Spectre of Europe - An Alternative Paris Commune Timeline
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Thanks all! Hoping to have the next piece out in a couple of days and let you know who died and who survived. Not intended as a tease, just suddenly swamped with work deadlines!
Chapter 130 - Chaos: Russia
Going to have to do this in multiple parts I think...
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty – Chaos – Russia
“I tell you: you have still chaos in you.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Perhaps, if Kyril had been more active during that long summer the collapse of his regime after his death would not have occurred. If he had, perhaps, mended the fences with the radical wing of the Christian Socialists, rather than increasingly alienate them and exclude them from power. If he had stood up to the various White generals he had melded into a loose coalition around him, rather than let them keep their own personal fiefdoms as “Governors”. If he had taken a more conciliatory approach to foreign policy, the British Intervention might not have come about.
As it was, the sniper’s bullets that ended his life in 1926 also ended his regime. The unknown gunman, never traced in the chaos that followed, killed Kyril, his son and presumed heir Vladimir, and seriously injured his daughter Kira. Two other staffers, and a maid, were also hit although none were killed. Speculation at the number of hits – six in the brief shooting spree – has seen attention focus on a killer with a trained or military background, until the discovery in 1963 of a police report of the time that identified the bullets as coming from a Danish-made Madsen light machine gun, opening up the possibility that the shooter had simply been lucky in spraying the courtyard in automatic fire.
The political scene in Russia might have stabilised around either the Duma (or more specifically the Christian Socialist Party apparatus) or the Governors – if the two had not been at each other’s throats at the time of the assassination. A coterie of Governors, some of whom had been at the Bolshoi that evening, convened around midnight and elected Admiral Kolchak President with emergency powers. It was far from unanimous, however, and Kolchak’s fumbling of the following hours saw more than a couple of Governors waver in support from the outset. So terrified were sections of Russian society of a socialist revolution, that Kolchak convinced the Council to strike first. Across Moscow leading Christian Socialists were rounded up in the small hours of the morning – and a number, including Leon Trostsky, were summarily executed by their captors.
Whether Kolchak ordered these killings or not in unclear, but what it spawned was panic in the Party. The Christian Socialists, at nearly five million members in 1925, were an enormous is disparate group, and ironically enough decapitating the Moscow branch of the party, always the most left-wing and radical, actually pushed the majority into revolt. Increasingly suspicious of the former Whites who surrounded Kyril, Kolchak’s attack that morning terrified party members who saw their own lives in peril. Within three days of the assassination fifteen cities across Russia were in open revolt, barricades in the street as the Party mobilized its considerable assets. “Bulganov has gone from cowed statesman in the peripheries of power to warrior priest of a new age” remarked the American Ambassador in an informal report to Washington. Fighting engulfed Russia as the two sides attempted to seize power at the same time, threatening to tip into out-and-out civil war at any point.
Of the myriad elements spinning off from the chaos, two events were most noticeable. The first was the flight of some 200,000 refugees into the Samara-Ivanovo region. Under the control of the Socialist Revolutionary Party who, under Mikhail Frunze, had emerged from hiding, the region was an oasis of calm into which panicked Russians poured for safety. Those SR politicians living in exile tried, hurriedly, to make their way back to Russia whilst Frunze, de-facto leader on the ground, armed his cadres and mobilized his membership to protect and provide for the influx of people.
Socialist Revolutionaries in Samara try to cope with the scale of the refugee crisis - Despite opposition to the Emergency Government
the Party refused to side with the Christian Socialists who they saw as both hopelessly deluded and fatally doomed.
The second event was the dispatch of a fleet from Germany. Onboard the ships, screened by German and British naval vessels, was the exiled Tsarina, Olga Romanov, and her loyal supporter General Lazar Kornilov. With them, as they steamed close to St. Petersburg that Autumn of 1926, was the exiles and adventurers that made up Kornilov’s crack Officers Shock Division. Olga, having spent the best part of a decade in exile, had returned to secure her country at a moment of crisis.
Finally caught up with this timeline again after about a year of neglecting it. A lot has happened, and I'm glad to see that the cause of revolutionary socialism remains strong and belligerent, although I am surprised that there has been as much of a backlash against it given how much nicer and democratic it is (although that said the reaction against it is somewhat less authoritarian than OTL). It also pains me to see how Marx has been bastardised, but then history has a habit of making really strange ideological twists and turns, particularly on the far-right.
Chapter 131 - Many Types of Dissent
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty One – Many Types of Dissent
‘I can think of no greater disaster for this country than to have its voters divide on religious lines’
Al Smith
The bullet that killed President Palmer struck him just below the left eye socket, jerking his head backwards and spraying the leather interior of the open-topped vehicle with blood. Miraculously, at least for the other passengers, though it was the only bullet of the five that caused serious damage. Pope Urban was shot in the left hand as he tried to shield the President from harm, the bullet piercing his palm but missing his body, and Vice President Jackson’s forehead was grazed by a ricochet. It was only Palmer, though, pronounced dead on the DC sidewalk minutes later, that had been killed. ‘I fear for humanity’ a stunned Holy Father was recorded as muttering by the throng of reports as President Palmer’s body was led away covered by a blood-stained sheet.
Within hours the situation got worse. The assassin, captured at the scene, was a Croatian Immigrant. Luka Horvat was twenty three, a former steel-worker out of work, who believed that it had been his god-given duty to kill President Palmer. The man was clearly unhinged, investigating officers quickly came to believe, considering how close his wild firing had come to killing the head of his own church. But the news that Horvat was a Catholic Immigrant spread like wildfire. The evening of the 23rd saw a series of attacks on Catholic businesses and clubs across the Eastern Seaboard and the Mid-West. 832 windows were smashed in Youngstown, Ohio, by anti-Catholic mobs and in Delaware Governor Robertson called out his National Guard after Klansmen staged a series of torch-lit marches that culminated in window-smashing and the overturning of cars. A steady rumble of discontent and anger continued through the coming days as Vice President Jackson, refusing to meet with the Pope despite the Holy Father’s valiant attempt to discharge himself from hospital and walk across DC to the Whitehouse, was sworn in.
An anti-Catholic mob attacks an Irish worker, Columbus Ohio 1926
For the first few days it was only the yellow-press that screamed for war with Catholic Mexico, but the Sacco and Vanzetti arrests changed all of that. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian Immigrants who worked a series of odd-jobs in Brooklyn, in the 1920s, and had met at a communal series of political gatherings in the New York district. Both men were Garbists, inspired by the mixture of social reform and traditionalism the ideology promised, and like many across the developed world had gravitated to the meetings out of a desire to find a political home that did not challenge their catholic faith. The discovery by the Police that their local branch had also been attended by Horvat saw both men dragged in for questioning and, quickly, charged with conspiracy to murder. The evidence was flimsy – Sacco had joined the group the month that Horvat left and claimed not to know the man whilst Vanzetti couldn’t speak English or Croatian – but in the fevered atmosphere of the early Jackson presidency they were subversive aliens and guilty by association.
‘If we don’t stand up for these innocents then, James, just what in the hells are we doing here?!’ she shouted, and then added the dissenting turn of phrase she has become famous for ‘Progress means progress – so get out of your god-damned chair and act!’. Cannon, ever the political weather-vain, hedged, going so far as to slip out of the back entrance of a hall to avoid reporters in Boston.
Al Smith's was the lone, clarion, voice in condemning the rabid anti-Catholicism sweeping America
Socialist silence, though, opened another door. Behind it was a very different man who, in another life, could have been a socialist. Al Smith, the Republican Governor of New York, had been no-one’s first choice for state leader. He had been voted in, a compromise candidate, to avoid a Labor victory. “Hold your nose and vote Smith!” had been one mock campaign slogan. The child of poor Irish migrants, and a devout Catholic, Smith’s career seemed doomed in the Americanism craze of the 1920s. Perhaps that is why, with nothing to lose, he stepped into the fray. A keen amateur actor and prized political battler, Smith had an oratorical style both rugged and honed and now he turned it on the status-quo.
He put the New York Police Department out on the streets in force. ‘A hyphenated American is still an American’ he announced, to rapturous applause at a speech on the Lower East Side ‘Irish-American, German-American, Italian-American, French-American, we are all something-American’. Despite a series of death-threats Smith continued his full-blooded defence of the America he knew and loved, and, at least in New York, it worked. New York Labor Party officials reports hundreds of members and thousands of potential voters bolting the party for Smith’s local Republican branch. Cannon’s inability to take a position was causing the local party to haemorage. ‘Just remember – you did this’ wrote an infuriated Max Schactman, aide to Cannon, in a memorandum. Suddenly the upcoming Party Conference in January 1927 seemed less of a coronation and more of an arena to the erstwhile young prince of the socialist movement.
Members of the Arizona National Guard march for the Mexican border. The USA had not fought a war since 1898.
America, though, was facing its own arena as the bloodletting on the southern border began.
‘I can think of no greater disaster for this country than to have its voters divide on religious lines’
Al Smith
The bullet that killed President Palmer struck him just below the left eye socket, jerking his head backwards and spraying the leather interior of the open-topped vehicle with blood. Miraculously, at least for the other passengers, though it was the only bullet of the five that caused serious damage. Pope Urban was shot in the left hand as he tried to shield the President from harm, the bullet piercing his palm but missing his body, and Vice President Jackson’s forehead was grazed by a ricochet. It was only Palmer, though, pronounced dead on the DC sidewalk minutes later, that had been killed. ‘I fear for humanity’ a stunned Holy Father was recorded as muttering by the throng of reports as President Palmer’s body was led away covered by a blood-stained sheet.
Within hours the situation got worse. The assassin, captured at the scene, was a Croatian Immigrant. Luka Horvat was twenty three, a former steel-worker out of work, who believed that it had been his god-given duty to kill President Palmer. The man was clearly unhinged, investigating officers quickly came to believe, considering how close his wild firing had come to killing the head of his own church. But the news that Horvat was a Catholic Immigrant spread like wildfire. The evening of the 23rd saw a series of attacks on Catholic businesses and clubs across the Eastern Seaboard and the Mid-West. 832 windows were smashed in Youngstown, Ohio, by anti-Catholic mobs and in Delaware Governor Robertson called out his National Guard after Klansmen staged a series of torch-lit marches that culminated in window-smashing and the overturning of cars. A steady rumble of discontent and anger continued through the coming days as Vice President Jackson, refusing to meet with the Pope despite the Holy Father’s valiant attempt to discharge himself from hospital and walk across DC to the Whitehouse, was sworn in.
For the first few days it was only the yellow-press that screamed for war with Catholic Mexico, but the Sacco and Vanzetti arrests changed all of that. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian Immigrants who worked a series of odd-jobs in Brooklyn, in the 1920s, and had met at a communal series of political gatherings in the New York district. Both men were Garbists, inspired by the mixture of social reform and traditionalism the ideology promised, and like many across the developed world had gravitated to the meetings out of a desire to find a political home that did not challenge their catholic faith. The discovery by the Police that their local branch had also been attended by Horvat saw both men dragged in for questioning and, quickly, charged with conspiracy to murder. The evidence was flimsy – Sacco had joined the group the month that Horvat left and claimed not to know the man whilst Vanzetti couldn’t speak English or Croatian – but in the fevered atmosphere of the early Jackson presidency they were subversive aliens and guilty by association.
The Sacco and Vanzetti case polarised the country, argued out in mass meetings and across the opinion pages of newspapers. It was, for their defenders, an atrocious miscarriage of justice whilst for their accusers it was proof of the creeping tendrils of anti-Americanism in society, particularly in the big cities. It also split the socialists. Many in the newly defined Labor Party, looking to the election of 1928 as a major chance, wanted to swim with the mood of the country. As American soldiers mobilized for the Mexican Border, with President Jackson declaring war in late October, many urged the young party leader, the 36 year old James P Cannon, to condemn the Italians. Even in his small coterie of young radicals, that had propelled his dynamic leadership campaign to the chairmanship the previous year, there were divisions. ‘Just condemn the Wops [sic]’ wrote Benjamin Gitlow, former editor of the Voice of Labor (although he would later go on to deny such comments). Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, though, stood for many in both the inner circle and the wider movement when she stormed into Cannon’s office.‘If we don’t stand up for these innocents then, James, just what in the hells are we doing here?!’ she shouted, and then added the dissenting turn of phrase she has become famous for ‘Progress means progress – so get out of your god-damned chair and act!’. Cannon, ever the political weather-vain, hedged, going so far as to slip out of the back entrance of a hall to avoid reporters in Boston.
Al Smith's was the lone, clarion, voice in condemning the rabid anti-Catholicism sweeping America
Socialist silence, though, opened another door. Behind it was a very different man who, in another life, could have been a socialist. Al Smith, the Republican Governor of New York, had been no-one’s first choice for state leader. He had been voted in, a compromise candidate, to avoid a Labor victory. “Hold your nose and vote Smith!” had been one mock campaign slogan. The child of poor Irish migrants, and a devout Catholic, Smith’s career seemed doomed in the Americanism craze of the 1920s. Perhaps that is why, with nothing to lose, he stepped into the fray. A keen amateur actor and prized political battler, Smith had an oratorical style both rugged and honed and now he turned it on the status-quo.
He put the New York Police Department out on the streets in force. ‘A hyphenated American is still an American’ he announced, to rapturous applause at a speech on the Lower East Side ‘Irish-American, German-American, Italian-American, French-American, we are all something-American’. Despite a series of death-threats Smith continued his full-blooded defence of the America he knew and loved, and, at least in New York, it worked. New York Labor Party officials reports hundreds of members and thousands of potential voters bolting the party for Smith’s local Republican branch. Cannon’s inability to take a position was causing the local party to haemorage. ‘Just remember – you did this’ wrote an infuriated Max Schactman, aide to Cannon, in a memorandum. Suddenly the upcoming Party Conference in January 1927 seemed less of a coronation and more of an arena to the erstwhile young prince of the socialist movement.
Members of the Arizona National Guard march for the Mexican border. The USA had not fought a war since 1898.
I promise a map of Russia for when the next Russia update happens. Short-hand Russia's borders are basically those of the Russian SSR + Belarus.
Thank you. I think its worth remembering that often the backlash against revolutionary socialism is not whether it is democratic or not but against the social upheaval it preaches. Peaceful or not the Commune represents a world-turned-upside-down for the status quo.
Whilst I've souped it up a bit, there was anti-Catholicism in this period. People forget that the second, and most popular, incarnation of the KKK in the 1920s was as an anti-immigrant, anti-catholic, force. Al Smith's OTL Presidential bid was a high-point of anti-catholic feeling. The Klan did erect burning crosses along the rail lines of his campaign trail. Obviously here it is more virulent as its mixed in with the anti-Mexican war fervour.
Question - are people interested in a comparison of the US and Mexican forces at the outbreak of war? I'm aware that most people reading this timeline aren't here for the military history, and that's more than ok with me, but I'm also aware that its been 50+ years since the POD and things have changed a bit...
Let me know in the comments
Thanks for reading Comrades!
Chapter 132 - The Eve of War: The Mexican Border 1926
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty Two - The Eve of War: The Mexican Border 1926
I believe in the Prince of Peace. I believe that War is Murder. I believe that armies and navies are at bottom the tinsel and braggadocio of oppression and wrong, and I believe that the wicked conquest of weaker and darker nations by nations whiter and stronger but foreshadows the death of that strength.
W. E. B. DuBois
Forces
Black Soldiers in 1926 shipping out to the Mexican Border. US Forces were strictly segregated in 1926,
and these men were restricted to support roles.
The US Army had not fought a war since 1898. But this did not mean that military planning and thinking had stood still for thirty years. In 1926 the Army stood at around 88,000 soldiers. It had been neglected under the Bryan years, a legacy of the President's pacifism in international relations, but had enjoyed a more buoyant relationship with subsequent administrations. It was well equipped, by modern standards, its Officer Class well trained and schooled in the outcomes of the European conflicts that had taken place since the turn of the century. There were also some 72,000 National Guardsmen who could be called up rapidly, their numbers swollen by the recent popularity of the "Stand-By" movement.
The Mexican Army, even ten years ago, had been a chocolate box affair. Top heavy and swollen by corrupt officers inventing fictitious recruits for the payroll and then skimming off the profits. However the zealous reforming nature of the Cristero regime had changed much of that. The army, now seen as the arm of the state, had been purged and reconstituted. A career officer class had been reshuffled, emboldened by victories in Central America, and compulsory military service had enhanced the recruits they could draw upon. Smaller than the US Army in 1926, the Mexican Army numbered around 70,000 soldiers with a further 120,000 "Rurales" militia groups that could (and would) be pressed into rapid service. Of course this larger reserve was off-set by a smaller population to mobilize in the event of total war.
Equipment
Count Alfredo Bennicelli - part of the Italian Volunteer Force in Mexico advising the Cristero since 1923
The Mexican Government, despite being poorer in industrial and financial senses, nevertheless had a technical advantage at the outset of the conflict. Not so much in the range or volume of weaponry, but in the doctrinal thinking that would underpin its use in the field. Since the start of the decade the Mexican Government had been the recipient of strategic support from other Catholic powers and from volunteers from international Catholic organisations. Alfredo Bennicelli, Italian noble, soldier, adventurer, and technical expert, was just one such figure, advising the Mexican Army on the use of Rolleurs. Although the Mexicans only had a slight numerical advantage in armour, due to US under-investment in this field, their plans hinged on a much more concentrated use of armoured vehicles in concentrated assault units as the Italians had developed with their erst-while French allies. Likewise, the Mexicans had, unlike the US, learned the lessons of chemical warfare more thoroughly. Spurred on, perhaps, by their awareness of their weaker position the Mexican Army had developed small but impressive stockpiles of military gas.
The US was by no means a technological laggard in 1926. Its Navy was, as both sides knew, the sovereign of the American seas and Mexican plans assumed the total annihilation of their fleet in the upcoming conflict. The US also had aerial supremacy, although the Navy was dominant here too. During the 1910s it had fended off those who called for either a separate airforce or one twinned with the Army, and the 1920s had seen aviation in the US military proceed along naval lines. Thus the wealth of American air experience, and the doctrines of use, were primarily spotting and scouting orientated.
Plans
Marine Corps staff discuss the Naval Strategy for the coming war
during exercises in Florida, March 1926
The Navy also led, strangely enough, planning for the upcoming war. Naval dominance led many in Washington to believe that coastal interdiction would be the best tactic for the upcoming war. Strikes along the coast, particularly at Veracruz, Puerto Barrios in former Guatemala, and Bocas de Toro behind Mexican frontlines in Panama, were all planned. Concerns that this might lead to expeditionary forces being cut-off were largely swept aside by the supreme confidence of the Navy, particularly Admiral Mark Bristol of the Atlantic Fleet. The plans would throw the 13,000 strong Marine Corps into three, hopefully unopposed, landings. The Army, slower to formulate a plan, was forced somewhat into a supporting role. It would roll the Mexican right flank back, pushing towards Tampico and Monterrey, with the hope of engaging the Mexican Army in one decisive battle.
Mexican plans, meanwhile, were a mixture of defensive and offensive. Key units had been left on the Panama Front, the intention in Mexico City being to thrust forward and overwhelm the resistance there before the US could land reinforcements. Panama needed, the Cristero regime felt, to be in hand when they forced the Americans to the table. Only the most brash or zealous in Mexico felt that they could win this war outright on the battlefield - the Government had tried to relieve the tensions unsuccessfully and had essentially been forced into action. But the Army had not been idle. The eastern front was already lined with trenches, prepared by experienced engineers trained by Spanish, Italian, and French Royalist veterans of the European Revolutionary War. In the mountainous centre and the west, meanwhile, Mexican light units were being mustered in large numbers for a series of light strikes across the border.
I believe in the Prince of Peace. I believe that War is Murder. I believe that armies and navies are at bottom the tinsel and braggadocio of oppression and wrong, and I believe that the wicked conquest of weaker and darker nations by nations whiter and stronger but foreshadows the death of that strength.
W. E. B. DuBois
Forces
Black Soldiers in 1926 shipping out to the Mexican Border. US Forces were strictly segregated in 1926,
and these men were restricted to support roles.
The Mexican Army, even ten years ago, had been a chocolate box affair. Top heavy and swollen by corrupt officers inventing fictitious recruits for the payroll and then skimming off the profits. However the zealous reforming nature of the Cristero regime had changed much of that. The army, now seen as the arm of the state, had been purged and reconstituted. A career officer class had been reshuffled, emboldened by victories in Central America, and compulsory military service had enhanced the recruits they could draw upon. Smaller than the US Army in 1926, the Mexican Army numbered around 70,000 soldiers with a further 120,000 "Rurales" militia groups that could (and would) be pressed into rapid service. Of course this larger reserve was off-set by a smaller population to mobilize in the event of total war.
Equipment
Count Alfredo Bennicelli - part of the Italian Volunteer Force in Mexico advising the Cristero since 1923
The US was by no means a technological laggard in 1926. Its Navy was, as both sides knew, the sovereign of the American seas and Mexican plans assumed the total annihilation of their fleet in the upcoming conflict. The US also had aerial supremacy, although the Navy was dominant here too. During the 1910s it had fended off those who called for either a separate airforce or one twinned with the Army, and the 1920s had seen aviation in the US military proceed along naval lines. Thus the wealth of American air experience, and the doctrines of use, were primarily spotting and scouting orientated.
Plans
Marine Corps staff discuss the Naval Strategy for the coming war
during exercises in Florida, March 1926
The Navy also led, strangely enough, planning for the upcoming war. Naval dominance led many in Washington to believe that coastal interdiction would be the best tactic for the upcoming war. Strikes along the coast, particularly at Veracruz, Puerto Barrios in former Guatemala, and Bocas de Toro behind Mexican frontlines in Panama, were all planned. Concerns that this might lead to expeditionary forces being cut-off were largely swept aside by the supreme confidence of the Navy, particularly Admiral Mark Bristol of the Atlantic Fleet. The plans would throw the 13,000 strong Marine Corps into three, hopefully unopposed, landings. The Army, slower to formulate a plan, was forced somewhat into a supporting role. It would roll the Mexican right flank back, pushing towards Tampico and Monterrey, with the hope of engaging the Mexican Army in one decisive battle.
Mexican plans, meanwhile, were a mixture of defensive and offensive. Key units had been left on the Panama Front, the intention in Mexico City being to thrust forward and overwhelm the resistance there before the US could land reinforcements. Panama needed, the Cristero regime felt, to be in hand when they forced the Americans to the table. Only the most brash or zealous in Mexico felt that they could win this war outright on the battlefield - the Government had tried to relieve the tensions unsuccessfully and had essentially been forced into action. But the Army had not been idle. The eastern front was already lined with trenches, prepared by experienced engineers trained by Spanish, Italian, and French Royalist veterans of the European Revolutionary War. In the mountainous centre and the west, meanwhile, Mexican light units were being mustered in large numbers for a series of light strikes across the border.
They look much more equal than ever iotl. Though the Cristeros are a bunch of suspicious semi-fascists, for deviation's sake: adelante, Mexico, hasta la victoria!
...Mexico has zero chance against a 20th century US, they lost against mid 19th century USA and in the 1900s the US is the strongest industrial power IN THE WORLD and a net exporter of everything from grain to steel to oil. Absent outside intervention (and frankly even with outside intevention) they are screwed like a five dollar hooker. The only way the US can be defeated in the 20th century is to put them in a conflict they don't really want to fight to begin with, and any peace that would imply less than a white peace (let alone annexations of core US territory) is something the US will never ever accept.
"Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States."
"Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States."
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