Uhhhh.... Monsone reserved it already.
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by South Americanastan » Sat Sep 04, 2021 10:25 am
by Union Princes » Sat Sep 04, 2021 10:29 am
by Sao Nova Europa » Sat Sep 04, 2021 10:31 am
by Union Princes » Sat Sep 04, 2021 10:46 am
by Sao Nova Europa » Sat Sep 04, 2021 11:08 am
by Reverend Norv » Sat Sep 04, 2021 11:17 am
by Union Princes » Sat Sep 04, 2021 11:31 am
Reverend Norv wrote:App should be up later today - except for the history, which will take a bit longer. As for Canada/Mexico ideas, U.S. policy since the surrender of Britain has been to embrace any government opposed to Berlin, whatever its ideological peculiarities (though, of course, countries friendly to American companies get embraced that much more tightly). So you have plenty of scope to brainstorm ideas, without needing to explain why the U.S. wouldn't have toppled your regime.
by Zedeshia » Sat Sep 04, 2021 12:34 pm
APPLICATION
NS Name: Zedeshia
RP Name: Socialist Federation of Iran
Flag:
Capital: Tehran
Territory:
The constituent Socialist Republics of Iran occupy all of Iraq and Iran as well as the southern half of Azerbaijan bordering the German controlled Caucasus. The country also holds claims over British Kuwait.
Population: Approximately 20 million across all territories
Official Language(s): Persian, Arabic, Kurdish, and Azeri
Ethnic Breakdown: 55 % Persian, 22% Arab, 12 % Kurd, 6.5 % Azeri, 3 % Baloch, 1.5 % Other
Religious Breakdown: The Socialist Federation of Iran is a secular, irreligious state that does not keep any records in regards to the beliefs of it's citizens. However despite this Islam and other faiths remain prevalent in Iranian society outside of politics, with Shia Islam being the most widely practiced in the core of the country and along what was once the border of Iraq while Sunni Islam is less widely practiced being largely centered in the west of the nation. Small pockets of Orthodox Christianity and the slowly rising Baháʼí Faith can be found scattered among the mountains of the country.
Type of Government: Democratic Presidential Federation of Socialist States, though all non-socialist political parties and movements are officially banned
Head of State: Chairman Iraj Eskandari
Head of Government: Chairman Iraj Eskandari
Legislature: Grand Council of Iranian Commissars
Legislative Houses: Each of the Socialist Republics that make up Iran have their own separate Congress of Commissars formed by various smaller political districts based upon the population of their respective region. These smaller Congresses hold a significant amount of independent power and autonomy and are largely responsible for the affairs of it's own people as well sending ten representatives to the Grand Council of Iranian Commissars, which meets regularly and is at least intended to act as the highest power in the nation with its elected Chairman at its head.
Party in Power: Tudeh Party of Iran
National Issues:
- Iraqi Arab Resistance: Generally speaking, Iran has seen great success with dissuading any nationalist movements among it's ranks, as its states of cultures other than Persian are both highly autonomous and accepted by the people of the nation, with little to no discrimination against ethnic groups which the previous monarchy had abhorred. Those too stubborn to accept a tolerant state have either converted to other ways of thinking or were driven out from the country during the Iranian Civil War. The same cannot be said with what was once Iraq, as though Iraqi communists and socialists welcomed the Iranian troops that entered the country many among the population who were of a more conservative nature rejected the new Iranian rule even after being granted autonomy. This has only grown worse with the rise of pan-Arab nationalism, leading to increasing resistance against the government in Tehran which is viewed as a foreign power occupying the country. Protests are becoming more and more common in the region with each passing day while a new group: the Iraqi Liberty Army, created by former elements of the Kingdom of Iraq's military as well militant Arab nationalists has begun to gain traction in Baghdad.
- Shadow of the Axis: The threat of the Axis powers was perhaps the greatest factor that encouraged the Socialist Federation to form, and even after more than a decade the threat of Germany in the Caucasian Mountains remains a near constant fear. Iran and the Greater German Reich follow two completely opposed ideologies, and tensions between the two is incredibly strained, a situation not helped by the notable military detachments deployed by both countries. Possible invasion from the Germans is always something the leaders of Iran are concerned about, as the Iranians control a significant portion of oil and other resources needed for production across the world. However, such a campaign would be difficult and costly, and as such the two nations continue to watch warily at one another, unable and unwilling to take action.
- Extreme Decentralization and Economic Stagnation: The decentralized nature of the Socialist Federation of Iran was a system created out of necessity and for a time proved to be an effective way to resolve conflicts between the different cultures, ethnic groups, political parties, and ideologies of the Socialist Republics formed after the Iranian Civil War. However the flaws of this decentralized system of government have begun to reveal themselves as time passes. Cooperating important projects, passing vital reforms, and managing Iran's national policy and economy is increasingly difficult for the Grand Council of Iranian Commissars in its current state, as the authority of the lesser states of the Socialist Federation are often placed before that of the central government, leading to mismanagement and miscommunication. With the end of the conflict between Iran and the British Empire over Iraq poor coordination has only grown worse, meaning that the slowly stagnating economy of Iran will likely be unable to recover unless something is done.
Public Goals: Further empower the central government, revitalize the Iranian economy, secure and protect hold over Iraq.
Private Goals: Find trustworthy allies, dominate the oil supplies of the Middle East, and have a regional cold war against Syria-Levant and Saudi Arabia.
GDP: Roughly 42 billion
Currency: Red Iranian Rial (RIR), introduced following the overthrow of the Shah and establishment of the Socialist Federation
Economic System: State Socialism, though noticeably more decentralized than similar socialist countries due to the fact that each Iranian republic has control over its own resources before the Grand Council.
Major Trade Partners: United Indian Federation, China, United States of America (Primarily trading in oil and other natural resources)
Alliances: None, as the nation was and continues to be neutral after the end of the Iranian monarchy
Military Branches: Revolutionary Armed Forces of Iran military branches:
- Revolutionary Army of Iran
- Revolutionary Iranian Airforce
- Revolutionary Iranian Navy
- Red Guards of the Republics
Active Duty: 170,000
Reserve Duty: 225,000
Total Manpower: Approximately 2 million, including men and women
Revolutionary Army: 185,000
Revolutionary Air Force: 7,500
Revolutionary Navy: 107,000
Republican Red Guard: 95,500
Other Military Information:
Largely formed from veterans of the Iranian Civil War and the occupation of Iraq the Iranian military is defined by its quality over quantity approach, with many among its ranks having at least some form of combat experience. The Socialist Federation of Iran possesses a large army, with it's central army dwarfing it's military's other branches and with almost 100,000 Red Guard troops formed by previous militias serving the individual Socialist Republics of the nation. Iranian troops use a combination of indigenously made weaponry and designs imported from the Soviet Union before its fall, supported by a powerful industry in the field centered around major towns and cities. A mixture of light tanks, armored cars, and infantry are typically deployed along the nation's border with Saudi Arabia and the Central Asian Soviet warlords while infantry and heavy artillery are commonplace along the border with Turkey and the German Reich near the Caucasian Mountains. Both men and women are recruited into the Iranian military, with those in the central Revolutionary Army mainly consisting of Persian and Arab speakers while the Red Guards of the Republics tend to be made up of native minorities as well as these speakers, including Kurds and Azeris.
The Iranian Navy has rapidly expanded in size in recent history, at first as a means to modernize the Socialist Federation's outdated naval forces as to protect Iranian domestic vessels during the war with Britain over Iraq but later becoming a permanent arrangement as the conflict grew to a close. The medium-sized Iranian navy is split into two groups: those based in the Caspian Sea and those based along the Persian Gulf. The former of the two groups is very limited in size, only comprising of a handful of ships used to protect Iranian territorial waters, while the latter is much larger in size. The Revolutionary Navy uses a mixture of native, Soviet, and British designs and is primarily composed of light cruisers and battleships.
The Revolutionary Airforce of Iran is relatively small, mostly consisting of older, foreign designs. Some among the Red Guards utilize modified versions of such aircraft alongside infantry, however these are largely used for support and are not widespread.
History: Tensions between the Persian monarchy and the general populace of Iran has always existed in some capacity throughout history, as many of the Shahs of the past had a long history of exploitation and suppression. However with the turn of the 20th century as the dynasties declined this anti-monarchism slowly grew in intensity as the years passed. By the beginning of the Second World War the incompetence and continuous failed attempts of modernization alongside brutal suppression of political dissidents and ethnic minorities under the leadership of Reza Shah had led many to support radical leftist ideologies and underground movements that were prevalent in the nation, ranging from communist to anarchist organizations. The attempts by the Iranian government to suppress these forces only encouraged more to join their ranks and take action. This would eventually accumulate into a series of events from early 1939 to 1941 where protests and strikes became a common occurrence until they were eventually crushed by the Iranian government, further aggravating the people of Iran and increasing tensions. As this progressed further and further the situation in the country was lying on the edge of a knife, ready to burst at the seams at any moment, and that moment would soon come.
The Anglo-Soviet Invasion of Iran broke the tolerance of Reza Shah's regime for many, as the monarchy proved to be completely backwards and incapable of even defending its own borders. The functions of the Iranian government being forcibly overtaken by foreign powers caused a massive blow to the House of Pahlavi's standing among it's subjects, sparking mass outrage. The response to this fact was at first limited as the combined British and Soviet forces occupied much of the country and installed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as the new leader of Iran, as some were still reluctant in regards to taking action. However as the new Shah did nothing to better the situation for the people or remove the occupiers this would only last shortly. At first beginning with small protests against the occupation that were quickly dispersed by Allied and Iranian troops and then developing into armed conflicts, extreme civil strife began to take place across Iran, leading to the destruction of pro-government buildings and strongholds and attacks on Allied forces in the region. By 1942 this escalated into civil war, as organized militias and armies directed by socialist and communist groups such as the Iranian Tudeh Party among others rose up and fought against what remained of the Shah's supporters. Meanwhile various Pro-German fascist and nationalist groups also became active, committing acts of terror and ravaging the countryside. The fighting was so intense that the Allied armies deployed in Iran had no choice but to leave the country or else face an incredible amount of resistance and suffer from causalities and attrition, forcing British troops to evacuate the country over the Indian Ocean and their neighboring colonies of the Raj and Kuwait while the Soviets fled northwards into Central Asia. This severed the supplies passing through Iran from the British to the Soviet Union, hampering the Soviet's ability to fight against the German advance in Europe as troops in Central Asia and along the Volga slowly suffered from mass shortages.
The different factions battling for supremacy in Iran would continue clashing against each other, with the socialists often fighting against reactionary Royalist and Fascist forces. Due to the spontaneous nature of the uprisings the different socialist and communist parties were limited to their own separate region and were forced to fight without the aid of one another, an issue only worsened by the different doctrines of each group. The three largest groups among the socialist faction was the Iranian Tudeh party which had taken up arms and revolted near Tehran, central Persia and the southern coast of the Caspian Sea, the Iranian Socialist and Socialist Revolutionary parties which took up arms and led a revolution in Iranian Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, and Khuzestan, and the Comrades Party which gained much traction and led mass protests and rebellions to the south of the nation, among other groups such as the northern Jungle Party and a multitude of anarchist militias. Resistance against these forces was fierce, with holdouts of Royalist support headed by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Prime Minister Mohammad Ali Foroughi remaining strong in major cities using whatever men they had available that did not mutiny or desert while bands of ultranationalists and fascists influenced by Germany terrorized the rural east of Iran. However, through a mixture of guerilla tactics and the use of military equipment seized from the retreating Soviet and British forces that had occupied the country the socialists were able to wear away at, siege, and push out any remains of the Royalist and Fascist factions within three years, completely securing their hold on the country in early 1945. The final Shah of the country was killed in the conflict, ending centuries of monarchical rule over the region. With this done various socialist republics and states were declared in Iran following a range of leftist ideologies from Marxism-Leninism to Anarcho-Syndicalism, such as the Democratic Socialist Republic of Tehran, the People's Republic of Azerbaijan (which had annexed some of the southern sections of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan Soviet hold over the region collapsed under the Germans), the Second Socialist Soviet Republic of Gilan, and more. This was a fragile situation, as the divided nature of these states both made their legitimacy questionable and put them under risk of invasion, especially by the Germans, who had occupied much of the Caucasus to the northwest. As such representatives from the Iranian republics convened at the Conference of Isfahan only two months after they had been officially formed to discuss the future of Iran and its people. This discussion would be long and tumultuous, with discussions breaking down twice before a decision could be agreed upon. None the less by the end of the Conference all parties involved with exception to the People's Revolutionary State of West Baluchistan (who would become a part of the Socialist Federation later in 1949) signed the Treaty of Naqsh-e Jahan, reuniting the Iranian nation and creating the Socialist Federation of Iran, a confederation of equals among the different republics, with the moderate Soleiman Eskandari being elected as the first Chairman of the new nation as a compromise between the ideologically conflicting political factions among the people of the Conference, with the current Chairman Iraj Eskandari later gaining the position after Soleimani later retired from politics. The period of bloody conflict that would become known as the Iranian Civil War at last came to a close with the nation and its people quickly recovering from the losses that it brought.
Iran would not be the only territory controlled by the new country, as the revolution and civil war that toppled the power of the Shahs and reshaped the social and political landscape of the state inspired similar actions against colonial rulers in neighboring Iraq, Kuwait, and Pakistan. While the protests and conflicts that sparked because of the Iranians proved to be short-lived in Pakistan the same could not be said with the Socialist Federation's western neighbors. In Iraq by the time of the formation of the Socialist Federation resistance against monarchical rule had weakened the British hold over their territories and close ties between Iraq and the British collapsed entirely as King Faisal II of Iraq and his closest ministers were driven out of Baghdad, forcing them to flee the country and take refuge in Syria-Levant. People's Communes had been established by the Communist Party of Iraq in Mosul and Baghdad which displayed much support for the new Iranian Federation. Taking advantage of this situation the Iranian government mobilized, making use of much of their forces from the previous Iranian Civil War and rapidly entering Iraq in 1447 under the justification of "liberation of the workers of our western allies and neighbors from Imperialism and the stabilization of the region", joining already active Communist Iraqi militants and occupying Iraqi territory. The British government, weakened by the failed war against the German Reich and already stretched thin in the lands of their Iraqi allies due to the encroaching threat of Axis territories in Syria faced a series of military defeats and were forced to retreat to Kuwait. The Iranian forces led by General Ali Azimi (who had risen to a prominent military position for the Democratic Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan during the Civil War) attempted to pursue the British forces and annex lands in Kuwait but was unable to defeat the British Army at the outskirts of Kuwait City with British troops proving equally unsuccessful even after receiving reinforcements. This resulted in a stalemate for both sides and would continue the war for almost three years until a ceasefire was signed in 1950 bringing an end to all combat between the two states past the borders of Kuwait and the Treaty of Manama one year later after discussions from both sides, as the Iranians wished to cut any further military losses while the British government was forced to step away from the matter due to increasing disapproval of the prolonged and taxing war by the British public. Of the two parties involved the new Socialist Federation clearly benefited the most, annexing the lands of Iraq and splitting them into the Socialist Republics of Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra as well as the Revolutionary Community of Anbar-Najaf (much to the joy of the Iraqi communists but to the dismay of the rest of the population). The Socialist Federation of Iran still claims "rightful" ownership over Kuwait, though Britain and the rest of the international community ignore this and Iranian officials are reluctant to press the matter to an extreme fearing international backlash.
The conditions of the war against Britain as well as a rush of foreign scientists and similar minds fleeing from the chaos that arose from the fall of the Soviet Union granted an opportunity for the new socialist Iran to at least partially modernize, which it would, rapidly expanding industrialization, adopting more modern forms of technology, and making various changes in terms of education such as the adoption of the Latin script in place of the traditional Nastaliq and Arabic scripts and the introduction of programs that greatly raised the nation's literacy rate. Barriers that restrict the economic and political rights of ethnic minorities and women have largely been torn down, with equal treatment of citizens regardless of culture, race, or sex being guaranteed in the constitution of the Federation. However, this rate of modernization and growth has slowly dwindled in the later years of the war and afterwards, creating a state of stagnation that may put the country back into the situation it was once in if the issue is not resolved. This is made worse through the lack of coordination and willingness to cooperate among the republics of the Socialist Federation, something that must be resolved if the country's economy is to prosper. Politically, the states of the revived Ottoman Empire and the Saudi monarchy are warily eyeing the Socialist Federation, threatened by the introduction of a adamantly anti-monarchist and anti-capitalist force at their borders while the German menace still lurks to Iran's northwest without any sign of leaving soon. But Iran's situation is not without hope. The rise of an independent Indian state Iran, though having notable differences in ideology, has found a stable partner in trade while many of the similar-minded post-Soviet warlord states to the north may prove to be faithful allies in the future. What will become of the Socialist Federation of Iran is yet to be seen, but just as it had before the country may well prove dominant in the future.
RP Example(s): viewtopic.php?p=37704709#p37704709
Do not remove - 1952RP
by The Palmetto » Sat Sep 04, 2021 12:51 pm
"That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
by Reverend Norv » Sat Sep 04, 2021 1:04 pm
APPLICATION
NS Name: Norv
RP Name: The United States of America
Flag: See right.
Capital: Washington, District of Columbia
Territory:The territorial core of the country is comprised of forty-eight states stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Beyond this, the U.S. has a large number of colonial possessions with varying constitutional arrangements. Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico are all commonwealths, with substantial self-government and full civil rights, but lacking representation in Washington. Most of the islands in the Pacific, by contrast, are American territories: their self-government is limited, and their residents are not birthright citizens. These territories include Guam, Samoa, Palau, the Marshall Islands, the Mariana Islands, and the Society Islands (the last occupied after the fall of France, theoretically in trust for the Free French government). The Panama Canal Zone is likewise a territory. The difference is theoretical: commonwealths are expected ultimately to become states of the Union, while territories are expected ultimately to become independent. In practice, Washington seems in no rush to reach either outcome.
Some other countries are not formally U.S. colonies, but rely entirely on the presence of U.S. troops for political stability, and therefore must informally defer to Washington; Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua have been occupied by U.S. Marines for more than twenty years, and Iceland has been occupied since the Second World War. The U.S. also has two formal protectorates: recognized sovereign states for which the U.S. has legally assumed a duty of defense and "democratic mentorship." These are the Philippines and Japan. Finally, the U.S. government and U.S. companies own many thousands of square miles in other countries through leases for military bases and private compounds: a global network of harbors, airbases, plantations, residential concessions, factories, corporate offices, and more. This invisible empire, acquired piecemeal by purchase rather than by conquest, is what truly extends Washington's reach worldwide.
Population: Estimated at around 152 million. There are several million more U.S. citizens in Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico; and there are several hundred thousand U.S. nationals (not citizens) in the Pacific territories and the Canal Zone. Six million Cubans, four million Haitians, and a million Nicaraguans live in theoretically independent states under U.S. military occupation; nineteen million Filipinos and eighty-four million Japanese live in American protectorates.
Official Language(s): English is the de facto national language, but the U.S. has no official language, and it is a highly multilingual polity in practice: English, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Yiddish, and more can be heard on the streets of any major city. The U.S. has a policy of English-language instruction in its overseas possessions, but this supplements and does not replace the native languages in those countries as well.
Ethnic Breakdown: The continental U.S. population is 87% white (though this category embraces a very wide range of identities, from recent Jewish refugees to Mayflower descendants); 10% African-American; 2% Latino; and less than 1% of other ethnic origin. The population of overseas possessions varies dramatically.
Religious Breakdown: The continental U.S. population is about 66% Protestant; most American Protestants belong to historic "mainline" denominations (Baptists, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc.), but about a third identify as Charismatic or Evangelical. 25% of Americans are Catholic, and 4% are Jewish. The remainder are irreligious or follow other faiths. Different denominations are distributed differently: Evangelicals are the majority in the Appalachians, Congregationalists in New England, Catholics in Pittsburgh and Chicago, Jews in New York City. With the exception of Japan and a few Pacific islands, almost every U.S. overseas territory is majority-Catholic; this is a source of some tension between colonial populations and their predominately Protestant administrators.
Type of Government: Constitutional federal presidential republic (albeit one in which about seven percent of the population is de facto disfranchised by Jim Crow).
Head of State: President Harry S. Truman
Head of Government: President Harry S. Truman
Legislature: The United States Congress
Legislative Houses: The House of Representatives (lower house) and the Senate (upper house).
Party in Power: The Democratic Party controls both houses of Congress, as it has for twenty uninterrupted years - since the 1932 elections. Gone, however, are the enormous supermajorities of Franklin Roosevelt's early term. And the Democrats themselves are an unwieldy coalition of farmers and union workers, Jews and Catholics, socialists and Southern racists. President Truman's biggest political challenge is not cooperating with Republicans - many of whom support much of his agenda - but holding his own party together.
National Issues:Public Goals: To defend democracy around the world; to contain, roll back, outcompete, and outlast the Reich; to rebuild Japan as a bulwark of liberalism; to construct a global united front of diverse antifascist powers, united by their common enemy; to advance the cause of human rights; and to continue building a more just and equal American economy.
- The Double V Campaign: During the Pacific War, African-Americans fought bravely and with distinction, and returned home determined to achieve victory over white supremacy just as they had achieved victory over Japanese imperialism. Although it has the backing of the mainline Protestant churches, a majority of Republicans, the federal courts, and the White House, the "Double V Campaign for Civil and Human Rights" has nevertheless collided with a unified wall of white Southern resistance. Last year, in Sweatt v. Painter, the Supreme Court banned segregation in graduate and professional education; many Southerners see this as the thin end of the wedge, the beginning of the end for legal segregation altogether. Their fears are justified: in the powerful federal administration, it is widely agreed that the propaganda war against the Reich requires the embarrassment of Jim Crow to end; outside the South, many Americans even see Southern segregationists as a treasonous Fifth Column for the Nazis. As marches and sit-ins and boycotts spread across the South, President Truman - and any potential Democratic successor - must find a way to reconcile racial justice with racial peace.
- The Emergency: For twenty years, the size and power of the federal government has grown: first in response to the Great Depression, then in order to fight the Pacific War, and then in response to the Emergency - the global geopolitical struggle against Nazi Germany that President Truman declared in 1947. The growth of government has paid great dividends in some ways: it has permitted the U.S. economy to remain on a war footing for more than a decade, and it has steadily improved most Americans' quality of life. But such measures have many detractors. American companies are weary of the War Production Board's resource rationing, of the Office of Price Administration's price controls, of the War Manpower Commission's employment mandates and quotas. Financiers are sick of the Securities Exchange Commission's wartime caps on investment income; unions are tired of forced arbitration by the National War Labor Board; activists on the far right and the far left complain of unaccountable surveillance and national-security investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In maintaining its readiness for total war - and in waging another war at home against poverty and inequality - the federal government has made American life more regimented and constrained than ever before. And so many Americans wonder: after twenty years, when will the supposedly temporary Emergency actually end?
- The Truman Doctrine: In 1947, President Truman publicly admitted the obvious: with Europe reduced to Nazi tyranny and China still struggling to rebuild from civil war, only the United States had the strength to resist the global spread of totalitarianism. Driven by imperatives both moral and practical, Truman committed the U.S. to a fateful policy: to resist, by all measures necessary, the subversion or subjugation of democratic governments by internal or external authoritarian forces; and to support the legitimate aspirations for self-determination and human rights of the oppressed peoples of the world. Until the march of tyranny was abated, the United States would consider itself to be facing a crisis of existential proportions: the Emergency. The Truman Doctrine committed the U.S. to a vast expansion of its global footprint: hedging the fascist world with a cordon of military bases, arming and training the armies of democratic regimes, smuggling guns and money to resistance groups, showering development aid on democratic allies, building a massive intelligence apparatus in the decolonizing world, investing heavily in special operations forces, building a nuclear arsenal - and the list of tasks goes on, and on, and on. As Truman leaves office amid the Brown Scare, both parties have adopted his hardline antifascism. But the vast American investment in containing the Reich remains an untested experiment; the U.S. will soon find out if its real-world capabilities are equal to its geostrategic ambitions.
Private Goals: The U.S. is quite sincere in all of its public goals. In addition to those, however, it has some more private objectives: to resolve - or at least minimize - racial unrest at home; to either befriend or marginalize China, in order to make it an adjunct to American policy; to open as many foreign markets as possible to American investment, exports, and resource extraction; and to remain the preeminent power of the free world.
GDP (nominal): $605 billion
Currency: United States dollar. It is one of the great strategic advantages of the U.S. that the dollar remains the world's most stable currency.
Economic System:Highly regulated, social-democratic, war-footing capitalism. The U.S. economy is based on channeling private enterprise toward public goods: detailed regulations set the parameters of market competition so as to ensure the desired result, and then the market is allowed to find the most efficient way to reach that outcome. So, for example, the War Production Board spends billions every year buying military materiel from private companies, and it uses its contracts to set de facto wage and safety requirements for whole sectors of the American economy. The WPB also rations strategic resources, and ensures that companies manufacturing more socially-valuable products (affordable automobiles, military materiel) get more resources. The War Manpower Commission and the Office of Public Works cooperate to control available labor - and, therefore, market wages - by drafting men into the military or expanding availability of public-works jobs. The Securities Exchange Commission sets maximum permissible profits on investments in order to discourage speculation, and markets war bonds to ensure that most Americans' savings are invested in the long-term health of the republic. This means that while the American government is largely debt-funded, that debt is owed to Americans themselves, not to corporate or foreign creditors. The National War Labor Board requires unionization of any company that wishes to compete for government contracts, but also arbitrates labor disputes to prevent strikes from disrupting industries crucial to national defense; this means that the American economy is heavily unionized, and that unions are expected to act as responsible partners in economic planning. The Office of Price Administration sets both ceilings and floors for household necessities, directly controlling inflation and forcing consumer-goods companies to compete within a set range of possible prices. Similarly, the Office of Public Health enrolls all Americans in a health insurance plan that sets reimbursement rates but otherwise encourages competition among healthcare providers. The Federal Housing Administration subsidizes homeownership by insuring Americans' mortgages and regulating maximum interest rates for home payments. And so on, and so on, and so on: each sector of the American economy is given structure and direction by federal regulation, and it is the response of private enterprise to those public incentives that drives American prosperity.
Major Trade Partners: The entire free world, more or less; but Canada, Mexico, China, Korea, India, and Britain are especially important. The U.S. has important investments related to agriculture and natural resource extraction in West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America; American companies in those countries are powerful and deeply entrenched. But for the most part, the U.S. relies on international trade primarily for access to export markets: the American industrial economy massively overproduces domestic demand, and so it requires a planet's worth of customers for its sewing machines and radios, bicycles and buttons, rifles and movies. For this reason, the U.S. treats free trade as an economic as well as an ideological imperative, and it regards trade as an important form of soft power; except for the Reich itself, it would rather addict its enemies to cheap American goods than embargo them.
Alliance(s): The strongest allies of the U.S. are the surviving Allies of the Pacific War: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Free France. The U.S. remains formally allied to China, though that relationship is fraught with tension over the extent of American power in Asia. The U.S. is also pursuing closer relationships with new, non-fascist states that have emerged since the end of the war: India, Malagasy, Iran, Korea, Egypt. A few of these efforts have borne fruit as strong alliances; the rest remain in progress. The U.S. is also beginning to probe the chaos of eastern Russia for plausible allies. Since the British surrender, the United Kingdom is no longer a formal American ally, though Washington has invested heavily into drawing Britain back into the fold. The Monroe Doctrine - emphatically reaffirmed by the Truman Doctrine - means that every country in the Western Hemisphere can rely on U.S. support against foreign invasion or fascist insurrection. Finally, the U.S. protectorate over Japan and the Philippines has many features of an alliance, albeit a substantially unequal one.
Military Branches:The United States Army is the largest branch, and the most complex in organization. In theory, its peacetime structure - though this has not been seen since 1940 - is composed of the Regular Army (career professionals), and the National Guard and Reserves (well-trained citizen-soldiers). When war looms - as it has for the last 11 years - conscription is imposed, creating a new version of the Army: the Army of the United States. In practice, the Regular Army, National Guard, and Reserves are then folded into the Army of the United States, providing officers and NCOs and specialists to lead draftee divisions. The Army of the United States, in turn, is subdivided into the Army Air Forces, Army Ground Forces, and Army Service Forces - each with its own airwings or divisions, each staffed by a combination of draftees and professionals.
By comparison, the organization of the United States Navy is considerably simpler and more geographical in orientation: the Atlantic Fleet and Pacific Fleet remain the largest components, but the Indian Ocean Squadron and Mediterranean Squadron are now large enough to be considered fleets in their own right. The United States Marine Corps is unique: in a mostly draftee military, it is an all-volunteer force organized into six divisions under a centralized headquarters. America's airpower remains organized under the Army of the United States as the Army Air Forces, though pressure is building for an independent Air Force. And the Office of Strategic Services has grown in the years since the Pacific War into a massive intelligence-gathering and special-operations force of more than 100,000 men, with sub-units specialized in sabotage, assassination, signals analysis, aerial reconnaissance, and unconventional warfare - among many other tasks.
Active Duty: 7,302,104 (because the U.S. relies primarily on draftees rather than reservists, its active-duty force number remains high even in peacetime)
Reserve Duty: 4,228,431 (during the Emergency, reservists are called by rotation to active duty, which means the number of reservists at any given moment is lower)
Total Manpower: 9,430,228 (not including the roughly 6 million draftees serving their 21 months on active duty at any given moment)
Land Forces: The primary land force of the U.S. is the Army Ground Forces - supported by the Army Service Forces - of the Army of the United States. This is a force of primarily draftee enlisted men, supported by officers, NCOs, and specialists who are either career professionals or trained reservists rotating through their active-duty assignment. Army Ground Forces are composed primarily of motorized infantry divisions, with trucks transporting infantry and hauling artillery and supplies; these are supplemented by fifteen armored divisions, which are equipped with the new M48 Patton: a first-of-its-kind main battle tank intended to outclass the German panzers that devastated Europe a decade ago. U.S. military doctrine is practical, patient, and materiel-intensive; American divisions are supported with much more artillery and many more trucks than their German counterparts, and they are trained to wear down the enemy with overwhelming firepower and stubborn defensive fighting. Then, and only then, will armored forces smash a hole in the enemy line for fast-moving motorized infantry to exploit. Notably, American forces also use an early form of combined-arms warfare: in practice, most operations rely on regimental combat teams cobbled together from infantry, armored, and air forces. These are placed under a single commander, and cooperate in battle to support each other and achieve their objectives. More recently, as the Army eyes greater involvement in low-intensity proxy wars, the Army's two airborne divisions, one mountain division, and Ranger regiment have received a great deal of extra training and investment. Finally, the greatest advantage of the Army Ground Forces is logistical and industrial superiority: American forces can simply afford to fire more shells, drive more trucks, burn more gasoline, replace more tanks, build more roads, and transport more supplies than any other army in the world. American morale reflects this reality: less fiery fighting spirit, and more a grim assurance of ultimate victory.
Air Force: The air power of the U.S. remains under the aegis of the Army of the United States, which enables it to benefit from draftee manpower; nevertheless, the Army Air Forces operate in practice like an independent branch of the War Department. They are a force of more than a million men under arms flying more than eight thousand planes from 1,600 airfields worldwide. There is a clear divide within the Air Forces between Strategic Command and the seven tactical air forces. The latter fly relatively short-ranged fighters and strike aircraft, and provide air superiority and close air support for ground and naval operations. The former fly strategic bombers and long-range escort fighters, and are responsible for devastating industrial, political, and military targets in the enemy's heartland - if necessary, through the use of America's more than one thousand nuclear weapons. Both branches of the USAAF now fly primarily jet aircraft; after the 1946-48 German recession, the U.S. caught up with the Luftwaffe's technological edge and then, with the F-86 Sabre and B-52 Stratofortress, surpassed it. Like U.S. ground doctrine, American air strategy is methodical and attritional: wearing down the enemy's aircraft numbers and degrading his airfields until he is unable to contest control of the skies, before unleashing a steady barrage of tactical airstrikes and strategic bombing upon the now-helpless foe. Notably, the tactical air forces have recently pioneered - in concert with the 101st Airborne Division and the OSS - an entirely new tactic in the history of warfare: the use of Sikorsky H-19 helicopters to evacuate casualties and transport commando teams. And as the primary custodian of America's strategic defense radar system and nuclear weapons, USAAF Strategic Command is responsible for developing the most advanced military technology in the U.S. arsenal: a transistorized, stored-program computer capable of calculating flight paths for hundreds of German V-series missiles based on radar data. It is the first machine of its kind on Earth.
Naval Forces: Victory in the Pacific War belonged, first and foremost, to the U.S. Navy, and the Navy remains both the most prestigious and the most powerful of the American armed forces. If the Army is the equal of the Wehrmacht, and if the USAAF has a slight and recent edge over the Luftwaffe, then the Navy at least is the longstanding and uncontested superior of the Kriegsmarine. Forged in the vast spaces of the Pacific, the modern Navy is based around carrier airpower rather than naval gunnery: the Atlantic Fleet has eight fleet carriers, the Pacific Fleet has seven, and five more fleet carriers are distributed between the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Squadrons. The fleet carriers are supplemented by sixteen escort carriers and are protected by four somewhat aged battleships, thirty state-of-the-art cruisers, fifty-one frigates (broadly equivalent to a German light cruiser), and 247 destroyers. The Navy's 108 submarines - notably fewer than the Kriegsmarine's U-boat fleet - are separately organized within each fleet, since U.S. doctrine calls for them to be used primarily for convoy raiding rather than as part of conventional fleet operations. Unlike most other navies, the U.S. Navy does not attempt to close with the foe and seek decisive battle; rather, an American fleet stays at least 100 miles from its enemies, and it flies hundreds of carrier sorties an hour: wearing down a foe who never comes within visual range of a single American ship. These tactics require a high level of technological sophistication - state-of-the-art carrier fighters, long-range shipborne radars - and excellent pilot training, so that hundreds of warplanes can fly for two hours only to find their exact target in all the vastness of the sea. The Navy is also the locus of the U.S.'s most ambitious military investments: construction has just begun on the world's first supercarrier, USS Forrestal, which will support an airwing of one hundred fighters when complete - almost twice the airwing of the Navy's current fleet carriers. Finally, the Navy benefits from its longstanding and close ties to the U.S. Marine Corps: the Navy's more than 200 amphibious assault ships give the Marines their global reach, and Navy cruisers provide the gunnery support that allowed the Marines to storm beaches across the Pacific.
Other Military Information:The U.S. Marine Corps emerged from the Pacific War as one of the most battle-hardened fighting forces on the planet. It is, in some ways, a military unto itself: its six divisions have their own armor, their own warplanes (flown from Navy escort carriers), and their own amphibious assault craft. The general ethos of the rest of the U.S. military - a focus on logistics, and a patient commitment to bleeding the enemy white through superior firepower - is not shared by the Marines; the Corps places a priority on speed, aggression, and improvisation in the field. Uniquely, it is an all-volunteer, all-professional force; there are no Marine draftees. This allows a continuity of combat experience and institutional knowledge that makes Marine units far more tenacious and dangerous than their relatively small numbers would suggest. As the Truman Doctrine leads Washington to engage more aggressively with antifascist brushfire conflicts around the world, the Marines are rapidly becoming an ideal tool of national policy: a Marine regiment can be deployed on a week's notice, it is self-contained and easy to supply in the field, and it can often turn the tide of a small civil war.
Similarly, the Office of Strategic Services is America's main foreign intelligence agency and special operations force. Consisting both of civilians and of personnel seconded from the other branches of the military, it reports directly to the Chief of Staff. From a small, ad-hoc bureau extemporized during the Pacific War, the OSS has grown into a force of more than one hundred thousand men. It has its own reconnaissance aircraft and smuggling ships, its own research-and-development department, its own budget (with limited Congressional oversight), and its own command structure. It recruits from the academic, diplomatic, and military elite of the U.S., and brings together the nation's most talented linguists, anthropologists, scientists, and engineers. Its various offices prepare psychological profiles of foreign leaders, analyze signals and aerial reconnaissance, decrypt ciphers, and feed false intelligence to foreign agents. In the field, the OSS coordinates agents of its own from Salisbury to Berlin. And its paramilitary wing includes hardened specialists in assassination and sabotage, as well as humane idealists trained in unconventional warfare: the art of inspiring, training, and leading foreign rebels to overthrow fascist regimes. More than any other branch of the American government, it is the OSS that has the responsibility of making good on the promise of the Truman Doctrine.
History:Until December 1941, it all seemed inevitable: Franklin Roosevelt would save the world. He had, after all, already saved America. He had drawn together a coalition of union workers, African Americans, Jews, socialists, farmers, and small businesses - all the Americans bankrupted by the Depression. That coalition had installed Democratic Party supermajorities in both houses of Congress. Roosevelt had put his control of Congress to work: establishing vast federal works programs, insuring banks and mortgages, regulating the stock market, and dragging the country back toward economic health. The role of the federal government in American life had changed forever, but at least American life still survived to be changed: the specter of revolution or civil war that had loomed in 1932 had faded by 1939. Indeed, the outbreak of war in Europe and Asia only accelerated the American transformation. Lend-Lease clothed and armed and equipped millions of British and Soviet troops with the proceeds of booming American factories; the preemptive imposition of conscription eliminated lingering unemployment; real wages met and then surpassed their 1932 levels. As the economy finished recovery, America armed itself for war with the Axis. It was, Roosevelt's cadre of foreign-policy experts agreed, inevitable. And when war came, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had already agreed, Germany would fall first.
On December 7, 1941, the war arrived: the Japanese Navy attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. But on December 8, the war that Roosevelt had expected failed to arrive: no declaration of war issued from Berlin. That silence continued until the momentous and unforeseen truth became clear: Adolf Hitler had, for the only time in his life, devised a diplomatic masterstroke. He had realized that, absent a German declaration, the American public would not accept war with the Reich when it was Japan alone that had attacked Pearl Harbor. And so Hitler had sold out his Japanese ally to avoid a war with the United States. For Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, there would be no American legions sailing to their rescue. For the crumbling Red Army, there would be no second front.
The full might of Roosevelt's New Deal government was therefore unleashed exclusively upon the Japanese Empire. Organized by the War Production Board and staffed by the War Manpower Commission, American factories replaced the Pacific Fleet's Pearl Harbor losses in seven months. A draftee army of seven million men, already armed and trained to fight the Wehrmacht, instead landed in India and wrested mainland Southeast Asia from the outnumbered Japanese. A rebuilt and strengthened Pacific Fleet shattered the Japanese Navy at the Coral Sea and then at Midway Atoll, and pushed on into the Philippine Sea. Marines clawed their way across Melanesia, from Guadalcanal to New Guinea to Tarawa. On each of its frontiers, the Japanese Empire's expansion halted, and then reversed. And at home, all the while and in the midst of total war, the National War Labor Board and the Office of Price Administration raised Americans to one of the world's highest standards of living.
Meanwhile, the unthinkable unfolded in Europe: Hitler won. Soviet resistance collapsed west of the Urals. Churchill was forced from office and Britain sued for a negotiated peace - which meant, in reality, a peace dictated from Berlin. The Nazis were masters of the continent. Refugees streamed into the U.S.: flooding the harbors of New York and Boston, and relocating from clogged Canadian resettlement sites. Some of those refugees - brilliant scientists in their home countries - brought their talents to the great secret project of the Roosevelt administration: the construction of an atomic bomb. Even as the Pacific War ground on to its inevitable end, Americans looked across the Atlantic to the unmooring, terrifying reality that they were now alone: the European civilization that they had, for so long, admired and measured themselves against - it was all dissolved in barbarism. They were the last bastion of Western democracy still holding on to world power. And as word spread of Nazi atrocities in Europe, of Hitlerite secret agents stalking American cities, of refugee ships torpedoed in the frigid North Atlantic - so too did a bleak and frightened conviction take hold: from the Capitol to the corner store, Americans came to understand that for them, the end of the Pacific War could not truly mean a return to peacetime. A longer and still more challenging struggle yet lay ahead.
The Pacific War ended in 1945, in an orgy of slaughter. Franklin Roosevelt would not live to see it; he died in April of that year and was replaced in office by Vice President Harry Truman. Within weeks of Roosevelt's passing, Marines wrested control of Iwo Jima. At the same time, the Army retook Rangoon and Saigon, and landed on Okinawa - touching the sacred soil of Japan. American strategic bombing set every major Japanese city ablaze, turning traditional wooden homes into miles of charred ash: the roar of thousands of engines a mile in the sky signaled the arrival of so many bombers that whole cities were cast into sudden shadow. And two of those bombing raids finally ended the war. Atomic bombs, developed by American scientists and European refugees, destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and inaugurated a new and more dangerous era of human civilization. The emperor surrendered, and Douglas MacArthur - the ambitious commander of U.S. ground forces in the Pacific, and a man despised by the Democratic establishment for his flamboyantly reactionary politics - was appointed U.S. High Commissioner for Japan: the architect of Japan's occupation and reconstruction. It was hoped that this would, if nothing else, keep MacArthur a little further away from domestic politics. Tens of thousands of American administrators, teachers, engineers, economists, and entrepreneurs followed MacArthur to Japan as reconstruction began. So did billions of American dollars, and a quarter-million American troops.
Even as Japan's reconstruction progressed, though, Harry Truman turned his attention to the wider world. He found that while the Pacific War might be over, the globe was hardly at peace. The conquest of France and the humiliation of Britain triggered the collapse of much of the world's two largest colonial empires. Guided by his "Wise Men" - pragmatic idealists like Dean Acheson, Charles Bohlen, Averell Harriman, George F. Kennan, Robert Lovett, and John McCloy - Truman set out to ensure that chaotic decolonization did not consume what remained of global democracy. American forces seized Iceland and French Polynesia, holding those strategic islands "in trust" for the return of their legitimate governments from exile. American money, arms, and expertise poured into Algiers to stabilize De Gaulle's Free French regime there. Where government collapsed completely in the chaos that consumed many former colonies in 1943-47, U.S. Marines landed to restore order and American food aid prevented starvation.
And so at home, the surrender of Japan did not bring full demobilization of America's military or its war economy. The draft relaxed somewhat, but a draftee army of more than four million men remained under arms - for the first time in American history - in what was theoretically peacetime. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops were still deployed overseas, from Tokyo to Algiers. The American war economy slackened only somewhat, because the War Department still needed to catch up to the technological edge of the Luftwaffe: the War Production Board continued to pump money into the military-industrial complex, and the War Manpower Commission continued to control the labor supply in order to sustain high wages. Truman took advantage of ongoing war measures to expand federal involvement in the economy still further: the Office of Public Health was founded to guarantee health insurance to every American citizen, giving the United States its first truly universal health care program. But other old, grim facts about America did not change: a million African-American servicemen returned from draftee service in the Pacific War to find themselves still denied equal citizenship at home. They concluded that the victory of democracy, having been won overseas, remained to be won in America. Soon, the Double V Campaign was organizing marches, sit-ins, and lawsuits all over the South. Racial segregation became a serious public embarrassment for the U.S. at exactly the moment when America most needed moral credibility around the world.
That need for moral credibility became exceptionally clear in March 1947. After almost thirty years of rule by American puppet governments - backed up by on-again, off-again occupation by U.S. Marines - Cuba erupted in insurrection: a nationalist, fascist cabal called Fronte Dignidad seized key government buildings in Havana and bombed the Marine barracks, killing seventy-two Americans. Within weeks, the Fourth Marine Division and elements of the Atlantic Fleet had fought their way ashore, relieved the surviving garrison, and retaken Havana and Santiago. Fronte Dignidad forces were driven back into the central highlands, where they have waged a low-intensity guerilla war against Cuban police ever since. But when the Marines stormed into the Front's Havana safehouses, they found thousands of German small arms and explosives, still stamped with the Erma Werke seal. The American response was swift: on April 12, 1947, President Truman addressed Congress to declare that the Nazis would not rest until democracy was extinguished from the globe; that only the United States possessed the strength to resist Hitler; that the nation's survival was now inextricably bound up with the global fight against fascism; and therefore that the United States would "resist, by all means necessary, the overthrow of any democracy anywhere by authoritarian forces, whether internal or external; and support, by all means necessary, the legitimate aspiration for self-determination and human rights of all oppressed people everywhere." In service of that policy, the United States would need to move back to a full war footing; it would require vast military, economic, diplomatic, intelligence, and nuclear investments in order to defend the entire globe against Nazi tyranny. The Truman Doctrine had arrived. So too had the Emergency: the first full, peacetime national mobilization in U.S. history.
Americans greeted the Emergency, if not with enthusiasm, then at least with grim understanding. Here, at last, was the necessary response to the malaise and despair that had gripped the nation since the fall of Britain in 1943; here, at last, was reason to believe that the future could still be brighter, on the far side of yet more sacrifice and endurance. The Emergency meant hardship, but it also meant hope. The ranks of the Army of the United States swelled; war bond drives became a feature of life again in every American town; mothers planted victory gardens and children collected scrap aluminum. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Emergency also sucked the political wind out of the sails of General MacArthur, who had widely been expected to challenge Truman for the presidency in 1948. It was no longer possible, even for MacArthur, to claim that Truman was soft on fascism; MacArthur's expected presidential bid never materialized, and the eventual Republican nominee - Robert Taft - lost to Truman in November. In an ominous sign of things to come, however, Southern delegates to the Democratic National Convention almost walked out over the inclusion in the party's platform of a statement of support for the Double V Campaign; only a weakly-worded, last-minute compromise negotiated by "Wise Man" John McCloy managed to keep the party from splitting.
Truman's second term has largely been consumed with the project of implementing his namesake foreign policy - a task that has grown especially urgent as Germany emerges from its recession, tests its first nuclear bomb, and asserts its European primacy through the EEC. The U.S. has tried hard but with limited success to convince its historic allies - especially Canada and Australia - to move back toward an economic war footing in order to counter the Reich. American diplomats, businessmen, and spies have become ubiquitous in the decolonizing world, especially in such key strategic areas as Egypt, Iran, and India. George Kennan once described America's diplomatic posture as "five carrots to every one stick": potential allies are showered with offers of economic aid, military support, educational assistance, business investment, and diplomatic praise - and only then are gently reminded that the OSS is quite good at assassination. These tactics are not quite sufficient to deal with China, which is rapidly rebuilding into a global power in its own right. The problem of "keeping China on-side," as Dean Acheson put it, has become a major issue for the Truman administration and for Secretary of State - formerly Chief of Staff during the Pacific War - George Marshall. A lifelong Anglophile, Marshall has also made it a priority to pry a weakened and humiliated Britain back out of Berlin's sphere of influence. On the other hand, the U.S. has found new fast friends - albeit friends who largely rely on the U.S. for survival. These include De Gaulle's Free French government in Algiers, and the new Jewish state of Malagasy. U.S. support for both has been unstinting: over a billion dollars a year go to each ally in the form of cash, arms, training, and infrastructure investments. Since 1949, Algiers has been both the headquarters of the U.S. Navy Mediterranean Squadron, and the main broadcast center for Radio Free Europe: a long-range broadcast service that brings American music, news, propaganda, and advice on escape to millions under Nazi rule. In 1951, the U.S. even tiptoed to the brink of war with the Reich over Malagasy: the U.S. Navy's Indian Ocean Squadron fired warning shots at a Kriegsmarine naval patrol off in the Gulf of Aden to prevent it from intercepting a convoy carrying Jewish refugees to Toamasina. In the end, the Germans backed down.
At home, public commitment to the Emergency has waned over the four years of Truman's second term. Republicans and moderate Democrats warn that American companies, exasperated by wartime measures that force the market to advance national defense rather than shareholder profits, have begun investing in Canada instead of building new factories in the U.S. Republican hardliners warned before the 1950 midterms that unending Emergency measures risked turning the U.S. into exactly what it was supposedly fighting: a corrupt, authoritarian, state-capitalist polity. That message resonated much more strongly than the Wise Men had expected, and the Republicans came within three seats of a Senate majority. For the first time since 1932, the New Deal coalition appeared vulnerable. Similarly, the Double V Campaign - snubbed at the 1948 Democratic Convention in the name of party unity - launched a series of high-profile boycotts in the summer of 1950, targeting segregated city services in Louisville, Birmingham, and Charleston. In Birmingham, the city authorities responded with exceptional brutality, and photographs of the crackdowns made international news and triggered solidarity marches in major Northern cities. For the first time, some of these marches included large numbers of white protestors alongside African-Americans.
Truman saw an opportunity in the turmoil to achieve both of his objectives: rebuilding support for Emergency measures, and marginalizing the Dixiecrats. The Wise Men called their friends in American media, business, labor, and law. By the spring of 1951, respected print and radio broadcasters were suggesting that pro-segregation southern Democrats were, at best, useful idiots for the fascist propaganda machine; that the Ku Klux Klan was a Fifth Column of American Nazis; and that reactionary racial attitudes were a sign of potential Hitlerite allegiance. Support for the Double V Campaign became, in most of the country, a litmus test for patriotism; anyone who was less than enthused about racial equality risked being labeled a Nazi spy. The consequences for that could be dire; at most of America's major companies, Klan members soon faced being expelled from their unions and fired from their jobs unless they affirmed their allegiance to racial equity. Prominent racists were subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee and interrogated on national radio about their loyalty to democracy and sympathy for Nazi racial policies. The furor only intensified when Henry Wallace, an aristocratic Georgia nuclear physicist, was discovered to have passed U.S. nuclear secrets to Berlin. Wallace's execution was a national sensation, and by the end of 1951 Americans' attitudes had undergone a sea change: most Americans now saw their country as encircled by fascist hordes without and racist traitors within, and the sacrifices of the Emergency once again appeared to be a rational response to a moment of national crisis.
Still, all is not well with the Democratic Party. President Truman has made it clear that he will not seek a third term, and the party has no obvious successor. Douglas MacArthur - still reigning in Tokyo as the so-called Gaijin shogun - is the presumptive Republican nominee; and while he shares Truman's hardline antifascism, MacArthur is a public and longstanding foe of the New Deal and all that it represents. The Brown Scare unleashed by Truman's branding of the Dixiecrats as Nazi sympathizers threatens to escalate out of control, consuming well-intentioned moderates as well as reactionary racists. And abroad, the Truman Doctrine has been operationalized but never truly tested, and it remains to be seen whether Berlin takes it at all seriously. In these last months of his term, Truman and the Wise Men must secure their political legacy, shepherd a successor to victory in November, and prove to the Reich that their policy of global confrontation is no mere bluff. For these men, and for the millions who look to them for leadership, the Coldest War is just beginning.
RP Example(s): See my sig.
Do not remove - 1952RP
by The Palmetto » Sat Sep 04, 2021 1:14 pm
"That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
by Reverend Norv » Sat Sep 04, 2021 1:25 pm
The Palmetto wrote:Very nice app, Norv. Before I begin work on my Free France app, do you have anything in particular you feel is relevant on the American side? (Such as particular pressure for reform, investments, support, etc.) Free France is a mess of colonies held from Algiers, so I'm inclined to think America has been crucial for keeping it together.
by Sao Nova Europa » Sat Sep 04, 2021 1:29 pm
by Union Princes » Sat Sep 04, 2021 1:40 pm
by Sao Nova Europa » Sat Sep 04, 2021 1:43 pm
Zedeshia wrote:APPLICATION
NS Name: Zedeshia
RP Name: Socialist Federation of Iran
by South Americanastan » Sat Sep 04, 2021 1:44 pm
Union Princes wrote:Huh, I always forget to include my intelligence agency for India. Oh well, I don't exactly need the best spies, just ones that are good enough.
Also Norv, I feel like India and the US would be competing for influence in the Middle East and South East Asia with India becoming the leader of the Third World movement. And is American still friendly with the KMT or has the relationship cooled after the Civil War?
by Sao Nova Europa » Sat Sep 04, 2021 1:50 pm
Union Princes wrote:Huh, I always forget to include my intelligence agency for India. Oh well, I don't exactly need the best spies, just ones that are good enough.
Also Norv, I feel like India and the US would be competing for influence in the Middle East and South East Asia with India becoming the leader of the Third World movement. And is American still friendly with the KMT or has the relationship cooled after the Civil War?
by Union Princes » Sat Sep 04, 2021 2:09 pm
by Reverend Norv » Sat Sep 04, 2021 2:17 pm
Union Princes wrote:Huh, I always forget to include my intelligence agency for India. Oh well, I don't exactly need the best spies, just ones that are good enough.
Also Norv, I feel like India and the US would be competing for influence in the Middle East and South East Asia with India becoming the leader of the Third World movement. And is American still friendly with the KMT or has the relationship cooled after the Civil War?
by New New Sriker » Sat Sep 04, 2021 2:26 pm
The Palmetto wrote:Sao Nova Europa wrote:
Free France has basically all of sub-Saharan French Africa. As for Algeria, it can be independent or under Free French rule. Up to you (assuming you app as Free France). Though if you do claim Algeria, overextension is going to be one of the problems.
I'll probably include Algeria, which would probably be the "core" of the nation, seeing as it has the most French people. As of the moment, Free France is probably some sort of colonial federation, with notable concessions to the native population out of necessity.
How would Free France have gotten Algeria though? Did Vichy France never own it, or did a military coup occur like in some other Vichy colonies IRL?
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