Free American Empire

The Free American Empire is a one-party unitary state encompassing most of northern, central, and southern America. Established during the Second World War, the incumbent President William Dudley Pelley of the country once known as the United States declined to intervene in the conflict and instead reorganized into the Free Empire, a radical consumerist and xenophobic regime bent on unifying the Americas to defend against Axis and Allied threats.

After a brutal two-decade campaign to conquer the Americas, the original fifty states remained intact and permitted to relatively self-govern while annexed countries such as Canada and Brazil lost all semblance of autonomy. Today, the Empire is mostly isolationist, sustaining itself through fiercely protectionist trade policies and free-market industry guided by focuses administered by the ruling party of the Silver Legion.

Political Geography



 * Blue - Self Governing
 * Red - Subservient
 * White - Martial Law (Cuba)
 * Gray - Unclaimed or Contested (Parts of Central and South America)

History
As the Great Depression entered its eighth year, incumbent President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed to implement his New Deal policies. Though highly successful in reality, a series of newspaper publications and radio shows launched a campaign to call into question their authority, fabricating false statistics about Americans refusing to work and various minority groups soaking up most of the benefits of social security and other programs. These publications were written by influential journalists and pundits at the behest of the Silver Legion, an extreme right-wing party with ties to the old Confederate States and, purportedly, Nazi Germany.

The unopposed leader of the Silver Shirts (as they were called) was the firebrand journalist William Pelley, who spent months campaigning in states hit hardest by the Depression, but especially the south, where racial strife was still quite apparent. Several mass-lynchings in New Orleans were blamed on the Legion, who quickly denied the allegations, claiming to be "a party of peace, foremost." Pelley rapidly shifted public opinion of FDR, who dismissed the hothead critic as a fascist.

In late 1935, Pelley announced his candidacy for president in Louisiania. He largely continued his previous strategy of campaigning nationwide, using inflated statistics and outright baseless claims to discredit the New Deal, also praising the Nazi party of Germany. Calling his opponent a warmonger, Pelley appealed to the growing isolationist sentiment in the states, while pundits regularly published his anti-semitic and xenophobic rants as evidence of his unelectability and pollsters predicted a landside Democratic victory.

Come November, Pelley scored a tight popular and electoral victory over Roosevelt, whom he spent a year locked in a political cage match with. Inheriting a divided nation, President Pelley stuck to his isolationist promises and rolled back many of FDR's New Deal policies. Domestically, industrialized much of the deep south, particularly Louisiana, which became a commercial juggernaut that challenged the likes of New York in a matter of decades. Defense spending spiked - as did secret funding of the clandestine Manhattan Project.

The United States strengthened relations with Japan and Germany, who previously feared that American invervention in the war could tip the scales out of their favor. Facing the battered and broken Allies, the Axis ran rampant throughout the world; Germany steamrolled through Europe, while Japan conquered much of Asia. All the while, the Soviet Union fought a war on two fronts, fighting desperately to defend its vast borders from the two fascist powers.

In 1943, with the end of the infamous Battle of London, the war came to an end, resulting in decisive Axis victory. Germany emerged with all of Eurafrica, Japan claimed a majority of Asia including China, Mongolia, India, and parts of the middle east, while the Soviets remained more or less intact, sans eastern Europe. To the world's surprise, however, a matter of months later, the first atomic bomb in the world was dropped: in a show of power, the United States had attacked Toronto.

Horrified by the unprovoked act of war, Canada immediately capitulated, ceding all of its land to the states. Shortly after American troops began to mass on the Texan border, Mexico quickly followed suit. Elsewhere, much of congress was purged in an attack perpetrated by militia members of the Silver Legion; following the dissolvement of his cabinet, Pelley declared himself president for life of the new Free American Empire.

Immediately, the burgeoning military saw a factional split, with three-quarters of the soldiers falling in line behind the president and the remnants fleeing to the northwest to form the American Resistance. With the Siege of Seattle, Pelley ensured the loyalty of every military official and commenced with a total lockdown of travel in and out of the country, instating nationwide martial law in everything but name.

From Mexico, the army marched through central America, toppling every government in its path; the navy and airforce led a coordinated strike on Cuba, quickly establishing the country as a staging ground for the new Silver Legion military.

The American campaign continued for years, concluding with the invasion of Buenos Aires. New acquisitions were subjected to brutal realignment during the transition process to ensure their loyalty, including the seizure of factories and armed attacks on government buildings. By 1970, almost all of the Americas had fallen under the banner of the Silver Legion, who justified the annexations as deterrents against attacks by the Axis and Russia, with whom diplomatic relations were reportedly waning.