and/or a Louisville-class--some Rebs might puzzle over why there's ships like the USS Camp Hill, Bull Run, or Fredericksburg all named for their LOSSES, and then realize "remembrance" is more than just a new holiday; also dangerous for the Grey Navy is the fact that its ships' "grey is a very DARK grey"
TL-191: Filling the Gaps
- Thread starter Craigo
- Start date
For all Featherston's faults, crimes and megalomania, my understanding is that he was fairly 'Straight Edge' in terms of recreational pharmaceuticals (Especially by comparison with Adolph Hitler): It is, however, possible he reached for one sort of bottle or the other in the very last books of the series (Which I have yet to read).
As for the CSA failing to move their capital once they secured their Independence - or after - I'm assuming that simple institutional inertia, exacerbated by nobody being quite able to agree on where the Best site for an alternative capital would be, kept the Confederate Congress in Richmond (Though the close proximity of the US border might have been a useful way of keeping that barrel of cats paying attention to the bottom line - hang together or be hounded to destruction by the US of A).
Did the CSA officially adopt "Dixie" as it's anthem later on after the war? I hope so because "God Save the South" is a terrible anthem imo.
my TL191 fix fic definitely envisions Featherston as a "straight-edge villain," especially by comparison to a "drink hard liquor until you have to change britches next morning" alcohol culture (and parallels McSweeney)[1]: and IRL most dictators are extremely pedestrian in their tastes and their lack of personality (think Bad Vlad and Rafael Videla)--but some vital amines and nerve tonic, hygienically administered under the constant supervision of his trusted doctor? well, he's no JUNKY
the Snake's definitely a "tender misanthrope" like Hitler or Himmler: he objects to Koenig/Goering's propensity for vanity sport hunting, plantation "entertainments" like goose-pulling, or shack-dwellers' dogfighting rings (mostly because it "degrades the nation" or just because it's an embarrassing mudsill distraction)[2]
I also have a really obnoxious scene where he stops the CS Army from issuing cigarettes as standard rations by emptying out both his gassed-up lungs on the quartermaster command to make the point that the doughboys shouldn't be half-crippled by their OWN army before they face the damnyankees--though more pragmatic generals sell opium cigarettes far and wide on both sides of the front; and presumably TTL's Industrial band Sloss writes a song called "Confederates on Captagon"
[1] Evangelicalism in Latin America and the South gets much of its impetus from just encouraging teetotalism, reducing the number of members who spend all their cash on guaro and then beat and abandon their families
[2] honestly in this he isn't that far from either the Whigs or Rad-Libs before 1914 (booze is to lubricate negotiations and the voting ceremony, bloodsports are either a mark of one's aristocracy or replaced altogether for European-style civilised entertainment)
the Snake's definitely a "tender misanthrope" like Hitler or Himmler: he objects to Koenig/Goering's propensity for vanity sport hunting, plantation "entertainments" like goose-pulling, or shack-dwellers' dogfighting rings (mostly because it "degrades the nation" or just because it's an embarrassing mudsill distraction)[2]
I also have a really obnoxious scene where he stops the CS Army from issuing cigarettes as standard rations by emptying out both his gassed-up lungs on the quartermaster command to make the point that the doughboys shouldn't be half-crippled by their OWN army before they face the damnyankees--though more pragmatic generals sell opium cigarettes far and wide on both sides of the front; and presumably TTL's Industrial band Sloss writes a song called "Confederates on Captagon"
[1] Evangelicalism in Latin America and the South gets much of its impetus from just encouraging teetotalism, reducing the number of members who spend all their cash on guaro and then beat and abandon their families
[2] honestly in this he isn't that far from either the Whigs or Rad-Libs before 1914 (booze is to lubricate negotiations and the voting ceremony, bloodsports are either a mark of one's aristocracy or replaced altogether for European-style civilised entertainment)
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He was a Group Leader (Major General). In my headcanon there was probably a small handful of people above him. As a Group Leader he actually outranked the Commander of the Army of West Texas (Brigadier General Ling). It's probable that he was de-facto Commander of all Freedom Party Guard troops in the state of Texas (Camp Determination, the training camp near Fort Worth and any other Camp stateand the Armed Freedom Party Guard unit)
Building on my immediate prior point, I'm guessing that the ranks and positions within the Freedom Party Guard apparatus probably weren't strictly defined. You've got the Attorney General at the top since the FPG all appear to answer directly to the AG's office directly. There is probably an Assistant Attorney General for Population Reduction Operations, or something like that that might be an inspector in terms of government bureaucrats, but it always looks like Koenig preferred to go straight to the Camp Commandants whenever he pleased so it's just as likely Koenig ran the concentration camps directly personally.
I wrote at best there were definitely high ranking Freedom Party Guards Officers, like Group Leaders and stuff in command of the detachments of Armed Freedom Party Guards that were on the frontlines, plus the Stalwarts and Freedom Party Guards that were handling internal security.
Now had the CSA won, I could easily see Pinkard getting a promotion to Chief Group Leader or something like that and overseeing the final phases of the full Population Reduction.. after that Koenig would probably tap him for something else in the Justice Department itself.
I wrote at best there were definitely high ranking Freedom Party Guards Officers, like Group Leaders and stuff in command of the detachments of Armed Freedom Party Guards that were on the frontlines, plus the Stalwarts and Freedom Party Guards that were handling internal security.
Now had the CSA won, I could easily see Pinkard getting a promotion to Chief Group Leader or something like that and overseeing the final phases of the full Population Reduction.. after that Koenig would probably tap him for something else in the Justice Department itself.
Possible, but considering that Jake just went after the CSSCOTUS he probably doesn't want anything that remain anyone of the SCOTUS.. remember for Jake it's all about his authority and making sure no one can challenge his. That is why I firmly believe no officer was ever promoted to full General, why he had Ferd Koenig literally keep a personal eye on every Commandant in the country and why there was no single leader of the Freedom Party Guards (the Group Leader that was the chief of his Guard detail being the closest to a real leader the FPG had).
My headcanon is that the CS military purposefully had four de-facto service branched and why field officers even had equal rank to Nathan Bedford Forrest III so that no single officer or individual was higher then anyone else.
wait, wouldn't it be "SCOTCS"? my headcanon is that the sainted Mitchel administration (besides authorizing camps for Red and then butternut "politicals," rigging elections and gleefully daring anyone to do something about it each time) also enthusiastically packed the Court and let several others stand vacant: that fits with the Bruning, Schelicher, and Papen parallels and would also let Featherston give an 18 Brumaire speech mocking the Whigs and R-Ls for basically signing their own warrants without him even knowing
but good point on the CS military, Hitler loved to have all the branches fighting, split them arbitrarily, and then added a parallel to each unit in the SS for double the fun: of course we also have Doylistically maximize it against the North to let it be able to chew through all Ohio, reach Baltimore and Pittsburgh, AND pin down the Feds from Delaware to California with a fraction of the population
thing is there's much less precedent for a Leader Principle in the US South than post-WWI Germany: my TL-191 notes say there's always been enormous tension between 1. the Whig need for a hierarchy of deferral, for a party full of forelock-tuggers, snitches, clock-watchers, ladder-climbers, and lapdogs, and 2. the Cavalier, Lowland plantation, AND Appalachian traditions that "a man's farm is his castle," that every (White, landowning, married) man is a sovereign with no king or boss and the right to enforce it personally with his rifle
so maybe it's no surprise the Snake's going to be an unmarried Father of the Nation, a pretend redneck, an antisocialist carefully balancing the subsidies to every state, a Social Darwinist damning the civilian and military elite, a law-and-order mobster, an unchurched intercessor between the nation and the Creator, a White Supremacist savvy enough to arm the more eccentric Black radicals against the Communists, a straight-edge tweaker, a philistine flirting with private bohemianism
but good point on the CS military, Hitler loved to have all the branches fighting, split them arbitrarily, and then added a parallel to each unit in the SS for double the fun: of course we also have Doylistically maximize it against the North to let it be able to chew through all Ohio, reach Baltimore and Pittsburgh, AND pin down the Feds from Delaware to California with a fraction of the population
thing is there's much less precedent for a Leader Principle in the US South than post-WWI Germany: my TL-191 notes say there's always been enormous tension between 1. the Whig need for a hierarchy of deferral, for a party full of forelock-tuggers, snitches, clock-watchers, ladder-climbers, and lapdogs, and 2. the Cavalier, Lowland plantation, AND Appalachian traditions that "a man's farm is his castle," that every (White, landowning, married) man is a sovereign with no king or boss and the right to enforce it personally with his rifle
so maybe it's no surprise the Snake's going to be an unmarried Father of the Nation, a pretend redneck, an antisocialist carefully balancing the subsidies to every state, a Social Darwinist damning the civilian and military elite, a law-and-order mobster, an unchurched intercessor between the nation and the Creator, a White Supremacist savvy enough to arm the more eccentric Black radicals against the Communists, a straight-edge tweaker, a philistine flirting with private bohemianism
Honest question:
Has it ever been explained, in-universe, why George Armstrong Custer is still on active duty Commanding General at the age of 74 in 1914?
I mean, yes, Turtledove does want to keep certain characters consistent in his works, and Custer is certainly phenomenal in these books, and obviously plays some Hindenburg-type of cfharacter, but still, in universe i'm surprised he was not put into forceful retirement before the First World War...
Has it ever been explained, in-universe, why George Armstrong Custer is still on active duty Commanding General at the age of 74 in 1914?
I mean, yes, Turtledove does want to keep certain characters consistent in his works, and Custer is certainly phenomenal in these books, and obviously plays some Hindenburg-type of cfharacter, but still, in universe i'm surprised he was not put into forceful retirement before the First World War...
I have too wondered same already long time why there is such old commander still in active commander. Even in nowadays over 70 old officer as military commander during war would be pretty old. Yes, Hindenburg and some Frenmch commanders during OTL WW1 weren't young anymore but still Custer seemed bit old guy.
I remember reading American Front for the first time and thought, "You are still alive, Custer?"
Something something Turtledove is lazy with parallels?
In universe I’d say that Custer had enough connections that made him virtually untouchable even to the Yankee Kaiser himself.
TL-191 series just proves that Turtledove has been often bit too lazy on studying things/thinking something else as using parallels or OTL people even when it wouldn't be very logical.
in Watsonian terms, presumably he's terrific at flattery--he tells Mahan "Your Excellency, I disagree--we need both more AND bigger dreadnoughts!" he even wins over TR by saying "yes, sabre-waving hussars will absolutely have a place on the industrialized battlefield!"[1] Edison also wowed the arms industry with things like "take a water cannon--and run electricity through it!"[2] so if the Commanding General of the United States Army was seen at such demonstrations he wouldn't just be perceived as simply this relict mummy
Custer might even have been made the Man of the Hour 1914, the last combat hero that the whole Remembrance ideology rested upon (TR excepted), when the war-frenzied Yanks were still throwing British tea into harbors and pouring French wine in the gutter and setting Southern tobacco on fire (like in the warehouses, not cigarettes)[3]; so he's been safely pushing papers and reviewing parades as the "brain of the Army" but then he started actually giving a few orders instead of acting like a pretty mannequin
[1] this also isn't too different from what CS Army officers are gonna be saying; OTL even winning the Boer War made many Anglophone theorists doubt the invincibility of Continental-style industrialized militaries against determined guerrillas
[2] I also have Featherston doing this--"let's put recon on bicycles! human torpedoes! autogyros!" his unconventional ideas work out in the Chesapeake/WV/Arizona Territory so he's more convinced than ever of his omniscience 1942
[3] Doylistically I see the 1880s-1900s interwar as a time when commercial interests are more important for inter-American affairs than the alliances of 1882 or 1914--even some joint veterans' ceremonies, World Fairs, scientific racism; Wilson can even go to Princeton (heck, technically that's south of the Mason-Dixon Line!); OTL you had the Columbus anniversary and Pledge of Allegiance as deliberate pan-American moves; OTL the British-German and French-Austrian relationships only broke down 1914
Custer might even have been made the Man of the Hour 1914, the last combat hero that the whole Remembrance ideology rested upon (TR excepted), when the war-frenzied Yanks were still throwing British tea into harbors and pouring French wine in the gutter and setting Southern tobacco on fire (like in the warehouses, not cigarettes)[3]; so he's been safely pushing papers and reviewing parades as the "brain of the Army" but then he started actually giving a few orders instead of acting like a pretty mannequin
[1] this also isn't too different from what CS Army officers are gonna be saying; OTL even winning the Boer War made many Anglophone theorists doubt the invincibility of Continental-style industrialized militaries against determined guerrillas
[2] I also have Featherston doing this--"let's put recon on bicycles! human torpedoes! autogyros!" his unconventional ideas work out in the Chesapeake/WV/Arizona Territory so he's more convinced than ever of his omniscience 1942
[3] Doylistically I see the 1880s-1900s interwar as a time when commercial interests are more important for inter-American affairs than the alliances of 1882 or 1914--even some joint veterans' ceremonies, World Fairs, scientific racism; Wilson can even go to Princeton (heck, technically that's south of the Mason-Dixon Line!); OTL you had the Columbus anniversary and Pledge of Allegiance as deliberate pan-American moves; OTL the British-German and French-Austrian relationships only broke down 1914
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In terms of Custer, I have been thinking that maybe he was recalled from Retirement upon the start of the FGW.
How common was that in Imperial Germany? Since the US Armed Forces here are based off of Germany’s military, I have to imagine that they copied doctrine wholesale too
and tbh in Doylist terms it's disrespectful to the subject matter--I know Turt was apparently just making potboilers for his kids' college but I can't really get reader-involved after Blood & Iron, I can't even tell NOLA from Brooklyn or the deepest Appalachians
one thing I always wanted was him to make a McSweeney US/revolutionary or failed-revolutionary CS series, which'd sell like anything else; The War That Came Early and Joe Steele are just as parallelomaniac and he squeezed 9 books out of each, but he basically abandoned his biggest creation ...
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If someone (me lol) had their own ideas for post-SGW events in the timeline, but which can't be expressed via photos in that thread or the pop culture one, would this thread be a good place to dump them? I'm slowly but surely coming up with my own alternative postwar timeline inspired by yet different from David's but I can't think of a good outlet, haha.