Some general events, 1940
January 1st: Premier Foster is notably absent from the annual Yuletide address, leaving General Secretary Haim Kantorovich to do it instead.
January 7th: The PanAmerican Radio Network is established, with help from the American PBS and Soviet Radio Moscow. PanAmRad unifies radio stations from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego in a single multinational Spanish language network. The PanAmerican News Bureau is established within this.
_January 13th:_Flash Comics , from Syndicated Features, makes its debut, featuring the characters of the Flash and Hawkman, both created by writer Gardner Fox (with Harry Lampert and Dennis Neville as the artists respectively)
January 20th: The Soviet Special Far East Red Banner Army, under the command of Mikhail Frunze, arrives in the Hunan province.
January 27th: Two trains carrying fuel and factory workers collide outside of Osaka. Out of 282 on board, 70 die and 94 are injured. Though the cause of the accident was found to be faulty signalling equipment, the accident is blamed on ‘communist saboteurs’.
January 30th: The School of the Americas is formally incorporated in Austin, Texas FSR. It is to provide training in “labor rights, Marxist pillars, democratic principles, organization, and military structure” for both the burgeoning Red and Pink nations of Latin America and individuals and groups from non-communist countries.
February 2nd: The V Olympic Winter Games officially open in Sapporo, Japan. Because of ongoing atrocities in China, the Comintern boycotts them, believing participation tantamount to “complicity in the Imperial State.”
February 7th: After years on the run, scuttling between Sons of Liberty safehouses, Sons partisan John “Johnny” Birch arrives in New Orleans.
February 12th: Due to a number of past instances of confusion caused at international events (such as the 1936 Olympics) by the Internationale being played as the UASR national anthem alongside other socialist states using the song as their anthem, the All-Union Congress passes an amendment introducing Solidarity Forever (an alternate version of Battle Hymn of the Republic) as a co-official anthem.
February 21st: The prototype of the Messerschmitt Me 262 catches fire on the runway at Leipheim, killing the pilot. Though the incident got covered up due to the secrecy of the Nazi jet program at the time, the cause was noted to be due to the exhaust deflecting off of the tarmac, igniting the fuel leaking from the fuel tanks.
February 29th: The Wizard of Oz wins Outstanding Production and All Quiet on the Western Front Outstanding Artistic Achievement at the 12th Academy Awards. Meanwhile, the Cuban replacement, the “National Film Institute Awards” gives their own “Oscars” to Gone with the Wind.
March 8th: The first skirmish between the Imperial Japanese Army and the Soviet Far East Red Army in Changsha occurs between the Japanese 26th Division and the Soviet 17th Rifle Division
March 15th: John Birch buys a pistol from W. Guy Bannister, a gun runner for the local Sons of Confederacy cell in Louisiana.
March 21st: Rebecca , based on the novel by Daphne du Marier, opens at the Gran Teatro de La Habana. The film is the first collaboration between British director Alfred Hitchcock and Warner Bros producer and Havanawood heavyweight David O. Selznick.
March 23rd: Mutual Broadcasting debuts the radio game show Truth and Consequences , an instant hit.
March 24th: A resolution by the All-India Muslim League to declare the independence of Muslim majority regions of India is narrowly defeated, likely thanks to British intervention.
March 27th: Rolls Royce is contracted to supply parts for the Power Jets W.2 jet engine, as the three pre-production models of what would later become the Gloster Meteor start their test runs.
March 29th: Contreras, Dictator of Venezuela, declines Salgado’s offer of joining in the coming war with Socialism barring a guarantee of British support; citing lack of gains to be made and the disruption to the Venezuelan economy that would result from its oil shipments being interdicted. However, Contrereas will allow for anti-comintern military forces to dock or station in Venezuela to guard against a possible American invasion of the country.
April 4th: Robin, the young intrepid sidekick to the brooding vigilante Batman, makes his debut in Detective Comics #37.
April 13th : As a prelude to the Olympic festivities due in a few months time, Prince Chichibu participates in the grand unveiling of the Tokyo Gallery of Concordism, the term for Japan’s syncretic ideology of asiofuturism and compromises between the Toseiha and Kodoha cliques within the military and a broad anti-communist and patriotic front in the civilian government. On display are artistic exhibits showing visions of a wholly Asian approach to the future devoid of European aesthetic influence to show the world that modernity and Asian sensibilities need not be at odds.
April 14th: The Arzi Hakumat-e-Azad Bharat(Provincial Government of Free India) and its associated army Azad Bharat is formed in Tokyo with VD Savakar as Head of State and AS Mukherji as Prime Minister. Mukherji’s wife Savitri Devi serves as “Minister in Charge of Women’s Organization”
April 16th: Party of the Masses of Iran or the “Tudeh” Party is formed as a legitimate front for the outlawed Communist Party of Iran, courtesy of OMS operative Kermit Roosevelt.
April 20th: Emma Goldman, anarchist activist, icon and one-time Secretary of Labor, dies at age 70 in her Chicago apartment. While still agitating against war in Europe and reconnecting with her anarchist roots, she had suffered two strokes which ultimately led to her death. There is a period of mourning in Chicagoland in honor of her and a tribute in The Daily Worker.
April 22nd: The Press Office of the Central Committee announces that Premier William Foster, alongside some other members of the CEC, will attend Goldman’s funeral in Forest Park, Illinois. John Birch, using his forged identity, subsequently boards a train to Chicago.
April 28th: At the funeral of Emma Goldman, Premier Foster is almost shot by John Birch, who sneaks a pistol into the crowd of mourners. He is subdued, but hits author and friend of Goldman HL Mencken in the arm instead.
April 30th: Birch escapes from the Chicagoland Temporary Separation Center. J. Edgar Hoover announces a manhunt for Birch, asking anyone for information.
May 1st: The new “Revolutionary Unity Front” sweeps the elections for the Congress of Soviets, with only some independents and anarchists giving token opposition. The outlawed True Democrats could not stand for elections.
May 3rd: The French General Elections see the Popular Front led by Leon Blum and the SFIO and supported by the SFIC win most of the seats in the General Assembly. Right wing forces begin to fear that communism will take over France, much as it did in Russia and America.
May 10th: A Paris fundraiser for the Comintern affiliated League Against Imperialism and its efforts for Chinese and Jewish refugees is evacuated due to a bomb threat. Tokunaga Naoaki*, a Japanese exchange student, is arrested in connection to the threat.
May 12th: Marshal Frunze launches an assault on the Japanese line at Changsha, helped by the National Revolutionary Army, pushing back the 11th Army.
May 13th: Full Electrification of the ‘Northeast Corridor’ between Boston and DeLeon-Debs is concluded ahead of schedule. This is commemorated by the first all-electric express train on the corridor departing Metropolis’s Penn Station to a water cannon salute, pulled by a pair of Class DD electric locomotives on either end.
May 15th: The Fall Teutonische commences, as Luftwaffe bombers cross the Soviet border, breaking the secret protocols, followed by an invasion force of five million men. The World Revolutionary War begins.
May 16th: The Soviet battleship Stalnoy puts into the neutral port of Copenhagen, narrowly escaping from an ambush by the Luftwaffe in the western Baltic Sea. The ship is (temporarily) safe due to the abundance of German merchant traffic, but German political pressure may result in her illegally being handed over.
May 16th: Upon reelection, William Foster makes a final radio address, declaring war on Germany in solidarity with the Soviet Union and announcing his resignation, asking the Central Committee and the Central Executive Council to put their weight behind his colleague John Reed. Behind the scenes, new Deputy Premier Harry Truman makes a similar plea to his DFLP and DRP comrades.
May 17th: The Soviets and NRA manage to secure the city of Changsha from the Japanese 11th Army, though, due to Wang Jingwei’s enthusiasm, the NRA advances too rapidly, and doesn’t entirely drive the Japanese out of the Hunan province. Marshal Frunze is called back west in the wake of Operation Teutonic.
May 18th: Newfoundlander journalist, Liberal Party and underground Communist activist, Joseph Smallwood, made a daring broadcast in his local radio program, the Barrelman , announcing his anti-fascist convictions and support for the defense of the Soviet Union against the invasion of the Anti-Comintern Axis. He also called upon the support of his listeners to the cause. After that broadcast, his show was declared suspended indefinitely by the radio station VONF. His house was also ransacked while being beaten by a gang of local fascist supporters of Quebec Premier Adrien Arcand.
May 21st : John Reed gives his first speech as Premier in Atlanta, detailing how the new “Revolutionary Unity Government” will coordinate the war effort in the USSR.
May 25th: The time capsule the Crypt of Civilization, an airtight chamber with artifacts detailing life in the late 1930’s, is sealed at Oglethorpe University, to be opened in the year 8113 AD. The artifacts include, among other things, the complete works of Karl Marx and Eugene Debs, and is held in trust to “The Workers’ Communist Party of America, the government of the United Republics, and all successors thereof, including internationalist governments.”
May 30th : A passenger ship, carrying Joseph Smallwood, his wife Clara and his three kids, docked in Ellis Island. Smallwood was in New York City back in the Biennio Rosso, which led to his political radicalization once he returned back to Newfoundland. He will eventually go back to working with the daily newspaper The New York Call.
May 31st: Wang Jinwei is shot in the groin in an assassination attempt orchestrated by Dai Li. Though not immediately life threatening, Wang has to take ‘temporary’ leave to recover, in spite of his protests. Zhou Enlai takes over Wang’s duties effective immediately.
June 1st : The Mutual Broadcasting News Hour begins broadcasting on televisions in Metropolis, relaying news from the war front.
June 2nd : The Spirit, created by Syndicated Features head Will Eisner, debuts in his own book.
June 5th: In London, a crowd outside the German embassy protesting the invasion of the USSR is met with a group of National Socialist and Fascist League (NSFL) supporters. The resulting brawl kills three people, and injures fifteen.
June 10th: When the Danish government does not yield to pressure, the Reich Foreign Ministry organizes a temporary halt of German flagged shipping to and from Danish ports, forcing the Stalnoy to either leave within twenty-four hours or be interned.
June 11th : After evading the Luftwaffe in a rapid night dash, the Stalnoy is confronted by a Kriegsmarine squadron led by the battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisnau. The resulting duel causes heavy damage to both sides, but the resilient Soviet battleship is able to escape to relative safety.
June 12th: Commander Columbia: Shadows of the Ossiarch introduces the long running nemesis of Columbia and Slava; Koschei the Deathless, the Undying Lord of Bones and foe of the Russian nation; joining forces with Adolf Hitler. Though originally planned for an April 13th, release, the film was delayed for minor edits to accommodate the shifting political situation. The film became the highest grossing animated film in America and the Soviet Union of the year.
June 13th : Quebec Premier Adrien Arcand finalized the “Eeyou Istchee Act,” which reverts all Quebec land gains starting from June 13, 1898 and establishes the Territory of Eeyou Istchee. As riots raged outside the signing ceremony, the Premier noted that this Act would “reverse the torturous treatment of the noble people who formed the foundations of our home and native land by the insidious Francophones that are a plague to our Canadian identity.”
June 16th: The Stalnoy rendezvous with TF 7, led by her half-sister Monitor (BB-57) and the carrier Ranger (CV-3), and is escorted to Norfolk for repairs.
June 18th: The panzerschiff Admiral Graf Spee docks in São Paulo, following a battle with a Comintern convoy coming out of Liberia. Controversy arises when it stays beyond the 72 hour mark dictated by the Hague Convention.
June 19th : A march in Cape Town protesting the German invasion of the Soviet Union organized by the Communist Party of South Africa is attacked by members of the Gentile National Socialist Movement (nicknamed the “Greyshirts”) as they move from the predominantly Coloured and Cape Malay Bo-Kaap district through the predominantly white Waterkant area en route to the city center, sparking three days of race riots.
June 22nd: Physicists from the University of Chicago, led by Enrico Fermi and Rudolph Peierls begin an experiment to create a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, with the construction of an experimental reactor in Chicagoland. The Secretariat of Defense is underwriting the funding.
June 25th : Avery Brundage, head of the American Olympic Committee in exile, holds a press conference proudly stating that he will send athletes to the Tokyo Olympics to show “the true measure of American athleticism”, dismissing concerns of Japanese war crimes.
June 30th: General John J. Pershing, as Commissioner of Major League Baseball, makes a joint announcement with Premier John Reed, proclaiming that, despite the declaration of war, the baseball season will continue on as homefront morale boosting. Members of the Dynamo Clubs are recruited to replace drafted players.
July 1st: Using the illegal aid given to the Stalnoy by Danish trade unions and allegations that parts of the Danish government were complicit as pretext, the Wehrmacht occupies Denmark as a “co-belligerent” of the Soviet Union.
July 2nd: The Office of Press Coordination releases a list of books to be “temporarily withheld from further publication” for the duration of the war. The list includes anti-war novels like Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo (ironically working now with the OPC in his capacity as WPFL head) and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms , as well as “novels critical of the communist experiment”, like the recently published Native Son by ANC head Richard Wright, also now working with the war effort. Interestingly, science fiction like Robert Heinlein’s “Solution Unsatisfactory” and the Superman story “The K-Metal of Krypton” are also listed for undisclosed reasons.
July 3rd: Charles Sorensen, Ford-GmBH general manager, resigns following the occupation of Denmark. He moves to Canada to work for the Ford Motor Company in exile.
July 4th: “The Black Baron”, Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel, formerly of the White Army, arrives in Sevastopol to negotiate the participation of White Russian exiles (with the support of Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich) in the Soviet war effort against the Germans (and to prevent white Russians from volunteering with the SS) and to offer his own services. This action would cause a schism in the White Russian community.
July 6th: Dolores Ibárruri, the General Secretary of the Spanish Free Soviet Republics, ostensibly makes a visit to Deleon-Debs as a measure of solidarity for the war effort. In truth, she is meeting Foreign Secretary Earl Browder for the possible evacuation of the Spanish Soviet leadership to America in the event that hostilities resume.
July 10th: Imperial Japanese high command concludes their planning for an attack on America meant to knock them out of the Pacific in a lightning series of offensives against its island holdouts; culminating in an invasion of Hawaii and Alaska. With the remoteness of Hawaii from the American mainland, it is hoped that once conquered America will have no choice but to agree to terms and give Japan a free hand to operate in Asia.
July 12th: WFRN Marines land at Reykjavik, Iceland, pre-empting both German and British moves to secure the island and the surrounding sea lanes. The resulting flashpoint is a low in Anglo-American relations. In the coming weeks, Greenland will be similarly occupied.
July 14th: A series of major raids by the pro-beijing Ma Clique on Tibet meant to be the prelude of an invasion of the vital supply link between Xinjiang and Yunnan are rebuffed after weeks of intense fighting by a combination of Tibetan forces, Xinjiang soldiers, and soldiers lead by communist general Zhu De.
July 16th: Zeras the Hammer: Mankind United , is released by the Ruby Orchestra to popular acclaim as the African-American modern deity takes the fight to racialists and their Nazi and Italian backers while uncovering and confronting the role that the diabolical British aristocrat and Victorian enthusiast known as the White Baron has in promoting bigotry, fascism, autocracy, and prejudice the world over.
July 20th: A five hundred bomber raid is launched on Chongqing in an effort to level a city that has become a centre of industry for China, with half of a thousand four engined heavy bombers unleashing thousands of combined tons worth of incendiaries on the city, sparking a firestorm that will claim the lives of more than a hundred and thirty thousand civilians.
July 27th: Bugs Bunny makes his debut in the Termite Terrace short “A Wild Hare”, directed by Tex Avery.
August 2nd: King Edward VIII gives a radio speech, ostensibly about pacifism in the midst of calls to intervene on behalf of the Soviet Union. However, throughout, the King subtly defends Germany, explicitly praises Hitler and states that the interventionist crowd was “influenced by wealthy Jews of Central and Eastern European extraction, who own the means of communication.” Through Buckingham Palace, he’s forced to issue an apology for the latter statement.
August 5th: Armand Messard, the President of the French Olympic Committee, heavily criticizes those who are protesting participation in the Tokyo Olympics. Messard threatens those athletes who refuse to compete and claims that “leftists and communists” are behind most of the protest. Messard is believed to be allied with Rightists led by Marshal Petain.
August 7th : At an airfield in Kansas City, Missouri, writer Rose Wilder Lane and her distant cousin aviator Laura Ingalls, both wanted for their activities with the Sons of Liberty, are arrested thanks to a tip-off. With them is a small mail plane full of Nazi propaganda pamphlets meant to inspire the increasingly fractured Sons to cause an uprising to “take their country back”. Ingalls was to fly this plane, and drop the pamphlets below.
August 9th: Americuban poet and radio broadcaster Ezra Pound defends King Edward and his comments, claiming that “International Jewry, behind the atrocities of the Great War, the rise of Bolshevikism, the assassination of President Wood, and the communist revolution on the mainland, has chosen now to influence Great Britain and reverse its wise decision for neutrality in the face of Bolshevik aggression. King Edward was indeed right in his statements, but the Bolsheviks and their Judiac masters seek to silence him.”
August 11th: Wyndham Portal, the Chairman of the British Olympic Association, attempts to defend British participation in the upcoming Tokyo Olympics as anti-Nazi sentiment surges in the country.
August 12th: The first American and Mexican forces start arriving at Vladivostok, to then travel by train to reach the battlefront. Among these is the Separate Mechanized Army, under the command of Patton.
August 14th: A Brazilian invasion force of 500,000, alongside forces from Paraguay and Bolivia, crosses the Argentinian border. Plinio Salgado declares a “holy war” against the socialist nations of South America.
August 15th: The Land of Black and Gold , the eighth volume of the Belgian comic series The Adventures of Tintin is released in collected form. Notably, it takes on fascist Italy and the tensions in Palestine.
August 18th: Fearing invasion and occupation, the still nominally liberal government of Uruguay capitulates to Salgado’s demands for military access; significantly widening the front that Argentina has to guard against the Integralist attack.
August 21st: In spite of his noted pacifism and German nationality, famed physicist, devoted Socialist, and naturalised American citizen Albert Einstein (in his capacity as General Secretary of the Princeton WCPA) makes an impassioned pro-war speech at the Alexander Hall in the University of America, Princeton. Stressing that he speaks not only as a Jew fleeing from Nazi antisemitism or a committed communist, but as a member of the human race which he states is directly imperilled by the national and racial hatreds driving the rulers of the Pact of Steel and the greater anti-communist Axis.
August 29th : The Seoul Declaration is signed by delegates from the Empire of Japan and select Chosunese independence activists, which declares the intention to create a Republic of Daehan within the Co-Prosperity Sphere after a transitional period ending on 1st March 1941. Cautious interest is expressed by rightist independence activists, and the ComIntern and associated local parties lambast it as a devil’s bargain between the Chosunese bourgeois and the Empire at the expense of the national proletariat.
September 1st: Secretary of the Treasury Bernard Baruch, a purported supporter of neutrality and the most prominent anti-Nazi in MacArthur’s cabinet, has his car bombed outside his office, killing his chaffeur. A young German-Americuban Nazi sympathizer named Herman Stuhl is eventually arrested, claiming that Baruch was an agent of the “International Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy”.
September 3rd: The Emergency Powers (Defence) Act is introduced in Parliament as a preemptive measure. Prime Minister Edward Wood states in an address to Parliament that the act is merely a way of ensuring national defence and that “His Majesty’s Government is currently not exploring the possibility of intervening in the German-Soviet conflict”. In a surprise move, his fellow conservative and staunch anti-communist Winston Churchill denounces this stance, stating that the British government has given Hitler too much leeway.
September 10th: Commonwealth Workers’ MP Willie Gallacher is giving a pro-interventionist speech when a NSFL sympathizer attempts to stab him. Gallacher survives, but notably, King Edward blames Gallacher’s “fiery rhetoric” for the incident.
September 15th: Secret communiques between the Japanese government and ultranationalist movements in colonised Asia are carried out under the cover of visits to the completed Olympiad facilities. The topic is contingencies in event of war with France, Britain, and the Netherlands, making the necessary arrangements for the cancer of large militant far-rightist movements growing within the colonised countries of Asia.
September 17th: Following Herman Stuhl’s conviction for the attepted assassination of Bernard Baruch, reports emerge that Vice President-First Secretary Charles Coughlin was attempting to urge Douglas MacArthur to commute his sentence, believing him to be merely “misguided.” The incident follows increasing tensions between the pro-neutral and pro-war factions in MacArthur’s cabinet, led by Baruch and Coughlin respectively.
September 21st: The VII Olympiad opens in Tokyo. The Comintern continues its boycott, whilst Nazi Germany, in the midst of the war against the USSR, sends athletes to compete, becoming the top medal earner.
September 23rd: As his sister-in-law Wallis mingles with Prince Chichibu and the German delegation at the Tokyo Olympics, Albert, Prince of York, meets with Winston Churchill and other conservatives dissatisfied with the policies of Lord Halifax.
September 25th: Clare Boothe, the Americuban Senator from New York (in exile), condemns Nazism and its supporters on the Congressional floor, and successfully defeats a billto increase aid to Germany. She becomes a target of pro-Nazis and pro-Interventionalists, especially because of her connection to Baruch, with Ezra Pound calling her a “crypto-communist”.
September 28th: “Spy catching and you with the Crimson Liberators” a short made by the Ruby Orchestra featuring a large selection of their characters is released as a PSA where they teach their audience how to be on guard for enemy agents and how to abide by information security protocols. Notably, Amanda Aaron adds “Don’t be sorry, check his story” encouraging viewers to question people who seem suspicious about relatively mundane things and see if there’s any inconsistencies as “Spies, like liars, tend to forget the little details.” To which Vladimir; her ally and lover adds “In the Soviet Union, we call this trust but verify.” Both of which are added to the lexicon of information security measures in America.
October 1st: At the trial of Rose Wilder Lane and Laura Ingalls, evidence emerges that at least Ingalls had been in contact with Gestapo agents in Toronto. Wilder had been in contact with Fritz Julius Kuhn, head of the German American Bund at one point, and, unbeknownst to Ingalls or the public at large, cuts a deal with the prosecutors to have her sentence reduced from certain death to a possible life sentence, in exchange for testimony against Kuhn and any possible leads on his location.
October 2nd: With the success of Tudeh and the OMS recruitment of junior officers in the Imperial Army, Kermit Roosevelt commences “Operation Ajax”, a planned removal of the Shah and installing a Comintern-friendly government.
October 5th: In an interview with the BBC, Americuban ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy denies reports of tensions within MacArthur’s inner circle over whether to support Hitler or stay neutral. He also denies that his own support for appeasement stems from his SS son serving in Russia, claiming that he hasn’t been in contact with Joe Jr. since he returned to Germany from Spain, and dismisses the reports that Joe Jr. and Herman Stuhl, the attempted assassin of Bernard Baruch, exchanged letters.
October 8th: The San Francisco Giants beat the Debs Defenders at the World Series. The game is broadcast to troops in the Soviet Union through All-Union Radio, as well as filmed for warfront newsreels.
October 9th: Emulating Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia , The Asian Olympiad-Part I is released, directed by Kajiro Yamamoto (with help from 30-year old Akira Kurosawa). The film focuses heavily on the industry that made the Olympic facilities, as well as the “Asiatic solidarity” shown in assembling all-native teams from European colonies and the Pan-Asian sensibility of the Gallery of Concordism.
October 10th : Fritz Julius Kuhn, leader of the pro-Nazi fifth columnist group the German American Bund, is killed attempting to resist arrest in a San Francisco boarding home. Papers found in his suitcase reveal he was attempting to flee to Japan after failing to get asylum in Germany.
October 13th: Author F. Scott Fitzgerald, serving as a war correspondent in Stalingrad, suffers a heart attack. While he ultimately recovers, he is sent home to avoid the death of a public figure at such an early stage.
October 15th: Operation Ajax mastermind Kermit Roosevelt meets with Linlithgow, Viceroy of India, and Jawharlal Nehru, the leader of the Indian National Congress. They brokered a deal such that British India would not intervene in the planned Iranian putsch, in exchange for encouraging the Comintern backed Indian Workers’ Party to reduce their anti-Congress stance.
October 17th: Rose Wilder Lane and Laura Ingalls are convicted of counter-revolutionary activity and treason. While Ingalls is given a death sentence for treason, because of her testimony leading to Kuhn (if not his capture), Lane has her sentence reduced to life. Regardless, the sentences are denounced by the Americuban newspapers, but have a relatively muted response in Britain and France. Ingalls is sent to Joliet to serve on death row, while Lane is sent off to the women’s wing of Alcatraz.
October 18th: An argument breaks out between Frunze and Wrangel during a staff meeting at Moscow.
October 21st: The Emergency Powers (Defence) Act is passed, with the mobilization efforts to go into effect in April. King Edward dismisses this as “excessive”, arguing that efforts should instead be made for “peace.”
October 25th: The English and Russian language debut of the second full length commander Columbia film of the year, The White Carnifex; which primarily takes on Fascist Italy and its aspirations to Roman Glory and its bloody handed imperialism, is made to significant fanfare. It ends up being the most successful Commander Columbia film released so far and the first to reach at least three times its break-even point.
October 26th: Senator Clare Boothe visits the UK and rebukes former lover (and Nazi sympathizer) Joseph Kennedy while visiting Churchill and his supporters.
October 28th: A German propaganda poster dismissing the Mexican expeditionary force in Europe as little more than “America’s barking chihuahua” makes its rounds in Mexican media as an object of mockery following a propaganda reel before the Spanish language debut of The White Carnifex; showing the poster and clips from related German propaganda films while a pair of commentators poke fun at its expense while trying and failing to contain their distinctive wheezing laughter as they mock Hitler’s mannerisms and racial theories and trade jokes about Mussolini and Salgado. The two are nicknamed “the Giggles” for their distinctive laugh and style of comedy.
October 31st: Soong Qingling conducts a “soft coup” of the Kuomintang as her revolutionary faction becomes increasingly dominant in the party following Wang Jinwei’s incapacitation, maneuvering herself into the position of General Secretary of the party following her predecessor’s death in a bombing raid. A leftist radical even by the standards of much of the CCP, she calls on the Chinese nation to stand firm in the face of the Imperialist aggression of Japan and its “three puppets to the North”. At the conclusion of her address is the first ever broadcasted performance of the Chinese version of “Sacred War”.
November 1st: The Germans begin their offensive into Velikiye Luki, five days before VOSCOM was preparing their own counteroffensive.
November 7th: Lt. General Per Sylvan, Chief of the Swedish Army, meets in conference in Kiel with General Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the OKW, to discuss German/Swedish military cooperation. Similar meetings are held with Turkey, which is already making plans to reclaim its lost territories.
November 9th: Attempted Peruvian and Chilean attacks into Bolivia are bogged down by difficult terrain and wily defences that fail to produce the desired result of relieving pressure on Argentina with less mobile divisions. It would not be until January of next year that the offensives would be called off with little more than thirty thousand casualties on the Comintern side to ten thousand Bolivian losses to show for it while Bolivia prepares a counter-offensive.
November 11th : Commander Columbia: Eagle’s Shadow ; another Columbia related half-film sees the return of popular villains Fafnir and Siegfried and a British backed plot partly financed by the White Baron to strike at America with intercontinental rockets filled with “Morgon”, a deadly self-replicating form of nerve gas that is also extremely corrosive. The half-film also introduces “Herr Totenkopf”, aka Johann von Eisenberg, a cunning and dastardly adjutant of Heinrich Himmler and primary mastermind of “the Black Order” that serves as Germany’s primary supernatural detachment.
November 12th: As the Soviets encircle the Germans near the city of Smolensk, Hans Guderian is relieved of his command.
November 13th: Bombardment of the encircled German forces commences at midnight, with a combination of artillery and air support. This is opened by a salvo of rockets from a battery of truck-mounted Katyusha launchers
November 18th: A fire breaks out on an oil tanker moored in the Port of Los Angeles. In spite of the efforts of the longshoremen and the firefighters called to the scene, the fire escalates into an explosion, which damages the two tankers right next to it, as well as several nearby buildings and warehouses. The disaster kills 269 people and injures approximately 400 more. The Los Angeles Soviet and the WFRN launch separate investigations.
November 21st: Fantasia: A Musical Experience , a Hyperion animated classical music anthology, opens, with the novel idea of “Fantasound”, a stereophonic multi-channel sound system. While the film receives mixed reviews, it becomes a massive success. It is also the last film Walt Disney produced before being tapped to lead the First Motion Picture Brigade.
November 26th: Chilean, Mexican, and Peruvian expeditionary troops arrive in Argentina to engage the overwhelming force brought to bear by the First Brazilian Army. Though outnumbered two to one, the tri-nation force manages to buy time in a three month long running engagement to allow the Argentine government to evacuate important personnel and industry from Buenos Aires further south.
December 1st: Maximilian von Weichs, defying orders, surrenders to the Soviets, ending the battle of Smolensk.
December 2nd: With the first major defeat of Operation Teutonic, Hitler suspends all operations on the Eastern Front while he and his officers regroup.
December 3rd: LifeTime Person of the Year: John Reed, for his ascent into the Premier’s office and his subsequent handling of the Soviet war effort.
December 5th: The Kingdom of Arabia concludes the treaty of Jerusalem with the British government, cementing the existence of a new Anglo-Arab alliance that includes the government of Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, and Oman as well as timetables for the transfer of territories in Gulf Arabia and Jordan to the Kingdom.While defensive treaties already existed and years of bilateral trade, modernisation subsidisation, military reform assistance and more to acquire access to Arabian Oil, and warm relations were long a fact of Anglo-Arab relations; this treaty ensures that whatever manner of war is to come in the middle east; all participants will fight on the same side whether on the attack or defence.
December 7th: Riots break out in Tehran. A general strike is called, and the Ajax-backed forces of Colonel Zirahzidek enter the city. They defeat the Imperial Guard around the palace. Reza Shah is “found” dead by suicide (though the details are sketchy). A “democratic revolution” is proclaimed.
December 8th : The first and second films of the Why We Fight series, directed by Frank Capra are released concurrently: the first, Prelude to War, describing the war as a whole and the origins of the conflict as well as the natures of the enemy regimes and the stakes at hand; the second, The Nazis Strike, looks at the battle for the Soviet Union thus far.
December 10th: The “Sonderentwicklung program” begins under the Reich Ministry for Armaments and the Front Ford quasi-state corporation to develop and standardize the next-generation of Wehrmacht equipment, especially armored fighting vehicles.
December 14th: The last of the pro-Royalist Imperial Army surrenders to the pro-Tudeh Iranian Army. The “Democratic Republic of Iran” is formally established under a Tudeh-Liberal coalition government. Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the heir-presumptive, agrees to renounce all claims to the throne and remain in the country in exchange for his wife Princess Fawzia Fuad and their two month old daughter Shahnaz being given safe passage to Fawzia’s homeland of Egypt.
December 15th: An open letter signed by both anti-German rightists and centrists as well as leftists within France is sent to the General Assembly condemning cowards and would-be Teutonic collaborators for selling out the honour of France to the Germans and Italians and standing idly by while “Hitler and Mussolini’s butchers devour the continent and plunge it into darkness” as well as “the anemic stances taken in the face of Japanese aggression and perfidy that will one day swallow us as it has others.” Demanding intervention for both humanitarian and patriotic reasons. Petain dismisses the letter as the rambling of discontented red sympathisers.
December 16th: Yuki Suzuki, a Japanese immigrant and head of a California Japanese restaurant, is killed outside her workplace. The culprit, a 17-year old Chinese-American named Jimmy Zhang, believed Suzuki was running a “spy ring” from her restaurant (MDSS investigations don’t find any evidence to support this claim)
December 17th : In response to the Iranian Revolution’s conclusion, the Turkish government announces that it will be moving to an immediate war footing for its economy and orders remaining reservists to be mobilised immediately as well as tripling the military budget. War in the near east is now a seeming inevitability.
December 18th: The WFRN Report on the Port of Los Angeles incident is released to the public after a failed classification hearing. It confirms the LA Soviet report’s conclusion that a combination of the tanker’s poor ventilation design and a rushed loading likely led to the fire starting, though what sparked the fire remains unknown. No evidence of sabotage emerges
December 20th: Hearst , written and directed by Orson Welles, is a relatively commercially successful, but critically acclaimed feature exploring the life of former American vice-president William Randolph Hearst. It is condemned by Hearst’s Cuban Department of Communications and his newspapers in Britain.
December 21st: Near Christmas Day, Americuban Vice President Charles Coughlin and Action Française head Charles Murras have a conference in Havana. The two lament that their respective governments and the Vatican have failed to take a firmer stance in support of the Nazi invasion. Coughlin states that his attempts to make Americuban foreign policy “more proactive against Judeo-Bolsheviskism” failed due to “wealthy Jews”. McArthur purportedly gets angry with Couglin over these comments.
December 24th: Largely independent though under British protection, the government of Iraq makes multiple moves towards formal alignment with Turkey, Germany, Italy, and Japan; cementing multiple important trade deals for Iraqi oil and assistance with developing a greater military. With concerns about the ambitions of the new Iranian and Turkish government, this militarisation in Iraq goes by largely unanswered by Britain as previous expansions of the Iraqi armed forces have.
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**Reed’s Revolutionary Unity Government
V Congress (7 May 1940 to 28 April 1942 )**
Workers’ Communist Party: 1209 seats (-104)
Democratic-Farmer-Labor: 688 seats (+122)
Democratic-Republicans: 146 seats (-68)
Independents: 3 seats (-43)
IV Central Executive Council
Workers’ Party: 246 seats (-25)
Democratic-Farmer-Labor: 155 seats(+34)
Democratic-Republicans: 55 seats (-7)
The Presidium
Secretary-General: Haim Kantorovitch
Deputies: Earl Browder, Harold L. Ickes, Aubrey Willis Williams, Hubert Harrison, Sam DeWitt, Rosa Pastor Stokes, Eugene Dennis
Central Committee (Reed I)
Premier: John Reed (WCP)
Deputy Premier: Harry Truman (DFLP)
People’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs: Robert Minor (WCP)
Attorney General: Earl Warren (DRP)
People’s Secretary for Defense: Martin Abern (WCP)
Commissioner-General of the Army: Max Schactman (WCP)
Commissioner-General of the Navy: Lucille Campbell Green (DFLP)
Commissioner-General of Military Aviation: Joseph McCarthy (DRP)
Commissar for Supply: Wendell Willkie (DRP)
Commissar for Civil Defense: Ulrich Stein* (WCP)
People’s Secretary for Labor: James P. Cannon (WCP)
People’s Secretary for Finance: Werner Dutschke (WCP)
People’s Secretary for Foreign Trade: Franklin D. Roosevelt (DFLP)
People’s Secretary for Agriculture: Henry A. Wallace (WCP)
People’s Secretary for Education: Benjamin Spock (WCP)
People’s Secretary for Public Safety: J. Edgar Hoover (WCP)
Director-General of State Security: Luigi Martelli* (WCP)
Commissar for Information: Estella Havisham* (WCP)
People’s Secretary for Railways: Robert Taft (DRP)
People’s Secretary for Communication: Ohiya Bonnin (WCP)
People’s Secretary for Maritime Transport: Alben Barkley (DFLP)
People’s Secretary for Energy: William Sidney Hatfield (WCP)
Commissar of Hydroelectric Power: Arthur Ernest Morgan (DFLP)
Commissar of Coal: John L. Lewis (WCP)
Commissar of Oil: H. W. Plainview* (DFLP)
Director of Fuel Rationing: Dante Hicks* (WCP)
People’s Secretary for Manufacturing: W.E.B. Du Bois (WCP)
Commissar for Armament: Howard Stark* (DRP)1
People’s Secretary for Light Industry: Jean-Francois Breton (DFLP)
People’s Secretary for Construction: John Nada* (WCP)
People’s Secretary for Culture: Joseph M. Schenck (DRP)
People’s Secretary for Geology: Rocco Klein* (WCP)
People’s Secretary for Aeronautics: Quentin Roosevelt (DFLP)
People’s Secretary for Welfare: Victoria Cooper (WCP)
Commissar of Food: Ramsay Gordon* (WCP)
People’s Secretary for Commerce: A. Phillip Randolph (WCP)
Chairman, State Planning Commission: Solon DeLeon (WCP)
Chairman, Academy of Arts and Sciences: Henry Jones Sr. (DFLP)
Chairman, Union Bank: Abba P. Lerner (WCP)
Speaker of the CEC: W.E.B. DuBois (WCP)
Chief Whip, CPD: George Meany (WCP)
Revolutionary Military Council of the UASR
Chairman: Earl Browder2
Deputy Chairman: John Reed
Standing Members:
Martin Abern (SecDef)
General Adna Chaffee (Chief of the General Staff)
Admiral Forrest Sherman (Chief of Naval Operations)
General Eugene Bullard (Chief of the Army Staff)
Lieutenant General Maxwell Price* (Chief of the Political Commissariat)
Normal Members:
Francis Waldron
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Paul Mattick
Harry Truman
Theodore Roosevelt III
Membership, War Production Committee of the Council of the National Economy
Chairman, State Planning Commission
People’s Secretary for Labor
People’s Secretary for Foreign Trade
People’s Secretary for Agriculture
People’s Secretary for Energy
People’s Secretary for Railways
People’s Secretary for Maritime Transport
People’s Secretary for Aeronautics
People’s Secretary for Manufacturing
Commissar for Supply
Director of Fuel Rationing
Chairman, United Steelworkers
Chairman, American Railway Union
Chairman, International Seafarers’ Federation
Chairman, United Mine Workers
Chairman, United Paper and Forestry Union
Chairman, United Autoworkers
Chairman, United Yeoman League
Chairman, Machinists Federation
Chairman, Shipwright Federation
- Reorganized as the People’s Secretariat for Armaments on 11 December 1940, with a much expanded scope. The original functions would be part of the Munitions Directorate, with Howard Stark continuing to serve as Director-General. The new cabinet level secretariat would be chaired by Paul Mattick (WCP)
- This office would be typically held concurrently by the Chairman of the Presidium, but it’s not legally required.
*[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation
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