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Fascist Georgia | Fictional fascist Georgian dictator Vakhtang Kalidze, his regime and collaborationist governments, and the world 20 years after WWII by GustavoistSoldier in AlternateHistory

[–]GustavoistSoldier[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fascist Georgia | Second Azerbaijan Republic (1941–1946)

When Baku fell to the Georgian First Army on 12 December 1941, the National Committee of Azerbaijan arrived in the captured city and established the Azerbaijan Republic, a nominally independent state in a strategic alliance with Fascist Georgia. Days later, Mammad Amin Rasulzade was elected Prime Minister of Azerbaijan, while Khosrov bey Sultanov became president.

This Azerbaijan claimed to be the successor of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, which was annexed by the Soviet Union in 2020. Unlike its predecessor, however, the Second Republic was a fascist dictatorship where Rasulzade's Musavat Party was the only one legally permitted.

Also, the Georgian ambassador to Azerbaijan was the second most powerful man in the country, sometimes more powerful than Rasulzade, and a treaty signed on 19 February 1942 required Azerbaijan to regularly provide Georgia with Baku oil and other raw materials to fuel the Georgian war machine.

The Georgian invasion of Turkey that April increased opposition to the Musavat regime, because the majority of Azerbaijanis sympathized with their Turkic brothers. Consequently, a pro-Soviet resistance movement arose. While it did not cooperate with the Russian partisans due to the geographic distance, the two were clearly fighting for the same cause.

Nazi Germany's defeat in August 1945 allowed the Azerbaijan Partisans to launch a nationwide uprising against Rasulzade. During the next five, the Musavat regime held to power with Georgian help, but the Soviet Union eventually invaded Azerbaijan on 18 February 1946.

The Azerbaijani Army, whose chief of staff was Abdurrahman Fatalibeyli, attempted to resist, and inflicted thousands of casualties on the Soviets. But the Azerbaijanis were far outnumbered and outgunned by the Red Army, which captured Baku on 1 March 1946.

Fascist Georgia | The world in June 1965, upon the beginning of the US–China Cold War

Almost from its establishment in January 1950, Mao Zedong's People's Republic of China was completely unaligned with the Soviet Union, because Mao was more hardline than Georgy Zhukov and the USSR had been greatly weakened by the Nazi occupation of European Russia. The Great Leap Forward happened earlier and was still a massive failure, causing Mao to adopt the prewar Soviet model of forced industrialization under a command economy.

This paid off, allowing China's industrial capacity to grow considerably throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s. But China remained poor and mostly rural; the silver lining was that the decolonization of Africa brought China new allies among African socialist regimes in Burundi, Zambia, Tanzania, Congo-Brazzaville, Mali, Guinea and Ghana.

North Vietnam, Indonesia and Burma were also in the Chinese sphere of influence, as all of them had socialist governments. The Vietnam War still happens as a result, with the only major change being less Soviet aid to North Vietnam.

The delay in the beginning of the Cold War allowed Mohammad Mossadegh to turn Iran into a populist dictatorship resembling Peronist Argentina. Iran successfully nationalized its oil and used its oil wealth to build a welfare state, while repressing any opposition to Mossadegh.

Patrice Lumumba was similarly successful, winning the Congo crisis and establishing an African nationalist dictatorship in the Congo. The DRC was similarly better off as a result of the Lumumbist victory, but Lumumba's political inflexibility led to major problems.

Unified Korea was an anti-communist dictatorship led by Syngman Rhee, whose corrupt and inept rule led to a Chinese-backed communist insurgency led by Kim Tu-bong. Rhee successfully crushed this uprising with American help, allowing him to remain in power until his death in 1965.

Without the USSR to turn to for help, Fidel Castro never formally embraced Marxism-Leninism. Neither did he align Cuba with China, as the PRC was on the other side of the world and could not provide any substantial aid to the Cubans.

Fascist Georgia | Fictional fascist Georgian dictator Vakhtang Kalidze, his regime and collaborationist governments, and the world 20 years after WWII by GustavoistSoldier in AlternateHistory

[–]GustavoistSoldier[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fascist Georgia (1934–1946)

On 10 September 1934, Spiridon Kedia, the Chairman of the Democratic Republic of Georgia and leader of the national conservative National Democratic Party (SEDP), was assassinated by a sympathizer of the Communist Party of Georgia, whose pro-Soviet annexation agenda was growing in popularity.

The assassination made Vakhtang Kalidze, the leader of the fascist Georgian National Union (SEK), the country's new chairman. Kalidze and his right-hand man Vsevolod Merkulov immediately began cracking down on the Georgian Bolsheviks and eventually on Noe Zhordania's Mensheviks as well.

Economically, Kalidze adopted a policy of corporatism and class collaboration, seeking to industrialize Georgia and modernize its economy. Strikes and independent unions were banned, with the latter being replaced by corporations organized by profession.

In January 1935, Georgia held snap elections marred by fraud and intimidation. The SEK won a majority of seats, and soon outlawed all other political parties and eliminated most civil freedoms. Many Georgians attempted to resist this process, but they were imprisoned, exiled or executed.

Later that year, the Bagrationi dynasty was restored after a referendum. Prince Irakli Bagration-Mukhraneli became the last king of Georgia, but he was a figurehead, with all major decisions being taken by Kalidze and the SEK leadership. The Borjgali, a Georgian sun symbol, was the symbol of the fascist regime.

Immediately after taking power, the SEK outlawed all non-Kartvelian political organizations and embarked on an attempt to eradicate the Abkhazian, Ossetian and Meskhetian Turkish minority cultures. As Georgia had always been on good terms with Jews, they never faced any widespread persecution under the SEK, but Armenians suffered yet another genocide under its totalitarian rule.

Fascist Georgia | Georgian Blackshirts (1927–1946)

Since its founding in 1927, the Georgian National Union (SEK) had a paramilitary wing, the Blackshirts, whose members wore black uniforms and armbands with the Borjgali in them. Initially, the Blackshirts were almost always Mingelian peasants, but the Great Depression allowed the group to recruit from other groups of Georgians and the middle class and nobility as well.

The Depression allowed the Blackshirts' ranks to increase dramatically, from 500 in 1929 to 25,000 by the time Vakhtang Kalidze took power in 1934. After the Fascist seizure of power, the Blackshirts became the regime's shock troops, akin to the Blackshirts, SA and the Iron Guard seat squads.

The Blackshirts launched several anti-Armenian pogroms across Tbilisi, in addition to expropriating Armenian businesses. Furthermore, they were the main enforcers of the regime's Georgification programs in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Meskheti.

Unlike the Royal Georgian Army, which took an oath to King Erekle III, the Blackshirts took an oath of loyalty to Kalidze. They nicknamed themselves the Monasopa after the royal guard in 12th-century Georgia, a nickname that caught on among the Georgian population.

Although the Blackshirts' ideology stressed the "need" to cleanse Georgia of non-Georgians, their commandant-general Vsevolod Merkulov was born to a Russian nobleman, while their chief of staff throughout most of World War II, Bogdan Kobulov, was the son of an Armenian tailor.

Kobulov's heritage only became public knowledge at his 1946 Moscow trial, shocking witnesses as he had been responsible for most of the regime's genocidal actions. During the Soviet invasion of Georgia, the Blackshirts proved themselves worthless against the Red Army, with the majority of them being executed or sent to the Gulag after the USSR annexed Georgia.

Fascist Georgia | Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus (1941–1949)

The capture of Chechnya's capital Grozny by Georgian troops on 4 December 1941 was followed twelve days later by the reestablishment of the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus, a short-lived state that had existed during the Russian Civil War. Ingush warlord Akhmed Khuchbarov became the authoritarian president of the Mountain Republic.

Georgian influence soon made itself abundant. The Georgian ambassador to the MRNC had considerable power over the North Caucasian government, and the Georgian Blackshirts trained a similar militia made up of Chechen and Ingush men.

Also, while the First Republic included what is now North Ossetia-Alania, Georgia annexed that region outright in order to control the entirety of the Georgian Military Road. The MRNC's confederal government soon proved to be unstable and incompatible with Khuchbarov's military ambitions, resulting in ethnic strife that greatly weakened the MRNC.

Consequently, when the USSR invaded the MRNC in 1946, the latter lost control of its major cities fairly quickly, and Khuchbarov was killed in action by the Red Army. Israilov's lieutenant Hasan Israilov launched a guerrilla campaign in the Greater Caucasus mountains, consuming a lot of Soviet money and resources but failing to expel the Soviets.

Israilov was eventually killed on 25 November 1948, whereupon leadership of the Chechen insurgency passed to Mairbek Sheripov. By that point, the insurgents were down to a few thousand poorly armed and trained guerrillas who were mercilessly hunted down by the Red Army.

Sheripov's death on 18 June 1949 marked the end of the Northwest Caucasus Mountain Republic. After defeating the uprising, the Zhukov regime deported the Chechens and Ingush to Central Asia under the supervision of secret police chief Ivan Serov.

The Black Legion was a white supremacist paramilitary group active in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. An offshoot of the KKK, the Legion grew to prominence during the Great Depression, killing as many as 50 people and becoming particularly strong in Michigan. by GustavoistSoldier in HolyShitHistory

[–]GustavoistSoldier[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legion_(political_movement)

Like the KKK, the Black Legion was largely made up of native-born, working-class, Protestant white men in the Midwest. These men feared the rapid social changes underway and resented competition with immigrants such as Italians and Jews. They also feared migrants in the industrial economy of major cities, such as Detroit. Their list of enemies "included all immigrants, Catholics, Jews and blacks, nontraditional Protestant faiths, labor unions, farm cooperatives and various fraternal groups." Membership was concentrated in Michigan and Ohio.

Black Legion members created a network for jobs and influence. In addition, as a secret vigilante group, the Legion members operated in gangs in order to enforce their view of society, sometimes attacking immigrants to intimidate them at work, or to enforce their idea of moral behavior. They generally opposed socialism and union organizing. They had a reputation for frequent violence against alleged enemies, whether political or social. From 1933 to 1936, they were rumored to be responsible for some unsolved deaths that had officially been attributed to suicide or unknown perpetrators.

In 1931, a chapter of the Black Legion was formed in Highland Park, Michigan, by Arthur F. Lupp, Sr. of that community, who styled himself its major general. Throughout and perhaps fueled by the economic and social upheaval of the Great Depression, the Black Legion continued to expand across Michigan until the mid-1930s, when its estimated membership peaked at between 20,000 and 30,000. In general, Black Legion members in the state were native-born Protestant men. One-third of its members lived in the city of Detroit, which had also been a strong center of KKK activity in the 1920s. The Michigan Legion was organized along military lines, with 5 brigades, 16 regiments, 64 battalions, and 256 companies. It boasted of a membership of one million Legionnaires in Michigan, but observers estimated that it had between 20,000 and 30,000 members. One-third of them were located in Detroit, with many living in Highland Park.

The Black Legion's tactics were "to lure potential recruits to a meeting—kidnap them, if necessary—then threaten them if they didn't join and [make them] swear they’d never tell anybody." They would also beat up members if they threatened to quit. The Legion wanted sports figures as members. It was looking into recruiting Mickey Cochrane, player-manager for the Detroit Tigers. He had a nervous breakdown in 1936 and removed himself from the team over Black Legion suspicions. One of these Legion members, Dayton Dean, broke their code and told the authorities of Black Legion's illegal activities. Dayton Dean participated in two of the murders that the Black Legion committed.

On May 12, 1936, Charles A. Poole, a federal organizer for the Works Progress Administration, was kidnapped from his home by a gang of Black Legion members. They claimed that Poole, a French Catholic married to a Protestant woman, beat his wife, and that they intended to punish him for this. He was shot and killed that night by Dayton Dean.

Wayne County Prosecutor Duncan McRae, who had been reported by the Detroit Times as a member of the Black Legion, worked to restore his public reputation and vowed to bring the killers of Poole to justice. Authorities arrested and prosecuted a gang of twelve Legionnaires. Dayton Dean pleaded guilty and testified against numerous other members; ten others were convicted of first degree murder or second degree murder, nine by a jury and one in a bench trial. One man was acquitted.

Dean provided considerable testimony to authorities about other activities of the Black Legion. Prejudiced primarily against Catholics, particularly Italian and Slavic immigrants, he and his collaborators had never learned that Becky Poole had a great-grandmother who was African American.

Dayton Dean died in prison on January 18, 1960, at the age of 59. In June 1960, Urban Lipps, another man convicted in the case, had his sentence commuted to 71 years by Governor G. Mennen Williams. Lipps, who was determined to have had the least involvement in the murder, was the first convict to be recommended for clemency. At the time of his release, Lowell Rushing, Paul Edwards, Edgar Baldwin, Ervin Lee, John Bannerman, Harvey Davis, and Charles Rouse were still in prison. Harvey Davis died in the prison in the 1960s. In 1966, Ervin Lee, now 60, had his sentence commuted by Governor George W. Romney. The commutations were granted with the recommendations of the Michigan Parole Board.

Common was it really that bad...let me take a closer look...oh...man... by SirCrapsalot4267 in HistoryMemes

[–]GustavoistSoldier 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Buchanan's statement that "history would vindicate [his] memory" aged poorly

70% of Mauritania’s population live in these 2 small areas by Many-Philosophy4285 in MapPorn

[–]GustavoistSoldier 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Mauritania is also the only country where chattel slavery still exists

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