Post by eurofed on Jan 7, 2020 15:34:52 GMT
ITTL, an ISOT (based on a cosmic copy and paste) occurred in early 1939. It replaced most of Europe with the equivalent from a TL where it unified in a federal equivalent of the EU after an earlier version of WWI and a revolutionary war with Communist Russia, and a more inclusive and pragmatic version of fascism took over after an equivalent of the Great Depression. In the original TL, the Great War occurred a generation earlier, at the end of the 19th century. It ended in a stalemate followed by collapse of pro-war governments, the downfall of the old empires, the rise of Communism in Russia, and a peace of exhaustion.
By a compromise peace settlement, France took Alsace-Lorraine, Luxemburg, and Wallonia, with the Netherlands getting the Flanders. Germany kept West Prussia and Upper Silesia, annexed Austria and the Sudetenland, and formed a confederation with Czechia. Italy got Trent, South Tyrol, the Kustenland, and coastal Dalmatia, and formed a confederation with Carniola, Montenegro, and Albania. Hungary kept the broad equivalent of 1941 borders and formed a confederation with Slovakia. Congress Poland became independent with Posen and Galicia. Like Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia failed to form because of the war's outcome and the postwar disruption caused by the conflict with the Soviets. Therefore, Croatia became independent and partitioned Bosnia with Serbia. In various cases, plebiscites and/or population transfers helped stabilize and entrench these new borders.
Being victorious in Russia, the Communists got emboldened to attempt spreading their ideology and control across Europe by a mix of armed invasion and revolutionary destabilization. Government forces combined with right-wing militias however were able to suppress Red insurrections in Western Europe and a hastily assembled European coalition contained and pushed back Soviet invasion of Central Europe. However, the Europeans could not stop the Reds from taking over vast chunks of the Balkans and the Near East with the help of Communist insurgents and pro-Soviet proxies.
The compromise peace left the Soviets in control of Finland, the Baltic States, eastern Poland up to the Narew-Vistula-San line, and Moldavia-Bessarabia, which they annexed as various SSRs. They also held Serbia, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Dobruja, and mainland Greece, which they merged into a Communist Balkan Federation, a client state of the USSR. Insular Greece remained free from Red control and formed an independent state under the military protection of the European powers. Pro-Soviet forces also seized control of Turkey, North Persia, and Afghanistan, which became other client states of the USSR. The Soviets exploited the situation to annex Western Armenia and Iranian Azerbaijan. TTL Iron Curtain rose at the Vistula-Carpathians-Danube line, with an extension cutting through the Western Balkans.
The outcome of the war and revulsion at the suffering it caused inspired widespread rejection of nationalism and gave a massive popularity boost to the ideal of European unity across Western and Central Europe. In a few years, the Western and Central European nations merged into a close analogue of the EU, which quickly took a federal character. In addition to all its OTL integration achievements, this version of the EU had a constitution, a strong common army, fiscal integration with well-developed taxation and welfare systems, and a semi-presidential government. The latter included a president directly elected by European citizens, a parliament with legislative initiative that included a directly elected assembly and a senate appointed by national parliaments, a supranational executive accountable to the parliament and the president, and a well-developed Pan-European party system.
France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, and White Greece joined the new federal union as its member states. Czechia, Slovakia, Carniola, Montenegro, and Albania joined as well as autonomous subunits due to their confederal bonds with Germany, Hungary, or Italy. Postwar Germany kept its federal character with a reorganization of its internal borders; Italy and Spain evolved in a similar way, granting a sizable degree of devolution to their regions. The European peoples' motivations for integration included a wish to avoid another general war, expectation that continental unity would bring political stabilization and economic development, and mutual protection from the Soviet threat.
For a generation, Europe experienced a solid boom thanks to economic unification of the continent. This paved the way to major industrialization of its Southern and Eastern regions and consolidated mass consensus to the European unity project. Its success fostered the rise and entrenchment of a solid Pan-European identity among the peoples of the continent. A wish for ease of communication drove the Europeans to adopt a reformed version of Esperanto (effectively indistinguishable from Ido) as their lingua franca, official language, and a mandatory school subject. In a few decades, Ido achieved strong popularity and became widespread in Europe among the elites, middle classes, and younger generations.
Chance discovery of North African oilfields further fueled European economic boom and infrastructure build-up in the region. It also greatly increased European appetite for acquisition and development of African and Middle Eastern resources, as well as interest for colonization of Africa using the settler model that had been so successful for the Americas.
The war also caused a partial collapse of the British Empire, as the Dominions reacted badly to paying a large price in blood for the empire’s glory in a seemingly pointless conflict. A series of peaceful republican revolutions swept the Dominions and drove them to sever political ties with Britain. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand joined the USA, out of a wish to get protection and stability from a sympathetic power that had stayed neutral and shared their culture. The English-speaking states and provinces of the Dominions became US states, while the territories became US territories. Quebec became an associated state of the USA.
South Africa decided to stay an independent republic and took over Basutoland, Swaziland, Bechuanaland, Southern Rhodesia, and South West Africa. Over time, South Africa developed increasingly close ties with Europe, up to becoming a client state of the EU. The British however were able to keep control of their colonial empire in Asia and considerably enlarged it since the war and its peace settlement enabled Britain to take control of European colonies in Indochina and Indonesia. The British also seized control of the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Arabia during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the conflict with the Soviets, turning the region into a series of client Arab kingdoms. South Persia became another client state of the British Empire.
The Scramble for Africa, the Great War, Europe’s unification, the post-war settlement, and South Africa’s independence left the EU in control of the vast majority of the African continent. European colonies included the Maghreb; most of West Africa except US-aligned Liberia and the British colonies of Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone; the Congo basin in Central Africa; Angola, Mozambique, and Northern Rhodesia in Southern Africa; and most of East Africa except British Kenya and Uganda. The British also kept control of Egypt and Sudan as a protectorate.
For a good while, it seemed postwar hopes for prosperity, democracy, and stability in Europe were going to be fulfilled thanks to the vast success of the European integration project. TTL equivalent of the Great Depression, however, got them terribly betrayed. A nasty global recession worsened by a vicious trade war between the capitalist powers ultimately created enough hardship to enable the electoral victory in Europe of a front of far-right parties and a fascist regime change of the EU.
TTL version of European fascism (known as ‘frontism’) became broadly similar to its OTL counterpart with a few important differences. The vast success of the European integration project drove them in their formative years to forsake their ties to ethnic nationalism and embrace a far-right version of Pan-European civic nationalism as their ideology. They gave up any notion of opposing European unity and refocused their efforts on shaping it in their image. Once the frontists took over, they reorganized the EU into the European Empire. They combined idealized notions of Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg and Capet monarchies, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Napoleonic Empire to make up their historical precedent and merged it with the typical features of modern fascism to establish their model of society.
They pragmatically continued to give full support to use, teaching, and diffusion of Ido as the European lingua franca and official language; for ideological reasons they also made some serious effort to establish a simplified version of Latin (effectively indistinguishable from “Latino sine flexione”) as the second common language of Europe. Despite reaping some popularity among scholars and being eagerly adopted by the Catholic Church, however, this version of Latin ultimately got much less success than Ido. Across Europe, Ido continued to reap ever-increasing numbers of native speakers and people that were fluent in it, gradually evolving into the main language of the continent. Growing linguistic unification thanks to success of Ido helped cement political unity of Europe and the rise of a solid Pan-European identity for the foreseeable future, regardless of the fortunes of the frontist regime. In the international field, Ido became one of the most widely spoken and fastest spreading world languages. Only English rivaled its importance and diffusion.
As it concerns their racial policies, TTL circumstances drove the frontist movement to accept more or less all European ethnicities as equal and valuable components of their supremacist in-group, and have no wish to discriminate or persecute them. They retained a strong wish to destroy the USSR if they get a chance, conquer the Russian peoples, and assimilate them in their empire, but they did not mean to treat Eastern Europeans any worse than Western Europeans. Of course, they kept the usual ruthless drive of totalitarian regimes to eliminate anyone that defied their rule. Besides the Russian lands, they harbored a strong wish to complete the unification of Europe under their regime by conquering the British Isles and the Balkans as well. However, they were willing to take a pragmatic attitude about it, and had no particular ill will against such peoples, provided they submitted to their rule.
The frontists did not really like the Jews, but early in their development, they realized the Jew minority was so important, influential, and integrated that serious discrimination or overt persecution would be too disruptive to their aims and their PR. Therefore, the frontists adopted a relatively pragmatic and tolerant policy towards the European Jews. Apart from occasional propaganda badmouthing and a few legal limitations, they mostly left the Jews alone and allowed them decent living conditions for the standards of their society.
Since the Jews devised the Zionist project on their own, the frontists opportunistically turned to support it as a near-optimal means to unburden Europe of its “excess” Jew population and keep the Jews at home and abroad friendly. In the frontists’ ultimate plans, their empire across the Old World would become so vast, powerful, and wealthy they did not mind carving out a Zionist homeland in Palestine and letting it exist as a client state. If the Zionist project in its original version ultimately proved unfeasible, the frontist policymakers planned to replace Palestine with some low-value area of Africa.
The frontists focused most of their murderous racist hate against non-White ethnicities, especially the ones, such as the Arabs/Muslims and the Blacks, which they regarded as especially troublesome for reasons of proximity, territorial competition, historical enmity, and/or sheer prejudice. Broadly speaking, TTL version of fascism replaced Eastern Europe with Africa and the Middle East as the target of a grandiose settler colonization project fueled by large-scale ethnic cleansing and genocide of natives.
They devised and engaged in a grand project to remove the Black and Arab/Muslim population of Africa and the Middle East by means of large-scale ethnic cleansing and genocide. They would replace them with a sizable number of European settlers they expected to be available thanks to demographic growth and natalist policies. They aimed to expel or exterminate most of the Arab/Muslim and Black population of Africa and the Middle East and replace them with White settlers, especially in the areas that are sufficiently valuable economically and suited for large-scale European immigration.
As it concerns the North African and Middle Eastern natives, they deemed a lot of them too ‘corrupted’ by (i.e. loyal to) Islam and/or Arab influence to be tolerated. However, they were willing to make an assimilationist exception for all the elements that had apparently resisted such ‘corruption’, such as the Christian Arabs and the collaborationists that forsaked Islam and accepted cultural assimilation. They deemed these peoples sufficiently close to Europeans, if often corrupted by African influence and miscegenation, to make assimilation potentially possible. In practical terms, the frontists deemed resistance to European rule and loyalty to Islam and/or Arab culture as a hallmark of irredeemable racial corruption that singled out an individual or group for elimination. On the other hand, a collaborationist attitude and acceptance of Europeanization was a good sign of assimilationist suitability.
For obvious racist reasons, they meant to allow no such reprieve for Black Africans, and planned ethnic cleansing, genocide, or enslavement as their inevitable doom. They aimed to wipe them out from the valuable parts of Africa that seem suitable for White settler colonization, and keep them as a captive workforce and enslaved underclass in those areas that have useful resources but are inhospitable to Europeans. For practical reasons, they were likely going to corral survivors in ‘reservations’ in the least valuable and most inhospitable corners of the continent. They gave priority in their genocidal colonization efforts to the regions that held valuable resources and were suited to large-sale European settlement, such as North Africa, Southern Africa, East Africa, and southern Central Africa.
Union between the EE and South Africa considerably eased their plans. Since its independence, South Africa gradually developed a close bond with Europe. The regime change in the EU only reinforced this process; the Great Depression and widespread sympathies among the South African settler population for the colonial policies of the EE enabled a frontist takeover in South Africa. The two states gradually developed an ever-closer patron-client relationship fueled by ideological affinities, economic and military cooperation, and convergent interests in domestic and colonial policies, up to successfully negotiating a political merger.
Until the frontist colonizers could replace them with European settlers, they meant to keep the Africans alive but make them subject to a regime of ruthless exploitation, forced labor, and brutal suppression of any resistance that amounted to slavery in all but name. In the valuable areas that were sufficiently suitable for White immigration, they meant this as a strictly temporary measure. Frontist policymakers debated their options about the areas of Africa that had valuable resources but did not seem that suitable for large-scale European settlement, such as parts of West Africa and northern Central Africa.
Such options ranged from keeping the African population as a permanent enslaved workforce to eventually enlarging the White settlement scheme to these regions if with more difficulty and over a longer schedule. A few even proposed gradually “whitening” the African population through selective mixed breeding between white people and black people. They meant this as an extreme means of completing colonization of Africa and an explicit exception to their usual policies, which condemned and harshly persecuted miscegenation with Blacks.
The other colonial possessions of Europe that did not seem to have valuable resources or be suitable for White settlement were to become by default “reservations” for the remnants of native populations. Such areas also provided the frontists a handy way to get Europe rid of another unwanted minority. They planned for a gradual deportation of the European Rom population to low-value areas of Africa. Frontist policies towards other disliked minorities such as homosexuals, leftists, and disabled people did not differ much from OTL Nazi ones. The main difference was, much like it was planned for the Rom, the African colonies provided lots of suitable places to deport the “undesirables”, much the same way the Soviet empire did with Siberia.
As it concerns the South Asians, East Asians, and Latinos, distance, a relative lack of imperialist competition, appreciation for their achievements, and a wish for allies and trade partners made the frontists take a practical and relatively open-minded attitude towards them, up to and including a potential willingness to treat them as near-equals and allies if convenient.
In the domestic field, the frontists addressed the economic crisis that had brought them into power with the mix of a vast public works program, a massive rearmament program, and the African colonization project. Notwithstanding the typical corruption and inefficiency problems of authoritarian regimes, these policies enabled the building of a sizable amount of new infrastructure and industry across Europe and in the colonies and were remarkably effective to ensure the economic recovery of Europe. They also did a lot to improve consensus to the frontist regime in the European population, despite its totalitarian character.
The frontist regime harbored serious ambitions of conquering the British Empire and the Soviet bloc, to eliminate their potential threat and unify Europe, western Eurasia, and Africa under their rule. The European leaders planned and prepared for a two-front conflict, not trusting either Britain or the USSR to stay neutral if they got in a conflict with the other power. They strived to expand the more modest but still impressive land forces rearmament the democratic EU had enacted for defense against the Soviet threat into a juggernaut that would crush the Red Army and conquer the Soviet bloc. At the same time, they sought to build up the European navy and air force into a tool capable of overwhelming British air-naval power and enabling conquest of the British Isles, the Middle East, and the British colonies in Africa.
Until their country was ready to strike, the European leaders near-unanimously acknowledged they had to bide for time, and settle for a while in a three-way Cold War dynamic with Britain and the USSR. In a long-term perspective, however, the frontist leaders were not of one mind about an aggressive drive to conquer their neighbors. An important faction argued that their existent possessions in Europe and Africa were more than enough to satisfy their needs, especially once settler colonization of Africa would enable their full development. Assimilation of the British Isles and the Soviet bloc, and ownership of Russian and Middle Eastern resources, would surely be useful, but not that necessary. Therefore, they pushed for giving priority to the African colonization and picking an opportunist stance vs. the British Empire and the Soviet bloc. If either power somehow unleashed a conflict on their own initiative or weakened too much, Europe should surely engage in a war of conquest. Otherwise, they should build up their strength and wait for a good opportunity.
Frontism’ more pragmatic and inclusive racial policies in comparison to OTL fascism drove it to take a more pro-science stance that emphasized the practical value of education and the pursuit of scientific and technological progress in a harmonious balance with athleticism to increase the strength of the people and the power of the state. Ideology-based intervention of the frontist regime in these fields was mostly limited to endorsing, emphasizing, and radicalizing the arguments of scientific racism about the superiority of the Whites and the innate savagery and barbarism of the Blacks. This stance combined with lack of persecution for the Jews to ensure there was no exodus of the European scientific community to foreign countries. Apart from a fringe that was motivated to leave by a militant anti-frontist stance, almost all the European scientists stayed home.
This helped the EE keep pretty much all the expertise it possessed before the frontist takeover and stay the global leader of scientific and technological progress in a tie with America. In OTL terms, Europe suffered none of the tech gaps the Axis powers experienced vs. the Allies and enjoyed a favorable standard that varied between full parity and a moderate advantage depending on the specific field and the counterpart used as a comparison. It also helped that the frontist system suffered the usual degree of inefficiency and corruption of right-wing authoritarian regimes, but none of the widespread administrative chaos that burdened Nazi Germany. To quote a notable example, this situation ensured America and Europe were going to develop nuclear technology more or less at the same time, and substantially earlier than the other industrialized great powers.
By a compromise peace settlement, France took Alsace-Lorraine, Luxemburg, and Wallonia, with the Netherlands getting the Flanders. Germany kept West Prussia and Upper Silesia, annexed Austria and the Sudetenland, and formed a confederation with Czechia. Italy got Trent, South Tyrol, the Kustenland, and coastal Dalmatia, and formed a confederation with Carniola, Montenegro, and Albania. Hungary kept the broad equivalent of 1941 borders and formed a confederation with Slovakia. Congress Poland became independent with Posen and Galicia. Like Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia failed to form because of the war's outcome and the postwar disruption caused by the conflict with the Soviets. Therefore, Croatia became independent and partitioned Bosnia with Serbia. In various cases, plebiscites and/or population transfers helped stabilize and entrench these new borders.
Being victorious in Russia, the Communists got emboldened to attempt spreading their ideology and control across Europe by a mix of armed invasion and revolutionary destabilization. Government forces combined with right-wing militias however were able to suppress Red insurrections in Western Europe and a hastily assembled European coalition contained and pushed back Soviet invasion of Central Europe. However, the Europeans could not stop the Reds from taking over vast chunks of the Balkans and the Near East with the help of Communist insurgents and pro-Soviet proxies.
The compromise peace left the Soviets in control of Finland, the Baltic States, eastern Poland up to the Narew-Vistula-San line, and Moldavia-Bessarabia, which they annexed as various SSRs. They also held Serbia, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Dobruja, and mainland Greece, which they merged into a Communist Balkan Federation, a client state of the USSR. Insular Greece remained free from Red control and formed an independent state under the military protection of the European powers. Pro-Soviet forces also seized control of Turkey, North Persia, and Afghanistan, which became other client states of the USSR. The Soviets exploited the situation to annex Western Armenia and Iranian Azerbaijan. TTL Iron Curtain rose at the Vistula-Carpathians-Danube line, with an extension cutting through the Western Balkans.
The outcome of the war and revulsion at the suffering it caused inspired widespread rejection of nationalism and gave a massive popularity boost to the ideal of European unity across Western and Central Europe. In a few years, the Western and Central European nations merged into a close analogue of the EU, which quickly took a federal character. In addition to all its OTL integration achievements, this version of the EU had a constitution, a strong common army, fiscal integration with well-developed taxation and welfare systems, and a semi-presidential government. The latter included a president directly elected by European citizens, a parliament with legislative initiative that included a directly elected assembly and a senate appointed by national parliaments, a supranational executive accountable to the parliament and the president, and a well-developed Pan-European party system.
France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, and White Greece joined the new federal union as its member states. Czechia, Slovakia, Carniola, Montenegro, and Albania joined as well as autonomous subunits due to their confederal bonds with Germany, Hungary, or Italy. Postwar Germany kept its federal character with a reorganization of its internal borders; Italy and Spain evolved in a similar way, granting a sizable degree of devolution to their regions. The European peoples' motivations for integration included a wish to avoid another general war, expectation that continental unity would bring political stabilization and economic development, and mutual protection from the Soviet threat.
For a generation, Europe experienced a solid boom thanks to economic unification of the continent. This paved the way to major industrialization of its Southern and Eastern regions and consolidated mass consensus to the European unity project. Its success fostered the rise and entrenchment of a solid Pan-European identity among the peoples of the continent. A wish for ease of communication drove the Europeans to adopt a reformed version of Esperanto (effectively indistinguishable from Ido) as their lingua franca, official language, and a mandatory school subject. In a few decades, Ido achieved strong popularity and became widespread in Europe among the elites, middle classes, and younger generations.
Chance discovery of North African oilfields further fueled European economic boom and infrastructure build-up in the region. It also greatly increased European appetite for acquisition and development of African and Middle Eastern resources, as well as interest for colonization of Africa using the settler model that had been so successful for the Americas.
The war also caused a partial collapse of the British Empire, as the Dominions reacted badly to paying a large price in blood for the empire’s glory in a seemingly pointless conflict. A series of peaceful republican revolutions swept the Dominions and drove them to sever political ties with Britain. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand joined the USA, out of a wish to get protection and stability from a sympathetic power that had stayed neutral and shared their culture. The English-speaking states and provinces of the Dominions became US states, while the territories became US territories. Quebec became an associated state of the USA.
South Africa decided to stay an independent republic and took over Basutoland, Swaziland, Bechuanaland, Southern Rhodesia, and South West Africa. Over time, South Africa developed increasingly close ties with Europe, up to becoming a client state of the EU. The British however were able to keep control of their colonial empire in Asia and considerably enlarged it since the war and its peace settlement enabled Britain to take control of European colonies in Indochina and Indonesia. The British also seized control of the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Arabia during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the conflict with the Soviets, turning the region into a series of client Arab kingdoms. South Persia became another client state of the British Empire.
The Scramble for Africa, the Great War, Europe’s unification, the post-war settlement, and South Africa’s independence left the EU in control of the vast majority of the African continent. European colonies included the Maghreb; most of West Africa except US-aligned Liberia and the British colonies of Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone; the Congo basin in Central Africa; Angola, Mozambique, and Northern Rhodesia in Southern Africa; and most of East Africa except British Kenya and Uganda. The British also kept control of Egypt and Sudan as a protectorate.
For a good while, it seemed postwar hopes for prosperity, democracy, and stability in Europe were going to be fulfilled thanks to the vast success of the European integration project. TTL equivalent of the Great Depression, however, got them terribly betrayed. A nasty global recession worsened by a vicious trade war between the capitalist powers ultimately created enough hardship to enable the electoral victory in Europe of a front of far-right parties and a fascist regime change of the EU.
TTL version of European fascism (known as ‘frontism’) became broadly similar to its OTL counterpart with a few important differences. The vast success of the European integration project drove them in their formative years to forsake their ties to ethnic nationalism and embrace a far-right version of Pan-European civic nationalism as their ideology. They gave up any notion of opposing European unity and refocused their efforts on shaping it in their image. Once the frontists took over, they reorganized the EU into the European Empire. They combined idealized notions of Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg and Capet monarchies, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Napoleonic Empire to make up their historical precedent and merged it with the typical features of modern fascism to establish their model of society.
They pragmatically continued to give full support to use, teaching, and diffusion of Ido as the European lingua franca and official language; for ideological reasons they also made some serious effort to establish a simplified version of Latin (effectively indistinguishable from “Latino sine flexione”) as the second common language of Europe. Despite reaping some popularity among scholars and being eagerly adopted by the Catholic Church, however, this version of Latin ultimately got much less success than Ido. Across Europe, Ido continued to reap ever-increasing numbers of native speakers and people that were fluent in it, gradually evolving into the main language of the continent. Growing linguistic unification thanks to success of Ido helped cement political unity of Europe and the rise of a solid Pan-European identity for the foreseeable future, regardless of the fortunes of the frontist regime. In the international field, Ido became one of the most widely spoken and fastest spreading world languages. Only English rivaled its importance and diffusion.
As it concerns their racial policies, TTL circumstances drove the frontist movement to accept more or less all European ethnicities as equal and valuable components of their supremacist in-group, and have no wish to discriminate or persecute them. They retained a strong wish to destroy the USSR if they get a chance, conquer the Russian peoples, and assimilate them in their empire, but they did not mean to treat Eastern Europeans any worse than Western Europeans. Of course, they kept the usual ruthless drive of totalitarian regimes to eliminate anyone that defied their rule. Besides the Russian lands, they harbored a strong wish to complete the unification of Europe under their regime by conquering the British Isles and the Balkans as well. However, they were willing to take a pragmatic attitude about it, and had no particular ill will against such peoples, provided they submitted to their rule.
The frontists did not really like the Jews, but early in their development, they realized the Jew minority was so important, influential, and integrated that serious discrimination or overt persecution would be too disruptive to their aims and their PR. Therefore, the frontists adopted a relatively pragmatic and tolerant policy towards the European Jews. Apart from occasional propaganda badmouthing and a few legal limitations, they mostly left the Jews alone and allowed them decent living conditions for the standards of their society.
Since the Jews devised the Zionist project on their own, the frontists opportunistically turned to support it as a near-optimal means to unburden Europe of its “excess” Jew population and keep the Jews at home and abroad friendly. In the frontists’ ultimate plans, their empire across the Old World would become so vast, powerful, and wealthy they did not mind carving out a Zionist homeland in Palestine and letting it exist as a client state. If the Zionist project in its original version ultimately proved unfeasible, the frontist policymakers planned to replace Palestine with some low-value area of Africa.
The frontists focused most of their murderous racist hate against non-White ethnicities, especially the ones, such as the Arabs/Muslims and the Blacks, which they regarded as especially troublesome for reasons of proximity, territorial competition, historical enmity, and/or sheer prejudice. Broadly speaking, TTL version of fascism replaced Eastern Europe with Africa and the Middle East as the target of a grandiose settler colonization project fueled by large-scale ethnic cleansing and genocide of natives.
They devised and engaged in a grand project to remove the Black and Arab/Muslim population of Africa and the Middle East by means of large-scale ethnic cleansing and genocide. They would replace them with a sizable number of European settlers they expected to be available thanks to demographic growth and natalist policies. They aimed to expel or exterminate most of the Arab/Muslim and Black population of Africa and the Middle East and replace them with White settlers, especially in the areas that are sufficiently valuable economically and suited for large-scale European immigration.
As it concerns the North African and Middle Eastern natives, they deemed a lot of them too ‘corrupted’ by (i.e. loyal to) Islam and/or Arab influence to be tolerated. However, they were willing to make an assimilationist exception for all the elements that had apparently resisted such ‘corruption’, such as the Christian Arabs and the collaborationists that forsaked Islam and accepted cultural assimilation. They deemed these peoples sufficiently close to Europeans, if often corrupted by African influence and miscegenation, to make assimilation potentially possible. In practical terms, the frontists deemed resistance to European rule and loyalty to Islam and/or Arab culture as a hallmark of irredeemable racial corruption that singled out an individual or group for elimination. On the other hand, a collaborationist attitude and acceptance of Europeanization was a good sign of assimilationist suitability.
For obvious racist reasons, they meant to allow no such reprieve for Black Africans, and planned ethnic cleansing, genocide, or enslavement as their inevitable doom. They aimed to wipe them out from the valuable parts of Africa that seem suitable for White settler colonization, and keep them as a captive workforce and enslaved underclass in those areas that have useful resources but are inhospitable to Europeans. For practical reasons, they were likely going to corral survivors in ‘reservations’ in the least valuable and most inhospitable corners of the continent. They gave priority in their genocidal colonization efforts to the regions that held valuable resources and were suited to large-sale European settlement, such as North Africa, Southern Africa, East Africa, and southern Central Africa.
Union between the EE and South Africa considerably eased their plans. Since its independence, South Africa gradually developed a close bond with Europe. The regime change in the EU only reinforced this process; the Great Depression and widespread sympathies among the South African settler population for the colonial policies of the EE enabled a frontist takeover in South Africa. The two states gradually developed an ever-closer patron-client relationship fueled by ideological affinities, economic and military cooperation, and convergent interests in domestic and colonial policies, up to successfully negotiating a political merger.
Until the frontist colonizers could replace them with European settlers, they meant to keep the Africans alive but make them subject to a regime of ruthless exploitation, forced labor, and brutal suppression of any resistance that amounted to slavery in all but name. In the valuable areas that were sufficiently suitable for White immigration, they meant this as a strictly temporary measure. Frontist policymakers debated their options about the areas of Africa that had valuable resources but did not seem that suitable for large-scale European settlement, such as parts of West Africa and northern Central Africa.
Such options ranged from keeping the African population as a permanent enslaved workforce to eventually enlarging the White settlement scheme to these regions if with more difficulty and over a longer schedule. A few even proposed gradually “whitening” the African population through selective mixed breeding between white people and black people. They meant this as an extreme means of completing colonization of Africa and an explicit exception to their usual policies, which condemned and harshly persecuted miscegenation with Blacks.
The other colonial possessions of Europe that did not seem to have valuable resources or be suitable for White settlement were to become by default “reservations” for the remnants of native populations. Such areas also provided the frontists a handy way to get Europe rid of another unwanted minority. They planned for a gradual deportation of the European Rom population to low-value areas of Africa. Frontist policies towards other disliked minorities such as homosexuals, leftists, and disabled people did not differ much from OTL Nazi ones. The main difference was, much like it was planned for the Rom, the African colonies provided lots of suitable places to deport the “undesirables”, much the same way the Soviet empire did with Siberia.
As it concerns the South Asians, East Asians, and Latinos, distance, a relative lack of imperialist competition, appreciation for their achievements, and a wish for allies and trade partners made the frontists take a practical and relatively open-minded attitude towards them, up to and including a potential willingness to treat them as near-equals and allies if convenient.
In the domestic field, the frontists addressed the economic crisis that had brought them into power with the mix of a vast public works program, a massive rearmament program, and the African colonization project. Notwithstanding the typical corruption and inefficiency problems of authoritarian regimes, these policies enabled the building of a sizable amount of new infrastructure and industry across Europe and in the colonies and were remarkably effective to ensure the economic recovery of Europe. They also did a lot to improve consensus to the frontist regime in the European population, despite its totalitarian character.
The frontist regime harbored serious ambitions of conquering the British Empire and the Soviet bloc, to eliminate their potential threat and unify Europe, western Eurasia, and Africa under their rule. The European leaders planned and prepared for a two-front conflict, not trusting either Britain or the USSR to stay neutral if they got in a conflict with the other power. They strived to expand the more modest but still impressive land forces rearmament the democratic EU had enacted for defense against the Soviet threat into a juggernaut that would crush the Red Army and conquer the Soviet bloc. At the same time, they sought to build up the European navy and air force into a tool capable of overwhelming British air-naval power and enabling conquest of the British Isles, the Middle East, and the British colonies in Africa.
Until their country was ready to strike, the European leaders near-unanimously acknowledged they had to bide for time, and settle for a while in a three-way Cold War dynamic with Britain and the USSR. In a long-term perspective, however, the frontist leaders were not of one mind about an aggressive drive to conquer their neighbors. An important faction argued that their existent possessions in Europe and Africa were more than enough to satisfy their needs, especially once settler colonization of Africa would enable their full development. Assimilation of the British Isles and the Soviet bloc, and ownership of Russian and Middle Eastern resources, would surely be useful, but not that necessary. Therefore, they pushed for giving priority to the African colonization and picking an opportunist stance vs. the British Empire and the Soviet bloc. If either power somehow unleashed a conflict on their own initiative or weakened too much, Europe should surely engage in a war of conquest. Otherwise, they should build up their strength and wait for a good opportunity.
Frontism’ more pragmatic and inclusive racial policies in comparison to OTL fascism drove it to take a more pro-science stance that emphasized the practical value of education and the pursuit of scientific and technological progress in a harmonious balance with athleticism to increase the strength of the people and the power of the state. Ideology-based intervention of the frontist regime in these fields was mostly limited to endorsing, emphasizing, and radicalizing the arguments of scientific racism about the superiority of the Whites and the innate savagery and barbarism of the Blacks. This stance combined with lack of persecution for the Jews to ensure there was no exodus of the European scientific community to foreign countries. Apart from a fringe that was motivated to leave by a militant anti-frontist stance, almost all the European scientists stayed home.
This helped the EE keep pretty much all the expertise it possessed before the frontist takeover and stay the global leader of scientific and technological progress in a tie with America. In OTL terms, Europe suffered none of the tech gaps the Axis powers experienced vs. the Allies and enjoyed a favorable standard that varied between full parity and a moderate advantage depending on the specific field and the counterpart used as a comparison. It also helped that the frontist system suffered the usual degree of inefficiency and corruption of right-wing authoritarian regimes, but none of the widespread administrative chaos that burdened Nazi Germany. To quote a notable example, this situation ensured America and Europe were going to develop nuclear technology more or less at the same time, and substantially earlier than the other industrialized great powers.