1925

Some notable events, 1925

January 8: Benito Mussolini assumes dictatorial powers in Italy.

January 14: Reichspräsident Friedrich Ebert passes away from complications from influenza and appendicitis.

February 1: The first issue of The New Yorker is released.

February 18: The New York printing of The Daily Worker reaches parity with The New York Times in circulation.

March 4: President Wood is inaugurated President for his second term. After the opening of the 65th United States Congress, fist fights break out between WPA and Democratic members over comments about “monkeys in the Capitol.”

March 6 : Pionerskaya Pravda, a newspaper for the Young Pioneers in the Soviet Union, begins publication.

March 18: The HMS Revenge , the lead ship of the Royal Navy’s Treaty exempted battlecruisers, enters commission.(1)

March 27: Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca and King of Hejaz, is coronated as Sultan of Nejd.

April 8: F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes his (eventually) famous novel, Under Red, White and Blue , to mixed critical reception and moderate commercial success, with some noting the dark undertone of disillusionment and bitterness towards the American dream.

April 12: Soviet politician Nikolai Bukharin publishes the monograph Socialism in One Country: A Road Forward in the Absence of Victory by the West-European Proletariat.

April 19: In the second round of the German presidential election, ardent monarchist General Paul von Hindenburg is narrowly elected Reichspräsident over the “Weimar coalition” candidate Wilhelm Marx of the Centre Party.

April 25: The US Navy’s Fleet Problem V concludes. The aggressor Black Force, with the aviation cruiser Langley , trounces the carrier-less Blue Force in a simulated attack on Hawai’i.

April 28: British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill announces, with the presentation of the budget, of a return to a gold bullion standard at a depreciated parity, citing advice from economist John Maynard Keynes and the British Federation of Industries.

May 1: Turnout at annual May Day parades and demonstrations is a disappointment this year. The steadily growing economy and reduced unemployment have in many ways deflated militancy on the Left. The Worker’s Party and the Solidarity labor union face the first decline in total membership after almost two decades of steady growth in membership.

May 2: Communist and trade union delegates found the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the labor arm of the Communist Party of China.

May 7: The KMT’s National Revolutionary Army begins the Eastern Expedition, against the warlord Chen Jiongming.

May 20: Retired Marine General Smedley Butler tours Turkey as an official guest of Mustapha Kemal. The two old soldiers reminisce about the war, and discuss the political situation in the Near East.

June 6: The Sixth June Movement: an eruption of strikes and protests in China sparked by the shooting of student protestors at the Shanghai International Settlement.

June 18: The Civil Rights Act of 1925 is enacted. The ambitious law prohibits discrimination on the basis of race or sex in all public accommodation, transport, housing and employment, overcoming a bitter battle from conservatives. In addition to empowering the National Labor Relations Board to investigate and punish employment discrimination, the Act also establishes a federal Freedom Commission to enforce its other measures.

June 25: The US Navy orders its first treaty-compliant capital ships. The five ships of the United States -class are heavily inspired by the British Revenge- class, and expected to replace the dubiously survivable Lexington- class battlecruisers.

July 1: The so-called National Government of the Republic of China is established in Guangzhou, under the KMT-CCP United Front.

July 3: The Imperial Japanese government promulgates the Peace Preservation Law of 1925 (治安維持法 Chian Iji Hō), effectively outlawing advocacy for socialism in the country, and authorizing the sentencing of members of members of socialist groups to up to ten years hard labor.

July 18: Adolf Hitler publishes the first volume of his political manifesto Mein Kampf(My Struggle), written during his imprisonment.

July 25: Anarchists Fumiko Kaneko and Pak Yeol bomb an affair led by the Japanese Crown Prince, unleashing a massive crackdown.

July 30: Days of Rage: Mob violence erupts in rural towns in South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. Local black prominents are murdered, prompting the mobilization of the state police.

August 7: Former missionary and screenwriter William Dudley Pelley founds the Silver Legion of America in Massachusetts. Modeled off the Italian National Fascist Party and its Blackshirts, the presently tiny Silver Legion attempts to distinguish itself from the “cowardly, unfocused” KKK.

August 9: An arson attack by the Georgia Red Army kills four, including prominent country lawyer and KKK supporter Eugene Talmadge.

August 14: The Klu Klux Klan organizes a march in Washington D.C of 3,000 - 6,000 members. As soon as the march starts, WPA counter protesters and KKK members begin fighting and the police quickly intervene, arresting many KKK members and stopping the march, although many are shocked to see how large the KKK is in Washington D.C.

August 18: In the USSR, Leon Trotsky resigns his position in Sovnarkom as the People’s Commissar for War, under mounting criticism within the party over, among other things, his earlier criticism of Zinoviev and Kamenev as well as his thesis on permanent revolution.

August 24: With dozens dead in sectarian conflict in the Days of Rage, and no clear winner, Congress mobilises the Army and National Guard to maintain order, and prevent the movement of Spartacus League paramilitaries to intervene in the conflict.

September 1: With the capture of Shantou, KMT control of the Guangdong Province is fait accompli.

September 4: NBI Director Hoover receives authorization to crackdown on the Klan. With the limited resources available to him, he begins establishing covert connections with left-wing groups in the South to serve as a catspaw.

September 18: The Voting Rights Act of 1925 is enacted. The Act establishes an Election Commission to oversee federal elections. It also authorizes an automatic reapportionment, subject to review by the Supreme Court, to the apportionment of Congressional seats, based on vote suppression of certain protected groups, as authorized under the Fifteenth Amendment. While chiefly targeted at the suppression of the black vote in the South, it will also block the proposals coming from the left-wing of the Workers’ Party to disenfranchise class enemies.

September 29: At the British Labour Party conference in Liverpool, delegates vote to exclude communists from membership in the Labour Party.

October 3: A Congressional joint resolution authorizing a constitutional amendment to ban the production, sale and distribution of alcohol is soundly defeated. The Prohibition movement begins a long, slow death in American politics, lingering in some areas for decades but losing most if not all of the former national attention it had received.

October 10: Sun Yat-sen publishes his testament on the fourteenth anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution. In it, he calls for a continuous United Front with the Chinese Communist Party, alliance with the Soviet Union, and settles questions about succession within the KMT. Most importantly, he recommends Wang Jinwei as General Secretary of the KMT, tasking him with maintaining discipline in the party, and General Jieshi as commander-in-chief of the military, tasked with the mission of reunifying the nation.

October 14: Alabama State Police arrest Grand Dragon Clarence Churchill* for violating the state’s criminal syndicalism law.

October 21: Spartacist Leaguer and NBI informant John Dillinger carries out an assassination plot against KKK Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans. Dillinger, utilizing a Thompson submachine gun and a tip provided by his NBI contact, attacks the Imperial Wizard’s motorcade en route to a meeting with financial backers in Gary, Indiana. Evans succumbs to his wounds three days later, precipitating a power struggle within the embattled organization.

October 31: Soviet Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs Mikhail Frunze emerges from ulcer surgery, and is expected to make a full recovery.

November 4: Following scandal in New York high society, and a media circus over socialite Kip Rhinelander’s marriage to a mixed-race woman, Alice Jones, the The Daily Worker runs the infamous headline “Critical Support for the Bourgeois Schweinhund,” followed by scathing critiques of the “unscientific racialism” in New York high society.

November 14: The Australian federal elections occur after three years of a Nationalist-Country coalition. The Nationalist-Country alliance runs on a joint ticket and increases their seats despite losing votes to Labor.

November 24: Sun Yat-sen passes away. China’s ongoing civil war leaves little time to mourn.

December 11: The Fourteenth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party begins in Moscow. While outwardly cordial, the congress is a clandestine battleground between the ruling troika and the Left Opposition.

December 17: Air power advocate Brigadier General Bill Mitchell is acquitted of violating Article 96 of the Articles of War, the “catch all” article, for his comments about naval airship disasters.

December 20: Reza Khan successfully overthrows Ahmad Shah Qajar of Iran, and is declared the new Shah by the Constituent Assembly, taking the name Reza Shah Pahlavi (to symbolize the new dynasty)

December 21: Sergei Eisenstein’s groundbreaking film Battleship Potemkin is released.

(1) OTL’s G3-class battlecruiser.