The Bunker Plot was an attempt by members of the Confederate States armed forces, led by chief of staff Nathan Bedford Forrest III, to remove President Jake Featherston from power in the final months of the Second Great War. Thanks to Featherston's suspicions and strategic placement of guards, the coup d'etat failed, and its leaders executed.
The Bunker Plot had its genesis in a meeting between Forrest and intelligence chief Clarence Potter in the fall of 1942 at the height of the Battle of Pittsburgh. Forrest suggested that removing Featherston from power would save the CSA from destruction, but was rebuffed by the realistic-minded Potter. The intelligence chief later toyed with the idea of assassinating the president and replacing him with a military junta, but discarded the idea for fear that it would only lead to a worse result. Nevertheless, Forrest went ahead with his plan, and made contact with other like-minded officers. However, with the onset of the USA's invasion of Kentucky in May 1943 and the Atlanta campaign, Forrest was too busy to carry out his plan to overthrow the Featherston Administration.
But by the beginning of 1944, the CSA was clearly losing the war, and Forrest decided to set his plan in motion. He confronted Featherston in the presidential bomb-shelter underneath the Gray House and suggested that he step down and allow Vice President Don Partridge to take charge. Featherston declined while secretly alerting his personal bodyguards (and not his regular army guards out of fear that Forrest had control of them, which he did). The Party guards gunned down Forrest's men and arrested Forrest, taking him away for torture and execution at the hands of Ferdinand Koenig's Justice Department.
The Bunker Plot was a disaster for its planners. It failed chiefly because Forrest didn't have the capacity to plan out a proper coup d'etat against Featherston: he didn't secure all of the bunker troops, didn't seize control of Saul Goldman's propaganda establishment, and opted to talk Featherston into surrendering power instead of outright killing him on the spot. Jake Featherston ridiculed Forrest for being such a poor planner, and went on to gloat on the national airwaves about Forrest's inept attempt to seize power. However, Featherston was shaken by the plot and tightened his personal security even as he abandoned the bunker and the capital a few days later. Soon after, on July 7, 1944, Featherston was gunned down by a US auxiliary while fleeing through Georgia, and seven days later, his successor, Don Partridge, surrendered unconditionally to the United States, dissolving the Confederate States.
Literary Note
The Bunker Plot is loosely modeled on the OTL failed coup against Adolf Hitler on 20 July 1944, which took place when Nazi Germany was in a similar grim military situation, and the motivation of its organisers was similar to that of Forrest in the book - though the concrete details of the German coup were completely different.
