True although if the war does occur America may be able to grind down Japan but I'd expect a harder time fighting the British not to mention there is the issue of no real strong allies given that their current set of allies need a lot of building up which likely won't be ready for a war. What they might find though is say an alliance of covenience with Russia which is resentful at their losses or China seeking to reclaim the North and take the dominant position in Asia away from Japan.
The Fire Never Dies, Part II: The Red Colossus
- Thread starter Meshakhad
- Start date
The butterflies came before 1914. While a casual observer from OTL who popped into TTL in 1914 wouldn't notice much in the way of differences, a socialist from OTL 1914 absolutely would. By 1914, the Socialist Labor Party was the most prominent in the world.
Basically. WW1 ITTL was basically a soft German victory, so now they're more interested in protecting what they have than expanding their influence.
Indeed.
Probably a lot shorter. I don't see a White Russia holding on to democracy for nearly as long as Weimar Germany did.
Pretty much, but the formation of the ASU is a much less important factor in the Middle East. The biggest impact might actually be that with the ASU having an open borders policy for all intents and purposes, a lot more Jews choose to come to America instead of Palestine, leading to a smaller Third Aliyah.
It will develop, but the circumstances are different. There was no Sykes-Picot agreement ITTL, so the Arabs didn't get backstabbed. Instead, the Ottomans still control most of the Levant and northern Mesopotamia. I haven't worked out most of the details, but one thing I've decided is that near the end of the war, the Ottomans actually won a few battles that they lost IOTL due to the Anglo-Arab forces being undersupplied. Of course, plenty of Arab nationalists see the Treaty of Basel as merely a ceasefire before they go again.
I'll be taking a look at everyone. It may well be that by 1935, most of the Western Hemisphere is under socialist control.
panik
Oh, absolutely!
I love it. Although I'm more imagining Otto Skorzeny as the inspiration for a German James Bond (Johann Bund?). Hell, maybe he pulls a Christopher Lee and goes into acting (don't worry, Christopher Lee will also have his OTL career).
Pretty much. The Carlists got purged, so the Falangists will be the dominant far-right force in Spain.
I have some plans for how this plays out. But yes, Spain fills the role of Italy as the birthplace of falangism.
The ASU will probably be on Japan's level for night fighting. As both major fleet engagements of the 2AR (Chesapeake Bay and Miami Beach) were night battles, Admiral King has heavily emphasized training for night fighting.
I'm curious what this fascistic Russia is going to look like. Is it "traditionalist reactionary" or "modernist" in outlook. Conditions for minorities are going to be hellish regardless, but will it pursue some sort of crash industrialization effort (probably hampered by the lack of resources of the Ukraine) or we going to end up with some neo-feudal hellhole more concerned with keeping the uppity peasants in their place.
Hmm, Well I don't see why we wouldn't still get some sort of wave of quasi sympathetic vampire movies. With an earlier LGBT Rights Movement emerging and the presumable relative lack of censorship in the ASU film industry, perhaps, say, we end up with some artsy feminist Carmilla adaptation that depicts the titular vampire in a lot more sympathetic and tragic light at some point (helps that there's a lot more of basis for that that sorta reinterpretation in the original source material then there is for Dracula.).
OTL!Japan you mean.
ITTL, I expect Japan to be quite frankly, the best night-fighting force in the world. With the combination of spotters, night optics (enormous wide angle binoculars), flare drops, searchlights, and radar (which they got from the British)....the Yamatos ITTL are going to be outright terrifying.
I could see stories involving sympathetic queer-coded vampires turning against the more traditional evil vampires getting some play.
On the subject of the economy, there is still a market, right? Are there still anti-trust laws and the like to prevent cooperatives and combines from doing stuff like price-fixing, monopoly mergers, etc?
I'd imagine that Russia will be the second country to fall to falangism and (with how violent you make Russian Falangism sound) it'll be a pretty violent death. In all seriousness I could imagine Russian falangists having an easier time in Russia mostly due to how badly the Russian Empire got it's teeth kicked in.
Okay that's really interesting. For anyone not in the know the third Aliyah was a particularly massive wave of Jewish immigration (the numbers range from 35,000 to 40,000 to give a rough estimate) into Mandatory Palestine (what would become modern day Israel and Palestine) between 1919 and 1923 with multiple push factors (the October revolution, pogroms in Eastern Europe, general political upheaval and economic crisis in Europe after ww1, etc.) It was a pretty big win for Zionism at the time with subsequent waves only getting bigger (the fourth Aliyah saw around 80,000 immigrants while the fifth saw at least 225,000 immigrants) proving that a Jewish state was the only safe place for Jews. While a smaller Third Aliyah wouldn't be a death blow for Zionism as an ideology it would probably be a significant hit for it, especially if subsequent waves continue with a downward. I could imagine leaders and other influential figures within the movement start to look at why the ASU is so appealing to the diaspora and various attempts to make Zionism more appealing. One of the reactions I could see is a few figures just deciding "hey maybe this whole Jewish State thing isn't panning out maybe we should do something else" and embracing canaanism, Bundism, or Jewish Autonimism to name a few ideologies. I expect most Zionists to do everything to make Zionism more appealing to Jews by lifting stuff from the ASU (Labor Zionism would probably be copying the ASU the most) with one possible outcome being a earlier version of the grandfather clause being discussed. However, I could see a number of Zionist leaders reacting by embracing more extreme beliefs and movements within Zionism in hopes of forcing a Jewish state. One element I could see being openly embraced is an extreme version of the negation of the diaspora posited Brenner and Berdyczewski who looked at the Pale of the Settlement and the conditions of the people living there and went "good, these people will have no choice but to see Zionism as their only salvation." Even more worryingly I could see some parts of these extremists openly embrace accelerationism as a means to create a Jewish state (i.e. "we need to make conditions worse for the Diaspora so they'll immigrate to Israel" type of batshit insane rhetoric).
TBH I could also see elements of pan-arabism embrace ASU style socialism as way to appeal to the masses and possibly get support. Also hopefully more tolerant of non-Arab minorities like Assyrians, Copts, and Jews (or at least some elements of the movement).
Honestly it'd be hilarious to see the red scare crowd in Europe react to most of Latin America going red. Is it alright for me to say that it's also pretty funny that a timeline I'm reading on sufficient velocity also features Latin America going red except the US can't do anything about it aside from whine from the sidelines.
Which will no doubt lead to more Big Brain moments from right wing Latin American leaders like what the constitutionalists did in Labor's star ascendent. In all seriousness I'm expecting the Latin American right to just get overthrown thanks to their stupidity and then just run to Europe while whining about how "those dirty reds took my stuff" like the American exiles did.
Looks to be that way after this TL's WW2 (Britain and France's colonies in the Caribbean and the Guyanas are probably going to get gobbled up by the ASU and friends). Although @Meshakhad did say that they're practicing a Finland style policy.
Given the ASU's socialist nature there's not exactly very many big businesses running around. Outside of the ASU's sphere I expect that those measures are put into place as to not make Socialism popular for the average person in non-socialist countries.
It varies wildly from industry to industry. In some industries, you basically have one big combine that controls everything by design. The most extreme case is the arms industry, where the arms manufacturers have been consolidated into one combine that answers to the Commissariat for War and whose workers have a status similar to civilian DoD employees IOTL. In other industries, there is a lot more genuine competition, but also collaboration at the union level. A loose metaphor might be the NFL, if the NFL commissioners were elected by the players and coaches. For example, the various farming cooperatives compete with each other to sell more and better products, but they'll also band together when dealing with other industries (such as negotiating a deal to buy modern farm equipment and distribute it).
There are some regulations in place to limit price fixing and such. But many socialist thinkers like Daniel DeLeon see too much competition in the market as one of the flaws of capitalism. This is, in fact, a major ongoing issue in the ASU, and one that will probably persist indefinitely, similar to OTL debates about the size of the government.
The longer Russian democracy lasts, the more violent its death will be.
Zionism is not going to do as well ITTL.
There will be some Arab socialists, and those will largely view Jews and other non-Arabs as brothers.
My vague plan for Latin America is that most of their governments do get overthrown at some point, with a few surviving thanks to luck, sufficient reforms to ease tensions, or European support. The last category includes the Dominican Republic, btw.
Personally, I think it would be interesting for the new socialist governments in Latin America to be diverse and have their own personalities.
What I have generally seen in these types of situations tends to oscillate between
"the new popular republics behave as if they were run by High Representatives sent from Red America" and
"the domino effect consists of the 'Communist States of America*' making Banana Wars 2, now with a coat of red paint."
It's a bit annoying because it basically assumes that the entire rest of the continent will simply fall in line without a complaint with whatever is decided in the English-speaking part of America.
*I know that the name of the ITTL country is Socialist Union of America, as well as that it is not that kind of horrible country. Here the mention of 'Communist States of America' is in reference to the most common incarnation of the Red America trope, that is, the one that is functionally indistinguishable from a protonazi evil version of OTL America.
What I have generally seen in these types of situations tends to oscillate between
"the new popular republics behave as if they were run by High Representatives sent from Red America" and
"the domino effect consists of the 'Communist States of America*' making Banana Wars 2, now with a coat of red paint."
It's a bit annoying because it basically assumes that the entire rest of the continent will simply fall in line without a complaint with whatever is decided in the English-speaking part of America.
*I know that the name of the ITTL country is Socialist Union of America, as well as that it is not that kind of horrible country. Here the mention of 'Communist States of America' is in reference to the most common incarnation of the Red America trope, that is, the one that is functionally indistinguishable from a protonazi evil version of OTL America.
Honestly I kind of wanna see the revolutionary governments in Latin America be a real hodgepodge of left wing ideologies ranging from anarchists in Brazil and Argentina to Zaptistists in places like El Salvador (presumably after a more successful La Matanza) to more ASU style socialists in places like Colombia and Chile. I think it'd be a pretty interesting scenario for the ASU to have to deal with a bunch of equally revolutionary governments with different ideologies.
That's a bright spot at the very least. Hopefully they manage to gain traction in a few middle eastern countries.
Man Trujiilo's going to be in for a rough ride once WW2 starts.
> be Trujillo in TFND
> ally with Britain
> WW2 starts
> Royal Navy gets evicted from Caribbean
> Haitians invading from the west
> Puerto Ricans landing in the east
> Mexican air force bombing you
> Cuban destroyers blockading your ports
> welp
I can also imagine that there will be a diversity of opinions towards the ASU among socialist governments.
To cite the four most dominant trends I foresee, I think there will be countries that run the gamut from:
"you don't fool us with this coat of red paint, you're still the same gringos that screwed us over", to
"we don't like you too much so did your predecessor, but we don't want a fight with you" and
"you are better than your previous version, at least with you we can negotiate, but we will see what you do before committing to you, although we appreciate your help"
as intermediate positions, and the other extreme would be
"ASU is the best thing since sliced bread, we must unite our destiny with theirs."
I doubt that any of the socialist governments will seek an open fight with ASU, they are proud but not suicidal. As history tells us, virtually all of the wars between the United States and its Latin American neighbors were the United States attacking someone, not being attacked. This trend is not going to change here.
To cite the four most dominant trends I foresee, I think there will be countries that run the gamut from:
"you don't fool us with this coat of red paint, you're still the same gringos that screwed us over", to
"we don't like you too much so did your predecessor, but we don't want a fight with you" and
"you are better than your previous version, at least with you we can negotiate, but we will see what you do before committing to you, although we appreciate your help"
as intermediate positions, and the other extreme would be
"ASU is the best thing since sliced bread, we must unite our destiny with theirs."
I doubt that any of the socialist governments will seek an open fight with ASU, they are proud but not suicidal. As history tells us, virtually all of the wars between the United States and its Latin American neighbors were the United States attacking someone, not being attacked. This trend is not going to change here.
Last edited:
I actually feel sorry for this poor guy. Because that some pretty spectacular bad luck, like 2nd Russian Pacific Squadron bad luck.