For the Republic: A History of the Second American Civil War
- Thread starter The Angry Observer
- Start date
Honestly, just in my opinion, Johnson is the worst person in the entire story. Which is supposed to be a pretty high bar.
Only ones that were stationed in and native to the deepest regions of the south. Not nothing, but a lot less than what the Republic and National-Corporate government have.
I feel I have to elaborate on this more, perhaps in the next chapter. I haven't figured out all the details yet, but in my mind the aging Philip Andrews comes out of retirement to assume control of the Republican naval forces. Of course, he dies in winter of 1935.
Yeah, finding images is becoming increasingly more of an issue the deeper we get into the war. Your idea makes a lot of sense to me, and I'll go back and fix that, as well as be doing that from now on. Thank you for the suggestion!
I appreciate the complement! Thanks for reading!
Of course, the American bread basket getting torched will have global consequences...
Yes, I'm afraid so.
Like, generations after everyone that participated in this is dead, the image of Johnson coming and stealing everyone's stuff will basically be what every Wisconsinite thinks of when capitalism is mentioned.
Deleted member 191087
I personally don’t think one can quite top orchestrating a genuine genocide like Hoover is doing but yeah, he’s definitely the second worst one for sure.
Anyways great chapters as always. I’ve got some questions to ask aswell:
1: Will you possibly maybe dedicate a side-chapter to South or Latin America in general like @Whiteshore mentioned?
2: And rounding up my questions about fascist shitheads and what they’re doing, do you have any guess what this guy could up to right now?
This TL seems quite good so far. I'm also currently writing a SACW TL, though this one has a different premise. Basically, Huey Long wins his 1924 Governor Election thanks to a last minute endorsements by WRH and McAdoo in the primaries and Parker reluctantly endorses him in the Run-off. He serves his full term and still wins a Senate Seat, but in 1926 this time instead of 1930 and while in the Senate, he begins building a cabinet and loyalty to him, including creating a militia made up of WW1 Veterans, Laborers, Farmers, the poorest of the poor, and different minorities, and in 1933, following the death of the VP and a lot of scandals hitting Long at once, he is faced with an impeachment trial that he paints as a sham and you can see where it ends from there. Hope you will give it a read when it's active.
When other natcorps think you’re tyrannical and even more than the soviets that’s a good sign you’ve made something really messed up
“The Battle of Wisconsin”"Look around us! There are those preening about a peaceful resolution to this war, but the scars on our own bodies and the tombstones in our backyards bear witness against such a farcical and insulting idea. Listen to the roar of MacArthur's planes the next time someone lectures you about peace! The only peace for Minnesota is the one that ends with fascism's total destruction!" - Governor Floyd OlsenThe Natcorps held several obvious advantages in nearly every theater of the war, such as better training and better equipment. Nowhere was this more pronounced than in the Midwest, where the Natcorps rapidly seized the industrial base and with varying degrees of effectiveness severed the Republican governments of Philip LaFollette and Floyd Olsen from Albany. For much of the campaign, the Republican holdouts were dependent on what they could scrounge from the west. It’s important to note that attitudes in the west towards the Natcorps and Republicans were incredibly varied and diverse, perhaps even more so than anywhere else in America. Everywhere that there was still democracy, there were staunch Republicans in the general populace and state legislators constantly agitating for opposing MacArthur. The further one got from the west coast, the stronger anti-Natcorp sentiment was. While many western farmers, particularly Protestants, were suspicious of Smith and had voted against him in the largest numbers, many also loathed the MacArthur regime’s industrial centralism. This would be the lifeline the outgunned, outnumbered, and desperate Republican contingents in the Midwest depended on as Hugh Johnson pounded them.
Smedley Butler
Historians have long debated whether or not MacArthur’s complete refusal to accept anything less than total conquest of Minnesota was uncanny intuition or madness, but whatever the case the Republicans simply had no answer for Johnson’s advances in 1935. “Hit them,” MacArthur said whenever someone involved in the theater approached them, “hit the sonsofbitches until they can’t move. We can’t have any trouble over there if we intend to box the reds into the Empire State.” Both armies were heavily disorganized, scrambling to arm and train an influx of new recruits. But Johnson maintained the obvious edge, and by the time the last year’s snow began to melt his supply lines were firm enough to bring in tanks, artillery, supplies, and thousands upon thousands of reinforcements all the way from Berlin. The Republicans, put simply, did not have the capital to compete with this. But there was one advantage Smedly Butler had, and that was that the freezing wasteland the war was reducing Minnesota and Wisconsin to was inhabited by millions of loyalists to his cause. More than anywhere other than perhaps New England, the American Republic enjoyed the most overwhelming support in the free Midwest. A wave of refugees escaping Natcorp horrors in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio weighed down and stressed what meager resources the Republicans had, but they also gave them a massive pool of very eager partisans with little to lose. “I've done a lot more with a lot less,” said Butler, a grizzled veteran of countless engagements in the Marine Corps, “as a hired thug for capitalism. Now we’re fighting for our survival, against a merciless fascist that will stop at nothing but our total annihilation.”
Natcorp soldiers in an M1 Scout Car, in Indiana
Of course, no matter what MacArthur demanded, some things were simply not possible, and an immediate conquest of the Midwest was one of those things. Despite vastly superior Republican numbers, the Natcorps had triumphed in the engagements following the Battle of Rockford and seized south Wisconsin’s population centers without much trouble. Neither Hugh Johnson nor Douglas MacArthur had much option beyond basically repeating the same campaign in Minnesota, hopefully seizing Minneapolis. The Olsen government, like the La Follette government, could flee to its rural, agrarian, and radical base. Johnson understood that the “total subjugation” his opponents feared and MacArthur needed could only be achieved through lengthy, bloody conquest. He was more than willing to deliver on this. In fact, Johnson’s papers suggest he was downright thrilled to till the soil where the seeds of the fascist future could be planted. But that required preparation, and preparation required time, which Smedley Butler and the Republicans took full advantage of.
Following Rockford, Butler went about doing basically what Patton had done following Syracuse. His goal was to turn the haphazardly organized Republican recruits in the Midwest, almost all of which were still green, into a genuine army that could protect the Republican allied governments of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan while eventually driving the Natcorps back down south. MacArthur, who was always fond of articulating his destiny through the heroes of the past, liked to invoke Winfield Scott’s Anaconda Plan as a metaphor for his ambition of separating the various Republican holdouts and then beating them into submission. Similarly, Butler’s hope was to drive the Natcorps out of the Midwest entirely, which would have severely compromised their position in the war. But he needed to do so at a severe equipment deficit with no hope of help from Albany. This wasn’t for lack of effort. Even as President Smith fought for his life in his impeachment trial, the Republicans were organizing humanitarian and military aid packages “completely unprecedented” in size, according to their chief sponsor, Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin. What Albany could do, however, was limited, given the Natcorps’ power in the Midwest. Complicating matters was Curtis LeMay and the Natcorp bombing campaign, against which the Midwestern Republicans had very little defense. Hard and soft targets throughout the Midwest’s major population centers were bombed constantly. “They can’t fight,” explained LeMay grimly, “if we’ve knocked them back five centuries.” Butler, therefore, took advantage of his numerical superiority by taking a page from the Great War. Mimicking the Brusilov and Kaiserschlacht Offensives, Butler personally organized “shock trooper” detachments of infantry. As in the Great War, their purpose was to weather heavy casualties and overwhelm enemy structures. When they could not beat the Natcorps in the open field, an inevitability given the situation Butler was facing, his troops were to fall back and harry the advancing Natcorps as much as possible, taking advantage of the terrain to maximize casualties and narrow the enemy’s equipment lead. The other goal was double envelopment. The Midwestern “front”, in total, was over five hundred miles of ill defined borderlands throughout Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, and Michigan.
Republican shock troopers
Butler’s and Johnson’s calculations were roughly the same. Johnson believed his best shot at an easy capture of Minneapolis was a blitz that took advantage of the Natcorps’ superior weaponry, punching through Eau Claire and into St. Paul. He understood what the Republicans’ strengths would be, however, and it was why he went to the extensive lengths he did to “pacify” the country that he encountered. With southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois under his immediate control, Johnson established a regime so brutal in reputation that it had a bad name even among other Natcorp commanders. Johnson often did not bother with the prison camps that had defined the Natcorp regime in other areas, instead employing forced labor and ghastly punishments in plain sight. He did not recognize the difference between civilian and soldier. As one Natcorp colonel recalled, “General Johnson liked to say that military values needed to go national if we wanted to protect the American spirit. So, we turned Madison into a barracks.” Suspected dissidents were shot in their homes. To up the ante, Johnson’s most loyal soldiers would conduct “full strikes” that killed entire families and in some cases created generations of orphaned children. “Every method of torture” was employed extensively by Johnson, according to a Secret Service asset.
But perhaps the greatest and most lasting of the Wisconsin Butcher’s crimes was his lootings of farmers. To sustain the Natcorp army and pound the locals into submission. Johnson understood that socialist leaning Republicans in the countryside couldn’t be given any reprieve. Otherwise, Butler would always have a knife pointed right at his headquarters and the better intelligence apparatus. So, Johnson’s troops, operating under the cover of chaos, looted farms en masse and seized their food stockpiles for themselves. Estates were put to the torch and entire families left to starve to death. In trucks, Johnson’s troops marched through Iowa, destroying what they could not take. The intention was to force the local populace to rely on him. “Even a serpent,” he explained to a high-ranking DOJ official, “does not bite the hand that feeds it.” It was also to make sure his army had the appropriate supplies to fight the war. Of course, as the war spiraled well out of either side’s control, the eventual result would be America’s breadbasket empty in its darkest hour. The Midwestern Famine would kick into gear soon, permanently scarring the region and leaving countless dead. Johnson, meanwhile, was one of the richest men in the world from his headquarters in Madison. “He’s a butcher and a monster,” one DOJ telegram reads, “who has picked the poor farmer’s pocket to teach him who his master is. Wisconsin under this Devil is more tyrannical than Soviet Russia.”
A farming family looted by Natcorps
And as soon as he could, Johnson prepared for another armored strike designed to basically repeat the success at Rockford. He was not naive to the dangers that he faced and knew that his very skilled opponent was doing everything he could to prepare for such a strike. But Johnson, under heavy pressure from MacArthur, had few better choices. MacArthur himself, without a sudden breakthrough in the east, didn’t have other options, either. Minnesota had to be taken. And that’s what lead to the Johnson Offensive, with Johnson assembling an army some 60,000 strong and marching north. What lead to contemporary observers and historians alike throwing such praise on Johnson was his savvy development of supply lines, which kept the Natcorp lines from overextending and buckling under their own weight. The huge numbers of tanks, with modern aircraft thundering over farmhouses to hail their advance, made for an impressive sight. “Gog and Magog are bearing upon us,” one Republican recruit grimly wrote. Butler ordered for “all cylinders to fire from cannons we don’t have”, which resulted in a dramatic escalation of the Midwestern War. Through intricate communication networks sustained by a fanatically Republican local populace, Republicans throughout the Midwest organized counterattacks. The First Army was stationed in the Michigan Panhandle, the Second was stationed in northern Wisconsin, and the Third in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa. All launched massive, predominantly infantry counter offensives into Natcorp occupied territory. With the borders so unclear, not much truly changed hands. Butler’s preparations hadn’t changed the rules of warfare, either, and much smaller Natcorp forces lodged behind fortifications were able to easily repel the Republican hordes. In fact, technological advances since the Great War had left Butler’s tactics even further out in the cold.
Nonetheless, they succeeded in scaring the hell out of the Natcorps, forcing a flurry of last minute preparations and troop shifts to beat off the attacks. They also ignited a simmering guerrilla war between Republican partisans, who quickly discovered that asymmetrical warfare simply made more sense given the dynamic, and the Natcorp occupiers responded with even more repression and brutality. Republican partisans in Wisconsin, both during the Johnson Offensive and all other campaigns that went through the Midwest, were a persistent headache for the Natcorps. The more tenuous Natcorp supply lines became and the more Natcorp equipment was destroyed by raids, the less pronounced their superiority in armored vehicles and weaponry became. Which was one of the reasons why early victory was so crucial for Johnson— the Natcorps’ odds of conquering Minnesota went down the longer he tarried. Johnson knew full well that the counterattacks were designed to rattle and distract him. Butler probably bought himself no more than a week. He, meanwhile, was left to defend central Wisconsin against all odds. He prepared to make his stand in Fort McCoy, from which he believed he had a reasonable shot at beating back the Natcorps and complicating their march towards the Mississippi River. On the morning of the 16th of March, Johnson wasted no time. After the Republicans had been treated to a full night’s worth of harassment by Natcorp bombers that, in Johnson’s estimation, had them on the brink of breaking before the first shot was fired, Johnson directed an early tank offensive. The Republicans were only saved from total collapse by the morning fog, which didn’t make the Natcorps’ tanks completely useless but certainly made them less effective. The Republicans, meanwhile, had been living on low rations and fighting a battle many thought was doomed. They were as furious as they were afraid, and by noon the Republican counterattack was so ferocious that Butler’s plan had actually succeeded. In a pitched battle, Republicans had held their own. And they’d done so while weathering thousands of casualties in under a day, something that they simply could not afford to do twice.
Natcorps near Fort McCoy
Johnson continued to pound them from afar, giving Butler little choice but to evacuate as quickly as possible. He was hesitant to do so very quickly, though, knowing full well that this could give his wily opponent an opening to attack from the back and turn an ordered retreat into a route. Therefore, he did so slowly— and in the morning, Johnson smelled what was a foot and launched another, full-out offensive that did deal the diminished Republican ranks a stinging defeat. Fort McCoy fell into Johnson’s hands, but to Butler’s credit, even before the battle much of the valuables had been whisked north and west. Johnson nearing the Mississippi, combined perhaps with George S. Patton’s own demands for men and resources, “put a spring in Stimson’s step” as La Follette recalled. More tanks, more planes, and more artillery pieces were on the way, being smuggled through Canada, snuck through Lake Superior, and even airdropped when possible. Butler needed only to make do with what he had until they were in his hands, but even that was a daunting task. “They want magic,” complained Butler to his brother, “they want me to take warm bodies and turn them into something that can resist the most modern army in the world. Every day, there are German-built fire breathing dragons cutting through these men I command. It doesn’t matter how ingeniously and manfully we’re going to fight. I may as well have butter to slow the Jackboots.”
Even so, Butler had a lifeline to Minneapolis, and more volunteers were still pouring into his ranks. He felt letting the Natcorps go much further than Fort McCoy meant losses in Wisconsin that they couldn’t soon make up and which would seriously endanger Olsen. As a result, Butler prepared an ambitious enveloping maneuver. He arrayed his troops between the Mississippi and McCoy, correctly anticipating that Johnson wouldn’t delay long and he could count on another simple, brutal frontal offensive from the Natcorps. Butler was right. Days later, Johnson renewed the attack, setting up Sparta as his forward base and pounding Republican formations from the air. And once again, there was little Butler could do to mitigate casualties other than spread out and weaken his formations, which made resisting Johnson go from difficult to impossible. But this time, when the Natcorp columns made their move and the Republicans retreated, it was far too easy. Between Rockland and Bangor, the Republicans pointedly attacked the Natcorps from three sides. It was a familiar dynamic for those that would spend much time fighting the war. The Republicans swarmed the Natcorp armor, doing as much damage as possible and inflicting chaos wherever they could. They even succeeded in causing momentary panic in Natcorp command— before the steely Johnson ordered reinforcements dispatched and Republican infantry was once again left helpless. They weathered thousands of casualties yet again in the days of desperate fighting that followed, and could only delay rather than temporarily derail the Natcorp advance. Nonetheless, Butler bought himself more valuable time. “More victories like this will finish us long before the Natcorps will,” he remarked. “We need more of everything even as we run out of everything.” Nonetheless, the mass of Republican recruits was able to relatively quickly erect fortifications stretching across much of central Wisconsin and snaking into Iowa’s staunchly Republican north. This “Olsen Line” became the backbone for the Republicans in the Midwest. The recruits that manned the Line were subject to constant Natcorp air raids. They had scarce access to weapons beyond machine guns and their infantry rifles. Ammunition was always in short supply. Johnson’s vicious looting campaign left them dependent on supplies from Canada and sympathizers in the west.
Republicans near Burns, Wisconsin
“It was the formative period of my life,” recalled Barry Goldwater, then a twenty-six-year-old man. Goldwater left his family in Arizona and made the long trek to Minneapolis. “And you know, you expect all the shooting and the hand-to-hand combat and that whole hell to be what sticks out to you most, but really, it was the weariness of barracks life. You know, waking up and seeing your face in a mudpuddle and thinking, ‘wow, it looks like someone’s drilled holes in my eyes’, having ditches filled with, well, excrement behind you, all the time. The whistling airplanes stick out to me way more than the times they actually dropped bombs on us, for instance. But the part that I’ll carry with me to my grave, what all of us who were in that region will carry with us to our graves, is the food. There was none of it. You just went, whole days doing all of this labor in the trenches, and maybe without any food at all. You aren’t going to feel the light if you’ve gone that long without food.”
Starvation was Johnson’s favorite tool, and he used it with cruelty that astounded even hardened Natcorp administrators actively running work camps and torturing political enemies. He turned the once prosperous breadbasket of America, which exported food all over the world, into a hungry warzone lorded over by himself and his minions. And while Johnson succeeded in inflicting immeasurable suffering on the Republican sympathetic populace, he did not make them any less likely to resist his rule. Many historians believe that Johnson’s use of starvation permanently rewrote the Midwestern consciousness, as it became such an ubiquitous experience during the war. Whether it was in Chicago or in isolated farming communities in southeast Wisconsin, every Midwesterner felt the sting of hunger. “Johnson’s brutality became inseparably linked to capitalism,” writes Brinkley, “with hired thugs constituting a tiny minority of the total population looting and displacing in what would ultimately be a very short-sighted bid for political power was seen as the natural extension of government by robber barons.” And it was very short sighted indeed, something everyone would end up realizing once the record-smashing cold that came with 1935's winter arrived in the Great Lakes.
Historians disagree on whether or not Johnson’s brutality against farmers was necessary to establish Natcorp rule. Some suggest that this was he only way he could ever hope to weaken Republican resolve enough to conquer the region. But one point against Johnson is that his actions gave Lydia Cady Langer and Warren Green, the Republican Governors of North and South Dakota, enough capital to win over their legislatures and commit troops and resources to Olsen’s side. Meanwhile, Johnson saw little value in pushing to the temporary Wisconsin capital of Eau Claire, instead deciding he would continue the offensive over the summer, invading Minneapolis and presumably repeating what he had done to Wisconsin all the way to the Pacific Coast. “We have made progress,” he told one of MacArthur’s confidantes, “and given the state of affairs we have observed in the Rumpublic, and the reassuring efficiency we’ve restored to Wisconsin, I believe it would take an act of God to dislodge the offensive.”
Iowan children orphaned by the Johnson Offensive
Perhaps. I simply don’t know enough about that history. Gaysinspace may, though, in which case it’s definitely worth a look.
I honestly don’t see why Pounds would have a different destiny than OTL. I don’t see him coming to America to support the Natcorps, that is.
Maybe you could ask people who’d be knowledgeable about Latin American history like @Gukpard for ideas and suggestions on LatAm?
Just wondering but will we get an update focused on Canada during this time. Because I am curious how the Second American Civil and the inevitable flood of refugees has affected the Bennett administrations policies and the election of October 1935.
In fact, could you cover the rest of the British Commonwealth in how the various dominions have been reacting to these developments in Asia and the Americas?
In fact, could you cover the rest of the British Commonwealth in how the various dominions have been reacting to these developments in Asia and the Americas?
In the context of Canada ITTL, I’d be interested in the fate of Adrien Arcand and Chuck Crate.
Also a question, how is the cause of Fascism in the UK with the outbreak of war?
They didn't really amount to anything in OTL, and I think outbreak of a Second American Civil War will probably see them in prison since the refugees will be relaying the horror stories of the McCarthur regime's DOJ. Something that will scare a LOT of Canadians into join border patrols against such a nightmarish regime.
There's going to be a famine. Between the fighting in the Midwest, the Dust Bowl, and the total collapse of the civilian supply chain people are going to starve.
I'm also surprised that given how cartoonishly evil the McArthurites are that they have any supporters.
I'm also surprised that given how cartoonishly evil the McArthurites are that they have any supporters.
You could say the same about the Nazis, who are to date still the closest thing we've ever seen to real life supervillains.
At the very least, having instances of the NatCorps displaying Pragmatic Villainy could be something that future updates could have to explain why the NatCorps still have some legitimate support.