My apologies, I could not find the source. But the reason I said so was I recalled hearing a while back that it had been agreed upon that Bulgaria would get its borders from the first balkan war back from Greece, in exchange for Greece getting Northern Epirus from Albania, as Kaiser Wilhelm wanted to balance the arrangement of power in the balkans.
That was before Bulgaria marched into Thessaloniki in this timeline. Greece practically collapsed due to a coup. Their negotiating position was quite bad. They can't seriously argue against losing these relatively sparsely populated and underdeveloped territories. All things considered the Germans are being lenient with them with this treaty IMO.
it also says 4 months of war - when that became 4 years, their argument for greater gains would seem to be strong.
althistory.fandom.com
It's not only his decision to stick around that was controversial. He tried to be more actively involved in the actual running of Belgium, which is something the political establishment did not appriciate and led to them trying and succeding in getting their revenge post-war. The idea of a national government outside of parliamentarian politics headed by the king and including basically everyone from socialists like Hendrik de Man to Verdinaso frontman Joris van Severen was floated around seriously
this is only partially true, he was only allowed to return after the christian democrats won the election on a platform of him returning. I think his problem was more that his behavior during the war put both a large part of the establishment as well as a vocal and large minority of the people wich protested very hard against him. It's not just the running of belgium but also his second marriage as well as other things.
As a Catholic, how did he get away with that? A quicky annulment?
My favorite thing, a government of national unity. I can understand why it won't wash.
Queen Astrid, his first wife, died in 1935. He married Lilian Baels in 1941, who was at the moment pregnant of their son, the would be prince Alexander. The marriage was first before the Church followed by the state which is a breach of the Belgian constitution, and their children were excluded from the succession as well
Belgium was already ruled by the British type of national unity governments during the latter part of the 30'ies, a coalition of the Catholics, liberals and socialists. What is more important is the cutting out of parliament and party politics in favour of acting decisively in national interest
Rex was just a very strange beast, and a lot of things would have to end up just right for Leon Degrelle to enter politics. Firstly, he's from Bouillon which is now a part of Germany. Secondly, he only really became politically involved as he was sent out as a Catholic reporter to report on the end of the Christero Wars in Mexico. Thirdly, iirc his father collaborated with the Germans during WWI as he ran a concrete factory. Rex was formed from this undertone of youthfull reactionary reformism within the Francophone wing of the Catholic Party, authoritarian yes (it wanted to return powers to the king for example) but not really fascist. Added to this would come a middle class liberal element that really feared communism. All of this was massively boosted as government aligned institutions, especially with the Catholic Party, underwent corruption scandals with the crisis going on. The height of the party was a by-election which turned into Paul van Zeeland (the prime minister) vs Leon Degrelle. (This also happened in the shadow of the by-election which turned into the (in)famous Borms Election which is also worth reading up on.) From then it was all downhill. Degrelle struck a deal with the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond (a Flemish big tent party that was eventually overtaken by its authoritarian, pro-German elements) over autonomy for Flanders, making the party strangely progressive on the communitarian issue, but shooting itself in the foot by alienating itself from its Belgicist base. The party was dead by the time war with Germany broke out. The events of May 1940 are also just a massive historical farce. Degrelle ended up surviving arrest and deportation (unlike Joris van Severen which saw the Verdinaso break apart) and would use his connections set up with the Nazi's in the late 1930'ies as a way to propell himself as top dog and rebirthing Rex as hardcore colabborationists. He laid down party leadership to volunteer on the Eastern Front and becoming the propaganda head for the SS in Wallonia. He ended up fleeing to Spain via Denmark and Norway after German capitulation where he was able to foster the myth of him as a fascist from the first hour. I'd really reccomend the biography on him by Bruno Cheyns if you speak Dutch or if its available in your language, cause his life story is just simply amusing. Rex also had some pretty cool esthetics.
The Italian chapters have already shown that the coalition that Mussolini gathered is already split in twain. I think, with Germany ascendent, that the Conservative Revolution may have more weight to throw around and be a bit less pessimistic. No doubt would a third way still come about, but it's not going to be what Fascism was irl. Chesterton's quote of "If you cannot see the faults of capitalism, you deserve the communist solution" (probably not fully correctly cited) is still going to ring through with many people. A lot may depend on the first regime that pops up that really attempts to be the face of such a thing
Map of Europe as of the signing of the Treaty of Zurich
