Chapter 145. The Fifties
Some events from the early sixties will be presented in this chapter if they are closely linked with the events from the late fifties.
If a country is not mentioned, you may safely assume that nothing noteworthy had happened there during that time period.
The German Reich will be covered in a separate chapter.
The situation in the Eastern ECN Countries and the Soviet Union is partially covered up to the end of 1958. See
Chapter 144. Peace in the East.
The situation in the rest of the World is only covered up to 1950. See
Chapter 140. State of the World in 1950.
Estonia,
Latvia and
Lithuania
The remaining Soviet forces completed the evacuation of the Baltic States almost one full year before the September 1961 deadline specified in the Reykjavik Peace Treaties.
Slovakia
The Soviet Union completed its evacuation of Carpatho-Ukraine in the spring of 1961. About one tenth of the half a million Ukrainians and almost all 9,000 Russians from Carpatho-Ukraine left with the Soviet Army while the rest preferred the autonomy offered by Slovakia.
Largely left to their own devices by the Slovak Government, the Carpathian Ukrainians managed their internal affaires mostly independent from Bratislava. Carpathia remained peaceful and no notable incidents occured. The Rusyn minority was adequately protected.
The southern part of Carpatho-Ukraine was joined to the Felvidék, including the mixed town of Munkács / Mukachevo, which created some resentment among the local Ukrainian population.
Romania and
Bulgaria
The Soviet Union completed the evacuation of (most of) Romania and Bulgaria shortly before the designated deadline. According to the Reykjavik Peace Treaties, the Soviet Army and Navy maintained military bases in the eastern sixths of Romania and Bulgaria. The continued Soviet military presence created some tension in those areas.
The Romanian Government and Royal Family relocated to București in 1960. Most of the Romanian soldiers and refugees from the Romanian Exclave returned to their homes before 1962, when Romania returned the exclave to Slovakia.
The Bulgarian Government and Royal Family relocated to Sofia in 1959. The tiny Bulgarian Exclave was returned to Slovakia at the same time.
The Romanian and Bulgarian Elections of 1961, in which the Communists fared poorly (8% in Romania and 13% in Bulgaria), marked the return of those countries to a democratic form of government.
The destruction of the economy and infrastructure of Romania and Bulgaria was so thorough that it took almost a decade for the ECN to uplift those countries to the standard of living common in the other Eastern ECN Countries.
Finland and
Karelia
Finland joined the ECN Military Alliance in 1960, marking the end of the policy of Finlandization (the Soviet share in the Petsamo nickel mines had been redeemed by the Finnish Government in 1959).
In 1959, the World Forum took over the administration of Karelia from the Soviet military.
The results of the 1960 Karelian Elections, organized by the World Forum, were the following: Finnish National Party 56%, Karelian Independence Front 22%, Communist Party of Karelia 19%. The resulting pro-Finnish Government in Viipuri proceeded to consolidate and deepen the relations between the two sister countries during the following years.
The Red Army completed the evacuation of the western half of Karelia in 1961. The eastern half of Karelia, where the remaining Soviet military bases were located, was sparsely inhabited and there were very few conflicts between the Soviet military and the locals.
Croatia,
Serbia and
Albania
The Red Army evacuated Serbia and Albania before the end of 1959 and transferred the administration of those countries to the World Forum. At the same time, the Wehrmacht vacated Croatia, allowing the World Forum to take over the troubled country. The Serb Federal State of Croatia was transferred to Serbia, according to the Treaty.
A multinational force of 75,000 men from Canada, New Zealand, India, Thailand, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Ireland, Iran and Ethiopia were deployed in Croatia, Serbia and Albania under the banner of the World Forum.
The Communist Partisans and most Serb, Muslim and Albanian Militias in Serbia and Croatia put down their weapons and disbanded, taking advantage of the general amnesty and the chance to compete in the upcoming elections. The situation in Albania was more complicated, with numerous warlords with no or little ideological differencies fighting for power and influence in a vicious and protracted struggle.
The World Forum organized elections in Serbia and Croatia in 1960 and in Albania in the following year, after the chaotic situation was sufficiently stabilized.
The results of the 1960 Croatian Elections were the following: Democratic Alliance 43%, Communist Party of Yugoslavia 37%, Ustashe 6%, Muslim League 6%, Serbian Parties 6%. A coalition government was formed by the Democratic Alliance and the ethnic minority parties but the Communists formed a very strong and united opposition in the Croat Parliament.
The results of the 1960 Serbian Elections were the following: Democratic Front 38%, Communist Party of Yugoslavia 31%, Chetniks 20%, Albanian Party 5%, Hungarian Party 4%. An uneasy coalition government was formed by the Democratic Front and the Serbian Nationalists, which gave ample political ammunition to the excluded Communists (the Chetniks were accused of war-time collaboration with the Nazis).
The results of the 1961 Albanian Elections were the following: Communist Party of Albania 28%, other 13 parties between 11% and 2% (the electoral threshold). The Communists managed to form a coalition government with the help of five smaller parties.
The
Referenda for the Membership in the European Community of Nations yielded the following results: 53% for the ECN in Serbia and 45% for the ECN in Albania. Therefore, Serbia remained a member of the ECN but the Albanian membership was officially terminated in 1962.
The
Form of Government Referenda yielded the following results: 67% for Republic in Serbia and 89% for Republic in Albania. King Peter II of Serbia accepted the result and abdicated for a second time. The former King and his family were allowed to stay in Serbia and settled in a nice property in Novi Sad. King Zog of Albania, who had lived in Egypt since 1945, did not concede the loss in the referendum but did not make any attempts to regain his throne either and died the following year of pulmonary cancer. His son and heir, Leka I, is still claiming the defunct throne of Albania to this day.
The Soviet Union
On 16 September 1959, less than one year after the signing of the Reykjavik Peace Treaties, Joseph Stalin suffered one final stroke and passed away at the age of 80. The Soviet Politburo unanimously elected
Vyacheslav Molotov as the new Secretary General of the Communist Party and, thus, implicitely, as the leader of the Soviet Union.
Molotov continued Stalin's policies, including the "Chinese Plan" and the "Russian Plan", but significantly curbed the terror and the purges. One of the most important achievements of Molotov was the rapprochement between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers which were wary of the increasing power of the German Reich and its European Community of Nations.
German Switzerland
The 1955 and 1960
Swiss Referenda for the Accession to the German Reich yielded 33% and, respectively, 43% in favour of joining the Reich.¹ The increase from 22% in 1945 and 29% in 1950 was obvious and worrying for those who preferred an Independent Swiss Confederation. But little could be done when the standard of living across the border was almost four times higher.
1. About one quarter of the German speaking Swiss considered themselves ethnic Germans in the first half of the 20th century. In 1960, Switzerland was broken up, with no more neutrality, no banking secret and no fiscal paradise, just poverty (relative to their rich northern neighbour). What would the Swiss Germans lose by joining the Reich? Nothing would change for the worst in their lives and they would become more prosperous.
France
In 1952, Charles de Gaulle authorized the French State to intervene against the Corsican revolutionaries who had been in control of much of the island since 1949. The French State deployed more than 60,000 soldiers in order to swiftly crush the rebelion. Indeed, ten months later, the last groups of Corsican revolutionaires laid down their weapons and Corsica was finally pacified. 1208 Corsican revolutionaires, 157 civilians, 211 soldiers from the Algiers based French Republic and 487 soldiers from the French State had lost their lives during the four years long conflict.
Corsica was reintegrated into the French State and its Autonomous status was not only preserved but enhanced with both Italian and Corsican fully recognized as co-official regional languages.
Having lost its last European stronghold, the French Republic was thus limited to Algeria and its African dependencies. In 1953, the French State was considerably more powerful than the French Republic, both economically and militarily, and the difference was only increasing with each passing year. In those conditions, and taking into consideration the changed political situation in the French State (Pétain was no longer President and the French State was fully democratic), de Gaulle approached Flandin to negotiate the reunification of France.
In 1954, elections were held in all of France, both in the Mainland and in Algeria. Flandin won his second term as President of France and named de Gaulle as Governor of the Autonomous State of Algeria. In order to appease the defeated Gaullists, the official name of the country was reverted to the French Republic and a new Republican Constitution was devised (the
Fifth Republic). However, France remained a member of the ECN and a staunch German Ally.
No longer wanted for treason in the ECN, de Gaulle visited Adolphine in 1958, exactly ten years after he had been her prisoner in the
Kelhsteinhaus.
The
French Associated States of
Morocco and
Tunisia were granted full independence in 1956.
France and Morocco performed an exchange of territory the following year. Morocco ceded a small strip of land to allow a direct land border between French Algeria and the Spanish Rif (and thus losing its narrow access to the Mediterranean Sea) and received a territory almost one thousand times larger² in the Sahara (which had belonged to Morocco centuries earlier). Thus, Morocco increased its territory approximately fourfold, with a less than 10% increase in population.
2. Mostly deserted parts of OTL Western Sahara, Algeria, Mauritania and Mali with a few small towns and several oases.
A large part of French Sahara, which had been exclaved by the territorial cession, was rejoined to French West Africa, alongside other three smaller areas.
A secret clause of the treaty specified the transfer of two million Algerian Arabs to Morocco. The forced deportation was carried on between 1957 and 1959, with little to no media coverage. The number of fatalities is not known exactly but it could have approached one hundred thousand³ if we include the victims of the parallel brutal crackdown against the ongoing low-intensity Algerian rebellion.
3. The World Forum would formally ban involuntary population transfers in 1962, mostly due to the outrage caused by the horrific stories told by those deported in Eastern Europe during the 1950's.
In 1960, Algeria had cca. 4.7 million inhabitants: Europeans 48%, Berbers 31%, Arabs 20%. Most Jews had left for Israel during the previous years, fearing the ECN takeover of Algeria. About half of the Muslim population were already French citizens and France finally enfranchised the remaining Muslim population of Algeria the following year.
In 1960, the European share of the population reached 55% in Libya, 48% in Algeria, 19% in the Rif, 5% in Portuguese Africa and 10% in South Africa (between 0 and 70% in different Cantons).
The Protectorate of French West Africa was partitioned, with Niger and Chad being organized as a separate Protectorate called Chad.
The three French African Protectorates,
West Africa,
Chad and
Equatorial Africa, would be upgraded to
Associated States in 1964 (the same status as
Ivory Coast and
Dahomey).
Portugal
With the Western Powers' threat to take over the colonies of Germany's allies no longer present because of the growing power of the Reich, Portugal finally joined the ECN in 1956. However, Portugal's colonies,
Angola and
Mozambique, were not included in the ECN (only the Cameroon Islands, the Bissagos Islands, Cape Verde, Madeira and the Azores, which were integral parts of Portugal).
Thus, in 1960, the
ECN had 22 member states: the German Reich, German Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, Croatia, Italy, Spain and Portugal (Albania would leave in 1961, see above).
The United Kingdom
The
British Associated State of
Malaya was granted full independence in 1951, according to the 1945
Japanese Instrument of Surrender.
Because the dormant civil war between the Malays and the Chinese reignited shortly after the departure of the last British forces, India and China stepped in with large peace-keeping contingents and managed to pacify the small country by 1954. The foreign troops would remain in Malaya until 1961.
The
1955 Hong Kong Referendum yielded a 62% majority in favour of becoming a part of China. The United Kingdom accepted the result and officially transferred
Hong Kong to the Republic of China the following year.
According to the
1946 Cairo Protocols, Egypt was granted full sovereignty over the
Suez Canal in 1956.
In 1958, the United Kingdom dissolved its last possession east of Suez, the
British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) and transferred Socotra, Seychelles, Mauritius, Rodrigues and Reunion to Australia⁴ (joined to the Australian Indian Ocean Territory) and the Diego Garcias Islands to India.⁵
4. With the Suez Canal under Egyptian control, the Indian Ocean Islands were difficult to control from London and their continued support was expensive. Australia, a faithful British Ally and Commonwealth Member, was in a better position to control those islands.
5. The Diego Garcia Islands were the closest to India and they represented less than 1% of the BIOT. India was claiming them (and the rest of the islands) since its independence and it wasn't sensible to antagonize the Indians by giving everything to Australia. Besides, if India decided to simply seize them, there wasn't much to be done about it. India left the Western Powers one year after the dissolution of the BIOT.
The Atlantic Crown Colonies,
Falkland Islands (including South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands) and
Saint Helena (including Ascension and Tristan da Cunha) were annexed directly to the United Kingdom with the status of
Autonomous Counties (like Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man).
Thus, in 1959, the only remaining British Crown Colonies were
Bathurst in West Africa and
Gibraltar and
Malta in the Mediterranean.
Bathurst was
too Black to be made an integral part of the United Kingdom (according to the racial views prevalent in the fifties) and the status of Gibraltar could not be changed (according to the
1713 Treaty of Utrecht) but Malta was thought to be easy to integrate into the United Kingdom Proper.
However, when the British Government announced the
Maltese Integration Referendum scheduled for the following year (1960), it triggered the
Mediterranean Crisis (discussed in the following chapter).
South Africa
South Africa already had close relations with neighbouring Portugal (Angola and Mozambique) and, after the accession of Portugal to the ECN, the relations between South Africa and the rest of the ECN, including the German Reich, improved as well, much to the displeasure of the United Kingdom. It is telling that, during the Mediterranean Crisis, South Africa was the only Dominion which did not support the United Kingdom. However, despite the worsening relations, the South Africans did not proclaim the Republic.
After more than one decade of planning, South Africa enacted a major administrative-territorial reorganization in 1957. The six Provinces (Cape, Orange, Natal, Transvaal, Rhodesia, Namib) and the three Indigenous Lands (Basutoland, Bechuanaland, Swaziland) were dissolved and replaced with 120
Cantons, of which 40 reserved for the White minority, 40 reserved for the various Black ethnic groups and the other 40 mixed. Expectedly, that did little to improve the situation of the Black majority and calm down the growing discontent in the country.
Canada
In 1960, all four
Canadian External Territories (
Bermuda,
Jamaica,
Trinidad and the
Canadian Caribbean) were upgraded to
Canadian Provinces. The resulting enfranchisement of four million Blacks was received badly by the racist portion of the Canadian population, with ultimately futile protests and riots.
United States of America
Four new
States were admitted to the Union in 1956:
Alaska (AK), the
American Antilles⁶ (AN),
Hawaii⁷ (HI) and
Micronesia⁸ (MR). However,
Galapagos,
Greenland,
Puerto Rico and
American Antarctica remained
Territories.
6. Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, Cayman Islands, Navassa, Virgin Islands (both parts), Anguilla, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Martin (both parts), Saint Eustatius, Saba, Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao (the diacritics were no longer used).
7. Hawaii Proper, Midway Islands, Phoenix Islands, Northern Line Islands, other nearby Minor Islands.
8. Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Caroline Islands, Marshall Islands, Gilbert Islands, Wake Island.
Incumbent
Thomas E. Dewey won the 1952 U.S. Presidential Elections. He was assassinated by a lunatic just five months into his second term.
Vice President
Robert A. Taft became the 36th President of the United States. He died of pancreatic cancer in 1954.
Vice President William Knowland became the 37th President of the United States. He was reelected in 1956.
Note: I will not maintain a list of U.S. Presidents from now on. We are too far away from the POD for any educated guesses. If you want to contribute a list of U.S. Presidents, you are welcome to do so. Thank you.
Latin America
In the 1950's,
Brazil was destroying vast areas of the
Amazon Rainforest in order to build roads and cities, expand its arable land, mine the region's numerous mineral riches, etc.
However, detailed Uptime information (maps, pictures, videos, statistical data) had clearly shown that the planetary homeostasis was quite fragile and disturbing it would lead to major disasters.
Under pressure from the public opinion⁹, the
World Forum adopted a
Resolution in which Brazil was asked to halt the deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest, for the benefit of all mankind.
9. I may be over-optimistic here.
After months of angry bickering, during which several countries called for an outright invasion of Brazil, it was decided that the other countries (according to their GDPs) would offer financial compensation¹⁰ to Brazil for the losses incurred by the lack of land development.
10. The World Forum estimated that Brazil would lose about one million per annum for not developing new areas of the Amazon. Therefore, the rest of the World would pay about 970,000 every year, so Brazil would only lose about 30,000 (its proportion of the World's economy, about 3%). Those 970,000 were then divided according to the GDP of the countries, so the United States and Germany ended up paying the most.
A nature preserve was set up in most of the areas where no development had arleady begun. Manaus and other areas which had already been encroached by land developers were obviously not affected.
In the future, using that resolution as a precedent, more countries would ask for financial compensation in order to cease destroying their natural environment. Some of them would be successful, others not.
Despite the fact that the United States economic policies in Latin America were significantly less exploitative than in the other history¹¹, a Socialist Revolution was nonetheless ignited in
Cuba.
11. In order to keep those countries friendly and preempt anti-American revolutions and what Adolphine had called the "Great Hispanic Invasion".
Scared by the spectre of a Soviet-alligned Cuba (from the Uptime information), the United States overreacted and outright invaded the small country.
After the invasion, Cuba was pacified rather quickly, thanks to important American financial aid but also thanks to the presence of important contingents from the other Latin American countries.
The
Latin American Union was created in 1958. It was a supranational organization, similar to the European Community of Nations, which aimed to increase the economical, political, cultural and military cooperation in Latin America. All twenty Latin American countries were founding members of the
ALU (
América Latina Unida).
Asia
In 1959,
China and
India overcame their differencies and, together with
Indonesia,
Thailand,
Iran and
Malaya, entered a military alliance called the
Asian Might.¹²
12. China and India had no border disputes, as the Treaty of Chungking had settled all territorial claims. Moreover, there was no ideological conflict, as both were capitalist countries, and they both wanted to keep Western influence out of Asia. Finally there was no Pakistan and no Kashmir conflict to create unlikely alliances. Just like the United Kingdom and France were able to set aside their differencies in the late 19th century, so did China and India in the middle of the 20th.
China and India started their nuclear programmes in 1960. Apparently, there was a good deal of cooperation between the two allied Asian Great Powers, both in nuclear physics and in other areas.
With increased prosperity and better sanitation and medical care, the populations of China and India started to grow dramatically. And, unlike Mao Zedong from the other history, neither Chiang Kai-shek nor Jawaharlal Nehru were going to enact national birth planning policies to curb the population growth of their countries.
Obviously, the developments in Asia caused concern in the Western Powers and their Asian Allies (Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia).
The Multipolar World in 1960
- European Community of Nations (the German Reich and most other European countries)
- ECN-friendly and ECN Associated States (Karelia, South Africa, Tunisia, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Dahomey)
- Soviet Union
- Western Powers
- United States of America
- British Commonwealth (United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand)
- Latin American Union (all Latin American countries)
- East Asian countries (Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia)
- Middle Eastern countries (Arabia, Egypt, Israel)
- African countries (Ethiopia, Liberia, East Africa, Somalia, Ghana, Nigeria)
- Asian Might (China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Iran, Malaya)
- Neutral countries (Iceland-Faroe, Ireland, Greece, Albania, Lebanon, Madagascar)
.
