thus, Britain and WWII would have a very different relationship more similar to the Continent, although as far as the Nazis are concerned it would be indirect though no less important and thus - while nowhere like anything depicted in Knights of God - you get a split in both the British Government and the Royal Family (although a minority, to be sure), with most preferring exile to collaboration. Both would exist as something like a British version of Charles de Gaulle’s Free French, with a British Resistance inside the UK against Edward VIII and the collaborationist Government. The Labour and Communist Parties would both exert influence within this Resistance and even fight against each other as much as they fight against the régime. What ends up happening is that the British Resistance eventually gets transformed and thus eventually moves towards something akin to Greece’s own Resistance rather than France’s and thus plants the seeds of a republican Britain that would bear fruit after the War. Thus rather than accepting civil war, after the war a referendum is held on the monarchy; with Edward VIII in mind, most vote in favor of a republic instead, leading to the disestablishment of the Church of England, the formation of a Commonwealth of Britain dominated by Labour including not just Newfoundland (since the vote here would also be for a republic, although leading here to a split in the Diocese of Newfoundland and Bermuda) but also the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, and the British Government-in-Exile remaining as such for a long time to come.
My question - or rather questions - are thus:
>Could something like this narrative actually work? Is it plausible enough? Are there details pertaining to Britain in particular I’m leaving out?
>What sort of reverberations would this have on the Dominions? On the rest of the British Empire?
>While I can somewhat imagine what a British Government-in-Exile would function like, even if my mind draws a blank on how to people it, this leads to another question. How would the British Royal Family actually work when operating in exile? What sort of titles of pretense would be used? Would there be something similar to the coronation ceremony adapted to different circumstances, or would it be something different?
Thank you in advance for reading, and any constructive criticism is most appreciated.
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