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Alternate History General Discussion

The Death of Mosley
That reminds me, we have lots of British Fascists available so Mosley’s consist choice is always a bit odd given that Mosley’s stumbling into Fascism wasn’t particularly intended and all that.

What I’m saying is we definitely need a story where Jorian Jenks turns Britain into the ‘Killing Fields but in the Midlands’ as his regime collapses into anarchy and Left Wing revolution.
 
That reminds me, we have lots of British Fascists available so Mosley’s consist choice is always a bit odd given that Mosley’s stumbling into Fascism wasn’t particularly intended and all that.

He's the big famous one because he was the big famous one, so here he is! Kim Newman had a list of notes What If Sea Lion stuff and has the nice paragraph: "The Germans had a so-called 'white list' of 39 supposedly prominent Brits who were favourably-disposed towards Germany. It doesn't contain anyone you've ever heard of, except for Captain Maule Ramsay, a Scottish Tory MP and notorious anti-Semite who was implicated in a half-baked pro-German spy scandal. Mosley was not on the list."
 
He's the big famous one because he was the big famous one, so here he is! Kim Newman had a list of notes What If Sea Lion stuff and has the nice paragraph: "The Germans had a so-called 'white list' of 39 supposedly prominent Brits who were favourably-disposed towards Germany. It doesn't contain anyone you've ever heard of, except for Captain Maule Ramsay, a Scottish Tory MP and notorious anti-Semite who was implicated in a half-baked pro-German spy scandal. Mosley was not on the list."
Yeah, at the end of the day, Mosley would at most end up as a figure in a controlled opposition or as Newman says, is more likely to join a British Resistance...which offers a juicy story opportunity indeed.

Oswald Mosley: Hero of the Resistance would be fun.

But yeah, imagining Pro-German Government’s probably sees J.C.Fuller battling the machinations of that Amery lad and Jorian Jenks as Britain burns.
 
That reminds me, we have lots of British Fascists available so Mosley’s consist choice is always a bit odd given that Mosley’s stumbling into Fascism wasn’t particularly intended and all that.

Kind of reminds me of how the de facto pop-AH choice for Evil Pro Axis President is Charles Lindbergh. Which I can understand (big name for soft AH), but can still be a little annoying.

But yeah, imagining Pro-German Government’s probably sees J.C.Fuller battling the machinations of that Amery lad and Jorian Jenks as Britain burns.

I'm imagining Fuller's dream tank-pure formations getting lured into a tight area with little support and being crushed that way a la First Grozny.
 
After watching Valkyrie, I like the idea of a series that at first seems to be a nuanced look at the July 20 Plot in historical fiction. Unlike the oversimplified, heroified movie, this would show both the unsavory characters among the plotters and the unrealism of their demands the Allies would never accept. It comes across as being historical fiction, and then the closing cliffhanger of one episode shows Stauffenberg managing to fuse both charges as a winking hint as to what's to come.

Then in the next one we see Hitler meet a Bionic Commando-esque fate, and the AH swerve into a confused power struggle begins.

For Want of a Nail Thumb
 
Kind of reminds me of how the de facto pop-AH choice for Evil Pro Axis President is Charles Lindbergh. Which I can understand (big name for soft AH), but can still be a little annoying.
Given there’s a vast range of American Firsters that exist (including a couple of Kennedy’s) that could be used, Lindbergh’s constant appearance is amusing.
I'm imagining Fuller's dream tank-pure formations getting lured into a tight area with little support and being crushed that way a la First Grozny.
This would probably lead to some Fuller’s Tanker Boys versus Wintgraham’s People’s Home Guard story that @Mumby scrapped at some point.
 
Isn't the use of Mosley at least premised on the reality that without him British Fascism would be a complete fucking alphabet soup mess of competing claims?
True, it probably makes more sense why the Nazi’s considered military men and semi-obscure Tory Backbenchers over Mosley though. He was just a bit too able for there taste.

That also being said, John Beckett could have been a potential Other British Fascist leader though the old guard would like Mosley probably think him a bit too Beefsteak for there taste.
 
Well there's two different things aren't there. German occupation scenarios and then Britain going Fascist off its own bat scenarios. I definitely think the Nazis would have prefered to rely on someone much more established to run Britain for them than Mosley. In places that Hitler intended to annex like Holland and Norway there was a kind of joint power structure between domestic Fascists and Reich Kommisars, probably as a means of fusing the two together long-term into the Nazi party, but obviously that wouldn't apply to Britain. It'd probably be more of a France situation with established figures in charge and the far-right co-opted lower down.

But if you're talking about Britain going Fascist independently then Mosley is a reasonable choice given he clearly outpaced all the other Fascist leaders IOTL for a reason. A lot of the 'alternatives' aren't really very close to being that, plausibly. Spencer-Leese for example was a habitual loner who basically just wanted to run an anti-semitic correspondance society where beyond hating Jews anything went, and yet he still managed to set up probably the second-most notable Fascist organisation of the inter-war period.
 
I think Newman's own stuff has Samuel Hoare as the quisling figure?

Yeah: "Norman Longmate's candidate for Prime Minister is Sir Samuel Hoare, former Tory Foreign Secretary, and half of the shameful Hoare-Laval Pact which legitimised most of Mussolini's conquests in Abyssinia and which caused such outrage in Britain that he had to resign. At this time the British government had packed him off to be ambassador to Madrid, almost certainly to get him somewhere where he couldn't do any harm. But as Longmate says, it's no certainty that Hoare would have taken the job, and after him you really do have to look a long way for a contender."

And thus.

Also:

With the death of Enoch Powell, the British Military Government collapses, since Powell's groomed successors are all too senile to take power. John Major, head of the tiny Conservative Party, takes command of a coalition of the marginalised political factions and, with trade union backing, forms a government of national reform that begins to unpick the fascist state.
 
But if you're talking about Britain going Fascist independently then Mosley is a reasonable choice given he clearly outpaced all the other Fascist leaders IOTL for a reason. A lot of the 'alternatives' aren't really very close to being that, plausibly. Spencer-Leese for example was a habitual loner who basically just wanted to run an anti-semitic correspondance society where beyond hating Jews anything went, and yet he still managed to set up probably the second-most notable Fascist organisation of the inter-war period.
Very true, there’s kind of a reason why I’ve said a few times that the only organisation outside of the Mainstream Right which could have possibly had any traction was the Social Credit folks (if they actually decided to focus on creating party rather than English Folk Scouts groups) given that it would have a possible base amongst Farmers and Agrarian types if someone like Mosley hadn’t sucked up all the air within the Right (Jorian Jenks complaining about Mosley’s obsession with Machines and Futuristic ideas symbolises what a semi-successful British Social Credit Party could have been).

Apart from that, your more likely to see some weird New Party type Syncretic organisations filling the void but that’s kind of it. Your more likely to see David Lloyd George or John Beckett and an Action party doing authoritarian measures to combat the Depression than Mosley winning with the BUF in my opinion.
 
Very true, there’s kind of a reason why I’ve said a few times that the only organisation outside of the Mainstream Right which could have possibly had any traction was the Social Credit folks (if they actually decided to focus on creating party rather than English Folk Scouts groups) given that it would have a possible base amongst Farmers and Agrarian types if someone like Mosley hadn’t sucked up all the air within the Right (Jorian Jenks complaining about Mosley’s obsession with Machines and Futuristic ideas symbolises what a semi-successful British Social Credit Party could have been).

Apart from that, your more likely to see some weird New Party type Syncretic organisations filling the void but that’s kind of it. Your more likely to see David Lloyd George or John Beckett and an Action party doing authoritarian measures to combat the Depression than Mosley winning with the BUF in my opinion.
Jenks if anything reminds of young Nicolae Iorga and the Samatorists who had proto fash ideas and viewed the city and industrialization as an evil foreign force that wants to the destroy and corrupt the traditional values of the nation.

Their main thing was promoting a rural society above all and rejecting any form of industrialization/change in Romanian society (and also taxing heavily anything remotely foreign),where minorities knew their place,the foreigners were never allowed in the country and pure blooded Orthodox Christian Romanian peasants would be in charge and keep the patriotic traditions of old in place no matter the cost. They viewed the 1848 Revolutions (if not the 1789 Revolution at times) as inherently evil and thought that the country should go back to the old feudal days,when the country belonged to the peasants and true Romanian nobles and not to the “mongrel” bourgeois and landlords and their foreign ways.

Among all,they want everyone to be a peasant and form a society without any foreigners in it and where everyone is and thinks the same. They viewed any form of progress as the work of foreign interests (and Jews because they were also really racist) wanting to subjugate the fatherland and the faith and at best only accepted certain developments in agricultural fields.

In a possible Jenks regime (or a Samatorist regime for that matter),I can imagine him coming to odds with the Nazis due to industrialization and a uprising of sorts happening,with Jenks and his followers fighting the Nazis in Midlands guerrilla style,
as well as anyone wanting industrialization in Britain.
 
Their main thing was promoting a rural society above all and rejecting any form of industrialization/change in Romanian society (and also taxing heavily anything remotely foreign),where minorities knew their place,the foreigners were never allowed in the country and pure blooded Orthodox Christian Romanian peasants would be in charge and keep the patriotic traditions of old in place no matter the cost. They viewed the 1848 Revolutions (if not the 1789 Revolution at times) as inherently evil and thought that the country should go back to the old feudal days,when the country belonged to the peasants and true Romanian nobles and not to the “mongrel” bourgeois and landlords and their foreign ways.
Jenks comes from the line of English Folklorists who saw returning to this idealised feudal, agrarian System would help deal with the woes of modern living. Of course this was inspired by Prussian ideas and Volkism and all that jazz, so the very concept of it has roots in ‘Blood and Soil’ stuff (though interesting most of the early proponents were Socialists who viewed Bismarck as the future of the world).

In a possible Jenks regime (or a Samatorist regime for that matter),I can imagine him coming to odds with the Nazis due to industrialization and a uprising of sorts happening,with Jenks and his followers fighting the Nazis in Midlands guerrilla style,
as well as anyone wanting industrialization in Britain.
Jenks creating some kind of Anti-Modernist Unabomber type organisation seems like a likely path for if a Puppet Britain went with a Mosley/Fuller type puppet and all that (which is fascinating concept).
 
In a possible Jenks regime (or a Samatorist regime for that matter),I can imagine him coming to odds with the Nazis due to industrialization and a uprising of sorts happening,with Jenks and his followers fighting the Nazis in Midlands guerrilla style,
as well as anyone wanting industrialization in Britain.
I feel like this takes their ideological positions too much at face value. I think most fascists who were nostalgic for the good old agrarian days wouldn’t actually go for completely destroying their own economy. After all, the Nazis didn’t. It would make a good excuse for the Nazis carting British industry off to Germany Soviet Union-style, though.
 
I feel like this takes their ideological positions too much at face value. I think most fascists who were nostalgic for the good old agrarian days wouldn’t actually go for completely destroying their own economy. After all, the Nazis didn’t. It would make a good excuse for the Nazis carting British industry off to Germany Soviet Union-style, though.

I feel like a Nazi collaborationist British Government going Merry Olde England Khmer Rouge is a wonderful/horrifying AH idea, even if I don't know that it is the most plausible possibility.

Makes me think of this ancient AH.com thread: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/under-the-aegis-of-the-white-wyrm.224648/
 
I feel like this takes their ideological positions too much at face value. I think most fascists who were nostalgic for the good old agrarian days wouldn’t actually go for completely destroying their own economy. After all, the Nazis didn’t. It would make a good excuse for the Nazis carting British industry off to Germany Soviet Union-style, though.
Oh no, Jenks would have certainly gone ‘Merry Olde England Khmer Rouge’, which was why he was mainly kept to sidelines and chatting with Nazi ‘Blood and Soil’ Farmer Corporatists. That and he really disliked Mosley for being a modernist.
I feel like a Nazi collaborationist British Government going Merry Olde England Khmer Rouge is a wonderful/horrifying AH idea, even if I don't know that it is the most plausible possibility.
It’s a fun idea if not realistic. If your looking for Khmer type madness then you probably need to have some kind of ‘Leveller Uprising Goes Really Wrong’ or ‘Britain gets really buggered in the Early 20th Century and collapses’ like the thread you linked.
 
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