History Literature / TheFootprintOfMussolini

** [[spoiler:With North China's rapid fall to a joint South Chinese-American invasion and knowing he's next without any hope of victory, Tsenbal signs away Mongolia's sovereignty to Chiang and accepts arrest without a shot being fired.]]

** In the case of Wallace, his hatred of Fascism is fully justified as by the time he ascends to the Presidency, the Italians have put a number of nations such as Greece and Serbia in chains along with Slovenia eseentially being erased from history. But his alienation of democratic and Fascist Europe and trying to ally America to Stalin's USSR out of his hatred for Fascism only got people killed, most notably [[spoiler: Warsaw being nuked by the Soviets, who were only able to do so because the Wallace administration handed over nuclear secrets to Moscow in order to even the odds in the early Cold War]]. [[VillainHasAPoint Wallace's hatred of Fascism is never once portrayed as wrong]], [[WellIntentionedExtremist but his sympathy and willingness to ally with the Soviets]] is what ruined him in this world.

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** UsefulNotes/CharlesManson never even starts the cult he did in our world, though he does [[spoiler:assassinate UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush in a futile attempt to start a race war. Ironically enough, Manson's actions leads to Bush Sr.'s Vice President Edward Brooke becoming the first African-American president in US history]].

** [[spoiler:Wallace's pro-Soviet policies turn him into a complete pariah. After he shares nuclear information with Stalin, who proceeds to nuke a Polish rebellion, he eventually ends up impeached in an effort lead by the Republicans. His actions end up destroying the Democratic Party as a whole.]]

* AlcoholInducedIdiocy: Played for drama. The sloppily planned Soviet plot to [[spoiler:fake the moon landing was born from Premier Suslov watching the film ''Film/{{Aelita}}'' while incredibly drunk. It didn't help that he was depressed at the thought that Britain and Italy were going to beat the USSR to the moon and completely humiliate the Soviets in the process]].

* HeelFaithTurn: As both the Soviet Union's international reputation and their internal situation swirls deeper down the toilet, Georgy Malenkov converts to Russian Orthodoxy in the late 1960s (about twenty years earlier than he did [=IOTL=]) to find comfort. Not only does he find God, [[spoiler:Malenkov becomes the final leader of a Soviet Union that is falling apart by 1973 sees him reside over the peaceful dissolution of the USSR with Russia itself becoming a country committed to the Christian Socialist ideals called [[Creator/LeoTolstoy Tolstoyism]]. Malenkov goes on to rescue the reputation of Russia by not only voluntarily allowing the other Socialist Republics to break off, but disarms Russia of its nuclear stockpile, which nets him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1975]].

* InsistentTerminology: By the 1960s, Libya is fully incorporated into Italy proper with the now largely Italian speaking natives given full rights. Only that the Italian government and the Libyans themselves identifying as Phoenician rather than Arab or Libyan.

* KickTheSonOfABitch: TheMafia bring their usual brutality against TheKlan.

* TheCoronerDothProtestTooMuch: [[spoiler:After the Nazis execute Horthy, the German media claims he was killed by communists.]]

** As in real life, Bey Muhammad VIII al-Amin of Tunisia is overthrown. In this timeline, however, it's at the hands of [[BodyguardBetrayal his own bodyguards]], for the purpose of swearing allegiance to the UAR at the start of the Second Arabian War.

* FictionalPoliticalParty: In response to President Wallace's desegregation policies and soft stance on Communism, the Dixiecrats split from the Democrats and found the Freedom Party on a platform of segregation and social conservatism. [[spoiler: The Democrats then implode completely after Wallace is impeached for giving atomic secrets to the Soviets, with the pro-Wallace left wing splitting off to form the Progressive Democratic Party.]]

* FictionalPoliticalParty: [[spoiler:After Wallace's disastrous Presidency, many Southern Democrats form a "Freedom Party", a pro-segregationist party.]]

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: [[spoiler:The post-Second Arabian War generation of Israel begin to feel this way about Operation Samson, which thoroughly destroyed the Arab world after nuking the UAR, though this feeling hits David Ben-Gurion, Israel's Prime Minster at the time, the most. He lived with regret over having to authorize it since that fateful Yom Kippur in 1956, no matter how often he was told he had no choice. Anne Frank described him as living in a deep depression over that choice ever since, and the narrative would state that he was haunted by his choice to his dying day.]]

** In 1942, the Turkish military overthrows their government in order to join the Fascist Bloc in its conquest of Greece.

* MilitaryCoup: [[spoiler:The People's Liberation Army, with the support of the Soviet Union, decides to overthrow Mao and sue for peace before they lose everything. Mao is arrested while visiting the USSR so he can be used as a bargaining chip, and the PLA launches a purge of his loyalists within the government. Jiang Qing becomes the new leader of Red China, and the China War comes to an end.]]

* OneHundredPercentAdorationRating: An extremely twisted example in South Africa, with [[spoiler:Andries Treurnicht]] being beloved by his people (rural and suburban) for saving them from blacks, but absolutely despised outside (even Rhodesia condemning him).

* AluminumChristmasTrees:
** Yes, there ''were'' Jews who joined the fascist movement, and many Italian fascists who opposed antisemitism. [[note]][[TruthInTelevision Initially, Mussolini's fascism movement was one that rejected the racial policies of the Nazis]], as most Italians saw Jews as part of the Italian nation. OTL, [[PragmaticVillainy Mussolini was mostly ambivalent toward Jews]], and only embraced anti-semitism in order to increase his ties with Nazism.[[/note]]
** [[spoiler:Tolstoyism, the brand of Christian Socialism that post-Soviet Russia follows, really is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolstoyan_movement a school of socialist thought]] that has long since fallen into obscurity in our history.]]

* OneHundredPercentAdorationRating: An extremely twisted example in South Africa, with [[spoiler:Andries Treurnicht]] being beloved by his people (rural and suburban) from saving them from blacks but absolutely despised outside (even Rhodesia condemning him).

** [[spoiler: Wallace's pro-Soviet policies turn him into a complete pariah. After he shares nuclear information with Stalin, who proceeds to nuke a Polish rebellion, he eventually ends up impeached in an effort lead by the Republicans. His actions end up destroying the Democratic Party as a whole]].
** [[spoiler: Mao Zedong]] failure of the Great Leap Forward, attacks during a festival, destructive charges of the Red Guard and Peoples Liberation Army, massive ego and sleeping with underage teenage girls ensured his hatred by everyone. The army commanders for his senseless waste of manpower during the Battle of Shanghai, the Chinese Communist party along with the Politburo want to kill him for dismissing their advice and refusal to ask for help, and the people despise him for the failed GLF, loss of life from the war, and his indiscretions. Even his own wife decided him staying in power would destroy his legacy.
** On a state scale [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra Apartheid-era]] UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica is even more hated than OTL with its reputation being widely despised (to the point where mentioning being from there can kick you out of a bar anywhere). As said by the narration, [[spoiler: the government has created a white ethnostate at the cost of their economy, moral decency and grandchildren’s reputation]].

* AlcoholInducedIdiocy: Played for drama. The sloppily planned Soviet plot to [[spoiler: fake the moon landing was born from Premier Suslov watching the film ''Film/{{Aelita}}'' while incredibly drunk. It didn't help that he was depressed at the thought of Britain and Italy were going to beat the USSR to the moon and completely humiliate the Soviets in the process]].

** [[spoiler:Josef Mengele also drowns in this timeline... but much earlier, and under very different circumstances]].

** The civil rights movement causes a controversy involving the Montgomery, Alabama, bus system, [[spoiler:after a wealthy black businessman purchases the system and desegregates it, causing many white residents to boycott the buses.]]

** Yugoslavia is carved up by the Fascist Bloc, with Italy getting Dalmatia and Slovenia, Hungary getting Vojvodina, Bulgaria getting Macedonia, an Croatian state that gets Bosnia, with the Serbs getting a greatly reduced rump state.

** By 1973 [[spoiler:the Soviet Union peacefully dissolves and sees the three Baltic States, Finland, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, the Central Asian Republics, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Chechnya, Tuva, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan all break off while Russia itself is the Tolstoyist Russian Federation with Georgy Malenkov at the helm]].

* ColdBloodedTorture: The standard punishment for just about anyone Stalin thinks is a spy or traitor, the effects of which are horrifyingly shown with how Italian communist exile Palmiro Togliatti is broken following his three-day-long torture at his show trial. After being falsely convicted of being a Western spy and sentenced to death, he proceeds go on an unscripted rant ''praising Stalin and saying he deserves to die''. It would later be reported that he was ''crying TearsOfJoy in the days leading up to his execution''.

** 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 democratically elected president of Cuba rather than becoming a dictator himself, and the Castro brothers are remembered worldwide as great liberators.

* PyrrhicVillainy: [[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.]]

It can also be found in [[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B72Q3VCC book format in Amazon]], having been self-published by the author.

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