The Great Crusade (Reds! Part 3)

[Derekc2]

Also I would like to vote for you to spoil us on what happens to canada ITTL.

 

[OwenM]

And I would like to vote against (I don't like spoilers, but I'm rubbish at avoiding them when I know they're there).

 

[eliphas8]

Also I would like to vote for you to spoil us on what happens to canada ITTL.

I'd similarly like spoilers.

 

[TNF]

I would also like to vote in favor of spoilers as far as Canada is concerned.

 

[Miss Teri]

How about Dominions in general?

 

[The Ubbergeek]

I would also like to vote in favor of spoilers as far as Canada is concerned.

Being a Québecois, I am curious specially about french-canadians and all - does the nationalist awakening of the 60s happens, how? Was the Grande Noirceur dispelled early?

 

[Ravenclaw]

I vote for spoilers.

 

[Libertad]

Spoilers for Canada.

Basically the rest of the world.

Of course, We just have to wait for more about the how's but I would like to have the spoilers.

Brazil is one country, about why it stayed capitalist and how...
South Africa's path and it's most likely neutral socialist turn.
Iceland's clarification of being a non-aligned socialist republic.
Is Korea too non-aligned?
Did Congo, Liberia and Mozambique turned Red? Angola too.
Any rough estimates about what happened to them?

I vote for the spoilers. Then just enjoy the journey to that inevitable victory, the fact that a Labour government is coming to power by TTL's 2014.

 

[Aelita]

Spoilers for Canada

Excerpts from the AH.com thread "The Canadian question"

The fate of Canada is a popular subject of 20th century TLs, and it seems like every tom dick and harry wants to create a timeline where Canada doesn't leave the Franco-British Commonwealth and wither away like a sandcastle before the red tide. So I figured, just like Operation Sea Lion, we should have a thread here cataloging all of the threads about the subject.

I'm just a Parisian kid hoping to get into university next year, so I don't know much about the subject personally, but even I can tell it's almost become a meme here on AH.com

Before anyone says anything, no, I'm not Canadian. I'm from the UP in Michigan, and I just chose the handle when I joined here because I grew up on a maple sugar farm and I had no idea that it had anything to do with Canada or Canadian irredentism in particular.

I was like two years old in 1979, so I don't remember any of it personally. But living near what used to be the border, I can say that my folks and neighbors talked about the secession crisis a lot. They referred to it as "the scariest time in their lives."

What's been summarized in every previous thread on the subject was that in 1979, no one in Canada had any real sense of what it meant to be Canadian. The two big poles of Canadian politics all explicitly identified their politics with the regimes of other countries. The long dominant Tories were English to the core in their values, and when they ruled Canada, they placed the interests of the FBU and the anti-communist agenda first.

The left were all pinkos whose agenda was basically "Let's be more like America!" And that's kind of sad, when you think about it.

As a Canadian, I've been of the opinion that in fact, Americans and Canadians have always been one people divided by different political systems. The fates of these two nations, in trade, culture and war, have been always so inextricably wound up together that merger was always the most desirable course.

And after spending thirty years being pushed into nuclear confrontation with their closest cultural kin and trading partner by aloof know-nothings in London and Paris, it's not too surprising that Canadians would change sides. I mean, we finished the St. Lawrence Seaway and the North American Water and Power Alliance while the Cold War loomed. We kept the borders open, in spite of pressure from the metropole.

So when Quebec decided to quit the confederation, it was only just the first domino sending them all tumbling down.

RougeBeaver's sentiments, while touching, are overly simplistic.

Basically, 1949 to 1979 in Canada was a constant culture war being fought over what it meant to be Canadian, and what the future of the nation ought to be. In the process, Canada itself ended up being lost as an idea. The left in Canada fought a constant propaganda war that attached all modes of social progress to the example that was their southern neighbor. Campus protesters in the 60s and early 70s would hold up posters and chant slogans about their province seceding and joining the UASR. This was done more mockingly than anything.

That mockery eventually became a serious political proposal because of Quebec nationalism. Because it had been decided a very long time ago that Canada needed to be Anglicized to hold together, and when the Entente happened, Canada was considered to be part of the Anglo-Zone. Tories treated any attempt to give special status to Quebec as an attack on the whole of the nation, and when Quebec nationalism took a decidedly Marxist character, that became emphatically true.

Quebec secession is probably the most important single event since the end of the Second World War. It brought the world closer to nuclear annihilation than it ever was before or since. We had clashes between FBU and American troops, not just on the Quebec border, but also in the Rhineland, Piedmont and the Congo. Bombers were in the air.

The Western provinces decided they wanted out, seceding and ordering FBU forces, especially nuclear ones, to leave. Quite understandably, they didn't want to see their homes burn.

I'd need a book length post to explain what happened next, but here's the summed up version. Basically, once the Canadian confederation began disintegrating, the central government found itself presiding over Ontario, and even that hold was sketchy at best. In the vacuum of leadership, only the left had any coherent idea what to do now that the country was tearing itself apart, in a surprisingly civil and peaceful way that perhaps only Canadians can (well, it was a social services and humanitarian crisis due to the disruption, but that was unavoidable). And America was undergoing its own internal revolution in the aftermath, with the Green Revolution taking power.

In essence, the FBU had no choice but to accept the outcome of the Treaty of Bern. There was no chance of holding onto Canada, and the left was ascendant. Allowing the UASR to admit the Canadian provinces and take ownership of former Canadian federal territory was handled shinily and diplomatically, and the Soviet brokered treaty allowed both superpowers to avoid the assigning of any guilt for the crisis. The official line was basically that "mistakes were made," and neither side would be held responsible for the deaths and destruction that occurred in the short crisis.

I don't know how I feel about the whole thing. It's still controversial, and while the majority of the public in formerly Canadian territories support unification, there is a very well organized and militant minority that believe it was a mistake. It's not just associated with counterrevolutionaries either, there are a great deal of leftists in Canada now that believe Canada should return to being a sovereign state.

Nothing good has come of the 1979 crisis. Losing Canada hit us pretty hard. The 80s were a bleak time in the FBU. The "Lions" were in power, and fifth columnists were being denounced everywhere. Lots of innocent people were jailed, the press became propaganda mouthpieces for the government, and anyone outside the white, Christian, straight male norm got smacked around. Civil rights activists, gays and lesbians, feminists, and Asians were being jailed in droves. We had soldiers policing the streets.

With how easily the crisis snowballed out of control, I think it was always clear that it was just waiting for the right spark. While I don't agree that the complete dissolution of Canada was inevitable, I think Canada's exit from the FBU and moving into the Comintern camp was inevitable, and nothing short of apocalyptic nuclear war was going to stop it.

 

[Killer300]

I honestly don't see how the FBU would recover from such a crisis, seeing as they'd essentially also probably lose a significant amount of power in the Western hemisphere in the process.

Regardless, very interesting, to say the least.

 

[eliphas8]

This is probably the point which in 2050 or whatever will be remembered as the time the FBU lost the Cold War. While they had little real ability to win without this happening, the loss of Canada seems to basically have lead to the slow implosion of the FBUs cultural conception of self.

 

[Killer300]

This is probably the point which in 2050 or whatever will be remembered as the time the FBU lost the Cold War. While they had little real ability to win without this happening, the loss of Canada seems to basically have lead to the slow implosion of the FBUs cultural conception of self.

Interestingly, this would also be, in many ways, a repeat of what happened to Canada.

Additionally though, the social crackdown would show the FBU to be a rotting carcass to the rest of the world, with numerous implications therein.

Also though, historically, many will argue Communism was destined to win the day the USAR was formed.

 

[A Real Libertarian]

Additionally though, the social crackdown would show the FBU to be a rotting carcass to the rest of the world, with numerous implications therein.

Their reaction caused more damage then losing Canada did.

 

[eliphas8]

Their reaction caused more damage then losing Canada did.

That's often how these things work out.

 

[DocBrown]

Can we please just get onto WW2 rather than skipping ahead 30 years into the future and talking about a UASR Polandball?

 

[eliphas8]

Can we please just get onto WW2 rather than skipping ahead 30 years into the future and talking about a UASR Polandball?

I mean I'd prefer to finish the revisions then move on. So that we can all know the context of the wars events. This is also specifically a requested thing.

 

[Killer300]

Also, Anglo-Zone? Does this imply France is the primary occupier elsewhere, perhaps in what the FBU holds of Germany?

Shows interesting dynamics within the FBU proper(I imagine what occurred with Quebec would have explosive implications in France proper.)

 

[Imladrik]

snip

First i would like to say this is a timeline that i like very much.

But i have a few nitpicks about the french. The name of the French Labour party shouldn't be Parti d'Ouvriers. It is grammaticaly right in French, but it doesn't really sound right. The name should be either Parti Ouvrier or Parti des Ouvriers (or des Travailleurs, if you want it to be a translation of Party of Workers, alternatively, Labour Party translation could be Parti Travailliste, which is how Labour Party is translated in french OTL).

The name of the ESCI in french should be either Section de l'Entente de l'Internationale Communiste or Section Ententiste de l'Internationale Communiste if you are not afraid of them using created words.

 

[Yossarian]

Is it just me, or has the presentation of the Franco-British Union moved from being basically equivalent to a modern democratic capitalist state, to some thing quite a bit more fascistic over the course of the writing of this timeline?

 

[eliphas8]

Is it just me, or has the presentation of the Franco-British Union moved from being basically equivalent to a modern democratic capitalist state, to some thing quite a bit more fascistic over the course of the writing of this timeline?

A big problem is that we get a lot of outside looking in stuff about the FBU. Not a lot of what we've seen is outside of things the US has done during the Cold War.