Dixie Forever

Chapter 40: A Decade of Extremes

The United States Turns Left

In the 1932 election, the Democrat, Franklin D Roosevelt ran against the profligate spending of Herbert Hoover, and won an embarrassingly large victory in the electoral college over the Republican, Herbert Hoover, at 305-59 electoral votes.  He and his Vice President, George White, were inaugurated on March 4, 1933.  His campaign was run on critique of Hoover's spending, but once he got into office, Roosevelt began a flurry of very active legislative maneuvers, widely called his 'Hundred Days.'

Farm prices had fallen 60%, unemployment was around 25%, and industrial production had fallen by half at the time he took office, which had affected many other nations around the globe.  On March 9, he called Congress into session, and they passed the Emergency Banking Act, giving the president the power to open and close banks by declaration, and transferred the power to print banknotes to the Federal Reserve, despite this not being a power granted in the Constitution.  On the 22nd of March, the Prohibition ended with the Cullen-Harrison Act.

The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), under the leadership of Harry Hopkins, was designed to distribute relief to state governments. The Public Works Administration (PWA), under the leadership of Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, was created to oversee the construction of large-scale public works such as dams, bridges, and schools. The most popular of all New Deal agencies, and Roosevelt's favorite, was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which hired 250,000 unemployed young men to work on local rural projects. Roosevelt also expanded a Hoover agency, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, making it a major source of financing for railroads and industry, again propping up companies rather than allowing inefficient companies to go out of business to free up resources to be used elsewhere. Congress gave the Federal Trade Commission broad new regulatory powers and provided mortgage relief to millions of farmers and homeowners, though there was nothing in the Constitution mentioning a federal power with respect to mortgages. Roosevelt also made agricultural relief a high priority and set up the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). The AAA tried to force higher prices for commodities by paying farmers to leave land uncultivated and to cut herds.  Instead of allowing the most inefficient farmers to leave the market to shift their resources elsewhere, where they would be better utilized, the Roosevelt Administration propped up farmers by paying them to destroy their milk, produce, and herds, which kept prices artificially high, helping the farmers, but hurting everyone else in the long run by keeping inefficient farms running.  Had the least efficient farms been shut, the more efficient farms could more naturally keep their prices up, supporting their incomes via the market, rather than government dictates.

Reform of the economy was the goal of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933, which sought to end "cutthroat competition" by forcing industries to form what amounted to cartels, establishing rules of operation for all firms within specific industries, such as minimum prices, agreements not to compete, and production restrictions, which is the very thing trust busting sought to avoid barely two generations prior. Industry leaders negotiated the rules which were approved by NIRA officials. Industry needed to raise wages as a condition for approval. Provisions encouraged unions and suspended antitrust laws. NIRA was found to be unconstitutional by unanimous decision of the Supreme Court in May 1935; Roosevelt strongly protested the decision. Roosevelt reformed the financial regulatory structure of the nation with the Glass–Steagall Act, creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to underwrite savings deposits. The act also sought to curb speculation by limiting affiliations between commercial banks and securities firms. In 1934, the Securities and Exchange Commission was created to regulate the trading of securities, while the Federal Communications Commission was established to regulate telecommunications.

Recovery was pursued through federal spending, the Keynesian model of economic thought, as opposed to what had worked in past depressions - cutting spending and paying down debts - which is what people did in their private lives all the time. The NIRA included $3.3 billion (equivalent to $65.18 billion in 2019) of spending through the Public Works Administration, and the Great Plains Authority sought to bring electricity to the great western plains states, and control flooding of the various rivers by damming them and creating reservoirs. Executive Order 6102 declared that all privately held gold of American citizens was to be sold to the U.S. Treasury and the price raised from $20.67 to $35 per ounce. The goal was to counter the deflation which was paralyzing the economy.  FDR did this despite his promise just 3 days prior that the gold standard was safe; now, holding more than $100 in gold coin was a crime.  He said it was temporary, but it would last until 1974.

Even overseas companies and individuals had their gold confiscated by the Roosevelt administration.  The Übersee Finanz-Korporation, a Swiss banking company had their gold confiscated to the tune of $1.25 million in gold coin, which they had now mistakenly entrusted to an American corporation for safekeeping.  In 1934, they discovered the confiscation, and appealed it, but the appeals were denied by the US government, which said they were only entitled to paper money.  They would've lost just over 40% of the value of their gold if they tried buying gold again with the paper money they were being given (60,474 oz, now 35,714 oz).  President Roosevelt said his ban on gold ownership "was the first step also to that complete control of all monetary gold in the United States, which was essential in order to give the Government that element of freedom of action which was necessary as the very basis of its monetary goal and objective."

Roosevelt tried to keep his campaign promise by cutting the federal budget — including a reduction in military spending from $752 million in 1932 to $531 million in 1934 and a 40% cut in spending on veterans benefits — by removing 500,000 veterans and widows from the pension rolls and reducing benefits for the remainder, as well as cutting the salaries of federal employees and reducing spending on research and education. But the veterans were well organized and strongly protested, and most benefits were restored or increased by 1934. Veterans groups such as the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars won their campaign to transform their benefits from payments due in 1945 to immediate cash when Congress overrode the President's veto and passed the Bonus Act in January 1936. It pumped sums equal to 2% of the GDP into the consumer economy and had a major stimulus effect.

In 1928, the US moved to the small certificate size, saving money by being able to print more bills on the same amount of paper. The bills had Washington ($1), Jefferson ($2), Grant ($5), Hamilton ($10), Jackson ($20), James Madison ($50), James Monroe ($100), Grover Cleveland ($200), James Garfield ($500), and McKinley ($1000) on them.  At this point in history, President Grant was honored as the President who helped 'heal the Union' after Lincoln's War.



Mortgages in the USA

FDR authorizes the creation of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) in 1938 as part of the 'New Deal,' to purchase mortgages that were guaranteed by the Veterans Administration and the Federal Housing Administration.  By doing so, the loans were taken out of the books of the original mortgage lenders, freeing up that money to be used to make more loans, which then went to making more loans.  At this point in the Confederacy, mortgages were still the subject of the various state banks and 'State Banks' (the bank of the state of Virginia, for example), with the various states either not subsidizing, partially subsidizing, or entirely subsidizing certain mortgages, but leaving the issue entirely out of the hands of the capital at Davis, since it's not an Article 1, Section 8 power to discharge debts, meaning the Confederate government remained small and did not accrue the debts the US government did at the same time.

Human Experimentation in the USA

At the Detroit 'satellite campus' or 'daughter campus' of the Alabama Tuskegee University was the Detroit Tuskegee Institute, striving to educate black Detroit citizens in valuable higher education subjects as it had been for decades now since large numbers of Confederate blacks had migrated north to find work.  At the medical department of this university worked Bryan Richard Anderson, David Henry Caswell, Scott Hale, Edward O'Neil, and Camilla Foster, who were working with syphilis via the United States Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Prevention (based on Columbus, OH).  They conducted an unethical and illegal experiment beginning in 1932, and going on until 1976 on 700 black men and 650 black women, divided without knowledge into a test and control group to study the progression of syphilis, and were told they were receiving free health care from the government, but simply disguised placebos, ineffective methods, and diagnostic procedures as treatment.  None of the men or women were treated with penicillin, which 15 years later in 1947 had become the standard treatment for syphilis.

The experiment continued under various directors for decades.

Hemp Outlawed in the USA

In the US, in 1937, the Marihuana Tax Act is passed, taxing anyone dealing in cannabis, hemp, or 'marijuana,' an obscure Mexican slang word for the plant commonly used since Washington's day for rope, clothing, and other uses.  Several propaganda films, such as Reefer Madness, were made to try to demonize the plant in the public eye before this act was passed, and several reasons for its outlawing have been proposed: the DuPont family had nylon, a synthetic fiber, to replace it, and Andrew Mellon, the Secretary of the Treasury, and part of the wealthy banking family, had invested heavily in nylon, which could be used for toothbrushes, stockings, and other products; another theory was that Randolph Hearst's timber holdings were threatened by the cheaper hemp being used for paper, despite wood being easier to turn into paper with newer machines.

While the ban was lifted temporarily for the second world war, the US would not grow hemp until the close of the 20th century again after decades of the 'War on Drugs' propaganda.

In the CSA, however, hemp fiber would continue to be used during the depression, finding new uses in construction during this time in experiments with further uses for the plant.  Buildings began using hemp as insulation, edging out asbestos, and having mold prevention characteristics in more humid areas, as well as sound insulation, and starting in 1938, began to be used in concrete, floor varnish, and hemp plaster.  

Some hemp farmers began touting hemp paper as superior to tree paper because it was stronger than regular paper, doesn't need pesticides/herbicides, has higher yields per acre and faster yields (3-4 months vs 20-80 years), can be whitened with peroxide rather than bleaches with toxic chemicals (meaning no chlorine or dioxins in the rivers), and resists decomposition and yellowing/browning with age.  The issue with its use is that only part of the fibers are usable for paper, which can be hard to separate from the rest of the plant.  Hemp paper became a niche product used in small markets across the CSA until the 1970s when newer machines made fiber separation easier.

Nutritional content of hemp seeds began to be studied in the late 1940s, and helped contribute to the positive view of hemp in the South, but also negatively influencing the US to stereotype southerners as being high on 'weed' a lot, despite their vast preference for tobacco from Cuba or the Carolinas.

The use of hemp for smoking, however, would be limited by law to those over 21 with a doctor's prescription or an indigenous religious use in state law, and driving while under the influence of cannabis would become a crime in each state, as part of the DUI laws each state had already passed.

Objections to Confiscation

Not everyone in Congress approved of his move to confiscate gold. A Representative from Pennsylvania, Louis McFadden, denounced his move with the following speech: "By his action in closing the banks of the United States, Roosevelt seized the gold value of forty billions or more of bank deposits in the United States banks. Those deposits were deposits of gold values. By his action he has rendered them payable to the depositors in paper only, if payable at all, and the paper money he proposes to pay out to bank depositors and to the people generally in lieu of their hard earned gold values in itself, and being based on nothing into which the people can convert it the said paper money is of negligible value altogether.

"It is the money of slaves, not of free men. If the people of the United States permit it to be imposed upon them at the will of their credit masters, the next step in their downward progress will be their acceptance of orders on company stores for what they eat and wear. Their case will be similar to that of starving coal miners. They, too, will be paid with orders on Company stores for food and clothing, both of indifferent quality and be forced to live in Company-owned houses from which they may be evicted at the drop of a hat. More of them will be forced into conscript labor camps under supervision.

"At noon on the 4th of March, 1933, FDR with his hand on the Bible, took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the U.S. At midnight on the 5th of March, 1933, he confiscated the property of American citizens. He took the currency of the United States standard of value. He repudiated the internal debt of the Government to its own citizens. He destroyed the value of the American dollar. He released, or endeavored to release, the Fed from their contractual liability to redeem Fed currency in gold or lawful money on a parity with gold. He depreciated the value of the national currency.

"The people of the U.S. are now using unredeemable paper slips for money. The Treasury cannot redeem that paper in gold or silver. The gold and silver of the Treasury has unlawfully been given to the corrupt and dishonest Fed. And the Administration has since had the effrontery to raid the country for more gold for the private interests by telling our patriotic citizens that their gold is needed to protect the currency.

"It is not being used to protect the currency! It is being used to protect the corrupt and dishonest Fed. "The directors of these institutions have committed criminal offense against the United States Government, including the offense of making false entries on their books, and the still more serious offense of unlawfully abstracting funds from the United States Treasury! "Roosevelt's gold raid is intended to help them out of the pit they dug for themselves when they gambled away the wealth and savings of the American people."

For his objection, McFadden got an assassination attempt at one of the main hotels from a cab in DC when shots were fired at him, but missed.  He then ingested poisoned food at a Washington political gathering, but his life was again saved, this time by a physician friend, who quickly got a stomach pump for him to remove the poison.  Unfortunately for the US, he was voted out of office in 1936 in a dubious election.

Dixie Hits a Bump, and Keeps on Moving

The downturn of 1929 affected the southern confederated republic mostly because they were so intertwined with the United States. The Confederate economy relied on the US for corn and about a third of its wheat consumption as well as alfalfa (called lucerne at the time), as well as quite a bit of its finished goods. Since the Confederate's tariff was lower than that of the United States since the 1860s, they effectively nullified the Union tariff for the most part, forcing northeastern factories to improve or shut the doors; at the time, this allowed enterprising Confederates to buy up a good amount of factory equipment on the cheap, and bring a good amount of industry south, improving the economy, but after some time and the US Depression of the 1870s, US factories improved and also moved west, their output dominating even over Confederate output.

The 1931 cotton crop was much larger than that of 1930, and with so much cotton on the market, President Cordell Hull asked farmers to withhold 1.3 million bales from the market to support prices, as this was a major southern crop.  This did support prices, but Congress saw that the 1932 crop would be another good crop based on projections, and bought up 1.8 million bales in an emergency package using the cotton to create 'cotton notes' with each cotton dollar backed by the cotton the government had bought.  This provided extra liquidity in the market, but when President Hull was asked if the other farmers, like tobacco, rice, sugar, and indigo would get the same treatment, he was hesitant, as this was a slippery slope of government supporting prices, which was unconstitutional, based on the fifth amendment, section 1 (1. Congress shall make no law setting or regulating wages or prices.).  Once Congress began buying up excess crops to support farmers, when would that stop?  Why not support the steel industry, railroads, automobiles, telephones, and the like?  Then the government would take its 1931 budget of $1.39 billion and inflate that as high as the US's $3 billion or more, spending to support its citizens rather than letting them support themselves.  Instead, President Hull cut the budget from around $1.4 billion to $1.1 billion, using incoming debt repayments from France and Germany to make up any difference and to pay down the Confederate debts.  Hull promised Congress that there would be no further government purchases of crops to support prices; the cotton bonds sold relatively well domestically, but it took a while for them to sell internationally, leading him not to try the venture again.

By not propping up farms, some farms did go under, but John Rust's recent invention of the mechanical rice picker helped keep many cotton farms afloat, lowered prices and freed up labor to go into other industries so that new things could be invented.  In the north, the mechanical cotton picker was looked on with fear, as numerous newspaper articles were written detailing a wave of poor black southerners descending on northern cities "like locusts" looking for jobs.  Those people who were farmers did shift their resources elsewhere, and Confederate industry gained new inventions, such as the chocolate chip and chocolate chip cookie in 1931 by Eleanor Green, and the isolation of vitamin C in a lab in 1932 in Atlanta, whose scientific laboratories had been vying for talent with Nashville, Birmingham, and Dallas for over thirty years.  Board games grew in popularity in the South, with Lee vs Grant and Lincoln's War being two notable games, along with Western Rangers, Dixie, and several other board games.  Card games like poker, bridge, and rummy grew more popular, and movie theaters with 5¢ tickets entertained people to keep their minds off their economic woes.  Radio developed a new technology in FM (frequency modulation) as opposed to AM (amplitude modulation).  In the South, many people had invested in AM, and tried to get various governors or the confederate government to ban FM technology, which the patent office, and various other government agencies refused to do; they had no power over private peoples' use of technology, so FM came to the market in the Confederate States almost a decade before the United States, despite being invented by a New Yorker.  In 1934, reflective road studs called 'cat's eyes' were placed on roads to help drivers stay in their lanes at night.  Later, in 1938, Dr. William Patrick O'Brien created the first blood bank in Richmond, Virginia, which would preserve blood according to type in refrigeration units for use during surgeries.  That same year, a publisher in Dallas created what would be called the paperback book, a cheaper way to publish and sell books, driving up the numbers for readership across the South.

Movie companies saw their role as entertaining and reinforcing southern values, and often did so by contrasting with antagonists from the United States who often failed to understand 'southern ways' and were either sent packing by the end of the movie, or came to see the error of their ways.  Some films were more serious, like 'The Western Front,' filmed with Texas Germans speaking in actual German for part of it, playing Germans excited to go to war, but seeing that war is truly hell, and then began discussing in the trenches that bankers cause wars to enrich themselves, and politicians make war like everything's a game of chess rather than real people dying by the day for their amusement.  It was a sobering film and won several awards in 1932.  "New Day" was a more optimistic 1933 film with two childhood friends, one black (Willy Rogers) and one white (John Rodgers), growing up on a farm and going to the city, making it and even finding girlfriends up north, and then losing their jobs due to the NY stock market crash.  The black friend is fired first from the NY firm where both work, and John Rodgers quits in disgust.  Both return home and open their own firm, saying it's a 'new day in dixie' and meet some local girls and rebuild their lives in Charleston.

Without the Federal Reserve, State-chartered banks provided liquidity and would respond to the market's needs for raising or lowering interest rates. Due to the crash, a number of the more leveraged banks closed, while the more fiscally responsible banks remained open. The Confederate Congress did sign some legislation separating investment banking from savings and loan banking, as this had caused a number of problems across the eastern seaboard of the Confederacy, including in Atlanta and Nashville, two big industrial centers. People began hoarding their gold and silver coins, and bank runs shuttered many banks for a good while from Virginia to Texas, and in Cuba and Puerto Rico. To help provide liquidity, the Congress authorized the purchase of another $50 million in gold and silver to back an equivalent number of banknotes each year.



During the election year of 1933, John Nance Garner, an oil man from Texas, defeated two other opponents, James Reed of Missouri and Harry Byrd of Virginia, and assumed office in 1934.  During the election year, however, a dangerous man by the name of Richard Caswell, a pseudonym for a known Russian Communist sympathizer who had been antagonizing people about socialism, shot Vice President Joseph Robinson in public, and attempted to shoot the 12th President, Cordell Hull from Tennessee, before he was wrestled to the ground shouting about the proletariat and other socialist rantings.  Tennessee proposed an amendment with Kentucky and Arkansas to deport dangerous foreigners, which was proposed at the same time as one changing the terms of the President and Vice President to begin and end on January 19th, Robert E Lee's birthday, already a national holiday, and another preventing gold confiscation like the Union President Roosevelt did back in April, and the last, which made confederate district residents citizens of the state which ceded the land, ending a legal dispute and tax dispute for people who were avoiding state taxes by living in the district.

With the new power of deportation, which Garner had commented already existed and was unnecessary, he was able to remove several thousand communist and socialist agitators from the United States and from Europe.  In an address to the confederation, the President made know that there was "a dangerous influence of a centralizing ideology, a left-wing philosophy going under various names in various nations, be it socialism in Europe, democratic socialism in the United States, fascism in Italy, France, and Poland, or communism in Russia.  Regardless of the name, each of these strange and hideous leftwing ideologies all aim at centralizing power in the capital of their nations, rendering their states and provinces powerless to resist, mere appendages dependent upon the whims of an unelected scientific and technocratic elite who believes they know better than the people of Virginia, or Sonora, or Cuba, or any of the individual states of our Confederacy what is best for them.  The Strength of our Confederation is our deep protection of states' rights, which is the cause of 1776, and of 1861, and so long as I am President, I will work with our governors to protect us from this dangerous system of beliefs to keep our States and our Confederation strong."

In a conference with President Garner, and the 27 governors of the states, and the territorial governors of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyana, Polynesia, the Mariana Islands, the Bahamas, Virgin Islands, and Alaska, along with their respective education secretaries, held from June 1 to June 17 in Tennessee at the University of the South, he asked them what they could do to prevent the growth of the dangerous left-wing ideologies.  Governor George Peery of Virginia, being a border state and seeing the centralization of power in Washington, DC, was very concerned, and proposed a framework that was adopted by the conference, that education in the Confederacy needed to show the difference between left-wing and right-wing ideologies; from this point, education in the Confederacy would lump socialism, fascism, and communism together as 'left-wing' and 'centralizing' ideologies, while they would go on to define 'confederationism' as a 'right-wing' ideology preserving the constitutional balance between local control and confederation-delegated powers.  This new terminology, that of 'confederationism,' became a newly used political ideology that would blend what we call 'strict construction,' conservatism or paleo-conservatism, traditionalism, and a form of Christian morality, where the confederated government exercises only those delegated powers, while all existing powers and future needed powers are exercised by the states unless specifically delegated to the confederated government, and the President's role is very limited to executing constitutional laws, appointments, defense, and foreign relations, preserving the intended role of Congress as more central, hopefully preventing an elected king from coming out of the Presidency; government was to be populated by moral Christian people and bound by Christian principles to keep it from overstepping its authority and attempting to become the central focus in people's lives.  Coming from this conference, the numerous Secretaries of Education began working with book writers, coming up with the first state-wide history and social studies books in the Confederacy, whose purpose was to inculcate students against 'dangerous ideologies' and instill in them a knowledge of the workings of the Confederate government, and why it is superior to other government forms, and why they seceded from the United States, and how they, not the United States, preserved the original intent of the Founding Fathers of '76 by doing so.  These new books would influence a number of college professors coming later, along with radio, television, and movie personalities in their defense of the Confederacy's form of government.

The power to deport 'dangerous persons' led President Garner to deport several hundred professors, state representatives, state senators, actors, and businessmen who had business dealings and ties with the Soviet Union, preventing a later, dangerous subterfuge in colleges in the 1950s and 1960s, with college professors indoctrinating students into dangerous and radical forms of socialism as they would to the north in the United States.  At the same time in the 1930s, radio and movie talents began to see their roles as reinforcing the Confederate way of life, and began releasing new movies, starting in 1933, that reinforced 'confederationism' over left-wing ideologies (fascism, socialism, communism in their various forms), showing people with vague sinister eastern European accents as trying to overthrow the Confederacy, including one movie called "The New Lincoln," where Alfred Ulysses Lincoln attempted to inaugurate a military coup in the CS and create a communist dictatorship, which was stopped at the last moment by the leading man Cary Grant, as William Casey.  The decentralized Confederate movie industry allowed its various studios to keep closer ties to the various cultures of the various states, and keep the studios from consolidating and swinging leftward as they would up in the United States.

Texan movie companies created westerns and German-language films which were often romances, dramas, and polemics against the Old World and the new start available in the New World ("Fangen wir neu an" aka "Let's Begin Again," was a film where Andreas Schmidt moved to Texas from the crowded Berlin, and found wide open spaces and acres of land for himself.  He met a Texan girl who became a friend, while writing his fiancée Annika Meißner in Germany, saying 'let's begin again in Texas.'  She moves to Texas and complains and makes a mess of things till the Texan girl shows her how screwed up her perspective is and how freedom is the natural state of people, not being told by the king how to do everything.  Andreas nearly breaks up with her till the Texan girl, Hannah Mae, shows her how to do it the Texas way, and Annika returns to her fiancé, dressed in jeans and a Texan hat, asking forgiveness and asking "let's begin again in Texas," and the movie ends with the two kissing as the scene fades out.).  Atlanta movie companies made dramas, romances, crime movies, action, musicals, and plenty of period pieces during the War of '61 and the Spanish-Confederate War, lionizing the heroism and patriotism of the people during the fight and the overwhelming odds against them.  Tennessee, Virginia, and Baja California film companies all make a number of other films, including westerns, dramas, early sci-fi, and more, giving plenty of choices at the theaters.  Each movie company made movies highly reflective of their unique state and region, and their multiple locations kept the Confederate film industry more unique and varied, rather than homogenized and bland.

Confederate silver certificates had Jefferson Davis ($1), John C Breckinridge ($5), Robert E Lee, Jr ($10), and Thomas Jackson II ($20), while gold certificates had Robert E Lee ($20), Stonewall Jackson ($50), JEB Stuart ($100), Joseph E Johnston ($200), Nathan Forrest ($500), and Patrick Cleburne ($1000). The 75th anniversary of Confederate Independence brought about a number of commemorative banknotes, including state-issued silver certificates honoring their heroes, with Lee being most popular in Virginia and the Carolinas, Cleburne in Arkansas, Oklahoma, western Tennessee, Forrest in Kentucky and Tennessee, and Joseph Johnston across the Deep South. Kirby Smith was featured on the Florida and Texas $5 bill that was printed from 1936-41. On the back of each bill was often a scene from a battle or a famous state landmark, while those printed from the Treasury in Davis, DC featured landmarks or memorials in the capital or around the Confederacy. The $1 silver certificate featured the Gray House, while the $20 featured Grant's Surrender. Before 1928 and the new small-size bills, the Confederates had for the last 30 years a series of bills featuring Jefferson Davis ($1), John C Breckinridge ($2), Robert E Lee ($5), Stonewall Jackson ($10), Nathan Forrest ($20), Patrick Cleburne ($50), Alexander Stephens ($100), Joseph E Johnston ($200), and Congressman Barksdale (author of the emancipation bill) ($500). With the greater decentralization in the Confederacy, each State circulated silver and gold certificates for its own citizens, while the Department of the Treasury circulated certificates for the entire Confederacy. The only real difference was the people and back of the bills, while the overall framing of the bills were the same, greatly resembling the 1864 series and the newer US certificates:






State silver and gold certificates would sometimes cross borders in this time, with the worlds "Virginia Treasury Note" for those found in Virginia, and other states having their names on top.

Musicians in Dixie 

Richard Penniman, later known as Little Richard, is born in Macon, Georgia in December of 1932.

The Dust Bowl

In 1934, both the United States and the Confederate States experienced the first of three major droughts in the Great Plains, which affected Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Colorado. Due to insufficient understanding of farming on dry grounds, both Yankees and Confederates replaced the deep-rooted native grasses with crops; these grasses would normally trap soil and moisture during periods of drought and high winds. With the rapid mechanization of McCormick plows and tractors in the Confederacy spreading north into the Union, farmers were able to make the easy choice to convert the arid grasslands into cropland, despite their receiving no more than 10" of rain a year on average. With the drought of 1934, much of this unanchored soil turned to dust, being blown away by the winds in huge clouds which would sometimes blacken the sky.

With the inability of many to make a living their farms, many Texans, Oklahomans, and New Mexicans in Dixie moved to other states to try to make a living, some ending up as far away as Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guyana (OTL: French Guiana) to the east, and Baja California, Sonora, and Durango in the west. Yankees moving west to California unfortunately found economic conditions not much better than those they left due to the depression.

In the United States to the north, the dust was seen as far east as Washington DC, and families left Kansas and the area for the old Midwest (Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin) or the west coast (California, Oregon, Washington) looking for work, but finding the economic conditions the same as those they left.

Mount Rushmore is Finished


Begun in 1925, the United States finishes its monument in South Dakota with Washington in 1934, and with Grant in 1939.  It is called the 'Shrine to the Republic,' with Washington, Jefferson, T. Roosevelt, and U.S. Grant chosen to represent the nation's birth, growth, development, and preservation, respectively.  Some wanted Lincoln to be on the mountain but he was not chosen because of his impeachment, and the historic record having shown he intended to cause the war to ravage the South, while Ulysses Grant had fought to preserve the Union, and bring the nation together after the war as President, and sought to improve relations with the South.

Education Gets Big in America

In the United States, the growing unemployment meant a lot of Americans returned to college to get a degree, believing that higher education was the key to getting ahead, and differentiating themselves.  This would be the beginning of the belief in the US that you had to have a college degree to get a good job.  The US was more urban than the Confederacy, being 65% urban, and about 35% rural*, so they were much harder hit, and a number of people chose to return to their family farms they'd left for the big city, and many people put off children while doing so and while getting their educations.  This led to a growing belief in the United States of being smarter than others, particularly the Confederacy, because they had college degrees, which don't necessarily equate to intelligence.  But it did mean that colleges became a bigger business and began growing and offering more degrees to accept peoples' money.  And many communists began going into education so that they could "educate" children into communism.

In the Confederate States, much more of the population was rural at the time, 61.6%, with only 38.4% urban, so they were much less affected by the depression, and many of those in cities and on farms decided, rather than going to college, they would go to a trade school or go into an apprenticeship.  Education was different in the Confederacy, with a higher emphasis on real-world skills over esoteric degrees that don't have real-world application (leading to the Yankee common belief of southerners being uneducated or ill-educated), so many people learned mechanical skills, welding, construction, plumbing, automotive, electrical, and other trades (leading to another Yankee stereotype of southerners holding 'low intelligence' jobs).  Many returned to their family farms, relearning their forgotten skills, and many in cities  began growing their own food in window sills and in yards in the small suburbs, leading to a lasting trend for Confederates when suburbs took off that they wanted large yards in case they wanted to grow food.  Colleges, like the University of Nashville, Georgia Institute of Technology, and others, grew during this time as well, but unlike the northern colleges, reduced the amount of extraneous degrees and courses, focusing on practical degrees that would be necessary for people.  This began a trend in the south of colleges being leaner and more practical than northern colleges, students earning degrees that are actually economically worthwhile, rather than useless pieces of paper that don't help them get better jobs.

*Yes, I went into the Census and calculated the numbers for both halves of the country.  It took a while.

The Third Republic Turns from Freedom

In France, the economic turmoil of 1929 resulted in the rise of the Popular Front, a left-wing party influenced by fascism, with a number of socialists and communists in the party led by Léon Blum, and the new Mouvement Franciste
party led by Marcel Bucard, which was joined by Charles de Gaulle, becoming soon the Mouvement Gaulliste party, whose power grew from 1929 to 1933, when the fire at the National Parliament resulted in a suspension of parliament under the emergency decrees, allowing de Gaulle to legislate without parliament, and suspended many civil liberties of the French people, including speech, gathering, owning firearms, and the press.

With the Fire Decree, the Popular Front, Mouvement Gaulliste, Republican Union (A quasi-fascist syndicalist party), Republican Syndicalist Party, merged into the French National Fascist Party, which soon used their two-thirds majority in the parliament and bullying tactics to prevent the opposition parties from meeting and opposing them.  Soon, opposition parties were blamed for the fire and banned altogether.  Then, Jewish and German businesses were required to register, then identify themselves with identifying marks, as they were not 'French' and were thus suspect.

The French economy soon rebounded out of the depression, with a number of welfare programs and food programs, along with make-work projects like the De Gaulle Highway System, hydro dams, and a massive settlement and development plan of Mauritania (OTL Mali and Mauritania), bringing the gold, copper, and oil into France in Europe, fueling the economy.  The settlement of ethnic French in large numbers, and their disruption of the very traditional ways of life of the natives brought them into conflict with the French, which unfortunately used the resistance to purchase large amounts of arms and equipment from Spain, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom, as it was promised to be used in Africa, not Europe, thus sidestepping the limitations of the size of their army (100,000 in Europe, but no limit on colonial armies) and the limits on rearming.  From 1934-1938, the French armies gained valuable practice in movement, tactics, and warfare maneuvering, which had the tragic effect on the native peoples of the colony of depopulating large swaths of territory, along with the forced labor of the colonial fascist government, taking the native population from around 5 million to about 2 million by 1938.

Germany's New Focus

With the economic downturn, Germany began focusing its efforts in Africa, offering to sail their unemployed to Africa, with the promise of more opportunities and land than in the cities of Europe.  A ticket to the colonies would be cheaper than paying unemployment, the government figured.  Additionally, with more Germans and enlisted veterans, they could protect their colonies from French aggression coming from West Africa, which could possibly be a sign of their intentions on Ivory Coast again.  

With a combination of at-home make-work projects, like the Autobahn, new majestic, classically inspired public buildings, and propaganda pieces about the wide-open spaces and larger houses, with big yards in Africa, Germany's economy began turning around by 1935, and by 1938 was nearly back to its pre-depression levels.  The only kink in things was the small agitations of the National Socialist German Workers Party, a small but militaristic party with rumored ties to Italy, Austria, and France, all of which had much stronger fascist parties.  Despite some circumstantial evidence, nothing concrete turned up, and loyalty to the monarchy kept people from the fascists; even German republicans in the west who wanted a more American-style government were not swayed by the fascist rhetoric.

Television in the United Kingdom (1936-1937)

The original American and Confederate iconoscopes (cameras) were noisy, with a high ratio of interference to signal, and ultimately had disappointing results, especially in comparison to the 'high definition' mechanical scanning systems coming out at the same time.  The EMI team in the UK under Isaac Shoenberg, broke down how the iconoscope and their EMItron produces its electrical signals and saw that its efficiency was about 5% of the theoretical maximum.  So they solved the problem by creating and patenting in 1934 two new camera tubes, which they called the 'super-Emitron' and 'CPS Emitron.'  The super-Emitron was 10-15 times more senitive than the original iconoscope and Emitron tubes, and in some cases was even greater.  This was first used on Armistice Day 1937 by the BBC to allow the public to watch the King lay a wreath on the Cenotaph.  This became the first time anyone had broadcast a live street scene from cameras installed on the roof of neighboring buildings.

RCA in the United States would do so in 1939 at the New York World's Fair, while Farnsworth would do so in Davis, DC, in 1938 during the Confederate Day Parade.

Baird also made the first color broadcast February 4, 1938, with a 120-line mechanically scanned image from Baird's Crystal Palace studios to a projection screen at London's Dominion Theatre.  Two years later, he demonstrated a color television publicly by combining a black-and-white display with a rotating color disk.  It was a very 'deep' machine, but he later improved this by using a mirror to fold the light path into a much more practical device resembling a large console.  Baird was unhappy with the design, and in 1944 would comment to a British government committee that a fully electronic device would be better.

Faxes in the Homes


Children reading a faxed newspaper, 1938

During the 1930s, fax machines became cheap enough that Finegan's Fax Machines (started by General Joseph Finegan's son, Patrick) created the newspaper fax machine with a drum of paper that would receive faxes of newspapers over telephone lines, typically between midnight and 6 AM when most people were asleep and not using the telephones.  The service was used in wealthier houses to get a typically 12-24-page special edition newspaper, sent from the largest newspapers in the Confederacy, but was found in enough middle-class homes that it turned a profit.  Such newspapers had a lower resolution than print, due to the primitive nature of the technology, and the thermal paper was expensive, so it died out during the early 1940s due to world events at that point in time.  A Radiofax, sending the news by AM radio stations, was also tried, but AM was vulnerable to static, and again, the newspapers had much less content than those delivered to their homes daily, and most people were content to listen on the radio for 'breaking' or 'hot' news.

Turkey's Return

İsmet İnönü became the second President of Turkey following Atatürk's death in 1935.  One of his first moves was to annex the Republic of Hatay on the Mediterranean, and despite the experience of the first Great War, İnönü signed a secret pact with the French that if Turkey annexed southeastern Europe and the Middle East, France would get full access to the oil that had since been found there, and either would enter war with the other against their common enemy powers.

Poland's Dark Turn

Under the control of Józef Piłsudski, the Polish leader had led the country in a number of wars that defined its borders.  In 1920, he helped defeat the invading Soviets at the Battle of Warsaw, which also saw Germany help the Polish defeat the invasion.  When Germany wanted Poland to make repayments for its part in helping preserve the Polish state it helped found, under Prime Minister Piłsudski the state refused, stating that it would've defeated the Soviets without their help anyhow, resulting in a two-year suspension of port rights at Danzig and a withdrawal of the German ambassador to Poland.  In 1923, Piłsudski retired from politics when the National Democrats took power, but when the nascent Polish Fascist Union, their nationalist socialist fascist party, took power in 1926, he returned to power as Prime Minister, and in 1930, when the economy crashed, he took power in a coup d'état, deposing the Polish king, establishing the National Social Republic of Poland.


Chief of State Józef Piłsudski

In 1932, he signed a treaty with the Soviets that he would support their annexation of the Baltics and grant them port rights at Danzig if the Soviets funded their attempt to gain the valuable Silesian industrial region, Danzig, and Posen, opening up the Baltic coast to the Polish; in facilitation of this the Polish agreed to buy up thousands of Soviet tanks, rifles, and munitions.  Piłsudski viewed himself as an heir to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and viewed the natural borders of Poland as those including Lithuania and Ukraine, and possibly even White Russia (OTL Belarus).  Under Piłsudski's rule in the 30s, the Polish economy rebounded and was able to come out of the depression by 1934.

Nathan Bedford Forrest National Park (1934)

In 1934, the President of the Confederacy, John Garner, designated an area in the state of Jefferson as a national park, named for the cavalry general Nathan Bedford Forrest, after his grandson, a native of the state, William N. Forrest, petitioned the President for the declaration.  

At the north end of the park is Saladino (OTL Antonio Amaro), a small village named for Colonel Anthony Saladino, a decorated veteran of the Spanish-Confederate War.  Within the park is the small town of Alcorn (OTL Villa Insurgentes), named for Mississippi Governor James Alcorn, a Brigadier General from the War for Southern Independence also.  The town grew rapidly starting at the turn of the century with the development of the automobile, and as of 1934, most of the original Mexican architecture is gone, and the streets have been widened and sidewalks added to improve mobility.  Large numbers of businesses with apartments on the upper floors are found in the town, such as bars, taverns, breweries, pharmacies, bakers, butchers, dry goods stores, clothing stores, and a number of 'tourist' shops catering to the visitors from out of town who sometimes come into town to visit the state-line-straddling park.

William Forrest, one of nine grandsons of General Forrest, moved to Durango in 1908, then to Jefferson in 1910, making his home in the capital of Zacatecas, which was renamed after the first World War to Gatlinburg, for the first military governor of the Territory of Zacatecas (1867-1872), Lt. General Richard C. Gatlin.  Forrest frequented the desert as a way to clear his lungs and think, and ride his horse.  He admired the area, and it reminded him of his grandfather, whom he knew from his childhood as a tough, hard man, but who brought out such devotion and loyalty from his men.  A number of former officers who served with Forrest settled in the Durango/Zacatecas area, and they often met in the region around the park, resting in Alcorn at night and riding the desert during the day.  William sent his father pictures of the area, noting that his grandfather would've loved to have seen such beauty while riding.

Confederate Secret Service

The Confederate Secret Service (CSS) has had a long history in the Confederate States, and during the 1920s, it was reformed in light of issues raised in the first World War.  The Spy Bureau was in charge of traditional spying; the Signal Corps was multilingual and was responsible for decoding foreign communications and had agents in every embassy; other bureaus had been added over the years, and the reform law, titled "A Law for the Reform and Restructuring of the Confederate Secret Service."

Based on that law, the Confederates wanted to ensure that some of the abuses they saw during the war on the part of France, and even Germany, the US, and the UK, ostensible allies, did not happen in the CSA.  So the Bureau of the Secret and Special Service, as it was legally called, was split in twain.  One side was the civilian side, responsible for collecting intelligence inside the CSA for Confederate Marshals, and came under the Department of Justice.  This side was to enforce federal law, and was required to comply with all the laws and the constitution of the CS, and was required to get warrants before it could engage in any spying.  The other side of the CSS fell under the Department of War and became known as the Bureau of Military Intelligence, and also included the Office of Naval Intelligence, Office of Army Intelligence, and Office of Marine Intelligence.  Civilians worked alongside the military and under their rules to spy on foreign nations, often posing as civilians working in Confederate embassies to gather information on foreign nations to keep the CS safe.  This was nothing new, as the US, the UK, and every other nation had spies in their own embassies.  It was statecraft for centuries.

The Confederate agency was restructured with its legal limits in mind, and all agents were required to take training courses in constitutional law to ensure they knew their limits under the law.

Colonies in Africa

Several colonies in Africa began moving towards more self-government within the British Empire, with the Statute of Westminster passing in 1931, and applying to Kenya (formerly British East Africa), Rhodesia, and South Africa, the main white settler colonies in Africa.  Incredibly unfortunately for native Africans is the 'clearances' the British engaged in, in response to attacks by native Africans who refused to assimilate into the British culture.  While a large number of Africans assimilated, spoke English, went to church, dressed 'western,' and adopted British customs, and even fought for the British Empire, they were still discriminated against and segregated against, similar to how blacks were discriminated against in the United States, with separate train cars, schools, and shops, though they were not often the equal of white schools.  Even with this, the assimilated blacks did place themselves socially over the non-assimilated, tribal blacks of Africa, believing themselves more civilized, and participating in the clearances with the white British, as this would mean more land for them, and elevated social positioning within the colonial power structure.

In Kenya, notable settlements included Baardheere in the east along the Juba River, guarding the colony against encroachments from the Somalis, who were subject to the 1892-3 'Eastern Clearance.'  Dolo, Luuq, Yoontoy, and Port Victoria at the Indian Ocean mouth of the Juba River became important border towns, with Port Victoria becoming an important resort and vacation town, and also home to over 8,000 members of the British Expeditionary Force from the first Great War, which essentially erased Gobuen from the map to recreate the town in the image of the British Empire.  In practice, the town looked very similar to that of any Outback town in Africa at first, but soon gained electricity, plumbing, and essential businesses like the butcher shop, dry goods stores, grocers, bakeries, breweries, and other signs of modernity.  The town of Faadoole and Calanleey became Callahan, after Lt. Col. Daniel Callahan, an Irish officer who decided to move to Africa for a new challenge, becoming colonial governor of Kenya in 1928, and institution a huge modernization effort, and a 'pacification' of some of the last resistance to British rule in Kampala and Hoima, resulting in the last clearances of tribal Africans into the Dutch Congo, which needed labor for its rubber plantations and other large-scale farming efforts.


A postcard from Callahan, Kenya (OTL: Calanleey, Somalia)

Germany's colonies followed largely the same pattern, with large numbers of now unemployed veterans moving to Africa to seek a new challenge, or hoping to find peace and a new start in Togoland, Namibia, Tanganyika (Tanzania as of 1925), Kamerun, and Ivory Coast.  Namibia and Tanganyika became the most heavily settled with Europeans, with Namibia having roughly 296,000 people in 1930, of which 72% were either European or Indian (brought in for labor and some minor civil service positions), and Tanzania having roughly 6.5 million people, of which 2.6 were native Africans, 1 million Indians, and the rest ethnic Europeans.  

The capital of Tanzania became a new planned town called Friedrichsburg (OTL: Dodoma)


Colonial Government House in Friedrichsburg


Friedrichsburg Colonial Parliament

Germany, like its British ally, allowed the colonial government to participate in 'clearances,' which were little more than forced removals of the native African populations, whose lands were taken to the benefit of the Indian, European, and assimilated African populations of the country.  Rwanda and Burundi became the exciting 'new' territories open to settlement with the vast numbers of German, British, Dutch, Austro-Hungarian (i.e. Austrian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovakian, Slovenian, Polish, and Romanian) veterans choosing to come to the new opportunities of Africa.  During the 1970s, Tanzania apologized for its role in the clearances, but did not offer to pay any reparations or offer to restore the now Congolese to their lands, as it believed the past was gone and dwelling on it would not help move Africa forward.

German authorities introduced a colonial passport / identification card, which categorized citizens by ethnicity, either German, Indian, naturalized (African), or tribal.  Those classified as 'tribal' had the fewest opportunities, so many would either seek to assimilate or move into the Dutch Congo.  Naturalized persons were native Africans who spoke German, went to church, dressed and ate like Germans, and had abandoned their tribal past, who had more opportunities than blacks in British colonies, but were kept out of most leadership positions.  Some blacks were allowed to attend schools with whites and Indians, and the military was not segregated, which had the effect of mildening racial attitudes in the colony, making desegregation and civil rights easier in the coming decades.

Tanzania had a large amount of farmland, raising potatoes, beans, sweet potatoes, cassava, wheat, maize, coffee, tea, cotton, sorghum, bananas, manioc (tapioca), rice, millet, cashew nuts, tobacco; beef, lamb, pork, milk, and hides.  Mining became more important since the 1910s, with diamonds, nickel, cobalt, copper, platinum, cassiterite, wolframite, and coltan growing to large business in the colony.  By the 1930s, there was a lot of income disparity between people with most of the upper half being European or some Indians, with a few native Africans, while the lower half of the economic income classes were a mix of African, European, and Indian.

The Dutch Congo had an appetite for new manual labor, with rubber, coltan, cobalt, copper, diamonds, and other raw materials feeding European and African industry, fueling the sad legacy of 'clearances' by all colonial powers into the rough and dangerous Congolese plantations run by many Dutch and Belgian owners.  This had the effect of draining populations from Rhodesia, South Africa, Kamerun, Tanganyika, Kenya, and other African nations.

Hurray for...Atlanta-wood?

Down in the Confederate States, the new art form of the cinema began to take off in the 20s, and even during the economic downturn of the early 1930s when talking movies came into being.  Texas and Rio Grande opened up Kinos (the German word for 'movie theaters'), owned by the various movie studios until the 1928 Lockwood vs. Texanerkino case found that studio ownership of studios was an unlawful monopoly, and paved the way for future two-screen and multi-screen movie palaces across the Confederacy.


Richmond Movie Theater

Atlanta Central Theater

While a number of actors and studios did decide to move to the Confederate state of Baja California, many decided to remain in the east where the transportation network and other key needs were readily available.  To that end, Jacksonville, FL, Atlanta, GA, Nashville, TN, and San Antonio, TX all became the capitals of movie-making in the Confederacy.  Winter and Christmas movies were filmed in Nashville and Atlanta, while westerns and cowboy movies were filmed in San Antonio and Los Angeles, and period pieces were filmed in Atlanta, Nashville, San Antonio, and Jacksonville.  

With all the shoot-outs and disruptions, however, the movie studio was asked not to film in Jacksonville's downtown.  Karl Schurz and Willy Holzbauer decided to move their operations just outside the little town of Jacksonville, still within Duval County, creating a new little town called Little Berlin, with a town center very similar to those found in Germany, while adapting the buildings and homes to those typical in the south with porches, tall ceilings for air circulation, opening windows, and fans for circulation.




Different views of Little Berlin, Duval County, the capital of Florida movie-making

The first award ceremony for the Southern Motion Picture Association in 1930 awarded the best actor award to Howard Jones for his role in Yankee Snowbird as Johnny Holmes, a Georgian living in Florida who shows the New York Yankee the error of his ways and sends him packing back to New York.  The movie Birth of the Confederation, focusing on the Battle for Atlanta and General Johnston's army's role in saving the Confederacy was an epic silent movie a few years prior, and got a talkie remake in 1930, was banned in the United States for showing black actors in a positive light, showing Sergeant Johnson's capture of General Thomas with his two friends, who were black, on relatively equal footing.  The Patriot won best movie, showing a young man joining the Confederate Army and fighting with Stonewall Jackson and General Lee to fight off the Yankee invasion.  The entire movie glossed over any relation of slavery and the war, as by this point in time, most historians and filmmakers believed the war was over economic questions and cultural differences, and had little to nothing to do with slavery.

Early color movies showed up on occasion with various additive color schemes, which were not as bright as black-and-white films and were more expensive, but at least three to five films every year were made in color, often the bigger budget movies.  Confederate movies were exported to Europe, Africa, and the Pacific, with pirate movies, swashbuckling, westerns, romances, comedies, and dramas all gaining audiences across the world, with Confederate output peaking to around 500 feature films a year with their decentralized and widespread movie studio system.

In the Confederacy, stars of movies began to develop a media fascination and gain fame and fortune through their movies, but during the 1930s, this element was challenged when newspaper reports of drinking problems, divorce, and adultery resulted in a number of early stars cleaning up their image and private lives, and with movies to agree to the Movie Code Authority, designed to promote family-friendly movies that promoted temperance, marriage, family, church-attendance, private charity, respect for authority, along with questioning blind obedience to authority and valuing independence and self achievement.

United States Movies move West

In the United States, the little town of Sunnyvale in California drew a number of actors and studio owners for its warm climate, mild winters, and variety of scenery, and to escape the higher cost of business in the east.  Soon more than two dozen studios had established themselves in Sunnyvale and San Jose, making it the nexus for Yankee filmmaking.  An early film during the silent era was that of The Great Emancipator, portraying Abraham Lincoln in a uniquely favorable light as looking to fight the war to free the slaves, contrary to the vast historical evidence to the contrary, resulting in a counter-film in the Confederacy, The Great Emanicipator, showing both Patrick Cleburne and Jefferson Davis, along with Robert Lee, Joseph Johnston, and Congressman Barksdale as the main players in Confederate Emancipation, while also showing Lincoln as delaying and dallying, and wanting to colonize blacks to Panama, Haiti, or Liberia, or just anywhere but the United States.  This led to the first copyright dispute in filmmaking, resulting in a court case allowing two films to have the same title so long as they were not 'substantially the same work or content or idea without proper credit or citation,' allowing the southern film to gain traction in states like West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

US movies experimented with color, but abandoned it for black and white more quickly than the Confederates did for monetary reasons.  Along with their Confederate cousins to the South, peak output in the north was in the 1920s with over 350 feature films each year.  Similar to the Confederacy, American movies began to adhere to a Motion Picture Code when many movies in the 1920s showcased a lot of drinking, smoking, adultery, and other 'lewd' behavior, which resulted in higher movie box office returns, as parents could then take their children to the movies.

Encyclopedia Confoederatica

The seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Confoederatica is published in 1930, spanning 12 volumes, which unlike Encyclopaedia Britannica, favors American spellings for words, and includes information not found in its main competition.  Articles on Lincoln and his correspondence with Karl Marx, his proto-socialist views, his racist and blatantly anti-black, pro-deportationist views, and later advocacy with the northern National Social Republican movement, and that of his son, Robert Todd Lincoln, differ markedly with corresponding articles in Britannica which either mention in passing or don't mention at all.  Articles on the War for Southern Independence note a number of northern triggers for the war (John Brown's terrorism, 30 years of anti-southern printing advocating violent slave revolts, etc), and do notably showcase a number of instances where the South could have won the war earlier than it did, but do note that if it had, emancipation may not have come about when it did, and slavery might have continued past the war, with that point granting black Confederates a large role in winning the war and having a grateful tone that slavery stopped as early as it did rather than lingering on until 1900, as Lincoln proposed with the Corwin Amendment.

Dystopian Becomes a Thing

Author Michael Jonathan Johnson writes the 1939 book A World United, wherein the United States endured a secret fascist coup and became responsible for a series of false flags causing its citizens to give up more and more of their rights, every seven years it seems - 1987, 1994, 2001, 2008, 2015 - causing the United States to trick the Confederates into joining a world government, where the Confederacy becomes oppressive, their symbols are banned, and all references to it are destroyed by race riots, and people from Asia, South America, and Africa are shipped into North America to act as private armies to help the state keep power through terror.  People are kept distracted by gladiatorial sports, pornographic movies, and drugs, and a two party system where the parties have almost no distinction between them in actual ruling but people are kept divided by party, race, and gender.  

The book is a hit, reaching #2 on the Richmond Observer best seller list, and establishes the dystopian genre in the South, often focusing on excessive government oppression in various forms.  Consciously or unconsciously, people in the Confederacy begin making more efforts to push 'we are all Confederates' themes in education, and equality of races, rather than superiority of one or the other.

Movies

Disney, a US company, makes the first animated feature film, Snow White, in 1937, with songs integrated, and shows that people will sit through a cartoon for more than a few minutes.  The Warner Brothers, who moved from Poland to Canada and then to Confederate Baja California, decide upon their own cartoon, creating The Sword in the Stone in 1939, adapting the legend of King Arthur into an animated form, adding in some music just as Snow White had, but with a much better singer than that movie.  It was a decided hit, followed by other heroic movies of fantasy heroes to give people something to focus on other than the recent depression or the war in Europe.  The Confederate theaters had Hercules (1940), Beowulf (1942), Eric the Red (1944), and various princess movies as well for young girls, The Six Swans (1941), The Frog Prince (1943), and Diamonds and Toads (1945).  In 1946 came Johnny Reb and Rebel Rose, a love story about a simple soldier and his sweetheart during the Confederate Revolution (1861-1865) and his trials going to war, and her support for him from home and then becoming a spy for the Confederates, and their eventual reuniting at war's end in Atlanta.

Heroes Become Super

Up in New York, Detective Comics begins publishing what many consider the first modern superhero, Superman, depicted as an alien from the planet Krypton, raised in Smallville (originally in Iowa, later Kansas), and becoming a reporter at the Daily Star (later Daily Planet), where he uses his fantastic powers to save the day.  He appeared first in June 1938, and would inspire more heroes in the USA.

Newspapers began printing funnies, or comics, to help keep their presses running during the depression. One, Johnny (Reb) and Dixie, began in 1931, and continues to this day, being a 'slice of life' comic that often poked fun at Confederate life, and more often than not, Yankee life. Johnny's best friend, Patrick Robert (named for Patrick Cleburne and Robert Lee) and his wife, Mary, both became the first continuously printed black characters in Confederate comics, and their appearance got the comic banned in the US till 1952.

Down in Atlanta, publisher Dixie Comics, that had until that point printed westerns, romance stories, and detective stories, including Zorro, The Many Loves of Birdie Mae, Gray Ghost, and The Red Mask, published a story very similar to that of Superman in August of 1938, a few months before DC's version.  They called him Ultra Man, later giving him an ally in Power Man, and creating a cast of Ultra Woman, Ultra Boy, Ultra Girl, and Power Woman, Power Boy, and Power Girl to fill out their rosters.  Rather than an alien, Ultra Man was a humble Georgian farmer from Doerun, David Rumph, who encountered an alien UFO from the planet Xenon.  They told him that he was adopted and was an alien from Xenon, with the power to absorb sunlight into fantastic powers.  The comic showed his cells had an extra mitochondria similar to chloroplasts that absorbed solar radiation and turned it into super strength, super resilience, super sight, and super leaping (later flight).  They activated his powers one day while he was out harvesting his crops, and he soon decided to move to the city to help others with his fantastic powers.  He had brown hair, blue eyes, and had a red costume, black boots and waist, and a red cape with yellow inside.  His emblem is a shield with a U in it resembling the Confederate Shield with a blue top (no stars), red U, and white background.

DC sued that he was an imitation of their own character in both the US and CS, but they lost the suit given the number of differences between the two characters - an Iowa farmer turned journalist who was an alien, vs a Georgia farmer who found out he was an alien by alien encounter who later became a journalist and hero, along with different costumes, and no evidence that the southern publisher intentionally copied the northern character.

Dixie Comics published a super detective called Nighthawk, who dresses in black with a yellow bird emblem on his chest, which is actually armor plating, as a rich Nashville socialite who dabbles in philanthropy named George Spaight.  His fiancée was murdered by a criminal and he vowed revenge, taking up the mantle of Nighthawk to find out who the criminal was, and later found out he was a lowlife from Detroit named David Caswell, who later became a flunky of Richard von Amerling, a wealthy but corrupt politician in Chicago who ran the local political machine there.  Nighthawk fought crime using his wits, and the author, Roger Haines, a real detective, used legitimate scientific methods in the comics to show Nighthawk finding the criminals and cleaning out Nashville.  Nighthawk often would fly using his cape, depicted as having wing-like structure to it, and having the ability to grip surfaces with his gloves and boots using special grips and micro-hooks, and having a utility belt with small gadgets to do crime-fighting and detective work.  Dixie Comics, during the suit with DC, counter-sued claiming Batman was a copy of Nighthawk, who had appeared 13 months earlier than Batman, but had a much lower circulation and had obviously not reached New York, where Bob Kane had created his own character.  The two settled out of court and agreed that they would give their characters different names and origins to avoid conflicts in the future, or if they used the same name, use a different look/powers to avoid confusion.

Ultra-Man met Ultra-Girl, an alien from planet Xenon, who was retconned into being the pilot of the UFO he encountered that gave him his powers, who had put herself in a life-pod to try to survive the crash.  She awoke years later and joined him on adventures, and had a crush on him, but Ultra-Man would have a years-long relationship with Valkyrie before eventually marrying Ultra-Girl.

Dixie Comics later created several other heroes to capitalize on the boom in comics, like Lara: The Jungle Queen, Red Runner (police detective Dave Carson who is exposed to a galactic radiation from an asteroid), Amazonia (an ancient warrior Amazon, skilled in combat and depicted as super strong, super durable, and very independent, but otherwise a human, with green eyes and black hair), Hercules, Black Shadow (Henry Patrick, a black Atlantan dedicated to fighting crime in downtown Atlanta), Panthra (Floridian Jenny Felix with a cat costume who solved crime in Dallas), and several others.

Dixie Comics Heroes:
-Black Shadow - a white detective who has the ability to disappear into shadows and reappear in any other shadow, and turn invisible when out of direct light.
-Gray Ghost - the modern (1940s) ghost was a black detective looking for justice in Memphis, often dealing with depictions of northerners who come in and cause trouble from Illinois and Missouri, descended from one of General Forrests guards, and styling himself as a guardian of Memphis.
-Amazonia (Athena Basilissa, a tall, curvy, attractive woman with blue eyes, black hair and the powers of strength, durability, intelligence, speed, and combat).  She was given mystic artifacts by the Greek gods to fight the evils of men, like the Gauntlet of Truth (Aletheia), Bow of Athena (Athena), and skills like warfare (Athena), animal communication (Athena), healing (Aceso), fair judgment and justice (Dike Astraea).  Her costume was heavily inspired by the Spartans, with a red skirt, gold armored top, braces that turned into gauntlets in battle, gold armored boots, and in battle, a Spartan helmet.  The red and gold colors were her iconic colors, depicted in her various gear and incarnations.
-Nighthawk - George Spaight, a rich philanthropist and industrialist dedicated to fighting crime after his fiancée's death.  He uses his wealth to fund his crimefighting, stopping criminals the police can't stop.  He has several vehicles like the Nightwing, an airplane to jet around town, the Streetwing, a stylized Ford car with hawk motifs on it and a mini-crime-lab in the trunk.  He later takes on a sidekick, Night Owl, who uses camouflage to hide with a color change costume, and has an 'Owl Screech' to momentarily disorient enemies.
-Raven - a male winged hero who featured in a number of 1940s stories but soon forgotten afterwards.  He dressed in black with a red bird logo on his chest.
-Red Diamond - male hero who finds a diamond from a crashed alien ship that gives him super strength and durability.
-Spartan - male hero imbued with the abilities of various Greek gods and demigods.
-Mercury - male hero of speed with golden winged boots, red pants, gold shirt with a caduceus on it, and a mercury hat.  He was imbued with speed by Hermes himself.
-Longshot - descendant of the black Confederate soldier who shot Union General John Allen, he can make trick shots with ease, and works in Richmond, later Dallas, solving mysteries and crimes.
-Ultra-Man - a Georgian farmer who finds out he's an alien from Xenon when a UFO crashes on his farm.  The crystal in the UFO activates his powers (in the first two years, it was the source of his powers), giving him super strength, speed, invulnerability, flight, sight and senses, and the ability to absorb solar radiation into power.  He later gains the powers of x-ray vision, telescopic vision, and energy blasts from his hands (though this drains his energy reserves faster than his other abilities.
-Ultra-Girl - an alien from Xenon who crashes on Earth, retconned into being the pilot of the UFO that crashes into Ultra-Man's farm in Georgia.  She gains powers in Earth's environment, drawing energy from Earth's heat, wind, water, land, and sun.  Her abilities help retcon Ultra-Man away from being a Superman clone.  The Xenon race had a sun that exploded, destroying Xenon and sending her to Earth.  Earth being a living planet with a warm sun gave her more power with her unique physiology, and gave her a healing power that Superman didn't have.  Xenonian vision is much more limited than Kryptonian, as the writers tried to keep it somewhat realistic (she can see to the horizon; hold her breath to exist in space; etc.)
-Spirit of '61 - a reincarnation of the Spirit of '76 and the original Spirit of '61, this is a patriotic hero tied to the land that tends to do everyday heroics 
-Rebel Phantom - Gray dressed man with a domino mask who can disappear into shadows, with enhanced strength, agility, durability/endurance, and teleportation.  The silver-age version is a female, replaced by a male in the modern age.

Dixie Comics Teams:
-Liberty League - Ultraman, Raven, Amazonia, Nighthawk, Mercury

Peach State Comics, later called Paragon Comics, published their own heroes, starting with Captain Confederacy and his sidekick, Dixie, a young girl who figured out his identity and would go on to marry him after the war.  CC was an experimental super soldier using alien technology from a crashed UFO to try to 'advance human evolution,' to fight fascists, and even being depicted as stopping a fascist revolt in Virginia near Alexandria.  Scarlett McCray becomes the Scarlett Speedster, renamed Red Speedster in her next appearance, depicted as red-haired and of Scottish descent, from North Carolina.  Wildcat was depicted as a Nashville woman from Charleston who wore a skintight black suit with her blonde hair showing through, with cat claws who fought crime in Nashville and Louisville, by the name of Catherine Daniels (nicknamed 'Kitty' as a kid, and having a gray long-haired cat named 'Whiskers'). 

Captain Confederacy was created in 1940 with a 'Confederate Shield' that compressed down and was made of alien metal, and would be thrown and return via magnetic attraction to an alien metal in his costume, or expand into a metal wing glider.  Super team ups create the Champions, with Captain Confederacy, which also introduced several new heroes: Golden Girl (female hero given flight, speed, strength, and durability from the sun via an alien ray gun), later adopting the name Power Woman.  Arctic Man and Lava Woman are a brother/sister pair that experimented in Iceland with mystic artifacts.  He is depicted as level headed and rational, while she is depicted as more spontaneous and exciting.  The group has adventures together, stopping the evil fascists, including a number of corrupt Yankees working with the fascists in Europe, much like the All-Winners Squad and the Invaders at Marvel.

Other Paragon heroes include:
-Golden Angel (female hero, blonde hair, with a blue leotard and red waist, boots, gloves, and red cape/wings and a golden bird logo on her chest, with strength, flight, and heightened durability)
-Red Phantom (female hero, detective who often helps her boss, Richard Johnson, a detective, solve crimes in a mask.  Rick is in love with Red Phantom, a curvaceous and daring woman, who by day hides being a mousy persona in his office as his secretary)
-Sharkfin (male hero, fights crime along the coasts and ports, gaining the ability to breath underwater, detect boats and injured people in the water, and swimming at super speed, and super strength when underwater; later adapted to being recharged when in water and keeping the strength on land at a diminishing amount)
-Union Jack (male hero, Alfred Bruce, who touched the Arthurian rock after being shot by a criminal and gaining superpowers - fast healing and durability, super strength and speed and agility), in a stylized British Union Jack flag costume, inspiring his fellow countrymen to heroic deeds.
-Spitfire (female hero, named after the airplane, Angela Glendower, who is in love with Alfred Bruce but their relationship is often interrupted by villains, a running theme in their stories.)  Her powers are are flight, speed, strength, and rapid-fire energy blasts (hence the name 'spitfire')
-Red Dragon (male Welsh hero, wears a dragon costume, has the power of flight, fireballs from hands, reptile control/talking/telepathy, strength and durability)
-Armor Man - male hero with a suit of mechanical armor that gives him strength and makes him bulletproof.
-Black Raven - a half-white, half-Native American who undergoes a ritual imbuing him with animal powers to fight injustice.

Paragon Comics teams:
-Defenders (formerly 'Defenders of Liberty' and the 'Liberty Defenders') - Black Raven, Sharkfin, Golden Angel, Electric Girl, The Panther
-Champions - Captain Confederacy and Dixie, Arctic Man, Lava Woman, Golden Girl, Armor Man

That is a huge number of tanks, do not think France can produce them in the time frame Mexico wants.

Wouldn't French and German tanks look very different from their OTL designs?

Chapter 42: The Storm Is Here

Status of Europe

In Europe, the small nation of Portugal held on to a small portion of its former empire.  Angola, Mozambique, the Azores, Madeira, the Savage Islands, and Macau remained under the control of the Portuguese.  Unfortunately, as with the rest of Europe, fascism was on the rise in Portugal as well.  They had 45 different governments within a span of 15 years in the early 20th century.  Economic weakness and political instability were a fertile ground for chaos and unrest, much like France and Italy.  By 1926 there was a coup d'état and a National Dictatorship (Ditadura Nacional) was created.  This led to a left-wing dictatorship of the Estado Novo under António de Oliveira Salazar in 1933, about the same time as France, with help from both Spain's fascists, Mussolini, and France.

Its colonies of Angola and Mozambique were subjected to intense industrialization as a result of the gold, oil, and diamonds present.  Of its 3.7 million population as of 1940, Angola was nearly 2/5 European, 1/5 Indian, and about 1/10 Chinese, intent upon building the colony to help enrich Portugal itself under its Estado Novo.  Mozambique supplied aluminum, tobacco, coal, cotton, tea, sugar, and other raw materials, while the mainland supplied finished goods.  Through the 1920s and 1930s, however, growing desire by the large European population to build things locally brought about an increase in factories and other manufacturing places.  In both colonies, a number of communist agitators amongst the Portuguese and African populations were arrested and executed, following a trend amongst the other colonies in Africa of executing communists as enemies of the state.

Spain maintained some of its empire, namely Spanish Morocco, the plazas de sobereina, Western Sahara, Ifni, the Canary Islands, Equatorial Guinea, and Sao Tome and Principe.  Western Sahara was a territory with a sparsely colonized native population until Francisco Franco's coup succeeded in 1934.  He ordered troop deployments and the subsequent support populations to follow, bringing the population up to 95,000 by 1936.  Fishing provided the main income, while phosphate mining provided additional income.  Cooperation with Mauritania brought in more development, and allowing the French under de Gaulle to dock and ship from Western Saharan ports assured the desert territory's development with the infrastructure build-up.

France's armies were practicing and maneuvering in Africa by and large to avoid suspicions by the allied powers.  France maintained part of its empire so as to help reparation payments to the allies: French Indochina, Corsica, Algeria, French Morocco, Mauritania (with Mali), the overseas departments of Oman and Constantine, Madagascar, and Djibouti.  Despite lingering resentments over the loss of much of its empire to the British and the German Empires, the colonial territories had positive trade relations with the newly German and British colonies.  Tanganyika, German Kongo, Kamerun, British East Africa, and Gold Coast all traded with the remaining French West African territories, while the French colonies gained more settlers than in the last 50 years of colonialism due to the uptick in military training and spending.

Italy attacked the British possession of Malta in June of 1940, and launched an attack on Greece that fall, but was repulsed with minor territorial changes.  Italy made headway in Africa, however, conquering British Somaliland and making two incursions into British-held Egypt.

Hungary was in a dangerous position, and despite its relationship with Austria, sided with Germany.  This was seen by Poland as a threat to its own security, and invaded Hungary, taking the country within 3 months and integrating it into Poland.  To the east, Mareșal Ion Antonescu was in control of Poland, and turned his country towards both Poland and France, and became an ally of the now Axis powers, offering oil, grain, and railroads for them to prepare a march east should they decide to do so.  Both French and Polish troops would soon ship through allied Austria, into occupied Hungary, and into Romania.

The Czech Republic and Slovakia were taken by France and united into Czechoslovakia, and created as a puppet state, using its industrial base to build tanks, airplanes, and weapons for France, Poland, and Austria, during a five-month struggle from March to August of 1940, with Austria allowing the French to march through their captured land (not that they had much of a choice, really).

During the course of 1940-1941, the French and Polish enticed Turkey into their alliance, promising them the territories of Greece, the remainder of Anatolia, and a split of Yugoslavia with Italy, with the Turks tarrying until they made their decision with their march into Smyrna in February of 1941.  With help from Romania, Poland, France, and Italy, the Turks were able to capture Constantinople by May 5th, and soon after, Albania (June 9th), and in a coordinated campaign with Italy, with Czechoslovakian arms and tanks, Yugoslavia fell by August 11th of 1941.

Monaco is occupied and incorporated into France, its language considered a dialect of French.

Confederate Census (1940)

The Confederate States have a population of 84,725,998 persons, with Texas being the most populous state at 10,178,346.  Of those, 18,020,227 or 20.8% were black.  The House of Representatives has 691 members, each representing 125,000 persons.  Most people in the Confederacy spoke English, while French would be found in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas and the territories of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Polynesia, and Guyana.  German would be found in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Rio Grande, Washington, Durango, and Jefferson.  Spanish would be found in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Veracruz, and Jefferson, though in no state is it a majority language or above 1/3 of the population speaking it as a first language.

Confederate Army Bases (1940)

Seeing a chance that war might come to the Confederacy, the Confederates in Davis begin looking for new land to acquire for a base.  They find a location in Caroline County, Virginia, near Bowling Green, and purchase the site, constructing Fort A.P. Hill.  The site would open July 11, 1941, with space for 74 officers and 858 enlisted, encompassing 77,332 acres.

Fort Lee, located near Petersburg, and the site of major training after the War for Southern Independence and for the Spanish-Confederate War, was rapidly expanded for World War I, but many of those buildings were temporary, and the final fate of the base was in question for much of the 1930s in efforts to lower budget outlays.

Assignment Patch of Fort Lee was designed after the Lee Coat of Arms

Fort Johnston in Jacksonville, FL, located on the west bank of the St John's River, was designated a site for naval training, in concert with the ship-building facilities at South Jacksonville on the southeastern side of the river.  In South Carolina, Fort Jackson (named for "Stonewall" Jackson) would train infantry forces, with an emphasis on survival and pushing men to their limits.

North Carolina's Camp Cleary became Fort Bragg in 1922, and would grow to be a hugely important training center for Special Operations forces.


Fort Gordon, in Augusta Georgia, and Fort Benning in Columbus, GA, would be ordered expanded in 1941 after the declaration of war, as would Fort Hood (TX), Fort Polk and Fort Beauregard (LA), Fort Cleburne (AR), Fort Forrest (TN), Fort Rucker (MS), Fort Cooper (RG), Fort Cleary (CB), Fort Gatlin (CA), Fort Anderson (AZ, Richard Anderson), and Fort Buckner (PR)

China's Civil War

Back in 1912, the Republic of China was established, with Sun Yat-sen of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party, KMT) proclaimed as the provisional president.  Later, presidency was given to Yuan Shikai, a former Qing general who proclaimed himself the new Emperor of China in 1915, but was forced to abdicate in the face of popular condemnation and opposition from his own Beiyang Army.  The republic was then re-established.

In 1916, after Yuan Shikai's death, China was politically framented, the so-called Era of Warlords.  The Beijing-based government was internationally recognized but internally nearly powerless, with warlords controlling most of the territory in various regions.  During the 1920s, under Chiang Kai-shek, the Kuomintang was able to reunify the country under its control through a series of military and political maneuverings, called the Northern Expedition.  Once in power, Chiang Kai-shek moved the capital to Nanjing, and implemented a 'political tutelage' program, outlined in Sun Yat-sens program for moving China into a modern confederated republic.


Chiang Kai-shek

Sun Yat-sen

Rosamund Soong Ching-ling


Rosamund Soong, as she was known in English, was educated in Georgia by her family.  She saw the large states preserving their unique cultures while getting her education over at Emory over in Georgia.  When she returned to China, she impressed the diplomats who met her and her husband, disarming them with her sweet Georgian accent, which immediately put them at ease.  She and her husband developed a unique confederation concept for China that adapted the ideas they saw in the CSA for the Chinese experience, preserving the various cultures of the regions of China, while bringing them together into one Chinese confederation.  It took a while, but over the 1920s and 1930s, Chiang Kai-shek also began to turn around from a fully Nationalist view, similar to the United States with the provinces subordinated and operating at the whim of the central government in the capital, to a more confederated republican point of view, where the provinces retained more power, while the national government was rather a confederation government, which had a small set of powers, including foreign trade and defense.  Between Ching-ling Soon, Sun Yat-sen, and Chiang Kai-shek, other Chinese who had also gone to the Confederate States for education, the Nationalist Party was slowly beginning to change from a centralized control party, but Chiang Kai-shek was not yet certain that China could come together under any form of national government.  China was as varied and unique as the Confederate States, and many of the warlords might not be willing to work together for a greater China.  Finally, the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong was preventing full unity, as the Nationalists were fighting the People's Liberation Army since 1927 in the Chinese Civil War.  While this war was successful for the Kuomintang, who were being sold weapons by the Confederates (who had long had commercial ties to China), fortunes would soon change.  

Things changed with respect to the Japanese in the Xi'an Incident in 1936.  Chiang Kai-shek was more focused on fighting the communists within China, but with the growing threat of Japan, several of his general captured him and detained him until he agreed to take a more aggressive stance with Japan.  With the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937, the war began in China.

Aerial view of the Marco Polo Bridge

Japan has invaded Manchuko (Manchuria) in 1931 and created a puppet state there, and expanded their forces to somewhere between 7,000 and 15,000 men by 1937 along the railways.  This was several times as many troops as the limit set by the Boxer Protocol.  In July of 1937, the Japanese had surrounded Beijing and Tianjin.  On July 7, Japanese units crossed the border to conduct military exercises, and exchanged fire with Chinese forces ouside of Wanping around 11 pm, a little town about 10 miles southwest of Beijing.  No one remembers the exact reason for the fight.  A Japanese soldier, Private Shimura Kikujiro failed to return to his post, and the Japanese commander demanded permission to enter town to search for him, but the Chinese commander Ji Xingwen refused.  Though by this point, Shimura had returned to his unit, both sides were already mobilizing, and Japanese were putting reinforcements around Wanping.

In Nanjing alone, roughly 40,000 to 300,000 Chinese would be massacred.  As a result of Japan's aggression, the PLA and the Kuomintang entered an uneasy alliance to defeat the invasion of their country.  Despite this, the Japanese won the Battle of Wuhan, forcing the relocation of the Chinese government to Chongqing (Chungking) in the interior of China.  By 1939, Japan's lines of communication ran deep into the interior, but with Chinese victories at Changsha and Guangxi, the war reached a stalemate.  Japan by this point ruled the large cities, but lacked the manpower to control the vast countryside of China.  In November of 1939, Chinese nationalists launched a large scale winter offensive, while in August of 1940, the Chinese communists launched their counteroffensive in central China.  Both the Confederate States and the United States strongly supported China, and to a lesser extent the USSR.  The two American nations supplied military and financial aid, and cut off Japan's oil exports from America.

Germany had also helped build up Chinese industry during the 1930s, but was forced to slow and halt their aid during the coming war.  In 1939, both the US and CS had congressional hearings on the situation with China and Japan, and it was revealed that both countries were exporting scrap iron, oil, machine tools, and other supplies without which Japan could not have invaded China.  In 1940, the Confederates stopped exports to Japan and agreed to send additional aid to China, though the United States continued for several months, as both nations were hesitant to break contracts.  Oil finally stopped being sent to Japan in July of 1941.  Around the same time, the Confederate Volunteer Group (CVG), or the Flying Tigers, was created, using a number of ethnic Chinese Confederates, white Confederates, black Confederates, and Chinese who were being trained by the Confederates.  They even created a Sino-Confederate flag to symbolize their group and cooperation between China and the CS.

CVG flag (first and second) symbolizing Confederate-Chinese aid.

The United Front helped stall the Japanese, but unfortunately helped the communists within China, who, like other infiltration ideologies, took advantage of every opportunity to spread their beliefs.

Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor

After the successful cooperation between the United States and the Confederate States in World War I, Confederates finally allowed US servicemen to use their Hawaiian base at Pearl Harbor, but not without much resistance from the native Hawaiians, many of whom remember the US attempted coup from 1874, and feared another attempt by the US to take Hawaii.  The native population had decreased to about 61,000 in the 1850s, but starting in the 1870s after annexation by the Confederate States, and the increase in western medicine, sanitation, and nutrition, the native Hawaiian population rose to 93,000 by 1900, and by 1940 to 136,000.  Confederates from the mainland, whether black, white, or Hispanic, made up around 173,000 additional persons, not including Yankees due to Pearl Harbor.


Confederate President George W. Peery

President Peery, concerned with the Japanese militarism, gave the order to embargo oil to Japan, and after conferring with the U.S. President Roosevelt, moved the Confederate Pacific Fleet to Hawaii from Baja California.  He also, not without some controversy, allowed American ships to dock at Pearl Harbor as well, which many believed was a pretext to a US invasion of Hawaii.

The Japanese were looking to prevent Confederate and American interference in their potential attacks on the British colonies in southeast Asia and German colonies in the East Indies, leading to their decision to take out the combined Pacific Fleets to prevent interference.  France allowed Japan to take its colonies in Indochina as it was concentrating on its invasion of Germany at the time, and would soon have more resources from Germany.  During 1941, Japan offered to remove itself from most of China and Indochina, provided the CS, US, UK, and Netherlands promptly shipped them 2 million barrels of oil, ceased aid to China, and lifted sanctions on Japan.  The Confederate counter-proposal in November was for Japan to evacuate China completely, without conditions, and conclude non-aggression pacts with the Pacific Powers.  The day before that counter-proposal was delivered, Japan's task force left for Pearl Harbor.

The attack had a few problems, namely that the shallow sea meant ships could be raised and repaired; men could be rescued; three Confederate aircraft carriers, the CSS Enterprise, the CSS Lexington, and the CSS Yorktown were not present, as they were on maneuvers at Midway with the USS Saratoga, USS Columbia, and the USS Hartford.



Japanese route taken to Pearl Harbor

The Japanese strike force departed from Hittokapu Bay on Kasatka Island with six aircraft carriers (Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, Hiryū, Shōkaku, and Zuikaku) in the Kurile Islands, and 408 aircraft (360 for the two planned attack waves, 48 for defensive combat air patrol (CAP)).  The plan was for two waves, a primary and secondary attack wave.  

The attack itself took place before any formal declaration of war by Japan, though this wasn't the intention of Admiral Yamamoto.  He originally stipulated that the attack commence 30 minutes after Japan informed the CS and US both that peace negotiations had ended, but the attack began before the notice could be delivered.  Tokyo transmitted a 5,000-word notification to the Japanese Embassies in Davis and Washington, but transcribing the message took too long for the Japanese ambassadors to deliver it on schedule, and it was not delivered until an hour after the attack began.  This message is often called a declaration of war, but it neither declared war nor severed diplomatic relations.  A declaration of war was printed on the front page of Japan's newspapers on the evening edition of December 8th (late December 7 in the CS and US), but not delivered to either American nation until the day after the attack.

The final two paragraphs of the message to Davis read:

Thus the earnest hope of the Japanese Government to adjust Japanese-Confederate relations and to preserve and promote the peace of the Pacific through cooperation with the Confederate Government has finally been lost.

The Japanese Government regrets to have to notify hereby the Confederate Government that in view of the attitude of the Confederate Government it cannot but consider that it is impossible to reach an agreement through further negotiations.


The Japanese attacked in two waves. The first wave was detected by United States Army radar at 136 nautical miles (252 km), but was misidentified as Confederate States Army Air Forces bombers arriving from the Confederate mainland, leading to conspiracy theories of US intent to draw Confederates into war.  The first attack wave of 183 planes was launched north of Oahu, led by Commander Mitsuo Fuchida.  As the first wave approached Oahu, it was detected by a US Army radar station near the northern tip of the island, which was a training station for the US Army and Navy, and not really operational.  The operators reported a target, but the Lieutenant there, Kermit Tyler, assumed they were the scheduled arrival of B-17s from Confederate Baja California, as the planes were approaching on a direction within a few degrees of the bombers.  The operators failed to tell him the size, and for security reasons, Tyler couldn't tell the operators of the bombers' arrival, despite it being widely known.

While approaching, the Japanese encountered and shot down several CS aircraft.  At least one of them radioed a warning that came out garbled.  Other warnings were still being processed and awaiting confirmation when the planes began bombing and strafing.  

The attack began at 7:48 AM Hawaiian Time (3:18 AM December 8 Japanese Standard Time), with the attack on Kaneohe (a town).  In all, 353 Japanese planes reached Oahu in two waves.  The slow and vulnerable torpedo bombers led the first wave, exploiting the first moments of surprise to attack the most important ships for them to attack - the battleships, while dive bombers attacked Confederate airbases across the island of Oahu, starting with Stuart Field, the largest, and Johnston Field, the main C.S. Army Air Force fighter base.  The 171 planes in the second wave attacked Cleary Field near Kaneohe.  The only aerial opposition was from a handful of P-36s, P-40, and some dive bombers from the carrier CSS Enterprise.


CSS Enterprise


The CSS Arizona, USS Oregon, and CSS Sonora, during the attack

Ninety minutes after the attack began, it was over 2138 sailors were killed and 710 others wounded; 208 soldiers and airmen were killed and 361 wounded; 105 marines were killed, and 72 wounded; and 62 civilians were killed and 34 wounded.  In all, 2,513 Confederates and Americans were killed and 1,177 wounded.  Twenty-two ships were either sunken or run aground including 7 battleships.  Of the 522 Confederate and American aircraft in Hawaii, 288 were destroyed and 159 damaged, 155 of them on the ground.

One noted Confederate was the sailor Doris Miller, from Texas, a black sailor serving on the CSS Sonora, who ran to his station when general quarters was sounded, but found it destroyed.  A Lieutenant ordered him to help get the injured captain out of the bridge, but he was unable to be moved.  Miller then went to another gun, loaded by another officer and managed to shoot down three Japanese airplanes and thwarted enough of the attack to help get fourteen crewmen off the ship by drawing fire.  For his courage, he was promoted to Petty Officer 3rd class and given the Navy Cross.


Confederate Admiral Nimitz pinning the Navy Cross on Doris Miller in 1942

In the aftermath, 18 Medals of Honor, 51 Navy Crosses, 53 Silver Stars, five Navy and Marine Corps Medals, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, six Distinguished Service Crosses, one Distinguished Service Medal, and five Bronze Star Medals were awarded to Confederate and American servicemen who distinguished themselves in combat at Pearl Harbor.  Aside from those awards, both the US and CS created the Pearl Harbor Commemorative Medal for all military veterans of the attack.

Confederate Declaration of War

The day after the attack, Confederate President Peery addressed a Joint Session of Congress, to call for a formal declaration of war on the Empire of Japan.  Within an hour, Congress obliged.  On the 11th of December, France and Italy declared war on the Confederate States, even though their Tripartite Pact didn't require it.  As a result, Congress issued a declaration of war against both France and Italy later the same day.  The UK actually declared war on Japan nine hours before the CS did, partially due to Japanese attacks on Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaya, and partially due to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's promise to declare war "within the hour" of a Japanese attack on the Confederate States.


Allied Response

The Allies were shocked by the attack as further losses compounded the setback they faced.  Japan attacked the US Philippines hours later.  Three days after the attack on Hawaii, the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk off the coast of Malaya, causing Churchill to say "In all the war I never received a more direct shock. As I turned and twisted in bed the full horror of the news sank in upon me. There were no British or American capital ships in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific except the American survivors of Pearl Harbor who were hastening back to California. Over this vast expanse of waters Japan was supreme and we everywhere were weak and naked".

Admiral Hara Tadaichi summed up the Japanese result by saying, "We won a great tactical victory at Pearl Harbor and thereby lost the war."  The Japanese confidence in their ability to win a quick victory meant that they neglected Pearl Harbor's navy repair yards, oil tank farms, submarine base, and old headquarters building.  All of these proved critical to the Confederate Pacific war effort in the coming months and years.

Mexico's Move

The Confederates to the north had just had their naval fleet in the Pacific decimated, while Mexican President Cardenas coordinated with the French concerning the proper time to strike to the north so that Mexico could regain its northern lands.  Even just regaining the Rio Grande to the border with the US would be a great victory for Mexico, but with French aid, and now, French declaration of war on the Confederates, Cardenas believed he had the chance to recapture even more.

The northern nation was still in shock at the attack by Japan on the 7th of December, and the government in Davis would not be expecting Mexican intervention, which came on the 11th of December.  In a double-pronged attack, the Mexicans launched their invasion on the unprepared southern border, making a fast march to Saint Louis, Veracruz (OTL San Luis Potosi), and Zacatecas, Jefferson.  The border wall was barely existent at this point in history, given the relatively peaceful relations between Mexico and Dixie, and the Mexican troops barreled through.

The 25-mile trek to Saint Louis took less than 6 hours in troop transports, tanks, and when the Mexicans made it to the city, Mexican airplanes scrambled to drop bombs directly on the city.  There were no air raid sirens, and people thought the airplanes were just Confederate planes flying overhead, when the bombs started dropping, decimating the town, and setting the state capitol building ablaze, whose central dome collapsed in the early hours of December 12th.



Notice was slow in arriving as Mexicans had been inside the southwest for some time, and on the 11th, a number of phone and telegraph wires were cut from Saint Louis, preventing warnings from getting in or out.  On the 12th, Hot Springs, Jefferson (Aguascalientes) was bombed and blasted into submission by the Mexican force in the same way, and on the 13th, Zacatecas, the state capital, was under fire.  Governor Harry Ford, having gotten notice of the bombing of Saint Louis, evacuated several tens of thousands of civilians, and ordered the mobilization of the Jefferson State Guard and called up the militia of the state.  The state had 15,000 in its guard, but theoretically the militia could boost that, as almost every Jeffersonian had a gun.

Veracruz's Governor, Peter Aguilar, who hadn't spoken Spanish in over 20 years, after the last time Mexico had attacked the Confederates, called on all Veracrucians to repel the invasion and called up the Veracruz State Guard from Matehuala, and called the legislature into session, as Governor Ford did for Jefferson from the city of Rio Grande, a mere 75 miles from the capital of the state.

The Mexican Invasion had begun.

Later on the 13th, news hit all across the Confederacy that Mexico had invaded - again.  That same day, Dixie declared war on Mexico.  Now, they were in a three-front war, something no one would ever dream of having to face.  The only question was if the Confederacy could face three theaters of war at once.


French and Polish Invasion of Germany

In August of 1939, due to a breakdown of negotiations between Germany and Poland over Poland's agreed-to rates of use of Danzig, over claimed anti-Polish agitation in Posen, Poland cut off relations with the Germans.  What would later be found out is that Poland's dictator had sent agitators to incite the Germans in cities like Posen, Wreschen, Ostrowo, and soon in Silesian cities like Tarnowitz, Beuthen, Königshütte, and Kattowitz, to violence against the indigenous ethnic Polish there and transient Polish workers who work in the factories and leave for Poland after their shifts.  Public opinion soured against the Germans in late August in both Poland and France.  Shortly after, an insurrection in Metz was used as a pretext for France to join in the attack.

France and Poland launched their offensive against Germany, with France using its Maginot Line, built within two miles of the border with the German state of Alsace-Lorraine, as its launch-point, using a guerre de foudre technique to coordinate with the Polish September 9th offensive.  France rushed its tanks and infantry past the Line and invaded Alsace-Lorraine.  Poland moved its troops into Germany, which met with some resistance, though it was overwhelmed within a day, as Germany's Kaiser, Wilhelm II, son of Henry I, had sought to reduce the German military in Europe to save money during the depression, and had only begun to rebuild their troop strength in 1938, meaning they were unable to mobilize and train enough troops in time to make a difference in the attacks from both sides.

Poland had 1600 aircraft against a much smaller German force of 250 ready, and 500 reserve fighter and bomber craft.  Much of Poland's armament were purchased from the USSR in the 1930s; Poland got arms, the Soviets got money to sustain their communism.  Poland's Central Industrial Region was critical to their build-up and helped Poland's industry build its way out of the depression.  Soon, Grabow, Pleschen, Woyzin, and Powidz in Posen fell to the Polish, who had a multi-front invasion.  From the west, France had 1560 aircraft, and 500 tanks (against a German force of 570 aircraft and 300 tanks with another 150 in for repair), rushing in and capturing Metz and other French-speaking villages, where they were greeted, like the Polish in the east, as liberators.  Many of the youth, who were more swayed by national socialism and the propaganda of the French and Polish language newspapers, thought that national socialism was the wave of the future and even some German-speaking youth joined in national socialism and helped the French and Polish occupy their country.


Poland was critically able to capture key industrial areas in Silesia, where ethnic Polish German citizens helped them overthrow the Germans, with Königshütte, Beuthen, and other key cities supplying arms and coal to the Polish to fuel their entry deeper into Silesia, Posen, West Prussia, and Pomerania.

Germans in Berlin were caught unawares, as they were getting mixed signals that armies were mounting, then dispersing, and both France and Poland were sending messages asking for de-escalation in exchange for small territorial concessions.  Germans in Berlin were even considering a linguistic split of Alsace-Lorraine with France to allow the French-speakers to join with France, hoping land for peace would work.  But once the fighting began on September 9, 1939, negotiations stopped.  Diversions in both east and west by French and Polish and sabotage helped divert valuable resources away from the frontlines.  

With the unpreparedness of German forces, by the 14th of September, Poland had pushed to Posen, capturing the city and renaming it Poznan, and were beginning to advance north to create a Polish corridor, long a dream of Polish nationalists.  France had caught Straßburg, the capital of Alsace-Lorraine by the 13th, and was beginning to advance north into the heart of Germany.  Germany's armies began shifting southwest, which is exactly what the French wanted to happen, as on the 16th, their second army, with a large number of Algerians and Mauritanians shipped in from May to July of 1939, burst through the rump portion of Belgium and into Germany in the Rhineland, its valuable industrial center.  The Guerre de Foudre continued as Aachen and Burtscheid fell quickly to the French army, with 90,000 troops marching through the streets disarming citizens.  Eupen and Malmedy fell on the 17th, and with their rush, Koblenz fell on the 20th.

Within a month, France had conquered Rhineland, Westphalia, Alsace-Lorraine, and most of Hesse, while the Netherlands capitulated without a fight and agreed to French annexation.  Poland took upper Silesia, Posen, and had managed to capture Danzig by October 3rd.  Within another 3 weeks, East Prussia fell to the Polish, who marched into Königsberg on the 21st, raising the Polish flag at the royal residence.

Much of the German Army had to fight a withdrawal action, moving closer and closer in the interior towards Berlin, being closed in on both sides by the French and Polish.  About 67,000 German troops were killed by the invading nations, with over 130,000 more being captured, and the remaining troops fighting a rearguard action closer and closer to Berlin.

Morale was falling in the army, when Minister President Reichhart von Amerling, a dedicated national socialist in the minority party of Pomerania, and his force of 80,000 national socialists in a militia, surrounded Berlin and declared the monarchy over, and the founding of the new republic of Germany on November 18.

The fascist flag was raised over the Reichstag building:


The royal family fled Berlin in an airlift that resulted in the deaths of 45 Luftstreitkräfte pilots and eight cousins of the Kaiser as they escaped north to Denmark, then to London.

By the end of December, Poland and France had divided up Germany, in agreement with the President von Amerling:
-land east of the Oder River from Pomerania, the Frankfurt Regierungbezirk, and east, including Silesia, Posen, East and West Prussia would be annexed to Poland and polonized
-Bavaria and Wurttember would join Austria, despite it not being an aggressor, and their monarchies abolished
-Schleswig-Holstein, Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Baden, Hanover, Westphalia, Rhineland, both Hessian states, the Palatinate, and Alsace-Lorraine to France
-the remnant portion of Germany, namely Saxony, Prussian Saxony and Anhalt, Thuringia, western Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, and part of Pomerania would become the Social Republic of Germany.





Britain declared war on both France and Poland on the 11th of September, 1939, soon followed by the rest of the empire (Canada, Patagonia, Australia, New Zealand, Rhodesia, South Africa, Kenya, and the rest of the empire) before year's end.

Chapter 43: The War to End All Wars is Begun

Dixie Volunteers

Everyone was outraged at the attack from the south, and recruiting stations were suddenly overwhelmed with recruits - black, white, hispanic, asian, men, and women - all wanting to sign up and beat back the invasion from Mexico.

One recruiting station of many across the Confederacy in December 1941 and January 1942

Within weeks, over 300,000 Confederates signed up, of which over 121,000 were black.  Everyone was affected by the attack and wanted to save their country.  Training was made a quick 6-weeks and people were shipped off to the southern border to beat back Mexico, while Davis, the capital, concentrated its efforts at striking back at Japan and fighting in Europe as well.  Notably, because of a law requiring college-educated to be taken to OCS, several thousand black sailors became officers, several years before the United States would follow suit.  Hundreds of Hispanic, Asian, Indian, and Asian Indian Confederates would also become officers in the Army, Navy, and Marines.

By the end of 1941, the Confederate Army had surged to 896,000 persons, 174,200 in the Navy, and 33,290 in the Marine Corps, with 55,000 in the Coast Guard.  Women were authorized for service in non-combat roles, often becoming nurses, secretaries, and even welders and construction workers in the Women's Army Corps.  Though they expected maybe 75,000 women at most, recruiters were stunned at receiving, by June 1942, about 155,000 women for work as nurses, switchboard operators, air traffic controllers, mechanics, bakers, and other non-combat roles, freeing up men for front-line combat.


Women OTC class in Houston, TX

Orders for airplanes were scrambled with new designs being requested to counter the jets from Mexico.  Several hundred Sidney Aeronautics SA2 single-engine fighters were rushed south to try to push the Mexicans out while new jets were being built.


SA-2 Confederate Jet flying south in late 1941.



Southern Attacks

On the 17th of December, Mexico began an air raid on the city of Durango, successfully bombing the capital from the air as well as the tank force on the ground.  Mexico was running supply lines in through the mountains and deserts, and managed to reach Tepic, Jefferson, by the 16th as well.  Its army, which had swelled in the late 1930s to 1.75 million persons, a very high percentage of its population, was on the move and intent on reclaiming its historic lands, called the "Reconquista."


Thousands of such images of cities and towns in the southwest destroyed by Mexican attacks are available.

Calvillo militiamen put up a brave fight, but after suffering 28 dead, they were forced to surrender the town to the Mexicans.  Tabasco, Jalpa, and Juchipila followed suit after some resistance.  Bucerias, Santa Rosa, and Sayulita were captured by Mexico before Christmas.  In every town captured, Mexicans disarmed the people, removed Confederate flags, raised Mexican flags to symbolize their control

On the 19th of December, the Battle of Tepic resulted in a fight between 90 Confederate fighters against 200 Mexicans.  Confederates shot down 49, while losing 37 themselves and withdrawing for refueling.  

Wright Aeronautics over in North Carolina expanded production of its P41 with an order of 500, and sent another 40 west to fight Mexico on the 17th.

Wright P41 fighter, with propeller-mounted gun.

The Sky Tiger P42 was also ramped up for service, with an initial order of 400 units.

The Sky Tiger and the Mustang, two popular fighter gets of the war.

In the east, Tampico fell to the Mexican invasion force, with its long range cannons, tank battalions, and aerial bombardment on the 21st of December.  Altamira fell on the same day.  Rio Grande State Guard units were mobilized and sent southeast, resulting in the Battle of Gonzalez on the 23rd.  Four thousand Confederates of the Rio Grande State Guard, led by Brigadier General Joseph Cleary, grandson of the Colonel who led a regiment in General Johnston's Army of Tennessee.  For over 14 hours, troops fought in and around the town of Gonzalez, while from the west, several large booms were heard coming from Ciudad Mante.  The Mexican army under Lt. General Jose Perez had 14,000 attacking the large city the same day.

On the 24th, Ciudad Mante fell, despite a 2000-strong guard unit defending the city.  With losses of around 690, they withdrew late Christmas Eve.  This was the most somber Christmas in the Confederacy since 1864.  Mexico was invading and moving north, in control of Hot Springs and Saint Louis, and moving towards Victoria City, Durango, and Mazatlan, then on to Saltillo, Monterrey, Torreon, and to the Rio Grande.


Mexican progress as of December 24

State Guard units were flooded with volunteers, the only roadblock being the time needed to train the recruits.  Time was running out, and State Guard units were understaffed in comparison to what was needed to stop Mexico.

Mexican progress as of December 31

Hispanic Confederates

Across the southwest Confederacy, thousands upon thousands of Hispanic Confederates were split on the issue.  They were often proud of their heritage, often with Mexican background, or Central American, but at the same time, over 80% of them spoke English as a first language at home, their grandparents being the ones who spoke Spanish, and many didn't look all that different from any given white Confederate, other than their names.  They were tied to Dixie, and loved it, and cherished its freedoms and wanted to stop the Mexican attack on their homes, for which many believed they were innocent of any wrongdoing.  Many of these southwestern Hispanics changed their names to avoid suspicions, and the rumoured round-ups that the US were doing.  Pedro became Peter; Jaime became James; Miguel became Michael, and so on.  Many quietly began attending Protestant churches, as many Catholic churches were suspected of being meeting places for Mexican agents, though Davis did not shut down any churches, as the states were adamant on protecting themselves from federal encroachment.  Many Mexican flags that were displayed within homes or on people's yards quickly came down and were replaced with Confederate flags.

Like Hispanic Confederates, Asian Confederates signed up in droves after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Thousands of Japanese Confederates and Chinese Confederates signed up to defend Dixie from attack.  Among the higher-ups, many of these Confederates were worried about their possible divided loyalties, and started sending Asian Confederates south to defeat Mexico first.

In all, about 190,000 Hispanic Confederates signed up by the end of 1941, and 118,000 Asian Confederates as well.  Oklahomans were also particularly eager to sign up, despite their lower populations.

Black Confederates

The status of black Confederates was much different from their cousins up in the United States.  Many were in the lower to middle middle class, and almost every one had an intact family unit.  Strong communities were built up with vibrant black businessmen in all areas of life.  Literacy was over 95%, high school graduation rates were over 90%, and many had technical or vocational degrees, and some had college degrees.  Officers in the army, navy, and marines were black, but were often among the last to be promoted, while NCOs were often times black with no issues.  Trains, bathrooms, lunch counters, water fountains, buses, streetcars, none of them were segregated, as some attempts to try in the 1890s resulted in massive losses to the businesses who attempted to imitate Chicago's and Detroit's segregation laws when their customers, black Confederates, stopped riding.  States banned segregation shortly thereafter, and within 15 years, black Confederates had gained the right to vote through peaceful protest of state laws which hindered the vote.  As of the 1940s, minor state offices were often held by black Confederates, but no state had positions such as Secretary of State or Treasury open to blacks; sheriffs and many police positions were often open to black Confederates, however.  Some states had at least 1 or 2 representatives to Davis who were black at this point in time, unlike the United States.  Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, and Missouri each have 1-3 black representatives, and Arkansas has 1 also.

Sick Soldiers Spur Medical Interventions and Agricultural Innovations

Soldiers from various places meeting meant that they inevitably got sick with all the various viruses and bacteria from different parts of the country.  The United States began to vaccinate their soldiers, while southern doctors and medical experts began recommending high doses of vitamin C, D, and as it was recently discovered in Newport News, zinc, especially from seafood like oysters.  

Every soldier had a diet that included citrus fruits, salmon, tuna, potatoes, and other items known to be high in nutritional content, which boosted immunity such that they didn't need to vaccinate their soldiers during the war.  However, promotional materials made it to the farmers that there was a danger of farm produce being low in trace minerals.  Several local compost combines sprang up around the Confederacy to help grow produce, and helped spur return of minerals and nutrients to the farms.  Composting became popular again and especially in the cities, with composters collecting uncooked vegetable waste, eggshells, and other compostable materials to such an extent that farms had a surplus of compost and were able to expand their production.  People across the south began growing, at the urging of their states' secretaries of state, 'Victory Gardens' with the extra compost so that there would be enough food for the troops, and there wouldn't be another experience like the War of '61.

Since the confederation's government couldn't put out propaganda, the individual states put out posters for people to recycle metal to be turned into bullets and tanks, use compost and grow victory gardens and save seeds for the soldiers, and to wash hands thoroughly and clean houses regularly to promote healthy indoor living.  With the push for indoor cleaning, something done already but given an extra push publicly, a number of new cleaners took off, with various lavender, orange, and lemongrass scents using common natural ingredients for soap, shampoo, conditioner, general purpose cleaners, floor cleaners, laundry detergent, and others.

Unlike the US push for vaccines for immunity, southern doctors simply pushed for healthy eating and getting sunshine by growing your own food, and clean water (via boiling it or using a filter), and multivitamins being developed by scientists in Nashville, Richmond, and Atlanta.

London Blitzed

Launched from Mont Violette, Greny, and Beaumont-Hague, starting in September of 1940, French aircraft launched the bombing of London.  The French dropped bombs night after night on the capital city.  With the aid of radio navigation devices from those cities and several others, bombers were able to navigate safely across the channel and reach their target.  This would soon be countered with the discovery of the French navigation beam coming from the town of Derby, and soon, the use of radar would be critical to the readiness of London.



Anti-aircraft guns in Hyde Park; damage from the air raids over London


Liverpool bombing damage as of March 1941

By March, Belfast, Dublin, Hull, and Cardiff were hit, and by the end of the air raid, 41,000 people were killed, and 139,000 injured.  The French Air Force lost 2,265 aircraft over the British Isles, 3,393 airmen were killed, 2641 missing, and 2117 wounded.  In total 45,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the United Kingdom, and French submarines were able to sink some 58,000 tons of shipping, and damaging 450,000 tons more.

The result of this was of the Confederate States declaring itself the 'Breadbasket of Freedom,' and the 'Arsenal of Liberty,' its Merchant Marine vessels now being armed and owners taking it upon themselves to add armor plating to their own ships in various places, of varying effectiveness, and the armed escorting of Confederate ships to deter French aggression in the Atlantic.  President Peery promised the confederation at this point (late 1940) that he would not send the Confederacy into a European war.  The Confederate Merchant Marine sent hundreds of thousands of tons to Ireland and England, keeping them fed and armed during this time, though it would be a matter of time before France would decide to attack.

Lithuania Sold Out

In a secret agreement with the USSR in April 1941, Poland, already having moved into Germany, was given Lithuania by the USSR in exchange for free export at Danzig and a non-aggression treaty.  Over 120,000 Polish troops marched in and took over the Baltic nation in late April, diminishing only when they knew that they could occupy the nation with fewer men.

It is about this time when Lithuanian Jews and Polish Jews, all speaking Yiddish with one another, began working together, passing information and seeing what the Polish intended to do.  Shortly thereafter, rumors of Jewish Poles as 'traitors' began circulating, and Polish soldiers began looking at them more closely as 1941 wore on.

Work Camps in Europe

In both Polish and French occupied Europe, work camps were set up to help supply critical war materials.  In France, with their lower population than the Germans, targeted first gypsies, as 'outsiders,' and soon people who by nature of their relationships, wouldn't have children.  In Oświęcim, a work camp was set up to make weaponry, boots, clothes, and other items needed for troops, and it was first staffed with similar 'outsiders,' then those who wouldn't bear children in their relationships, and soon, Jewish Poles began filling camps, alongside Germans in Poland.  Germans in occupied Germany were put to work on farms as labor to keep the Polish armies fed, often facing cruel taskmasters and getting subsistence rations.  When their caloric requirements weren't met and they began collapsing, only then did they get additional food and rest so as to keep up their value as labor.

Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, and Chelmno all had work camps established in 1941.  Soon, Poles targeted political opponents as well, purging much of their regime of opposition to the political party's actions.  France established work camps in Cologne, Hinzert, Straßburg, Metz, Nancy, Pithiviers, Vernet, Niederhagen, Düsseldorf, Brussels, and near Luxembourg City, over a wide area to try to help supplies be both dispersed to avoid sabotage and enemy destruction, but also close to the front where it was needed.  Often, the French would put communists in the camps first, with little care for their well-being, followed by gypsies, cripples, those who wouldn't have children in their chosen relationships, and when Jewish Germans began forming their own committees of correspondence, Jews began going into the camps as well.

The Resistance

Robert Hammond, George Hammond, and Roy Hammond, three Texan Germans who had gone to Germany in 1937 for work found themselves in 1941 as foreigners in an occupied nation.  Robert was over in Cologne, deep in the French zone, while George lived in Frankfurt an der Oder, but often commuted to Berlin on the train, living in the Polish-occupied area, but working in the capital of collaborationist Germany.  Roy, the youngest, was over in Breslau, now called Wrocław by the occupiers.  Travel between the zones was getting difficult but they all were able to meet in Brunswick, which reminded them of home, as their grandparents lived in Brunswick, Georgia and they loved the town when they weren't on their ranch in Texas.

"I wish I could just grab my rifle," said George, "but the government's rounding up guns.  Everyone who has one is going on a registry to be taken."
"Dang socialists," said Robert.  "Taking guns just like Lincoln did!"
"Well if'n they don't take your guns, they can't shoot you later, now can they?" Roy said, getting a laugh out of his two brothers. 

"Now the question is what do we do?  Go back to Dixie and join up?"
"I don't know," replied George.  "Can we sneak out of the country?"
"Perhaps not," Roy answered.  "But maybe we can help slow them down and get some information back to the boys in gray to try to help end the war."

"Sounds like you're wantin' us to become a resistance or something," Robert said to his little brother, proudly.
"If not us, who?  If not now, when?" Roy replied.  "Besides, if we don't stand here, the French and Poles will come for Dixie.  Maybe we can show the Germans how not to bend over to the government and stand up for their rights."

"They have a lot to learn about rights," Robert scoffed.  "We oughtta rewrite their constitution for them."
"There's time for that later," George said.  "Now let's come up with a plan and see whom we can trust."

Working into the night, the three brothers came up with little ways to sabotage the French, Poles, and collaborationist Germans.  Tires would go flat, the electric grid would blow, food would be diverted to resistance or civilians who weren't collaborators.  Information would flow about troop movements through radio messages in secret transmitters, or at drops via strips of paper wrapped into pens or any number of ways.

Soon, Robert, George, and Roy found German girlfriends, Ingrid, Julia, and Charlotte, who were fascinated by their strength and willingness to fight for Germany, unlike a number of Germans who passively submitted to authority.  Other Texan and Rio Grande Germans who were either at university or working in Germany brought to life a real resistance, identified by their accents or by little items of decoration on their clothes.  Native Germans were angry at the occupation and the collaboration government in Berlin, and Steffi Dhom, Johannes Hubner, and others were already resisting in their own way, but their Texan friends helped them organize and begin a real resistance.  Cells developed across Germany of three people, and never more, who would know only one other contact so they could never give up the group.  Most socialists and communists would collaborate, but some would join the resistance, and their socialist/communist leanings would diminish in conversations with resistance members.  Tales of the resistances would go on to make movies for decades after the war.  Civilians would later claim to be part of the resistance, so as to avoid being called a collaborator (and hence a traitor) to Germany.

New Weaponry

While France was consolidating its gains in the Rhineland, it came upon an interesting set of blueprints for a flying bomb that used a pulsed jet engine, dated several years prior.  In 1940, this was filed away as nice, but nothing necessary, but as the air raid on England wound down in 1941, and France's occupation of western Germany was solidified, including its valuable industrial areas in the Rhineland and Westphalia, General Marie-Pierre Kœnig remembered something about a self-guided bomb, and rediscovered the device.  Immediately he ordered the construction of prototypes and began capturing German scientists with advanced skills that could help make this rocket a reality.  One such scientist, Wernher von Braun, was shuttled to Cologne and then Straßburg to work on French rocketry tests.  He would be the first of hundreds.

Luckily, some scientists were able to escape before the French invasion, such as a man named Albert Einstein, who settled in Nashville, in the heart of the Confederate scientific community.

Chapter 45: The War in 1943

Force Synchronization

Once the Americans and Confederates resolved to work together, they needed to unify some of their structures and forces.  One area was to match terminology and size of forces.  A lot of Confederates were worried this was a prelude to a reunification with the United States, and a loss of state sovereignty, but the fears were unfounded.

From Largest to Smallest:
*Theater/Region - 4+ army groups - General of the Army or Fleet Admiral (*****)
*Front/Army Group - 2+ field armies - General / Admiral (****)
*Field Army - 100K-300K - General (****)
*Corps - 30K-50K - Lieutenant General (***)
*Division - 10K–25K - Major General (**)
*Regiment/Brigade - 1000-5000 - Brigadier General (*), Colonel
*Battalion - 300-800 - Lieutenant Colonel, Major
*Company / Battery/ Squadron - 80-150 - Major, Captain, 1st Lieutenant
*Platoon /
Troop - 15-45 - Lieutenant, 1st LT, 2nd LT
*Squad /
Section - 5-14 - Staff Sergeant, Sergeant, Corporal
*Fireteam - 2 - 4 - Corporal, Lance Corporal

Rifles, handguns, and artillery were unified as was ammunition, so that either side of the 37° parallel could supply both armies and navies.  Many medals and awards were awarded on both sides throughout the war.  Despite the unification, uniforms remained distinct as ever.

US Navy had khaki, dress white, dress blues
CS Navy had steel gray, along with butternut (slightly different from khaki), and dress white
US Army had olive drab service dress
CS Army had cadet gray service dress
US Marines had forest green service uniform, and dark/light blue dress uniform
CS Marines had the cadet gray uniform with dark blue trousers, and a dress uniform of Richmond Gray, like the Army, but with dark blue trousers.

Both Americans and Confederate unified much of their tanks, artillery, and aircraft, along with naval vessels.  Both Americans and Confederates built and fielded the Mustang, the B-17, the B29, and other airplanes, though with minor modifications.

The B-17G, in US markings

As an example, the US let the B-17 fly with a silver, shiny bare skin, while the Confederates painted theirs a two-tone scheme so as to reduce the chance of glare.  The bottoms were painted Richmond Gray, a sort of dark-blue-gray, while the tops were painted browns and greens (from 1942-1943) and Richmond Gray (1943-1945).

Regardless of nation, pilots painted 'nose art' to inspire them and motivate them, often in the form of 'pinup' girls.

A B-29, named "Southern Belle," one example of nose art found on most airplanes.

Russian Jews Go East

Beginning in the 1920s, the Jewish people in Russia had troubles in Russia.  The religion itself ran counter to the athetistic policy of the Bolshevik party, but Vlademir Lenin, the leader of the nation in the 1920s, wanted to appease minorities in the USSR to gain their support and provide examples of tolerance to improve the international appeal of the USSR.  The unemployment rate of Jews ran over 30% by 1924 due to Soviet pogroms and policies which prohibited people from being craftsmen and small businessmen.  During the 20s, the Soviets established Komzet, a committee for the agricultural settlement of Jews, which sought to resettle Soviet Jews into a designated Jewish territory as an alternative to Zionism, and allow them to pursue a lifestyle that would be "socialist in content and national in form."  Socialist Zionists like Ber Borochov were gaining followers, and Zionism was a rival ideology to Marxism amongst Jews.  The initial location chosen was Crimea in the 1920s, which already had a large Jewish population, and two Jewish districts (rajons or counties) were made in Crimea and three in south Ukraine.

The Soviets eventually decided to have Birobidzhan, a 'Jewish Autonomous Oblast,' over in the east, as the new site for their Jewish population, surprising Komzet.  The area was chosen for both military and economic reasons.  China often invaded the area, and Japan threatened the region now in the 1930s.  There were only 30,000 people in the area, mostly the descendants of the Tran-Baikal Cossaks who were resettled there by tsarist authorities in the past, along with minorities of Koreans, Kazakhs, and Tungusic peoples.  Given this vulnerable and lightly defended border, the Soviets wanted to strengthen the Far East.  But Stalin designated it as an autonomous district, not an autonomous republic, meaning it would have no local legislature, high court, or ministerial government posts, keeping it under tight control.

On March 28th, 1928, the Presidium of the General Executive Committee of the USSR passed a decree "On the attaching for Komzet of free territory near the Amur River in the Far East for settlement of the working Jews." The decree meant "a possibility of establishment of a Jewish administrative territorial unit on the territory of the called region".  The new territory was initially called the Birobidzhan Jewish National Raion.



Settlers found a harsh landscape and climate when they arrived.  The area was mountainous, covered with virgin forests and swamplands, meaning that new settlers would need to rebuild their lives from scratch.  To entice more settlers, the Soviets allowed private land ownership.  In the spring of 1928, 654 Jews arrive to settle, but by October, almost half had left due to the severe conditions.  In that summer, torrential rains flooded the crops, and an outbreak of anthrax killed the cattle.


On May 7, 1934, the Presidium of the General Executive Committee accepted the decree on its transformation into the Jewish Autonomous Region within the Russian SFSR. In 1938, with formation of the Khabarovsk Territory, the Jewish Autonomous Region was included in its structure.  Settlement continued slowly, with the 1939 census recording 17,695 Jews (16% of the total population).  Some of the early settlements, like Valdgeym (1928), Amurzet (1929), and Smidovich, were founded and grew during this time.  

To help settlement, the Organization for Jewish Colonisation in the Soviet Union, a Jewish Communist organization in North America, successfully encouraged the immigration of some US residents, bringing about 1,200 non-Soviet Jews chose to settle in Birobidzhan.  As the Jewish population grew, so did the impact of Yiddish culture on the region. The settlers established a Yiddish newspaper, the Birobidzhaner Shtern; a theater troupe was created; and streets being built in the new city were named after prominent Yiddish authors like Sholom Aleichem and I. L. Peretz.

Once the war started, a number of Polish Jews were captured by the Soviets and asked to be taken as prisoners to escape from their 'work' as soldiers, along with Byelorussian and Ukrainian Jews, many of whom offered service in the Soviet Army, while many were relocated voluntarily to Birobidzhan in the Far East, including many Soviet conscripted soldiers who moved east to defend from Japanese invasion.  By 1943, about the time of the high point of the join French-Polish invasion, despite the Soviet-Japanese Non-Aggression Pact, roughly 250,000 additional Jews were moved east, of which 112,000 were soldiers, all of which were either Byelorussian, Ukrainian, Polish, Lithuanian, and Russian.  While intending to aid forming a join identity, the mixing of these four nationalities did cause much tension in the area.  The joint loyalty to the Soviet army and the speaking of Yiddish helped maintain order for the most part in the far-east region.  During the rest of the war, around 2 million Jews would be resettled to the oblast.

Battle of the Coral Sea (1942)

The battle was a joint effort by the Americans, Confederates, and Australians, with the Australians under Vice Admiral John Crase, the Confederates under Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz (TX), and Americans under Admiral Frank Fletcher. There was initial tension between the Republican President, Robert Taft, and the Confederate President, George Peery, given that it was a Republican President, Lincoln, who invaded the Confederate States 80 years prior, and Confederates flat-out refused to be under American command throughout the whole war in Europe or the Pacific. A compromise was reached wherein the Americans or the Confederates would have operational control over individual battles depending on the forces deployed, and strategic objectives, but the control of the War in the Pacific would be a joint affair where neither the Americans or Confederates would exercise sole control over the other.

Perhaps as a 'passive aggressive' jab at the Americans they would be working with, Confederate sailors and marines all began wearing, without initial authorization, the state battle flag of their home states on their right shoulders.  Soon this shoulder patch would be authorized for wear on all uniforms of the Confederate Armed Forces (Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Marines, and the then-current Army Air Force), which had before simply worn the Battle Flag on the right shoulder and on the left, a brigade-level patch, originating in the 17th Infantry Division out of Fort Jackson in South Carolina, which wore a 'Wildcat' patch starting in World War 1.




Virginian right shoulder patch

Confederates were very proud of their states, and wanted to show both their unity as Confederates, and their love of their home states, leading to the use of these emblems on their uniforms.

The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought from 4–8 May 1942, was a major naval battle between the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and naval and air forces from the Confederate States, United States, and Australia, taking place in the Pacific Theater of World War II. The battle is considered historically significant as the first action in which aircraft carriers engaged each other, as well as the first in which the opposing ships neither sighted nor fired directly upon one another.

In an attempt to strengthen their defensive position in the South Pacific, the Japanese decided to invade and occupy Port Moresby (in New Guinea) and Tulagi (in the southeastern British Solomon Islands). The plan to accomplish this was called Operation Mo, and involved several major units of Japan's Combined Fleet. These included two fleet carriers and a light carrier to provide air cover for the invasion forces, under the overall command of Japanese Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue.  The Allies learned of the Japanese plan through signals intelligence, by use of Confederate code-breakers, and a joint CS-US Navy task force, and a joint US-CS-Australian cruiser force to oppose the offensive.  The entire group was under the overall command of C.S. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz.

On May 3rd to 4th, the Japanese forces had successfully invaded and occupied Tulagi, though several of their supporting warships were either sunk or damaged in surprise attacks by aircraft from the C.S. fleet carrier Yorktown.  Now that they were aware of the presence of Confederate carriers in the area, the Japanese fleet carriers advanced towards the Coral Sea to try to locate and to destroy Allied naval forces.  On the evening of May 6th, both sides chose a direction for air searches within 81 miles (70 nautical miles) of each other, unknown to either side.  Beginning the next day, the 7th, the carrier forces of both sides engaged in air strikes for two days.  The first day, both sides thought they were attacking their enemy's fleet carriers, but were actually attacking other units; the C.S. sank the Japanese light carrier Shōhō, while the Japanese sank a Confederate oiler and a US destroyer.  With both sides suffering heavy losses in aircraft and damaged or sunken carriers, they disengaged and retired from the battle area.  Due to loss of carrier air cover, Inoue recalled his Port Moresby invasion fleet to try again later.

Tactically this was a victory for the Japanese in terms of the number of ships sunk, though it was a strategic victory for the Allies.  For them, it was the first time since the start of the war (for them in December 1941) that a major Japanese advance had been checked by the Allied powers.  Two Japanese fleet carriers, Shōkaku and Zuikaku, the former damaged and the latter with a depleted aircraft complement, were unable to participate in the Battle of Midway the following month, while CSS Yorktown did participate, ensuring a rough parity in the number of aircraft between the two opponents and contributing significantly to the C.S. victory in that battle.  Two months later, the Allies would take advantage of the resulting strategic vulnerability of the Japanese in the South Pacific and launch the Guadalcanal Campaign.  This, along with the New Guinea Campaign, eventually broke Japanese defenses in the South Pacific, and would be a significant contributing factor to the ultimate surrender of Japan.

Allies:
Confederates
2 fleet carriers
2 heavy cruisers
7 destroyers
2 oilers
88 aircraft

Americans 
5 heavy cruisers
1 light cruiser
7 destroyers
60 aircraft

Axis:
Japan 
2 fleet carriers
1 light carrier
6 heavy cruisers
3 light cruisers
15 destroyers
5 minesweepers
2 minelayers
2 submarine chasers
3 gunboats
1 oiler
1 seaplane tender
12 transport ships
139 aircraft

Casualties:
Allies
659 killed
1 fleet carrier sunk
1 destroyer sunk
1 oiler sunk
1 fleet carrier damaged
69 aircraft destroyed

Axis:
966 killed
1 light carrier sunk
1 destroyer sunk
3 minesweepers sunk
1 fleet carrier damaged
1 destroyer damaged
1 transport damaged
69–97 aircraft destroyed


CSS Yorktown, damaged at the Battle of the Coral Sea.  Its sister ship, the CSS Lexington, was sunk

Battle of Midway (June 4-7, 1942)


US Dive Bombers on approach during the Battle of Midway

The C.S. Navy under Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and U.S. Navy under Admirals Frank J. Fletcher and Raymond A. Spruance defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chūichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondō near Midway Atoll, inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet that proved irreparable to them. 


The Japanese operation, like the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor, hoped to eliminate the Confederate States and United States as strategic powers in the Pacific, thereby giving Japan a free hand in establishing its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Japanese hoped that another demoralizing defeat would force the C.S. and possibly the U.S. to capitulate in the Pacific War and thus ensure Japanese dominance in the Pacific. Luring the Confederate and American aircraft carriers into a trap and occupying Midway was part of an overall "barrier" strategy to extend Japan's defensive perimeter, in response to the Doolittle air raid on Tokyo. This operation was also considered preparatory for further attacks against Fiji, Samoa, and Hawaii itself.



Japan's expansion as of April 1942, and their planned expansion into the Pacific


The plan was handicapped by faulty Japanese assumptions of the Confederate and American reactions and poor initial dispositions. Most significantly, Confederate cryptographers were able to determine the date and location of the planned attack, enabling the forewarned C.S. Navy to prepare its own ambush. Four Japanese and three Confederate and American aircraft carriers participated in the battle. The four Japanese fleet carriers (Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū and Hiryū), part of the six-carrier force that had attacked Pearl Harbor six months earlier, were sunk, as was the heavy cruiser Mikuma. The C.S. lost the carrier CSS Yorktown and the U.S. lost destroyer USS Hammann.



USS Hammann


After Midway and the exhausting attrition of the Solomon Islands campaign, Japan's capacity to replace its losses in men (especially well-trained pilots and the associated maintenance crewmen) and materiel (particularly aircraft carriers) rapidly grew insufficient to cope with mounting casualties, while the Confederate States' massive industrial and training capabilities made losses far easier to replace, as were those of the United States. The Battle of Midway, along with the Guadalcanal campaign, is widely considered a turning point in the Pacific War.

The choice of Midway, an island 1300 miles or so away from Oahu, was made by Yamamoto because it was outside the effective range of almost all Confederate aircraft then stationed on the main Hawaiian Islands.  While not especially important in the larger scheme of Japan's plans for the Pacific, they did feel it would be considered a vital outpost by the Confederates and they would have to defend it, forcing a battle.  The C.S. did consider Midway vital - after the battle, the C.S. Navy established a submarine base on the island to allow their submarine forces to operate from Pearl Harbor and then refuel and re-provision there, extending their operational radius by another 1200 miles.  In addition to serving as a seaplane base, Midway would also have airstrips to serve as a forward staging point for bomber attacks on Wake Island.


Midway a few months before the battle


CSS Yorktown at Pearl Harbor, a few days before the battle

Before the battle, Confederate Admiral Nimitz had one critical advantage, namely that CS cryptanalysts had partially broken the Japanese Nay's JN-25 encryption code, and had been decoding messages since early 1942 that there would be an operation at 'AF.'  No one knew where 'AF' was, but Commander Joseph Edward Johnston and his team at Station HYPO were able to confirm that it would be Midway.  Captain William Pike devised a ruse to say that Midway's water purification system was broken down via uncoded radio message through their supposedly secure undersea cable, and within 24 hours, the code breakers found a Japanese message saying "AF was short on water."  None of the Japanese radio operators who intercepted that message appeared to be concerned that the Confederates were broadcasting uncoded about a major naval installation close to the Japanese threat having a water shortage, which could've tipped off Japanese intelligence officers that it was deliberate deception.

HYPO was also able to determine the date of the attack as either 4 or 5 June, and to provide Nimitz with a complete IJN order of battle.


Japan did have a new codebook, but its introduction was delayed, enabling HYPO to read messages for several crucial days; the new code, which took several days to be cracked, came into use on 24 May, but the important breaks had already been made by Americans and Confederates.  As a result of these important breakthroughs, the Confederates entered the battle with a good picture of where, when, and in what strength the Japanese would appear. Nimitz knew that the Japanese had negated their numerical advantage by dividing their ships into four separate task groups, too widely separated to be able to support each other. This dispersal resulted in few fast ships being available to escort the Carrier Striking Force, reducing the number of anti-aircraft guns protecting the carriers. Nimitz calculated that the aircraft on his three carriers, plus those on Midway Island, gave the C.S. rough parity with Yamamoto's four carriers, mainly because Confederate carrier air groups were larger than Japanese ones. The Japanese, by contrast, remained mainly unaware of their opponent's true strength and dispositions even after the battle began.


Battle Movements


CSS Enterprise before battle

Confederate Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, needed every available flight deck to battle the enemy who was expected to have four or five carriers.  He already had the Confederate Vice Admiral William Halsey's two-carrier (Enterprise and Hornet) task-force on hand, but he then recalled American Rear Admiral Frank Fletcher's task force from the Southwest Pacific Area, which included the Confederate CSS Yorktown.  Despite the initial estimates that the Yorktown would need several months of repairs due to damage from the Battle of the Coral Sea, her elevators and flight deck were intact, and Pearl Harbor worked around the clock to repair her.  Within 72 hours, she was battle-ready, enough for two to three weeks of operations, which is what Nimitz required of her.  Her flight deck was patched up, and whole sections of the internal frames were cut out and replaced.  Even while she sortied, repairs continued from the USS Vestal, the repair ship assigned to her, which had also been damaged at Pearl Harbor.


Yorktown's own depleted air group was rebuilt with whichever planes and pilots they could find.  VS-5 scouts were replaces with Bombing Three (VB-3) from the USS Saratoga.  Torpedo 5 (VT-5) were replaced with Torpedo 3 (VT-3), and so on.  They tried to get the Saratoga ready, but she was unable to reach Midway till after the battle.  By June 4th, the C.S. Navy had stationed 31 aircraft in 4 squadrons of PBYs for long-range reconnaissance, along with 6 new Wright Aeronautics Avengers.

Wright Aeronautics Avengers, used by the CS and US Navies; Wildcats, flown more by Confederates and British, but also by the US.

Beginning in February of 1943, aircraft design was unified between the US and CS forces so as to reduce spare part issues and ease maintenance training.  Wright Aeronautics became one of the chief suppliers of the war from North Carolina and its plants in Arizona and Baja California, while Douglas and other companies in the US also played a role.  Dauntless, Wildcats, Vindicators, and Buffalos all flew in the battle, as well as 17 B-17 Bombers and 4 Martin B-26 Marauders with torpedoes, giving 126 aircraft.

In the early morning on June 4th, four Japanese aircraft carriers attacked and severely damaged the Confederate base on Midway, but unknown to them, the Joint Carrier Force was just east of the island, and ready for battle.  Once their initial attack had finished, the Japanese aircraft returned to their carriers to refuel and rearm.  While they did this, their navy became aware of the Confederate-American naval forces in the area.

Torpedo bombers and dive bombers launched from the CSS Yorktown, CSS Enterprise, and USS Hornet attacked the Japanese fleet, hitting and setting fire to the Akagi, Soryu, and Kaga, which had to be abandoned by their crews.  The only surviving carrier, the Hiryu, responded with two waves of attacks, both of which struck the CSS Yorktown, leaving it severely damaged, but still floating.  That afternoon, a scout plane from Yorktown found the Hiryu, and Enterprise sent its dive-bombers in to attack, which left the Hiryu burning, unable to launch aircraft, and finally sinking into the ocean.

For the next two days, Confederate and American troops at sea and on Midway continued the attack, forcing the Japanese to retreat in defeat.  They lost over 3000 men, 4 carriers, 1 cruiser, and hundreds of aircraft.  The joint US-CS fleet lost together 412 men, 1 carrier, 1 destroyer, and 149 aircraft.  This victory would be critical to halting the growth of Japan's empire and put the Confederates and Americans in a position to begin pushing back against them.

After the battle, three US airmen were captured, interrogated, and killed by the Japanese by tying water-filled kerosene cans to them and throwing them overboard.  Two Japanese prisoners from the Mikuma were rescued from their life raft on June 9 by the CSS Rattlesnake and brought to Pearl Harbor.  They received medical care, and one of them cooperated during his interrogation by providing intelligence.  Another 35 from the Hiryu were taken from their lifeboat by the USS Ballard on June 19, brought to Midway, and then transferred to the Confederate Naval Base at Pearl Harbor on the USS Sirius.

Joint US-CS forces stopped pursuit around Wake Island, which helped prevent being overwhelmed by Japanese surface units like the Yamato.  The Japanese changed a number of procedures as a result of their loss.  Aircraft were refueled and rearmed on the flight deck instead of the hangers, and all unused fuel lines were drained.  New carriers being built were redesigned to have only 2 flight deck elevators and new firefighting equipment.  More crew on the carriers were trained in damage-control and firefighting, and replacement pilots were put through an abbreviated training schedule to meet the short-term needs of the fleet.  Unfortunately, this led to an obvious sharp decline in the quality of pilots, who were fed into the front line, while veterans who were still alive after Midway had an increased workload as their conditions grew more desperate, with few having the chance to rest on the home islands or in the rear areas away from the fight.  Due to these, the Japanese naval air groups deteriorated overall through the war while Confederate and American forces continued to improve.

Allies:
Confederates
2 fleet carriers
5 heavy cruisers
1 light cruiser
8 destroyers
200 aircraft
10 submarines

Americans 
1 fleet carrier
2 heavy cruisers
1 light cruiser
7 destroyers
150 aircraft
6 submarines

Axis:
Japan 
4 fleet carriers
2 battleships
6 heavy cruisers
1 light cruiser
14 destroyers
276 aircraft

Casualties:
Allies
409 killed
3 captured
1 fleet carrier sunk
1 destroyer sunk
149 aircraft destroyed

Axis:
3,057 killed
37 captured
4 fleet carriers sunk
1 heavy cruiser sunk
1 heavy cruiser damaged
248 aircraft destroyed

Guadalcanal Campaign

From August of 1942 to February of 1943, the Americans, British, Germans, and Confederates fought in the first land and naval campaign against the Japanese. Landing on the 7th of August, the Confederate Marine Corps, along with their Yankee counterparts, landed on the islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Florida in the British Solomon Islands.

The Guadalcanal campaign, also called the Battle of Guadalcanal (Codename: Operation Sentinel) was a military campaign fought from August 7 1942 to February 9, 1943, on and around the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific Theater during the second World War and was the first major land offensive by the Allies against the Japanese Empire.

On August 7th, the Allies, mainly Confederate Marines, with US Marine support, landed on the islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Florida in the southern Solomon Islands, with the objective to use Guadalcanal and Tulagi as bases to support the effort to capture or neutralize the major Japanese base on New Britain at Rabaul.  The defending Japanese, who occupied these islands since May of 1942, were outnumbered and overhwelmed by the Allies, who captured the islands of Florida and Tulagi along with the airfield, later called Davis Field, that was under construction on Guadalcanal.

The Japanese were surprised by the Allied offensive, and made several attempts between August and November to retake Davis Field.  Three major land battles, seven large naval battles (five nighttime surface actions and two carrier battles), and nearly daily aerial battles culminated in the decisive Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in early November, with the defeat of the last Japanese attempt to bombard Davis Field from the sea and to land enough troops to retake it. In December, the Japanese abandoned their efforts to retake Guadalcanal, and evacuated their remaining forces by 7 February 1943, in the face of an offensive by the C.S. Army's XIV Corps, with the Battle of Rennell Island, the last major naval engagement, serving to secure protection for the Japanese troops to evacuate safely.

The campaign followed the successful Allied defensive actions at the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway in May and June of 1942. Along with the battles at Milne Bay and Buna–Gona, the Guadalcanal campaign marked the Allies' transition from defensive operations to offensive ones and effectively seized the strategic initiative in the Pacific theater from the Japanese. The campaign would soon be followed by further Allied attacks in the Pacific as the Allies tried to get closer to the home islands.

Notable Confederate officers during the fight: Peter de Valle (PR), Clifton Cates (TN), William James (SC), Gerald Thomas (MI)*, J Lawton Collins (LA)

*MI is the Confederate abbreviation for Missouri; the US abbreviates Michigan as MC to avoid confusion.

Commanders:
Navy:
Robert L. Ghormley
William Halsey
Richmond K. Turner
Frank Jack Fletcher
Marines:
General Alexander Vandegrift
Merritt Edson
Army:
Alexander Patch
Coast Guard:
Russell R. Waesche

Allies (60,000+):
Confederates

Americans 

Axis:
Japan 

Casualties:
Allies
7,100 dead
7,789+ wounded
4 captured
29 ships lost including 1 fleet carrier, 6 cruisers and 14 destroyers.
615 aircraft lost

Axis:
19,200 dead, of whom 8,500 were killed in combat
1,000 captured
38 ships lost including 1 light carrier, 2 battleships, 3 heavy cruisers, 13 destroyers.
683 aircraft lost
10,652 evacuated

Japanese Capture of Attu and Kiska (1942)

On 7 June 1942, six months after the Confederate States entered World War II, the 301st Independent Infantry Battalion from the Japanese Northern Army landed unopposed on Attu. The landings occurred one day after the invasion of nearby Kiska. The C.S. military now feared both islands could be turned into strategic Japanese airbases from which aerial attacks could be launched against mainland Alaska and the rest of the C.S. West Coast.

Alaskans were understandably alarmed despite the distance of the two islands from the rest of Alaska.  The Alaskan State Guard was mobilized and placed under control of the President to begin the defense of Alaska, and mainland Confederates were warned that if Japanese put airbases on those islands, they could reach the Confederate mainland.  Confederate Major General Albert Brown, from South Carolina, notably said, "where we go one, we go all," a statement that all Confederates should fight together to win or they'd fall together.

Battle of Komandorski Islands (March 27, 1943)

A cruiser and destroyer force under Rear Admiral Charles "Soc" McMorris was assigned to eliminate the Japanese supply convoys. They met the Japanese fleet in the naval Battle of the Komandorski Islands in March 1943. One Confederate cruiser and two destroyers were damaged, with seven C.S. sailors killed. Two Japanese cruisers were damaged, with 14 men killed and 26 wounded. Japan thereafter abandoned all attempts to resupply the Aleutian garrisons by surface vessels, and only submarines would be used.

Allies:
Confederates under Vice Admiral Charles McMoris (Alabama )
Axis:
Japanese under Boshiro Hosogaya

Battle of Attu, Alaska (May 11, 1943)

C.S Infantry prepare mortar fire on Japanese positions

On 11 May 1943, units from 17th Infantry, of Maj. Gen. Albert E. Brown's 4th C.S. Infantry Division made amphibious landings on Attu ("Operation Landcrab") to retake the island from Japanese Imperial Army forces led by Colonel Yasuyo Yamasaki. Despite heavy naval bombardments of Japanese positions, the Confederate troops encountered strong entrenched defenses that made combat conditions tough. Arctic weather and exposure-related injuries also caused numerous casualties among C.S. forces. After two weeks of relentless fighting, however, Confederate units managed to push the Japanese defenders back to a pocket around Chichagof Harbor.

The invasion force included scouts recruited from Alaska, nicknamed Castner's Cutthroats.  A shortage of landing craft, unsuitable beaches, and equipment that failed to operate in the horrible weather made it difficult for the Confederates to exert force against the Japanese.  From the 21st to 22nd of May, a powerful Japanese fleet assembled in Tokyo Bay, preparing for a sortie to repel the Confederate attempt to recapture Attu. The fleet included the carriers Zuikaku, Shōkaku, Jun'yō, Hiyō, the battleships Musashi, Kongō, Haruna, and the cruisers Mogami, Kumano, Suzuya, Tone, Chikuma, Agano, Ōyodo, and eleven destroyers. The Confederates, however, recaptured Attu before the fleet could depart.

On May 29th, 1943, without any hope of being rescued, Yamasaki led his remaining troops in a banzai charge.  The surprise attack broke through the Confederate front line positions. The shocked Confederate rear-echelon troops were soon fighting in hand-to-hand combat with Japanese soldiers. The battle continued until almost all of the Japanese were killed, and the Confederates would not stop fighting. The charge effectively ended the battle for the island, although C.S. Navy reports indicate that small groups of Japanese continued to fight until early July 1943. In 19 days of battle, 549 soldiers of the 4th Division were killed and more than 1,200 injured. The Japanese lost over 2,351 men, including Yamasaki; only 28 prisoners were taken.


Colonel Joseph Lee with Tommy Miyasaki and Eddie Yoshimura, Baja Californian Confederates taking a picture from Hawaii before departing for Alaska.

Adding to problems for the C.S. forces, soldiers suffered from frostbite because essential cold-weather supplies could not be landed, nor could soldiers be relocated to where they were needed, because vehicles could not operate on the tundra. The Japanese defensive strategy against the Confederates attacks included Colonel Yasuyo Yamasaki having his forces engage the Confederates not where they landed, as might have been expected, but rather, the Japanese dug into high ground far from the shore. This resulted in fierce combat, with a total of 3,929 U.S. casualties: 549 men were killed, 1,148 were wounded, with another 1,200 men suffering severe injuries from the cold weather. In addition, 614 Confederates died from disease, and 318 from miscellaneous causes, mainly Japanese booby traps or friendly fire.



Allies (15,000+):
Confederates

Canadians 

Axis:
Japan 
2900

Casualties:
Allies:
549 killed

1,148 wounded

1,814 sick and died from disease

Axis: 
2,872 killed or committed suicide

28 captured
Battle of Kiska, Alaska (August 15, 1943)


Kiska Island, Alaska, CSA
On August 15th, an invasion force consisting of 35,216 Canadian and Confederate troops landed on the island of Kiska.  The invasion consisted mainly of the C.S. 3rd Infantry Division (Marmaduke's), and Castner's Cutthroats (created by Colonel Stephen Castner of Monterrey, Rio Grande and General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr, son of the famous General from the War for Southern Independence out of Alaskan natives, Russian Alaskans, and Confederate Alaskans), along with about 5300 Canadians from the 13th Canadian Infantry Brigade of the 6th Canadian Infantry Division and the 1st Special Service Force, a joint Canadian-Confederate commando unit formed in Sonora that trained in West Hudson in winter warfare techniques.  There were 3 regiments, the first as part of the first wave at Kiska Harbor, the 2nd as a reserve, and the 3rd to land on the north side of the island o the 2nd day of the assault.  The 34th Regiment of the 4th Confederate Mountain Division, was the second major Confederate force trained specifically for mountainous warfare, also participated in the operation.

Canadians also participated with 3 armed merchant cruisers, 2 corvettes, which did not encounter enemy forces, though the Royal Canadian Airforce No 111 and 14 squadrons saw active service and scored several kills on Japanese aircraft.

The invaders landed to find the island abandoned; the Japanese forces had left two weeks earlier. Under the cover of fog, the Japanese had successfully removed their troops on July 28th. Despite CS military command having access to Japanese ciphers and having decoded all the Japanese naval messages, the Army Air Forces chose to bomb abandoned positions for almost three weeks. The day before the withdrawal, the C.S. Navy fought an inconclusive and possibly meaningless Battle of the Pips 80 mi (70 nmi) to the west.



Although the Japanese troops had gone, Allied casualties on Kiska numbered 313. They were the result of friendly fire, booby traps, disease, mines, timed bombs set by the Japanese, vehicle accidents or frostbite. Like Attu, Kiska offered an extremely hostile environment.

Chapter 47: The War in Europe Intensifies

Confederate Redeployment
With the capitulation of Mexico, much of the Confederates' resources could now be redeployed in other theaters.  State Guard units were, since March of 1942, trained with the regular army units to their standard, despite state reticence that the government in Davis was trying to nationalize the Guard like the United States had done in making the state militias into the 'National Guard.'  Now the Confederates, due to massive training efforts and high levels of volunteering, were able to field another 1.8 million troops to Europe.  Transporting them to Morocco, which was fighting for independence from France, the force easily conquered Spanish Morocco when their forces landed at Tangiers, the capital of Spanish Morocco.  The short 'Battle of Tangers' took maybe 8 hours before Morocco capitulated, and the Confederates and Americans agreed that the British should take control of the region to protect the shipping lanes into the Mediterranean for their landings in France and Italy.

Fall of Carthage

British Army marching through Carthage

British and Confederates had finally maneuvered their forces into Tunis after having secured passage into the Mediterranean.


British Churchill Tanks, critical to success in Carthage.

Confederate "Stonewall" tank, so-called due to its speed and striking power.

The Confederates 2nd Corps had landed and was proceeding rapidly up Tunis and into the Carthage enclave of Italy on Africa.  Tunisians aiding them sought to recapture the land and push the Italians out, but that would be for another day.  The Corps was called "Jackson's Corps" and was the successor to the very corps that General Thomas Jackson commanded in 1862-65.  Their units bore a flag similar to those of the State Guard, with a large '2' for the 2nd Corps in place of the state coat of arms.

From the 22nd of April till May 6th, the British 4th Infantry Division (British IX Corps under Lt. Gen. Brian Horrocks) faced a combined French-Italian defense force with three battalions of Germans taken from occupied Germany, and attempted to break through to Carthage city by using the 12th Royal Tank Regiment (21st Tank Brigade), Churchill Tanks that advanced without infantry support, and though they fought bravely, they were attacked by the defending force using Molotov cocktails and 'sticky mines.'  Twelve tanks were destroyed, and in several cases, the crews were rescued by the Germans from the burning wrecks.

The Germans proved the key in the renewed assault on Carthage.  They hated that their country had been occupied and dismantled by the French, and they viewed the Austrian occupation as a puppet of France without much actual Austrian support.  Several British prisoners 'escaped' with as much intel as the Germans were able to give them without giving themselves away.

On the 30th of April, Confederate units arrived, and Confederate General Bradley and British Lt. General Horrocks figured out a new plan to take Carthage, code naming the operation 'Cicero' for the man who was quoted as saying "Cartago delenda est."  The preparations were made, and launched six days later.  That day, the British First Army under Lt. Gen. Kenneth Anderson, coordinating with the Confederate 8th Army ("Confederate Army of Africa") under Lt. General Charles Summerall, a native Floridian, launched their assault on Carthage, while the 2nd and 3rd Confederate Corps took the city of Hippo (OTL Bizerte).  The German commander in charge of Hippo, General Johannes Metzger, surrendered without a fight realizing he couldn't defend the city, asking for clemency and in conference with the Confederates, asked to participate in the liberation of Germany.

On 30 April it was realized that a revision was necessary to achieve success. The revised final phase of the assault on Tunis was codenamed Strike and launched six days later. On that day, the British First Army (Lieutenant-General Kenneth Anderson), took Tunis and American troops reached Bizerte. The German commander, General Hans Michael Sumner (half-American, half-German descendant of Charles Sumner) finally surrendered on 12 May to the Confederates.

The next day, on May 13th, all remaining Axis forces in Carthage, under the Italian Marshal Giovanni Messe, surrendered unconditionally to the combined British-Confederate force.  Messe tried (with Mussolini's approval) to negotiate an "honorable surrender" the day before, but this was rejected.  Earlier that morning, Messe was promoted to field marshal, but the Allies wouldn't accept anything other than unconditional surrender, threatening to resume their attack.  At 12:15 PM, Messe gave the order to surrender.  He and the remaining French commander, Louis Franchet de Negrier, surrendered later that day.  With the close of the operation, about 240,000 French and Italian troops were captured.

The only trouble the Allies had afterward was a small attack by Tunisians wanting to take Carthage from the Italians.  A British and a Confederate Corps pacified the Tunisians and refocused on the landing in Sicily.

Landing on Sicily

July 10

The Allied plan for what they called Operation Apache called for an amphibious assault of Sicily by two Allied armies, one landing on the south-eastern coast, and the other on the central southern coast.  The assaults would be supported by naval gunfire, tactical bombing, interdiction, and close air support by the combined air forces.  For such a huge operation there needed to be a complex command structure to ensure success, incorporating land, air, and naval forces.  The overall commander was Confederate General Dwight Eisenhower (from Texas), as Commander-in-Chief of all allied forces in North Africa.  British General Sir Harold Alexander acted as his 2nd in command and commander of the 15th Army Group.  American Major General Walter Bedell Smith was Chief of Staff, and the overall Naval Force Commander was British Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham.

The Allied land forces were from British, Canadian, American, and Confederate armies, put in 2 task forces.  Eastern Task Force was led by General Sir Bernard Montgomery, made of the British Eighth Army (including the 1st Canadian Infantry Division).  The Western Task Force was commanded by Confederate Lt. Gen. George Patton, and included the Confederate Seventh Army with some divisions from America.  Both task forces reported to Alexander of the 15th Army Group.


The Confederate Seventh Army started as 3 infantry divisions, organized under the 2nd Corps, commanded by Confederate Lt. Gen. Omar Bradley.  The 1st and 3rd Infantry Divisions, commanded by US Major General Terry Allen and Confederate Major General Lucian Truscott, respectively, sailed from ports in Carhtage, while the 45th Infantry Division, under Confederate Major General Troy Middleton, sailed from the Confederate States out of Charleston to Oran and to Sicily.  Oran had been captured by the British and Confederates on the 26th of June, providing a safe harbor past British-held Spanish Morocco.  The 2nd Armored Division under US Major General Hugh Joseph Gaffey, also sailing from Oran, was to be a floating reserve for the invasion and added in to the combat as required.  On July 15th, Patton reorganized his command into 2 corps by creating a new Provisional Corps HQ, headed by his own deputy army commander, CS Major General Geoffrey Keyes (from New Mexico).

The British Eighth Army had 4 infantry divisions as well as an independent infantry brigade which was organized under the XIII Corps, commanded by Lt. Gen. Sir Miles Dempsey, and XXX Corps commanded by Lt Gen Sir Oliver Leese.  The two divisions of the XIII Corps, the 5th an 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Divisions, commanded by Major Generals Horatio Berney-Ficklin and Sidney Kirkman, sailed from the east, from Suez in Egypt.  The various formations that made up the XXX Corps came from various ports to ready the assault on Sicily.  Included in the assault were the 1st Canadian Infantry Division (Maj. Gen. Guy Simonds), 51st (Highland) Infantry Division (Maj. Gen. Douglas Wimberley), and 231st Independent Infantry Brigade Group.

Airborne troops were to be flown in for the landing, including the British 1st Airborne Division (Maj. Gen. George F Hopkinson), which to seize vital bridges and high ground to support the British Eighth Army.  The initial plan had the C.S. 82nd Airborne Division, under command of Confederate Major General Matthew Ridgway, would be held in tactical reserve in Carthage.

The Allied naval forces were also grouped into two task forces also to transport and support the invading armies.  The Eastern Naval Task Force was made from the British Mediterranean Fleet, commanded by Admiral Bertram Ramsey, and the Western Naval Task Force was formed from the U.S. Eighth Fleet, under command of Admiral Henry Kent Hewitt (from New Jersey).  The two task force commanders reported to Admiral Cunningham as the overall Naval Forces Commander.  Two sloops from the Royal Indian Navy, the HMIS Sutlej and HMIS Jumna, were also part of the task force.

At the time of Operation Apache, the Allied air forces in North Africa and the Mediterranean were organized into the Mediterranean Air Command (MAC) under Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder. The major sub-command of MAC was the Northwest African Air Forces (NAAF) under the command of US Lieutenant General Carl Spaatz with headquarters in Tunisia. NAAF consisted primarily of groups from the United States 12th Air Force, 9th Air Force, and the British Royal Air Force (RAF) that provided the primary air support for the operation. Other groups from the 9th Air Force under US Lieutenant General Lewis H. Brereton operating from Carthage and Egypt, and Air H.Q. Malta under Air Vice-Marshal Sir Keith Park operating from the island of Malta, also provided important air support.



The U.S. Army Air Force 9th Air Force's medium bombers and P-40 fighter that were detached to NAAF's Northwest African Tactical Air Force under the command of Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham moved to southern airfields on Sicily as soon they were secured. At the time, the 9th Air Force was a sub-command of RAF Middle East Command under Air Chief Marshal Sir Sholto Douglas. Middle East Command, like NAAF and Air H.Q. Malta were sub-commands of MAC under Tedder who reported to Eisenhower for NAAF operations and to the British Chiefs of Staff for Air H.Q. Malta and Middle East Command operations.

Axis

The island was defended by the two corps of the Italian 6th Army under General Alfredo Guzzoni, although specially designated Fortress Areas around the main ports (Piazze Militari Marittime), were commanded by admirals subordinate to Naval Headquarters and independent of the 6th Army. In early July, the total Axis force in Sicily was about 200,000 Italian troops, 32,000 French troops and 30,000 French Air Force ground staff. The main French formations were the Motorized Infantry Division Petain and the 15th Motorized Infantry Division. The tank division had 99 tanks in two battalions but was short of infantry (with only three battalions), while the 15th Motorized Infantry Division had three grenadier regiments and a tank battalion with 60 tanks. About half of the Italian troops were formed into four front-line infantry divisions and headquarters troops; the remainder were support troops or inferior coastal divisions and brigades. Guzzoni's defense plan was for the coastal formations to form a screen to receive the invasion and allow time for the field divisions further back to intervene.



By late July, the French units had been reinforced, principally by elements of the 1st Parachute Division, 29th Motorized Infantry Division and the XIV Tank Corps headquarters , bringing the number of French troops to around 70,000. Until the arrival of the corps headquarters, the two French divisions were nominally under Italian tactical control. The tank division, with a reinforced infantry regiment from the motorized infantry division to compensate for its lack of infantry, was under XVI Corps and the rest of the motorized infantry division under the Italian XII Corps. The French commanders in Sicily were contemptuous of their allies and French units took their orders from the French liaison officer attached to the 6th Army HQ, Lt. Gen. Pierre de Moulin who was subordinate to Field Marshal Robert d'Alsace, the French C-in-C Army Command South (OB Sud). D'Alsace had arrived in Sicily in late June as part of a French plan to gain greater operational control of its units. Guzzoni agreed from 16 July to delegate to de Moulin control of all sectors where there were French units involved, and from 2 August, he commanded the Sicilian front.


General Alfredo Guzzoni, in command of Franco-Italian forces on Sicily

Battle

Starting on the night of July 9th to 10th, British and American paratroopers jumped in to try to prepare for the landing, but strong winds threw many off-site.  They were to try to seize Ponte Grande, the bridge over the River Anape just south of Syracuse.  It took a few days but about half the Americans and 2/3 of the British finally gathered, and began sowing confusion where possible, attacking Italian patrols and vital points on the island.


51st Highland Division's sea landing on Sicily

The strong winds also made the seaborne landings difficult, but also ensured surprise, since many of the island's defenders assumed no one would attempt to land in such poor conditions.  Landings were made in the early hours of July 10th on 26 main beaches, spread out along 105 miles of the southern and eastern coasts of the island, between the town of Licata, where the C.S. 3rd Infantry Division under Maj. Gen. Lucian Truscott (TX) landed at Torre di Gaffe, red beach, and Mollarella and Poliscia, green beaches in the west, and Cassibile in the east, and British and Canadian forces in the east, and Americans towards the west.  This was at this point the largest amphibious operation during the war in terms of the landing zone size and number of divisions landed ashore on the 1st day.  The Italians defending the island didn't even think of fighting a pitched battle on the beaches, so the landings were a bit anti-climactic as opposed to later landings.  The biggest problem for the landings was hidden sandbars and poor weather causing landings to be off-location and late, though the lack of Italian response to the landings made up for lost time.

Italian tanks attempted to meet up with the invasion, but off-shore shelling from the destroyer CSS Shubrick and light cruiser USS Boise destroyed several tanks and dispersed the attacking infantry battalion.


CSS Shubrick NDC-551

By about 11:30 AM, the Joint Task Force had control of Licata, the port, and were clearing the port for further landings.  Confederate General Truscott landed and made his HQ at the Palazzo La Lumia.  The pre-landing bombing campaign of the last few weeks had greatly weakened the Axis air capability and the heavy Allied presence of aircraft operating from Malta, Gozo, and Pantelleria kept most of the Axis attempts at air attack at bay, though a few attacks did get through and some soldiers and sailors were lost.

General Alexander's landing plan was first to establish his forces between Licata and Catania, west to east, then to embark on operations to capture the rest of the island.  This required capturing ports to facilitate the build-up of forces, and capturing airfields to protect the landings.  C.S. General Patton's Confederate Seventh Army was tasked with capturing Licata and the airfields of Ponte Olivo, Biscari, and Comiso to prevent the enemy from moving its reserves eastward against General Montgomery's Eighth Army, which was working to capture Syracuse and the Pachino airfield before moving on to take the ports of Augusta and Catania.

On the night of July 11-12, the British attempted to capture Augusta but were repelled by the defenders, despite being supported by 3 destroyers.  Early on the 13th, elements of the British 5th Division on the Eight Army's right flank entered Augusta, with Maj. Gen. Sidney Kirkman's 50th Division on their left.  The commander of the Italian division and his staff were captured by Brigadier John Currie's British 4th ARmoured Brigade that same day, but it would not be until 6:45 PM on the 14th when the town was cleared of snipers and obstructions, and the advance resumed.

The joint Confederate-American landings went well, landing a large amount of supplies and transports, taking Ponte Olivo on the 12th (by the 1st Infantry Division) and the Confederate 45th Infantry Division (under Maj. Gen. Troy Middleton) taking the airfield at Comiso and entering Ragusa to join up with the Canadians.  On the left, Confederate Major General Truscott's 3rd Infantry Division, which landed at Licata, pushed his troops 25 miles up the coast, almost reaching Argento, and 20 miles inland to Canicatti.


Confederate Stonewall Tank crossing Sicily, July 1943

The fighting in July continued with the Allied forces gaining Palermo on the 22nd of July on the north of the island and Catania on the eastern side on the 23rd of July, pushing the Franco-Italian forces back to the Etna line, where fighting continued into August.  On the 6th of August, the Allied forces finally pushed through to Troina, and on the 7th to San Fratello.  By the 10th, they had reached past Mt. Etna, and on the 17th, Messina at the northeastern coast of the island of Sicily.  The Axis realized it couldn't hold the island by August 7th, and began a retreat in force, attempting to delay the Allied powers as they returned to mainland Italy.

Allied forces in captured Catania, Sicily

The C.S. Seventh Army lost 8,781 men (2,237 killed or missing, 5,946 wounded, and 598 captured), while the British Eighth Army suffered 11,843 casualties (2,062 killed or missing, 7,137 wounded and 2,644 captured). The C.S. Navy lost 546 killed or missing and 484 wounded and the Royal Navy lost 314 killed or missing, 411 wounded and four captured. The CSAAF reported 28 killed, 88 missing and 41 wounded. Canadian forces had suffered 2,310 casualties, including 562 killed, 1,664 wounded, and 84 captured.

The French forces lost 4,325 men killed, 4,583 missing, 5,532 captured and 13,500 wounded, a total of 27,940 casualties. According to the Historical Branch of the Italian Army, Italian military losses were 4,678 killed, 36,072 missing, 32,500 wounded and 116,681 captured.

After the capture of Biscari airfield on July 14th, U.S. soldiers from the 180th Regimental Combat Team of the 45th Division murdered 74 Italian and two French prisoners of war in two massacres at Biscari airfield on 14 July 1943. Sergeant Horace T. West and Captain John T. Compton were charged with a war crime; West was convicted and sentenced to life in prison and stripped of his rank but was released back to active service in November 1944 as a private, and honorably discharged at the end of his service. Compton was charged with killing 40 prisoners in his charge but was acquitted and transferred to another regiment, where he died in November 1943 in the fighting in Italy.

Invasion of Italy (1943)

A coup deposed Mussolini in July, as resistance to the war and to his government had been growing for years, but the French soon freed him and installed him as the leader of the Italian Social Republic in northern Italy in September.  

On the 3rd of September, the Allies and Italy signed an armistice at Cassibile, stipulating the surrender of Italy to the Allied forces, agreed by King Victor Emmanuel and Prime Minister Pietro Badoglio, who were hoping for favorable conditions from the Allies by seeking a separate peace with them.

The allied forces landed at Calabria on the 3rd of September by British and Canadian forces, though the commander, General Montgomery, of the British Eighth Army believed it to be a waste of effort as a diversion to the main attack at Salerno.  He was right, and the landing force faced no real opposition as they rode the 298 miles up to Salerno.  The resistance came from reaching the Gustav Line at the Sangro River and Cassino, called the Winter Line, where the Allies were halted through the winter.

Invasion of Turkey (1943-1944)

In cooperation with the Soviet Union, which was now part of the Allied forces, the allies moved their forces in from Egypt, crossing Sinai and went into occupied Palestine, freeing it from the Turks in a series of battles from August 11th to October 19th.  The Turkish Navy remained a threat since it had control of Cyprus and Crete, which the Greek government-in-exile wanted to reclaim for themselves.  The Battle of Jerusalem, from September 3rd to 18th, saw the withdrawal of over 93,000 Turkish an their allied forces, facing the Confederate 11th Army, the US 6th Army, and the British 14th Army, with over 140,000 troops.  Once Jerusalem was occupied, the Allies were persuaded by the Jewish occupants that the remaining Arabs in the city were sympathetic to the Turks and a danger to their armies, which resulted in the expulsion by the American army of the Jerusalem Arab population of around 31,000 persons was removed to the Transjordan region of British Palestine.

The Turks actually retreated back to Damascus, in occupied South Syria, where the allied forces met them in battle from September 23rd, fighting and shelling much of the city for five nights before invading on the 29th, fighting street by street over the course of another three days, before finally capturing the city on the 2nd of October.  The Battle of Homs on October 9th-10th was surprisingly quick, but the crossing of the desert to Aleppo, the North Syrian capital took until October 21st, where the Allies also faced resistance at Antakya.

Simultaneously, the USSR retook Krasnodar, and soon found themselves facing stiff resistance in Chechnya in September at Groznyy.  They found the Chechens had allied themselves with the Turks and were actively aiding them in suppressing Russian advances.  Stalin ordered a firebombing of Groznyy, taking its population of 174,230 to 97,000 through destruction of infrastructure, blockade, and fires burning through the city, with another 31,000 persons dying of starvation over the course of 3 weeks until the city surrendered to Russia on the 9th of October.  Vladikavkaz and Nalchik both surrendered within three days of Grozny's fall.  The entire month of November was spent retaking Georgia, and its valuable oil fields, which were a blow to the Turkish war effort in the Caucasus Mountains.

From the south, the Allies invaded Crete on October 23rd, and Cyprus on the 31st, with a combined naval and aerial bombardment lasting over a week at all major airstrips and ports, destroying large numbers of Turkish ships and airplanes.  On the 9th of November, 1943, both Crete and Cyprus were captured, with over 123,000 Turks captured as prisoners.  Karpathos was next, invaded on the 13th, and finally pacified on November 23rd.  Rhodes was invaded on the 25th, and fully controlled by December 4th.  

It was time to attack mainland Turkey, with the British, Confederates, and Americans now ready to strike.  The landing at the Mugla Province occurred simultaneously at Marmaris, Kucek, and Fethiye, facing some coastal resistance, but the Allied landing, with 75,000 troops landing at each site, was able to overwhelm the Turks within 11 hours on December 7th, 1943.  Over 33,000 Turkish soldiers surrendered, while another 18,000 retreated deeper into occupied territory.  Mountains made advancing difficult, so paratrooper landings were key to the allied strategy along with aerial bombardment, with the Allies finally capturing Mugla, the city, on the 12th of December.  Control was solidified on the 19th of December of the entire province.  

Athens was retaken on the 15th of December with a joint Greek-US-CS-British effort, with another 19,400 Turks rounded up, along with Albanian Muslims who had collaborated with them in occupying Greece.  This made three free provinces (Attica, Caria, and Peleponnese) and two free islands (Cyprus, Crete) of Greece by December 15th.

Spain and Portugal Waver (1943)
With the allied forces slowing in 1943 in Italy and facing resistance in Turkey, they turned to Spain and Portugal, who were openly, though not very publicly, helping the Axis powers with food, agricultural products, and materials.

The Allied Powers jointly declared war on both Spain and Portugal on July 19th, 1943, and landed on the Azores, Madeira, and Canary Islands, finding little resistance, and then on the mainland with over 582,000 troops at Lisbon and Cadiz each.  Portugal capitulated to the Allies without more than token resistance, and Antonio Salazar was arrested for aiding the French and war crimes.  Leaving a token occupation force of 190,000 in Lisbon itself, the other nearly 400,000 marched into Spain.  This force was soon joined by a landing force at Valencia, Alicante, Cartagena, and Almeria.

The British Mediterranean Fleet was joined by the American's Eighth and Fourteenth Fleets, and the Confederate's Fifth and Sixth Fleets, in landing forces from Carthage, Sicily, and Tunisia.  Confederate Marines were flown in to the north of Valencia on the Mediterranean coastline, while the US Marines south of the town marched north.  Both sets of Marines cut off power to the town, enabling the armies to land while the town was in chaos, and distracted.  421,000 troops landed around and at Valencia, which was lightly defended by the Spanish.  In a nation of around27,000,000, they only had an army of around 1.2 million, which was also fighting invasion through Portugal at this point over at Badajoz.  There, around 121,000 were attempting to slow the attack, while the Allied forces were landing on the east and south east. 

To the north, Confederate Navy and Army forces landed at Algorta, in the Basque Region, one which was already brimming with resentment at Franco's regime, and had a nascent nationalism of their own.  From July 17th to 31st, the Confederate landing force of 155,000 persons were aided with Basque separatists, about 39,000 out of a population of their claimed population of aroudn 1.2 million people.  The Basque guide the Confederate forces into Navarre, and provided crucial intelligence about army maneuvers in the north of Spain.  They were able to march towards Vitoria, Logrono, and to Soria before meeting stiff Spanish resistance. 

The landing forces to the east and south were joined by some 14,000 Spanish deserters, disgruntled by the regime, who joined the British, American, or Confederate forces as privates and would go on to distinguish themselves in the fight against Franco.  It took to October 4th, but the allied forces made it to Ciudad Real, Tomelloso, Navalmoral de la Mata, Honrubia, and Cuenca, in five divisions, and began their bombing runs on the night of the 4th over Madrid.  For five days, B-29 and B-17 bombers attacked around the capital, and on the 9th, began marching towards Madrid, reaching the outskirts on the 11th.  What happened next was a surprise, as the allied forces were expecting a fight.  On October 12th, the Allied Forces were greeted by representatives of Prince Juan, Count of Barcelona, who had declared himself King of the restored monarchy of Spain, and that his own forces had killed Caudillo Franco on the 10th.


King Juan I of Spain

General Jackson III of the Confederate Eighth Army, along with General Lee IV of the Ninth Army, consulted with Lt. General Bernhard McWilliams of the British Seventh Army and the American General Andrew Fletcher (from Ohio) took the representative and met with him for about 30 minutes, and requested to enter Madrid.  On the 12th of October, Madrid was occupied by the Allied Forces.  Destruction was evident, but most of it from fighting within the army between Francoists and Royalists, interspersed with bomber damage to a number of buildings.  At 11:03 AM, the allied forces were shown the body of Franco, who was, indeed, dead, and not a body double.  Pictures were taken as proof, and the generals met with the self-proclaimed King of Spain.

For the next few hours, Juan spoke to Jackson, Lee, McWilliams, and Fletcher, and they came to an agreement that Spain would be occupied so as to prevent aid to France, but that after the war fell, Spain would be free to pursue its own course, provided it created a new constitution that protected the rights of the people and forswore fascism, socialism, and communism.  The day after, Lisbon also agreed to occupation by the allied forces, as they marched towards France from the south.

Without these two nations aiding her, France's days were numbered.