I'm not aware of him ever saying anything vile - sure, he's not a socialist, but he's not a WhatIfAltHist or Monsieur Z, either; a low bar to clear, for alternate history on YouTube, alas.
Oh I wasn't commenting about ideology. By the abysmal standards of YouTube alt-hist figures, Cody is by far the best ideologically.
I just meant that his videos aren't really the most rigorous.
I do not know enough about B.R. Ambedkar. However, I'd assume his conversations with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., are the same in our world. I know that Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., were born about a decade after the true changes start to occur ITTL, but then again we see a Bob Dylan song from this universe and it's pretty much identical to one from OTL. (It's the "100% American" chapter, and the song is called "Talkin' All-American Blues" and it's basically "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues").
Since Bob Dylan was born decades after the true changes start to occur ITTL, I'd assume that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X would be similar.
March on, Red Soldier! What may have befallen the Jews of Galicia, the Serbs of Belgrade, the benighted peoples of Hungary, without your courageous advance? March on, Red Soldier! Strike dread into the reactionary lords of terror that crush under their heel our European brothers! March, on, Red Soldier! In your hands has been entrusted the fate of the world's peoples; by the thrust of your bayonet and the sweat of your brow shall long-suffering humanity be at last redeemed! March on, Red Soldier!
-John Heartfield
We have entered a war not simply for the advance of socialism, but for the continued survival of undegraded humanity. We charge the Anglo-American power with nothing less than placing man upon a cross of capital and sacrificing the innocent peoples of Europe to preserve bourgeois power. Not even Marx and Engels could predict the horrors which the bourgeois now bring into the world as they attempt to delay the inevitable end of their class rule.
-Ernst Thalmann
It was not 1919 when the socialists gained ascendancy, but 1923; the cultural hegemony of the capitalist powers, their claim to moral and political legitimacy, was already battered by the war, but it only truly died in the killing fields of Galicia. The old liberal cause of equality, brotherhood, and freedom, what we today call "humanity", passed over to the new powers. Equipped with this potent weapon, they did not hesitate to employ it.
-Enzo Traverso
The curious thing about being made a soldier of humanity - if one may use such a term - is that one's enemies cease to be truly human. Has the Pole and Croat truly surrendered their own personhood by dint of their crimes? May humanity truly be saved in a sea of blood? Shall the red terror provide recompense to the victims of the bourgeois, or shall we instead numb our own humanity by such unrepentant violence? I fear that, having grown so drunk on our own self-righteousness, we shall soon enough cease to recognize ourselves.
-Karl Kraus
We have all had enough of the moral hand-wringing of the Frankfurter Zeitung. Was such consideration offered to the countless victims of the reactionary terror? Perhaps if Mr. Kraus had acquainted himself with those who survived the bourgeois ethnocides and atrocities, he would not spout such drivel, but this is likely too much to ask of his genteel sensibilities."
-Georg Ledebour
Whether they march to the Marseillase or the Ode to Man, the spirit is the same. Whether he be a Napoleonic volunteer or German convert to the latest millenarian creed, I am terrified of the man who engaged in wide-eyed slaughter while intoning his love of humanity. The man who exalts abstract humanity is the same man who hates the actuality of human existence.
-Martin Heidegger.
The British Empire is already tottering - all it requires is a gentle push.
-Yakod Sverdlov
We had best be careful, or within a few years that damned American flag will be hung over Melbourne and Toronto.
-Winston Churchill
Prelude
What were the essential lineaments of the 19th century world-order, in which Britain secured a leading but not hegemonic role? The British World-system required, first and foremost, a balance of powers across the channel, such that no European coalition could divide the booty of the British empire without first taking on continental challengers. In East Asia, it needed a passive or at least friendly group of powers which would not challenge British commercial supremacy in Malaya and China. And it demanded, if not complete restfulness, than at least comparative tranquility in South Asia, the great backstop of British power. In the First Revolutionary Era, as Japan made a bid for hegemony in East Asia and a German-Soviet alliance looked poised to establish a condominium over Europe, all the essential conditions for British supremacy were called into question.
For much of the 19th century, the great fear of British diplomats was the possibility of an enlarged Russian hyperpower immune to the chastening effects of sea power by virtue of its Eurasian geography. Such a state could batten at the four great doors of the British imperium: the Straits of Dardanelles which connected the mediterranean and black seas, thus far managed by a compliant Turkey; the maritime approaches to the Raj off Persia and its vulnerable Central Asian land frontiers; and, finally, the crucial British commercial grip on China. At the beginning of the 20th century, the disastrous Russian performance in the Russo-Japanese war made the dire prognostications of the Russophobic "Central Asian" lobby appear to be little more than paranoid fantasies. Lacking the economic and industrial might of Britain, Russia was not a serious threat. The 1907 Anglo-Russian convention settled their remaining disputes and prepared the way for an alliance against the burgeoning German power.
For eleven years, defeat after defeat was inflicted upon the weary and bedraggled Russian state. Germany's shattering victory in the Polish offensive confirmed Russian military weakness, and the 1918 Treaty of Warsaw, which transferred control of the Empire's western borderlands to Germany, seemed merely another signal of the interminable decline of Russian power. Yet in reality, this marked a nadir before a remarkable resurgence of Russian prestige. Lenin's Bolsheviks defeated their white opponents in short order, and an isolated Germany was forced to cede back lost territories in exchange for Russian grain. Then, the First Revolutionary Era brought the return of the Baltics and Finland into the Russian domain. Central Asia was pacified, and a friendly regime installed in Mongolia. Turkish weakness allowed a nearly effortless expansion of Western Armenia into Erzerum and Trabzon. Russian arms and military advisors threatened to bring down the British Raj.
Protected on its western flank by its German ally, the Russian military attained an unprecedented freedom of action. Lenin faced steadily mounting criticism from those who believed him to be overly cautious in its use. India's defeat in the Lucknow offensive brought a flurry of outrage from the left, who urged more direct intervention against the British. Before an early congress called in 1923, though, Lenin contracted the Yankee flu and died. There was little question about his successor. Almost immediately, Yakov Sverdlov became the "First-among-equals" at Sovnarkom. As party-secretary, holder of multiple commissar posts, and crucial intermediary between the party's left and centre, he had already grown to wield power equivalent to Lenin's; the upcoming Party Congress would merely confirm his ascendancy.
Sverdlov shared Lenin's pragmatism and ideological commitment to the communist project, but not his caution. He intended to do whatever was necessary to bolster the position of his Indian allies. This meant, first and foremost, creating difficulties for the British. Under the pretense of intervening in support of an aggrieved Kurdish minority, an invasion of eastern Turkey was launched. Such a plan had several advantages. Firstly, Turkey was at war with Britain's Greek ally, and it would therefore be politically impossible for England to send it aid. Secondly, the creation of a Kurdish client state and the presence of Soviet troops near Southwestern Persia would force the diversion of British troops into the region. Finally, such a route avoided directly assaulting Persia, which was doing its best to resist British attempts to extend a formal protectorate over the region. The presence of Soviet troops along its border would provide it with an incentive to continue these efforts.
Sverdlov also directed a sizable contingent of soldiers to Bulgaria via the Black Sea. These were not to commence any direct invasion of Constantinople, but they were to quite noisily menace both Greece and the International Zone, forcing additional diversions of British soldiers. In addition to this, a sizable bribe convinced the governor of Xinjiang to allow Soviet troops into the area, ostensibly as protection against Japanese imperialism, a fairly absurd pretense given the distance of Japanese soldiers from the province. Finally, the Soviets began sending raids into Afghanistan, intending to force it to desist from its invasion of the northwestern border provinces and Punjab.
These maneuvers did not determine the details of the year's struggles, but they did set the stage for them. Soviet advances on the British Empire's strategically vital flanks were met with predictable alarm by Britain, particularly because it had exhausted the means to counter them without enforcing a prolonged pause on the Indian campaign. In February, Churchill requested American military assistance in Iraq and Constantinople. Commentators rightly noted that this was an epochal development: England was now forced to rely not just on American financial aid, but also American military and industrial power to shore up the defense of its empire. As befuddled American soldiers were sent into Iraq and Constantinople to guard against Soviet incursions, the new, quadripolar world-order was being born, and the long century of British predominance being laid to rest. Perhaps most consequently, realization of the full extent of British weakness prompted the Americans to fully commit to creating a "Eastern European bloc" to counterbalance Soviet-German designs and prevent them from establishing a red condominium over Europe.
The Battles of 1923 - The Opening Blows
Over 1923, the fate of Asia and of Europe was determined on the battlefields of Luzon, Taiwan, Czechia, Bengal, Romania, Punjab, and Poland. As we will see, these military conflicts had become truly globalized, and it is impossible to fully understand the decision-making of political elites in the eastern campaigns without also examining the unfolding situation in the west - and vice-versa. For this reason, they must be considered together, as part of a single global ideological struggle. 1923 continued the pattern that had already begun in 1921 and 1922: the two power-blocs would continue to muster their forces and inch ever-closer into open and unmediated conflict, but would make no overt declaration of war.
In the Asian theater, the American fleet finally achieved its decisive battle in March, defeating an inferior Japanese force and sinking a third of its battleships. The invasion of Luzon began to great fanfare, but ended in great consternation and foreboding as the public learned of the staggering losses of American troops suffered to entrenched Japanese defenders. The internationalists in the state department began to speak of a negotiated peace, something which the easterners believed would only embolden Japan in the long-run. President Root intervened, and funneled additional resources, principally artillery and landships, to the allied Eastern European bloc, prompting the outrage of the generals fighting in the East Asian theater, as well as among Sun Yat-sen, who had been promised generous aid shipments. The Japanese army in China held out against several counteroffensives prosecuted by an undersupplied and frequently under-nourished Chinese Army.
Across the vast Indo-Gangetic plain, British forces made steady advances. An invasion out of Burma seized the province of Assam in February, and in April, Bengal itself faced an assault from the south and the east. The difficult terrain gave the defenders an initial edge here, buying time for many members of the INC government to flee through the Himalayan mountains into Tibet, where they would eventually make their way to the Soviet Union. It would take until September for the British to fully conquer the region, and a good deal longer to "pacify" it. Punjab, with its large and well-trained Sikh army, was defeated by the end of the year; pledges of amnesty for lower-level soldiers eventually provoked mass desertions as news of British success in Bengal spread to the region.
In July, before the campaigns of the Anglo-American powers had reached their conclusion in the Asian theater, war broke out once again in Europe. The arrival of American military advisors, planes and landships into East-Central Europe could not be masked. A steady stream of spies, insurgents, and provocateurs from the socialist bloc streamed into the reactionary states to undermine the adversarial regimes. Germany quietly began a military buildup, and Russia halted its troops along the border of British Baghdad, having waged a successful campaign to take the key city of Mosul. It was not, however, just the exigencies of geopolitics which demanded intervention.
News of the Jewish and Serbian ethnocides had gradually reached the socialist publics of Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy. For some time, these three states had maintained a tight leash on their militaries, worried about the potential of pacifist backlash against undue expansion of the army. Roman Dmowski's coup against Pilsudski's weakened Polish government had already inflamed relations, and now reports of Anglo-American aid and massacres against Jewish and Serbian minorities provided further resources for a militarist propaganda drive. The reactionary states, now the "Bucharest Pact", responded to the military build-up by cracking down on perceived fifth columns. New regulations targeted German minorities in the Czech Sudetenland and in Croatian Slovenia. Germany responded by stepping up surveillance against "counterrevolutionary elements" of the Polish community in Posen.
Matters reached a head on July 14th, when the German community in the Czech city of Pilsen began an uprising that successfully won control of around half the city and proclaimed a "German Soviet Republic of Pilsen". Ironically, many of the participants in the revolt were not workers but middle-class elements in the pay of both German and Soviet intelligence, who had determined that the "socialist devil" to the north was preferable to the intrusive "Czech hydra". When the Czech authorities crushed the short-lived republic with extreme prejudice, an aggrived Germany sent a note demanding that atrocities against civilians be prosecuted, leading to a Czech denunciation of German involvement in its internal affairs. In border clashes, half a dozen German and Czech soldiers were injured.
What followed can only be described as a pattern of purposeful escalation by the socialist states. Outraged by the temerity of the Czech dismissal, Germany issued another note, informing the Czech government that a failure to protect the remaining German minorities in Czechia would be grounds for war. The military thinking of most of the top brass in Russia and Germany was that the reactionary states had grown overly emboldened by the provision of American aid, and that there was a narrow window to strike before the Pacific and Anglo-Indian wars wound up. What followed was a relentless campaign of vilification - largely not unfounded - against the states of the Bucharest Pact. Socialist leaders who previously believed that reports of atrocities were exaggerated now quickly switched tunes, both in public and in private. In any case, the invasion of Poland would soon reveal the full extent of the tragedy that had transpired under the first seven months of Dmowski's rule.
In the press and in the official pronouncements of the socialist bloc, the campaign that followed was declared to be a grand crusade against reactionary barbarism and a creeping Anglo-American invasion of Europe. In reality, it was both of these things and more. Military mobilization to match the swelling Anglo-American armies was felt to be a necessity, and such a war provided the perfect opportunity for it. Failure to intervene now might mean that no opportunity for intervention would ever arise - at least, no opportunity that would not provoke the Anglo-American enemy into a repeat of the Great War. It was now or never.
Soviet and German soldiers began the invasion of Poland on July 21st. With its diminished borders and decimated military hierarchy, it had little chance against the combined onslaught. The sizable Romanian army and well-supplied, experienced Czech soldiery waged a much more successful defense of their outlying provinces in the initial weeks of conflict. Warsaw fell in early August, and Galicia, the burial ground of over 600,000 Jews killed in the infamous ethnocide, was mostly captured by the 17th. The Czech, Romanian, Hungarian, and Croatian governments sent a confidential note offering generous peace terms on August 31st, including the cession of border areas, the expulsion of American advisors, and the legalization of banned socialist parties.
This was overwhelmingly rejected by the cabinets in both Russia and Germany. The second, and more brutal phase of the war thus began in September, coinciding with the American invasion of Taiwan. Alarm now spread among the capitalist powers that the red armies would soon sweep across the Balkans, bringing them to the gates of Constantinople and Greece. Several British expeditionary divisions were ferried into Romania, and for a few weeks, Anglo-American air support prevented the Red Army from making any breakthroughs. But then, the unstable Hungarian state, already facing sporadic protest at home, was requested to bring its army into Moravia to shore up Czech lines. Horthy at first equivocated, worried of the domestic implications of such a move, but eventually complied. He was right to be anxious. A patriotic revolt broke out across the army; Horthy was accused of "sacrificing Hungary's men to Hungary's butchers", and red militias under the command of Bela Kun successfully stormed Budapest, executing most of the government's ministers and proclaiming a soviet republic. The rest of the army almost immediately swore allegiance to Kun, as did the besieged Social Democrats. A war of reconquest soon began: Kun marched his men into Slovakia later that week and met up with advancing German forces, cutting off the remainder of the Czechoslovak Republic from its Romanian and Croatian allies.
A panicked America rushed through a hugely controversial bill that placed a complete embargo on shipments of grain, foodstuffs, and industrial goods to the socialist bloc; Britain did the same a few days later, and wielded its still-considerable financial power over Argentina to force it to pass a similar measure. Yet, crucially, Britain was not able to convince its own dominions to move forward with the embargo. The governments of both Canada and Australia feared that cutting off exports to the socialists would precipitate a farmer's revolt, and perhaps even bring the rural masses into coalition with domestic labor. Most of British financial leverage over its dominions had been whittled away by the wartime sale of securities and investments, not to mention the considerable loss of moral legitimacy Britain suffered through its use of dominion soldiers as cannon fodder in the campaigns of the western front.
Australia and Canada were two of the largest food exporters in the world, and as a consequence of their refusal to sign onto the blockade, they became some of the prime beneficiaries of rising global grain prices. So too would the Soviet Union, which would use its tremendous "food-power" as leverage in negotiations over the new order in Southeastern Europe. Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands were all immediately forced to reimplement rationing measures, even though the latter two made an only negligible contribution to the war.
The Battles of 1923 - Rising Tensions
Root's embargo was instituted at a time of acute national anxiety. The invasion of Taiwan had turned into a spectacular debacle. The initial landings, bloody but successful, were not followed up with continued progress. Japanese attritional warfare forced the American advance to a crawl. Despite the best efforts of the Navy, they could not stop the island's numerous defenders from being resupplied under the cover of darkness, often from Japanese-held China. A report in the Wall Street Journal indicated that there was a systemic undercounting of military deaths, leading the Secretary of War to resign. Popular concern about the war was matched by official consternation. In the state department, many worried that the "Jap War" had become a distraction from the more important European theater. The Hungarian revolution and collapse of Czech lines in Slovakia finally gave the internationalists a decisive upper-hand: the full might of the American military had to be directed at containing the Bolshevik menace.
To the shock of the world, America sent a formal offer of peace to Japan on September 24th. This was telegraphed across the entire nation: at the very least, Japanese refusal would rally public support. It was not a particularly generous offer. Japan would be forced to retreat from its bridgeheads across China and restore the status quo ante. It would have the option to purchase commercial rights in the Shandong Peninsula from the nationalist government in China. Japan would also lose the South Seas possessions it seized from Germany during the Great War, though almost all of these were already occupied by American soldiers. Perhaps the most injurious to Japanese prestige was the demand that it grant a 99-year lease on several naval bases in Taiwan to America. Taiwan was acquired back in the first Sino-Japanese war, and for the military command, losing sovereignty over any portion of it was politically unacceptable.
Negotiations nonetheless began in Honolulu on September 29th. The government of Tanaka Giichi faced economic collapse and spiraling discontent at home, and they feared that without coming to some sort of deal, there would be another eruption of civilian displeasure. Giich hoped for a settlement that would appease the Americans, end the war, and maintain an expanded Japanese Empire that would placade domestic military hardliners. To accomplish this, they would have to ice out the Chinese delegation. In exchange for generous security assurances to the Americans - including a substantial reduction in the size of the navy - they could perhaps be convinced to acknowledge an enlarged zone of Japanese influence in China stretching down from Manchuria through Shandong and Nanjing. Unfortunately, this was a grave miscalculation. Not only did American diplomats resist any move to sideline the Chinese, but they also insisted on a rapid withdrawal of Japanese from core chinese territories. After a week and a half of frustrated negotiations, the war resumed. The "easterners" were temporarily confirmed in their predictions about Japanese intransigence.
In reality, however, the Japanese political elite were bitterly divided against themselves. The civilian legislature had grown tired of the constant depredations of the military cabinet, and feared that the movement for constitutional rule which had gained steam during the Great War was now being brought to a premature end. An unknown source leaked the minutes of the Honolulu diplomacy to the press, prompting massive "peace marches" in major cities. When the military resorted to violent suppression, the Japanese Diet convened and passed an extraordinary resolution expressing its lack of confidence in the Gliichi ministry. At the crucial moment, the new industrial magnates, the Navy, and progressive sections of the old genro came out against a proposed measure to forcibly disband the Diet, sealing the fate of the Giichi government.
Yukio Ozaki, the leading figure behind the Diet's resistance to government policy, was named the new Prime Minister by the Crown-Regent Hirohito. Ozaki assembled a cabinet of members from all the major parliamentary factions, though the most represented were the liberal elements of the Kensekai, who had been prominent in the push for manhood suffrage. Ozaki immediately re-entered into negotiations to bring an end to the war; a somewhat skeptical American government found the new foreign minister Kijūrō Shidehara to be far more amenable to their proposals. Though hardly an anti-imperialist, Ozaki knew that maintaining a large land empire in China would only provide opportunities to his enemies in the military establishment.
The final details of the peace treaty, now negotiated in San Francisco, required Japanese forces in China to retreat to the Manchurian border and to the city of Qingdao, which they would be allowed to keep in exchange for a small indemnity to China. The Qingdao-Jinan railway would revert entirely to the Chinese. Japan would reserve the right to station one hundred thousand soldiers in its Manchurian zone of influence, ostensibly to guard against Soviet incursions into the area. The Japanese possessions in the South Seas, as well as the islands of Saipan and Iwo Jima, would be ceded to the United States; Taiwan, however, would remain free of American soldiers and ships. Japan would also be obligated to maintain its Naval tonnage at a level slightly below half that of the United States, and to foreswear any alliance with other great powers. In practice, the tonnage agreement solidified Japan's position as the preeminent power outside of the "Big Four" by confirming that it would have the world's third-largest navy.
The Japanese "Constitutional Protection Revolution", as it came to be called by its defenders, was predictably assailed by the military establishment. And yet it proved to be on firmer footing than many expected. To great popular acclaim, the new Ozaki ministry passed laws enshrining manhood suffrage, expanding access to education, and reforming labor law. Relations between Japan and the Soviet Union were formally established later that month, giving it a potent source of leverage in future negotiations with the west. The sharp swing back toward reformist liberalism was vindicated in December elections in which Ozaki's new "Constitutional Reform and Protection Party" won a decisive popular mandate. The question, of course, was whether the economic rudiments were in place for Ozaki's long-term political project, which depended upon the further integration of Japan into the slowly recovering global economy.
Peace with Japan was intended to permit a reorientation toward the west, yet in reality the logistical capacity of the United States was insufficient to save the embattled Balkan coalition. Over September and November, the Red Army surged forward into Romania, Czechia, and then, with Italian assistance, into Croatia. Revolutionary terror followed in the wake of this self-styled army of liberation. It is impossible to discern the full scope of the violence which followed in their wake: it was undoubtedly more discriminating than the ethnocidal killing of their right-wing opponents, but it is likely that over 150,000 Poles and Croat civilians lost their lives over the next few months. Many died in revenge killings that are not clearly attributable to the Red Army.
The Red Army's victories confirmed Soviet-German hegemony in Europe. Provisional socialist governments were constructed in the devastated balkan territories, typically with the support of local social-democratic movements which had radicalized after being subjected to state persecution. A bitter debate began between Sverdlov and Luxemburg about the territorial division of the new states. This was also, at least implicitly, a debate about the future of international socialism. While Sverdlov sought to add the new states as new socialist republics to the USSR, Luxemburg and the Germans hoped for them to either become independent or - if possible - "associated" states of the DSR under a German military umbrella. Kun's Hungary managed to successfully play off the two powers against one another and won recognition of Hungarian sovereignty over all the lands lost in the previous two years, including many regions which only had minorities of Hungarian-speakers, such as Slovakia.
The bulk of American and British expeditionary forces fled into neutral Albania to avoid capture. After being interned for two weeks, they were permitted to take ocean liners into Constantinople. It was later revealed that the Albanian Prime Minister received two mansions in Southern Connecticut from a shady American financial firm. Contrary to expectations, the Red Army did not move into Greece, Albania, or the British International Zone, which may have set off a real, as opposed to a quasi-war.
This was the first year in which this term - "Quasi-war" - assumed its modern meaning. It was used first in American policy circles, and then in several newspapers of the United States' Eastern Seaboard. It is unclear if the German word, Scheinbarkrieg - also first dated to late 1923 - was formed in response to its American counterpart or arose independently. In any case, journalists and politicians finally found concepts adequate to the new form of warfare that was emerging between the great powers. Even if their armies frequently encountered each other in foreign battlefields, they were clearly not locked into a conventional war. Naval engagements, including blockades and submarine attacks, were studiously avoided. Significant amounts of trade were permitted to continue. The home fronts of the great power combatants were never attacked, even though by this point, German planes could easily have gone on bombing runs against Southern England from bases in the Netherlands - and vice-versa. Careful diplomatic correspondence prevented escalation, even as the armies of the great powers slaughtered each other in their quest to win influence in foreign lands and spread their ideological creed. Such a situation could only exist because each side feared the economic - and political - consequences of resuming the totalerkrieg of the great war. None of the four great powers believed they had the domestic support to launch another "total mobilization" of society. Hence a quasi-war rather than a conventional war, in which certain military measures were "off the table" and no formal declaration of war was ever made.
Of course, there was real concern that the expanding quasi-war would end up turning into and thereby recapitulating Great War. This is why the Red Army stopped short of advancing on Constantinople, despite the urging of ultra-left hardliners in both Russia and Germany. Predictably enough, they did not demobilize, but were transferred to the relatively quiescent French theater. Soldiers of the French Red Army had just recently marched into Paris after being ordered back onto the offensive; they forced Frossard to sack around half of his ministers, and place delegates from the soldier's councils in their place. Frossard himself was more than happy to welcome several hundred thousand German and Soviet soldiers, whom he hoped would improve the flagging morale of his own army. First the Americans, and then the British as well sent dozens of divisions to bolster the white army. A furious Elihu Root, stung by the loss of the Balkans, swore to inflict a decisive defeat on the reds. France would soon become the final and largest battleground of the First Revolutionary Era.
Notes
There were a great deal of events elsewhere that I was simply not able to fit into this post. These include developments in Ireland, Spain, South America, Mexico, Laos, Indonesia, Australia, Canada, and Britain. Covering them all here would make make this just a bit too lengthy. I should (hopefully!) have dedicated posts on the following topics before 1924:
The Lumbering Titan: Britain and its Empire, 1919-1923
I think the US will focus on improving weapons and tactics to make up for colonial losses, maybe even allowing immigrants and minorities to serve in the military in return for citizenship. Also, American corporations would be able to purchase British and other Western companies cheaply since they have available capital. China, Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia will be fully exploited since Europe has been lost. India and Burma may continue to be a smoldering issue with well supplied 'bandits' attack British/American and Princely troops.
As for the Socialist World, the losses in manpower may force the Red Armies into more mechanized thinking and combined arms. I am not sure on women serving in the Armed Forces but I can see them being used in possible non-combatant roles.
HOLY FUCK, ALL OF EUROPE (Nearly) is RED!
I assumed that the story was heading in the direction @The Laurent predicted, with Poland/the Intermarium becoming the fascist power of the interwar that then ethnocided the Jews of Galicia, and that the Balkans would remain a reactionary tumour in the underbelly of Europe.
But...all of that's gone!
The Red Banner flies from Paris to Vladivostok, from Helsinki to Skopje, and everywhere in between.
Sweden, Denmark, and Belgium are implied to be, from what I can gather from the Sozialstaat infopage, pro-Comintern "socdem" states that reddify in time, a la People's Democracies in Reds!
The only White Powers that remain east of the French frontier are Switzerland, Norway, Albania(which you say is neutral), Greece, and British-administered Constantinople.
And of course Malta and Sardinia and Corsica and Cyprus, since it looks like the Royal Navy has been pretty proactive in securing the Mediterranean even as the continent bleeds Red from West to East.
I expect whatever insurrection to occur in Ireland to be crushed, but autonomy nonetheless granted to prevent volatility and instability on the Emerald Isle.
Looking forward to seeing how the Continental Civil War ends up on the West of Europe -- can the Red Banner reach the Pyrenees, or perhaps even the Pillars of Hercules? I'm presuming not, considering the traditional English amity with Lusitania and Legitimist French forces on Spain's northern flank, but I'm looking forward to learning how things shape up nonetheless. And oooh, South America! Gonna be interesting to see how that shapes up.
Interesting that a Cold War dynamic is developing inspite of no nukes -- although that just seems to be the current state of affairs out of exigency due to no major power wanting to jump headfast into another Great War, rather than a permanent one.
I'm happy that Sverdlov becomes Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars -- I'm pretty sure you mentioned Douds at the start of this thread, so I'm guessing the choice is deliberate, due to Sverdlov's tendency to keep the Party and State adrift from each other.
That petty nationalist squabbles continue to occur in Red Europe are both amusing and completely realistic.
I'm looking forward to the updates mentioned, particularly (as of now) the ones related to Ireland/Britain and France/Spain
This TL just continues to get more gripping -- the transition to peacetime once the FRE is over in '24 is something I think would be really interesting
HOLY FUCK, ALL OF EUROPE (Nearly) is RED!
I assumed that the story was heading in the direction @The Laurent predicted, with Poland/the Intermarium becoming the fascist power of the interwar that then ethnocided the Jews of Galicia, and that the Balkans would remain a reactionary tumour in the underbelly of Europe.
But...all of that's gone!
The Red Banner flies from Paris to Vladivostok, from Helsinki to Skopje, and everywhere in between.
Sweden, Denmark, and Belgium are implied to be, from what I can gather from the Sozialstaat infopage, pro-Comintern "socdem" states that reddify in time, a la People's Democracies in Reds!
The only White Powers that remain east of the French frontier are Switzerland, Norway, Albania(which you say is neutral), Greece, and British-administered Constantinople.
And of course Malta and Sardinia and Corsica and Cyprus, since it looks like the Royal Navy has been pretty proactive in securing the Mediterranean even as the continent bleeds Red from West to East.
I expect whatever insurrection to occur in Ireland to be crushed, but autonomy nonetheless granted to prevent volatility and instability on the Emerald Isle.
Looking forward to seeing how the Continental Civil War ends up on the West of Europe -- can the Red Banner reach the Pyrenees, or perhaps even the Pillars of Hercules? I'm presuming not, considering the traditional English amity with Lusitania and Legitimist French forces on Spain's northern flank, but I'm looking forward to learning how things shape up nonetheless. And oooh, South America! Gonna be interesting to see how that shapes up.
Interesting that a Cold War dynamic is developing inspite of no nukes -- although that just seems to be the current state of affairs out of exigency due to no major power wanting to jump headfast into another Great War, rather than a permanent one.
I'm happy that Sverdlov becomes Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars -- I'm pretty sure you mentioned Douds at the start of this thread, so I'm guessing the choice is deliberate, due to Sverdlov's tendency to keep the Party and State adrift from each other.
That petty nationalist squabbles continue to occur in Red Europe are both amusing and completely realistic.
I'm looking forward to the updates mentioned, particularly (as of now) the ones related to Ireland/Britain and France/Spain
This TL just continues to get more gripping -- the transition to peacetime once the FRE is over in '24 is something I think would be really interesting
It does seem like Poland gets its genocide... it's just that it's confined to a single year, if the comment about 600,000 Galician Jews is any indication, they tried to make up for lost time but got crushed in the end.
Oof, thank you so much for saying so, feels great to have an influence, however tiny, on this massive TL
If you don't mind, could you give a list of your sources for colonial Indian history in particular? I'd love to read some actual, full-fledged books on it -- what I do know is haphazardly scrounged up from official school hagio-histories, a miscellany of wikipedia articles, long-form history articles and essays on some news sites, The Constituent Assembly debates, essays by post-independence historians like Ram Guha, and an odd mixture of books that, among others, include Arundhati Roy's works, a Bengali satirical novel written in and about mid-19th century Calcutta called Hootum Pyanchar Naksha, and the fairly racist and greatly reviled but nonetheless informative "Mother India" by Katherine Mayo.
Tithi Bhattacharya, The Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education and the Colonial Intellectual in Bengal
John Gallagher, Locality, Province and Nation: Essays on Indian Politics 1870 to 1940
Durba Ghosh, Gentlemanly Terrorists: Political Violence and the Colonial State in India, 1919–1947
Sumit Sarkar, Modern India
Sumit Sarkar, Modern Times: India 1880s-1950s
I am still really thinking about how Hinduism might evolve differently ITTL. Given how much of the Hindu elite threw in with the INC and the Indian Revolution, there's going to be something of a power void in the immediate post-revolutionary era, with British elites searching for - and at times constructing - elite collaborators. While there will almost certainly be attempts to conscript the lower castes into collaboration, from what I understand, the general thrust of British law in colonial India was actually to reinforce caste hierarchies, and I don't really see this changing in any fundamental way, even if there are separate electorates.
I am still really thinking about how Hinduism might evolve differently ITTL. Given how much of the Hindu elite threw in with the INC and the Indian Revolution, there's going to be something of a power void in the immediate post-revolutionary era, with British elites searching for - and at times constructing - elite collaborators. While there will almost certainly be attempts to conscript the lower castes into collaboration, from what I understand, the general thrust of British law in colonial India was actually to reinforce caste hierarchies, and I don't really see this changing in any fundamental way, even if there are separate electorates.
Perhaps more anti-caste or atheistic movements? A rebellion against the hierarchies? Plus the Comintern would probably be willing to fund Anarchist and Republican movement like this guy: Bhagat Singh - Wikipedia
Of the eternal questions, nothing else: is there a God, is there immortality? And those who do not believe in God will talk of socialism or anarchy, of the transformation of all humanity on a new pattern, which all comes to the same thing, they're the same questions turned inside out.
-The Brothers' Karamazov, Dostoevsky
We are not, in fact, afraid of all these socialists, anarchists, atheists, and revolutionaries, he said. We keep an eye on them, and their movements are known to us. But there are some special people among them, although not many: these are believers in God and Christians, and at the same time socialists. They are the ones we are most afraid of; they are terrible people! A socialist Christian is more dangerous than a socialist atheist.
-The Brothers' Karamazov, Dostoevsky
Do you still ask? Is your Manchester liberalism unaware of the existence of a school of economic thought which means the triumph of man over economics, and whose principles and aims precisely coincide with those of the kingdom of God? The Fathers of the Church called mine and thine pernicious words, and private property usurpation and robbery. They repudiated the idea of personal possessions, because, according to divine and natural law, the earth is common to all men, and brings forth her fruits for the common good. They taught that avarice, a consequence of the Fall, represents the rights of property and is the source of private ownership.
They were humane enough, anti-commercial enough, to feel that all commercial activity was a danger to the soul of man and its salvation. They hated money and finance, and called the empire of capital fuel for the fires of hell. The fundamental eco- nomic principle that price is regulated by the operation of the law of supply and demand, they have always despised from the bottom of their hearts; and condemned taking advantage of chance as a cynical exploitation of a neighbour's need. Even more nefarious, in their eyes, was the exploitation of time; the montrousness of receiving a premium for the passage of time — interest, in other words — and misusing to one's own advantage and another's disadvantage a universal and God-given dispensation…
Now, then: after centuries of disfavor these principles and standards are being resurrected by the modern movement of communism. The similarity is complete, even to the claim for world-domination made by international labour as against international industry and finance; the world-proletariat, which is today asserting the ideals of the Civitas Dei in opposition to the discredited and decadent standards of the capitalistic bourgeoisie. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the politico-economic means of salvation demanded by our age, does not mean domination for its own sake and in perpetuity; but rather in the sense of a temporary abrogation, in the Sign of the Cross, of the contradiction between spirit and force; in the sense of overcoming the world by mastering it; in a transcendental, a transitional sense, in the sense of the Kingdom. The proletariat has taken up the task of Gregory the Great, his religious zeal burns within it, and as little as he may it withhold its hand from the shedding of blood. Its task is to strike terror into the world for the healing of the world, that man may finally achieve salvation and deliverance, and win back at length to freedom from law and from distinction of classes, to his original status as child of God.
-Naphtha, The Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann)
Excerpts from a Swiss College-level textbook in Religious Studies, 1972
Key Terms:
Names used for the Fatima Church by its opponents: "White Church", "White Papacy", "Anti-church", "Robber's Church".
Names used for the Fatima Church by third-parties: "Fatima Church", "Fatima Papacy", "White Church", "White Papacy".
Names used for the Fatima Church by its own members: "Roman Catholic Church", "True Church", "Fatima Church".
Names used for the Roman Church by its opponents: "Red Church", "Bolshevik Church", "Anti-church", "Jew-Church".
Names used for the Roman Church by Third Parties: "Roman Church", "Roman Papacy", "Red Church", "Red Papacy".
Names used for the Roman Church by its own members: "Roman Catholic Church", "Roman Church", "Reformed Church", "Franciscan Church".
Introduction
It is a trying task to write an impartial history of the great schism of 1920 and the dual papacy. We have, in fact, already sinned - such concepts as "dual papacy" and "great schism" are rejected by both of the involved parties, who vociferously insist that there was no rupture in the true body of the church, and that the very concept of a "dual" papacy is a contradiction in terms given the indivisible character of papal authority. The categories which the historian employs in this matter necessarily operate at a distance from the lived realities of the laymen, priests, cardinals and other church officials who participated in the momentous events of 1920. By abstracting, we threaten to annihilate the true nature of the conflict that tore apart the church, treating fervent conviction as mere rhetorical gamesmanship. Yet we must persist in employing such artifice, as the alternative is to write a wholly partisan history.
We should begin not with the events of 1920, but those of 1916 and 1917. While most historians have treated the Marian appirations of Fatima as something of an afterthought, or otherwise buried them beneath discussions of their varied post-schismatic interpretations, catholics of every stripe assert their centrality to the momentous events of 1920. By taking the disputants at their own word on this matter, we might better discern the era's characteristic mood.
Beginning in the spring of 1916, three shepherd children reported apparitions of an angel in Valinhos, Portugal, a town just outside of Fátima. A little less than a year later, on April 4th, the children claimed to see five apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom the children described as a "lady more brilliant and beautiful than the sun at morning." The children spoke of a prophecy: prayer would finally bring an end to the great war, and for those who still doubted, a miracle would be performed on November 2nd so that "all might believe". A large crowd of between 50,000 and 125,000 gathered in Fátima on that date, and thousands of spectators reported seeing the sun transform into the Virgin Mary. According to the children, she castigated the sins of men and implored further prayer: "the war is going to end", Mary reportedly said, "but if people do not stop offending God, another, even worse one will begin in the reign of the next Holy Father." All three of the children died a few years later in the global flu pandemic.
In a world without the November revolutions, these miracles would perhaps have never attained the world-historical prominence they did, though we should be mindful of the importance they already possessed during the Great War. The church had begun a formal investigation in May of 1918, and the true meaning of the events was already fiercely debated amongst cardinals and catholic intellectuals. More openly pacifist elements of the church believed that the war constituted a punishment for man's sinful violence. In the apocalyptic atmosphere of 1919, some laymen and parish priests even suggested that the prophecies heralded the second coming of Christ and the divine judgement of the wicked conspirators who had started the war.
Of course, the November Revolutions began nearly two years to the day of the so-called "Miracle of the Sun". There was, in fact, already speculation that the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 was connected in some way to the miracle; most of the church hierarchy who drew out the connection believed that the "atheistic" revolution was a warning about the dire consequences of continuing the war. This second numerological coincidence was too much to ignore. The embattled church in Rome (officially neutral, but in reality reluctantly allied to the white government) proclaimed that the revolutionary violence had been brought on by the sin of man, and that the secular elites who allowed the war to continue had now unleashed Bolshevik apostasy onto the earth by failing to restrain their lust for power. The white government in Rome had to be convinced by its clerical allies to not censor an official church statement on the matter.
Of course, the "red" Roman Church would have a quite different interpretation of the prophecies, one with long and world-altering consequences, but before racing ahead, we should examine the events of 1920 which precipitated the great schism…
The Storming of Rome and the Origins of the White Papacy
Benedict XV was declared Pope on September 6th 1914, just days after the Great War began. His political and theological instincts were as distant from his "white" successors as the "red" church: as a modernizing reformer and a pacifist, he descried the Great War as the "suicide of civilized Europe" and made numerous attempts to broker peace, at times with the assistance of the American President William Jennings Bryan. After Italy surrendered, he sanctioned Catholic participation in national politics, breaking a long taboo against engaging with the secular and frequently anticlerical Italian state. Although many of the reforming elements allied to Benedict would eventually constitute an important faction of the Roman Church, he sided tacitly with the white government even while declaring official church neutrality in the civil war.
When the red and black assault on Rome began, Benedict resolved to remain in the city as a show of force. It is still unclear why he refused to take measures to evacuate the church's property, which the anarchists gave every indication they intended to seize. In any event, Benedict died shortly before the city was taken. He likely perished from the combined effects of influenza and stress brought on by the ceaseless artillery shelling, though considerable mystery still surrounds the circumstances of his death. The remaining cardinals, around 40% of the total that would typically meet for a Papal Conclave, rushed to elect a new pope while there was still time.The political balance was ultraconservative: montanists held at least half the seats due to the absence of more liberal cardinals from America and France. Rafael Merry del Val, the Secretary of the Congregation of the Holy Office, emerged early on as a clear frontrunner.
In certain respects, Del Val was an unusual choice: a Spaniard raised in Protestant England, he would be the first non-Italian Pope since the Dutch Adrian VI in 1522. Historically, the Italian cardinals guarded the position of the Papacy jealousy - it was, in fact, one of their few remaining privileges. However, the chaos presently engulfing Rome convinced enough Cardinals that the need for a strong conservative voice outweighed the preservation of Italianate privilege; after four rounds of balloting, Cardinal Merry del Val was officially elected. He chose the name Gregory in honor of Gregory XVII, who had triumphed over secular rule during the investiture controversy, thereby establishing sole papal supremacy over the church.
Pope Gregory XVII several hours before being elected to the papacy
Just hours after the papal enclave, the entire church hierarchy remaining in Rome fled to Spain, principally on British vessels; the irony of Protestant England coming to the aid of the Catholic church was not lost on observers. They disembarked first at the port of Valencia, and then made their way to Madrid. The beleaguered Spanish government, however, was in no position to host a new papacy. Spanish liberals of both aristocratic and republican stripes had little desire for Spain to become the new home of the church, particularly given the ultraconservative and montanist leanings of the papacy. In fact, the feeling was mutual: despite his own Spanish heritage, Gregory wished no part in a Spain wracked by regionalist separatism, peasant protests, and social radicalism. For fairly obvious reasons, France was not a suitable destination, and though a few cardinals mooted the name of Brazil, moving this far afield was felt to reek too much of cowardice and capitulation. Portugal was the last remaining option.
The Republic of Portugal was hardly an oasis of political stability, but compared to the rest of Catholic Europe, it was comparatively quiescent. It was briefly an active participant in the Great War, but broad popular opposition to Portuguese entry led to a successful coup by military officers loyal to Sidonio Pais, one of the prime drafters of the 1911 Republican constitution. Pais never formally established peace with Germany, but he did draw down the Portuguese war effort while restructuring the Portuguese constitution to centralize power in the hands of the Presidency. Soon enough, he held significantly more power than any Portuguese monarch. Despite his own temporary masonic flirtations, he rallied conservatives to his side by normalizing relations with the church and amending a progressive law separating the church and state. He survived several assassination attempts through 1918 and 1919, which many speculated were financed by British interests upset with Pais' pro-german outlook.
Portugal was nonetheless dependent on a flagging British economy, and as consumer demand collapsed in 1919, Portuguese export industries crashed, unemployment rose, and labor discontent surged. Pais's government gave covert blessing to the formation of anti-leftist irmanandes, which he hoped would stymie the rising tide of worker militancy. These conservative, anti-modernist, and Catholic fraternal organizations appealed to unemployed young men of a more middle-class milieu, drawing in members with promises of brotherhood, camaraderie, and redemptive violence. They received funding from conservative Catholic landowners frustrated with being frozen out of the Republican political establishment. Pais himself was wary of the ultimate goals of the irmanandes, but he permitted them to continue operating as a useful check on the growing power of syndicalist trade unions and other left-wing political organizations.
By 1921, however, the swelling irmanandes had grown powerful enough to undermine Pais' own authority. Fearing a coup if openly defied the church, Pais allowed the pope to take up residency in Lisbon while working behind-the-scenes to push him out of the capital. To lessen the risk of an overt conflict with secular authorities, Gregory moved his headquarters to Fatima in early 1922, where several of the fraternal irmanandes participated in the construction of a new papal complex.
Unfortunately for Pais, the decision to host the ultramontanist Pope had been the last straw for his erstwhile allies among the Portuguese Republicans, who now entered into a covert pact with syndicalist trade unions and several prominent military officers to force Gregory out of the country. Hemmed in by the irmanandes on his right, Pais did not have the ability to conciliate his former anticlerical supporters. On March 12th 1922, troops loyal to the dismissed republican general Alfredo de Sa Cardoso in the Lisbon garrison revolted and declared the restoration of the Portuguese Republic of 1911. Pais himself was finally assassinated by coup supporters later that week and with the assistance of worker-militias, Lisbon fell to the republican soldiers on the 17th.
Portugal descended into a brief civil war. In the north, royalists loyal to Henrique Mitchell de Paiva Couceiro successfully seized the city of Porto. Pais' right-wing supporters refused to fight against the monarchists until the "Bolshevik uprising" in Lisbon had been crushed. In the center of the country, the Catholic irmanandes seized many small towns, and most of the military rallied to the side of Joao Tamagnini Barbosa and Joao de Canto e Castro, both loyalists to Pais. By the end of March, the Lisbon uprising had been crushed, but Portugal seemed as if it might be on the verge of a prolonged struggle between the northern monarchists and the remaining right-wing republicans, especially since the Catholic paramilitaries appeared set to turn on the latter.
It was in this situation that Gregory offered himself as a unifying national figure. Behind the scenes, he convinced Couceiro to accept a place in a new national government; he was likely helped by the fact that the deposed King of Portugal showed no interest in returning to the nation. The republicans lacked a single figurehead, and after some internal dissension, they settled upon Manuel Gomes de Costa, an ultraconservative officer, as the prime minister of the new administration. In reality, Gomes de Costa was hand-chosen by Gregory's foreign minister Pietro Gasparri. Much of the temporal power in Portugal had seemingly slipped into the hands of the visiting white papacy and his loyal irmanandes without anyone being quite cognizant of it. Over the next two years, a grand new Papal residence was built in Fatima, and a telegraph line laid between the booming town and Lisbon.
The Origins of the Red Papacy
Italy was without a Pope for a little over a year. While the anarchists and significant sections of the Italian socialists opposed in principle any proposal to create a "Red Papacy", Gramsci and his allies believed that the opportunity to create another "international organ of worker's propaganda" was too good to pass up. A socialist papacy would also aid in the integration of the heavily Catholic south and provide the new Italian state a potent source of soft power.
The movement toward progressive Catholicism had begun on the leftward fringes of Benedict's modernizing faction, and picked up steam through 1918-1919 as Catholics entered into parliamentary politics. The political proclivities of discontented Catholic peasants undoubtedly had a role in pushing some of the reformist clergy left. Luigi Sturzo, who considered himself a Christian Socialist, emerged as the revolutionary government's most prominent ally, though he carefully avoided taking too active a role in the First Congress. The establishment of a rival "red papacy" gained momentum throughout 1921 as Catholics and Socialists entered into alliance and Catholic journals, periodicals, and newspapers assailed Gregory's "reactionary and unchristian" leadership. In August, Italian parish priests and bishops formed a commission to investigate the "extraordinary circumstances" in which Gregory was elected. The same body ruled in September that Gregory's election had occurred without providing requisite prior notice, and was therefore illegitimate. In response, Gregory issued an extraordinary decree excommunicating all of the clergymen who participated in the creation of the commission. With the break formalized, the momentum toward a new papacy was now unstoppable. The Italian bishops and priests appointed a new college of cardinals in October, which held a conclave in Rome to determine Benedict's rightful successor.
By the time the conclave met, the majority of bishops in higher church offices had already fled to Portugal, leading to a slew of rapid promotions of lower-level priests more sympathetic to socialism. These constituted the core of the radical faction which allied itself to the new revolutionary state. Politically, they were linked to the reconstituted party of Catholic Socialists, and many of them had participated outright in the peasant activism of 1918-1919. Theologically, they emphasized the "christian duty" to struggle for social justice and a more equitable distribution of wealth. Their more outspoken members castigated the church for abandoning the prefigurative practices of the early Christian communities, in which the institutions of collective property and common ownership anticipated the coming of Christ.
Of course, they did find some support for their views in the christian intellectual tradition: they never tired of referencing the seas of ink spilled by theologians throughout the ages chastising the social elite for their abuses of the marginalized. In continuity with reformers throughout history, they argued that the upper echelons of the church hierarchy had been seduced by the "idolatry" of wealth and power, and lost sight of the Church's true mission: to bring into being a new moral order upon the earth reflective of the Christian teachings of love, justice, and universal brotherhood. As the common radical slogan went: "Love of God is Love of Man, and Love of Man is Socialism". The radicals advocated for a thoroughgoing reform to church doctrine which would return the Christian community to the "purity" of the Church of Saint Peter. This included, most controversially, a return to preaching in the vernacular and the direct election of priests by parishioners.
Opposed to them were the old reforming elite of the Benedictine era. They still held onto a thin majority at the conclave, and hoped to steer the church away from both the "mad ultramontanism" of Gregory and its "heretical politicization" along the radicalist line. Above all, they were fearful of aligning too overtly with the new revolutionary government and thereby harming the international reputation of the true roman church, though they were still more than willing - and in some cases, even more eager than the radicals - to carry out a purge of their traditional ultraconservative adversaries.
The moderates were, in fact, divided relatively early into two distinct camps. On the one side were the "modernists", a liberally-inclined majority, and on the other side were dogmatically apolitical "quietests" who refused participation in temporal politics. Traumatized by the horrific violence of both the Great War and the November Revolutions, some clergymen had begun to advocate that the church should concern itself strictly with affairs of theology, and leave matters of governance entirely to the state. After all, the church had survived and thrived under political orders as diverse as Roman plantation slavery and modern capitalism; catholicism was, to use a favorite phrase, "necessarily apolitical", adapting itself to serve the flock of any and every society. Render unto caesar what is caesar's, and to god what is god's.
Much more prominent at the Papal Conclave, however, were the liberal modernists. They wanted to bring the church into the 20th century, to make its doctrines and its practices adhere with the best of modern times. The modernists were perfectly comfortable launching a frontal assault against ultramontanism and conservative catholicism, which they treated as a reactionary relic of a bygone age. Their candidate of choice was Romulo Murri, who had been condemned and then excommunicated by Pope Pius X for his involvement in democratic politics.
Skirmishes had erupted between the various factions well before the Papal Conclave was called. The radicals accused the liberal modernists of being bourgeois traitors to Christ's mission, and the quietist clergy of being "collaborators in waiting", ready to countenance evil to preserve their own power. For their own part, the modernists charged the radicals with crypto-protestantism, and the quietists cast a pox on both of their houses. Many believed before the conclave met that Romolo Murri had achieved sufficient support to win a majority outright, but quietist dissension prevented him from doing so. The radicals, meanwhile, placed forward a number of lesser-known candidates who had little chance of garnering a majority. After fourteen rounds of balloting, the name of Luigi Sturzo was finally put forward.
Sturzo was assisted by his connections in the government, as well as by his own position midday between the two largest factions. He refrained from embracing the more revolutionary pretensions of the radicals, and advocated for a program of internal reform rather than revolutionary political action. Simultaneously, none could doubt Sturzo's commitment to a positive vision of christian socialism. In the end, enough of the modernists believed him to be a capable steward of the reform process to swing over to Sturzo; his previous leadership of the Party of Catholic Socialists also helped him convince numerous cardinals that he could secure the non-interference of the revolutionary government in church matters. On October 29th, he was finally elected the 258th pope by the reformed Congress of Cardinals after nineteen ballots.
Sturzo assumed the name of Francis I, signaling a commitment to both social justice and catholic tradition: the Franciscan order was one of the oldest and most venerable of catholic institutions, and was well-known for advocating on behalf of the poor and marginalized. The "red pope" quickly accumulated a bustling private mythology. Perhaps the most enduring image from the Storming of Rome is that of the future Francis rushing into the Vatican at the head of the Red Army wielding nothing but a broom, beating the various gold and silver-bedecked clergymen while shouting "Auferte ista hinc!" ("leave from this place", the command given by Jesus as he drove the money-changers from the Temple). In reality, Sturzo was over thirty miles of Rome during the conquest of the city, and he did not enter it until some weeks later, but this has not stopped the story from entering popular consciousness.
Francis I (nee' Luigi Sturzo) in 1905 following his ordination
Francis also became known for his "day walks", where he would eschew his formal papal vestments and stroll through the streets of Rome clad in ordinary dress; in the mid-1920s, these became something of a public event as crowds thronged around the ambulatory pope. Francis was a robust and lively interlocutor, and he became well-known for his ability to discourse on arcane theological matters without breaking his stride. His temporary parishioners included many anticlerical socialists who made the "pilgrimage" primarily to challenge the most "Holy of "holies". Perhaps the most iconic photograph of the era depicts Francis I embracing a young anarchist radical who had minutes ago been on the verge of assaulting him.
The Duelling Papacies and the New Millenarianism
In the month following Francis I's election, the varied elements of the Catholic world declared their allegiance. Loyal bishops in Germany, the Netherlands, and parts of Northern France recognized Francis I as the legitimate pope and called on Gregory to step down. Meanwhile, across South America, Croatia, Poland, and America, existing Catholic hierarchies declared the "Communist Agitator" an antipope. A much longer war of position commenced in the various catholic orders; sizable minorities of lower-ranking Jesuits and Franciscans left to form new, reconstituted organizations loyal to the Roman church. Curiously, in America many bishops and cardinals expressed reservations about the "politicization" of the church hierarchy in Portugal, while in many locations across South America, parish priests and laymen were considerably less enthusiastic about the Fátima papacy than their superiors, a division which would eventually lead to a prolonged battle for control of the continent's catholics.
Throughout 1922, the two popes directed a series of biting encyclicals against each other. Francis I denounced the ultramontanist monarchism of the "white church", as well as its growing intervention in the temporal affairs of Portugal. Echoing some of the quietists, he appealed to the primarily spiritual character of the Church's vocation. He also made a brief defense of the new "communal economics", though he never outright equated Catholic Social teaching with Marxism. For his part, Gregory accused Francis of being a mere puppet of the socialist bloc and of perverting the traditional teachings of Catholicism.
The Fátima Apparitions quickly became the central subject of dispute in the warring encyclicals. This is perhaps unsurprising given Gregory's decision to locate the new Papacy in Fatima, but it was Francis I who first raised the matter in the (in)famous "Maria, Redemptor Hominis" (Mary, Redeemer of Man) encyclical. This remarkable piece of eschatology is, of course, one of the most discussed theological texts of twentieth-century Catholicism. It was written at a time when Francis was under increasing pressure from the ascendant radicals, and it appears, in fact, as if several left-wing Catholic intellectuals of the Naples circle had a hand in writing it. Though tempting, we should be careful to avoid over-emphasizing the role that this encyclical played in the events which followed, for the ideas, feelings, and convictions which it articulated were already very much "in-the-air" well beyond Italy. Nonetheless, it undoubtedly played a vital part in crystallizing these sentiments and in granting them official sanction, something which successfully enraged the moderate faction of the clergy, who believed that in agreeing to Sturzo's papacy they had guaranteed themselves sufficient political leverage to prevent such politico-religious utopianism from becoming official church policy.
Maria, Redemptor Hominis centered on the interpretation of the Marian Apparitions of 1917. In a drawn-out analogy, Francis likened the Marian auguries to Christ's prophecy of the Second Temple's destruction. The "offenses to god" Mary spoke of in 1917 were none other than the exploitation of man by man, the spoliation of the earth, the accumulation of private wealth, the depredations of war, and the systematic substitution of hierarchical "relations of submission and slavery" for "properly christian relations of brotherhood and love". In sum, it is bourgeois society which is indicted as a "social" sin, and the outbreak of revolution simply the natural and divinely-ordained consequence of such sin assuming monstrous and nearly irremediable proportions. Like the destruction of the Temple before it, the violence of war and revolution, while tragic, were both necessary and divinely predetermined waystations to man's ultimate salvation. At least implicitly, the revolutionaries were depicted as Christian martyrs, even if, as Francis coolly remarked, "many were imperfect agents, practicing the wickedness and cruelty that they suffered, and even more failed to recognize the signs of the Creator reflected in their own burning desire for justice".
One may contrast Francis' reading of the Martian apparitions with an even more radical interpretation that arose among the "prefigurationist" catholic intelligentsia of Naples. For the prefigurationists, the only means of ushering Christ into the world was to first establish a "replica" of the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth. Only after the achievement of Gemeinwesen, the "true community" in which man's inhumanity to man is brought to an end, will Christ find human beings truly worthy of salvation. The Martian Apparitions were nothing more than omens that this community was on the verge of being constructed. They therefore had a distinctly eschatological role. Of course, Francis did not offer a plan for achieving the Kingdom of God in Maria, Redemptor Hominis, though he did endorse the notion that the apparitions were signs of a coming change in the fundamental character of human social relations. Without worrying overmuch about a "close reading" of the text, the radicals therefore chose to embrace it as a reflection of their own prefigurative political theology, a charge which Francis studiously refused to either endorse or repudiate.
The Angel of Socialism Takes Flight
Beginning in the 1920s and extending well into the 20th century, various forms of socialist-inflected Marian millenarianism spread across Pacific South America, the Dutch East Indies, Northern Vietnam, Central Africa, and Korea, posing challenges for colonial rule and mobilizing traditionally insular peasants against both native and foreign elites. The Marian apparitions followed a fairly uniform pattern despite their diverse trappings. Either a group of peasants or a charismatic religious leader would claim to see and speak with a divine image of a matronly woman, typically in her late 20s to early 40s; she implored those who listened to gather those closest and ready themselves for the coming of a new world in which the wealthy and powerful would be made humble and the common people exalted. The task of bringing the new world into being was pictured as an active and strenuous vocation, requiring the full employment of human agency. Whether this was to occur through violence, religious reform, or mass conversion was a matter determined on the local level.
In analyzing this extraordinary outburst of world-wide religious fervor, we must be careful to avoid the Eurocentric fallacy which attributes sole agency to the Roman Church. This trope has become quite ubiquitous in the popular histories of Marian-socialist millenarianism and yet there is extraordinary little historical evidence for it. Its staying power is a testament to the interest of both socialist and conservative historians in casting the Roman Church as the ultimate and unique originator of such religiously-inflected resistance to colonial rule. In reality, Marian Millenarianism arose exclusively in areas which already possessed pre-existing traditions of eschatological utopianism. Although it frequently crossed denominational lines, particularly among protestants, it was almost never transplanted into wholly foreign religious contexts. Local circumstances and traditions lent a unique character to each indigenous reworking of prophetic Marianism; the "glorious future" envisioned rarely coincided exactly with the imagined utopia of European socialists.
Among the peasants of Java, apparitions of a "great mother" foretold the coming of a "just king" who would expel the Dutch, eliminate the rent upon land, and end the exploitation of Chinese traders. In Central Africa, Eliot Kenan Kamwana, a charismatic religious leader who had already amassed a substantial following in the pre-war years, announced that he had escaped from British imprisonment in Mauritius with the help of a "white lady of the church". She had promised to meet him in Nyasaland, where she would bring about a kingdom of endless abundance and amity once the people had risen up against the British. Korean preachers spoke of "working toward God" with the assistance of a kindly female spirit, who would end all temporal government, slay death itself, and divide up the lands of the wealthy amongst the peasants after the people had fulfilled Christ's mission.
Mary the Angel of Socialism, Paul Klee
It is undeniable that the Roman Church had a hand in these movements. They fervently disseminated their own particular interpretation of the Marian apparitions, and among the downtrodden people of the third world, it was the radicals' activist, ultra-millinerian reading which was shared. It appears that the Italian government, too, bears a significant degree of responsibility: for many years, the Manchester Guardian report detailing extensive payments to the Roman Church from socialist-controlled Camera del Lavor
was dismissed as British propaganda, but now the story has finally been confirmed by a number of Italian priests.
It was ultimately none other than the Italian Chairman Antonio Gramsci who was behind these payments. As his declassified notebooks revealed, Gramsci believed that the Roman Church could serve as an invaluable international propaganda arm of the socialist bloc, and he directed loyal chambers of labour to direct some of their savings into the Franciscan and Jesuit missionary orders. However, the independent-mindedness of the zealous young radicals meant that in practice, Gramsci never possessed much control over how these funds were actually spent. The missionary orders took on a life of their own, and soon enough operated outside the purview of the Pope as well as the Italian government. It was in this freewheeling atmosphere that the "Marian prophecies" were spread, though it appears that most of the "work" done here was accomplished not by the radicals themselves but the expanding communications networks of colonial capitalism and learned native elites, often in the employ of colonial governments, who were eager to assimilate and advance anti-hegemonic versions of Christian thought. Direct attempts to secretly teach the new "theology of liberation" to Javanese peasants or Central African villagers rarely resulted in a conversion to "orthodox" Catholic-Socialism, however well-meaning and genuine the effort. Instead, existing religious movements fused the more overtly symbolic concerns of their traditional millenarian practices and the politicized utopianism of the red catholics, resulting in a myriad range of political theologies that collectively exercised a vital role in fomenting the development of national and anti-colonial consciousness.
Notes
I want to thank @PrognosticHannya for helping brainstorm ideas for this post, and in many cases giving me an education about church history and popular catholicism! This entry is at least as much their doing as it is mine.
How it impacted christian movement india? Will we see early arrival of Christian ashrum movement?
Will we see any impact on orthodox churchs? Will Soviet try to replicate some version of Soviet church like Red Papacy? Or we see a future fusion between two of them into one church?
Will synergic or eastern elements incorporate further within Red Theology? Aka mother Goddess worship? Like Guan yin or hindu devi etc?
I wrote about the Trinitarian movements in the Reds! Verse, which combined liberal protestant and catholic movements. I wonder how various protestant movements will greet the splitting of the church.
Per wikipedia the indian Christian community were big supporters of independence and probably would continue to be.
"He hath showed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away."
I really like this take on a "Red" Papacy, especially the part about the modernist electing a "compromise" candidate who it turns out actually meant all the things he said about socialism rather than being a nice moderate Pope. I am also really excited to see how this anti-colonial theology continues to develop and spread outside of Europe!
TIL about the "Miracle of Fatima" — very interesting, ngl.
If I were an outsider catholic ITTL I would pick the Roman Church over the Portuguese Church anyday — it's pretty clear that the former's more autonomous, more politically diverse, and ultimately more just and considerate towards the laity than the Portugal-robbing white popes.
I'm presuming this Papacy update almost certainly near-directly ties into the Spanish and Latin-American "social wars".
I think these Marian apparition will not necessarily expand the reach of the Red Catholics but rather create independent Catholic national churches allied to the Red Papacy, somewhat like OTL's Aglipayans. These will eventually either stay separate or integrate with the Roman Church. In fact, the Aglipayans themselves might reintegrate under the Roman Church because its founders were associated with the early socialist movement in the Philippines.
Sturzo's penchant for walking among the people while in more or less "civilian" garb reminds me of Sankara - now, will he be a model Franciscan throughout his whole mandate as Pope? By the time he got couped, Sankara was starting to show some worrying tendencies, after all, and had he lived longer, my worry is that he would've become a Mugabe-like figure; Sturzo's basically the ideal Pope but, will it last?
It's interesting that some people list the Rome Church or "Red Pope" as the "Jew Church", according to the 1978 book published in Switzerland. This implication is that there is still a degree of anti-Semitism in Europe ITTL.
This leads me to wonder if we still see a large-scale persecution of Jews in this timeline, and if so, will it not be on the scale of the Holocaust OTL, or is it just less widely known?
It's interesting that some people list the Rome Church or "Red Pope" as the "Jew Church", according to the 1978 book published in Switzerland. This implication is that there is still a degree of anti-Semitism in Europe ITTL.
This leads me to wonder if we still see a large-scale persecution of Jews in this timeline, and if so, will it not be on the scale of the Holocaust OTL, or is it just less widely known?
I mean, there was a literal Polish Ethnocide of hundreds of thousands of Jews going on/ending just right now (in the timeline). That's not the sort of thing that goes away, in terms of attitude.
I wonder if the term "ethnocide" will replace the word "genocide" ITTL, since the word "genocide" was created in 1943 to describe the systemic destruction of Europe's Jewry, coined by Polish ethnologist Raphael Lemkin.
This means that since there is not likely to be a systemic destruction of Europe's Jewry ITTL, since anti-Semitism is not as taboo in ITTL's Europe, judging by the Swiss textbook, I doubt Raphael Lemkin will coin the word "genocide" ITTL, and perhaps the term "ethnocide" becomes popular instead.
I wonder if the term "ethnocide" will replace the word "genocide" ITTL, since the word "genocide" was created in 1943 to describe the systemic destruction of Europe's Jewry, coined by Polish ethnologist Raphael Lemkin.
This means that since there is not likely to be a systemic destruction of Europe's Jewry ITTL, since anti-Semitism is not as taboo in ITTL's Europe, judging by the Swiss textbook, I doubt Raphael Lemkin will coin the word "genocide" ITTL, and perhaps the term "ethnocide" becomes popular instead.
