The Hammer Falls

The Hammer Falls ​

“They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there
You’ll either be a union man
Or a thug for J.H. Blair”
~ Florence Reece, “Which Side Are You On?”​

Excerpts from Ernesto Guevara,The Development and Implementation of the Revolutionary War Thesis , (Lexington, KY: Hans Kahle Military Academy Press, 1976)

On 7 June 1933, the All-American Congress of Soviets passed a decree centralising control of all anti-fascist military forces under the control its Revolutionary Military Committee. This decree was countersigned by the heads of the Provisional Government, and received the reluctant endorsement of anti-fascist liberal leaders. Taken together with other acts passed that day, the distinction between soviet and Provisional government de facto ceased; Acting President Sinclair now served concurrently as the Chairman of the All-American Congress, with First Secretary Foster taking the chair of the Congress’s steering committee. With the period of dual power now neatly sewn up, the Revolutionary Military Committee set to the difficult task of turning the unwieldy guerilla armies attached, to varying degrees, to the cause of revolution, into a cohesive revolutionary military force. The Rose Offensive had highlighted the major weaknesses of the loose organization of Antifa and its confused (some would say nonexistent) chain of command.

The first concession to practicality was the enforcement of martial discipline norms. Punishments for breaches of military discipline were implemented. Under the regime of martial law imposed, the voluntary militia detachments could no longer come and go as they pleased. Desertion and insubordination were punished by drumhead court-martial. The RMC, composed predominantly of ex-army officers did little, however, to destroy the democratic and proletarian nature of the revolutionary military. Elections of officers were retained, along with the abolition of officer class privilege.

On 18 June, General Order 117 reorganized the Red Army, the Spartacus League and other party militias and the collection of US Army defectors, and volunteer groups into the Workers’ and Farmers’ Revolutionary Army. There were holdouts: the anarchist Black Brigades split over the question of integration, with platformists acquiescing while the synthesists resisted and held onto its paramilitary status under the banner of the Libertarian Fighters’ League. They nevertheless accepted with some reluctance the dictates of the revolution’s military leaders, for they had no desire to actively hinder the revolutionary struggle, so were not actively persecuted for their reluctance.

The lingering question was what to do with the US Navy. Most of the admiralty had refused participation in MacArthur’s putsch. They were put under house arrest by the White Army or its paramilitary kapos. While a few vessels and bases had provided support to White military takeover, it was always unenthusiastic. The en masse mutinies in the Pacific fleet had destroyed White control of the West coast, but the organizational infrastructure and hierarchy of the Navy refused to commit to either side. It was clear, however, that they could not remain neutral forever. With the success of the Rose Offensive and the Norfolk Rising, and the Reds’ consolidation of power in the Great Plains and Mountain West, a clear winning side emerged.

On 20 June, as the RMC was busy making plans to liberate the City of Washington and if possible capture the renegade MacArthur, Vice Admiral William H. Standley arrived in Chicago, leading a delegation of senior US Navy officers. Presenting the deposed commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral Luke McNamee, as a sweetener, Standley negotiated the US Navy’s transformation into the Workers’ and Farmers’ Revolutionary Navy.

This was no doubt a cynical move. Standley had bypassed many men his senior who had taken no active part in the MacArthur Putsch. While he was an old-school Social Democrat in his politics, Standley was by no means a communist sympathizer. He could, however, fake it quite well, and his own personal letters detail a certain measure of social patriotism guiding his decision. While he did not love the revolutionists, he hated MacArthur and everything he stood for, and the glimmer of hope that the Reds might preserve the democratic spirit of America’s first and second republics was enough to overcome his overblown fears of communist tyranny. But we must not ignore the practical aspects of his conversion; Standley used his role as a bridge between the more reluctant admirals and the revolutionary government to preserve much of the class privilege of the naval officer class.

There was another aspect to the Navy’s turn to the revolutionary government. Having languished in the Great Depression, hemorrhaging men and materiel, the Naval establishment longed for an opportunity to rebuild itself. The Reds made it clear that after the defeat of the Whites, they would be writing a blank check to the WFRN to safeguard their cradle of revolution. The chance to dethrone the British Royal Navy, the reigning world champion, was irresistible.
[…]
Patton, now serving under the brevet rank of Corps Commander, had learned quickly from the failures of the Rose Offensive. He would apply what he had learned studying Frunze’s Unified Military Doctrine and Zapata’s partisan campaigns into a new synthesis of revolutionary war suited for an urban, cosmopolitan and industrial military.

In the context of the revolutionary offensives of the summer, Patton strengthened the political commissariat, establishing the organizational principles that have made it an enduring pillar of the WFRA.

The political commissars were thrust into a leadership role intimately intertwined with the regular chain-of-command. Their functions went beyond the initial role in ensuring compliance from the politically unreliable. As secular chaplains, they would monitor and improve the morale among soldiers. They would also provide political instruction, giving the units a clear revolutionary mission and showing how to carry that out in practice. The Red Army needed to cultivate the image of being a liberator, not a conqueror. Military aggression towards civilians would be counterrevolutionary. To that end, the commissars would also assist in the maintenance of discipline among the units and punishing breaches. And, of course, to mold the uninitiated into dependable communists.

The political commissariat always suffered from a shortage of suitably qualified personnel, particularly in the Civil War. Patton was equal parts military man and revolutionary, and he wanted the members of the commissariat to maintain this balance without compromising either. The commissariat’s first members were mostly comprised of members of the underground Socialist Officers Club, of which Patton had been a member, and party members who had been veterans of the First World War.

The highly sensitive nature of the coming campaign necessitated compliance with revolutionary war doctrine. As Patton had learned during his education at the Virginia Military Institute, the enmity between Northerners and Southerners was intense and deep-seated. An army comprised of Northerners invading the South, even to overthrow a hated tyrant, would not sit well.

For this reason, Patton emphasized the necessity of close cooperation with active partisan groups in enemy territory. In the context of the Civil War, this meant moving men deep behind enemy lines, to serve as agitators and advisors to partisan resistance. The first step towards meaningful liberation would be to bring locals into the communist struggle. The degeneration of the old social order in the South provided a perfect opportunity to do so. Re-establishing communication with Workers’ Party cells in the South enabled the revolutionary leaders to turn the long festering resentment of the “Bourbon” class into a tool to bring a large mass of Southern whites into the communist cause.

The racial issue could potentially destroy the whole operation. While white and black partisans had been cooperating against the NSF regimes in Southern states, this was always at arm’s length. Patton needed them to join the same revolutionary army and fight side by side. Fortunately, the US military had no shortage of Southerners, many of whom had been radicalized into active and committed agents of proletarian revolution. They would serve as the public face of the campaign to liberate the South.

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The Battle of Washington

The fall of the city of Baltimore on 12 June had placed the frontlines only ten miles from the outskirts of the capital. Though MacArthur was confident he’d made his old protege pay dearly for the ground, no one could deny that the situation was dire. A week of fierce summer squalls had bought time for his depleted divisions to dig in.

With a scant 170,000 men in eight divisions left, MacArthur needed to secure the borders of the entirety of the State of Virginia, running from the tidewaters of Chesapeake Bay to the Appalachian Mountains.

Deep-behind his lines, a boil centered around Norfolk festered. In spite of his orders, punctuated with the dispatch of trusted lieutenants and whatever goons he could muster, to hold the harbor defenses of Chesapeake Bay to the last man, Fort Story’s garrison surrendered without a shot fired, and with them the mighty 16-inch gun batteries closed the bay to any hope of naval relief. Like a chain of dominoes, the remaining Army and Navy stations at the mouth of bay surrendered to Butler’s Revolutionary Marines.

Ships and aircraft interdicted the arrival of reinforcements and supplies from the Carolinas. Further north, the battered remains of the 29th National Guard Division dug in on the outskirts D.C. metro area. Trenches and bunkers reminiscent of the Great War dotted the land. Miles of barbed wire, much of improvised with thousands of civilian razor blades soldered to whatever scraps of wire available, covered the approaches. Artillery batteries, including great railway guns pulled from long term storage, clustered in earthen forts in the rear.

The soldiers waited, cold and hungry in the rain, dreading nightfall and another round of raids and counterraids. The anti-aircraft batteries only fired sporadically now, conserving ammunition. The Reds controlled the skies. Planes with red star roundels watched overhead, harrying troops exposed above ground. The stubby green “Ishaks”, gifts from Comrade Stalin, had hunted friendly P-24s and P-26s from the sky.

Further west, the green reserve divisions and combat groups of state militia and paramilitaries garrisoned quieter sectors. The 2nd Infantry Division, along with loyalist militia from West Virginia, had fought a fighting retreat out of coal country, to the relative safety of Virginia. Now they waited in reserve, licking their wounds.

MacArthur’s other regular division, the 8th Infantry, had wheeled south to crush the Norfolk Rising two weeks before. But with the guns of the battleship squadron firmly under Red control, they erected a cordon sanitaire around Norfolk, just outside of naval artillery range.

The stage was set. One 19 June, the guns opened up along the front just before dawn. Soldiers garrisoning Washington tightened their Brody helmets, and hunkered down for a frontal assault by a pan-European band of communist fanatics. But the attack on the front was a feint.

The 1st Tank Brigade, supported by West Virginia Red Guards, broke through the lightly defended lines in western Virginia. Within hours the green defenders of the city of Charlottesville routed, as tanks and motorised infantry wrought havoc in their rear. Tanks, half-tracks and trucks now raced along the asphalt paved U.S. Route 250, while the White lines rolled up like a carpet.

Simultaneously, on the easternmost edge of the state the 1st Marine Division began her breakout. Destroyers braved the mines and hazards blocking navigation of the James River to bring gunfire support to the Marines. Artillery, trucks, and even a few T-26 tanks, ferried across the Chesapeake, supported the Marine assault. Up North, Patton’s troops applied constant pressure on Washington. The guns of the battleship U.S.S. Washington shook the earth east of the city, tearing up fortifications.

Over the next three days MacArthur’s determination did not waver. But as destroyers began to brave the barely navigable channel of the Potomac River to attack artillery positions and supply depots, and the dagger of the 1st Tank Brigade edged ever closer to Richmond, his fortitude broke.

Ordering the 30th National Guard to hold Richmond to the last man, and giving similar orders to the 8th Infantry, MacArthur ordered a general retreat from Washington. The civilian arms of the National Salvation was thrown into a panic. Even the most diehard did not take his talk of “evacuation” and euphemisms of “maneuvering” as true. The city was lost, and with it likely the whole war effort. Those that had not evacuated from the capital or the surrounding area made their hasty plans.

With the Secret Service stretched thin serving as MacArthur’s hatchet men, the beleaguered National Bureau of Investigation stepped in to lend its services. Its chief, J. Edgar Hoover, promised to protect many members of Congress and the executive in getting them out of the battlezone.

While MacArthur was busying himself with plans for the Republic of Cuba, then a protectorate of the United States, and directing the five remaining battleships under his control to protect the approaches to the island, J. Edgar Hoover was quite happily taking a grab bag of putschists into protective custody to turn them over to the Reds. Leaning on his back door channels and informants in the communist movement, the old spy came in from the cold.

In spite of the general retreat, fighting in Washington D.C. was still fierce. The 29th National Guard would serve as the sacrificial lamb in the fighting retreat, buying as much time for the evacuation of the machinery of government and the rest of MacArthur’s forces. The city would be heavily scarred by the fighting. At 3:54 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, on 26 June 1933, Corporal Dae Han Park*, accompanied by Troopers Leonard West* and Isaak Feldman* raised the red flag atop the dome of the U.S. Capitol building. For all practical purposes, the city had been liberated.

The battle was not yet over. The fighting retreat southwards set the Tidewater and Piedmont regions ablaze over the coming days. Red troops fought stubbornly to close the pocket, inching ever closer to Richmond. On 6 July, Platoon Leader Chris Metz* parked his T-3 tank on U.S. Route 1 just south of the city of Richmond, stopping a convoy of retreating civilians and soldiers. Within hours, advance echelons of the 1st Marine Division linked up with the 1st Tank Brigade. While MacArthur and many of his inner circle had escaped, four division equivalents of soldiers were trapped inside the pocket. Demoralized, most would surrender to the first Reds they came across, but pockets of diehards retreated to the countryside to fight an insurgency in the coming months.

Wikibox courtesy of@Asami

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The World Turned Upside Down

Both the newspapers as well as His Majesty’s Government suffered equally from a paucity of reliable, verifiable information during the Civil War. Communiques received by the Foreign Office were often wildly contradictory and soon out of date. British military observers operated clandestinely, with infrequent opportunities to send to secure cables. Both the civilian and military establishments had made a semi-official policy of distrusting any public pronouncements made by either the Red or White movements.

Civilian newspapers journalism standards greatly slipped in reporting on the war and revolution. Scandal erupted when several articles published in March uncritically paroting White propaganda concerning “Negro rape gangs” were retracted following further investigation, including one in The Times , the most esteemed newspaper in the UK.

The Daily Mail would publish whatever gossip and rumor would catch the headlines. The 12 April 1933 issue, for example, published an article asserting that Upton Sinclair had been deposed by Jay Lovestone. The 5 May issue reported that the revolutionary government had outlawed Christianity and subtly implied that the revolutionaries were erecting monuments to Satan in Chicago.

So when The Daily Herald , a Labour Party affiliated newspaper, became the first to break the news of the liberation of Washington D.C., the immediate mood among readers of more establishment periodicals was skepticism and disbelief. A government radio broadcast that evening urged listeners not to jump to conclusion, and also asserted that rumors of labor unrest in Britain were greatly exaggerated.

On Wednesday the 28th, during minister’s questions, the Foreign Secretary John Simon made the first public acknowledgement that Washington had been lost by the National Salvation government, which was presently still recognized as by His Majesty’s Government as the lawful government of the United States of America.

While a more detailed discussion of the details and military implication of this event was shuttered to preserve state secrets, attention turned in the Cabinet and the House of Commons towards the new political reality. In spite of acknowledging a series of Red victories, pure wishful thinking had resulted in few seriously contemplating a Red victory. With details pouring in on the routing of MacArthur’s forces, it became clear that the Reds had all but won the civil war.

On 1 July 1933, Prime Minister Baldwin declared a state of emergency. Canada had already been under an unlimited national emergency since March, and now the rest of the Commonwealth would join them. As part of this emergency, Baldwin secured emergency spending to mobilise the Royal Navy to prepare operations for the defense of the Realm.

Seven battleships kept in reduced commission, some awaiting scrapping pending the result of the summer’s London Naval Conference, were rushed to full commission. Emergency funds were secured to put the Royal Navy back into fighting shape as reservists mustered in case of the unthinkable.

A task force, consisting of the battlecruiser HMS Invincible(1), the carrier HMS Courageous , escorted by the light cruiser HMS Emerald and four destroyers, was sortied to reinforced British concessions in the Caribbean.

Though the British Empire was enthusiastically sharpening the sword, Baldwin also extended the olive branch. Preliminary unofficial meetings were held in Canada between British and American diplomatic officials. Aggressive war was completely off the table in the public mood set by the Great Depression and the lingering exhaustion of the Great War, and that left peace as the only realistic option. While Baldwin was confident that British workers would still rise to the defense of the Empire should the Reds launch a war of aggression, doubts lingered.

These first unofficial meetings proved fruitful. Red diplomats were talking, for now, of peaceful coexistence. It was a bald faced lie, but right now a useful one for both parties. While formal recognition would come months later, Baldwin signalled his intent on 8 July 1933, when he ordered a general suspension of foreign debt obligations both public and private to the United States government or to American financial institutions.

This shattered the National Salvation government. Hard currency dried up overnight, and those of means either tried to plea bargain or attempted to flee the collapsing White regime. In areas still under the direct occupation of the National Salvation military, increasingly worthless scrip and direct expropriation of goods and labor were employed to stem the bleeding.

France was generally content to follow the British government’s lead in policy towards the American Civil War. The Third Republic had been deeply divided internally in the aftermath of the Great War. Whatever healing was beginning in the second half of the Twenties ended with the Great Depression. Thus, without direct national interest at play in the Americas, France had no consensus on what to do.

The Cartel des Gauches alliance, led by the liberal left Radical-Socialist Party, had governed with a small parliamentary majority since May of 1932. With the first rumblings of civil strife in February 1933, Prime Minister Edouard Daladier opted to play strictly by the neutrality rules mandated by the League of Nations.

This policy was never ideal, but it was broadly popular in the centre. Daladier could simultaneously block the financial support being given by French industrialists, as well as any shipment of arms to the conflict on French-flagged merchant vessels while simultaneously hindering the flow of left-wing volunteers to support the beleaguered Reds.

At any rate, save among the most rabid of far-rightists direct French military involvement in the conflict was out of the question. With many hungry mouths at home, and so many dead in the last conflict, no one was of a mood to water the soils of America with French blood.

Baldwin’s tacit delitimisation of the National Salvation regime proved to be another boon. On 11 July 1933, Daladier suspended debt repayments. Courting allies on the centre-right as well as his own centre-left, Daladier planned to split the savings between Depression relief programs and cautious rearmament.

With the economy entering a broad recovery and further bolstered by his popular programs, Daladier had hoped that his leadership would stabilise the Third Republic’s centre. But trouble was brewing on his left flank.

Whereas in Britain liberal-left reformers and reform socialists cohabited in the Labour Party, in France the two strands were represented respectively by Daladier’s own Radical-Socialists and the French Section of the Workers’ International (SFIO). And while the French Section of the Communist International (SFIC) held only ten seats in the Chamber of Deputies, it was orders of magnitude more powerful than the tiny Communist Party of Great Britain.

So while the nature of British reaction to the American Revolution was determined within the halls of bourgeois government, the French working class was growing increasingly restless. August brought the biggest wave of strikes since demobilisation. A new revolutionary wave was beginning amidst the recovery, leaving Daladier at the head of an increasingly compromised government.

Daladier’s first major misstep came when opened discussion among the Council of Ministers accommodate the new political reality in early August. To strengthen the economic recovery, he proposed to extend diplomatic recognition to the UASR and begin trade talks. While all in attendance agreed that this new reality couldn’t be avoided, the more moderate members of his party balked at his seeming eagerness, and believed that making that step first would further inflame the growing tensions between labor and capital.

Benito Mussolini had long admired America for many reasons. He was fluent in English, his words about his fondness for the country preceded many a movie in a gesture of apparent international solidarity. He claimed to love American pies and to enjoy American cinema, and had cultivated deep ties with businesses based in the United States. He also held a certain fondness of America’s vast Italian population, which had long shaped his policy towards the United States.

Mussolini had long put his fingers into the pie of the American far right and had sunk quite a bit of money into the Fascisti Americani. He was a natural ally and advocate of the MacArthur Putsch and immediately sought to cultivate ties. He was perhaps the fiercest advocate of MacArthur in Europe and sought to extend whatever lines of support that he was able to. However Italy’s abilities to project power and its capacity to offer support were limited by the Kingdom’s simple lack of strength. Though counted among the great powers, Italy was always the runt of the litter and had no presence in the western hemisphere with which to base immediate support.

Mussolini attentions became fixed on the United States as the civil war grabbed global headlines. After MacArthur failed to get the quick victory he wished in April, Mussolini made offers of hard currency and arms to MacArthur’s government. He began making frequent visits to the Supermarina , plotting with the Admirals to ferry a “volunteer corps” from the Royal Italian Army to support the White government.

These plans were scuttled when news reached Rome of the Norfolk Rising. With the Atlantic Fleet now in Red hands, any attempt to deliver troops would now be a suicide mission. Mussolini was furious and began making threats to the Admiralty to punish them for disloyalty. Eventually, he saw reason. The Royal Italian Navy had seven battleships at her disposal. The two middle ships of the Caio Dullio -class were undergoing extensive rebuilds and would not be ready for action for months. This left three old dreadnoughts and two newer fast battleships(2), none of which could match the American ships for firepower or durability.

By coincidence, the same day as Washington D.C. fell, Mussolini’s Grand Council of Fascism placed orders for four new battleships. Mussolini had deferred plans for major arms building during the conciliatory phase of Italian Fascism, focusing efforts instead economic growth and rationalization.

America was dead to him. Whereas the Fascist ideal had once turned to dreams of a new Roman imperium, attention now turned to the looming threat of Bolshevism, which might turn the French Mediterranean interests from rival to ally.

1. OTL’s G3 battlecruiser design
2. The Francesco Caracciolo-class, never completed IOTL.