History Literature / TheFootprintOfMussolini

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Fascism joins communism in not making it out of the 1970s with a fair amount of Asian, Middle Eastern and African countries being surprisingly well-off compared to OTL. However, this timeline gets its name for a reason. Italian Fascism being legitimized allowed colonialism in Africa to continue to the point where many colonies were incorporated into the European metropole and acts considered war crimes in our world such as [[TheMigration forced expulsions]] and collective punishment being considered normal instead. Fascist Italy also holds the dubious honor of having dropped the most nuclear weapons in history which includes the destruction of the Middle East that came with the fall of the UAR]], the NuclearWeaponsTaboo only still in place during wartime thanks to [[spoiler:the worldwide horror at the Soviets nuking Warsaw and the Italians nuking Addis Ababa]].

** When Anne Frank enters politics, Meir Kahane accuses her of anti-Semitism for her criticism of the Roman Alliance.

** ''Warsaw'' features an old man wandering through the ruins of Warsaw, having flashbacks to his younger self portrayed by Creator/JohnWayne, and ends with him deciding that while the city of Warsaw may be ruined, the spirit of it lives on and joins the local resistance. The film is a massive critical and commerical success, and John Wayne would receive an Oscar for his acting alongside Creator/JohnFord.

** The Cold War in this world sees an alliance of sorts between the democratic International Treaty Organization and the Fascists of the Roman Alliance against the USSR and its Stalingard Pact. [[spoiler:While the alliance does see major cracks that result in a split between the Fascist and Democratic blocs by the 1960s, it lasts long enough to be part of the reason why Communism falls and the Soviet Union collapses in the early 1970s]].

** Mussolini is a brutal, imperialistic dictator, but after a Jewish blackshirt [[TakingTheBullet takes some gunfire]] for him, he decides he'll never have anything to do with anti-Semitism.

** Multiple high-ranking Nazis, most prominently [[spoiler:Heinrich Himmler]] and [[spoiler:Joseph Goebbels]], are executed at the Nuremburg trials despite not having been tried (at least not there) in our timeline.

** Because of [[spoiler:the religious mood in Russia afrer the collapse of the USSR]], neither UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev or UsefulNotes/BorisYeltsin ever amount to anything in their post-Soviet careers. The only mention of Gorby anywhere in the timeline is spending [[spoiler:the rest of the Soviet Union's life in a gulag]].

** PlayedWith. The premise of the timeline is Mussolini deciding never to have anything to do with antisemitism following an assassination attempt in 1932, after having been a dictator for a decade by that point. What sealed the deal were the last words of his Jewish savior Isaac Carpi ("Then ''[[UsefulNotes/{{Italy}} we]]'' are safe."), which [[ItsAllAboutMe fed Mussolini's ego]]. This magnanimity toward Jews, and becoming a member of the Allies during World War II allows Mussolini to get away with atrocities such as genocides in Libya and Albania (later downgrading to [[PragmaticVillainy assimilating them into Italian culture]]) that don't get a critical look until the 21st century.

* IconOfRebellion: [[spoiler:As Italy's political situation in the 1970s continues to grow tense and the world begins to turn against Fascism, Enrico Berlinguer (who's been imprisoned since 1963) becomes the symbol for the people of Italy who demand change to the system after all the blood spilt in Ethiopia. When he is released from prison, he bcomes the first non-Fascist leader of Italy.]]

* NotSoDifferentRemark: Goebbels tries to play this card [[spoiler:at the Nuremburg Trials against the victorious Allies, saying they have no right to condemn him and his fellow Nazis when they're guilty of similar misdeeds]].

** ''The Other Great Dictator'', a sequel to Creator/CharlieChaplin's ''Film/TheGreatDictator'', is released as a response to the Holocaust and is DarkerAndEdgier compared to the original film. Featuring the Barber who is freed from jail, his jot at seeing Tomania being liberated is diminished as freedom over there is slowly and brutally eroded by the Russians. The film ends with most of the cast from the first film and Barber escaping to Israel.

** [[invoked]] ''We The Living'' is an adaptation of Creator/AynRand's first novel, whose ending was changed to conform to the MediaNotes/TheHaysCode, leading to Ayn Rand herself to [[DisownedAdaptation renounce it]]. While [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff popular in Italy]], the fact that the story can also be interpreted as antifascist lead to the [[BannedInChina Italian government banning it]].

** ''Warsaw'' features an old man wandering through the ruins of Warsaw, having flashbacks to his younger self portrayed by Creator/JohnWayne, and ends with him deciding that while the city of Warsaw may be ruined, the spirit of it lives on and joins the local resistance. The film is a massive critical and commerical success, and John Wayne would receive an Oscar for his acting alongside John Ford.

* TakeThat: By implication, the author delivers one against moon landing hoax conspiracy theorists. By showing the Soviet Union attempting to fake a moon landing in the middle of its own Cold War, and showing just what a complete disaster the hoax is, it is implied that the same thing would have happened had the US attempted to fake the moon landing IOTL.

** [[spoiler:[[ConspiracyTheory The idea that one could engineer a false moon landing.]] Suslov, desperately trying to restore the prestige of Soviet Russia, attempts to fake a moon landing. [[DisasterDominoes From the very start, it was clear this wasn't going to go how Suslov thought it would.]]]]

*** [[spoiler:Said plan was also conceived after Suslov got drunk because he was depressed over the British and Italians beating the Soviets to the moon. Even when he sobers up, he sticks with the plan because he's that convinced it'll work.]]
*** [[spoiler:Most of his subordinates see the plan for the insanity it is, Yuri Andropov even thought it was a "test of loyalty" from Suslov when first informed of the plan. Everyone else within upper echelons of the CPSU that are in on the plan are noted to be too terrified to stand against this plan thanks to the USSR's persistent Stalinist terror, with Gorbachev having been shipped off the gulag months before the plan went into motion for trying to foment opposition against Suslov.]]
*** [[spoiler:Numerous intelligence agencies from the rival blocs would expose the act together after the fact. They have the means to know what's going on in the Soviet Space Program and have no reason to keep this ruse a secret.]]
*** [[spoiler:Many subordinates, like Yuri Gagarin, would be deeply disgusted by this act. Pavel Klushantev, a Soviet science fiction move director who was dragged out of a gulag for the occasion, [[StylisticSuck deliberately engineers the footage to be as bad as possible]].]]
*** [[spoiler:Many trained engineers and scientists could use science to debunk the claims of the Soviet Union.]]

** Mikhail Suslov [[spoiler:first begins to crack when Malenkov takes full control of the USSR but leaves him alive afterwards and finally shatters by the time of the Trier Trial. During his trial, he would call Malenkov “a cross-humping faggot”, call Molotov “the bastard son of a gypsy and a vodka bottle”, and declared that he had secret Communist agents within the court ready to kill everyone in the room and rescue him. Future historians note that had the circumstances been different, Suslov would've been declared unfit for trial]].

* ForWantOfANail: Mussolini being saved from an assassination by a Jewish Blackshirt changes Mussolini's outlook on Jews, as well as the course of history.

* PyrrhicVictory: How the end of the [[spoiler:Ethiopian Uprising goes for both Italy and Ethiopia. Ethiopia freed itself from the Italian Empire at the cost of at least 5 million dead, the country shattered by years of warfare that struggles to recover even in the modern day, and is a poor husk due to refusing to trade with Italy at all. For Italy, the supposed victory only serves as the catalyst for change to come to Italy in 1979.]]
** [[spoiler:South Africa managed to maintain the regime of Apartheid and create a white ethnostate after expelling the majority of the black population from the country. And it only cost them the small price of the total destruction of their economy and being turned into an international pariah that is despised by every other country in the world. At least there is almost no crime... because everyone is so poor that there is nothing worth stealing.]]

** [[spoiler:[[ConspiracyTheory The idea that one could engineer a false moon landing.]] Suslov, desperately trying to restore the prestige of Soviet Russia, attempts to fake a moon landing. [[DisasterDominoes Several things would go wrong.]]]]
*** [[spoiler:Rather than being a stroke of genius that Suslov thinks it is, the hoax is portrayed as nothing but a last desperate move of a man who has snapped from the pressure of seeing Soviet communism replaced in the third world by Afro-Fascism and seeing everything he believes in dying before his eyes, even if he refuse to admit it.]]
*** [[spoiler:Yuri Andropov thought it was a "test of loyalty" from Suslov when first informed of the plan. The remaining high ranking members of the CPSU are too terrified to stand against this plan thanks to the USSR's persistent Stalinist terror, with Gorbachev having been shipped off the gulag months before the plan went into motion for trying to foment opposition against Suslov.]]
*** [[spoiler:Numerous intelligence agencies would expose the act.]]
*** [[spoiler:Many subordinates, like Yuri Gagarin, would be deeply disgusted by this act. Pavel Klushantev, a Soviet film editor, [[StylisticSuck deliberately engineers the footage to be as bad as possible]].]]

** Because of [[spoiler:the religious mood in Russia falling the fall of the USSR]], neither UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev or UsefulNotes/BorisYeltsin ever amount to anything in their careers. The only mention of Gorby anywhere in the timeline is spending [[spoiler:the rest of the Soviet Union's life in a gulag]].

*** [[spoiler:Yuri Andropov thought it was a "test of loyalty" from Suslov when first informed of the plan.]]

* HistoricalDowngrade: UsefulNotes/JosipBrozTito, the heroic partisan leader of our world who lead Yugoslavia to be a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement and played off both sides of the Cold War, becomes another one of Stalin's puppets. Although Tito's only other choices was facing off against the Fascists alone and does at least get sympathy from the democratic world, partially because Pavelić is such a repugnant excuse of human being. [[spoiler:Tito at least manages to avoid being put on trial at Trier after the Fall of Communism along with the other communist dictators, albeit going on trial separately from them and dying three years earlier than he did in our world]].

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Fascism joins communism in not making it out of the 1970s with a fair amount of Asian, Middle Eastern and African countries being surprisingly well-off compared to OTL. However, this timeline gets its name for a reason. Italian Fascism being legitimized allowed colonialism in Africa to continue to the point where many colonies were incorporated into the European metropole and acts considered war crimes in our world such as [[TheMigration forced expulsions]] and collective punishment being considered normal instead. Fascist Italy also holds the dubious honor of having dropped the most nuclear weapons in history which includes the destruction of the Middle East that came with the fall of the UAR]], the NuclearWeaponsTaboo only still in place thanks to [[spoiler:the worldwide horror in the Soviets nuking Warsaw and the Italians nuking Addis Ababa]].

** PlayedWith. The premise of the timeline is Mussolini deciding never to have anything to do with antisemitism following an assassination attempt in 1932, having been the dictator of Italy for a decade by that point. Because the last words of his savior Isaac Carpi ("“Then ''[[UsefulNotes/{{Italy}} we]]'' are safe,") [[ItsAllAboutMe fed Mussolini's ego]], it sealed the deal on him opposing antisemitism. This magnanimity toward Jews, and becoming a member of the Allies during World War II allows Mussolini to get away with atrocities such as genocides in Libya and Albania (later downgrading to [[PragmaticVillainy assimilating them into Italian culture]]) that don't get a critical look until the 21st century.
** Fidel and Raul Castro turn their backs on communism once and for all after the nuking of Warsaw and the revelation of the Second Holocaust (although its left ambiguous as to whether it was genuine disgust over Soviet actions or because being tied to communism would impede their revolution more than help it). This combined with American support means that when they overthrow Batista, Fidel is a democratically elected president of Cuba rather than becoming a dictator himself, and the Castro brothers are remembered worldwide as great liberators despite Fidel being forced to make a deal with the US Mafia in order to win the revolution.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Fascism joins communism in not making it out of the 1970s, but this timeline gets its name for a reason. Italian Fascism being legitimized allowed colonialism in Africa to continue to the point where many colonies were incorporated into the European metropole and acts considered war crimes in our world such as [[TheMigration forced expulsions]] and collective punishment being considered normal instead. Fascist Italy also holds the dubious honor of having dropped the most nuclear weapons in history which includes [[spoiler:the destruction of the Middle East that came with the fall of the UAR]], the NuclearWeaponsTaboo only still in place thanks to [[spoiler:the worldwide horror in the Soviets nuking Warsaw and the Italians nuking Addis Ababa]].

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: [[HistoricalHeroUpgrade Mussolini in this timeline is far more forgiving and tolerant to the peoples Italy ruled over than his OTL counterpart]], who ordered a genocide on the Libyan people merely a month into his reign and considered the peoples of the Balkans, ''especially'' Albanians to be subhuman.

** Due to his magnanimity toward Jews, and becoming a member of the Allies during World War II, Mussolini enjoys this in-universe, with many of his atrocities glossed over.

** [[spoiler:South Africa managed to mantain the regime of Apartheid and create a white ethnostate after expelling the majority of the black population from the country. And it only cost them the small price of the total destruction of their economy and being turned into an international pariah that is despised by every other country in the world. At least there is almost no crime... because everyone is so poor that there is nothing worth stealing.]]

* ArtisticLisenceHistory: [[HistoricalHeroUpgrade Mussolini in this timeline is far more forgiving and tolerant to the peoples Italy ruled over than his OTL counterpart]], who ordered a genocide on the Libyan people merely a month into his reign and considered the peoples of the Balkans, ''especially'' Albanians to be subhuman.