Hawkatana
That jaywalking punk anarchist
- Location
- That place in the thing
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The 2000's is basically a period of calming down following the shitstorm what was the TTL 90's.
Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline
- Thread starter Aelita
- Start date
- Timeline Post-1900 Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Miss XTC
2 kawaii 2 live 2 sugoi 2 die
- Location
- HelLA.
- Pronouns
- She/They
The ironic thing is, the AFS has survived this long because of how much their governments intervene in the economy. Western Europe itself is basically the Nordic model on steroids, and neoliberalism is a fringe ideology and not the end all be all of capitalism that it is IRL.
Something that I think a lot of people need to internalize is that if the FBU existed IOTL, a lot of people would see it as socialist. And at the very least it would probably be more livable than America or the UK is right now. It only comes off as reactionary because it's up against a free, prosperous and socially liberated Communist bloc. And peaceful coexistence is untenable in the long run: one has to die for the other to keep living.
And from a lot of people's perspective both in the TCI and the AFS, by the dawn of new millennium it's clear that capitalism that will die.
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Miss Teri
The Queen
- Location
- West
- Pronouns
- She/Her
He kinda does that before and after the war, but by the 50's, he is a general news anchor.
Raiho-kun
This Cycle's Second Biggest Communism Builder
The 90s are actually the beginning of the Long Detente which stretches at least until the 2010s. Lore for the present day is fairly murky at the moment.
Hawkatana
That jaywalking punk anarchist
- Location
- That place in the thing
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'd call that a calming down period.
Libertad
Interdimensional Traveler and Culture agent
- Location
- Culture orbital It's Fantastic For You To Be Here
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah, that administrative structure, whatever that is, called by Engels as "administration of things" doesn't have to be a "nation-state" and it will not be one under world communism. States are all about "administration of people". Administering social conflict and class conflict, usually in favor of one social or economic class over the others. People will not be administered by anything like it under world communism because exploitation of Man by Man is all over. They'll be entirely self-governing. Quite libertarian, for lack of a better word.
Call it "utopian" but that's what it is, at least for Marxists. A lot of anarchists tend to agree as well, they just differ with Marxists in terms of how to get there.
The best science fiction portrayal of this in my opinion is Iain M. Banks' stateless and moneyless The Culture. Star Trek's Federation is close but it's more "interstellar liberal socialism" than communism.
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Definitely. The AFS is dependent on its historical advantages in industry to match the Comintern early on. Every decade the Comintern grows stronger as its largest members benefit from supercharged industrial development. It's a Soviet Union and China backed by American industry. That alone is a bloc of nearly a billion people by the 80s, which grows only bigger every year. All its members benefit from development, even African countries and Latin American ones. Suddenly all those people kept in metaphorical bondage by capitalism are now receiving educations and working in productive jobs. They aren't resources extraction colonies, but industrialized countries constantly growing.
The playing field is suddenly leveled. Western Europe can't lean on its control of financial systems and material advantages to prevent Africa and Asia from developing, like they've done in real life. The AFS lost the numbers game the moment the Comintern got all of China, Korea, and Japan. The AFS also needs Africa partially underdeveloped to keep it as a captive market. It isn't allowed to develop further than what's necessary for it to fight off Comintern allies. Meanwhile Congo and Azania are the largest industrial powerhouses on the continent.
The largest member of the AFS is the Indian Commonwealth. It's the only one with the population that could possibly match the Comintern's biggest members, even with the famines in the 40s and 50s. That's why it starts to become the tail wagging the dog by the 2010s/2020 after decades of FBU investments. It's the China of the AFS. Brazil also has meteoric growth by the end of the century too. It's likely as big, if not bigger than Western Europe population wise by the 2020s. The loss of Canada in the 80s or 90s hurt a lot too because that removed another market from the FBU's sphere.
Capitalism requires underdeveloped captive markets to function. Otherwise it reaches market saturation and companies face unprofitability from too much competition. If every country in the AFS could produce most of its own clothing and industrial goods then they're not buying FBU or European goods. Government intervention can help mitigate this, but it's still a serious issue that's only going to get pressing as time goes on. The FBU is forced to balance its need for strong allies with its need to maintain underdeveloped markets, when the Comintern has no such concerns. Every year it gets stronger, like Skyrim Draugr.
It's very possible for the FBU to keep the system running despite pressure, but it'd require a lot of work for diminishing returns. India and Brazil aren't going to deindustrialize for its benefit. The AFS isn't really set up to have equals. There's only so much market space to go around between them. It's a very interesting set up. If the AFS had grabbed more of Asia or Latin America during WW2 then it'd be a better position to survive well into the 2000s without much issue.
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Libertad
Interdimensional Traveler and Culture agent
- Location
- Culture orbital It's Fantastic For You To Be Here
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Africa is going to be thoroughly developed ITTL if I remember correctly, just because of sheer necessity for the AFS to keep its holdings in the continent. The fact that North Africa is going to be more thoroughly integrated into Western Europe in the general European consciousness, and that the West African Federation is going to become an economic power is in itself a sign of that since Red Africa is itself going to be a leading economic power in the continent.
There's no "Third World" ITTL by 1970.
There's also another alternative interpretation that capitalism is losing the Cold War ITTL because of the fact that ironically, in order to keep itself going, it is slowly but surely being converted ideologically to the Left, it is just being in denial of it.
Capitalism ITTL by the 21st century is no longer the capitalism that we know IOTL. So the idea that "capitalism requires underdeveloped captive markets to function" doesn't apply anymore. It's no longer "capitalism".
But that's just another interpretation.
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That crossed my mind as well. At a certain point the dirigisme of the FBU becomes a sort of soft pseudo-state capitalism. I don't think it'd make that full transition since it'd require nationalizing sectors of the economy. I also don't think they'd ever end unemployment or homelessness or make post secondary education free like Comintern nations do.
Egypt in real life under Nasser made employment a right, so you'd never struggle to find work. If you didn't or couldn't work there was education or disability syndicates you could join. Unemployment dropped to 0% and education skyrocketed. I feel like that's an ideological bridge too far for the FBU and AFS to cross. You'd still see the British and French ruling class desperately holding onto power to keep calling the shots as long as possible.
Libertad
Interdimensional Traveler and Culture agent
- Location
- Culture orbital It's Fantastic For You To Be Here
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Dirigisme from a certain perspective is technically a practice of "state capitalism" already. As what's already mentioned before, you put the Franco-British Union, the premier capitalist superpower of Reds!, in OTL 2023 and it's going to be considered to the left of the People's Republic of China, Yugoslavia, the Nordic social democracies and the Soviet Union by many people in this world right now.
It's a heavily-planned state corporatist system and trying to do its best to satisfy the labor bloc and the capitalist bloc. A more real "state being a mostly-neutral arbitrer of social conflict" than being a more usual or classical dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
There's also the revelation of the TCI's transition to "lower-stage communism" (which I now have some personal qualms over its introduction and evolution), so by comparison within the timeline, the FBU definitely looks capitalist/state capitalist since the FBU is still operating an economy under the "capitalist mode of production" whereas the TCI had already moved on towards building the "communist/socialist/associated mode of production".
"Lower-stage communism" in this case within Reds! meaning that money and monetary accounting as we know it has been abolished in favor of labor vouchers (which cannot be hoarded and expires) and labor-time accounting within the TCI bloc, starting in the 80s and 90s.
So, even nationalization of parts of the economy (which the FBU definitely has a ton of) is still under the capitalist mode of production. It's still "capitalism". And just because structural unemployment is largely eliminated, it doesn't mean that there's socialism. Eliminating homelessness (at least on paper), making post-secondary education free of charge also doesn't mean there's socialism... (and I believe the Franco-British Union has largely accomplished those within Reds! as well making it look "socialist").
If the planned economy still operates under the capitalist mode of production, it's still capitalism.
This timeline has been developed for over the course of a decade through a "left communist" perspective of the world, with some residuals of "anarchism/libertarian socialism" seeping in (mostly a result of Aelita's former Bookchinite background that influenced the version 1 of the work along the contributions of some anarchists to this work), so no surprises there.
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Obviously we're some way off the actual updates but I'm increasingly find it hard to believe that this world avoids a strategic nuclear exchange due to how antagonistic at least one of the major powers (the UASR) in the Cold War seems to act. (And this is without considering the Lions and other hardliners in the FBU.) Not necessarily because either side wants to start a nuclear war but because decades of near constant brinkmanship creates a lot of opportunities for a mistake which, due to ICBMs reducing the decision making window to hours at best, can't be pulled back from.
- Location
- New Commonealth of the Americas
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I seriously regret saying those things. I was being emotional and angry at the time and I disavow entirely what I said back then.
I've apologized to the admin already and I'd apologize to the other people in the thread if I could.
It's a reference to an old AH timeline by Tony Jones, nothing more. The timeline has sentimental value to me because it's what got me into AH.
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Raiho-kun
This Cycle's Second Biggest Communism Builder
For what it's worth, you don't strike me as anything other than just an anti-communist liberal, so you're fine. Of course, since most people here are some flavor of commie or anarchist, getting clowned on is to be expected. Nothing personal
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IIRC it gets warded off when a nuclear armed FBU ship passes over the red line near Chile and gets nuked itself; with the demonstration that the Comintern really is 100% serious about the red lines the brinkmanship comes to a close and the sides take desperately needed chill pills.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
Ultimately people are very reluctant to actually push the button when it can end in their own deaths too, especially since we have a pretty good example where Britain's nuclear arsenal OTL is entirely unsecured by passcodes, keycards or the like, just a bike lock and trusting the officers won't do anything silly with them. Plus, every time there was a nuclear scare, people on the ground always hesitated and pulled back. Without any strategic usage of nuclear weapons, the general feeling that nobody actually has the balls to pull through on MAD is not uncommon, but similarly nobody has the balls to prove their hypothesis with world war three so the games of high stakes chicken just keep on going on a generational cycle. One generation wants detente and coexistence to recover from the last series of conflicts, the next thinks their parents were being weenies and proxy wars flare up around the world.
The result is places like Western Africa and Southeast Asia flaring up with interstate and insurgent warfare in 20-year cycles. So regular is this cycle that the acronym YAWIG (Yet another war in the Gulf) and its sibling YAWITS (Yet Another War in the Sahel) was coined due to many growing numb to the cycle of wars to try and expand revolutionary footholds in West Africa or roll back revolutionary governments.
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- Location
- The left-wing of the impossible
It's been alluded to before by people looking backward across their historical epoch already, but the main difference in attitudes about atomic war and escalation is that owing to their never being a meaningful nuclear monopoly, the first use of atomic weapons being tactical rather than strategic, and neither side developing doctrines of mutually assured destruction, strategic thinking is much more cautious and in the same mold as 19th and early 20th century notions of balance of power.
The use of strategic nuclear weapons will never be anyone's first, second, third or even fourth resort. Thinking follows something akin to Herman Kahn's escalation ladder.
The use of tactical nuclear weapons in undeclared wars and limited conflicts, typically defined by the participation of forces under the legal guise of international police actions by the Peacekeeping Force or the International Volunteer Army, is just another level of escalation.
Just caught up with the timeline and, while I have some doubts about the implied future of the timeline (the likes of Romania and Poland would never join any kind of Russian-dominated polity by their own free will, for example, not even if the USSR has become, as stated earlier, somewhat of a socialist European Union - unless, the old policy of korenizatsiya were to be reinstated, on steroids, resulting in the decline of the Russian population everywhere but in those places that were Russian already before the Tsars began their conquering spree), I liked how, for example, American society's mostly free from the kind of authoritarian, doctrinaire, po-faced, USSR-sponsored bent that, IMO, doomed 20th century socialism IRL.
A monopoly is a monopoly, it doesn't matter much if it's capitalist or socialist in nature - in the end, you get the same kind of power-hungry suits on top, and it's a good thing that the UASR realized it early on, with the Revolt of the Cadres. It's a good thing that the UASR merely boosted the USA entertainment industry's pre-existing progressive bent rather than imposing their own version of the Code on it, too - Anna May Wong sure deserves her ATL success, and Bugs Bunny's trickster nature fits a libertarian socialist ethos like a glove.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if abusers and rapists were to pop up in Hollywood again (Chaplin himself had a bit of a dark side, even though he was never a Weinstein-tier creep), successful entertainers are way more likely to be kinda narcissistic than average people - their whole thing being, having to be at the center of attention - so you'd need strong countermeasures to prevent those traits from taking over the industry.
Speaking of Bugs Bunny and his whole crew... will a Who Framed Roger Rabbit analogue ever be filmed here? If the story were to be set a decade or two earlier, you'd still be able to preserve the theme of toons being discriminated against, and the events might be tied to those of the revolution, not to mention how Jessica Rabbit would end up being even more of a sex symbol there, since ATL Hyperion isn't as anal as OTL Disney about some things. Hell, she could be a bit of a "champagne" socialist (as in, a committed socialist who thinks the finer things in life should be available to everyone, rather than a liberal in disguise) with an axe to grind against the capitalist powers and Stalin's USSR alike.
A monopoly is a monopoly, it doesn't matter much if it's capitalist or socialist in nature - in the end, you get the same kind of power-hungry suits on top, and it's a good thing that the UASR realized it early on, with the Revolt of the Cadres. It's a good thing that the UASR merely boosted the USA entertainment industry's pre-existing progressive bent rather than imposing their own version of the Code on it, too - Anna May Wong sure deserves her ATL success, and Bugs Bunny's trickster nature fits a libertarian socialist ethos like a glove.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if abusers and rapists were to pop up in Hollywood again (Chaplin himself had a bit of a dark side, even though he was never a Weinstein-tier creep), successful entertainers are way more likely to be kinda narcissistic than average people - their whole thing being, having to be at the center of attention - so you'd need strong countermeasures to prevent those traits from taking over the industry.Speaking of Bugs Bunny and his whole crew... will a Who Framed Roger Rabbit analogue ever be filmed here? If the story were to be set a decade or two earlier, you'd still be able to preserve the theme of toons being discriminated against, and the events might be tied to those of the revolution, not to mention how Jessica Rabbit would end up being even more of a sex symbol there, since ATL Hyperion isn't as anal as OTL Disney about some things.
Hell, she could be a bit of a "champagne" socialist (as in, a committed socialist who thinks the finer things in life should be available to everyone, rather than a liberal in disguise) with an axe to grind against the capitalist powers and Stalin's USSR alike.
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Miss XTC
2 kawaii 2 live 2 sugoi 2 die
- Location
- HelLA.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Poland being made part of the USSR is a side-effect of two things: 1) its demographics being utterly fucked by The War, 2) a lack of domestic communist movement.
We're considering just having Romania be independent, but with an EXTREMELY long occupation beforehand to de-Legionize the country
Two things about Chaplin:
1) Are you really sure about him "not being Weinstein-tier"
2) Funny you should mention Chaplin and Harvey in the same sentence, because after the war there's gonna be something that shakes up Hollywood.
Wait, I think I said too much, moving on!
Speaking of Bugs Bunny and his whole crew... will a Who Framed Roger Rabbit analogue ever be filmed here? If the story were to be set a decade or two earlier, you'd still be able to preserve the theme of toons being discriminated against, and the events might be tied to those of the revolution, not to mention how Jessica Rabbit would end up being even more of a sex symbol there, since ATL Hyperion isn't as anal as OTL Disney about some things.
Copyright law is extremely loose in the UASR, so it's not a matter of "WILL something like Roger Rabbit exist", it's a matter of "HOW many different versions of Roger Rabbit are we gonna see ITTL?"
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
Romania is subject to direct rule by the Comintern as in essence, a mandate, for a full twenty years before it's allowed sovereignty again due to the severity of the perceived infection of the Iron Guard. Whether or not Romania is brought into the USSR, the Comintern more or less tears Romanian society up root and branch to leave behind a very different and much more urbanised and industrialised place. Out of the former Axis, Romania also probably has the harshest crackdown on expressions of its nationalism with the Iron Guard's dream of yero zeroing Romania to a purer, more organic state as part of Codreanu's Vanilla Pol Pot shenanigans leading to the whole project of Romanian nationalism being regarded as suspect following Romania's defeat and occupation in the war.
As for whether it works, Romania is a problem child for quite a while and when Romania ceases to bother the Comintern line is best described as the horse having finally been broken in after a near half-century of not entirely gentle approach to deprogramming the country and at least one Hungary esque incident, except it being a response to nationalist deviation rather than ultraleftism. Some feel bitter about this since the asian members of the communist bloc are given much more leeway with regards to nationalist expression than the likes of Romania, with Nusantara and the North Philippies both basically subscribing to a form of national communism without incident whereas Romania had its own take stomped out on assumption that it was just Legionarism in disguise.
As for Poland, I'm not hugely attached to a Polish ASSR, though even an independent Polish Socialist Republic of Soviets would be very different from the Polish People's Republic due to not bothering with People's Democracy and going straight for a Nested Worker's Council Republic instead. It'd also be smaller as Poland would not be given any territory from Germany besides Gdansk and East Prussia. Silesia, Western Pomerania et al would be out of the question as the UASR's aspirations for East Germany are the farthest possible thing from wanting a toothless Germany, nor does the UASR seek to disavow Pan-Deutschism.
Pan-Germanicism is right out of course, but absorbing Austria and the Swiss Germans is not seen as problematic, with the Americans catching even the Soviets by surprise by making it clear they have no interest in restoring Austria and are going to make the Anschluss permanent, forcing the Western half of Austria to have to be attached to the German Federation so as to not have a dilapidated meme country. The process of making this fait accompli and making everyone have to just deal with it is also part of why Germany doesn't really end up being divided along coherent occupation zones and is instead drawn up based on where lines meet.
Italy is a more managed and even-keeled process of partition split into the Soviet Zone, the American Zone, the Franco-British Zone, and the general Commonwealth zone.
Dark Red for Soviet
Red for American
Purple for FBU
Blue for General Commonwealth
North Rome is an enclave in South Italy carefully designed to give the papacy a one kilometre exclusion zone.
Garibaldi would be most heartbroken.
Mussolini in truest form, dies by being shot by partisans and then having his corpse publicly desecrated and getting hanged upside down. It is at least, a more dignified death than Henry Ford who, thanks to the MRD fearing that he'd die of old age before a trial could conclude, arranging for him to be picked up by Partisans, then dropped off in Yugoslavia at the Barbara pit to be dropkicked into the abyss and then blown up with a grenade and his fate not being revealed for a full twenty years of pretending he just disappeared.
As for whether it works, Romania is a problem child for quite a while and when Romania ceases to bother the Comintern line is best described as the horse having finally been broken in after a near half-century of not entirely gentle approach to deprogramming the country and at least one Hungary esque incident, except it being a response to nationalist deviation rather than ultraleftism. Some feel bitter about this since the asian members of the communist bloc are given much more leeway with regards to nationalist expression than the likes of Romania, with Nusantara and the North Philippies both basically subscribing to a form of national communism without incident whereas Romania had its own take stomped out on assumption that it was just Legionarism in disguise.
As for Poland, I'm not hugely attached to a Polish ASSR, though even an independent Polish Socialist Republic of Soviets would be very different from the Polish People's Republic due to not bothering with People's Democracy and going straight for a Nested Worker's Council Republic instead. It'd also be smaller as Poland would not be given any territory from Germany besides Gdansk and East Prussia. Silesia, Western Pomerania et al would be out of the question as the UASR's aspirations for East Germany are the farthest possible thing from wanting a toothless Germany, nor does the UASR seek to disavow Pan-Deutschism.
Pan-Germanicism is right out of course, but absorbing Austria and the Swiss Germans is not seen as problematic, with the Americans catching even the Soviets by surprise by making it clear they have no interest in restoring Austria and are going to make the Anschluss permanent, forcing the Western half of Austria to have to be attached to the German Federation so as to not have a dilapidated meme country. The process of making this fait accompli and making everyone have to just deal with it is also part of why Germany doesn't really end up being divided along coherent occupation zones and is instead drawn up based on where lines meet.
Italy is a more managed and even-keeled process of partition split into the Soviet Zone, the American Zone, the Franco-British Zone, and the general Commonwealth zone.
Dark Red for Soviet
Red for American
Purple for FBU
Blue for General Commonwealth
North Rome is an enclave in South Italy carefully designed to give the papacy a one kilometre exclusion zone.
Garibaldi would be most heartbroken.
Mussolini in truest form, dies by being shot by partisans and then having his corpse publicly desecrated and getting hanged upside down. It is at least, a more dignified death than Henry Ford who, thanks to the MRD fearing that he'd die of old age before a trial could conclude, arranging for him to be picked up by Partisans, then dropped off in Yugoslavia at the Barbara pit to be dropkicked into the abyss and then blown up with a grenade and his fate not being revealed for a full twenty years of pretending he just disappeared.
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- Pronouns
- Any/All
As an Indonesian ngl Nusantara looking to have things better than OTL Indonesia by an infinite amount
- Location
- France
- Pronouns
- She/They
Romania is subject to direct rule by the Comintern as in essence, a mandate, for a full twenty years before it's allowed sovereignty again due to the severity of the perceived infection of the Iron Guard. Whether or not Romania is brought into the USSR, the Comintern more or less tears Romanian society up root and branch to leave behind a very different and much more urbanised and industrialised place. Out of the former Axis, Romania also probably has the harshest crackdown on expressions of its nationalism with the Iron Guard's dream of yero zeroing Romania to a purer, more organic state as part of Codreanu's Vanilla Pol Pot shenanigans leading to the whole project of Romanian nationalism being regarded as suspect following Romania's defeat and occupation in the war.
As for whether it works, Romania is a problem child for quite a while and when Romania ceases to bother the Comintern line is best described as the horse having finally been broken in after a near half-century of not entirely gentle approach to deprogramming the country and at least one Hungary esque incident, except it being a response to nationalist deviation rather than ultraleftism. Some feel bitter about this since the asian members of the communist bloc are given much more leeway with regards to nationalist expression than the likes of Romania, with Nusantara and the North Philippies both basically subscribing to a form of national communism without incident whereas Romania had its own take stomped out on assumption that it was just Legionarism in disguise.
As for Poland, I'm not hugely attached to a Polish ASSR, though even an independent Polish Socialist Republic of Soviets would be very different from the Polish People's Republic due to not bothering with People's Democracy and going straight for a Nested Worker's Council Republic instead. It'd also be smaller as Poland would not be given any territory from Germany besides Gdansk and East Prussia. Silesia, Western Pomerania et al would be out of the question as the UASR's aspirations for East Germany are the farthest possible thing from wanting a toothless Germany, nor does the UASR seek to disavow Pan-Deutschism.
Pan-Germanicism is right out of course, but absorbing Austria and the Swiss Germans is not seen as problematic, with the Americans catching even the Soviets by surprise by making it clear they have no interest in restoring Austria and are going to make the Anschluss permanent, forcing the Western half of Austria to have to be attached to the German Federation so as to not have a dilapidated meme country. The process of making this fait accompli and making everyone have to just deal with it is also part of why Germany doesn't really end up being divided along coherent occupation zones and is instead drawn up based on where lines meet.
Italy is a more managed and even-keeled process of partition split into the Soviet Zone, the American Zone, the Franco-British Zone, and the general Commonwealth zone.
Dark Red for Soviet
Red for American
Purple for FBU
Blue for General Commonwealth
North Rome is an enclave in South Italy carefully designed to give the papacy a one kilometre exclusion zone.
Garibaldi would be most heartbroken.
Mussolini in truest form, dies by being shot by partisans and then having his corpse publicly desecrated and getting hanged upside down. It is at least, a more dignified death than Henry Ford who, thanks to the MRD fearing that he'd die of old age before a trial could conclude, arranging for him to be picked up by Partisans, then dropped off in Yugoslavia at the Barbara pit to be dropkicked into the abyss and then blown up with a grenade and his fate not being revealed for a full twenty years of pretending he just disappeared.
Does it make sense for the soviets and Americans to end up with different occupation zones? They ran the whole war with pretty high integration and can probably see the benefits of an unified aproach to Italian reconstruction from the start.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
It's a United Nations thing. De facto there's really just two occupation zones; the North and Sicily-Sardinia-Naples-Piedmont but the negotiations allot them to specific command zones to appease the bean counters.
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Romania is subject to direct rule by the Comintern as in essence, a mandate, for a full twenty years before it's allowed sovereignty again due to the severity of the perceived infection of the Iron Guard. Whether or not Romania is brought into the USSR, the Comintern more or less tears Romanian society up root and branch to leave behind a very different and much more urbanised and industrialised place. Out of the former Axis, Romania also probably has the harshest crackdown on expressions of its nationalism with the Iron Guard's dream of yero zeroing Romania to a purer, more organic state as part of Codreanu's Vanilla Pol Pot shenanigans leading to the whole project of Romanian nationalism being regarded as suspect following Romania's defeat and occupation in the war.
As for whether it works, Romania is a problem child for quite a while and when Romania ceases to bother the Comintern line is best described as the horse having finally been broken in after a near half-century of not entirely gentle approach to deprogramming the country and at least one Hungary esque incident, except it being a response to nationalist deviation rather than ultraleftism. Some feel bitter about this since the asian members of the communist bloc are given much more leeway with regards to nationalist expression than the likes of Romania, with Nusantara and the North Philippies both basically subscribing to a form of national communism without incident whereas Romania had its own take stomped out on assumption that it was just Legionarism in disguise.
As for Poland, I'm not hugely attached to a Polish ASSR, though even an independent Polish Socialist Republic of Soviets would be very different from the Polish People's Republic due to not bothering with People's Democracy and going straight for a Nested Worker's Council Republic instead. It'd also be smaller as Poland would not be given any territory from Germany besides Gdansk and East Prussia. Silesia, Western Pomerania et al would be out of the question as the UASR's aspirations for East Germany are the farthest possible thing from wanting a toothless Germany, nor does the UASR seek to disavow Pan-Deutschism.
Pan-Germanicism is right out of course, but absorbing Austria and the Swiss Germans is not seen as problematic, with the Americans catching even the Soviets by surprise by making it clear they have no interest in restoring Austria and are going to make the Anschluss permanent, forcing the Western half of Austria to have to be attached to the German Federation so as to not have a dilapidated meme country. The process of making this fait accompli and making everyone have to just deal with it is also part of why Germany doesn't really end up being divided along coherent occupation zones and is instead drawn up based on where lines meet.
Italy is a more managed and even-keeled process of partition split into the Soviet Zone, the American Zone, the Franco-British Zone, and the general Commonwealth zone.
Dark Red for Soviet
Red for American
Purple for FBU
Blue for General Commonwealth
North Rome is an enclave in South Italy carefully designed to give the papacy a one kilometre exclusion zone.
Garibaldi would be most heartbroken.
Mussolini in truest form, dies by being shot by partisans and then having his corpse publicly desecrated and getting hanged upside down. It is at least, a more dignified death than Henry Ford who, thanks to the MRD fearing that he'd die of old age before a trial could conclude, arranging for him to be picked up by Partisans, then dropped off in Yugoslavia at the Barbara pit to be dropkicked into the abyss and then blown up with a grenade and his fate not being revealed for a full twenty years of pretending he just disappeared.
Yes, Garibaldi would hate this - especially since he was quite far left, to such an extent Bakunin openly praised him; he'd probably approve of the UASR too, hell, he could've taken part in the American Civil War, but Lincoln didn't accept his deal, that involved freeing all the slaves right out of the gate. Of course, Garibaldi didn't quite live up to his own ideals (to this day, his conduct in the former Two Sicilies is a very controversial subject) but, if the UASR can work with the Stalin-led Soviet Union without feeling tainted by the mere association with said genocidal asshole, well...
...that said, the timeline's mention of Harukichi Shimoi made me think of his old pal D'Annunzio, and I think that if Italy had to go Fascist, D'Annunzio would've been a better choice, over Mussolini, if only because he embodied his own nationalistic ideals way more coherently and courageously than Mussolini (even as someone who doesn't agree with them, I got to respect how much of a massive madlad he was), and because many of the people he hung out with came from an anarchist and syndicalist milieu, the Charter of Carnaro co-authored by many of them could've easily steered a D'Annunzio-led Italy towards a weirdly leftist course, for an openly nationalistic regime - Italy could've been to the ATL Allies what Finland was to the OTL Axis.
