Dixie Forever

Chapter 50: The Walls are Closing In (1944-1945)

Battle of Königsberg (1944)


From April 6-9, Major General Richard J Beale, CS Army, led a force of 145,000 troops in an effort to break in to Königsberg
to open up another line to Warsaw.  His force was faced with 180 aircraft, 108 tanks, and 90,000 Polish Army with 14,000 collaborationist Germans.  The Confederates brought 5200 artillery, 2174 aircraft, and 520 tanks.  Beale cut off the road to Pillau, an important port city, leaving three options for the occupying force:

1. stay and starve with the 200,000 civilians
2. cross the lines and leave themselves at the mercy of the Confederates
3. cross the ice of the Frisches Haff in hopes of getting an escape ship.

The four days prior to the attack entailed preparatory bombardment by Confederate artillery and B-17, B-29, and B-26 bombers, which was also preceded by propaganda leaflets being dropped saying that resistance was futile and the Polish were almost pushed out of Germany, though the propaganda had little effect.

The attack was hindered by the impressive defenses constructed by the Germans for the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War, but on the first day, after three hours of impressive amounts of shelling before the infantry moved in, the first line of defenses had been eliminated, as many of the defenders were dead or demoralized from the preceding four days of bombardment and the horrifying sound of banshees coming for them - the rebel yell.  By noon, the effort stalled at the second defensive line, so Beale had to put in his reserve regiments.  Three hours later, the second line was overrun in several places.

On the 7th, with favorable weather, precision bombing helped take out a number of defenses, and allowed tanks to proceed closer to the city, but the Polish had used railcars as firing points, which needed to be taken out.  The Confederates breached the city but had to go building-by-building, especially as they approached the Altstadt near the Pregel.  Maraunenhof was relatively easy to cross, with German civilians kissing and cheering the army entering their section of the town.

On the 8th, the Confederates made it to the southern portion of town south of the Pregel, having encircled the town and taken the Hauptbahnhof, and were about to cross the Pregel.  Fighting continued throughout the day with Polish soldiers using buildings as cover to fire upon the troops entering the city.  But near dusk, the remaining 7,433 collaborationist Germans surrendered from Vorderhufen, allowing the Confederates to take Nord Bahnhof.

By the 9th, the Polish commander Kazimierz Fabrycy sent the order for the troops to surrender, and at 2 PM local time, he sent the message, and by 7 PM, Fabrycy surrendered to the Confederate Army.

Königsberg after the battle

Much of the city was destroyed in the fight, including centuries-old buildings, and the Confederates now had 59,000 Polish prisoners and around 200,000 Germans suffering near starvation due to the war.  The Confederates at Königsberg wanted to proceed to Warsaw, but were stopped with the need to process prisoners, feed the survivors, and replenish their own supplies and men so they could effectively push through "Masuria" (East Prussia) to Warsaw.

Battle of Danzig (1944)

The port city of Danzig was beautiful, even in winter.  But since its capture by the Polish, the German majority were under more and more hardship.  There were 46,058 Poles, 93,029 Germans, and 35,000 Polish soldiers.  For five days before the landing, Commodore Patrick Kilcrease landed three brigades of Marines, one at the Vistula, and two at Zoppot, avoiding Gdingen's defenses and those of Danzig.  They began cutting electricity, damaging supplies, and sabotaging Polish efforts while the naval forces off the shore began shelling Gdingen and Danzig, hoping to draw the defenders out.

Neustadt (Nowy Port) took the brunt of the shelling, as it was right next to the defensive fortress on the right bank.  Krakau und Westlich Neufähr (Gorki Zachodnie) and Glettkau (Żabianka) took a heavy shelling for five days, as bombers flew over the defensive structures, before the Confederates landed their infantries in waves across the shorelines.  Glettkau island was decimated, with an easy surrender of 813 remaining soldiers of 1400.

The invading force of 133,000 was organized into 3 corps, with First Corps taking Danzig-Brösen (Brzezno) within the first three hours, Bohnsack (Sobieszewo) and Quadendorf (Przejazdowo) fell to the Second Corps within 6 hours, and the Third Corps came around via Langfuhr (Gdańsk Wrzeszcz) and Pietzkendorf und Müggau (Piecki and Migowo).  Within the first day, the city was being shelled from positions barely two miles away.  Bombers dropped propaganda leaflets to the civilians that the attack would stop upon surrender of the Polish soldiers and occupation force, with a six hour pause in bombing and attack being made.

The infantry marched in with the tanks and artillery moved closer, and four people - two Germans and two Poles - walked out under white flag, surrendering the city to Major General Richard Bowen, the great grandson of John Bowen.  With barely any losses from enemy fire, Bowen had captured Danzig.  During the pause, the Poles and Germans of Danzig had rebelled and removed the Polish military from their positions.  As of April 15th, Danzig was captured.

 
Danzig and the Marienkirche after bombing

Within five days, the Confederates had secured a beachhead in the eastern captured territory, giving them a roughly 10 mile area held, with 21,000 prisoners to house and feed.  Swedish provisions came in to help aid the people, while several divisions helped clear streets of rubble and give medical attention as needed to the people of the city.

At this point, the Confederates and other allies should have been able to push straight to Warsaw, but it was not drive that prevented their advance, but lack of supplies and provisions to move as quickly as they wanted.

Operation Bagration (1944)

From June 23 to August 14, the Polish-Lithuanian Army, bolstered by French troops separated from France, faced the oncoming Soviet Army. The 521,000 men of the Axis with 145 tanks, 3245 artillery pieces, and 920 aircraft faced the Red Army forces of 1,670,300 men, 3,841 tanks, 1977 artillery, 7799 aircraft, and 32,718 guns, rocket launchers, and mortars

Launched as a multi-front offensive, the Soviets attacked along the entire front, hoping to push the Poles out of the USSR, fighting fiercely throughout the summer, eventually pushing the Poles back to Minsk, Kiev, and Mykolayiv, and Rezekne (Estonia).

The Soviets used deep battle tactics to attack far behind the front lines to destroy support forces, though continuing to take heavy losses.  The Polish Army's defense strategy was based on fortress cities to be held at all costs, Minsk being one of them, as was Kiev.  The Polish losses of the front line of Navapolatsk, Polatsk, Vitsyebsk, Orsha, Mahilyow, Homel, Shostka, Konotop, Sumy, Kharkiv, Pavlohrad, Donetsk, and Mariupol was a huge setback, resulting in the destruction of the entire 5th Polish Army, and various sources would give differing numbers, but the Soviets claimed 381,000 killed, and 158,480 captured.


Polish POWs paraded through Moscow


Abandoned Polish equipment on the field

After the battle, the Soviets paraded the Polish prisoners through Moscow to show the magnitude of their victory.  It took 90 minutes for them to pass.

They were now about 300 miles from Warsaw, and the Allies about 175-200 miles from the capital of Poland.

Battle of Breslau (1944)

The city of Breslau (Wrocław) was in Polish hands, an important industrial center with railway lines key to their war efforts.  Major General Samuel Dees of the US Seventh Army faced the concerted efforts of the Poles to hold the city, and sieged the city for months, from March to June, before the surrender on the 6th of June.


Rathaus (town hall) after the siege

The city of Liegnitz fell to the Allies in a siege from March to April to the British Third Army, while the US Seventh focused on Breslau.  The attack was delayed due to supply lines being overstretched, beginning on the 13th of March, when the US Seventh began to encircle the city of Breslau.  For two weeks the Americans shot artillery and tank mortars into the city, which the Poles attempted to resupply via airlifts to give them food and provisions.

By April 9th, the US Seventh Army had occupied up to Hardenberg Strasse (Bernarda Pretticza), and by the 23rd, they had reached Elsasser Strasse (Zaolzianska), Lehmgruben (Gliniana), Moritz Strasse (no longer exists), and Brandenburger Strasse (Lubuska).  On June 4th, the clergy in the city demanded the Polish surrender the city to stop the killing.  On the 6th of June, General Adam Palcziewski surrendered the town to the American Seventh Army, barely a month after the city of Liegnitz surrendered to the British Third Army.

Home Army in Poland (1944)

After a number of defeats, the Armia Krajowa (Polish Home Army) grew in power, as many younger Poles, especially those in core Polish territory, began turning away from the war.  Acts of sabotage at home were blamed on the AK, whose members were predominantly Jewish, which also resulted in the creation of Jewish ghettos in 1942, work camps in 1943, and by 1944, Jewish Poles were disappearing from cities entirely.  Civil rights were abridged more and more as the war efforts turned against the Poles.

Restoration of Brandenburg an der Havel 

The forces of the UK First Army marched towards Brandenburg an der Havel, as it had an aircraft factory owned by the Arado, their army under Sir Miles Dempsey, split his forces along the Havel River, marching north and south of the town to encircle the Altstadt and Neustadt.  The aircraft factory was completely destroyed by the 3rd day of the artillery barrage, and by the 4th day the army was marching into the streets, and on the 6th day, the French forces finally surrendered 69,000 soldiers to the British First Army May 22nd.  Their efforts would soon take them to Leipzig, Dresden.

Battle of Magdeburg 
Under the command of Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Brien of Ohio, the US 14th Army just pushed the French out of Burg bei Magdeburg, and faced a defending force of 72,800 French soldiers, including 11,350 collaborationist Germans from the SPD and CDU parties.  O'Brien split his forces in 3, a complicated maneuver for any army.  His army was split in 3rds, his First Corps fighting on the east bank of the Elbe, 2nd Corps coming from the north, and the 3rd Corps from the Southwest.  Most of the artillery pieces were placed on the east bank, while most of the tanks crossed the river, and came up the rear as the French attempted to escape the shelling from the east, in a surprise maneuver, with four battalions maneuvering to cover the Niederndodeleberstraße escape route with tanks and artillery.  Three days of artillery and bombers destroyed much of the city, as shown below.



The French threatened to start killing civilians if the US didn't cease, but they continued their bombardment and shelling.  In response, the French placed civilians in the streets, intentionally choosing 40,000 Protestants and shooting them in lines on the streets and placing their bodies in the shelled buildings or on the streets as they were hit by shells.

On the 4th day the First Corps crossed the Elbe as the Second and Third Corps closed in on the Altstadt, discovering what the French had done.  The youngest soldiers vomited, older soldiers cried, and almost everyone had nightmares at seeing what had been done to the bodies after and, after examination, before they died, especially the women.  The fifth day of the attack the city finally surrendered, on the 9th of June, resulting in the capture of 39,644 French and German collaborationists, with 21,801 escaped in the fighting, heading for the next fortified town of Brunswick.

Lt. Gen. O'Brien was horrified and saddened, moved to tears by what he saw, and spent a week burying the dead, working 18 hours a day to try to complete the task to continue moving west.  Widows and single Magdeburger women were alone, afraid, and saddened by the horror of what happened to their home city, and many lonely servicemen were eager to comfort them, giving them food, alcohol, cigarettes, candy, and simple provisions, for which they were incredibly grateful after the hardships of occupation and war.  Like in other German towns, there would be many war brides coming to the US, CS, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Tanganyika, Kenya, Namibia, Kamerun, Togoland, German Congo, Rhodesia, and Patagonia.  They would go on to Kassel, Koblenz, Trier, and Luxembourg City.

Battle of Halle

After fighting an escaping French occupation force and chasing them out of Dessau-Roßlau and into Halle an der Saale, due to a heroic effort by Canadian Major General David Macauley of Nova Scotia and his Canadian Second Army, liberating the roughly 128,000 German civilians from French control, capturing around 15,233 French soldiers, while the remaining 31,934 escaped to Halle, but leaving around half their equipment behind in their efforts to escape, giving the Canadians with a large cache of rations, weapons and ammo, uniforms, and intelligence about their defenses to the west in the vicinity and an undamaged code machine.

Marching on to Halle an der Saale, the Canadian Second Army joined the British Second Army to surround and force the surrender of the city, where an aircraft plant was being used by the French.  The Canadians used their 251,000 to surround the northern half of the town, while the British Second Army surrounded the southern half of the town, both crossing the railroad tracks and the Saale River.  Tightening the noose around the forces in the city, even South African, Kenyan, and Rhodesian Divisions participated in the attack, with artillery forming the main force, bombers making strafing runs across the city.  

Over the course of four days and nights, Halle was attacked, when on the 5th day, the French forces retreated, having 84,219 troops remaining alive.  After the losses here and along the occupation, the French began requiring their troops to prevent encirclement and if they couldn't hold a city, to retreat to the next city, and either burn the city or leave timed explosives for the allies as they moved closer to France.  Soon, they would fight for Erfurt, Frankfurt, and Saarbrücken.

Situation as of June 1944

The eastern front had made much progress up to June, while the entire western front moved from Hamburg to within striking distance of Bremen, capturing Magdeburg and Halle from the remnants of the Collaborationist Government, whose forces were now under French control, as was Austria's Fascist government, which was now simply a puppet of the French as well, sending their forces north into Bavaria, Saxony, and Thuringia to try to stop the Allied advance.  The UK Seventh Army would be heading south into Saxony, while the Confederate 5th Army would be heading into Thuringia to secure those territories from the collaborationist forces.

It should be noted that the United States produced a huge industrial output, more than most nations, but it would be the Confederate States who supplied more men than either the US or the UK.  They are a vibrant people, with a proud martial and cavalier tradition (cavalier in the older sense of the word).

Siege of Bremen (August)

Having restored his equipment and his men, and maneuvered his forces to the Hunte River at Granstedt, Brauel, Offensen, Heeslingen, and Weertzen, the Confederate Tenth Army was technically made of 5 field armies, but they were called the first through fifth corps, each designated to take a portion of Bremen, which according to their information was being held by the French-Belgian Fourth Army of about 275,000 men.  France was now getting to the point where the loss of manpower was hurting their war efforts more visibly, and General Lee was interested in ending the war as quickly as possible.  His target was the port city of Bremen.

It was only 25 miles from their position on the Hunte, so General Lee decided to make his maneuver on the 4th of August.  His First Corps moved through Osterholz-Scharmbeck, cheered on the way as they drove through, giving the Rebel Yell and getting a response back from the civilians.

City Hall of Osterholz-Scharmbeck


The First Corps under Lt. Gen. David J. Johnston, having secured its sections of the city found at Vegesack and Farge, found troubling evidences and proof of more concentration camps run by the French and Belgians occupying the city. Three thousand were freed at Farge, and a thousand from Vegesack, German Protestant and Jewish people and some Czechs who were doing ship building, and sub building at Farge.

Prisoners at Farge KZ

The Second Corps and Third Corps were tasked with the capture of West, Mitte, and Sud, while the Fourth and Fifth were tasked with the capture of Ost and the two easternmost portions of Sud.

Aerial bombardment preceded the arrival for two weeks, allowing the Confederates to create fortifications for their artillery.  Artillery preceded the invasion for a week, and finally the troops marched into the city of Bremen.  It was an impressive sight to see such a large mass of troops entering the city from the north, northeast, and east, and they soon broke into a run, the tanks keeping up with them as did the transports for ammo and reserves.  The troops gave the familiar rebel yell, letting the French know they were coming.  Skirmishes happened at Schwanewede, Ritterhude, and Oyten just outside Bremen, but these were scatterings and not really considered 'battles' by the Confederate Army, just the opening salvos to the fight at Bremen.

The first day of actual combat involved Confederates facing French defenders firing from a number of surviving buildings and from deep entrenchments north of the Kleine Wumme River, Katrepel, Mahndorf, and several dozen mini fortifications with small artillery fire, grenade launchers, and machine guns that needed to be silenced before they could proceed.  They were defended by medium-range artillery further into the city, preventing the Confederates from approaching closer.  The Confederates did get within two thousand feet of the city on the first day.  The second day and third day concentrated on eliminating the mini-fortresses with tank and artillery fire, while also trying to clear out the defenders from the north of the city.  The fourth day was the breakthrough day when all the concrete fortress bunkers were finally eliminated and the Confederates could enter the city of Bremen itself.  Fighting was slow in the city, having to go neighborhood by neighborhood.  Confederate casualties were low at this point, thankfully.  

The fifth day of fighting brought the Confederates to the Schwachhauser Ring, Stader Strase on the east, and Waller Ring on the north, clearing up to that point by 5 PM, where the Confederates set their artillery and defenses to prevent an attack at night.  The sixth day brought them closer, to Hansator, Hochstrasse, and Am Doben, and finally on the seventh day, the Confederates broke through to the Altstadt of Bremen, forcing the French and Belgians into a running retreat across the bridges and into the Neustadt, where they didn't even have time to set fire to the bridges to cover their escape.


Ruins of Bremen after the Confederate capture of the city from the fleeing French Fourth Army.

After the end of the month-long fighting in and around Bremen, the city was finally freed from the French occupation, and around 98,400 French and Belgian soldiers were taken prisoner, 58,700 were missing or wounded, and 61,200 were dead.  The remainder had fled west deeper into occupied territory, remaining at Oldenburg for a week before leaving a token force to make the Confederates think a larger force was in the city.  The Fourth Army was decimated, and the French were conscripting German collaborationists, Dutch, Flemish, and Belgian fascist sympathizers to try to make up the difference in numbers now.  Confederates had suffered 48,655 dead, 39,422 wounded/missing during the fighting.


Altstadt at the end of August 1944

While Davis and Washington both wanted a quick end to the war, Lee decided the city, with its 289,200 destitute and near starving citizens, needed his army to stabilize the situation, and the command at home agreed after several messages sent back and forth.  Lee took the month of September to restore power, sewage control, plumbing, and basic city services in the city with his engineering corps and his infantry corps helping to remove debris from the street.  Bremen after the fighting was destroyed in many aspects, but the people were determined to get back their lives.  The citizens worked with Lee's Tenth Confederate Army and both grew to understand and respect each other.

In gratitude for freeing the city, the Mayor, Dieter Wildemar declared Kurfurstenallee was now Robert E Lee Straße, and Schwachhauser Heerstraße would be Confederate Straße.  One grateful city senate member, Senator Appelt, had the Army of Northern Virginia flag stitched on the flag of Bremen by his wife, who presented it to General Lee, who took it with grace, and noted later to his staff that it looked like the Confederates had conquered the US with the flag, and decided not to fly it after leaving Bremen, so as not to disrespect their hosts.  On the 21st of September, the Confederates had helped the Bremener people enough and had routed their prisoners to the rear of their lines, and pushed on to Osnabrück.

Siege of Hanover (August)

General Jackson took his 11th Confederate Army towards Hannover, taking a southerly route that would take him through Bielefeld, Münster, Dortmund, Wuppertal, Cologne, Bonn, then on to Belgium and France.

With Four Corps under his command, Jackson decided to make a rapid advance so that they could try to end the war in 1944 if they made more progress than thought.  His bombers, assigned by Davis, took out the airport, preventing any aerial attack, and were the fourth or fifth bombing run, resulting in over 50% of the buildings being destroyed by the time they reached the city.  On the 10th of August, artillery were shelling the French positions, who after two days of shelling and a tank advance from five motorized infantry forced the French out of Döhren-Wülfel, Langenhagen, and Buchholz-Kleefeld and deeper into the city of Hannover.  

Fighting back and forth with tank and foot infantry took another three days through Vahrenwald, Kleefeld, and to pass Wolfstraße to the south.  Jackson closed positions, and on the sixth day his Third Corps under Major General John Stuart Wilcox (descended from Cadmus Wilcox) captured the Hauptbahnhof.  The Second Corps captured the north part of the city the next day, and the First Corps finally broke through to Bult and Südstadt-Bult, and on that sixth day, they fought against a French fighting retreat from Calenberger Neustadt, and on through the seventh day, they finally pushed the French out of Linden and Ricklingen, having taken 35,833 casualties, but having captured 29,221 French and Belgian and collaborationist Germans, over 92,000 escaped to their rear, having left valuable provisions and equipment the Confederates captured.  Having over 325,000 Hannoverians in the city to take care of, Jackson took two weeks to help feed the Germans in the city, while recouperating his soldiers, sending casualties back to Berlin while getting refreshed soldiers and additional equipment for the push to Bielefeld.



Hannover's inner city and factories after the bombing.


Old Town Hall (Altes Rathaus) of Hannover

During those two weeks, the Confederates and the Germans worked together to help clear rubble and begin the process of rebuilding with the rubble.

Capture of Elbing (August)

Maj. Gen. Richard Bowen's 1st Division, 15th CS Army moved east from Danzig through Tiegenhof (Nowy Dwór Gdański), encountering minimal resistance, but arresting a few hundred Polish citizens on suspicion of their being spies.

Two divisions of Polish troops were stationed in the city, when they were made aware of the approach of the Confederate Army, and they began evacuating the city from the Hauptbahnhof in the south of the city.

Elbing Hauptbahnhof, 2015

At this point in the war, the Polish were fighting a delaying retreat, avoiding capture and casualties so that the Confederates could be slowed and stopped in a larger, concentrated, pitched battle.  Their trains were heading towards Preußisch Holland (Pasłęk), at the ready, while the troops fought the arriving Confederates on August 5th from across the Elbing River.  The Confederates were slowed, but managed to reach Berlinerstraße (Warsawska) that same afternoon.  By evening, they had captured Am Elbing and Fischmarkt on the east bank of the river.  By 8 PM that evening, the Confederates had captured 944 Polish soldiers, of them 83 captains, 14 Lt. Cols., and 8 Colonels.

While Bowen's orders were simply to advance in force towards Warsaw in coordination with the other armies, he took the initiative to try to capture the escaping Polish when they got to Preußisch Holland.  Using five armored infantry brigades, he had them advance at top speed to meet the train as soon as their scouts saw the trains loading earlier in the day.  With the infantry, they laid several explosives within the train track, and when the train passed over the explosives, they were set off, destroying the engine and killing 4,000 Polish soldiers, derailed the train and the following train, and causing the surrender of 35,000 Polish soldiers without even taking a casualty.  

Once taken prisoner, the Poles were marched to Danzig, while the armored infantry went to Preußisch Holland and seized the town from the token force that was expecting reinforcements.



Historic walls of Preußisch Holland

The 6300 Germans cheered the Confederates, welcoming them and throwing a celebration for their freedom, waving both Confederate and German flags from windows, and treating the troops to beers like the Elbinger brew and Wurst with Süßer Senf, which was immediately familiar to the Texans in the Corps.  Quite a few single ladies enjoyed the company of some of the single troops that night.

Capture of Marienburg (Malbork) (August)
Maj. Gen. Jason Pratz, 2nd Division, 15th CS Army led his force to the natural peninsula created by the Nogat River, which held the city of Marienburg on its left bank.  The Polish encampment was at the tip of the peninsula and acted more like a delaying force for the Confederates, with Pratz brigding into the city and capturing it after two days of shelling, finding the Poles were heading for Stuhm (Sztum), a third of the way to Marienwerder (Kwidzyn).


Marienburg Hauptbahnhof

The tracks to the Hauptbahnhof were repaired and troops, tanks, and artillery were soon moving quickly south to meet up with Cleburne and Kirby-Smith on the way to Warsaw via Posen.


Marienburg Castle

The Marienburg Castle became the Confederate Forward Operating Base in the Reclaimed Territories of Germany.  Resistance fighters were given targets in coded messages, rations, ammo, boots, guns, tanks, artillery, and other supplies came in from Danzig, and the surrounding population swelled from 26,000 to nearly 200,000 with the support personnel not actually fighting.  The stereotypical German Blonde came from this town, where a number of Confederates wrote home about the golden blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes of the women, while others pined over the green eyed beauties from East Prussia.

Capture of Bartenstein (Bartozyce) (August)

Maj. Gen. Andrew Johnson, 3rd Division, 15th CS Army

War Brides from Germany (Part 1) (1944)



Any time you take young single men and place them in the stressful situation of combat in a foreign land, they will find comfort in the arms of things they love most - friends, card games, football, singing, drinking, and pretty women.  Confederate men were no different, and if anything, they were even more wooed by a pretty face.  The German girls were unsure how to act towards these 'country boys' who gave them flowers and opened doors for them, and paid for their dinners, what little there was at that time to treat them to.  Just from the eastern territories, Confederates would bring home 123,944 local women, about 4/5 German and 1/5 Polish, along with several thousand children by the end of the war.

The Confederates also brought changes to the occupied areas of Germany.  Shops they reopened for the Germans to shop in, the soldiers bagged groceries for the Germans; this was to know what they were buying, but it was also customary over in America, but not so in Europe, where people bagged their own groceries.  However, due to the occupation, after the war, Germans now expected grocery stores to bag groceries for them, unlike elsewhere in Europe.  Drinks now had a lot of ice in them, and Germans began drinking a lot of sweet iced tea, a legacy of Georgians especially, but Confederates in general.  The habit for Confederate soldiers to let someone with one or two items go ahead of them in line, if they had a dozen or two things became a now accepted and customary part of the German shopping experience also, such that to the present day, Germans consider it rude if you have a full cart and don't let the person behind you with one or two things go first.

Chapter 52: Europe Falls

Rosie the Riveter and Diesel Dixie


Nearly 20 million women held jobs during World War II between the United States and Confederate States. Many of these women were already working in lower-paying jobs or were returning to the work-force after being laid off during the depression. Only a few million new female workers entered the workforce during the time of the war.[


Women responded to the call of need the two republics were displaying by stepping up to fill positions that were not traditionally filled by women. They began to work heavy construction machinery, taking roles in in lumber and steel mills as well, and other normally male-led positions. Physical labor including unloading freight, building dirigibles (which are airships similar to air balloons), women began making munitions, and much more. Surprisingly, many women discovered they enjoyed the autonomy these jobs provided them with. It expanded their own expectations for womanly duty and capabilities. This was reckoned as unnatural and as men began to return home from the war, the government instituted another propaganda campaign urging women to “return to normalcy."





"Wendy the Welder" in the Richmond, VA Shipyards; a "Rosie" in Nashville

This war would be the first time many white, black, Asian, Indian, and Hispanic women would be working together in a workplace.  Due to the close nature of the work and long hours, many women came to become close friends with women of other races, not just acquaintances.  While the first world war had brought a number of women together, it was a much shorter period of time and in a far more limited sense than in this war.  Racial attitudes in the South, where they had been for some time a bit paternalistic towards minorities, were more quickly shifting towards a mutual respect and admiration for the women doing the work.  In the North, however, a lot of factories would remain segregated and give out lower pay to black workers than white workers.  Despite this, a number of blacks would go north due to the sheer number of jobs available up there, bringing a new vibrancy to the Yankee Black communities, and bringing up a lot of the 'Old South' values and the Confederate flag with them.


Riveters working at Wright Aeronautics Corporation making bombers for the war

Victory Gardens


In the Confederacy, about 2/3 of the population was still rural, and often grew their own food and canned it to get through the winter, as a number of rural homes still had no electricity or running water.  The War Department released posters asking the people to grow 'victory gardens' in the cities as well as out on the farms so that the excess food produced would be able to be sent to the troops so they could keep fighting in Europe.  Agricultural output jumped up so much that people were canning a lot of extra food, more than the troops needed.  That excess was then given to the allied troops, and if possible to the destitute Germans, whose crops the French and Polish were plowing under as they retreated or stealing.  As they moved across Germany, besides ruined cities, tales of Germans who had to live on meager rations, while Leader Von Amerling's excessively large administrative state feasted on the best foods, wines, and other delectables, circulated to the Allied forces, who had to deal with malnourished civilians as they tried to end the war quickly.

Concentration Camps

As the French and Polish fascist states were taking form, they both needed enemies to blame for the two nations' woes.  At first, it was the communists, who agitated to overthrow the government, as the ones who lost the first Great War for both nations.  So, thousands upon thousands of communists were rounded up as suspected traitors, and put into camps across France and Poland.  These camps were responsible for creating a supply of labor to help boost the economy, as prisoners didn't have to be paid.


Camp roll call, 1938

France's camps were hidden at Bordeaux, Nantes, Lyons, La Rochelle, Marseilles, and Rennes, far from the front so as to ensure their labor supply would continue.  Poland hid its camps at Krakow, Lublin, Auschwitz, Lvov, Tarnopol, and Stanislowow.  After installing a puppet government in Germany, the concentration camp labor system expanded into collaborationist Germany (Dachau, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück, Flossenbürg, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Neuengamme, and Natzweiler-Struthof).


Each camp had 'Work Sets You Free' carved into their doors, a grim and ironic statement, since the only setting free was death.  Von Amerling, aside from imprisoning dissenters - *anyone* who disagreed with any political stance he took he arrested - imprisoned Jewish Germans as their banks charged 'usurious interest' to Germans and they refused to become part of the national socialist regime.  He took special delight in censoring any person who disagreed with him and arresting them if they spoke again, or even if they didn't.  His sister in law, Kamille Forster took special delight in pretending to be nice and innocent while at the same time rooting out anyone who disagreed with their Dear Leader, sending thousands of dissidents to the concentration camps.

France, Poland, and Germany, once they had interned their communists, moved on to the mentally ill and handicapped, saying they would move to a 'school' that would help them and take care of them.  Six months later, those people's families got letters they had died of natural causes.  Then came the 'sexual deviants' as they were called by the fascists; this despite there being a number of fascists who were homosexuals who were practically free to practice once they got into power.  The Sinti / Roma were sent (13,000), as were 'race defilers' - mixed race couples and their children.  As the populations were worked to exhaustion and death, more prisoners were needed, so the actual prison populations were moved into the camps, along with Jews, who were not seen as 'French', 'German,' or 'Polish,' but portrayed as 'the other,' and sent to the camps for the safety of the state.  Political prisoners, then petty criminals who were stealing food to feed their families were sent in as well.


Camp prisoners freed by Gen. Cleburne at Ravensbrück

As the Allies came into new territory, they discovered new camps.  In one camp, General Jackson came upon 13,000 unburied corpses, and another 10,000 dead from typhus or malnutrition over the weeks just prior to being freed.  General Lee freed Bergen-Belsen, finding a number of Dutch Jews suffering there before he surrounded and freed the camp.  One young girl there, Annelies Frank, and her sister Margot, were in severely poor health, but reminded of his own daughters, Lee had the doctors do their best, and they began recovering with vitamin shots and fresh foods.  They would find their father, Otto, after the war was over.

Bergen-Belsen Camp, freed by Lee


In almost every camp, corpses were burned in crematoriums like the above-shown units.

The 'shower' units where prisoners nearing the end of their use were gassed before being cremated.

German prisoners (Dachau) toasting their liberators.

The Allies would discover that about 2.5 million Jews were murdered in the camps, systematically.  Four hundred thousand Germans living in Poland were systematically humiliated, tortured, and killed.  France had killed about 741,000 Germans in the Rhineland, Hanover, and Alsace-Lorraine, intent on replacing them with French, also found treated much the same way.  Leader von Amerling usually just imprisoned and worked to death his minorities, but took special delight in the torture and humiliation of his political opponents, at whom he would sometimes take time to yell and shout at before allowing them to be killed at the camps he visited. Stories would tell that he simply loved lording over them how he was right and they were wrong about politics and religion. 

France's Last Leg (1945)

The D-Day invasions, coupled with the roll-up of the French Armies by the Allies out of Germany had caused the French to move back into France into a multi-ringed defense-in-depth structure in concentric rings around their capital of Paris.  An outer ring (Troyes, Chalons-en-Champagne, Reims, Soissons, Compiègne, Beauvais, Evreux, Dreux, Chartres, Orléans, Montargis, Sens) was their last line of defense of the new French Third Empire (Charlemagne, Napoleon were one and two). 

From mid-December to the end of January, the 'Battle of the Bulge' took place, France's last gasp offensive attempt before retreating to its defenses.  That battle along cost 114,000 lives, of which 61,000 were Confederate, 2,300 were British, and the rest were American.  The battle was really a series of offensives, and small clashes.  A group of 11 black Confederates attempted to surrender to the French, who shot them defenseless.  Another incident was the defeat of one of the French War Groups, allowing the Confederates to capture 50,000 CS Gallons of fuel.

The C.S. 61st Infantry Division, outnumbered five to one, inflicted casualties in the ratio of 18 to one. The division lost about 20% of its effective strength, including 465 killed and 2,524 evacuated due to wounds, injuries, fatigue, or trench foot. French losses were much higher. In the northern sector opposite the 99th, this included more than 4,000 deaths and the destruction of 60 tanks and big guns.


Confederate Tennessee State Guard, as the 119th Infantry Division, marching towards Sankt Vith.

The French offensive used their best soldiers still available, and they sustained heavy losses to their aircraft and armor, while the Allies had significant losses to the manpower.  Starting with 410,000 men, they reached 450,000 men at their peak, 1,400 tanks, tank destroyers, and assault guns; 2,600 artillery pieces; 1,600 anti-tank guns; and over 1,000 combat aircraft.  Of the men, between 63,000 and 98,000 were casualties on the French side.

Weather obstructed early Allied offensives, but once it cleared, the Allies were able to secure air superiority, which sealed the fate of the operation.

Marching closer and closer, the French continued fighting, but slowly the Allies encircled the city closer and closer.  From February to April, the noose on De Gaulle tightened.

Paris Falls

Scenes of Parisian destruction

The Allies reached the outskirts of Paris by mid-April, which was bombed and shelled starting on the 16th.  They had been held about 36 miles out from the city from early March, but had made progress towards the city all month.  The Allies finally broke the line and were at the Seine at St Denis, Versailles, Creteil, and Noisy-le-Grand when the Confederate 7th Mechanized Artillery began shelling the city and didn't stop until the city surrendered.

Generals in charge in Paris had about 45,000 soldiers in severely depleted French Army divisions, supplemented by the police force, boys from the compulsory De Gaulle Youth Brigade, and the Tempête du Peuple (about 40,000 elderly men who'd mostly been veterans of World War 1).  Guillerme Barrière was placed in charge of the defense of the Louvre and other inner palaces, including the president's bunker.  He had about 2000 men at his command.  Barrière had 20 commanders for each arrondissement of the city, most of which had no combat experience.

On the 23rd, Lee's 23rd Infantry Division and Eisenhower's 1st Mechanized Infantry assaulted the city from the southeast, and reached the 12th arrondissement and the fork in the Seine and Marne Rivers.  The US 2nd Mechanized Cavalry reached Bois de Boulogne on the 26th of April and fought their way through the southern suburbs in the 13th and 14th arrondissements.  On the 27th, the two understrength divisions defending the southeast were forced back towards the center, taking up new defensive positions around Place de la Bastille.  The British Second Army destroyed the Le Bourget Airport, the principal airport of Paris, opened since 1919.

The Allied advance into the city center resulted in the heaviest fighting in the 5th, 7th, 1st, 2nd, and 8th arrondissements.  Jackson's 2nd Mechanized Cavalry, 11th Army was tasked with removing the snipers and artillery from the Arc de Triomphe, leaving a number of bullet holes and artillery fragments on it.  Once cleared, Jackson marched his army into the city.

Confederates marching into Paris


Shortly after he secured the area, Lee's 1st Corp secured the Champs-Elysees southeast of the Arc, heading to the Louvre, where the bunker was.  The two fountains had artillery near them, where Confederate tanks destroyed with only a few shells spent.  Crossing the river from the southwest, Lee's 2nd Corps captured the Palais Bourbon, the site of the former French National Assembly, and the Palais du Luxembourg, the site of the former French Senate.  The last attack was at the Louvre, with artillery and tanks defending the approach.  Coordinating with units from the Americans and British, however, Lee was able to maneuver his tanks and artillery into place across the Seine to destroy the tanks at the Louvres-Tuileries


Tanks in downtown Paris attempting to defend the Louvre

Place de la Concorde fell at 3:15 PM, and at 4:45 PM, a flag of surrender was waved from the Louvre.  Within the next four hours, the Confederates, Americans, British, Canadians, and the units from Germany had accepted the surrender of the French government, or what was left of it.  Charles de Gaulle attempted to commit suicide, but was restrained by several generals who put him in shackles and under guard during the tank assault.  At 7:30 PM, five French generals, including Henri Petain, François Sevez, Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, and Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, surrendered on behalf of the French Social Republic.  Once the sword was passed as a sign of surrender, the rebel yell broke out amongst the Confederates present, which caught on with the Americans and even the British.  In all, there was an estimated 129,000 Parisian civilians killed in the operation, 458,080 military killed and 479,298 captured.

Each of the victorious armies were assigned a sector of the city, with the Louvre being cleared out and made the Allied HQ for France.  The British took south of the Seine (5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 15), the Confederates took the northwest (2, 8, 9, 16, 17, 18), and the Americans took the northeast (3, 4, 10, 11, 12, 19, 20).  Arrondissement 1 was assigned as a jointly administered zone of Paris.

Starting on the 3rd of May, Americans, British, and Confederates took measures to try to start restoring essential services.   Almost all transport paths into and out of the city had been made inoperative, including the Paris Metro, and bombed-out sewers had contaminated the city's water supplies.  The Allied command appointed local Parisians to head each city block, organizing the clean up of the city.  The three armies made a major effort to feed the residents of the city, and they were grateful to receive food at American, Confederate, and British soup kitchens, which were begun on Major General Robert Bragg's orders.  After the surrender, Allied soldiers went from house to house, arresting and imprisoning anyone in a uniform, including firemen and railroadmen.

During and immediately following the assault, there were a few vengeful troops who did engage in pillage (all three), rape (mostly American and British), and murder (mostly American and a little Confederate).  Discipline, however, was swift, especially in Lee's army, if he heard of any of this, as he thought it would smirch the honor of the Confederate Army.  Despite Allied efforts to supply food, and rebuild the city, starvation remained a problem.  A month later, in June of 1945, one month after surrender, the average Parisian was only getting about 2/3 of their daily ration of 1400 calories.  Across the city about 1.5 million people were without homes.



Three thankful Parisian ladies, Marie, Jacqueline, Jeannine; another woman from Saint Denis, Suzanne, who ended up in Georgia

Of course, many Parisian women were thankful to the US, UK, Canadian, and CS men for freeing them from the De Gaulle regime.  In the above picture, Marie, Jacqueline, and Jeannine ended up enjoying the company of some of the young men from Lee's 15th Infantry Division, 2nd Corps and would eventually come back to the Confederacy as 'war brides.'


Thankful Parisians waving flags of France and the Battle Flag

Poland's Walls Close In

Coming from all sides, the Confederates, Americans, British, Americans, and the Soviets pushed the front in from all sides at Poland.  Slow progress from February through April, the Allied Armies retook land and conquered portions of Poland, pushing their armies back further and further.  Białystok, Pinsk, Brest, Lutsk, Lviv, and Lublin were all hard fought by the USSR, with thousands of casualties on both sides, but the Soviets continued coming.  Płock and Przasnysz proved a delay for the Confederates coming from the north, but General Cleburne and General Kirby-Smith were able to meet up with their American, Soviet, and British allies by April 26th.  Coordinating their push, everyone continued inward from the defensive lines and trenches, reaching Warsaw by May 9th.

Warsaw Falls

The city of Warsaw was encircled on the 9th of May, subjected to aerial and artillery bombardment before the city was entered on the 17th of May.


From the 17th, the various armies fought progressively deeper into the city.  Confederates progressed day by day further and further into the areas we would call Białołęka Bielany, Bemowo, Żoliborz, Praga Północ, and Targówek.  The Soviets pushed through the areas we call Wawer, Praga Południe, Rembertów, and Wesoła.  The Americans pushed through Bemowo, Ursus, Wola, Śródmieście, and Ochota, while the British came up from the southwest into the areas we would call Ochota, Włochy, Mokotów, Ursynów, and Wilanów


The fighting in Warsaw was most intense in the city center, where Pilsudski and his ministers and generals were housed.  Ogrod Saski was the scene of the last intense fighting as they made their way up to the Presidential Palace (Pałac Prezydencki).


Destroyed wall of the Presidential Palace, 1945

The final surrender was accepted by General Kirby Smith on the 26th of May, when the Poles surrendered to the joint Soviet-American-British-Confederate forces at 5:15 PM.

Room where the surrender documents were signed

In the city, Soviets met their western counterparts for the first time, encountering such foreign concepts as Coca-Cola (from the CS), Bubble Gum (from the US), Shepherd's Pie, poker, and dozens of games, music, and books which many could not take back into the USSR with them.

US and USSR troops meet at Warsaw

The surrender of Poland on May 26th became V-E Day, or Victory in Europe Day.

V-E Day

Churchill waves on the 26th; Servicemen at Wilmington, NC holding up papers declaring "Peace."

With the fall of Warsaw, the war in Europe was finally over, with all the Axis countries in Europe now gone.  The question for the future is what would Europe look like?  The Allies had plans for France, Poland, Turkey, and Italy, but now that this part of the war was over, the Allies had to concentrate on Japan and its defeat.

Chapter 53: The Changing World

Germany's Government Changes
Kaiser Wilhelm II (Wilhelm Viktor Karl August Heinrich Sigismund), meeting with both the Allied Powers (CS, US, UK) and a number of the surviving members of the German government before the occupation found there was a very real chance of a republic being declared in Germany if something weren't done.

Kaiser Wilhelm II

The collaborationist forces had already abolished Prussia as a unified kingdom, and there were a lot of government officials urging him to resume where things left off.  But Wilhelm seemed to sense where things were and would go if he gave in to those voices, and decided to proceed with a new German government, forming what would be called the Konföderierte Reichsrepublik Deutschland (KRD).  The Provinces of Prussia would form independent states of Germany, each governed with a Governor-General (Generalgouverneur) rather than the Oberpräsident of the past.  The cabinets in these states were 'compressed' where they were responsible to the Governor-General, who would be selected by the monarch, but elected by the people of the state; elections would come from a slate of candidates and the monarch would approve or disapprove (which would trigger a new election).  The overall effect was that these new states were more like US or CS states, being nearly completely independent and choosing their own legislatures and governor-general (who would be approved by the 'King of Prussia'), and cabinets functioning more like those of American states.

The Reichstag would now be the name of the all-German legislature, with the Volkstag lower house, and Landtag upper house:


With the roughly 72 million Germans, the Germans came up with a 687 member Volkstag, and with 36 states, a 108 member Landtag. 

Former Prussian province residences for the governors-general:

Konigsberg Castle, (EP)         Abbot's Palace, Danzig             Posen             Breslau

New Palace, Potsdam                             Grumbkow Palace, Stettin   Fürstenwall, Magdeburg      Kieler Schloß

Hannover                                Münster                                           Koblenz                                  Straßburg


Westphalia was merged with Lippe, whose capital at Detmold had a palace, which would also be used as a Governor-General residence:

Kingdoms

Munich, Stuttgart, Dresden


Surviving Kings, Rupprecht (Bavaria), Wilhelm III (Württemberg), Friedrich Christian (Saxony):


*Prince Ulrich (b1880-?) lived and had a son, Wilhelm III, maintaining the Lutheran line of the kings of Württemberg

Grand Duchies 
Oldenburg, Mecklenburg, Hesse, Baden


Thuringia, having been fragmented for several centuries, though united since 1920, had numerous residences.  The main residence was Schloss Weimar:


The Duke of Meckleburg-Strelitz, Adolphus Frederick VI, was murdered by the fascist regime of Von Amerling, causing a succession crisis during the war, resulting in the merger of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz into one grand duchy. Grand Duke Friedrich Francis V, now residing at the Schwerin Castle, also had the Neustrelitz Castle in the city of the same name.


The Grand Dukes of Hessen also have the Wilhelmshöhe Palace at Kassel:


The surviving Grand Dukes, Nikolaus, Friedrich Francis V, George, Berthold:

Free Cities
Lubeck, Bremen, Hamburg, Berlin


A number of royal houses were extinguished and many would soon be extinguished due to the destruction of the war.  Both houses of Reuß, Waldeck, and Schaumberg were decimated due to the Leader Von Amerling, making their unification into Thuringia easier.

Each formerly Prussian state would also have its own legislature, modeled after those in the US and CS to represent the various Kreise (counties) and the people.
East Prussia                           West Prussia                        Posen                                Breslau                                         Potsdam

Stettin                              Saxony-Anhalt                   Schleswig-Holstein                  Hanover


Westphalia                             Rhineland                               Alsace-Lorraine


The other states' legislatures would be rebuilt and have elections, hopefully by fall of 1946:

Lubeck                              Bremen                                    Hamburg         Berlin


Oldenburg, Mecklenburg, Thuringia, Hesse, Baden

Württemberg                                                                                                                       Bavaria                              Saxony



The old Hessian Landtag was in the Ständehaus, but this was destroyed during the war.


Germany had been partially occupied by Austria, the remnant of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but this had been ruled by a fascist that overthrew Otto of Hapsburg, the Austrian Emperor.

Returning to Austria to find a country destitute, destroyed, and in dire straits, Otto met with Wilhelm II in Berlin, coming back from exile in England, and personally asked for the unification of Austria to Germany; this was already something many in Austria wanted, as they felt that Austrian independence had not worked out.  As part of their agreement, Wilhelm II's son, Prince Alfred, would marry Otto's younger sister, Elisabeth, the archduchess, merging the Hohenzollern and Habsburg houses.


The states of Austria would become separate and independent states of Germany, including Vienna, with Otto as their king, but with powers excercised by the governors-general like in the former Prussian provinces.

Governor-General Residences:
Vienna, Vorarlberg, Tyrol, Salzburg, Carinthia,

Styria, Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Vierburgenland,

German Bohemia, Sudetenland, Teschen Silesia

Legislatures:
Vienna, Vorarlberg, Tyrol, Salzburg, Carinthia,
 
Styria, Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Vierburgenland,


The old Vierburgenland Landtag (above) was damaged during the war, and a new building was ordered built with larger offices and a new hall with a semi-circle design:

[image: new hall]

German Bohemia, Sudetenland, Teschen Silesia

China's Civil War Ends

The end of the war with Japan only meant the resumption of the war between the Nationalists and the Communists.  The fragile peace after the war ended as the communists wanted to resume to take control of the entire country.  Their mistake was the long cooperation with the Confederates, many of whom had formed friendships with Chinese people who went to school in the Confederacy, including Chang Kai-shek's own wife.

Confederates and Americans shipped Japanese troops north to fight the communists in China, and in Korea, who helped push the CPC back to the north for another year, helping the Nationalists until 1948, when both sides were exhausted of the war, forcing a peace treaty, ending the Chinese Civil War.  Kai-shek and Zedong agreed to a divided China and a unified Korea; the communists of which were pushed out into China by Chinese, Japanese, Confederate, and American troops.

The Communists were given the provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, Shengjing, Zhili, Shanxi, most of Inner Mongolia (aside from Ordos, Alxa League), and portions of Henan and Shandong, and Mongolia itself was ceded to the communist party in there also.



In return for helping the Chinese Nationalists, Chang Kai-shek allowed concessions to continue as extra-territorial foreign owned land, but with a much better trade deal for the Chinese.  Hong Kong, Weiheiwai, and Kiautschou Bay were made perpetual leases to the UK and Germany.  In Tianjin, for example:



The Japanese and French concessions were given to the Confederates; the Germans gained the Austrian portion north of the river, and the portion of Japan's concession to the east.  The United States gained Russia, Italy, and Belgium's concession.  Similar adjustments were made in other concessions around China, whose government needed to make quick moves to solidify its government to discourage communist insurrection.

For nearly 40 years, the Confederates had been sending missionaries to China, and Chinese had learned English and politics at Confederate universities, and many in the nationalist movement, including Chang Kai-shek, were leaning more towards confederation rather than nationalization.  The government would make an interim constitution, and then a final Chinese constitution in 1948 on May 5th, the founding date of the Confederated Republic of China (CRC).  

During that period, many were unsure of how the new CRC would work, with so many different people in China, the Han, Zhuang, Manchu, and more.  China devolved much power to the provinces, including language policy, but did dictate that Mandarin Chinese would be the language of the national government, while the individual provinces would have their own languages.  Religion would be up to the provinces, and much of the protections would be modeled after the Confederate constitution, as the Chinese had had more positive experiences with Confederates and their Christian missionaries than with US missionaries.  US missionaries had been much more dismissive and condescending to the Chinese, telling them what they had to do and how they were doing things wrong, while the CS missionaries would work with the Chinese, get to know them, and meet them where they were, and build real relationships with them.  Even with the Boxer Rebellion, Confederate missionaries were spreading the Gospel across the landscape of over 400 million people.  

Republic of Korea

Over in Korea, the Americans, British, and Confederates repatriated captured Japanese soldiers, and built a border wall separating communist China, alternatively called "North China," "Red China," or several other unflattering terms, keeping the communists from pouring over the border.  Internally, Korea was, under US direction, purging communists and communist sympathizers, either by trial and execution or by exile into North China.

Syngman Rhee
, a Korean national, was selected to the presidency of this new, unified Korea.  He had spent time in the US trying to convince the Americans to do something, but Woodrow Wilson, wasn't terribly interested.  While at the university in Nebraska, he met Park Yong-man, and the two moved south, first to Texas, then to Tennessee, finding a vibrant intellectual scene there.


Syngman with CS General MacArthur

The fight against the communists took until mid-1948, and once it was ended, Syngman met with Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek to discuss a joint security agreement against North China.

Syngman with President Chiang Kai-shek of China


The declaration of the Republic of Korea on August 15, 1948, was widely celebrated across the unified peninsula.  Americans had refused to give the Koreans heavy military equipment, while the Confederates were happy to do so, if only to contain what they saw as a godless and dangerous ideology.  With his background of speaking English, Syngman was the most acceptable compromise candidate for the first Korean President, but the Confederates made sure to let him know their help came with some important strings - freedom for the Korean people.  Syngman had acquired some nasty habits from his time in the US, and there was some corruption amongst his government, which threatened aid from the Confederates and Americans.  

In 1949, the CS gave him an ultimatum that their military aid would end, putting him at risk of renewed aggression from the communists.  (Confederate military aid was not the same as what we would call 'financial aid,' but rather the sale of used military equipment from the war either against Japan or within China, and the sale from military contractors within the CS to Korea.)  He agreed to root out the wide corruption in his government - people skimming money intended to provide the Korean military with heated barracks and winter uniforms, troops that existed only on paper, and poor treatment of communist prisoners, and more - in exchange for continued aid.  Korea's constitution gained several long amendments to prevent much az the excess and corruption and protect the rights of people, though it would not be until the end of Syngman Rhee's second term as president before much of it was stopped.

The second Korean President, Park Chung-hee was elected in 1958, after Syngman's second five-year term ended, and was critical to the development of Korea, especially in competition to Japan.
 

President Park was critical to turning Korea into an export-driven economy, which brought in money to build a more modern national rail system with the same 6' Confederate-gauge rail already in use in North America, along with subway and streetcar systems similar to many American, Confederate, British, and German cities.  His national expressway system was designed similarly to the US and CS highway systems, with as many straight sections as possible.


Rebuilding

Other places were once proud monuments, like the Kaiser Wilhelm I Church in Berlin, but were now ruins as a result of the war and the abuse by the Von Amerling regime, which hated Christianity, despite the lip service they paid to it.  

St Nikolai Kirche in Hamburg

Being a deeply religious country, and being shown the ruination to churches, a number of Christian denominations, be they Baptist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Catholic, or otherwise, spontaneously took up donations in their Sunday plates, sending money to the European churches for rebuilding.  It would take time and a lot of money, but Europe would rebuild.

France

On July 5, 1946, a French inventor created the first bikini, a two-piece swimsuit smaller than the very similar atome, which he saw women roll down to work on their tans.  With the devastation in France, women needed something to take their minds off things, and this was a good way to start.  With the recent US atomic bomb test on bikini atoll, the name was in the news, and the inventor thought his bikini would be as explosive in fashion, and patented the name in France.  Due to the occupation, however, the US, UK, CS, and Germany all had every French patent, and didn't need to ask to take it.  Despite this, and despite the bikini making it over to those countries, it remained banned in the CS until 1949, and in the US till 1952.

The old provinces were recreated, aside from the territorial changes made as a result of the Treaty of Berlin (1945) ending the war.  In each zone, the British, Germans, Confederates, and Americans cultivated regional identity and loyalty, with regional languages and dialects, regional costumes, regional foods, all designed to lower the simple-minded obedience engendered by various socialist ideologies to a central state, which was the current blame for the war.

Demobilization

With the end of the war, the Americans, British, and Confederates were eager to demobilize and return to peacetime.  A lottery system was used to decide who left and stayed based on length of stay and whether the person had children to tend to at home.  Confederate demobilization was slightly slower than many wanted, but the last Confederate left Britain by 1947, Italy by 1948, and Germany and Japan by 1949.  A few Confederate troops remained attached to US bases in adjoining quarters in France, Germany, West Poland, the United Kingdom, and Japan until 1955, never amounting to more than 10,000 troops, and declining as Confederate fears over breakdowns in order and invasion waned.

America, however remained and got basing rights in a number of nations, ostensibly to maintain their 'security,' including in Britain near Liverpool.  Many British did not like the foreign 'occupation' and would protest their presence, but with them there also came money and culture.  The musical influence of American, and especially Confederate music would go on to create the music group 'The Beatles,' who listened to Confederates like Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley, first singing covers of their songs, then creating their own music.

With Americans, British, Confederates, and Canadians came new foods, drinks, and even brides, though some, specifically the Japanese, Korean, and Chinese brides, would be less welcomed in the traditionally white societies.  Hawaii was closed off to much of the immigration, as the Hawaiian and white Confederates already there were not interested in upsetting the existing ethnic balance there, the Hawaiians especially not wanting to be even more outnumbered than they already were.

British soldiers came from all over their vast empire, including India, Australia, and New Zealand.  While Indians and most native Africans tended not to take war brides, either from laws at home or military restrictions, British soldiers from the UK itself would take home French, German, Italian, Polish, Japanese, and Greek brides.  The army also made a point to encourage returning soldiers to settle in the empire so as to build up those lands, provide a change in scenery for recuperation, and to provide a new labor pool to improve the entire empire rather than just the UK.  Over 1.2 million British veterans moved to Kenya, Rhodesia, South Africa, Ghana, Patagonia, British Guyana, Australia, and New Zealand, along with their families and children, bringing 2.8 million people from Europe to the rest of the world, one of the largest migrations in history.

Confederates Learn Lessons

Over and over, tales from the soldiers came home to their states, telling of the citizens being censored by the national government for their political or religious beliefs.  Paris's government, von Amerling's regime, and the Polish regime, each desired to squelch debate.  Leader von Amerling was particularly vicious.  He had his security apparatus listen in on phone calls, and interrupt them with 'fact checks', and mail was searched and censored, and had neighbors turn in neighbors. 

Various states began drafting proposed amendments, eventually coming up with a 31st Amendment, the 'Anti-Fascism' amendment:

1. Congress shall make no law to censor, infringe, restrict, punish, or otherwise interfere with the free speech of citizens of the Confederate States, including political and religious speech, or with any of the other rights guaranteed by this constitution, nor coerce, threaten, conspire, or otherwise work with any business to do the same.

2. No government agency or official shall discriminate against any citizen of the Confederate States, or violate any of the rights guaranteed under this Constitution of any citizen on account of religious or political beliefs.

3. The people of the Confederate States have the right to conduct commerce and use any means of communication without discrimination on account of religious or political belief or race.

4. Congress shall have the power to legislate for all means of communication that cross state lines to ensure freedom of speech including political and religious speech, as well as to ensure interstate business does not infringe upon the rights guaranteed under this constitution.

5. Neither Congress nor the executive branch shall cause any business to infringe upon the rights protected by this constitution, or reserved to the states, or to the people, but in such case shall be liable to impeachment or felony or both, and forbiddance from holding government office or position of trust.

Income Taxation in America

The United States passed what was called a 'Victory Tax' of 5% to fund the war, along with selling war bonds to afford the war effort.  The Confederates did not have a legal income tax, so they relied on tariffs, bonds, and state levies, which the individual states often chose to collect via so-called 'war taxes,' which were taxes on wages for the duration of the war plus six months up to 10% of income.  Since the government of the Confederate State was not taxing income, the supreme court found it legal when challenged in 1943.  Once the war ended in 1945, the US Victory Tax was ended, but the withholding was not ended, and became a normal feature of US life.  On the southern side of the border, withholding ended with the war taxes.

Poland Divided

The five occupation zones in Poland were each de-fascist-ized to varying degrees.  The Allies were split on the issue of reparations, which the Soviets pegged at $21 billion.  The western allies wouldn't acquiesce, so the Soviets began extracting their reparations by removing Polish industry where they could, though they realized after a while that this was alienating Polish communists from the cause.  The introduction of the new Polish zloty was allowed by the western allies, and began the split between eastern and western Poland.

America, Confederates, and British took all patents and technological know-how that was worth taking for two years after the end of the war, such as:
Poland:
high frequency radio detection finding of subs
Czochralski process - a method of crystal growth used to obtain single crystals of semiconductors
Polish mine field detector
vitamins (as a concept)
protactinium
typhus vaccine
France:
polonium, radium, francium, etc.
neon lighting
wind turbines
TB vaccine
polo shirts
pencil skirts
Belinograph (wirephoto)
sonar developments
Germany:
flecktarn (camo)
Jerry cans
StG44 assault rifle
V-1 and V-2 missile technology
Me163 rocket powered airplane
electron microscopes
Focke-Wulf helicopter

The US and the British used Polish and French as forced labor to clear minefields, to which the Confederates objected, as they remembered Sherman and Grant doing the same thing to their own grandparents and great-grandparents.  A large number of French and Polish women were raped by the occupation soldiers, mostly US soldiers and USSR soldiers (especially in Poland), and to a lesser degree, Confederate soldiers, who were punished to a higher degree than the other occupation forces, and were made clear that if they harmed the locals, they would face reprimands, dishonorable discharges, reparation to the women involved, and if a woman got pregnant, he would have to provide for the child.  Given that, Confederates had the lowest incidence of mistreatment of any soldier, with the culture of 'southern honor' playing a huge factor as well.

On May 23, 1949, the Republic of Poland was founded with Krakow as its 'provisional' capital, consisting of 20 states plus one city-state (West Warsaw), and in October that same year, the Soviets created the Polish Democratic Republic, the communist Polish state.

Confederate Presidential Election of 1945



Candidates:
Cordell Hull (TN) (ineligible having already served a term)
William Bankhead (AR)
Earl Warren (CA)
Andrew Johnston (KY)
James Dougherty (FL)
Strom Thurmond (SC)

The 1945 election took place in the aftermath of a large and destructive war in Europe and the Pacific, with millions of men overseas voting absentee.  Now that the war was over, the people largely believed that the Confederacy needed to demobilize and return to normal.  Vice President Dougherty, serving under the popular President Peery, was the nominee of the Confederate Party, while the Democrats nominated Strom Thurmond of South Carolina to run against him.  The Confederate Republican Party nominated Andrew Johnston of Kentucky, the first black party candidate in the south, and a relative of General Joseph Johnston.  Thurmond and Johnston fought for the Democrat nomination, until Thurmond won, leaving Johnston to join the Confederate Republican Party, which saw the Kentucky AG as a viable candidate.

The race was largely fought over whether Dougherty could bring the troops home, demobilize the economy and return the South to normal.  He chose Warren as his VP candidate, and was able to secure a large electoral victory, despite William Bankhead's campaigning for Thurmond, Bankhead's actress daughter helping campaign for women's votes in the Deep South.

Thurmond fought for States' Rights, something deeply important in the South, and moreso in the original seven Confederate states.  President Peery had supported the United Nations, a wartime measure to allow cooperation during the war, but it was being discussed as something of an international forum afterwards, stoking fears of the Confederate States being subject to international dictates by some world government or new world order.  Thurmond stoked that discussion and the first audio-recorded presidential debate took place between Thurmond and Dougherty in late September of 1945, shortly after the dropping of the atomic bombs by the US and CS on Japan.


In the end, Dougherty won 246-238, but the loss of the "Deep South" or the "First Seven" was surprising, as they'd expected to win Texas, Rio Grande, and Cuba.  Once the votes had been counted, Dougherty and his Vice-Presidential Candidate, James Byrnes (SC) began the transition from Peery to Dougherty.  But Dougherty realized the Deep South was necessary to govern, and met with Thurmond a week after the election.  The two worked up a proposed constitutional amendment to take care of the concerns of Thurmond and other southerners about the UN:

Proposed Amendment (1945)
1. The Confederate States shall retain their sovereignty and independence, and no treaty shall abrogate, infringe, transfer, or impair upon their rights of sovereignty and independence, or those of the several States, or the rights of the citizens thereof to any international organization.  
2. No membership or treaty shall be interpreted to or executed to transfer, abrogate, infringe, or impair the sovereignty or independence of the Confederate States, or the powers and rights thereof, or of the States, territories, or citizens of the Confederate States by any government within the Confederate States, or the courts thereof, and no court shall take any treaty or international agreement as binding upon the citizens of the Confederate States over the Constitution thereof.
3. The courts of the Confederate States shall restrict their decisions' legal basis to the Constitution of the Confederate States, the laws passed in pursuance to the Constitution thereof, and the Law of Nations by de Vattel (1758), and treaties passed in pursuance to this Constitution and this Amendment, excluding all treaties regarding international organizations or memberships therein.  In any conflict between a treaty and the Constitution of the Confederate States, the courts shall in every case rule in favor of the Constitution over any treaty.
4. Any organization to which the Confederate States is a member has no power to assume any of the legislative, judicial, or executive powers of the Confederate States, or authorize the armed forces of the Confederate States to operate in violation of the Constitution of the Confederate States.
5. The President of the Confederate States shall not order the armed forces of the Confederate States to operate or to fight based upon the direction, request, order or otherwise of any international organization in violation of the Constitution of the Confederate States.
6. The Confederate States shall not allow their armed forces to be subject to any international court for disciplinary procedures, nor shall their economic policies be determined by or overridden by any international body.
7. No treaty or membership in an international organization shall be considered as perpetual and shall not be treated as superior to the Constitution of the Confederate States in any case.
8. The Confederate States shall not expend moneys for any purposes which violate the Constitution of the Confederate States, and shall retain the right to leave any international organization in accordance with law at any time.
9. The Congress shall have the power and obligation to enforce this article by appropriate law

While some believed this amendment was a bit heavy-handed, Thurmond petitioned for it in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and he and his running mate got South Carolina and Mississippi to propose it officially, followed by Georgia, bringing it before all the states.  Within 6 months it would become the 30th amendment.  Despite its passage, the United States to the north ridiculed their fears of the organization that the Confederates themselves had founded with the United States.

United Nations

The United Nations was founded as a forum for international discussion and working out differences to try to prevent another world war from happening in another twenty years.  The General Assembly would be the deliberative body, headed by the Secretary-General, where ambassadors from each member would meet and deliberate on issues.  While some nations tried, the Confederates and the Germans objected, to restricting the Secretary-General from being from the nation of a permanent Security Council member.  So it became an unwritten rule that permanent Security Council members would only seek one five-year term.

Some in the United States proposed Richmond for the location of the General Assembly, which Virginia rejected.  They already were required to demilitarize their Potomac counties, and refused to make any other concessions.  The Rockefellers then offered some land in New York, which the UN agreed to assume as international territory, what had held the 1939 World's Fair, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.  This would assume a position as an international city within the United States.


UN territory seen from the river

A huge globe within a fountain was part of the central grounds, with a building curving around it, creating a courtyard effect.  The building was a half-circle, 12 floors tall to either side, bisected by the Avenue of the Americas (north) and the Avenue of Europe (south), with a rectangular building with a large golden dome in the center with some glass plates facing the globe, designed similar to a Roman temple, where the General Assembly would meet and the Secretary-General would have his office.  Behind that would be the UN Office Tower.


Circus in London, which was the inspiration for the UN office.

Aft view with the parking lot, opposite the giant world globe courtyard

The 897 acre park, which many feared would sink into the river, was strengthened and the area around the UN was made into a beautiful park with scenic pathways.  A series of hotels, restaurants, and an office tower were built for the UN to conduct business.  Two spinning restaurants were placed in tall towers (seen above) offering scenic views of New York and the grounds, similar to the TV Tower restaurants in Berlin and other cities in Europe.


UN Office Tower and UN Museum; UN Second Tower (1994)


Original front of the UN Library; 1963 addition aft of the original, connected by a glass walkway into the towers.

The flags of the members of the UN ring the globe courtyard.

Marshall Plan

With Europe the main battlefield, and the USSR to the east, the western powers were eager to rebuild the west so as to ensure their alliance to the United States and Confederate States.  George Marshall proposed a huge aid package which would go on to take his name, the Marshall Plan, to rebuild Europe and modernize its industries, which, coincidentally, would send the dollars lent back into American businesses, helping the United States at the same time.

The Confederates were interested in rebuilding Europe, along with its military capability so that Confederates would not have to fight overseas a third time.  So the plan sent both American and Confederate agricultural goods to Europe as quickly as possible so as to stop the humanitarian crisis, on loan at a very low 2% interest rate.  Electric systems were restored, and home goods were wired at 120V / 60Hz, and the allied powers agreed to a unified electric plug design.



Rather than loan money to Europe that they then spent back in the United States, Confederates simply contracted with the governments of European nations to rebuild their shattered nations and grids.  Thousands of buildings were rebuilt, from Berlin's Bücher Palace to the Reichstag and Charlottenberg Palace.


Bücher Palace, 1949, converted to the new Confederate Embassy near the Brandenburg Gate.

Military Strength

The United States had increased its forces from a 1939 level of slightly over 227,000 to a peak of 8.2 million by 1945 in concert with the peak Confederate strength of 6.2 million.  By 1954, the United States would have a military of around 2 million due to their post-war commitments, justified by the needs of the Cold War, while the Confederates reduced their military size to about 450,000 in federal service, the remainder having been demobilized back to the State Guard units whence they came.  Those remaining in federal service were mostly stationed overseas in Japan, France, Germany, and Poland, their costs being paid by the nations hosting them, and would be rotated out in agreement with those nations with other State Guard units.  President Dougherty and his successors would work towards full demobilization, though it would not be achieved for several decades, as the other nations asked the Confederates to stay in their nations to provide assurance against Soviet aggression against them.

Much of the hardware used by the Confederate Armed Forces, now that they had demobilized, reverted to the states, taken home by guardsmen, making the Confederate citizen one of the most well-armed populaces in the world.  Much of their gear also went to the German and West Polish people, whom the Confederates and Americans trained in the use of small arms since the end of the war, so they could then defend their own nation in the event their armies were not enough.  

Chapter 55: 1950-1960, a new Golden Age

Konigsberg, East Prussia


The Governor-General of East Prussia, Max Keiser, was responsible for overseeing the reconstruction of the old city castle (see above), but for the state's legislature to agree to that, he had to agree to the construction of an office building close to the castle to house growing government responsibilities, mainly refugee settlement and the Ministry of the Interior's Office for Reconstruction of Historic Buildings and Monuments.


Katrina Merkel, a German who'd been living in Poland, now in Brześć, East Poland, finally made it to Konigsberg, and settled off Strasse der CSA and Republikstrasse (close to Ulitsa Griga and Ulitsa Frunze).  Her cousin, Johannes, met her there and helped her get into the apartment building, with what little she had with her, just two suitcases.

"It's good to see you, Kati," Johannes said, as they rested on the threadbare couch they'd gotten from the Colonel Miguel Cleary, who'd given them a ration stamp book earlier, and it cost 10 stamps.  

"It's good to be back here, and out of the Soviet zone," Katrina replied.  "The things I saw the Soviets do...it frightens me."

"Ssshh...don't think about that now," Johannes said, as he hugged his cousin.  He'd spent plenty of time in Texas, and had picked up the more 'gregarious' and 'touchy' habits of the southerners, including their strange habits of barbeque and iced sweet tea, but it comforted her.  "We're safe now."

"I know," she replied.  "But when the Confedi's leave?  The Yankees?  Germany's been destroyed and Russia will run us over."
"Well I think we're going to sign a treaty with the two American countries and they'll protect us while we rebuild," Johannes said.  "Until then, we have to have faith."
"It's hard to have faith with what I've seen," Katrina countered.  "The war was just horrible."
"I know, but we prayed for deliverance from the evils of war and fascism, and we have that," Johannes answered.
"But will the kaiser be any better?" 
"I think that link to our past will help," Johannes comforted.  "Our traditions ground us and comfort us, as does our faith in God.  But I think those who want a republic, if they can compromise with the kaiser and cut a lot of our bureaucracy and government rot out like the Confederates did when they left the United States, we can rebuild much quicker.  Some kind of Imperial Republic (Reichsrepublik) or something."
"That'll be the day," Katrina laughed a little.
"Come on, let's get some lunch," Johannes said.  "Near the Schloss is a great Texas BBQ restaurant."
"Barbecue?" she said, pronouncing the foreign word.  "What is that?"
"Oh, you're going to love it," he smiled.  
The two relatives took a stroll through the streets, south and west, to the Neuer Markt along the Neuer Pregel river.  Some of the booths had traditional German food, but many of them had a lot of foreign food - pizza, pasta, burgers, shepherd's pie, and various other southern and Yankee dishes, and finally the Texas BBQ restaurant, next to a Carolina BBQ place.

"Why two separate BBQ restaurants?" she asked.
"Some use vinegar based sauce, some mustard, and some ketchup.  But Texas BBQ cooks till the meat falls off the bone using hickory wood, with a sweet ketchup sauce.  Trust me, it's delicious," he smiled.  He had even had Wurst with Texas BBQ sauce with the Texan Germans at New Braunfels.

Once they finished their meal, with their iced sweet teas, the only way the Americans and Confedis knew how to make it, apparently, they went to the CS Army-run grocery store, the only place to get any kind of food to store in their own refrigerators.  The young men bagged her groceries for her, weird, but after a while, she got used to it, and eventually, it became normal that grocery stores in East and West Prussia bagged your groceries for you, spreading west to the rest of what had been Prussia.

Confederate Presidential Election (1951)

President Dougherty was still relatively popular, from the Confederate Party, though the acceptance of both NATO and the UN were dragging his popularity down in the widely non-interventionist Confederacy.  The Democrat Party, which had been out of power in Dixie since Oscar Colquitt in 1934, came down to a fight between Estes Kefauver from Tennessee and Richard Russell, from Georgia, both powerful states, with Tennessee being a technology powerhouse, and Georgia being a financial and agricultural force in the Confederation.  By mid-July, however, it became clear that Kefauver was leading in the party primaries, and won the nomination handily in the convention in Louisville, KY.  Similarly, the Confederate Party came down to former General Dwight Eisenhower and Governor John Sparkman of Alabama.  While the governor was a strong voice for debt reduction from the war and reducing presence in Europe and Japan, general Eisenhower's experience in the field convinced CP voters that it was necessary to stay in Europe and Japan for a little while longer until the Germans, French, and West Polish could stand on their own, as well as the Japanese.


Estes Kefauver from TN vs Dwight Eisenhower from TX

Eisenhower's campaign made a concerted effort to win women's votes.  He campaigned on measured return from Europe before the end of his administration, reducing the war debt through retiring war bonds, creating new bonds, fighting inflation, fighting communism, and education.  The federal government in the south had no role in education, the Democrats countered, but Eisenhower wanted states to work together to improve education for rural and urban schools, and close the gap with other nations he perceived.  Kefauver's weakness of being in a party with suspected mafia ties worked against him, as did stories of graft and adultery, and being soft on communism, which sought to overthrow the Confederacy and establish a communist dictatorship, according to ads in the election, worked strongly against the Democrat.

On election night, Eisenhower won the election with 445 to 254 electoral votes, becoming the 16th Confederate President.

The 16th Confederate President (1952-1958): Dwight Eisenhower

Unlike a number of Confederates, Eisenhower did believe in the usefulness of NATO and the United Nations, having seen firsthand the devastation of the war, and the necessity of cooperative action to prevent an even worse war in the future.  He did not want foreign entanglements, but remained supportive of the two organizations throughout his presidency.  As President, he promised South China protection against North Chinese and Russian aggression, and may have threatened the North Chinese with nuclear attack if they did not reach an armistice concerning South China and Korea, which remains in effect to this day.  

His main goals while in office were to contain the spread of communism, reduce the federal deficits and debts of the war years, and continue the military drawdown from the war.  He believed that nuclear weapons were less expensive as a deterrent to communist aggression in comparison to large army divisions.  While not providing foreign aid, he allowed Confederate weapons and military surplus items to the French to help fight off the Vietnamese Communists in the First Indochina War.  When the United States conducted regime changes in Iran he was initially supportive, as it appeared to be anti-communist, but later after the 1954 coup in Guatemala, he grew worried about what he would later call the 'military industrial complex' and sought to limit Confederate involvement in US adventurism abroad, even if it were only by providing arms.  By the end of his term, Eisenhower was able to secure a promise from the US to remain out of the Confederates' backyard (i.e. Central America), and the Confederates would remain out of the Americans' playgrounds (Asia and Africa).  This backdoor deal would be criticized later as allowing Americans, through their various NGOs to topple governments who didn't play ball and help them build their empire of economic colonies, but it would help Latin America stabilize and grow more prosperous under the Confederate blanket of protection.

Eisenhower condemned the Russian response to the Hungarian Revolution and the Czechoslovakian Revolutions in 1956, even moving CS divisions to the border of Austria and Czechoslovakia along Sudetenland and German Bohemia, two Austrian states.  The tensions were resolved when the Russians saved face within their sphere of influence when the Czechoslovakian communists and rebels were able to negotiate a split between Czechia and Slovakia.  The Russians were seen as negotiating peace, as were the Confederates.  Russians preserved Hungary and Slovakia, while Czechia was seen as a wayward rebellion that would fall apart without communism to guide it.  The Confederates and the west got a PR victory with the release of Czechia from communism, sparking a massive religious revival and the beginning of an economic boom as the Germans and Austrians, as well as the British, Confederates, and Americans began pouring aid in to help keep it from falling to communism again.

The Soviets launched their Sputnik satellite in 1957, prompting Eisenhower to sign legislation to create the CSAA (Confederate Space and Aeronautics Agency) later on that year, and launch their own satellite by 1959.

Domestically, the President was quite anti-communist and helped Senator Edward Johnston of Virginia root out a spy ring of communists from the State Department, the War Department, and from a number of universities across the Confederacy.  Notably Richard Bryans, Henry Caswell, Olivia Smith, Eddie O'Neal, Benjamin Bilthaus, Winter Van Der Fries, and several other university professors were found to be on the payroll of the USSR and were jailed for treason, and later executed.  Eisenhower was a strong proponent of civil rights for women and minorities, putting them in various positions within his administration that blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and women had not been before.  He also promoted a Confederate Highway System, improving the roads of the Confederacy so that travel by car would be just as safe as by train.  The various states passing the CHS legislation cooperated to establish routes and preserve their historic downtowns, and with lobbying by the railroad companies, established 'last mile trucking' where cargo would be taxed if carried on vehicles with more than 2 axles by the mile, but not on railroads; this resulted in semi trucks being used within cities and most often from railyards to final destinations, making railroads profitable for cargo, allowing them to offer good rates for passenger traffic well into the 21st century.  By 1958, the reduced debt and military spending had brought Dixie back to a small army of 86,400 persons, the remainder returned to the State Guards.

Domestically suburbs grew with many small neighborhood street-front shopping districts within walking distance showing up in large numbers of towns, so people didn't have to travel downtown for everything and could still enjoy the conveniences of city life but with more space that suburbs could offer.  Neighborhoods could gather in these little districts in their little parks, bringing people together who wouldn't otherwise be together.  Schools grew and university attendance grew during this time.  It was remembered as a peaceful time with a growing economy and a sense of real patriotism.  Black Confederates, especially veterans, moved into white suburbs during this time in slightly higher numbers than before without too much trouble, and racial tensions would be much lower than in the United States.  Black families were more intact than white families, and their emphasis on education and self-reliance meant black children often were more literate and better behaved in school than many white children.  The use in some upper class households of mammies rapidly dwindled in this decade with the slow but steady increase in women in the workplace.

Dixie's World Fair (1953)

The 150th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase was celebrated in New Orleans, CSA, with exhibitions on Thomas Jefferson, the growth of settlement in America, and the growth of the Confederacy.


New Orleans World Fair building

Luckily for the visitors, the fair showcased air conditioning, keeping the buildings 72*, even if the outside was in the 90s and humid.


Palace of Liberal Arts
The palace built for the exposition along the Mississippi River, where they had over 3200 acres free for the exposition, is still used today in the settlement of Bridge City as an art museum for Metairie.

NORAD Comes Online (1958)

Both the United States and the Confederate States had spent a large sum of money on the war, and with the development of Soviet nuclear missiles, Eisenhower and his US counterpart, Marshall, believed that a unified defense against missiles would protect both countries more effectively than separate defensive fields.  So the North American Aerospace Defense Command, called 'NORAD' was decided and agreed upon by 1958.



The three-country defensive system involved radar detection along Greenland (US), Ellesmere Island (CA), and Alaska (CS) - Northern Sector; the province of Vancouver Island (CA), Prince George Province's Moresby Island (CA), Washington (US), California (US), Oregon (US), Baja California (CS) - Western Sector; and Newfoundland (CA), Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia (CA), Maine (US), Massachusetts (US), New Jersey (US), Delaware (US), Maryland (US), Virginia (CS), North Carolina (CS), South Carolina (CS), Georgia (CS), Florida (CS), Bahamas (CS), Puerto Rico (CS).  The three areas of North, West, and East would cover any angle from which the USSR could conceivably send a ballistic missile and help coordinate response between the nations, as nuclear radiation hitting one could affect another.

Command bunkers were constructed in Cheyenne Mountain (US), Mount King George (CA), and Mount Walter (CS) with a similar plan of a hardened bunker with 25 ton blast doors to protect the defense command from possible nuclear attack.  Both Canada and the Confederate States allowed the Cheyenne Mountain be the main command center with observation teams from their countries, as the United States was willing to foot the bill for a lot of radar detection for their countries as well.



To control their defense and radar systems, the three countries created a computer system called Q5, with over 60,000 vacuum tubes and able to perform over 75,000 calculations per second, one of the most advanced computer systems in the world.




Rock n Roll Music Goes Mainstream (1955-1965)

Coming out of Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, where black gospel and jazz mixed with country music more popular in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Texas, musicians traveled and played, taught each other tricks, and influenced each other back and forth, with early forms of rock n roll coming in the late 1940s, with a piano or saxophone as the lead, gradually replaced by the guitar, until the genre settled on having two guitars, a bass, and a drum as the most common set of instruments played by most bands.  Performers from the United States, like Chuck Berry, a black guitar player from Missouri, influenced southern performers, who would then influence performers as far away as Detroit, Michigan.  Americans like to point to Chuck Berry, especially by the 1980s, as having put all the pieces of rock 'n roll together, thereby saying that the United States invented rock 'n roll, however as with any form of music, it was an evolutionary process that would not have happened without a lot of inputs and influences across the continent, much of which came from the Confederate States, regardless of what Americans say happened.

Regardless of where rock 'n roll started, it soon became a huge musical style and Dixie seemed to dominate it.  Various artists like Fats Domino (New Orleans), Little Richard (Macon), Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Cotton Plant, AK), Jerry Lewis (Ferriday, LA), Elvis Presley (Tupelo, MS), Carl Perkins (Tennessee), Jessie Lee (Atlanta), Jackie Brenston (Clarksville, MS), Arthur Crudup (Mississippi), Michael Wilbanks (Charleston), Sally and the Cottonettes (Macon), and several others all worked across the southern confederation to develop new songs and riffs and evolve a new form of enjoyment for the kids.  Parents were often aghast at the music, which inspired children to 'shake their hips' in suggestive ways, rather than in the large and orderly reels and jigs the parents often danced.  Artists adjusted their styles and included some patriotic references to Dixie in their music, either a few notes of that famous song, or references to southern bravery, manhood, or femininity, while toning down any possible sexual innuendo to get past the various censors on radio in the south.

In the north, less than friendly terms were thrown about by white parents about rock 'n roll, as it came from the CSA, which they saw as 'mixed' and worried that their children were listening to the same music as black children, and that it was influencing the rise of the civil rights movement, which was also spurred on by southern pastors coming up from Dixie to meddle in their business.  It'd been segregated for over century in the north, and the white people up there saw no reason to change it.  Rock 'n roll was censored up north as well, but northern artists, with a less Christian background in many instances, not being in the 'Bible Belt' of North America, often had slightly more overt references to 'hooking up' with a girl, which parents complained loudly about, but their kids continued listening anyway.

Movies began showing rock 'n roll either in the soundtracks or having bands and singers playing in the movie or even starring in the movie.  Michael Wilbanks starred in Barroom Rock, about a young man who played a gig across the border in Cincinnati, and was arrested for manslaughter in the bar, when he was misidentified as the assailant.  He is jailed in the US, and forced to serve time there, when the warden discovers his talent for music, and he gets early release for good behavior after playing a few sets for the other prisoners (in some well choreographed numbers).  Once released, he discovers that Richard Henderson, an angry Ohioan, had fingered him for the murder after he saw his girlfriend fawning over him during his set a year ago.  Mike and Rick duke it out, with Mike getting a confession out of him, and seeing Rick turned over to the police as the music swelled.  And "New Virginia Reel," about a band who wants to make music but their parents object, thinking the music is 'subversive' and a bad influence, when they see their children dancing and swinging their hips.  The band has a few humorous encounters along the way, before they debut their original song "The New Virginia Reel," a rock 'n roll version of the classic Virginia Reel where the kids and parents all dance the Virginia Reel together, the parents now seeing that rock 'n roll isn't always and everywhere 'subversive' or 'trashing tradition,' but an evolution of tradition.

Such movies helped ease parents into rock 'n roll, when bands showed that it was a continuation of tradition rather than a total break.  Up north, however, rock 'n roll gained more thinly veiled drug references and sexual references, and would soon begin influencing the so-called 'hippies'.

Drugs in the USA

In the 1950s, the CIA bought up the entire world's supply of LSD in order to study its effects on people, and possible use in Project MK Ultra, a mind control experiment.  It was given, without knowledge, to doctors, military, prostitutes, mental patients, and others, who were then studied without their knowledge to gain insight into the effects of the drug on them.  By 1963, Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley (who wrote Brave New World), and other psychiatrists were advocating the use of hallucinogens to 'expand your mind.'  Other drugs made it into the USA via Mexico via straightaway trains, which did not stop in the CS but went straight through to the USA, allowing them to bypass customs, a practice begun in 1958, but stopped in 1963.  Others came from southeast Asia, where the US intelligence agencies and military were operating, and from South America, where 'economic hit men' were operating to ensure access to raw resources to fuel the American economy.

Chapter 57: Pivot Point

United States Presidential Election of 1960

In the United States, a young and vibrant Senator from the small state of Massachusetts made a run at the Democrat nomination, by the name of John F Kennedy.  Despite recommendations to the contrary, the now candidate put up W. Averell Harriman as his VP, a man born and raised in New York and in deep to the NY machine, which Kennedy needed to win the election against Nixon, a man from California chosen as the Republican candidate for president.  Kennedy talked tough, especially about the "missile gap" between the US and USSR; in truth, the Soviets had maybe 4 ICBMs to the US 98, and CS 61, with both North American nations quickly building more.  By 1962, the USSR had 72, the US 177, and the CS 155.

The fight was hard fought, but in the end Kennedy won by 313-191 electoral votes, and squeaked past in Illinois, Michigan, and Fiji when some "late-arriving ballots" came in after midnight that secured the victory for John Kennedy.  While he certainly had grounds to sue for what appeared to be fraud in those three states, which would have given him the presidency.  For what he believed to be the sake of the country, and to avoid the remote possibility of more secession (despite it being a century afterwards), Nixon conceded the election.

The media loved Kennedy, and encouraged a public image of an active and vibrant man, despite privately wearing a back brace and being on a number of pain medications.  His campaign encouraged the new generation to become active in politics, and symbolized a 'passing of the torch' from the pre-WW2 generation to that of the WW2 generation to take up leadership in the country.  He was famously quoted for saying "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." 
 

Kennedy's Presidency

Kennedy toured a number of countries as president, including the Confederate States, where he visited Richmond, the former capital, Appomattox, where a memorial to Lee and Grant's final battle stood, and had a state dinner with President Strom Thurmond, where Dixie was played, and the southern version of Battle Cry of Freedom was played, as was routine, at a parade held in his honor, the lyrics causing some reaction from the new President (specifically "Down with the eagle, and up with the cross"), causing a minor media incident in the South, as the New Englander President had the misfortune of coming from the area of the US that most southerners still held responsible for causing the War for Southern Independence.  He also visited a crowd of Georgia State Militia near Fort Cleburne in Atlanta, the militia flag flying next to him, a photo that caused a bit of stir back in the US.



His speech to the militiamen was well-received, though afterwards a number of the Georgians did joke about his Boston accent, quipping "he pahkt the cah in Warshington ovah they-ah then came down hee-ah to to-ahk to us" till their sergeants stopped them.  "I have met men of boldness here in Dixie, men of action, and dedication.  At the centennial of the War of 1861, we remember that independence and self-government guided your ancestors then, and all our ancestors in 1776.  The boldness your grandfathers showed then and in those terrible wars not twenty years ago, must guide us now.  It is important for us both to work together for peace, to seek every opportunity to promote progress of both our peoples towards a future where race and creed matter not so much as what's in your head and in your heart.  Peace is the right way, but it must be sought in the right way.  The ends do not justify the means in all cases, because in the end, our means will be judged by history just as harshly as they deserve if we sought power and party over justice and the constitutions by which we live."

It was a five minute speech, and in his words, the southerners read a subtle sign he was not just another Yankee, but interested in peace and cooperation with the more rural confederation.  They heard the subtle jab at Lincoln that most in the north would not hear or understand, but people behind the scenes in the US heard him and began plotting against Kennedy.

In his first State of the Union, Kennedy said, "The denial of constitutional rights to some of our fellow Americans on account of race—at the ballot box and elsewhere—disturbs the national conscience, and subjects us to the charge of world opinion that our democracy is not equal to the high promise of our heritage.  Our Confederate brothers to the South have shown us that such a denial is not necessary; they lived without true segregation for over a century and the negro population of the Confederate States have prospered because of their integration into society."  Kennedy would take steps to require companies that got government contracts not to discriminate, and would appoint Thurgood Marshall, from Maryland, to the Supreme Court.  Under his watch, a cross-border match between the Southern Football League and the National Football League was organized, and actually took place in 1961, televised in both nations as one of the highest rated television shows to date.

President Kennedy took a routine Kruschev speech intended for internal Soviet audiences as a personal challenge, escalated any operations in Central or South America - only the CSA would do that, to the consternation of the US's CIA.  As part of the reconciliation efforts with the CSA, the United States agreed to help build space launch sites in Florida, Guyana, and Texas, which unfortunately caused an escalation of tensions with the Russians, and caused the Nicaraguan Missile Crisis after the failed invasion of Nicaragua, which nearly caused a three-way war between the CSA, USA, and USSR before Thurmond, Kennedy, and Kruschev were able to de-escalate tensions.  Thurmond was angered at the Yankee Empire meddling in the "Confederate Lake," and had a heated conversation with him for over an hour until the two were able to come to an agreement that the US would no longer cond Texas in exchange for the right to launch from those sites at times when the CS were not launching, and partial funding of the Confederate space program for a period of 5 years.

Flag of communist Nicaragua, since 1959

After the PR nightmare of the Nicaraguan Missile Crisis, the Kennedy Administration needed to pivot to something else to gain positive attention, and began work on both civil rights and on tax cuts.  The United States had, since the latter part of the Grant Administration, allowed segregation and racial discrimination towards its black population, which most Americans at the time viewed as responsible for the Union loss against the Confederates and as traitors against those who were trying to free them.  The famous 1896 case Plessy vs. Henderson, involving Michigan's Separate Car Act had declared as constitutional the 'separate but equal' clause that was only recently (1957) declared unconstitutional, and with incitement by black southerners such as Martin Luther King, John Calvin Prince, John B. Wycliffe, and John Huss, the northern black population was demanding equality before the law more and more.

Despite arrests and deportations for violations of the law, King and other civil rights activists wrote letters, taped sermons and messages, and wrote pamphlets, inspiring thousands to protest the unjust laws of the US that segregated people.  Some American governors, especially those of Illinois, Michigan, and New York, with the strictest segregation laws, complained to the President about Confederates meddling in their business, for a people who supposedly believed in state sovereignty.  Governor Joshua H. Swainson of Michigan, and his wife 'Josie' made a number of colorful remarks on black southerners, including a desire to deport all blacks from Michigan to Liberia like Lincoln wanted to do in the first place, which would soon earn him an electoral defeat once Michigan black citizens were able to vote safely.

In 1962, on March 13, Kennedy's Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, got a recommendation from Bryan Lemintzer, Operation Northwoods, recommending flying planes into buildings with Hispanic-looking passengers as culprits so they could blame Nicaragua, which had recently embarrassed the administration in the missile crisis, and the resulting Confederate 'request' to 'stay out of their lake.'  If they did this false flag, they would then have a pretext for war against Nicaragua, regardless of what the Confederates said.  His other plan, Operation Dixie Crossing, had two options: (a) have buildings bombed in Detroit or Chicago, and blamed on the Confederates as an option to take Kentucky and California back, or (b) have jets flown from Confederate airspace into Baltimore to provide pretext for full war with the South to retake the entire country, nearly doubling the size of the US, population, and natural resources.  When Kennedy was made aware of these plans, he fired Lemintzer immediately.

One of Kennedy's more positive efforts was his establishment of the Peace Corps, which used volunteers, typically college students, to promote economic and social development in poorer countries around the world.  It was partially funded by the US government and partnered with other nations to help them with various projects like medical care, malaria prevention with drugs like HCQ and mosquito nets, electrification, freshwater wells, and other similar efforts.

With Southern and Central America out of bounds for US efforts at international intervention, Kennedy turned to Southeast Asia, and specifically Vietnam, a country that fascinated him since his time in the Senate.  With the increase in Viet Cong in the nation, Kennedy increased the number of military advisors and special forces from 11,000 in 1962 to 16,000 in 1963.

In early 1963, Kennedy gave a speech in West Warsaw, the capital of West Poland since 1948, though not the actual seat of government due to East Warsaw and the wall, where he famously said "jestem warszawiakiem" (I am a Varsovian), though his accent rendered the phrase almost unintelligible to most of the audience.  The most famous line referred to the recently established Warsaw Wall, where he said, "Freedom has many difficulties, and democracy is not perfect. But we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us."

In June 1963, Kennedy visited his ancestral home of Ireland, and got an honorary degree from the Royal University of Ireland in Dublin and accepted a grant of armorial bearings from the Chief Herald of Ireland during his visit, a follow-up to his visit to England in 1961.  Despite the hopes of the small republican minority of Ireland, Kennedy emphasized that Ireland was stronger within the United Kingdom than without it, and urged everyone in Ireland to work towards a stronger United Kingdom where the Irish were respected as were the Scots and the Welsh.

In his final State of the Union address, Kennedy called for a substantial tax reform, reducing the income taxes from the then-current range of 20-90% to 14-65%, and reducing the corporate rate from 52% to 47%, and the elimination of certain deductions.  At a speech in Detroit, Kennedy called for the US to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade in cooperation with the Confederate States.

Unfortunately for the United States, President Kennedy was shot in Chicago on the 22nd of November, 1963.  The blame initially fell on Bryan Caswell O'Neal of Detroit, who was shot the day after being arrested.  O'Neal claimed he was a patsy, despite a mountain of evidence pointing to him.  A day of mourning was declared even in the Confederate States, where the Confederate flag was flown at half-staff in respect to President Kennedy; even the flag at Alexandria, Virginia flew at half-staff, seen from the White House.  His Vice President, W. Averell Harriman, was sworn in the same day as President.

Trust the Government

In the United States, TV stations would often sign off about 1 AM as there was no more content to televise until the next morning.  At this time, the United States were in an ideological struggle with the Soviet Union, and were using various means to ensure the loyalty of their own citizens.  Those who watched the nightly sign-off unknowingly got a hidden message in their patriotic video:



In the transition between lyrics, the messages flashed on screen, too fast to be consciously perceived, but registered in the subconscious:

TRUST THE US GOVERNMENT

GOD IS REAL GOD IS WATCHING

BELIEVE IN GOVERNMENT GOD

REBELLION WILL NOT BE TOLERATED

OBEY CONSUME OBEY CONSUME

BUY ULTRA BUY NAOMI

WORSHIP CONSUME OBEY BELIEVE

DO NOT QUESTION GOVERNMENT

After the 1960s, the message was removed from the US sign-off.  

There was no corresponding messaging in the Confederate States, however, they did sign-off with playing 'Dixie' and a number of patriotic images, such as the Lee Statue in Richmond, the War Memorial in Atlanta, and images of the memorials in Davis, DC.

Civil Rights in the United States

After the second World War, many black Americans had fought bravely for their country with honor and dignity and had broken down many barriers within the armed services, though when they got home, they found many northern states and cities still had segregated schools and public accommodations as they had for a century.  The increased contact with southern blacks, who had for decades already achieved legal and social equality with whites through a very gradual process, showed them the chasm they had to cross to achieve the same in their own nation, which lauded itself as the 'land of the free' and a 'bastion of equality' that fought against the tyrants in Europe and Japan, and yet, still segregated part of its population.  Southern pastors and preachers, black and white went north into the United States and helped motivate and embolden their cousins living up north that, rather than moving south, they should fight for equality in the US, and make it live up to its founding documents, changing the meaning of the Declaration of Independence to a call for equality between the races.

A practice of civil disobedience and protests and lawsuits was developed, looking for venues that would help overturn the century-plus-long segregation of the United States.  It finally happened with the case that made it to the Supreme Court, starting in 1951 in Kansas, known as Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.  It was ruled in 1954 that school segregation was unconstitutional under Chief Justice William James O'Brien.  The following year in 1955, the court laid out how schools should desegregate.  Southern press, especially black-owned press outlets, praised the decision, but worried that the Americans were looking to their courts to make the changes they themselves should be making in their state legislatures.  Forcing people to change by court order, the southern newspapers editorialized, might cause further resentments, rather than really changing hearts and minds.  Cape Girardeau, Missouri was one of the first 'northern' cities to desegregate after the court decision.  "It is unthinkable,' said the School Board Superintendent Michael Jeffries, 'that we will try to [override] the laws of the United States."  Notably, the Limbaugh law firm in the town represented several black families when fighting desegregation of restaurants in the town, which was largely achieved peacefully.

An Ohioan woman, Rosa Parks, whose mother moved with her up to Ohio after splitting with her father in the 20s, married a Columbus barber Billy Parks, who encouraged her to further her education.  Soon, the Springfield Nine came into the news, when the Governor of Illinois, Democrat David Caswell, who followed Adlai Stevenson in the governor's mansion, attempted to block the children from entering Springfield High School by calling out the National Guard in September.  Very close to the capital, protestors lined along the streets waving American flags and holding signs against "race mixing."  President MacArthur sent the 83rd Airborne Division to protect the students, and federalized the Illinois National Guard, delegating command to General J. Robert Cleburne, from West Virginia.


Confederate Naval Jack flown in Southern Illinois by protestors of the governor.

Counterprotests occurred at the capital with civil rights protestors, white and black, flying Confederate Naval Jacks in front of the capitol building where other protesters were waving US flags, and in front of Lincoln's House, calling him a racist and a deporter-in-chief.  Those waving US flags called those with the CS flags traitors creating a heated environment, while a number of Confederates objected to using their flags up north (which would lead to accusations by later American politicians that they were racists for not supporting civil rights).  It was a tense school year, and eventually, Caswell signed a bill to close all the high schools in Springfield so that desegregation could not occur.  The children endured a lot of abuse by white students that was not punished unless it was egregious and witnessed by an adult.  Governor Caswell then initiated a plan to open private schools, which was blocked in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the black community in Springfield then became the target of hate crimes by people who blamed them for the schools being closed.  Teachers were in a difficult position, as public employees, forced to attend school every day despite the schools being closed.

In May of 1959, after firing 44 teachers and administrative staff from the three high schools, the segregationist school board members were replaced with 3 moderate ones, who reinstated the staff to their positions, and attempted to reopen the schools, to Caswell's dismay.  To avoid more complications, the high schools were scheduled to open earlier than normal.  Though what was called the "Lost Year" came to a close, black students who returned to high school in Springfield faced mobs that made it difficult to enter schools, and faced emotional and physical abuse there.  The "Lost Year" became the pretext for new racism against black students in Springfield.

The defunct Union League came back with a vengeance, associating loyalty to the Union with defending segregation, with the local NAACP leader, Bobby Locke, encouraging armed self-defense, which stunned Union League members who retreated when first confronted with the civil rights protestors, and several Union League members, like Cameron Amerling, Bryan Foster, Olivia Smith, and Cass Henderson, to be convicted of incitement to riot, a famous photo of them in their white robes across front pages around the US.

At the same time in 1958, sit-ins began starting in Kansas, at Dockum Drug Store in downtown Wichita, moving eastward.  After three weeks, Dockum Drug Store changed its policy of segregated seating.  A lesser-known sit-in happened in Oklahoma City in the Confederate States, with Lizzy Clayton, a black-Indian woman, led a sit-in to protest the state of Oklahoma's discrimination against non-Indians in some accommodations.

In 1961, 'Freedom Rides' became another technique used by civil rights activists, using interstate buses and the Interstate Commerce Act, a 19th century law, to overturn segregation in public accommodations.  The case Wayne vs. West Virginia ruled segregation was illegal for buses engaged in interstate travel, so 'freedom riders' tested the case out by riding buses and trains.  They were able to ride, but when they arrived and attempted to use 'white only' restrooms and facilities, they got arrested for breach of peace and refusal to obey an officer.  They were put in prisons with horrible conditions.  

Voter registration drives spread across the US, with 'camps' dedicated to getting them educated to defeat the literacy tests and other obstacles put in their way, though whites put tests that no highly educated person could pass in their way.  Employers fired blacks who attempted to register, and landlords evicted tenants who tried registering.

Despite all these obstacles, public pressure was mounting during Kennedy's presidency, and after his death, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the follow-up in 1965, overturned segregation and discrimination on the basis of race, giving the federal government more power to interfere in state affairs, in the name of civil rights, that would extend well past the original intentions of the law's authors.

Confederate Capital Cathedral


After nearly a century (1872-1961) of construction, with pauses during the Spanish-Confederate War, World War I, three years of the depression, and World War II, the Confederate Capital Cathedral (what the US would call the 'Confederate National Cathedral') is completed.  It seats 8,900 people with an area of 11,200 m².  The two towers are named for Saint Peter and Saint Paul.  While officially a Southern Methodist cathedral, it is open to all denominations, and Baptists, Lutherans, and other denominations routinely hold chapel services and other services in the cathedral.


Stained glass windows within the cathedral

The stained glass of the cathedral showed images of Christ's Passion, the martyrdom of the apostles, and images of Robert E Lee, Thomas Jackson, Nathan Forrest, Joseph Johnston, JEB Stuart, and PGT Beauregard praying and showing Christian charity, and Patrick Cleburne reading the Cleburne Memorial with dozens of black Confederates in uniform carrying the 'southern cross.'  Images of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Davis, and Stephens are present in the stained glass as well, showing the Christian roots of the Confederacy.

Bishop James Peters conducted the consecration and service, attended by the governors, President, Vice President, congress, and several thousand people from all across the Confederacy, in an over-capacity service that was televised, and in some homes, moved people to tears.  It was shut off across the border when it showed black and white Confederates sitting next to each other as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

In keeping with tradition since the 1876 Great Revival, the cathedral is the site of the Seven Feasts (Passover, Pentecost, First Fruits, Unleavened Bread, Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles), celebrating the traditional Jewish feasts, but in their Christian context of pointing to Jesus as the Messiah.  Once the Didache was found, another wave of revival swept through the South, making dunking baptisms much more common, and moreso in rivers, though in the cathedral, a baptismal font with running water is considered 'living water' for the purpose of baptism.  

All along the sides of the church are chapels dedicated to the various Saints of the people who make up the Confederacy: St George (England), St Patrick (Ireland), St David (Wales), St Andrew (Scotland), St Michael (France), St Boniface (Germany), St Moses the Black (Africa), St Mary (Asia).

Surrounding the cathedral in its close are a subway station (Cathedral Station), a Biblical Garden, Sunday School building, rectory, and church museum.

Confederate Centennial

Preparations for the centennial had been gearing up since 1955, with novels, magazines, and television specials planned for the event.  The first celebration was at the old Fort Sumter, now Fort Sumter-Liberty Island, with a newly cleaned, gleaming bronze Lady Liberty in the harbor.


The first official celebration was that of South Carolina, with Harry Downs, the first black mayor of Charleston, and veteran of World War II who saved the lives of three now-sitting senators' children in active combat in Germany, leading the celebration on the 20th of December with a reading of the South Carolina declaration of secession.  Mayor Downs noted that the northern states failed in their constitutional obligations regarding the fugitive slave provisions, and though he and every Confederate alive knows that slavery was wrong, had the north not agitated against the south and broken their compact, the two sections could've come to a more peaceful solution without war.  He then remarked that in the end, secession was better for all black southerners as the white southerners with whom they'd lived and worked realized that independence could not be achieved without them working together, and after the war, white southerners honored their emancipation obligations, unlike the northerners who segregated and ostracized the very black veterans they had used to force the south back into the Union.  Mayor Downs celebrated the one hundredth Secession Day with fireworks, barbeques, and his promise that Charleston would be a seat of liberty for all Confederates of all races and religions.

In the spring of 1961, Secession Day came with huge fireworks, parades, and waving the first Confederate flag in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and Louisiana, and Confederate Day celebrated the centennial of their new Confederation with President Thurmond giving a speech, saying "Had we not separated from our northern brethren, I don't know if we southerners would be as happy or as peaceful as we are today.  We might be living under a 70% income tax and still struggling to rebuild after that horrible war that no one asked for other than those abolitionists in New England to place all our states under their mercantilist thumb of slave labor for white and black, barely making enough to eat, and certainly not making enough to build a free and prosperous confederation as we have.  What good came out of it is that we saw the error of our ways in slavery and saw that together rather than apart, we can fight to maintain our freedoms and liberties.  The Confederacy is that beacon of liberty showing the world not by force or manipulation, but by a proud example, how a free republic can function without oppressive regulation or taxation, and people of many races can work together to build a new tomorrow.  We don't need to focus on our race or our gender, but as a good reverend from Alabama told me, it's the content of our characters that should be our judge and guide for how we treat one another.  God made us all uniquely and different and God never makes mistakes, so it's up to us to see the wisdom of our Creator."

Fort Sumter Day was declared in April, with a huge fireworks celebration at Charleston and on Fort Sumter-Liberty Island, the giant golden statue gleaming in the reflections of the fireworks as people partied and celebrated.


First Manassas - July 21, 1961

At the centennial of the first major battle of the War for Southern Independence, descendants of all the major leaders of the south at the time were in attendance.  Jefferson Davis III and IV were present, along with the son of President Thomas Jackson II, Thomas Jackson III, a war veteran and Virginian State Senator, Joseph R Johnston, Robert Beauregard and Emilie Beauregard, the great grandson and great granddaughter of the general, Theodore Holmes, the grandson of the Reserve Bridge commander, and several thousand other direct descendants, many of whom participated in a reenactment of the battle for the crowd who watched from the stands.

Edward M Smith, the great grandson of General Kirby Smith, came up on the Richmond Train and gave a speech on honor, valor, and sacrifice for freedom, saying "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We preserved our freedom a century ago by granting freedom to our fellow black Confederates.  Now it's up to all of us to fight together to maintain it, and to stand up to any tyrant at home or abroad who would divide us by race or by gender."  Many thought this would be the beginning of a promising political career for Smith, but he declined to run for politics.  He wanted to spend time with his family and his business.

Seven Days - June 25 to July 1, 1962

General Lee's large family was present for the seven-day celebration of the second year of the War for Southern Independence, with Robert Edward Lee V, VI, VII, and VIII there, talking with the public and giving speeches, and stands with replica goods of the era, and reenactments at all the various battlefields, with several hundred thousand Confederates and Americans visiting and learning about the battles.

Fredericksburg - November 7, 1962

At Marye's Heights, the Confederates had reenactments of the battle where they had had such a resounding victory, while kids spent time at the arts and crafts booths with little toy guns and mini caps, and copies of Lincoln's initial emancipation proclamation were read aloud, his plans for deporting all black people out of the country after emancipation to Liberia or Panama being the sharp focus of a number of black speakers there, such as Bernard Lafayette, who emphasized that they were an integral part of the South and it wouldn't be Dixie without them there.  Everyone who made up Dixie was critical to the creation of its culture and heritage and should be respected, honored, understood, and celebrated, he said in a speech in period clothing to a large crowd of men, women, and children, black and white.  Lafayette's speech especially was labelled as 'dangerous and seditious' and no northern paper published any excerpts of it.

Gettysburg - July 1963

Both American and Confederate descendants came together in Pennsylvania to celebrate the centennial of the battle and to show the reunion they had had together since the battle, men dressing in the uniforms of their ancestors coming together and shaking hands across the fences as their ancestors had done nearly 50 years ago when the survivors of the battle had also done the same.

Both the US and CS released a commemorative half dollar for the centennial:

The main difference of the Confederate version was the name of the country, and replacing 'In God We Trust' with 'Deo Vindice.'  Thomas Jackson IV gave a speech about his great grandfather, who fought in the battle, declaring that he believed the battle would've been lost had his ancestor not been there.  Despite the battlefield victory by the South, the North still claimed it as a victory for themselves, and the South was gracious to let them think so.

President Kennedy spoke at the memorial, along with President Thurmond.  Kennedy remarked that he regretted the separation of north and south, but they were two different cultures and two different nations, even in 1776 when they both fought together for independence.  He said that despite the division sown between the two that led to war in 1861, they had grown into friends and allies in war and in peace, and both can learn from each other in peace.  President Thurmond spoke on how liberty grew stronger as a result of the war, the South giving an example of a victorious struggle not to preserve slavery as a few fringe historians claimed, but a struggle to preserve independence and self-government, and a struggle on how to free and integrate a quarter of the southern population into a free society on their own terms.  Thurmond's own daughter, of mixed race, was in the crowd, but he had not at that time publicly accepted her, mostly to avoid political controversy. 

Both Kennedy and Thurmond signed the Gettysburg Agreement on the 4th, reaffirming friendship, peace, and free trade between the US and CS, along with joint space exploration efforts, continental defense efforts, and resistance to communism; though Thurmond asked for the US to keep Central and Southern America as the CS 'sphere of influence' (i.e. the US would keep its economic hit men and jackals out, and stop meddling in the political affairs of those countries).

Emancipation Day - January 2, 1864

One of Patrick Cleburne's descendants, who happened to be part black, read out his Memorial and eulogized his ancestor from Ireland and his foresight that it took all of Dixie to win independence.  Both white and black depended upon each other, and only together, said Patrick Martin Cleburne, would Dixie find victory in independence, and freedom to find their own path in the world.  Celebrations in black neighborhoods and amongst black families were the subject of a large number of stories and news reports, and Confederate flags flew proudly from many homes on the 2nd.  The show of racial unity across the South was shocking and appalling to a number of northerners, including Mayor D.C. Bryan in Chicago, Governor Caswell in New York, and a number of pastors in various New England towns predicting 'racial mixing' if that kind of outrage came to the North.  People in power in the US Government began worrying how to control and keep the black population separate as the move for civil rights up north gained steam.

Battle for Atlanta Centennial - November, 1864

Celebrating the centennial of the defense of Atlanta, Mayor Jonathan Allen and Governor Carl Sanders participated in the celebrations and rallies at Peachtree Creek with Patrick Martin Cleburne, Cecilia Cleburne, and several other prominent local figures.  Talks of moving the capital to Atlanta, the financial center of Georgia, crept up again, but Milledgeville remained the capital, as it had been for over 160 years.  Reenactments and barbecues were all over the Peachtree Creek Battlefield Park, which had been preserved since 1914 from development to preserve one of the key sites in Confederate history from being lost.  The routing and capture of General Thomas, a Union General from Virginia was marked with a series of comemorative plaques.

Richmond Diplomatic Centennial - November and December 1964

Queen Elizabeth II made a state visit to the Confederate States, along with French President Marie-Pierre Kœnig, received in Davis, D.C. and staying in the Lee Hotel's royal suite, with the three nations reaffirming the warm relations established in 1864 among them, their commitments to human rights and freedom, and a firm position against socialism and its ultimate end - communism.

Centennial of Grant's Surrender - April 1965

Descendants of Lee participated in the reenactment of the surrender of Grant with a reenactor from Ohio in the United States, and gave them the same full honors Lee gave to Grant as his troops surrendered arms to him, Forrest, Longstreet, Hill, Ewell, and Jackson.  As with all the centennials, it was filmed and photographed for posterity.

Education of History
The individual states surveyed the education of Confederate history and discovered a lack of solid constitutional instruction, and a number of oversimplifications of Confederate history and the causes of secession. Beginning in 1961, historians rewrote the entire southern history textbooks, putting southern culture in context, and giving context to the cultural, historical, and political differences between north and south, and how they led to the war, their well-researched facts destroying the old 'all about slavery' argument lazily used by some northerners.  The Celtic culture of the south began to be emphasized against the English culture of New England, and New England was put into context as the odd-balls in the early United States; their repeated attempts and threats of secession blunted their claims that secession was illegal/unconstitutional in concert with NY/VA/RI's ratification statements on the Constitution, which were included in many history book appendices.  Northern abolitionism was put into its proper context as a power ploy to counter southern efforts to block northern protective tariffs, rather than anything to do with the morality of abolishing slavery, hitting the south in their pocketbook like the south did for the north.  Northern use of whips and lashes, segregation, and violence against blacks and true abolitionists were included in textbooks from this point forth.

As a result of the centennial, a number of northerners began resenting the publicity of the South and fawning coverage they saw of their centennial and the use of Confederate battle flags even up north as a sign of rebellion to authority by some of the youth, who saw the south as justified in separating from the north, having fought for freedom, independence, and the constitution, while they said the north fought for money, power, and political control.  People in the education industry began changing the educational materials about the war to start changing opinions about the south so that the north would be seen as the good guy in the war.  TV stations used subliminal messages in the TV sign-off to program people that the north was fighting for freedom.  The then-current curricula was simply that the North 'fought to preserve the Union of their fathers for their sons' while the south fought 'to preserve their way of life, that of self-government, from growing government influence', and 'both sides fought with honor'.  Mentions of pre-war northern segregation were slowly removed from the textbooks, while post-war segregation was blamed on southerners moving north agitating the blacks to violence against peaceful, moral, upright, innocent northern citizens.  At the same time, the north's quest to preserve the Union became a 'fight to end slavery' over several revisions to the texts, giving the north a perceived moral superiority that didn't exist in reality.

Confederate Presidential Election of 1963

In the Confederate States, the election of 1963 was fought between two older men, namely Barry Goldwater of Arizona and Lyndon Johnson of Texas.  The Confederate Party had become the Confederate Republican Party after the second world war to emphasize its ties to the republican form of government as opposed to communism.  Johnson was a southern Democrat, and had gotten his Senate position through dubious means, an open secret in the Senate.  He got the endorsement of Thurmond, though not a vocal and public endorsement as Thurmond had gotten from his predecessor, and the two fought in four televised debates in the fall of 1963, with a number of topics including nuclear arms, US intervention in Vietnam, the Warsaw Wall, and joint space operations with the Americans.  Democrats were barely holding the majority in the Senate, but Goldwater's command of the issues and his war record made him more popular amongst the younger Confederates, where he represented a return to a more honest time, as persistent rumors of Johnson's dubious vote-acquisition schemes dogged him throughout the campaign, along with his well-known temper.  His selection of George Wallace of Alabama sought to bring in the eastern states, as Wallace had promoted industrial development, lower local taxes and confederation-wide tariffs, and managed to open the University of South Alabama in Mobile during his time in office.  After his selection, however, private comments by Wallace surfaced that would cause some damage to the campaign, where Wallace said the northern policy of segregation had a 'proud history' and perhaps it should have been adopted in the South after the war, saying there were too many non-white people voting in the South.  Johnson personally called and bullied a number of reporters into squelching the story, and was reportedly heard getting in Wallace's face and staring him down within inches, jabbing his finger right in his chest, giving him "The Treatment."  After that, Wallace made a public statement renouncing northern segregation and 'clarifying' his statement that he didn't mean to sound like he supported northern-style segregation or intimate that non-whites shouldn't vote, but rather meant that northerners were proud of their segregation, and if the south had adopted such a policy, there wouldn't have been as many non-white southerners contributing to the advancement of the South.  It eased the media scrutiny, but made a lot of steady black Democrat voters in Dixie hesitant to vote Democrat again.

Presidential Candidates

Goldwater (AZ) vs Johnson (TX)

Vice Presidential Candidates


Carl Sanders (GA) vs. George Wallace (AL)

Goldwater chose Carl Sanders of Georgia as his running mate as he was believed to be a balancing force for modernization and representing the generation that had fought in the war, was a much more likeable person than Wallace, and was able to defeat him in their sole Vice Presidential debate, his Georgian accent coming across as more personable, and his experience working for all Georgians, as opposed to Wallace's efforts to leave black Alabamans out of his government made black Confederates more likely to vote Confederate Republican rather than Democrat.  In three televised debates, Goldwater showed a strong command of the issues, explaining the dangers of voting Democrat, with Goldwater warning Confederates that Johnson would drag the Confederates into the Vietnam War alongside the Yankees.

In November of 1963, in a close race, Barry Goldwater defeated Lyndon Johnson by 37 electoral votes.  After midnight on election night, thought thousands of ballots showed up in various precincts, attempting to flip Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia for Johnson, when law enforcement in those states turned up evidence of a massive bribery scheme with Brennan Amerling, his brother Richard D Amerling, both Johnson campaign staffers, D. Thompson, a native of Chicago, D Caswell, and several other campaign employees trying to stuff ballot boxes and rig voting machines to count more votes for Johnson than there were voting-age people in those states.  The scheme fell apart by mid-November, despite Johnson's loss, and resulted in Johnson's arrest for treason, along with over 587 other Democrats across the Confederacy.  Five State legislatures flipped to the Confederate Republicans, and the media had a field day with the coverage.  Information came in that there were ties to a number of American businessmen and their intelligence agencies, though the CS would not confirm it in later reports.  By December 11th, the Confederate Democrat Party announced it was dissolving itself as a political party after the arrest and prosecution of the head of the party itself.  Reported in a few newspapers in Atlanta, Brunswick, Richmond, and Birmingham, but not picked up, were the deportations of a number of American citizens from around Dixie, and a group who had gathered at the private residence of the Rockefeller family on Jekyll Island. 

Their charges were not made public, but it was later revealed that members of the Vanderlip, Rockefeller, Aldrich, Warburg families, C. Douglas Dillon, and a few others were arrested for conspiracy to influence a Confederate presidential election by funding LBJ so he would get the CS into Vietnam with the US along with the new US President Harriman, allowing a number of armament businesses to make millions of dollars providing munitions, and banks to make millions on loans and debt for them and the government.  Outgoing President Thurmond was livid, as he was a strong supporter of states' rights and the independence of Dixie from the United States.  LBJ was also receiving surveillance information captured by ECHELON, a signals intelligence program between the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the Confederacy.

The collapse of the Democrats resulted in a massive win for the Confederate Republican party, which now had supermajorities in both Houses and in most state legislatures, as the former Democrats fumbled about.  A new amendment to the constitution was passed, the 32nd, which contained a number of vote integrity provisions, to prevent such a debacle as the 1963 election from happening again.  After his inauguration in 1964, President Goldwater commuted the sentence of Johnson to avoid the standard punishment for treason, but Johnson would remain in prison for the rest of his life.

Despite the political turmoil, president-elect Goldwater attended the state funeral in the United States with President Strom Thurmond for President Kennedy, and both gave their condolences to Mrs. Kennedy.  President Harriman did the same, though he was less than cordial with Thurmond and his successor, President Goldwater.  Accusations of spying for the USSR dogged him, with his escalation in Vietnam being seen by many as a ploy to dodge the accusation.

A series of voting integrity laws were passed across the CSA to avoid any further debacle and restore confidence in the voting system.  Among them:
-all voters must present a state-issued photo ID to vote.
-counties must verify that their voter rolls are purged of dead-people, non-residents, foreign nationals, underage, welfare recipients, and felons whose voting right was not restored
-counties must verify that they have the same number of ballots as they have votes cast, and have the ballots secured for 2 years after the election.
-counties cannot hold their results past two hours of close (used in the 1963 election to find out how many ballots to manufacture)
-the ballots are reported and counted on election night, and no extra ballots are accepted after polls close; the ballots are recounted by an independent audit company within 3 weeks that has no ties to either party or campaign to verify the numbers again.
-absentee ballots are only allowable for military oversees.  Each state authorizes a half-day holiday for voting
-all ballots must have chain of custody from polling location to counting location
-all polling districts shall ensure they do not count more votes than registered voters
-all polling districts shall provide a count of ballots that shall be the same at the counting location; if it differs, the people running the polling location shall be charged with a felony
-all counting locations shall have modern security to prevent the introduction of new ballots at all stages of counting or the miscounting or destruction of ballots, and shall not have more ballots than registered persons in their districts.
-any person who votes more than once, destroys/alters ballots, adds new false ballots or anything else to alter the true outcome of an election, commits a felony and loses the right to vote for 5 years.
-voter intimidation is a felony
-paying for votes or offering anything of value in exchange for a vote is a felony
-citizens who leave a county must report to the county that they have left, and the county must send them a notice they have been removed from the voter rolls.
-any hospital and any funeral home must report a death to the county, who removes the person from the voter rolls; this notice of removal is signed at the hospital by staff or family to prove it had a witness to avoid any complaint.
-a candidate which knowingly tries to alter the true outcome of an election will be charged with treason; the campaign and political party will be charged with a felony and any person who obeyed any directive to commit fraud will be charged with a felony and lose their right to vote for 5 years.

Given the behind-the-scenes interference by the US and their intelligence agencies with the CS election, and fears that it was with the goal of returning Dixie to the United States, and a not-publicly-admitted but privately spoken fear during the centennial celebrations, a number of federal changes were made and several laws were passed to strengthen Confederate privacy protections and discourage foreign interference in Confederate elections:

-foreign nationals who spy on Confederate citizens or violate any right guaranteed under the Constitution would be charged with a felony and imprisoned for at least 5 years
-telephone systems in the CS were required to have some form of encryption at the endpoints
-foreign interference/participation in any political activity by any foreign national was explicitly made a felony
-the Confederate Secret Service was forbidden from spying on citizens, but could spy on foreign nationals within the CS if it expressly protected the identities of citizens if they were part of the conversation, and could not be unmasked without a warrant.
-businesses, including banks, operating across state lines could not participate in politics by funding specific candidates, campaigns, or political parties, lobby for any legislation designed to cause profit, monopoly, or disadvantage or discourage competition, conspire with any elected or other government official to cause any law to be made or regulation, or make business decisions with a political outcome in mind, including hiring/firing for political reasons.

The last piece of legislation was opposed by a number of companies, who carried the case to the Supreme Court by 1966, in Bank of the Appalachians vs. the Confederate States, where the bank, with branches across Virginia, sued the CS government on the grounds that corporate personhood included the freedom of speech.  The result of the case caused a ripple throughout the Confederacy.  The Court ruled against the Bank of the Appalachians, on several points of law:

*banks are not persons, but legal fictions to separate liability from the employees and owners to the corporation and its assets.
*conglomerations of persons, such as banks, businesses, and are not individuals or citizens, and as such cannot participate in political activities such as campaign contributions to a candidate, party, or campaign or lobbying, as their accumulation of money outweighs and negates the voices of hundreds to thousands of citizens
*as a conglomeration, banks, businesses, etc. cannot possibly represent all the views of all their employees
*as a conglomeration, they have a larger amount of money at hand and can use that money to have a much larger impact on political activity than one individual, and thus, would be, if allowed, silencing a large part of the population if they were allowed to fund a candidate, campaign, or political party, against the will of the employees or other voters.
*conglomerations cannot lobby lawmakers for a specific law or regulation, as this would be in violation of the 20th amendments restrictions on restricting trade by using the government to try to monopolize trade for the company
*conglomerations cannot force employees to make political contributions to a candidate or party against their will
*conglomerations cannot discriminate based on political opinion, as that would be participating in political activity
*conglomerations can purchase ads based on issues that would affect them so long as they don't mention specific candidates or parties.
*conglomerations cannot act on their customers in a way that would infringe on their political freedoms, as that would be participating in a political activity; i.e. banks cannot discriminate against a particular political party in denying them an account, or a telephone company can't close the accounts of customers who disagree with the political opinions of those in charge of a company

This was *huge*.  Corporations were now forbidden from lobbying the Congress to get laws favorable to them; anti-communist laws were potentially unconstitutional; political discrimination happened in some parts of the south as a matter of course for some people to discriminate against certain races.

States threatened to overturn the ruling, as did Congress, though businesses affected by it now couldn't lobby (officially), but the ruling had a lot of support among the people, who made themselves known against both business and banks who tried to resist it, and they made it known to their representatives and senators in the states, and through them, their federal senators, and their federal representatives.  Pundits in northern newspapers in the north played it up as if the Confederacy were going to fall apart, but it was just hype.

Several additional suits were brought that clarified the ruling and its results.

Wright Aeronautics vs North Carolina (1967) - businesses can discriminate against people with known communist links, as it fell under national security; communism was legally defined as an ideology trying to overthrow the government
Thompson vs Florida (1966) - a local pastor fired an employee for saying something he disagreed with on the premises but off-work.  The court found that churches could discriminate on the basis of religious opinion, as every denomination was by its nature based on religious beliefs, but could not fire someone for off-duty comments even if they were on premises.  A later case in 1995 made a clarification that an employee had the right to make any political comment off-duty and could not face any on-duty repercussions for it, but an employee in a position of authority could not make political comments on duty (at all) as their authority could be interpreted as the company's position and thus participation in politics, and employees in positions of authority could make comments off-duty and off-premises provided such comments didn't affect the company's behavior, and could be taken into account in future lawsuits.
Galveston Shipbuilders' Union vs. Texas (1968) - a local union required dues of their employees, and used it to support political candidates in the Democrat and local Texas Workers and Industrial Party.  The ruling clarified that if a union required dues, they cannot be used for political purposes per the Bank of the Appalachians case.
Johnston vs. Visionworks (2018) - an employee posted political comments online and wore a t-shirt with political text on it from Thomas Jefferson, and was fired from his place of business.  Roger Johnston ridiculed a newspaper online for being biased that a coworker liked, and wore a t-shirt on premises with a quote from Thomas Jefferson, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants."  It had a tree on it with a graphic depiction of blood.  It was claimed he had a book talking about conspiracy theories and he spoke to another employee while on break about them, and someone overheard it.  He was fired several months later for those 'infringements.'  His suit made it to the Supreme Court, and the court found in his favor that: (a) t-shirts with historic quotes on them from natives of any of the current Confederate States, or of the United States before secession (1861), are protected political speech, including graphics in keeping with depicting those quotes which do not reasonably call for an immediate act of violence against a specific person or group; (b) citizens have the freedom of speech in accordance with Article 1, Section 9, which was intended to include the common means of communication of the day, which in 2018 meant online communications; (c) citizens can read whatever they want if it's not forbidden from import and doesn't violate any law; (d) the freedom of speech includes discussing books, even if someone else disagrees with that book's contents if the book is legal to own per (c); (e) a company that does not explicitly clarify expected behaviors or confront an employee about them in a timely manner (such as the day of, or within the same month depending on the bureaucracy of the company involved) is essentially saying that such behavior is not a problem and is acceptable; (f) Visionworks must pay Johnston his salary from the point of firing until he finds a new job, and must give a position recommendation to all employers whom he applies, and $5 million in damages to reputation.

The Confederate Supreme Court

Virginian native Spottswood William Robinson III, who was the solicitor general in Davis, D.C., was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1962 to replace Justice Anthony Carter, who had served for 15 years.  Robinson is the first black Justice on the Confederate Supreme Court, though there have been black justices in the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Cuba for over 30 years.


A landmark case came before the court from Tennessee, with Jim Forrest suing for discrimination against the University of Tennessee because the university, whose admissions board required that 15% of new students be black to encourage "diversity" on campus, as his grades were better than all but 1 of the students admitted instead of him.  The court ruled in 1964 against UT, because it is state-funded since 1868, and as such, would be government discrimination if it adopted affirmative action policies.  The ruling stated that (a) any entity a state funds must protect against discrimination on the basis of race, gender, or political affiliation, either for or against (racial discrimination violates equality before the law), which would violate the equal protection of the law required in Tennessee's Constitution; (b) 'diversity' is not a valid goal for a state-funded university in determining its admissions because it is a 'code word for racism'; (c) universities receiving state funds must consider criteria that would not create a discriminatory effect regarding race or gender, for or against; this effectively outlawed any form of affirmative action in the south and made 'diversity' a code-word for racism and made it a word to be avoided by any university or business for the foreseeable future, for fear of being called 'racist.'  Robinson wrote the majority opinion, wherein he said that "The Confederate States have a history together of slow progress in race relations.  Too slow for some, too fast for others.  But this slow progress has allowed the black race to become accustomed to freedom and rise up out of bondage into political and social equality with the white race.  It has allowed the white race to come to accept the fact emancipation would at some point result in political and social equality.  At this point in time, to discriminate against white people to favor blacks would temporarily advantage blacks, but it would result in the creation of new resentments against them, halting racial progress.  It would also sow doubt, such as if a black doctor got into medical school because of skin color, rather than being the best, would a white person want to be his patient?  If affirmative action were instead stricken down, and race no longer made an issue, and admissions made by factor of the best grades, then no one could doubt that the black doctor is good enough and better than anyone else not admitted to his university."  

The Centennial in Movies

With a largely decentralized movie industry, the Confederates celebrated their achievement with a variety of cinematic treasures that soon after became classic interpretations of the events they told.

In Texas, Houston's Objection told the tale of Governor Houston refusing to go along with the Confederates in secession from the United States, his son serving in the war and being wounded at Shiloh, and Houston's last days after the peace in 1865, where he congratulated his son for serving honorably, and (despite no sources to say that he said it) reconciling with him and with the government in Austin, taking an oath to the new Confederacy just weeks before his death. (Historic sources did record him having taken the oath in August of 1865).  Kirby-Smith's Confederacy worked in cooperation with the Kirby-Smith Museum in Saint Augustine, Florida, and how he worked to keep supplies coming in from Mexico, and stole gold from the Union in Colorado.  Confederate Braves told the story of a company of Indians from Indian territory who joined the Confederates, while Indian General told of General Stand Watie's fighting the Union and eventual victory in 1865.  Though not technically a war movie, Tears on the Plains told the tragic story of the fate of the Indians in the United States whom General Sherman worked to exterminate, and how thousands of Indians were forced from their homes across the plains, and made their homes in Oklahoma in the Confederacy, where they finally found peace.  Sherman was played intensely by Dan Nevins, a veteran actor who made him believable as both a villain and a period-accurate Yankee in mannerism and attitudes.

Atlanta's movie industry rereleased Gone with the Wind, along with other classics like The Atlanta Conspiracy, telling the tale of a lowly Confederate sergeant who was tasked by General Cleburne to infiltrate the Union army to find what they were doing, and his return to tell the Confederates that Grant wasn't going to Montgomery, but doubling back to take Atlanta, and how the spy infiltrated once more, and blew up Sherman's supplies, ending the threat to Atlanta.  Sherman's March told the tale of Sherman's path of destruction from Atlanta to Chattanooga, Franklin, Nashville, and up to Louisville, leaving almost nothing out, though keeping within the censorship standards of the day, about burning civilian homes, stealing peoples' clothes, jewelry, furniture, books, and other personal items, killing livestock, burning farms and barns just so that people would starve, and other inhumane acts (rather than gratuitous detail about the numerous violations of women, it showed frantically crying women running from Union soldiers and being manhandled and pulled off-camera and screaming).  The Cleburne Maneuver told the tale of the Battle of Peachtree Creek, with General Cleburne's Memorial as a prelude to the movie, and showed how the Confederates defeated the Union at Peachtree Creek by feigning a break in their lines, then enfilading them, and causing them to run into the creek, where the camera didn't show the carnage, but with clever camera angles, showed the Confederates firing into the creek ravine and screams and yells of agony giving a good enough picture of the carnage of war.  The movie ended with the stalemate at Atlanta, and the capture of General George Thomas of Virginia by a lowly Confederate sergeant.  Andersonville told of Captain Wirz's attempts to keep Union prisoners of war alive, emphasizing that Lincoln made medical supplies contraband (in violation of the laws of war), and refused prisoner transfers, even when the Confederates didn't ask for their own men in return, and in late 1864, showed how the British and French recognition of the Confederates brought in critical medical care that saved thousands of lives at Wirz's personal request, cementing the Euro-Confederate diplomatic relations and souring Union-European relations for a generation

Out west in Los Angeles, San Francisco Heist told the story of a small fleet of Confederate raiders who sailed into San Francisco Bay and robbed the San Francisco Mint of millions in gold and silver bullion, which buoyed the Confederate economy at a critical point in the war.  The Flag of Gillis told of how the southern Californians had sided with the Confederates, were nearly defeated, only to be surprised when the Union agreed to cede all of California south of the 37th parallel to the CSA, with the film ending in a roaring cheer of the crowd as the California Gillis Flag was raised in San Diego, now the capital of Baja California.


In Virginia, Lee's Struggle was released in early 1861 to time it with Lee's joining the state forces of Virginia, detailing his journey from Texas to Richmond and to DC, and his ultimate decision to join the Confederates rather than lead the Union army under Lincoln.  The portrayals of Simon Cameron and Francis Blair were not kind and showed all their flaws, while Lee's portrayal was heroic, it was still more honest than some movies.  His letter stating "Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native state?" was not left on the cutting room floor.

Other films like Arlington Manor, showing the Union occupation and desecration of the Lee's home, and theft of all their possessions and the burial of Union soldiers in their yard, was shocking and similarly unflattering to the United States.  Rebel Rose told of Rose, the rebel spy, along with The Army of Northern Virginia, telling of the rise of the army that would soon be headed by Lee.  Davis's Decision told of the time when Jefferson Davis agreed to leave the Senate and become the Confederate President, while Southern Leadership continued his story of the Presidency, and Peace in Our Time told of the victory and post-war struggles of Davis, while Southern Freedoms told of Davis's struggles with the Cleburne Memorial and his first tenuous support, encouragement by General Lee, and the support of the army that led him to support emancipation and enlistment to protect the effort at Confederate independence.  Forrest's exploits were the subject of several movies, notably The Battle of Fort Pillow which detailed how he defeated the Union with tactics and offered the black Union troops clemency if they joined him, and showed them leaving during the night to join the Confederates.  Bedford was a tale of his civilian life before the war as a slave trader, which northern press criticized as whitewashing and sugarcoating, but the film's producers used first-hand source material and accounts of the people he traded in depicting him as he was - rough around the edges, and in a disliked profession even in the south, but even the slaves he sold asked for him to buy them because he treated black people better than most others did in that business - and then showed him during the war, and afterwards testifying in congress for the black veterans to get equal pay and pensions, and for emancipation to be faithfully completed.

The Centennial in Books

What if the North won the War? - a US book by MacKinlay Kantor, from Boston, told of a United States that won the War for Southern Independence, calling it a 'civil war' in that book.  The book postulates that Stonewall Jackson died at Gettysburg, resulting in a loss for the CSA, and they never emancipated, allowing the US to claim that they 'freed the slaves,' a bit of revisionist history.  Once the north won, the south was forced back into the Union, the US then fought Spain in 1881, the two sections fighting together, bringing Cuba into the Union, Alaska having been bought in 1867, and Hawaii being annexed in 1889.  This larger US brought WW1 to a close earlier, but the author still allowed WW2 to happen, postulating Germany was the cause of this war, and resulting in a split of Germany, rather than Poland, between the East and West, with a communist "German Democratic Republic" and a "Federal Republic of Germany" that looked a lot like the US in politics but a lot of European socialism.  His book postulates a lot of east/west spy intrigue with this larger United States being the major world power opposing the USSR.


Kantor's Alternate Germany in his novel

A Century of Progress in the South - A book by Richard Saylor, a black Charleston author and professor who tells of the century of progress in the South of black Confederates, praising the slow and steady progress that won out as advocated by Booker T Washington, General Forrest, General Cleburne, and others, contrasting it to the situation of segregation in the north.  It praised the efforts of southerners like John Calvin Prince and Martin Luther King to strive for peaceful integration and overcoming northern racism.  The book pulled no punches in calling the 1860s South racist, but its paternalistic racism was different from the northern form of racism, and enabled southern emancipation.  The author cited primary sources on Lincoln's colonization efforts and his slow-rolling on emancipation, support for the Corwin Amendment, and how northern emancipation was not done for humanitarian concern, but so the north could conquer the south and rule over it.  Various black entrepreneurs like Uncle Gregory, Aunt Jemima, Madame C.J. Walker, Denver Ferguson and others are lauded for advancing black civil and cultural equality.

The Confederate Century - Bart McRae's history of the CSA, from 1861 to 1961, with an emphasize on the differences between their culture and that of the US, showing how things would've been worse if the South had to endure US laws and history, especially for black Confederates.  An appendix chapter goes into the causes of the war, showing its origins in the American Revolution and before, the different cultures of the Cavaliers and Celts in the South, and the Puritans and their religious founding as a 'city on a hill' leading to its culture of enforcing conformity and hostility to other ideas, then going into fights against the centralization of the Federalists like Chisholm v Georgia leading to the 11th amendment, and on to the Tariff of Abominations and northern agitation on every issue as being on slavery, hitting the south in the pocketbook like the south hit the north when it went against the protective tariff.  While obviously biased and patriotic towards the CSA and its culture, it is one of the most complete histories and became quite popular in the English-speaking world, with its French and German translations becoming popular as well.

The Union Forever - A northern history of the war, written in 1963, attempting to show a US-favorable version of the war.  It emphasized southern intransigence against slavery starting in the 1830s to 1860, without explaining that the north never cared until the south defeated its protective tariff, at which time the north made everything 'about slavery' until they had caused secession.  The book lionizes Lincoln, despite his impeachment, claiming he was trying to save the Union and free blacks, portraying him as 'Father Abraham,' a completely new take, de-emphasizing Lincoln's numerous racist quotes and his colonization attempts, or attributing them to others in his cabinet, placing him as a hero of the republic attempting to save the Union, rather than trying to economically and politically dominate the south, which foiled the north's attempts at instituting Clay's 'American System'.  The book showed Grant's defeat as a sad day for the Union, but hypothesized that the north was better without the south, as it would've just tried to secede again later, and the US might never have bought Greenland or gotten St. Bart's, Fiji, or the other territories with having to spend resources to rebuild the south, and might have had troubles with rebellion in WW1 and 2 from them.  It lionized the Gilded Age and Industrial Advancement, and was a very patriotic apologist book for the USA, one of the first that glossed over US culpability in creating secession and the war, leading to new textbooks taking a more pro-US view of the war, beginning to leave out key facts about the war that improved US patriotism, pro-Union sentiment, and pro-government actions.

Escalations in Vietnam

US President Kennedy wanted to leave Vietnam, and some have speculated his assassination was a response to that potential loss of revenue for the military-industrial complex that many believed controlled Washington, DC.  When President Harriman assumed office, he initially said he wanted to leave the country, but the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, where the US claimed it was attacked by Vietnamese forces, resulted in an escalation of the war in Vietnam and widespread drafting of American men to fight in the faraway land. Harriman ordered the deployment of 184,000 troops to Vietnam, many of which were armed by southern-made weapons and clothed by southern textile mills.  By March of 1965, 3500 US Marines would land at Da Nang, beginning the ground war in Vietnam.


Confederate reporters and politicians opposed escalation of the war, and thought the Gulf of Tonkin may have been an excuse to escalate the war, and advocated that while the Confederates should continue to oppose communism, they should not have anything to do with the American involvement overseas, as the CS weren't directly attacked.  News of American involvement overseas emboldened the now 'Southern Republican' (formerly the Confederate and Confederate Republican) Party to bring the remaining overseas Confederate troops from Europe, where they were garrisoned in Germany, France, Poland, and Greece, ostensibly to protect against Soviet expansionism, while President Goldwater used the anger to renegotiate the deal allowing the Confederate troops to stay, but their upkeep would be paid by the countries hosting them.

Nicaraguan Missile Crisis
While the Confederates were renegotiating with Europe, the United States secretly deployed nuclear missiles into Italy and Greece, within striking distance of the Soviet-allied North Turkey and Moscow itself.  The Soviet response was to deploy missiles first to Nicaragua, and then to North Turkey.  After Kennedy's failed Krukira Bay invasion, the Soviets thought he was weak, especially after the Confederates refused to assist the invasion of their communist puppet regime, and would simply accept the foreign troops and missiles as a fait accompli.

The American photos of Soviet missiles in the Central American nation only served to heighten the media's stoking of fear in the people, and a number of talking heads in the US urged a joint US-CS military invasion of Nicaragua from Honduras, Costa Rica, or both.


Outgoing President Thurmond signed legislation authorizing the placement of Confederate nuclear missiles near Manzanillo and Sandino on Cuba, and Tempoal in Veracruz, while the US President addressed the US about the placement of Soviet missiles in Nicaragua, and declared a blockade of Nicaragua, which was technically an act of war, which the Confederates well knew.  By October 26, a Soviet agent met an American agent to discuss a diplomatic solution to the entire thing.  A Brazilian intermediary relayed that the US and the CS would be unlikely to invade if the missiles were removed from Nicaragua.

Soon the Soviets sent a message that they would remove their missiles from Central America if the US were to remove their missiles from Greece and Italy.  The downing of an American U-2F strained efforts to negotiate, but it was determined a local Nicaraguan at Chinandega acted on his own.  Despite this, the crisis ended on the 27th of October with agreement to the terms by both the US and USSR with the CS joining the agreement as well.

By October 1962, the US had 13,100 nuclear missiles, CS had 12,800, and 3300 in the USSR.  The US had around 2000 nuclear weapons ready to use, with a combined yield of around 4100 megatons.  The US had about 3200 nuclear weapons in Europe, 450 of which were ballistic missiles, while the Soviets had 550 such weapons in Europe, while the Confederates had no nuclear weapons in Europe.

Super Bowl 1 (1961)

For several years, football fans in the Confederate States watched their own east-west teams play one another in friendly rivalries, as sports teams became more popular after the war as a way for people in the South to 'return to normal' after the shock of war.  The Dixie League and the Transmississippi League would play the 'Dixie Bowl' starting in 1950 as a way to determine who the champion team was, rather than having sports writers and fan votes as they had in the years after the war.

The first championship game, later called a 'bowl game,' finished the 1950 season with the Richmond Generals defeating the Phoenix Rangers in a 61-49 game, one of the most watched games in the Confederacy, even with the low numbers of home televisions at that point in time, about 1.8 million of them across the South.  For several years, the games spurred more sport leagues in the South to televise their games to push more awareness of their teams, and before long, the television commercials during football games were some of the most valuable paid by any company in the CSA.  After ten years of championship games at what, by 1960, was called the Dixie Bowl, negotiations finally came through for a cross-border US-CS championship game.

Amongst the 16 southern teams, the Richmond Generals faced off against the Green Bay Packers, faced an incredibly tough and exciting game.  The first quarter saw a touchdown and several points scored by the Generals, though the Packers got the ball and scored a touchdown, and controlled the ball for much of the 2nd quarter, and most of the 3rd quarter, the Generals only having possession for about 5:32 of that quarter, before regaining the ball during the 4th quarter and finally scoring a touchdown and field goal to win the game, 49-41.  It was a huge success in the Confederacy, with people celebrating whipping the Yankees on the hundredth anniversary of secession being celebrated immensely for a good week.  Up north, there were talks both of not doing another cross-border game, while the ratings success and desire to 'whip the rebels' (in a playful manner, though) meant that both the NFL and SFL agreed to another championship game between the winner of the Yankee Bowl and the Dixie Bowl.

Super Bowl II (1962) was another success in ratings, this time the Green Bay Packers vs. the Dallas Cowboys, with the Packers defeating the Cowboys in a 35-31 match where both teams were fairly evenly matched for much of the game, the Packers eking out a victory at the last possible moment, to the consternation of the Cowboys and their fans, who wanted a rematch next year.  This would be the beginning of the tradition of a "Super Bowl" - so named because the Yankee Bowl and the Dixie Bowl champions met in a super bowl game - which would continue each year to the present.

Television in the United States now began having 51 minutes of content and 9 minutes of advertisements every hour by the end of the 1960s, while the Confederates had 56 minutes per hour and 4 minutes of advertisements.

Disneyland California

In the 1950s, Walt Disney wanted to build a theme park near his studio to bring in tourists to see the place, but his plans eventually outgrew the land available, and he went shopping for more land. He wanted his park in the United States, as the country had a growing population and while he enjoyed California life, he wanted some of the park to evoke memories of his home in Missouri, the small town feel.

He purchased around 160 acres near Sacramento, CA, a sunny city not too far from the border of the CSA, around Elk Grove, and began the process of building his new park in 1954, and opened it July 4, 1955.

His park opened with 5 "lands" which would inspire the Six Flags park in Texas later: Main Street USA, Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland. A Holidayland section opened in 1957 with a circus and baseball diamond, but it closed in 1961.

Rides and Restaurants:

Main Street - typical midwestern town from the early 20th century with train station (how people enter the park), movie theater, town square, city hall, fire house, emporium, shops, arcades, and so on.
-Disney Art Gallery
-Great Moments with Mr. Grant (1965)- featuring an audio-animatronic version of the controversial 17th President, portraying him in a positive light despite his corruption, largely crediting him with healing the nation.
-Sleeping Beauty Castle (an entrance into Fantasyland also)
-Disneyland Railroad
-Main Street Cinema
-Bandstand (1955–1962)
-Horse Drawn Fire Wagon (1955–1960) (Now parked inside the Fire House on Main Street)
-Main Street Shooting Gallery (1955–1962)
-Firehouse Five Plus Two (1955–1971)
-Horse Drawn Surrey (1955–1971)
-Carefree Corner (1956–1985; 1988–1994)
-Carnation Plaza Gardens (1956–2012)
Adventureland - a tropical, exotic themed area like African or Asian jungles
-Tropical Cantina (restaurant)
-Jungle Cruise
-Magnolia Park
-Swiss family Treehouse
Frontierland - themed around the pioneer days of the American frontier
-Golden Horseshoe Saloon - Old West show palace
-Ceremonial Dance Circle (1955–1971)
-Conestoga Wagons (1955–1959)
-Daniel Boone Arcade (1955–1987)
-Daniel Boone Frontier Museum (1955)
-Dixieland Band Stand (1955–1961)
-Indian Village (1955–1971)
-Marshal's Office (1955–1956)
-Mike Fink Keel Boats (1955–1997)
-Miniature Horse Corral (1955–1957)
-Painted Desert (1955–1959)
-Rainbow Ridge Pack Mules (1955–1973)
-Stagecoach Ride (1955–1959)
-Casa de Fritos (restaurant)
-Chicken Plantation (restaurant)
Fantasyland - medieval European playground for kids
-Peter Pan's Flight
-Sleeping Beauty's Castle
-Casey Jr. Circus Train
-King Arthur's Carousel
-Dumbo the Flying elephant
-Mad Tea Party (spinning cups)
-Mr. Toad's Wild Ride
-Snow White's Enchanted Wish
-Storybook Land Canal Boats
-Canal Boats of the World
-Mickey Mouse Club Circus
-Mickey Mouse Club Theater
Tomorrowland
- a 1950's view of the future with corporate sponsors helping to sponsor rides in exchange for product placement.
-Autopia
-Rocket to the Moon
-Astro-Jets
-Disneyland Railroad (1955-present)
-Court of Honor (1955–1956)
-Phantom Boats (1955–1956)
-20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Exhibit (1955–1966)
-A Tour of the West (1955–1960)
-Hall of Aluminum Fame (1955–1960)
-Space Station X-1 (1955–1960)
-The World Beneath Us (1955–1960)
-Art Corner (1955–1966)
-Clock of the World (1955–1966)
-Flight Circle (1955–1966)
-Hobbyland (1955–1966)
-Monsanto Hall of Chemistry (1955–1966)
-Rocket to the Moon (1955–1966)
-Circle-Vision 360° (1955–1997, re-themed as Rocket Rods Queue)
-American Dairy Association Exhibit (1956–1958)
-Bathroom of Tomorrow (1956–1960)
-Our Future in Colors (1956–1963)
-Astro Jets (1956–1964)
-Avenue of the Flags (1956–1966)
-Skyway to Fantasyland (1956–1994)

Six Flags Over Texas

Several businessmen in Texas, having visited the Disney park over in California, came away suitably impressed by the park, but wanting to make a bigger park for Confederates.  They chose to place their new park on 5000 acres south of I-10, placing them close to the city of Houston, just a few miles east, between it and Beaumont, choosing to place it along a major east-west artery to allow traffic to be drawn to the park naturally.

The men, including William O'Brien, Micah Callahan, Joshua Holmes, and Lynn Holmes, came up with a park with themed areas like Disneyland had, but more and varied areas to show off Confederate history and its progress.

Themed Areas:
Main Street, Dixieland - the entryway to the park, featuring classic late 19th to early 20th century architecture, classic small-town vibe, leading into a plaza with a giant fountain, set against a large castle inspired by Schwerin Castle in Germany that led into Storybook Land, with large Confederate flags fluttering in the breeze at the entrance to the park.
-Restaurants: Uncle Gregory's Coffee Shop, Aunt Jemima's Kitchen and Pancake House, Havana Libre, Charleston Ice Cream Shop
-Shops: Toon Shop, Savannah Print Shop (books, framed animation cels, post cards), and more
Old South - classic southern land celebrating southern culture.  It features Liberty Square, The Dixie Carousel
-Dixie Carousel (1966) - A carousel similar to Disney's Carousel of Progress showing the development of Dixie from the 1600s through the 1960s, with scenes that spun around you with animatronic figures.
-Briar Patch Splash (1967) - based on Uncle Remus's Stories, and an old film from the 1940s Song of the South, produced by Atlanta Film Company in 1945, a mixed live/animated movie
-Briar Patch Pickin's - shop/restaurant attached to the BPS log flume ride.
-Hall of Presidents (1971) - animatronic figures of Jefferson Davis to President Kirk (19) talk about their part in Confederate history in a building resembling the first capitol in Mississippi.

The show begins with a film presentation of the history of the Confederate States of America, starting with settlement, colonization, early abolition attempts, the American Revolution, early qualms with the north (1794), northern secession threats over Louisiana, the War of 1812 and northern secession attempts, the era of good feelings and the Tariff of Abominations, northern agitation over slavery for political advantage, secession and war, then a presentation by each of the 19 presidents on their time in office.  It discussed emancipation and integration, black Confederates fighting in both the War for Southern Independence (by Davis) and the Spanish-Confederate War (G.W. Lee), peace and expansion, the fight for freedom in WW1 and WW2, and the post-war peace standing together with the US against the USSR.  The overall idea of the film and the presentation is that the Confederate way was forged through conflict looking for freedom from oppressive government, be it the British, the US, or now the USSR, and that there's always room for improvements to protect freedom of the people via their states, and celebrates the liberties of the Confederate people, the differences in their states, the CS Constitution, and the progress of Dixie in its early years to spread freedom to all races.  The presentation ends with "Dixie," then switched to "Battle Cry of Freedom" from 1986-1996, then returned to "Dixie."

Storybookland - inspired by children's stories from the Brothers Grimm and Mother Goose, this has classic children's rides.
-King Arthur's Sword - a kid's ride showing the journey of King Arthur, ending with him asking kids to look inside themselves and to be more than a spectator in life.
-Carousel - a large horse carousel from any traveling fair
-Crow & Key - older-style British food like pheasant, fresh vegetables grown in Texas, etc.
-das Smokehaus - a mediaeval German restaurant with German food, celebrating the Templar and Teutonic Knights and German food
-The Frog Prince - a ride based on the old Grimm Brother's fairy tale
-Three Little Pigs - ride based on the classic story, with the pigs admonishing kids to prepare for bad situations
-Rapunzel - another ride based on the Rapunzel story.
-Six Flags didn't get rides or films based on Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, or Snow White, as Disney had already gotten those properties.
Texas and the Old West - celebrating Texas and the old west, cowboys, etc.  This is themed for the wild west, with a cowboy stunt show and a train roller coaster
-Stampede Train - themed as a train through desert mountains evading Indians and Mexicans stopping Texan independence.
-Davy Crockett's Alamo Show - a history show narrated by a live Davy Crockett about his life and last stand at the Alamo
-Crockett Hat Co. - a merchandise store with frontier hats and cowboy gear for sale
-Brisket on the Range - a Texas BBQ restaurant
New Spain - colonial Spanish themed area with Spanish restaurants
-Los Tacos de Mexico - Mexican themed restaurant
-Secrets of the Mayan Temple - roller coaster with a Mayan theme
-Lost Aztec Gold - roller coaster with an Aztec theme
New Orleans Square - a themed land based on New Orleans, including the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean ride.
-Haunted Mansion - using a continually moving people mover cart technology, this brings people through a haunted mansion telling the story of New Orleans cotton magnate 'Captain Grove' who was rumored to be a pirate, who brought all sorts of haunted treasure into New Orleans, attracting all sorts of ghosts to the town, causing his wife to kill herself.  Rumored to have killed her, he disappeared when his ship sank, but rumors say his ghost haunts the house, looking for his wife.  Various areas of the ride include a ghost pirate ship, graveyard with ghosts floating out of their graves, a ghost ballroom, skeleton playing the organ, and more lend much to the creepy vibe.  Evolving from earlier walk-through concepts, this ride became one of the most visited in New Orleans, attracting the teen and young adult demographics to the park looking for more 'mature' rides.
-Pirates of the Caribbean - with a few nods to Captain Grove in the ride and his escapades, and some pirates complaining that young pirates knew nothing about being a pirate like Grove, take the riders in a boat through a Caribbean journey through San Juan, Habana, Jamaica, and a few other fictionalized pirate towns.
-Riverboat Cruise - take a cruise through the rivers of the South with an old-fashioned paddleboat
Futureland - based on a 1950s view of the future, with Star Journey Coaster being its main attraction, the first inside rollercoaster.
-Star Journey - a ride that 'transports' you to the future with a 'jump rocket' to the moon, then Mars, then to an alien planet before returning you to Earth.  It's been redone several times with advances in technology, though the long fluorescent colored lights stayed as a simulated 'spacewarp' to transport riders, only being replaced by LEDs in 2014.

-Alien Invasion - a friendly alien demonstrates his teleportation technology, but accidentally teleports a scary alien to Earth


Television

In 1963, the low-budget show Doctor Who airs in the United Kingdom, and becomes popular enough that DBS brings it over for Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons to fill out their broadcast schedule.  Enough copies of the show were made that in the late 2010s, when the BBC was hoping to re-release and remaster the show for HD-DVD and 4K HD-DVD, they needed to find old Confederate copies of the show, as many British copies were destroyed by erasure in the early 1970s, as was policy back then for many British shows.

Chapter 59: What Glitters...

Space Race (1955-1975)

The Space Race was an informal, non-hostile competition between eastern and western powers to move into space.  The United States, Confederate States, United Kingdom, Germany, and the Soviet Union made various advances in rocketry allowing them to send artificial satellites, and later humans, into space.  In 1955, President MacArthur announced that it would launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year, a year (or 18 months, really) of international cooperation amongst 69 countries in various areas of science.  In response, the Soviet Union announced on August 2nd that it would also launch a satellite "in the near future."


Its first successful launch on October 4, 1957 with the launch of Sputnik I, a small sphere sending out a repeating radio signal, a beep, whose signal was easily picked up by radio amateurs across the world, causing the Sputnik Crisis in North America especially, and western Europe as well.

Soon, a number of sites were chosen and construction began around the British Commonwealth of Nations, the German Realm, United States, and Confederate States to establish feasible launch sites:

Commonwealth of Nations
Denel Overberg Test Range
(South Africa)
Malindi Space Centre (Kenya)
Delgado Space Centre (Patagonia; -42.66772544746461, -63.6265144349789)
Mahia Spaceport (New Zealand)
Carnarvon (Australia)
Woomera Test Range (Australia)
Kumaka (British Guyana)

German Realm
Somanga Space Port, Tanzania
Cuxhaven

United States
Nevada Test Range
Clark University, Worchester, Massachusetts
Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland
Thule Air Base, Greenland

Confederate States
Kourou, Guyana
Cape Canaveral, Florida (Thurmond Space Center)
Gillis Air Force Base, Baja California (34°43′58″N 120°34′05″W); named for JP Gillis, who became the territorial governor for Baja California, which became the state of Baja California.

European Space Agency
Coronie, Surinaam; Kingdom of the Netherlands

Confederate presidential candidate Strom Thurmond used this as a campaign issue to launch a Confederate satellite and place a Confederate into space as soon as possible, the first satellite Apache 1 being launched successfully on January 31, 1958, with a joint launch by the United States of Explorer 1 from the second launch platform at the same base, having tested the launch missiles in Nevada and Maryland beforehand.  

The Soviets put the first human into orbit, Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961, and the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova on June 16, 1963.  On May 5, 1961, the US put Alan Shepherd into space, while the Confederate Space Agency put Nathan William Wharton into orbit April 25, 1961.  The US did not attempt to put a woman into space for another decade, the Confederates placed a woman and man into space together July 19, 1963, to see what effect space flight would have on male vs. female bodies.  

The British and Germans saw they were behind the two American nations and Soviets, but were determined to keep up with the other nations, their efforts helping bring investment and pride to their various dominions (the word colony had gone out of fashion in the 1950s).

Moon Race

With the Soviet Union claiming the lead in the informal 'space race,' being a huge PR win for the communist nation, the western nations wanted to take the competition to the next level.  The United States wanted a space station in orbit in concert with the Confederates, British, and Germans, but others in the US and CS decided on a moon landing, publicly declared by Presidents Kennedy and Thurmond.

The Soviets had already sent the Luna satellites to the moon in 1959, with Luna-1.  Luna-2 and Luna-3 were also successful in going into lunar orbit and taking pictures of the far side of the moon, spurring western competitiveness to catch up to them.  The US attempted the Pioneer missions, but Pioneers 0-4 blew up or misfire and burned up on reentry.


Pioneer and Luna 3

Ranger 7 finally took over 4000 pictures of the moon but crashed on re-entry, while the Confederate probe Dixie 3 finally succeeded to take lunar images and take live images of the moon on July 31, just after the US probe took its historic images.


Dixie 3 being prepared for launch

Dixie 5 was the successful follow-up craft that took pictures of the far-side of the moon sent via the quasi omnidirectional low-gain antenna and the parabolic high-gain antenna. Transmitters aboard the spacecraft included a 60 W TV channel F at 959.52 MHz, a 60 W TV channel P at 960.05 MHz, and a 3 W transponder channel 8 at 960.58 MHz, sending the first color images of the moon back to Earth.

Dixie 5 replica at the Confederate Aeronautics and Space Museum.

President Thurmond spoke on September 17, 1962, a day after Kennedy, stating that "The future of the Confederacy will take us to the stars, and that first step is the moon.  We set sail in this grand new sea, the final frontier for mankind, because there is new knowledge to discover, new planets to seek out, not just for Dixie, but for all mankind.  Space science, like nuclear science, computer science, and all new technology, has no conscience of good or evil.  It is up to man to determine whether such science will used for or against man.  We have not known war for nearly 20 years, and this new ocean should be a sea of peace, not a new theater of war.  That is not to say we will venture unprotected from our protection here on Earth, but I believe that we can explore space in peace without feeding the fears that lead us into war, without repeating the mistakes that have led to countless horrors in our recent and distant past.

As of now there is no strife, no national conflict in space, and its dangers we all face equally.  Its exploration should be done by the best of humanity regardless of nation, and its benefits should come to us all.  Some will ask why go to the moon?  Why should the Confederate States go there as our goal?  Those same people also ask, why climb the highest mountain?  Why fly the Atlantic?  Why sail around the world?  Why does Atlanta play Dallas?

We choose to voyage to the moon. We choose to travel to the moon within this decade and to do those other grand feats, not because they are east, but because they are a challenge.  Only when we are challenged together do we rise to the occasion and find out we can do thing we *never* thought we could do before.  But only by pushing ourselves farther, higher, and faster, can we ever overcome our limits and become that much more.  Only by facing trials can we ever improve, and organize ourselves in new ways, and discover new talents, energies, and skills, and find that resolve not just to endure, but to win."

While serving in the Senate, Barry Goldwater, the future presidential candidate opposed the civilian space effort, as it would take resources away from the military space efforts, however negotiations between the United States and Confederate States, along with Germany and the United Kingdom resulted in a cost-sharing of the funding effort, while Goldwater got the military resources he wanted.  The Confederate military would put in for the rockets if they got spy satellites and navigation-assisting satellites out of it, separate from those of the United States.  

American President Kennedy went to the United Nations to propose a joint moon mission between the USSR, USA, and CSA, which Khruschev was leery of, but his advisors thought it would be a great way to acquire American technology.


The joint US-CS Surveyor probe, also launched from the UK space port in Kumaka, British Guyana, and the German port in Malinda, Tanzania, sent tens of thousands of pictures to Earth from the moon, while the Surveyor 4 probe was the first radio controlled rover, a battery operated robot controlled from Cape Canaveral in Florida, in November 1968, sending live images to Earth, and playing audio (which showed that the moon had almost no atmosphere at all, playing 'Dixie').  Nine launches from the US, CS, UK, and Germany brought back over a hundred thousand images of the moon and hyped up the public in those nations to see who could be the first to land a man on the moon.

Man on the Moon

With sending men into space, the Confederate Aeronautics and Space Agency (CASA), NASA, BSA (British Space Agency), DRA (German Space Agency) signed an agreement that they would also commit to a space station in Earth orbit and on the moon's dark side.  Since the United States didn't have the agricultural and mineral resources of the Confederacy, they couldn't afford to go to the moon themselves, forcing them to cooperate with other nations in the development and funding.


Lunar Orbiter satellite

To prepare for the mission, the United States sent in several satellites orbiting the moon to scan for landing sites.  Three were sent by the US, and two by the CS.

Starting in 1967, the US and CS managed the first space rendezvous, docking two space modules together and exchanging flags with each other, and providing some good PR for both nations that needed the boost after some resentment lingering from the centennial celebrations and movies in the South and the northern snubbing behind the scenes in the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo.


Issues arising from the Van Allen Radiation Belt caused the Confederates to take a longer road in getting to the moon than the Americans.  Confederates circled Earth and spun out the north pole to avoid most of the radiation in July of 1969 with a rocket vessel containing a more thorough shielding than that of the American Apollo mission, leading to claims that the Americans never escaped the Earth's orbit and simply took images while in orbit and filmed the rest of the moon landings on a soundstage in California.  The Confederates launched their moon attempt in three stages, a propulsion/orbiter stage, lander stage, and cargo stage, which mated in orbit and left Earth, the astronauts in protective anti-radiation gear to protect from the feared radiation of the Van Allen belts.

Once the Confederate ship, the Viking 3, escaped Earth's radiation belts, via measurement instruments, they opened the television cameras and portholes to view the Earth as they left, catching film of themselves watching Earth decrease in size.  The US gained the distinction of being the first men on the moon, but the Confederates took their combined lander/cargo stage to the moon with a rover and set up several scientific experiments including a laser rangefinder that allowed accurate measurements of the distance to the moon, rover-based exploration of about 3 square miles of the moon and sample-taking, planting the Confederate flag and a plaque commemorating the event, taking a round of golf and football.




Nixon Decouples from Gold

From 1944 to 1971, the Bretton Woods system helped keep prices stable and gave the world a long period of peace and prosperity.  Under this  system the European currencies were pegged to the dollar, and the dollar was pegged to gold at $35/t oz.  Europe and Japan were rebuilding from the war, and even other countries around the world wanted dollars to spend on American and Confederate goods - cotton, textiles, toys, cars, steel, machinery, consumer goods, and more - causing gold to flow into the two American nations, and goods to flow out of the other nations.  After the war, the Allies returned much of the stolen artwork lodged in salt mines across France and Poland to other nations around Europe, but the 8400 bars of gold, found by General Stuart and his American counterpart, were divided between the US and CS, (roughly $58,800,000 at $35/t oz), on behalf of the European nations, and European nations needing to be rebuilt needed North American goods, causing a huge inflow of gold (about 300 million ounces into the US and CS each), giving the CS about 12,000 tons of gold in total, and 13,500 for the US, with the Confederates cutting a lot of spending, retiring bonds, and demobilizing much of their military, allowing them to reduce government spending on a scale that the United States couldn't do. 

As Europe recovered, however, especially Germany and Japan, from 1950 to 1969, the US and CS share of world economic output declined significantly.  Confederates adjusted their economic outputs and scaled their government spending down over that time, demobilizing and adjusting to a peacetime economy while the United States continued spending, as taxes coming in meant more money for Washington, and money in Washington could be used to line pockets for favored interests, making many people quite wealthy.  The growing debts by the Vietnam War and more inflation by the Federal Reserve caused increasing overvaluation of the US Dollar by the end of the 1960s.  In Germany, the Bretton Woods system was criticized as "America's exorbitant privilege" where non-US citizens supported "American living standards" and subsidized "American multinationals."  As known, it cost only a few cents to print a $100 bill, but other countries had to provide $100 of actual goods to get that piece of paper.  In 1965, Chancellor Willy Brandt announced the intention of Germany, the largest economy in Europe, to exchange its US dollar reserves for gold at the official ($35/oz) exchange rate.

The issue is, by 1966, the US had only $13.2 billion in gold reserves, while non-US central banks held $14 billion.  Of the US reserves, only $3.2 billion were available to cover foreign holdings, since the rest was needed to cover domestic holdings.  By 1971, the situation worsened as the money supply increased 10%, and in May, Germany left the Bretton Woods system, as it was unwilling to revalue the Deutschmark, which proved positive, as Germany was able to strengthen ties to its dominions as it prepared them for independence.  As a result, the US dollar dropped 7.5% in value against the Mark, and other nations began demanding their gold, Switzerland regaining $50 million in July, France $191 million, and West Poland $94 million.  On August 5, the US Congress released a report recommending devaluing the dollar, so as to protect it from 'foreign price gougers.'  On the 9th, the dollar dropped again in value against European currencies, and Switzerland left the Bretton Woods system, increasing pressure on the US.


At this point, US unemployment was 6.1% and inflation was 5.84%; the thought of reducing spending to the many Keynesians in Washington had not occurred to them.  So Nixon directed his Treasury Secretary, George Schultz to suspend convertibility of the dollar to gold, and closed the gold window to foreign governments.  He wrote Executive Order 11615 to start a 90-day freeze on wages and prices (despite the power not being anywhere in the Constitution) to fight inflation, and set an import surcharge of 10% to ensure US products wouldn't be at a disadvantage in comparison to foreign goods due to expected price fluctuations via the exchange rate.  Nixon made the announcement on Sunday evening when the markets were closed, assuring the American public that the dollar would still buy as much as it did before at home, but maybe a little less for foreign goods.

"If you want to buy a foreign car or take a trip abroad, market conditions may cause your dollar to buy slightly less. But if you are among the overwhelming majority of Americans who buy American-made products in America, your dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow as it is today."

Much of the public believed the President, that he was actually rescuing them from price gougers and a foreign-caused exchange crisis, rather than an issue with government spending on Vietnam and entitlements (In 1971, the government spent $210.1 billion on receipts of $187.1 billion, a $23 billion deficit.  Just ten years prior in 1961, the US spent $97.7 billion on receipts of $94.4 billion, a $3 billion deficit, and more than doubling government spending).

The New York Times, however, praised the president, "We unhesitatingly applaud the boldness with which the President has moved."  The Dow Jones rose 33 points the next day, and by December, the surcharge was dropped and the G-10 agreed to 2.25% devaluations from an agreed-upon exchange rate, which became a floating exchange rate by March of 1973.

While it was considered a political success, it was an economically mixed bag, causing the 'stagflation' of the 1970 and creating instability in floating currencies.  The dollar would go on to plunge in value by a third, dragging down most other currencies, and forcing the Confederates to devalue their own dollar as well so as not to price themselves out of the market.  Japan was forced to purchase $1.3 billion to keep its Yen at the rate of ¥360 to prevent it from increasing in value and make their imports into the US too expensive for Americans to purchase.  Despite further purchases, they couldn't prevent dollar depreciation.  France was fine with the dollar depreciating against the franc, but not to let the franc appreciate against gold.

Domestic Agenda 
President Nixon began a policy of bussing black students to white schools to achieve a racial balance, and by 1971, less than 10% of black students were in segregated schools, though this caused protests and some violence, even after the death of Martin Luther King.  Nixon also encouraged affirmative action via the Philadelphia Plan, and appointed more women to positions in the government than anyone before him.

He created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Clean Air Act, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and proposed a private health insurance employer mandate as a reform to health insurance.

Nixon Goes to China

In 1971, Mao Zedong invited a US table tennis team to the North China capital of Beijing, and in July 1971, announced he would visit China the following February.



Nixon met with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai for over an hour at Mao's private residence, where Mao would say he respected Nixon's forthrightness, but was suspicious of Kissinger.  Nixon visited the Forbidden Palace, Ming Tombs, and Great Wall, beginning a new era in Sino-American Relations, but caused South China, the so-called 'Confederation of Chinese Provinces' to look askance at the US for recognizing the communist regime.  South China began turning its massive economic potential towards the Confederate States.  

Behind the scenes, North China would begin buying up US treasury bonds in small numbers, but ramping up in 2001 after North China joined the WTO.  This would help fund the US's government spending far beyond what it would otherwise be able to afford, and eventually lead to cheap North Chinese goods coming into the United States.  While it helped people afford goods, they were of lower quality than locally made or European-made goods, sometimes contained lead or other harmful materials, and would need to be replaced more often, leading to increased business sales, boosting the US economy, while costing customers more.

South China

Chiang Kai-Shek led the first government of China as its president by overwhelming majority, taking office from 1950 to 1956.  His vision for China was deeply affected by the existing relationship over the last 70 years with the southern confederation in America.  Southern missionaries were quite different from those of New England, who had a subtle condescension about them and a sense of cultural superiority, while the southern Christian missionaries got to know the Chinese people and met them where they were, and won many more hearts and minds across China in the rural areas and in the developing cities.  During the Chinese Civil War, both the US and CS had contributed military aid to the Nationalists, and with the larger British and German empires aiding them against the communists with their African colonies providing aid and manpower, the Nationalists were more than able to push back against the communists, but not enough to defeat them decisively.  The Chinese split was difficult, but ended in 1949, with the socialists, communists, and those advocating a strong, centralized government going to the northern Chinese state, calling itself the People's Democratic Socialist Republic of China.  Southern China, as Kai-Shek hoped, would be as prosperous as the Confederates.  

In the agreement with North China, Korea, and the USSR, South China and North China agreed to cede all claim to Mongolia and to East Turkmenistan (Uyghur Province), and both Chinese states agreed along with the USSR that Korea would not be attacked or influenced by the USSR or North China, allowing Korea to remain united and a free (capitalist) nation, provided that China and North China would not attack each other or overthrow each other.

From 1950 to 1956, the first President of China worked on land reforms and economic reforms, bringing in modernized farming equipment and beginning the difficult process of industrialization, electrification, and providing modern sewage and plumbing systems to the cities and the rural areas.  His government consistently ran deficits, but its efforts brought in electric lights, sewage treatment and modern Type-L plugs (newly agreed upon by the allies rebuilding Europe), along with southern teachers and professors bringing modern teaching methods to students.  Under the speakership of Chen Cheng, who initiated tax reductions and land reforms, what remained of the communist sympathies in the south evaporated, and began the process of reducing old policies, implementing the 375 plan, capping the landlord demand for crops at 37.5% of the harvest, where they had previously asked for half or more before.  Chiang Kai-Shek, with the help of the newly elected legislature established a number of laws with sunset provisions in them that were somewhat heavy-handed, but were critical to building up the infrastructure of the country, with roads, bridges, dams, power lines, and the rest being built at a rapid pace.  In effect, they were built quickly

The island of Taiwan reached 7.82 million people under Chiang Kai-Shek by 1956.  The second President, Yen Chia-kan continued his policies, elected in a margin of 64% against his opponent, vastly improving the industrialization of the country, and beginning the process of bringing electricity into the rural areas, a policy continued by Chiang Ching-kuo, son of Chiang Kai-shek.  Chiang Ching-kuo sent his condolences to the United States in 1963 upon news of President Kennedy's passing.
 
Chiang Kai-shek's first Executive Yuan (Senate) leader was Dr. Kung, who was quite enamored with the American nations and ensuring a strong Chinese defense force, while strengthening the power of the provinces relative to the national government, which he helped turn into a confederation government.


Dr. Kung

Kung was excluded from the US due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, but he was allowed south in the Confederacy, where he toured, discovering a number of new foods and drinks, along with technologies he sought to bring back to China, having made a number of business contacts to help open businesses back in China after the end of the Chinese civil war.


T.V. Soong

Ambassador Soong served two presidents of China as the ambassador to the Confederate States.  He had gotten his bachelor's degree at the University of the South in 1915, and a graduate degree at Emory College in Georgia, and was a practicing Methodist Christian.  Soong spent his time encouraging the Confederates to bring peace and security to China in its formative years, as well as agricultural and industrial expansion, including oil and natural gas, which the national government used to create a national wealth fund, charging foreign businesses for mineral extraction, that fee going into a national development fund that President Lee began transitioning to a sovereign wealth fund for all Chinese citizens. 

Under President Yen, the right of the people to speak freely was tested when a group of students protested Chinese involvement in Vietnam with the Americans.  Yen, rather than bring troops to quell dissent, addressed the students instead: "Freedom is difficult in a nation which has not known freedom, and some of our people have chosen the slavery of communism to the freedom of the individual.  The students should make their voices known peacefully and within the bounds of our constitution, and the military must defend their right to speak.  The civilian governor of the province of Shandong must also know that the constitution is binding upon them as well as upon me, and the confederated government is tasked with preserving the rights of all Chinese regardless of province or ethnicity or religion."

It was a watershed moment in China, and it marked the opening up of a number of provinces where people felt comfortable to voice dissent without fear of their local governors silencing them.  Multiple parties sprang up to advocate for ethnic minority rights, not without some trouble, but the political development of China as a multi-party confederation really came into its own at this point.

South China renegotiated the status of Hong Kong and Macau with the British and Portuguese, extending their leases indefinitely if they did not open trade with north China, which they agreed not to do.

Presidents of China:
1950-56 Chiang Kai-shek
1956-62 Yen Chia-kan
1962-68 Chiang Ching-kuo
1968-74 Lee Teng-hui



South China Population:
1954: 484,462,603
1964: 559,534,072

North China Population:
1954: 109,180,512
1964: 150,191,042

From the 1950s to the 1970s, the modernization of South China proceeded at a slow and steady pace.  By the early 1970s, most cities had electric and sewage, but the rural areas often remained lit by candle into the 1980s.  In the mid 1970s, environmental groups began spreading throughout the southern Chinese confederation, protesting pollution of the rivers and ground as a result of the industrialization.  They gained a quick 10% of the Chinese legislature, and were able to push through clean air and clean water legislation, which helped reduce the smog growing over Shanghai and Nanking, reducing respiratory illnesses, and cleaned up automobile exhaust and coal and gas emissions from power plants.  Industrial plants had to clean up their runoff, and soon, forests and other natural areas were growing healthier. Concerns over desertification in the northwest near the border with East Turkmenistan and Tibet resulted in a number of 'tree lines' being planted, helping hold the soil and retaining moisture in the ground and air in the region, slowing the desertification process.

President Chiang and President Lee established the first national parks in China, natural areas protected from development to be preserved for the future enjoyment of the Chinese people.  GDP grew between 8 and 12% each year, while personal income rose every year, with the number of people in 'extreme poverty' dropping from 94% in 1949 to 28% in 1979.  

In North China, however, Mao began in 1958 the Great Leap Forward, which also created a famine in the north, to establish communism in the country more firmly.  Farms became communes, much less efficient and causing a famine, with unfounded irrigation and crop digging experiments being wasteful and inefficient. Houses were encouraged to put in 'backyard furnaces' to help make North China the top steel producer; the real effect was deforestation and the use of scrap metal for low quality metal, though Mao kept the program so as not to dampen enthusiasm.  Industrial construction was a huge government investment, but the redirection of men to construction meant no real increase in industrial output.  The government purchased about 30% of the harvest starting in the late 1950s to establish a grain reserve, and began exporting grain for profit, though the rural areas went without and experienced food shortages.  Rationing was introduced in the cities to 'curb wasteful consumption' and encourage savings.  Mao most specifically targeted the United States in his criticism, while Khrushchev wanted peaceful economic competition with the Americans, famously saying "Do you think the capitalists will put down their butcher knife and become Buddhas?" 

By 1962, Mao's policies were obviously failing, and Premier Zhou Enlai took over control of the party.  Mao was still influential, however, and argued against Khrushchev's emphasis on material development, claiming it would soften the people and make them lose their revolutionary spirit.  Khrushchev countered, saying, "If we could promise the people nothing but revolution, they would scratch their heads and say 'Isn't it better to have good goulash?'"  Mao attempted to regain power and by 1963 launched the Great Socialist Education Movement to purge arts and education of feudal and capitalist themes.  It was a large failure, with at least 77,560 deaths, with 5,327,350 people being persecuted in just North China.  One of Mao's most fervent supporters who helped him with the  subsequent Great Leap Forward was 布莱恩 (Buh Lye En), and his close friend Da Wei (大卫).  Both were incredibly eager to promote socialism and communism, being responsible for much of the indoctrination and persecutions of dissidents, leading to a refugee crisis that resulted in the creation of the New Great Wall:



Guard towers were built every 500 meters with three .50 caliber machine gun embankments on the top.  Trip wires, mines, guard dogs, vehicle barriers, and electrified fencing with barbed wire were put up to avoid the brain drain that could result from the flight of refugees, as well as a lose of face, something very important to Mao.  Da Wei and Buh Lye En pumped up the personality cult of Mao, with his little red book selling over 100 million copies, and miracles being attributed to those who had the book on their person.

In 1966 the 'Cultural Revolution', purging dissidents against his communism.  People who wore glasses were arrested; people who expressed disagreement with any government policy were arrested, and children were encouraged in schools to snitch on their parents.

Presidential Election of 1972


Nixon vs. McGovern

McGovern's platform was an immediate end to the war in Vietnam, along with a guaranteed minimum income, something much closer to communism than a simple minimum wage.  After winning the nomination, a Democratic senator told Bob Novak that McGovern was secretly for abortion, amnesty, and legalization of pot, which did much to harm his campaign with the western states, as did the need to replace Eagleton with Shriver, three days after saying he backed him "1000%," leading many to feel he had a lack of conviction.

In comparison, President Nixon was widely popular, with the public crediting him with opening North China and getting détente with the USSR.

In the end, Nixon won even 36% of the Democrat vote against McGovern, and won one of the most lopsided victories in the electoral college at 482-24, McGovern having only DC and Massachusetts, failing to win even his own state of South Dakota.  Nixon won with 31,508,577 to 21,607,040 votes.


SWIFT Banking

In 1973, a number of nations agreed to the creation of an international bank money transfer standard, named SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), to be located in Brussels, in the Netherlands.  Each message is constructed of letters and numbers:

2 Letter country code (US, UK, CS, CA, RU, etc.)
2 Letter subdivision code (FL, NY, etc)
4 Letter bank code
3 Letter/digit branch code
1 digit operation code (0 - verify account exists; 1 - transfer to the account)

After the code is sent, the account number and amount is transferred to the bank.

For example: CSVABOVA0010 would translate to: Confederate States, Virginia, Bank of Virginia, home office (001 is always the home office or main branch), verify the account exists that is to be sent next.

Petrodollars and the first Oil Crisis

In 1973, after having taken the dollar off the gold standard, Nixon needed something to shore up the dollar and help continue fueling the US economic growth and government spending.  Representatives of the United States went to Rashidi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations, and were successfully able to get them to agree to price oil in US dollar, and sell only in US dollars.  It was a huge boon to the US dollar, which had sunk from about $35/ t oz to $153 / t oz in just two years.  With the agreement in hand, however, the price of gold in dollars would sink to about $100/t oz.  The new demand for dollars to buy oil helped the US to continue to spend money rather than having to tighten its belt, allowing the welfare programs created in the 1960s to continue operating.  As a result of this requirement to use US dollars, the Confederates would stop selling their oil to most international markets, allowing the dollar to gain international power, but also allowing the Confederate dollar to remain strong and to avoid the inflationary effects of the US dollar's international usage for the most part.

Despite this, the OPEC countries would embargo the US for its support of Israel, leading to an oil crisis in the United States.  Rationing came into effect, the price of gas going from 38.1¢ to 55¢ per gallon, with fuel sold on certain days to certain vehicle types.  The US put a 55 MPH speed limit on all highways, and created the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standard, resulting in the creation of more fuel efficient cars in the US and from abroad, including the CS.

The Confederates continued extracting oil domestically from Texas, the Gulf, and began exploring the northern shore of Alaska.  With the rise in prices, it became economical to drill up north, and past the horizon in Confederate waters, which would eventually come to pay license fees into the Confederate Sovereign Wealth Fund, the southern confederation's alternative to government tax-based welfare.  After the oil crisis ended, Alaskan oil would be less economical, but Gulf oil would remain so with the increase in southern cars and A/C in the summer and heating in the winter.  During the crisis, southerners would switch to trains to travel long distance, resulting in a temporary revival in the various train companies' fortunes, and reviving interest in the long-time industry.  Congress would sign agreements to send mail on railroads until the "last mile" (locating postal depots near railroad stations for final delivery where possible), and big rigs were taxed to use highways by the states to fund highway construction, helping reduce taxes on the public, while keeping trains viable and highways funded.  Economically, the petrodollar encouraged the southern confederation to pay down their WW2 debts and reign in any excess spending.