Well even getting all your Cities turned into rubble isn't that much of an issue, in the end as long as your institutions are working, it doesn't matter that much, other than the rebuilt cities may turn out pretty ugly.
Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
The "French State" will last from 1938 to 1993. Aprox. 55 years. Not 70.
.....how far into the metaphorical "symbolism" could this go?
I mean, seeing Vardaman somehow being assassinated by a African-American could be the most ironic thing ever...
Still, that's a rather significant chunk of time - and the chances are the regime is going to go through more than one leader during that time (one has to assume that the military officer taking control is going to be in his 40s or so at the absolute youngest - and I can't imagine then surviving into their 90s and being able to continue the job. So it's going to be a rather long-lasting multi-generational regime. And that's ... really fascinating.
I'd almost prefer for one his own Red Scarves to do it - feeling their 'great leader' betrayed them. Getting mauled by your own mad dogs always has a healthy dose of irony (especially when it happens literally like the late King od Belgium
)I don't want anyone to assassinate Vardaman. Could make him a martyr among the reactionary right which is far better than he deserves. He should either kill himself or survive.
I agree with this. God forbid it is a black person that kills him. That would just double the martyrdom and feed into, what I am sure will be, some sort of lost-causer sentiment after the war. I think in this case Vardaman is the embodiment of the saying "The worst thing you can do to a man is to give him exactly what he wants."
As indicated, Francoist Spain and Stroessner's Paraguay are *one* person leadership. And as for Myanmar, viewing Ne Win and SLORC as part of the same Junta (much less the current State Administration Council) seems a stretch.
Where did you get 1938 from? (Trying to figure out what happens in the 20ish years from the end of the war until the beginning of the "French State")
I definitely was thinking of these OTL quotes every time I tried to visualize Vardaman speaking. Uncomfortable, but it’s an uncomfortable subject
It’s playing AH on Legendary to do this lol
French poverty won’t be *that* bad, it will just aggressively underperform the rest of Europe
Def hard ro have it just be one guy
The Brazilian military regime had several leaders with fixed terms and legal methods of succession - it isn't beyond possibility that the French State might do that. OTOH, the regime in Brazil lasted 21 rather than 55 years and the heads of state (other than the last) came from a single generation of officers, so the French State seems destined to enter uncharted waters eventually.
How aggressive are we talking? Would the current standards/economy be more similar to, say, OTL Spain? Or like OTL Turkey? Or something else?
If nothing else at some point the tension between the military and the civilian factions of the State would need to be resolved
Def more of the Spain analogy than a Turkish one; think of Paris as an uber-Madrid economically, especially when comparing its wealth and influence to the countryside
The Forgotten Front: The Isthmian Campaigns of the Great American War
"...agreement that had not been acted upon by either side; it was for that reason that on February 29, 1916, Marines crossed back into Guatemala from El Salvador to punch their way to the capital as Mexican forces seized two major crossings of the border from unstable Chiapas to prevent a Huertista evacuation. In theory, under the stipulations of the Treaty of San Diego, Mexico was meant to have left Guatemala entirely alone, but the ink had been dry on that document for only four months before the United States was already acquiescing to Mexican intervention in the region, as forces under Aureliano Blanquet, at one time a good friend and ally of Huerta, moved off of their border positions in a scramble for the capital, with Mexicans embarrassed by Huerta having received the signal from Mexico City that it would be preferable if his scalp was taken by his own, rather than the Yankee.
Simple geography largely dictated the events to come. Mexico overran northern Guatemala's Peten Department and captured Quetzaltenango, but Guatemala City's collapse was carried out by American Marines who refused surrenders from many of the Huertistas there, simply shooting them in the head and leaving them in a mass grave on the edge of the city while declaring that the "official" Army of Guatemala was welcome to be in charge of the country again. The problem, of course, was that there wasn't much of an official army left, after two years of brutal war in Nicaragua, Estrada Cabrera's various purges of his officer class, and finally Huerta massacring his enemies to keep hold of power in the country. There wasn't much official of anything in Guatemala, and Butler's missives back to Philadelphia suggested that a long campaign of nation-building would be required to restore the country to any semblance of governability.
Huerta, of course, escaped into the jungles of northeastern Guatemala with many of his men, where a few months later he would die of some unspecified tropical disease believed to be yellow fever, thus dissolving his strange army of pseudo-mercenaries into the guerilla groups increasingly in control of Honduras and parts of rural Guatemala, paramilitary cliques that essentially came to hold their own fiefdoms with the support of fruit mercenaries and making a joke of any kind of idea of central government and structure in two of the three member-states of the now-dead Centroamerica..."
- The Forgotten Front: The Isthmian Campaigns of the Great American War
Simple geography largely dictated the events to come. Mexico overran northern Guatemala's Peten Department and captured Quetzaltenango, but Guatemala City's collapse was carried out by American Marines who refused surrenders from many of the Huertistas there, simply shooting them in the head and leaving them in a mass grave on the edge of the city while declaring that the "official" Army of Guatemala was welcome to be in charge of the country again. The problem, of course, was that there wasn't much of an official army left, after two years of brutal war in Nicaragua, Estrada Cabrera's various purges of his officer class, and finally Huerta massacring his enemies to keep hold of power in the country. There wasn't much official of anything in Guatemala, and Butler's missives back to Philadelphia suggested that a long campaign of nation-building would be required to restore the country to any semblance of governability.
Huerta, of course, escaped into the jungles of northeastern Guatemala with many of his men, where a few months later he would die of some unspecified tropical disease believed to be yellow fever, thus dissolving his strange army of pseudo-mercenaries into the guerilla groups increasingly in control of Honduras and parts of rural Guatemala, paramilitary cliques that essentially came to hold their own fiefdoms with the support of fruit mercenaries and making a joke of any kind of idea of central government and structure in two of the three member-states of the now-dead Centroamerica..."
- The Forgotten Front: The Isthmian Campaigns of the Great American War
The Last Days of the Old Confederacy: How the War Was Lost in 1916
"...new ships put to water in late 1915 were designed more with the intent of being able to quickly ferry soldiers onto land, and by March of 1916 nearly three hundred aero-planes and four hundred landships were coming out of American factories per month. Even without some tactical successes by the Yankees, this superiority in weaponry would have been extremely difficult for Confederate forces to overcome. The disparity in artillery, armor, air support and even simple things like shoes and coats by the spring of 1916 was remarkably vast despite the game efforts of the foundries and arsenals in Birmingham, Anniston, Augusta and Macon, or even the uniform mills in Durham and Greensville; the Confederacy was, quite simply, outgunned on paper.
Two battles occurred in early March - on March 8th the Norfolk Landings, and on March 10th the Rapidan Offensive - that both secured their immediate tactical and strategic objectives and in doing so greatly complicated Lejeune's defenses of Richmond. In the former, the new landing vessels were deployed both from the Chesapeake and the Atlantic to storm the shore of Virginia Beach, a sleepy resort town that nonetheless enjoyed a large, sustained open beach abutting flat (if marshy) land for a thrust at nearby Norfolk. These landings were supported by coastal bombardments from the US Atlantic Fleet that had little else to do at that point in time, shattering most of Norfolk's ample coastal defenses over the course of three days as Marines and Army infantrymen pushed their way in to take the city. Norfolk fell on the 12th, and the next push was the new shipyards in Hampton across the water, captured on the 14th. The fall of the Hampton Roads as a Confederate waterway was timed with a major push by Lenihan in the north, not at the hardened defenses at Fredericksburg where he had failed previously to break through into central Virginia but rather further west, near Culpeper; while the offensive took a whole ten days, the successful breaking through at Culpeper placed Lenihan's forces upon the Rapidan and thus hooking the left flank of Lejeune's forces southwestwards, threatening to break that end of the Confederate line.
For Lejeune, this was disastrous, regardless of how tenacious a fighter he was. For one thing, it did not only create issues for advances towards the capital but also his ability to coordinate with Lee in the Shenandoah, where Hall's push southwards towards Roanoke could now be supported from Lenihan overland directly rather than via a long supply line via Harpers Ferry. This merged both sub-theaters into one single offensive deeper into industrial Virginia and her hinterland where much of her food was grown, and as these attacks were occurring during the spring planting season in the Valley, it seemed fairly obvious to Lenihan that his army, and civilians, had seen nothing yet as far as another winter of starvation might go.
The ability of forces under Charles Farnsworth out of Norfolk to make progress was not to be underestimated, either, though Lejeune had anticipated this enough that he had placed four valuable divisions near Williamsburg to act as a screening defense. The Virginia Peninsula, site of the famous failed attempted by George McClellan Senior to take Richmond in 1862, was the most direct route with the most favorable terrain towards the capital from the Chesapeake Bay, and both sides knew this. Lejeune's only advantage was the small number of landships that Farnsworth was able to put ashore and the marshes south of the James River concentrating all Yankee forces on a fairly narrow pathway; defenses at Williamsburg were easy to construct and man and support with air power, and Farnsworth's advance was for the time being checked.
That was little respite to the men at Fredericksburg, who had to finally abandon their excellent defenses there as Lenihan finally broke through on April 27-28th, with horrific casualties for both sides in the last major battle of the war with such high losses for the United States. There were simply to many planes raining fire from the heavens, too many landship "tanks" barreling through Confederate lines (especially in the Rapidan area), and too much artillery hammering trenches as small, targeted "Hellfighter" shock forces attacked in precise weak points of the trenches to get behind and clear the path for the men force. The Third Battle of Fredericksburg was the charm for Lenihan, who at last had what he'd promised President Hughes he would achieve when he had been moved to this theater a year earlier after the Fall of Nashville - a fairly clear path to Richmond..."
- The Last Days of the Old Confederacy: How the War Was Lost in 1916
Two battles occurred in early March - on March 8th the Norfolk Landings, and on March 10th the Rapidan Offensive - that both secured their immediate tactical and strategic objectives and in doing so greatly complicated Lejeune's defenses of Richmond. In the former, the new landing vessels were deployed both from the Chesapeake and the Atlantic to storm the shore of Virginia Beach, a sleepy resort town that nonetheless enjoyed a large, sustained open beach abutting flat (if marshy) land for a thrust at nearby Norfolk. These landings were supported by coastal bombardments from the US Atlantic Fleet that had little else to do at that point in time, shattering most of Norfolk's ample coastal defenses over the course of three days as Marines and Army infantrymen pushed their way in to take the city. Norfolk fell on the 12th, and the next push was the new shipyards in Hampton across the water, captured on the 14th. The fall of the Hampton Roads as a Confederate waterway was timed with a major push by Lenihan in the north, not at the hardened defenses at Fredericksburg where he had failed previously to break through into central Virginia but rather further west, near Culpeper; while the offensive took a whole ten days, the successful breaking through at Culpeper placed Lenihan's forces upon the Rapidan and thus hooking the left flank of Lejeune's forces southwestwards, threatening to break that end of the Confederate line.
For Lejeune, this was disastrous, regardless of how tenacious a fighter he was. For one thing, it did not only create issues for advances towards the capital but also his ability to coordinate with Lee in the Shenandoah, where Hall's push southwards towards Roanoke could now be supported from Lenihan overland directly rather than via a long supply line via Harpers Ferry. This merged both sub-theaters into one single offensive deeper into industrial Virginia and her hinterland where much of her food was grown, and as these attacks were occurring during the spring planting season in the Valley, it seemed fairly obvious to Lenihan that his army, and civilians, had seen nothing yet as far as another winter of starvation might go.
The ability of forces under Charles Farnsworth out of Norfolk to make progress was not to be underestimated, either, though Lejeune had anticipated this enough that he had placed four valuable divisions near Williamsburg to act as a screening defense. The Virginia Peninsula, site of the famous failed attempted by George McClellan Senior to take Richmond in 1862, was the most direct route with the most favorable terrain towards the capital from the Chesapeake Bay, and both sides knew this. Lejeune's only advantage was the small number of landships that Farnsworth was able to put ashore and the marshes south of the James River concentrating all Yankee forces on a fairly narrow pathway; defenses at Williamsburg were easy to construct and man and support with air power, and Farnsworth's advance was for the time being checked.
That was little respite to the men at Fredericksburg, who had to finally abandon their excellent defenses there as Lenihan finally broke through on April 27-28th, with horrific casualties for both sides in the last major battle of the war with such high losses for the United States. There were simply to many planes raining fire from the heavens, too many landship "tanks" barreling through Confederate lines (especially in the Rapidan area), and too much artillery hammering trenches as small, targeted "Hellfighter" shock forces attacked in precise weak points of the trenches to get behind and clear the path for the men force. The Third Battle of Fredericksburg was the charm for Lenihan, who at last had what he'd promised President Hughes he would achieve when he had been moved to this theater a year earlier after the Fall of Nashville - a fairly clear path to Richmond..."
- The Last Days of the Old Confederacy: How the War Was Lost in 1916
Well, if we know that the war is going to end in November, after the US election and a path opens up to Richmind in April - I wonder what occures that allows the Confederates to hold out for the next six(ish) months. Would Vardaman and the government be able (or willing) to flee Richmond if it falls. We know that Ol Cotton gets captured furthered South by US forces; but one wonders if he's there because the government fled to South Carolina or somewhere else.
The Americans finally punching through Fredericksburg is wonderful news to read with my morning coffee. As Tony Stark once said, "We're in the endgame now."
Also, nice job capturing Wilson's voice with that last update - you do a good job channeling how he'd likely write.
Also, nice job capturing Wilson's voice with that last update - you do a good job channeling how he'd likely write.
Reluctant as I am to use exact historical analogies, it took quite some time to thrust into Germany for the Allies as well after getting near the Rhine around Christmas - and the supply lines the US has to rely on now are getting very, very long in an age without reliable air transport and so much of the fighting being inland on enemy rail infrastructure
Thank you! I’ve enjoyed Wilson being something of an unseen POV character even if it’s purely as a textbook author
Very bad enemy rail infrastructure (LeT's UsE dIfFeReNt RaIl GaUgEs BeTwEeN sTaTeS, tHaT's A gReAt IdEa!)