1936

_Notable Events, 1936

January 1st:_ Plinio Salgado authorises intensive developmental programs to build Brazilian industry and exploit the vast resources of the Amazon basin, made possible through investment from Europe and heavy reliance on prison labour. Salgado also seeks to mechanise Brazil’s agriculture under Barroso’s advice, and hires expertise from abroad to design Brazilian tractors and trucks to supplement overseas purchases.

January 3rd: Lisandro de la Torre, citing poor health resigns from the Argentine presidency, ending his short stint as the first member of the Argentine Socialist party to win the presidency. He is succeeded by Nicolás Repetto who vows to continue the Argentine experiment in “people’s democracy”.

January 7th: Salgado, citing the threat of godless Bolshevism and its “divisive tactics breaking apart communities and nations” terminates relations with people’s democracies such as Argentina and Colombia and revolutionary Peru and Chile.

January 8th: The True Democrats hold their emergency National Convention after their split last year, where they nominate Martin Dies, Jr. as Chairman and John Nance Garner as Congressional Party Leader. Many CSS agents are in attendance.

January 10th : The Argentine government secures the acquisition of a number of large shipments of machine tools from America as well as raw materials from the Soviet Union to accelerate plans to develop less populated regions of Argentina such as Patagonia.

January 11th: An unsuccessful assassination attempt is made against Metropolis Attorney General Joseph Brodsky. The assassin (gunned down at the crime scene) is identified as Arthur Flegenheimer, aka “Dutch Schultz”, a mobster embittered by the loss of his profitable number racket and control over local unions, prompting a further crackdown on organized crime in the city.

January 13th: Fearful of encirclement, the governments of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras band together in an attempt to fight off the red tide from both the north and the south. Creating a military alliance to share resources with one another as they seek to crack down on a hydra of revolutionary agitation.

January 15th: The Soviet science fiction film Kosmicheskiy reys or Cosmic Voyage makes its debut. The film would make its American debut months later, garnering praise from HG Wells and Fritz Lang, among others.

January 16th: Albert Fish, the “Brooklyn Vampire” is executed at Sing-Sing Prison for killing at least five children, before and after the Revolution. The first execution unrelated to conduct during the Civil War

January 18th: Fritz Freleng’s Midnight at Porky’s debuts, featuring Termite Terrace star Porky Pig as a waiter fighting off a gang of robbers. It is the first Termite Terrace cartoon to feature its signature target opening.

January 20th: George V, King of the United Kingdom and Emperor of India, dies at age 70. His eldest son, the Prince of Wales, ascends the throne as Edward VIII.

January 22nd: The governments of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras declare the foundation of a Federation of Greater Central America, another in a long line of Central American political unions. In reality the “Federation” is little more than a triple alliance of desperate far right states.

January 25th: Peruvian Revolutionaries at this point control virtually all major cities and most of the arable land. The revolutionary leadership now engages in siege warfare against the remaining reactionary holdouts, offering food and amnesty for those who defect to destroy rightist cohesion.

January 27th : Mao Tse-Tung is expelled from the Communist Party of China over his perceived nationalism, but remains committed to Socialist politics; focusing on his theoretical writings, agitprop, and poetry instead. Chen Duxiu’s Trotsky sympathising Orthodox Leninist faction is now supreme in the Communist party through an alliance with Zhu De’s peasant focused Agrarianists and Xiang Jingyu’s influential if young women’s movement. It is flanked to its right which is comprised of “Social Patriots”, Pro-Market factions inspired by the Kibbutzim , and Moscow Loyalists with the latter being headed by Wang Ming. On its left is Zhou Enlai’s pro-D.C faction, the Shanghai labour militants inspired by the IWW, and a collection of Chinese “ultra-leninists” highly influenced by Bordiga.

January 28th: WCP Secretary-General Earl Browder announces the Party Central Committee’s decision to end the power-sharing coalition, and contest the next elections alone. The Presidium postpones Soviet elections to 8 May.

January 29th: Chen Duxiu meets with Zhou Enlai and Wang Ming to further consolidate the Chinese Communist movement. Though there are of course divisions in ideas for the way forward, it is agreed that supporting the Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang against the right, the warlords, and the insidious influences of France, Britain, and Japan is paramount.

_January 31st:_The Green Hornet radio series debuts, a modern day spin-off of the popular Lone Ranger series.

February 1st : The “Populate or Perish” laws as they’re nicknamed are passed in Australia, opening the country to immigration with far less strict immigration laws. Adjoining them are laws promoting the raising of the national birth rate in anticipation of a vast military threat from the Comintern’s pacific forces. Similar laws are soon passed in New Zealand as well.

February 3rd: At a conference in Havana, the resurrected American Mafia makes the decision to cut ties with their mainland counterparts in the aftermath of the Brodsky attempt and invest further in Venezuelan oil.

February 6th: The IV Olympic Winter Games open in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. It is the first Olympics that the nascent UASR participates in, winning a Gold medal in Bobsleigh, and Bronze in Ice Hockey and Speed Skating, a coup for the newly established Cultural Secretariat.

February 8th: Jawaharlal Nehru is elected President of the Indian National Congress. While impressed with the American experiment with socialism, he is skeptical of associating the INC with the larger Comintern struggle.

February 10th: Strikes erupt at crucial Venezuelan oil facilities, bringing together both the reformist and revolutionary left.

February 12th: Julius Monroe composes “Amanda the Thunderer”, which will serve as the primary leitmotif for Commander Columbia for decades to come.

February 13th: The Turkish Turanists, who had previously managed to gain a number of seats in prior elections over the cause celebre of the land ceded to the Soviets following defeats suffered against the Armenians seek to push forward a bill to forbid the teaching of non-Turkish languages in regions such as Turkish Kurdistan. Though it is defeated, that the bill even lives to see a vote is regarded as troubling.

February 14th: Street battles erupt in Venezuela between the strikers and mafia affiliated leg breakers while the government for the time being largely holds back to avoid repeating the mistakes of prior reactionaries. Contreras speaks with foreign interests to decide on a course of action. The British consulate in Caracas makes it clear that production must be restored with all due haste.

February 16th: The leftist Popular Front achieves victory in the Spanish general election, defeating the right-wing National Front.

February 17th: Lee Falk’s iconic comic strip The Phantom debuts

February 19th: Havanan Mafiosos stage the “Scarlet Nineteenth” massacre, resulting in the deaths of 38 striking Venezuelan workers, resulting in an intensification of rioting.

February 20th: British economist John Maynard Keynes publishes The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in the UK

February 21st : The National Convention for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party ends in New Orleans, with Franklin D. Roosevelt elected as Party Chairman for the upcoming election, and Vice-Premier Robert LaFollette, Jr. as Party Leader.

February 21-28 : Strikes and retaliations against growing police brutality within the Central American Federation are met with extreme violence. Driven to intense paranoia by their encirclement, a series of massacres are launched across the week that will see more than a thousand people killed each day across the entire week.

February 22nd: In a meeting of the Revolutionary Military Committee, Browder and Foster issue a directive to prepare for armed intervention in Central America.

February 23rd: The Colombian government issues a demand for Venezuela’s leadership to step down and accede to the will of the people in response to the increasing demonstrations. This is seen as proof positive of Colombian (and thus American and Soviet) meddling in Venezuelan affairs.

February 24th: The 100,000th Italian settler arrives in Libya as part of a wave of immigration into the colony to exploit its oil wealth and partake in Mussolini’s work programs. Given the small population of Libya, the oil rush has drastically altered the colony’s demographics.

February 25th: Douglas MacArthur meets with Contreras, Busch, and Salgado to discuss the course of the Americas, though Canadian Prime Minister R. B. Bennett rejects the invitation.

February 26th: The Showa Restoration is finalized

February 28th : The British government rejects entreaties to intervene in the Central American Federation, instead opening British Honduras to refugees fleeing the violence.

March 1st: The Boulder Canyon Dam is completed, a major feat of engineering on the Colorado River. It is expected to generate electricity in a few months.

March 3rd: Riviera and Sandino come to an agreement to start moving soldiers to the borders with the renegade central American juntas as the two countries start to make plans for war. A warning is issued that further barbarism will not be tolerated as civil war begins to openly erupt in the “Federation.”

March 5th: Knowing full well the dangers of a mishandled response, Contreras opts to meet some of the demands to divide the movement against him. Offering workers stakes in oil industries, offerings to use his government as a negotiator with foreign businesses, and renewed investment in the flagging agricultural sector of the economy.

March 7th: In defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany reoccupies the Rhineland. In spite of the blatant violation of the Treaty, Britain and France take no action.

March 8th: The Paraguayan government, under pressure from Brazil; begins to implement Integralist policies. A small cadre of military officers in opposition, led by Colonel Rafael Franco, are ultimately forced to flee to Argentina

March 10th: Contreras’ gambit works, and a number of the reformists begin to stand down while the revolutionary left is made to stand alone. With Western Europe highly likely to go to war to protect Venezuela’s oil fields, the Comintern’s hands are tied.

March 12 : San Salvador sees its bloodiest day yet as; under intense pressure, the government cracks and begins indiscriminate slaughter, more than three and a half thousand suspected enemies of the state will be gunned down in twenty four hours.

March 13th: At the Democratic-Republican Convention in St. Louis, William Borah is nominated as Congressional Party Leader, and Robert Taft as Chairman.

March 14th: Charles “Lucky” Luciano, one of the reigning heads of the Mafia, is arrested in a hotel room in Buffalo, following his listing on the “Public Enemies List”, and a month-long manhunt. He was preparing to cross into Canada.

March 15th : A small scuffle between a student in the Shanghai Commune and a Japanese legation guard ends in 8 people dead and 20 more injured.

March 16th : An end to major fighting in Peru occurs as the last significant reactionary strongholds surrender to revolutionary forces. The success of the Peruvian revolutionary movement is widely hailed across the Comintern.

March 17th: The St. Patrick’s Floods in Pittsburgh bring devastation to the city.

March 20th: The Nicaraguan, American, Soviet, and Mexican governments issue warnings that if the governments of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala do not change course; there will be dire consequences.

March 22nd: Honduran dictator Tiburcio Carías Andino publicly boasts that the Comintern will find only ruin and defeat in central America as he and his allies launch a wave of offensives against centres of revolutionary activity and move soldiers to their borders.

March 23rd: Josef Stalin’s long planned diplomatic visit to DeLeon City opens with a discussion with Browder, Foster and Rivera about intervention in Central America.

March 24th: Economist Oskar Lange publishes the first volume of his On the Economic Theory of Socialism , which integrated classical pricing control within a socialist system, through the University of Chicago

March 25th: The National Convention for the Workers’ Communist Party of America is held in Toledo. By an overwhelming majority, it continues to endorse Upton Sinclair as Secretary-General, and William Foster as Premier.

March 28th: Premier Foster presents a motion to launch military action to the All Union Congress of Soviets against the governments of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

March 30th: A group of military officers styling itself as Kōdōha(Imperial Way Faction) seizes control of the Imperial Japanese government in a relatively bloodless coup. The faction cements the military and particularly the IJA’s control over the state, espousing a totalitarian, militaristic and expansionist doctrine.

April 2nd: A major Sons of Liberty cell is broken up by Public Safety in Atlanta. Among those arrested is 17 year old Johnny Birch. When the story reaches international papers, it causes an international frenzy, with many calling for clemency for John Birch, and making him a martyr in Cuba

April 4th: Salgado passes the “Deviancy laws” authored partially by head of the Green Guard Cristiano Boaventura and head of the Green Shirts Gustavo Barroso. The laws authorise the draconian penalties starting with three decades of hard labour and escalating to outright death for acts of “sexual deviancy” such as homosexuality, transgender expression, and even advocacy of such positions.

April 5th: Tupelo, Mississippi is hit by a severe tornado, which kills 216 and injures 700. Among the survivors, miraculously, are one year twins Elvis and Jesse Presley.

April 7th: We the Living , the debut novel for Russian-American exile Ayn Rand, is first published by Macmillan of Canada. The book is a romance with a very strong anti-communist message.

April 8th: American intelligence services establish greater ties with the Central American revolutionaries, helping to supply weapons and supplies to keep them in the fight in the face of increasingly brutal repressions.

April 9th: Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, a Jewish mobster affiliated with the Cosa Nostra, is caught attempting to board a passenger ship to Australia.

April 10th: In an attempt to further mollify the reformist left while simultaneously cracking down on revolutionaries, Contreras steps up repressions against organised crime; targeting both Mafiosos and Revolutionaries in the guise of restoring order.

April 12th: Premier Foster and Foreign Secretary Reed jointly announce that the UASR will accept Jewish refugees fleeing the Reich, prompting hundreds of visas to resettle approved by the end of the year.

April 13th : Soyuzdetmultfilm, the premier Soviet animation studio, is founded by order of the Politburo with the assistance of American animation talent. Soyuzdetmultfilm will proceed to produce thousands of works of animation, starting with a number of original commissions as well as a number of projects once under the auspices of smaller teams now under its banner. Its first production will be “Ivan and Rose”, the first in what will come to be a series of shorts about a cheerful and imaginative if absent minded Soviet boy meeting a sophisticated and erudite but fun-loving American girl and falling in love.

April 14th: Orson Welles’ all-Black production of Macbeth at the Lafayette Theater in Harlem garners critical acclaim and is touted as the premier example of plays produced under public grants.

April 17th: The first people to be killed for violating the deviancy decree are a twenty year old Brazilian Bisexual named Jose Ribeiro and his lover Joao Peres. After a quick show trial, the two are executed by firing squad. The execution draws substantial foreign criticism from across the political spectrum for the barbaric killing and transparently rigged “trial”, especially from Comintern member states, resulting in a mild relaxation of the policy.

April 20th: Major street violence in Venezuela largely comes to an end as revolutionary activity dies down; with many in the Venezuelan left retreating to Colombia for safety. Contreras has kept the pumps flowing and is hailed a hero in many European and Japanese news circles.

April 23rd : Boaventura and his brothers pass a memoir through the Green Guard in the organization’s secretive ConLang Uzumrik. The memoir is a vicious hateful screed against queerness warning the paramilitary that there is no cure for homosexuality, transgender, or other “deviancies” save death.

April 25th: The Arab Higher Committee is established by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem for Palestinian Arab organizations under his directorship.

April 26th : The French legislative elections are held in the backdrop of a heavily divided France; where even the major political parties are all divided into numerous subfactions. All portions of the spectrum whether reformist, revolutionary, leftist, rightist, centrist, republican or monarchist are at war with themselves as much as each other. The only certainty however, is that the French army will intervene should chaos ensue and that overt alignment towards either the Pact of Steel or the Comintern will lead to civil war.

May 1st: May Day celebrations commence across the UASR. An urban legend in later years was that urban centers celebrated with large scale “free love orgies”, which sparked outrage from conservative and rural figures.

May 2nd: Peter and the Wolf, a composition by Sergei Prokofiev, debuts at the Nezlobin Theater in Moscow.

May 3rd: Joe DiMaggio makes his Major League debut in baseball, batting for the Debs Hammers (formerly the Washington Senators)

May 5th. With pay cuts being announced and discontent by native crews, sailors aboard the HNLMS De Zeven Provincien mutinied and took control of the ship off the Sumatran coast, heading to Soerabaja port in eastern Java. A task force is assembled to intercept her before she reached the Sunda Strait, comprising of the cruiser Java, destroyers Evertsen and Piet Hein, submarines KVII and KIX and several planes.

May 7th: Italy formally annexes Ethiopia as part of Italian East Africa. A candlelight vigil is held in Columbia to mourn the incident. ANC leader Richard Wright gives a speech condemning the Italians as imperialists.

May 8th: UASR general election: governed by a new election law, all the Soviets are up for election beginning on Friday and concluding on 10 May 1936. The disenfranchisement of counterrevolutionaries and class enemies, once sporadic, is now systematic. As a result, the WCP increases its majority in most states and in the all-Union Congress.

May 10th: Contreras meets with Salgado and Busch to discuss the terms of an anti-Comintern alliance in South America. While Contreras and Busch are simple military dictators with reason to be sceptical of Salgado’s designs, he is their most natural ally on the continent.

May 11th: The mutineers aboard De Zeven Provincien surrender after being bombed by a task force of five Dornier flying boats and three Fokker bombers with 23 of the sailors dead.The involvement of Communist cells in the mutiny greatly boosts the profile of the Anti-Revolutionary Party and the previously obscure National Socialist Movement at the expense of the centre-right.

May 12th: The Central American Revolutionary War begins after a border stand off at Honduras results in a number of deaths when trigger happy Honduran soldiers attack their Nicaraguan counterparts after demanding to be allowed through to capture fleeing dissidents. Mexican and Nicaraguan forces begin their attacks immediately.

May 16th: Charles Luciano is convicted on a number of charges, including murder, treason (providing arms and shelter for the Sons of Liberty), and illegal gambling, and sentenced to death on Riker’s Island.

May 24th: Workers at the Kharkiv “Komintern” Locomotive Factory begin a wildcat strike after a further workday extension is announced.

May 25th: Circus , directed by Grigori Aleksandrov and starring Lyubov Orlova, is released. A story about racism in America, it notably features cameos from Charlie Chaplin, Paul Robeson, and Solomon Mikhoels.

May 26th: The Kharkiv soviet orders local NKVD Internal Troops to seal off the city as the strike spreads to trolley workers and other industrial personnel. Strike suppression begins, resulting in rioting and civil unrest.

May 28th: Mathematician Alan Turing submits his paper On Computable Numbers to the London Mathematical Society, where he introduces the idea of a machine which can use a predefined table of rules to determine a solution to input variables

June 1st: Zhang Xueliang, “the Young Marshal,” takes command of the New 1st Army. As part of Comintern military cooperation, these American trained divisions are expected to be the core template for the National Revolutionary Army. American industrial investment in railroads, steel, arms and chemical production are expected to be a vital resource in future struggles against Japan.

June 2nd : Prominent Indonesian nationalists Tjipto Mangoenkoesoemo, Ki Hadjar Dewantara and communist-affiliated journalist Mas Marco Kartodikromo are put on trial in connection of the riots after the De Zeven Provincien mutiny.

June 5th: The “Federation’s” offensives into Mexico and Nicaragua collapse after being allowed to grind themselves into exhaustion under the withering gaze of American airpower, superior Communist Equipment, and naval bombardment.

June 7th: The Matignon Agreement between the French government and the CGT, which ensures the legal right to strike and removes all obstacles to union organization, ends the French General Strike. For the time being, peace is maintained in France.

June 10th: Gone with the Wind is published in Cuba and the United Kingdom by Macmillan. A sweeping historical epic centering on the South during the Civil War, it is a massive hit amongst the American exile community, especially among Southerners.

June 12th: Guatemalan forces are repelled from traditional native land by bands of heavily armed and well trained Zapatist natives; who have been supported by Mexico to prepare them for an uprising against Mexico’s southern neighbour for years.

June 15th: The III Congress of Soviets convenes. In the afternoon, the new CEC convenes with the WCP in a commanding super-majority, and the DFLP in the opposition benches.

June 17th: Clemency is denied in the prosecution of 17-year old John Birch who is convicted of helping plot the bombing of the Atlanta chapter of the African National Congress, despite the pleas of many international observers. However, he is given a reduced sentence,in exchange for a military stint.

June 19th: American forces make their first landings at both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of the “Federation”, driving away the increasingly scattered and disorganised enemy forces with little difficulty. Paratroopers launched from bases in Mexico are used to great success.

June 23rd : British forces at Belize establish a “safe” zone near the borders of British Honduras, extending the de facto borders of the colony.

_June 26th:_A Farewell to Arms, the adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s romance set during the First World War starring Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball, is released by Culver City Studios, the first major feature to utilize the relatively new three-strip Technicolor technique.

June 28th: WFRA Deputy Chief of Staff George Patton announces that the West Point Military Academy will begin accepting women for the coming term, greenlighting a handful of aspirants from among the Army’s NCO cadres.

July 1st: US President-for-Life Douglas MacArthur begins purging his inner circle in response to decreasing sugar harvests and riots in various Cuban cities. Deputy Secretary of State Joseph Kennedy is promoted to Secretary of Interior as a result.

July 3rd: The governments of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are no longer able to contain the offensives launched against them. Mexican forces enter Guatemala City and American paratroopers capture Guatemalan dictator General Jorge Ubico Castañeda.

July 6th: The Army of Africa launches a coup against the Leftist government of Manuel Azana, which is joined by other Spanish Army uprisings, starting off the Spanish Civil War. The coup soon comes under the command of General Jose Sanjurjo. Militants from the PCE and the CNT defy the injunctions of the more moderate Republicans, seizing arsenals and forming militias. Fierce street-fighting erupts across Spain as Nationalist and Republican militants fight for control of the major cities.

July 7th : In cooperation with PBS Radio Lab and the Mutual Broadcasting System (MBS), the TSC conducts the first pre-recorded test of an experimental interlaced 30-frame, 343-line broadcast system from Metropolis’ MBS-1 to 241 receivers. This is the first broadcast of what became the 1935 TSC Demo Reel, an American long-form video benchmark that would last for almost fifty years. It was also the first American field test of television transmission outside of the closed-circuit experiments conducted at the PBS Center.

July 8th: Aided by uprisings and mutinies in the crumbling Honduran army, Nicaraguan forces enter Tegucigalpa. Andino has already made himself scarce, having fled to British Honduras a week before and taken a ship to Venezuela.

July 9th: The Mutiny on the Espana : As ships of the Spanish Navy support the air and sealift of troops from Morocco to support Sanjurjo’s putsch attempt, the crew of the battleship Espana mutiny. After the junior officers and enlisted seize control of the ship, they raise the red flag, sparking spontaneous mutinies on her escorts.

July 11th: The Nat Turner Story , starring Paul Robeson and directed by Fritz Lang, is released by AFNR based film cooperative Lincoln Films.

July 13th : The North American Heat Wave reaches its peak, with the Midwest experiencing record high temperatures.

July 15th: Scandal erupts after Prime Minister’s Questions; a backbencher member of the Tories asks whether His Majesty’s Government is considering peacetime conscription as a preparedness measure, expecting a denial. Prime Minister Baldwin, however, does not deny it.

July 17th: In a speech before the Congress of Soviets, Premier Foster formally pledges American support and aid for the Communist Party of Spain and the CNT in their “struggle against the fascist threat”.

July 18th: The July Uprising in Dutch East Indies begins; A group of jawara(bandits) recruited by the PKI attacks the Glodok prison, but unsuccessful. Elsewhere, workers in Soerabaja and Semarang—where union activity is the strongest—proclaimed “soviets” and the peasantry in Bantam, Tegal and Minangkabau rose up against the colonial authorities. However, the nationwide uprising hoped for failed to materialize, due to a lot of the local leadership of the PKI getting arrested and the proposed truce with the Sarekat Islam did not went through.

July 19th : Latin America divides itself further on the issue of support for one side or the other of the Spanish Civil War. While countries such as Brazil, Venezuela, and Bolivia endeavour to aid the Falangists as much as possible, nations such as Chile, Mexico, and Argentina instead resolve to unwaveringly support the Republic.

July 21st: The British government announces that it will not interfere with the Spanish Civil War, and convinces the French and the League of Nations to follow the same line, enforcing a blockade and preventing military personnel from entering. The American and Soviet delegations heavily criticize this course of action.

July 23rd: Right wing factions of the KMT meet in Hong Kong to discuss some means of taking China back from the American and Soviet backed KMT Revolutionary Committee and the Communists. Increasingly sidelined by what they feel to be illegitimate usurpers, the Right looks to Sun Fo, H.H. Kung, and begins courting “the red general” Jiang Jieshi himself.

July 25th: Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, in defiance of the League of Nations non-intervention blockade, begins to give military equipment and aid to the Nationalists, through the Salazar regime in Portugal.

July 28th: The Vatican issues its official statements on the Spanish Civil War. Remembering the schism its efforts to bully New World Catholics had created, it opts for a more measured condemnation of violence against the clergy and ecclesiastic grounds in an attempt to save face.

July 29th: Molotov and Reed hold conference at the ECCI. Despite the Soviets’ initial misgivings, Molotov states that they will back America’s pledge for support for the Spanish leftists, and the declaration that neither state will sign or abide by the Non-Intervention Agreement. The International Brigades are also organized at this time as an all-volunteer unit.

August 1st: The 1936 Summer Olympics open in Berlin, and becomes the first sports event to be broadcast on live television through the British Broadcasting Corporation. American and, for the first time, Soviet athletes compete, in spite of their open opposition to Nazism. That said, the CulSec made a conscious decision to send Jewish and Black athletes specifically to indicate their solidarity with the oppressed Jewish peoples and opposition to Nazi racial ideology.

August 3rd: A delegation of Indian National Congress members, led by Subhas Chandra Bose, arrives in DeLeon-Debs to meet with Foreign Secretary John Reed. Reed affirms support for Indian independence, but Bose leaves the meeting dissatisfied.

August 4th: Greek Prime Minister Ionnes Metaxas, with the support of the King, declares a state of emergency, suspends parliament, and declares Martial Law, thus setting himself as dictator.

August 5th: After suppressing unrest within Batavia itself, the Dutch colonial government moves to crush the uprisings. Japan sends elements of the Combined Fleet, including detachments of Special Naval Landing Forces, to secure Japanese citizens and businesses. The insurrections themselves began to run out of steam due to lack of coordination, the peasants’ uprising failed to expand beyond their respective regions, the Soerabaja and Semarang soviets are mostly holding their ground. Privately, several members of the PKI’s politburo excoriated Semaun for aligning the party with bourgeois nationalism.

August 7th: The UASR formally passes the “Aid to the Spanish Republic” Act (with opposition only from the DRP and TD), which authorizes military and humanitarian aid to the Spanish Republic and CNT, as well as a clear declaration that they will not follow the blockade. The shipment of arms to the CNT causes mild controversy in Republican circles.

August 10th: El Salvador’s army is now essentially nonexistent as Comintern forces sweep through the countryside. Salvadoran dictator Martinez is captured as the Occultist is found latching onto the deranged hope that the ritual of a band of hucksters will turn the tide of the war.

August 12th: The initial plan for the coup against the Spanish Republic has failed. Nationalist rebels have failed to take most of the major cities, and while much of the countryside is under Nationalist control, Azana’s government refuses to surrender. In London, Prime Minister Baldwin issued a directive to the Royal Navy to not interfere with the passage of American flagged ships to Spain lest a second Great War erupt over the fallout.

August 17th: The 1936 Olympiad closes, with the UASR managing to make a surprise victory over Germany in terms of medal count, with 35 Gold Medals and 69 in total. They also have a symbolic victory with African sprinter Jesse Owens, and Jewish relay runners Sam Stoller and Marty Glickmen managing to get some of those gold medals, as well as other victories in sports such as Basketball, beating German athletes in the process.

August 20th: Fighting breaks out in the Southwest of China between Chinese soviet uprisings and the forces of the Republic of China-Chongqing warlords of the Guizhou Clique, raising the specter of Japanese military intervention when Tokyo sends warning that should China degenerate into a renewed warlord Era they will take steps to intervene.

August 21st : The War in Central America is essentially over, with clean up actions against remaining scattered bands of loyalists reporting that most major resistance has ceased.

August 22nd : South Africa’s economy is currently experiencing a commodity and industrialisation boom. However the increasing industrialisation of the economy is also raising tensions in certain sectors of society as worker’s unions continually grow in number in response to haphazard safety standards, unequal wages, and long hours of work.

August 23rd: The children’s book The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf is cited by Culture Secretary Louise Bryant as a key part of the “propaganda for peace” being promoted overseas.

August 25th: The Australian Labor party issues an official condemnation of the Australian segment of the IWW for its “divisive tactics” and “nature as a mouthpiece for the D.C line.”

August 28th : Major fighting in the Chinese Southwest ebs for now. All sides involved fear intervention by the Japanese and European powers enough to allow cooler heads to prevail for now. But the Japanese government orders an increased military presence in its concessions all the same, including a substantial increase in its forces in former German areas such as the Shandong Peninsula.

August 30th: A message is sent to the press by John E. Rankin, the new Grand Wizard of the KKK and regional head of the Sons of the Confederacy, warning of a “New American Revolution” against the “Judeo-Bolshevik, miscegenationist government”

September 1st: Both British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden and his French counterpart Yvon Delbos heavily criticize Comintern involvement in the Spanish Civil War.

September 5th: The Bangkok-Changchun-Tokyo accord is signed between the Governments of Thailand, Manchukuo, and Japan that formally establish the existence of an alliance between the three to formalise years of growing Japanese cooperation with the Siamese.

September 7th: Benjamin, the last known Thylacine, dies in captivity at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania.

September 10th: The Public Broadcasting Service is established, covering radio broadcasts and the nascent medium of television. Five channels are currently being set up from radio stations across the nation.

September 12th: South African Field Marshal Jan Smuts sends his reports on the country’s military readiness to British command. He emphasises the necessity of opposing Apartheid to defuse tensions within the country and lauds the Commonwealth’s role in bringing development to the Union.

September 15th: The Paul Whiteman Orchestra performs to a sold-out crowd at the Mariinsky Theatre in Leningrad. In attendance are Foreign Secretary Molotov, his wife Polina Zhemchuzhina, and composer Dmitri Shostakovich. Shostakovich and Whiteman are photographed shaking hands.

September 17th: Cape Hatteras in North Carolina is hit by a devastating hurricane, causing massive amounts of damage.

September 20th: As Nationalists forces begin to approach Madrid, General Sanjurjo is declared Generalissimo of the Falangist State.

September 21st: With the ink barely dry on the American-Spanish Treaty of Mutual Assistance, elements of the WFRMC begin operations against Falangist militias in the Canary Islands.

September 26th: The Central Executive Council enacts the so-called “Two Ocean Navy Act” on a strict party-line vote, with the WCP supporting the Act with few abstentions, the DFLP in opposition after failing to secure a more moderate armaments plan, and the DRP steadfastly opposed on a “guns vs. butter” principle. The Act will go into effect in April as part of the 1937 Fiscal Year.

September 29th: South African geologists looking for more deposits to mine encounter a wealth of fossils in the Choiniere. While not useful for mineral resource exploitation, they are invaluable to the Paleontological community.

October 3rd: The XI International Brigade, known by the nickname the “Eugene Debs Brigade”, consisting of volunteers from America, the Soviet Union, and Canada, ships off for Spain.

October 5th: American socialite Ruth Harkness, Chinese American explorer Quentin Young, and British naturalist Gerald Russell disappear in the Sichuan Province, while searching for Giant Pandas to bring back to civilization. It’s rumored they were victims of fighting in the region.

October 7th: The George Washington Brigade is organized by fascist American exiles in Havana to fight for the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. They are met in Portugal by Standartenführer Joseph Kennedy Jr., their SS advisor and organizer.

October 10th: The Siege of Madrid begins, with the Nationalists breaking the Republican outer defense, but opposed with explosives, such as “Sanjurjo Cocktails”.

October 12th: With the Balearics and the Canaries secured, Stavka deploys the XII International Brigade to Spain, a fig-leaf covering the deployment of the 3rd Tank Division under the command of Major General David Eisenhower.

October 14th: The British government grants the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge’s request for a grant to fully explore the fossil beds in Choiniere.

October 16th: The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to James Joyce. It is believed that Joyce was chosen due to previous favorite Eugene O’Neill’s prominent position in the American government.

October 17th: Ten Days that Shook the World, an adaptation of John Reed’s memoirs on the October Revolution, is released by Pico Pictures. Directed by John Ford, and starring John Carradine as Reed, it becomes a classic and a major blockbuster for the era. Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein makes several cameos throughout (having been in Hollywood at the time of filming and stumbling on the production)

October 20th : Emiliano Zapata publishes the latest iteration of his thesis on agrarian socialist revolution and socialism in the pre-industrial world titled “The Revolution and the Farmer”; co-authored by lifelong ally Pancho Villa; to expand on their prior corpus of thought. Zapata also expands on his thoughts regarding the revolutions in Chile, Central America, and Peru as well as his analysis of the failure in Brazil, Bolivia, and Venezuela.

October 25th: Italy and Germany sign an alliance pact opposing Comintern, starting what would be called the “Rome-Berlin Axis”

October 29th: The Uptown Theater opens in the Debs Commune.

October 31st: The Rocket Propulsion Laboratory is established by the Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, with help from grants from the Army Air Force and the Academy of Arts and Sciences. Specializing in research on rockets and their applications, it is the first university based rocket research center. Its leadership committee is led by Theodore von Karmen and graduate student Frank Malina.

November 2nd: The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is established

November 6th : The first live broadcast is demonstrated on Metropolis’ MBS-1TV, using a slightly smaller number of RR-356B units. While Nazi Germany had managed a 200-line live broadcast during the Munich Olympics earlier in the year, this is the first live transmission of what was then considered a high-definition television signal. This coincided with the general availability of the GEC 1800 and 1801 ‘kinescope’ for amateur radio experimenters.

November 7th: On the anniversary of the October Revolution, the Soviet government begins a public show trial against members of the supposed “Zinoviev-Kamenev Terrorist Centre.” News of high level conspiracy within the Soviet government shocks the public across the Comintern, as many important figures among the “Old Bolsheviks” are denounced by their confederates for planning a “Soviet Thermidor” and plotting the assassination of leading figures in the Politburo, including Stalin.

November 10th: The Siege of Madrid ends as General Sanjurjo withdraws to defensive positions outside the city.

November 20th: Germany and Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact.

November 23rd: “Terraplane Blues” is released, the first song by seminal Blues musician Robert Johnson.

November 24th: The Iberian Libertarian Federation is formed from anarchist strongholds Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia. The UASR commits to both this newly formed nation and the struggling Republic.

December 1st: Hitler Youth membership is now mandated for all boys ages 10-18 in the German Reich.

December 5th : The Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic is dissolved, and Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia become full Soviet republics.

December 10th: Edward VIII announces his intention to marry exile American Wallis Simpson. He had planned it for months, but had to wait until Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin got approval for a morganatic marriage (which the Cabinet approved after much debate). Simpson will be referred to as Consort, rather than being acknowledged as Queen.

December 17th: American Foreign Minister John Reed meets with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin (the King being unavailable for obvious reasons). Reed uses the meeting to heavily criticize the Non-Intervention blockade and its tacit support for the Nationalists.

December 21st: The Commission for Legal Reform publishes its proposed Uniform Criminal Code. *[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation