Holding Out for a Hero: Gustav Stresemann Survives

[Faeelin]

With Liberty and Justice For All

"Per il pane, per il lavoro, per la terra, per la pace, per la liberta!"- "For bread, for work, for land, for peace, for freedom"-Italian Communist Party Slogan, 1921.

"Man is the end. Not the state"-Carlo Rosselli

If you were in Rome on October 3, 1931, and looked up, you would have seen a sign of how desperate some were for freedom. For almost half an hour an antifascist dissident, Lauro DeBosis, risked his life to drop fliers above the city's streets from a plane he flew from France. Readers would pick up fliers that warned that "Italians are suffering as a servile herd," and Lauro flew so low that some thought he was going to land in the Piazza Venezia. It was a heroic act. It was a futile one. Lauro's plane would crash mysteriously off the coast of Corsica, and no one in Rome cared about what some damn kid thought. [1] Heroes Italy had aplenty.
This is not their story. This is the story of the Fascists who cut a deal to save their skins; of liberal professors who stayed behind rather than toss aside their careers; and of revolutionaries who plotted with a king. And it begins with the man who inspired a youth to drop garbage onto Rome, Carlo Rosselli.

Rosselli was born to a liberal Tuscan Jewish family who were active in Republican politics. After fighting in the Great War, Rosselli, like so many rich young liberals, joined the Socialist movement and witnessed the destruction of Italian democracy at Mussolini's hands. Rosselli began writing for opposition journals, helped the liberal academic Filippo Turati escape, and, after he was himself arrested, escaped on a yacht a friend purchased from an Egyptian prince in the Riviera. [2] Disillusioned with the Socialist Party in exile, he founded, Justice and Liberty. In true Italian fashion, it promptly began quarreling with the other opposition movements in exile.

Guistizia e Liberta (Justice and Liberty) had two benefits over the other groups. First, he was a charismatic writer, persuading many emigres to join his group. Secondly, he was rich, which gave him resources other parties lacked. Under Rosselli, Giustizia Giustizia e Liberta's platform was a vague blend of republicanism, anarchism, and socialism. To Rosselli, the way to take down Mussolini was through drastic action; a democratic march on Rome, or an emulation of Garibaldi's red shirts. In July 1930 Giustizia e Liberta conducted a daring flight over Milan, dropping pamphlets on the city. [3]

After the Spanish Revolution of 1931, Rosselli met with Spanish leaders, such as Manuel Azana, to discuss the possibility of using Spanish airports for propaganda flights over Italy. The use of propaganda flights reached a peak on October 3, 1931, when a Giustizia e Liberta follower flew over Rome, dropping leaflets which urged the people to revolt. Although the plane was shot down off Corsica, Rosselli's urge for dramatic action would only grow after the Spanish Civil war.

When the civil War broke out, Mussolini dispatched 44,000 "volunteers," investing his nation's resources and prestige in overthrowing the Spanish Republic. Yet Mussolini was not the only Italian to intervene. In June of 1936, Justice and Liberty marched south. Giustizia e Liberta proceeded to Catalonia, where he organized troops to act as his Redshirts for the "coming Italian Revolution." Rosselli's initial force was ptitiful, some 130 men who he led from the Ford automobile he drove down from Paris. While they were the first troops in the field, they were few in number, and the wave of Communist resources soon gave them control over the Garibaldi Battalion, as the Italian Republican volunteers were known. Even Rosselli's unit had a Communist commissar[4]. In France, meanwhile, the Italian Communists made every effort to gain control of Italian emigrants in Europe, and dispatched them to Spain as well, to serve in the Garibaldi Brigade.

But the Garibaldi Battalion was not composed solely of communists; its members included old-fashioned liberals, anarchists, and Rosselli, with his belief in Giustizia e Liberta. In late 1936, Rosselli hit upon the idea of reshaping his column into a "motorized revolutionary force," with the aim of blitzing behind enemy lines. [5] Rosselli copied the Communist system of political commissars, and installed one in his own unit, who spent most of his time arguing with the Communist commisar. Rosselli also became the voice of Free Italy, broadcasting from Madrid.

"Just as in the darkest stages of the risorgimento when no one hoped, there came from abroad the example of initiative, so today awe are convinced that from this modest but virile force of Italian volunteers a powerful will to achieve redemption will find its source. Today in Spain, tomorrow in Italy!"

-Carlo Rosselli, broadcasting from Madrid, 1936


Banner of Justice and Liberty in Spain

Yet Rosselli's experience in the Spain would influence not just his own political views, but the European left and the struggle for power in post-Fascist Italy.

__________________________________________________ _

It was the tastes that got to you. Coffee, fresh from Brazil when the front line made do with chicory. Flaky pastries made with chocolate and sugar. Ham, eggs, and chopped liver. Rosselli had been raised Jewish, but his mouth still watered as he sat at in Gaylord's with "Alfredo," as the leader of the Italian Communist Party was known here. Madrid was under strict rationing, but you would never tell by the food the Russians ate. [6]

"Alfredo" was, of course, Palmiro Togliatti, the leader of the Italian Communist Party, and a member of the Comintern with the ear of Stalin. So surely he would be able to help Rosselli. "Comrade Togliatti," he asked, "might I ask what has happened to Comrade Balducci?"

In all the time Rosselli had known Togliatti, and they had debated, sparred, and quarreled for years, he had never seen him smile. Too much time among the Russians, probably. And so it wasn't out of the ordinary for Togliatti to keep his voice flat as he said, "he was a traitor to the Republic."

"Balducci? No! A bit naïve politically, but he had been fighting since the first days of the war."

Togliatti spread his hands. "He had anarchist literature, he wrote letters to friends in France and Germany criticizing the war, and he confessed to far worse."

And that ended that. "I see." Rosselli had heard about the confessions. Who hadn't, by this point? The Republic's secret police had been taught by the NKVD, many who'd been kept on as advisors. Rosselli had been imprisoned in Mussolini's Italy. What happened in Spain was far worse.

It was not even worth asking how they'd found out. . Best to change the subject, and ask about getting more artillery for his brigade.

_____________________________________________

Rosselli's own writings from this period are circumspect, and the letters he sent home were often seemingly random, discussing classical history instead of the affairs in Spain. While his initial letters had discussed the exuberance and joy of the revolution, this vanished and Rosselli restricted his observations to describing the sun-bleached plains of Castille, where Republican tanks slowly ground the Nationalists to a powder of blood and bone. The fraternal atmosphere that characterized the soldiers' in the first weeks of the war, where both sides took a siesta and wine around noon, was replaced with descriptions of bloated corpses that stank so bad that the soldiers donned gas masks.

Vanished too was the revolutionary fervor that had greeted the Revolution.
Rosselli noted that usted had come back into fashion, replacing comrade; the black markets that catered to those with connection; and occassional mentions to the purge in Barcelona. All in the name of discipline, of course.

________________________

The Nationalists had holed up in a church. Maybe they thought God would protect them. The fallen roof and wounded coming out, hands above their heads, proved them wrong. "Are there more inside?" he asked one of the soldiers on the scene, a Belgian kid who'd joined his unit. The kid had blonde hair and blue eyes, and when he smiled seemed fourteen. He spoke Spanish fluently. There was a story there, he knew. But it wasn't his business.

The kid carried a rifle, now. He'd shot a prisoner two weeks ago, and been given a pat on the back by his officer for it.

"Yes, those who can't walk." The kid lit a cigarette, offered one to Rosselli. As he shook his head, he noted the pack was in Russian. "And we found a few of the Blue Shirts."

"Of course we had." Everyone knew what that meant. "Where are they?"

"The Commissar's with them, in that house, sir." No Comrade. Rosselli hadn't heard Comrade on the front for over a year now. Maybe it belonged to the mayor, or a doctor, before the war. If they were here now they'd know better to complain.

Rosselli entered, and spoke briefly to the Commissar, a Catalan who'd become fiercely devoted to the Republic. When he found out they wouldn't confess to any wrongdoing, he merely gave the orders and went in to see them.

One of them had a bandage covering his eye, dark red from blood, but still alert. "What are you going to do with us?'

"You are enemies of the Republic, and not soldiers in arms but rather defenders of the Fascists. And so, death."

"When?"

"Now. Here and now, so the town can see Revolutionary Justice." Somehow the words seemed capitalized, even when spoken. "Have you anything to say?"

"Nothing, but this is an ugly thing."

The Belgian kid spoke up. "You're an ugly thing, oppressor of the peasants. You'd shoot your own mother if a don asked you to."

The bandaged fascist laughed. "I never shot anyone's mother, you little prick. And at least I know who my father was."

The scary thing was the kid didn't even reply. His anarchists, when this began, would have punched a fascist who said that. Somehow the discipline unnerved Rosselli more.

It didn't matter, really. He'd seen enough towns fall across Spain to see what would happen. After seeing nuns get shot while praying, or a fascist horse dealer beaten to death by the town because he'd been a supporter of Franco, what was two more deaths? These men were at least guilty.

If the kid was thinking along the same lines, he didn't show it. "And so the Republic advances, Sir. Tomorrow in Italy, no?"

Rosselli looked up. "Oh, yes. Tomorrow in Italy."

_________________________________________

"There is a monster in the contemporary world, the state, which is in the process of devouring the society. The contemporary dictator state has deeply changed all human relationships…has replaced freedom with arbitrariness and equality with military camp discipline… In the modern dictator state, the logical consequence of statism, there is no longer a place for the human being."


Rosselli's own writing during this period marks what some have called the "Death of Marxism" in European socialist thought. As early as 1934, Rosselli's own writing moved away from Communist totalitarianism and towards what some classified as anarchism, but, as his post-Civil War writings would indicate, reflected an affirmation of classical liberalism and a fear of ‘religione pagana di Stato’: the religion of the state.

Rosselli's writing during the Civil War years was strangely subdued, but when he returned from Spain in 1938, as the Republican victory seemed assured, he began to write a scathing critique of trends in the European left, and suggesting that it was time for an "explicit break with Marxism."[7]

Rosselli's vision of a post-fascist Italy entailed capitalism bound by regulation; ending the "absurd monopoly on patriotism held by the so-called nationalist parties"; and a commitment to a society based on liberty and justice for all, not just the "negative outdated Marxist fetish for class warfare."
With the declassification of Comintern archives, we know that Rosselli left Spain only shortly he was scheduled to be "purged," and there is no denying that the Popular Front formed between Justice and Liberty and the Communist Party broke down in the aftermath of his departure, although the two parties remained committed to "working with all antifascist movements for the reconstruction of Italy."

But the tensions were manifest, and things came to a breaking point in March of 1942. Italy's Fascist Grand Council oversaw an economy that had sputtered to a halt, and the Yugoslavian morass had only further dented the regime's prestige. When the wave of strikes began to spread, and the Red Flag was raised over Fiat's factory in Turin, it was clear to all that it was time to act. But how?

[1] This happened in OTL actually.

[2] This also happened. Rosselli would later claim that the prison's guards were eating ice cream and were so not around when he tried to escape. I'd make some comment about the banality of evil, but I can't blame a man for wanting ice cream.

[3] It was cool, even if nobody noticed.

[4] This happened in OTL. Rosselli ended up being killed while on leave in France in OTL 1936, but in the ATL the 4th Republic is not a place for antifascist Italian emigres, and so he ends up in England on leave instead.

[5] Rosselli came up with this idea in OTL as well.

[6] Soviet troops were kept isolated in Madrid, but they did end up eating better than everyone else in the city.

[7] Actually Rosselli called for this before the Civil War, but I am presuming the trend becomes more significant.

[Arafeel]

Wohoo!

Update, twice in one month.

[Faeelin]

Originally Posted by Arafeel

Wohoo!

Update, twice in one month.

Aww, shucks. I am trying to write more, and will hopefully have the time to do so for the next year or so.

The one question I'm debating is... does the left play a role in how Yugoslavia shakes out? I've been avoiding it, but I think there are a lot of possibilities.

[Arafeel]

Originally Posted by Faeelin

Aww, shucks. I am trying to write more, and will hopefully have the time to do so for the next year or so.

The one question I'm debating is... does the left play a role in how Yugoslavia shakes out? I've been avoiding it, but I think there are a lot of possibilities.

Well, your done with law school no? Passed the bar yet? (my fourth year starts tomorrow, but i don`t need to pass any bar, only work as a slave... apprentice for 2 years after)


The left will play a part, the question is how, and to what degree. I think we could be looking at a Fall of Franco and then add some Iranian revolution.

Step one is the break up, then who gets on top in the different parts. What do the neighbours think.

You also have created a precedent for a successful "popular front" intervention. Based on how things turn out in Italy, we could be looking at a small group of "professional" revolutionary's, not that different from the 1840`s.

The split in the activist left is going be interesting. Pro and anti commintern,
and then the other groups. The issue for the non commintern ones are going to be funding and training.

[Grand Prince Paul II.]

Originally Posted by Faeelin

The scary thing was the kid didn't even reply. His anarchists, when this began, would have punched a fascist who said that. Somehow the discipline unnerved Rosselli more.

It may appear inhuman, but discipline is the key to victory, Grazhdanin Rosselli.

[Hendryk]

Good to see this TL going again

[Faeelin]

Incidentally, here's what I have Yugoslavia looking like shotly after the fighting breaks out.



The Bulgarians have moved into eastern macedonia, the Hungarians have taken Marbiro, and fighting over Bosnia is about to break out. The Left is still consolidating...

And word of the first atrocities is starting to get out.

Thoughts?

[Zajir]

If the Italians make an offensive in coordination with the Serbs Croatia and Slovenia are toast...

[Faeelin]

Originally Posted by Zajir

If the Italians make an offensive in coordination with the Serbs Croatia and Slovenia are toast...

Actually, the Croats are Italian allies. I oscillated on what was happening in Slovenia; I could see the Croats easily taking it over, but I also suspect they would have other fish to fry and, given its location on the German border, things could get bad very quickly.

[Zajir]

Originally Posted by Faeelin

Actually, the Croats are Italian allies.

If the Italians can make an agreement with Serbs giving them all or most of Dalmatia (more than any croatian government can accept) and Slovenia up to the Sava.
I think that the Italians would be tempted to betray the Croatians.

[Faeelin]

Originally Posted by Zajir

If the Italians can make an agreement with Serbs giving them all or most of Dalmatia (more than any croatian government can accept) and Slovenia up to the Sava.
I think that the Italians would be tempted to betray the Croatians.

I'm not sure if the Italians would go in for such naked imperialism. And this ignores that there are other powers out there, as well.

[Arafeel]

The Germans offer trade agreements with the Slovenian, recognise them and seeds an ambassador. Maybe some military advisors as well too help them set up their own force. Might send a naval squadron as goodwill act, official visit. Would also tell everybody else to back off.

Pro Yugoslav groups will be active in the grabbed areas, might be some in Croatia as well. The different groups will start to plan (left, right, monarchist, nasjonalist, Yugoslavist) . Would the soviets send arms and advisors? Non of the Balkan nations are very fond of them. Italy-Hungary-Croatia might make an anti serb agreement, but your posts tells me that the Italians might have their hands full at home. Still a perceived grab for glory might be believed to be the cure for that. They might try to make a move on Albania as well if nobody is watching, but i doubt it. The Bulgarians, Hungarians and maybe the Greeks might try to grab what they can, and try to build up support among inside Serbia. I do think Hungary will try to follow Romas lead her unless they had a falling out.

[Grand Prince Paul II.]

Originally Posted by Arafeel

Would the soviets send arms and advisors? Non of the Balkan nations are very fond of them.

Bulgaria may not be too pro-Soviet, but its population is still quite pro-Russian.

Originally Posted by Faeelin

But times change; Stalin had begun building a large fleet; and he was a realist. Moreover, while King Boris's regime was ardently anti-Communist, the people at large retained considerable pro-Russian sympathies, something that Stalin was eager to capitalize on. A Soviet propaganda blitz ensure d that Soviet films were shown across the country, while the Soviet ambassador assured the Bulgarians there was no intention of Sovietizing the country.

In his more revealing moments, Stalin revealed his concern with the Balkans and Black sea. "the Crimean War, the capture of Sebastopol, the intervention of Wrangel," were, he thought, only possible because Russia did not dominate the Black Sea. As for Bessarabia, its acquisition would put the Soviet border along the Carpathians, a far more defensible position. And so Stalin extended an offer to sell Soviet armanents to the Tsar in the world. And so OMRI (United) became active, and asked for Bulgarian assistance. And so the Soviet Union mobilized troops along the Romanian border while tensions flared, and the Bulgarians massed near Dobrudja, and Yugoslavia, the keystone of the Little Entente, a wreck.

[Faeelin]

Originally Posted by Grand Prince Paul II.

Bulgaria may not be too pro-Soviet, but its population is still quite pro-Russian.

Well spotted. Soviet-Bulgarian ties are going to appear in the next post.

[Faeelin]

Here's an interesting question. To what extent should the scale of ethnic cleansing and slaughter in the Balkans be attributed to Germany? I mean, the Hungarians in January of 1942 killed thousands of people in and around Novi Sad in reprisal for partisan attacks.

When the town of Drama rose up in Bulgarian occupied Greece, the Bulgarians killed 3,000 people and tens of thousands of Greeks were expelled.

The Italians intervened 30,000 Slovenes over 1941 and 1942, and so forth.

Obviously, the death toll won't reach as high because the situation won't be chaotic for several years, but it's hard for me to not think you'll see some examples of massacres as Yugoslavia.... fractures. No?

[Eurofed]

Originally Posted by Faeelin

Here's an interesting question. To what extent should the scale of ethnic cleansing and slaughter in the Balkans be attributed to Germany? I mean, the Hungarians in January of 1942 killed thousands of people in and around Novi Sad in reprisal for partisan attacks.

When the town of Drama rose up in Bulgarian occupied Greece, the Bulgarians killed 3,000 people and tens of thousands of Greeks were expelled.

The Italians intervened 30,000 Slovenes over 1941 and 1942, and so forth.

All very true, if contrary to clichè. If one takes proportions into account, the most enthusiastic enforcers of democide in the 1930s-1940s were not the German Nazi, or the Soviet Stalinists for that matter, but the Croat Ustase; they reached extremes of brutality that made the SS and the NKVD look like gentlemen. I remember an incident about a proud Ante Pavelic showing a trophy by the Ustase to their leader, a basket full of gouged Serb eyes, to a disgusted Nazi general.

[Shevek23]

Originally Posted by Faeelin

...The one question I'm debating is... does the left play a role in how Yugoslavia shakes out? I've been avoiding it, but I think there are a lot of possibilities.

There's no reason Tito would be butterflied away, is there? I mean, ample opportunity for him to get killed, shunted aside, evolve toward a different political concept where he's not as effective or noted--so I don't mean "butterflied;" that's just random stuff. I mean, no systematic reason he shouldn't be around.

I read a biography of him some years ago (something like 5 years ago actually) and I don't have it with me, nor am I sure how good a biography it was anyway. So honestly right now I'm looking at Wikipedia yet again, but at least I have the dim memory of some other narrative to compare it to, so yay me. FWIW.

Anyway, I forget just when the POD is here, but IIRC WWI went exactly as OTL, and whatever the little butterfly flap is that lets Stresemann live so much longer, the effective POD is in the mid-1920s and the really big divergences are in the 1930s.

Josip Broz's formative experiences before the War, his (exemplary) service in the Austro-Hungarian Army and his capture by the Russians and sojourn among them in the early Bolshevik years should all be as OTL; his early career as a Communist in Yugoslavia should be pretty much the same (barring random bullets and the like that would kill or deflect him) until he was sent to prison in 1928. I forget if you already laid down any major divergences for Yugoslavia as a whole by '28 but anyway OTL Broz got out of jail by 1933 and I don't think Yugoslavia would be very much different ITTL by '33; the years right after that were the ones where he took the name "Tito" and had already risen to considerable prominence in Party circles.

Now the next "hurdle" one would have to jump in trying (not that I think that's what you're trying to do here) to form a "Titoist" movement closely parallel to OTL would be to have Yugoslavia go through pretty much exactly what happened in WWII. Which, Heaven forbid! But while there is no Axis here to smash the old kingdom and so forth, there is the Italian expansionism, which honestly I've forgotten the extent of at this point.

Tito himself was of mixed Croat and Slovene ancestry--but he spent much of his childhood with his maternal Slovene relatives. I think part of why Yugoslavia held together as well as it did until his death OTL (and for a decade thereafter) was that he was of a "third party" as it were in the Serbian-Croat rivalry; he saw to it the Yugoslav Communist Party was not captive of this or that ethnic faction. Butterflying him away or to the side and putting some other Yugoslav in charge of the Party carries the risk that this alt-leader would be firmly in one or another of the stronger ethnic camps and while Party ideology and discipline might make this leader no less even-handed, he (not inconceivably but highly unlikely she) would more likely be nevertheless perceived as biased, if not by Party members then by the larger masses of Yugoslavs anyway.

Another key to the regime's survival was of course brutality; Tito was widely known in Communist circles of the '30s and '40s and even early '50s as Stalin's loyal hatchet man--until Stalin was about to turn on him and his country. He would not be moved by Rosselli's liberal siren song!

So you have many ways to go with the Yugoslav left but insofar as there will be a Yugoslav Communist Party, in the Comintern, it will be led by Tito or someone like him; if they aren't the group you foresee eventually rising to power there at least you know who these other groups Communist foils would be and what they'd be like.

Yet another pillar of the post-war-to-1990 Yugoslavia was of course that they were (after much bloodshed) successful during WWII. Many countries had undergrounds, Resistances, partisans who did noble yeoman work in fighting the Axis OTL--but only the Yugoslavs beat the Axis forces on their own soil by their own efforts and took over effective control of their own country before any Allied armies arrived at their borders. So effective was Tito's control by the time the Soviets showed up, he was in a position to direct the Red Army to simply transit through Yugoslavia but not stay to occupy it.

Now how much of that was due entirely to the massive stirring up and mayhem the Germans and Italians inflicted under the Axis banner (including letting the genies of endemic ethic strife out of the bottle to be sure!) and how much is it a tribute to the pragmatism and vision of the Yugoslav Communists, and how much of the latter depended peculiarly on Tito? I've already indicated that Tito's mixed and marginal ethnicity was itself a factor in the ultimate national union, which the later breakdown showed was only paper over the deep faultlines anyway, but without that paper, what? I'm pretty sure that a Titoist path to victory, or even approach to a decent share of power, would have been far different and far less likely without the monkey wrench the Axis threw in; the Italian ventures can only be a weak substitute at best.

To be honest, unless the Italians all by themselves could possibly crush the royal regime the way it took the Germans OTL to accomplish, I don't see the Communists being any more than a strong but clearly minority and easily marginalized faction.

The question is--can any other faction that has the slightest pretense of being leftist, progressive, or even meaningfully liberal at least paper over the ethnic fault lines even half as well as Tito did OTL?

Particularly when you're now setting up as the alternative to Marxism an ideology that denounces ideology in general, but particularly cocks a very wry eye toward the State as such. Without some kind of overarching but evenhanded state structure I see no reason for Yugoslavia not to face the stark choice of either shattering into warring microstates (which themselves will almost certainly not be distinguished for their civil liberties, being after all at each other's throats and thus in an eternal state of existential emergency) or falling under the iron rule of some faction that is not in the least interested in being "even-handed" at all--the Serbs being the obvious candidates.

Tito was no saint, but I do think given the demonstrated alternatives of OTL and all their huge liabilities, he was probably the best thing that happened to Yugoslavia OTL. Can you pull off an even better, or at least comparably mixed, bag of outcomes for the various peoples of the Balkans, whether under one national flag or a dozen? Frankly the likeliest outcome seems to be that some people would do somewhat better for themselves than OTL but many people will be considerably and consistently worse off--either entire nations subordinated (whether nominally independent but cut out into the have-not category, or as oppressed provinces of some larger regime) or the majority classes subordinated, social stasis being reinforced by economic backwardness, which a reactionary regime could only perpetuate if not worsen because it would underscore the fears of whoever is on top more than goad them to risk the ventures that could pull the nation/region forward.

[yourworstnightmare]

Originally Posted by Faeelin

I'm not sure if the Italians would go in for such naked imperialism. And this ignores that there are other powers out there, as well.

Especially if the Croatians are controlled by the Ustasha, because then the Croat state will be a Italian puppet anyways.

[Faeelin]

Originally Posted by Shevek23

Another key to the regime's survival was of course brutality; Tito was widely known in Communist circles of the '30s and '40s and even early '50s as Stalin's loyal hatchet man--until Stalin was about to turn on him and his country. He would not be moved by Rosselli's liberal siren song!

Oh, I agree.

I should note that Rosselli is not the only leftist thinking along these lines. I will try to flesh it out in the next post, but German Social Democracy is evolving in a broadly similar direction.

Can you pull off an even better, or at least comparably mixed, bag of outcomes for the various peoples of the Balkans, whether under one national flag or a dozen? Frankly the likeliest outcome seems to be that some people would do somewhat better for themselves than OTL but many people will be considerably and consistently worse off--either entire nations subordinated

Unfortunately, I'm inclined to agree. Although I am reading about some of the resistance to the Utasha. It's... interesting.

[Arafeel]

Originally Posted by Faeelin

I should note that Rosselli is not the only leftist thinking along these lines. I will try to flesh it out in the next post, but German Social Democracy is evolving in a broadly similar direction.

So a sort of Habermas esque broad liberal leftism? The Frankfurt school will play an role as a thinkthank for the SDP.