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Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM |
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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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King of Traitors
I was curious to see if I could do a British
version of Dark America or The
Paney War. Those of us who are British may
find this TL controversial, as indeed I do, but it seems a valid possibility. Edward VIII may or may not have been a closet fascist.
He was certainly concerned about the failure of the British system to
provide for the victims of the great depression, and it is a documented fact
that he had some communications with Nazi agents, but the depth of his feelings
are known only to the Lord of All Things. The pro-monarchist factions in
Britain claim that he was a fascist and cite his semi-forced abdication as a
triumph for anti-fascist movements. That
is nonsense. He was pushed out
because he dared to fall in love with Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee, who
was viewed as an unacceptable queen. (She
was American/a separated woman/she rubbed the queen mother the wrong way/who
knows). Let’s assume that there is a
compromise worked out. Edward had a
strong hand, he had (in theory) the loyalty of the army, he was a very popular
king and there was no precedent for evicting a king.
Few people would have considered beheading him, as had happened to
Charles, and parliament was not united on the question.
Therefore, let’s have them all accept a face-saving solution; Wallis
becomes the official consort (a title famously denied to Philip) and the line of
descent is rewritten to exclude her and any children the couple may have.
The British public gets a royal wedding and everyone is pleased. Fast forward to 1939.
Edward is heavily involved in projects to feed and clothe people
suffering from poverty. The
establishment is appalled, but Edward is the most popular king for a long time
and he has the support of Churchill and many other politicians.
The Tory party leaders know that they cannot afford to be seen to act
against their monarch, so they are forced to go along with him.
Britain gets some Hitler-type programmes; industrialising, massive
agricultural development, improved social systems.
Britain has also conscripted unemployed men into Land Armies and the
proper army. Edward and the conservative
politicians don’t care about Europe. Hitler
gets to destroy Poland without any British interference; the British don’t
want a war with Hitler, they want him steered to face godless, monarch killing
communists. Britain is quite
willing to allow German domination of Eastern Europe in exchange for Hitler
destroying the USSR. The British
press the French into staying neutral, brokering an agreement with Germany for
French occupation of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg. Hitler heads east in 1940.
The British are very enthusiastic about this move and declare a blockade
of the USSR. They also send troops
and supplies to Iran and India, preparing to seize the oil wells and parts of
the USSR as far as Stalingrad. The
British also supply Muslim rebels with weapons and advisors from India.
The war causes an economic boom as Britain sells arms, oil and other
supplies to Hitler. Some British
reds protest this loudly and are promptly arrested for slandering the monarch.
(Still an offence, but one not invoked for a long time.)
Britain suffers some unrest which allows the establishment of a limited
police state. The Germans take Moscow in late
1940. The soviets have far less
material than they did in OTL 1940, with far fewer factories and other supplies.
Most of the communist leaders make it out, but Stalin is killed in an air
raid. The reminder of the
government, in uneasy coalition, flees east.
The British take this as their cue to seize Baku and the other oil
facilities, while the Japanese hit the soviet rear. The British have quietly given
the Japanese a guarantee that they won’t supply the Chinese in exchange for a
non-aggression pact. Many British
wanted the Japanese to continue hitting the ChiNats and ChiComms as they had
inconvenient amounts of nationalism inside them.
The Americans continue supplying the Chinese, but it’s not so easy
without British co-operation. The British make deals with
Hitler, who is now their staunch ally, and work to strengthen their empire.
The British take all the Jews/Czechs/Poles/liberals that the Germans can
arrest and ship them to places around the Empire. Rhodesia, South Africa, Kenya, all get a larger white
population. The British have also
started to introduce a national security state – non-whites in Africa who
refuse to become ‘civilised’ get nothing, not even rights. The British work to reform the
Indian system. Gandhi and his
Congress friends get played off against the Muslim League.
The Princes are given important roles in government, as are notably
pro-British Indians. Nationalists
and Communists are displaced. Absent
WW2, there won’t be a massive famine and the British can stamp on religious
strife. The British have what is
effectively a popularist dictatorship. King
Edward has more real power than his father and is very popular.
Churchill gets his empire, most of the mandarins are removed or pushed
back to be replaced by thrusting go-getters.
The Empire is reinvigorated by new colonists and considerable
anti-nationalist feelings. Nazi
Germany is a stanch ally. The
British officially keep their Jews down, more practically; they have a
semi-independent dominion of ‘Israel’ in Africa.
The Belgium Congo is taken over without payment.
The French are following the British lead with massive settlement of
Algeria. Indochina is jointly
occupied by British and American forces. Japanese
get the Dutch East Indies and hire Dutch ships to protect them, a legal fiction
to keep America happy. Russia is
partitioned between Germany, Italy, Turkey and Japan.
The Balkans are shared between Greece, Turkey and Italy under German
supervision. The British could care
less about them. In Britain, most citizens have
the same amount of freedom they had in 1930.
There is some press censorship, mainly of communist, Irish nationalist
and anti-monarchist papers. Some
parts of Britain become darker as local lords are allowed to reintroduce the
federal system on their lands when they are ordered to use them for food
growing. The lords will ‘look
after’ the workers, provided they follow orders and don’t leave the farms.
Work camps in the mines are there for the malcorants. Africa is a police state.
The black populations are practically used as slaves and work-fodder.
White settlements are permitted everywhere they want to go and massive
industrialisation is being promoted everywhere.
Boers have been declared Englishmen and they get along better with the
British now that the British have taken a pro-Boer stance on the race issue.
Railways, highways and massive telecommunication poles hold the African
empire together. The British dominate the Middle
East. The Saudi Arabian nation is
ripped apart and split into different small nations.
Iran is offered the choice between becoming a crown dependency or a
German-dominated zone. The Shah
decides on the Germans, but is overthrown and the British dominate the area.
The British therefore control the oil supplies of most of Europe. Australia and Canada decided
they hated the new order of affairs and declared their independence.
Canada made theirs stick with American support, starting the
American-Europe cold war, while Australia’s was brutally crushed.
Australian refugees were permitted entry into the USA, which took over
Central America in 1945.
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