For All Time Pt. One
December 20, 1941
White House
7:00 PM

"It's a good speech, just a little too long." commented Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, trademark cigarette holder clenched in his teeth, as he read Judge
Samuel Rosenman's draft for his Christmas Address to the Nation. He looked up
and grinned at his speechwriter, the former judge. " It's damned good, in fact.
Are you sure you don't celebrate Christmas on the sly, Sam?"

Rosenman shrugged, smiling. "Hell, Franklin, if Christmas is about Christ in
this town, or half the country these days, I'll eat that speech. Have you seen
that new Coca-Cola Santa Claus? That's the man the Christian kids in this
country pray to.", he joked. 

The two men chatted for another few minutes; they'd been friends and colleagues
for a very long time, since before Roosevelt's first campaign for President in
'32, but even with working in the same building and with Sam working for
Franklin, they rarely got a chance to just sit down and shoot the breeze for a
while. 

Especially with what had happened earlier in the month. The face of Washington
had changed radically in the last six months; anti-aircraft guns poked up from
nearly everywhere these days, and soldiers walked the streets. Still, Rosenman
trusted his old friend to get the country through it. 

Finally, Judge Rosenman glanced at his watch. "Ah, damn, I promised the wife
I'd be home for dinner tonight, I'm already an hour late." He stood up and
offered FDR his  hand, and the President shook it firmly. Roosevelt was
frighteningly strong for a polio victim, thought Rosenman, he wouldn't want to
arm-wrestle with him. "I'll edit the speech tonight, put it on your desk in the
morning."

"No, I just want to drop a page here and there." said Roosevelt with a jaunty
grin. "I won't drop dead from working on my own speeches, you know, Sam." The
speechwriter laughed, louder when Roosevelt feigned slumping in his seat. "No,
I won't suppose you will, Frank?"

"Franklin?" Roosevelt's cigarette had dropped from his teeth, and was rapidly
burning a hole through his suit. His glasses half-hung, on one ear and off the
other, and his eyes stared blankly at his feet. 

"Oh my God?"

December 21, 1941
5 PM
Vice-President's residence

"My fellow Americans," said President Henry Wallace as he faced the microphone
squarely, imagining the millions and millions of people listening to his speech
by radio. He'd written this speech himself. Sure, speech-writers were great,
but he needed a  "This is your President, Henry Wallace." He paused for a
moment, and then continued. 

"By now, all of you will have heard of the tragedy that befell America
yesterday. Our President, the great Franklin Delano Roosevelt, died peacefully
at his desk, working, as he always did, for all Americans."

"I will never be the President he was," he said with more truth than he knew,
"but I will be the best President a man can hope to be. Together, we will carry
forward the struggle against the Japanese and German foes, on land, sea, and
air, until at last the forces of democracy, represented by ourselves, General
Secretary Stalin, and Prime Minister Churchill, together with our allies in
China and the Free French, triumph. As Abraham Lincoln might have said, let us
not remember this day as a tragedy, but as a new birth of freedom in the
Earth." 
 


All across the nation, a mourning people breathed a sigh of relief. The man who
had brought them through the New Deal, had comforted them when the great new
war began, was dead. But his chosen successor, a good young farmboy, had
manfully taken up his mantle. 

 For All Time Pt. 2
January 5, 1942
Washington, D.C.
Oval Office

"I don't think this is a good idea," said President Henry Wallace firmly,
tapping his pen against the memorandum he needed to sign. "Granted, Wavell is
experienced, but as I recall, Rommel handed his head to him on more than one
occasion, and do we really want this Yamashita fellow doing the same thing? It
seems to me we'd be better off with Doug MacArthur, or even Chet Nimitz, over
Wavell." 

Secretary of War Henry Stimson, whose government experience predated Henry
Wallace's own birth, eyed the young President as a faint note of concern
sounded in his head. "Well, Mr. President, our policy is full cooperation with
our British and other allies, unification of command and basic strategy,
pooling of resources. And British, Dutch and Commonwealth forces in that sector
of the Pacific do outnumber ours by a substantial margin at this stage. It
seemed most practical to President Roosevelt to give command to the
British...for the time being." 'Especially with that glory hound MacArthur
locked up in Bataan.", he thought grimly.

Wallace eyed the memorandum again and finally, reluctantly signed it. "You're
right, they _do_ outnumber us there...no surprise, their half of the war is
defending their Empire." He shook his head as he handed the memorandum back to
Stimson. "We'll outnumber them there soon enough, once we get our boys in
position."

Stimson took the memo and looked at Wallace in some surprise as he rose to
leave. "Well, granted that's true, Mr. President, but both of our attentions
are on Europe right now, and it seems inadvisable to increase our commitment to
that area just to ensure American dominance in the command-"

"Do you think I don't know that?", snapped Wallace, not bothering to get up.
He'd tried to get along with Roosevelt's old cabinet, but most new Presidents
tended to clear out the old wood in their first year or so anyway, and there
was few wood older than Stimson in American government today. "I'll tell you
the same thing I told Cordell Hull when he tried to give me that line earlier
today. I am the President of the United States, and I will not be trifled with.
I make the decisions around here, and while I appreciate your advice, I don't
need it."

---

"Dr. Win the War is the boss now," said President Wallace in his January 12
State of the Union Address, "but don't worry. Dr. New Deal is still alive and
well, and very important around these parts." 

Wallace outlined a three-step program for the New Deal during the war:

-The National Race Relations Board would ensure "full cooperation and promote
mutual trust between the various American races, white and black, Asian and
Indian, so that all the free peoples of the continent can unite, without fear
or prejudice, against the foes of democracy across the seas." Privately,
Wallace had already promised control of the board to Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury Harry Dexter White.
-The Nationalized Lead-Lease Industrial Board, Wallace's own inspiration, would
place all industrial material going to help America's allies under the direct
control of the US government. The US would set their wages, prices, corporate
policies, while ensuring that even the owners of those companies would get what
was coming to them. To head this up, Wallace has delightfully chosen the kind
of man he really admires: Henry J. Kaiser.
-Current New Deal programs, such as the Works Progress Administration,
Securities and Exchange Commission, and Civilian Conservation Corps would
remain solidly on the books, and recieve strong additional funding. Wallace
believed firmly in the New Deal, passionately, even, and would see no reason to
funnel money elsewhere in wartime. Plus, it will let him quietly put several
supernumeraries from the last administration out to pasture, or so he hopes.

 For All Time Pt. 3
 
January-February 1942

-In OTL, early 1942 saw the openings of the first joint Anglo-American economic
commitees, the Combined Raw Materials Board, the Munitions Assignments Board,
and the Combined Shipping Adjustment Board, with their goal as coordinating the
economic and industrial policies of the Allies. In OTL, they were reasonably
effiencient and worthwhile...but that was under Roosevelt. 

Henry Wallace neither likes nor trusts the British Empire in general and
Winston Churchill in particular. While he reluctantly agrees some sort of
economic cooperation is needed between the Great Powers, he'd like to have
someone on the commitee besides Great Britain; and when his lobbying efforts to
Stalin fail, he settles for making sure the cooperation is done his way. 

Instead of the various boards, policy and planning will be made by the Combined
Industrial Board, and its various subcommitees; and Wallace knows just the man
to run the American side of things. While the former director of the Securities
and Exchange Commission is far to the right of Wallace, he is a self-made
millionarie, like the new President, and also shares with him a strong
suspicion of the British Empire. Plus, he has extensive experience as the
former Ambassador to Great Britain.

-Early 1942 also saw the beginnings of South America turning away from the
Axis; the governments of Peru, Uruguay, Bolivia and Paraguay all broke off
diplomatic and economic relations with the Axis powers during January and
February, after the US (and Secretary of State Cordell Hull) helped show them
what a good idea it was. 

Henry Wallace, however, with his extensive interest in South America, calls in
the foriegn ministers of nearly every nation on the continent (consulting but
ignoring Hull, who he regards as a bigoted old fossil) and strongly invites
them to go one step further, to declare _war_ on the Axis powers. 

Many demur, at first, after all, all their countries have a significant
rightist political element (many are governed by right-wing governments,
especially Vargas in Brazil), and their governments will look like lapdogs if
they declare war because Wallace cracks the whip. 

Wallace is a businessman, though, and knows how to negotiate with inferiors; he
offers them something of a national bribe, lots and lots of Lend-Lease aid, to
make up for the economic disruption caused by the loss of German trade. 

Argentina is the first to withdraw, President Ramón S. Castillo knows full well
he will be overthrown if he turns his back on neutrality, and frankly, he'd
rather not be overthrown. Wallace continues to stubbornly insist that _every_
nation involved in the secret talks must declare war, or they'll all look weak,
finally going to so far as to make intimations of "cleaning house in the

 For All Time Pt. 4

-In mid-February of 1942, President Wallace politely but firmly turns down
British plans for a commission of mutual cooperation in the Caribbean. He's
still determined to set right whatever went wrong in Latin America, and he
doesn't trust the British not to come in and gum things up. Not intentionally,
mind, but their diplomacy comes across as a bull in a china shop. He
acknowledges a need for Anglo-American cooperation in the area, though, and so
turns the matter over to the Commander of the United States Navy: Ernest King,
who attacks the matter with his usual Anglophobia. (After all, Singapore has
just fallen and the "Scharnhorst", "Gneisenau" and "Prinz Eugen" have escaped,
how compentent can the Limeys be?) With Latin America messed with for no
particular reason yet again, a young Under-Secretary of State named Nelson
Rockefeller, already uncomfortable in the less than bipartisan Wallace
administration, hands in his resignation. 

-Cordell Hull comes near to resigning, yet again, when President Wallace
(though not publically, thank God, he thinks as he throws an empty bottle
 across the room) puts
strong pressure on the British government, along with Chaing Kai-Shek, to
simply grant India the independance they want, and not horse around with the
Cripps offer extended earlier in the year. But, Hull is a stubborn man, and he
won't go down without being pushed. He knows full well that Wallace wants him
gone, too, and is grooming White House Chief of Staff Alger Hiss for his job.

-Acting under direct orders from Secretary of War Henry Stimson (who, with his
long experience of Presidents, knows the key to dealing with them is just not
telling them things), General Douglas MacArthur leaves Bataan Island and
surrenders his role as commanding officer there.

-Wallace takes the oppurtunity of the disastrous Battle of Java Sea (February
27-March 1) to do some house cleaning. The United States lost five ships sunk
to a damaged Japanese destroyer; clearly, something is seriously rotten in the
civilian parts of the Navy Department. This is good for Wallace on a personal
level as well as a political one; he despises Frank Knox, the Secretary of the
Navy. Knox is a deeply, deeply conservative Republican, the wealthy head of a
major newspaper chain in Chicago, (in fact, he was Landon's runningmate in
1936), and he and the arch-liberal Wallace have butted heads on more than one
occasion. Knox isn't exactly happy about being ordered to resign, but hey, if
he criticized FDR in his papers, he can do three times worse to Wallace...To
replace him, Wallace opts to go outside the Department alltogether; to Paul
McNutt, former Governor of Indiana and High Commisioner of the Phillipines,
current director of the Federal Security Administration.

In the shuffle as the new Secretary comes into power, a terrible paperwork
malfunction loses all the plans for a planned B-25 strike against Tokyo and
Yokohama in late April. McNutt is a very, very good administrator, (his enemies
called him "The Hoosier Hitler" for his organization abilities) though, and he
quickly helps rebuild the plans, so the strike is post-poned until the first
week of May, when the Hornet and Enterprise will launch the planes of General
James Doolittle.

 For All Time Pt. 5

April-May 1942


-In late April of 1942, General James Doolittle recieves word that his planned
airstrike against the Japanese Home Islands has been postponed, yet again;
Japan is poised to seize Port Moresby and have a gateway against Australia, and
the Enterprise and Hornet are needed to reinforce the Yorktown and Lexington in
the Coral Sea.

Doolittle has his backers, though, and infighting over the move delays the
arrival of the carriers and their battle groups to the night of the eighth of
April. Meanwhile, the battle goes as largely as per OTL; the first
carrier-on-carrier battles in history see the loss of a few cruisers and
support ships, the sinking of the Japanese light carrier Shoho, the savaging of
the carrier Shokaku, destroying its ability to launch planes, and the
destruction of most of the Zuikaku's planes. The Lexington takes the damage
that will sink her as per OTL. 

After arriving in the combat area and assisting with attempted repairs of the
Lexington, Captain Mason of the Hornet, the senior officer of the arriving
fleet (Captain Harriman of the Enterprise being very new, he just was delivered
to the ship the Tuesday before.) takes the two fresh, undamaged carriers west,
to hunt the Shokaku and Zuikaku. 

The two carriers are travelling close together with the survivors of their
battered fleet; the Zuikaku's shattered combat air patrol (the only Japanese
planes in the air) is at a minimum; after all, thinks Rear Admiral Tadaichi
Hara, the Americans are staying behind to lick their wounds...

And thus it is that while Lieutenant Scott Oscuro's recon flight from the
Enterprise sees the Japanese fleet, the Japanese don't see him, and, an hour or
so later, around high noon, to the delight of jingoistic American film makers
of the future, "all the dive-bombers in the world came crashing out of the
sky," in the words of one Japanese sailor. The Americans are inexperienced, but
they score hit after hit as their Wildcat escorts shred through the thin line
of Mitsubishi Zeros. 

Two cruisers and a handful of escorts go down in a matter of twenty minutes,
and wounded Shokaku is struck again and again, until, with a great groan, the
engines fail entirely, just as water begins pouring in through a dozen holes.
By this time, the remnants of the Zuikaku's planes are in the air, just in time to face the rested, well-fed pilots of the second wave of American planes, the
torpedo bombers and their friends...when all is said and done, the Shokaku is
going down fast (she will be gone within the day), the Japanese escort ships
are simply fleeing home, and Zuikaku, with no less than five torpedos in her,
is slowed enough that an American submarine will sink her before the week is
up. 

It is America's first great victory of the war; the tide of the Rising Sun has
been turned! America in general, and President Henry Wallace in particular,
with his shakeup at the Department of the Navy, looks very good indeed. And
he'll need it, too. 

-Congress just won't do it. All of Wallace's Second New Deal package makes some
people happy in Congress; liberals on race relations like the idea of the
Commission on Race Relations; farmers like the Food for Victory Commission, and
labor likes the idea of working for the nationalized, consolidated war
industries...but, contrary to Wallace's hopes, the result is instead a
coalition of Southern Democrats, conservative Republicans, and other opponents
of the various bills.

They're in commitee, most of them, and don't look prime to leave at all. And
with the Congressional session nearly over for the start of the '42 campaigns,
they're not going anywhere...

 For All Time Pt. 6

-Despite their reservations with the new President's planned policies, Speaker
Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley throw their weight behind
at least the general idea of the "Second New Deal." Wallace has been President
for only about six months in this, June of 1942, and he's entitled to a
honeymoon. Besides, and much more importantly; Party infighting in wartime, in
an election year, will do nothing more than make Republican Joe Martin Speaker
of the House in 1943. 

So, with some effort, after consulting a bipartisan crowd as diverse as
Milliard Tydings, Hiram Johnson, and even freshman Margaret Chase Smith of
Maine, the Democratic leadership works out a compromise set of bills that is
basically acceptable to at least a majority. 

The Food for Victory Commission is in; most people not opposed to an expanded
government in general like the idea of consolidated agriculture, it promises
quite a bit of profit. Too, there's little problem in sustaining and expanding
the existing New Deal programs; they're reasonably popular in the mainstream
wings of both of the parties.

Nationalization of war industries, barely, survives, though the nationalization
is restricted to mutitions only, and the promised payments to the corporations
involved are trebeled. In addition, Congress adds an oversight body to make
sure the nationalized companies aren't going to mischeif. 

One thing (almost) everyone is glad to lose is the Commission on Race
Relations; a fair majority of Southern Democrats would have voted against any
set of bills that contained such a thing, and wasn't liked by a reasonable
number of Congresspeople everywhere. 

But, now, they've a working set of Second New Deal bills. They don't make
everyone happy, by any means, but the SND package will get the votes of a
majority, and be on President Wallace's desk just in time for him to sign, and
the Democrats will be assured of increasing their majority in 1942.

Until Henry Wallace gets word that the professional politicians on the Hill
have dared to tamper with his package of bills. The marks are clear, they're
sabotaging his plans, the expanded New Deal that he _knows_ with every fiber of
his being the people want, the Commission on Race Relations...well, he'll fight
for it. 

He tries. He really does, but it's about the time he's shouting down Sam
Rayburn, who's trying to tell him that _no_ Southern Democrat will vote for
something likely to do away with segregation that the Second New Deal is dead,
at least in 1942. 

Wallace tries to keep Congress in session, calling them back twice after recess
begins, despite the election in November, but most members of both houses
simply leave Washington anyway, even those not up for election in November. In
August, bitterly disgusted, Wallace gives up on Congress, which has long since
given up on him. 

-Meanwhile, in June, the Battle of Midway happens around the same time as OTL.
Fresh from the crushing at the Coral Sea, the Japanese pilots are much more
aggressive, determined to avenge their brethern, and the Americans don't get
the good luck of catching much of the enemy air cover on the deck, refueling. 

Instead of four carriers sunk in a matter of minutes, the IJN loses the
carriers Akagi and Soryu, while the Kaga's air patrol is so thoroughly savaged
that they'll be out of action for quite some time. The US fleet loses the
Yorktown as per OTL, but the more aggressive Japanese pilots manage to slip
through the American screen and sink the Hornet, while the heavily damaged
Enterprise barely manages to limp back to Pearl Harbor. 

Despite the different losses, Midway winds up with the same final result; a
battle that is a tactical draw is a strategic victory, the Japanese invasion
fleet turns about and heads for home, thoroughly chastened by the Americans in
two battles in a row, now. 

-Secretary of War Henry Stimson takes the oppurtunity to resign in July;
pleading health issues and that he's unnecessary, now that the United States
has won two reasonably excellent victories in short order. It's true, but not
_really_ true. The Wallace administration is not a pleasant place for
Republicans, of which Stimson is a titan of, and Wallace's antipathy toward
professional politicians has made relations with a man who has been involved in
government since the Taft administration cool at best. 

Wallace isn't stupid, though; he knows exactly why Stimson is resigning, and
so, when asked for a routine confirmation of Stimson's resignation, he denies
it, and says the Secretary is resigning for reasons of basic policy. Angry and
humiliated, the normally courtly Stimson pens a blistering attack on Wallace,
which is published quite happily by Colonel Frank Knox's Chicago papers.  

With the very public fight in all the papers as leaves begin to turn red in
Washington, the academics and junior politicians approached by Wallace to take
Stimson's place refuse, they've no desire to stick their heads into that
particular guillotine. In fact, in sympathy to Stimson, the Secretary of the
Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, who'd also been growing unhappy (Morgenthau was a
moderate-to-conservative Democrat who went liberal for his friend FDR) quietly
resigns and goes home to New York.

Finally, President Wallace finds his man for the War Department in the Navy
Department, with Under-Secretary Frank Forrestal, who assumes office in early
September. For Treasury, Wallace manages to find (finally) an academic who he
can really trust to follow his agenda. 

-With the temporary chaos in the civilian sector of the War Department, the
Wallace administration is forced to rely heavily on the professionals, so,
reluctantly, Wallace takes the advice of Chief of Staff George Marshall and
cancels Operation Torch, the planned invasion of North Africa. Even more
reluctantly, Wallace agrees to step up aid to British forces in North Africa,
that they can do some of the work that the Americans won't be doing. 

Frustrated over not being able to open his planned second front in 1942,
Wallace aims the planning sectors of the War Department and the Army brass at
one great goal in Europe; an invasion of France in 1943. He has already offered
command to the man who is perhaps the most distinguished American soldier
outside of the Pacific; Marshall, who has accepted. 

-In early October of 1942, recognizing the danger the Democratic Party is in,
and the risk of getting a Congress full of Republicans after November, Henry
Wallace decides that it's time for a grand gesture. He will do something that
will unite all Americans, everywhere, behind himself, the Democratic Party, and
the war effort in one grand tide of liberty and justice.

And so it is, on October 5, 1942, President Henry Wallace, with George C.
Marshall on one side and Benjamin O. Davis (the first black general in the US
Army, brought out of retirement by Franklin Roosevelt before his death)  on the
other, before a great crowd of reporters, Henry Wallace signs an executive
order desegregating the armed forces of the United States as of the first day
of 1943. 

(Historians will debate the racial views of Henry Wallace for years to come;
while he is decades ahead of his time in civil rights for blacks, he only
pondered the removal of Asian-Americans from the Far West for a few days before
authorizing it earlier in the year.)

-El Alamein goes largely as per OTL, though less US Lend-Lease aid means that
the British take heavier casualities; it's just not enough to change the
outcome of the battle. In distant Algiers, Admiral Pierre Darlan reads the
reports, and ponders...

-When all is said and done in the election of 1942, the Democratic Party
doesn't lose as badly as they might; the Republicans wind up with 50 Senate
seats, a bare majority, and only a lead of 7 seats in  the House. However, a
conservative Democratic coalition with the Republicans gives the GOP a strong
majority in Congress.

For All Time Pt. Seven (Reconstructed)

With both the recent British victories in Libya and the tentative approaches 
made by the Darlan government in Algiers freshly in mind, the Allies pledge to 
recognize any French government that becomes hostile to the Germans, Vichy or 
Free French.

There's a project the US government is funding in Chicago...after some
negotiation, the Soviets and Americans agree to cooperate on their projects,
such as they are. The liason between them, chosen to assure Churchill that the
British aren't entirely screwed over, is a fine gentleman named Klaus Fuchs,
who is soon on his way to the University of Chicago... 
In mid-February, Henry Wallace announces his intention to appoint White House
Chief of Staff Hiss as his new Secretary of State; in the same press
conference, he announces he is simply creating the Food for Victory Commission,
nationalizing war industries, and putting White in charge of race relations.

Furious at the blatant executive smackdown, Senate Majority Leader Charles
McNary vows to give Hiss the grilling of a lifetime; if Wallace wants to make
the war effort partisan, that's exactly what he'll get. Meanwhile, in New York
City, a slightly sweaty ex-newspaperman named Whittaker Chambers is pondering
his next move. 

 While the American 
island-hopping campaign will continue, none of the powers will take the 
offensive into Burma or another area of jungle, instead the British will move 
into China, to keep supply lines open that way.  Also, the Anglo-Austro-American 
forces agree to ensure the crushing of the Japanese Navy as soon as possible.

Concious of just how weak the Wehrmacht looks, Hermann Goering, in his infrequent periods of not being high on heroin...

For All Time Pt. Eight

-Not all news is bad news in March of 1943; in the first few days of the month,
Allied planes in New Guinea shatter a Japanese troop convoy in the Bismark Sea,
sinking six of eight destroyers and every troop transport. Furthermore, in the
last week of the month, Tripoli finally falls to Montgomery's Desert Rats, who
soon find their main worry to be running out of fuel, as they chase the Germans
back into Tunisia. Admiral Pierre Darlan is nearly ready, now. He'll show
Petain, and Hitler, and all the bastards. He'll fix them good!

-But much is; the Japanese invasion of New Georgia on the 15th goes off quite
well, and Kharkov is besieged by the Germans on the same day. On the 20th, the
largest convoy battle in the Atlantic to date sees U-Boat Wolf-Packs sinking
thirty-four ships and damaging a dozen more; the American carrier U.S.S. Ranger
barely manages to stagger home to New York. In late March, Joseph Stalin
dissolves the Comintern as a gesture to his Western Allies. It's a gamble, but
if it can make the United Kingdom as strongly allied as the United States, who
is he to complain?

-In the United States, meanwhile, Senator Charles McNary is re-reading a
massive letter he recieved from Whittaker Chambers just after the Hiss hearings
started on the first. He's not quite sure what to believe; he'd heard the
rumors about Hiss, so had most people in Washington. But the idea that the
President of the United States would nominate a Communist spy...still, this
_is_ Henry Wallace. After a while, he decides to pay a visit on one man who
knows a great deal about Communists, or at least about  where they are; the
director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. 

-As preperations for the invasion of France in June are completed, a decision
is made in the staff of George Marshall; the German panzers allegedly being
refitted in and around the city of Caen are an illusion, a fluke of bad
intelligence from the French Resistance and bad photographic intelligence. For
all of Marshall's skill, like most generals, he knows pretty much what his
staff tells him, so he agrees with them. 

-Scandal rocks the American Army in mid-April, and at least a dozen officers
resign. General George S. Patton, who was billed to be the commander of the
forces coming ashore at OMAHA Beach on D-Day, pays a visit to an Army Air Force
hospital to speak to the wounded men and reassure them with the sheer magnitude
of his presence. 

Near the end of his tour, his heart swelling with pride at the brave American
boys, he runs across a man with no visible injuries, huddled on a cot in the
corner. Soliticiously (after all, the poor boy might have been unmanned) but
with a growing suspicison, he asks the young tail-gunner, Corporal Joseph
Heller, where he's hit. "It's my nerves," he responds, "I can't take the flak!"

Patton, in high dungeon, slaps the young man with his gloves and attempts to
throw him from the hospital; and finds himself being thrown out. The AAC is not
in his direct chain of command, and you just don't do that sort of thing,
really.

Word of the dustup gets back to President Wallace; he goes mad, and when all is
said and done, George S. Patton is back home, riding a desk as Omar Bradley's
immediate underling at the Army General Staff. His replacement is a man who has
never commanded a field force in his life, but seems a stalwart pile of man,
General Leslie Groves. 

-There is, of course, no TRIDENT conference in Washington. Churchill, in
conference with Montgomery on the Tunisian border on the 8th of May, formulates
a plan for an invasion of Italy in 1944 or '45, once Sicily is secured in late
1943.  General Henry Arnold assumes command of American air forces in Europe
and Britain in particular; his opposite number on the British side is "Bomber"
Harris, the two like each other about as much as any other set of American and
British generals in this war. 

-In the end, though, it all comes down to June 5, 1943, when approximately
150,000 soldiers, 18,000 vehicles, 1,000 tanks, and 10,000 planes leave
Dartmouth, Portland, and Portsmouth, setting out for OMAHA, GOLD, and UTAH
Beaches. To oppose them is General Heinz Guderian, the staff officer and the
man who'll get the credit, at least, for inventing tank warfare, who is chief
of operations for Gerd von Rundstedt, C-in-C in the West for the moment...

For All Time Pt. Nine

In the end, D-Day far closer than it will look in hindsight. Despite the best
efforts of Congressmen, journalists, and authors for decades afterwards, it is
quite difficult indeed to pin  the blame for the collapse of the Normandy
invasion on any particular facet of the American Army, or even on the actions
of the Wehrmacht. War is, after all, a mightily complex thing, and the greatest
seaborne invasion in history, up to that time, was perhaps the most complex
undertaking of the Allied armies up to that time. Still, some conclusions can
be drawn:

-The airborne side of the operation, the landings in late June 4 and early June
5, worked perfectly well until the paratroopers actually touched ground, and
were confronted with the three panzer divisions that Intelligence had dismissed
as an error. Despite heroic last stands in Bayeaux, Caen, and other names that
would be carved in blood in the histories of American airborne units, there
were no functional paratrooper groups larger than company-size after June 7. 

-The naval contingent offshore simply flattened the three German destroyers and
five U-Boats that happened to be caught between Britain and Normandy on the
night of the 5; the only casualties were men wounded in the rush of firing.
However, faulty reports of a German pocket battleship fleet (The Scharnhost,
Tirpitz, Gniesau, and friends, to be precise) sent five American battleships
and associated cruisers on a fruitless chase that lasted most of the night of
the 5th. 

-While the Army Air Corps, Navy pilots, and Marine fliers did signal service
over the skies of Normandy, breaking the Luftwaffe into hundreds of pieces
(some interceptor units took over 90% casualties, among whom was Adolf Galland,
perhaps the premier German aviator of the time), they proved unable to fulfill
their _second_ function, which was to bomb and strafe German ground units on
the beaches and those moving up the roads to them. Only the heroic rescue
missions carried out by bold transport and bomber pilots kept them from
recieving blame at the time; they landed again and again, dodging more and more
German flak on the narrow beaches, saving hundreds of trapped soldiers, taking
heavy casualties themselves.

-As for the men of the initial beachheads, at UTAH, OMAHA, and GOLD...it was
probably Bill Mauldin who put it best when he said: "Early on the 7th, I
realized I was actually running back across the Channel. It was about that time I started to think we'd lost." Despite heroic fighting, regiments dying to a
man to cripple German brigades, it is obvious by the morning of the 7th of
June, when the infamous "Five Tigers" made it onto the actual sand at UTAH,
destroying a dozen Lees and Shermans before being taken out themselves, that it
was obvious the invasion had failed. General George Marshall, American C-in-C
Europe, called off any further waves, and ordered an evacuation. When the last
soldier had returned, he resigned from the Army. His replacement is General
Mark Clark, whose troops at UTAH beach penetrated the farthest, and lasted the
longest, of any of the three wings. 

-When all is said and done, 58,000 men are dead or dying on the beaches of
Normandy, and in the fields around, on the morning of June 8, 1943. The 
majority are American; the British are focused on North Africa and India, where
Archibal Wavell is preparing for a planned Japanese offensive from Burma, and
the Canadians, Dieppe fresh in their minds, weren't about to get involved in
such a batcrap enterprise. Still, there are 10,000 dead British and five
thousand dead from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, total. Another 40,000 or
so have made it back safely to Britain, many of those are wounded and sick,
unable to fight for a long time. 50,000 are German prisoners, guarded by, for
the nonce, "an Army so broken it couldn't fight a cat, but fortunately the
Americans are mice.", as one unkind German observer put it. 

-June 9 dawns sunny in the office of Secretary of War James Forrestal; he's
been in there all day, reading unfolding reports of the apocalypse that was
Normandy. His phones have been ringing constantly; Bradley at Army, President
Wallace, the press...they'll all blame him. So he picks up the .45 he borrowed
from his Army guard the day before, puts it to his temple, and-!

-Two men are motivated by the disaster in particular; Vargas in Brazil opts not
to declare war on Germany in 1943. Despite the strong temptation to go to war
against the nation that has been sinking much Brazilian shipping, he's no
desire to be yoked to the incompetent, ham-handed Americans. In Washington,
meanwhile, Senator Charles McNary decides that there can be no mercy with the
sitting government right now, they have to be broken, and broken hard, before
more boys can die. That day, on what was originally planned to be the last day
of SecState-designate Alger Hiss' interrogation before Congress, he takes out a
file of telegrams recovered from a pumpkin...

For All Time Pt. 10  
July-August 1943

- By a 3/4ths majority, the Senate refuses to approve Alger Hiss as the next
Secretary of State. Indeed, Charles McNary begins legal action against Hiss for
perjury before Congress, a citation for contempt having failed by a slim
margin. Furious at what he regards as the smearing of a good man, President
Wallace decides it's time to take action. He retains Hiss as White House Chief
of Staff, soon devolving all sorts of responsibilities upon the former State
Department official, and nominates Joseph Kennedy Sr. to take the actual job at
State. After all, say what you will for Joseph Kennedy, it's hard to call him a
Communist spy. He has a much harder time finding someone for War; no one wants
to step into the landmine that is James Forrestal's former office. (Forrestal
seems to have kept a lot of notes in his head.) Finally, Wallace finds his man
in New York Senator Robert Wagner Sr.; after all, the Senate usually approves
its own. 

But he's not finished, of course. With surprising perspicacity, he recognizes
that McNary had to have help to bring down Hiss (Chambers has kept his name
quiet.), and that there's only one man in Washington who could have done that:
J. Edgar Hoover. Wallace fires the canny F.B.I. director on August 1, 1943,
replacing him with the head of the Division of Social Protection of the Federal
Security Agency, a man most notable for his ability to harass criminals to the
ground. Wallace turns him toward his enemies in Congress, even as they go quite
mad over the firing of America's "top cop." 

Finally, Wallace decides to head out into the country; once the people see him,
hear his message, they'll unite behind him. Franklin made whistlestop tours,
didn't he? He organizes a whistlestop tour; New York to Chicago to Denver to
San Francisco, and all the towns in between, to last most of the fall and
winter. He'll run the government from the train, of course, but he'll leave
day-to-day decisions in the hands of Chief of Staff Hiss and SecState-designate
Kennedy. 

-The end of August sees the area in and around the city of Kursk as a burnt-out
shell of a town, besieged by both sides...a second Stalingrad, except a bit
more favorable toward the Germans. The Soviet summer offensive has slaughtered
millions of Germans, but millions more Russians also were quite surprised to
find themselves dead. Still, while the Soviet advance has stalled somewhere in
the center of the city and doesn't look to get going again until winter, the
Germans are definitely on the defensive. 

-In the Pacific, New Georgia falls to the Allies on August 10, 1943. The
American forces are doing marginally better in the Pacific, enough that General
Lesley McNair's proposal to move America's first and only Marine field army to
Europe is granted. McNair himself is soon on a plane to Algiers, to meet with
Bernard Montgomery, Pierre Darlan, and Henri Giraud. After all, just because
the Army failed in France doesn't mean the Marines must fail against Sicily.
Also, Archibald Wavell manages to cut off and destroy Yamashita's offensive
into eastern India at Imphal, and has won permission for an offensive west into
Burma. His deputy, William Slim, has nicely put down the pro-Japanese revolts
led by Subhas Bose; a pity that Mahatma fellow died as well, but if he was
going to go walking around in a riot waving his stick, it was his look-out. 


-Too, arrangements are finalized for the Tehran conference in November. On the
agenda is discussion of the joint American-Soviet-Anglo nuclear program
(definitely in that order), there's talk of the Soviets concentrating on one
type of bomb and the Americans on another, plans for the invasion of Sicily,
tentatively set for early in 1944, and even the postwar division of Europe and
Asia. 

For All Time Pt. 11  
September-November 1943

-The newspapers explode with scandal as they've never done before in September,
when J. Edgar Hoover releases his papers. They're a Who's Who list of scandals
in the Democratic Party; Secretary of State Kennedy's stock manipulation and
possible rum-running is prime on the list, and all are met with pardons from
the White House, for . President Wallace announces that he will not allow false
and unwarranted indictments to be made against his administration. Emboldened
(though he was not pardoned, he told Wallace he didn't want to look guilty),
Alger Hiss sues J. Edgar Hoover for libel. Two days later, pictures of J. Edgar
Hoover in hose and garters, along with a reasonably detailed account of his
homosexuality, are released to the press by an anoynmous source. The first is
an outright fake, the second is a fake in the sense that it's a fictionalized
account of reality. The press eats it up, though carefully, and politely...this
is an age of gentlemanly stuff, after all.

-Charles McNary dies of brain cancer in early September, 1943, and is replaced
as Majority Leader by the gentlemanly Robert Taft, who has the approximate
personality of his father, if Taft pere had lost the weight and taken up
jogging. With the Hoover muddle in everyone's mind, Taft decides not to bring
charges of lying to Congress against Alger Hiss (He is not a fan of scandals,
even for the other side), and instead quietly turns the papers involved over to
the federal prosecutor, suggesting a possible indictment for espionage...

-The kindest thing that can be said about President Wallace's nation-wide
whistlestop tour is that no one actually took a shot at him. New York is
abysmal; Wallace had spoken often of the "Rainbow Army" after integration, made
up of white and black, Catholic and Protestant...and now nearly 60,000 of those
boys had died in less than a week. Of the thousands that come to see him speak,
most have anti-Wallace signs, and the rest have rocks. 

Chicago is kinder, Wallace has always been close to labor, and he's pushed the
right buttons during his term (John L. Lewis and George Meany, among others,
have sat on government commitees.) Denver is bad, though, and San Francisco is
good only because of the Marine guards posted around the perimeter of the
Presidio, where Wallace speaks. 

He returns home in early November to prepare for Tehran; vowing to help swing
the people away from the Republican press that has led them so astray. He'll
fix 'em...he'll fix 'em good!

-There are dustups in America's Big Science projects in this period, too. (of
the two man team running the government in early fall, only Chief of Staff Hiss
has any interest in it.) David Greenglass at the Manhattan Project is promoted
for his good work, winding up as America's #2 scientist, just under Vannevar
Bush. To placate frustrated egos at the Manhattan Project, Hiss has Edward
Teller created Presidential Science Advisor. 

-Just to top everything off, the Tehran Conference, from late November to early
December, sets the stage for the post-war world. America and the Soviet Union
agree to divide their efforts on nuclear projects as they share knowledge; the
Soviet Union will work on the gun-type bomb, while the Americans will work on
the implosion-type. As per the war in Europe, all the powers agree to
offensives in the summer of 1944. 

The British Empire, Americans, and Free French will go north through Sicily and
the rest of the Mediterranean, while the Soviets will strike again in the
Ukraine. The Soviet Union also pledges to declare war on Japan within a month
of Germany's surrender. _Very_ preliminary plans for the post-war world are
drawn up; the Soviet Union will occupy Austria, along with eastern and central
Germany, until democracy can be established, while the US, the UK, and France
will hold the rest. 

Finally, all powers will demand unconditional surrender. 

For All Time Pt. 12  

-The winter of 1943-44 is a dark time in American politics. As J. Edgar Hoover
releases his damaging files and is struck by damaging information about himself
in return, about a half-dozen Senators and dozen Congressmen quietly retire or
resign?but no others. While most politicians manage to endure the storm, it's
only through fighting back as dirty as the information on them. The damage is
done, though, and the era of the gentlemanly press is coming rapidly to an end.


-And just in time for the '44 campaign, too. President Wallace plans to run for
re-election, but he's one of the few people outside of the left of the
Democratic party, especially labor, that wants him to. The de facto leader of
the opposing wing of the Democrats is Senate Minority Leader Alben Barkley of
Kentucky. He is a moderate on race, unlike most Southern Senators he has not
blamed the failure of D-Day on the integration of the Army, though he has
called it "hasty and unwarranted". Barkley has been speaking to Party bosses
since the election of 1942, and has quietly locked down the conventions in
several states. 

The Republicans, meanwhile, are much more divided; with far more candidates who
want to be the nation's 34th President. The conservative wing of the Party is
divided between two isolationist Senators, Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenburg,
while the liberal is roughly divided between Indiana banker Wendell Willkie
(who has not been associated with Democrats and thus not discredited as per
OTL) and New York Governor Thomas Dewey. 

One man who is not interested in running for any particular office is Missouri
Senator Harry S. Truman; he has reluctantly come out in favor of integration in
the Army, and the subsequent outcry in his home state was enough to convince
him he had no further interest in politics. 

-In the Ukraine, both the Reich and the Soviets are planning lots of action for
the spring and summer of 1944. Field Marshall Manstein plans a spring offensive
against Kursk, aiming to drive the Russians out and seize the great Soviet
salient in the area. Zhukov, whose signal intelligences have let him read
Manstein's dispatches, plans for a defensive fight in the spring and then a
great blow in the summer. Hopefully, this will coincide with the invasion of
Sicily, which is now forecast tentatively for July. 

-Meanwhile, in North Africa, the first United States Marine Corps field Army is
forming; training together with Montgomery's British and Giraud's Free French,
for the invasion of Sicily. Morale in the Marines is surprisingly high; many
are veterans of the Pacific, and they vow to revenge the defeat of Normandy on
the bloody shores of Sicily. The invasion will run into one particular
difficulty, though?

-Eliot Ness has no interest in dealing with the Mafia. J. Edgar Hoover might
not have recognized that it exists, but he does, and he won't make deals with
them. When Charles Luciano comes to him with an offer of keeping the East Coast
docks American; Ness threatens him with arrest. Determined to get in with the
government, Luciano cracks down on his lieutenants; Albert Anastasia finds
himself deep in the East River for planning to burn the Normandie, but it still
doesn't convince Ness. With all of the disturbances going on, a handful (five,
in fact) of Axis sympathizers manage to get in operation on the docks of New
York City?

For All Time Pt. 13  

-In February of 1944, as most people in Washington have been expecting for a
long time, White House Chief of Staff Alger Hiss is arrested by the FBI for
espionage. Wallace appointee he may be, but Director Ness is no more a fan of
spying than the next man. (He does allow Hiss to resign his post at the White
House first, though, and arrests him at home rather than there.) President
Wallace expresses his full confidence in Hiss' innocence (Hiss, convinced he
will be acquitted and wanting to preserve his reputation, declines the
President's offer of a pardon.) and promises Hiss his job back when he's
acquitted. 

-It's about that time that Mississippi Congressman William M. Whittington, one
of the Democrats on the House Judiciary Commitee, stands up and submits
articles of impeachment for President Henry Wallace. Whittington has the
backing of a strong wing of the House Democrats, recognizing how very, very bad
Wallace is making them look, not to mention the 60 thousand dead at Normandy,
and the whole Communist Spies Everywhere thing. As the Commitee begins debate,
(with resistance mostly based on the fact that there's no grounds for
impeachment on the basis of incompetence, plus no one really wants to see
Joseph Kennedy President.) Wallace decides it's time to pick his running mate;
as can be expected, professional politicians are rather...dubious at the
prospect, so he turns to the realm of business. 

-Meanwhile, the American Expeditionary Force in North Africa has reached its
full size; roughly half that of a standard Corps (38,000 men). Most in it are
Marines, enough that the overall commander is a Marine, Major General Alexander
Vandegrift. In many ways, having the Marines along is a bad military decision;
they're well-trained in amphibious assaults, of course, which makes them _very_
popular in the American military establishment after the failure of D-Day, but
not so much in the field fighting that Sicily, and especially Italy will need,
but the Wallace administration badly needs a victory. One man who is sure of
this is General George S. Patton, commander of the American Army contingent of
the invasion, another is the overall commander of the invasion, Bernard
Montgomery. 

-March of 1944 sees the premeire of _The Martyrs of Normandy_, the first film
about the failed invasion of D-Day, starring John Wayne as Captain Wedge
Donovan. Directed by John Ford, who came ashore at Normandy and was badly
wounded enough to be invalided out of the Army, the film is largely a bottle
piece, as well as shocking for the day, graphically violent, with the
suggestion that it was incompetence upstairs that let our boys in France die.
On another level, though, the way it is sold to the public, it's simply a
particularly daring and honest war movie, if one shot with great speed. 

-In early April of 1944, the Soviet defenders of Kursk are awakened by a great
rumbling of artillery and panzers in the distance; Manstein's spring offensive
has begun, with its aim to strike at Moscow, again. Little do the Germans know,
of course, that the Russians are well-prepared for them indeed. 

Far to the west, not far from Poitors, Hermann Goering is inspecting his
hand-picked crews for the operation he plans to use to rise to the Fuhrer's
right hand again. After the humilation of the Luftwaffe over Normandy, he found
the Army or SS or Kriegsmarine suddenly in control of half of his former
responsiblities. Wermacht men man Germany's flak guns now, Navy men make
coastal patrols, and all of his offensive ground forces, including his beloved
panzer division, were handed over to the Waffen SS.

He'll show them, he thinks as he looks over the crew for the 50 planes he's
building secretly, he'll show them all. Goering has shown surprising political
skill in keeping his plan away from the rest of Hitler's higher-ups; ambitious
SS #2 man Heydrich has loaned staff to get the glory, as has the Reich's #2
engineer, Albert Speer, who has helped build the Ju-190s Goering wants in
secret, in Poland. 

For All Time Pt. 14

-Tragedy strikes Washington on April 11th, 1944, as American forces occupy the
Marshall Islands in the Pacific and prepare for the strike against Sicily.
General Benjamin O. Davis; the first black general in the United States Army,
brought off the retired list to command a brigade at Normandy (his was one of
the first to hit the beaches and the last to be evacuated) is just leaving the
War Department when a shabbily-dressed enlisted man bursts from the crowd of
office workers and yells "Die, nigger butcher!" before shooting Davis three
times in the chest and fleeing. He leads the Washington police on a merry chase
for a day and a half, before being killed in a shootout outside the Lincoln
Memorial. 

Wallace, horrified, makes a speech promising full restitution to Davis's
family, and promises a greater role for blacks in his administration, now and
after the election. To show this, he nominates Under-Secretary of State Ralph
Bunche to be the next ambassador to Great Britain. In response, the House
Judiciary Commitee draws up three articles of impeachment and votes to send
them to the house on May 1, 1944.

-Tragedy strikes the political scene a few weeks later, when, in the middle of
a violent debate on Communism (the American politicial scene is much less
gentlemanly in the Wallace timeline) between Republican front-runner Wendell
Willkie and New York Governor Thomas Dewey during the most recent primary
debate on May 20, when Wendell Willkie falls over dead. 

Willkie's delegates coalesce around former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen
for the nonce; while Stassen, serving as a naval staff officer in the Pacific,
is probably unnominatable at this point, he can serve as a valuable block
indeed as the former Willkie delegates plan to choose between the man who
killed Wendell Willkie, and the men who might kill his ideals. On June 23,
1944, the Republican Party meets in Chicago to decide just who they'll run for
President in 1944.

The convention is acrimonious to say the least; pretty much any Republican
candidate has an excellent chance of winning the general election in 1944.
Dewey takes the lead in the first few ballots, but liberal-to-moderate
favorite-son candidates like Harold Stassen and Henry Cabot Lodge deny him much
of the Midwest and New England, respectively, keeping Dewey and his
conservative rival, Ohio Senator Bob Taft (who has the endorsement of Arthur
Vandenburg), neck and neck for several days of ballots.

Finally, when they're sure Taft will feel indebted to them, Harold Stassen and
his former Willkie delegates concede on the 28th of June, throwing their
support and states behind Robert Taft. Henry Cabot Lodge recognizes the trend,
and so does Dewey, they concede, and Robert Taft has the nomination by luck and
acclimation. 

In gratitude to the liberals and New Englanders, he picks a man who is both,
Vermont Senator George Aiken (who had supported Stassen), as his running mate,
and Aiken is quickly selected by the Party on the first of July. As Taft and
Aiken shake hands proudly in Taft's hotel suite a few days later, someone turns
on a radio, and everyone hears the first reports of the invasion of Sicily...

For All Time Pt. 15

-For all the worries of all parties involved, the invasion of Sicily opens
reasonably well. Between July 1-July 3, the British wings of the invasion on
the left and right secure Licata and Syracuse, while the Franco-American forces
in the center successfully subdue Gela and the German fortifications there. Bit
by bit, then, the Allied forces begin slogging their way north; against strong
German resistance. Despite the "Colonel Potter" intelligence ploy of the
British, even the weakened German forces on Sicily are quite strong, launching
multiple offensives against the Franco-Americans in the center throughout the
month of July. Benito Mussolini flees to German-held Corsica just ahead of an
anti-fascist mob; the Germans do a good job of _pretending_ to believe the
Ciano government is serious about continuing the war...

-On July 9, 1944, the last German defenders of Kursk surrender to the Soviet
forces there. Field Marshall Zhukov is delighted; the Germans are finally,
finally falling back, and the Red Army is on the move, going west! He will be
in Kiev by the end of the month; not long after Koniev has finished clearing
out every German and associate from in and around Leningrad.

-The success of Sicily boosts the popularity of the Wallace administration,
enough that, by the slimmest of margins, the House voted not to hear articles
of impeachment before adjourning for the 1944 campaign. "He's going down in
November anyway," comments one anonymous Congressman, "why bother with an
impeachment?" And indeed, things are looking troubled. Wallace has won only a
few isolated primaries in the Midwest, and then only when his opposition was
split, and every state convention has gone against him. Plus, with the trial of
former White House Chief of Staff Hiss heating up, well, it's a grim time
indeed, and the convention in Chicago at the end of July is a bit...bitter.

In fact, it's marvelously violent as black supporters of President Wallace
clash with Southern Democrats; as divided labor fights among itself, and as
respected Congressmen and Senators almost come to blows. Finally, convention
chairman Rankin manages to throw most every disputed seat between Barkleyites
and Wallaceites to Barkley's people. As Wallace fumes in his hotel room, vowing
to get some payback, the now-unified convention votes, with a minimum of
discussion, to nominate Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley as the Democratic
candidate for President in 1944. To please Westerners, the Party picks
California Senator Sheridan Downey to go with him on the third ballot. 

Two days later, speaking from Washington, Henry Wallace announces that he will
be running for President again in 1944 on the Progressive Party ticket. He's
rather blunt about it, naming his running mate (Secretary of Agriculture Jay
Hormel) in the same speech. 

-Meanwhile, in the Pacific, President Wallace authorizes Admiral Chester
Nimitiz's planned frontal drive on Formosa over General MacArthur's strike at
the Phillipines on July 10. Tempting as it is, the Army just doesn't have the
credibility with amphibious assaults that it might: Wallace trusts the Navy,
not the Army that let him down so abominably. 

For All Time Pt. 16  

-August of 1944 doesn't see any amphibious invasions, but it does see
preperations for two grand ones in the next year. In the Pacific, General
Douglas MacArthur has ever-so-generously accepted command of Operation
Overlord, the American invasion of Formosa, set to begin in January of 1945.
MacArthur is in one of his manic phases, organizingly enthuastically and
boldly, reasoning that if he cannot take credit for the idea of Overlord, he
can at least take credit for the crushing victory that he is sure it will be. 

In Europe, meanwhile, General Mark Clark has a bold scheme that will bring him
great glory and renown as an American general, and as an added bonus, will
prove very helpful to the war effort; an American invasion of Europe's
heartland in the spring of 1945. One of Clark's primary associates in planning
Operation Anvil is General Curtis Lemay, C-in-C of American air forces in
Britain, who has one good way to get through the (vastly weakened) Atlantic
Wall; burn it through. 

-There are isolated, minor anti-draft riots on many American campuses near the
end of the summer of '44; mostly they're against the idea of an integrated Army
fighting to liberate Europe for the Godless Russians. The riots are small,
though, and poorly organized, after all, no actual politician wants to _end_
the war, especially not with the Allied toehold in Sicily and the Russian
summer offensive in the Ukraine doing so well. They just want to complain; it's
a small, petty series of incidents, the most high-profile being the egging of
musician and President Wallace campaigner Pete Seeger as he tried to play to a
hostile crowd in southern California. 

-The US armed forces are increasingly black now; the tens of thousands of
"Wallace's Boys" who joined up after integration are rapidly being replaced by
"Davis's Men", discharged or retired veterans who've joined up in the name of
their fallen leader. Blacks still are a minority in the US military, of course,
but they hold increasingly prominent positions there. In terms of economic and
social status, blacks are better off in the Wallace administration than they
were at this point in FDR's term...OTOH, lots and lots of people openly blame
the integrated army for the failure of D-Day. 

-As August turns to September, a new word enters the American political
lexicon. President Wallace's running mate, Secretary of Agriculture Hormel, is
one of the wealthier men in America (he's certainly above the mean, at least)
and throws his considerable forture foursquare behind the campaign. He pays for
hundreds of thousands of mass mailings to be delivered across the countryside
to potential Wallace voters; unfortunately, faulty shipping and procurement
causes two or three copies of the mailings to arrive at the victims' houses per
day for a week or so, all of them cheerfully emblazoned with Hormel's company's
most famous product. And thus the term "spamming" was born. 

For All Time Pt. 17  

-In mid-September of 1944, Sicily finally falls to the combined Allied
offensive. Humiliated, Rommel evacuates with the survivors of his command to
Italy, where he recieves word that Hitler plans to court-martial him for gross
incompetence. (He has, after all, "lost" both North Africa and Sicily.) He
recieves permission to resign from the Army instead, and so on September 29,
1944, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel inspects his troops one last time and flies
home to Germany, defeated in war and in history. His replacement as commander
of troops in the Mediterrean theater is Erwin von Witzleben, former commander
of Army Group West. 

In two and a half months of fighting, the combined Allied armies have lost
62,000 men, and 19,000 of those, primarily French and Americans, are dead. The
victory is a bloody one; but it is the closest thing to a foothold won on the
soil of continental Europe that the Allies have seen yet. German resistance was
high; and remains high over in Italy despite the new commander; after all,
they've won many battles, and made the enemy pay in blood for Sicily. As many
of the reinforcements arriving in Sicily are American, Field Marshall Bernard
Montgomery authorizes a plan to get them out of his way, so that the fighting
can be carried on by British troops under British command; the invasions of
Sardinia and Corsica, to be carried out by Franco-American troops. To please
the French and Americans, their feathers ruffled at getting the minor
operations, command of the invasion forces (Sardinia is set for November,
Corsica for early December) will go to a French General and an American one. 

-Kiev falls in early October of 1944. The Red Army is on the move west, and the
Nazis are beginning a long, long retreat that will hopefully end in Berlin.
It's not nearly fast enough for Polish Home Army General Tadeusz Komorowski,
who broods irritably in his bunker; the Home Army had had a _really_ good plan
for an uprising in August, but the Reds weren't actually close enough to do
anything about it. They'll be here soon, though, of that he's very sure. He
isn't going to go down like the stupid yids did in 43, shot down like dogs in
their ghetto, no, he's going to be the leader of Poland when all this is over. 

-October 7 of 1944 is a great day at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C; it's a
big, noisy Shriner's convention! President Wallace blames most of the troubles
of the last few years on incompetence or maliciousness among the British; and
thus has no particular interest in conferences, especially when his
administration is fighting for its life. Even if they had; with Harry Dexter
White on indefinite leave to protect the administration and Alger Hiss' jury
nearly finished with their espionage deliberations, there would be surprisingly
little to talk about. A conference is scheduled for May of 1945 in Cairo; but
that is between all three leaders, and most people are sure that Henry Wallace
won't be there. 

-On a party level, the election of 1944 is shaping up to be a relatively polite
one, all things considered. Bob Taft has no interest in fighting dirty; it
violates his deeply held political beliefs, many of which are slightly to the
right of his late father, and it's bad politics to boot. All the dirt in the
election comes from the Democrats and their splinter, the Progressives; Wallace
calls Barkley a traitor to the Party, Barkley calls Wallace a fool, and a dupe
to boot, and blames him for the failures of the American military. Both men are
increasingly desperate; Barkley suspects he doesn't have the votes to really
win, and that Wallace may have destroyed the Democratic Party (which Barkley
has spent decades polishing); while Wallace looks on Barkley as the worst kind
of professional politician, one who stabs his leader in the back for his own
political gain. The issues are diverse; everything from Wallace's pardoning of
Private Eddie Slovik to Barkley's alleged ties to the Klan. (While that does
hurt him among black and liberal voters, many Southern Democrats wonder what's
so wrong with that?)

On November 7, 1944, people all over the United States go to the polls to
evaluate the four years of the Wallace administration, as well as the competing
claims of the two major parties...

For All Time Pt. 18
November 1944-January 1945

Rod Serling is a month away from his 20th birthday on November 25, 1944, when
he recieves word that _The Atlantic_ has picked up his first short story "Where
Is Everybody?" Serling has spent much of the past year in an oxygen tent
recovering from a bullet wound to the lungs incurred at Normandy; it was there
that he picked up his chewing gum habit and wrote his story, a bitter,
pessimistic expose of a military whose top brass still whisper that it was the
d*** n****** who lost them D-Day. Serling will manage to draw both hate and
praise.

In what many pray will be the final propaganda disaster of the Wallace
administration, Alger Hiss is convicted of espionage on December 1, 1944. The
convictions are divided; of multiple counts on the indictment, Hiss was
acquitted of about half. (As per OTL, Hiss' trial was a mix of the truth and
framing of a guilty man, fortunately the jury was a bit more perceptive.) To
keep from overly embaressing the government, and since Hiss did spy for a
current US ally, after all, Hiss is sentenced to twenty years in a federal
prison. Wallace immediately pardons him, prompting the near-instant resignation
of Attorney General Rosenman . The Washington federal prosecutor, meanwhile,
begins drawing together evidence for a perjury indictment, though he'll make
sure to send it to the grand jury _after_ January 20. 

It's an unpleasant Christmas for PFC Charles Schulz; Sicily is a rather rugged
place at the best of times, made worse when one is far from home and serving in
a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, that looks nothing like long-gone
Minnesota. He finally assembles a small Christmas tree out of a tiny, scraggly
tree he found loose on a hillside, mutters "I've killed it!" as it keels over,
and goes out on his date with local girl Sophia Petrillo. 

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. greets the new year with the grim depression that
accompanies all of the O.S.S. agents attached to Joseph Stilwell. American
relations with the Nationalist Chinese are in terrible shape; Stilwell doesn't
like Chaing, and Wallace has been funneling most of the Hump tonnage straight
to Mao Tse-Tung. Thoroughly disgusted with the blatant corruption of the
Nationalists and the slightly questionable aspects of the Communists,
Schlesinger has found himself reading fiction exhaustively, looking for some
sort of escape from the banal trap most of the world is. Two days later, his
edition of _Astounding_ finally arrives.

As Robert Taft is sworn in as the nation's thirty-fourth President on January
20, 1945, Eva Duarte ponders that life is actually pretty good, all things
considered. For all that she misses him, Juan is a rapidly fading memory; they
both knew how things were, and if he got himself shot, it was his own fault.
Still, he was better than her current attachment, the military attache to the
Chilean consulate in New York. Augusto is just...odd. But she's found her niche
in the city, learned to speak moderately good English in the two years she's
been there, and won great fame in the Latin areas of the city playing the
Madonna in a Spanish-language musical last Christmas. 

On January 22, 1945, navy pilot George Bush makes himself an ace twice over by
shooting down his tenth Japanese airplane in the opening minutes of Operation
Overlord, the American invasion of Formosa. The 100 thousand men of the  first
wave of the invasion have sailed from American-held Saipan and Tinian; with
Formosa in American hands, the US will be able to head south to the
Philippines, or over to China, or even to Japan...

For All Time Pt. 19. 

February-March 1945

-The American seizure of Formasa is a slow, bloody affair. After a solid month
of fighting, the coastal regions of the island are at least de facto in
American hands, but at least 20,000 Japanese troops are still well-fortified in
the center of the island, especially in the Chung-yang Shan-mo mountain range,
along with countless armed Japanese civilians. To win the native Formosans over
to their side, and thus facilitate anti-guerilla operations, the American Army
establishes the Office of Civilian Administration under Brigadier General
William Westmoreland, to ensure the hearts and minds of the Formosan people are
all for democracy. 

-February also sees the beginnings of President Taft's cabinet shaping up;
Henry Stimson is back in Washington (somewhat reluctantly) at State, now
serving under his fifth President. Surprisingly, Taft keeps Robert Wagner on as
Secretary of War, saying (with rather pointed references to the Wallace
administration) that he has no desire to change horses in mid-stream, or at
least in wartime. The rest of his Cabinet appointments are more prosaic, mostly
conservative-looking Republicans like New Jersey Congressman Fred Hartley at
Labor and California Governor Earl Warren as Attorney General. Taft also
restores the former O.S.S. director William B. Donovan, who had resigned over
procedural issues with President Wallace. 

-In Europe, Lewis B. Puller's invasion of Sardinia is well-underway on the
first of March, most of the island is secure. Puller estimates that Sardinia
will definitely be able to support the planned strike against Corsica later in
the month. It will be a Franco-American operation; there are just so many
Americans in Sicily and few French, there aren't exactly many replacements
coming in.) that the French needed backup. To command the invasion of Corsica,
the US military picks General George S. Patton. Like with most American field
operations of the war, the British are only mildly consulted, and Bernard
Montgomery vows that it will be British and British only who strike against
Italy in May. Meanwhile, to the north, the Soviets have cleared the Germans out
from around Leningrad and begun an offensive against the Finnish lines north of
the city. 

-In the first week of March, two quasi-steps forward are taken in military
aviation. Hermann Goering, visiting a moderately secret Luftwaffe base in
southern France, gets the good word that almost two years of work has paid off;
they've an engine for the forty-seven completed planes that can actually
sustain flight for 15 hours straight. Goering, delighted, orders his team to
work, to finish modifying the Ju-190s in question. Unfortunately (at least for
the pilots), Goering hasn't really been paying attention. The jet engines _can_
work for 15 hours, which means that about half the time they'll work for about
that long, give or take an hour or two. Still, thinks Goering's staff and
engineers with a shrug, it's not like they're flying the planes. 

On the sixth day of March, the history of American military aviation takes
something of a sideways step. The goal of the LeMay Raids are simple; clog the
European road and rail system with refugees and relief efforts (military
efforts only, at least) and thus make the invasion of the Low Countries (now
set for mid-May) all the easier. The obvious way to do that, of course, is to
shatter, via incindiary devices, European cities under German occupation in the
area, forcing the local German governments to deal with tens of thousands of
civilians roaming the countryside, as well as the military loss of various
cities. 

First on the list to fall is Amsterdam...

For All Time Pt. 20  

-Adolf Hitler's 56th birthday party on April 20, 1945 is a quiet, sedate
affair. Despite the greater success of the German armies, Hitler's drug
addictions have proceeded apace, and the man largely sequestered in the Berghof
is not the champion of 1939, or even 1943. Lots of people take note of the
Fuhrer's apparant mortality, everyone from Hermann Goering to Reinhard Heydrich
to the Army Chief of Staff for Italy, Claus von Stauffenberg. As the young
Generalmajor returns to his post in Rome the next week, he ponders.

Italy is a sunny place to be for the German Army, despite the terrific fighting
going on in besieged Sardinia, not that far off-shore. Many officers, including
the commander-in-chief, Erich von Witzleben, have moved their families down to
Italy to join them. The Ciano government is moderately popular with the Italian
people at large. 

-Late April also sees the cancellation of the LeMay Raids (thus sparing
Flanders a visit). The various American Air Armies involved are pretty happy
about that; the raids were deeply unpopular in the rank and file. Furthermore,
they haven't really accomplished their goal; while Amsterdam, the Hague,
Rotterdam, and Antwerp look as if a hammer has been taken to them, with tens of
thousands of dead and hundreds of thousands homeless...well, the Reich has ways
of ensuring fleeing refugees don't block the roads, and they're effective.
Irritated, LeMay turns his attention to supporting the invasion of the
mainland, now set to strike somewhere around the Belgian-Dutch border, set for
early May of 1945. 

-To the surprise of no one (except perhaps himself) President Robert Taft
authorizes use of nuclear weapons in both Europe and Japan as soon as they are
viable. (A test detonation is tentatively scheduled for mid-August, with a
deployment the next month.) Taft will die long before the use of nuclear
weapons become an issue unto themselves, but as he himself said in a private
letter, "I was elected to save the lives of people, American, European,
Japanese. Stimson and Wagner tell me it will kill a million Americans to reach
Berlin after we land in May, and tens of millions of Germans. Well, I will make
sure that doesn't happen." The Soviet nuclear program, still in loose
cooperation with the American (Taft doesn't want to alienate the Soviets, but
he is rather worried about too much cooperation.), estimates that they will
have a working device (built from uranium rather than the American plutonium)
by January of 1946. 

-In the Far East, Formosa (despite terrific Japanese resistance and a strong
partisan movement in the interior) is usable to support combat operations by
the first of May, 1945. Despite knowledge at the very highest of levels that
they may not need to bother, American forces on the ground begin organizing
plans for Operation Olympic, the American invasion of Kyushu. 

-On May 4, 1945, in the early morning hours, 200,000 Americans leave Norwich,
sailing hard and quick for West Flanders in the beginning of the largest naval
invasion in history. The Americans were going back to the Continent. 

For All Time Pt. 21   
May 7-8 1945

-The initial problem with the Great Raid of May 8, 1945 was that it was just
not a very good idea to begin with. Even if the initial fifty-three specially
modified Ju-290s had all been able to reach their targets (the Brooklyn Naval
Yards, Gracie Mansion, and Wall Street), the main effect would have been
nothing more than a pinprick to the already-enraged American behemoth. As it
was, well, things got unpleasant very fast. 

Of the initial fifty-three bombers scheduled to take off at 1700 sharp on May
7, seven simply don't. Frustrated, the pilots and crew of the seven watch as
their comrades fly out of the airfield near Bordeaux, ready to do or die for
the Fatherland. Most will. 
Surprisingly, the forty-six survivors avoid Allied detection on their long,
lonely night flight (illuminated by a single slim fragment of the moon) along
the 25th parallel, before veering south towards New York City. That didn't help
the ten bombers who develop mechanical problems and crash, their crews drowned
nearly to a man, the U-Boats supposed to pick them up hundreds of miles away,
or sunk (Doenitz would later deny hearing anything about the operation...and
laugh and laugh in Goering's face.), but one takes luck where one can. 

Especially, since, in a development apparantly revolutionary to the Luftwaffe
personnel involved in planning the raid, the Americans have _radar!_
Admittedly, much of the US Army brass in the Northeast (that portion of it
awake at the time) does dismiss the three-dozen radar blips traveling down the
coast of New England as illusion, but it is a young bird colonel in New York
City named Barry Goldwater, a veteran of D-Day and Sicily, who wakes his
superiors and persuades them to launch the fifty or so P-51s available for
combat at that short notice, and send them hunting the blips at around 6 AM on
the morning of the 8th. 

They catch twenty-nine Ju-290s over Long Island Sound, just off the city of
Huntingtdon, an hour or so later, just as the sun is breaking in the east. The
P-51 pilots are rested and ready, with full guns and full gas tanks; the
Luftwaffe crews have been flying all night, are low on fuel, and had their
armaments stripped nearly bare for the long flight. 

None of the Ju-290s survive; most are swatted from the air and crash into the
Long Island Sound, a fortunate few manage to land on American soil, or jump
from burning planes to parachute to ocean or land. One frustrated pilot manages
to drop a portion of his bomb load on Long Island; they land in an abandoned
warehouse area, killing five and starting a major fire that will do some
millions in property damage. Of that portion of the raid, that's all she wrote.


Except for the five planes under Oberst Otto Remer. The SS officer isn't a
particularly able pilot, but he does have loyal crews, men on loan from
Reinhard Heydrich as part of his deal with Hermann Goering. With virtually the
entire active New York City-area air force out of the way, Remer is feeling
confident as New York City comes into view around 7:45 AM, many of the American
antiaircraft gunners have never hit a moving target (save for veterans) and his
squadron can strike and go as they please. 

Until the U.S.S. Massachusetts opens fire. The big battleship had taken a
torpedo hit while on convoy duty the year before, and is just leaving drydock
in Brooklyn, where she'd been under repair ever since. Her crews are rested,
ready, at general quarters; and the men manning her AA guns are veterans to a
man. And Remer's planes are passing right overhead. 

In a single volley, three of five are down, exploded or straight into the sea,
and a fourth is wounded. Ironically, it is Remer's that is hit, one wing is all afire as she begins a slow, slow plunge toward Bedloe's Island. The final plane
manages, against all odds, to drop her bombs in full Battle of Britain style.
On the completely wrong part of town; the Aurora Theater in Harlem, to be
precise. 

Remer's plane, meanwhile, as if guided by an angry god or a vicious, dying SS
officer, smashes into the primary feature of Bedloe's Island, a copper statue
given to the United States by France in the late 19th century. The statue is
old, in need of repair, with a thin, thin skin. The Ju-190 smashes directly
into the statue's base, whereupon which every bomb on board detonates. Slowly,
slowly, Lady Liberty topples, shattering from the high explosive, the old
copper that survives landing in the burning pools of incindiary, melting
slowly, slowly. 

By 8 AM, May 8, 1945, it's all over, except for the cleanup. The Aurora fire
destroys most of Harlem; America's civil defense is brave and well-organized,
but green as grass. A few hundred die, thousands are homeless, and a great
neighborhood will never be the same. The Statue of Liberty will never be, not
this version, anyway. 

For All Time Pt. 22  
May-June 1945

-News of the attack on New York is actually a propaganda victory for both
sides; for all that Hitler crows for the great Luftwaffe victory (especially
the destruction of the Statue of Liberty), the American armed forces charge
forward, whipped into a lust for revenge spurred by the attack on American
soil. (The British, meanwhile, shrug, as the Americans have taken civilian
casualties equal to a bad few days during the Blitz.) Within two weeks of the
attack on New York, by May 22, 1945, Antwerp and Brussels have fallen to the
American Army, and an armored spearhead has reached as far as Ghent. 

American casualties have been high, fifty thousand dead and wounded, but
they're nothing compared to the failed D-Day. Civilian casualties have been
heavy as well; the Germans have released the tens of thousands of refugees from
the terror bombings onto the roads, blocking the American advance in many
places and causing many accidental raids on fleeing civilians. The image of a
screaming Belgian girl fleeing down a shattered road soon becomes one of the
most famous photographs of the war. 

Still, most of western Belgium is solidly in American hands by the end of May,
with small footholds in northern France and the southwestern tip of the
Netherlands. 

-In the United States, President Taft moves quickly, greatly ramping up the air
defense network over the East Coast and beginning construction of warning radar
stations all up and down the East Coast. Secretary of War Robert Wagner
resigns; it was his New York that was bombed, and his Department that will take
the fall. Taft finds Wagner's replacement in another New Yorker; the head of
the O.S.S., William Donovan. Taft speaks personally in New York City two days
after the raid, showing surprising fire as he vows to pay the Germans back a
hundred-fold for what they've done. 

And indeed, he does. Secretary Donovan's first act in office is to order Curtis
LeMay to resume his terror raids; this time in conjunction with the British
over Germany. On May 25, the 8th Air Force visits Bremen, shattering much of
the city over the next few days. Lubeck, Hamburg, Wilhelmshaven, and Bremen
have now all been destroyed from the air in the space of a very few weeks by
the British and Americans. 

-Morale in Germany is a mix of elation and despair; America has been struck and
hurt (the attack on New York has been greatly played up by propaganda as total
destruction.) but Germany is being struck and hurt worse nearly every day. Tens
of thousands are dead and homeless in the cities struck by terror raids; and,
worse, a Soviet offensive has finally crossed the border; Russian troops are on
the ground in Poland and slowly pushing their way west, and they've cleared the
Crimea and Ukraine of German troops. 

Worse, for the Army at least, Heinrich Himmler is in charge of a whole front
(the German troops, Waffen SS and Army alike) in the Netherlands. 
Reinhard Heydrich has successfully supplanted him as Reichsfuhrer SS, using the
Goering raid as justification (after all, Himmler couldn't even see the Great
Raid preperations, right under his nose!), but Hitler has offered his old
friend a chance to redeem himself as commander of the troops on the Dutch
front. 

Horrified at being under a "damned psychotic chicken farmer", anti-Nazi
elements in the Army make contact with the Kriesau Circle, long the centerpiece
of the German Resistance movement in the Fatherland itself. Already the
commander of the Wehrmacht forces in Italy, von Witzleben, is on their side,
along with all of his staff. Tentative outreaches to the Ciano government have
been quite positive; if the conspirators can somehow get Sardinia back. 

-Pierre Darlan transfers his personal headquarters to Corsica in early June;
the island is solidly in Franco-American hands, and it is the expected jumping
off point for Operation Dragoon in June, the subsidiary invasion of southern
France. It is expected to be an American project; something the British are
fine with, Montgomery is finally ready for his strike against Italy itself, and
the British and Commonwealth forces plan to strike in June as well. It's now
clear to everyone that Hitler's Reich is going down, it's just a question of
when and how. 

-On June 6, 1945, the American invasion of the Phillipines begins. Though there
was a strong sentiment to simply make the islands the biggest "island prison"
holding isolated Japanese troops, the Japanese garrison there is large enough
to support bothersome submarine patrols, and it is Luzon that the Yamato was
heading towards in late May when she was caught and sunk by torpedo bombers
from the USS Ranger after a running gunnery duel with the Iowa and North
Carolina...

For All Time Pt. 23  
July-August 1945

-By early July of 1945, most of the Low Countries are solidly in American and
Allied hands. Allied forces driving into France have reached the Somme (with
more than a few old American and British soldiers recognizing their old
stomping grounds), while the American army has crossed the Meuse in Belgium.
Heinrich Himmler's terrible generalship has let the Americans drive to the
North Sea in most places, forcing the Wehrmacht back to defensive lines around
the city of Arnhem, in eastern Gelderland. Himmler's army deputy Heinz
Guderian, the hero of D-Day, after watching in horror the deliberate
destruction of most of the Dutch dike system by SS troops, flooding much of the
countryside and killing tens of thousands and making hundreds of thousands of
refugees, has opted to throw his weight behind the Kriesau Circle, and the
quietly growing arm of the German Resistance. 

Not because of civilian casualties, of course; Guderian has served on the
Eastern Front before Normandy, and it's regrettable, but these things happen in
war, but to have to work under the _SS?!?_ It's simply monstrous, and he won't
stand for it. 

Guderian isn't alone in joining the Resistance; as Kiel, Erfurt, Essen, and
Hanover are shattered from the air over the course of July and August by
American bombers, and as a whole cross-section of the German military steps
into the anti-Hitler column, everyone from Erwin Rommel, the commander of the
German Home Army, to Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, commander of Army Group
Center, (and all of his staff) who has fallen back to western and central
Poland after a Soviet drive stalled just east of Warsaw. 

Adolf Hitler, meanwhile, is growing increasingly isolated in his Berghof
headquarters near the former Austria (the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia falls in
early August.) 

Soviet troops have by this time taken Romania and Bulgaria, and with their
forces very near the Hungarian border, Admiral Miklos Horthy, regent of
Hungary, has made his decision. He begins quiet chats with the commander of
German troops in Hungary, Henning von Treschow, working out arrangements that
his Italian counterpart Galeazzo Ciano has already made with the German
commander in Italy, von Witzleben.

-In the Pacific, the Philippine Islands are largely in American hands by the
end of August. A small remnant of the Japanese troops there continue guerilla
operations in the interior, but it's hard to be guerillas when everyone hates
you and lots of former Resistance fighters know just where to chase you into
the bush. 

With the fall of the Phillipines, there's really nothing left but Downfall;
American planners in Formosa are already putting the finishing touches on the
organization of the attack on Okinawa, planned for sometime in early September.
After Okinawa, there will literally be nothing left but Japan herself.

There's a new influx of troops as well in the Pacific; those few men who made
it through Japanese captivity intact and who wanted to go back into the
military. Formosa served as one of the larger Japanese prisoner holding camps,
and they were slow to evacuate the prisoners. (Though quick to shoot many.)  

Among those now in American hands is Jonathon Wainwright, final commander of
American troops in the Phillipines before their surrender in 1942, and Richard
Sorge, alleged Soviet spy and former German diplomat.

-It is seemingly a season for invasions; on August 9, 1945, the invasion of
Italy begins. It is a largely British and Commonwealth affair; Bernard
Montgomery is the overall commander, with a Canadian army under Henry Crerar
landing at Campania, an Australian under George Vasey striking against
Basilicata, and Montgomery himself commanding the invasion of Calabaria. 

Like almost everything Bernard Montgomery does, the invasion is slow,
meticulously well-planned, and designed to greatly aid his own reputation.
Which it does. American troops in the Low Countries have taken terrific
casualties; the German army up there has the Panther and King Tiger as its
standard model panzers, and nearly every man has an MP-3 assault rifle. In
Italy, things are better (for the Allies, anyway.) Those tanks which aren't
Italian are usually the obsolscent Panzer IVs; and most of the soldiers still
have Mauser '98s. This is good, at least for the Allies. 

-South, across the Mediterrean, the Cairo Conference (August 11-29, 1945) has
gone marginally well. The massive casualties caused by X-Day (D-Day will remain
a lexicon for failure in the American language until the end of the century,
and beyond) have only reinforced the fervent isolationism of Robert Taft, he is
only too glad to pledge agreement with his predecessor's suggestions for
postwar German occupation zones, and even carry them further. (The Soviet Union
to administer Austria, Hesse, Schleswig-Holstein, and Bavaria, on top of OTL's
claims.) 

Plans for post-war treatment of Nazi war criminals are discussed as well;
President Taft agrees to recognize any trials carried out by the British,
French, and Soviets, but says the United States will not try any war criminals
in its possesion; they will be handed over to either the various allies or
released into the custody of German civil authorities. 

Taft's tentative proposals for some sort of joint nuclear program are soundly
rebuffed; Darlan is reasonably interesting, but Stalin doesn't want to share,
and Churchill, frankly, just doesn't trust the Americans anymore. Taft doesn't
mind, it wasn't at all big on his agenda. 

There are, of course, no discussions of any sort of internationalist
organization after the war; indeed, all four leaders are increasingly weary of
the League of Nations, which is just a living joke at this point. Darlan and
Taft agree to sponsor an invasion of southern France by October. 

In the Pacific, Stalin renews his pledge to declare war on Japan within a month
of the fall of Germany, in exchange for Soviet post-war authority over Sakahiln
and Korea, with tentative, half-formed plans made about some sort of soverignty
over Hokkaido as well.

On a personal level, Robert Taft's first meetings with the other Allied leaders
don't go at all well; Winston Churchill is suspicious of all Americans,
especially Taft, the arch pre-war isolationist, Joseph Stalin has come to
expect a degree of...pliability from American politicians that Taft is
unwilling to provide, and Darlan is...Darlan. 

As his plane leaves Cairo for Washington, Taft is heard by an aide to mutter
"Let them all hang, when our fight is done."

For All Time Pt. 24  
September 1945

-On September 9, 1945, one of the largest paratroop drops in military history
sees an entire American airborne division dropped behind German lines in the
eastern Netherlands. Landing amidst shattered infantry units and with a massive
armored offensive striking just across the river, the city of Arnhem is in
American hands within a week, with virtually all of the Netherlands following
it by the next Only a brilliant strategic defense by Heinz Guderian allows the
bulk of the German army to escape into Germany herself; a defense Heinrich
Himmler successfully takes credit for. A fuming Guderian roars bloody murder at
the de jure SS chief (Guderian is the only man not afraid of him) and retires,
like a sulking Achilles, to his tent. Forget letting a junior officer do it;
he'll see to Himmler himself. 

-In Italy, the Australian, British and Canadian beachheads have linked up with
each other, putting a big piece of southwestern Italy in Allied hands. Oberg,
commander of the small SS force in Rome has begun making dire intimations to
Erich von Witzleben, German C-in-C Italy, about just what the Reich does to
failures; there's talk of replacing von Witzleben with Oberg's immediate
superior Kaltenbrunner, or simply shooting him and putting a more competent
Army officer in charge. Von Witzleben, long a figure in the German Resistance,
persuades his colleagues actually in the homeland to accelerate the timetable;
Major Axel von Bussche's attempt to set a bomb to kill Hitler has failed after
Heinrich Himmler failed to show up for the relevant conference, so the
conspirators must do something; the new Soviet offensive is gradually blasting
the Germans out of Poland, and there is talk of the Red Star over Berlin by
Christmas. 

-In the Pacific, meanwhile, American forces are surviving the storm that is
Okinawa; Japanese resistance is fanatical and tough, and as in Formosa, there
is a fair-sized population of civilians. However, Formosa has taught the
Americans well about dealing with Japanese civilians and Japanese soldiers
themselves; American and Japanese casualties are slightly lower than in OTL's
invasion of Okinawa. To the south, unimaginative but competent Archibald Wavell
has driven Yamashita back into Thailand after fierce battle; the Japanese
exhausted their resources with a poorly-managed offensive into India some years
earlier, and are far weaker in the area than in OTL. 

-With the death of Hoover-era Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts, President
Robert Taft makes the first new Supreme Court appointment since Robert Jackson
(Byrnes not having resigned from the Court as per OTL; after all, the Wallace
administration would never give a job to a conservative like him); and to
everyone's surprise, it's former Presidential candidate Alfred Mossman Landon.
Landon is confirmed with reasonable speed; both houses of Congress are solidly
Republican, and Landon isn't as far to the right as he looks. 

Meanwhile, Alger Hiss' trial for perjury is over, with a conviction on all five
counts, and a sentence of twenty-five years alltogether. The nation is solidly
united behind Attorney General Warren (brought in as a special prosecuter, he
worked his level best to conduct the trial in a fair and just manner, something
he mostly succeeded at.)  There will be no move to acquit Hiss in this TL; he
will never be a martyered icon of the Left after being convicted of espionage
once, and then convicted again of perjury at his first trial. The nation's eye
is on Earl Warren, and he is pondering a run for President in 1952, or even
earlier. 

On September 19, 1945, absolutely nothing happens in Alamagordo, New Mexico.
The hundreds of prominent scientists there, from Oppenheimer to Teller to
Banner to Hall, are "just fishing" in the words of General Dwight David
Eisenhower. The scientists are, however, very concerned about people attempting
to spy on their fishing (not that anyone should, since there's nothing
happening.), and thus Army guards will arrest or shoot anyone who comes to
investigate the large flash, as if from some sort of plutonium explosion, that
rocked the skies around the small town at exactly noon. 

-In Great Britain, it is abundantly clear that the Churchill government will
not survive the next elections, whenever it is that they are held. (Probably
after V-E Day.) It's clear too that the left wing of the Labour Party is firmly
in the driver's seat; while Clement Atlee remains an important figure in the
party, too-public association with the unpopular Conservative government has
pretty well tainted him to actually lead them, come election time. 

Too, there is no small amount of Americanphobia in the Labour Party; the US has
provided quite a bit less Lend-Lease to Britain than per OTL and has been more
overtly Anglophobic. Increasingly, the Party has begun turning to the minister
of labour and national service, the former union leader Ernest Bevin. 

For All Time Pt. 25 

 -October 9, 1945 dawns clear and bright over Leipzig. The war has been
(relatively) good to Leipzig; her industrial centers are large and prosperous,
and her famous university is full of good Aryan students from all over Germany,
learning all sorts of good Aryan facts, like what a marvelous fellow the Fuhrer
is. While Leipzig has, of course, lost thousands of her sons to the Russian
bear currently devouring western Poland and the American forces in the Low
Countries and northern France, so has every German city; and at least Leipzig
has mostly been bombed only by borrowed Russian B-17s; the Soviets are now
notorious for their inaccurate bombings. Indeed, the only American B-29s that
seem to be overhead lately are weather planes; much of the local populace has
stopped ducking into bomb shelters unless there's a really, really good reason.

Among those who don't duck is Dr. Carl Goerdeler, former Mayor of Leipzig and
one of the leading figures in the anti-Hitler resistance. (He resigned from
office when a statue of Felix Mendelssohn was removed by order of the main
government.) Indeed, the resistance plans to make Goerdeler the new Reich
Chancellor once Hitler is assasinated. With plans for the assasination becoming
more and more urgent, Goerdeler and his colleagues are risking a rare meeting
at his home near the center of the city. 

Former Army Chief of Staff Ludwig Beck is there, along with former Social
Democratic Leader Julius Leber. While Reserve Army commander Erwin Rommel is
attending, neither Erich von Witzleben nor Heinz Guderian were able to leave
their military responsibilities in Italy and western Germany, respectively,
though Witzleben has sent his Chief of Staff, General Count Ulrich von
Schwanenfeld to assure the conspirators that Italy, both the German troops
there and the Ciano government, will back the conspirators 100%. 

Henning von Treschow is there to say the same for Hungary and the Horthy
government. Another spearhead of the Resistance not there is Admiral Wilhelm
Canaris, former commander of the Abwehr. Forced to retire in February after the
defection of several high-ranking Abwehr officers in Turkey, (Canaris was fired
in 1943 under similiar circumstances; with the Germans doing much better in the
ATL, they defected two years later), Canaris is Being Watched, with
Schellenberg (Heydrich's replacement as SD chief) nearly ready to close in on
him. 

The Enola Gay, meanwhile, is there to kill them all, which it comes close to
doing, detonating the first atomic bomb used in wartime at exactly 8:37 AM,
October 9, 1945, roughly 1,500 feet over the University of Leipzig, believed to
be an important center of the German atomic bomb project. Most of the students
are just going to class; most of the city's workers are on their way to work,
on the streets.

By 8:40, 70,000 people are dead. Leipzig is on a flat, broad plain, loosely
similar to Hiroshima's delta, but the plutonium bomb is significantly more
powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in OTL. Only solid German
architecture, brick and stone and steel, keeps the city from being shattered
and thousands more dying. A brisk wind kicks up from the west as the Enola Gay
flies back to the Netherlands, and the great mushroom cloud begins slowly
falling west. 

In Dr. Carl Goerdeler's house, nothing stirs, nothing walks. Only one wall is
nearly unburnt and uncollapsed; it has but one scar; the frozen, fushed shadow
of a man who was once called The Desert Fox.

For All Time Pt. 26  
Unpublished diary of Captain Eberhard von Breitenbuch, adjunct to Field Marshal
Walter Model
October 15, 1945

They'll be coming for me soon. I know it, I can feel it. Already I hear the SD
asking what Beck and von Treschow and Rommel and Goerdler were all doing
together in Leipzig; eventually they'll ask the wrong person, they'll crack,

and the whole game will be given away. 

[von Bussche] is transferred to France to fight the Darlanists; [Klausing] is
at Zossen, preparing for the Fuhrer's imminent move. Of all of us, only I am
left here, save for [Stieff,] and he is not a man to do what must be done. 

And it must be done. Death is a void of fear, but if he can be stopped, my
death is worth it. Nearly 80,000 known to be dead in Leipzig from a single
bomb, much less the tens of thousands of maimed and dying, much less the other
cities broken from the sky like a child's plaything, much less Poland all Red
now, half of Italy and France is American and British...and _he_ speaks only of
organizing a Vergeltungswaffen nerve gas strike against Antwerp. 

They'll be there tomorrow, von Kesselring to plead for his bombers (as if he
stands a chance, with Goering in chains for his failure), Dornbergers for his
rockets,  and Keitel and the rest of _his_ Army lackeys, Jodl and Blomberg and
Reichenau, to bow and scrape before the greatest evil we have ever known. 

I fear only failure. Will [Guderian] and [von Witzleben] act, with the plan
dead at Leipzig? Horthy hesitated, and the SS taught him the price of such.
What lesson shall I teach?

For All Time Pt. 27  

-Eberhard von Breitenbuch will become a favorite source of speculation for
alternate historians of the future. What if he'd used a bomb, as all of his
fellow conspirators had planned? What if he'd shot Hitler two days earlier, or
two days later? And, perhaps the most obvious, what if he'd succeeded outright?
But, of course, he did none of those things. 

What he did do, around noon on October 16, 1945, was shoot Adolf Hitler twice
in the chest in the middle of the last Fuhrer Conference to be held at the
Berghof, with a small Browning pistol he'd smuggled in past SS Security. The
first bullet passed neatly through Hitler's left lung; the second passing
through Hitler's arm, rib, and the big muscles of his chest before lodging in
his spine. 

Just before the Fuhrer was rushed out of the command pillbox, unconcious from
shock and with a sucking wound to the chest, a volley from a dozen SS SG-44s
took Breitenbuch in the chest, killing the young officer instantly. A moment
later, Obergruppenfuehrer Theodor Eicke, commander of Hitler's personal guard,
shot Field Marshal Walter Model in the head as an obvious partner in the
conspiracy. 

A tableau arose for a moment; the unarmed Army officers, including Luftwaffe
commander Kesselring and Peenmunde commander Dornberger, frozen at one end of
the locked room, Eicke and his men at the other, loaded machine guns trained on
the Army men, fingers trembling on the triggers.

It's hard to say what happened next (there is a paucity of reliable eyewitness
testimony) but the best evidence suggests that one of the Army officers,
perhaps Wilhelm Keitel, slipped on a pool of blood and fell across
Breitenbuch's dropped pistol. 

The SS immediately opened fire, riddling Keitel with bullets, as the trapped
Army officers fled for the locked exit door. In a matters of moments, as Eicke
shouted "Kill all the traitors!", Field Marshals Walter von Blomberg, Walter
von Reichenau, and Fedor von Bock were dead, shot in the back as they managed
to tear the lock off the door. Albert von Kesselring and Walter Dornberger fall
as well, critically wounded. Dornberger will linger another few weeks in an
Army hospital before dying; von Kesseling will live out the rest of his life in
a wheelchair. 

Only Erich von Manstein, oppurtunist extraordinarie, is thus still alive and
articulate (he ducked under the table) when Lt.-Colonel Wilhelm Heinz and his
men break down the pillbox's door a moment later; alive to cry out, "It's the
SS, they've shot the Fuhrer and are launching a coup!" 

The subsequent exchange of fire is heard by both nearby SS and conventional
Army troops, and thanks to foolish aggression and clever calculation, the
German Civil War has begun. 

As the roar of gunfire grows louder from the camp, an anonymous, forgotten
truck, carrying the unconcious Adolf Hitler and two SS doctors, speeds away
toward Munich.

-An hour later, in Oldenburg, the headquarters of the German army facing the
Americans in the Low Countries, General Heinz Guderian personally executes
Heinrich Himmler after the former SS chief is dragged from the ruins of his
former command post (Guderian used an entire panzer brigade to bring him down).


Similarly, in Rome, Italian and German Army troops arrest every SS officer in
the city; Erich von Witzleben is the most senior surviving Army officer in the
Reich, already there is talk of him as the next Chancellor. 

But there is no such talk in Berlin, where Reinhard Heydrich has purged every
OKH officer that so much as looked at a swastika cross-eyed, and declared
himself provisional leader of the loyalist forces of the Reich.

Swiftly, he dispatches Dr. Joseph Goebbels to Nuremburg, to conduct a massive
rally with the elite of the Party faithful; to tell the citizens of Greater
Germany that the Fuhrer is alive (which he is) and well (which he isn't.)

-There are 10,000 people in Nuremburg Stadium, a mix of administrators, Party
officials, SS officers and loyal soliders, on the afternoon of October 16,
1945, cheering with varying degrees of madness as Admiral Karl Doenitz, Joachim
von Ribbentrop, and then Joseph Goebbels proclaim their loyalty to the fallen
Fuhrer and to the ever-lasting Thousand-Year Reich. 

It is perhaps the greatest speech of Joseph Goebbels' long career of
speech-making, and when three B-29s fly overhead amid the barking of flak guns,
he refuses to take shelter and mocks those few who try to, laughing and
pointing to the sky, saying, "These are the Americans you fear? With only three
bombers against a great-"

For All Time Pt. 28  
Late October-Early November 1945

-With word of the assasination attempt on Hitler and the formation of the three
new German governments (Guderian and von Witzleben having realized that _they_
are the men of vision destined to lead the German people into the future) the
American government suspends plans for a third nuclear strike against Germany
at the end of October, making an attempt to negotiate with all three leaders in
concert with the British, French, and Soviets. 

It doesn't go well at first; both Francois Darlan and Joseph Stalin recognize a
defeated, lapdog Germany is in their best interests, so they ask for the
impossible, cession of the Ruhr on the one hand and cession to the Elbe on the
other. The Heydrich government (which is fighting a violent civil war between
Erich von Manstein's Home Army and Heydrich's SS) refuses to negotiate at all in the hastily-organized conference in Geneva, while Guderian gets bogged down
in the Franco-Soviet demands. 

Erich von Witzleben is in no position to surrender all German troops fighting;
not in the way Guderian or Heydrich might be, but he can save the lives of his
men, and of their families, if he moves quickly, which he does. Acting on
behalf of both his own command and of the Ciano government in Italy, Field
Marshall Erich von Witzleben surrenders to Bernard Montgomery's Commonwealth
force on November 1, 1945. 

Two days later, the Kingdom of Italy formally declares war on Heydrich's Third
Reich, and Italo-German troops join the British Empire's in the swift rush
north to the alpine passes on the former Italian-Austrian border. 

With von Witzleben down, Guderian begins slowly disengaging from the front in
Schleswig-Holstein to aid Manstein's fight, and the Allies resume plans for use
of nuclear weapons on German soil.

-On October 29, 1945, Francois Darlan and George S. Patton enter Paris to the
cheers of a huge crowd welcoming their liberators from the Nazi threat. In his
first hours in the city, Darlan personally awards Raymond Aubrac, the slayer of
Gestapo deputy commander Klaus Barbie, the Croix de Guerre. 

The former admiral moves as swiftly as a storm in his first few days in power,
executing collaborationists and encouraging Frenchmen all over the countryside
to do the same. French Resistance forces and Darlan's French Army wind up
taking perhaps a third as many prisoners as George S. Patton's American's
forces. 

Despite Darlan's rhetoric of a "Révolution culturelle" to purge the unFrench
elements, especially Communists and fascists, from the newly-liberated
Republic, the purges are really a way to eliminate anyone who remembers too
strongly that Francois Darlan himself was the arch-collaborationist
extraordinarie, along with anyone who might politically oppose him in the
post-war era. 

Among the first to die is a Vichy government minister with alleged ties to the
Gaullist resistance; beaten to death by a Darlanist mob, Francois Mitterand. 

-In Okinawa, damage from the apocalyptic Typhoon Louise of early October has
been largely repaired, and the an invasion armada is being assembled around the
American-held island. American fire-bombing raids have already largely
destroyed the cities of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Kokura, and while Japanese
morale has plummeted, the Annami goverment is determined to fight on. The
atomic bomb will be deployed in the Pacific within two weeks of the surrender
of Germany; but that may be too late, as the invasion is set to begin in
mid-December of 1945. 

-In the east, meanwhile, Waffen SS General Sepp Dietrich has managed to keep
Zhukov across the Oder, fighting desperatly just a relative handful of miles
from Berlin herself. Dietrich is the only successful German commander in the
east, though: Koniev enters Vienna on November 3, 1945, and begins the process
of cleaning the city of its Nazified elements by the expedient of
shooting/working them to death. 

To the cheers of a crowd of liberated Serbs, SS officer Kurt Waldeim is beaten
nearly to death by an enraged Red Army officer before being sent on the long
trains back to Siberia to be worked till he dies.

For All Time Pt. 29

Early to mid-November, 1945

-For all that it will be a centerpiece of an outcry against weapons of mass
destruction as grand as the nuked cities of the world, the sarin gas attacks
upon Soviet troops along the Oder on November 9, 1945 are far less than they
might have been. 

The three V-2s launched from a cleared area behind German lines are not
terribly accurate; one misses entirely, destroying a small German farming
community, and the two that strike hit prepared troops (thanks to Enigma) in
two areas several dozen miles apart with a moderate supply of gas equipment and
antidote. Of 200,000 men in the affected areas, only 8,000 die, and not that
many more are even disabled. 

With the areas of devastation so far apart, the subsequent German armored
offensive across the Oder fails bloodily for both sides, and Zhukov begins
driving Dietrich back towards Berlin. He's not the only one heading there;
Guderian's troops are stopped a dozen miles outside the city limits by a
mobilized Hitler Youth, and Clark's army, despite having taken more casualities
per its size than any other American Army up to that time, is not that far
behind him. 

To the south, George Vasey's Australians and Koniev's Soviets are racing for
Munich, where a paralyzed Adolf Hitler drifts in and out of a morphine-induced
haze. 

While he ponders what to do, Heydrich executes the surviving techs from
Peenmunde (including the civilian director, Dr. Werner Von Braun) for their
failure.

-With the nerve gas attack, Stalin purges a fair number of military
intelligence officers, handing over intelligence-gathering to Laverenti Beria's
NKVD. Some Red Army officers protest. They don't do it more than once. 

He then tells Beria, rather bluntly, that if the Soviet atomic bomb (which is
under Beria's direction) isn't finished by the first day of 1946, the NKVD will
have a new director. Quite motivated, Beria throws all of his reserved
resources into the bomb, the first prototype will be ready by mid-December. Do
they test or do they nuke? It's a good question. 

There's no question, of course, about moving mustard gas to the front, or using
it against the Waffen SS in the chase back to Berlin, using loaned American
tactical bombers and even B-29s.

-There's also no question for the American government about the use of the next
atomic bomb, either. President Taft ponders for a while, but doesn't even need
to think. (He's seen pictures of Dachau by now, and Auschwitz.) 

The only real delay is passing messages on to Guderian and Zhukov, suggesting
it might be an excellent idea not to press too close to Berlin around November
12-13th: both of them take that advice. 

When the air raid sirens begin around 2 AM in Berlin on November 13, 1945,
Fuhrer Heydrich takes shelter in the Fuhrer-bunker, the command post buried
deep, deep under the surface of Berlin. Heydrich takes a moment to inspect his
troops; so he's inside the armory, one of the lowest and best-protected levels
of the bunker, when three hundred B-29s and their escorts peel away from three
lone bombers flying over the central city, and moment later, a sun blossoms
over the Brandenburg Gate. 

For All Time Pt. 30  November-December 1945

-Even with Fuhrer Heydrich alive and moderately well, it's clear to all but the
most fanatical citizens of the Third Reich that the struggle is all over. The
nuclear destruction of Berlin on November 13 has decapitated virtually the
entire Reich government but Heydrich himself, and the Waffen SS forces facing
Guderian and Zhukov don't so much surrender as crumble under mustard gas attack
and utterly shattered morale. Sepp Dietrich surrenders to Georgi Zhukov on
November 16 and then calmly walks into his tent and pulls the pin on a hand
grenade. 

Guderian's forces, being closer, win the race for Berlin on November 16, and
the inventor of panzer warfare investigates the ruins of the city, personally
inspecting the melted rubble that was once the Brandenburg Gate. Kripo
Commander Obergruppenfuehrer Arthur Nebe, the highest-ranking official left
alive in Berlin, has already placed his old rival Heydrich under arrest, and
hands him over (reluctantly) to the Soviets when they arrive on November 19,
1945, even as Guderian (even more reluctantly) hands the city over to them. 

In the meantime, the Allied powers are moving to occupy their assigned zones
of, well, occupation: The Americans in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia;
the French in Rhineland-Palatine and Saarland, and the United Kingdom in
Baden-Wurtemburg and the western half of Bavaria. 

Nebe and Guderian sign the formal surrender of Germany in Weimar on November
21, 1945, V-E Day. It's over.

-Except for Japan! Paul Tibbets' 509th Composite Group begins the long journey
from the western Netherlands to Tinian on November 22, once they're sure as not
shooting that the Third Reich is toast; along with a transfer of several
hundred thousand American and British Commonwealth troops. 

The Soviet Union moves quickly as well; building...Pacific barges! They're
cheap and not very good, many are Soviet-flagged Liberty Ships given away by
the Wallace administration, but they'll carry a few thousand troops to northern
Hokkaido, give or take a few hundred men who die frozen in agony dumped into
the sea. But this is Stalinist USSR, what have they to complain about?

This is in sharp contrast to the professional American armada growing off of
Okinawa, ready to begin Operation Olympic if the atomic bombs fail, once they
arrive in early December, if all goes well, but both will fulfill their goal of
actually getting people to land on Japan and not be killed by the ocean. 

-On November 23rd, 1945, Polish troops under British command investigate a
small mental hospital located on the outskirts of Munich. The hospital was
struck by a burning Spitfire during the very last days of the war, and most of
the staff fled or died, the survivors surrender, and lead the Poles to a
crumbling bunker and a lone, ranting figure in a wheelchair and diapers.

Thus is Adolf Hitler taken. 

For All Time Pt. 31  
Late November-Early December 1945

-With the Third Reich smashed, President Taft's popularity grows to an all-time high; even House Minority Leader Rayburn praises his bold executive leadership.
Taft's popularity is such that only men like Walter Reuther really notice the
quietly-passed Labor?Management Relations Act of 1945, sponsored by Senator
Styles Bridges of New Hampshire and passed easily by the solidly conservative
and Republican Congress. 

It outlaws the closed shop, permits union shops only where legal under state
law and with worker approval; requires 60 day strike notification; authorizes
federal strike injunctions when a strike might imperil national safety;
changesthe definition of unfair labour practices; goes into lots and lots of
unfair union practices; all but does away with union political contributions;
and outlaws jurisdictional strikes and secondary boycotts.

To head the new Labor Relations Board, Taft picks Secretary of Labor Fred
Hartley, the former Congressman from New Jersey. 

-Taft has been quiet about his post-war plans for Europe, though he does
comment to reporters just after V-E Day that "The commitment of a land army to
Europe is a program into which we should not drift." *

It's about this time that Henry Stimson, Taft's Secretary of State, retires on
grounds of age; he's an old man (born in 1867) and deeply uncomfortable with
the way the US has been forced to use both nuclear and chemical weapons in
Europe and Japan (With evidence of attempted Japanese bacteriological warfare
found in Formosa and China, American bombers drop several thousand tons of
mustard gas on Kobe on the first of December.)

To replace him, Taft picks long-serving New York Congressman and isolationist
Hamilton Fish; fresh from a narrow re-election victory in the 1944 election.
1944 was a good year for the Republicans, the House and Senate are solidly
Republican, and with the deeply conservative Southern Senators and Congressman
on Taft's side, Taft has an chance like no President since FDR to make policy.

-Later commentators, men like William Manchester, will write of the air of
anticipation hanging over the Pacific at the beginning of December, 1945.
Virtually every major Japanese island possesion in the Pacific is in American
hands; all the way up to Tanega off the coast of Kyushu. Even the Japanese half
of Sakahiln has been raided by a US Marine team under Captain B.A. Baracus on
December 4. 

The Olympic armada is ready; Raymond Spruance's Fifth Fleet and Maurice Rose's
Sixth Army, for the planned landings at Kushniko on the west coast, another in
the south at Ariake Bay, and the last near Miyazaki City on the east coast.
But, being opposed to hundreds of thousands of Americans and even more Japanese
dying in an invasion, the Taft administration prefers to wait. 

But they won't have to do that for long; on December 7, 1945, the first of a
few dozen B-29s of Composite Group 509 touch down at a very, very impressive
airstrip built by the Seabees on the island of Tinian over the past few months.


-The Soviets, meanwhile, are only waiting for resources to arrive; Stalin has
shifted an a large, heavily armored army to the Manchurian border, ready to
drive the Japanese all the way into the sea at the southern tip of Korea, as
well as make sure Mao Zedong wins out in China. 

But that's for the future: in Vladivostok, Stalin has assembled a force of
around 2,500 light infantry; the heaviest weapon anyone is likely to have will
be American bazookas, though a single company of T-34s will come along for the
ride. Supplementing the infantry and tiny armored contingent are 500 armed
sailors, the only members of the Soviet military really trained in amphibious
operations. 

Of course, in an actual invasion, even against lightly defended and invaded
Hokkaido, they'll be killed, probably while still on the beaches. And worse, by
Stalin's standards; they'll fail. Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov, overall commander
of the invasion, works up the courage to tell Stalin this on December 10...and
the great dictator for once just laughs. "Comrade Beria will ensure our
soldiers land on empty beaches." 

For All Time Pt. 32

Mid-December 1945

-Contrary to wartime American and Allied projections, Japanese morale in the
last days of 1945 is abominable. The Straits of Tsushima  are under American
blockade as of the 12th of December; nearly 400,000 (above OTL) are dead after
firebombings and mustard gas attacks  on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kokura, Kobe,
Osaka, Kyoto, and a host of other major cities. 

As a final humiliation, on December 14, 1945, Red Army tanks cross the Amur
River just after Molotov delivers a declaration of war to Foriegn Minister
Togo. Despite the terrain and season, the Soviet advance is quick and violent,
the Kwangtung Army has been largely evacuated to the Home Islands, except for
those tens of thousands sunk by American submarines in the Sea of Japan. 

Only the personal leadership of General Korechika Anami, Prime Minister since
Tojo's fall after the American conquest of Formosa, has kept the nation's
fighting spirit going on, defeat after defeat after defeat. With the Soviet
invasion of Manchuria, Anami moves quickly, pulling out the reserve 19th Army
and sending it to the port city of Niigata, acting under the assurances of
Admiral Toyoda that the troops can be sent to reinforce Manchuria and Korea by
cover of night. 

-It's a cold, clear morning on December 17, 1945 in Niigata. The newly-arrived
19th Army is doing morning calisthenics at their base in the center of the old
port city; most people are just waking up, getting ready for a long day at the
local munitions plant or just in keeping body and soul together. The rice
ration has been cut, again, and fishing is difficult when every boat is sunk by
American submarines or aircraft. Life is hard for Niigatians, young and old,
rich and poor, Army and civilian. 

And the 25 kiloton bomb detonated over the exercising 19th Army (which dies
nearly to a man) at 7:04 AM local time doesn't help matters much either. In an
instant, 49,000 people are dead, Japan's last even somewhat functional port to
the outside world is gone, and Joseph Stalin makes his move. 

On December 18, 1945, an American-made B-29 takes off from a secret airstrip in
the Ural Mountains, carrying the most secret cargo in the Soviet Union since
Lenin's sealed train. Laverenti Beria himself is on board as the plane wings
its way to Vladivostok...

For All Time Pt. 33 
December 20, 1945

-Wakkanai is a frontier port town, or rather, it would be if there was anywhere
to go in the north. Wakkanai sits in the northernmost part of the northernmost
island of Japan, Hokkaido, and is the northernmost city in Japan. The people
that aren't dairymen are fishermen, and hardy ones at that. 

It's cold all the time in Wakkanai, especially for Japan, especially on
December 20, 1945, with a strong wind blowing in fron the ocean. Life hasn't
changed terribly much since the war began; while it is barely within the range
of bombers from the Aleutians, there's nothing there to bomb. Wakkanai sits on
a rail line, but only at the very end of one, a rail foot, if you will.
People's main worries are getting through the winter, living off cattle and
salt fish, and with the new terror, Americans sinking fishing boats.

The main military excitement came over December 16-19, when a single B-29 would
fly over the town from the west, and back, seeming to be taking pictures,
scouting. Troop strength in the ring of bunkers facing the coast is increased
from 1,500 to 2,000 in response, but it doesn't do much good, the new troops
are mostly battered, recuperating veterans from bombed-out cities. An isolated
dozen are from Niigata. 

Airplanes and artillery are, of course, reserved for the defenders of Kyushu
and southern Honshu, far to the south. 

When the bell rings for a sighted enemy aircraft at 2:15 AM, most citizens of
Wakkanai don't bother to move to their shelters (most people don't have them
anyway), but every soldier in the area gets to their beachside bunkers. The
beaches are flat, the terrain doesn't slope up until well in back of the town. 

-Suravikhino is 75 centimeters in diameter and 3.5 meters long, in the system
of its native Soviet Union. Though it weighs 4090 kilograms, most of that is
ballast, the central core of uranium weighs only 12 kilograms. Even that would
be lighter, but Soviet refining processes are not as they should be. 

The "City of Rostov" is an American-built B-29, traded to the Soviets in early
1944 as part of Henry Wallace's last great Lend-Lease package. Her crew ran her
through a series of milk runs over northern Finland and Bulgaria during that
year, and have spent most of 1945 practicing accurate single bomb drops off the
coast of Vladivostok. 

"Suravikhino" fits comfortably into her hull on December 20, 1945 as she takes
off from her isolated airstrip near the former Korean border. It is a lonely
mission, lit by the eerie glow of a full moon. There are seven men aboard,
pilot, commander, bombardier, navigator, the flight engineer, and Sergei
Korolev, who will finish assembling the bomb once they're in the air. 

Operating the radio is Laverenti Beria himself; carrying a machine pistol. If
the plane goes down or the bomb malfunctions, he will shoot every man on board,
starting with Korolev. The flight engineer is also carrying a machine pistol,
unknown to Beria. If the bomb malfunctions or the plane goes down, he will
shoot _Beria._

It is a milk run despite this; a survivor of the crew comments years later that
it felt like just another photographing mission, even after dropping
Suravikhino and bugging out an instant later. Until 2:19 AM, when the first
Soviet atomic bomb detonates three miles off-shore and a dozen meters above the
surface of the Pacific.

The blast turns the cold, damp arctic night into a slice of hell: Wakkanai is
instantly ablaze, over twenty thousand civilians (out of thirty) dead in an
instant. Only in the protected beach bunkers and pillboxes do soldiers survive
the blast; even there, a fair percentage, those too near doors facing the beach
or looking out vision trenches are left burned, blind, dying. 

Fractions of a second later, the wave hits. The nuclear tsunami is seven meters
high and traveling at nearly 200 feet per second. Bunkers are smashed, the
soldiers drowned and battered to death in matters of seconds, the town itself
is washed nearly clean, the water receding so far as to leave the harbor
relatively unobstructed. 

Six hours later, the first wave of Soviet troops land, parachutists are already
doing the best they can to clear the last of the harbor and beach debris, as
well as raid south, into Hokkaido. 

For All Time Pt. 34 
Late December, 1945

-The Soviet landings on Hokkaido stun and shock the American government. In
reaction to the Russophilia of its predecessor; the Taft administration had
assumed that Stalin wouldn't be able to finish an atomic bomb on time, much
less get it to Japan _and_ pull off a semi-successful invasion. 

"Climb Mt. Olympus!" is the ironic code to begin the American invasion of Japan
on December 22, 1945. Almost simultaneous with the rapid American landings in
southern Kyushu (5,000 Americans die in those initial few hours, and thousands
more Japanese) comes the nuclear destruction of Fukuoka, one of the largest
industrial cities on Kyushu. Eighty thousand are dead there. 

-Deliberation in Tokyo is violent and bloody; Army head General Yoshijiro Umezu
nearly attacks the Keeper of the Lord Privy Seal, Marquis Kido, for suggesting
a peace, both men are put under naval (the Army is too...erratic) guard and
kept far away from each other. 

It is a difficult decision for Korechika Anami. He is a professional soldier;
he knows that with the Americans stubbornly in Kyushu and the Soviets firmly
clinging on to Hokkaido, the military will fail. Japanese civilian morale is at
an all time low as American, British, Soviet bombers fly freely overhead,
nearly every major city has had an incindiary or chemical attack in the past
month. Over a million Japanese civilians have died in aerial attacks since
summer. 

Still, surrender means , from his perspective, the death of Japanese
civilization, the loss of national honor, and the enslavement of the greatest
warriors the nation has ever known. Better for them to live on their knees,
with a chance to rise again, or simply die? 

As a light snow falls over ravaged Tokyo, he makes his decision. On December
25, 1945, the Emperor of Japan makes the following annoucement: 

"To Our Good and Loyal Subjects:

After pondering deeply the general trends of the world and the actual
conditions obtaining in our Empire today, We have decided to effect a
settlement of the present situation by resorting to an extraordinary
measure...." 

World War Two is over. 

For All Time Pt. 35 
January 10, 1946

Tokyo Bay:

Lieutenant Commander RICHARD NIXON is in the back row of all the pictures of
the various dignitaries aboard the USS Midway; the young naval staff officer
will always remember his meetings with Douglas MacArthur and Georgi Zhukov
(Nixon is on the staff of Admiral William Halsey) with pride; men like American
Secretary of State Fish and British Foriegn Minister Atlee will always come up
short in his mind. 

Nearly a million Japanese civilians are dead. President Taft has turned down
Stalin's suggestion of a new conference to deal with the Far East; Korea and
Hokkaido are in the Soviet zone, and that's all they're getting. 

Berlin: 

ALBERT SPEER collapses into his bunk, exhausted as he has never been in his
life. In a touch of humor, Stalin had decreed that the Soviet trials for Nazi
war criminals will be held in a special auditorium built on the former site of
the Brandenburg Gate...built by the labor of those same criminals. Robert Ley
has already managed to bash his own brains out with a shovel, Speer, who has
lost 100 pounds this winter, wonders if he should do the same...

London: 

JOHN BAGOT GLUBB, known as Glubba Pasha, is meeting personally with the new
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,
Ernest Bevin. Glubb was rather surprised by the invitation; the Arab Legion
fought bravely and well for the Allies during the war; but what would Bevin
want with him personally? Bevin tells him a very simple story: The Empire is
nearly bankrupt, and Britain needs her troops in Palestine to defend home and
the most vital parts of the Empire, not a mandate that will run out in a year
or so anyway. Glubb's army, and by extension the Kingdom of Transjordan, can
take the place of the British troops, control the mandate themselves. 

Glubb, never one to turn down personal empire-building or a challenge, has only
one question. "What about the Jews?" "What _about_ the Jews?" 

Paris:

JEAN-PAUL SARTE is awakened from a sound sleep by a knock at his door; he opens
it to be shot three times in the chest; the mob bursts in and beats his
companion Jeanine de Beauvior to death. Anti-collaborator killings have gotten
more violent and more bloody-thirsty since V-E Day, on the 7th fashion designer
Coco Chanel was dragged from her car, along with her Gernan lover, and lynched
just outside the Swiss border. 

Perhaps two thousand people have already been lynched or shot; the Darlan
government continues to ride the proverbial whirlwind, doing nothing. Indeed,
Darlan's "Tricolor Guards" are often the main culprits behind the civil
disorder. 

Princeton: 

Professor GEORGE KENNAN's book _Caging the Bear_, articulating his proposed
policy of "containment" of Communism, has earned him nothing but scorn.
"Apparantly Professor Kennan's service in the Wallace administration went to
ill use; the same government officials who slaughtered sixty thousand American
boys in a day in 1943 now want other nations to fight their proxy wars. Well,
Professor Kennan, be advised that no more Americans will be killed fighting
Democrat wars, and none of our allies, either." says one critic.


Washington: 

Treasury Secretary and former President HERBERT HOOVER retires. While he
enjoyed being an active part of government again, as he put it: "You can't go
home again." President Taft turns his eye for a replacement on the Treasury
Department itself, more specifically to a dashing young economist named Milton
Friedman...

For All Time Pt. 36 
February-April 1946

-Despite stories told later by American and European politicians, the American
demobilization of the late winter and early spring of 1946 is not a cowardly
retreat from global responsibilities. The United States, a nation unaccustomed
to violent foriegn wars, has lost over 500,000 soldiers and civilians over four
years of bloody fighting. The soldiers want to go home, and President Bob Taft,
who was elected to bring them home, is determined to do just that. 

In the Philippines, for example, after signing treaties assuring a 99 year
lease on the naval base at Subic Bay, the US pulls out its troops and ceded
soverignty to the government of Sergio Osmeńa on February 7, 1946, though the
new President will not declare formal independance until July 4. Osmeńa, who
had become President in exile after the death of Quezon in 1944, is an old man,
though, and tired. People are already talking about the election of 1949. 

-For Germany, the situation is a bit more complicated. Taft has pledged to have
all American occupation troops home by the end of 1947, but American efforts to
negotiate either a British or French takeover of their sector fail, not that
the US pressed too enthusastically for that anyway. Thus it is that while
beginning deamage control work on the cities of northern Germany (clearing
streets and repairing roads, there are lovely wide boulevards with no buildings
at all for miles around) the US begins organizing a provisional government for
"Westphalia", centered around Erich von Manstein, whose anti-Hitler and
anti-Communist credentials are impeccable, and who has managed to parlay that
into most of the world forgetting his pretty firmly Nazi roots. 

There is an outcry among German nationalists, American Jewish groups angry at
the US government's alleged favoritism towards Nazis (it's not entirely a fair
charge, but it makes sense, Taft's bill to subsidize Jewish immigration to the
US is slowly percolating through Congress, and he has vehemently rejected a
proposal by American intelligence called Operation Paperclip.) 

-Japan, meanwhile, has kept her Emperor (Douglas MacArthur has warned
Washington of the risk of Communist subversion if Hirohito is deposed) and is
working toward a new government under the leadership of civilian Japanese
officials. As in Germany, the US has spurned war crimes trials, though they do
hand over wanted criminals to their former Pacific. Fortunately, men like Tojo,
Anami, and Ishii have already taken their own lives. 

Friction growns between Taft and MacArthur in March; MacArthur doesn't like the
US "abandoning Japan in her hour of greatest need", and doesn't hesitate to
share that with the press. Fuming, Taft comes within a hair's breadth of asking
for the General's retirement (as he has already quietly done with the US
commader in France, George S. Patton.), but finally decides to let MacArthur
stick it out in Japan until the end of cleanup and buildup (training the
Japanese military and building American bases there.). He is even idly
pondering the fellow Midwestern Republican for a Cabinet post. 

-On April 2, 1946, a disgruntled military officer throws a hand grenade that
nearly kills Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, leader of Iran, before being shot to
death himself. While the Shah lies near death at a closely guarded hospital in
Tehran, a factional struggle breaks out in Iran between forces loyal to the
monarchy and the landed gentry of Iran. 

A week later, the first Soviet armored divisions cross the border. Citing the
need to restore order in the civil-war wracked nation, Stalin promises to
restore full and just order. Americans and Europeans are torn between relief
and horror as Soviet troops manage to secure the large cities, at least...but
there's not much they can do, outside of protest strongly. Western oil comes
from Indonesia, the United States, and South America, not the Middle East, and
many Americans haven't even heard of Iran. 

If he had to go somewhere, better Iran than Germany, is the general consensus
as the initial fighting slows to a stop. Besides, you can't trust those
Pahlavis; the Shah's father was almost a Nazi!

For All Time Pt. 37  
May-August 1946


-For a Stalinst-era production, the Soviet summer campaign in Iran is
surprisingly bloodless. There is a distinction between conquest and annexation,
after all, one of which Joseph Stalin, annexer of the Baltic States and
conqueror of Poland, is acutely aware.

Only particularly vocal or reactionary members of rightist and centrist (and
leftist, after all, the most dangerous traitors to the revolution are those
that lurk within. Not to mention Trotskyites.) parties are deported to Siberia
and remote regions of Central Asia; and the ostentatious respect shown for
Iranian mosques (There are a fair number of Central Asian and Caucasian Muslims
among the Soviets, that, of course, raises its own problems.) ensures that even
the most anti-Communist clerics keep their discontent to a low murmur. 

Indeed, in many areas, the Soviet troops are welcomed. The authority of the
landed nobility is decidedly broken, as are many of the landed nobles, and they
bring food, supplies with labels in German and Czech, and books with similiar
authors. The most prominent members of the Iranian officer corps are quite to
see forces of law and order restored. Many, those who were most anti-Communist
before the invasion, are so glad that they volunteer to work for the Revolution
in places with names like Kolyma.

Even Stalin is aware of the good fortune of the invasion, and the Red Army
occupation force is gone by August. In its place is the Democratic Republic of
Iran, complete with a compliantTudehist government under Premier Soleiman
Mohsen Eskandari, an abdicated Shah, and Soviet military bases. Lots and lots
of Soviet military bases, to help keep the peace in the new Autonomous Regions
of Azerbijian and Kurdistan. 

And engineers; there are new ports being built along the south coast, in places
like Chabahar near British India, Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz, and
Bandar-e Taghi Arani near the Iraqi border. They will provide hundreds of new
jobs in those cities and environs, and space for big ships. 

-Despite their differences, Ernest Bevin and Pierre Darlan are acutely aware of
what a perfect time this is to nearly panic. Both men spend the summer of 1946
flying from Paris to London and back again, meeting at Bevin's 10 Downing
Street in London and Darlan's palatial estate south of Paris about the issue of
the giant Russian bear eating parts of their sphere of influence and interest.
(For all that British Oil company representantives have been unmolested by
either Soviet or Tudehist government officials, the two men aren't stupid.)

After the initial condemnation of the Soviet invasion, the two men and their
respective governments realize there's nothing they can actually do to the
Soviets. Military action is out of the question given post-war demobilization
fever and the need for soldiers elsewhere (plus the Soviet Union is rather a
military powerhouse), and economic embargos from the moribund League of Nations
are of dubious impact at this point. 

Neither of their economies are in much shape to be embargoing anything; Great
Britain is living on what it can get from its Dominions and on heavy rationing
and wage/price controls, and France's overseas departments grow ever-more
restive under massive taxations outside of metropolitan France. Areas under
French military control, like war-torn Indochina and the "District of the
Rhineland" in Germany are being quite shamelessly looted. 

Finally, both Britain and France agree (in relatively secret negotiationsto
supply aid to anti-Tudehist forces in Iran and not to recognize the new
Eskandari government, and settle on a defense pact signed by Bevin and Darlan
personally on August 1, 1946.

-In the United States, the nation shrugs its collective shoulders. President
Taft makes a speech or two condemning imperialsm and refuses to recognize the
Tudehist government, but life goes on.  The US is king in oil in the 1940s;
Texan and Oklahoman Congressman lead the fight to not overly condemn the
invasion of Iran at the same time their constitutes grow ever richer from the
hike in world oil prices. 

Most Americans are reading Mickey Spillane instead of the foriegn news anyway.
For all that the US has backed off from confronting Communism abroad, they've
no hesitation in confronting subscribers to Serbian-language newspapers and
other such obvious traitors. 

Still, anti-Red fever is relatively low at this point. The sheer grey flannel
radiance of the Taft administration keeps government corruption low, and
Attorney General Jenner has managed to co-op anti-Communist sentiment against
holdovers from the Roosevelt and Wallace administrations (there has been almost
total turnover between those and Taft's) 

The people not reading Spillane are reading Richard Matheson. _The Bare-Faced
Legends_, an account of teenage soldiers in World War Two, has been influenced
heavily by his partnership with his hospitalmate Rod Serling, though both are
new enough writers that they're not quite aware of it yet. (Matheson is 19,
Serling is 20.) 

"Neville drove the bayonet into the dirt an inch from the SS officer's jugular,
just scraping the skin. 'You're about to enter a new dimension, my friend, not
of sight and sound, but of pain'..."

-But, of course, the story of the summer of 1946 takes place in Baden, where a
certain paraplegic takes the stand in his own defense on August 2, 1946. He's
chosen to act in his own defense, spurning the efforts of his trialmates, men
like von Papen, Sauckel, and Raeder, many of whom have blamed everything on
him. 

Though he seems utterly mad in his cell, ranting all night except when
medicated, he has seemed sane to the many, many teams of psychiatrists who came
to evaluate him over the long months since his capture and arrest. Before
Prosecutor Bullingham can speak, the madman shouts to the cameras with all of
the old fire

"Selbstverständlich bedeuteten wir, die Juden zu beenden!"

For All Time Pt. 38  
September-November 1946

-September of 1946 sees a new Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
(CJ Harlan Stone died in April and was replaced in June in OTL; with a
Republican in the White House he managed to last a little longer, hoping to
live until a Democrat became President or they took back Congress, but to no
luck.) 

President Bob Taft ponders carefully over his replacement; coming within a
hairsbreadth of picking former Attorney General Earl Warren, who'd accepted an
appointment to the US Senate after California's junior Senator died a few
months after taking office. Warren has a good solid reputation as a
conservative and law and order man...but in the end, it's just not strong
enough for Taft's taste. This is the same job Taft's father William Howard had,
the right sort of man needs to hold it.

Taft finally decides the right sort of man is strongly reminscent of the
President himself, conservative, a former Senator, and reasonably well-liked by
both major American political parties. Thus it is that New Hampshire Senator
Styles Bridges becomes the 13th Chief Justice of the United States around
September 3, 1946.

-1946 is an election year in the United States, and a surprising number of
veterans are in the running. Politics is in something of a mess; a wave has
begun to grow among young men who've come back home from fighting for American
democracy and capitalism to find empty factories; or worse, jobs filled already
by men who came home first. 

The Democrats blame the Republicans, Speaker Martin, Treasury Secretary
Friedman, and even President Taft himself. While public respect for the man who
won the war remains high, confidence in the job he's doing as President has
been declining since the first factories started closing. As Winston Churchill
could have told him, it's an easy lesson to forget. The man is not the party,
and the people know that. 

Taft has surprised many, though; general strikes in the coal fields of western
Pennsylvania and the steel industry have been met with condemnation from the
White House, but no sort of preemptive or even postemptive attempts to stop the
strikes from happening. The President's dry "The American worker has a right to
strike." would have won a man less hated by labor more than grudging respect,
as it is, many have decided to take the President at his word.

When the dust settles on Election Day of 1946, the Republicans have managed to
retain both their Congressional and Senatorial majorities, though a closely
divided Senate will have Vice-President Aiken using his tie-breaking power
quite often in the first few months of the new Congress, in the next year.
There are new faces in government, and some absent entire. 

Richard Nixon remains a slightly frustrated lawyer in southern California;
Jerry Voorhies was defeated soundly in the Republican landslide of 1944. Barry
Goldwater is elected to the Arizona Senate in a surprise upset after his
earlier primary victory; the aviator was elected while still in uniform. Hubert
Humphrey came within a hairsbreadth of the Minneapolis mayorship, and Joseph
Kennedy Jr. overcame lingering questions about his father to replace Leverett
Saltonstall as Governor of Massachusetts. One younger brother is in the state
legislature, another writes regular newspaper columns. 

-October sees the creation of a new nation in Europe: "The Republic of
Westphalia", governed from Dusseldorf and by President Erich von Manstein, has
a Constitution similiar to the American (if with more powers for the executive
in a crisis. The men who drew it up were leery of the example of Weimar, but,
hey, the Reds are right over the border, not to mention the Frogs and Limeys.)
and is a staunch ally, at least on paper, of its patron. 

Manstein's first problem in office is, of course, the winter. Great Britain is
tottering through on rations, African grain, and prayer, while France has seen
another upsurge in political violence (it had been dying down) as Darlan
manages, somewhat successfully, to pin the blame for the poor harvest and
general poverty through most of France on the fascists and Communists, who
clearly need to be lynched, or at least shot. 

Without such a resource, Manstein's Treasury Secretary, Hjalmar Schacht, finds
himself slowly burning off domestic capitol and even foriegn exchange to help
feed everyone and make sure the economy runs down on time. Slowly, it begins to
look like Westphalia will get through the beginning of winter with head and
heart intact. 

Indeed, the nations of Europe are in no danger: Just the people; the millions
still homeless who already are trying to make it across the border into Spain
and Portugal, where it's warm and there was no war, or Italy, where...well, at
least it's warm, only to be met by border guards, some reluctant, some not, who
shoot to kill to keep out the foriegn invader. There's nothing to do then but
wander, as the cold winter begins. 

-A lot of people wander to Baden; the British German zone is reasonably well
supplied, and safer than the French Rhineland. Besides, there's a show: The
Grimmest Show on Earth. The Americans and French held none, the Soviets were
dull, and a foregone conclusion. (About the only verdict that surprised anyone
was the sentence of Albert Speer to a lifetime of hard labor in Siberia.
Heydrich, Friesler, Frank, Kaltenbrunner and all the rest go to their deaths on
October 19, 1946, blaming Hitler for everything to the last.) 

Not that there's any doubt of the fate of Adolf Hitler, of course, or of his
principle subordinates on trial with him. But Hitler in the dock is Hitler in
the dock; cheerfully describing Goering's efforts in Prussia (the former
Luftwaffe head is in Westphalia, under the house arrest he's been in since his
American capture), Funk's accepting human teeth at the Reichsbank, roaring at
the incompetence of Sauckel and Rosenberg in the East, at the Jews that
escaped...

Hitler's testimony actually helps spare Baldur von Schirach, he has so happily
told the unvarnished, inescapable truth of so many others on trial that his
rosy view of the young man who worshiped him as a King (and helped so many
young Germans do the same) keeps von Schirach from conviction (along with
former Foriegn Minister von Papen) A few more defendants get a long stretch in
prisons all over Germany, and Hitler himself is set to recieve the noose on
November 9, 1946. There will be no cameras as there were at the Berlin Trial
hangings, the men who pull the handle won't recieve commendations and be
publically lauded. It's just a hanging for Adolf Hitler. 

For All Time Pt. 39 
Winter of 1946-1947

ADOLF HITLER dies on November 9, 1946 just as the dawn rose outside Baden. The
gallows room was in a converted gymnasium, his death chair a converted
student's desk, the rosy dawn was in his face for a moment as he spoke his last
words, "Es ist heute morgen kalt, nicht ist es?" It is cold indeed, the winter
of 1946-1947 will be one of the coldest since the 19th century, and the wind is
coming from the Alps today. An instant later, the executioner pulled the final
lever and the dictator dropped into eternity, unrepentant to the last.

Before the winter is over, JOSEPH MENGELE and ADOLF EICHMANN will join their
spiritual leader; Mengele hanged by Polish partisans and Eichmann frozen to
death in a work camp in the Ukraine. The winter is a dark time for former
Nazis, more so than most refugees. Few have the money to flee to South America,
and attempts to flee into Westphalia, the only state in Europe where former
elements of the Third Reich still control the government, are met with a police
force headed by WILHELM CANARIS, who remembers all the people who put him under
arrest and killed his friends, and frankly isn't happy about it. 

OTTO FRANK dies in a Displaced Person shelter in the French Rhineland on
November 18. Hundreds of thousands will join him, there are few places indeed
to go on this cold, cold winter. The Benelux countries can barely feed their
own citizens, thousands join the fleeing mobs that clog nearly every frozen
road through the winter. Darlanist France puts the DPs to work; it's incredibly
hard work and hundreds more die in the job of repairing France and stripping
Germany, but it's food and shelter, sometimes. (And the occasional nativist
mob, full of people who don't have much themselves, except rope.) Great Britain
is unaccessible, and the border guards in Spain and Italy shoot to kill. With
Communist sentiments growing, both Darlan and Ciano decide that free elections
must be postponed again for another few years. 

On Christmas Day, 1946, JIMMY STEWART stares blankly into a nameless  river in
the Sierra Nevadas. Life has been bad for Stewart, two years in a POW camp has
broken his health, and the disastrous failure of _The Best Years of Our Lives_
has shattered his Hollywood capital. His wife has left him, but he and the
bottle have gotten well-acquainted indeed. Maybe it'd be better to end it all,
let the Stewart legacy go out with some class. He puts a foot over the
rail-"Stop, son!" The other man is paternal, despite that he's short and could
stand to lose some weight. "That's never the way." He extends a hand. "Let me
help you." "Who are you?" "My name's Travers, Henry Travers." 

JACK KEROAUC faces an empty typewriter with grim determination in the early
days of 1947. Greater economic disruption in the postwar US in general and
rebuilding New York in particular broke up his group of friends a few months
back. Ginsberg, the former welder, is writing patriotic pamphlets in Washington
for the fund to rebuild the Statue of Liberty, Burroughs and Cassady moved back
to Denver together, and Carr mostly drinks and talks about the weather. Not
that Jack has a problem with drinking, no, but he has bills to pay, and _The
Town and the City_ won't write itself. At least he has a regular job these
days, writing for his favorite radio program, and chicks dig it when you can
turn to NBC at 6:30 and hear "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?"

HAROLD STASSEN is America's first ambassador to independant Japan, the last US
occupation troops (as opposed to troops stationed in dozens of military bases
over the countryside) pull out by February 1, 1947. Despite Stassen's best
efforts, relations with former occupation commander Douglas MacArthur slowly
disentigrated as the general saw his personal empire collapsing, blaming a
false and weak-willed defense policy under President Taft and Secretaries Fish
and Donovan. MacArthur didn't hesitate to say as much, and once the
Congressional elections of '46 were over, Taft didn't hesitate to fire the old
general. "I am the commander in chief," commented the commander in cheif, "and
General MacArthur forgot that."

For All Time Pt. 40 
March-July 1947

-March 1, 1947 sees the formation of the Amsterdam Pact, a defensive and
economic alliance between Belgium, France, Great Britain, Luxembourg, and the
Netherlands. The Benelux nations are desperately poor and a few thousand
dollars from bankruptcy from month to month, especially after the terrible
winter of 1947, and throwing in with the Anglo-French keeps them alive. The
Pact is the brainchild of British Prime Minister Ernest Bevin, a unification of
Western Europe against the Communist threat. Soon Belgian and Dutch troops are
on the border with Westphalia, carefully watching the situation in Germany and
eastward. 

Significantly, Westphalia and Italy, the two things closest to successor states
to the fascist wartime governments, are excluded from the Pact. Darlanist
France and the Benelux countries will enter into no alliance with a de facto
and de jure independant German state or a fascist one, despite the
non-aggression of the Manstein and Ciano governments. 

Bevin and Darlan hit on an inspiration, then: they'll make their own German
state! The British and French governments begin working on cooperation between
their occupation zones in Germany; first a common legal system, and then a
common government by the middle of summer, with a theoretical capitol at
Stuttgart. (Though, really, the new German "Palatinate District" is  governed
from Paris and London.) Great Britain gets their German state as a first line
of defense against the Germans, France gets more resources to keep the
Darlanist regime afloat. 

-In response to the formation of the Amsterdam Pact, Joseph Stalin declares
during a grand May Day speech (as all of them are in the Soviet Union) that he
will restore full and complete independance to the "People's Republic of
Germany" by the summer of 1948, six months ahead of the Anglo-French schedule
for the Palatinate. He makes a similiar pledge for the "Japanese People's
Republic.", pledging full independance there by the end of 1947. (There is only
the already independant South Japan to mock him with its Westernization there,
not an existing competition with the European imperialists.) As the name
suggests, the "JPR" is not entirely a pleasant place for non-Japanese,
especially Koreans and Ainu, who obviously cause the weakening of the spirit of
the Japanese proletariat and defensive spirit by not being Japanese. The
fortunate ones manage to slip across the straits to democratic Japan, the
really fortunate ones escape the Korea and Ainutowns that have sprung up in
every major Japanese city to make it to the United States. 

-The United States has taken quite a lot of immigrants in since the end of the
war, both those displaced by it directly and those fleeing its consequences.
Among these are several hundred thousand Jews, enough to give her an even more
substantial Jewish population per OTL. (Very few American Jews have emigrated
to the nearly openly anti-Semetic Palestinian Authority, where Britain will
formally cede her control in August of 1947.)_Gentleman's Agreement_ will prove
even more successful than per OTL, the problems of American and Americanized
Jews, as opposed to their European or Palestinian counterparts, are reasonably
important to the American public. 

Things are going pretty well in the US, they can afford those kinds of
humanitarian worries. The recession of 1946 is comig to an end, and the economy
is booming. The mass media is full of tales of the horrors of war and what a
marvelous thing peace is: the pacifist science fiction stories of a young
professor at Columbia named Isacc Asimov are the latest thing in the pulp
community. Academic advocates of military interventionism have begun a lively
if secretive correspondance, two former Undersecretaries of State named Dean
Acheson and George Kennan are working on a _magnum opus_ against isolationism,
not that they expect it'll come to much good at the moment. Advertising middle
manager Sloan Wilson, whose firm does limited publicity for the White House,
has begun writing a biography of President Robert Taft, with the expected
title. 

-As summer begins, a weather balloon crashes into the central square of the
small town of Roswell, New Mexico. Deeply embaressed at the public failure of
the Army's attempt at high technology, Secretary of War Donovan and President
Taft cut the budget for secret military research for the second year in a row. 

-Meanwhile, India is independant! Hooray! Millions are dead in the partition,
but that's less good. 

For All Time Pt. 41  
August-December 1947

-The main story of the latter part of 1947 is, of course, the outbreak of the
Palestine War. What was first billed as a pan-Arab peacekeeping operation soon
devolves into a pan-Arab conflict, and one where everyone is shooting at the
Jews. 

Menachem Begin is a desperate man by the middle of August, 1947. British
authority in the Palestinian Mandate is due to lapse (by governmental decree)
on October 1, 1947, when it will be turned over to the Arab Legion in
particular and the government of Transjordan in general. Glubb Pasha's troops
have been the de facto government in Palestine for a long time, though: it was
soldiers of the Arab Legion who arrested Avraham Stern the year before, and
they who executed him publically just before New Year's. 

The more moderate Zionist leaders, men like David Ben-Gurion, have chosen to
try cooperation with the new authorities, to persuade them to disgorge
territories long since promised to a Jewish state and largely useless to the
Arab authorities. (Britain's Bevin government has replied to every petition
with stern warnings about the consequences of making trouble.)The Irgun Zvai
Leumi has been formally outlawed by both the government and the moderate Jewish
organizations, driving the members of that already desperate organization (of
which Begin is the new leader) to even greater feats of bravery or terrorism,
depending on your interpretation. 

With word of a new crackdown on the Irgun planned for September, Begin makes
his decision. If the weak-willed moderates won't make an Israel, he'll make his
own, by God. On August 7, 1947, several hundred Irgun troops, the bulk of their
Jerusalem fighting strength, seize control of the King David Hotel in
Jerusalem, with only a few casualties among the Arab police forces posted to
the hotel. (OTL's bombing went elsewhere.) Speaking to a cheering crowd of his
supporters, soldiers and those few Zionist civilians in the hotel in the first
moments of the crisis, Begin announces the formation of the State of Israel,
with himself as its first Prime Minister (and commander of the army at once.)
As a sop to the moderates, David Ben-Gurion is namd first President. Begin
calls for revolution, for the Jewish population of Palestine to take to the
streets and take out the hated Arab and (to a lesser extent) British occupiers.


Indeed, in the opening hours of the crisis, mobs consisting of perhaps five
thousand in total do briefly roam the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv,
throwing rocks at passing Arab and British soldiers and demanding a Jewish
state for Jewish people. The homes of moderates like Ben-Gurion and Levi Eshkol
are picketed, with cries for them to lead the revolution personally; their
attempts to reason with the crowd meet with lukewarm success at best. Still, in
a calmer enviroment, the Palestine Crisis would probably have passed with few
casualties among the civilian and military populations of Palestine. 

But Glubb Pasha's Palestine is anything but calm. Within a few hours of the
beginning of the civil disorder, Arab Legion troops have mobilized in every
major city in the Mandate, with the reserves called out in cities like
Jerusalem with a Jewish majority. (Even with the greatly decreased Jewish
migration to Palestine, Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority since the mid-19th
century.) Several thousand troops surround the King David Hotel, demanding the
immediate surrender of the Irgun forces. Both Glubb and Begin are under siege
in the hot sun, Glubb's subordinates want to storm the hotel and slaughter all who live within and worship the wrong god, and Begin's most fanatical
subordinates like the idea of a second Masada a little too much. 

With the two divided camps on the hot afternoon of August 8, (the siege has
lasted a day) it's hard to say who throws the hand grenade that detonated near
an open window of the hotel at 3 PM, killing two Arab soldiers, a British
advisor, and wounding two Irgun fighters. Both sides return fire, and Glubb
reluctantly gives the order to storm the hotel, or rather gives his seal of
approval to the reserve troops who have already broken the firing line to storm
the hotel, adding the well-disciplined Arab Legion troops to their numbers. 

By nightfall, over three hundred of Begin's four hundred troops are dead, many
shot after attempts to surrender, with 109 Arab Legion and reserve troops in a
similiar state. Casualties are heaviest among the reserves, and soon the word
sweeps across Palestine about the Jewish terrorists who have killed Arab
soldiers, many of them locals, civilians on days they're not in uniform. 

Despite half-hearted efforts at peacekeeping by Legion and a smattering of
British troops, the mob violence that sweeps Palestine in the next few weeks is
mostly Arab on Jew. Both sides are armed and firing at each other; with the
Transjordanian troops often openly joining in the fighting against the Zionist
troops. Acting under orders from Amman (and possibly London, depending on what
conspiracy theory you believe) and blaming the Zionists for the deaths of his
men and the violence in Palestine, Glubb finally deploys his troops formally as
peacekeepers, with orders to shoot rioters and looters to kill. He makes a
distinction between "armed civilians acting in self-defense" and "alien rioters
capitalizing on our disorder for their own gain.", with the results one might
expect. (Lots of dead Jews, and lots more angry, armed Jews and Arabs on the
streets the next day.)

-As August moves on, British Prime Minister Bevin pledges British (and by
extension, Amsterdam Pact) neutrality in the "Palestinian Disorder", though he
does make many veiled references to "alien trouble-makers stirring up trouble
in a peaceful territory" and promises full European support and recognition for
the legimate government of Palestine. He accelerates the timetable for a
British pullout, and by the first of September, only embassy personnel and Arab
liason troops are left.

Despite strong pressure from American Jewish groups, the Taft administration
pledges full neutrality in the Palestinian problem; though Taft does echo his
post-war promises that Jewish refugees displaced by World War II, even those
who temporarily settled in Palestine, will recieve succor and aid if they
choose to emigrate to the United States. 

Meanwhile, the Arab states are horrified at Jordan's weakness. There's a risk
of a _Jewish republic_ right there in Palestine (land they want, run by people
they hate), and the Jordanian military is only shooting rioters and members of
terrorist organizations! The pansy bastards! The Egyptian and Syrian
governments begin exerting strong pressure on Jordan's to take real action
against the Zionists, to drive them into the sea or slaughter them! (Iraq is
distracted by the new Communist Iranian state, and Lebanon is besieged by tens
of thousands of Arab refugees from Palestine.) Plus, they all want a piece of
Palestine, for faith and for all that land. (Land! Sweet land!)

When Jordan refuses, the Egyptian and Syrian armies mobilize on the Palestinian
border, giving Jordan a time limit of October 1 to begin a full crackdown on
the Zionists and to hand over the land which they acquired through a back room
deal with the British imperialists. (The ten thousand dead or arrested Jews in
Palestine might say they already are under crackdown, but neither Egypt nor
Syria care.) Jordan refuses without hesitation, it is their territory, to deal
with as they please, and so, at high noon on October 1, just as British
authority formally lapses in Palestine and the territory becomes de jure part
of the Kingdom of Jordan, the first Egyptian and Syrian troops cross their
respective borders. 

Despite early rapid strides by the Egyptian and Syrian armies, the more
professional and fully mobilized Arab Legion (though badly outnumbered) manages
to stabilize the battlelines within a month of the invasion, with the lines
still frozen there by the end of the year. The Egyptian forces have broken free
from the Negev and have seized most of Beersheba in the south, while the Syrian
forces have pushed south to lay seige to the city of Nazareth in the north. 

As the war's military body count passes 10,000 by the end of 1947, American,
European, and Soviet observers notice that if the Jordanians, Egyptians, and
Syrians fight each other with moderate ferocity at best, they fight the Irgun
with a ferocity indeed. The Irgun cause isn't recognized by any party (even
Stalin is in one of his more anti-Semitic moods, and is trying to cozy up to
the Islamic world after the whole invasion thing.) in the conflict or world, so
they're considered terrorists, and are treated as such. 

For All Time Pt. 42 
January-July 1948

-The biggest story of early 1948 in the United States, despite the ongoing
Palestine War with its hundreds of thousands of arriving refugees, is the
election of 1948. Despite moderately serious strikes in the coal and rail
industries, the American economy has recovered well from the recession of 1946
and much of America's wartime prosperity has been revived and extended to most
Americans, at least the white middle class ones. Thus, there really are no
challengers for President Robert Taft for the Republican nomination, and his
renomination at the June 21-25 convention in Philidelphia is something of a
foregone conclusion. 

The only real surprise is the nomination of New York Governor Thomas A. Dewey
as Taft's Vice-Presidential candidate. Vice-President George Aiken, a firmly
liberal Republican, is uncomfortable with the deep conservatism of the Taft
administration, but not so much that he'll challenge a sitting President for
the nomination. Dewey is liberal too, but far more willing to compromise,
especially with an unspoken offer of support in 1952. (In a Lincoln-esque move,
no one actually bothered to tell Taft about the deal, knowing he'd refuse on
principle, but his staff knows he'll support a loyal confederate like Dewey,
especially with somewhat Presidential seasoning.)

Democrats, meanwhile, fight hard through the winter, spring, and early summer.
Presidential contestants include 1944 candidate Alben Barkley (who loses out as
too old and too discredited), Georgia Senator Richard Russell (who is too
conservative even for the newly rightist Democrats) and former President Henry
Wallace, whose doomed attempt at the nomination only serves to demonstrate how
out of touch he is with both the Democratic Party and the country at large. Not
entirely blind, he refuses an offer to revive the '44 Progressive Party, he can
see the '48 apparatus is full of Stalinists. 

After a tumultous convention from July 12 to July 16, in which Russel and
Barkley crush Wallace before turning on and destroying each other, the party
settles on a moderate dark horse, but one with a history of leadership and
organization in war and peace: former Secretary of the Navy and Indiana
Governor Paul McNutt, selecting Nevada Senator Pat McCarran as his running
mate. 

-Meanwhile, in March, Lebanon declares war on Jordan and, allied to Syria,
invades Palestine, its armies greatly enhanced by the thousands of refugees
who'd temporarily fled there at the war's outbreak. With Lebanon fighting by
their side and with a substantial fifth column of Palestinians already living
in the former Mandate, the Syrian army pushes the Nazareth Line south, to the
city of Hadera on the coast and including part of the West Bank of the Jordan
River. 

With the Arab Legion distracted and being slowly bled white, the Egyptian Army
in the south manages to drive north to the city of Gaza, only to be stopped by
an unwitting and unwilling combination of fanatical Jewish resistance and a
successful Jordanian counter-offensive that drove the Egyptians back from the
gates of Hebron. 

The numbers of their professional military dwindling (the AL was never a large
force) and partisan activity getting worse and worse, the government of Jordan
sends out peace feelers in May of 1948 and Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, all of
whom have suffered their own fair share of casualties, agree to negotiations on
the first of June, and by the end of July, the Palestine War is over. 

200,000 people are dead, mostly civilians, mostly Jews. (the deaths are
concentrated in urban Jews, with refugees and the pogroms severe enough that
Jerusalem has lost its Jewish majority, with much of Tel Aviv a virtual ghost
town.) Delegates from all over the Arab world meet in semi-neutral Baghdad to
settle the new boundaries of Palestine. There are, of course, no Jewish
delegates, with the assasination of David Ben-Gurion by a former member of the
Jordanian army, the surviving Jewish leadership has died in place or
successfully fled to the United States. 

-In the Philippines, ailing President Ozmena decides to bolster his equally
ailing government by taking the even more ailing Manuel Roxas into his
goverment. Roxas had been the favorite to win the Presidency in 1948, but his
health makes it impossible to run this year. Roxas is the new Minister of
Justice, and begins a crackdown on the Hukbalahap movement (the corruption and
moderate attempts at a crackdown under Ozmena have served to make the Huks more
powerful than per OTL.) 

For All Time Pt. 43 
August-December 1948

-With the victories of Chester Bowles in Connecticut, Adlai Stevenson in
Illinois, and Herbert Lehman in New York, the Democratic Party takes back the
Senate in early November of 1944; unfortunately, that's the only concrete
Democratic victory of the election of 1948. 

The House remains Republican by a half-dozen votes, with the Southern Democrats
who have often voted the GOP's line since the Roosevelt administration ensuring
a strong majority for the programs of the Taft administration. 

The Presidential race is a dull one; Bob Taft's policies have only offended
people who'd have voted Democratic anyway (labor and librals), and while Paul
McNutt is deeply interested in the increasingly rapid retreat of Chaing
Kai-Shek in China, the beginning of leftist disturbances in the Philippines,
the ongoing "culturelle révolution" in France,  the end of the Palestine War,
the new Red German and Japanese states and the new Anglo-French backed
Palantine; America doesn't care very much, and so McNutt mutes his urge towards
interventionism.

Thus, with the American economy in very good shape (on the surface at least)
and foriegn policy not particularly an issue, there's very little reason for
people _not_ to vote for Bob Taft, so they mostly do. The Taft-Dewey ticket is
elected by over 100 electoral votes and five percent of the popular vote,
proving that America is reasonably willing to accept his policies; he can be
elected without electoral chicanry. Taft carried New York and most of the
Midwest, only losing McNutt's Indiana.

-With his President safely re-elected, Secretary of War William Donovan
resigns. The old commander of the 69th New York cannot countenance the
dismantling of much of the American military under his watch, despite his
personal loyalty to President Taft. 

Taft's pick as his replacement is North Dakota Senator Gerald Nye, whose
loyalty to the administration (Taft's campaigning and popularity helped save
him in 1946) is nearly as fervent as his isolationism and commitment to
disarmament. Neither man is willing to touch America's fission program (outside
of post-wartime cuts), but as for all the other waste...

-On September 15, 1948, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria sign the Treaty of
Baghdad, formally ending the Palestine War. Lebanon recieves the northern half
of the Hula valley, but they don't particularly mind, the government didn't
enter the war for territory. Druze and Maronite Christians will recieve special
rights in the Muslim-controlled Holy Cities, while newly-vacant land in
Palestine will be awarded to Muslim refugees in Lebanon; thus getting them
_out_ of Lebanon. 

Syria recieves everything north of the city of Janin, outside of the Lebanese
concession. Many native Palestinians (well, the non-Jewish ones) emigrate north
to the Syrian territories, with whom they have a strong ethnic bond. Toward the
Jewish population of the area, Syria pursues a similiar policy to the Egyptian
government (which has everything south of the city of Gaza, east to the
Jordanian border.) Formal discrimination, with strong encouragement for those
who fled to not come back, and for those already there to go. By the end of the
year, only the poorest or most fanatical Zionists remain in the new Syrian or
Egyptian territories, the poorest assimilate or keep their heads down, the
fanatical simply die. 

Things are a bit better in the Jordanian territories (the remainder of the
Mandate), discrimination is less severe and members of the armed mobs that
still roam city and country, killing "uppity" Jews and burning out their homes
and businesses are occasionally prosecuted, and even occasionally convicted.
Still, the war saw heavy guerilla fighting between the Arab Legion and Irgun
troops in the major cities, and most of the urban Jewish population has fled to
the countryside or fled the country altogether. Jerusalem has lost its Jewish
majority, and the ghost town of Tel Aviv is soon filled up with Palestinian
returnees. 

For All Time Pt. 44 
Spring, 1949

-On March 1, 1949, one of the longest civil wars of the 20th century shifts
into an entirely new phase, when Chiang Kai-shek himself steps off the boat at
Taipei, well and truly gone from Mainland China. (For the moment, at least, or
so he hopes.) Both Chiang himself and Taiwan the island are in bad shape; the
Nationalist forces recieved substantially less aid from the United States
during World War II and after, while Taiwan itself was fought over heavily
during the American invasion of 1945. With the Kuomintang weakened badly and
the Taiwanese population more radicalized (and armed) by the war, the logical
solution is clearly to purge the native intellectual and educated classes; if
they're not Communists, they're probably Japanese collaborators, which is
nearly as bad to Chiang. 

-With the independance of the Palatinate (the former French and British
occupation zones in Germany) at the end of 1948 comes people who hate the whole
idea of the place. Members of the Volkstag in Dusseldorf blast the Amsterdam
Pact for carving up Germany and making them a puppet state, crowds in the
street express their agreement by pelting passing Anglo-French troops with
rocks and eggs. 

The Volkstag delegates can be silenced by impeachment or political pressure,
but the Dusseldorf mobs can't be; so the Blumentritt government calls on the
Amsterdam Pact for help. Recognizing the propaganda problems that using their
own troops would open up, both in their countries and in the Palatinate, Ernest
Bevin and Pierre Darlan pressure the Benelux governments into sending in
_their_ military as peacekeepers, so it's young men from Amsterdam and Brussels
who tear gas and billy club the anti-government mobs into submission through
the spring of 1949. 

While the Benelux peacekeepers are largely successful in restoring order,
(after the Nazis, the horrors of war, and the occupation, there isn't exactly
much spirit left in the German mindset), it is clear now to the world that the
Palatinate government and even the state itself are a creation of and
maintained by the Amsterdam Pact nations. Walter Ulbricht and Erich von
Manstein condemn both mob violence and the "repression of democratic ideals of
the German people", Ulbricht has his orders from Moscow and von Manstein has
his basic  views about how nifty a large, powerful Germany would be. (Plus he's
worried about the elections of 1950, Konrad Adenauer's party looks powerful
indeed, the Mayor of Bonn may be the next President. The Constitution does
contain clauses about suspending the elections in event of civil disorder,
though...)

The repression also serves to finally alienate the Taft administration from any
attempts at military cooperation with Europe. 

-Influenced by the pleas of the Quirino government in April, President Taft
increases the size of the naval and Marine garrison at Subic Bay. The
Hukbalahap Rebellion has been growing gradually worse since independance, and
the attempts at first cooperation and then repression by the vacillating Ozmena
government served mostly to stimulate the growth of the forces of Luis Turac, a
former member of Congress. Quirino hopes that a show of force will show the
rebels that the United States will defend one of her few remaining formal
allies. 

Unfortunately, influenced by his own deep reluctance to get involved in the Far
East and by the less than reliable reports of Secretary of State Fish and
Secretary of War Nye, Taft sends only a token increase in forces, a squadron of
 destroyer escorts coupled with an extra 400 Marines. The troop increase, which
had been trumpeted by the Philipino government as proof of the utility and
power of their ally, demonstrates to much of the populace that the government
doesn't know what it's talking about and the Americans have gotten far
more...spineless than they remember. 

-As May dawns, a bitter, angry John Ronald Reuel Tolkien packs his bags,
wondering what the University of Bloemfontein will look like. The lawsuit from
his publishers nearly impoverished him from the legal fees alone, much less the
damages he had to pay, and Oxford decided it didn't need to keep employing such
a controversial Rawlingson Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke
College.

Fortunately, an administrator at Bloemfontein was a fan of both Tolkein's
fictional tales and his academic papers and lectures, and the job offer had
come in just when he and Edith were contemplating the humilation of moving in
with John Jr. or C.S. Lewis while he hunted for work as a lecturer. 

Still, even after all the heartache and personal disasters, Tolkein is sure he
was in the right with his publishers. The books didn't _need_ editing! A bad
economy doesn't mean the populace won't buy a deep series, and it doesn't mean
they want unrealistic fantastic stories to distract them. _The Hobbit_ was
published in 1936, when the economy was not the strongest, and it didn't
exactly fail. 

If only he hadn't lost the rights along with the suit...well, there will be
more books.

For All Time Pt. 45
Summer to Fall, 1949

-By June of 1949, George S. Patton and Douglas MacArthur have begun a lively
correspondance, bridging the gap from Paris to Manila, the distance and the
medium of the written word keeping the horns of their gigantic egos from
locking too often. Time and the vicissitudes of the post-war American military
have driven both men out of the Army they'd devoted their adult lives to,
loyalties established during the war have let them both wind up in another
army, though. 

Patton's France is more stable than MacArthur's Philippines, the isolated
Communist guerillas in the Massif Central are far less of a threat to national
stability than the Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon, and Patton advocates a
slightly more consistent course of action than MacArthur's: Just shooting the
partisans. On most days, MacArthur advocates a far more moderate course,
cooperation and co-option (and shooting those who resist after _that_), but his
flashes of both bloodthirstiness and sheer pessimism have attracted the
attention of the government, enough that he doesn't quite have the policy
influence of Patton, not the kind his reputation might suggest. 

-On July 4, 1949, ground is broken on newly-renamed "Liberty Island" to build
the new Statue of Liberty. The project is a cooperation of the city government
of New York, the state government, and truly heroic donations from all across
the United States. (A young former welder named Allen Ginsburg wrote most of
the advertising posters.)

The Statue herself will be rebuilt as close to the original as possible (even a
great deal of the original copper will be recycled), but the Island itself will
be totally remodeled, with a museum dedicated to the German raid on New York
City and to American warfare and patriotism in general. 

Commissioned to design and the museum complex is Charles-Édouard Jeanneret,
whose bitter feud with Darlanist France over the rebuilding of French cities
has driven his genius from European shores back across the Atlantic to the
United States.

-Clark Gable's starring role in _Twelve O'Clock High_ is keeping the actor's
reputation high indeed. Gable spent the war organizing war bond drives and
making rousing, patriotic speeches alongside his wife Carole Lombard; and with
celebrities in uniform like Jimmy Stewart relatively few and far between, to
many, Clark Gable simply was the face of patriotic Hollywood at war. 

Gable's fame is such that elements of the California Democratic Party have
suggested he run for office; that he challenge Governor Frederick Houser in
1950, or even Senator Earl Warren in that same year. Gable is cool to the idea,
politics isn't quite his scene, but the always politically active Carole has
been urging him on for quite a while: plus he really doesn't like the Taft
administration...

-Former Vice-President George Aiken is Robert Taft's latest Supreme Court
appointee, replacing the late Frank Murphy, an FDR appointee. Aiken is a
liberal Republican, much more so than Taft or any other of the President's
judicial appointees, but Taft feels no small loyalty to his former #2 and a
healthy respect for the man who stood against the tide of conservatism in his
administration for four solid years. (Taft is _really_ familiar with the idea
of standing against the tide of history.) 

-One of the few men willing to talk publically (and getting a reasonably good
reception at it) about interventionism abroad is a former OSS officer named
John Birch, who'd been removed from his post in China after a too-public feud
with the local Communists in the Wallace administration. 

Birch, a lifelong and deeply commited Southern Baptist, has begun working with
former army chaplain Billy Graham, preaching a gospel of godly purity at home
and unashamed confrontation with the forces of Hell abroad. Birch and Graham
attract only moderate attention, this is before the mobilization of religion in
American politics, but a speech in California does appeal to a troubled young
teenager named Charles Manson, who rapidly organizes his local Young Republican
chapter...

For All Time Pt. 46
Fall to Winter 1949

- Ismet Inönü is a worried man in September of 1949. As per the "requests" of
Foreign Minister Molotov: The Soviet Union wants the Dardanelles (Not to keep,
mind you, just a major Soviet naval base there and Soviet say over which ships
enter the Black Sea and which don't.) It wants Kars, too, and much of the east
to be attached to Soviet Georgia, and more still to be attached to the Kurdish
autonomous region they carved from their puppet state of Iran. And those, those
they want to keep. 

Inönü is fully aware of the consequences of resistance: the recent internal
coup d'etat and harsh crackdowns in the new "People's Republic of Iran" have
sent thousands of Iranians fleeing into Persia with horror stories to tell of
just what it is the Soviets mean. Too, caving in will ensure the defeat of his
party in the elections of 1950, not to mention national humiliation and even
the risk of a military coup d'etat. As he has so often in the past few years,
he wishes Kemal hadn't been so ungracious as to simply die eleven years
earlier, and leave him to run the show when the monsters began running loose
upon the world. 

Turkey never entered World War II, Germany's greater apparent strength kept
them out in 1945 and its abrupt collapse of strength in 1946 happened too fast
for them to act. With no real ties with Europe, (Inönü's efforts at neutrality
have succeeded well indeed.) Turkey can depend on no support from the Amsterdam
Pact. Support from the United States is so unlikely as to remain unnoticed. The
rest of the Muslim world doesn't care overmuch about Turkey, except for Iraq
(who mostly cares for Iran) who won't do anything anyway. 

Finally, as October slowly dawns, the old soldier and statesman makes his
decision. If the choice is between Turkey's life and Turkey's (and his) honor,
there's not really a decision to make, anyway. On October 2, 1949, Ismet Inönü
signs the Treaty of Istanbul, granting the Soviet Union control of the
Dardanelles and the rights to build a naval base and other complexes there, as
well as awarding them roughly 90% of the disputed territory in the east of Asia
Minor.
The Turkish military goes mad (at least in angry barracks discussions), Europe
and the US consider Turkey a Soviet satellite (unfairly), but there will be no
war in Asia Minor, for now. 

-In November, after an unsuccessful Huk attack in Manila wounds President
Quirino and kills the Minister of Agriculture, President Bob Taft agrees to
step up the American military presence in the Philippines. A full regiment of
Marines will be added to the garrison already at Subic Bay, and a US carrier
task force will take up permanent station at the various harbors on the major
islands, starting in January of 1950.

First to be dispatched will be the modern carrier U.S.S. *David Farragut,
completed just before the end of World War II and one of the survivors of the
Taft administration's military budget cutbacks, complete with her very own task
forces of escort ships and combat aircraft. 

-On December 1, 1949, freshman Congressman Adam Clayton Powell storms angrily
out of the office of House Minority Leader Sam Rayburn. Times aren't very good
for blacks in the United States; either politically or economically. 

While the wartime social programs of the Wallace administration were successful
in raising the economic and political standing of America's African-American
population, especially in government-related occupations, the budget cutbacks
and economic austerity of Bob Taft and Treasury Secretary Milton Friedman have
fallen heavily indeed on America's black population, mostly unintentionally. 

A second wave of the Great Migration has begun in the post-war United States,
it was newly-emigrated voters recently from Alabama and Mississippi who pushed
Powell narrowly into office, after his embaressing defeat in 1944. Elected on a
platform of more rights and economic aid to poor blacks, Powell expected help
from his seniors in the Democratic Party. 

Rayburn is sympathetic, but it's just not a priority for him: He's worried
about rebuilding the Democratic Party as a cohesive institution in the South,
one that can help elect a President in 1952, and worrying about civil rights
and the status of blacks will just hurt that effort.

No little black resentment is beginning to turn against America's newly-growing
Jewish population: the government is obviously pro-refugee, and the aid to the
new arrivals smacks of blatant racism, helping out the Jewish migrants to court
the Jewish vote while ignoring America's black population...

For All Time Pt. 47 
January-April 1950

-On January 2, 1950, Benito Mussolini breathes his last on an isolated island
in the Adriatic, one of the few in Italian hands. Mussolini had been under
house arrest since 1945, when the Ciano regime came to power in Italy.
Mussolini's fall was not nearly so hard as per OTL, and he never became a
German puppet. Thus, the loyalty of a son-in-law to his father-in-law kept
Mussolini alive, despite his bugaboo status as a touchstone for Italian
ultra-fascists. 

With his death, though, the movement falls apart: Its leaders were "Rosenbergs
and Goebbels", able to lead a movement about restoring an exiled il Duce, still
popular with some, but with no real ability to lead a movement about
themselves. Ciano moves quickly to co-opt them, and by the end of the month,
the only former Mussolini backers not in the government camp or out of politics
altogether are gangsters who wrap themselves in political clothing, and are
recognized as such. 

With his right wing well-shored up, Galeazzo Ciano now has a choice to make.
While no democrat, he is no Hitler or Mussolini either, and the harsh measures
he has had to adopt in the past five years have made him uncomfortable,
sometimes. Too, even limited democracy would help him get into the Amsterdam
Pact: to get military aid with the border incursions of Austria and Yugoslavia,
to get economic aid (though the influx of Jewish refugees has largely solved
the labor crisis), and to help get credibility with states abroad, many of whom
still don't like the idea of a fascist-descended state. 

After extensive consulations with King Victor Emmanuel (to make sure both their
positions will be well-protected in the new state), on February 20, 1950, Ciano
makes the surprise announcement that Italy will hold her first free elections
(well, for the legislature at any rate), on September 20, 1950. The Amsterdam
Pact is pleased to have a possible new ally who is strong without challenging
Britain and France for supremacy, Italian liberals are pleased to have some
pretence of democracy, while Josef Stalin is non-plussed. There are ways of
dealing with this sort of thing, after all. 

-On March 9, 1950, Hermann Goering is shot to death while walking around his
small house-prison. Goering has been under house arrest in various parts of
first the American occupation zone and then Westphalia since the end of the
war, a victim of his own success. 

Goering was liberated from a concentration camp by Americna troops just before
V-E Day, imprisoned for his failure to stop the use of nuclear weapons on
German cities, as well as an alleged plot against the Heydrich government.
Having lost weight and drugs and gained his political acumen back in prison,
the old Field Marshal managed to sell certain gullible or jaded American
soldiers on how anti-Nazi he always was, even before the war, reminding them of
the half-dozen or so Jews he helped save. He couldn't go free, though, not with
his record, and the Americans reluctantly opted against extraditing him,
despite the pleas of the other allied powers. 

No group claims responsiblity, not formally, but Westphalian ntelligence does
find an apparant link to a maimed veteran of the British military, who lost an
eye in the invasion of Vichy Syria during the war. Moshe Dayan disappears
shortly thereafterwards, though, just ahead of Wilhelm Canaris' efficient
internal police force. 

He's not quite done with Westphalia and Europe, though. From late March through
April, a former Polish Jew named Shimon Peres runs a crew of carpenters working
on a major refurbishing of the largest hall in Oldenburg. This is Erich von
Manstein's planned site for the Solidarität convention of 1950; where he and 
Dr. Eugen Gerstenmaier will be nominated for a second term, in theory. 

Erich von Manstein has a plan, whose only flaw at the moment is that it's not
as secret as he imagines....

-On April 19, 1950, Governor Joseph Kennedy Jr. of Massachusetts addresses a
class of political science students at Harvard University, expostulating a
theory of government that wasn't entirely ghost-written. His most rewarding
contact, though, is with a young physics lecturer who worked on the Manhattan
Project named Theodore Hall...

For All Time Pt. 48 
May 7-20, 1950

-On May 7, 1950, Canada has its first non-Mackenzie King Prime Minister since
1935: John George Diefenbaker, leader of the Progressive Conservatives. Louis
St.Laurent's Liberals ran a good game, but the party had been growing weaker
for a while, seen as too arrogant after so many years in power, and too close
to a US that remains more unpopular than OTL, with strained relations during
the war and after. 

Diefenbaker is in something of a dilemma: he badly wants stronger relations
with Great Britain and the rest of the Dominions, but their Liberal governments
just strike him the wrong way. Ernest Bevin in particular troubles him;
whatever the faults of J.G. Diefenbaker, he is neither a bigot nor "an odious
little reptile of a man", and Bevin and his Liberals strike him as both. 

Well, if Canada can't trust the US and it can't trust Great Britain (Yet,
anyway. In his first days in office, the Chief meets often with former British
Foreign Minister Anthony Eden, and the two become fast friends. Eden even helps
suggest a medication for Diefenbaker's back, one that has helped Eden himself
many times over the years.), she'll just have to go her own way, in more ways
than one. 

One of the few non-government members Diefenbaker meets in his first week as
Prime Minister is a professor of nuclear physics at the University of Toronto
named Walter Zinn. He has a mission for his fellow Canadian; a mission to build
a shield to protect the nation, and then to help shield others. After all, he
has to do _something_ to get Canadian industry up and running again...

- Corporal Charles Abrell, USMC, is guarding a side entrance, just outside an
enlisted barracks, of the major US naval and marine base at Subic Bay in the
Philippines at 800 hours on May 12, 1950. Just before his assigned watch period
ends, a large civilian truck pulls up, like many that pass by his post every
day, three came by on his current watch alone. 

But something makes the young Hoosier suspicious, he stops the truck and orders
the driver to open the back, and thus just has time to level his M-1 before the
truck driver pulls a jury-rigged lever near the steering wheel, detonating the
truck's contents. Abrell's thinking saves several hundred people in the
barracks, but kills thirty nearby Marines and a dozen Philipinos. 

(The suicide bombing was, of course, not solicited or endorsed by Thorez,
Taruc, or any of the other leaders of the Hukbalahap Rebellion. They are
soldiers and revolutionaries, not fanatic madmen. (Or, at least, not _that_
fanatically mad.) 

Ill luck intervenes, however, with most of the Huk major commanders in the
field this day, so the first message sent in response to the bombing doesn't
actually bother to declaim responsibility for the attack, merely condemning
cowardly attacks on those not involved in fighting, while at the same time praising a blow struck against the imperialists. A perhaps deliberate
mistranslation by a government translator renders a clumsy, offensive document
into something even worse, and the Huk statement runs next to a picture of the
giant crater at Subic Bay in every American newspaper on the 13th. The Huk
restatement makes page 3, accompanied with editorials about the hypocritical
Communists.

No American is more horrified than Bob Taft. He is the commander and chief,
he's the one who chose to deploy those Marines, he's the one who got them
killed in a foriegn land. His temptation is to simply withdraw, let the
foriegners settle their own problems: but he can't abandon an ally, not with
Quirino rushing aid to the wounded Marines at Subic, and more, he can't let
those men die for nothing, not with all those bodies burnt into his mind's eye.


News from the Far East had been bad enough before; Red Chinese "volunteers" are
turning the tide in Indochina, Massu's troops are slowly falling back toward
the south, fighting hard in the jungle, using some of the same Lewisite the
British are using on the Mau Mau, to the same limited effect. 

But now it's American boys coming home in body bags, American women made
widows, American children left fatherless. If he can't make them alive again,
he can at least make sure as few as possible die in the future, by wreaking
revenge against the men who attacked America, however indirectly. 

On May 14, 1950, Robert Taft addresses a packed Congress in what will become
the famous "Bitter Duty" speech, easily winning approval for immediate
airstrikes against Huk positions in Luzon, with possible use of ground troops
alongside the Filipino army. Gerald Nye resigns almost immediately, and Taft
retires to the sancity of the White House. (A personally modest man, he can
live with the problems in the White House, though he's encouraged the First
Lady and his children to move to Blair House while he looks for a good
architect. The former Martha Bowers is as tough as her husband, but they're
devoted parents, his son's jukebox nearly broke through the floor.)

 As the USS David Farragut and her battle group turns toward Luzon, already
drawing up plans for airstrikes against the Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon, some
using the new combat version of the FJ-Fury, Robert Taft begins visiting Blair
House almost constantly, even moving his office there. On his short list for
the new Secretary of War are New York corporate attorney John Foster Dulles,
Ohio Governor John Bricker, and even Harold Stassen; some of the few prominent
interventionists in American politics. 

On May 20, Taft invites Thomas Dewey over to Blair House; he wants his
Vice-President's advice on the next Secretary of War. 

For All Time Pt. 49 
May 20-June 1950

-In many ways, the events of May 20, 1950 outside of Blair House were almost
anticlimactic. In many ways, however, they most assuredly were not. The island
of Puerto Rico had been largely neglected by the last two administrations;
though through no malice on either part. Puerto Rican development projects had
been on President Henry Wallace's agenda, but he did not submit the relevant
bills to Congress until after a solid anti-Wallace majority would block nearly
anything with his name on it, and those projects, a new naval base, a national
museum that he managed to pass under his authority as President of the United
States were largely dismantled by the Taft administration in a spirit of
removing governmental interference. 

To Albizu Campos and his black-shirted army of liberation, however, the neglect
was yet another sign of mainland American racism. Campos had earned his
distrust of the Americans as a veteran of WWI, exposed to the casual bigotry of
the United States army, many of his followers were motivated by the infamous
Rhoads letter, or a simple desire for national independence; like what they'd
seen much of the rest of the Caribbean achieve in the past few decades. 

Oscar Collazo is motivated by the first, Griselio Torresola by a family history
of revolution, together with a long, angry time on relief and a chance to be
really useful, since of the two, he's the gun expert. (Collazo has never fired
a pistol in his life.) Neither of them are terribly competent, though: they've
not bothered to determine President Robert Taft's schedule, nor even his
general pattern of movements. Their plan is a rather bold one; Collazo will
strike the front door, while Torresola, the skilled gunman, will attack the
weakly defended basement door. 

Even that plan they abandon in a rush of delight at exactly 4:37 PM, when they
walk up together to find, of all things, President Taft greeting Vice-President
Dewey at his door. Now is the opportunity to strike, to bring about a
revolution in the United States that will let the motherland break free and be
independent! The two New Yorkers burst from their car ten yards up the road,
Torresola firing with the cool of a professional, Collazo with the mad grace of
a fanatic, shouting "Puerto Rico Por Toda la Tiempo!" and slogans of the
revolution-

As he picks himself up off the ground a moment later, Thomas Dewey feels rather
embarrassed. (Through the not-unreasonable residual terror, that is.) Old mob
fighter that he was, he hit the dirt the moment armed men burst from a car; but
within a minute or two it was all over; Torresola catching Birdzell's volley in
the chest, Collazo actually getting within 15 feet or so before being cut down
by the massed fire of five Secret Service agents. 

The embarrassment fades, however, when he sees the blood-stained, silent corpse
at his side. 

-Thomas Dewey knows how to deal with gangsters, though. Showing a verve and
drive that shocks a nation that remembers him as the other boring guy from 1948
but is less than surprising to a New York that remembers its governor and an
city that remembers its district attorney, the new President takes only time to
be sworn in by Chief Justice Bridges and to change into a clean suit before
addressing Congress and the nation, live at 5:30 PM. His speech is one of the
first major broadcasts of the infant medium of television.

The National Guard is going to Puerto Rico (well, not the Puerto Rican National
Guard, but of other states) to act as the new police force, obviously the local
cops just aren't doing a good job. To Dewey, Campos and his "band of armed
hooligans in an all-too-familiar uniform" must be slapped down and slapped down
hard. Rapid deployment of the National Guard means the closest units, and the
closest units are from the Southern states, units already radicalized on a
basis of race, now with a martyred President to hold up, with the g******s now
below the n*****s, at least for the moment. Racism is disgusting and pointless
to Thomas Dewey, but if putting racists in Puerto Rico prevents any more
assasinations, well, he's willing to do that for law and order, and if he
alienates the voters in the South...well, they weren't going to vote for him
anyway.

The obvious problem there is numbers; the regular army is relatively small, and
with much of the National Guard posted to Puerto Rico, there are a paucity of
forces available for operations in the Philippines. (Dewey vows to carry out
President Taft's plans there to the last, the "fall of a hero" will not stop
America standing up for democracy.) Thus, in an act of supreme irony: the
memory of Robert Taft, who bulled through World War II like a horrifed crusader
and greeted the return of new conflict with disgust, is used to re-introduce
the draft. 

It is billed as an emergency measure (even in shock and with a groundswell of
popular support, THIS America and THIS Congress will give no President that big
a stick), lasting only until 1952, but with an option to renew it later. Thomas
Dewey has his strong arm to lay down the American law, for good or ill, and a
strong wave of popular support, for the moment. (He picks fellow New Yorker
John Foster Dulles as his Secretary of War.)

But he's in a bigger fishbowl now than Albany or Manhattan; the nation is
watching him, Congressional Democrats are watching him (if World War II was
partisan, why should the "police action" in the Philippines be any different?),
Europe is watching him, and, of course, a fellow mustachioed world leader is
paying close attention indeed. 

-Celâl Bayar is running for President of Turkey and hoping to crush Ismet
Inönü, appeaser that he is, like an ant, and all of his military party too.
Bayar is a Democrat, hoping to reduce the autocracy of the government and
promote free enterprise rather than state-owned governments. 

He's delighted when one of the smaller left-of-center party chooses to merge
with his, and gladly takes a fair share of the massive amounts of funding they
offer, from private backers, and takes lots of pictures with the party leaders.
(Bayar's not stupid, of course, he knows the "private backers" are foriegners. 
As his party is strongly in favor of engagement with the Amsterdam Pact, it's
obvious they're interested in electing a candidate friendly to their interests.
He has no interest in being their toady, but no objection to taking their
money.) 

-On June 6, 1950 at noon exactly, Erich von Manstein ascends the podium in
Oldenburg Hall. In his hand is a speech suspending the election and declaring
martial law in Westphalia, with harsh crackdowns to follow on suspected
terrorists. Manstein will be as hard as he can; the Americans will balk at too
much, but he can do much indeed with them distracted in the Pacific. 

At 12:13 PM, the clockwork assembly underneath the podium finishes counting
down. The subsequent blast kills Manstein, the Vice-President, Head Police
Chief Canaris, two Justices of the Supreme Court, and the leaders of Manstein's
party in the legislature. 

The new President is Attorney-General Reinhard Gehlen.

For All Time Pt. 50 
September 20, 1950

Madison, Wisconsin

"And when I looked down into that bottle three years ago today, do you know who
I saw staring up at me? Do you?" JOSEPH RAYMOND MCCARTHY stepped back from the
podium for a moment to wipe his brow, looking from face to face. Thirty
seedy-looking men were here tonight, more than he'd had come to see him speak
in a long, long time. Life was going pretty well. "I saw SATAN staring up at me
from that bottle, my friends! The Red Devil from his bottle of Red Commie
Vodka!" He hefted the bottle of Smirnoff by his side on the podium and smashed
it to the ground. "And that's what you have to do with it, my friends! Smash
Red Commie Vodka, smash Comrade Whiskey and Comrade Gin, smash the champagne
and fancy liquors the refined leftist pinko loves to drink, until we've
cleansed America of the curse of Commie booze! Protect our precious bodily
fluids!", he shouted in his best preacher-style voice, saying a silent prayer
of thanks he'd spent his last dime on watching John Birch speak. _His_ suit
wasn't seedy at all. "Drink American drinks! Like beer!" 

Manila, Philippines

Major-General WALTON WALKER has assumed command of Operation COPPER, a wry pun
from the Dewey administration and the planned anti-Huk peacekeeping operation
in Luzon. Walker himself is not familiar with the Far East, having served in
Europe during World War II and in the US after, but he has a strong right arm
in his cheif of staff, WILLIAM WESTMORELAND, who served with distinction in
Formosa and the Philippines during the war, and commanded several offices
charged with fighting partisans in that time. 

Some say Walker overextends himself in moving his command to Manila before his
strong left arm (which is to say, his invasion force of veterans mingled with
draftees and volunteers) is assembled in the United States and brought over to
the Far East, but Walker is never one to worry about that. He and his boys will
move _forward_, ever forward.

Airstrikes, now in their fifth month, have killed several hundred Huk fighters,
several hundred civilians, and 25 American pilots.

New York City, USA

PIERRE BOULLE sighs irritably as he looks over his income for this month.
Emigrating to the States was a good idea; Darlan is no Hitler or Petain, but
it's a bit uncomfortable to be an author who's at all political in France these
days. Besides, watching the government lose the land in Indochina he endured
years in a Japanese POW camp for turned his stomach.

But Hollywood is well-entrenched, and anti-French sentiment combined with his
own really bad English drove him back east again: to New York, America's
Eternal City, to write plays. Well, outlines for plays anyway; neither M.
Hammerstein or M. Rodgers would much like it if he started to write their
musical for them. Still, even the idea will pay rent for this week, and food
for a month...


Rome, Italy

PALMIRO TOGLIATTI has won a narrow majority in the new Italian Senato, making
the Italian Communist leader one of the most powerful men in Italy. Togliatti
is not in the Moscow camp, of course, very few Euro-Communists of his era are,
at least in Western Europe. They saw what happened to their ideological
brethern in the East when Stalin cut them loose, after all. To be fair, though,
there are a number of Stalinist parties allied to his. 

To Galezzo Ciano, however, his experiment in democracy has failed, and failed
badly. God, the Communists are _this_ close to taking over the government
entirely! He'll stop them, though, and stop them personally, the decorated
veteran of Spain is not one to flinch from personal danger. There is a
gathering of former Resistance fighters (bunch of Reds) n October 1, Togliatti
is scheduled to be the keynote speaker. Ciano will see about introducing
something much more interesting. 

Istanbul, Turkey

GAIK OVAKIMYAN is sitting in a cafe, drinking that odd Turkish tea and musing
idly that Istanbul is no New York, but hey, what is? Life has been pretty good
for him in the past few years, he got a lot of America, and not just huge
amounts of military intelligence. He actually got to meet President Henry
Wallace in 1944, and if he can just manage to meet Pierre Darlan, his list will
be complete. 

Once operations here are complete, he'll be behind only Sudoplatov, who is
behind only Beria, who is behind only...well, the Great Stalin can't live
forever. 

For All Time Pt. 51 
Fall to Winter, 1950

-Anglo-American military cooperation, something dead and gone since the death
of Franklin Roosevelt, begins to flower again in the Philippines. Thomas Dewey
hasn't the Anglophobia of Henry Wallace or the ingrained isolationism of Robert
Taft, and is acutely conscious that if he must fight the war well and quickly,
he daren't simply repeat the mistakes made by the French and British in their
colonial, anti-Communist wars, and so he asks Ambassador Wilson for British
assistance; for the loan of British advisors, veterans of Malaysia and Burma,
to teach Americans how to fight Communist partisans in the Far East. 

Whatever his vague amusement at the Americans, so arrogant in their
isolationism, having to fight essentially the same war he's been fighting,
Ernest Bevin isn't one to flinch from helping another democracy fight
Communists, and soon, as one wit puts it, "Americans teach Filipinos how to use
the Pershing in the city, while the British teach the Americans how to use
their rifles in the jungle." 

The Americans are doing more than relearning jungle operations; the British
have met the hardness of the Malaysian guerillas with their own (more after the
successful Indonesian secession from the Netherlands and the quasi-Communist
government established there.), and they teach the tactics of the Emergency to
the Americans, an even mix of peacetime soldiers and veterans of the last war. 

Most, surprisingly, are not draftees; John Foster Dulles' War Department, now
fully settled, has concluded there's not actually a need for a vast number of
soldiers to fight the alleged Communist hordes, and it has been applied weakly
at best, mostly to ensure the few American military bases in Westphalia, South
Japan, and the Panama Canal Zone, now largely emptied as regulars are deployed
to the Philippines, remain at full strength. Still, they remain an vague
spectre of worry to American men of the right age, though that ground remains
largely untapped. After all, despite the presence of 2,000 draftees in the
Philippines, none have seen combat, yet. 

-President Reinhard Gehlen can't do what he _really_ wants to do in Westphalia;
purge the undesirable elements and drive them out into countries with more
tolerance for such things. He wasn't the mad anti-Semite of so many of his
comrades in Intelligence during the war, but they've certainly not demonstrated
their trustworthiness! (While neither Moshe Dayan nor Yitzhak Rabin has been
caught, evidence of their organization has been found and linked to the
assasination of Manstein and Goering.)

Pondering that Moshe Dayan's organization might not represent all Jews, or that
even Dayan's people might have had a legitimate grievance against a former Nazi
suspending elections is profitless, so Gehlen, pragmatist that he is, does no
such thing. Instead, he acts in a way even Manstein couldn't have. 

The election of 1950 is postponed until 1952; and the "Internal Police" begin
monitoring Konrad Adenauer and other leaders of the opposition party.
Furthermore, several hundred of the most prominent radicals, leaders of the
small Communist Party and Jewish activist groups among others, are rounded up
and exiled, or else kept in "protective custody", under house arrest, forbidden
from politics. Some are involved in Dayan's movement, some in other plots, most
are not.

The crackdown plays as well as can be expected; Westphalia does apparantly have
a terrorist problem, after all, and the United States, the only nation with a
major, politicized Jewish population, has for the moment little sympathy for
the assasins of a President, or for Communists. Still, Westphalia slowly slides
outside of the mainstream of European society even more, slight odds of joining
the Amsterdam Pact pass well away. 

-On October 1, Galeazzo Ciano acts. Moving with decisive speed and authority,
he makes a multi-part declaration from his palace in Rome that outlaws the
Italian Communist Party and "their allies, politicial and not", fires and
arrests all such from the Senato, and declares the Uomo Qualunqu and its
official leader, Pietro Badoglio, as head of the legislative branch. 

Galezzo Ciano is bold, honest, and decisive, but such qualities in a leader do
not necessarily filter down to the rest of the government and military; Italian
Intelligence is a leaky sieve during the weeks of preperation, and even
Togliatti's cat knows the troops are coming by the first of October. When
squads arrive to arrest the canny Stalinist, he and cat are long gone, as are
virtually all Communist leaders. 

Warnings to the Christian Democrats are less efficient, those Senators and
their political allies who join Togliatti in his refuge in and around Turin
have many friends in government hands, and perhaps it is this that prompts them
to join Togliatti in his "Turin Declaration" of October 5. He and his new-found
allies declare the executive, monarchial, and judicial branches of government
dissolved, Alcide de Gasperi (one of the Christian Democrats in government
hands) and Pietro Togliatti are joint leaders of the "Repubblica Sociale di
Italia" and the Army is called on to remove the "Fascists, now revealed in
their true colors." 

First to join the RSI are the new Jewish migrants, politicized as they are by
the horrors of war they've fled and the knowledge of what fascist governments
(like Gehlen's, and perhaps like Ciano's) might do to active Jews i wartime;
they are joined shortly thereafter by those thousands of Italian officers and
men who are _tired_ of fighting for those who, whatever their heroism might
have been in past wars, force them to keep the government's boot on the neck of
their fellow Italians. 

Within a week, low-level fighting, rapidly escalating in intensity, has begun
in nearly every major city in the north of Italy, and more than a few in the
south...

-In Puerto Rico, conditions slowly simmer. Virtually every officer above the
rank of lieutenant in the Puerto Rican National Guard has resigned in anger at
their disarmament and deliberate demoblization (all those in uniform at the
time of declaration of martial law have been demobilized, and no more have been
called), and discontent is high among the civilian population as well. Luis
Muńoz Marín, elected governor of the island, has sent repeated petitions to
President Dewey, only to be met with polite, even friendly refusal. Marin has
made up his mind, he'll just go see the President himself.

Still, despite allegations of brutality from private soldiers and
non-commissioned officers, the National Guard administration of the island has
been an efficient one. Members of Puerto Rican nationalist organizations have
been arrested, most held in prisons off the island, in some of the more
isolated Florida Keys. 

-In this troubled world atmosphere,  Celâl Bayar becomes President and Adnan
Menderes Prime Minister of Turkey near the end of the year.

For All Time Pt. 52 
January-April 1951

-On January 18, 1951, General Jacques Massu hands his broken sword to General
Vo Nguyen Giap in a formal ceremony outside the city of Phnom Penh in
southwestern Indochina. The long, grueling Indochinese War is finally over. The
war has been marked with atrocities on both sides; Massu's artillery
bombardment of Hanoi with Lewisite (an incredibly destructive poison gas bought
from the British) will remain a textbook case for humanitarian societies after
the war, while Giap never hesitated to turn French POWs over to the Chinese
(after they entered on the Vietminh side), or to use terroristic tactics of
sabotage and bombing of French civilians in Saigon. 

When Massu and the tattered remnants of his command arrive back in Paris in
February, Francois Darlan's rage is apocalyptic. He has lost face, a colony,
and suffered a terrible military defeat. Acting in his capacity as commander in
chief of the French armed forces, Darlan instantly cashiers Massu and imprisons
him for treason and incompetence. No more French colonies will be lost, he
vows, no more humilations before the world. He orders General  Raoul Salan and
General Paul Aussaresses, commanders-in-chief in Algeria and French West Africa
respectively, to "crush all who lie before you; if you must kill every man in
the departments to ensure their loyalty, then do not hesitate. There is nothing
more cleansing than the blood of traitors." 

Darlan also takes the precaution of cashiering some members of the officer
corps suspected of disloyalty as well as a few members of his civilian
government, along with throwing more money and resources at the Anglo-French
atomic bomb project, which finally reaches fruition on April 9, 1951, when
"William the Conqueror" is detonated in an isolated region of the Sudan near
the French colonial border. 

-By that time, though, Great Britain has a new government. A combination of ill
health, a shaky economy, and a bit of wartime nostalgia have swept Ernest
Bevin's Labour Party from power, leaving it with a significant 40-seat minority
before the newly-resurgent Conservatives. 

Leading the Conservatives to victory and to a second round as Prime Minister is
none other than Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill himself; the lion of wartime
Britain is now the champion of her peace. Darlan is delighted; for all that he
remembers the occasional feud with his old wartime partner, he respects
Churchill as an honourable man and a good anti-Communist, something he never
really felt about the old trade unionist Ernest Bevin. 

In a fit of Anglo-French cooperation, Darlan offers military aid to the British
forces fighting in Burma and East Africa. While the offer is more than legal
under terms of the Amsterdam Pact, and the British forces there, despite their
slow successes against the local Communists/nationalists, certainly could use
some help, Churchill is understandably leery of either looking like the United
Kingdom needs France to keep her empire, or of relying on the same troops that
failed in Indochina. Still, he's never one to turn down aid, and a total of
about a division of French troops begin fighting in Burma and Kenya by the end
of spring. 

-Both governments in Great Britain and the one in France stand staunchly behind
the Ciano government in Italy. While neither the British nor French publics
will countenance sending in combat troops in a European war in support of a
quasi-Fascist government; they have no objection at all to selling war
material, especially given the economic boost that provides to both of their
industrial sectors. 

While this helps the UK and France, it doesn't help Westphalia at all, and
despite his strong sympathies with Ciano, Reinhard Gehlen winds up only able to
supply large numbers of advisors from the Westphalian military, men _very_
experienced in hunting down Communist partisans. 

Speaking of which, Josip Broz Tito recognizes the Togliatti government a few
hours before even Moscow, and soon Austrian, Yugoslavian and Soviet
"volunteers" in Soviet-made Mig-15s are testing their mettle in aerial combat
with Loyalist Italian pilots in surplus Spitfires, and western Europe (and
Ciano) are learning a grim lesson indeed in the important lesson of
modernization. 

Josip Tito is all loyalty to Moscow in these efforts (and he is, after all,
acting on Stalin's orders), but the canny old soldier has his own agenda.
Markos in Greece remembers it was Yugoslavia who put him on his chair, however
shaky it might be, and if he can ensure a similiar grateful Italian government,
well, things will get interesting. If only if it weren't for the
ever-so-helpful Austrians!


-In February, the first wave of American troops land in northern Luzon and
begin the slow march south to Quezon City. This is the British-trained wave
(and indeed, a hundred or so advisors land with them) and the patriotic fervour
stirred up by the bombing of Subic Bay and the (admittedly unrelated, but
dark-skinned Latins blend together in the American mindset of the era) has been
focused into a hard, cold professionalism. 

Persons and groups suspected of sympathy with the Huk are resettled elsewhere,
those who resist are driven out, those who resist violently are simply shot.
Battles with Huk forces are common at first and take a relatively heavy toll on
both sides; for all that the Americans are well-trained, most have never fought
a battle, and those who have haven't in many years. 

While control over the media is strict, and the nation hears only of the
victories, not so much the body counts that accompany them, a drafted reporter
from Indiana vows to find out just what _is_ going in in those classified areas
just behind the American lines...

For All Time Pt. 53 
May-July 1951

-Along with much of the rest of the world, Scandinavia quietly seethes through
1951. (though a bit more quietly than most.) The ruling Social Democratic
parties have well and thoroughly expelled their Communist members; they're
neutral in the Italian Civil War, but it has sent a grim message to them about
cooperation with the Communist parties. Not to mention, of course, the even
grimmer message sent by the fairly large Soviet armies to the south of Denmark
and the east of Finland, respectively. 

Finland is slightly better off than OTL, the various Soviet offensives against
them were weaker with the greater resources devoted to Europe, and the border
is correspondingly further east. Finland is still bound to the USSR by treaty,
but the bonds are weaker and less secure than OTL. Too, Finland can boast with
reasonable honesty (though quietly) that they've now beat back the Reds three
times, though each time it's been less and less pleasant for them. 

Denmark, meanwhile, has the not inconsiderable worry of the Red Army. Unknown
at the time, of course, is an abortive Soviet plan to offer Schleswig-Holstein
as a trust territory to the Danes; but in the end, priorities went the other
way, and a reliable naval base on the North Sea, located in a reliably
impuissant Soviet puppet state was deemed more important than keeping
Scandinavia sweet. Denmark's attempts to organize a Scandinavian Defense League
have foundered on the rock of Norwegian independence and Finnish obligations,
and she continues to lean more and more towards the Amsterdam Pact. 

-Speaking of secure naval bases: in May of 1951, long-simmering discontent in
the Turkish military finally bubbles over and explodes when "anonymous sources"
in the government of Celal Bayar's Democrats reveal that Bayar accepted massive
campaign contributions not only from foreigners, but from _Red_ foreigners at
that! 

The Turkish generals, especially one General Cemal Gürsel, nearly foam at the
mouth with rage, even as they follow government orders and close the presses.
The heir to Ataturk was a spineless pantywaist when it came to dealing with the
Reds, and now the civilians are actually taking money from them! Democracy was
a worthy experiment, but it obviously can't be trusted for the nonce. 

On May 14, 1951, Gürsel issues a list of...well, they're somewhere between
requests and demands made of the Democratic Party and the Bayar government. The
President, Prime Minister, and all of their ministers must step down and a
coalition of the various rightist parties will govern until "genuine" free
elections can be held. If the DP remains stubborn, the consequences will be on
their head. Bayar, who is not actually a Communist himself, angrily refuses,
and issues a warrant for the general's arrest. 

The Soviet agents carefully worked into the Bayar government remain
deliberately silent until just before the cadets from the Ankara and Istanbul
arrive on June 7, giving Bayar only time to mobilize the Presidential Guard and
attempt to flee Ankara with his government before the shooting starts. It's
never quite proved who fires first, some overeager cadet with his head stuffed
full of visions of Ataturk or a member of Bayar's bodyguard trying to protect
his President, but when it's all over, Bayar, Prime Minister Adnan Menderes,
and their families and staff are dead, along with a score of bodyguards and a
dozen cadets. 

Even as a horrified Gürsel (he wanted Bayar gone, but not like that!) moves to
assume office on May 16 , the governments of the Soviet Union, the People's
Republic of Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania,
Hungary, and Albania issue a joint condemnation of the military coup in Turkey.
Each give Gürsel two months to resign from office along with his government,
disarm all elements of the Turkish military except those needed for internal
peacekeeping duties, and prepare Turkey for "international occupation and
reconstruction as a democracy." A few days later, the People's Republic of
China, Iran, Vietnam, and Indonesia chime in agreement.

The oh-so-solid front is the only major mistake in one of the Soviet Union's
better intelligence operations. 

-The Amsterdam Pact is understandably shocked at the rapidity and violence of
the coup. as well as the Soviet response, but a variety of factors paralyze
them from acting. Winston Churchill, for all that he has maintained his old
fire as an orator, is in worse health than OTL's 1951, his mind wanders easily,
he can no longer work his war-era titanic schedule, and his predilection for
grandiose schemes (especially retention of the Empire) has multiplied. 

The man some call the shadow Prime Minister is Foriegn Minister Anthony Eden.
Eden, who stood by Churchill's side in the war, feels no strain at all in
sheltering his old leader, in keeping the golden lion of wartime from being
tarnished by the ravages of old age and growing senility. Eden, unfortunately,
has his own problems: methamphetamines, to be precise. While the two respond
well to events they have some warning of, the rapidity of events in Turkey
paralyzes both, and the British government hesitates at a critical moment. 

Admiral Francois Darlan, meanwhile, is in one of his more irritable moods, and
has bigger fish to fry; stamping out the Communists in Brittany, Marseilles,
and Normandy who dare, dare, DARE to speak their language above French, the
mother of all languages. They must be Communists, to be such traitors, and a
stay in prison should cure the Red out of them. Turkey? Bah, he hardly cares. 

With Britain and France hesitating or uncaring, the Amsterdam Pact does little
more than condemn any form of imperialism before the Soviet deadline passes.
The United States, of course, takes no notice, busy at it is in the Pacific,
Caribbean, and with being very apathetic. 

-Spain and Portugal, however, are not apathetic at all. Francisco Franco and 
António Salazar were upset enough by the civil war in Italy. (Only their own
lack of much of anything have kept them from supplying Ciano.) And now, with
the demise of another militaristic government looming, well, they both start
remembering what they did to their enemies when they came to power, and the
shadow of the firing squad or noose looms large. 

There's no other choice; for all that they'd resisted falling under the
Anglo-French spell, Franco and Salazar both would rather have military help to
stay in power and win their various colonial conflicts (along with a bit of
economic aid, now and again) than let their foreign policies largely be
determined by London and Paris. 

Neither Churchill nor Darlan are the type to miss out on a chance for more
influence, and so they act quickly indeed on their request, and on June 10,
1951, Spain and Portugal become full-fledged members of the Amsterdam Pact.
Spain and Portugal would likely not have been eligible for the Pact before, but
with the Italian disaster keen on everyone's mind, pragmatist Churchill and
authoritarian Darlan are more than willing to accept the pretense of some sort
of governmental change in the indefinite future. 

-The admittance of pretty well openly fascist Spain and Portugal sours
President Thomas Dewey on the Amsterdam Pact, even more so than before. He'll
keep his under the table deal with the British, economic aid for the advisors
in Luzon; he is, after all, a practical man. But he watched the coffins from
D-Day come home through New York harbor, and he was Governor when the Great
Raid hit New York and the Statue of Liberty. 

Dewey made deals with gangsters, sure, you have to do that to get by. But if
Britain and France are going to betray the hundreds of thousands of Americans
who died fighting for their freedom by making _more_ deals with gangsters writ
large, well, they're no friends of his, for all that he'll cooperate with them
when he must. 
One man a bit less comfortable with the necessities of the struggle against
Communism is Hamilton Fish. Not the Secretary of State, but his son and
personal assistant. 

Fish was a Harvard freshman when that campus was rioting against Henry Wallace
(and had the natural freshman's reaction of hiding), a sophomore when Bob Taft
spoke there on the importance of principle in politics. While he remains an Ivy
League aristocrat, even resembling his father strongly physically, he has a
slight streak of Anglophobia not really present in OTL, and, more, a rather
naive view in principle above all else. 

He slowly assembles a file of evidence detailing the secret deal of the Dewey
administration; pressure on Irish-American groups to cease pressure on the
British government to give Ulster to the Free State or supplying Irish groups
in Ulster with resources along with hundreds of millions of dollars carefully
diverted to needy British industries and tariffs friendly to them. In return,
the British will supply the Americans with unlimited training to
do...something. He's not sure what. 

-That piece of the puzzle is in the hands of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., a reporter
recently out of his one-year draft enlistment and promptly assigned to cover a
rather major story in Puerto Rico, even bigger than Willie Mays signed to play
for the Indians next year. Horrified at what he found in the fifth of five
Huk-friendly settlements in Luzon, the young Hoosier has written a detailed
account, both in a book form and one publishable in major magazines. He's even
got pictures. 

The situation had been growing grimmer and grimmer in Puerto Rico; the Dewey
administration has firmly refused any offers of Puerto Rican self-government or
an elected government. He's sympathetic to the arguments of those for it, and
is certainly familiar with the notion of plea-bargaining. But he just won't do
it; he won't give the assassins of a President what they wanted, even in death.


It begins outside Arecibo on July 1, when a unit of the Georgia National Guard
moves to arrest the leader of a cell of Puerto Rican nationalists. Colonel
Lester Maddox, a restaurant owner in civilian life, has become one of the more
infamous figures on the island, and when "Coronel Hacha" is recognized, the
fifty adult members of "Comuna De la Liberación" decide they simply will not
surrender. 

The shot that takes off Maddox's neatly-ordered officer's cap was aimed to
miss, but the volley at the three jeeps he sends tearing across the sugar
fields a moment later are not, and the CDL have been training for the day of
liberation for a while. (Too, several of their newer members are ex-Puerto
Rican National Guard...and they didn't return their weapons.) 

When the first day's fighting is over, a dozen of Maddox's men are dead and a
half-dozen of the CDL members are, including two women and one small child. As
both radio reports of the massacre (though who was massacring who remains to be
seen), the Arecibo Siege ends its first day...

For All Time Pt. 54 "Scenes" 

((Something a bit different.)) 

1973
Los Angeles. 

"This is going to change everything, you know." said Richard Dreyfuss, playing
Kurt Vonnegut in Kubrick's latest. "Dewey, the Philippines...it's all going to
be different. We're not just bringing down a President, we're bringing down
interventionism, the Republicans...everything." In the premeire audience,
Vonnegut watched his onscreen doppleganger turn to Paul Newman. The kid was
good, but had he ever been that young? Or so sweaty? "We owe it all to you,
Phil." 

Newman stared into his whisky glass before looking up with those flashing blue
eyes that had made him a heartthrob years before. "Yeah. I stab my President
and party in the back for honor...what is honor, anyway? It's..." He twirled
the glass. "Bob Taft had honor. And he's dead. Maybe that says something." It
was all very magnificent and all a load of crap, Hamilton Fish Jr. had been
stone sober from the first minute Vonnegut had seen him walking through the
ruins of the CDL compound to the last time; and Newman was decades older than
Fish had been in 1951, even older than Fish would be today. Still, he'd kept
his description of "Philip of Macedon" deliberately vague for a reason, not
even telling Kubrick. 

"It's about doing what's right, Philip.", said Robert Redford with
determination and a questionable Boston accent. _Oh, here we go._, thought
Vonnegut irritably. Kubrick had got the red-hot, boiling summer, the terrors of
the CDL disaster (Robert Duvall had been a terrifying Lester Maddox), he'd even
gotten the Luis Riveria, the bar that had been the centerpiece of the
conspiracy....but God, had he f***** up Hamilton Fish Jr. and Bobby Kennedy.
"And that's what we're doing. If it puts Joe in the White House, that's fine,
but it doesn't matter. We have to expose Dewey, Fish, Dulles, and that whole
crowd. We need to clean up Washington, so there aren't any more Settlement #5
massacres, Kurt, and there aren't any more under the table deals by American
Presidents." 

The Robert Kennedy that _he_ remembered, thought Kurt Vonnegut irritably, had
been the drinker of the bunch; the Boston Globe reporter had been bemoaning the
way his father had shut him out of his brother's administration, pushing him
off into journalism. As if his life's work was a sentence of death. Just today
some punk kid from the Washington Post had been leaving messages on his
machine, asking for advice. 

But it didn't do to criticize a Kennedy, or at least that's what Kubrick
thought. Whether or not that was true, Kurt wasn't going to speculate. It had
been a while, after all. At least the Barrio Riots promised to be interesting;
Kubrick had claimed to have hired both actual rioters from back in the day and
even old New York policemen. Not to mention Warren Beatty as President Dewey.
The humor alone...

For All Time Pt. 55 
July, 1951

-Fortunately, the Dewey administration is an efficient one, especially when it
comes to potential disasters, and Undersecretary of State Hamilton Fish Jr.
arrives along with a direct Presidential order to Colonel Lester Maddox
ordering him to _not_ deploy the armored brigade he'd brought up from San Juan,
on the second of July, 1951. While the Hispanic vote is nowhere near as
important in 1951 as it is today, it is a factor, and President Dewey has no
desire to promote a massacre. 

Over the next few days, more State Department bureaucrats arrive, along with
FBI negotiators personally selected by Director Melvin Purvis, and a horde of
reporters, much to the horror of the Georgia National Guard. American public
opinion is much divided, a fair majority, while not exactly sympathetic to
Gestapo tactics, is all for the arrest at nearly any cost of the same kind of
people who murdered President Taft, while a fierce minority, mostly Puerto
Ricans or strong leftists, points out that all the CDL actually did was harbor
two fugitives from justice for a few weeks, as well as taking possession of
proscribed ex-military hardware. 

Among the many problems of the initial weeks of the siege is that Melvin Purvis
doesn't actually know how to pick hostage negotiators, so said negotiations
lead everywhere but to success, and with the Army's counter-espionage units
busy on Luzon, efforts to jam the CDL's repeated transmissions proclaiming
their innocence and the guilt of "Coronel Hacha" go to naught. As sporadic
disturbances erupt in the major cities of Puerto Rico, President Dewey deploys
National Guard units from New York City, many of them drawn from the moderate
Puerto Rican population in the city itself, hoping they will work better in
policing their coethnics. 

-In New York City herself, tensions have been building for a long time. The
feuding between her black and Jewish populations, burning since the Great Raid
drove so many thousands out of Harlem, and burned _hot_ in the years since the
arrival of the first waves of refugees from Europe and Palestine has even moved
to the realm of organized crime. 

If any man can be said to run organized crime in New York, it is Meyer Lansky.
Operating in the South and Cuba during the Ness and most of the Purvis years as
Director of the FBI, he managed to escape the informers that caught Barbara,
Vito Genovese, Bonventre, Frank Costello, Bonnano, and Garofalo, and the
subsequent bitter infighting that killed Anastasia, Carlo Gambino, and Sam
Giacana. Arriving just in time to subsume Joseph Biondo into his numbers,
Lansky has enforced a tough peace on the surviving factions. 

The brief mob wars of the late '40s brought public attention on organized crime
like no time since the 1920s, and Lansky is acutely concious of what that
means. No more open conflicts, nothing more that attracts the eye of _Thomas
Dewey_, for God's sake. And for the most part, Lansky has succeeded; and has
even begun approaching his compatriots in neighboring cities about a pact
between them as well. They're in business to make money, after all, not go to
prison or die. 

But the generation of mobsters still in command in the early 1950s is
understandably paranoid, and if Lansky's going to start talking about a treaty
between everyone, he'd better make **** sure his own house is in order. And
he'd done that; relations had been pushed right to the breaking point with the
influx of blacks into the South Bronx after the destruction of much of Harlem,
but he'd been able to smooth things over with diplomacy that would have been
admirable in a cause less, well..criminal. 

Until, of course, the sudden arrival of thousands of young, angry Jewish
teenagers who've learned both a streak of amorality and an appreciation for a
good spot of violence against one's enemies. While Lansky moved quickly to hire
most, some literally right off the docks, these are not people to obey orders,
and moving into the South Bronx as they do, they soon disentigrate relations
between Lansky and Ellsworth Johnson all over again. 

There have been several public incidents between young black men angry at the
loss of their homes and young Jewish men angry at the loss of theirs; with both
of them moving into the same territory. Perhaps a dozen people have died over
the years, with the government of Mayor Robert Moses slowly moving to
intervene, mostly on the side of Lansky. Moses has no sympathy for any sort of
mobster, of course, but the monolithic intolerance that marked his building
career has been carried over.

-But New York City's real problem lies in her Puerto Rican community. Like most
immigrant communities to countries dissimilar to their own, their relationship
with the government has always been rather shaky. With the assasination of
President Taft, the declaration of martial law in and the occupation of their
homeland, and the subsequent close observation indeed of virtually any Puerto
Rican political or social groups by the police and FBI, things have gotten
worse yet. 

The fact that it's summer never helps, and the mood of the Puerto Rican areas
of the South Bronx slowly heats up, along with the mood of those members of New
York's Finest patrolling the neighborhoods. The Arecibo Siege only heightens
the mood of impending doom. Finally, on July 13, it all comes to a head with
the attempted arrest of Arturo Ruiz, late of San Juan. The 17-year-old, in the
United States for two years, was wanted for questioning about his friendship
with a CDL member from New York who'd been caught in the compound when
everything went wrong. 

Ruiz runs from the several burly Irish cops who attempt to corral him while
leaving high school, and manages to give them a merry chase before being
cornered in an alley behind a church, where services have just ended. _Someone_
then fires three shots; sources vary on who. The official word of first the
police and then the Moses government is that Ruiz pulled a .22 pistol and fired
a shot at Officer Lenny Briscoe, who replied with two shots from his .38, one
of which proves fatal. 

Two Puerto Rican eyewitnesses, a 14 year old boy and the 9 year old sister he
was watching, say that Briscoe fired first and last, planting the .22 on Ruiz
after he was dead. As the Puerto Rican communities explode in marches and
protest meetings, Robert Moses makes the not unreasonable decision of sending
in the police to talk to the young witnesses the next day. 

Their families aren't about to give them up, and when the detectives try to
force the issue, a crowd of a dozen locals chases them out via stone and stick.
A while later, riot troopers arrive, and the first Barrio Riot has begun.
(They're not actually IN a Barrio, really, but the name will stick.) 

-As the United States convulses in a wave of race riots, as Latinos all over
the country join the fun, (The Mexicans and native Hispanics living in the
Southwest are _not_, in fact, Puerto Rican, but their local governments have
not bothered to make such a distinction; it is suppertime in Washington D.C, on
the second day of major rioting, July 16. 

It is nearly midnight, though, for American Ambassador Nelson Rockefeller in
Istanbul. The Turkish coup and Red demarche has made his life understandably
difficult, helping thousands of Americans get out of Turkey in a hurry. He's
only too glad to have his one day of vacation; Istanbul is indeed a beautiful
city. Rockefeller is just falling asleep over a copy of Time when he's awakened
by a wave of explosions. The "Intervention" has begun. 

Istanbul is recieving a visit from virtually the entire Greek Air Force, in an
attack coming exactly one minute after the Greek government transmitted the
breaking of diplomatic relations. The Turkish fleet is caught at anchor, and
while the Greek pilots aren't that well trained in torpedo and dive bombing,
they certainly have a salutary effect by weight of numbers and fervor. Within
an hour of the attack (which commenced at 11:51 PM Istanbul time), the Turkish
fleet is broken; every battleship, even the old Yavuz, is sunk or irreparably
damaged, and most of the medium-sized capital ships have similar problems. The
Turkish navy has more ports, of course, and its army is undamaged. 

Until, that is, the Bulgarian army crosses the border into Turkish Thrace, just
in time for the Soviets and Iranians to move west into Anatolia, all before the
sun rises over a suddenly-terrifed Ankara. As Greece organizes an amphibious
landing force in the Aegean Islands (using landing craft given to the Soviets
in World War Two by the Americans and then sold by the Soviets to the Greeks),
the Communist bloc broadcasts their intention to "return democracy to Turkey."

For All Time Pt. 56 
August-September 1951

-By August 1 of 1951, Colonel Lester Maddox has had enough. While FBI
negotiations have won the release of several wounded or ill CDL members,
they've not won a surrender of the compound itself. An arrogant man, he can't
deal with the idea of being humiliated by the "greasers" he holds in contempt
nearly as low as black Americans. For that matter, he has political ambitions
in Georgia, and if he lets himself be so publically frustrated for so long,
well, that just won't work. 

He is still commander of the several thousand Georgia National Guard (virtually
the entire Georgia contingent on the island) gathered around the CDL compound,
though, and on the night of August 1-2, he rolls the dice. Even if he fails
here, he can prove to Georgia and himself that he's just as tough as anyone
else, not to mention hurting the enemy. 

Sometime after 2 AM on the morning of August 2, a platoon of Georgian rangers
slowly crawls up to the edge of the CDL compound, 200 yards from the main
building, where they encounter CDL guards. When the sudden, inevitable exchange
of fire begins, Maddox moves in. As MPs stall the FBI and State Department
representatives, Lester Maddox sends in 12 Sherman tanks, followed by nearly
three hundred infantry, with orders to shoot to kill anyone with a weapon, not
even bothering with tear gas, just firing and firing. 

It's hard to say just what happens next, the initial investigation will last a
decade and the follow-ups will last even longer. The best guess, though, is
that after the first Sherman reached the main door to the main building (with
two dozen soldiers and 6 CDL members dead at this stage, mostly the perimeter
guards and unlucky snipers), someone on the first floor of the two-story
building threw a surplus Army hand grenade into a mixture of diesel fuel and
nitrate fertilizer of about half a ton.

All but one of the seventy-five CDL members die in an instant...or from the
essential neglect of the Georgia National Guard, which controls the site until
the less-than sympathetic Alabama National Guard moves in. Fifty Georgian
soldiers die, mostly in the initial blast. 

-The Barrio Riots now explode into a new level of violence, the surrounding,
slowly encroaching cordons of police in New York and Los Angeles take on a
whole new meaning with the Arecibo Massacre on everyone's mind, the last
terrified broadcast of the CDL radio operator was live when it happened, and
while few heard it then, everyone has heard it by now. 

But as violence explodes in the North, the South goes mad as well: at least
Georgia does. White mobs attack black neighborhoods in Atlanta, Macon, and
surrounding small communities, and with most of the Georgia National Guard in
Puerto Rico, there's very little to stop them. 

When Dewey, beset with worries at home and abroad, hesitates in deploying those
few Army units at home to keep the peace in Georgia, blacks in the north join
Puerto Ricans in the street, and what begins as peaceful protests rapidly
become their own riots in turn. 

And there are a lot more blacks in the United States than Puerto Ricans or
Hispanics, soon Chicago and Philadelphia explode in their own waves of
violence. Embattled and horrified, Dewey declares martial law in the rioting
cities and sends in the National Guard. His popularity has begun to dip...

-The last few years or so have been downright excellent for Joseph Kennedy Jr.
While the war wasn't exactly fun, he managed to win a Silver Star in early 1945
after shooting down a German Me-262 in a fierce battle in the air over Hanover,
and the fame he won from that got him an even greater prize: the governor's
seat in Massachusetts in 1946, at the age of 31. 

Already famous thanks to his father (Joseph Kennedy Sr. served as Henry
Wallace's Secretary of State after the Alger Hiss debacle), Joe Jr. has become
something of a spokesman for the "New Democrats", the post-Wallace, post-World
War II generation. He is to the left of his father, but not by much: a moderate
to conservative Democrat who is deeply isolationist, and in favor of a smaller
government, especially on the businessman. Until the summer of 1951, he'd been
planning to run against Henry Cabot Lodge in 1952, and use a victory there to
take the Democratic nomination in 1956. (He is, after all, only 36 in 1951.)

But events have been moving quickly now with the first outbreak of serious
civil disturbances in Puerto Rico since the declaration of martial law, the
Arecibo Siege and its horrific outcome, and now the Barrio Riots in New York
and the Southwest have convinced him otherwise. He is a Catholic, and young,
but the second might actually work in his favor; and the Catholic issue, while
real, is not as severe a worry as it was in 1928. 

If nothing else, there's always the Vice-Presidency. He has been a good
governor of Massachusetts; the economy is in as good a shape as any in the
United States, and Boston saw only a slight flicker of disturbance. To project
an image of maturity and family values, as well as because she's not such a bad
girl, he married the former Ethel Skakel in July. 

But his campaign needs a hook, something to move him beyond the rather hated
sobriquet of "The Boy Bay State Governor" bestowed on him by the Republican
press. He finds that on August 23, when he receives the infamous Dewey Papers
from his younger brother Robert, who has returned home after the conclusion of
affairs in Puerto Rico. 

Running to nearly 800 pages of single-spaced, double-sided paper, the Dewey
Papers clearly show the differing natures of their two authors; Kurt Vonnegut's
account of  the behavior of American troops in the Philippines shifts from deep
patriotism to a growing horror, fully realized in a closing series of pictures
taken by hidden camera; a dozen captured Huk fighters shot in the back of the
head and buried in a ditch, terrified civilians being herded into resettlement
areas by American troops, the horrifying results of an attempted breakout gone
horribly wrong at Settlement #5 (Slaughterhouse #5, Vonnegut has angrily penned
in the margin.), culminating in an incredible photograph, the execution of a
Huk fighter by a US Army sergeant, just as he pulls the trigger. 

Hamilton Fish Jr.'s pseudonymous  sections are nearly as horrifying, but in a
different way. "Philip of Macedon"'s dry, Ivy-League style pedanticsm as he
watches his father and President Dewey work out trade policies to sell out some
American companies in favor of their British counterparts and to quietly crush
Irish-American groups, as academic Treasury Secretary Milton Friedman is lured
into joining the conspiracy and diverting funds, as he hears British officers
visiting the White House joke about what they'll be helping the Americans
do...it's all well-disguised, of course, Fish's courage balks at formally
stabbing his family name in the back, but it's all there. 

The Irishman and civil libertarian in Kennedy is shocked at the plans for
dealing with radical Irish-American groups and IRA members in the United
States, everything from harsh crackdowns on perfectly legal sales of supplies,
weapons and otherwise, to the quiet extradition-less removal of various Irish
fugitives to the United Kingdom; the hard-headed politician recognizes that the
damage to American industry would have been far less than the help given to
dying British companies, Dewey was making something close to the right choice.
Not that the press will care. The isolationist in him is reinforced a
thousand-fold by the pictures from Luzon: this is the kind of thing foriegn
wars get you into, the kind of deals that make even good men do evil. 

As for the Kennedy in him: he keeps the promise Bobby made to Kurt Vonnegut,
mailing the "Slaughterhouse Five" set of stories to every major newspaper in
Massachusetts, New York City, Washington, and Indiana under Vonnegut's byline
on September 1...but makes sure to send it by regular mail, so that his
marathon series of speeches denouncing Dewey in early September come at the
same time as the breaking of the story. 

JPK Jr. may not be President in 1952, but whoever does win will owe him big, is
the Democratic consensus as September ends.

For All Time Pt. 57 
Fall-Winter 1951

-While the breaking of the Dewey Papers scandal and the subsequent resignations
of the American Secretaries of State, Treasury and War (the first and last are
replaced by Ohio Senator John Bricker and the Ambassador to South Japan, Harold
Stassen.) makes the papers in Europe and abroad, their attention is focussed
for the most part on Turkey, and the slow death struggles of Cemal Gürsel's
National Unity Government. 

Anatolia is good defensive country, and once the Turkish army and milita units
are fully-mobilized, they begin demonstrating this to the invading Bulgarians,
Greeks, Soviets, and Iranians. But such moblization takes time, and thus the
Communist forces in the west have pushed east to around the 30th parallel by
mid-September (the battle for Istanbul, July 25-August 13, was an apocalyptic
struggle; the city took massive damage in house to house fighting, the Turkish
forces were utterly destroyed, and even the Greco-Bulgarian army there is still
recuperating.) and in the east have moved as far west as Elazig. 

The brief halt in the fighting through September and October isn't the respite
the Turkish government thinks it is; with uncontested control of the Aegean and
Dardanelles, hundreds of thousands of Greek and Bulgarian (mostly Greek, for
all that Dimitrov stands firmly behind the Moscow line, there are...cultural
issues at work here) troops are moving to western Anatolia and preparing a
strike against Ankara itself. In the east, Kurds, emboldened by the prospect of
a homeland, even a Red one, declare for the Soviets and soon are armed (if with
surplus gear) and ready for battle. 


With no less a personage than General I.D. Chernyakhovsky in command, a Soviet
invasion force leaves Sevastapol on October 15, 1951, a signal for pressure to
begin again in western and eastern Anatolia. Gursel deploys more and more of
his reserves to the two fronts, gambling that his nerve can outlast the Soviets
and their allies. Indeed, enough damage has been done to quell any appietite
for adventurism in Moscow for the next few years...but it's not enough to stop
this. 

When Chernyakhovsky's army lands outside Sinope on October 22, most of even the
milita has gone to the two fronts, and there's very little to stop his
subsequent race to Ankara. By the middle of December, the formal part of the
war is over. Chernyakhovsky is in Ankara, the Greek and Bulgarians are already
quarrelling over who gets what (city names are already changing back to Smyrna)
and the infant People's Republic of Kurdistan is being born. 

-On December 12, Walter Zinn finishes his safety review of the Chalk River
facility, especially the NRX and ZEEP reactors. Not at all comfortable with
what he's found, the director of Canada's nuclear weapons program orders an
upgrade of procedure and equipment. Canada's nuclear program is relatively
large and intensive, and he doesn't want a potential disaster, say an
accidental control rod removal, damaging his work. 

For all that Prime Minister Diefenbaker is delighted to have a Conservative
government in power in Great Britain again, and has moved for closer ties with
the motherland; he is less of an Anglophile than per OTL. His deep dislike of
Ernest Bevin and concerns about the unpleasant regimes the British government
is allied to through the Amsterdam Pact have not so much made him turn against
Britain, but realize that Canada will need its own shield of defense, whether
to stand shoulder to shoulder with Great Britain or go their own way. 

There is, of course, not even a whisper of Canadian-American cooperation in
matters of defense. Many Canadians blame the American-pressed-for and led
invasion of Normandy in 1943 for extending the war into 1945; many Americans
blame Canada's "lack of commitment" during the war for that same period and for
all that bloody fighting. Relations are correct, but quite cool. 

-Meanwhile, in Australia, sales of iron and coke to the Communist regime
controlling Java and southern Sumatra have profited both the new government in
Jakarta and the government of Prime Minister Herbert Vere Evatt, a small steel
industry is already forming on the eastern half of Java. The collapse of the
Indonesian state paradoxically drew Australia close to the largest and most
doctrinarie Communist successor state, Evatt has no particular problem with
Communism or anti-colonialism, but he does have a problem with violent civil
wars right off the Australian coast. 

Without Australian patronage, the other successor states, places like the
Republic of Bali, the Republic of West Malacca, and the Kalimantan states,
simply grow poorer and poorer as time goes by, virtually all are military
dictatorships by this point. The poorest of all, the Irian Jaya Confederation,
finally cannot stand the poverty anymore, and rather than simply collapse into
Boschian anarchy, they approach the Evatt government about extending the
Australian trust territory west, to encompass the entire island. 

-With the Amsterdam Pact behind high tariff barriers and the US moving away
from foriegn trade, , most of the Scandanavian countries (Sweden, Denmark, and
Norway) sign the Scandanavian Coal and Steel Pact Agreement on December 1. The
member states of the new Community agree to provide a unified market for their
coal and steel-related products, remove trade barriers relating to them, and
work on unifing their labor market. 

Finland is strongly inclined to join the Community, but the Soviet government
is a bit too worried about letting even their least-dominated state (and their
domination of Finland is weak indeed) join even an economic alliance. The only
voice in favor, perversly enough, is the head of the NKVD, Laverenti Beria. It
won't endanger security, really, and as Beria says: "We're not monsters, after
all." 

For All Time Pt. 58 
Late Winter-Early Spring, 1952

-Of all the major candidates for the Democratic nomination in 1952, only Joseph
Kennedy Jr. is in a position to exploit the Barrio Riots. While liberal on most
other issues, Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright is solid on race, and thus
is rather unlikely to successfully appeal to black and Hispanic voters; and
Illinois Senator Adlai Stevenson's ill-advised Biblical comparison of the
Chicago police department to the Assyrian outside Jerusalem have alienated him
from conservative voters, who find themselves far closer to the fifty policemen
and National Guardsmen dead in the nation-wide riots than the two hundred
civilians who met the same fate. 

The lid is back on in New York and the rest of the riot-torn cities; the city
governments involved quietly decide not to try any of the rioters who broke the
law except the most egregious. The sooner they manage to sweep the whole
situation under the rug, the better. There are, of course, no trials for police
officers or National Guardsmen suspected of improprieties. 

-A new wave of ethnic leaders have emerged from the fires of New York, Los
Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Santa Fe, and Atlanta. In New York, young
attorney Edward I. Koch has successfully won the acquittal of Leon Maurer, a
young ex-serviceman accused of assaulting two alleged rioters on the subway,
and the two have become close friends. In Philadelphia, a recent graduate of
Crozer Theological Seminary who helped administer to fire victims has turned
away from contemporary Protestant theologians and the Mahatma Ghandi, finding
solace in the apocalyptic preachings of the 19th century and a life of Michael
Collins. 

A fair portion of America's black, Hispanic, and Jewish populations have been
well-radicalized by the riots and their after-effects. Puerto Ricans have seen
the government step firmly on the neck of their homeland (and kill dozens of
people) and as firmly as it could on Puerto Ricans in the United States proper,
blacks have seen the government hastily back away from the civil rights
commitments made by the Wallace administration and then spend all their time putting out fires in Jewish neighborhoods. America's Jewish population,
especially the millions of refugees from Europe and Palestine, have seen that
if America _is_ to be the homeland where they can live free of persecution,
they'll have to buckle down and fight, as well as keep a watchful eye on the
blacks and the Hispanics. 

(There will be no cooperation between American Jewish groups and blacks on
civil rights in the ATL: William Moses Kunstler is a firebrand conservative
Republican and colleague of Ed Koch, Ralph Bunche is the troubled President of
Howard University, while a young Alabama pastor named Ralph Abernathy has
already begun blaming the deaths of so many blacks in the South on an
anti-black media controlled by "the Robert Moses' of New York.")

-The Dewey administration is, to say the least, troubled. A Congressional
Democrat on the House Judiciary Commitee introduced articles of impeachment for
treason, and while they were defeated by the Republican majority, it was
shockingly close, with several Republican defections to the cause of
impeachment. His shadow Vice-President, California Senator Earl Warren, has
unceremoniously declined to run with him in 1952. A fair number of his Cabinet
has resigned with equal vigor, the only Taft-era appointee that remains loyal
is the fiercely anti-Communist Attorney General, William Jenner. 

Dewey spends a lot of time thinking about the last man in his office to be so
unpopular (Henry Wallace) and how his struggle to hang on to the office on the
basis of principle and power wrecked his party so badly that now, seven years
later, they've barely recovered. He did the right thing, he's sure of that: the
disorder in Puerto Rico certainly proves there was _some_ sort of Nationalist
conspiracy there, martial law in the major cities was absolutely necessary, and
the injury to American industry he allegedly worked out with the British would
have existed far more in the mind of Winston Churchill than in the pocketbook
of the American consumer. 

But good luck convincing the media of that, or the public. His experiment with
realpolitk is well and truly over. 

-On Luzon, General Walton Walker's nerve has failed him, to a degree. With
thousands of his veteran troops pulled out to help keep the peace in the United
States and casualty reports reaching levels not seen since the last time the
United States was at war, Walker has stalled the American offensive between
Bayombong and Palayan. As his chief of staff William Westmoreland comments,
"It's as if someone ran him down on the road."

Westmoreland has moved into de facto command of the American forces in the
Philippines, and he has begun to reorganize for a planned offensive in the late
spring. Despite the horrific reports about civilian and even military
casualties in the US, the American offensive _has_ worked, wherever the US
forces have gone, the Hukbalahap forces have been broken in twain. Perhaps
1,000 Americans have become casualties, dead or wounded, while several thousand
Filipines are dead, and tens of thousands displaced into resettlement areas. 

-In Venezuela, Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Delgado Chalbaud has successfully
supplated his theoretical colleague in the military junta, Major Marcos Pérez
Jiménez. Rather than simply kill his rival, he has given him command of the
military post around San Carlos de Rio Negro, in the isolated and remote
province of Amazonas. Even if Jiménez does rebel, there's nowhere for him to
go. 

Venezuela is in better shape than most of South America; the oil boom has
happened, and Delgado has spent more of the subsequent revenues on Venezuela as
opposed to himself than OTL's government. Too, the influx of half a million and
more Jewish refugees from Europe has helped him greatly; he has successfully
presented himself as champion of the victims of Communist and Nazi oppression
as well as woo the armed forces with carefully private, guarded talks of a
South America free of European imperialism. 

Anti-Europeanism is popular in South America in the early 1950s. Thanks to
ham-handed diplomacy by the Wallace administration and pressure from local
fascists, no South American or Latin American nation declared war on Germany or
Japan during World War II, though Brazil and Mexico came very close. With no
post-war US Lend-Lease and with a reputation as quasi-fascists, South America
is poorer and less reputable around the world. 

The Taft administration followed a policy far less agressive than his father's,
though, and the Western Hemisphere has slowly become more integrated in the
past few years. 

For All Time Pt. 59 
April 1952

-By April of 1952, Galeazzo Ciano is in trouble. A surprisingly _non_-Communist
rebellion on Sicily has at least partially deprived him of control of that
large island, leaving him only Sardinia and Italy south of a line roughly
bisecting the province of Abruzzi. Rome fell to his great personal shame on
March 4, 1952; though he had personally directed the defense of the city, his
escape to Naples earned him the name of coward among the Communists in the
North and even, to a lesser degree, his own side. Pius XII's rather hasty state
visit to Spain in late February has been extended indefinitely. 

The Social Republic of Italy, unlike his own side, controls a reasonably
substantial amount of industry in the cities to the north, and what they can't
make can be supplied directly from Austria or Yugoslavia by land. Ciano's south
is industry-poor, and British and French shipments come slowly, and are usually
of equipment that's just not that good. 

(Both the United Kingdom and France have dispatched volunteer fighters to fight
alongside Ciano's forces, while the lessons they learn about Mig-15s won't help
out the Italians much, they're being hurriedly applied to the next generation
of Amsterdam Pact jet fighters. There has been, of course, no Coment jet liner
in this TL, nor will there be for a long time.)

-On April 3, the governments of Bulgaria, Greece, Iran, and the Soviet Union
announce the new borders in Asia Minor. Joining them in their "Smyrna
Declaration" are two new nations on the map; the People's Republic of Kurdistan
and the Democratic United People's Republic of Anatolia. (The Turkish army
major found to run the new state is...strange.)

Bulgaria and Greece recieve all lands in the former Turkey save Constantinople
west to the 30th (east) parallel and north of the 39th (north)  for Bulgaria,
with the southern territories to Greece. Greeks or their offspring displaced in
the wars of the early 1920s will be entitled to take back all that they lost
back then, while Bulgaria is free to expel her own Turkish population. (Though
many, many of those refugees came from territories still not Greek. It is here
that Athens quietly falls in line with Belgrade over Moscow.) 

Both Iran and Turkey cede land to form the new Democratic Republic of
Kurdistan, Iran is compensated with a corridor stretching to the Syrian border.
The Soviet Union annexes everything else east of the 39th (east) parallel, as
well as the city of Constantinople and enough territory around it and down the
Aegean coast to ensure access to the Mediterrean whenever they please. 

The remainder is the new, Communist 'DUPRA.", with about as cheerful social
policies as you might expect, given the circumstances. 

-As part of political manueverings with Southern Democrats (who are very
nervous at nominating a very young, pretty well Catholic northerner), Joseph
Kennedy Jr. quietly pledges not to support a civil rights bill in his
administration, as well as to take a Southerner as his running mate. 

Kennedy feels about as bound by this pledge as any a slightly amoral politician
 makes, but it does reflect something like his real views. While he is
sympathetic to the idea of blacks recieving equitable treatment from the
government in terms of, say, voting rights, he has his father's views on the
sanctity of businessmen to do as they please. (Indeed, he also plans to cut
surviving Wallace-era regulations on industry, while satisfying labor with
other amenities.) 

As for running mates, well, a moderately conservative northern, eastern
politician will need a moderately liberal southerner for his running mate, and
he has just the wheeler-dealer in mind for the job. If he can get Stevenson,
that is. 

-On April 30, 1952, to his own apparant great surprise (despite a series of
swiftly-covered up strokes since the new year.) Joseph Stalin looks at his
private secretary in befuddlement before falling over dead. 

For All Time Pt. 60 
May-August 1952

-He wasn't the most prominent of Soviet leaders before, during, or after World
War II; most Western governments treated his accession to power with a great
deal of surprise. The leaders of the Soviet Union were, after all, survivors of
Stalin's purges and of the Great Patriotic War. Surely they wouldn't balk at
shedding blood to grab power, even to launch a kind of dynastic war between the
various factions? 

Western consensus ignored, of course, that these men _were_ survivors of Stalin
and the War. They'd seen friends die for no reason in petty struggles, seen
their nation struck hammerblow after hammerblow by one madman's struggle for
power. Even the month and a half of dynastic struggle after Stalin died killed
nearly 10,000 Russians, mostly high-ranking officials. It was small change, of
course...but it foretold a future they didn't like, indeed, even feared. If any
man could prevent more struggle _and_ not kill lots of the Party hierarchy in
paranoid fits, well, they'd unite behind him. 

There could be no candidates for leadership from the Red Army, though there
were many generals who wished they could. The assassination of Georgi Zhukov
and Ivan Koniev during the May Day entombment of Joseph Stalin by "Ukrainian
fascist-nationalists" took the heart out the Red Army, and while no one quite
dared doubt Rodin Malinovsky's skill and bravery, he was a loose cannon, to say
the least. It was he, after all., who personally executed Nikita Krushchev
after the surviving assassin (under NKVD interrogation) named the Ukrainian
party boss as the leader of the anti-Army conspiracy. No one wanted a madman at
the head of the nation, again. 

The NKVD forming the government meant, of course, Laverenti Pavolovich Beria as
the leader of the Soviet Union...an unpopular idea at best. Future historians
will conclude that luring Malinovsky into assassinating Krushchev was a plan to
eliminate two feared rivals at once (and that he himself had been behind the
assassinations of Zhukov and Koniev.), but whatever the rest of his plans were,
he forgot some factor, because on May 26, 1952 sometime around 3 AM, a month
after the death of Joseph Stalin, a speeding freight truck crossed two lanes to
strike his armored limousine at over 100 MPH. Beria and his driver Rapava were
killed instantly. While Pavel Sudoplatov would prove to be an effective head of
the secret police, he hadn't the caliber to run the country in 1952. 

It came down to the Party bureaucrats: Molotov and Bulganin managed to tear
each other down to ambassador to the Japanese People's Republic and head of a
fairly large coal power plant near Lake Baikal, respectively, while Malenkov
was mostly colorless, and his few colors seemed to be in the NKVD shade. MI
Kalinin is, of course, dead. 

And so it is that Lazar Kaganovich becomes leader of the Soviet Union on August
15, 1952. Malenkov theoretically heads the Party, but with Beria dead, he knows
which way to jump, and Malinovsky will obey the orders of his superior. Perhaps
for the first time in its history, a Russian government _stops_ a persecution
of its Jewish citizens. For all that he has long abandoned the faith,
Kaganovich can't kill his fellow Jews. He can oppress and kill Kazakhs, though,
and begins to do exactly that. 

((In OTL he's remembered as another faceless Stalinist bureaucrat, but Lazar
Kaganovich was an interesting figure to say the least. He actually rose to
power out of Turkestan, but was head of the Moscow party organization between
1930-35, and ran collectivization with a great deal of enthusiasm. A strong
opponent of Kirov's reforms, he and Molotov were comrades and coworkers in
Stalin's Politburo after the purges, which he also was enthuastic about. He ran
much of Soviet industry before and during World War II, especially oil-related
matters. He opposed de-Stalinization and fell from power after Krushchev became
leader of the Soviet Union. 

He was one of the few Jews that Stalin didn't target during his anti-Semitic
purges. Here's his Brittanica bio:

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?idxref=2765  He's second from the left here:
http://www.ucr.edu/history/seaman/images/nib26.jpg  In OTL, he lived until 1991. ))

-In an occasion with less death but just as much violence and turmoil, Joseph
Kennedy Jr. is nominated for President by the Democratic party on August 1,
1952. At 37, he is the youngest Presidential candidate nominated by a major
party since William Jennings Bryan, and the second youngest in history. To the
great surprise of the supporters of Adlai Stevenson, Southern Democrats proved
one of his strongest supporters, though the surprise soon faded into political
unsurprise when Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson is nominated by a majority nearly
equal to Joseph Kennedy Jr.'s. JPK pledges protection of American industries,
peace with honor on Luzon, and a final settlement in Puerto Rico, together with
a policy of "Fortress America."

Far more violent than _that_, though, is the Republican National Convention
from July 7-17. President Dewey has decided to seek a full term in his own
right, but only a divided opposition keeps him from failing. Earl Warren,
Gerald Nye, and Henry Cabot Lodge all go up against him, but their failure to
unite ensures Dewey's narrow renomination, with Secretary of State John Bricker
as his runningmate. Dewey pledges victory in Luzon and a confrontation with
Communism abroad. 

-On August 13, 1952, George S. Patton dies quietly in his sleep in Paris. While
reasonably saddened at the death of his wartime comrade and close friend,
Francois Darlan is glad of the oppurtunity it offers. Darlan is 71 and his
health is in a very gradual decline from what he will discover in a few years
is intestinal cancer. Too, the events in the Soviet Union have convinced him
that he needs to find a successor now, before his death. 

Darlan names General Raoul Salan as Patton's replacement in Paris. He likes
what Salan has done in Algeria, he has a high body count among the enemy, a
sign of nerve, and has proven successful in his goals, a sign of a good
commander. Both Salan and his colleague in French West Africa have proven more
successful than their counterparts in Indochina, they've kept the provinces in
French hands, and a majority of the casualties have been among the natives. 

For All Time Pt. 61 
September-December 1952

-History will give credit for the Jerusalem League to Gamel Abdel Nasser, and
the man himself will do the same. "The man who mastered Egypt has mastered the
world!" cry a few government-sponsored authors and poets on October 31 when the
treaty is signed, ignoring the fact that Nasser hasn't _quite_ mastered Egypt,
and the world extends beyond the Arab Islamic Middle East. 

Despite a powerful, powerful urge to drive his collaborationist self from
Cairo, Egypt, and even the world, Nasser has been unable to overthrow King
Farouk II. With the king's popularity high indeed after the Egyptian "victory"
in the Palestine War, and with the grim lessons of Iran and Turkey (military
coups that led to Communist takeovers) in mind, he has been unable to muster
enough support to actually drive the monarch from the nation. 

Still, if he is not the Egyptian Darlan, he is at least its Ciano; Farouk has
been stripped of all real authority, and he knows _very_ well how soon the
monarchy will suffer an "unfortunate accident" if ever he attempts to exercise
even his de jure powers. When Nasser speaks, he, and Egypt, listen. And now,
for the moment at least, when he speaks, the world listens. 

Even when fighting each other, the Arab states of the Middle East had been
watching the north and east with growing concern. The tales told by Iranian
refugees who settled in Iraq and points west after the Soviet conquest of Iran
were disturbing, the tales told by those who fled the four-way conquest of
Turkey were gruesome...and those fleeing Kaganovich's purges are worst yet. 

Thus it is in an atmosphere of general concern that Nasser and his fellow heads
of government gather in Jerusalem on October 1 to discuss "the future and the
protection of the region." Present are representatives from Iraq, Egypt,
Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, and a  lone observer from Lebanon. All agree
on the need for a mutual defense pact, but none agree at first on just who the
pact is needed against! After all, most of the represented countries are only
five years from a brutal war with each other. Too, the French in Algeria are
committing just as many outrages against fellow Muslims, and there is a
nativist suspicion of the foriegn Farsi-speaker and the Turk. 

It is the ailing Haj Amin al-Husseini who gives Nasser his most famous line
from the conference: "First they came for the Iranians, and I said nothing for
I was an Arab. Then they came for the Turks, and I said nothing for I was an
Arab. Then they came for the Arabs, and there was no one to speak for me." 
Playing on fears of Communist takeovers and ignoring his own earlier sympathies
with the Soviets, Nasser manages to batter together the delegates into an
approximation of a treaty. 

The Jerusalem League pledges mutual defense against any invading power (they
are _almost_ as anti-Western European as they are anti-Communist)...but that's
just about it. There is no suggestion of a common market, especially not for
oil, not with the profit that makes for the individual countries. Coup d'etats
are roudly condemned (signed either by monarchs who look _very_ nervously at
their army these days, or by military leaders who don't have an urge to be
replaced.) Finally, they pledge a shared policy against "suspicious
populations." Which means, of course, the Jews.

-In the United States...it's far, far closer than most people expected. Joseph
Kennedy's youth and Catholicism does hurt him badly; he does worse than McNutt
in rural areas  of the Border States and California, and the usual Democratic
victories in the Deep South are merely landslides as opposed to
Stalinist-esque. Against anyone other than a deeply unpopular incumbent,
especially in a time of relative economic good times, JPK Jr. might have been
far less successful. 

Still, he delivered New England, Lyndon Johnson delivered Texas, and when
California swung his way in the early morning hours of November 9, it delivered
him the Presidency. Both he and Dewey called each other traitors; Dewey was
allegedly a sellout to the British and Kennedy a sellout to the Communists, but
Kennedy's promises of peace with honor in Luzon play well to the families of
soldiers fighting abroad, and the major cities _really_ liked his planned
programs to reduce urban violence. 

(Even without the Barrio Riots of 1951, urban violence in the United States has
been higher than per OTL. With the economy worse off and the racial situation
more chaotic, poverty and violence have come together time and again to foment
crime and general chaos all over the urban United States.)

Old prosecutor that he is, Thomas Dewey fights hard outside of political
rhetoric as well. He orders Edward Almond, the new C-in-C in Luzon to resume
Operation COPPER, but overt military successes come too rarely or too quietly
to influence public opinion or the election. At the dedication of the finished
Liberty Island on September 19, he gives perhaps the greatest speech of his
career on what it really meant to be President; the kind of hard choices it
required. Finally, as Election Eve dawns with him well behind in the polls, he
promised a referendum in Puerto Rico on independance by 1955...only to have
Kennedy promise it by the end of 1953. Lester Maddox's acquittal by an
all-white Georgia court martial manages to help exactly not at all.

In contrast to the relatively narrow victory of the new President, the
Democratic Party sweeps the country, mostly by associating Republicans with
Dewey or the war in the Philipines, or with the promise of future wars to come.
William Proxmire is Senator from Wisconsin; Clark Gable is Mayor of Los
Angeles, and Wayne Morse's re-election seems to have been mostly dependent on
his party switch. (Though that switch was ideological rather than political.) 

One Republican who emerges as an unabashed victor is California Congressman
Ronald Reagan. His televised debates with his challenger, fellow actor Anthony
Quinn, saw him battle with and carefully demolish the Democrat, and while Quinn
rebounded and came within a few hundred votes of victory, the state and the
Republican Party remembers Reagan's masterful performance. Reagan, meanwhile,
remembers how well playing up Quinn's Mexican ancestry played in the less
likeable parts of his district...

For All Time Pt. 62 
January-April 1953

-Joseph Kennedy Jr. dives into the Presidency the same way he plunged into
combat during World War II. In his inaugural address, he uses the magic words:
"Third New Deal," and calls for sweeping changes in policy foriegn and
domestic. The Third New Deal doesn't resemble the First and Second very much,
but the name is magic to Democrats in Congress and the nation, all of whom
remember the prosperity, at least, that they had under Roosevelt and Wallace. 

Playing on his youthful image, the new President appoints a 34-year old
professor from Yale University, James Tobin, as his Treasury Secretary, and his
Presidential Science Advisor, Theodore Hall, is in his mid-twenties. (With
American intelligence underfunded in the Wallace and Taft administrations, the
Venona Telegrams were never intercepted. Hall likes Kennedy, but doesn't quite
trust him with high technology. Government funding for Big Science, already
low, will be pared to the bone.) 

Continuing his campaign promises of bipartisan cooperation, Kennedy names
former Wisconson Senator Robert LaFollette Jr. as his Secretary of State, and,
rather shockingly, does away with the Departments of War and Navy in swiftly
passed legislation. Heading the new combined "Department of Defense" is
isolationist former Republican Wayne Morse. (With all of the United States'
theoretical allies morally disreputable or with the United States doing
disreputable things, many liberals are isolationist.) Most badly hurt is the
Navy; Kennedy agrees to finish the Forrestal-class aircraft carriers now under
construction, but no more will be built after 1955. 

Before the hundred days are up, Morse has supervised the sale of American bases
in Westphalia and South Japan to their respective governments, leaving the
naval/marine bases in Yokohama and Hamburg as the only American military
installations, save for Subic Bay, outside of the Western Hemisphere. In the
Philippines themselves, Kennedy orders Edward Almond to pull back to the
nearest major civilian concentration and go on the defensive; when Almond
refuses, JPK names General William Westmoreland as his replacement. 

In Puerto Rico, Kennedy sends his old rival Adlai Stevenson to organize a
plebiscite on the status of the Commonwealth. (Although that option will not be
offered, only statehood or independance will be on the ballot in July. Kennedy
and the country have had enough of the guerilla war. "Either we clutch our
brothers to our bosom," he says, "or we bid farewell as they make their own
house.") 

-In Cleveland, Bill Veeck is a thoroughly content man. The Indians didn't beat
the Yankees in the '52 Eastern pennant race...but they came _darn_ close,
especially since the Yankees turned out to be the Series winners that year.
Willie Mays went through hell, sure, but he got through it with a smile and a
home run, and with the barrier broken, it'll be better for the next generation
of black ballplayers. 

With his eye still on the Negro Leagues and their all-stars (He will sign Roy
Campanella as a player and James "Cool Papa Bell" as a coach/manager for the
new season, though he will narrowly lose a young man named Hank Aaron to
Rickey's Brooklyn Dodgers.), Veeck starts looking at a map of the world. In
talking with players who served overseas during the last war, he found out just
how big baseball is in Japan. And with the Japanese economy slowly circling the
drain, the ballplayers can't be making much...

While Wally Yonamine isn't techically Japanese (his parents were, but he was
born an American citizen in Hawaii), he is the first of his kind in modern
times as well. 

-On March 1, 1953, Pius XII steps off the runway at Lisbon, blinking into the
sun of his (hopefully temporary) Portuguese home. The head of the Catholic
Church is leery indeed about staying on in a Communist state; things were bad
enough before Mussolini and his predecessor worked out the Vatican...what might
matters be like in a _Communist_ country? 

France has too many Protestants and has a bad history with Church splits,
Franco is a bit too much even for his tastes, while the Americas are too far
away and Ireland too unstable. Austria is, of course, far too Red...

-With the Muslims safely quiet, dead, or out of the country, Lazar Kaganovich
is beginning his initial programs of reform. Well, they're mostly reforms.
Kaganovich helped collective Moscow farms and was a player in the purges of the
1930s, and while he's not about to be doing _that_ sort of thing anytime soon,
he's far more Stalinist than the people who ran the Soviet Union in OTL in this
era. 

He frees a substantial number of former Soviet soldiers in gulag camps in
Siberia (including Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn), allowing them a few weeks
home with their families before drafting them again and sending them to
isolated posts along the Sino-Soviet border or in the most dangerous regions of
the newly-conquered Middle Eastern territories.  It is quiet, and the soldiers
have a chance to visit their Chinese counterparts. Kaganovich also frees almost
every German POW whose families live in the DVR, including abortive Fuhrer
Heinz Guderian. 

-Fittingly, the final days of the Italian Civil War strongly resemble some
great opera with its mix of triumph and tragedy at once, for all the sides in
the suddenly three-cornered war. Alcide De Gasperi (liberated by Christian
Democrat troops after the fall of Rome) has been slowly realizing what a horse
he has hooked his wagon to in Pietro Togliatti, and what a Communist-dominated
Italy will _really_ mean. 

Unfortuately, he and his right-hand man General Ferrucio Parri haven't quite
the resources to take on the Communists; they could wage a guerilla war like no
other, but neither have any urge to wind up deep in a jail, or dead. The rising
in Sicily is more Christian Democratic than anything else, and the leaders
there have already offered him the Presidency. If he can get there, that is. 

The Communist breakthrough in Campaigna in late March gives him the chance he
needs. The armored and aerial portions of the Social Republic's army are the
elite troops of the Communists, and as they race south for the Ionian Sea, the
northern countryside becomes just unguarded enough for De Gasperi and his
quietly-assembled army to leap south! They charge their way to Latina, where
the fraction of the fraction of the Italian Navy loyal to Gasperi instead of
Ciano or Toghliatti sets steam for Sicily with them on board, even as Galeazzo
Ciano's reasonably large and modernish navy begins quickly escorted convoys to
Cagliari, one of the largest ports on Sardinia. 

By the end of April, before they've even finished wiping out the Fascist
partisans, the Togliatti government turns its attention to Sicily. Before they
kill the fascists, they have to kill the traitor. (Plus, the Italian Red Navy
is small enough that any attempt at the rapidly fortifying Sardinia will be a
dreadful failure.) 

But Winston Churchill isn't about to let that happen. No indeed. 

For All Time Pt. 63 
May 1953

-Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his de facto partner in government,
Foriegn Minister Anthony Eden, have been aiming for a confrontation with the
Soviets in Europe for quite some time. This is not unreasonable of them; the
losing war in Burma and the winning war in East Africa aren't very popular with
the British public. The economy is badly off (more so than OTL), and the
government is spending substantially more on defense. Victories and defeats in
distant lands blend together in the mind of John Q. Briton; all they notice are
the body counts. 

A confrontation in Europe, on the other hand, will give them the political
satisfaction and success of staring down the Communists, proving to Aneurin
Bevan's Labour Party that yes, all that money going to defense and patrolling
the Mediterrean and South Pacific with the French is a good idea! There is the
admitted risk of nuclear conflict if Kaganovich doesn't blink, but neither
Churchill nor Eden is at their best. Too, nuclear weapons are far less feared
than in OTL's 1953; it took three nuclear bombs to take down Germany and Japan
each, after all. 

It's still a worry, though, so Churchill-Eden make sure when they do take a
stand against the Communists; it's not the Soviet Communists, but instead their
Italian allies, and over an issue that will ensure moral support, standing up
for a non-Fascist government, namely, De Gasperi's infant state in Sicily.
They've got a reasonable amount of forces based in the Mediterrean as well; the
HERMES carrier battlegroup stationed at Cyprus is actually the largest British
naval presence in Europe outside of the United Kingdom itself. There is, of
course, France, but Darlan has always backed their anti-Communist moves before.


On May 1, as Pietro Toghliatti's Esercito Italiano Di Liberazione begins
organizing an amphibious invasion of Sicily in and around Reggio de Calabria at
the very tip of Italy's boot, Winston Churchill addresses the nation live by
radio and even television (though few British have a television). It is  a rare
occurance these days. Looking fully in the pink for perhaps the last time in
his long, multi-colored life, Churchill boldly condemns the Communist planned
attack on the "peaceful and democratic people of Sicily", and announces that
the Republic of Sicily is a protectorate of the Amsterdam Pact. "Any aggressive
move by the Communist forces in possession of the mainland of Italy shall be
met with the full thrust of our might." 

Even as he speaks, the HERMES and her escorts steam out of Kyrenia harbor,
bound for the Straits of Messina. (There are, of course, nuclear weapons
aboard, as there are on every British and French aircraft carrier.) There's not
much of a ground force component, but the RN ships outclass their Italian
counterparts enough they don't actually need one. Too, the Red Italian Air
Force, while skilled, has no training in attacks on ships, and will be facing
planes that match theirs. 

-Problems begin almost immediatly, though, from an unexpected source. Francois
Darlan doesn't _care_ about the "italiens de puer de pensée-garçon." He
remembers how "well" they fought in World War I, how quick Mussolini was to
stab France in the back when she was falling to the Germans...and he likes the
idea of just letting them hang. 

At least, those are his public statements. While he has become rather erratic
as he moves further into his 70s, he's not so foolish as to let his prejudices
run his politics _that_ much. Still, it never hurts to let your enemies think
you're rather insane, underestimation is alwas a good idea. Especially when
admitting to the truth is virtually impossible, both in the character of
Francois Darlan and in the political survival of his regime. 
France can't fight any stand-up wars right now. Darlan's Peronist policies of
purified schools and courts, redistributed revenue, and strong favoritism of
industry over agriculture, labor over farmers, has succeeded in preventing a
Communist takeover and ensuring the average Frenchman is reasonably loyal to
Francois Darlan and his "Tricolor Alliance." 

But as the export market dries up along with the stock of looted German goods,
the economy dries up too, and relatively quickly. France is richer than the
Palatine, richer than Westphalia...the wealthiest state in Western Europe save
the United Kingdom, as a matter of fact. But they're well below the UK, and
falling where most of Europe is in either an irritable mutter of stagnation or
a very, very slow rise. France _does_ have a large, modern military, but it's
busy in Africa and other colonial wars. 

On May 2, Darlan declares moral support for de Gasperi, but says France is
neutral in the Italian Civil War, now and forever, and, rather irritably,
condemns unilateral action on Britain's part in speaking for the Amsterdam
Pact. As they have since joining the Pact, the Dutch follow the British line,
while the Belgians and Luxembourgouis break for the French. Spain and Portugal
sensibly sit on their hands, they both like Ciano better. A hastily-convened
conference of the Pact in Amsterdam produces no results in the first few days,
and while they don't take _negative_ action, the lack of AP support amply
demonstrates that Churchill is acting alone. Being Churchill, of course, he
presses on. 

-Meanwhile, Lazar Kaganovich has been sitting back and watching carefully. He
isn't as rash as Nikita Kruschev, isn't about to make any hasty declarations or
move nuclear weapons south for no reason. This is a man who survived close
proximity to Joseph Stalin for decades, after all. He will wait and see what
the British do, and Toghliatti will do what he says, unless he likes the idea
of losing out to Nenni or one of the other Communist leaders. In many ways,
he's just as paranoid 

By May 7, though, it's obvious that Britain is acting alone (Kennedy is, of
course, neutral, while the Ciano government in Sardinia cordially despises both
the Communists and the Christian Democrats), and now _he_ has the chance to
slap down the British. He's not exactly an observant Jew, what with the
Stalinism and all, but the Bevin government's treatment of Palestine has made
the British his least favorite class enemies. Also, agents in the British
government have informed him of Churchill's disposition, and he's reasonably
confident that his will is stronger than a half-senile elderly man and a speed
addict.

In a series of speeches to Party officials in Moscow and Leningrad, Kaganovich
condemns "Imperialist interference in a matter of social struggle" and declares
that the Soviet Union will back the Social Republic of Italy in the restoration
of her "proper borders." (As he has no interest in promoting an actual war, not
yet, the old collectivizer sends a vehement personal message to Toghliatti,
informing of the consequences if so much as a fishing vessel sails from
Calabria to Sicily.) 

To bolster the sabre he's rattling at the British, he dispatches one of the
Soviet Union's newer aircraft carriers (there aren't that many) and its escorts
from port at the Soviet naval base in Constantinople. Like most Soviet carriers
of the day, the Pavelov is a big ol' target for a good submariner, but it, and
its escorts, have nuclear weapons on board, including a large, bulky hydrogen
bomb that can just be launched by carrier aircraft on the Pavelov. The Soviets
have had thermonuclear weapons since just after Kaganovich came to power, but
he hasn't been broadcasting that sort of thing. 

-Matters are grim as the Soviet fleet slowly approaches the British, which has
now taken station up in the Straits of Messina, between Italy and Sicily.
However, they don't turn really dangerous, not yet, until the night of May
13-14, 1953. 

The Red Italian cruiser TOSCANO OPERAIO isn't very good; a pre-World War II
vessel, it spent five years quietly rusting in harbor in the north of Italy
before defecting to the anti-Fascists. The steering is balky, navigation is
unnerving, if it wasn't for the crew, one of the few veteran bodies to defect
en masse, as well as the urgent need to have every ship in the south to 
support either an invasion or defend against the British, it'd probably still
be back in the north. 

On the night of the 13th, she's on picket duty off  Calabria. The night is
dark, the storm is bad, and the seas are rough. A junior navigator is on duty,
and the third-in-command has the watch. Based on evidence from the ship's log
and from British accounts, apparantly the TO began taking turns too wide, and
began to slowly drift towards the British fleet around midnight. 

Where a squadron of light patrol boats were, as light patrol boats do, pushing
the limits of _their_ patrol area as well. Slowly, the rattletrap old cruiser
and the four small ships drift closer and closer, both totally unaware of the
other, engine noise lost in the howl of the storm. Until at just before 2 AM on
the morning of the 14th, the TOSCANO OPERAIO strikes its most accurate shot
ever. It rams a British patrol boat and neatly slices the smaller vessel in
half, just as the PB squeezes off a volley of machine gun fire. 

Instantly realizing what's happened, the young lieutenant on the bridge orders
hard about and steam for home at flank speed; just as the British patrol boats,
not unreasonably thinking they're under attack, open up with their deck guns.
Gunnery crews return fire; they're trained to fire back immediatly when fired
upon, but a combination of inexperience, the wild zigzag maneuevers of the four
vessels, and the rough seas mean all they do is make a big light show. The
captain of the TOSCANO has come to the bridge by now, and with him at the helm,
the big ship barely manages to make its escape (the patrol boats are more
interested in saving the crew of the fourth ship in the water, and they know
they can't take a cruiser, not with help an hour away.). Eight British sailors
are dead, and one Italian. 

-Instantly, the world is on the brink. Churchill threatens war and orders the
HERMES to arm their nuclear arsenal, while at the same time sending troops
bound for East Africa to the Mediterreanean. Toghliatti dares Churchill to do
his worst and begins final preperations for an invasion, while an angry, angry
Lazar Kaganovich reluctantly backs his ally, accelerating the Soviet task
force's journey to Messina. Seriously angry at his erstwhile ally, Francois
Darlan mobilizies the French nuclear strike force and sends troops into the
Palatine, putting them right on the border with the Soviet Union. (Reinhard
Gehlen, who recently postponed elections until 1956, proclaims Westphalian
neutrality.) 

By May 20, the two fleets are only fifty miles apart. Even Joseph Kennedy Jr.
has been motivated to call on the Amsterdam Pact and the Soviet Bloc to "keep
the fragile peace in Europe, lest we fall into the cauldron of war in this new
decade", ignoring that most of Europe fell into the cauldron of war in the
decade _before_ last, actually. On the 20th, Winston Churchill summons
Parliment into a special session, promising an extraordinary announcement. He
has just strode to the podium when he turns bright red, stares at the assembled
Members for a moment, and collapses. 

Anthony Eden is the first at his side, the first to take the crumpled sheet of
paper from his hand, and the one to close his eyes. He strides up to the podium
as the crowd realizes that Winston Churchill, the Lion personified, is dead,
and here is his likely successor. Eden holds the paper high. "It is a call for
peace!" 

-By the end of the month, Lazar Kaganovich has his old colleague Molotov back
as Foriegn Minister, Anthony Eden is Prime Minister of Great Britain, and the
new Nenni government has pledged not to attack Sicily, though there will be no
diplomatic recognition of the de Gasperi government, or Ciano's, for that
matter. 

For All Time Pt. 64 
June-September 1953

-On June 9, 1953, Prime Minister John George Diefenbaker, Defense Minister
Dalton Camp, Walter Zinn, and General Henry Crerar are among the crowd of
Canadian dignitaries gathered aboard the Canadian destroyer Isacc Brock,
currently in the Foxe Basin between Baffin Island and the Melville Peninsula on
the mainland of Labrador. 

Just before noon, they witness Canada's entry into the nuclear age when the
fission bomb "CA-1" detonates on nearby Prince Charles Island. Three years in
the making, the bomb detonates with the force of thirty thousand tons of TNT.
Canada doesn't have much of a delivery system for the bomb, but B-36s built
under license just after WWII, taking off from various parts of Canada (the
Yukon, Newfoundland, and Ontario) can carry nuclear weapons to any potential
enemies, so Diefenbaker is content. 

CA-1 is a propaganda coup for his government; Canada's economy isn't very
strong, and the main accomplishments of Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservatives
have been the adoption of a new national flag and the emancipation (on a
federal level) of Native Canadians. But the newly-named "Atomic Prime Minister"
has a monument much like him, big and noisy and impressive, and he begins a new
series of programs, including construction of nuclear power plants to replace
coal. (Regrettably, like many of Diefenbakers' OTL ideas, he hasn't entirely
thought the matter through.)

-President Kennedy congratulates Canada on their technological achievement, but
quietly has the American radar bases in North Dakota, Alaska, and New England
cast a slightly suspicious electronic eye on the Great White North. Canada is
the first nuclear power that the United States shares a hemisphere with, and
even the basic good relations between the two can't overcome Joe Kennedy Jr's
suspicions, especially given Diefenbaker's unabashed Anglophilia.
(Diefenbaker's rhetoric during the Sicilian Crisis even outmatched
Churchill's.) 

Kennedy privately urges Treasury Secretary Tobin and Commerce Secretary Daley
to direct American foreign trade away from Canada; as much as can be done
without actually hurting the US, at least, given the tight interconnectedness
of the two nation's economies. If Diefenbaker wants nuclear weapons and likes
the UK better than the US, fine, that's what he'll get. Kennedy also
accelerates the development of federally funded power plants in the Northeast,
in a plan to lower American dependence on Canadian electrical power.

-In July, Chaing Kai-Shek barely survives an assasination attempt, losing the
sight in his right eye. Taiwan is not at all a pleasant place in the early
1950s. More paranoid after being "betrayed" by the Americans and losing more
badly to the Communists, his crackdown and purging of local Taiwanese
intellectuals in 1949 was more severe than in OTL, beginning a vicious cycle of
repression that has made Taiwan a frightening place indeed for a non-Kuomintag
member. 

Not that matters are perfect for them, either. With American foriegn aid at
very low levels and military help nearly non-existent, Taiwanese society is
very heavily militarized (mandatory draft and service for all males between
18-45) and quite poor. America's small but powerful "Taiwan Lobby", mostly made
up of servicemen who served in Formosa during and after the American invasion,
has ensured there will be no increase in American aid until the government
lowers the level of repression, and even for foriegn aid, _that's_ not going to
happen anytime soon. 

-Meanwhile, fighting in the Philippines has somewhat stabilized by the end of
summer, somewhat to the worry of the Thorez-led Hukabalahap. The American
military has switched to, and been successful at, driving the guerillas out of
the major cities and away from pro-goverment populations on the coast. There's
been a paucity of American raids into the Huk-controlled sectors as well, now
that the Huk are surrounded by a largely friendly population. 

Even American air raids have largely come to a halt; the most common American
airplanes flying overhead these days in central Luzon are high-level
reconnaissance aircraft taking pictures. By September, the Communist-controlled
areas of Luzon are perhaps the best-photographed areas in the world. There's a
reason for this, of course, but no one in the area knows it just yet. 

(The isolated Huk presence on other, smaller islands has been well-stamped out
by the United States Marine Corps, one of the few unqualified successes of
Operation COPPER.. One veteran of those engagements, Lieutenant Daniel Taylor,
while giving the commencement address to the class of 1954 at his old Dallas
high school, will inspire a young honor student named Lee Harvey Oswald to join
the Marine Corps.) 

-Lazar Kaganovich is a busy man in September of 1953, what with carefully
organizing a plan to ensure tight Soviet control of her satillite states in
Eastern Europe, condemning the "cult of the intellectual" surrounding Karl
Marx, and arranging for a strong Soviet military presence in the JPR. Still, he
always has time to meet with a representative of the other big country with
nuclear weapons; especially old Burton Kendall Wheeler, the American
ambassador, with a personal message from President Joseph Kennedy Jr. 

It's not a message, though; merely a question and comment. How would the Soviet
Union react if the United States used nuclear weapons in its ongoing conflict
in the Pacific? The Ambassador makes it clear that Kennedy is not asking for
permission, he merely wants to warn Kaganovich ahead of time. As he does for
every major question, Kaganovich asks for time to think matters over, and
promises to call Wheeler back in a week or two. 

He has a lot to think about. The most obvious problem, coming so soon after the
apparant Soviet victory in the Sicilian Crisis (both the Amsterdam Pact and the
USSR claimed victory), is loss of face. The American defeat of a Communist
insurgency might make other insurgencies in East Asia, specifically Burma, lose
heart. However, neither the Huk nor the Burmese Communists are Soviet-backed;
the Filipino Communists are very home-grown and supported, and whatever limited
Soviet aid they got ended with the American blockade. 

Only Mao Tse-Tung knows it was Joseph Stalin and now himself who urged the
Chinese government to intervene on behalf of the Indochinese and to supply such
massive aid to the Burmese and Indonesians, and Mao isn't talking. Too, the
Americans and Amsterdam Pact are well-seperated in the minds of even the most
ignorant partisan, an American victory over her local Communists won't suggest
an Amsterdam Pact victory over Soviet or Chinese-backed Communists. 

Another obvious problem is, of course, that the Americans might inspire the
Amsterdam Pact to use weapons of a similar nature in Burma or East Africa. It
doesn't seem as if they will, though. Darlan's attention is on French colonial
wars in Africa, where the insurgents are nationalist rather than Communist.
(They are _very_ not-Communist in Algeria, in fact.) As for the United Kingdom,
the Sicilian Crisis has not left Kaganovich with a great respect for the
willpower of Anthony Eden. Even if Eden can work up the nerve, he has his
opposition to worry about. 

The main risk, then, is an abstract one, a mode of thinking the old
industrialist isn't used to using. Even if the Amsterdam Pact doesn't pick up
on the use of nuclear weapons right away, Kaganovich himself will certainly use
nuclear weapons if, say, Rokovossosky in Poland or Tito in Yugoslavia get too
uppity. And that road is reasonably likely to lead to some sort of nuclear
exchange at some point. Still, the USSR has lots more nuclear weapons than
their primary enemy at the moment, the Amsterdam Pact. 

In fact, Soviet-American cooperation on this issue might lead to more. While a
formal alliance, or even particularly good relations between the heart of
industrial capitalism and the world's most powerful Communist state is almost
certainly not going to happen, if sufficient detente is achieved by the time of
that possible war between the Amsterdam Pact and the Soviet Union...the United
States just might stay out of it. 

And when he puts it _that_ way...Kaganovich doesn't hesitate to tell Ambassador
Wheeler that the Philippines fall into the American sphere of influence, they
can do as they please there, right down to nuclear weapons on the heads of
local Communists.

For All Time Pt. 65 
October 1-19 1953

-The attacks come north of Palayan on October 3, 1953, by carrier aircraft
launched from the U.S.S. David Farragut. There are three of them, all clustered
within a triangle ten miles on a side, a radio communications center, a
munitions depot, and a road junction. All are actually well away from the
front, in territory easily accesible and inspectable by the Huk forces. The
attacks come within an hour of each other between 5:40 and 6:56 PM (EST), and
the bombs detonated are 1 10-kiloton warhead per target. All are shattered
beyond repair. 

By 10 AM (EST) on the 4th, after the senior Huk leadership has had time to
either inspect or recieve reports of the damage, Joseph Kennedy Jr. addresses
the United States and the Philippines live by particularly powerful and relayed
radio. (The US gets the TV broadcast as well.) Kennedy announces the use of
nuclear weapons in Luzon and promises destruction of all enemy targets, by
nuclear weapons, by the end of 1953, until and unless the Hukabulahap
surrenders. 

He goes on: "There are those watching or listening to this broadcast, in Moscow
or London, Beijing or Paris who may compare this to the unprovoked atrocities
of the past administration. However, let me make one thing perfectly clear. The
United States is no longer in the business of killing civilians without cause
or purpose. The nuclear weapons used last night on the Communist bases in Luzon
were used for the same purpose as the nuclear weapons used on Germany and Japan
in the last war; to destroy the military might of the enemy and to show him the
strength of our resolve. If you are prepared to call our actions on Luzon an
atrocity, if you are prepared to call myself, Secretary Morse, or General
Westmoreland warmongers or butchers, then you must call the destruction of
Hitler and Tojo an atrocity, you must call Robert Taft, Secretary William
Donovan, and General Omar Bradley warmongering butchers. I have seen the face
of war, as have many of my viewers and listeners. It is a hideous, ugly thing,
something no man, whatever his creed or color, should face. But if war must
come, it must be fought with every weapon available, and it must end quickly."

-Shortly after Kennedy's broadcast, American carrier bombers and ground
artillery begin a large-scale bombardment of Huk-controlled territory with
chemical weapons, mostly mustard gas. Chemical weapons are nothing new in
warfare in the mid-20th century, they saw moderate use in WWII and heavy use in
the Indochine War, the Italian Civil War, Operation COPPER, and essentially
every major conflict since 1945. 

The US has never used them to this extent, however, and they're actually
outrunning existing stocks, they've only six months of heavy fighting's worth
left in the entire American arsenal. Kennedy's government isn't being stupid;
they have to show _force_...because they're running one of the larger bluffs in
American military history. 

While JPK Jr. promised "peace with honor" during the campaign, he knows what
will happen if American armies come home with a Communist guerilla movement
still around in significant numbers in Luzon. He'll be a laughing-stock, again,
the boy governor elected as a war hero who couldn't beat a bunch of mud hut
guerillas. Unfortunately, if he's to end the war quickly, as he must, he needs
to hit the Huk _hard_, harder than even Dewey's army did...but that would mean
casualties, and far too many of those to boot. 

But even the Quirino government, made an American puppet state by dint of the
sheer numbers of American troops occupying Manila and parts near, won't stand
for massive use of weapons of mass destruction so close to his capitol, and
American public opinion won't stand for a coup d'etat, even a well-mannered
one. It all comes down to a question of nerves, then.

-Luis Turac has been fighting for 11 years. First it was the Japanese (the
Hukabalahap formed in 1942), in a long, bitter campaign that seemed to last
forever. Then it was the government, when Quezon stabbed the peasants in the
back time and time again, and now the Americans with their odd ways, necessary
brutality condemned as a monstrosity. The government has been getting smarter
too, General Magsaysay has successfully pulled so many of his old comrades away
with pardons and promises of cooperation. (Madmen. Don't they know of Bismark?)

And now this. Turac is one of the first senior officers on the scene of the
Triune Attack; he pulls bodies out of ruined bunkers himself, stares in horror
at the image of a soldier burnt forever into the concrete near ground zero. (It
is probably here that he acquires the cancer that will kill him in 1965.) No
more of this. Eleven years, three different opponents, and now all fighting
means is death, death not just for him but for the brave boys who first took up
his banner against the Japanese. 

No more, no more. On October 19, 1953, Luis Turac surrenders the Hukabalahap.
The Luzon War is over, in the sense that the Philippine Insurrection ended when
TR declared so. Perhaps 50,000 Filipinos are dead, perhaps 4,000 Americans have
become casualties.

For All Time Pt. 66 
December 1953-May 1954

-With the end of the Luzon War and the formal abolishing of the draft, Joseph
Kennedy Jr. finds himself riding a wave of popularity like no President since
Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. To maintain both his own popularity and the strong
Democratic Congressional majority, he passes a large package of economic
programs in early 1954: a high protectionist tariff (30% on steel alone), cuts
on the last surviving Wallace-era regulations on industry, synchronizing the
Federal Reserve Director's term with the President's, and giving Secretary of
theTreasury Tobin a vote on the Federal Reserve's board. 

The President is what most Americans like to imagine they are: the young war
hero returned home, with a young wife and new family. Even his brothers seem
likeable: John Fitzgerald is speaker of the Massachusetts state legislature and
author of several best-selling history books, Robert is the famous
investigative reporter, and Edward is the bright young college boy. (Joseph's
infidelity, John's problem with methamphetamines, Robert's and especially
Edward's alcoholism are, of course, swept under the rug. The Kennedy political
machine combined with the gentlemanly press of the early 1950s (rebounded from
the nastiness of the '40s) works just as well as for John's administration in
OTL.)

-In February, an mid-level British diplomat named Guy Burgess finds a
fascinating piece of carbon paper that somehow wound up in the back files of
the Foriegn Ministry. It's a communique sent by the Prime Minister's office to
RAF bases in Malta and Scotland (the order would only be read by very
high-level officers), confirming that "Order 11" has been rescinded. The date
is in May of 1953, just after the end of the Sicilian Crisis. 

He's not quite sure what it means, but he does pass it on to his superiors,
carefully. (A colleague, Donald MacLean, threw himself in front of a bus when
suspected of espionage three years before.) When said superiors find out the
exact meaning of Order 11, Lazar Kaganovich has a fascinating picture indeed of
"The Matter of Britain." 

(Contrary to stories told by rightists in Europe and America, the Soviet Union
does _not_ prefer leftist governments in Western Europe and the US to
right-wing ones. Indeed, Kaganovich likes Anthony Eden in charge of Great
Britain quite a bit. Still, he's not one to turn down such information.)

-Kennedy's popularity goes up even more in March of 1954, when Guatemalan
President Jacobo Arbenz appropiates and begins redistributing the seriously
vast amounts of land owned by the United Fruit corporation in his company.
United Fruit is a fair bit richer than the government itself, as well as being
the largest landowner and employer. 

As per OTL, Arbenz is no Communist stooge, he really is just taking a risky
step to help the impoverished peasants and workers of his country. Also as per
OTL, though, he certainly does have the support of Guatemala's Communists, and
more to the point, no American President, especially not a son of Joe Kennedy
Sr., is going to let an American corporation be inconvienced by a Latin
American government. 

With America's intelligence community small and underfunded, centered around
the OIS, he can't organize a local coup d'etat, and while it wouldn't require
much military force to drive out Arbenz, an actual military invasion is out of
the question with the Luzon War just barely over. Instead, he compromises. 

Government-sponsored public relations companies blather about Reds in Latin
America as Kennedy sends the U.S.S Intrepid south from San Diego, where it's
been refitting since October. The Intrepid is fresh from the Philippines, full
of veteran bomber pilots with planes full of bombs. The American ambassador
gets a meeting with Arbenz and tells him in black terms of the fate of those
who oppose the US, intimating that nuclear or chemical attack will be launched
against Guatemala City if Arbenz does not surrender. 

His attempts to mobilize the army fail when rumors that the Americans are
coming in strength and bent on slaughter and conquest rip through Guatemala;
when Kennedy persuades El Salvador to mobilize its military, the already
fragile structure of Guatemalan society gets weaker and weaker. 

By April 9, when American airplanes from the Intrepid destroy most of Guatemala
City's bridges and all of her power plants, it's almost an anti-climaz, Arbenz
is already quickly packing his bags and fleeing into the British-controlled
Belize. (They're more inclined to give refuge to a politician seen as
anti-American.) The new government isn't so much in the pocket of United Fruit
as it is United Fruit with a Guatemalan face. With no American deaths and
American industry protected, the United States and, more specifically, Joseph
Kennedy Jr, look very good indeed. 

-During his annual May Day address, Premier Lazar Kaganovich stuns the world
with a surprise announcement. "The democratic and peace-loving states" of
Eastern Europe friendly to the Soviet Union will be organized into a unified
defense and economic structure, tentatively called "The Alliance of People's
Democracies." 

On the surface, nothing much has changed. The APD would only formalize
arrangements that have existed since the late 1940s (namely, that Eastern
Europe jumps when Moscow says so), but it's still a formal, public statement of
the authority the Soviet Union has over its satiellite states. Oddly enough,
one government official deeply discomfited at the notion is Mao Tse-Tung. The
APD's name doesn't preclude expansion to every Soviet-backed state, and he has
_no_ desire to have Moscow start to tell him what to do. He's not strong enough
to resist them quite yet...but he's not that worried. Moscow isn't strong
enough to push him around either, and he's got his own little friends in
Indochina, Burma, and bits and pieces of Indonesia. 

Joseph Broz Tito's situation is a bit different. He knows the Markos government
feels as he does and Nenni _might_; the Italian General Secretary is far less
Stalinist than the man he replaced, and the fate of his predecessor did a good
job of teaching him what happens to puppet leaders who fall off their strings.

But none of them can even trust their own house completely, especially Nenni.
Nagy in Hungary might go his way, too, and Rokovossoky is relatively unpopular.
Dimitrov in Bulgaria will be against him, of course, not to mention Hoxha in
Albania or the Romanians. And, of course, Lazar Kaganovich at the head of the
great Soviet bear. 

He fences on the night of May 2-3, even as the Yugoslavian army begins
mobilization. Parry, thrust, parry, advance...well, now he'll have a chance to
thrust at the heart of the Bear itself. Time to see just how tough the
industralist really is. 

For All Time Pt. 67 
May 1954-August 1954

-With two great European crises happening in May one year apart, fringe social
theorists will talk seriously of a yearly cycle of social unrest. It's about as
true as most social theories, but will entertain some for several months. The
summer of 1954 will inspire more than just social theories; it will have plays,
movies, songs, and several best-selling spy novels. Too, it will begin the
long, slow road towards the awakening of the American ostrich. 

But all that's in the future on May 3, 1954, when Yugoslavian leader Josif Broz
Tito announces that Yugoslavia will take no part in the Alliance of People's
Democracies "or any other infringement of a foriegn power upon her national
sovereignty." Instead, he invites Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Italy to join
him in a "Mediterranean Federation" of non-aligned states: "To steer our own
path, not devoured by Russian imperialism on the left or pulled under and
drowned by the capitalist whirlpool on the right." 

Within a day, after Greek President Markos Vafiades declared his support for
the Yugoslavian initiative, long-simmering sentiments of ill-will explode
through Eastern Europe. Oppressed citizens of Berlin and Munich storm through
the city after meeting in Atomic Square; where the damage caused by the final
American atomic bomb has been preserved. Crowds of students gather around the
office of liberal Hungarian Premier Imre Nagy, calling on him to mobilize the
Army and expel the Soviet presence. In Poland, elements of the Polish Army
(mobilized for a nation-wide civil defense drill) actually assault the Warsaw
military base where the "Russian" Konstantin Rokossovski is reviewing his
troops. (Czechoslovakia and Austria stay quiet thanks to a quick and merciless
clampdown by the efficient local governments.) 

Even in relatively stable Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania, suddenly thousands of
people are on the streets, marching for liberty. A surprising number aren't
actually Communists, and would likely find Josif Tito's Yugoslavia an
unappetizing place...but repression breeds strange bedfellows, and a great deal
of cognitive dissonance is at work on both sides, though Yugoslavia and Greece
are careful to accept the support only of Communist organizations abroad. (Both
Yugoslavia and Greece, by preemptive army deployments, manage to keep down
their own Stalinists.) 

Pietro Nenni likely would have joined Markos and Tito in their rebellion; but
Italy is the only place where Soviet, Yugoslavian, Greek, and Bulgarian troops
are side by side and armed (for the moment.) The Soviet commanders on the
ground move first and best, and soon they're chasing the rebels into the hills
while Pietro Nenni is rather nervously going on the radio and announcing his
full support for the Kaganovich government and Soviet policy in Europe. 

Meanwhile, in Moscow, Lazar Kaganovich, forced to do the one thing he hates
(move quickly) gives a rather surprising order. Limited Soviet troops will be
moved into Eastern Europe, if the local governments request it...but outside of
Italy, no Soviet troops or troops from the Soviet Bloc will cross Yugoslavian
or Greek soil. Indeed, Kaganovich proclaims his friendship to all the
Yugoslavian and Greek peoples, urging them to overthrow their "capitalists in
Leninist-Stalinist clothing" leaders. 

-Cautious of tangling with the Communists so soon after the embarrassment and
terror of the Sicilian Crisis, the Amsterdam Pact pledges support for
"democratic movements" everywhere. Anthony Eden has begun to sink into a fugue
of depression from some unidentified source, and Darlan is busy in Africa,
where his whirlwind tour of Algeria is actually very safe, mostly because there
are a paucity of non-assimilated Muslims in the major cities. They've been
forcibly driven into the deep interior, many heading into Libya. 

Joseph Kennedy Jr. doesn't pay much attention, though he makes similar
statements that don't actually say anything at all. His America is listening to
a 19-year old white from Florida belt out covers of songs by more gifted
artists of the wrong skin color; he personally has decided which Southern
Senator he'll appoint to the Supreme Court to satisfy the Southern Democrats
who helped put him into office. 

In July of 1954, Puerto Rico votes, by a razor-thin margin, for independance
from the United States in 1956.

-As she has since the beginning of history, Poland becomes the fulcrum on which
Europe turns. It will be events in Warsaw in the last half of May, that will
shape all that comes next, in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Much of it will
turn on the character of Konstantin Rokossovski, the son of a Pole and Russian
who became a Red Army general and rose to the highest rank, even while speaking
his Russian with a marked Polish accent. 

Had his nerve broken between May 4-11, things might have been very different in
the summer of 1954, and after. Had he surrended his base, the largest Red Army
base in Poland, and surrendered his title as Premier, perhaps the rising power
of the Soviet Union might have been checked right there, on that day. 

But, of course, it didn't. Personally leading a column of T-34s, the old
Marshal broke the siege of Stalinsk Base between May 11 and May 14, finally
battering his way out to a  radio transmitter, where he signalled for help from
Moscow before returning to the fray. Within a day, Soviet troops were pouring
across the border to aid loyal Polish troops and the embattled Russians already
in Poland, and by the end of the month, the Red Army boot was busy tramping out
any resistance beyond a nuisance level. 

With Poland crushed, Imre Nagy comes down on the side of not getting shot to
death by the Soviets, and is soon directing the destruction of those who'd
begged for his help and pledged alliegance only a few short weeks before in the
middle of June. As fighting continues in Italy through July, the governments of
Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania calmly and brutally shoot down their protestors
in the streets, even as they invite Moscow in to help too. 

Tito and Markos fight hard and well, but by the beginning of August, both can
tell they've lost. Despite inflicting terrific casualties, the Yugoslavian and
Greek troops in Italy have been pushed back over the border (rather ominously,
over the border the Italians claim), and all their attempted offensives to
assist Poland, Hungary, or the rest of the Communist world in breaking free of
the Soviet yoke have met with bloody reverses. In Albania and Anatolia, the
slightly mad Envers Hoxha and his even madder Turkish counterpart have
mobilized their armies, perched on the border and ready to swoop down on the
foe. The more stable Communist states await Moscow's orders. But Lazar
Kaganovich has another plan. Another plan entirely. 

On August 1, 1954, he makes a rare move; a televised address, from his office,
to the people of Yugoslavia and Greece. If they do not remove their leaders by
the middle of the month, he will do it for them, by the most terrible means
known to man. Tito and Markos take their gamble and bet that if Joseph Stalin
only used nuclear weapons once in wartime, the old shoemaker from Kiev and
Turkestan will do no such thing. And if the Red Army does invade, well, they've
won guerilla wars before. They issue a blistering reply. 

-Kaganovich knows that for all Sudoplatov's security services are good, they're
not that good, and anything the Soviet Union has will eventually get out to the
West. Better to release the information publically, and in a way to impress the
other Soviet client states: this is what happens when you go up against the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, when you break treaty and cause a war.
Too, he has to prove to the world that he's as tough as Joseph Kennedy
Jr...._and_ more power. Markos is next on his list, if he resists, but Tito is
the center, the focal point of the conspiracy. 

Two weeks after Tito and Markos dare him to do his worst, he does. At 8:45 AM
local time, a high-level Soviet bomber detonates a 10-megaton hydrogen bomb in
the skies over Zagreb, Yugoslavia. Roughly 500,000 people live in the
relatively densely packed Croat city. Much of it is on the flat flood plain of
the Savo River. Most people are on the street, going to work. 

For All Time Pt. 68 
August 1954-December 1954

-Despite countless romatic ballads penned by Yugoslav refugees afterwards (many
who would have spat in the eye of Josif Tito while he was alive), Josif Broz
Tito does not escape from his besieged  capital during the battle for Belgrade.
(August 21-30.) While his death in an artillery barrage just as the pro-Soviet
forces push their way into the capitol district proper may lack Hollywood
impact, the old partisan leader does die at the head of his men in a reasonably
noble last stand. The new government tamely asks for Soviet help during
reconstruction. 

His Greek colleague is not so lucky; the things Markos Vafiades's secret police
chief does to him after the coup on August 25 aren't pretty, and what the
Athens mob does to his body(most of them acting out of fear for their lives,
trying to impress the new government) after he's tossed to them are even worse.
Just as their colleagues in Belgrade do, the new Greek government invites in
the Soviets before the first of September. 

With no more than 5,000 Soviet military casualties, (and perhaps 1000 dead),
Lazar Kaganovich has restored order to Eastern Europe. (The remaining activists
in the Soviet Bloc, not unreasonably afraid for their lives, quiet down very
quickly indeed.) The occupation forces in Greece and Yugoslavia are
multi-ethnic; Russian and Albanian, Bulgarian and Austrian, a grand solidarity
of Communist countries and a good image for the infant CPSD. 

There are, of course, over half a million civilian casualties; mostly in Greece
and Poland. That excludes, of course, the apocalypse of Croatia. Three hundred
and fifty thousand people died in Zagreb in the initial blast; another hundred
thousand died within a week. The survivors joined the hundreds of thousands of
Yugoslavians roaming Croatia and the nation, looking for...somewhere. Anywhere.


-In the United States, President Kennedy appoints no less a person than
Theodore Hall to head the American thermonuclear bomb project. The former
Presidential Science Advisor almost immediately finds himself at war with his
old Manhattan Project comrade, Dr. Edward Teller. (Teller, who has been
teaching at Berkely since Taft dismantled much of America's nuclear research
program, had become something of a pariah in American nuclear circles thanks to
his repeated letters urging the development of a hydrogen bomb. Now he's back
in the government's good graces...but Kennedy still doesn't trust the Hungarian
loose cannon quite enough to let him run the project.) 

Hall was badly shaken by the nuclear destruction of Zagreb; it seemed to show
that the Soviets were no better than the Americans. Still, the convictions of a
lifetime are hard to overcome. He will build Joe Kennedy his hydrogen
bomb...and he'll tell the Soviets every last detail. If there must be a balance
of terror in the world, at least there'll a balance of power as well. 

-His health in fragile shape from stress and methaphetamines, Prime Minister
Anthony Eden takes the oppurtunity of the disorder in Eastern Europe to retire
in early October. With foriegn affairs and the military on everyone's mind, he
hands power over to his defense minister, a stalwart fellow named Harold
MacMillan. The new Prime Minister moves quickly to clean house once in office,
arm-twisting Cabinet members and government officials around until he has a
body of men around him he can trust. 

Replacing MacMillan at Defense is John Prumufo, a decorated veteran of World
War II and a former high commissioner in the British portion of the Palatine.
The new Foriegn Minister is Guy Burgess, while rounding out the trio of new
blood is the new director of MI6; the former head of the Soviet Divison: Kim
Philby. 
Much like his quasi-counterpart in Stalin's era, security concerns give Philby
direct supervision of the British portion of the Amsterdam Pact's
hastily-inaugurated thermonuclear project in the deserts of Sudan. Darlan
appoints an actual nuclear scientist with a famous name, Irene Curie, to head
the French contingent. 

Shortly thereafterwards, both Burgess and Philby notice a shift in the behavior
of their handlers; most are actually replaced all together, the new people look
like junior operatives. Too, they shift more towards dead drops and other
techniques where neither can quite give the game away. Both dismiss it; it's a
logical tightening of security now that they're both in far more high profile
positions than before. 

-The Great Powers aren't the only nations to be rather alarmed by the Soviet
destruction of Zagreb. The Evatt government in Australia approaches their
Antipodean neighbor about a joint program to be carried out in the Australian
desert. (Evatt is more worried about an aggressive Amsterdam Pact or America
than the Soviets at the moment, but it's a good story to tell more conservative
governments when trying to cooperate. 

Mao Tse-Tung throws more and more bodies at the A-bomb question; while the
members of the Scandanavian Coal and Steel Community (very, very quietly) agree
to cooperate on any program they establish, at any time in the future. The
Delgado government in Venezuela adds inquiries in university physics and
engineering departments to its prioties in operations in the Palatine. 

-In November, John George Diefenbaker vows to continue his government's program
of public works. Already there is a causeway under construction from the
mainland to Prince Edward Island along with Canada's program of nuclear power
plant construction, and now he promises a system of federally-funded highways
to connect "Whitehorse to Victoria, Victoria to Toronto, and Toronto to
Charlottetown." It's a nice idea, and one that might help Canada's troubled
economy (the A-bomb project was expensive indeed, and the greater defense
spending doesn't help matters much either.), except that he hasn't actually
bothered to ponder putting a four-lane highway down in the Yukon, or, for that
matter, mention the idea to the provincal premiers, who might have some slight
interest in the matter. 

Still, he is Dief the Chief, the Atomic Prime Minister, and plans are quickly
drawn up for major "interprovincial highways" all across the continent...a lot
of people just aren't happy about it. Construction will begin first in Ontario
and the Maritimes, both of whom have slipped into a slight economic depression
in the past year thanks to the questionable trade relations with the Americans.


-Joseph Kennedy Jr. is mildly irritated at Diefenbaker's stealing his thunder
on the power plant issue, but not that much. After all, Canada gets relatively
little coverage in the United States, and those who did hear much about the
announcement were in New England and the upper tier of the Midwest, people not
inclined to think much of Canada deconnecting itself from the American power
grid and local industry. 

In his address celebrating the Democratic Party's retaining control of
Congress, Kennedy pledges a (simplified and smaller over OTL) national
interstate system, as well as at least one federally-funded power plant
(presumably nuclear) in every state by 1961. To that end, he asks Congress to
set up a Department of Energy as a full cabinet-level post. 

For All Time Pt. 69 
January-May 1955

-On January 1, 1955, an American chemist named Linus Pauling, famous for
winning the Nobel Prize a year before, announces that he has discovered the
secret of life! Well, the building blocks of it anyway: the Oregon State grad
has found the double helix structure of DNA using X-ray diffraction. Pauling
follows up his paper in February with the publication of a book describing his
discovery: _The Staff of Life._ Pauling, as modest as most research scientists,
thoroughly enjoys the subsequent academic reaction, most of which is praise for
the already famous and respected scientist.

The biggest surprise for him, though, is a very generous offer from the
government to act as a consultant to a new biological research labratory
they're setting up in Puget Sound. It's a grand deal; a salary that seems
obscene to even an experienced academic, a chance to be his own boss and tell
others what to do without the responsibility of leadership, and the government
will even pay for his commute! It's a grand suggestion and he happily accepts. 

Unknown to Pauling, while the American laboratory does have a significant
civilian sector, funding research into polio among other things, the primary
purpose of the Puget Sound National Medical Laboratory is weapons, specifically
bio-weapons, molecular biology, and even the near-fetal science of genetic
engineering. Pauling's personal isolationism (he protested the Luzon War and
the occupation of Puerto Rico) was at first mistaken for just that, rather than
a dislike of war in general, but the government agents on the scene, mostly
military in civilian clothes, are quick to realize this. For the moment, at
least, Pauling will know nothing of what he's helping to build. 

(With the massive increase for military-related science funding in the US after
the destruction of Zagreb, a substantial amount of money was left unassigned
even beyond the Hall-Teller Super Project. Max Faget has his EHLB program in
Nevada, and now there's the biological research division in Puget Sound. It's a
new science, and thus hopefully one the Communists don't have a lead in.)

-In February, Lazar Kaganovich, speaking for the Council of People's and
Socialist Democracies, announces the preliminary division of the former state
of Yugoslavia. "Experience having proven that the unfortunate peoples of the
traitor Tito's empire cannot be led united into world socialism, we shall
assist their journey seperately." 

Some of the new borders are nibbles by the former Yugoslavia's Communist
neighbors. Nenni's Social Republic of Italy gets her claimed border near
Trieste back, as well as a few islands off the coast of Dalmatia. Hoxha's
Albania gets the Albanian-rich region of Kosovo, while Nagy recieves the
Hungarian-populated Vojvodina. The rest of the former Yugoslavia is divided up
along ethnic lines; Serb, Slovene, and Montenegran. Significantly, Croats and
Bosnian Muslims get _no_ territory, areas with a Croatian or Muslim population
are simply divided up among their neighbors. 

The new states will recieve full theoretical independance sometime in
1956...theoretically. All are, of course, members of the CPSD. Greece is a bit
more lucky; it surrendered instead of fighting and the West would object far
more strongly to the carving up of a historical state. (Not to mention the
historical Greco-Russian ties.) Still, the new People's Republic of Greece
gives their share of the former Turkey to Bulgaria and the Anatolian People's
Republic. 

-In the People's Republic of Korea, Kim il-Jong is a frustrated man. He has
dreams...dreams of an imperial Korea that can take revenge on all of her old
rivals; Japan and China and the rest. But there are problems; Japan is either
an ally or protected by the United States, and an invasion of China would...not
be a very good idea. 

The obvious solution is an atomic bomb, and his scientists are already
feverishly at work on that. But he needs something greater, something to knock
Korea ahead of the game above all the Great Powers at once. Sure, it will take
time, but he's got nothing but. 

-In April, Chief Justice Styles Bridges announces that the United States
Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case arising out of the state of Kansas
in their October session. Named for the first plaintiff in alphabetical order,
the case is one of several that began in 1953-1954 and are only now reaching
the highest level of the American judicial system. 

It will be, however, only "Andrews vs. Wichita Board of Education" that
students of the future will remember. 

For All Time Pt. 70 
June-October 1955

-The execution of Fidel Castro on June 2 marks the culmination of a series of
crackdowns by the government of General Fulgencio Batista. Castro had been a 
member of the Cuban Parliment before the Batista takeover, and had allegedly
been trying to restore the civilian government overthrown in 1952. 

Castro has organized his movement in a rather messaniac fashion; his capture
came while leading an invasion of seventy-four men from the Oriente the year
before, and without him, the truly radical phase of the anti-Batista movement
comes to an end. (Not that the movement itself comes to an end. No indeed.) 

The few surviving members of his inner circle scatter to the four winds: his
brother Raul Castro Ruz hides in plain sight, falling deeper and deeper into
the vast world of organized crime in Havana. Ernesto Guevara de la Serna,
embittered at both South American fascists and Americans, slips south through
the Caribbean and South America, finally returning to his native Argentina just
before the end of the year. 

-The primary story of the summer of 1955 in the US is the murder of political
activist and lay minister John Birch. Birch had won a great deal of fame in the
late 1940s and early 50s with his preaching of anti-Communism as a fundamental
part of the Word of God, but after a public break with his partner the Reverend
Billy Graham (who decided religion was more important than anti-Communism,
while Birch thought that anti-Communism WAS religion.), Birch's influence
declined outside of his weekly radio show and many books. 

When the murder is connected to George L. Rockwell, a naval officer who read
Karl Marx while recovering from wounds incurred at Sicily, a fair number of
Birch's closest friends come to the conclusion that the Communists (or the
Europeans; Birch's rhetoric was very nationalistic indeed.) took down America
and God's great spokesman as his hour of triumph dawned. Clearly, they must
band together in this time of need, in a society in the fallen leader's name. 

They are a curious crew, this first generation of the John Birch Society.
Manson, the UCLA junior; LaRouche, the former Trotskyite from New Hampshire,
and Robert Welch, the Connecticut millionaire whose funds make everything
possible. They're all quite mad, of course, but this is a season for madness in
politics, it seems. 

In Philadelphia, a charismatic minister with a concern for social justice
exceeded only by his gigantic, gigantic ego named Jim Jones has won a special
election to the city council. 

-In Australia, Robert Menzies has been swept back to power, finally displacing
the government of Herbert Evatt that he has despised for so long. Always of
deep emotional resonance in Australia, the issue of emigration is crucial in
the campaign: Evatt's government had been quite friendly to the thousands of
Indonesians who fled their country's multi-sided civil war, while Menzies was a
bit more sensitive to all those Communists. 

Menzies quickly begins pouring funds into the joint Australian-New Zealand
atomic program and offers the MacMillan government assistance in the ongoing
Burmese War. Macmillan is a bit reluctant at first, but good sense soon
prevails. The British are losing, bit by bit, and maybe with Australia's help,
they won't have to nuke the place. 

For All Time Pt. 71 
October 1955-February 1956

-In the end, it all comes down to Robert Jackson. One of the last Roosevelt
appointees to the Supreme Court, Jackson's record since has been mixed; at
times he's sided with the liberal wing led by Hugo Black and William O.
Douglas, at times he's sided with the conservatives under Styles Bridges and
Alfred Landon. 

Andrews vs. Witchita will test the "Swinging Judge" (not named for his
lifestyle or stance on capital punishment) like no other. The pro-Plessy side
lacks its most articulate spokesman of OTL (John W. Davis) but has a more
receptive audience; more civil libertarians and segregationists, and a more
convincing argument in comparing a hasty Court-ordered desegregation to the
Wallace-ordered desegregation of the US military that allegedly led to the
failure of D-Day. 

Not all the insinuations about black soldiers in the world will convince Hugo
Black or William O. Douglas, though. Nor, for that matter, will the admittedly
brilliant arguments of Thurgood Marshall convince Felix Frankfurter or Alfred
Landon that the Court should overstep its bounds. Both are deeply opposed to
segregation (especially Frankfurter), but their judicial scruples are stronger
than their moral scruples. 

Richard Russell and Stanley Reed are largely typical Southern Democrats with
the racial attitudes one might expect, and not all the persuasive arguments in
the world will convince them that the good order and peace in the South will be
helped by desegregation, not to mention all that unfortunate race-mixing that
is likely to go on. 

Chief Justice Styles Bridges and former Vice-President George Aiken were
largely non-commital during the presentation of the case, but as the Justices
begin meeting and debating to decide their opinion, it's clear that Bridges,
the old Yankee conservative, sides with no one but himself, believing that
while desegregation is probably a good idea, it is a state issue only. 

George Aiken, liberal rebel from the Taft administration, rebels again from the
conservativish majority, and sides with Hugo Black and William O. Douglas in
the best traditions of New England liberalism. Thus, the judge from New York is
suddenly asked to judge the nation itself, not just now, but for all time. 

It's a tour of New York City that reminds him of the riots that killed so many,
and of just how volatile the racial situation in America is. Too, without his
experiences as chief prosecutor at the Nuremburg Trials, Jackson hasn't seen
the dark face of human intolerance up close and personal. In the end, he just
doesn't care enough. 

On February 2, 1955, the Supreme Court hands down a decision. 3-3-2-1: Aiken,
Black, and Douglas in favor of striking down Plessy and ensuring desegregation
everywhere the federal and state governments reach; Frankfurter, Landon, and
Jackson condemning segregation as a blight on the American landscape, but
saying it is an issue for Congress, not the courts. Reed and Russel have their
stirringly white supremacist defense of segregation, and Bridges has his lone,
angry dissent. 

Bridges is irritated at being left out in the cold, again, so irritated that he
up and retires just after the decision is delivered. He's not the only one
unhappy. 

For All Time Pt. 72 
February-May 1956

-In contrast to the Barrio Riots of a few years before, the post-Andrews civil
disturbances are a mutual affair. While blacks, Hispanics and whites both
rioted in the aftermath of the Arecibo Siege, neither did so at the same time.
Northern blacks and Hispanics rioted into white neighborhoods in the major
cities, while Southern whites attacked black and Hispanic areas in the rural
areas.

February of 1956 is, however, a different story. Peaceful and
less-than-peaceful black protests take to the streets in nearly every major
American city, with the more violent winning out rapidly. After all, all the
peaceful gradualism of the NAACP has earned is three votes for liberty on the
Supreme Court...while a majority simply made the same kind of white liberal
whining they've heard for decades. "It's a state issue." "It's a Congressional
issue." 

In those same cities, though, (especially in the South) suddenly whites burst
onto the streets, some celebrating the maintenance of white supremacy, some
simply aiming to "take back our cities!" from the distrusted minority groups
that have now rioted violently in the past five years. Whatever their
motivations, degrees of moderation fade as quickly as in their black
counterparts, and soon there is nothing but violence in America. 

Lynchings are rare outside the South (where a young minister named Ralph
Abernathy is hung outside his church), but there are enough fatal beatings and
shootings to go around in all sections of the country. Lester Maddox is shot
and left paralyzed in late February; only the presence of Marine guards saves
Hugo Black from a white Alabaman determined to get the traitor. 

As the death toll mounts (fifty are dead by the end of February, and that's
only the beginning), President Joseph Kennedy Jr. is horrified. Dozens of
Americans are dying in bloody racial strife, the CPSD and Amsterdam Pact are
mockingly sympathetic...and re-election is now looking risky. Civil disorder,
after all, was a big reason the Republicans lost in 1952, and now they just
might be back. 

Very carefully, he sends the National Guard into the major cities, and down
into the South. (The regular army knows how to repress civil disorder from
Luzon, but it wouldn't be a very good idea to do that.) Kennedy makes sure to
deploy experienced veterans; men who know the right way to pacify a city
without simply adding to the violence. It works partially. 

Gambling black votes in the North vs. white votes in the South; he appoints
liberal Southerner Estes Kefauver to replace Styles Bridges as Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court, and introduces a Full Rights Bill into Congress. It is a
heavily watered down combination of OTL's Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts;
mostly desegregating state facilities (as opposed to state-funded facilities),
anything funded by the federal government, and automatically transferring
lawsuits based around voting rights to the federal courts. (No one in the South
is worried about Attorney General Thurmond exercising the power to investigate
such lawsuits.)  

It satisfies a surprising number of moderates on both sides; but then,
moderates aren't the ones rioting, beating, burning, and lynching. Still,
Kennedy's moves win him support among the majority of the United States; though
the most extreme on the left and right aren't pleased at all, and they make
their opinions known. Most of them are driven well away from the rioters,
however. There will be no revolutions for either side. 

But there will be deaths. Deaths indeed. By the end of May, when the riots have
finally died down, there are over a thousand dead Americans, mostly civilians
killed by civilians, mostly killed in the major cities of the North and South.
As the government begins re-examining _very_ old plans about policing the inner
cities with the military, the country stands behind the government, to an
extent. 

Sort of. 

-Meanwhile, the Soviet Union makes a bit of a mistake. Aneurin Bevan
_indignantly_ refuses an offer tended to him by an unofficial representative of
a rather large state east of Poland. He may have led the Labour Party rather
sharply to left since beating Hugh Gaitskell for the Party leadership, but he
is not a Communist stooge, and neither is anyone else in the Party. Or so he
hopes, anyway. 

The offer was intriguing, though; information to bring down the MacMillan
government, including exposure of highly-placed spies and friends of spies, if
Bevan agreed to support nuclear disarmament and take steps to withdraw from the
Amsterdam Pact upon taking office. If there _are_ Communist spies in the
Government, something must be done, and unofficially to boot. 

-On May 2, 1956, Admiral Francois Darlan dons his full dress uniform. Commander
of the French armed forces, head of state, head of government, hero of World
War II, he shines with medals like the sun as he watches it set over Paris. His
family is in Tahiti; they've been vacationing there for quite some time. It's
safe, after all, and he takes care of his own. 

And himself. His intestinal cancer (oddly one of the few diseases safer for the
elderly than the young) has been getting worse and worse; the drugs have begun
to impair his faculties, but the constant pain does so even worse. There are no
treatments, and he thinks of old friends who died slow, painful deaths. No,
that's not for him. No one will humiliate l'admiral.

Just before sunset, Admiral Francois Darlan puts his service pistol in his
mouth and blows the back of his head off. 

For All Time Pt. 73 
May-September 1956

-Admiral Francois Darlan's government, built on efficiency and order as it is,
survives him easily. His chief of staff and designated successor, General Raoul
Salan, alleged hero of Algeria, takes the reigns of power by the end of the
week; May 9, 1956. Conscious of his image, he addresses the nation live on the
radio and infant television, announcing "A New Hundred Days, but these shall
last forever, for the glory of France." 

Salan knows full well that Darlan's death was a suicide; he'd been close to the
old admiral and knew of his despair over his failing health. The remnants of
the French free press is calling for new elections, though, and there's only
one way to silence them. Hunt the murderers of the National Hero. 

Beniot Franchon is dragged from his prison cell and guillotined publically on
May 12, while Maurice Thorez (in his Romanian exile) says a prayer of thanks
that he got out when the getting was good.  In Salan's first 100 days, perhaps
five thousand opposition politicians, newspapermen, anyone who had too noisily
criticized the government are publically executed, all in the central square of
whatever city they live in, most of them after public trials by Jo Ortiz,
Salan's favorite civilian. 

Some would call it a Second Reign of Terror, if they weren't dead or terrified
for their lives. Even after the Hundred Days are over, Salan still moves, but
now abroad. He detonates three atomic bombs in Algeria and French West Africa
each, concentrating them against civilian targets, specifically food
distribution centers. (This is a bit of a risk, France's
specifically-controlled nuclear arsenal is only a dozen bombs and the
half-finished "Charles II" in the Sudan desert.) 

-In London, Harold MacMillian does the Prime Minister equivalent of banging his
head on the wall. If it wasn't for the urgent necessity of cooperation against
the Soviets; he'd cut France loose so fast...Salan is anti-Communist, and they
need that right now. But it's just so nauseating. 

Aneurin Bevan isn't just nauseated, he's horrified as he watches a film of . He
didn't get where he is without friends, especially in the press, and
fortunately his friend kept quiet about what they discovered about John
Prufumo...after all, they found more, especially after that bureaucrat from the
Foriegn Ministry got a bit too drunk. 

By now, it's moved beyond politics, beyond getting Labour back in power. It's
about doing to Harold MacMillan what those reporters did to Thomas Dewey. Bad
enough making deals with Fascists; what nest does he have clutched against his
bosom? 

-Almost as an afterthought, Joseph Kennedy Jr. is renominated for a second term
in August, retaining Lyndon Johnson as his running mate. The Republicans,
meanwhile, nominate John Bricker, a deeply conservative internationalist from
Ohio and a former political ally of Robert Taft, and war hero Harold Stassen to
go with him.  

Things have settled down in the United States; there are no more than a few
racially motivated murders a week in a typical major city or large state.
Attorney General Thurmond has been quietly pushed aside in favor of another
Southerner who seems reliable on race, Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright,
who is "safeish" on race at this point. 

As America moves into an election season, her shattered nerves are soothed by
the melodious strains of "Love Me Tender", as sung by the undisputed King of
Rock and Roll (though the young man from Florida hates the title), Mr. Pat
Boone. 

For All Time Pt. 74 
October 1956-February 1957

-In October of 1956, Reinhard Gehlen and the German Liberty Party win
re-election by a relatively overwhelming majority. (He ensures the elections
are partially fair, enough that the opposition Christian Democrat party under
the ailing Konrad Adenauer wins 40% of the popular vote and retains nearly a
third of the seats in Congress. The Social Democrat party, quite small, has
only a handful of seats.) Gehlen's running mate is Heinz Guderian; well-liked
as the man who brought down Hitler, and damaged enough by nearly a decade in
Soviet capitivity that he'll pretty much say anything. 

Gehlen's anti-French and anti-Communist paranoia has driven hundreds of
educators, authors, businessmen, and other intelligentsia right out of the
country. (While he'd sorely like to kill a lot of them; pressure from the
United States and the whole "Germans are evil" thing has kept him from being as
repressive as either Darlan or Salan.) A surprising number have wound up in
South America; the rest of Europe is nativist, the United States is rapidly
closing the Golden Door, but it's Venezuela that needs engineers and
physicists, Brazil that needs industrialists. With her relatively low trade
barriers (at least to the US), there's nothing much to stop Ford's acquisition
of Volkswagen near the end of the month. 

-November sees Joseph P. Kennedy Jr's re-election by a fair margin; his victory
over the Bricker/Warren ticket isn't a landslide; but it's much better than his
squeaker over Thomas Dewey four years earlier. Emboldened by his victory,
Kennedy moves quickly. At the dedication of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant
in January, he reaffirms his pledge for a nuclear power plant in every state.
"America must be built on the atom!" he cries. 

Privately he throws even more money at the American hydrogen bomb program; (Ted
Hall now promises a working bomb by the middle of the year, to both his
masters), and the EHLB program in Nevada. Max Faget promises a successful test
by 1958; and to that end, Kennedy begins a program of expanded airports along
the East Coast. Trans-atlantic jets are rare indeed, but internal American air
travel has expanded greatly in the 1950s, so the program makes sense on a
variety of levels. 

Too, it's about this time that he decides for a third term in 1960. He's young,
popular, and doesn't trust his own party to carry out the Kennedy agenda. He'll
have to do something about his Vice-President, though, not to mention his own
party. 

-In January, the Progressive Conservative government of John George Diefenbaker
finally falls. Diefenbaker has real accomplishments to point to, the atomic
bomb, the major roads through Ontario, Quebec, and into the Maritimes, but his
opponents; Lester Pearson's Liberals, can also point to just how much those
grand projects cost; and the disastrous failures of the Yukon and Northwest
Highways tell a gripping tale. 

Too, Diefenbaker just isn't a very good Prime Minister, and that often tells
against a politician. His fall is softer than OTL's 1963, though. Pearson will
be heading a minority government with the Liberals allied to the Social Credit
Party in the West, Diefenbaker will have a great deal of power in Parliment.
Pearson makes an attempt at reconcilation with the US, but nerves are too
frayed on both sides, and the growing trade war between the two largest
English-speaking democracies in North America continues to the detriment of
both; but especially Canada. In Newfoundland, Joseph Smallwood looks around him
and decides he'd like to play his particular game on a bigger stage. 

-Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, Harold MacMillan makes his decision. He's
resisted use of nuclear weapons in Burma; more out of a desire for economy than
a horror of the moral consequences. Still, he is a moral man, old-fashioned
gentleman that he is, and the deaths of nearly twenty thousand National
Servicemen in Burma weigh far more on his conscience than the millions of
pounds each atomic bomb costs. 

Too, he's in harness with the Salanist beast, and he has to show everyone; his
own people; France, the United States, and the Soviet Union, that Britain is
not to be trifled with; she'll fight for her allies as she would herself. He's
trying to win over Scandanavia as well, but they won't join an alliance
dominated by Salanist France, no indeed. 

A few miles away, just as MacMillan signs the order to ship three atomic
weapons from their storehouses in Malta to Rangoon, "Nye" Bevan is meeting with
a highly-placed official in British intelligence; with a fascinating story to
tell (and lots of evidence to back it up) about a variety of his coworkers. 

For All Time Pt. 75 
Notes on the State of Virginia, and elsewhere
March 1, 1957

-Things are all right in Virginia; racial violence there was less severe than
most of the South. The Byrd family continues to dominate politics, a young
ex-naval officer named John Warner has been elected District Attorney of
Fredericksburg. Now, for elsewhere. 

-Plastics aren't the wave of the future. Postwar patent licensing arrangements
(downright monkey business, in fact) between I.G. Farben, ICI, Dupont, and
Standard Oil were pretty much the foundation of the plastics  industry as it
exists today. With the different American and German cultural and economic
climates, that whole arrangement has been knocked for a loop. I.G. Farben's
been all but removed from the equation with Germany impoverished and the US
behind high trade barriers; and Taft's Department of Justice didn't pursue an
anti-trust lawsuit against ICI, so they've yet to license their polyethlene
patents to Dupont. Advances have been slow and costs to consumers high. 

-Speaking of anti-trust lawsuits, AT remained a cheerful monopoly through
1949, not breathing a word of transistors until 1955 (there will be, of course,
no licensing of technology in 1959.) With transistors sole property of a nearly
competition-free industrial giant in the United States and with the European
countries that might be tempted to pirate it with a serious lack of high-level
technological research, the kind of research that led to the integrated circuit
in OTL's 1960s will take a while longer indeed; until 1965, or later. 

-With no Anglo-American cooperation on aircraft, there's no Comet and won't be
for the longest time. The jet industry in general has been slower to develop.
Boeing's working on a jet liner, but it won't be ready in 1958 as it was per
OTL, with no British techonology and no government subsidies from the
development of the KC-135 tanker. Aerial travel has concentrated on short-range
commuter hops and airport development has reflected this.

-Cars are awful, pretty well all over. With the various nations of the
Amsterdam Pact hiding behind high tariff barriers, Palatinate coal and steel
can't get together with French coal and steel, and no European producer has
been able to work up to real profits since the end of World War Two. Many
companies (such as Volkswagen) have gone under, mostly to be purchased by their
American counterparts. The Italian car companies are, of course, well and truly
buggered. Most surviving European companies stagger along on producing licensed
copies of American cars. (And the problem there is that American cars are
_really_ awful. Ford Fairlanes compete with Edsels, which are moderately
competitive in the ATL.) The various manufacturers compete with each other;
General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, all of them seeking to do to the other what
they've already done to Nash and Hudson, Tucker and Packard. 

-Tensions are higher in the Far East what with the Red Hordes everywhere.
Malaysia is theoretically independant and a relatively peaceful British puppet
state; Burma is theoretically independant and not at _all_ peaceful. India and
China don't like each other much; India is more militarized after the more
successful Japanese invasion during World War Two and more worried about the
expansion of Chinese Communism. Still, both of them are poor, and most of
China's military is elsewhere, in Burma and even still in Indochina. 

For All Time Pt. 76
 May-September 1957

-The passage of the Full Rights Bill is marked with unsurprising sectionalism
and surprising nationalism. With even civil libertarian Republicans like
Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater supporting the lukewarm civil rights
legislation, (Goldwater's support is a bit reluctant, he hates the idea of
giving the federal government any kind of power on internal matters like this,
but even he thinks the national government should have the power to regulate
itself and its subsidiaries.), the main opposition to the President's program
comes from Southern Democrats.

Removing the clause giving the Attorney General the power to intervene in Full
Rights cases satisfies Southern moderates; and while James Eastland and
Theodore Bilbo will break records in filibustering, in the end it is the votes
of men like Yarborough and Gore, Folsom and Long, that pass the votes for
cloture and for the bill itself. 

The new Act satisfies moderates in both sections; Southern liberals can hope it
will end pro-black agitation in the North and "return our own Negroes to a
state of content solemscence."; Northern liberals are satisfied that they've
done something to ensure equal rights for minorities while at the same time not
giving into pressure from men like former Congressman Adam Clayton Powell or
African Ecumenical  Council President Martin L. King Jr. 

Radicals are, of course, incensed (James Eastland spends September 1, the day
President Kennedy signs the Full Rights Act into law, making speeches against
the Red-Negro menace in his home state of Mississippi.), Southern conservatives
by the shameless "kowtowing and salaaming to the forces of violent Negro
radicalism; must an African assasinate a white for all his hasty and false
desires?", civil rights leaders by the fact that the bill won't actually
_change_ anything, everything short of the desegregation of the federal
government itself will require suits in federal courts. 

A generation of young blacks; Angela Davis and Cassius Clay, Medgar Evers and
Julian Bond, watch Kennedy's triumphal speech on 9/1/1957: "We have solved the
problems of Negro rights in America!" and shake their heads. They're not buying
it anymore than their white counterparts a few miles away are. 

-On May 16, 1957, Harold MacMillian's Tory government suddenly fails to pass a
vote of no confidence introduced by Labour Party members. The shocking lack of
coordination among Tory floor managers (the vote was a routine jab at a
government with a slim majority, several like it had been introduced every year
since the death of Winston Churchill.) remains a mystery for decades, and the
truth is a slightly sordid one. 

Nye Bevan had been geniunely sympathetic during his meeting with the Prime
Minister two weeks before, but firm at the same time. John Prufumo's affair
with Gerda Munsinger (who was also "employed" by the Soviet naval attache for
matters not particularly nautical) is depressing but not particularly shocking;
the old Tory gentleman knew his Minister for Defence was incorrigible, but the
Prime Minister had thought he wasn't quite so _stupid_ as to boff the wrong
tart. 

The rest of Bevan's information is shocking, shocking to MacMillan's very core.
Using a carefully organized series of files organized by the new head of MI6,
Bevan shows a pattern of Soviet espionage among very high-placed officials in
the Foriegn Ministery (Burgess), MI5 (Percy Sillitoe), and various other
officials in nearly every major department of the British government. Bevan is
sympathetic; having been a socialist before and during World War II, he knows
all about subversive Communists sneaking in and subverting your cause...but he
can't allow a government full of spies to continue in power. If MacMillan
doesn't ensure an election by the end of the month, Nye Bevan will release the
information he and Kim Philby have gathered, and see that "instead of falling
as the Cavaliers did, the Tories will fall as  did mighty Carthage." To his own
surprise, Bevan hopes for the first; he'd rather win an election fairly instead
of tarring good men with the brush of the bad. 

For Harold MacMillan, it's a hard choice indeed; most of the spies exposed
aren't actually people he or his predecessors appointed; of his Cabinet, only
John Prufumo is implicated in _anything_, and that having no sense in women as
opposed to espionage. He could quietly push all of the Civil Service men out of
office and fight like a lion...but the party would be forever tainted by the
whisper of espionage, Conservative men who betrayed their country. Not to
mention what it would do to the Amsterdam Pact; to the national reputation of
Britain abroad, and the morale of British servicemen abroad (the nuclear
destruction of Maymyo has driven the Communists back, but the war isn't at all over).

In the end, it's imagining those men; those British boys dying outside Mandalay
and Rangoon, imagining them learning their leaders are full of Reds, that
motivates MacMillan. He puts up a fight in the election, but his heart just
isn't in it, and in July of 1957, Aneriun "Nye" Bevan (to the great confusion
of future generations of school children), becomes Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom. 

His first crisis comes quickly, and in a very unusual place. 

For All Time Pt. 77 
September 1, 1957
(Okay, so it's not really on vacation. But we are from the plot.) 
"Exiles"


RICHARD WRIGHT has stirred from New Zealand only a very few times since 1948;
and only once to the United States, for the funeral of his friend Langston
Hughes in 1952. Hughes had been badly burned during the Harlem Raid in 1945,
and an addiction to morphine and pneumonia ended his life 15 years earlier than
OTL. Wright has preferred to become a slightly more articulate version of his
hero W.E.B. DuBois (A meeting with Wright managed to get DuBois out of West
Africa in 1955.), "crouching in his Antipodean fastness," writing hundreds of
articles and stories condemning the racism of the United States, calling on
blacks to either liberate themselves by emigration to less benighted shores or
by the sword. His _African Spartacus_ was outlawed for obscenity in several
Southern states, but bootleg printings are common in black communities. 

If any man can be called the "Poet of the Resistance" in France and her
territories, ALBERT CAMUS is that man. Shocked out of the killing frenzy that
shook post-war France by the murder of his friend Satre, Camus emigrated to St.
Pierre, a French island off the coast of Canada. (St. Pierre and Miquelon, its
nearest neighbor, have fallen by the wayside in the African and Asian-oriented
Darlanist and Salanist government, Charles De Gaulle has even been allowed to
criticize the government relatively freely.) Camus returned to his native
Algeria only once, to write a depressing, methodical account of, oddly enough,
the effect on _French_ troops of the appalling brutality of the Algerian War.
Both Camus and De Gaulle have been quiet since Salan came to power, at least
publically. 

SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC's parents left the Serbia he was born in to return to their
native Montenegro shortly after the collapse of Yugoslavia, seeking something
better than the chaos that is Serbo-Croatia. The 16 year old is a troublemaker
in school, often teased for his Serbian accent, and was thrown out of the Young
Communists of Montenegro organization. He is a bleak young man in a bleak
place. 

KAROL WOTJLA is a member of the ersatz  Polish delegation to the equally ersatz
Vactican in Toledo. An articulate and fiery survivor of the bloody battles in
and around Warsaw that accompanied the restoration of the Stalinist government
to power; the young bishop was instrumental in persuading his superior in the
Church to vote for something truly unprecedented in recent times after the
death of Pope Pius XII a month before: a non-Italian pope! Joseph Cardinal
Mindszenty, briefly papal secretary of state and a fiery anti-Communist,
narrowly defeated Angelo Roncalli, a de facto prisoner of the IRS) and the
archbishop of Milan. (The new Pope has taken the name of Gregory XVII.) 

EDWARD KENNEDY is cultural attache to the American embassy in Mongolia (Kennedy
recognized the People's Republic after the end of the Luzon War) and drunk to
beat the band. Robert Kennedy was able to control his alcoholism and his
womanizing for the 1956 campaign, but Teddy failed at the same effort, and his
older brother patched him off to Ulaan Bator. To his own surprise, Kennedy has
started dating a local girl religiously. 

For All Time Pt. 78
 September-November, 1957

-On September 8, 1957, Charles De Gaulle, in the full uniform of a general in
the French Army, stands on a decrepit wooden stage in downtown Saint-Pierre
(the largest city in the island of the same name) and cries "Revolution!"
Rather than eliminate his most popular rival, Francois Darlan had dispatched
him to the isolated French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon as commander of
the forces stationed there, preferring to concentrate on Africa and Asia. De
Gaulle took great advantage of this fact; every officer down to the level of
lieutenant is personally loyal to Charles De Gaulle (the vast majority are
veterans of the De Gaullist resistance, in fact), and the vast majority of men
love their general like a father. 

Too, De Gaulle has taken steps to remain popular with the civilians; the
islands have perhaps the last free press and free schools in all of France and
her departments, and his agents in France have helped dissidents settle there
under assumed names and new identities. Isolated as the Breton fishermen are
(DeGaulle has learned to speak the language fluently), his blaming of Paris for
the slowly grinding economic hard times has worked well indeed. 

There are questions, of course: How will the islands' economies stay viable
without aid from France, what will France _do_ now...but these questions are
lost in the rush of a man driven slightly mad by isolation and a people willing
to follow him where he leads. "To gain all, we must risk all.", he says in his
declaration of the Republic, paraphrasing a wartime enemy. 

Even as De Gaulle makes his speech, a graying unit of French marines helps the
second officer of the destroyer Calais seize control in the name of Charles De
Gaulle! Suddenly, French naval power in the northwest Atlantic is cut in half.
De Gaulle sends representatives to Ottawa, Washington, and London before the
day is out, demanding recognition as an independant state (but not, carefully,
as the legitimate government of France.) 

-All three nations respond with moderation; all would dearly love a chance to
stick France in the eye, especially Nye Bevan's government in Great Britain,
but none are willing to risk fracturing their de jure or de facto alliance with
France over two windswept rocks and one mad general. The United States, with
the least to lose from fractured relations with France, (since relations are
already pretty fractured) dispatches a "Special Presidential Envoy" in the
person of Adlai Stevenson, aboard the U.S.S. Iowa, an old US battleship due for
retirement in 1958. 

What none of them count on, of course, is that Raoul Salan is not a stable man.
Without being kept on a leash by a civilian government in his military career
(and on the loose himself), Salan is even more stable than in OTL, and he will
not stand for this kind of insolence from a pack of parvenu foriegners. To the
American ambassador, he is intemperate in the extreme, demanding that President
Kennedy withdraw his "ambassador" and "military aid" lest they feel the full
wrath of an outraged, united France. To the British, he demands Amsterdam Pact
assistance to reclaim the "rebellious provinces", while he himself begins
organizing an expeditionary force of 3,000 veterans of Algeria and West Africa
with orders to "leave no brick atop another." (He also dispatches the Louis
XIV, the largest carrier in the French navy equipped with nuclear weapons, to
observe the situation.) To the Canadian, he warns them blackly to stay out of
the business of big countries. 

-Raoul Salan's contempt for democracy (earned from interacting with jailed
dissidents and the puppet civilian government of France, both of whom strike
him as utter pansies) doesn't play very well with Canada, the United Kingdom,
or the United States. Lester "Mike" Pearson is the first to act; the bow-tied
Liberal has been underestimated before (his nickname comes from a WWI sergeant
who thought "Lester" was a wussy name) and will be again. He sends the largest
ship in the Canadian navy, the cruiser Vancouver, to take up station-keeping
alongside the U.S.S. Iowa, and roaringly condemns imperialism. 

Never one to let the Canadians move toward a major sphere of influence in the
Americas, President Kennedy echoes Prime Minister's Pearson's declaration, and
dispatches elements of the US Atlantic fleet to that large area of ocean
bounded roughly by Newfoundland, mainland Canada, and the rebellious islands.
The American fleet, like the Canadian and French, is, of course, armed with
nuclear weapons. 

For Nye Bevan, the dawning St. Pierre Crisis is both a blessing and a curse. He
can buck Great Britain's fascist yokemake and make the Amsterdam Pact what it
was founded to be; a union of non-Communist states standing up against the Red
Menace. (There are, of course, Spain and Portugal, but at least Franco and
Salazar know when to shut up, both personally and politically. Neither
government is half as expansionist as Salan's.) 
But he will pay a price for driving out the Butcher of Bayeaux; France is one
of the strongest states in Europe, Britain's only real rival on the Continent,
and her most powerful ally. The hydrogen bomb will take years instead of
months; the slow deployment of the jet bomber will be well and truly snarled. 

The French pillar is rotten, but _strong_. Just to be safe, of course, he sends
the carrier Hermes on a goodwill tour of first Gothaub, and then 

-In the end, though, it's not really his decision. Raoul Salan is a veteran of
several wars, and he knows doubtful allies. Better to throw them overboard now,
to purge the moneychangers from the temple, than to be dragged down by the dead
weight of Britain. For that matter, he's never once liked the idea of being an
ally with nigh-on an out and out socialist like Bevan. 

On September 31, even as Bevan's Amsterdam Pact ambassador (Harold Wilson) is
introducing a motion for the Pact to recognize the "Free Republic of St.
Pierre", the French representatives are already leaving the Netherlands, and
the next day, Raoul Salan announces that "France shall no more walk in the
shadow of the Socialists of London." 

The Western world shudders a bit as it moves toward war (Lazar Kaganovich has
his first real belly-laugh in decades, recognizing De Gaulle even before
Kennedy), with the people of the various nations solidly united behind their
leadership...with the exception of France. Most of Francois Darlan's inner
circle is far more reasonable than Salan, none of them have an urge to get into
a nuclear war with anyone else over a few thousand Breton fishermen living
across the ocean. 

After all, in the event the regime falls, their lives will be short, to say the
least. 

-As it happens, war doesn't come...but dozens of French sailors might wish it
had. In the dead of night on October 14, 1957, the flight crew of the Louis XIV
 are loading ammunition aboard a flight of scout aircraft, off to buzz the ABC
forces off St. Pierre, when one drops a signal rocket, which immediately
ignites. 

A quick-witted French sailor grabs the rocket and throws it inside a sealed
locker before it can detonate, lest it fry half the men on the deck.
Unfortunately, it's a fuel locker. Fortunately, the blast is confined to the
locker itself and the compartment directly below. Unfortunately, thanks to a
rather ill-concieved design (the Louis is a WWII-era battleship with the top
sliced off), the compartment directly below is loaded with Lewisite, which
leaks. 

As a hundred French sailors die gruesomely and hundreds more envy them
considerably over the next few days, Raoul Salan declares privately that it was
an attack by the hated British, and orders the French nuclear forces to go onto
high alert. It's not entirely certain what happened next, Salanist era records
are very sketchy, but apparantly Salan boarded a flight from Paris to Caen to
supervise the organization of the cross-Channel attack on the morning of
October 19.

Paris is shockingly silent through the 20th, at least on the radio, though
things are quite noisy in the city herself, what with the purges and all. The
city police force is very busy manning roadblocks that completely seal the city
off from the rest of France. 

On October 21, Maurice Challe announces the assasination of Raoul Salan by
"fascist elements of the Army.", and by the end of the month, his purge of
people who knew about the bomb outside Caen or the planned nuclear strike on
Great Britain is over. There'll be no war, but no Amsterdam Pact, either. 

-Veteran's Day 1957 (November 11) dawns quite bright indeed in Prudhoe Bay,
Alaska; Edward Teller's Super has come to fruition at last.

For All Time Pt. 79
Finishing the 1950s, photographs

1/1/1958
Aarhus, Denmark
Larry Burrows for the New York Post

-Andrei Gromyko's presence alongside the Prime Ministers of Denmark, Finland,
Norway, and Sweden will forever contaminate the infant Nordic Council in
Western eyes, but that's not a particularly fair impression. The political and
economic Scandanavian association genuinely is neutral, the relevant treaties
strongly resemble those formerly in place for Finland. 

Scandanavian solidarity had been growing for years, ever since all the Great
Powers proved themselves either uninterested in an alliance (Kennedy's America,
Bevan's United Kingdom) or unworthy of an alliance (Challe's France,
Kaganovich's Soviet Union.), ever since nuclear fire rose over the Philippines,
Croatia, Algeria, West Africa, and Burma.

1/18/1958
In the Channel
David Bailey for the Times

-One of the worst maritime disasters of the late 20th century is the collision
of the cross-Channel ferry and the Norwegian icebreaker Trondheim, hundreds
drown, hundreds more freeze to death in the icy January waters. Indeed, only
rapid action by a passing Romanian destroyer helps rescue those fortunates who
do survive. 

Amid the mass funerals and backbencher calls for revenge is the death of a
prominent Briton, no less a personage than the head of MI6 himself. Only a very
few will make any kind of connection between a shadowing vessel from a Soviet
ally and the late H.A.R. Philby, no one wants to be associated with the drunken
sodomite Burgess. 

11/5/1958
Coro, Venezuela
Henry Huet for the Associated Press

- As Carlos Delgado Chalbaud reviews the newest additions to Venezuela's  navy,
he can thank Roy Jenkins for his trouble. Great Britain's defense establishment
is rather strapped for cash with the sudden collapse of the Amsterdam Pact and
the rather messy demise of the joint thermonuclear and jet projects. Even with
the Low Countries siding with Great Britain in the Channel Union, even with the
excellent new relations with Canada, the government needs money. (The adoption
of a nuclear policy similar to the American, nukes first, brigades second, has
helped a bit, but not much.) 

Thus the selling of the RN; dozens of old battleships, heavy cruisers, and
other archiac vessels (mostly WWI-era craft that had been refitted to fight in
the Second World War) have been auctioned off to friendly countries. Charges
that the Empire will be unprotectable have been met with a Welsh shrug and
"What Empire?" The Bevan government presides over independence for Guina and
the Rhodesian-South Africa merger, and the final withdrawal of troops from a
Burma that is at least theoretically free for now. 

7/4/1959
Yokohama, Japan 
Various

Certainly the most famous photograph of the late 1950s is Frank G. Powers' Rex
coming in for a landing at the last American base in the Far East, the engines
that carried her on her flight of thousands of miles at an altitude just above
sub-orbital still glowing with a kind of nuclear fire. The Extremely High-Level
Bomber project has  succeeded, somewhat. The Rex and her three compatriots can
carry a bomb-load of a ton on a good day...that is, if bombs suitable had been
built. 

The picture, of course, does not include the radiation plume that followed the
Rex from Nevada to Japan, nor the dead fish, nor the upswing in cancer patients
in California and Japan. Still, for better or for worse, the world has entered
the Space Age, sort of. 

Of course, a variety of events that would prove important later aren't caught
on film. In late 1959, an anonymous Soviet advisor to rebel forces in the Congo
returns home, broken in health after being badly wounded in an ambush. Only a
blood donation from a clinic deep in the jungle saved his life, and so even as
he descends into morphine addiction and alcoholism he (he will be transferred
through several posts in Poland and Bulgaria before finally recieving a Kremlin
desk job) donates a pint every three weeks to his local blood bank. 

For All Time Pt. 80
February-April 1960

-Just in time for the 1960 campaign season comes two bombshells in American
race relations: 

On Valentine's Day comes _The Middle Passage, And After_, a history of American
racism since the end of the slave trade. The book is large, over 800 pages of
small print, but C. Vann Woodward has turned the anger spurred by his political
dismissal from the University of Virginia into writing an eminently readable
book. "Negros have their Kinsey," comments one reviewer, and the book is
recieved much like the Kinsey Reports of a few years earlier: Some refuse to
read it, many buy it and publically scorn it...but then  they read it again.
Sympathetic reviewers are few, but they're there, and soon the Howard
University history professor is outselling Mickey Spillane and Rod Serling. 

-Estes Kefauver is apparantly one of the book's many buyers; the Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court quotes Woodward several times in Baker vs. Charlotte
County, Florida. The Court's decision (a more enthusiastic version of OTL's
Brown) is not unanimous, of course; Justice Richard Russel has proved an able
organizer for the pro-segregation forces, but Kefauver's 7-2 decision is
relatively commanding. 

There's little reaction from much of the black community; the NAACP has largely
lost its leadership role at this point, and the new generation cares more about
bridging the gaps between Muslim and Baptist than between white and black. "I
am not so proud as to turn down a hand offered," comments Martin Luther King
Jr., "though I may never trust the man behind it." The South, of course, goes
mad, and a new generation of white supremacists stands up to lead the "Impeach
The Coon" (Kefauver's old political slogan coming back in a rather unpleasant
way) movement, and to run for office. 

The Kennedy administration moves very carefully; JPK Jr. needs the support of
Southerners when he tries for his third term, liberal Attorney General Pepper
is offended by the attacks on his own state, and not very many people except
for the Vice-President care much for civil rights to begin with. "All speed" is
likely to turn to "all deliberate speed" swiftly. 

-In the Soviet Union, Lazar Kaganovich could care less about American race
relations; they've got planes to build. Despite taking a lead in hydrogen bomb
technology, Kaganovich's Soviet Union has been relatively hostile to
technology, and it has lagged behind the United States (and to a lesser degree,
Western Europe.) Still, the industrialists and bureaucrats that the leader of
the Soviet Union has surrounded himself with, for all that they're faceless
cogs compared to the General Secretary, are _good_ faceless cogs, and they know
good people. 

In March of 1960, Mikhail Yangel and Yuri Smirnov begin a remarkable
partnership somewhere around Uzbekistan. (With Kaganovich keeping more people
in the gulag longer, Kurchatov and Korolev are dead and dying, respectively, in
OTL Smirnov worked on the Soviet hydrogen bomb project and Yangel was Korolev's
assistant.) The Americans may have built a nuclear plane, but now they'll show
them just what Soviet Science Can Do. 

-In April, a flurry of communications fly back and forth to and from a remote
area of Sinkaing to Beijing, and Mao Tse-Tung, already sensing his power
weakening as the Great Leap Forward slowly implodes, opts to curse violently.
The scientists are irreplaceable, of course, and shooting workers won't do much
good, enough died getting the pile up and running. The bomb and break will have
to wait a few years...pity, pity. 

A few miles away, one of the highest-ranking members of the People's Liberation
Army ponders his own destiny. The **** Confucian is probably unassailable, he
can probably _kill_ him, of course, he's not a God, but the murderer of Mao-Tse
Tung will probably be unable to govern. The old man can't live forever, thinks
Lin Baio, hero of the Indochine War.

-Late in the month, Nye Bevan dies surprisingly quietly; he is the second
Labour Prime Minister in a row to die in office. He is, of course, buried in
Cardiff, the funeral is perhaps larger than he would have liked, but the
eulogies, from such personages as Prime Minister Jenkins, Opposition Leader
Butler, and even his own wife, will all become classics of late 20th century
oratory in their own way. 

By now Europe has settled down into its post-Amsterdam Pact state; Spain,
France, Portugal, and Sardinia are tied together by bonds of fascism and
language, if not by any ties more formal than interlinking defensive treaties,
while Great Britain, Sicily, and the Low Countries have fallen together out of
sheer terror of the dark. Only in the Palatinate do they all hang together,
lest they all hang seperately. 

For All Time Pt. 81
Summer-Fall 1960

-Even being held in Boston doesn't save the Democratic convention of 1960 from
turning into a riot; everyone knows from the beginning that Joseph Kennedy Jr.
will almost certainly be nominated for his third term, and be able to pick the
Vice-President he chooses. For anti-administration forces, centered around the
person of Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, the seven hot days in July are a
stand. Fight now, build an organization that can take the nomination for the
Kennedy candidate in 1964. (After all, no President has even run for a fourth
term, much less been elected.) 

It's that for everyone but Lyndon Johnson, though; the former Senator has
watched the ideals of a lifetime collapse under Kennedy's slow dismantling of
America's already scanty social welfare net, of controls on businesses, even
the administration's carefully non-existent stance on civil rights troubles
something in the soul of the man whose father fought the Klan and who taught
Mexican-American students. It's usually his Texan delegates who throw the first
punch in the several brawls that break out between July 1-July 7, driving many
liberals like Hubert Humphrey into the administration's carefully moderate
camp. (Too, Johnson's rather unholy alliance with a variety of Southern
conservatives offends many.) 

In the end, only Texas holds out against the tide, Kennedy's nomination is
otherwise unanimous. His choice of running-mate surprises many; the former
Senator from Wisconsin has been an excellent Secretary of State and is still an
excellent speaker (he gave the speech that nominated the President), but there
is something odd about him in small groups. Still, Robert M. LaFollete Jr. is
loyal, from a doubtful state, and putting an ex-Republican on the ticket helps
the theme of "Bring the nation together." 

-The Republican convention is a bit more sedate, if only because no one really
believes Joseph Kennedy Jr. can be beaten. If they swing too far to the right,
they'll alienate Rockefeller liberals, if they swing too far to the left, any
hope of getting the Republican-Southern Democrat coalition in the Senate back
together is well and truly screwed. Not to mention, of course, that Kennedy is
the man responsible for the strong economy (though there are rumblings; the
most obvious one being the repeated bailouts that are all that have saved
Chrysler so far), for keeping a quasi-peace in the cities and the South..."We
were a welterweight against a heavyweight," commented the junior Senator from
Arizona decades later, "but we were going to _fight!_" 

Perhaps fortunately, just the right candidate has emerged from the primaries;
Harold Stassen is all things to all people, war hero, Governor, Senator,
liberal to the liberals and conservative to the conservatives, and A-O-K to
most everyone else. After a great deal of debate, he picks Prescott Bush as his
running mate. The junior Senator from Connecticut isn't very popular even in
his own state, but he does have solid street cred as an Eastern establishment
liberal with lots and lots of money. (Nelson Rockefeller is rumored to be
Stassen's first choice, but the Governor of New York is waiting on 1968, or
even 1964.) 

-As the campaign goes on, President Kennedy suddenly finds himself having to
telegraph the same congratulations he extended to John Diefenbaker a few years
earlier. On August 4, 1960, on an uninhabited rock in the Cook Islands,
Australia and New Zealand jointly enter the nuclear age when a 50-kiloton
warhead detonates to the cheers of onlookers aboard local Anzac vessels. 

The decidely unlikely alliance of Walter Nash and Robert Menzies has produced a
nuclear weapon and program, soon Anzac vessels armed with nuclear weapons are
docked at the major ports of the various Australian and New Zealand allies in
the vast Indonesian archipelago, even the less-than-popular People's Republic
of Java. 

In Europe, the shaky British Commonwealth is reinforced by two new nuclear
members. (A former member, meanwhile, has begun hammering out treaty agreements
between themselves and Salazar's Portugal. The war in Angola and Mozambique
isn't getting better, and the old dictator likes his job far more than he likes
Africa.) 

-The only real issue of the campaign comes in the last week of September, when
events in Argentina move with sudden, brutal swiftness. Rumors of discontent
with the Castillo government have been growing for over a decade, but no one
really expected his assasination on September 21 as he reviews a contingent of
elite paratroopers. In every major city of Argentina, well-organized troops
turn on their comrades and arrest or shoot them. In the countryside, farmers
and peasants rise up against the oppressive dictatorship and all it stands for.


In a month of apocalyptically bloody fighting, two men, perhaps unlikely
allies, emerge as leaders of Argentina. One is Ernesto Guevara, the medical
doctor who leads a popular revolt of such magnitude as to make him master of
the countryside in short order, one is Leopold Galtieri, the general who found
power far more important than the flag that flies and the cause the soldiers
sing about. The two trust each other naught, of course, but they both know to
kill their other enemies first. 

The two parties are divided, Stassen is weakly in favor of doing _something_,
while Kennedy is in favor of doing nothing at all. (After all, nothing he
actually does can affect the election.) The Red-ish revolt is surprisingly
local, Kaganovich's agreement with Kennedy about spheres of influence was about
as geniune as either the shoemaker from Kiev or the rich kid from Boston could
be.

By the time that issue has been sorted out, though, Joseph Kennedy Jr. has won
his third term. As expected, the black vote was mostly Democratic, the Jewish
mostly Republican, and the South helped elect some interesting candidates;
James Folsom has been driven from office by Asa Carter, while Orvil Faubaus
helped elect his friend Glen Campbell. In Pennsylvania, Jim Jones has won his
first Congressional seat, and Clark Gable's victory over Ronald Reagan for the
California governer's seat was real but decisive. 

South America isn't quite done with the nation yet. 

For All Time Pt. 82
December 1960-February 1961

-On December 2, 1960, the Alexander von Humboldt is the least popular ship in
the Dutch Antilles. The former British light cruiser, sold to the Venezuelan
fleet in the late 1950s, has been teasing the small Dutch Coast Guard garrison
for weeks, sailing within Dutch territorial waters (at one point even within
hailing distance of Willemstad) and darting out before the Coast Guard ships
could quite prove anything. Polite requests to the Venezuelan consulate have
been met with indignant demands to stop interfering with their military
vessels, and the Caracas media has said the same. 

Tensions are running high in the islands and among the Coast Guard garrison,
and so when the von Humboldt suddenly runs aground on the tiny island of Klein
Curacao, it's quite understandable the rescue party would come armed, and quite
understandable that after finding a dozen pounds of heroin (straight from
Taiwanese processing) and a dozen more pounds of dynamite, virtually earmarked
for the independence movement on the islands, they'd intern the von Humboldt's
crew. 

And since the entire process was a Venezuelan government operation, right down
to the support for the independence movement, it's understandable that Carlos
Delgado Chalbaud would be well-prepared indeed. As Admiral Wolfgang Larrazábal
begins organizing the 5,000-man Venezuelan Marine Corps for an overseas
operation, Delgado is on television in both his own country and abroad,
condemning European imperialism and the theft and imprisonment of the Humboldt
and her crew. 

-In the United States, public opinion is cautiously pro-Venezuela, if that.
Attacks on European imperialism ring home to the Kennedy administration and
those Americans who _do_ think about South America are mostly watching pictures
of Argentina and thinking what an awful notion this Communism business is.
President Joseph Kennedy Jr. settles for merely condemning war in general. (The
_big_ story of December in the US is, of course, the collapse of Chrysler and
its division between Ford and General Motors. The name and brands will survive,
but as the property of Edsel Ford or Alfred P. Sloan.)
The Netherlands themselves are in something of a bind; their treaty with the
Jenkins government in Great Britain specifically says neither party will assist
the other in colonial conflicts. Originally intended to keep the British out of
Suriname and the Dutch out of Aden, Roy Jenkins is only too glad to use the
clause to stay out of war. The Dutch government doesn't like much at all, but
they _need_ the alliance with the United Kingdom. They need to oppose
Communism, so the NC is out, and they're not evil, so the fascist states are
out too. They'll have to go it alone. Two heavy cruisers and a thousand troops
are dispatched to the Antilles, not because anyone wants war, really, not even
Delgado, but because it just must be done. 

-On December 19, the first Venezuelan planes appear over Willemstad, the
capital and reasonably major port of the Dutch islands. With the best possible
precision strikes given the circumstances, the fighter-bombers, some modeled on
late-WWII German models, destroy the radio station, telephone exchange, the
barracks of the island's milita, and the Governor's  House. (The Governor was
out, and the Venezuelans knew it.) 

A day later, the first Marines arrive. The islands, already demoralized by the
strikes, surrender bloodlessly, at least at first. The Dutch governor isn't
about to see people die for no reason, the 2,000 man Venezuelan force
outnumbers the adult male population of the islands, and the follow-up waves
are expected to (briefly, at least) outnumber the entire population of the
islands. 

That is, until, a shot rings out as Wolfgang Lazzarabal formally accepts the
surrender and parole of the Dutch garrison on December 21, 1960, and the
founder of the modern Venezuelan Navy crumples over dead. His successor
immediately declares martial law in the Dutch Antilles, even as more waves of
troops arrive. 

-Through Christmas and into the new year, the Venezuelan fleet and the Dutch
duels in the southern Caribbean. The Venezuelans begin with a lead and keep it;
their supply lines are shorter and with their powerful submarine arm, they can
cut the Dutch lines far more easily. Though they are quite careful to stay out
of range of the land-based Venezuelan Air Force, this leaves the land forces
needed for the counter-attack stuck on Aruba or drifting about at sea, getting
more and more seasick. 

Finally, after a February in which a Dutch heavy cruiser sinks two Venezuelan
destroyers only to be torpedoed by a submarine the next day, the Dutch
government throws in the towel. They're strapped for cash, and frankly the
government needs the bailouts they lost with the collapse of the Amsterdam Pact
far more than it needs some islands, whatever useful natural resources they may
have. (They don't really have the money to exploit them anyway.) 

The terms of the treaty hand over the Antilles to Venezuela in perpetuity, in
return for a cash payment that's reasonably large to a Venezuela with the oil
boom slowly ending and quite large enough for a Netherlands that needs money
nearly as badly as Mars needs bars. 

For All Time Pt. 83
March, 1961

-On March 1, 1961, Maurice Challe declares the war in Algeria over. It's not
quite over, of course, anymore than the Philippine Insurrection was in 1907,
but significant, organized, actually threatening resistance to the French
government and colonists is over. Perhaps fifty thousand French soldiers have
died in the years of fighting since the end of World War II, making the
Algerian War the bloodiest colonial war of the late 20th century. 

The key to French victory has been famine, the kind deliberately caused by the
Darlan and Salan goverments and encouraged by the use of tactical nuclear
weapons on food distribution centers in the heartland of Algeria's Muslim
population. (France has used far more nuclear weapons than any other nation on
Earth as of 1961.) Perhaps a third of Algeria's Muslim population of seven
million is dead of hunger, with a million dead of combat on top of that, with a
third of the remainder fled into the various independent nations surrounding
Algeria. Some have even slipped across the border into French West Africa, to
join a struggle for independence that's doing a bit better than theirs. 

-March also sees the (hopefully temporary) end of democracy in Brazil when
Marshal Artur da Costa e Silva assumes near-dictatorial powers. The former
minister of war, elected President after Argentina became pretty much
doctrinarie Communist and Venezuela won the Antilles War, ran on a platform
loosely akin to "Give me all the power and I'll save the country.", and the
voters seem to like that idea. 

Costa's preference is to promote economic development, but there are more
important things to do. Brazil shares a border with both Argentina and
Venezuela (The Venezuelan border is in some of the most remote, rugged places
on Earth, but the Dutch thought their oceans were a shelter), and Costa's
government is worried about both. Thus, Brazil becomes the second nation in
South America to begin a nuclear program. 

-Approaching the end of his first decade in office, Lazar Kaganovich has been a
very busy man.  Stalin was, of course, the Great Stalin (Kaganovich will never
really say aloud his doubts, and neither will anyone else if they know what's
good for them.) but he left the Soviet Union and the Communist world in general
a mess on his death. Kaganovich has done as well a job as anyone else could,
given time and resources, and far better than most. 

Kaganovich has three tools at his disposal for consolidating the Soviet's 
new territories.  The first is the Comintern or  the International Division of
the Communist Party of the Soviet 
Union as he insists Western reporters call it  The Comintern rather innocuously
manages the membership lists of all its satillite parties, and holds a large
yearly Congress in different 
cities around the CPSD (the 1961 Congress is in the Istanbul SSR).  
This subtle function actually gives Kaganovich and his government a 
great deal of power --- he is, in effect, the General Secretary of almost 
all the ruling Communist parties of the CPSD.  Since 1954, Kaganovich has 
been using this power to carry out what later historians will call the 
"Silent Terror," quietly purging nationalists and obstructionists from the 
the party structures. They've been especially busy in Romania; his USSR doesn't
have to stand for Ceausescu-esque monkeyshines, and so they don't. 

Unfortunately, not every Communist party is equally dependent on the 
Comintern.  It's Asian members (except ever-loyal Mongolia and North Japan) 
are tightly under the control of their local leaderships:  Mao, Ho, and Kim 
are a slight headache.  In Europe, the problem is smaller.  Albania and the 
DUPRA are the only parties where the Comintern's tentacles have not fully 
penetrated, but Kaganovich's skill at redrawing borders has secured the 
loyalty of both parties.  

Hoxha rules large unhappy populations of 
Slavs and Greeks, and knows that he depends on Soviet support to remain in 
power, while the DUPRA's unpredictable supreme leader hopes to regain the 
Bulgarian occupation zone in Anatolia.  (Kaganovich would actually like to get
rid of both men, they're both far more erratic than they ought to be, but he's
sensible enough to realize the expense and cost of administering Albania or the
DUPRA.) Unlike the BPR's gains west of a 
Bosporus, Kaganovich has been very careful to keep the disposition of 
territory in Anatolia "provisional":  except for the Istanbul SSR, the 
DUPRA could in theory regain that territory any time the Supreme Council of 
People's and Socialist Democracies should decide to give it back.  (Bulgaria's
reaction to that is what one would probably expect...so is their power to do
anything about it.) Which 
hasn't, of course, stop the mass deportations of Turks from the territory, 
which bring's us to Kaganovich's second lever:

Kossov is the accepted abbreviation for the CPSD's planning committee, 
which coordinates the various five-year plans of the member states in the 
interests of preserving "the international socialist division of 
labor.", and, of course, the economic might of the Soviet Union. 
 In a huge arc from the Danish border down to Iran, Kossov 
bureaucrats allocate capital and raw materials, decide where new factories 
will be built, and relocate entire populations.  Kossov is, in fact, 
Kaganovich's private obsession --- the old railroad bureaucrat cannot 
resist micromanaging the empire.  (Unlike many world leaders who've done the
same, he's actually pretty good at micromanaging. Too, focusing the nation's
energies on the economy redirects the expansionist urges of various slightly
unreliable members of the Politburo.)

He pays special attention to the new Istanbul SSR:  the 
Bulgarians have forced millions of Turks into its small territory and millions
more have actually fled there, 
providing the necessary fodder for an impressive industrial expansion.  The 
ones expelled into the DUPRA have fuelled a similar industrial explosion 

there.  Sure, it's a messy process, but no one ever said that building 
socialism would be easy. Kaganovich helped collectivize Moscow agriculture,
he's heard all the complaints about brutality and such and isn't about to  let
that mess with them. 

In the west, Kossov is unchallenged:  the leaders of states which meet its 
target are rewarded by finding themselves governing a "socialist republic" 
rather than a mere "people's democracy."  Leaders which fail quietly go 
into, uh, retirement. He's kept his pledge to his own inner circle and himself,
the one he made when he came to power. Failure won't be met with death, only
outright rebellion will give Communist leaders the same fate as Tito. 

In Asia, however, Kaganovich is quickly learning the meaning of a famous 
Spanish saying obey, but I do not comply.  In 
theory, the Chinese, Koreans, Javanese, and Indochinese 
send representatives to Moscow to participate in Kossov 
planning sessions; again, in theory, they accept Moscow's dispositions and 
plans.  In reality, the People's Republics of China, Korea, Indochina, and 
Java do whatever they want, and Moscow pays for it.  There have been propaganda
losses as well, the failure of Mao's utterly mad plan to industrialize China
has been largely blamed on Soviet failure to supply enough resources, thus
helping the Chinese General Secretary stay in power. 
Asian recalcitrance to participate in the International Socialist Division of 
Labor (or pretty well anything that would benefit European or Middle Eastern
Communism) is a problem he will eventually have to deal with, and probably
sooner rather than later. 

A bigger problem has been the Joint Armed Forces of the CPSD.  In the west, 
Kaganovich has learned the lessons of 1954 well.  The Great Stalin had it 
backwards:  he removed the form of independent militaries from his 
satrapies, but retained the substance.  The armies of the Stalinist block 
wore uniforms based on the Red Army, insignia based on the Red Army, and 
used traditions based on the Red Army, but save Poland and the DVR 
effectively functioned as independent fighting forces --- as the Soviet 
Union bloodily discovered in 1954.

The Joint Armed Forces are different:  they have the form of independent 
militaries, but none of the substance.  Uniforms and traditions 
differ:  but the armed forces of every European CPSD member save little 
Albania are integrated into the Red Army's command structure at the 
battalion level, and are almost completely unable to operate save in 
conjunction with Red Army units.  With every passing year, with every 
passing arms shipment, the satellite's militaries are further 
"reorganized," and control from Moscow is more complete.  Although the 
color and cut of the uniforms now look different, by 1961 the armies of the 
CPSD are designed to function as a single integrated military under the 
direct and complete control of Moscow, and more to the point, they almost
certainly couldn't do otherwise. No more rebellions. 

Unfortunately, the Asians have again been unwilling to participate.  Oh, 
they are more than happy to accept Moscow's protection, but their 
militaries are almost entirely unintegrated into the Joint Armed Forces 
command.  All their advanced and most of their heavy equipment comes from 
the European part of the CPSD, but unlike them none of it is under proper 
Soviet control. And both China and Korea seem to be getting far more than they
need, it's going _somewhere_, and he doesn't like the idea of where it's going.


An open break with Moscow is unthinkable while Kaganovich retains a nuclear 
monopoly.  Which means, of course, that China is the only thing to worry 
about.  Neither Korea nor Indochina matter much.  Korea is too small and 
too poor --- Kaganovich is slowly squeezing what's left of its outdated 
Japanese industrial plant.  Kim will eventually come around, of that 
Kaganovich has no doubt.  The Korean is a lunatic, though, and he doesn't like
that much:  he has begun shoving Kim off to officials in 
the Comintern or Kossov.  Molotov is good at it; the two old colleagues in
Stalin's post-purge Politburo share horror stories about the Korean madman.
Once Kim comes to heel, then his reward will be 
regaining access to the supreme leader of the October Revolution.  

Ho is even easier to control.  He has his own ethnic difficulties in Laos 
and Cambodia; like Hoxha, he knows that without Soviet support the 
Indochinese Federal People's Democratic Republic would collapse like a 
house of cards. Still, Ho is moving slowly, slowly away, his succesful purges
of  Saloth Sar's Khmer Party has helped keep the Vietminh in the driver's seat
into the 1960s. 

The People's Republic of Java is one of the few countries to get large amounts
of aid deliberately. If the government there collapses (and that's a
moderately-probable event almost daily), they will almost certainly fall back
into the hands of the Australians, and the idea of a Communist state going
backwards is an awful idea, Marx's arrow of history turned on its head and a
terrible propaganda loss. Advisors from the former NKVD are _very_ busy. 

Argentina is a problem; neither Galteri nor Guevara seem particularly
subordinate, and the virtually independant nature of the revolution there
suggests that they might go their own way...and unlike Tito, they could
geniunely make it stick. Still, the Democratic Republic of Argentina has been
quick to ask for military aid, and he's never one to turn down a fellow
Communist. 

 For All Time Pt. 84
May-September 1961

-The Nordic-Thai treaty of May 1, 1961 helps spur western European worries
about the "creeping cancer of neutrality", but that's more out of paranoia than
anything else. There are traditional ties of friendship between the Kingdom of
Thailand and various Scandinavian countries (especially Norway and Denmark)
going back centuries, and both nations have found themselves in similar
positions, surrounded by either Communist states or authoritarian governments
that just don't strike them well at all. 

The Nordic Council nations badly need a market for their goods outside of the
CPSD, and Thailand needs an alliance with a First World state, help in
modernizing their military and society to defend against both the bullets and
propaganda of their Communist neighbors, advisors and guns and resources and
all the things an alliance brings. Some are worried about becoming a colony,
but the Scandinavians do certainly seem to come in peace. 

By the middle of summer, the first groups of Nordic military and civilian
advisors have arrived in Bangkok. One of the first industries to benefit from
their arrival is the vice trade, the sons of Aarhus and Trondheim and Helsinki
are no more immune to the temptations of prostitution, gambling, and drugs,
than their American OTL counterparts of later in the decade. 

-The first major summer release of 1961 is _I Walk The Line_, starring hit
singing sensation Johnny Cash. While outwardly Cash has the same clean image of
his chief rival, Pat Boone, (indeed, the movie itself is the story of an ex-con
singer who finds God and becomes a minister), his teenage fans are quick to
find the subversion behind the music. While the title closing number is
popular, of course, it doesn't get half the screams of delight produced by the
opening tune, when Cash strides out in a James Dean-esque leather jacket and
doesn't so much sing as growl: 

"I can't get no-satisfaction!" 

-The popular culture in America takes several interesting turns in that summer
of 1961, as the generation of children born after World War II begins slowly
groping towards their majority. Science fiction, which spent most of the 1950s
locked in a bitter war of words between pacifist Isacc Asimov and militarist
Robert Heinlein, sees several novels brought to the big screen; Roger Corman
produces Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_, while Edward D. Wood and his new
leading man, E. Aaron Presley, handle Ward Moore's _Bring the Jubilee._ 

The liberal racial message of Wood's latest brings him howls of outrage from
the South, howls so loud that perhaps it's understandable few notice the way
they shift into derision once Bring the Jubilee premieres in Atlanta in July.
Wood soon becomes the darling of certain circles in California, roundly praised
by people who know only the liberal message of the film. All men are, after
all, created equal. 

On television, _Maureen's Family_ goes off the air after ten seasons, one of
the most beloved shows in the medium's infant history. Maureen O'Hara had never
really become a big star in Hollywood; without _It's a Wonderful Life_, she was
never able to equal the success of _Sinbad the Sailor._ Shifting to television
(and starring alongside her real-life husband, director Will Price) helped make
her a real star and keep her troubled marriage alive. (In OTL, they divorced in
1953.) Still, Will's health is failing, and she can't spend her entire life on
television. Replacing her is Jerry L. Lewis' _Jeopardy._ 

-August 20, 1961 is a great day for President Joseph Kennedy Jr.; the last
major nuclear power plant complex in the Union is completed in Pennsylvania,
just up the river from the state capitol at Harrisburg. The vast majority of
American electrical power still comes from fossil fuel, of course, but the
nuclear program of the Kennedy administration has had real effects; every state
in the Union has at least one nuclear power plant in it, and most, especially
in New England, draw at least 5% of their power supply from the new nuclear
power plants. 

Emboldened at his great propaganda victory, Kennedy announces a Presidential
grand tour to begin later in the year in which he will visit every state.
Though the tour is theoretically linked to the new nuclear system and the
anniversary of the Civil War, keen-eyed observers notice Kennedy is heading for
places where the Democratic Party is weak or fractured; places like John
Birch-dominated New Hampshire or Johnson-controlled Texas. No one quite
believes he's ready for a fourth term in 1964, barring some great national
crisis, but few people believed in 1954 that he'd dare run for a third six
years later. 

-In September, the Soviet Union takes a step into the Space Age when Alexei
Leonov's Eagle-1 flies from Uzbekistan to a massive Red Air Force installion at
a relatively safe distance from Moscow. Eagle is smaller than its American
counterparts, with even less military application, but it is a propaganda
victory for the Kaganovich government, at least for the moment. No longer can
the capitalists crow quite so much about their superiority in matters
technical, or at least they'll have to find a new subject to crow about. 

And indeed they're working on just that; a new generation of test pilots is
working on a new generation of Dyna-Soars, and scientists are talking
confidentally of a successful Earth orbit by 1963. Will it be Michael Collins
or John Glenn, Gus Grissom or George Bush? The new generation is a bit more
enviromentally concious than the last. (Theodore Taylor has made sure of that,
even if he finds himself more shut out every day.) They emit no more radiation
in a trans-continental or trans-oceanic flight than the average tactical
nuclear warhead's fallout plume. 

For All Time Pt. 85
October 1961-January 1962

-On October 3, 1961, the Supreme Court is discussing the constitutionality of a
new state income tax leveled by the state of Kansas in 1960. There are
legitimate legal issues; questions of the state unfairly penalizing various
private businesses (under pressure from the administration, the Kefauver Court
has  defended businesses against the encroaching government like no Supreme
Court since the "Nine Old Men" of Hoover's day), and that's essentially the
only reason why the nation's highest court took the case. The plaintiff's chief
attorney is a rather dislikeable man named Fred Phelps, and he had filed
hundreds of briefs on every imaginable subject from his tiny Topeka office
before this one happened to get past the appellate courts. 

Still, they've all seen worse in their careers on the bench or in politics, and
the ultimate 6-3 decision has far more to do with the fact that Kansas' grocery
warehouses really aren't hurt that badly by a tax of a few percentage points on
their annual revenues than the odiousness of Fred Phelps, the former vacumn
salesman. Hugo Black, one of the last great relics of Rooseveltian liberalism,
delivers the decision himself as the sun begins to set outside. His words are
clear, calm, and remarkably concise. 

Before the last echoes of his words die, before Black can even turn to exit the
room, Fred Phelps, bigot and racist, at once an anti-Semite and white
supremacist (a rare combination in a world where blacks and Jews speak a kind
of nearly-open racism between each other), the unsuccessful lawyer who has
waited years for the chance to get past Supreme Court security and strike a
blow for his very Aryan-looking God, pulls out a revolver and fire three times,
not at all wildly. The red drapes are suddenly redder. 

-The South roars to life with celebratory parades; Hugo Black has been a
traitor there for years, even more so than Kefauver. The former Klansman's turn
to liberalism on racial issues once on the Court took a lot of people by
surprise; and it wasn't a very pleasant one for his supporters in Alabama, or
in the rest of the South. President Kennedy just manages to avoid attending one
during his national tour at Mississippi, for all that he didn't think much of
the old Southern populist, he's horrified at the very first assasination of a
Supreme Court Justice. 

Reluctantly, Kennedy delays his national tour indefinitely, returning home to
Washington within the week. Taking the advice of FBI Director Purvis, Attorney
General Pepper, and following the precedents of past administrations, Kennedy
declares martial law in the District of Columbia, calling in troops from Fort
Meade to keep the peace. 

Fred Phelps's already tenous hold on the universe has slipped even more in
custody, his stories about the "Army of the One White God" has every judge in
America watching their backs. Kennedy has just had time to nominate John
Connally (acceptable to both conservatives and Southerners, plus it helps
please Texas) to replace Black when the fan is well and truly struck. 

-The black community's reaction is surprisingly muted at first; Black was
respected by moderates, but moderates are a minority in 1961; to some he was
simply paternalistic and out of touch, to others he was something worse, a
hypocritical c******. But the mixture of white triumphalism and those few
moderates willing to mourn Hugo Black publically soon produces that thing so
familiar, black and white mobs clashing in America's major cities. Before the
middle of September, the radicals have gladly joined their brethern on the
streets, before the end of the month, the riots have exploded all through
America's major cities again. As with so many riots, by the end of the month,
few of the people robbing and looting and brawling have ever heard of Hugo
Black. 

President Kennedy's horror is the only thing that mounts faster than the
national rage; yes, _this_ will make re-election in 1964 ever so much easier.
This will not be the Kennedy legacy, he vows, his term will not end the way his
predecessor's did, on a wave of violence and hate. Still, he must take
measures, and he declares martial law in the riot-torn areas and cities.
American soldiers have now spent nearly as much time policing their own cities
as they have fighting wars after World War II; and they go into the situation
thinking they know what they're about. 

But this is a new type of disturbance for the new decade, both groups are
_organized._ The White Citizens Councils in nearly  every state are armed,
militant, and ready. (Especially the New York chapter; while Ariel Sharon is
viewed as something like a devil to his counterparts in Mississippi and
Alabama, in an enviroment where the head of International Communism is pretty
well openly Jewish, he is good at what he does.) While they are, of course, a
minority, they provide a hard, professional edge to the white mobs that rampage
across the tracks in Birmingham, Columbia, Atlanta, and help whip up the same
in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. 

African-Americans are organized well too, though, the ecumenical mergers
(especially the bridges built to the Islamic community) have given the
leadership of various militant civil rights groups: King's African Ecumenical
Council, Malcom X. Little's People of the Book, and countless others an edge of
organization and unity absent earlier in the decade. Too, there are more
geniune fanatics now, and while no one is quite willing to emulate Cassius X
and his suicide bombing of a Chicago synagogue on November 17, he is soon the
idol of every young, mad black man. 

Thus it is that when blood runs in the streets, darkening the snows of November
and December 1961, it comes from Southern white bigots, Jewish
gangsters/politicians (the two are inextricably linked in many places at this
point, it will take the politicians of a later generation, one raised in the
United States, to untangle that noose), Black Muslims, Black Christians,
National Guardsmen...and, of course, the primary victim of any civil
disturbance: Innocent people. 

-President Joseph Kennedy Jr. is personally a fearless man; he flew combat air
missions over Hitler's Germany right up until the end of WWII; and has a taste
for rougher pursuits than his brothers. (He is the first President to
experience the modern sport of whitewater rafting.) After such things, riots
and civil disturbances hold no terrors for him. Ignoring the rather fervent
advice of almost everyone in his administration, from the First Lady to the
Vice-President to the head of the Secret Service, he goes from city to city,
New York to Biloxi to San Francisco. 

In New York he stands shoulder to shoulder with Mayor Elliot Goodwin, the two
parties united to bring peace. Rioting does die down, a bit, but it has far
more to do with very, very aggressive police and military tactics in the cities
where Kennedy is about to visit. The media blackout in America's major cities
helps as well; even news organizations inclined to be rebellious in other times
are eager here. Disturbances are bad for business. 

That is, of course, until a man long forgotten steps forward. President Henry
Wallace had been shut out of the Democratic Party (and mainstream politics in
general) since the late 1940s; his own run for the Governorship of Iowa in 1950
had less than salutary results. Even his legendary stubborness is not
invulnerable, but the former President just can't give up on politics. Taking
the very considerable fortune he amassed in agriculture, Wallace's purchase of
the Des Moines Register in 1953 gave him a liberal voice no one  could silence.
The paper hasn't sold well in conservative Iowa, but Wallace still makes more
than enough money to bail it out; too, the paper has a moderate national
circulation, mostly to moderates and liberals of all stripes. 

Henry Wallace and Joseph Kennedy Sr. had been friends in the 1940s, JPK Sr. was
his Secretary of State and the man he trusted most in Washington...but that was
before his son cut loose labor and made corporations king, before he stepped
away from the commitment Wallace made toward civil rights during his
Presidency. There's been no declaration of martial law in Des Moines, and no
one would dare arrest a former President anyway. 

And so it is, when it's the middle of December and the body count for the '61
riots has exceeded that of all the others, that Henry Wallace publishes a
series of pictures sent to him from Chicago, showing the results of a gun
battle between a particularly militant Jewish group and a particulary
enthuastic National Guard unit from New York that happens to have a
preponderance of black members. The photographer had zoom, had color, and was
good at his art. 

-Now, of course, it really hits the fan; Jewish moderates who previously were
horrified at the violence of their religious compatriots now have a very, very
public display of something very much like what they saw in the few pictures
that escaped Palestine during the bloody war of the late 1940s. They take to
the streets, prompting an inevitable backlash from previously neutral elements
of America's black population, so that by New Year's Day, nearly every major
city in America is undergoing the equivalent of Detriot circa 1967. 

In Texas now, President Kennedy decides he can't continue with the national
tour; he is the Commander in Chief, after all, he has to show the world and the
nation that he's in charge both politically as well as personally. Already
Aleman and Pearson are experiencing something like sympathy disturbances in
communities near the border with large American cities; already Kaganovich is
offering "peacekeeping troops" to assist the American National Guard. 

There's just time for one more speech, on January 3, 1962. It's a crisp winter
day as he speaks at the University of Texas at Austin; there's completely no
wind, and the sun shines so brightly even through the clouds that one can see
for miles. 

There's nothing to throw off Charles Whitman's shot. 

For All Time Pt. 86
 January-April 1962

-President Joseph Kennedy Jr.'s state funeral on January 17, 1962 comes at the
end of two weeks of national mourning. His casket, guarded at times by his
father, younger brothers, and a constant bodyguard of Secret Service personnel
and US military, has gone through the entire nation from Texas to his burial
place at Arlington National Cemetary. Speakers include former Presidents Dewey
and Hoover, the only ones still alive, and even former Vice-President Lyndon
Johnson, mending fences over the grave of the martyred President. (One of the
leaders in this effort is Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. Already respected by
moderates in his own party as a foe of the extreme right and an articulate
advocate of conservatism in one, Goldwater's status as a family friend of the
Kennedys lends him a status not shared by most Republicans.) 

Significantly, the new President is largely absent, from both the journey from
Austin and the funeral at Arlington. Robert LaFollette is not unaware of
appearances, of course, but he has a more important agenda. Father cared more
about doing what was right than being President, after all. And what's right,
of course, is law and order. Taking the advice of Generals Haig, Walker, and
FBI Director Purvis, LaFollette declares a "temporary" state of nation-wide
martial law, suppposed to last only as long as "the current emergency." His
suspension of habeas corpus and posse comitatus are natural follow-ups, and by
the middle of February any town with a population larger than 25,000 has itself
a small National Guard or regular Army garrison. Too, he takes steps to
encourage state governors to declare a dusk-to-dawn curfew and move quickly and
decisively to crush dissent. Finally, he greatly expands the power of the
Secret Service, giving them the power to investigate any and all threats to
national security and the safety of the President, at home and abroad. (The
President does not sleep easily.)

It's not terribly Constitutional, of course, but with the Supreme Court
building still being repaired to hide the bullet holes and bloodstains of the
late Hugo Black, the nation's highest court is decisively silent for the
moment. Some members of Congress aren't terribly comfortable with the
quasi-suspension of civil liberties, especially those from unaffected areas in
the Far West and elsewhere, but even they are swept along in the tide of
restoring American law and order. 

With the media blackout sternly enforced (and with no one ready to protest in
the afflicted cities), the new military presence does help; none of the rioting
groups (not even the thousands of newly-arrived Puerto Ricans) are quite ready
for the revolution they often talk about, the riots and fighting began as
defensive measures. (It is, of course, the _other_ guys who are the
aggressors.) Still, the cycle of violence, reprisals and counter-reprisals,
contiues, if not nearly so openly. The main effect of the martial law
declaration is to inculculate a disrespect and outright contempt for the United
States government (and governments in general) in all the clashing groups. 

-The formation of the "American police state" (as it is widely percieved
abroad) deals a deathblow to the already-shaky government of Lester Pearson in
February. Canada's economy has been in trouble for quite sometime, the expenses
of maintaining a powerful nuclear defense arm and the fallout from the trade
war with the United States (which has hurt Canada far more badly than the US,
which both prepared for it better and had a larger economy to begin with) have
hurt the nation badly. "Third" parties have grown quite substantially, with the
CCF and Social Credit governments in coalition with the Liberal Party and
Progressive Conservatives, respectively. 

The new Prime Minister has long been an opponent of the Pearson government from
within the Liberal Party, he favors promotion of economic development and
advancement of himself personally far more than the former Prime Minister. His
government is a coalition one, the Liberals in it along with a variety of other
parties, but Joseph Smallwood is confident he can lead Canada and his party
together into the 1960s. 

-To the irritation of his Soviet allies, Ernesto Guevara's coup-within-a-coup
through March and April of 1962 goes off reasonably well. Leopoldo Galteri
actually escapes successfully, fleeing with a substantial portion of the
Argentine treasury to Brazil, where he is soon telling the authoritarian
government there all the secrets of Argentina. With the supreme leader of the
conservative wing of the revolution gone and discredited, the faction of the
military that supported the anti-Castillo revolution proves unable to unite
around any one candidate, and soon Guevara is working on a new constitution.
Civil disorder is still ongoing, after all, better to bring the revolution to
its fruition while blood is still running in the streets. 

The United States isn't terribly pleased, of course, but they're a little busy,
and despite reservations, Kaganovich is aware that his informal agreement with
the United States was with Joseph Kennedy, not the new occupant of the
President's chair. 

For All Time Pt. 87
May-September 1962

-In the words of George McGovern, writing from relatively peaceful South
Dakota: "The hand of martial law fell as a cloud of some exotic  gas; it
inflamed and smothered fires where it found them, and intoxicated the more
peaceful places on a cloud of contentment" Indeed, in much of the United
States, the main impact of martial law was to seperate National Guardsmen from
their families for a while; along with the sudden appearance of pro-government
and pro-military posters. (Allen Ginsburg did his work well.) In areas where
state governors did impose curfews, they went largely unenforced.

In afflicted areas, especially in major cities, there was of course a
significant impact. Government censorship, especially in the press, is heavy
(though largely de facto rather than de jure), and the most compelling
photograph of the summer of 1962; an M48 Clark tank  parked outside Grant's
Tomb, is ironically taken by an army photographer and used in various patriotic
publications. President LaFollette resists the temptation to simply make mass
arrests in black, Jewish, and Hispanic neighborhoods, though units from the
Army Corps of Engineers do quietly refurbish the World War II-era camps used on
Japanese-Americans. 

There are incidents, of course; the bloody raid on an AEC safehouse in
Philadelphia kills a dozen civilians and five FBI agents in June, the Kahanist
bombing of a National Guard barracks in August, and countless others, but the
great mass of the nation only hears about the successes, and with a realization
that there isn't going to be any great publicity outside of the movement itself
(and with moderates leaving all groups in droves), that vast spectrum of
activists who  took the streets at the beginning of the year, from Ariel Sharon
to Malcom X. to Gordon Kahl, slowly begin to retreat into the churches and
mosques; offices and backrooms; that they came from in the first place.

By the beginning of August, it's not too much to say that the troubles of 1962
are nearly over; organized violence continues in the major cities (far less in
the South, the new waves of the Great Migration have sent Southern blacks by
the tens of thousands either north into the big cities or into black-majority
eareas), but at a level far more like Chicago in 1925 than Belfast in 1916.
Altogether, perhaps a thousand people are dead. 

-In addition to giving the government a rather...visible presence in most of
America, the "Riot Congress" of 1962 takes steps to make the government itself
more sturdy. The Presidential Succession Act of 1962 ensures the death penalty
for Presidential assasins or conspirators to same; it also extends the
Presidential line of succession, adding the Speaker of the House, President Pro
Tem of the Senate, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court between the
Vice-President and Secretary of State. A follow-up of the act gives the
President the power to appoint a Vice-President, given Senate approval.

President LaFollette moves quickly to appoint a Vice-President, signing the
relevant documents just after the new regulations become law on August 15,
1962. California Governor Clark Gable is popular beyond his state as the former
movie idol and man's man he is, and, as an added bonus, he has been a pretty
good governor since his election in 1960[FN1]; California's race riots were
unpleasant, especially in San Francisco, but at least mercifully brief. 

-Meanwhile, in July, in an isolated room somewhere in Montreal, George Shoeters
shakes the hand of an anonymous officer in the French intelligence services.
Maurice Challe can't touch the US; all of her disgruntled minorities or
political movements are disturbingly nationalistic, and the ongoing tensions
with Britain more than let him get back at the Jenkins government. 

But Canada...ah, Canada. He can at once help liberate an oppressed French
population, get back at those dastardly Canadians who made France a
laughing-stock after the secession of St. Pierre and Miquelon, and get rid of a
vast number of weapons made unnecessary after the end of the Algerian and West
African Wars. There are no nukes in those first shipments, of course; France's
nuclear program is  in overdrive, trying to build the hydrogen bomb that Great
Britain beat them to in May, they've none to spare and likely never will.
Besides, unlike his predecessor, Maurice Challe is not insane.  

-It's about this time that the first Chinese atomic bomb is completed; Mao
Tse-Tung moves very carefully nowadays. While most CPSD organs operating in the
People's Republic of China are run by Chinese, there are a fair number of
Soviets and Soviet agents running around, and he can't allow Kaganovich to know
of the Chinese atomic program. 

He is very close to a formal break, but he can't yet. If China is to
successfully strive free of the hand of Moscow, they need everything the Soviet
Union has...especially thermonuclear weapons. It will be another few years
before they've moved to that stage, though, so Mao continues to smile and
firmly agree with General Secretary Kaganovich about the need for cooperation
among the two largest nations in the CPSD; while privately working to making
his own darn bloc, thank you. 

Meanwhile, General Lin Baio, commander of the People's Liberation Army, and one
of the few officials highly placed enough to be aware of Mao's plans for the
future, is thoroughly disgusted. He agrees, of course, with the urgent need to
break from the "neo-capitalists" of Moscow, but Mao is being far too wussified
about it! If the Soviet Union has more hydrogen bombs, well, there are millions
more Chinese, Chinese united behind the banner of the people's revolution! 

-Other nations, however, are not so ambitious, or at least have less of a
reason to hide their ambition. On September 9, 1962, President Delgado Chalbaud
invites the Soviet and American ambassadors to witness Venezuela's entry into
the nuclear age. In an isolated region of the Guiana highlands (the incredibly
remote area that was the setting for _The Lost World_), the first South
American nuclear bomb, an impressive fellow of forty kilotons, is detonated
just after sunset. 

The 53-year old Chalbaud has been walking an interesting tightrope in his
decades in power, especially after the conquest of the Venezuelan Antilles.
Presenting himself to the United States and western Europe as an anti-Communist
(and indeed, especially after Guevara rose to power in Argentina, it's not a
good idea to found an large Communistish group in Venezuela), Chalbaud has been
married to a Jewish-Romanian Communist (Lucia Levine) since the early 1930s.
More than a few dissidents or refugees from Kaganovich's CPSD, especially from
the former Yugoslavia, have quietly found their way to Caracas and its
environs, especially scientists and engineers. (There've been a lot of those,
the former commander of the Venezuelan Army Corps of Engineers has been a
_builder_, and not just of military matters. He's quite proud of the comparison
to Augustus Caesar.)

To the CPSD, he has presented himself as the leader of a non-aligned bloc in
South America, pointing proudly to the left-wing publication his wife edits
(that somehow never criticizes the person of Delgado Chalbaud) and the (very
carefully) positioned leftists in his government. He'd normally just let them
alone; despite his marriage he has little use for Communists, but his
representative Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo is already in Cairo, negotiating with
representatives of the Jerusalem League and the CPSD on the formation of a bloc
of oil producing nations: the OPEP. 

For All Time Pt. 88
October 1962-December 1962

-On October 4, Pedro Estrada is unsurprised to see only a mid-level Treasury
official greeting him as he steps onto the tarmac at Manfred von Richthofen
International Airport; the largest major airport serving the city of Dusseldorf
and the country of Westphalia. (Okay, the _only_ major airport serving
Westphalia, at least the only major civilian one.) He didn't want to be greeted
with someone well-known, and Helmut Schmidt is comfortably obscure in a
department still dominated by Hjalmer Schacht. 

The head of the Venezuelan Secret Police isn't a man comfortable with
publicity; the only people he really likes to show his face to are Carlos
Delgado, his wife, and the occasional particularly prominent (and unfortunate)
political prisoner in Caracas or the Venezuelan Antilles. He's even less
comfortable with it now; after all, he's got a very important cargo in the
boxes full of technical information in the hold of his airplane, not to mention
several former Palatinate nuclear scientists who've come home to advise their
northern brethern. 

-Henry Wallace's funeral on October 20, 1962, (he died at his desk two weeks
earlier) is attended sparsely, mostly by dignitaries within the United States
government, the former President's family, and members of the fringe moderate
civil rights movement. Herbert Hoover and Thomas Dewey; the two living American
ex-Presidents, give long eulogies which mostly say that Henry Wallace was
President of the United States during World War II; Vice President Clark Gable
speaks as well as can be expected for the man who many blame for stirring up
Charles Whitman. 

Benjamin O. Davis Jr. gives a good speech, so does Thurgood Marshall, and
Walther Reuther actually makes people cry...but no one's that bothered.
Servicemen remember the disaster at Normandy in 1943, conservatives remember
the way Wallace drove through liberalism above all else, and bigots will
_never_ forgive the man who made the country pay attention, however briefly, to
civil rights in the United States. Whatever people think of him, though,
everyone agrees that America's 33rd President, and the world he hoped to
create, is dead. 

After the funeral, Thurgood Marshall happens to bump into Martin Luther King
Jr. (unlike many of his counterparts in the civil rights movement, no one ever
made anything stick against King), and the two fall to talking. Perhaps
something can be done to make Wallace's death not in vain, after all, something
near the holiday of Christmas.

-Meanwhile, Canada mutters on. With the support of Prime Minister Smallwood,
K.C. Irving and Maurice Dupliess have easily retained their positions running
New Brunswick and Quebec, respectively. It is a measure of Smallwood's ability
that he, the autocratic socialist, has successfully cozied up to elites of all
languages to keep Quebec and the Maritimes solidly in the Liberal camp. 

The Newfoundlander has been less lucky in the west; the government's
dislocation of small fishing communities in the West Coast has created a
generation of angry young men all throughout British Columbia, most of whom
have found God (at least a political version of same) in the person of their
riding's Social Credit MP. The Progressive-Conservative/Social Credit coalition
is a powerful Opposition force in Parliment, and Smallwood has only recently
survived a vote of no confidence. 

(The most interesting stories are the ones unreported; a generation of Quebec
intellectuals like Rene Lesage and Pierre Trudeau has been driven into academia
or journalism; Francophone politics are dominated by nearly theocratic
conservatives on the one hand or quasi-terrorists in the other.) 

In Algeria, Pierre Gagnon is slapping more and more zinc oxide on himself; the
distraction of sunburn can not, must not be allowed to interfere with the
Cause. Revolution!

-Official Washington is all abuzz in December with rumors of a planned Negro
revolt; each rumor more graphic than the last. If any man can be blamed for
them, it is the director of the F.B.I. Roy Cohn is part of the new generation
of politically active, radically conservative Jews that has sprung up after
World War II; he was appointed during President LaFollette's attempts at
bipartisanship. 

He does geninuely believe the stories; FBI agents planted in the NAACP have
picked up evidence of meetings between moderates like Thurgood Marshall and
radicals like Martin Luther King Jr; and he even has a planned route for the
march; one ending (ominously) in the park opposite the White House. 

Despite a strong urge to strike first and best, Cohn is well aware of the
risks; an FBI/military attack on black groups who have publically done nothing
wrong will simply stir up another wave of civil insurrection, and he really
doesn't want that...better to bring them out publically, in the eyes of the
world. 

There can be no telling the President the exact truth, of course, Robert
LaFollette Jr. is far too soft-hearted to do what's right. Cohn settles for
telling LaFollette that investigations are underway, while having secret talks
with Secret Service Cheif Schine and Marine Major Lee H. Oswald, commander of
the White House garrison. (Especially secret with Schine.)

-On December 12, the first bus arrives in Georgetown...

For All Time Pt. 89

"I'll always remember how cold it was. There must have been two, three thousand
Negros in Lafayette Square that day, not to mention twenty Marines, a dozen
Secret Service suits, and one President of the United States, but it must have
been ten below."

Norman S. takes a long drag on his cigarette before continuing. "I wasn't with
them, of course. It wasn't policy to let the guy holding the nuclear launch
codes walk into the middle of a crowd of Negros that had been chanting songs to
Muhammed and Jesus ten minutes before. Of course, it wasn't policy to let the 
_President_ walk in there either." 

He laughs in rueful admiration. "We'd known he wasn't all there, you know.
Christ, he put a picture of his dad in the Oval Office a week after Joe Kennedy
bought it, and he talked to the damned thing. But Bob LaFollette had guts, I'll
give him that. I wouldn't have walked out into that crowd. But then again,
maybe he shouldn't have either..." 

"I couldn't hear what they were saying. That was the worst part at first; here
I was, the President of the United States putting his life on the line to talk
to Thurgood Marshall and Medgar Evars man to man, and Peckerhead Oswald and his
boys were going to see all the action." 

Norman looks out the window, and his voice shakes a bit. "We knew he was nuts,
too, every real soldier in the White House, but Ed Walker always stood up for
him. Said he'd take a bullet for Oswald, and Oswald would take a bullet for the
President...and he got to pick his own men, too, which meant Lee Oswald had
twenty of the most psycho Marines in the United States behind him on the 15th
of December. The Secret Service guys weren't much better, mostly crazy bastards
who were sorry they hadn't bagged a n***** along with the DC police when the
riots hit." 

Growing in strength, the big man looks squarely at the interviewer. "Even so, I
think Bond must have done something stupid. Even a nutjob like Lee Oswald
wouldn't have just pulled out his .45 and shot a guy for no reason. It doesn't
matter..." Norman shakes his head. "Maybe he just shoved his hand in his pocket
too fast to get some smokes. You don't do that kind of crazy stuff five feet
from the President when you were just yelling "Revenge! Revenge!"

"Still, I almost can't blame Evers for shooting back, not with Oswald blowing a
man's head off right in front of him. No one else was shooting, though...I
don't care what everyone else said they heard, I heard exactly two shots before
it all hit the fan. Two shots..." Norman closes his eyes. "Twenty AR-16s firing
at full auto is damned loud, you know, damned loud. We didn't hear the
screaming until they stopped to slap in a full mag, and by then the snipers on
the White House roof were picking Negros off right and left..." 

Norman opens his eyes and suddenly booms: "Hell! He loses four Marines and
three Secret Service guys, five of seven to friendly fire, in the time it takes
to fire a volley and get Bob LaFollette out of there, and he says they were
shooting at _him!_ A hundred and twenty dead, two hundred wounded, and
Peckerhead Oswald makes himself the hero." 

"We were all sure there was going to be a race war, then, like nothing we'd
ever seen. Everyone was going nuts when we got back to the White House, Oswald
was walking around covered in blood, Wayne Morse was about to have a heart
attack..." S. shakes his head admiringly. "But not Bob LaFollette. He gets the
cameras rolling, he breaks into every network, live, an hour later, when
Washington is already catching fire...I always thought it was the bandage that
did it, the President of the United States, bleeding from his head, telling the
nation not to shed any more blood, that it was his fault and no one else's,
that he was the one who'd spilled so much blood..." 

Norman looks at the New Zealander with haunted eyes. "I think he must have had
the pistol in his desk for months; no one had .38s in the White House. You can
see Hugh Thompson's arm in the CBS and NBC broadcast, poor kid was maybe a
half-second too late...ABC didn't cut away in time."

For All Time Pt. 90
December 1962-February 1963

-A major lasting initiative of the early hours of the Gable administration
(beyond the Presidential Disability Act that would eventually turn into a
Consitutional amendment, and taking the final steps to prevent a race war) is
the Federal Mental Health Agency. Headed by Antonio Moniz disciple Benjamin
Spock, the FMHA is charged with maintaining the mental health and stability of
all Americans. (Mental health has, of course, been taboo for as long as anyone
can remember, but LaFollette's suicide has made it shockingly public.) 

Spock's doctors (at least one is at every major mental hospital in America by
the middle of the year) have broad discretionary powers to ensure the proper
treatment of the mentally ill, and the Agency itself has the power to commit
nearly anyone who's a danger to themselves or those around tem, even if the
patients themselves aren't fully aware of it. 

Americans will have the federal government watching over their sanity, and as
they watch President Clark Gable and Edward Brooke lay a wreath at the site of
the Lafayette Incident, frankly, they're ready for someone to. (Gable's
Vice-President is famous, politically neutral, but a Republican voter: General
Matthew Ridgeway, retired since 1948 and an author of a best-selling series of
military novels; is remembered as the hero of the abortive invasion of Japan at
the end of the war.) 

-January 1, 1963 marks a not-terribly voluntary Independance Day for
Bechuanaland, Britain's last major colony in southern Africa. Completely
surrounded by South Africa and its associated territories, tied to the shaky
Britain of Roy Jenkins, and without the important resources of Nigeria and
Aden, the new nation of Botswana is founded more on the principles of cleaning
up than setting free. 

Hundreds of miles away, Idi Amin's conquest of Zanzibar has proved a success,
right down to the planned row of gallows from the sea to the former Sultan's
palace. Like a lot of dictators, he is modeling much of his government after
the proven success of Delgado's in Venezuela. His civil engineering projects
aren't doing so well, forced savings can only do so much, and his nuclear
program along Lake Victoria is slow at best. 

The main things that _have_ been successful, though, are the thousands of
rifles and hundreds of trained, veteran fighters that have slipped across the
long border with the Territories of Botha and Smuts (The former Northern
Rhodesia and Mozambique, respectively.) to wreck havoc. Johannesburg is already
casting an eye north and pondering what's to be done, even as urban violence
explodes to apocalyptic levels. 

-On February 5, 1963, Ritchie Valens wipes his brow and bows to the Liverpool
crowd. America's first great Latin pop sensation was far less successful at
home than in OTL, the inevitable association of ethnic music with ethnic strife
has badly hurt the careers of black, Hispanic, and Jewish musicians. 

He's still big in Great Britain, though, teenagers rebelling against the
near-poverty of home and against the disliked Americans across the sea all at
once. After the show, a bespectacled young man makes his way to Valens'
dressing room; he has a presentation for the gregarious artist, British ethnic
music:

John Lennon's _Jugalbandhi_

For All Time Pt. 91
March-July 1963

-As legions of tanned, tired men march past Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, he is
the most popular man in Australia. His government's revival of the de facto
alliance with the People's Republic of Java and Sumatra has let both
governments make a strategic retreat; Australian peacekeeping troops can return
home from Ceram, Buru, and points west, while Jakarta can spend CPSD funds on
themselves than on the ideological bretheren in the Indonesian archipelago. 

(Not that either power will stop pointing nuclear bombers at each other, from
Yogyakarta and Bali, respectively.) As for Whitlam himself: now he can use his
personal and political popularity to bring Australia fully into the 20th
century, make a social democracy in a world where they're few and far between.
It will be hard, but he's not one to flinch from hard work.

-Neither is his American counterpart, President Clark Gable, and he's got a lot
to do: His pledge not to run for his own term in 1964 has freed him to
concentrate on being President, but has cost him valuable political cards. His
planned Equal Rights Amendment is mostly pretty words, and thus popular, but
more equitable laws (at least from the actors' perspective) for the acting
community will take work indeed. 

He makes nightly television addresses from the First Family's bedroom (the
first President to do either), and the old acting talents haven't withered,
though his last role was a cameo role as the Judge in family friend Lucille
Ball's _Inherit The Wind_ in 1957. Gable would like to do a national tour, but
that didn't work so well for President Kennedy. (Not to mention, of course,
that the President's bodyguard is rather...large at this stage.) 

-Meanwhile, Roy Jenkins rolls the dice. Like his predecessor, he is a firm
believer in butter over bullets, but circumstances have forced him to build the
largest nuclear arsenal in Europe. (France has a substantially larger land
army, though.) With an economy not terribly stronger than West Germany's in
OTL, Britain is hard-pressed enough to defend herself and her vastly reduced
Empire while at the same time maintaining even the trappings of a social
democracy. 

Thus, Burma has to go; tens of thousands of British soldiers have lost their
lives there since the Communist insurgencies began (though far less since they
shifted back to be advisors only), three nuclear weapons have been used, and
still the Win government whines for more tens of millions of pounds, money that
he always seems to spend on himself. No more. No more. 

On June 1, 1963, Britain's ten thousand advisors and engineers begin the long
withdrawal home, just in time for Ne Win to find himself a new patron. Thailand
isn't exactly screamingly rich, of course, but they're doing quite well for one
of the three non-Communist states in Southeast Asia. More to the point, the
Nordics don't get uppity if you deal with students. Or maintain a harem. In
fact, if the reports from Bangkok are accurate, they _really_ like it. 

-Under the dark of the moon in July of 1963, a thermonuclear fireball rises
high over Chinese Turkestan...

For All Time Pt. 92
August-November 1963

-In the end, there is no war, and that's what dooms them all. Almost everyone
in Washington, London, Paris, and Ottawa expects a nuclear conflict between the
Soviet Union and Communist China in the dark days of August-September 1963.
Both powers mobilize millions of men and machines along their long common
border; China's demonstration blasts of one megaton each in isolated border
regions prompts Lazar Kaganovich to detonate an impressive 40 megaton blast
between North Japan and Manchuria. 

But, finally, neither man can _quite_ give the order to strike first. Lazar
Kaganovich has spent eleven long, hard years building the Soviet Union's and
the CSPD's industrial machines into a monument to Marx and Lenin, large,
efficient, and more prosperous than anyone has ever seen. (There has been a
barely noticeable rise in worker inefficiency in isolated areas, but SPID is
still kilometers below the radar.) Like a Prussian admiral of World War I, he
just can't take his mighty creation and hurl it against the wall; even in a war
he knows he'll win. 

Mao Tse-Tung is a bit more prosiac; he's seen the People's Republic of China
come back from (what he imagines as) worse than the losing side of a nuclear
conflict, and just doesn't particularly care about tens of millions or so dead.
But _if_ he's going to kill millions of Russians and tens of millions of
Chinese, he'd better have a good reason...and in the end, there isn't. Both Ho
Chi Minh and Kim Il Sung have quickly cozied up to Moscow, with Mongolia and
the JPR proving equally afraid to confront the reality of the people's
revolution. And once he realizes Kaganovich isn't about to go to war, well, the
whole thing starts to look a little silly.

By October of 1963, both powers have begun a (very) slow process of partial
demobilization. After all, war or no, the Communist world has been split, and
split forever. (A potential Maoist ally is removed early; Envers Hoxha is
assasinated by his own private secretary on September 25, 1963; Eastern Europe
remembers 1954 _very_ well, thank you.) 

-The General Secretary of the Soviet Union is a survivor. From being a Jew in
the inner circle of Stalin, the arch-anti-Semite, to running the Soviet Union
through perhaps her most turbulent times since the war, Lazar Kaganovich knows
when to stand, and when to duck, and when to get away from the noose mob. (Not
that he's in any particular physical danger, mind, the post-Stalin de facto
treaty is alive and well...but he'd rather quit than be fired.) 

Even before the extreme Stalinists begin to mutter about the spineless
government letting the Chinese get away with that kind of uppityness, Lazar
Kaganovich announces his retirement, and on October 20, 1963, after a suitable
period of arranging the right sucession with Politburo arm-twisting, the only
man to survive running the Soviet Union retires to his (relatively) small home
in Moscow. 

While Kaganovich would have preferred to have handed the government over to
Foriegn Minister Molotov, a personal friend and comrade (in the old sense of
the word) for 30 years, he's aware of appearances. The Soviet Union needs new
blood! It's not as if they're a pack of senile vodka-drinkers, after all.
Mikhail Andreevich Suslov is a bit more liberal than he, but an opponent of any
particular changes: In the end, he wants another industralist to run the
industrial empire he's made. 

((http://www.anet.net/~upstart/suslov.html))

-On November 22, Mao Tse-Tung is taking his daily nude swim in the nearest
convienent river (it's the Li River today, he's been touring the natural rock
formations nearby) when he suddenly turns face-down. Despite the alleged
efforts of his bodyguards, he is pronounced dead of drowning by a PLA doctor a
few hours later. 

Even as Mao is (very) rapidly cremated, no less a figure than General Lin Biao
himself is headed for Bejing. He has a long list of Soviet agents to take care
of, especially Mao's murderous bodyguards. (No one ever does find the opiate
capsule, the same brand the general himself uses.) 

For All Time Pt. 93
December 1963-February 1964

-On December 2, 1963, the world takes another step into the Space Age when the
first human being successfully makes a full orbit of the Earth. (There have
been several sub-orbital flights over long distances by both the US and the
USSR.) The Dactyl that Michael Collins and George Bush ride in their long
equatorial flight from Kennedy Base in Nevada and back is generations advanced
over the Dyna-Soar of years earlier; it is larger, faster, and pollutes
moderately instead of severely. (Theodore Taylor isn't particularly satisfied;
of course, but he, like everyone else involved in America's space program, is
swept away by the moment. Too, he has a sympathetic ear in his close friend and
superior, Ted Hall.) 

Too, thanks to heroic efforts by Clarence "Kelly" Johnson and Edward Teller,
the Dactyl and her two sister planes can actually carry weapons; one
five-hundred kiloton bomb each, and surprisingly, there are even specially
designed bombs that can survive a fall from orbital heights. Accuracy is a
problem, though, and it's difficult to do tests; there are no particular
treaties about testing weapons between the various Great Powers, but it doesn't
do to give London and Paris and Moscow and Bejing ideas. And, of course, each
Dactyl costs about two-thirds as much as a mid-sized aircraft carrier. 

-Ernesto Guevara's December negotiations with representatives from the People's
Republic of China are quite profitable indeed for all parties. Lin Biao's
position is still a bit shaky back home; there are always more people to shoot,
and he needs an inarguable success, an ally for China's very own. 

Too, Guevara needs assistance. He is sensible enough to know the socialization
of Argentina's armed and prosperous farmers will likely be the work of
generations; but for all that he's a believer in the inevitability of Marx;
well, he'd like to actually _see_ that happy day. 

The key is war! A war to liberate the oppressed workers and peasants of the
surrounding continent; that a generation might grow up under the banner of the
people's revolution, under a banner of liberation! Then, then can he reform the
heartland of the Democratic Republic of Argentina. 

There are problems, though; the purge of Galterist wreckers in the Army has
left the Argentine military without much in the way of experienced officers.
The Chinese military has those in abundance, men who can teach order, and
fighting, and combat, and devotion to the cause of the people's revolution. 

As for nuclear weapons...well, maybe when that war actually hits. President
Gable is an isolationist, yes, but Lin Biao is well aware how many nuclear
weapons the United States has, and how ill they will look at even a salmon
country dropping nuclear weapons on all and sundry. But they'll be ready for
them too...

-As 1964 begins, Mikhail Suslov isn't terribly bothered by all this. As he sits
in his Moscow office, surrounded by flow charts, he has all the proof he needs
that Lin Biao is leading his nation down a road even worse than capitalism. (A
truly terrifying thought!) There is, admittedly, the problem of the lost ally
in the Americas to worry about, but Dr. Guevara always made him a
bit...nervous. 

People's revolutions are all well and good, but smart men (like himself)
understand Moscow is the only really good source for a revolution. Independent
revolutions (like Mao's or Guevara's) are far too likely to fall from the
stalwart path of Marxism. No, the best way to have a revolution is to guide it
right from his desk in the Kremlin. 

And on February 17, 1964, when Colonel Jafaar Mohammed al-Nimeiry's army takes
Khartoum, well, there's suddenly a heck of a lot of people that need guidance.
The trip from Iran is a bit risky, but the Jerusalem League is far more
watchful than likely to actually start a war, and by the end of the month, the
first Soviet advisers are arriving in Sudan. 

((In OTL, Nimeiry led the 1969 Marxist coup. In the ATL, there's been enough
Soviet monkeying about in Africa (witness SPID) to make the revolution a pretty
solidly pro-Moscow one. ))

For All Time Pt. 94
March-August 1964

-On March 2, 1964, the people of Britain go to the polls and turn out Roy
Jenkins and the Labour Party. There are a variety of reasons for this; none of
them alone quite explaining the collapse of the "Prosperity through Austerity"
government that has run the United Kingdom and its diminished Empire since the
death of Nye Bevan. 

To begin with, the Empire itself. Only thirty years earlier, the map was
one-sixth pink; now Great Britain holds Aden, Nigeria, the Caribbean, islands
scattered hither and yon...and that's it. The mighty Royal Navy has been mostly
sold off to acquisitive foriegn powers, and bomber bases are near every major
city. It's a sentimental issue, to be sure, but a real one, especially among
Britons of a certain age. 

And, of course, the eternal factor, the economy: Great Britain is leaps and
bounds better than France or Westphalia, much less Spain and Portugal, but
times have, to say the least, been better. Jenkins' retention of Nigeria and
Aden have let the United Kingdom stay independant of OPEP and foriegn oil
supplies, but technically-minded citizens look to the large nuclear system of
the United States and wonder where _their_ breeder reactors are. 

There are, of course, slightly less savory reasons; racism being prime among
them. The militarization of India and Pakistan's governments in the 1950s has
produced several waves of East Indian immigrants to Great Britain, in the
millions by 1964. The United Kingdom is as tolerant as the next First World
democracy, of course, but nativism works well in just about every nation with a
sudden influx of immigrants. 

And thus it is, with his slogan "Not One Inch More!", which refers to either
the collapse of Empire, economy, or whiteness, depending on what element of
Conservative voter you ask (he's rarely explicit), that Enoch Powell becomes
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. 

((Yeah, so it's convergence. Heck, the man is perfect, perfect I tells ya...))

-Another issue is, of course, American football. (_Real_ football) World Cup
qualifiers weren't televised in 1950, and most American fans aren't the type to
travel across oceans, so it was mostly the British and Brazilians who were
there on June 29 when the American soccer team crushed the British with an
score of 2-0. As time has gone by, the situation's gotten worse; American teams
have at least tied their British counterparts in two of their three return
matches; the last American victory, in 1963's semi-finals, saw perhaps the
finest American player in history, the great Jim Brown, score two goals
personally in the first ten minutes, with (according to Americans, at least)
only a broken leg during a post-game party keeping him from leading the
Americans to victory over Portugal in the World Cup championship. 

Clearly, something must be done! 

((In OTL, the American Soccer League was one of the strongest in the world in
the 1920s, but jurisdictional disputes and the Great Depression killed it off.
The system remained strong enough to beat the British in 1950 by a score of
1-0, but with the decline of ethnic clubs and the televising of other sports,
American (world) football became so much shadows and dust.

In FaTL, with the influx of Germans and Italians and Palestinians and Puerto
Ricans, combined with the sharp ethnic divides in the United States and poor
integration slowing American "football"'s progress, American soccer remains
very competitive, winning the Copa America an average of three years out of
eight. The pan-Americas soccer league is a powerful (American teams compete
regionally, then nationally, then internationally.) force. Oddly enough, the
influx of Europeans _also_ benefits Venezuela, historically the weakest
_futbol_ nation in South America. 

As for Jim Brown, well, he was a multi-sport guy, and dang fast.)) 
-The sudden, shocking collapse of the Burmese government is ample proof of what
happens when a client state becomes too corrupt and its Great Power patron too
complacent. In May, Burma is a fascist, authoritarian state, and by the end of
August, the first Chinese-built tanks are rumbling through the streets of
Rangoon, and Burma is on her way to becoming a Communist, totalitarian state. 

Most of the blame for this can be laid squarely at the feet of the Ne Win
government. Ever since the British use of tactical nuclear bombs had driven the
Communist rebels north into the hills near the Chinese border, Burma's military
government had been more than content to spend the British military subsidies
on themselves, building skyscrapers, organizing drug shipments through Taiwan,
and in general committing every major sin except sloth. 

Imperialism is a rather new thing to the nations of the Nordic Council, and the
men sitting in Copenhagen and Stockholm, Oslo and Helsinki, had been inclined
to believe their experts on the ground; that Burma was as stable and honest as
Thailand, that their military subsidies were going to help the Army fight.
Still, they put just enough pressure on Rangoon that Ne Win ordered one great
summer offensive to wipe out the rebels, to take care of them once and for all.



No one, not even the surviving Norwegian and Finnish military advisors, ever
gets full, definititive proof that there are PLA officers leading the armored
pincers that capture most of the Burmese Army just east of Lashio, or Chinese
pilots flying the fighter-bombers that appear over Rangoon a week later...but
everyone knows, all the same. 

Humiliated, the Nordic governments make a solemn vow; they and their allies
will never, ever be pushed around again. No more nations will fall, especially
not Thailand, which 
suddenly has lots and lots of sunburned blondes guarding the border. 

-Barry Goldwater touches on the spread of international Communism in his
acceptance speech; the junior Senator from Arizona having just been nominated
by a supermajority to be the Republican Party's Presidential candidate in 1964.
Goldwater is immensely popular with conservatives and centrists; a fiery foe of
lily-livered liberals and repugnant extremists at once, he has a grass-roots
base like no Presidential candidate for decades before. On top of everything
else, Goldwater is one of a growing number of  non-isolationists in American
politics.

Goldwater is an especial foe of the FHMA, promising to abolish it "in the first
hours of my Presidency" and to "salt the field that such a repellent idea has
come from." (It's not just words; Goldwater's family chain of department stores
has made Goldwater a wealthy man, and he's spent quite a bit of money funding
the largest Court challenge to the Federal Mental Health Administration,
arising out of a case in Phoenix.) 

The choice of running mate is a very difficult one; while Goldwater would
prefer New York Congressman William Miller, a close friend and former GOP
chairman, he's well-aware that after the deaths of Kennedy and LaFollette
(especially LaFollette's mental instability), the public is paying very close
attention to potential Vice-Presidential candidates. 

After a great deal of personal debate, Goldwater picks one of his chief rivals
for the nomination; Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton. Scranton is from a
big, important state in a big, important region, and is a bit to the left of
Goldwater on a variety of social issues. (For one thing, Goldwater is strongly
opposed to most of the surviving New Deal.) 

-Meanwhile, amid screaming boos, Lyndon Johnson is nominated by the Democrats
in Baltimore. Embittered by Joseph Kennedy Jr. dumping him in 1960, Johnson has
spent the last four years getting in good with every political boss in the
country; in all likelihood, the mass of the Party would have preferred someone
else; possibly New Jersey Governor Brennan or Maine Senator Muskie, but they
don't really get a choice. 

As his running mate, Johnson takes Ed Brown; he is _trying_ to get in good with
the Gable administration, after all, and getting Gable's former lieutenant
Governor is probably the best way to do that...

For All Time Pt. 95
August-November 1964

BOBBY BAKER is one of the most senior political advisors to Barry Goldwater,
and perhaps the most skilled. Goldwater's navigator when both flew bombers over
Belgium, Baker has a hard job in keeping his old friend from making the
slightly wild statements of public policy in public that he's given to in
private, but it's one he's proved largely successful at. 

(In real private, of course, the horror stories Baker relates about several
friends of his and their dealings with FMHA doctors in more rural areas of
Texas and Alabama. Homosexuality is much, much too risky a subject to bring up
in a campaign with a mudslinger like LBJ, but Barry Goldwater fully intends to
do _something._ once he's safely elected.) 

FRANCISCO TUDJMAN's Croatian Guards are in the forefront of the occupation of
Trinidad. The operation is something of a gamble for Carlos Delgado; while the
post-Eric Williams government has cut almost every tie to Great Britain, Enoch
Powell's rhetoric about standing up for former Empire nations is quite real.
(As he is wont to explain to the Venezuelan ambassador, over and over. You have
to explain things to these Latins.) 

Fortunately, though, the invasion is not particularly bloody; islanders
impressed with the efficiency of the Delgado government and fed up with the
intercine violence and economic turmoil accompanying their expulsion from OPEP
are waiting to greet the battlescarred veterans of Italy and Willemstad with
reasonably open arms, and Powell was never comfortable with the quasi-Marxist
government in Port of Spain anyway. He does, however, begin the construction of
a fairly large airstrip on the Falkland Islands, less the Guevara government
get uppity. 

He designs the base himself, spending long hours instructing Army engineers
about the construction of an airbase in the distant lands below the equator.
It's a frustrating task, but you have to explain things to these engineers. 

PETER LAWFORD, the American Ambassador to the Court of St. James, looks
blearily up from his Scotch as the crowd cheers and Arizona Senator Barry
Goldwater, thousands of miles away in Phoenix, announces proudly that Lyndon
Johnson has just conceded. Lawford is glad; he was appointed as a Kennedy
relation back in the halcyon days of Joe Jr, and no Kennedy likes Johnson.
(Johnson's margin of victory in Massachusetts was in the hundreds, and more a
measure of a liberal state than a pro-Johnson state.) 

CHARLES MANSON, however, is not so happy. Goldwater has successfully pulled
conservative Republicans away from the siren lure of extremism, and that means
trouble for California's Attorney General. (who is nothing if not extreme.)
It's these damned Jews, he thinks blackly, the Red Jews finally got their man
in Washington in the White House. 

Fortunately, he has Marilyn to soothe him. And they say Hollywood marriages
never work...

For All Time Pt. 96
December 1964-February 1965

-Apollo Milton Obote has been (publically) a side figure in the East African
government of Idi Amin. Originally put into Amin's cabinet to satisfy the
faction of the late Julius Nyerere, the East African Federation's Education
Minister has spent his career making sure Uganda's schools keep several
pictures of the Maximum Leader in all classrooms, and that teachers who don't
teach the glories of the Zanzibar conquest get what's coming to them. 

Obote has, however, been quite the busy man privately. Amin's incorporation of
the old anti-colonial rebels groups into the EAF's military has helped him keep
civil insurrection to a low ebb...but it's also put people who fear and hate
him in a very good position to do something, and Obote, the man who buried
Julius Nyerere,  is just the man to do it. On December 2, Idi Amin leaves
Kampala for a two-week conference with King Selassie of Ethiopia to consult
just what to do about the threat posed by Sudan (where Russian and northern
troops have begun waging a brutal war of expulsion against the black population
of the South), and Obote makes his move, as it were. 

High-ranking members of the East African military don't have long to wonder why
much of the General Staff and civilian leadership aren't at the December 10
meeting, it's hard to wonder things when you've just been bombed and shot to
death by men in your own military's uniforms. Hours later, Apollo Obote
addresses the East African Federation live on radio and television (the EAF has
surprisingly large quantities of both, the better to hear the Maximum Leader.).
"East Africans! Today we celebrate our freedom from fear! Our freedom from
want! Today, we celebrate our independance!" 

Two days later, the first military representatives of the People's Republic of
China arrives. Decades under first the British and then Amin have swung Obote's
personal pendulum far toward the siren call of Chairman Mao and General Li, and
for that matter, East Africa needs allies, trapped between near-CPSD member
Sudan and hungry South Africa, and revolutionary China is just the thing. 

-Barry Goldwater's inaugural address is an eventful one; long and exciting at
one go. A lot of it, though, isn't that surprising. Most people were expecting
the promises of stronger international relations abroad, especially with
Westphalia and Venezuela, and pretty much everyone was expecting the promised
cuts in the federal budget, like selling off the Department of Energy's big
nuclear plants to the states, and the many damns and plants of the Tennessee
Valley Authority over to private business. 

But it's a fair statement to say no one was expecting Barry Goldwater's closing
paragraph, not even the new President himself. "There is a crisis in America
today; a crisis of people condemned for no other crime than the way they were
born. Persecuted wherever they are found, outright banned in most parts of the
country, forbidden legal recognition, they are America's underclass. All but a
few weaklings will speak for Americans of a different color, or creed, or
nation, but no one will speak for them. None will dare even speak their name.
We call them security risks, we say they are easily blackmailed, and so we fire
them from the civil service. We discharge war heroes and call them traitors. No
more. One of the first acts of this administration will be to ban all federal
discrimination against those unfortunates we give the name homosexual, in all
aspects and portions of the government. And while there are those who will call
this action extreme, well, I would remind you that extremism in the defense of
liberty is no vice. And let me remind them also that moderation in the pursuit
of justice is no virtue." 

((There are those who may question this, but: 

Goldwater _was_ in favor of equal rights for homosexuals in OTL, and wrote a
stirring defense of gays in the military that's available on the Web.
Admittedly, this came later in his career, when it was a more public issue.  

However, in FaTL, with the power of the Presidency behind him, with his
friendship with Bobby Baker, with his horror at the treatment of homosexuals at
the hands of the Federal Mental Health Administration, and given Barry
Goldwater's known capacity in 1964 for  coming up with ideas without thinking
them over, especially as he didn't specify the military, I believe it's at
least as plausible as a Soviet atomic bomb in 1945.)) 

-It's not the first action of his administration, though; before the crowd has
even quieted outside the White House, President Barry Goldwater is in the Oval
Office signing the executive order demolishing the Federal Mental Health
Administration. All of its employees are transferred or discharged, all of its
patients are released.

Rather relieved at not having to hear such a divisive case, Estes Kefauver and
the Kefauver Court never do deal with the issues raised by Doe vs. Alfred,
after all, they've been dealt with by the executive branch, and quite
scathingly too. The "Salt the Earth" order will become a classic in its way.

-On February 2, the first crowds gather outside the Stonewall Bar...

For All Time Pt. 97
February 1965-May 1965

-Everyone knows the Stonewall Bar is a gay bar, its location on Christopher
Street has made it one of the most successful establishments of that nature in
Greenwich Village, New York City. For the most part, though, people don't care.
Greenwich Village is a liberated area even in FaT's New York, and as long as no
one makes a fuss, everyone's happy. Raids are not uncommon, but are always met
with little resistance. 

But a fuss has been made, and a big one: President Goldwater's liberalization
of the federal government's policy towards homosexuals has energized the
elements of the gay community (if there is such a thing in 1965) that patronize
the Stonewall; political activists and rebels, writers and poets, a
cross-section of Village life in general. They don't have to hide what they are
anymore; Barry is with them. Men accustomed to being at least semi-public find
it a relatively easy road to being completely public, men who fear less find it
easy not to fear at all. 

The Tactical NYPD unit that makes the February 2 raid is perhaps rougher than
they have to be, homosexuality's popularity among mainstream Americans has
actually dipped since Goldwater's announcement, no small effort to say the
least, and the police, veterans as they are of years of riots, are nothing if
not protectors of the mainstream order. All in all, the newly-confident New
York gay Village community and the New York City Police Department come
together, and suddenly police are slugging it out in full riot gear with
Greenwich youths incensed at the oppression of the government against a
minority, or the abuse of fellow travelers on a lonely road of life, or simply
people who like to make trouble, or all three. 

By the morning of the third, though; the two groups are suddenly joined. A
moderate segment of Americans in New York are veterans of street fighting too,
and a segment of those (primarily WASPs and Jews) are only too happy to rush to
the defense of the police or against "degenerates." Tempers flaring, with two
officers dead and more hurt, the police simply pull back to regroup and get
reinforcements...and the Battle of the Village begins. 

Contrary to what Boomer historians of later years will say, it's not a
generational struggle; in a way it's two Americas, the old vs. the new,
conservativism vs. liberal...in another way, a less abstract way, it's simply
chaos as black and Puerto Rican groups,  none of which are particularly
sympathetic to the differently-sexed, see their old enemies on the streets and
do the same, lest they lose ground, and soon the blood runs in the streets of
Greenwich Village.

Mayor Abraham Beame's administration is already shaky; Golda Meir, William F.
Buckley, and former Mayor Elliot Goodwin are formidable candidates for the
Republican nomination, not to mention John Lindsay from within his own party.
(Beame is that increasingly rare thing in New York, a Jewish Democrat.)
Horrified at the mounting toll, 
with (truth be told) awareness of his image as a weak-willed accountant, Beame
sends in the NYPD despite their reluctance, giving them direct orders to go
into the riot-torn areas and restore order by any means necessary...

It's hard to say when the first lynching happens, but the first caught on
camera is on February 11, and within very short order, it has imitators all
over the city. And the country, as old networks spring back up into life...and
new ones form. Most historians date the birth of the gay rights movement from
the execution style slaying of off-Broadway star Dick York on March 5.

-As America's cities explode into violence and rioting again, the medium of
television gets a big boost. Contemptous of the media blackouts of the previous
administration, President Goldwater allows the cameras right down into the city
streets, and so Americans can turn on CBS at 10 and watch Eric Severied narrate
the beating of a young Jewish man...and many, inspired or vengeful, take to the
streets themselves. 

Fascinated and horrified at once, a generation of psychologists like Stanley
Milgram, Nathan Lewine, and a Harvard professor named Timothy Leary watch as
the violent effects of the young medium are apparantly displayed, and quite
graphically, too. Too, they watch as their former patients take to the streets.


President Goldwater's instant dismantling of the Federal Mental Health
administration has freed hundreds of wrongfully imprisoned people; but
thousands of mentally ill have been released, too quickly to be processed, and
soon they're among the rioters in strength. 

-Never one to hesitate from confronting a problem, Barry Goldwater sends in the
military to New York City, Chicago, and the dozen other cities with growing
chaos, recognizing that the US Army is one group equally respected (and
loathed) by all the rioting factions and militias.  

Grumbling, the Army moves in, only to find they're not as unbiased as they've
been in the past. Despite great personal reservations, President Goldwater has
stood firm on his commitment to "desegregating" all areas of the federal
government, including the military. After all, homosexuals _have_ served in the
military for centuries, and he gave his word. Barry Goldwater isn't a man to
step back from his word. 

The wave of subsequent resignations wasn't that large, but it did include a
variety of high-profile officers. The most high-profile of all, oddly enough,
had the courtesy to conceal it as early retirement: the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, General Creighton T. Abrahms. His successor, Major General
Edwin Walker, doesn't like it much either (in fact, much less), but he knows
when to work quietly, when to work behind the scenes...

-One of convicted traitor Saddam Hussien's last sights on April 3, 1965, is a
guard's television set, showing the detonation of the Jerusalem League's first
atomic bomb on an uninhabitated island in the Persian Gulf. (He is taken out
and shot within the hour for plotting to assasinate the King of Iraq.) 

Suitably impressed (because who isn't impressed by nuclear warheads), the Gulf
States, from Qatar to Bahrain to Dubai, join the ranks of their Arab co-ethnics
in the Jerusalem League, and suddenly there's a big new neutralist power bloc
between the Democratic United People's Republic of Anatolia and the People's
Republic of Iran. 

(Both Venezuela and Great Britain are rather disappointed by this; Carlos
Delgado is only too aware that Arab nations outnumber Spanish-speaking nations
in OPEP by quite a bit, and if they do start voting together, it'll pose a
considerable problem in his efforts to control a great deal of the world's oil
supply. 

Enoch Powell, for his part, is still faced with a simmering guerilla conflict
in Aden, one driven by Arab nationalism, and a largely united Arab world,
especially a prosperous one, just doesn't help matters much at all. He spends a
_great_ deal of time explaining that to Defense Minister Heath, a braver man
than most.) 

-On May 12, 1965, Scandanavia enters the nuclear age when a mushroom cloud
rises into the sky in a remote sector of Norway....

For All Time Pt. 98
June 1965-September 1965

-Oddly enough, the Stonewall Riots are both less widespread and bloodier than
previous American civil disturbances. In the end, despite the web of
connections between the White Citizens Council, African Ecumenical Council,
Jewish Defense League, and various other groups, very few people in a position
of leadership are willing to go to bat (quite literally, in some cases) for
homosexuals. 

But some are (mostly smaller, splinter groups seeking attention), and, more to
the point, America's urban homosexual population proves nearly as quick to
organize as her black and Jewish and Puerto Rican populations in years past;
men who contented themselves with hiding in cramped, darkened bars, or in less
savory enviroments, find not only _can_ they fight back, but they can win, too.


Not against the police, though, and after several New York City and Chicago
police officers are killed suppressing the riots, allegedly by homosexuals,
well, the police start to expect violent resistance...and, truth be told, the
expectation has a way of creating the reality. (No one is ever tried for the
Castro Street Massacre, but then, the official National Guard verdict is that
the occupants of the bathhouse were hiding firearms, so that's to be expected.)


All across America, images of young men at war with the police are burned into
the mindsets of a whole generation of Americans. 

-On a more pleasant note, a massive shipment of supplies very much like a
similiar one sent a year before to Argentina) from the People's Republic of
China arrives in Mombasa, East African Federation, for shipment all over the
nation on August 2. The shipment is a mixed bag, whatever can be spared by Lin
Biao's version of Cultural Revolution China, everything from rifles to rice to
Red Books. 

It is so large, in fact, that various unmarked freighters are forced to use
alternate ports, most of them owned and occupied exclusively by the EAF
military. Rapidly, giant crates and enigmatic great machines are whisked across
one of the few really good road systems in the country to a vast complex of
buildings on the shores of Lake Victoria. 

Apollo Milton Obote is not a man to be blackmailed lightly, and both the newest
member-state in the CPSD to the north and South Africa to the south have
trifled with him far too much for him to let it slide again. 

-Truth be told, the People's Republic of Sudan's membership in that vaunted
club isn't helping matters much. With the East African Federation supplying
southern Sudan's black population with arms to resist the attempted ethnic
cleansing of the dominant North, the war looks to drag on for years. 

Too, General Secretary Mikhail Suslov (not so ably assisted by Defense Minister
Ivan Boldin)  hasn't helped matters much. His reliance on case studies and
projections by civilian bureaucrats have led official Soviet policy to ignore
the shipments still slipping across the border with the EAF entirely, and
encouraged local ground commanders to simply inflate their body counts. Morale
is low, casualities high.

It's understandable, then, that Soviet troops, many already feeling ill even on
non-combat days, would seek solace in Khartoum, Omdurman, Port Sudan, and other
cities and towns with less than savory areas, and if inhabitants of those areas
continue the trade that keeps body and soul together with visitors from outside
Sudan, be they Ethiopian or French Africans, Egyptians or even Europeans. 

For All Time Pt. 99 
October 1965-February 1966

-When it comes, it comes almost without warning. Maurice Challe's "Tricolor"
government is far less heavy-handed or bloody-minded to the French in France
than its Salanist predecessor, this has let a relatively free exchange of
ideas, both technological and cultural. Unfortunately (at least from the
government's perspective), it's also led to the spread of anti-government
ideas. 

Ethnic nationalism is just strong enough to be a potent threat as well; Premier
Darlan's official banning of Gascon, Norman, Breton and countless other
non-French languages served mostly to make them the language of rebels and
dissidents, with the short reign of terror under Salan serving to weld the
patriots of Gascony, Normady, Brittany, and even a few stalwart Occitans to
their alleged mother tongue. Most dissidents, even in those provinces, are more
anti-government than pro-language, but enough are that the  "réveillenters" are
a definite force to be reckoned with. 

In October of 1965, after a series of incidents involving the police and
anti-government students and bloody shootouts, several riots break out in and
around Rennes, the provincal capital of Brittany. (Breton nationalists, often
assisted by the Camus government in St. Pierre, are the most organized and
best-funded.) Premier Challe doesn't hesitate, he deploys the troops. 

As per twenty years of governmental policy, they are conscripts, recruited from
Brittany itself. With France's primary enemy in the east, the great land power
of the Communist bloc, locally recruited conscripts are considered far more
likely to fight bravely and well in defense of their homeland. It isn't that
doctrine is inaccurate, per se, only that the Army didn't think through all of
its implications. The first units defect around October 15, and by the end of
the month, thousands of trained young soldiers have joined their fellows in the
streets, and the "Armee du Bretange" is more than just a fiction. 

Even as the government mobilizes, the revolts spread, more and more soldiers
defect to causes that promise high pay, a strong economy for France, and
liberation for groups ethnic and otherwise. Many areas stay loyal, with only a
minor rebel problem, but many do not, and by the beginning of 1966, there are
full-scale revolts in Gascony, Normandy, Brittany, the Marseilles hinterlands,
the Saar, and Alsace. 

By January, the first shipments of aid have arrived, delivered to all parties.
Germans in Germany have never quite given up on the Saarland, and Reinhard
Gehlen's Westphalia is only too glad to supply the German rebels there.
Communism (much like overt ethnic nationalism) is deliberately muted by the
rebel leadership, but Mikhail Suslov is only too happy to covertly supply them.
He aims not so much to enhance Communism as to discredit capitalism, and a
civil war in Western Europe's largest capitalist state is a good way to do
that. 

(Spain, Portugal, and Great Britain all supply aid to the Challist government
with varying degrees of reluctance. As he explains to reporters again, and
again, and again, and again, he has no sympathy with dictatorship, but better
dictatorship than civil war. Franco and Salazar, meanwhile, have no such crises
of conscience or media.) 

-For two men of rather different backgrounds and views on the world, Carlos
Delgado and Barry Goldwater take a quick liking to each other. Both men love to
tinker and build, holding several patents in their own countries, and both are
solidly, strongly anti-Communist. 

In their week-long conference at Camp Charles in February, the President's
retreat on the tip of the Delmarva Peninsula, the two heads of state hammer out
the first significant alliance for both countries in decades. Delgado will
allow Americans to build naval installations in less populated areas of the
Venezuelan Antilles, and even bomber bases deep in the interior. Both nations
agree to combat their enemies, especially international Communism, all through
South America, and the US will provide preferential status to Venezuelan trade
goods. 

(Only President Barry Goldwater is aware of the full meaning of the
less-explicit parts of the treaty, essentially letting Venezuela do as it
pleases against British Guiana, Colombia, and points north and south. A deeply
moral man, he's uncomfortable with this , but like most Americans of FaTL, he's
deeply opposed to European imperalism, and is well aware the United States
needs an ally on the Southern Continent.) 

The treaty is popular in both countries; Venezuelans have no particular
objection to financial aid and almost perfect trade relations with their
largest trading partner, and Venezuela's economic prosperity and authoritarian
government has long made it popular with certain segments of the American
population. (Too, there's hope that alliance with the United States will help
spread democracy to Venezuela and points elsewhere.)