MotF 88: Public Enemy Number One

My Entry:

POD: 1930s

The Burgundian Reich

The SS-Territory of Burgundy came into existance as Germany invaded France in 1940. In the first decade after its creation it only included the area around Besançon. The SS tried to "Germanise" the city and its surrounding with force. They created a brutal police state, taking infants from French families to bring them up in a "Aryan" way, closing French schools and Catholic churches.
SS-Burgundy grew much bigger as the Germans and Italians divided Switzerland in 1950, with Italy's fall from grace in 1953 the SS was able to secure a big part of the Alps for themselves.
In the 1960s Nazi Germany suffered severe economical problems and internal turmoils, which enabled Italy and France to break free from the Reichs yoke.
After the crisis of the 1960s the Nazi leadership became more moderate. Germany stayed a brutal police state but they created "Slavic homelands" in Eastern Europe which gained independence in the 1990s. With Germany becoming more moderate the relationships with the other states relaxed even if Europe stayed a tinderbox.
The Nazis began in the 80s with a relaxation policy with aimed at keeping Europe in peace, because they knew that a big scale war would destroy their empire.
Under all this years Burgundy remained a totalitarian, anti-christian, anti-semitic, anti-romance, paganophil and medievalophil hell hole and saw itself isolated with the beginning of the new milennium. Even the Greater German Reich denounced the SS's more extrem elements. Only the fear of a civil war kept Germany from destroying Burgundy, which acted more and more like an totally independent state and not just an autonomous subdivision of Greater Germany. Its enormous nuclear arsenal kept the SS-state safe from Italy and France who seeked revenge for the SS's crimes, and enabled Burgundy to declare itself independet from Germany in 2003 (but it still considers itself to be bound by blood to the Reich and to be part of the Führer's great plan of salvation for all Aryans etc.).

SS-Burgundy has a strict hieracy with the "Sublime Führer of Burgundy and the SS" on top, which is always a member of the Himmler family. Heinrich Himmler tried to establish an Aryan Model State in the Alps. It was clear in the 50s that the aging Himmler was the undisputed ruler of Burgundy but the SS was split in the eastern and the western SS. The former was assigned a new leader. Himmler felt betrayed and never forgave the Reich for that. He began to focus on Burgundian domestic policy. Himmler lived till his death in 1970 near Montreux/Muchtern. He built a massive concrete palace opposing the local Chillon Castle, throning over Lake Geneva, which became his domicile.
Adult men were forced to join the SS if they were seen as "Aryan" and indoctrinated with the Nazis ideology. They who were not willing to be part of Himmlers state were forced out of the country or even force into the SS-camps which lay deep in the military territory. Their children were taken and raised in SS children's homes. The traditional family was to be slowly replaced by the more "Aryan" collectives. Young men were encouraged to live polygamic, contraception was illegal and unwanted children were given to the collectives.
The guerilla's who fought the SS were merciless hunted down and were killed together with their family members and everyone who helped them. As part of Himmlers obsession with witch persecution guerla fighter and criminals were burned in public. He saw the church as an enemy who oppresed the "German Spirit" for centuries and tried to destroy all forms of organized Christianity. Instead he merged the Nazi ideology and neo-pagan rituals, forming a "religion" witch admires blood purity, heritage and leader cult. Himmler saw himself increasingly as the manifestation of the "German Spirit" leading the people to an "Aryan" utopia as some kind of High Priest.
His henchmen forged evidence for Himmlers disturbed fantasies, going so far as constructing a lineage from the medieval Zähringer and Staufer. The SS sent for Himmler's 70th bithday postcards to every household in Burgundy, showing him with a full beard and a sword standing in the mainhall of his castle. It was the last picture of him the public got to see. He died already three weeks before his birthday, but the SS-leadership annouced his death only on the 21st December, the day of midwinter. Claiming the 21st December as his death day, they mythtified him and his life, stylising him as the Eternal Leader.

Himmler's adoptive son Gerhard Himmler became his successor. In 1950 an marriage was arranged between Gerhard and Himmler's only child Gudrun. Neither of them was happy in the relationship. Gudrun became pregnant 1952 and gave birth to a son the following year, Otto Himmler. Gudrun was the one who was interessted in her fathers ideology and became the strong woman behind him in his last years. She showed no further interest in Gerhard after she had done her "duty" of producing an heir for her fathers empire. Her husband meanwhile sunk into the luxury and decadence the SS made aviable for him. Like his adoptive father, he went slowly insane, building his own castle in Aosta/Augst and taking a Bavarian princess as his second wife. Heinrich Himmler liked to imagine himself as a GermanichKing and Gerhard Himmler imagined himself in the role of a Roman emperor. His palace, with view over Aosta, was built in a more mediterrean style, with much marble, purple and oversized statues. He had an actual harem and statues of naked women on a 3m tall marble elefant. Out of the women's golden amphores poured wine when he wanted and out of the elephants trunk came warm water for his bathtub.
Gerhard had over a dozen children with several women, but none of them were seen again after his son Otto became the new ruler of Burgundy.

Gerhard died already in 1978. He had suffered a heart attack in the spring of the same year and it was decided over his head that it was now time for his son Otto to take over. Gerhard died on schedule on the 21st December. Under Otto's rule Burgundy changed from an inhuman totallitarian dictatorship to a poor inhuman totallitarian dictatorship with a starving population. He focused on the military which swallowed the largest part of the states budget, he began to isolate Burgundy increasingly, the borderlands to France and Italy were cleaned of human population. No one should be able to hide in the wide forests of the country. The family basicly ceased to exist in Burgundy. The last rests of a civil society were destroyed in favor of "self defence measures". Social welfare collapsed and who was not in the army couldn't even count on getting enough food.
Giant monuments were built in Genf by slave workers to honor Otto's father and grandfather.
The radio and TV sations of Burgundy announced on the 21st December of 1981 that a son was born to Otto's primary wife; the future "Otto II of Burgundy, by grace of blood sublime leader of nation and race".

North Spain is Best Spain

Franco dies in mid 1937, and with the main leaders of the uprising gone (save for Queipo and Cabanellas), the Nationalist side unstabilizes and enters a period of power struggles that allow the Republic to consolidate and hold on, even to retake the South. Still both sides stall and the war unoficially ends with an armistice line (officially, the Spanish Civil War is still on). The Republic expected to retake the North when the World War came, but after the non-interventionist emergency rule of Colonel Casado, that chance vanished. The State of Spain, suffering from big purges after the emergence of a shadow military government, tried to enter war, but as Franco ITTL, they proposed ludicrous conditions. After the war, the Spanish Republic was recognized as the only legitimate Spanish government at an international level.

The Spanish Republic was decidedly authoritarian and unstable for the first decades, with periods of political antagonism causing pronunciamientos. The start of the Spanish Miracle, and the need for a good international image for the 1960 olympic games of Barcelona, slowly brought a functioning democracy to the by then 6th Spanish Republic. Not without its low points (the political radicalism of a noisy minority still creates headaches), it has sowly become a modern and prosper country, even surpassing Italy and OTL Spain in GDP per capita.

The State of Spain was only recognized by Salazar's Portugal, and that was just until the Portuguese military coup of 1958. Since then, the North Spanish/Portuguese border is comprised of barbed wire and minefields. The SoS has evolved towards a form of military dictatorship (with around 40% of male adults serving in the military) with an official, definite body of doctrine but no political parties, and with a State Church (the North Spanish clergy was eventually excommunicated) that claims the Pope of Rome is the Antichrist. The regime worships Franco as both the Eternal Chief of State and as a martyr saint. For being a rabidly anti-communist regime, its economy is fully Collectivist in practice, with the State totally intermingling with the few holdings that control the North Spanish economy. Though greatly agrarian, antagonism with the RoS made them to adopt a strong natalist policy and to raise an elite of qualified professionals, in order to, hopefully, develop a military advantage that allows them to recover the South. Official propaganda teaches that Spain has recovered part of her overseas empire, and that the South is an evil Communist regime at war with itself and under squalor poverty. The few lucky bastards that manage to flee North Spain for the South usually can't sleep for days after their first visit to Madrid or Barcelona.

For all their differences, both the RoS and the SoS agree on one thing: Spain is One. And in the same way the North Spanish collapse that many pundits around the world have predicted for decades resists to come, on both sides of the DMZ, the Two Spains the intellectuals talked about not long ago, keep an eye on each other wating for the war that everybody expects and may never come.

Back in the 20s, a series of treaties brought about by the victorious Allies shrunk the Ottoman Empire until little remained. This remainder did not last a year, before revolution and the foundation of the Anatolian Republic. This unstable republic soon collapsed, with military rule being established under the guise of continued democracy. Over the ensuing 30 years, things went from bad to worse with the Radical Right and Left growing in numbers and causing trouble. This caused a flood of emigration, until neighboring states closed their borders. Eventually, when mass shootings occurred, the European Directorate intervened and after some fighting a Directorate 'monitored' election took place. A far Right nationalist wacko calling himself the National Hero won the vote- he also happens to have been educated in Berlin- and soon the country undergoes radical changes. Hungarian, Jugoslavian and German surplus weaponry strengthens the military and plans are drawn up to retake some of the land lost previously. This fails at about the same time that Directorate forces are withdrawn to fight the International in Poland, and 'National Hero' is ousted. Military rule resumes for 10 years, until eventually another election is scheduled in 1973. The world at large decides to intervene, as the Third Great War has just concluded and a Cold War is developing. International, Directorate and Allied nations prop up their respective parties and the United States attempts to keep things democratic. This was, incidentally, the first time foreigners had been let in since the Directorate soldiers left and the first time that international news saw images of the devastation in the country, of the shambling skyscrapers and of the Tuz Desert. This map, part of a Rightist propaganda poster showing irredentist claims to bordering nations comes from this era. At some point, it was defaced by a pro-Left protester, who presumably could not remove it from it's wall as evidenced by the torn bottom edge (Not pictured.). It currently resides in the Political Museum in Geneva, still attached to a piece of siding, brought there after the elections by an opportunistic American reporter.

Here's my little entry. No wall of text for a change.

PoD: Italy remains neutral in WWII, and the Cold War is less tense. Space is colonized with more purpose than 'plant a flag'.

The Kennedy dynasty has had a tremendous impact on American politics, with the formation, growth, and revival of other political dynasties like the Roosevelts and Pierce-Bush families, as well as increasing military influence on American politics, and the growing wealth and decadence of the United States.
The Moon colonies, all of the larger ones having a population of at least 1,000, were generally sought after and even militarized pieces of property. The Military had always had sway over the colonies. One general, a descendant of the Kennedy dynasty, was de facto the leader of the Kennedy Colony, with his soldiers utilized as a police force.
Then, a perfect storm of events came to pass which left the Colony adrift; Hurricane Iago finally wiped out the NASA base at Cape Canaveral, and the other bases were only prepared for telecommunications and unmanned military satellites. For about a month, the American colonies were stranded, but for telecommunications. The American governor of the Lunar Territories was under pressure, and facing mass panic over supplies. John Kennedy V, already wielding a lot of influence, asked the governor declare martial law and step down. As he radioed Houston, a solar storm blocked the signal, leaving Houston unaware that the coup occurred. JFK V quickly set out calming things down, and divvying up the land for his underlings. He declared independence from the United States, claiming to be the Emperor of the United States, a 'better' USA; an decadent empire of peace and sanity; a refuge from the warring and pollution on Earth. He wanted to conquer the lunar bases for himself, and showed his determination by 'invading' the adjacent Canadian base. Of course, he then pointed his rather large missile collection at the skies. The First ship Washington sent up was quickly taken hostage upon arrival.
As a threat to her colonies, most major powers will not support the 'Lunar Empire', but the other rogue state of People's Republic of South Africa (Things got bad), not possessing lunar colonies, willingly supports the Lunar Empire as a base of operation on the moon. Both states are highly dangerous and regarded as threats to worldwide peace.