On that note, such a move helps build up excitement for the TL by making us all guess what will happen next, now you mentioned it.
8mm to the Left: If Hitler Died in 1923
- Thread starter KaiserKatze
- Start date
Nah, most likely it'll be Germans. France isn't going to fall to Algerians or Vietnamese.
It's probably Jews given France is most likely going to be a fascist country - we know the Third Republic is going to fall, and an entire update wouldn't be dedicated to the rise of Action Francaise if they were irrelevant.
How are they going to do that? Unless they nuke Israel/Palestine, there's no central place where a majority of jews live
I think we're going to see the the Algerians be killed in Algeria more than anything else. Algeria was administered by the French as part of France proper, and I'd imagine a lot of the natives there would revolt like otl, and France probably would kill a lot of them to make space for French speakers.
But I'd agree that French Jews probably would have a terrible time in Action Francaise, it's just that it wouldn't be 'millions of people'. Only war in Germany would wrack up that number otherwise.
I do wonder if we'd still get something like Israel popping up despite no Nazis bc of Stalin. A more severe doctor's plot ittl would be a good catalyst for it, and if France goes to slaughter their own Jews I could see a mass exodus of Jews to Israel as they're scared. But I have to admit I'm not too well versed in the history around this, so yeah. I think an Arabian Palestine would be just as interesting.
Mandatory Palestine will still have a growing Jewish population, but it won't be ballooning as quickly without the oppression of the Nazis. It is still growing, but a larger number of those immigrating are Jewish Socialists relative to IRL, and a lot of Socialist Jews at the moment are preferring France before Palestine. For now. However, that is giving the region a slightly different character than IRL. In 1936 IRL, Jews were 27% of the population in Israel, whereas in 1936 here they are something like 20-22%. That is a rough number, of course, and if anyone knows more about migration to Israel in this era and can check my math on how the Nazis influenced it, that'd be great.
Yeah that would make sense sine German jews probably would stay in Germany and not be zionist.
I do think things will go bad, just not as early as otl, and I do think it would be quite contentious. Maybe in the fifties instead?
The implication was that France does nasty things in Algeria and Vietnam with their OTL anti-colonial insurgencies in mind.
or ittl France going lebensraum over Algeria, I do think it has to be something outrageous and unfortunately an Asian colony on the other side of the world will be something that could more easily be swept under the rug. And the French government bringing over very discriminatory practices to France.
You reminded me of how the French government, err, handled Algeria in @Kaiser of Brazil’s Nazi Victory TL, now you mentioned it.
When he returns from limbo, he will be surprised to see that he has been branded after 18 years. Hahaha
16 - Heavy is the Head
8mm to the Left: A World Without Hitler
"Much of the suffering my and many other peoples endured could have been avoided if different choices had been made when Italian troops crossed the Abyssinian border in 1935. If the Great Powers had been willing to set aside their egos and work together in the interest of collective security, instead of playing tug-of-war over scraps, perhaps my father and my kingdom could have avoided their eventual horrible fates.” - Prince Nicholas of Yugoslavia, 1968
Heavy is the Head
On November 19th, 1935, the Kingdom of Italy invaded the Empire of Abyssinia (sometimes called “Ethiopia” in English), crossing the border sans declaration of war and forcing Abyssinian Emperor Haile Selassie to declare war in defence of his nation. This marked the beginning of the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, a war which would complete European domination of the African continent with the surrender of the last true and independent African nation.
The buildup to this war had its roots as far back as the late 1800's, when Italian expansion in the Horn of Africa had brought them into conflict with Abyssinia and seen the Italians come away the losers, a rarity in wars between Europeans and Africans in that century. Despite their loss, Italy had maintained colonies in neighbouring Eritrea and Somalia, and throughout the following decades maintained dreams of uniting the two through the annexation of Abyssinia into a comprehensive colony of Italian East Africa.
Italian Colonial Holdings, 1934
(https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/zZkAAOSwV91kadV3/s-l1200.webp)
For Benito Mussolini, the continued independence of Abyssinia was a slight to Italian honour, a naked defiance of supposed Italian superiority and a grating reminder of their failure in 1896. While Italian dreams of expansion in the Balkans were currently impossible, Il Duce saw African conquest as a suitable distraction for the time being, and so began making plans.
The two greatest obstacles to Italian expansionary goals were France and Britain, the other two major colonial powers within Africa, neither of whom were particularly keen on further Italian competition in what they saw as their sphere of influence. In regards to France, a solution presented itself readily in early 1935. Preoccupied as the French were with the Saar Referendum and the possibility of German rearmament, they were more than willing to turn a blind eye to Italian ambitions in exchange for Rome's support against Berlin, especially while Mussolini continued to oppose German attempts to unify with Austria. In March, 1935, in response to their failures at the Geneva Conference, French Prime Minister Flandin put forth the Franco-Italian Agreement, agreeing to recognise Italian interests in East Africa, as well as cede certain border regions of French Chad to Italian Libya, in exchange for Italian promises to assist France in “maintaining order” in Europe, taken but not explicitly stated to refer to preventing any German actions towards enforcing their claims on France or Austria.
Despite Italian hopes, the United Kingdom would not be so easily swayed. Though there was a definite undercurrent of pro-Italian diplomacy during the beginning of the 1930’s within Parliament, this had slowly faded when, under von Lettow-Vorbeck, the German Republic had continued to improve its international image and present itself as a bulwark of stability opposite the “violent” Italian Fascism. Not helping the matter was Italy’s increasingly-aggressive overtures towards Abyssinia, a nation nominally under British protection, and it soon became clear to Westminster that the end goal of Rome was war against the Abyssinian Empire. Following the success of resolving the matter of German rearmament, overtures would be made to Italy to attempt to resolve the matter, going so far as to offer Italy the North-Eastern regions of Abyssinia to bridge Italian Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, to no avail.
Many historians argue that Italian and British designs on East Africa were not wholly antithetical, but that it was instead the unique convergence of British, Italian, French, and German goals and diplomacy which drove a wedge between the former allies of London and Rome. It is indeed undeniable that there were many within the British circles of power who supported, or at least did not actively oppose, Italian gains, seeing them as a fair expression of Italian might as well as an earned boon leftover from the Great War. For many others, though—including the top pick for a new Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, whose campaign against the Labour Party focused heavily on their failure to achieve disarmament—the importance of Italian alignment had been relegated to a secondary position opposite strengthening ties with their own empire to cement their status as premier world power. It was well-understood that Italy would have demands before agreeing to fall in line with anything the British planned, and there was a certain doubt as to the worth of trading valuable colonies for an ally with such aggressive and expansionary goals. In fact, far from shoring up ties with the Continent, many began calling for a return to Splendid Isolationism, the Victorian-Era notion of Britain standing alone and above the wars and violence of their European brethren.
Stanley Baldwin fell into neither of the two extremes, those being an Italian alignment or Splendid Isolationism, and it was this steady, “middle-of-the-road” approach which helped cement his inevitable victory. It is undeniable that the question of rearmament had been brought to the forefront of the political scene following the events in Geneva, but with the Labour Party having touted the Conservatives as warmongers and the public being largely pro-peace, it would have been political suicide to call for rearmament without legitimate reason. Instead, he ran his campaign on a platform of housing, jobs, and imperial stability, and opposed further negotiations with Mussolini, stating that, “On the matter of Abyssinia, I believe that the matter has been quite firmly settled. As a member of the League of Nations and a sovereign state in her own regard, Abyssinia must be accorded the respect and treatment of any other state, European or otherwise, with the implicit expectation that her territory not be infringed upon any further than what is necessary to secure our colonies.”
The Italian response to this was incredibly negative, with many taking offence at the idea of an African nation being accorded the same respect as a European one. Baldwin’s quote would be translated into Italian and printed in every major Italian newspaper, coupled with a political cartoon depicting Abyssinian Emperor Haile Selassie as a “King of Apes” and the Italian quote “Salute a Selassie, grande re d'Europa!" (Hail to Selassie, great king of Europe!”)
Even more than the historic hatred of Abyssinia, this backlash triggered a flood of public discontent within Italy for Britain as a whole. Reminders of the British betrayal of Italy during the post-war treaties were dredged up and many politicians put forth demands for Britain to not only cede their own holdings in adjacent British Somaliland to Italy, but also the island of Malta (geographically a part of Sicily, it was pointed out) as well as recognising Italian claims in the Balkans. It placed Mussolini in particular under pressure as he was pinned between the twin columns of public and governmental opinion, especially opposite King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, whose own opinion favoured Britain and who was deeply concerned of the Italian navy having to face down the British one, especially with Britain maintaining control over the two major entries into the Mediterranean via the Suez and Gibraltar.
A point oft-ignored in contemporary descriptions of the Kingdom of Italy under Fascism was the greater popularity of the royal family when contrasted to Mussolini and other fascist leaders and how that influenced interactions between the nominal Prime Minister and his sovereign. The House of Savoy, Italy’s royal house since unification and the rulers of Sardinia-Piedmont beforehand, was deeply beloved by the people of Italy, earning cheers and applause at every appearance (contrasted to the stony silence which frequently met fascist symbols and leaders). Until the late 1930’s, it is very likely that, had the king attempted to oust Mussolini from his post, he would have been successful, with the army and populace following his lead. The fact that he made no move to do so, as well as his willingness to cede greater and greater powers to his Prime Minister, played a crucial role in the loss of popular support during the last years of the fascist regime and, eventually, culminated in the end of the Italian monarchy itself.
Popular support would not be enough to incite the king to restrain Mussolini, however, and on November 19th, war erupted between the Abyssinian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy, the first major conflict involving a European power since the Great War itself, and what many today consider the first step towards the oncoming conflagration.
Galadi was a dirty little village in a dirty little region of a dirty little country for which Antonio Bertoldi had absolutely no respect. It was a dry, barren wasteland not even fit to be called a nation in his opinion, much less an empire, though he couldn't imagine the sort of disease-ridden monkey that these creatures called a ruler. He longed to return to the warm shores of his home in Italy, where the sand was white and fine, not coarse and dyeing the entire world a perpetual shade of muddy orange, and the heat was comforting rather than stifling. He missed his parents and siblings, but he had a duty to fulfil, and he would stay until the Italian flag flew from Eritrea clear across to Somaliland.
“Dalmati,” called out Giorgio Puccini, one of the other soldiers, as he jogged over. He, like Bertoldi, was young for a soldier, 18 to Bertoldi’s 20. He’d barely gotten any of his whiskers yet, and his clear attempt to grow them out had led to a perpetually scruffy-looking appearance that had earned him the nickname “gattino”, or “kitten”. Giving nicknames seemed to be a popular habit within his troop; he’d scarcely opened his mouth before his native Dalmatian accent had earned him the nickname “Dalmati”, or “Dalmatian”, since he was the only non-peninsular Italian from their group, being an inhabitant of the city of Zara. He supposed he couldn’t complain about it too much.
“What is it?” Bertoldi asked, pushing himself to his feet off of the large empty oil drum on which he’d been sitting. “Raiders? An attack?”
Puccini laughed and clapped Bertoldi on the shoulder like one of the older officers might’ve, a strange sensation given their close ages and identical levels of experience. “You don’t need to be so eager,” he teased, “lots of men on the front would kill to have garrison duty!”
Bertoldi scowled and rubbed at his short-cropped hair, missing what his mother called a “shaggy mop”, which he’d had before enlisting. “Some duty,” he muttered glumly, sitting back down. “I’m positively dying of boredom. These Abyssinians don’t even do anything! They just glare and say things in their awful language!”
“One of them spit at di Remo this morning,” Puccini said in what was probably supposed to be a soft voice, leaning forward conspiratorially. “You know what di Remo is like—he flew completely off the handle. Beat the living shit out of the monkey till his whole face looked like rotten meat.” Puccini grinned broadly. “Then the governour had him tied to a pole in the city centre so everyone could see what happens if they do anything like that. He’s still there, though I don’t think he’ll make it through the night, and we certainly won’t let one of our doctors treat one of their kind, so you better go check it out before he dies.”*
Bertoldi mirrored Puccini’s smile, though he did not feel the emotion which his friend so clearly did. He certainly had no love for these savages, but he could not bring himself to find joy from the notion of torturing them. They were lesser than Europeans, that was obvious, but what good did torturing or killing them do? Wasn’t the whole point of this war to topple their so-called “emperor” and bring good, Catholic civilization to the region? Of course, he also knew that he was new to colonialism and warfare, and perhaps there was something more to this which he simply was unaware of. He would have to trust in Mussolini to know what Italy needed, just like his father had always taught him to do.
“Is there any news from the front?” he asked, deciding to change the subject.
Puccini deflated. “No, not yet,” he lamented, dropping onto the barrel beside Bertoldi. “I bet we’re winning too quickly to need to send back reports on. They’re Africans, after all; a few pointy spears are nothing against Italian steel!”
Bertoldi elected to not point out that Italian steel had already once failed to conquer the region. It was… not forbidden, exactly, but highly discouraged to bring up the Italian performance against Abyssinia in 1895 and 1896. He had distinct memories of learning about the war during one of his classes, where it was taught as a failure of the Italian military, but it seemed that Italian schools had a different mindset than Austrian ones, with many claiming British or French intervention and greed as the driving forces for Italy’s defeat. He changed the subject again. “Any new deliveries?”
“No.” A scowl darkened Puccini’s face. “They say the British aren’t letting us use their port north of here, so we have to ship everything through Somalia with horses and trucks.”
“What? Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious? They want Abyssinia for themselves!”
The indignity of it! It made Bertoldi’s blood boil and he gained a scowl to match Puccini’s. “As if their empire isn’t big enough already, now they want to take ours?”
“They’re greedy bastardi, those Brits. They’re just afraid of us, afraid that our navy will become bigger than theirs and that we will threaten their unjust occupation of rightful Italian lands. Just you wait—Mussolini will show them!”
Bertoldi could picture it in his mind’s eye, just like everyone always talked about—an Italy stretching not only from Savoy to Albania, dominating the Balkans and Greece, but also their empire, from the tip of Tunisia down to the Horn of Africa, as mighty as Rome itself, just like he always heard on the radio. Abyssinia was only the beginning, he knew, and one day soon all of his home region would be restored to Italian rule and Rome would regain its ancient claim as the dominant city in all of Europe.
All they had to do was wait and trust Mussolini. He and he alone could lead them to victory.
Across the Adriatic Sea from the nation currently launching its invasion of Abyssinia, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia watched with deep concern. Under the order of Prince-Regent Paul, the troop count on the Italian, Austria, and Hungarian borders had been doubled and planes were being sent out every half-hour to keep track of Italian naval movements. Rest assured, if Italy made a move, they would be the first to know of it.
This was cold comfort to Prince Paul himself, safely tucked away though he was in the national capital of Belgrade. He paced the halls of the White Palace relentlessly, his thoughts consumed with stratagems and questions on what he would do if his nightmares were realised and the Italians invaded. It was perhaps ludicrous to imagine them taking such a step now, in the middle of another war, but if there was anything which this conflict had shown, it was that Mussolini would take any step he saw as necessary to achieve Italian prestige, including, Paul had no doubt, striking East to claim the rich plains of Dalmatia which Rome saw as its right. French and Britain’s as-of-yet unwillingness to step in did not aid this, nor did Austria and Hungary’s support for Italy and proximity to their heartlands.
“Your Highness, please, sit down,” Prime Minister Stojadinovic insisted for the third or fourth time from the nearby dining table upon which a myriad of documents and maps had been splayed out. “You will do the nation no good with worrying alone.”
“Worrying is all I can do,” Paul declared, though he reluctantly crossed to the table. He could not bring himself to sit, though, and stood behind a chair, gripping the headrest tightly. “Is there any news from the North?”
“No news from anywhere, the same as a half-hour ago,” Stojadinovic said in a somewhat strained voice. He understood the other man’s concern, but paranoid micro-management would manage nothing. In Stojadinovic’s experience, as an economist if not as a soldier, Mussolini would not be foolish enough to begin a second war while in the initial stages of his first. Italy’s economy would have enough problems bankrolling this idiotic little adventure in Africa; it certainly would not be able to handle a war which directly threatened its industry and people. Still, that did not mean that it would hurt to play it cautiously, especially when the threat of Italian invasion was proving profoundly stabilising for the nation’s internal policy.
The Croats, one of Yugoslavia’s three official ethnic groups, were well-aware of Italian designs on their coastal territory, and all but the most extreme Croatian Nationalists knew that an independant Croatia would not last long before having its lands seized by its neighbours. This had worked to the benefit of the Yugoslavian government in the 1920’s, portraying the government in Belgrade—for all its disputes—as a superior option to what would face them under Italy, and Stojadinovic had not wasted this opportunity to dust this tool off and apply it once more. The Yugoslavian administrative regions, or “banovinas”, which contained Croat majorities had not been this calm in years.
“I have arranged for two contingents of troops to be placed along the Bulgarian and Albanian borders, in case either seek to take advantage of the distraction. We are stretched thin, but it is enough, I believe..”
“Good, good,” the Prince-Regent murmured distractedly. “And the French Ambassador?”
Stojadinovic grimaced, but dug the letter out of the pile of paperwork. “They accuse us of paranoia.”
“What?” Paul ripped the letter from his hands and read it quickly. “It says nothing about paranoia.”
“Not directly,” Stojadinovic conceded, “but notice the word choice. ‘No unprovoked action,’ it says, followed by saying that they would ‘look unfavourably upon continued bias against our Italian neighbours’.” He laughed harshly. “Bias, the ambassador says! As though we were the ones to invade and occupy our cities.” He glared down at the map where the ports of Rijeka and Zadar (Fiume and Zara in Italian) were marked in deep red.
Prince Paul was clearly reluctant to think ill of his French friends, and said, “It does not abrogate their support for us.”
“Nor does it reinforce it. Do you not see, now, that the French would gladly throw us to the Italians if it meant an ally against the dreaded Nyemtsa across the Rhine?”
Paul placed the letter back down on the table and turned away, avoiding letting Stojadinovic suck him into another debate on the matter. The Prime Minister lacked the deep admiration and respect which the royals held for the French and British, and instead advocated a pivot towards the Germans, whom Stojadinovic saw as the most logical counter to Italian and Soviet ambitions in the Balkans. During his quest towards economic resuscitation and reform following the Great Depression (the very reason Paul had appointed such a renowned economist as his Prime Minister) he had massively increased the sale of foodstuffs and raw minerals to Germany, a veritable goldmine for the nation, though at the cost of infuriating the many members of the Serbian nobility who loathed their old enemies in Vienna and Berlin, the same peoples who had oppressed the South Slavs for centuries and fought against Serbia in the Great War. Stojadinovic had publicly criticised these voices as being too “stuck in the past”, and not even an assassination attempt had stopped him from trying to bring Belgrade and Berlin closer together, even against the wishes of Prince-Regent Paul, himself.
“I can only thank God that King Peter is safe far away from this madness,” Paul spoke up. Stojadinovic glanced over and saw that the acting sovereign was standing below and staring up at the enormous painting of his brother, the deceased King Alexander I, which hung between the two windows. “I could not bear the thought of letting his realm fall due to my own foolishness or inaction.”
It was at times strange to remember that Paul was merely standing in for the child who technically ruled their nation, currently hidden away in a school in England where the messiness of domestic politics and colonial wars could not touch him. “You were the one chosen to rule our kingdom until your nephew comes of age. You will have to decide the best path to do so. I understand honouring your brother’s wishes, but circumstances today are not the same as they were before.”
“And if I choose incorrectly? If I forsake our old allies and our new ones betray us? If I concede to those who crave federalism and it leads to our utter collapse?” He lifted his hands to his brow. “There is a saying in English, you know. ‘Heavy is the head that wears the crown.’ Each day I feel that weight grow. One day, I fear it will break me.”
Author’s Note: I hope it goes without saying that the opinions of racist 20th century people are not to be justified and that this is written as a reflection of the era rather than my own thoughts on the matter. Racism is bad, full stop.
I personally hope that Italy will have it's Ethiopian conquest become a bleeding ulcer of sorts that will just drain away money and men
Yup, I couldn't find any applicable political cartoons from the era so asked AI to make me one. You can tell cause the weird missing pieces
What a mess and Mussolini's arrogance will do him as much good as it did OTL. Especially as this time he does not have allies that will respect him (at first) and this could easily push Britain and Germany closer in their disapproval. Also if Britain and Germany are least have a friendly neutrality that could see Yugoslavia willing to work with the German's if they think the British will moderate any attempts to turn them into a satellite state.
To think again about the conquests Italy has done until 1939, i became a bit baffled towards the fact that Anton Mussert decided to model his political thinking after someone whose empire is only 11 times larger than the fatherland, compared to the Dutch's 45 times larger.
But i guess greed has no bounds, eh? And to be fair the Italian colonial possession is still almost 2 times larger than the Dutch's. And also combined Benelux would make their colonial empires (4.349 million km², 58 times larger) bigger than Italy's (3.798 million km²).
But i guess greed has no bounds, eh? And to be fair the Italian colonial possession is still almost 2 times larger than the Dutch's. And also combined Benelux would make their colonial empires (4.349 million km², 58 times larger) bigger than Italy's (3.798 million km²).
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