Literature / For All Time

For All Time (FaT) is an extensively dystopian Alternate History timeline originally created by "Chester A. Arthur" (no, not the President), who is known under the handle "gentboss" on AlternateHistory.com, on Usenet's Soc.history.what-if from March 2001 onwards.^note This incomplete archive has upload dates on the chapters.

The premise of FaT is that in late December 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies unexpectedly, and his Vice President Henry A. Wallace becomes President. Wallace is a well-intententioned but rather inept leader, and a few mistakes eventually snowball into an alternate World War II and late 20th century of racial and sectarian violence, incessant warfare, regular use of nuclear weapons and stymied scientific and technological development. It is thus no wonder that FaT has become notorious on alternatehistory.com as an example of what happens when everything in an alternate history that can go wrong does go wrong.

The main story can be found here, though that one lacks the last few chapters after the late 1970s, or here (link downloads a .doc file). Moreover, a page containing more information about this story is available here.

A spiritual sequel/update titled "For All Time: Well Enough Alone" was written on AH.com by user "Lord Roem". It brings the story up to 2008 and gives it a final conclusion. It can be found here. An "antithesis" story titled For All Eternity was also written, inverting the point of divergence to attempt to create a timeline where things turned out much better than our world.

A map of the world at the end of FaT (including the Lord Roem sequel) can be found here.

Compare The Draka, another heavily dystopian alternate history.

Be careful, as there are unmarked spoilers!

For All Tropes:

• Aborted Arc:
  • Soviet spymaster Gaik Ovakimian features in an update for 1950, musing about how after his most recent plan is complete, he will be only be behind Pavel Sudoplatov, who is only behind Lavrentiy Beria, who is only behind Stalin himself, who will not live forever. However, Ovakimian is never seen again in the story.
  • In 1952, Anthony Quinn loses a California Congressional election to Ronald Reagan, and it is noted that "the state and the Republican Party remember Reagan's masterful performance [in a debate with his opponent]. Reagan, meanwhile, remembers how well playing up Quinn's Mexican ancestry played in the less likable parts of his district". This seems to hint at future political success (possibly involving some less-than-progressive stances on racial issues), but it comes to nothing as Reagan's political career fizzles out and he returns to acting.
  • In 1962, the French government begins covertly funding separatist guerrilla groups in Quebec, and by 1966 it is said that "there are dark and unpleasant rumors of some impending revolution rising throughout the province". This doesn't appear to go anywhere despite the momentum built up, and Quebec separatism is not mentioned again in the main story. In the epilogue it is revealed that Quebec did gain its independence sometime in the mid-1980s, but this still feels a bit like an afterthought.
• The Alliance: The Amsterdam Pact (TTL's version of NATO) is established in 1947 between Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg to defend against Soviet aggression. Spain, Portugal, and the Pfalzrepublik (the Franco-British German puppet state) later join. The United States stays out due to being under the isolationist President Robert Taft. The alliance collapses in 1957 after a nuclear war nearly breaks out between Britain and France.
  • Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark all unite as the Nordic Council in the late 50s. Despite the turbulence of this world, the council manages to stay intact into the 21st century. In general, Scandinavia doesn't suffer as badly as the rest of the world in the timeline, all things considered.
• Allohistorical Allusion: Like OTL, a President Kennedy is assassinated in Texas—albeit it’s Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. (JFK’s older brother, who in OTL was killed during World War II) who is killed, it happens in Austin and not in Dallas, and the assassin is Charles Whitman.
  • During a routine test, a nuclear plant experiences a meltdown after the automatic shutdown systems are switched off. Here, however, the plant's in Jackson, Mississippi rather than northern Ukraine.
  • In our timeline, Milton Obote served as President of Uganda until he was overthrown by Idi Amin while on a state visit to a nearby country. Years later, however, Obote overthrew Amin right back and became President once again. In For All Time, it's the other way around: Amin is President of the East African Federation (which includes Uganda) until he is overthrown by Obote while on a state visit to nearby country, but he later comes back and overthrows Obote.
  • In the alternate timeline, Kurt Vonnegut becomes a reporter who publishes a shocking exposé of the brutal conduct of American troops toward Philippine guerrillas in the Luzon War. In particular, the revelations focus on the savage horrors committed in "Settlement #5", one of five concentration camps for captured partisans. The camp gains such a terrible reputation that Vonnegut calls it a slaughterhouse—that is, Slaughterhouse-Five.
  • After World War II, a combatant country that was invaded and suffered heavily comes under the control of an authoritarian regime that attempts a "cultural revolution" to cleanse itself of ideologically impure citizens. But here, it's France rather than China.
  • In order to promote the creation of the Jerusalem League, Haj Amin al-Husseini uses the "First they came..." poem from Martin Niemöller.
  • Leo Ryan serves as Secretary of Education in President Jim Jones' cabinet. In real life Ryan was killed during his visit to Jonestown, the cult settlement Jones had founded.
• Anarchy Is Chaos: Authority in French West Africa dissolves in the Autumn of 1968 with the garrisons in the region all deserting amidst terrible conditions. Governed almost entirely from Paris, the result is the region experiencing an anti-Hobbesian state of nature.
• A Father to His Men: François Darlan, fascist Premier of France, gives General Charles de Gaulle command of the remote islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, in order to keep his most popular rival out of the way. De Gaulle makes the most of his position, attracting thousands of former French Resistance fighters who love him as a father. De Gaulle becomes so popular on the islands that he declares them a breakaway republic, causing a crisis that nearly leads to nuclear war between France and Britain.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Westphalia, one of the successor states of Nazi Germany, is led by ex-Wehrmacht officers such as Erich von Manstein and Reinhard Gehlen. Downplayed in that they don’t bring back Nazi policies; they’re just authoritarian German nationalists.
  • France ironically becomes a fascist state under Admiral François Darlan after World War II.
  • Even more ironically, the "Grand Hebrew Republic" established in the aftermath of the Soviet-Arab nuclear war also goes fascist.
  • A Fourth Reich is established in the 2000s in the form of the National German Republic, led by Reich Chancellor Jörg Haider. Like with Westphalia before them, though, they don't share Nazi policies and under them Germany's Jewish population actually reaches numbers not seen since the Weimar Republic.
• Apocalypse How: Since nuclear wars are common, Class 0s happens frequently.
  • The Sino-Soviet nuclear war kills over 600 million people. 100 million Soviets die in the Chinese attacks; the Soviet counter-strikes are significantly more destructive, killing (from a total population of 900 million) 540 million Chinese; the famine and starvation that follow kill roughly half the survivors, resulting in close to a billion deaths in total.
• Arab–Israeli Conflict: The first attempt to establish a Jewish state in the Middle East is thwarted by the Arabs. This leads to Jewish refugees resettling in America, further destabilizing race relations. After the Soviet Union nukes the Middle East, the Jews take advantage of the power vacuum and establish a Jewish state in the wreckage of Palestine, enacting brutal ethnic cleansing against Arabs.
• Artistic License – Nuclear Physics: It is practically impossible that Korea could build the "Glorious People's Revolutionary Hammer", a 250,000 megaton nuclear doomsday weapon. In OTL the largest nuclear device ever built was Tsar Bomba, which had a maximum theoretical yield of 100 megatons but was detonated with a yield of 50 megatons.
  • Though the story indicates the statement to be an honest one on the part of the Koreans, nothing says that it would have actually worked. After all, a claim like that is not easily verified...
• Ate His Gun: Dying from intestinal cancer, French ruler Admiral Francois Darlan commits suiside this way.
• Assassination Attempt: In October 1945, Eberhard von Breitenbuch smuggles a small pistol past SS security and shoots Hitler twice, gravely wounding him. Breitenbuch is swiftly slain by the SS, who murder Walter Model for being a suspected partner in crime. Accidental gunfire triggers further SS killings at the scene. Erich von Manstein survives, and convinces enough army personnel that it was the SS who shot Hitler, plunging Germany into a civil war between the two factions.
• Atomic Hate: With no international organization created after World War II to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, dozens of countries gain the atomic bomb in FaT, including Canada, Australia, Venezuela, Greater (apartheid) South Africa, Idi Amin's East African Federation, etc. Another key part of this rule is that whenever nuclear weapons could be used (and even when they really shouldn't), they are used (for example, the largest single series of conflicts in FaT is a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, the Soviet Union and the pan-Middle Eastern Jerusalem League, and concluded thereafter by a nuclear civil war that destroys the USSR).
  • The space age begins, more or less, on July 4th, 1959, when a nuclear-powered Extremely High-Level Bomber called the Rex makes a trip from Nevada to Japan at sub-orbital altitude. It also leaves a long trail of dead fish and cancer patients in its wake thanks to the radioactive plume from its engines.
• Bald of Evil: Kim Jong-il gives his speech threating to set off a 250,000 megaton nuclear weapon unless Korea is allowed to annex Japan and Manchuria with a shaved head.
• Balkanize Me: Many states don't live to see the 21st century.
  • Germany is first divided into three states after the Second World War, although it is later reunified as the National German Republic.
  • Japan loses Hokkaido after WWII, which is turned into a Soviet-backed People's Republic of Japan.
  • After Israel is strangled in its crib, Palestine is divided between Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt.
  • Indonesia collapses into multiple states, the largest being a communist regime that controls Java and Southern Sumatra. Others include the Republic of Bali, the Republic of West Malacca, the Kalimantan states, and an incredibly poor Irian Jaya Confederation.
  • The Italian Civil War results in the independence of Sicily and Sardinia, while mainland Italy becomes a Communist state and eventually splits into north and south by the end of the 20th century.
  • Yugoslavia is carved up by the Soviets and its neighbors after it attempts to rebel against Moscow's authority.
  • Turkey is divided up between Bulgaria, Greece, the Soviets, and the newly created Democratic Republic of Kurdistan, which also gains land from Iran. As a compensation, Iran receives a corridor to Syria. The remnants of Turkey become the communist Democratic United People's Republic of Anatolia, or DUPRA.
  • France loses Brittany, Corsica, the Saarland, and Saint Pierre and Miquelon. Then after La Résistance dies the rest of France collapses into half a dozen states.
  • China collapses following the Sino-Soviet nuclear war in 1973. Xinjiang, Gansu, and most of Manchuria are absorbed by the Soviets, while Mongolia takes Inner Mongolia and Liaoning. Tibet also secedes from the country sometime before 2009.
  • England withdraws from the United Kingdom after an independence referendum in 1971, though an abortive Monarchist/Conservative coup d'etat led by General Walter Walker and Margaret Thatcher tries to keep the union together. It later reunifies with the rest of the UK as the Federation of the British Isles.
  • The Soviet Union utterly collapses after it falls into a nuclear civil war.
  • Canada is splintered by French Quebec, the maritime provinces, and the western half being assimilated into the North American Confederacy.
  • Greenland separates from Denmark and becomes an independent republic.
  • After the Grand Hebrew Republic is established, many surrounding states are carved up or turned into satellite states.
  • Switzerland is carved up between the Fourth Reich, Northern Italy, and a tiny rump state.
  • Inverted with Greater South Africa, which eventually incorporates Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Mozambique, Angola, and the southern half of the Congo. Botswana, however, remains a British colony and later an independent nation despite being enclaved.
• Being Evil Sucks: Most of the story's bleakness derives not from good failing against evil, but evil inflicting evil onto evil. Nazi Germany falls into a three-way civil war, fascist France loses its colonial empire, crumbles into civil war twice and becomes the poorest country in Europe, communist Korea is nuked back to the stone age after threatening to destroy the world, communist China is Balkanized and dismembered after most of its people die in a nuclear war with the USSR, and the the USSR is destroyed in a nuclear civil war.
• Benevolent Dictator: Gough Whitlam and later Charles Yue are this for Australia, later Australasia.
• Black Comedy: Appears every now and again, with one of the more prominent examples going:

With the new militarization of the Chikatilo regime, some weaknesses must be opened in the previously sealed walls of the CPSD border. While Chikatilo isn't enamored of the idea of his subjects...err, comrades, getting away, hey, the border patrol is a lot of money that could be better spent on things more useful to the still-reeling Soviet bloc.

Like that big statue of him in every major Soviet bloc city, not to mention the camp-factories along the Arctic Circle where the munitions for a new age are being turned out and thousands of traitors are being disposed of daily.

• Black-and-Grey Morality: Most of the people and factions in For All Time lie within the medium to dark grey range, but there are several black spots. These tend to be Communist dictators, but other notables include French Emperor Jean Bedel-Bokassa
• Boom, Headshot!: In 1962, black radicals stage a protest outside the White House, and are met with by President La Follette. Lee Harvey Oswald is guarding the President, and for reasons unknown shoots Julian Bond in the head. Medgar Evars then shoots at Oswald, causing the Presidents bodyguards to open fire onto the crowd and to try and prevent a race war, La Follette calls a press conference where he takes the blame then commits suicide on live television.
• The Butcher: Raoul Salan earns himself the title of The Butcher of Bayeux due to his liberal use of nuclear weapons in suppressing Algerian separatism.
• Butterfly of Doom: FDR dies of a stroke shortly after Pearl Harbor, setting in motion the dystopian events of this timeline.
• The Caligula: This world is full of them, but the most notable is Jean Bedel-Bokassa, who after becoming the Emperor of France, decides to solve a famine by selling meat made from the flesh of murdered political prionsers. The Defense Secretary of the Grand Hebrew Republic latter contemplates using the same method to solve the food shortages in the Palestinian ghettos.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": HIV/AIDS is called SPID (Sindrom priobretennovo immunodeficita, syndrome of acquired immunodeficiency) in this timeline, since it was discovered by the Soviet Union instead of the United States. Thanks to the incessant warfare and an incompetent Soviet blood donation system, it has managed to infect about 35% of Eurasia's population by 2002.
• Car Bomb:
  • Amidst civil war in Mexico in 1969, Maoist rebels assassinate judges and writers who criticize them this way.
  • The Mayor of Edinburgh is murdered on May 3, 1971 as part of regional unrest in the UK which culminates in England voting to withdraw from the Union.
• Civil War:
  • In the 1950 Italian elections, the Italian Communist Party wins a majority of the Senate. Prime Minister Galezzo Ciano is horrified and outlaws the far-left parties, triggering a leftist uprising that becomes a civil war. With Soviet assistance, Ciano is forced to flee to Sardinia, while the leftists in turn split, Sicily becoming ruled by Christian Democrats and the mainland by Stalinists.
  • Indonesia collapses into civil war in 1951 and is subsequently Balkanised.
  • From its independence in the late ‘50s to its conquest by China (and transformation into a puppet of Beijing) in 1964, the fascist Burmese government is fighting a war against communist rebels.
  • Separatist rebellions engulf France in 1965, ending in 1968 with the independence of Brittany, the Saarland, Corsica and the Maghreb, French West Africa crumbling into anarchy and Jean-Bedel Bokassa crowned Emperor. A second civil war erupts in 1970 after it becomes public knowledge that Emperor Bokassa was engaging in industrial-scale cannibalism to feed the country.
• Character Death: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Juan Peron, Benjamin O. Davis, James Forrestal, Wendell Willkie, François Mitterand, Jean-Paul Sarte, Robert Taft, Reza Shah Pahlavi, Benito Mussolini...
• Commie Land: Communism spreads much further in this timeline. In addition to those in OTL (bar Cuba), there's Austria, a larger East Germany, North Japan, all of Korea, Iran, Turkey, Italy, Argentina, and many others.
• The Coup:
  • After the USSR has a rebellious Yugoslavia nuked, Greek ruler Markos Vafiades is overthrown by his secret police chief.
  • Che Guevara deposes the co-ruler of Argentina Leopoldo Galteri in Autumn 1962 allowing him to transform the country into a Maoist state.
• Crapsack World: Perhaps the ultimate example in alternate history fiction. In FaT’s world, all leaders are either corrupt, incompetent or insane; nations get splintered or thrown into civil war on a daily basis; and nuclear weapons get tossed around like snowballs. World War II is longer and bloodier, the equivalent of NATO falls apart, the Soviets gain ground everywhere (they take Italy, Austria, Turkey, Iran, all of Korea, and Hokkaido, among other places), France collapses after a string of inept fascist dictators (capped by Jean-Bedel Bokassa), American race relations take a long dive off the cliff, the Nuclear Weapons Taboo is flagrantly averted, the Reverend Jim Jones gets elected U.S. President after beating Charles Manson, and to top it all off, the Soviets get Andrei Chikatilo as their last General Secretary. Emphasis on "last" — he destroys the Soviet Union in a nuclear civil war, but not before nuking China and the Middle East.
• Darker and Edgier: Over time, the story becomes more and more dark when compared to the equivalent period of history. This begins with a slightly darker World War 2 than reality that ends with a lesser spread of Democracy thanks to an expanded Soviet bloc and a fascist France. Things start to veer further from our timeline in the '50s with increasing usage of nuclear weapons as a means of rebel suppression. In the second half of the '60s things take another turn for the worse with interstate nuclear wars occurring, and in the 1970s society is ravaged by a mix of natural and artificial plagues, major powers fight a nuclear war, and most of of the planet that had been democratic (as is the case with the USA and Australia) become dictatorships.
• Day of the Jackboot: Though tyrants are a dime a dozen in For All Time, this trope is mostly averted due to the lack of reasonable authority figures for them to take over from. One notable exception is when Jim Jones replaces George McGovern as President of the USA.
• Deadly Gas: As is the case with nuclear weapons, so to does the taboo on chemical weapons cease to exist with a botched Sarin gas rocket attack launched by the Germans against the Soviets in the last days of World War II. From that point, they see extensive use in virtually every other conflict in the mid to late 20th century.
• Democracy Is Bad: Subverted, mostly. The few societies in the FaTL which do maintain democratic institutions generally remain nicer places to live than the many authoritarian states in this world, and are (for the most part) spared from a lot of the misery and insane leadership that befalls those places. Until Jim Jones is elected U.S. President, that is.
• Democracy Is Flawed: Plenty of bad leaders are elected democratically in For All Time. For instance, racist British Prime Minister Enoch Powell, whose alienation of Welsh voters leads to a Welsh independence movement that resorts to terrorism, is able to take office thanks to the poor economy, loss of empire and South Asian immigration, things that either appeal to people's worse instincts or are largely beyond Labor's control. Nonetheless, thanks to democratic accountability, he only holds office for three years and does only a tiny fraction the damage of the worst unelected leaders.
• Depopulation Bomb: A very literally case with the bombing of the Glorious Peoples' Revolutionary Hammer, which kills the majority of Korea's population.
• Didn't Think This Through: What happens after Korea unveils the Glorious People's Revolutionary Hammer (an impossibly enormous nuclear bomb) and threatens to use it unless they're allowed to annex Japan and Manchuria? The other nuclear powers of the world bomb them into oblivion.
• Different World, Different Movies: Several examples are given.
  • Johnny Cash evidently becomes an actor, starring in the 1961 release I Walk The Line as an ex-con singer who finds Jesus and becomes a preacher.
  • Film versions are made of The Demolished Man and Bring the Jubilee, the latter of which stars famed actor Elvis Presley.
  • James Bond is instead known by the name John Gould^note named after an ornitologist, just like in real life, and is played by David Niven and Richard Harris.
  • In 1973, Stanley Kubrick directs a historical political thriller about the release of the Dewey Papers, which ruined President Thomas Dewey's public image in the early 1950s. It stars Richard Dreyfuss as Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Duvall as Lester Maddox, Paul Newman as "Philip of Macedon" (actually Hamilton Fish Jr.), Robert Redford as Bobby Kennedy and Warren Beatty as President Dewey.
  • The Breakin' film series has at least five sequels, of whom Breakin' Five: Time to Jive and Breakin' Six: Bag of Tricks are named.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Happens a lot, especially with nukes.
• Divided States of America: Downplayed. After twice losing the Presidential election to Jim Jones, California governor Charles Manson declares his state independent. The subsequent war lasts two years before the USA completely reconquers the wayward region.
• Doomsday Device: Kim Jong-il builds the “Glorious People’s Revolutionary Hammer”, a 250,000 megaton nuclear weapon that he threatens to set off unless Korea is allowed to annex Japan and Manchuria (where there are substantial Korean populations). The world responds by nuking Korea back into the Stone Age. The doomsday weapon is destroyed, but 40 million Koreans are killed and radioactive fallout spreads across the Pacific.
• Doorstopper: The main story alone contains almost 120,000 words.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Previously, in 1943, Secretary of War James Forrestal killed himself after the failed D-Day invasion of Normandy. He committed suicide in OTL.
  • President Robert La Follette Jr., after a personal meeting with African-American civil rights activists outside the White House turns violent and threatens to start a nationwide race war, blows his brains out during a live TV address in which he blames himself for the massacre. He also committed suicide in OTL ^note Though there are some who believe he was murdered.
  • François Darlan kills himself after being diagnosed with cancer.
  • Hundreds of French officers who know about the "pork farms" set up by French Emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa in Central Africa.
  • Also happens to the people who realize they ate human flesh.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Robert Kenneth Dornan, as his faulty plane is falling apart mid-flight, decides to carry out his mission to destroy the Glorious People's Revolutionary Hammer the only way he can. He becomes the center of a 500 megaton explosion at 4:40 AM, May 17, 1970.
• Dystopia: The timeline.
• Emergency Presidential Address: Following his meeting with black protestors in which his bodyguards massacre 120 and injure a further 200 President Robert La Follette Jr. calls a press conference in which he takes the blame for the incident, urges peace and shoots himself.
• Enemy Civil War:
  • Hitler's near-assassination triggers a civil war in Nazi Germany, which sets the stage for the country to be divided into three separate entities.
  • After former ambassador Ron Gorchov walks in on General Secretary Andrei Chikatilo raping the corpses of Pioneer Girls, part of the NKVD attempts to depose him, leading to the destruction of the USSR in a nuclear civil war.
• Enemy Mine: The US and the Soviet Union team up briefly to take out Korea.
  • Later on the winning ticket includes Russ Feingold (a staunch progressive and Jew) as president and Pat Buchanan (a paleoconservative accused at times of anti-Semitism) as vice president. They came together over opposition to Haig's military regime.
• Evil Laugh: Kim Jong-il cackles after announcing that Korea has developed a 250,000 megaton nuke.
• Evil Versus Evil: A frequent occurrence in For All Time. Racial paramilitaries frequently battle each other in the streets of the USA, and both the 1976 and 1980 presidential elections are between Jim Jones and Charles Manson. Nazi Germany falls into a three sided civil war where all factions are worse than the Allies they are also fighting, communist East Africa wages a nuclear war against apartheid South Africa, and so too do the USSR and the People's Republic of China.
• Expanded States of America: By 2009, the United States, Western Canada, and much of Mexico merge together to form the North American Confederacy.
• Failed State:
  • The East African Federation is left as this after its nuclear war with South Africa.
  • Following the assassination of Emperor Bokassa, France becomes one and fails to recover by the 21st century.
• Failure Hero: President Wallace. Just about all of his plans blow up in his face, most notably the desegregation of the armed forces.
• The Famine: There are numerous instances of this. A few of the more notable ones include:
  • Without significant US aid to postwar Europe, it suffers from food shortages, particularly France and the Low Countries.
  • Starvation is used strategically as a weapon of war against rebellious regions in northwest Africa by the fascist French government, with hunger alone killing a third of the seven million Muslim Algerians.
  • Metropolitan France itself suffers serious famine soon afterwards, following the French government collapsing into civil war twice leading to Emperor Bokassa using the industrial scale slaughter of political prisoners to provide meat.
  • Lin Bao's cultural revolution and the mass nuking of Korea lead to the deaths of five million in China from starvation. After he loses a nuclear war with the USSR , the famine gets catastrophically worse.
• Final Solution: Massacres and genocides are another common sight in this timeline.
  • The French Government (later Government in Exile) kills off a large number of ethnic Algerians, driving hundreds of thousands south of the 30th parallel. Only a fraction of Algeria's population survives a few decades from the 1941 point of departure.
  • After the nuclear attack in Philadelphia, which is initially blamed on black militants, America comes within hours of a full-scale genocide, with a number of lynchings not seen since the 1920s.
  • The government of the Grand Hebrew Republic calls for the eradication of Arabs throughout Arabia and surrounding territories.
• Finagle's Law: Basically the governing rule of this timeline. Pretty much every crisis or issue that existed in the latter half of the 20th century
• From Bad to Worse: This series delights in dragging things downward every five minutes. D-Day fails, Stalinists take over most of Eurasia, nuclear weapons are used like hand grenades, and the Soviet-Chinese nuclear war kills over 600 million people. When Canada is sufficiently militaristic and paranoid to have its own H-bomb program and the 1980 U.S. presidential election is between Jim Jones and Charles Manson, you know the world isn’t doing so well.
• General Ripper: Francois Darlan is so infuriated at the French loss of Indochina, he authorizes the use of massive numbers of nuclear weapons against civilians to preserve the rest of the French colonial empire. Specifically, he orders General Raoul Salan and General Paul Aussaresses, commanders-in-chief in Algeria and French West Africa respectively, to

crush all who lie before you; if you must kill every man in the departments to ensure their loyalty, then do not hesitate. There is nothing more cleansing than the blood of traitors.

• The Generalissimo: Military dictatorship is a very common form of government in For All Time, but one in particular stands out. During World War 2, Admiral Pierre Darlan declares himself head of the French government, securing the Maghreb for the Allies. Then able to lead the French forces liberating the Metropole from Nazi Germany to cement himself as ruler of the country. His first move is to encourage the murder of anyone likely to threaten his hold on power, which he holds until his death by suicide.
• Giant Wall of Watery Doom: Two notable cases as a result of nuclear attacks.
  • When the Soviets detonate a nuke off the coast of Wakkanai on December 20, 1945. Barely a second after the town is set ablaze, a seven-meter-high tsunami hits and kills almost everyone.
  • After the Soviets launch an unprovoked attack on the Middle East in 1975, one of their targets is the High Nasser Dam in Egypt. Hit with a 3 megaton nuke, the resulting flood kills 98% of Egyptian's population.
  • There's also mention of Indian president Attri giving the personal order to flood Bangladesh.
• Godzilla Threshold: Though there are several occasions where nuclear weapons are thrown about like confetti, it approaches being justified on one occasion – Kim Jong-Il's announcement of a nuclear weapon with world destroying capability. Every nuclear power joins in on reducing the Korean Peninsula to radioactive slag.
• Going Critical: Thanks to the Soviets nuking the Middle Eastern oil fields, there's a massive energy crisis. This leads to the nation's numerous nuclear plants, all of which were built by less than competent companies, being put under greater strain than ever. The Ross Barnett Memorial Nuclear Plant becomes this world's Chernobyl in 1976, which leads to the exodus of 200,000 people and the creation of an exclusion zone in and around Jackson. As nuclear plants are shut down in panic, the energy crisis really begins.
• Gone Horribly Right: Joseph Kennedy nukes the Philippine jungle and the communist rebels therein quickly surrender. Nukes are then used with success (though with a much greater death toll) by François Darlan to hold onto northwest Africa, and using nuclear weapons against rebellious regions is thereafter standard practice.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Describes many of the major events in this timeline. There are numerous examples:
  • President Henry Wallace’s desegregation of the U.S. military, nationalization of industry, and attempts to push racial equality backfire disastrously, resulting in Republicans retaking both houses of Congress in the 1942 midterm election and blocking Wallace’s proposed policies.
  • Wallace fires some of the leftover cabinet members from FDR’s administration, such as Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Secretary of War Henry Stimson, because he considers them old-fashioned and too conservative. He tries to appoint his Chief of Staff Alger Hiss as Secretary of State, but Hiss is arrested by the FBI for espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union, hugely embarrassing the already tarnished Wallace administration. James Forrestal is appointed Secretary of War, only to commit suicide after the failed Normandy invasion.
  • U.S. relations with Britain are damaged due to Wallace’s disdain for Winston Churchill.
  • The Allied invasion of Normandy occurs a year earlier than in OTL due to Wallace being convinced to open a second front in Europe. This early D-Day turns out to be a disaster, with the Germans (whose forces are stronger and better-prepared at this point of the war) managing to defeat the Allied invaders. Afterward some Americans blame Wallace’s desegregation of the military for contributing to the fiasco, further inflaming racial tensions in the U.S.
  • Wallace invites the Soviet Union to participate in the Manhattan Project. This results in the Soviets developing an atomic bomb earlier than in OTL, which they use during their invasion of Japan.
  • The U.S. military attempts to crack down on nationalist forces in Puerto Rico, but the operation is botched and sees many innocent civilians slaughtered. The island is deemed a lost cause and granted independence.
  • President La Follette meets with African-American civil rights activists outside the White House in an attempt to mend race relations. Gunfire accidentally erupts between the Secret Service/Marine guards and the crowd, resulting in a massacre that nearly starts a race war and leads to La Follette committing suicide on live national television out of shame.
  • Control over U.S. nuclear power plants is transferred from the federal government to the states. This is largely responsible for the catastrophic meltdown at a nuclear power plant in Mississippi, as that state lacked qualified personnel to safely operate the plant.
  • A national referendum in the United Kingdom results in England seceding, while Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland ironically remain in the union.
• Government in Exile: After Jean-Bedel Bokassa seizes control of France, the rest of the French government flees to North Africa, cementing control by killing and expelling the bulk of native Algerians, it is implied, by the use of refugee child soldiers from mainland France.
• Hanging Around:
  • After the German defeat in World War 2, Josef Mengele is hanged by Polish partisans and Adolf Hitler is hanged along with much of the Nazi leadership following a trial by the Western Allies.
  • Amidst the race rioting in 1955 following the Supreme Court’s confirmation of the constitutionality of government-mandated racial segregation a lynch mob hangs Ralph Abernathy
  • The government of South Africa hangs Albert Luthuli for sedition on Robbins Island in 1959
  • In this timeline, Linus Pauling discovers the double helix structure of DNA and is, recruited to assist in what is, unbeknownst to him, a biological warfare program. After it produces a flu that kills a two hundredth of humanity he is hanged along with the Colonel Flagg who was running the operation.
• He Knows Too Much: Exaggerated, yet used in a morally grey manner. After Charles de Gaulle declares the independence of St. Pierre, the UK's indecisive response has the mentally unstable Raoul Salan withdraw France from the Amsterdam Pact, and when a French aircraft carrier explodes and sinks thanks to crew error he believes it to be a British attack and orders the United Kingdom nuked. Two days later, Maurice Challe announces that Raoul Salan was assassinated by fascists, and over the next 10 days purges those who knew about the insane plan.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: In reality, Eberhard von Breitenbuch's attempt to assassinate Hitler failed when the Leader's SS guards refused him entrance to the room. In For All Time, his attempt is a year and a half later, but he is allowed into the conference room and though Hitler survives being shot, the event triggers a civil war between the German military and SS that brings a swift end to the war in Europe.
• Historical Villain Upgrade:
  • The more marginalized and extreme a figure is in OTL, the more likely he or she is likely to be a prominent world player in FaT. Examples include Hal Warren (known in OTL for directing Manos: The Hands of Fate, one of the worst movies ever made) becoming Vice President of the United States, Charles Manson marrying Marilyn Monroe and becoming the Governor of California (and later being kept out of the White House through “creative” measures), Lyndon LaRouche becoming the Governor of New Hampshire (and Manson’s running mate), Jim Jones becoming Governor of Pennsylvania and later President of the United States (and being disposed of in a quiet military coup led by Alexander Haig and G. Gordon Liddy when he goes completely bonkers), and perhaps most notoriously, the sociopathic serial killer Andrei Chikatilo becoming the final General Secretary of the Soviet Union.
  • In OTL, Jean-Bédel Bokassa was one of the worst tyrants Africa had the misfortune of seeing, but the allegations of cannibalism were never proven. In this timeline, it's not only known for a fact that he made people into meat products and fed them to others without telling them (quite a few people didn't deal with having unwittingly eaten human flesh well, to put it mildly), he did it on an industrial scale!
• History Repeats: After the Soviet Union collapses, Germany and Japan both turn back into fascist, expansionist states.
• Illegal Religion: After the collapse of the Jerusalem League, the Grand Hebrew Republic founded in its wake effectively outlaws Islam.
• I Love the Dead: General Secretary of the USSR Andrei Chikatilo rapes the corpses of Pioneer girls he has murdered. This becoming semi-public knowledge leads to the attempted deposal of him and the destruction of the USSR in a nuclear civil war.
• Improbable Age: There are a few characters doing things people their age would be unlikely to do:
  • Bobby Baker is mentioned as having been Barry Goldwater's navigator during the latter's service as a bomber pilot in World War II. He could not have been older than 17 at the time.
  • William Westmoreland is described as being a Brigadier General in 1945. He would have been 31 years old at the time.^note Admittedly, Lesley J. McNair became a Brigadier General at the age of 35 in 1918, and Westmoreland himself was promoted to the same rank at the age of only 38, so this is probably the most plausible of improbable ages listed here.
  • Lee Harvey Oswald is a Major in the Marine Corps at the age of 23 in late 1962.
  • In 1970, a Marxist coup takes place against the Belgian government over the loss of Belgian Congo (which happened ten years later than in our world), and a General by the name of Vande Lanotte is one of the leaders of the coup. Problem is, the historical Johan Vande Lanotte was only 15 in 1970.
• In Its Hour of Need: Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Suslov refuses to evacuate Moscow when nuclear war breaks out between the USSR and China. He killed when the city is destroyed by a three megaton nuke.
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite all that happens, some things turn out very similarly if not exactly the same as in our timeline.
  • Vicente Fox is still President of Mexico in 2002, and Bill Clinton (known in the ATL as Bill Rodham) still ends up as governor of Arkansas by 2004.
  • The U.S. Presidential election of 1964 is still between Lyndon B. Johnson and Barry Goldwater, although it's Goldwater who wins in a landslide.
  • The 1950 attack on Blair House by Puerto Rican nationalists still occurs, though in the alternate timeline, the perpetrators unfortunately succeed in killing President Bob Taft.
  • While some unexpected and obscure individuals end up as President of the United States in the alternate timeline, several other countries (including Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Brazil) end up being led by many of the same people as in real life. For example, in 1969, the world is on the verge of several nuclear disasters, and yet Harold Wilson is Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz is President of Mexico, and Gough Whitlam is the Prime Minister of Australia.
  • African-American medalists at the 1968 Olympics raise their fists in a black power salute, just as they did in OTL's 1968.
• Ironic Last Words / Killed Mid-Sentence: Josef Goebbels, who becomes the center of the nuclear bombing of Nuremberg.
  "These are the Americans you fear? With only three bombers against a great-"
• Klingon Promotion: How Lin Bao takes control of China from Mao Zedong.
• Last Stand:
  • A June 1943 D-Day has American paratroopers deployed in Normandy perform this while facing three panzer divisions in open combat.
  • After Soviet Premier Lazar Kaganovich announces that his east European puppet states will have a partial formalization of their status with the Alliance of People's Democracies, Josif Tito announces that Yugoslavia will instead found a "Mediterranean Federation” of non-aligned states. Kaganovich calls on the people of Yugoslavia to depose Tito, and motivates them by nuking Zagreb. Belgrade is surrounded and Tito, still commanding loyalists, is slain by artillery fire.
• La Résistance: Played with on many, many occasions, but done straight only once. Violent resistance movements occur all over the place in For All Time, but are similarly bad as, if not worse than, the regimes they fight. The sole exception is the uprising that occurs when people learn that Emperor Bokassa had been engaging in industrial scale cannibalism to feed France.
• Make an Example of Them: In 1954, Josip Broz Tito announces Yugoslavia will be leaving the Soviet Bloc and invites Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Italy to join him. This move sets off several demonstrations and political responses across Eastern Europe, which leads to brutal crackdowns from Soviet-aligned leaders. Premier Lazar Kaganovich then issues an ultimatum for him and his ally Markos Vafiades to be removed from power or else. When the two refuse, Kagnovich drops an H-bomb on Zagreb, sends in a multi-ethnic occupational force and later has Yugoslavia carved up, all to showcase what will happen to any rebellious leaders in their sphere.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: A month after Stalin's death Lavrentiy Beria's limousine is hit by a fright truck heading at over 100 mph allowing Lazar Kaganovich to seize control of the Soviet bloc.
• Middle Eastern Coalition: After the collapse of Israel, faced with expanding Soviet influences in Iran and Turkey, as well fears of Western Imperialism, several Arab nations form a defense pact on October 1, 1952. The Jerusalem League is much more akin to NATO or the Warsaw Pact than a true federation. It collapses following the Soviet bombing campaign in 1975 and Israel is later re-established by Jewish militants.
• Monumental Damage: The Statue of Liberty is destroyed by a Nazi bombing raid, after a damaged Ju 390 bomber crashes into it in a suicide attack. It gets rebuilt after the war, though.
  • The nuclear strike over Berlin destroys the Brandenburg Gate.
  • In March 1971, black militants attack and destroy the St. Louis Arch and the Alamo.
• Mole in Charge: Downplayed. British spies working for the Soviet Union, Kim Philby and Guy Burgess rise to heights beyond what they achieved in our timeline, with the former becoming head of MI6 and the latter Foreign Minister. They are found out after the USSR presents an offer to opposition leader Aneurin Bevan, which he rejects. In return for them revealing the highly placed spies, which would disgrace the Conservative government, he would pledge to withdraw from the Amsterdam Pact and dismantle the UK's nuclear weapons.
• Must Make Amends / My God, What Have I Done?: After President Robert La Follette meets with a crowd of black activists and his bodyguards massacre 120 and injure 200 of them, causing rioting to break out in Washington, he holds a press conference where he takes responsibility for everything and shoots himself on live TV.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: In 1960, Leopoldo Galtieri joins Che Guevara in an uprising that overthrows the government of Argentina merely because he wants power. Che deposes his partner in a coup two years later, though Galteri escapes to Brazil with much of the treasury.
• Nuke 'em: Nuclear weapons are used regularly, often when they shouldn’t. This is broodingly alluded to early on with the phrase "as grand as the nuked cities of the world."
  • Six nukes are dropped during World War II: three on Germany (Leipzig, Nuremberg, and Berlin) and three on Japan (Niigata, Wakkanai, and Fukuoka).
  • The United States uses nuclear weapons against insurgents in the Philippines. This has the effect of normalizing their post-war use as "really big bombs," as acceptable as any other weapon of war.
  • A Soviet bomber drops a hydrogen bomb on Zagreb before its invasion of Yugoslavia, solely for the purpose of demonstrating that the USSR will keep its satellite states in-check by any means necessary... following the precedent set by the United States in the Philippines.
  • The British use nukes against guerrillas in Burma, and the French use nukes against rebels in their African colonies.
  • Narrowly averted during the Saint Pierre crisis. When the tiny island declares their independence from France in 1957, fascist leader Raoul Salan isn't too keen on the idea. When the UK prime minister Nye Bevan tries to negotiate, Salan decides he's tired of dealing with his neighbor and almost sends nukes their way. Fortunately, things are put to rest by Salan's assassination and the purge of his inner circle. Unfortuantely, the situation is the final nail in the coffin for the Amsterdam pact.
  • Che Guevara's Maoist-backed Argentina uses several unprovoked nukes against Chilean cities before invading that unfortunate country in the name of people's revolution.
  • The United States nukes Buenos Aires via a high-altitude space plane after Guevara launches a bloody invasion of neighboring Chile.
  • Kim Jong-il builds a nuclear doomsday device, which is destroyed – along with the rest of Korea – in a massive nuclear bombing by the world’s leading nuclear powers.
  • A few nukes are used during a war between Portugal and Spain.
  • Emperor Bokassa’s “pork farms” are nuked by the breakaway Maghreb Federation (Algeria.)
  • Argentine terrorists destroy Philadelphia in 1972 with a nuclear bomb smuggled into the country. Before this comes to light, however, black militants are blamed, resulting in an epidemic of lynchings across the country and off-hand comments by the President about deporting all blacks back to Africa. Nobody can tell if he's serious or just panicking.
  • In 1973 a nuclear war erupts between the Soviet Union and China; the Soviets “win” while China is completely destroyed. In 1975 the Soviet Union launches an unprovoked nuclear attack on the Jerusalem League, an alliance of Arab nations in the Middle East. Then, in the 1980s, the Soviet Union collapses into a nuclear civil war.
  • Use of nuclear weapons is less common from then on, although they are still sometimes used; U.S. President Alexander Haig nukes Mumbai to remove India’s nuclear threat, and his successor Slade Gorton nukes Nome, Alaska to crush the Alaskan independence movement. Later on, a nuclear incident is mentioned in "Boliviaopolis," which has put to rest a President Smith's chance of a reelection, but guaranteed the NAC's domination in South America. The Mujaheddin also detonate a suitcase nuke in Tel Aviv.
• Occupiers Out of Our Country: Wars for colonial independence are similarly frequent to the real life mid-20th century. The most notable single example is much more ahistoric however, being a conflict in Wales from 1969-71. Deconstructed in that there's no reason to believe that Wales was particularly oppressed by the UK and the conflict only got going when Welsh terrorists murdered the Price of Wales.
• Oppressive States of America: By the mid-1970s, American society is rapidly deteriorating into a quagmire of feuding racial militia, plagued by domestic terrorism, burdened with a collapsing economy, suffering a genetically-engineered flu pandemic, and, after a nuclear meltdown at a Mississippi power plant, a drastically exacerbated energy crisis. In response, President Jim Jones establishes an authoritarian rule over America after his election in 1976, locking up his opponents in labor camps, ruthlessly crushing militants of all stripes, and creating a paramilitary force called the "National Volunteer Army" to help enforce his rule, with detachments led by the likes of a young Bill Clinton and John Gotti. After Jones goes crazy and is deposed in a silent coup, Alexander Haig takes over as President and rules America with an iron fist, although he manages to bring some stability to the country.
• One Nation Under Copyright: When President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala attempts to redistribute the land owned by the United Fruit Company, cutbacks to foreign intelligence has left the CIA too weak to orchestrate a coup to overthrow him (as happened in reality). Instead, President Joseph Kennedy threatens to gas or nuke Guatemala City, American bombers destroy its bridges and power plants, Jacobo Arbenz flees to Belize and the United Fruit Company is left running the country.
• Our Presidents Are Different:
  • (1941-1945) Henry Wallace is a synthesis of President Iron and President Jerkass. His obstinate unwillingness to compromise on any of his liberal policies or cooperate with politicians causes a breakdown in the relationship between him and Congress, and his attempts to force through his agenda using executive power are met with harsh reprisals. In addition, the conversations we hear between Wallace and other politicians reveal him to be very impatient and unpleasant with those who aren't doing what he wants.
  • (1945-1950) President Robert Taft is also President Iron due to his staunchly conservative and isolationist views, though with a cooperative Congress and much popularity among the American people, he is a much more effective one than Wallace. He then becomes President Target after he is assassinated by Puerto Rican nationalists.
  • (1950-1953) Thomas Dewey is a bit of President Scheming, due to the secret deals he makes with the British to secure British training to fight Huk nationalist guerrillas in the Luzon War.
  • (1953-1962) Joseph Kennedy Jr. is a variant on President Focus Group: portrayed as a cunning politician, he supports a very weak civil rights bill to maintain support among liberals, but he cares much more about preserving his support among segregationist southerners than he does about providing equal rights to all races. He also becomes President Target after his assassination by Charles Whitman.
  • (1962-1962) Robert La Follette is a very toned-down version of President Lunatic; he's not deranged and is in fact very well-meaning, but he does have serious mental issues which lead him to commit suicide.
  • (1962-1965) Clark Gable gives off at least an impression of President Personable, using his skills as a former actor to his advantage by making nightly television addresses to the nation.
  • (1965-1969) Barry Goldwater is a bit of President Personable as well, in that he is portrayed as an honest and well-meaning commander in chief who nevertheless becomes highly unpopular due, among other things, to his support of equal rights for homosexuals and the war of occupation he fights in communist Argentina.
  • (1969-1973) Joseph Foss is President Iron for his military pursuits in Argentina, and his anti-governmental stance popular with radicals. His term is plagued with race riots, forcing him to reinstate the draft.
  • (1973-1977) George McGovern mixes President Personable and President Iron with his attempts to levy sanctions against the Soviet Union for its nuclear attacks on China and his attempts to calm racial tensions at home. However, despite doing his best to bring America's foreign and domestic crises under control, the American public eventually sours on him due to his failure to accomplish anything meaningful.
  • (1977-1980) Jim Jones is easily President Evil mixed with President Iron, for his ruthless crushing of opposition, suppression of French Canadians in America, and vicious all-stripe volunteer army. Eventually evolving into President Lunatic in a mental breakdown that nearly leads to nuclear war, before being overthrown in a silent coup.
  • (1980-1990) Alexander Haig is something of a President Scheming in his introduction, taking power by lying to President Jones and having the rest of the cabinet agree to the removal of Jones from office. Later he takes the character of President Iron, taking a stand against pornography and forcing Larry Flynt to emigrate to Europe, initiating a harsh crackdown against domestic insurgents of all ideologies, and nuking Mumbai for the perceived Indian nuclear threat.
• Overly Long Name:
  • In 1952, Stalin chooses a head for his new Turkish puppet state. The unnamed Major renames the country the Democratic United People's Republic of Anatolia
  • After the conga line of misery it experiences, the newly unified France of the 21st century is officially named the "Peoples Liberal Democratic Republic of France."
• People's Republic of Tyranny: The greater spread of communism has many more of these appear than did historically. They include the Japanese People's Republic, People's Republic of Iran, People's Republic of Kurdistan, the People's Republic of Greece, the People's Republic of Java and the Democratic United People's Republic of Anatolia.
  • The People's Republic of Australasia is a downplayed example; while a dictatorship, by For All Time standards, it's a genuinely nice place to live.
• The Plague: HIV/AIDS, here known as SPID, is even more widespread in this TL. Soviet military advisers deployed in the Congo during the late 1950s-60s return home to the USSR after accidentally contracting the disease. SPID becomes a pandemic throughout the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. Even after the destruction of the USSR, it remains a constant threat in much of the world, with over a third of Eurasia's population infected as of 2002.
• Plot-Triggering Death: As mentioned in the intro, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
• Pretext for War: Ernesto Guevara disputes the border between Chile and his People's Republic of Argentina in order to justify his nuclear weapon supported invasion of the latter.
• Puppet State:
  • The French and British occupation zones of Germany are merged into a puppet Pfalzrepublik.
  • On top of the historical Eastern Block, Stalin successfully adds Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Iran and Hokkaido to the list of regions run from Moscow.
  • After officially being granted independence, Malaysia remains a puppet of the UK
  • Following the destruction of the Jerusalem Pact, most of Arabia and Mesopotamia is carved up into satellites of the Grand Hebrew Republic.
  • By the 21st century, the resurgent National German Republic has made puppets of Lithuania, Bohemia, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia.
• The Purge: In October 1957, after assassinating Raoul Salan, Maurice Challe orders the purge of everyone outside the city of Caen who knows about France's nukes or the planned nuclear strike on Great Britain.
• President Evil: U.S. President Jim Jones, who nearly starts a nuclear war to fulfill a religious prophecy, and Soviet General Secretary Andrei Chikatilo, who plunges his country into a nuclear civil war.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Though Greater South Africa defeats East Africa in their 1971 nuclear war, large chunks of the country are left uninhabitable and its apartheid government is destroyed.
• The Quisling: The Italian Civil War leaves Pietro Nenni officially ruler of a Soviet puppet state controlling mainland Italy.
• "Ray of Hope" Ending: The final entry in the sequel, which suggests things won't be quite as bad as they've been after 2009.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: John McCain, after being fired from the White House twice during the administrations of George McGovern and Alexander Haig, is dispatched by 2002 "on a long-term mission under the Arctic Ice Cap".
• Red China: Like in our timeline, Mao Zedong emerges victorious in the Chinese Civil War. The Sino-Soviet split still happens, albeit under different circumstances, and the USSR's cutbacks to international spending results in most of the developing world's communist block being allied with China, most notably East Africa and Argentina. The dispute with the USSR culminates in Chairman Lin Biao starting a nuclear war which leaves hundreds of millions dead, China balkanized and vast swaths of the country uninhabitable.
• Red Scare: Thanks to a multipolar world order and serious unrest from other sources, this is significantly downplayed from our timeline in the fairly democratic Anglosphere. It's nonetheless a major phenomenon elsewhere, such as France, Venezuela, Westephalia, and the exiled Republic of China.
• The Remnant: Following an Allied conquest of Sicily in July 1944, Mussolini flees to Corsica and his son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano assumes control of Italy and switches to the Allied side the following year. In order to gain support from the Amsterdam Pact, in 1950 he holds free legislative elections, which are promptly won by the communists. Outraged, he outlaws communist and allied parties, leading to a successful uprising which leaves Sardinia as all that remains of fascist Italy.
• Repressive, but Efficient: President Alexander Haig - although authoritarian like his predecessor (Jim Jones), he manages to bring some stability to the country during the 1980s.
• Retcon: Colin Powell first appears in FaT as an Army Colonel in 1973, analyzing data of the brewing Sino-Soviet nuclear war for President George McGovern. However, a later chapter mentions him having been shot to death as a Lieutenant in Houston in 1967.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Par for the course in For All Time, but the most notable example is Ernest Guevara's Maoist revolution in the People's Republic of Argentina which launches an unprovoked invasion of Chile and nukes Santiago to spread communism.
• Revolving Door Revolution: Well Enough Alone implies this to be occurring in France given its mention of “the best French Revolution in years”.
• Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman: Many, many, many examples:
  • Henry Wallace becomes President after FDR’s untimely death. He is followed by Presidents Robert Taft, Thomas Dewey, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., Robert La Follette Jr., Clark Gable, Barry Goldwater, Joe Foss, George McGovern, Jim Jones, Alexander Haig, Slade Gorton, Russ Feingold, L. Neil Smith, and Randolph Parker (you might know him better as Trey.)
  • Jim Jones and Charles Manson both become politicians in this TL; Jones is elected Governor of Pennsylvania (and later President of the United States), while John Birch Society extremist Manson is rises to become Governor of California (marrying Marilyn Monroe) and rules as the strongman of a powerful, corrupt political machine. He runs as Republican candidate for President in both 1976 and 1980, but is defeated by Jones. After being denied the White House, Manson attempts to lead California out of the United States, provoking a brief civil war in the early 1980s. He is ultimately shot to pieces by the US Army as they storm his stronghold in the Sierra Nevada mountains in 1983.
  • Lyndon LaRouche is elected Governor of New Hampshire, and later serves as Charles Manson’s running mate in the 1980 presidential election.
  • Clark Gable enters politics and is elected Governor of California. He is later appointed Vice President by Robert La Follette Jr., and becomes President after La Follette commits suicide.
  • Francis Gary Powers, here referred to as "Frank G. Powers", is the first man to fly in space.
  • Andrei Chikatilo, the Soviet Union’s most notorious serial killer in OTL, ends up serving as the last General Secretary of the Soviet Union as the country descends into a nuclear civil war.
  • Jean-Bedel Bokassa is a placed in charge of French forces in Corsica before he becomes the Emperor of France and uses state-sanctioned cannibalism to solve the country’s food shortages.
  • Che Guevara becomes the leader of Communist Argentina.
  • Lee Harvey Oswald serves as the commander of the White House Marine garrison under President La Follette.
  • Elvis Presley pursues an acting career and later becomes a successful businessman with a franchise of diners.
  • George Bush is an ace fighter pilot during World War II, and is later one of the first humans to fly into space. He eventually commands the American space program.
    • His son George H. Bush becomes “the first Texan Prime Minister of Iceland.”
  • A young William Jefferson Blythe moves to Chicago with his mother and becomes the stepbrother of Hillary Rodham, eventually becoming a paramilitary commando in the late 1970s. He still manages to be elected Governor of Arkansas as in OTL.
  • John Lennon is one of the world’s most famous Indian musicians, although he ends up a washed-up music star with serious marital problems.
  • Pat Boone is the undisputed King of Rock ‘N Roll.
  • Newt Gingrich is one of the most popular science fiction authors in America.
  • William Luther Pierce (the author of The Turner Diaries in the real world) becomes director of the CIA by 2008.
  • As for Richard Nixon, he builds a fast food empire that manages to survive all the chaos of FaT’s America.
• Schizo Tech: Downplayed. Technological progress happens in different areas at very different rates to reality; the United States military introduces suborbital nuclear-powered bombers in 1959, but other fields, such as computer science, stagnate massively. Already by 1966 computing is explicitly stated to be about five years behind our world, and in Well Enough Alone a character marvels at a computer that fits inside a single room, and experts are mentioned as claiming the price of a personal computer to possibly decrease to less than one million pounds by 2020.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: With a reign of terror the only thing keeping vast swathes of the country under his control, significant portions in open rebellion, and Brittany, Corsica, and the Saarland lost entirely, President Maurice Challe flees Paris to save his family, eventually retaining control only of the Maghreb Federation.
• The Secret of Long Pork Pies: Jean-Bedel Bokassa solves France’s food shortages by importing “pork” from his native Equatorial Africa. Turns out the meat is actually from human prisoners who were slaughtered in concentration camps.
• Sedgwick Speech: After Hitler is severely wounded by an assassin, the SS and Wehrmacht start fighting each other. Reinhard Heydrich becomes provisional leader of the former faction and sends Joseph Goebbels to Nuremburg to host a rally that will hopefully raise moral. In the middle of Goebbels' speech, the city is nuked.
• Self-Immolation: In front of the Liberty Place Monument in New Orleans, itself protected by the Louisiana national guard, three members of the "Children of God" light themselves on fire to protest the US government's treatment of African-Americans. As the organization had tipped off the press earlier, the event is heavily photographed and helps further inflame racial tensions in the USA.
• Shown Their Work: The sheer amount of detail, historical figures, interactions, and sheer insanity employed in this goes above and beyond most other alternate history tales.
• Shout-Out: As noted above, Marilyn Monroe marries Charles Manson. One wonders if she became a heavy metal musician afterwards.
  • Margaret Thatcher is mentioned as having been struck and killed by a bus in the town of Thaxted—likely a reference to Thaxted, another alternate history story in which Thatcher moves to the titular working-class community in her youth and acquires socialist views.
  • Several characters from OTL TV shows and movies show up in minor roles, notably Lenny Briscoe, Lt. Dan Taylor and Colonel Flagg.
• Sliding Scale of Alternate History Plausibility: Starts off reasonably hard with World War II and the 50s, becomes a bit wilder in the 1960s, and completely dives into insanity in the 1970s.
• Sliding Scale of Villain Threat: A letter to the president from the director of the CIA outlines a number of terrorist groups active domestically and abroad, all rated on the Feingold Terror Alertness Level (FATAL). It ranges from Alpha (serious attacks imminent) to Theta (sporadic attacks and money laundering at worst).
• Space Plane: The United States and later the Soviet Union develop nuclear-powered space bombers that can land on runways, though how they take off is unspecified.
• The Starscream: Lin Bao plots the overthrow of Mao Zedong due to what he perceives as the Chairman's docility towards Moscow. He succeeds in murdering his master and becoming ruler of China.
• Stealth Pun: Why is America's first spacecraft called the Rex? Because it's a Dyna-soar!
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Downplayed. Germany's victory in D-Day did not extend to the air force, and as a result Luftwaffe head Hermann Göring is stripped of many of his responsibilities. To regain Hitler's favor, he has bombers capable of (one way) transatlantic flight constructed in secrecy.
• Suicide Attack:
  • One particularly fanatic Hukbalahap suicide truck bombs an American military base in the Philippines, leading to an escalation in the war there.
  • During the American racial violence of 1961, Cassius X suicide bombs a Chicago Synagogue, and a police station in the same city is attacked the same way.
  • It's also the main tactic used by the black resistance to Greater South Africa in the 1960s.
  • Idi Amin's East African Federation is willing to let itself get nuked to smithereens by Greater South Africa so long as it is able to deal serious damage with its own nukes first.
  • A street mime kills Emperor Bokassa this way, leading to the disintegration of the French government.
• Superweapon Surprise: When Spain invades the newly-communist Portugal in 1970, it expects an easy victory—look at a map, for crying out loud, Spain is six times larger! As it turns out, Portugal had nukes.
• Synthetic Plague: After Linus Pauling discovers the double helix structure of DNA, he is offered and accepts a job consulting a biological research facility in Puget Sound that comes with an immense salary and little responsibility. He doesn't know it's main purpose is biological warfare. "Colonel Flagg" creates the Sheridan Flu in the early 1970s; a global pandemic that kills about 0.5% of the world’s population. As a result, what remains of international trade pretty much collapses.
• Those Wacky Nazis: Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt by a renegade Wehrmacht officer, but ends up paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. He survives the war, gets tried as a war criminal by the British, and is executed.
  • Hitler's assassination attempt leads to a three-way civil war in Nazi Germany between the SS (led by Reinhard Heydrich, who deposed Heinrich Himmler), a Wehrmacht faction led by Heinz Guderian and Erwin von Witzleben, and the Home Army led by Erich von Manstein.
  • Hermann Göring, in an attempt to regain Hitler’s favor, builds a fleet of long-range Junkers Ju 390 bombers and sends them to bomb New York City. All of the bombers are shot down by the Americans, but one of them manages to drop some bombs on Harlem and crash into the Statue of Liberty.
  • Joseph Goebbels makes a fanatical speech to inspire the Nazi faithful at Nuremburg after Hitler is shot, only to end up at ground-zero in an atomic blast.
• Title Drop: In late 1955, the Supreme Court hears a case on the constitutionality of government mandated racial segregation:
  George Aiken, liberal rebel from the Taft administration, rebels again from the conservativish majority, and sides with Hugo Black and William O. Douglas in the best traditions of New England liberalism. Thus, [Robert Jackson] is suddenly asked to judge the nation itself, not just now, but for all time.
• Torn Apart by the Mob: Jeanine de Beauvior is one of many perceived Les Collaborateurs murdered this way with the support of the post World War 2 French government.
• Tyrannicide: The fate of French Emperor Jean Bedel-Bokassa at the hands of a street mime during the second civil war in France in five years.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: It's mentioned that many of the most important events of the timeline aren't caught on film, with special mention made to a Soviet Soldier deployed in the Congo in 1959. Wounded in an ambush, he was saved by an emergency transfusion at a clinic deep in the jungle. He's transferred through Poland and Bulgaria before getting a desk job at the Kremlin, donating a pint of blood every three weeks to his local blood bank. Three guesses as to what he brought with him out of Africa. Give up? It was AIDS.
• Vestigial Empire: After the Soviet Civil War, all that's left of the USSR is a communist state in Kamchatka.
• War Comes Home: After fighting a series of overseas colonial wars in the mid-20th century against communists, nationalists, and communist nationalists, in 1969 mass rebellion erupts in Wales, eventually leading to the secession of England from the United Kingdom.
• We Didn't Start the Billy Joel Parodies: The sequel ends with Joe Springsteen singing this world's version of We Didn't Start The Fire.
• We Have Reserves: Lin Biao believes that China can defeat the USSR in the event of war thanks to its gargantuan population. He's horribly wrong.
• Weapon for Intimidation: Downplayed. While Joseph Kennedy orders three nuclear weapons set off in Huk territory and a much larger area smothered in poison gas, he is unwilling to use further nukes and the USA is rapidly running out of chemical weapons. The only way the attack can work is if it convinces the Huk to surrender quickly.
• Winter of Starvation: With minimal American aid, Western Europe experiences this in 1945-6 and 1946-7.
• Wham Line: There are quite a few in the story, but this one stands out.
  In Texas now, President Kennedy decides he can't continue with the national tour; he is the Commander in Chief, after all, he has to show the world and the nation that he's in charge both politically as well as personally. Already Aleman and Pearson are experiencing something like sympathy disturbances in communities near the border with large American cities; already Kaganovich is offering "peacekeeping troops" to assist the American National Guard.

  There's just time for one more speech, on January 3, 1962. It's a crisp winter day as he speaks at the University of Texas at Austin; there's completely no wind, and the sun shines so brightly even through the clouds that one can see for miles.

  There's nothing to throw off Charles Whitman's shot.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In 1969, Prince George Arthur Philip Charles^note a name-flipped version of Prince Charles dies in a terrorist attack. The title of the Prince of Wales, which he would have been invested in, instead goes to a Prince Alexander^note likely a gender-flipped version of Princess Anne. However, later in 1971 when Queen Elizabeth II announces that she will abdicate, the text states that she will be succeeded by her son Andrew; what happened to Alexander is never addressed.
• Won the War, Lost the Peace: The rebellions that shake France from 1965 end with victory for most of the rebels, and Jean Bedel-Bokassa riding the chaos to become emperor fighting against them. The country is devastated after losing three years of war, and a famine begins that he alleviates through the mass murder and consumption of political prisoners. This becoming public knowledge leads to another round of rebellions which balkanize France.
• You Have Failed Me: Reinhard Heydrich orders the launch of three V2 rockets containing sarin gas against the Red Army approaching Berlin. One misses entirely, and thanks to allied decryption the other two hit prepared troops and cause minimal casualties. After the follow up German offensive fails, the people responsible for the V2, including Wernher von Braun, are executed, permanently crippling rocket technology. Ironically, Stalin launches a purge of his own against the military intelligence for allowing the casualties of the poison gas.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The scientists who construct his Glorious People's Revolutionary Hammer are all killed on the orders of Kim Jong Il.

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