The timeline commences in the late 1930s, as America and the rest of the world struggle to emerge from the depths of the Great Depression, and is told through the eyes of Elliott Roosevelt, the son of perhaps the greatest American President in Franklin Delano Roosevelt immortalised simply as ‘FDR’.
“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” FDR told graduating students of Ogilthorpe University a month ahead of receiving the Democratic nomination for the 1932 US Presidential election which he won in a landslide.
FDR lived up to that pledge and Elliott Roosevelt had observed his father bring the US back from the brink of despair through ambitious and vigorously developed and implemented programs referred to collectively as the ‘New Deal’ which led to him being rewarded with a second term in 1936.
Elliott had embarked on his own deal – running a small network of radio stations in Texas – in September 1938 as the Munich Conference was held and France, Britain and Italy agreed to Germany’s annexation of Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia hoping it would appease their expansionary impulse.
FDR, acutely aware of swirling geopolitics as the 1940 election was approaching, had been weighing up whether to run for a third term – on the one hand he believed it was his duty to continue steady leadership through the countervailing currents, especially with Europe on the brink of war which he feared might drawer in other nations including America, and ongoing hostilities between Japan and China in Manchuria, but on the other hand he would be going against convention which, whilst his uncle Teddy ignored it when he failed to be elected for a third term, his closest political confidant – the “Kingmaker” James Farley – had strongly advised him against.
Even Eleanor, his wife, had serious reservations and was looking forward to stepping back from her own very busy schedule as first lady.
Sitting in his Dad’s well-worn leather lounge chair at his family’s Hyde Park estate, enveloped by paternal safety, in plush comfort, newspaper lowered across his knee (exposing an article debating whether Germany is set to move eastward into France), Elliott drifted off remembering back to the conversation he had with his father in the oval office only days earlier where they shared their deepest thoughts and concerns for the world, and he, rather imprudently, about his business interests…
His Dad, normally clear in his convictions, was torn. Farley had been with FDR from the very beginnings of his political career, with political intuition surpassed by none of his contemporaries. The father and son talked long and earnestly, uncharacteristically so for a relationship where the father was so accomplished and admired, even for a politician.
FDR confides that more likely than not he will seek the Democratic nomination to contest the 1940 US Presidential election, even if he must compete against his right-hand man in Farley.
Nazi strategists, aware of the significance of the Presidential election to whether America would join (again) with forces against Germany, concentrate efforts on building up armaments and fortifying their eastern positions in Poland, etc through the spring of 1940. Herr Schacht, former Finance Minister and longtime head of the Reichsbank, had long warned the Nazi regime that Germany was not economically capable of waging a long war against the British with their ‘Anglo Saxon mentality’, and even though he had lost the ear of Hitler because of his ‘defeatist comments’, his views still had influence over some of those who retained Hitler’s confidence.
The British Empire, through its colonies, protectorates and independent dominions of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, controlled 25% of the global population and 30% of the landmass, and the engagement of the broad Commonwealth in the conflict was predictable. FDR had been talking with the British, including with King George VI on a visit to his family estate Hyde Park in June 1939, and his inner circle knew him to privately support involvement in a European conflict. Americans, too, had suffered severe losses in WWI and their wives and mothers had not forgotten their pain of loss; in fact, those anguished feelings had only grown through the toughest years of the Great Depression.
The delayed advance of Germany eastward leads to the Republican party nominating Robert A. Taft as their candidate on an isolationist platform and the support of American hero Charles Lindbergh means Taft will mount a formidable challenge. At the Democratic National Convention Farley resists FDR’s wife Eleanor’s late appeal and throws his support behind Bennet Clark, an avid isolationist, to counter the strong isolationist platform on the right. A young Harry Truman, also from Clark’s home state of Missouri, has also impressed the politically pragmatic Farley. Truman holds a strong view that America cannot afford the cost of war and is sceptical of the waste inherent in producing supplies sent already to support the British. At the Democratic National Convention FDR promises that no American boys would go to a foreign war under his watch, but it is to no avail as Farley’s influence carries sway and Clark wins the Democratic nomination.
Clark ultimately wins the 1940 Presidential election with Farley his Vice President in November 1940. Hitler, however, does not need to wait for the election to be held to expand Nazi held territory eastward. With two avowed isolationists as Presidential candidates, and Americans in huge numbers joining up to the newly formed America First Committee, growing out of a movement started at Yale University (and with support of future Presidents Gerald Ford and John F Kennedy), it is increasingly clear American involvement in the war will be at most ambiguous with minimal supply of war resources. Nazi blitzkrieg by its powerful Wehrmacht allows it to annex Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and has France in retreat, by the time the ballots are being counted, and soon after Italy and Japan sign the tripartite agreement with Germany while it battles the United Soviet States of Russia (USSR) on the east and Italians commenced operations in Africa.
The British repel the first air war, The Battle for England, against the Nazis largely with covert aid from America (in place under FDR). Knowing this, Hitler warns the US against further involvement. President Clark assures the Nazis that they had already wound down their war production, of which Henry Ford and others were somewhat ambiguous on in any case, and that the US wouldn’t enter the war so long as Japan did not move against American interests in the Pacific. German strategists talk down Japanese military strategists from actions on the Aleutian islands off Alaska and leave the Philippines untouched, while at the same time Axis members commit to acquiring American territories, indeed North America, once they have won the European war.
War rages on in northern Africa, remorselessly over England with them attempting to return fire over German cities with limited success, and in the east on the Russian front. With limited opposition, Japan marches downward through the Asia Pacific and only encounters tough opposition in New Guinea, but eventually claims Australia and New Zealand in late 1944 with resources and support of other Axis partners as the ground war in Europe winds down and a second front is opened against Russia to capture the Sakhalin Island north of Japan and the adjacent mainland territory of Primorsky Krai, including the important port city of Vladivostok, and territories against the Sea of Okhotsk. When Britain formerly surrenders in May 1945, followed shortly later in August 1945 by the Soviet States, the great Eurasian war is over.
The Soviet States are convinced to surrender following the Japanese explosion of an atomic bomb in Novosibirsk which on the one hand demonstrates the power of the technology the Japanese has first mastered, and on the other hand destroys the major site of military production for the Red Army after it was shifted from the west.
Neither Hitler nor Mussolini survive to the end of the war, however, as both are assassinated by more moderate groups within their ranks in an elaborate plot which unfolds on 20 July 1944. First Hitler is killed by a bomb explosion. Then Mussolini is killed when he arrives for a planned meeting with Hitler later that day and his entourage each is presented with a stark choice of overthrowing their fascist dictator and each putting a bullet in Mussolini or dying with him. Though the full plot has never been disclosed, nor the full list of conspirators, a large number (believed to be over 300) senior and influential members in their ranks accepted that their dictatorial and destructive style of leadership would fail to lead in the peace which many had been insisting leadership focus on from mid-1942 when an Axis win grew increasingly likely.
Emperor Hirohito, a man of science and logic, whose support for the war was always ambiguous, after the nuclear bomb detonation manages to gain sufficient support from the Japanese public and key political moderates to rest power from the ruthless conquering military leaders. A national radio address, the first time that Japanese people ever hears his voice, entitled the “Jewel Voice” where he discusses the harsh treatment of vanquished Chinese and other people in invaded territories, as well as prisoners of war, swings public opinion strongly away from military leaders.
In the postwar European power struggle neofascists triumph and throughout all of Europe the character of society becomes decidedly Teutonic (Germanic) with Berlin the centre of power and wealth, and all nation states responsible for selecting a certain number of party members (based on economic parameters) to the Pan-European People’s Conference (PEPC) in a pan-European autocracy. The leaders of the PEPC are selected via internal party politics and are typically rotated every 5 years. The form of neofascism practiced could best be described as fascism light, Hitlerism without dictatorship, Nazism without the systematic eugenics, oppression and murder, but state sanctioned racism is only thinly veiled and normalised such that very, very few Caucasian Europeans consider it a problem or even an issue.
Harry Truman, Secretary of State from 1940, becomes US President when both Clark and Farley die before the end of their term (October 8 and February 25, respectively) in 1944 and he wins the 1944 Presidential election (he was VP briefly after Farley’s death).
From the vantage point of the early 1990s, North America is the last bastion of democratic capitalism, though its sphere of influence is largely limited to North Mexico, which fought a fierce and protracted civil war – a proxy war between capitalist and neofascist interests – through the early 60’s, repeated in Brazil a decade later resulting in a similar North-South split between capitalists and neofascists, and a handful of other small and essentially inconsequential South American countries.
America and Canada survive in a hostile world due to its development of nuclear weapon technology through a collaboration known as the Manhattan project. It was initiated in complete secrecy under FDR, mothballed for a year after he lost the 1940 election, but re-instigated with increased vigor as Canadians and Americans became fully aware of the brutality of Nazism and Japanese imperialism. Canada may not be superior to America in economic strength, but it has maintained a moral authority due to its involvement in the European war. Since the late 40s when it became apparent that Japan, Europe and North America all had developed nuclear weapon technology, assured mutual destruction from further war has largely prevented full scale warfare. The world is taken to the brink in the ‘60s, however, when an increasingly insecure America attempts to deploy missiles on Attu Island, the westernmost island of the Aleutians off Alaska. The Japanese maritime blockade of US ships carrying the missiles brings a showdown between President John F Kennedy and the Japanese Prime Minister whereby all of humanity fears that the first nuclear war had arrived. America stands down, narrowly averting catastrophe, but it acts as warning to global leaders and reductions of nuclear weapon stockpiles are negotiated.
The economist Hjalmar Schacht rose to global prominence as the architect of the post-war world economic order, though many insiders know that this success was not just in not repeating the mistakes of the Weimar Republic, e.g. limiting war reparations by Britain and the broader commonwealth of nations so as not to be overly onerous, but in Schacht’s willingness to listen to a largely forgotten British economist, Maynard Keynes (who, though 6 years junior to Schacht, has health issues through the war period and dies within a year of the war’s end). Schacht is widely considered a likely co-conspirator in the assassination of Hitler.
Europe is the centre of global corporate and social culture which emphasizes Teutonic doggedness, pragmatism and discipline, and eschews Jewish ‘fussiness’ – as Dr. Schacht describes it – and the ‘flamboyance’ of the latinised Mediterraneans. Schachtian economics emphasises the need for individuals and nations to live within their means, through austerity when necessary, with speculative activity and excessive borrowing strictly regulated to prevent speculative manias that precipitated the global depression of the late 1920s.
With single party autocracies predominating throughout the world besides North America and a few nation states within its sphere of influence, constitutional monarchies have enjoyed a renaissance to give the perception of a level of political balance but in reality most have very limited discretionary powers.
This said, in recent years technological development in communications and rapid information transfer has tested the neofascists’ hold on power in Europe, with increasing understanding there of democratic capitalism as practiced in North America forcing a certain level of liberalism. However, the dominance of the central European languages, especially German, hinders information spread especially in central and eastern Europe.
Japanese-dominant Asia and Europe maintain a competitive and mostly functional relationship as the main geopolitical powers, though Japan has never really accepted the supremacy of the Deutschmark as the reserve currency of the world which has conferred a significant advantage to European interests. The industrial machinery of Europe dwarfs that of Japan’s, advantaged by proximity and greater geopolitical influence over the energy states of the Middle East and Russia. Japan has remained more dependent on North American and South American energy suppliers. Japan is further disadvantaged by the geographical spread and the more disparate cultures within its sphere of influence. It is constantly plagued by discontent in the anglophone antipodeans and in the East Indies, for example.
Neither Japan nor Europe has much concern for central and southern Africa, except in relation to resource-rich regions, never more so than when the North Americans are actively courting their governments for resources access for their companies.
Global inequality has improved little since the Eurasian war, and has only improved, albeit marginally, in those nations of geographic importance in the contest between capitalism and neofascism, and/or with advantageous natural resources. Of course, neither sphere really cares who shares those benefits and whether they reach the citizens of those nations – they simply seek to serve their own interests, and if a thin layer of corrupt officials sequesters the benefits, which ultimately results in lower costs to the powerful nations, then so be it.
Population growth has been explosive as most of humanity has remained poor and did what all living beings are biologically programmed to do – have larger families to increase the chances of survival for themselves (as they age) and of their family lines. European, Asian and American scientists have recently noted the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at a rate suggestive that humanity’s activities are having a serious affect which is resulting in a warming global climate which some extreme scientists suggest will result in increasingly unstable weather patterns and melting polar icecaps making parts of the world uninhabitable, first low-lying Pacific islands.
The largest global oil and gas company, Deutschpetroleum, has produced research that suggests this is not at all the case, convincing the political class that actions which would be a drag initially on economic growth were unnecessary. This is also politically convenient since many politicians and party associates have close financial links with the industry. Nonetheless the industry is working on developing hydrogen technology to power motor vehicles, especially the many millions of VWs, BMWs and Mercedes Benz that move the great majority of families daily around the globe. Few can afford the premium Japanese and Italian cars. Every nation has tried to build a car industry, with mixed success, but everyone knows the stories of the ‘lemons’ produced by inferior American car manufacturers Ford and General Motors along with Russia’s Lada Niva.
Life is tough for the majority of the world’s human inhabitants. There has always been an elite few that have soaked up the riches of the world, and then there is the rest, but the brutal and prejudicial character of the winning Axis is undeniable. Although never substantiated and strongly denied by Teutonic Europe, there are rumours that Jews especially were persecuted and executed during the Eurasian war. Very few people in Europe self-identify as being Jewish, and while they have limited access to sites of historical significance, Jewish people are welcomed postwar in Japanese held territories and in North America.
Political debate is curtailed and strictly regulated in Eurasia and most of Africa and South America. The only truly progressive region is North America with a remarkably open society built on free speech and a strong social safety network including free medical benefits and education, and support for the unemployed. Their leaders, especially JFK in America and Trudeau in Canada in the 60s, realised that social cohesion was vital to keeping those living within their island of prosperity safe. In fact, the social safety network was so favourable that a trial of a universal basic income found little benefit to most since they feel secure and regular surveys show Americans to be the happiest people in the world, though many also put that down to realistic expectations for their lives and their ambivalence to materialism.
Gun laws are the strictest in the world in America, as everyone knows that guns kill humans, and they are unnecessary in a society which can afford to protect itself from aggressors at the State level so the outdated and irrelevant 2nd amendment to the US constitution, originating from 300-year-old British law, was prudently deleted in the ‘70s.
Official and illegal migration into North America via Mexico, from South America, especially, however, is beginning to fray the social compact. And nobody suggests that America and Canada have truly dealt with racist pasts. Papering over the cracks is closer to the truth, though some headway has been made in corporate circles with a smattering of black CEOs, and while around 30% of corporate executives are females, there are very few black female CEOs, a few more Hispanic female CEOs, and no Asian female CEOs.
Europe made use of migrant labour from north Africa in the postwar rebuilding effort, and in Britain from Asia, especially India. Most returned home, however, as harsh regulations meant that they were required to live outside the limits of towns and cities, and curfews meant that at night they were not able to be in the cities that they were rebuilding during the day. Most believed that they would be better off closer to family connections and support networks once the rebuilding work dried up, while those who remained live in poor ghettoes and are subjected to ongoing discrimination and prejudice.
Throughout Teutonic Europe few in executive positions have a non-Germanic family name, certainly none are of Jewish descent, neither are there any of Middle Eastern, Asian or African descent. Inferior German language skills are often blamed as the reason. Only modest progress has been made on gender equality.
On a train heading west from Innsbruck towards the Oetztal Valley in Austria in the late 80s Elliott observes a young Australian couple, the man Caucasian and his wife of Asian descent, subjected to overt racism. Four middle-aged women sitting in the opposite seats stare at the couple barely in their 30s to make their abhorrence with their mixed relationship apparent, looking upon them as if they are less than human, as the couple sink into their seats feeling powerless given their obvious lack of agency. Elliott speaks to the young couple to help ease their discomfort, learning that the husband is a scientist with a fellowship to research in Germany, and that they were on a planned weekend away to celebrate their 7th wedding anniversary. The young woman of colour tells Elliott how frequently on train platforms in the Bavarian capital of Munich middle-aged people, especially, stare at her with a deep scowl. The previous year living in southern France, also on an international research fellowship, they quickly became aware of the underlying dislike of the ‘Arabs’ who had remained in lower socioeconomic regions of the cities they had rebuilt after the war, unable to improve their circumstance substantially due to systemic racism. Elliott recounts to them a brief friendship with a British family where the man was of German heritage, and how shocked he was when the man – who was raised near the Black Forest, and after returning from a family trip there – spoke about how the Arab people swimming in natural springs were fowling the water for ‘others’, because they wore pants with pockets rather than swimming briefs, and suggested that they should be excluded. He also used the vile ‘N-word’ in discussion alike the deeply racist groups that remained in America on the fringes.
The situation throughout Asia is not much better with Japanese domination of corporates and broader society. Interestingly, however, in British dominions the former colonisers, now oppressed and dominated themselves, have developed close relationships with the former indigenous peoples and those they had previously minoritised, as evidenced for example in Australia through the White Australia Policy, in their common struggle for existence. Those earlier migrants of central European descent who had previously developed close relationships with indigenous peoples on the basis of their common status outside of general society are now significantly more favoured and are referred to as ‘model migrants’ in comparison to anglophones and others.
The European middle class has become precarious and proportionally has shrunk, and in recent years those in central Europe who have not shared in the benefits of strong economic growth over the past half century since the Eurasian war have become discontent and have become a manipulable force for populist sections within the one-party structure. Some politicians appeal to the disaffected with a slogan of Making Europe Great Again (in the lesser spoken vulgar English, MEGA), yet none define which period in Europe was truly great and what made it so, though it clearly involves more extreme fascism including greater systemic prejudice and overt racism.
Elliott Roosevelt has lived a life of distinguished public service. Having listened to his father extoll the virtues of American involvement in the Eurasian war, and of how a true enduring peace was only possible through reduced colonialism/imperialism and equality of opportunity on a global basis, and his mother about civil rights and gender equality, Elliott has taken it upon himself to fulfill the destiny his parents felt so strongly. FDR lived through into his 70s, dying 12 April 1955, a fair age given his significant medical issues; the women in his life agreed that he might have lived longer without the stress of leading the nation for two terms through such a troubled period.
Elliott was a Democrat powerbroker through the 50s becoming a chief advisor to JFK and was second only to his brother Bobby Kennedy in the influence he had over JFK, though many considered Elliott more influential. Elliott later became the American representative to the international League of Nations which was reinstituted after the Eurasian war, but quit in the late 80s when European nations conspired to invade Ecuador under the guise that their dictator had instigated a program to develop weapons of mass destruction and it was close to achieving nuclear status. It quickly became apparent in the war that the nation was essentially a failed state and could not manufacture a lightbulb let alone a nuclear bomb, but hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were killed as collateral, along with the broken bodies and, more so, minds of many of those who fought. The puppet government then put in place has secured energy resources for Europe, and more importantly, has restricted access to it by Japan and North America.
Married twice, with one child to his first wife, and three with his second, Elliott Roosevelt lives a long life in close contact with his entire family, especially his mother Eleanor after his Dad’s death. He was highly regarded as a great American and many felt that he would have made an even better president than his father, FDR. In October 1991, 10 months after the death of his brother James, Elliott has a heart attack – surrounded by family and loved ones, in a hospital bed he drifts off with only the noise of a mechanical ventilator piercing the stark quiet of the room…
Elliott stirs in his Dad’s well-worn leather lounge chair at Hyde Park, disturbed by the housemaid reviving the dwindling fire by squeezing a set of bellows to direct air onto the glowing coals, and notices the paper that has fallen off his knee onto the ground. Staring blankly at the headline, as we all do when awoken from a deep Sunday afternoon slumber – even those not yet 30 years of age – reflecting on the vividness of his dream.
Chapter 2 – Rementar – Next
Reset: Introduction – Previous
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