Dead By Dawn: The Road to Revolution

[enigmajones]

 Hey y'all, Enigmajones here with a TL. Hope you enjoy it.

 The Rise of National Socialism

 Arguably, the first step on the road to the German Revolution, was the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch. Although it often believed to have begun in September of 1919, when a young Corporal in the Reichswehr by the name of Adolph Hitler, was ordered by his superior to spy on the German Workers Party. The German Workers Party was a nationalist party with strong Pan-German overtones formed by a small radical group. When the young Hitler was sent to spy, the leader of the small party, Anton Drexler, was impressed by his oratory skills and invited the young soldier to join the party. After considering the offer, Hitler joined the small political party and quit the Reichswehr.

 The small political group was soon won over to Hitler's own political ideals and was renamed the German National Socialist Workers Party to gain a wider audience. Using Hitler's oratory skills as its center stage, the party grew rapidly. Hitler and as a result the NSDAP, soon gained prominence amongst Bavarian right wing movements. Soon Hitler gained control of the party, usurping control from Drexler, and proceeded to layout his platform. A Greater Germany, Eastern Expansion, abrogation of the Versailles Treaty and most prominently the expulsion of German Jews from citizenship. In 1921, Hitler organized the creation of the Strurmabteilung (SA), a corps of shock troopers designed as the military arm of the National Socialist Revolution. It became clear that the purpose of National Socialism was the violent overthrow of the Weimar Republic.

 By September of 1923, bolstered by the success of Mussolini's March on Rome, Hitler decided the time to strike was imminent. He formed the Kampfbund, a coalition of right wing movements, the largest of which was the NSDAP, but it also included the Reichskriegflagge Society and the Oberland League, both comprised of disgruntled war veterans. Hitler at the time of the Putsch had up to 15,000 soldiers to call upon for his his planned grab at power. Originally, Hitler had planned to utilize the state of Bavaria's Prime Minister, Gustav Ritter von Kahr, to march on Berlin. However, when it became clear that von Kahr had no plans to go through with the plot, Hitler decided to take action.

 On November 8th, 1923, after months of planning, 600  surrounded the Beer Hall where von Kahr was speaking and Hitler famously declared  "The national revolution has broken out! The hall is filled with six hundred men. Nobody is allowed to leave. The Bavarian government and the government at Berlin are deposed. A new government will be formed at once. The barracks of the Reichswehr and those of the police are occupied. Both have rallied to the swastika."  From that point, the so called Putsch went down hill. Von Kahr and his cohorts refused to play along with Hitlers coup, even when faced with the support of General Ludendorff, a national icon.

 By the new day, had become apparent that the Putsch had failed to meet its goals. It was temporarily saved when Ludendorff exclaimed "We shall march!" loudly. As a result about 2,000 men aimlessly left the Beer Hall for the Bavarian Defense Ministry, lead by General Ludendorff. The key moment in the planned coup came when they reached the Odeonsplatz in front of the Felddernhhalle where the force met with 100 state soldiers. The two groups exchanged fire and when it was over, 4 state officials and 16 Nazi's, including Adolph Hitler, were dead. The day would end with the Putsch unsuccessful and its main conspirators arrested. The NSDAP was banned and its headquarters raided, and its main leaders were sentenced to fortress prison, an honorable punishment for people who had committed crimes that the state felt was for a good cause, if not in the wrong place. The most prominently sentenced was Rudolf Hess, Hitler's second in command and de facto leader of the Party upon his death.

[enigmajones]

[SIZE="3"]Butterflies of the Orient[/SIZE][/B][/B]

 About two weeks after a small, seemingly unimportant failed coup in Germany, the crown prince of the Japanese royal family was on his way to attend the opening of the Japanese Diet. On his route from the Akasaka Palace to the diet, Prince Hirohito's carriage was passing an intersection known as Toranomon, when a young man emerged from the crowd and fired 2 shots at the carriage. The bullets shattered a window and hit the crown prince. The assassin then screamed "Long live the Communist Party of Japan" and was seized by the crowd. The prince was rushed to a hospital, but died before he could reach proper medical attention. The assassin, Daisuke Namba, the son of a Japanese Diet member, was a radical who supported the Communist Party of Japan. He was sentenced to death and killed weeks later.

 The death of Hirohito was a watershed moment for Japan. It pushed anti-communist sentiment in Japan to a new high and people accused of communism either fled or committed suicide. The Emperor Taisho, was forced to give the regency to his second son Chichibu, who would be crowned Emperor Tensho upon his fathers death in 1926, was distraught over the loss of his eldest son and went into seclusion. Chichibu was popular and received sympathy from other nations for the loss of his brother. But Chichibu was noted to have less interest in the office of Emperor then his older brother had been. His military career, which had only just begun, received a major boost as he was promoted from Second Lieutenant to Colonel, in the face of anti-communism. It was a flimsy pretense for the military to garner favor with the soon to be emperor.

 While half a world away a new king was being fitted for his crown, the same was the situation in Germany. The death of Hitler and the banning of the party had placed a divide in the NSDAP. With the de facto leader of the NSDAP, Rudolf Hess, imprisoned the party began to reassemble themselves differently. Two of the most influential members of the party received early release from their sentence after being elected to the Bavarian Landtag under the Nazi aligned Volkischer Block, Gregor Strasser and Ernst Rohm.

 Gregor Strasser, a Bavarian born veteran and Freikorps commander, was an able politician and fiercely loyal to the NSDAP. After Hitlers death, Strasser pushed to support the anti-capitalist strain of National Socialism and gained the support of not only new recruits, like young Joseph Goebbels, but from close friend of Hitler and leader of the SA, Ernst Rohm. Rohm saw the SA as the building block of a new military, one that would replace the old Prussian run military that many of the men in the National Socialist Party had worked under. Strasser was noted for his organizational skills, and although he lacked the great oratory skills of Hitler, he made sure to evoke the memory of the Fuhrer to the people to whom he spread the word. Strasser's popularity helped gain him the de facto leadership of the party from the imprisoned Hess, which caused a split as many saw Strasser's new form of National Socialism as to communistic. This helped bolster the support the German National Peoples Party, the DNVP, but only in a minor fashion. It soon became clear that the National Socialist movement was now here to stay, and as it spread throughout Germany, out from its base in Bavaria to the masses of Northern and Central Germany, that its new leader was to be Gregor Strasser.

 [SIZE="3"] National and socialist! What goes first, and what comes afterwards?[/SIZE][/B]

 By 1926, the evolution of the National Socialist German Workers Party, whose ban had long since been ignored, was astounding. Under Strasser, the party had grown by leaps and bounds. The populist message of the Nazis, as they came to be known, was received well by the lower class citizens of Germany, while it's revolutionary overtones were looked at cautiously by the government on the Wilhemstrasse. It was also noted as a far different party by the old party base.

 Rudolf Hess, after being released found what he dubbed as "a damnable organization". Hess attempted to take control of the party at a meeting in February of 1925, but was rebuffed by the Strassists who had gained control of the party. Many of the people who had participated in the Beer Hall Putsch had left the party after Hitler's death, claiming differences with the party's new direction. Some joined with Hess's new splinter party, the National Socialist Peoples Party (NSVP), but most joined with the German National Peoples Party, which was lead by Kuno von Westarp and funded by media tycoon, Alfred Hugenberg. The DNVP were a nationalist, monarchist, pro-business and anti-semitic party connected with the largest veterans organization in Germany, the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten. With all of its goals and its backing it would seem that the DNVP was the perfect choice for a German nationalist in the 1920's. There was one major difference between it and the NSDAP, was the S.

 Under Gregor Strasser, the National Socialists had brought the Socialism in National Socialism to the forefront. It was famously said by Strasser at a speech in Berlin that "First socialist redemption, then comes national liberation like a whirlwind!", to which the gathered crowd of over 6,000 cheered. They had also begun to intimidate their political opponents. Under Rohm, the SA had been transformed from a rabble to a private army. Their former leader, Hermann Goering, who had perished in Austria from wounds received during the Beer Hall Putsch, was invoked often at meetings by the Brownshirts, as the SA were growing to be called. So strong were they that the generals of the Reichswehr were beginning to worry, and a young officer by the name of Kurt von Schleicher began to amass power by rebuilding the army with help from an unlikely ally in Moscow.

 The growth of National Socialism didn't just occur in Germany, but related movements began to spring up in areas with large ethnic German populations. In the Free State of Danzig, Poland, Austria and Czechoslovakia. The reason for this, was that the Nazis were committed to the cause of Pan-German unity. Gross-Deutschland as a future state was often found in Nazi propaganda leaflets, which found their way into Poland and the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia. In the Sudetenland, where the ethnic Germans were being persecuted by the Czech community in a form of social justice for past transgressions, the movement caught on with the lower class workers, while the upper class tended to support the DNVP which also supported a Gross-Deutschland. In Austria, the National Socialist movement had first taken form in the 1900's and was thought to have influenced the later German parties ideology. It also had a Pan-German standpoint but the largest party in Austria under the Pan German Banner was the Greater German Peoples Party or the GDVP. However, the Austrians also had a nationalist movement of their own. Descended from the Heimwehr militia's of German Austria, whose only mission was to defend the border of the new Austria. The two forces would soon clash.

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 Blood and Soil

 With the success of the Nazis in the inner city and industrial regions of Germany, there was a certain nationalist backlash. Under Strasser, the party had taken steps to emphasize the worker in National Socialist German Workers Party. This caused the farmers to decidedly move away from their support of the Nazis. It also lead to an increase in membership for the Artaman League. Founded in 1923, the AG (Artaman Gesselschaft) was in support of a return to ruralism and helped relocate over 6,000 city dwellers to the German provinces of Silesia, Saxony and East Prussia in an effort to combat the settlement of these areas by Slavs, Poles in particular. Although the Artamanian movement had similarities with the Nazis, its followers were anti-Socialist, supporting the remarkably similar Volkisch movement. The League formed its settlers into the Wehrbaueren a group of soldier-peasants whose purpose was to defend the settlements from slavic attack. In reality they turned into roving death squads, terrorizing the Slavic neighborhoods and villages. Their crimes were ignored by the police.

 The Artamanians as a political force were mostly represented by the National Socialist Peoples Party. Under Hess, the NSVP had found a niche with people who, although supportive of Nazi policies, were wary of the socialist tinge it had taken under Strasser. The representative of the League's interest in the NSVP was Richard Walther Darre, whose speeches soon won over the majority of the League. Darre, an Argentinian born whose background as a farmer helped establish the NSVP amongst the agrarian movement. The League soon became the dominant force in the NSVP. Darre soon was able to take the party chair from Hess, who would spend the rest of years in obscurity before being killed in 1932 for his past affiliation with the Nazis. Darre also moved the movement towards a neo-paganist tinge, with unusual rituals becoming a part of daily life in the Artamanian camps. These rituals became whole heartedly accepted  by the Artamanians as a rejection of the Judaic based religion of Christianity.

 One particular settler by the name of Heinrich Himmler, rose to power in the Wehrbauren to the position as its commander. He became a close confidant of Darre and formed a special troop of Wehrbauren that followed Darre around Germany, protecting him as he made speeches. In one particularly memorable moment in 1927, a rally by the National Socialists in rural Saxony was met by an opposing rally by the NSVP. The speaker at the Nazi rally, Wilhelm Frick, referred to the NSVP as "reactionary heathens", which caused the SA to get involved in a street brawl with the Wehrbauren of the NSVP. The brawl was noted because the public of the rural Saxon village were decidedly against the Nazis and forced the Nazi rally to leave.  And although the NSVP would remain a minor political force on a national level, it soon came to prominence in Saxony, with Reichsprasident Hindenburg to refer to Darre as "Fuhrer of Saxony".

 Red Star in a Sea of Blue

 It was the stroke of Vladimir Lenin that began the power struggle for the leadership of the newly created Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. At the time of the stroke there were a number of men who were poised to take control of the nascent Soviet Union. There were many candidates but the one who was deemed the most likely to succeed was Leon Trotsky. Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein to a well to do Jewish farmer. His main opponent to the position of party chairman and leader of the USSR was a Georgian socialist by the name of Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili better known by his chosen name, Joseph Stalin. Stalin, a feared and powerful member of the party, was disliked by Lenin, largely because of an insult paid to his wife by the young Georgian. Lenin, in the spring of 1923, disowned Stalin as a member of the party in a speech delivered by Trotsky by at the 12th Congress of the Russian Communist Party. The speech blew Stalin out of the water and turned the Party's opinion on the Georgian out of whack. When Lenin's death came months later, Stalin fled from the USSR to Turkey, from where Stalin and his supporters would continue to support guerilla's against the rule of Trotsky, especially in Georgia, where Stalin remained popular.

 Trotsky's ascension to the head of the nation was looked on wearily from Europe, who saw Trotsky as a troublemaker. Their assumption was correct. Trotsky was a believer in the theory of continual revolution. The idea that the revolution wasn't truly over until over until every capitalist nation had been liberated. This allowed for a complete mess in the foreign policy department. One major instance was the Northern Expedition in 1926. The Expedition was an attempt by the Kuomintang, a nationalist political and military organization that wanted to unite China under their rule, against the warlord cliques of Northern China. Although Trotsky supported the Guominjun, who were allied with the Kuomintang, he also offered support to the Communists who caused uprisings against Kuomintang rule and sponsored the Wuhan Government under left wing KMT leader, Wang Jinwei. The resulting chaos forced the abortion of the Northern Expedition and a continued divide in the legitimacy of the government of China between Chiang Kai-Shek in Guangzhong and Zhang Zoulin in Beijing.

 Trotsky wasn't an idiot however and realized that certain allies were necessary. He continued the agreement with the Weimar government that allowed the German's to rebuild their military and circumvent the Treaty of Versailles. Many have assumed this was because of Trotsky's opinion of National Socialism. Trotsky recognized that the party held dangerous power and could potentially be a threat to the Soviet Union, especially considering their plans for Eastern expansion. Not to mention their constant use of the term "Jewish Bolshevism" in reference to the Soviet Union. Trotsky also funded the Communist Party of Germany and met personally with Ersnst Thalmann, whom he described as "a true revolutionary". Trotsky overall became a symbol of the Soviet pledge to continue the revolution, which would alienate the Soviet Union from the mainstream international scene for the next decade.

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Stuck between a Rock and a Hard Place

 Of all the national leaders watching the Nazi movement closely, none was more aware of the movements potential than Jozef Pilsudski the leader of Poland. After taking power in a swift a decisive coup d'etat in 1926, Pilsudski's regime was one that was considered authoritarian, but was not in many ways. Truly the father of the Second Republic, Pilsudski had defended his nation from Soviet invasion in 1920 and had saved his country from chaos. In his mind. He was distrusted by the Communists, although the feeling was mutual in that regard, and was not a fan of socialism, which he had used as a mean to a gain. Pilsudski did very actual ruling during his "Sanation" Regime, leaving most of the tasks of government to his colonels. The most prominent of these colonels was Edward Rydz-Smigly, who was considered to be Pilsudski's anointed heir. Rydz-Smigly became the leader of Poland's armed forces and pursued a closer alliance with France, Czechoslovakia and the United Kingdom. He was also at the helm when war erupted in their neighbor to the west, Germany.

 When the Berlin Uprising occurred in May of 1931, the Polish government was quick to act. The National Socialist Uprising in Germany was followed by similar actions in Danzig and the Silesian territories of Poland. The Polish military quickly put down the rebels in Polish territory and occupied Danzig. They then set forces on the border of not only the German border to the west, but to the east. East Prussia, an exclave of the German Reich, was quickly brought under the control of its Social Democratic government and its leader, Otto Braun. Braun was able to take command of the Reichswehr soldiers in East Prussia and convinced them to uphold the government in East Prussia, by violently putting down the Nazi, Communist and pro-Schleicher elements in East Prussia. As a result the small enclave became the last holdout of the legitimate Weimar government, as Germany proper dissolved into pro-Schleicher and Nazi held territories. After the civil war ended in 1935, the Braun government of East Prussia refused to recognize the legitimacy of the government in Berlin and retained its independence with the help of Poland.

 The breakout of war in Germany proved the beginning of the Polish rise to power. Suddenly far more worried about the potential of war, Yugoslavia, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland signed a treaty of mutual defense and alliance in 1932, with Dollfuss, Pilsudski, Benes and King Alexander's signature, the Litlle Entente was formed. Although its primary aim was to protect from German invasion, it was also based on Polish fears of a Soviet attack and Yugoslav fears of an Italian invasion. The Entente was viewed warily from Moscow and Berlin.  But it would assure peace in Central Europe, for years to come.


  The Berlin Uprising of 1931

 By 1930, it had become painfully clear that the National Socialists would not be elected into power. President von Hindenburg was actively promoting the success of the DNVP, who were supported by the rural based NSVP, against the KPD and the NSDAP. In inner city neighborhoods throughout Germany, Nazis competed with Communists for votes and membership, whilst they were persecuted by the government. At a meeting in Munich in August of 1930, it was put forward by Gauleiter of the Berlin Party and the Berlin SA, Karl Daluege, reported to Otto Strasser and Ernst Rohm that he had a approached a member of the Reichswehr, who was in charge of a division of troops in the capital and who were sick of the direction the nation was going and whom were sympathetic to the cause of the Nazis. Daluege suggested they could use the division to take the capital and establish a National Socialist state. When Otto brought it to the attention of his brother, Gregor told his brother "The revolution will come soon, but we must be patient".

 What Strasser was waiting for was the arrival of a shipment of weapons from American supporters of the Nazi's, mostly from the German-American community. The weapons would be used to arm the SA, which although large was poorly trained and less than controlled. For over a year the SA trained, in what they thought was secrecy. The whole plot was being followed closely by Kurt von Schleicher, who had risen to the rank of general and was a personal confidant of the President. Schleicher, along with other generals of the Reichswehr, were planning a coup to coincide with the Nazi Rebellion and had all the piece's in place. In May of 1931, on the 3rd to be exact, Strasser gave Daluege the go ahead, who contacted his conspirator in the Reichswehr, Walter Model. On the night of May 3rd, the SA and the Reichswehr under Model marched on the Reichstag, where they were prepared to raise the new flag of Germany, the Swastika. However upon their arrival, they discovered a fortified position held by Reichswehr forces. The revolutionary force was cut to ribbons on the streets Berlin and that very night von Schleicher through a coup in order "to preserve the freedom of Germany and of all Germans". Throughout Germany similar attempts were made, with all but a few succeeding. In Koln, Munich, Hamburg and Nuremberg, the Nazis were able to capture the bases. Elsewhere, the Reichswehr forces were able to defeat the ragtag SA force.

 At the outbreak of hostilities, the only region with little to no Nazi activity was Saxony, where the NSVP recognized the legitimacy of the new Berlin Junta. The Nazi's soon established their base as Southern Germany, with Bavaria being their stronghold. East Prussia also escaped from harm, when the Prime Minister of Prussia, Otto Braun, escaped to Konigsberg. Braun was able to gather the armed forces in East Prussia to round up and defeat the Nazi's and pro-coup forces. As a result of Polish intervention, Braun would remain in power in East Prussia until his death in 1955.

 International reaction to the breakout of civil war in Germany was mixed. In the USSR, Chairman Trotsky offered Soviet support to the KPD so that they could take power. Of course the Politburo had no expectations of Germany going red, but figured Thalmann's outfit could create chaos amongst the Germans and a weaker Germany would benefit a stronger USSR. In Poland and Czechoslovakia, the Nazi's convinced the local ethnic German populations to revolt. In Danzig, the Nazi's managed to take control of the government, but they were soon defeated by the Polish army that occupied the city. The occupation of Danzig would be indefinite, ending in the annexation of Gdansk in 1940. In Austria, the Nazi rising allowed the Heimwehr and other nationalist forces to seize power in Austria, forming a nationalist, authoritarian state under the control of Engelbert Dollfuss, who immediately outlawed all other parties and closed the border with Germany. In Italy, Mussolini supported the Nazi's  personally but for reasons of ideology offered support to the new regime in Berlin. In France and Britain, the populace's of each nation had collectively decided to ignore the war, while securing the borders so that conflict did not spill over. The French forces reoccupied the Ruhr and shot at any armed forces that attempted to take the region.

 Public support for the Nazi's was high in Germany and internationally. Civilian groups from America, Britain, France, Argentina, Chile and Brazil flew to Germany to fight with Strassers forces, whilst an Italian division of "volunteers" was dispatched to the Berlin government from Rome. As the fall began to set in, it became clear that the war was just beginning.

[enigmajones]

  The Iron Fist

 The German Civil War is remembered for being one of the most brutal exercises in futility ever seen on the European Continent. Of all the interwar conflicts, none had a death toll as high, not just in terms of military, but in terms of civilian lives. With the borders all around Germany closed off, the people of Germany were in a word, quarantined. Food shortages became a major worry after NSVP Wehrbauren burned their crops in an effort to keep from feeding the Nazi troops. During the war morale was low on both sides, with the high command of each army doing all the thinking. In the National Socialist camp, the Army of the Revolution was lead by Otto Strasser, which caused a slight divide in the troops who supported Ernst Rohm. Rohm himself respected Strasser to much to make an issue of it, besides the fact that Rohm homosexuality was the reason that Gregor Strasser kept him out of the position. In the Reichswehr camp, Schliecher was the commander in chief of all Republican forces, including the Reichsmarine, the Reichswehr and the Reichluftstreitkrafte, an air force created at the time of the coup.

 The Nazi's were at an immediate disadvantage, because whilst they had a massive army, they had no air force or Navy, nor did they have any hope of gaining either. This caused setbacks at first and forced the Nazi's to retreat to the southern part of Germany by the winter of 1932. Under Otto Strasser the armed forces recollected themselves for a planned offensive on the capital. Otto confidently boasted to his brother that the swastika would be flying over the Reichstag by Christmas of 1933. The confidence proved unfounded as the war turned into a hideous stalemate. The names of Efurt, Zwickau, Steinau and Leipzig plastered the headlines of daily papers in Paris, New York, London and Moscow. The Battle for Thuringia would end the Nazi offensive on Berlin and the Nordenmarsch ended in February of 1934, forcing the Nazi's into the realization that the war was possibly unwinnable. Some similar feelings were being expressed in the capital where President von Schliecher was worried that Festung Bayern, would be in the hands of the Hitlerites forever if an offensive could not succeed. He continually extended offers of alliance to any neighboring nation in return for assistance in the war. By the summer of 1934, he had found two allies.

 Benito Mussolini, Il Duce of the Kingdom of Italy and leader of the National Fascist Party, had been offering the involvement of Italian troops since as early as 1932. However, the anti aircraft guns in Nazi held territory were shooting down any planes flying overhead, so the only viable route was by land and the only route by land from Italy to Germany was Austria. Austria, now under the rule of Engelbert Dollfuss, a self described Austrofascist, was an ally of Italy and a confidant of Mussolini. He was however, wary of helping the Germans as he was firmly against a Greater Germany. Thus, he would refuse to allow Italian troops to move through Austria if Schliecher swore not to promote the annexation of Austria, a move that von Schliecher approved of. By October of 1934, he agreed to the deal. And on Christmas Eve, 1934, the Austro-Italian force launched its invasion of Germany.

 The attack on their rear caught the Nazi High Command completely off guard, and Munchen, which had been bombed occasionally by Schliecher planes, was now being bombed continuously. At the beginning of the war, the Nazi's had placed a large army on Austro-German border, but in order to push towards Berlin, had left a small remnant force under the command of Sturmabteilung-Standartenfuhrer Theodor Eicke. Eicke's orders were to make sure no saboteurs or people escaped and most of his force were young soldiers drafted to the cause from the streets and juvenile halls of Bavaria. Which would explain his surprise at the massive armed force that quickly overwhelmed his position. Soon forces were called back from the front to protect Munchen, the capital of the National Socialist Republic of Germany, from the Austro-Italian force. The retreat from the front coincided with the Reichswehr offensive which gradually overwhelmed and captured territory until the National Socialist Army was left to nothing but a remnant in the region south of Nurnberg to Munchen. The Nazi capital was relocated to Regensburg where Strasser announced that the revolution was a failure. Gregor decided to flee from the country to Switzerland. He left the Nazi forces in the hands of Ernst Rohm, who would continue the fight. Gregor Strasser and his small group of 10 bodyguards fled south until they were stopped at a Reichswehr checkpoint in Sigmaringen. The guards recognized Strasser and a firefight ensued. When it was over Strasser and the bodyguards were dead.

 By January of 1935, Munich had fallen and the Nazi's only held official control over a small region surrounding Regensburg. Rohm swore every soldier to fight to the death and the siege only ended in late February when an Italian-German force captured the city, Rohm was captured and executed by the state days later in Munchen. The war was over and National Socialism and all of its brother organizations were outlawed. Otto Strasser escaped to Denmark, through bribery and deceit. But the thousands who had served in the SA and the other Nazi forces, a form of oath was required to be let back into normal society. And while the fighting was officially over, National Socialist Guerilla's remained a problem in the South of Germany until the late 1950's. In Berlin, Kurt von Schliecher declared the nation to be at peace and formally signed an alliance with Austria and Italy. And Europe breathed a collective sigh of relief, the war was over, even if the smell had not yet left the air.


The Chosen People In A Forsaken Land

 Of all the ethnic groups that were present in Germany at the start of the Civil War in 1931, none would be dealt a blow as harsh as the Jews. With a history in Germany stretching back to the Roman Empire, the Jews had been persecuted since the time of Charlemagne. But the anti-semitism experienced after Germany's loss in the Great War, lead to an unprecedented surge in anti-semitism. One of the large reasons for this was the Dolchstosslegende, which was the concept that were it not for the traitorous actions of the government of Germany, the communists and most importantly, the Jews, Germany would've won the Great War. The concept grew popular in right wing circles and was a pillar of National Socialism, both in the form of the NSDAP and the NSVP. It was also hugely popular in the DNVP, who would become the de jure party of the state after the civil war.

 During the war, the Nazi's routinely raided Jewish neighborhoods, selected certain men and women and had them shot as a manner of raising morale in the Nazi camps. Jews in Nazi held territory, suffered losses more than any other civilians in Nazi held territory. Synagogues were routinely burned in Bavaria and throughout the south of Germany. These atrocities were widely publicized by the government in Berlin in an attempt to garner more Jewish support for their cause. And it worked, a special battalion of Jewish soldiers, lead by Oberst Erwin Rommel, served with distinction against the Nazi's during the Battle for Thuringia. Although given dangerous assignments and having a high casualty rate, the soldiers were loyal and were awarded for their service. Its veterans were given special treatment during the Schleicher regime (1935-1954) even as their fellow Jewish citizens fell prey to the governments anti-semitic actions.

 Even as their young men served in the Reichswehr, the Jewish community under the control of the Berlin Government were persecuted. In order to free up soldiers for the fight against the Nazis, the Stalhelm and Bismarckjugend of the DNVP were given the right to police the territory. These Great War veterans and nationalist youth organizations were anti-semitic and nationalist and were mostly tasked in fighting communist saboteurs present throughout Prussia and the north of Germany. However, they often just invaded Jewish neighborhoods and lynched the Jewish men whom they assumed were responsible for the acts of treason. Although not nearly as severe as the actions of the Nazi's, the Jews of the north were under harsh treatment. It was for these and the over all devastation in the country that caused many Germans to immigrate, many of whom were Jews. It is considered that an estimate of 45% of Germany's jewry left Germany for the Netherlands, France, Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Free Germany* and the United States.

 By wars end, about 25% of the prewar German Jewish population had died, with Jewish war orphans being quite common in the post war era. Most of them were raised in state run orphanages, run by the DNVP, where a process of Germanization occurred, causing many to lose touch with their Jewish heritage, this act of cultural assassination caused a huge outrage in the world's Jewish communities, when the details of the scheme were released to the public in 1959. The remaining Jews in Germany, grew gradually more distant from the von Scleicher regime, especially after Alfred Hugenberg was declared Reichskanzler in 1936. Laws banning Jewish citizens who had not served in the Reichwehr, known as the Rommel Exemption, passed in 1938, proved the final straw in a long list of grievances. By 1950, their was only a small minority still active in Germany that still practiced their faith. Large amounts had migrated to British Palestine, which was open to Jewish settlers and Zionist recruiting agencies were common in Jewish neighborhoods throughout Germany. There were a larger group of Jews who remained in Germany, who were German and Christian in upbringing and were non practicing. These were the results of the DNVP youth cultural rehabilitation program. The fate of the German Jew, was a bleak one, forced from their home and scattered across the globe, a fate unenvied.

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  From the Rubble

 Post war Germany was desolate place. Although Reichswehr victories early on in the war had spared much of the country from devastation, the entire southern portion of the nation was in ruins. Munich, Cologne, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Mainz, Frankfurt, Erfurt and Leipzig had become nothing more than piles of rubble with people. The south of the country was under joint Italian, Austrian and Reichswehr occupation and Nazi partisan activity was still quite common in Bavaria and Wurttemberg. The German government was nothing to speak of. There was no Reichstag and there were no plans for the opening of a civilian government. During the war, the nation had been run by edicts from von Schleicher's personal office in the Benderblock. After the war ended, Von Schleicher was sworn in as Reichspraesident. This caused a minor uproar amongst the DNVP who believed that their loyalty should be rewarded. Von Schliecher was hesitant but succumbed to the requests in January of 1936, when Alfred Hugenberg, leader of the DNVP, was declared Reichskanzler. Hugenberg would serve in this capacity until his death in 1951. The rise of Hugenberg to power was met with the outlawing of any other political party in Germany, which was met with public outrage, although none more violent than in Saxony.

 In what was referred to as the Saxon Revolt, the declaration of the outlawing of all other political parties was met with disgust in the NSVP stronghold of Saxony. The Wehrbauren brigades had fought bravely against the Nazi forces in the civil war, especially at Leipzig and Zwickau, and saw this development as an act of betrayal. The NSVP immediately organized an assault on the Reichswehr base in Dresden. This small outpost had been left largely empty, as soldiers were needed on far more important fronts, and was easily captured by the NSVP. The leader of this revolt, Heinrich Himmler, took the officers present hostage and sent demands to the government in Berlin to overturn the declaration and allow the NSVP to continue its existence. The demands were ignored and the Wehrbauren were slaughtered two days later by an overwhelming force. The swastika was formally banned and so was any form of a National Socialism as a political organization. Saxony, along with Bavaria, would remain stronghold's of anti-government sentiment for years to come.

 In foreign relations, the German Reich was quick to establish a formal alliance with both Austria and Italy. Soon the Reich began to establish relations with the United Kingdom, France and the majority of the world. Certain holdouts remained, however, and the von Schleicher regime was far from global popularity. The Second Polish Republic, under Edward Rydz-Smigly, gave formal recognition to the Weimar remnant in East Prussia, which drove an early wedge between the new German Government and Poland. War had almost broken out when a Reichsmarine fleet had steamed out from Kiel to retake the rebellious territory, but were met by the Polish MWRP, who blockaded the German ships. The German ships left with the message that any attempt by the German Reich to retake East Prussia would be considered as an act of war against the Polish Republic. The German ships backed down, as Germany needed to recover from their own conflict before starting another. Another area of contention was the Polish occupation of Danzig. Danzig, officially a free city state under the Treaty of Versailles, had been occupied by Polish forces in 1931 and had remained under Polish control since that time. Germany initially complained to the League of Nations about this, which resulted in a sanction against Poland. In response, Poland withdrew from the League. Germany, Czechoslovakia, Italy and Austria would withdraw soon after. 

 In Germany, the government under Hugenberg began to pass a series of laws prohibiting Jews from participating in the new Germany. Small laws were passed, prohibiting Jews from owning pets, receiving drivers licenses, owning stores or homes and finally a law barring any Jewish citizen from voting, which was a redundant concept, as no one in Germany could vote, and wouldn't be able to until 1968, but the symbolic gesture was strong. It did face opposition from decorated war hero Erwin Rommel. Rommel, who had commanded a Jewish battalion during the war, pleaded on their behalf to von Schleicher who allowed the laws to be passed, unless the Jewish citizen could prove they had served in the Reichswehr, in which case they would be exempt from the laws. This act of kindness was never forgotten and across Europe, ex-patriate communities of German Jews applauded Rommel's stand on their behalf, earning him the nickname in British and French circles as "the good German" or  "le bon Allemand". In 1937, the German national flag was switched to the old Imperial flag, along with the formal renaming of Germany to the German State or Deutsches Staat, to avoid confusion with the old Weimar government. The renaming of Germany, was matched in Konigsberg to the title of the Free Republic of Germany, or Freirepublik de Deutschland.

 In 1936, Italian troops were forced to evacuate from Germany to be shipped to East Africa, where the Italians were fighting a war of imperialism. Although little reported by the German State, thousands of veterans who had served in the Sturmabteilung, were given to the Italians to help serve in their war. They were given the choice of fighting for Italy or living the rest of their lives in back breaking labor camps. The choice of the majority was unsurprising. The troops who would serve in East Africa, were to never return to Germany, either gaining homes in Italian Libya or moving to South America.

 The Danzig War

 By 1939, Poland seemed poised to take power on the world stage. The weakness of the Germany and the lack of a threatening Red Army on either side, the Polish Republic was growing more an more powerful. In a scheme devised by Jozef Beck, with assistance from the Maritime and Colonial League, the Jews of Poland were advised to leave for the French colony of Madagascar. This was because of overpopulation within Poland and the prominent anti-semitism prevalent in Polish politics. From June of 1939 onwards ships filled to the brim with Jewish citizens departed for Madagascar. The trip was long and hard and once the immigrants landed on Madagascar, the Jews ended up moving to the capital of Tannarive. The almost 100,000 Polish Jews would end up becoming loyal french subjects, backfiring against the Polish plan to convert the colony to their rule. An additional 100,000 Poles, containing a Jewish minority, departed for Liberia after an agreement between the governments of Monrovia and Warsaw. This half of the scheme would work quite well and Liberia would grow into an Polish colony by the 1970's.

 This era of Polish nationalism was topped off by the dedication of a large memorial to Pilsudski in Warsaw. And in an event that Poland hoped to keep quiet, annexed Danzig and formally renamed the city Gdansk. This move caused an uproar in Berlin. Von Schleicher had ended occupation in all areas of Germany excluding Saxony and Bavaria by 1938. But morale amongst the people was low and worried that his own power might be challenged, von Schleicher took advantage of the Danzig annexation. He called on Poland to immediately exit Danzig or face war. President Rydz-Smigly immediately dismissed the threat as a hollow one. In the summer of 1939, von Schleicher commissioned three generals as Field Marshals, in command of three army groups. Erich von Manstein, Ferdinand von Bredow and Fedor von Bock were each given the tasks of capturing Konigsberg, Warsaw and Krakow respectively. Von Manstein's force was headquartered in Stettin, whilst the other two generals were headquartered in Breslau. In the Fall of 1940, the Generals were ordered to strike.

 The attack, which was supposed to be a surprise that forced the Poles to capitulate. However, the Polish, thanks to intelligence gathering, was well aware of the Reichswehr's plans. When the Germans marched on Poland in September, they were met with heavy resistance. The Polish had built a heavy set of fortifications across their border with Germany during the Civil War. As a result the German force became mired in a stalemate. The only general to gain ground was von Manstein, whose force was able to lay siege to Danzig by December of 1940. But the Polish were to dug in. The war proved to be a tremendous waste of the German's time. By March of 1941, it was clear that the Germans would not gain any further territory and von Schleicher sued for peace. The Treaty of Breslau agreed a return to pre-war borders. The war seemed to be a waste in the eyes of the German military, but von Schleicher vowed to return to war, to his generals at least. Von Schleicher made sure that the next time he went to war, he would have an alliance. The war resulted in a surge of Polish nationalism unseen since the Polish-Soviet War.

[enigmajones]

Powderkeg Redux

 In July of 1923, the army of Bulgaria was prepared to overthrow the legal government in Sophia. The reason for this was the signing and ratification of the Treaty of Nis, which weakened Bulgaria immensely in the eyes of the nationalist right wing factions in the capital. The army of Bulgaria with the blessing of the Tsar overthrew the government and instituted a white terror upon Bulgaria under Aleksandar Tsankov. Tsankov was decried as a fascist by Comintern, and after the assurance of Trotsky's ascension by Lenin, the Soviet Union invaded Bulgaria, by landing troops on the northern shore of Bulgaria's Black Sea coast. The invasion coincided with the rising of Agrarians, Socialists and Communists. After limited fighting the Soviets captured Sofia and declared the Peoples Republic of Bulgaria, under the control of Georgi Dimitrov. The right wing government was dismantled and the Tsar fled from Bulgaria to Greece. The success of the Bulgarian Intervention reflected well on Trotsky in Moscow and resulted in White Terror throughout the Balkans.

 In Greece, the military rule of Greece was almost ended with the declaration of a republic. The fall of Sophia in February of 1924, was met with surprise and horror in Athens, where the General Theodoros Pangalos declared the creation of the Second Hellenic Republic, under his control. Pangalos instituted a white terror in Greece, outlawing the Communist Party of Greece. The Communists fled to Bulgaria and supported terrorist acts against the new Greek Republic. Pangalos also instituted nationalist sentiment and promoted the removal of Turkish control of Asia Minor. His rule was unpopular, but with Communist Bulgaria and the Soviet friendly Turkey surrounding Greece, the army had no choice but to throw its support behind Pangalos. Pangalos would eventually forge an alliance with the Italians, and formed a Treaty of Friendship with Mussolini in July of 1927. One stipulation of the treaty was the recognition of Italian claims in Albania, along with Greek claims in Albania.

 In Romania, which shared a large border with the Bulgarians and a large border with the Soviet Union, anti-communist sentiment was high. The Peasants Party and the National Romanian Party formed a coalition and took power in Bucharest. The Peasants Party was largely pro-monarchy and virulently anti-communist. It also lead to the rise of the power of the National Christian-Defense League, an anti-semitic organization who became very popular in the Southern and Northern regions of Romania. By 1927, a firebrand by the name of Corneliu Zelea Cordeanu came to the head of the party and united the right wing under his control. The Lancieri, known as the Blue Shirts in Western papers, became increasingly violent and grew to hold huge power and support, especially in the Romanian government. In 1930, the NCDL took power in Bucharest and had CZ Cordeanu established as the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Romania. They created Romania as a statist society, with the Eastern Orthodox Church as its official religion. By 1931, all other parties had been effectively marginalized, with the revolt by the National Socialists in Germany being the impetus for the outlawing of all other political parties. Although many people compared the Romanian government to the Nazis, most likely because they both used the Swastika as their symbol, Cordreanu despised the National Socialists and considered them nothing but "German Bolshevists" when some Nazis attempted to reestablish themselves in Romania, Cordeanu had them banned from Romania. The Kingdom of Romania established relations with the von Schleicher government in 1933, being one of the first to do so.

 The Third Balkans War

 The Third Balkans War, one of the largest conflicts since the Great War and preceding the Second Danzig War, had its origins in the rise to power of Leon Trotsky. Trotsky's main opponent had been Joseph Stalin, a Georgian born socialist whose rough exterior and ruthlessness were not to be diminished by his exile to Turkey. Once in Turkey, he established himself on the border with the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Republic and sent funding and weapons to Georgian rebels who rose in violence in 1924. The revolt was put down, but the rebels escaped to Turkey, and the Peoples Army of Free Georgia was established in Trabzon and began to receive unofficial support from the Republic of Turkey. Stalin even met with Ataturk, events which were discovered by the GPU and brought to the attention of Trotsky. Trotsky, who realized that Turkey was necessary to keep the balance in the Balkans decided to keep the information secret to keep relations good. The tactic worked, with the Turkish-Soviet relations growing colder. Things grew worse when the Soviet backed assassination of Greek President Pangalos failed and the Greeks signed a formal alliance with the Romanians. In 1934, the August Uprising of former military officers in Bulgaria failed, but caused significant damage to the regime of Georgi Dimitrov, who became increasingly propped up by the Soviets. With the military buildup of Romania and Greece and the Italian invasion of Albania in 1939 really pushed Trotsky over the edge. Accompanied with the continued attacks on Soviet government officials, Trotsky decided to fell two birds with one stone.

 On July 15th of 1940, the Soviet Union sent a demand to Turkey to extradite the Georgians, especially Stalin. Turkey refused and the next day the Soviet Union declared war on the Republic of Turkey. In a similar case, Bulgaria sent a demand to Athens to immediately extradite the Bulgarian nationalist responsible for the August Uprising. Pagalos outright refused and the next day hostilities broke out when the Greeks and the Romanians launched an invasion of Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Peoples Army, which although well stocked, was small. In order to defend themselves the government in Sofia instituted a draft. The fighting stalled in the Rhodope Mountains between the Peoples Army and the Greeks. The Romanians were in far more luck and took Sofia in the Spring of 1941. The Soviets in Turkey were stalled on the road to Ankara and were caught off guard when the Romanians launched an invasion of the Ukraine in an attempt to capture the Ukraine. The Soviet counterattack came late and all the veterans of the Soviets were in Turkey at the time. Local militia's were called to arms to fight the Romanians and were able to stall the Romanians outside of Kiev by winter of 1940.

 After the fall of Sofia in 1941 caused the Greek army to launch an invasion of Turkey. The Greeks were assisted by the new Kingdom of Bulgaria, the collaborationist government established under the restored Boris the Third. The return of Boris and the toppling of the Communist government was met with mixed feelings from the public, and while communist partisan activity was not uncommon, it was also matched by support for the restored Tsar. The new Royal Army of Bulgaria was dispatched to join the Greeks as they marched on Constantinople. The Greco-Bulgarian offensive was stalled before they could enter Constantinople and the Greeks launched a secondary invasion, with help from Italian troops, of the Aegean coast of Anatolia. The Greeks attacked Izmir in particular and captured the city from Turkish troops and began the march on Ankara. The Soviets were forced to re-evaluate their situation by the end of 1941, after a Romanian offensive had captured Kiev, expecting the Soviets to request a truce. No truce came, and the Soviets launched a secondary offensive against the Romanians, whilst relaunching their march on Ankara. The offensive against the Romanians liberated Kiev, even after the Lancieri ethnically cleansed large portions of Kiev, while Soviet ships proceeded to shell Romanian cities on the Black Sea. By Spring of 1942, the Soviets had captured Adana and were fighting the Turks in Yozgat, when the Turks called for peace. In the humiliating Peace of Ankara, the Republic of Turkey was forced to cede it entire Aegean Coast to the Greeks. Everything east of the 33rd Meridian would be ceded to the newly created Peoples Republic of Turkey. The Greeks would receive all Turkish land West of the 30th Meridian. This humiliating peace left the Republic of Turkey a humiliated rump state. The Soviets were able to transfer their veterans across the Black Sea to the Crimea to the new front in the Ukraine and leave the newer troops to occupation duty and help train the new Peoples Turkish Army being formed in the new nations capital of Malatya.

 The new Soviet force pushed into Romania, only to be stopped by a massive uprising in Georgia and Turkey. The Greeks and Bulgarians not busy in occupation came to the help of the Romanians. The war was in a firm stalemate by the winter of 1943. The war was bankrupting the Soviets but Trotsky refused to accept anything but total victory. On Christmas of 1943, the military in Moscow killed Trotsky and initiated the new Soviet governments offer of return to pre-war borders with the Romanians. As a result the Treaty of Kiev lead to the end of hostilities in the Third Balkans War. It was one of the most violent conflicts in Europe since the German Civil War, and forced the British and French to finally take notice of events taking place in Eastern Europe, because of their refusal to get involved in a new war, the Red Army had a base on the Mediterranean.

[enigmajones]

 Look To The East

 The rise of the Emperor Tensho to the throne of Japan was an event of monumental importance to Asian history. The new Emperor was young and his nationalist attitudes were well known at this point. The assassination of his brother 3 years previous had shocked Japan, and had set the future of Japan in motion. With the the rise of Emperor Tensho came the Kodoha, of the Imperial Way faction, to power in the Army of Japan. The Kodoha wished to push north and eradicate communism. The Emperors support of the Kodoha faction allowed its leader Sadao Araki to the post of War Minister. Araki was an expansionist and wanted to physically expand the Japanese Empire, even if it was at the expense of European colonial powers. The idea of this was put to a stop when the Emperor Tensho renewed the long dead Anglo-Japanese Alliance into a full cooperation between the two nations. Soon enough Tensho began to suggest to the government that Japan should look north for its treasures. Tensho also pushed forward the plan to place the Prince of Korea to the head of the Korean General-Government. Basing the new set up in Korea on the Canadian system, Prince Yi Kang was made the King of Korea, a position subservient to the Emperor of Japan. This compromise angered some in the Kodoha faction, but the overall opinion of the Emperor forced them to accept. The Kingdom of Korea was therefore founded in 1926. The compromise, created to appease the Korean revolutionaries did not bring an end to the Korean Independence movement, but rather bolstered those who viewed the new Korean government as collaborationist. In fact the new Korean government lead to the monarchists being discredited in favor of the Communist and Democratic rebels.

 By 1927, Chiang Kai-Shek in Kwantung, bolstered by support from the Soviets originally were now ready to take control of the rest of China. His Northern Expedition was launched in an effort to take the land held by the Chihili Faction, headquartered in Nanjing and lead by Sun Chuanfang. Chuanfang was originally in combat with the Beiyang Government, but when the Japanese came to him and offered him arms against the coming Kuomintang invasion, Chuanfang and Zuolin were able to broker a peace. Zuolin was able to take power in Beijing as a result of a Japanese backed coup that very year. The joint defensive front established against the Kuomintang and the Kuominchun was able to keep both armed forces from conquering either Beijing or Nanjing and the established government of Beiyang under the Zhili Clique formed an alliance with the Chihili Clique and became known as the Eastern League. They were able to foil the Kuomintang's attempts at unification. The revolt of the Communists in the camp of the Kuomintang was not helped, and neither was the desertion of Wang Jingwei to Wuhan, where he established a government supported by the Soviets. The failure of the Kuomintang and the Kuominchun lead to the joint Western Expedition, which eradicated the Wuhan Government and united the governments in Guangzhou and Xi'an. Chiang Kai-shek and Feng Hu-Hsiang were able to form a united Kuomintang government and began to force their control over the rest of China.

 The Western Expedition (1928-1931), was the KMT's attack on the Kwangsi Province, the union with T'ang Chi-yao's Yunnan based government and the KMT's solidification of the Sinkiang and Sechuan provinces. By 1931, the KMT had basic control over the whole of China, excluding the consolidated territory of the Beiyang government. The Eastern League, fully backed by the Japanese, especially after concessions to Japanese control over the Liaodong Peninsula to the Kingdom of Korea, went about solidifying its control. In 1928, Zhang Zuolin ordered the assassination of Sun Chuanfang, while the New Beiyang Army, trained by Japanese soldiers, consolidated control over the territory of Chuanfang. As a result Zuolin became the head of state of the Republic of China (Beijing) while Chiang Kai-shek became the President of the Republic of China (Guangzhong). The Japanese support for the Beiyang government prompted the French Government to lend its support to the KMT. The British continued their formal influence over Tibet, which was recognized by the KMT and the French, and offered support to both governments. The important thing in all parties minds was the destruction of the Communists in China. The defeat of the Wuhan government and Jingwei's assassination at the hands of Communists hardliners had not helped their cause and by 1930, the only Communists left were considered nothing but outlaws. After 1931, the two states came to an uneasy peace with each Republic fighting for legitimacy. Both became radically anti-communist and in Guangzhong, a faction of the ultra-nationalist KMT known as the Blue Shirts Society began its rise to power in the government, while the authoritarian rule of Zuolin became infamous abroad.

  The Hook Cross and the Christian General

 After the end of the Western War and the union of the Guominjun and the Kuomintang, the Guangzhou government was forced to consolidate. The eradication of the warlords in the south of China was key to the unification process, but disputes began to arise between Hu-Hsiang, the leader of the former Guominjun, and Chiang Kai-shek, the President of the Guangzhou government and leader of the Kuomintang. Hu-Hsiang was in all honesty a leftist, his ideology being a splice of nationalism, militarism and Christian socialism. He was opposed to communism, but was not wholly against them, as a large wing of the Kuomintang was. One wing of the party, lead by Kai-shek and his allies from the Whampoa Clique, was the Blue Shirts Society, who had gained prominence after the fall of Wuhan. Kai-shek had promoted many of its members to higher points in the military because of their affiliation with the organization and their rise had alienated Hu-Hsiang and the left wing of the party. With the Communists marginalized and Jingwei's death, the left wing became strongly under the control of Hu-Hsiang and the former Guominjun members. Feng's political concepts became heavily influenced, not from Moscow, but from Munich. Support for the National Socialist ideology in the left camp became high and caused Strasserist policies to fall to the wayside in the Blue Shirts. The leader of Strasserist theory in the Blue Shirts, Liu Jianqun, lost his influence in the society as a direct result of this, the main ideological contributor becoming He Zhonghan, who drew mainly from Italian fascism and Japanese Statism. Zhonghan managed to take over from Jeng Tie, who had attempted to make the Blue Shirts the only wing of the party. The refusal of Jeng Tie to recognize the control of Chiang on the movement, lead to his disposal by the secret police. His execution was rumored to have been carried out by Dai Li, the head of the KMT's secret police. A strike on Hu-Hisang was proposed by Dai, but Chiang vetoed it.
 
 After his escape into Denmark in the Spring of 1935, Otto Strasser became the face of the failed Nazi Revolt in Germany. He became popular in academic circles across Europe and was a frequent visitor in Paris, London and Madrid. In early 1936, Strasser was contacted through an intermediary from the French interests in Yunnan, that his presence had been requested by Feng Hu-Hsiang. After explaining who the general was and his views on Otto's late brothers theories, Strasser, along with 600 or so Nazis, most of whom had fought in the war, traveled to China through French Indochina, traveling to the Northwest to met with Hu-Hsiang. Hu-Hsiang, by the winter of 1936, had grown weary of Chiang's support of the Blue Shirts, who had grown from secret society to a massive group, encompassing the right wing of the party. Hu-Hsiang had gathered some left leaning generals and was prepared to force a civil war in an attempt to dislodge the Blue Shirts from power. With the arrival of Strasser in the Spring of 1937, the left wing's cause was bolstered and were ready to challenge the the government in Guangzhong. The first move of war was when Li Zongren agreed to join the plot. Although Zongren was not ideologically opposed to Chiang and the Blue Shirts, he believed it threatened any chance of his taking power. The forces loyal to him launched the attack on Guangzhou, capturing the city and forcing the KMT to retreat to Chenzou in the Hunan. The fall of Guangzhou was considered a death knell for the Kuomintang, especially when the newly revived Guominjun, with German volunteers, marching south. The siege of Hunan went on between June of 1937 and August of 1937, when Chiang ordered the retreat to Yunnan. However, Chiang was killed by an artillery raid on the force as it retreated and when the KMT reached Yunnan, the party was faced with a political struggle between Liu Chih, the remaining strong military commander in the KMT and the Blue Shirts lead by Zhonghan. The struggle was won by the Blue Shirts, with Chih being killed in his sleep. It was believed at this point that the KMT was out for the count, except that, seeing the disunity in the west, Zhang Xueliang, the son and heir apparent of Zuolin, convinced the new Beiyang Army that now was the time to strike. As a result, the army strode south from Nanjing towards Guangzhou, forcing the anti-Chiang Clique to respond in a defensive maneuver. As a result the KMT was able to recuperate and rebuild its strength. War had reopened in China, and as leaders in the colonies of Europe looked on, it could be contained.

[enigmajones]

 Sorry for the blocks of texts. It's far easier to do this on a mac, because frankly this is the worst piece of sh**t computer I've ever used.

 Anyone liking the TL?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I'm liking it, tho at times there are some things that strain my willingness to suspend disbelief.  The most unlikely thing was the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.  Certainly the Japanese would welcome such an event, but it was the British who terminated it so as to strengthen ties with the US and I don't see anything in this timeline so far that would cause the British to reverse their position.

[enigmajones]

 Japan in this timeline, thanks to the rise of the Kodoha to power in Japan, give Britain a guarantee that any colonial possessions of Great Britain or it's allies will be respected in their totality. The British are also guaranteed that the Japanese will take care of the situation in China, especially after the rebellion in Hong Kong. My timeline is layered, and when I go back and do the redux, Im gonna fix all the continuity errors and the stuff that as I hear it (through my laptops speech function). But all the crazy has a path, and while the possibility of these things occurring as a result of the butterfly effect may not all be leaders in plausibility, they make for a hell of political climate.

 Thanks for responding man, hope you keep liking it.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Thing is, those assurances wouldn't have affected Britain's concern, or more accurately, Canada's concern, that the alliance would cause the Commonwealth to be drawn into a Japanese-American conflict.  You'd need to have some changes in British policy to make a restoration of the alliance practical.  Also, the ending of the alliance was formally part of the Washington Naval Conference treaties that were negotiated before the points of departure of your timeline.  A renewal of the alliance could well lead to the end of the Five-Power Treaty limiting naval armaments which a war-weary Britain would not want to put at risk.

[enigmajones]

And Yankee Doodle Went To Town...

 In the 1920's, while the rest of the world was struggling, the United States was facing unmatched prosperity. The 20's was a time of social growth and as a result there was a traditionalist backlash. This included the passage of the Volstead Act of 1920, which made alcoholic beverages illegal. There were loopholes, including the legalization of Sacramental wine and legalized prescription of alcohol in certain quantities. It was during this time that the Presidency of Warren Harding ended as a result of his death, which resulted in the rise to power of Vice President Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge, the former Governor of Massachusetts, was the expected standard bearer of the Republican and did not disappoint, winning the Republican nomination for the presidency and went up against the Democratic candidate William G. McAdoo, who received the nomination thanks to the support of the Prohibitionists and the Ku Klux Klan. The election of 1924 was heated and the breaking point came when Coolidge was asked to define an American. The answer, while not inflammatory, was twisted by the McAdoo campaign to sound as if Coolidge favored immigrants and "negroes" over the average American. As a result, McAdoo was elected to the office of President, with Oscar Underwood as his vice president. President McAdoo's first term saw the unprecedented rise of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, afraid of Coolidge's plans for the United States, had thrown total support behind the McAdoo/Davis campaign and in some cases were suspected of rigging elections.

 Throughout the country, opposition to Prohibition continued to grow with the circumvention of the Volstead Act being assisted by the growth of organized crime and corrupt politicians. McAdoo was not blind to this, but decided it was best to ignore it beginning what would become referred to as the "Second Gilded Age".  The laissez faire attitude adopted by the McAdoo presidency lead to unlimited economic growth. By the time re-election came in 1928, McAdoo and Davis easily defeated the Republican ticket of Lowden/Hoover. A year into McAdoo's second term, the stock market crashed, causing unemployment to skyrocket. As a result dissatisfaction with the ruling party became increasingly apparent. McAdoo became one of the most unpopular presidents in American history and as a result it became clear the next president would be a Republican. In the upcoming election of 1932, the main candidates were Herbert Hoover, the former Secretary of Commerce, John J. Blaine, Senator and former Governor of Wisconsin, and Joseph Irwin France, a former Senator from Maryland. The original frontrunner was Hoover, who ran on a promise to return to the prosperity of the 1920's and the Harding Administration, even if his economic policies were considered a carbon copy of McAdoo's failed policies. As a result of this, Blaine jumped to the forefront, becoming the favorite progressive in the election. Blaine would win the nomination and the election, with the Blaine/France ticket going up against the progressive Democratic Governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Minority Leader of the House, John Nance Garner. Blaine won by a landslide setting in motion the future of the United States.

 Two Presidents and a Depression

 The presidency of John James Blaine, was marked by the repealing of the Volstead Act, which had been kept in its totality by the McAdoo Administration. The abolition of prohibition helped boost the president early on, along with his plans for the economy. Blaine's economic plans, included a nationalization to a degree. This included the creation of the Third National Bank and newly created bureaus to handle the rampant unemployment. Blaine, although popular, became sickly in 1933 and died of a heart attack shortly afterwards. His Vice President, Joseph France, was a radical. He was the definition of progressive, not only in the sense of being liberal, but in his opinions on communism. Under President France, the United States began to openly court the Soviet Union and its leader Leon Trotsky. President France, was also noted for his minor support for the National Socialists in Germany, and although it was never proven, shipments of arms to the Nazis were believed to have come from the United States. France began to push forward economic programs that reflected a more socialist lean, causing a backlash from the more conservative members of the Republican party and a division of the Democrats, with the more progressive voters and politicians switching to the Republicans. As a result the Democrats gained the more conservative end of the party. The Democrats also began to grow more and more isolationist, as France and the Republicans began to approach the concept of internationalization. The Presidents popularity was increased as the working mans life became better. Public work programs were quite common at the time and were opposed by the Democrats, who agreed that a Laissez faire policy was best in the world of business.

 In 1936, the Democrats put forward the former governor of Georgia, Richard Russell Junior, a conservative with clout in the Southern spectrum and his running mate, Cordell Hull of Tennessee. The Russell/Hull ticket was defeated in a landslide victory for the France administration. France's running mate was Kansas Governor Alf Landon. Landon would be remembered for nothing but being a seat filler. Regardless of the Vice President, France remained popular and although his popularity continued, his programs weren't working. The economy had yet to recover to the state it was in during the McAdoo Administration and as a result, many people were getting tired of just getting along. In 1939, President France passed away, pushing Landon to the forefront of the party for the upcoming 1940 election. Landon would be going up against a Democratic Party burgeoned by the failure of the Republican Party's failures to fix the economy. The Democrats had no frontrunner, but many different candidates. It included John N. Garner and Charles Lindbergh were able to jump to the head of the pack and while Garner gained the nomination, with Lindbergh as his VP candidate. However, Landon was able to win a close election, thanks to the nomination of Robert Taft to the position of Vice President. Thanks to the good feelings left over from the France administration, Landon was able to win the election and the United States prepared for 4 more years of a Republican White House.

[enigmajones]

 Die Alter Mann

 After the failure of the 1st Danzig War, President Von Schleicher was faced with a country torn apart by war. The wreckage from the civil war had yet to be rebuilt although allies from abroad, including the United States and South Americans, helped rebuild city centers destroyed in the fighting. Much of the new buildings reflected a minimalist architecture, much like the new Fascist cities being constructed throughout Italy. Although most construction would not be finished until 1953, the reconstruction of Germany or Umbauen, would go down as a credit to Schleichers regime and explain his popularity in future generations of Germans and his reputation as the father of modern Germany. His rule was not unopposed however and in Bavaria and Saxony, symbols of the failed revolution were quite common. The swastika, although officially banned, became a symbol of liberty in the German State, as it symbolized defiance against the Reichswehr and their rule. It was during the 40's when German culture began its modern development. After years of war, the people wanted peace and stability. The failure of the Danzig War was a mark of the German people's mood. There were no riots, just sadness for those who had lost sons and fathers to the front. Trade with the rest of Europe became normalized by the late 40's and relations with Western Europe were reestablished almost immediately. In the east, the Germans maintained relations with Moscow and Bucharest, but there was a cold relation between Poland and Germany. Many felt that the animosity was not just over the last war or Danzig, but the lost province of East Prussia. Many Germans felt that East Prussia was rightfully the territory of the German State and that its people were being forced to remain free of Germany thanks to Franco-Polish influence.

 These feeling were not just held by the people, they were encouraged by the government. Reichskanzler Hugenberg, used state radio and press to convince the people that East Prussia was willing to rejoin Germany, if only it wasn't held back by Rydz-Smigly and La Rocque. Officially Schleicher had a good report with the French President, but in fact the two were great rivals. They had a personal hatred for each other and clashed because both felt that, were it not for the other, they would rule the continent. It is believed that the threat of La Rocque's France is what kept Germany from invading Poland again during Schleichers presidency, as it was only France's distraction in the Yunnan that gave Schleicher the free hand he desired. In Britain, von Schleicher was seen as a convenient leader, as he was not only powerful, but sane. He was not an uncommon leader in Europe, as military dictators ruled throughout Europe. In Spain, Damaso Berenguer held the power, Pagalos in Greece, Horthy in Hungary, Rydz-Smigly in Poland and Peter the Second in Yugoslavia. They were considered far better than the ideological dictators that reigned supreme in Romania. The LANC and their leader Codreanu, were looked at wearily from Western Europe, where Henri de Man and his Labour Movement were gaining traction with the local populace. Schleicher was an ally of Romania, but only when it suited himself. When Tukhachevsky took power in Moscow in 1946, Schleicher was quick to reestablish closer relations with the Soviets.

 As the 40's ended, Schleicher began to crack down on attempts at liberalization being made by the populace. The influence of literature and culture from East Prussia, known as Free Germany to the younger generations of the 50's, was becoming overwhelming, with East Prussia becoming a haven for musicians. In Free Germany, the rule of Otto Braun was that of a benevolent ruler. Although it was a technically a multi-party democracy, Braun was never voted out of power, and would remain in control until his death in 1955. Free Germany was an SPD stronghold and was opposed completely to the German State. In culture, it became more akin to the Baltic States, becoming friendly with Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It was also towards the end the 40's in which the Nazi guerilla's lost their strength. The Nazi's became nothing more then a terrorist organization, being supplied by the government in Xian in China. Von Schleicher became sickly in 1954, and died in 1956 of natural causes.

 The Belgian Crisis of 1950

After the brutality of the Great War, Belgium was left in a state of utter destruction by 1918 and the nation fought to recover throughout the 1920's. Politically Belgium became far more diverse. After years of Wallon and Catholic domination of the small nation, Universal suffrage was enacted finally giving political options to the Flemish population. As a result of the particular devastation in Flanders during the war, a party was formed composed of Flemish veterans known as the Frontbeweging, whose goal was greater autonomy for the Flemish regions of Belgium and a greater consideration towards their language, which was respected far less then the use of French in the military. Even as the Frobtbeweging pushed for peaceful means to accomplish their goals, the government seemed to ignore their pleas. As a result there was a very radical shift to Right amongst the Flemish population. One such party was Verdinaso, a party inspired by Italian Fascism. Although it did not grow at first, its popularity became far more viable as French businessmen heavily invested in the Wallonie region of Belgium.
 
 As a result economic parity between the two regions became quite large with the Walloons regaining a monopoly over the Belgian government, helped by the rise of Catholic supremacist politicians like Leon Degrelle. Degrelle gained popularity with his Rexist form of religious populism pushing at the divides between Flanders and Walloon. The failure of the Socialist party caused the country to become politically split by 1939. The French government began to send feelers out to the Rexists as early as 1937 as to whether they would be interested in gaining independence. They received enough positive feedback, but La Rocque refused to antagonize the British, who would not take kindly to the dismantling of Belgium. As a result it was only after his death in 1949, that a crisis emerged. In April of 1950, the Belgian parliament, useless for years, received a demand from the Walloon regions to secede. The Belgian government refused and as a result, France invaded to assist the Walloons, easily defeating the Belgian Army in the Battle of Brussels. In London, the government was furious and sent a demand to France to withdraw all troops from Belgium. France refused and expelled the British ambassador from Britain. As a result, the Franco-British War began several days later.

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 Italia-New Rome

 Italy entered the Great War in an attempt to take control of Italian populated area's within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The war was not popular with large parts of the population and much strife preceded the actual entry of Italy into the war. By the end, Italy had failed to gain all that it wanted and had lost over 600,000 lives to the war. As peace took hold in Europe, nationalists became more prevalent in Italy, as a result of anger over the failure to take territory seen as Italian. One such nationalist who became prevalent in the political community, was Gabriele D'Annunzio. D'Annunzio, a nationalist writer who had fled to France in the 1880's, returned to Italy as war drew imminent. During the war he famously volunteered as a pilot for the Italian Air Force and dropped Italian propaganda over the city of Vienna in early 1918. This stunt caused D'Anunnzio to become a bonafide celebrity, which was expanded on after his demands for the annexation of Fiume to Italy were ignored. D'Annunzio would not be deterred and along with 2,000 nationalist irregulars captured the city of Fiume from its allied occupiers. He then tried to get Italy to annex the city, which has an Italian majority population. Italy refused, and D'Anunnzio declared the creation of the Italian Regency of Carnaro, a state which would use several ideas closely related to what would become Fascism. D'Annunzio even declared himself Duce or leader of the Regency. In 1920, Fiume was made into its own independent city, the Free State of Fiume, in a situation not unlike that of Danzig, however this still displeased D'Anunnzio who declared war on Italy itself. The regency was destroyed after an attack by Italian military who evicted the nationalists from Fiume in Christmas of 1920.

 Returning to Italy, D'Annunzio retired to writing in his lake front home. His writings were one of the influences on the young activist and master orator, Benito Mussolini. Mussolini, a former Marxist and veteran of the Great War, created a movement called Fascism and began to march against Socialists and communists. Mussolini found a following and in 1922, performed a daring "March on Rome", in which he forced the hand of King Vittorio Emmanuele the Third to make Mussolini the new Prime Minister, in order to avoid civil war in Italy. In his first year as a Prime Minister, Mussolini was able gain dictatorial powers from the government, legal at the time, and incorporated the MVSN, aka the Blackshirts, the military wing of the National Fascist Party, into the military of Italy. In 1923, Italy invaded and occupied the Greek island of Corfu, proving the powerless nature of the League of Nations. It is considered by many, that the Corfu incident gave Mussolini the license to be more bold in his actions. Around the same time the Squadristi, the unofficial version of the MVSN and avid Fascist supporters, began to attack and kill prominent socialists and liberals, although there was hope that these actions would lead to an end to Fascist rule by the opposition, an anti-fascist movement never came to fruition.

 During the late 20's, Mussolini began to dismantle all constitutional constraints on his office, turning Italy into a police state completely under his own control.
By 1930, Mussolini was in complete control of Italy, and ordered the construction of new "Fascist" towns that espoused everything that Fascism stood for. He also orchestrated many construction programs, putting people to work while maintaining internal growth. He also supported the Italianization of non Italians in Italian territory. He supported massive immigration to Libya, which he referred to as Italy's "Fourth Shore" after the merger of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan. He also supported immigration to Italian East Africa, although it was substantially less successful then the effort in Libya. In Libya, Mussolini had put his presumptive heir Italo Balbo in charge, as what many saw as an attempt by the Duce to humble the ambitious Balbo, who had become a darling in the west, whose skills as a pilot were renowned, on par with the American Lindbergh. Balbo however, took to the job with zeal and gradually turned Libya into the most profitable colony in Italy. It is commonly said that Balbo was the father of Modern Libya. Mussolini believed that by exiling Balbo he could weaken him, instead he gave the steadfast young politician his own power base.

 In 1934, Italy and Austria joined with the Reichswehr government of Germany to defeat the Nazi's in the south of Germany. It was this intervention in the German Civil War that finally justified Mussolini's arms spending and military buildup. However, gaining an ally was simply not enough for Mussolini, and he began to agitate for Imperial conquest. And in late 1934, he orchestrated the Wal Wal Incident, in which Italian and Ethiopian troops had a skirmish on their shared border in Africa. However, this war did not go as planned. When Italy launched its invasion, it received sanctions from Great Britain, France and Japan. Britain and France, worried about the seeming rise in Italian power, warned Italy against such an action, and while France pledged support to the Ethiopians, Britain merely boycotted Italian goods, in what became known in British daily papers as the Pasta War. France almost went to war with Italy at this point in Europe, but Britain warned that the situation on the continent was to fragile and that Britain would work to end the conflict as quickly as possible. Taking this response as a rather cryptic one, France could do nothing as French Somaliland was occupied by the Italians. As a result the French launched an invasion of Libya, and launched ships from Madagascar to Italian Somalia. The French were joined in the war by the Japanese. In Japan, Pro-Ethiopian sentiment was high, and the Emperor Tensho approved of an "African excursion to prove the superiority of the Japanese soldier". The Japanese Navy, small and modern, was useless as anything but a regional force, but the Japanese Army was a force to be reckoned with. After sending 70,000 troops to French Indochina, they boarded French ships en route to Africa. The Japanese would be essential to the aquatic attack on Jubaland.

 The assault on Juba in the summer of 1935 was a success and the Franco-Japanese force marched on a and successfully took Mogadishu. The Japanese troops then moved into Ethiopia and met up with Ethiopian forces and helped defeat the Italian army during the Christmas Offensive, which helped force the Italians out of Ethiopia. As everything began to go bad for Italy, Balbo and his Libyan forces defeated the French force in the Battle of Fezzan. This would be considered the only Italian victory of the war, which forced Mussolini to capitalize on Fezzan, after the war, ensuring the continual survival of Balbo. By the time 1936 had rolled around, French reinforcements in Ethiopia had taken Eritrea from the Italians along with French Somaliland. Italy was forced to sue for peace in Spring of 1936. At the Treaty of Cairo, Italy lost Somaliland to the French and was forced to cede Eritrea to Ethiopia, a feat largely attributed to the Japanese diplomats at the table in Cairo. It forced Italy to pay reparations for starting the war to Ethiopia, Japan and France. As a result of the war, Ethiopia began to exercise its power as an independent nation and began to build a modern navy with French help. Remaining ethnic Italians in Eritrea and Somaliland relocated en masse to Libya, home to Balbo, hero of the Fezzan. Many veterans were in favor of overthrowing Mussolini and installing Balbo and riots broke out across Italy. When it looked like Italy was on the brink of civil war, Balbo came to Rome and spoke to the masses on behalf of Mussolini, swearing his own "eternal loyalty to our Duce". It was with this broke that Balbo kept himself alive even longer. The riots subsided and Balbo returned to Libya.

 As a result of the failure in Ethiopia, Italy's imperial ambitions were forced to take a backseat to practical practices. In 1940, Mussolini set into motion a joint Greco-Italo Invasion of Albania, by which the territory was split into Italian territory and Greek North Epirus. This small war would be followed by Italian assistance in the Third Balkans War. This would be the end to Italian militarism on an international stage. By 1950, Italy was a first world nation with a strong economy and a people used to the rule of Mussolini, while a counterculture grew throughout the cities of Northern Italy. The south and Libya became the base of Fascist political control, while the North, originally the birthplace of Fascism, became home to more radical interpreters of Fascist ideology. Their ideology, followed the writings of D'Annunzio to the letter and gave birth to what was called "Italian National Socialism". When Il Duce died at the age of 72 in 1955, the calls for a free election began to become more public, with massive marches in Milan and Genoa calling for the Grand Fascist Council to be dissolved. Instead of answering their demands, the Grand Fascist Council elected Italo Balbo, aged 59, to be the new Il Duce of Italy. This caused an uproar of civil disobedience in the North resulting in harsh government crackdowns, as the year turned to 1956, a fragile peace had been created, all weighing on the shoulders of Italo Balbo.

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Franco-British War: 1950-1954

 What began as what many thought would erupt into a Second Great War, would end with a nation neutered and an empire is disarray. The French declaration of war was not as much an actual declaration as an act of war. The French forces in French Somaliland invaded British Somaliland in Late April of 1950. The French also invaded the Belgian Congo, which remained loyal to the Belgian remnant in Flanders, taking most of the territory by August. The British forces in Africa, caught off guard, decided to launch an invasion of French Somaliland, while blockading France. The blockade worked perfectly and effectively ended all contact between the French colonies and Metropolitan France. In mainland France, there were about 300,000 colonial troops anyhow, included with the population, the French were prepared to take on the British. The British immediately made landings in Flanders and began to push their way into Walloon territory, which was backed entirely held by French forces. Degrelle's Rexist Army were a largely show military, with the French military taking 90% of all battles. The British and French began the Battle of Brussels in November of 1950, just as British Somaliland fell to french Forces. At the same time, an Australian-Japanese force steamed towards French Indochina and began the Battle of Indochina. By December, French troops had seized Malta in a daring raid. This resulted in the French disruption of the Royal Navy's hegemony. A month later, in January of 1951, British forces had seized the French Levant, facing only minor resistance in Aleppo, in fact the Mesopotamian Brigades were greeted as liberators, and were left to occupy the French territory as the British regulars were moved to the French Front.

 Throughout 1951, the British continuously attempted to make landings on the Channel coast of France. The French seizure of the Channel Islands made the option of invading from Jersey impossible. Attempts to break into Nord-Pas-de-Calais failed consistently, as the French military was adamant in not bringing the battlefields to France. As a result throughout 1951, Belgium was a battlefield, with the fight for Brussels taking center stage. The Battle of Brussels would continue into late September, when British troops finally broke through French lines, resulting in a horrific retreat by French forces. By December of 1951, much of Belgium had been liberated by the British, as the Royal Navy's blockade and the bombing by the Royal Air Force on French coastal towns began to take effect on the civilians in France. The French military was not prepared to give up and launched a daring raid on India in December of 1951, landing troops on the west coast of the Raj. Indian self rule had been enacted in 1938, but there was still a lot of support for total and complete independence from Britain, about equal to those who supported greater autonomy within the commonwealth, but the independence supporters were far more militant. Thanks to the French "invasion" the Indian Freedom Movement rose up against British forces. In South Africa, the white population viewed the Indian revolt with disgust and launched an invasion of the Belgian Congo as 1952 began. As 1952 progress, the British gained allies. After the French were defeated at Lille and Metz. The invasion of Metropolitan France was met with aid from Italy, who launched an invasion across their border with France. The Portuguese and Spanish also joined in, invading the French colonies near them in Africa. By the end of 1952, the French had been defeated in India, which was open in revolt, France controlled very little in Africa besides Somaliland and Madagascar in anything but name and British forces were outside of Paris, whilst Italian forces were outside of Lyon.

 As 1953 started, President Laval relocated the government to Orleans and began to assess the situation in France. Lava made contacts with the Italians, and Mussolini wanted Corsica and all of French territory east of the Rhone River as payment for exiting the war. Laval immediately declined, as Paris was torn apart by war. By the time Paris fell in July of 1953, the city had been largely level, with such landmarks as the Notre Dame left to rubble and the Eifel Tower good for nothing other then scrap metal. When French forces were defeated in Somaliland by December, Laval decided to finally contact London and ask for their terms. The last fighting ended in February of 1954 when Laval surrendered officially to British forces. France was forced to cede their territory in Morocco to Spain, Tunisia and Algeria to Italy, Gabon and French Guinea to Portugal, French Somaliland North to Ethiopia and Corsica, French Somaliland South, French Indochina, the French West Indies, French Guiana and the remainder of French Africa to Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In regards to mainland France, the French military was gutted so that it could only hold up to 50,000 men at any time, forced to have a demilitarized zone with all neighboring nations, the elimination of the French Navy and the cession of everything East of the Rhone River to Italy. There was also a clause in the Treaty of Orleans (1954) which called for free elections in France. These free elections resulted in the French Socialist Workers Party receiving the Presidency. Belgium was reunited and payed war reparations by France. and while the end of this war seemed good for the United Kingdom, all was not well. In the massive new territory the British faced numerous revolts, including those in India, Indochina, Corsica and smaller scale revolts throughout Africa. The British Empire would be stuck in these Colonial wars throughout the 1950's and into the late 60's, ending in the humiliating fall of Delhi and the Red Coalition across Asia.

  A Dragon, Once Felled, Rises

 After the death of Chiang Kai-shek in 1937 and the exile of the KMT to Yunnan, where they were under nominal protection of the French Army, who had entered the province to protect French interests in the are. It was in Kunming where Zhonghan began to set up his new government. It was completely based around the Blue Shirts Society, which was declared as the new party of the Republic of China. As a result there were officially three Republic of China's. One based in Guangzhou, one in Beijing and one in Kunming. Of course the Kunming Republic, unofficially referred to as Yunnan by the Western world. While the Guominjun battled against the Beiyang Army, Zhonghan began to build his forces. With French assistance, he disassembled the Tusi system of tribal leaders, who he saw as an obstacle to complete loyalty. These tribal clearings were completed by 1943, with resentment against Zhonghan and the Blue Shirts amongst the local populace at an all time high. During that time, violence by the largely Han Blue Shirts against the Yi population was on the rise, leading to the formation of the Yi Liberation Army, who had ethnic and socialistic overtones, who began to attack KMT installations throughout the province.

 In the central plains of China, the armed forces of Zhang Zuolin under his son Zhang Xueliang, had attacked across the agreed upon the border to take advantage of the weakened KMT. Xueliang led the main force in an attempt to capture Shensi from the Guominjun, only to be caught in the Battle of Yanan, which was a bloodbath. While a force lead by Wu Peifu managed to strike through KMT territory and capture the Wuhan, severing the KMT territory under Hu-Hsiang from the territory under Li Zongren. Zongren, against the National Socialist overtones of Hu-Hsiang, but hoping to rule the KMT, fought viciously to retake Hupei from the Beiyang Army. However, his forces were stalled and he was defeated by May of 1938, with Beijing ruling the Southern provinces. In the North, the National Socialist Republic of China was proclaimed by Hu-Hsiang with the fall of Guangzhou, after the Guominjun defeated the Beiyang Army at the Battle of Yanan in the Summer of 1938. After the dislodging of the Beiyang Army, Xueliang ordered a retreat and a ceasefire. With the fall of Guangzhou, the National Socialist Republic was left in control of Inner Mongolia, Kansu and Shensi, receiving funding from Moscow, and totally isolated from the world. Xueliang, who had lost prestige after his failure at Yanan, regained his heroic reputation after he lead the Conquest of Sinkiang province, holding the territory for the Republic of China. The only remaining pockets of resistance were in the Yunnan where Zhonghan managed to remain in power until France was toppled in 1954. The new Republic of China, the officially recognized one, would become allayer in east Asian politics, even if they were seen as a tool of the Japanese.

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The Great Crisis

In December of 1954, President Kurt Von Schleicher took ill. As the caesar of the German State, Von Schleicher had presided over the most peaceful period in German History since before 1914. Under his rule, politics had become something of unimportance and he became the one unifying figure in German life. The National Socialist rebels had been reduced to nothing but occasional roadside bandits, with the majority fleeing for China, where Otto Strasser had become a prominent member of the government in Xian. However, with Von Schleicher becoming more and more sick as the days went by, the government began to panic. In 1954, Reichskanzler Hugenberg had passed away and the post had remained empty. The Reichswehr was also split, with two major camps forming. The first major camp, was the Rommel Faction. Erwin Rommel, a tactical genius, was a General who had served valiantly in both the Civil War and the 1st Danzig War, was considered by most to be a liberal, who was supportive of calling free elections and abstaining from war. The other camp was lead by Admiral Reinhard Heydrich. Heydrich, as leader of the Reichsmarine, was considered one of the most popular military personnel of the time, having taken the command of the Reichsmarine out from Schraeder, the man who built the Reichsmarine into a naval force to be reckoned with. When Von Schleicher died, the country looked ready to plunge into chaos. However, before anything could occur, Rommel threw his support behind Heydrich, who was sworn in as President in February of 1955.
 
Heydrich immediately began to prepare for war. He fully mobilized the Reichswehr and ordered naval manuevers in the Baltic Sea, near the Polish border, in hopes of sparking a conflict. He made contact with Balbo, Dolfuss, Horthy, Codreanu and Tukhachevsky about whether or not they would intervene in a war with Poland. Balbo rebuffed the overtures of the German Foreign Minister, as he was still pacifying Italy's territory in Algeria, Tunisia and Rhone-Alps. Dolfuss was reluctant to enter the war with Poland, but was agitating against Czechoslovakia. Horthy, facing a Fascist coup at home, declined and Cordreanu replied in the negative, as he prepared his forces for a possible two front war against Hungary and the USSR. Tukhachevsky was the only leader to respon positively. He had been planning since 1951 on an all out invasion of Eastern Europe, targeting the Baltics, Finland, Poland and Romania. The German entry was seen as a positive in Moscow, and the two agreed to not fight one another as they invaded Poland. As a result war seemed ready to boil over. In Western Europe, Polish pleas for assistance were ignored, as British forces were busy suppressing a Communist Revolt in the North of India as well as facing large guerilla attacks on their occupiers in France.
 
 As the New Year rolled around, it appeared that war was unavoidable. On January 3rd, 1956, the USSR occupied the Baltics in a huge strike and launched the invasion of Finland, Poland and Romania. Poland, who had been building defensive structures all over their respective borders, was unable to hold the Soviet Army and by early February, Lwow had been captured and much of the East was occupied, to compound their troubles, the German army surged across the border and occupied the Corridor, striking down and begininng the Siege of Warsaw. The World War had begun.


1957- A Year of Violence

 The World War had begun in a lightning strike of activity. The German capture of Gdansk (Danzig) and occupation of West Prussia, had taken advantage of the Polish preoccupation with the Soviet force invading from the East, who had captured Wilno, Bialystock and Lvov and were pushing toward Lublin. The German 3rd Army was being held at bay in the West, protecting Poznan from attack and keeping Germany from crushing all resistance in Poland. The Polish Navy, without a port to take refuge in, had been completely defeated by the Reichsmarine at the Battle of Rugen. Although the battle was far off of Rugen, the name was given by German Naval Commanders, rather then the Polish name, which roughly translates as the Ambush of the Baltic. The German ships lied in wait and launched an attack against the polish ships as they left Polish waters. The Polish fleet was defeated and the ships that weren't sunk, were captured by the Germans, renamed and put into service with the Reichsmarine. The Polish Front quickly transformed into one of the most violent in European history. With thousands dying every day, although casualties were much higher amongst the Polish. As 1957 began, the Germans entered East Prussia, taking Konigsberg in days, defeating the local armed force and declaring the "liberation" of East Prussia. Political dissidents, aka supporters of the SPD regime in Konigsberg.

 The Soviets also began to launch their assault on Romania and Finland. The USSR's plan was to take the capital's of each nation in a lightning offensive. According to Soviet plans, Helsinki and Bucharest would be in Soviet hands by the end of the year. However they faced some serious opposition. The Polish front was proving to be far more difficult then anticipated. Added to that, Romania had entered Greece and Bulgaria into the war with them. The additional land forces added to the Romanian army, allowed the Romanians to keep the Soviets at bay. In Finland, the harsh terrain proved to difficult for Soviet tanks to traverse easily and threw a gigantic monkey wrench into Soviet planning. The Finnish managed to hold them off, but by no means were winning the war. The Finns and the Romanians both suffered heavy losses.

 The rest of the world was shocked by the outbreak of war. In Hungary, Miklos Horthy, the long time regent, died of old age, and the far right took advantage of Hungarian fears that the Soviet Army would roll across Romania and take Budapest, by throwing a coup, establishing Laszlo Endre as the new Regent of Hungary. The far right coup established a state eager for war, and Hungary was swept up into a nationalistic fervor, with calls by Regent Endre to retake Transylvania and reestablish all of Hungary stolen in the Treaty of Trianon. In Austria, Dollfuss was facing a population divided. His ministers and those in support of the far right were agitating for war with Czechoslovakia, while Labor organizers, working in secret, were organizing protests against the war. In Great Britain, the war was seen as a power play on the part of the Germans and the Soviets, but with rebellions in former French Africa, India and the Asian territories, Britain had enough on its hands. In the United States, the war was plastered over the American media, with radio reports from Warsaw garnering special interest amongst the populace. Polish and German immigrants and Americans of Polish and german descent clashed in the streets of American cities, like Chicago and Milwaukee and formed volunteer legions to assist their homelands in their respective fights.

 

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 1958- Death Comes Swiftly

In 1958, the war that had at one point been considered a war of German and Soviet conquest took a very sharp turn. Emperor Tensho, with the support of his generals ordered the formulation of an attack plan on the Soviet Union. The Republic of China also began to mobilize its forces, skirmishing with National Socialist troops on the border. The war seemed ready to gain its historical name, the World War. In Europe, Regent Endre ordered the Hungarian invasion of Romania. The Hungarians gained some early advantages, occupying the Romanian province of Crisana in the early months of 1958. The Romanian reaction was swift, with a Romanian force of 60,000 facing the Hungarians at the battle of Cluj. It was in the instance that the Romanians defeated the Hungarians decisively and forced them to retreat back to Crisana, where the Hungarians began to garrison forces. The Romanians, busy with the massive Soviet force present in Bessarabia, were to busy to dedicate forces to liberate Crisana, but were able to begin a mass persecution of the Hungarian's remaning in Transylvania. As a result, more then 60% of the remaining Hungarians fled to either Hungary or to Crisana, settling in what was declared as the newest County of Hungary.
 
With the Romanians slightly occupied, the Soviets attempted a push into occupying all of Bessarabia, which succeeded, pushing back the Balkan forces, who faced heavy casualties in the face of Soviet aggression. The Balkan forces fell back, but were able to stabilize their ground. In Anatolia, the Soviets began overtures to the government in Ankara to allow Soviet troops to march through their territory. Turkey responded that any Soviet forces in Turkey would be considered an act of war, and would force Turkey to join with the Greeks. However, the Soviets ignored this, and merely invaded, declaring that the Treaty of Kiev had been violated by the Turkish government. As a result the government in Malataya was declared the legitimate successor of the Turkish State. In Greek Anatolia, the Turks had been ethnically cleansed from many areas surrounding the coast and had been replaced by ethnic Greeks and Slavic Christians. Taking advantage of the advancing Soviet and Communist Turkish armies, the Turks in Greek territory rose up in defiance, forcing the Greeks to fight a two front war in Anatolia itself. Although Rebel activity was kept to mostly guerilla warfare, the rebels did have success against Greek forces, as proven by the fall of Izmir to Turko-Soviet forces in the Summer of 1958. The Greeks, as a result were forced to pull support from Romania and to use its full populace to defend against the Turko-Soviet push to capture Constantinople.
 
It is considered at this point in the war, that the German High Command began to consider going to war with the Soviets. While the Germans had much to lose from entering against the Soviets, the USSR was fighting a war on 4 fronts and was poised to take control of Eastern Europe, a goal that the Germans did not agree to. The first plans to attack the Soviets came in August of 1958, as German forces began to break the Siege in Warsaw. The proposal was to make the Polish their puppet and use Polish and German soldiers to attack the USSR along with Greece, Finland, Romania and to a lesser extent Bulgaria. The concept was appealing, but Heydrich was unconvinced it would succeed. He began to speak with the Japanese ambassador on a regular basis, questioning if and when the Japanese would enter the war, assuring the ambassador that any Japanese entry would be accompanied by a German advance. The Japanese Ambassador, after gaining permission from his superiors, told Heydrich that the Japanese would enter the war in the Spring of 1959. This was good enough of a promise for Heydrich to order the strike against the USSR.
 
As a result in late August of '58, German forces opened up warfare against the Soviet forces across the border from them in Lithuania. From East Prussia, the Germans launched a lightning attack liberating the Baltic States by October. The Soviets were caught off guard, and were forced to draft more troops to deal with the Baltic situation. The recruits were not enough and the Baltics remained in German hands, as they dug in for defense over the long winter, planning to advance in the Spring, coinciding with the Sino-Japanese invasion of National Socialist China and Mongolia.

 Gas to the Fire

 As 1959 began, the Germans settled into the Baltics for a defensive position. It was during this time that Germany got Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to sign treaties that essentially made each nation into a German protectorate. There was some resistance amongst the governments of the Baltics, especially Lithuania, but the situation proved to be either Germany or the USSR and the government chose the better of two evils, which was the Germans in their case. Germany also included the annexation of the Memeland in the treaty with Lithuania and the ceding of the Vilnius region to Lithuania after the war. There was a problem with this however. Although the Germans had been able to push the Soviets out of Lithuania, they had not been able to dislodge the Soviets from Western Poland, including the Vilnius Region. And even as the Germans claimed victory in the Baltics, raids on German positions were common and the help from the local armed forces was a large part of the German strategy. However, the majority of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian forces had been disarmed and taken as prisoners by the Soviets. They were then shipped to POW camps in Byelorussia. As a result, the Germans were alone in the Baltics against a far larger force. The Soviets were still attacking Finland, Romania and were laying siege to Constantinople with a Turkish force as the year began. The Germans began to push the Japanese to attack earlier then planned, however the Japanese refused to break with the plan and the Germans suffered because of this choice.

 The Baltic Front, originally meant to be a launching pad towards Moscow, became a self made prison, with the borders being riddled with trenches and a gigantic drain on troops for the Germans. In Berlin, Reinhard Heydrich began to plan a German offensive to capture Leningrad, to break the Baltics Front and liberate the POWs kept in the camps outside of Minsk. He planned to use the Reichsmarine to blockade Leningrad in the winter and to land troops to coincide with a Finnish offensive. However, the Finnish commander, Ruben Lagus, was hesitant to advance. The Finnish forces had managed to force the Soviets into a stalemate and Lagus had ordered his forces to remain defensive, even as nationalists in Parliament called for the liberation of Karelia and Ingria. Lagus was aging and near death so Heydrich had hope that his successor would be more reasonable to his plan. However, Lagus's successor, Hugo Ostermann was even more worried about the potential of the Red Army seizing Helsinki and was completely opposed to any offensive.

 In Asia, the President of China, Zhang Xueliang began the invasion of National Socialist China. The Nazi Republic, had been popular amongst the locals, even after the death of Hu-Hsiang in 1948. The European Nazi's had long since aged but had given birth to a generation of half-Asian, half European children littered throughout the Xi'an. Otto Strasser, the brother of the famed Nazi rebel Gregor Strasser, had become an active part of the Xi'an government, ruling as a part of the government. He served to legitimize the stance of the Xi'an government that they recognized the true dream of Adolph Hitler, and more importantly Gregor Strasser. The writings of the Strasser Brothers were translated into the local dialects throughout China and spread by Nazi agents. The Nazi movement benefited from Xueliang's harsh rule and the view of the populace of the Beijing government as nothing but Japanese puppets. But no major movement had formed to challenge the government since the fall of the Yunnan KMT in 1953. The formation of Nazi cells in China would become key to world history later on. As Spring began in Asia, Japanese forces seized control of Karafuto and landed a force to capture Vladivostok, as well as advancing across Eastern Russia with a goal of capturing Irkutsk by December. With the Soviets busy in Europe, the Japanese figured such a strike would be easily completed. They were correct and Irkutsk fell in December of 1959 to a Sino-Japanese force, which had formed after Chinese force had occupied NS China and Mongolia, linking up with the Japanese. However, the invasion had stretched the supply line quite thin and Japan and China were forced to devote all resources to the armed forces.

 In Russia, the German force managed to break the Soviet front in Estonia, but became caught in the Battle of Leningrad, massively outnumbered and were forced to retreat by the winter of 1959. As 1960 began the USSR had amassed a force to defeat the Japanese force occupying their territory.

[enigmajones]

 1960- The Oriental Express to Hell
 When the Empire of Japan declared war on the USSR in 1959, it did so in the face of mounting internal and international pressure to do so. When the Emperor Tensho died in 1953 of tuberculosis, his brother, the Prince Takamatsu, was crowned as Emperor Shouhei. Shouhei, like his brother, was an anglophile and interested in increasing ties to the west. However, unlike his brother, Shouhei was far more interested in a closer relationship with the United States, not the United Kingdom. In 1955, the Emperor Shouhei met with President Earl Warren in Honolulu and signed the Pacific Ocean Peace Pact (POPP), which essentially stated that Japanese and American military would agree to an alliance in regards to the Pacific Ocean. That was the official reason at least. One of the men who accompanied the Emperor to Hawaii was General Sadao Araki, who met with American military personnel to discuss what their response would be to a Japanese attack on the USSR.

 The US made clear that while they would not openly support Japan, they would definitely assist in the way of arms and support should the Japanese attack. Ever since the France Administration, America had swung towards an anti-Soviet policy, following the precedent set by the Dewey Administration. When the World War broke out in 1956, the United States began to benefit from selling arms to all sides, including the Soviets. However, in 1958, President Warren ordered American companies to cease weapon sales to the USSR. This resulted in a diplomatic break with the United States. Little did the USSR know that this would precipitate the opening of hostilities with Japan. This is considered why Tukhachevsky was caught off guard by the Japanese attack. The attack was lead by General Araki, who was credited with the quick campaign to Irkutsk. However, a large portion of the Japanese strategy was based on the ability of the Germans to capture Leningrad and push forward on all fronts. Without this, the Japanese were forced to draft even more men and place them at important intervals throughout the "occupied" territory. The majority of the men who would end up with these assignments were Koreans, who had been drafted from the Kingdom's populace. This is not to say that there were no Japanese, but the records do show that a large portion of those set to garrison the important towns throughout the Soviet Far East were Korean. In Irkutsk, General Araki had ordered his men to wait during the winter, hoping to begin the assault in Spring. However, he had underestimated the harshness of Siberian winter and the refusal of the locals to recognize defeat.

 The supply line from Vladivostok to Irkutsk was long and fragile. It was also filled with partisans who were attempting to dislodge their foreign occupiers. These partisans would make daily and nightly raids on Japanese held positions and casualties began to rise, as Chinese soldiers would be found dead, from either the cold, hunger or a bullet to the head. Many soldiers would fear leaving their trenches, which had been built in huge numbers surrounding the city and the occupied area, and instead would defecate on themselves. Stories like these were often circulated, insisting that if any Chinese, Korean or Japanese man was caught alone, the Russians would skin him alive and leave his pelt nailed to a tree. These horror stories quickly became propagated thanks to the tactics of NKVD agents who had penetrated the long front. In fact, the NKVD was heavily involved in training the partisans and there was an NKVD agent assigned to each partisan group. This was considered the first step in the Soviets plan. General Gregory Zhukov, famed for his role in defeating the Antonovschina, was assigned an Army group to deal with the invasion. According to the Red Army generals, the Japanese would be taken care of when the Germans had been defeated. Until that point, the USSR would move with scare tactics.

 It was with this in mind that Zhukov mobilized his force to move against the Japanese while the winter remained. He made his attack in March overwhelming the small force that Araki had stationed at Bratsk, and set up his headquarters in the small city. His plan was to attack Irkutsk just before the end of winter, all the while beginning skirmishes with the local Japanese force. Most of the troops the Soviets encountered were Chinese and poorly trained. The capture of POW's was common and a plan to convert the captured POW's into Soviet troops actually had a high success rate, with large amounts of Chinese soldiers disillusioned over the reason for them being in Siberia. The Chinese who did switch sides became branded as traitors on home front by the Beijing government, with their families having to pay a heavy "Traitor Tax" which if not payed would result in forced labor.

 The soldiers were not the only ones who were becoming disillusioned. On the home front, China was rapidly descending into chaos. With the capture of Xi'an, the Beijing government had hoped to quash any Strasserist behavior, but instead the ideology had spread like wildfire, with its adherents joining anti-government militias across the countryside, primarily in the South and West. Famine broke out in China as the demands to feed the army became overwhelming, and as the Chinese continued to send shipments of food to Japan, where food shortages and government rationing was proving insufficient to feed the people. In Korea, food shortages and a rising death toll in the Far East lead to public shows of defiance to the government, with people marching in the streets of Gyeongseong and Heijo, protesting the war and calling for greater autonomy. These calls were met with bullets, after King Yi Geon ordered the Korean Army to disperse the traitors. This caused endless unrest in Korea, which added onto the situation in China and the growing dissatification in Japan to make the war ever more of a quagmire. The sh**t really hit the fan when the Soviets launched their attack on Irkutsk, accompanied with the assassination of the Japanese High Command, which ended in a complete retreat by the Japanese, initially out of the city and then back towards Vladivostok. The army reformed with the surviving officers regrouping in Baykalsk, but the damage had been done. When news of Irkutsk reached East Asia, the Beijing government faced its first serious challenge from the formation of National Peoples Republic of China in Guangzhou, under a coalition of Strasserists, KMT and Communists. As winter turned to Spring, the Russians would advance against a seemingly incapable Japanese force, recapturing Vladivostok in September of 1960. Although the Empire of Japan would never officially admit defeat, the war in the Russian Far East was over, as Korea, China and Japan erupted into unrest and rebellion.

[enigmajones]

1960- The House of Cards Comes Tumbling Down

 The year of 1960 began with the World embroiled in War for the fourth year and things were going poorly in Europe. Constantinople had fallen to Turkish and Soviet troops and the Greeks had been expelled from Anatolia, in what was described in the New York Times as "the single worse act of mass murder recorded in history". While the American media may have been slightly exaggerating in their depiction of what the Turks saw as the "National Reunification", the ethnic cleansing that took place in the Winter of 1959-1960 displaced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, and resulted in a great retreat of settlers back to Greece, where they would remain for the rest of their lives, excluding the few who chose to return in the Peace Agreement of 1978. In Greece, the death of President Pangalos in 1952, followed by the death of President Papagos in 1955, had forced the aging General Charalambos Katsimitros, to take power at the age of 69. The General had been famous for his success during the Anatolian Campaign of 1941-42 and was personally shocked by the loss of the Anatolian campaign. The Campaign and the ongoing deaths of Greek youths in the military, lead to growing support for a truce and an end to the war. Although the movement for peace was not Communist in nature, the response of the Katsimitros Presidency was to treat those who didn't support the war as traitors, and had troops based in Athens open fire on one protest in front of the Old Royal Palace, which housed both the Greek Senate and the Vuoli. This reaction by the Greek government resulted in the radicalization of the Anti-War movement, which would result in the General Strike of 1960 as the people of Greece came out vehemently against the war, with the Greek government at the brink of calling its troops to fire on its people en masse. This situation resulted in the Turko-Soviet assault on Crete and the Aegean Islands being a rousing success. As Soviet and Turkish forces prepared to attack from Constantinople, the call came from Athens. President Katsimitros had called for a truce on all fronts, giving the order shortly before taking his own life. Although he did not say such in his suicide note, the capitulation of the Katsimitros government would prove the death knell for the 2nd Hellenic Republic. By the time the Turks and Soviets had finished listing demands to the Provisional Government of the Hellenic Republic, people were revolting in the streets and desertion became an epidemic in the Greek Army. The Athens Treaty of 1960, would result in the Greek government canceling all claims to Turkish territories, as well as paying the Turkish government up to 50 billion USD in war reparations. It would also result in the Turkish annexation of the Aegean Islands, Crete and East Thrace, forcing a new migration of ethnic Greeks back to the mainland. It was in this environment that the 3rd Hellenic Republic was born.

 With the Greeks out of the picture, the Romanians and Bulgarians were forced into a tight spot. In Bulgaria, the exit of Greece was seen as leaving an open door for the Soviets on their shared border with Turkey. This forced the Bulgarians to make keeping the Turks at bay their number one priority. Fortunately for the Bulgarians, the Turks, convinced that they had contributed enough to the war effort and had told the Soviets of their intentions and the USSR had agreed to allow the majority of Turkish units begin the task of occupation of newly acquired territories. This, added with the Soviet plan to defeat the Japanese, which would require a major drain on troop sources and the almost fanatical resistance maintained by Bulgarian forces against Soviet troops, would result in a de facto truce on the Bulgarian front. With the Bulgarians concentrated on keeping the Soviets from reinstating the Peoples Republic of Bulgaria, Romania was left to its own devices in terms of protecting themselves from the Soviets. With the sake of Romanian lives at stake, and with C.Z. Codreanu at the helm, the Romanian military threw a coup on April 14th, killing Codreanu and many leaders in the LANC as well as the Lancieri, and established a dictatorship under the military of Romania. The new government accepted the terms of peace as the cession of Bessarabia to the USSR. By April, with the complete exit of the Balkans from the World War, the Germans were in full on retreat mode. By August, the Germans were only left in Lithuania and Poland. Latvia and Estonia had both been "liberated" and the Soviets were pushing towards Kaunas and Wilno and were facing heavy resistance from German and local forces. However, German and Russian diplomats were in the beginning of peace brokering, as Soviet forces captured most of Lithuania by September. The Soviets also began to push into East Prussia and Eastern Poland. By November, the Vovoideships of Wolyn, Wilno, Nowogrodek and Polesie coming under Soviet occupation. By November, the Germans, tired of war with the Soviets called for a cease fire on any front. This would be the beginning of peace on the European continent.

[enigmajones]

The Spread of National Socialism Part 1

 Although originally known as a fringe radical force in a neutered European nation, National Socialism as an ideology spread gradually over the next 30 years, across the globe and into the mind of like minded individuals. The first places for National Socialism to spread to, were states with large German minorities. In the 1920's, the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party) spread to Czechoslovakia and Poland, popular amongst the Germans of the Sudetenland and Silesia. The parties were popular in their ideology and in Czechoslovakia, the NSDAP absorbed the upper class German National Party and became the most powerful party in the Sudetenland. In 1931, they were banned because of the NSDAP's actions in Germany. This revolt in Germany was matched with a smaller one in the Sudetenland. The Sturmabteilung in German Bohemia were able to take control of Reichenberg briefly, before being occupied by the Czechoslovakian Army. Sudeten German territories would remain occupied until the end of the German Civil War, with German Bohemia and the Bohemian Forest region being the exception, as both shared borders with Germany and Austria. Although the NSDAP would remain banned, the Sudeten German Party would take its place, using National Socialist ideology to preach for German annexation of the Sudetenland, late in the 1960's.

 In Poland, the NSDAP and National Socialist symbols were immediately banned by the Sanation Regime. The success of the NSDAP in Danzig were one of the Polish reasons for its annexation. Poland was largely worried about German irredentism for West Prussia and now that it held an independent nation, East Prussia, and as a result were eager to have less Germans in its territory. The area seen as most dangerous by the Polish was the Poznan Voivodship, which had a heavy ex-Nazi community and a vibrant anti-government movement. National Socialism would remain banned and much of the veterans of the German Civil would depart Poznan for China, weakening the Polish Nazi movement to its eventual deathbed in the late 1940's, being replaced by the more conservative DNVP based DVP or NPL as it was known. Nazism would also spread across Europe, becoming most popular in Great Britain and France.

 In France, the power of the Croix de Feu and its hegemony on power in France, was palpable. However National Socialism began to appear in student organizations throughout the 1940's. The younger people of France admired Otto Strasser and Gregor Strassers ultimate goal, socialist unity. They used National Socialist symbols, banned by the government, as a way to casually rebel. They formed an underground movement, known as the French Socialist Workers Party, creating a far more leftist version of Nazism. After the fall of the Croix de Feu in 1953, and the holding of free elections in France, the French Socialist Workers Party (POSF), won an overwhelming majority, gaining 60% of the vote, an act which many claimed was thanks in large part to its famous defiance of the Croix de Feu throughout its existence. The POSF would go on to enact many social reforms, taking part in the de-Rocqueization of France, famed for their use of a militia wing of the party, known as the Sturmtruppen to break up "Conservative", "Reactionary" movements, allowing for its dominance to be retained.

 In Great Britain, a nation which seemed unlikely to accept such a radical movement, was one which would be majorly affected by the spread of Nazism. During the German Civil War, some 250,000 German Jews sought refuge in Great Britain, gaining approval from Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald.
MacDonalds "Refuge Scheme" would cost him the Ministership, and allow for Baldwin to regain the Ministership in the 1931 General Election. As a result, the Jews would still arrive, staying mostly in the South of England, around London, adding to the ever growing melting pot of British society. However, these German Jews, arriving in such a large fashion, allowed for the spread of xenophobic attitudes amongst the native English population, especially in the lower class. Although xenophobia and anti-semitism were already quite common amongst populations across the world, it began to rise and in 1933, the National English Workers Party was founded in the Greater London Area, as an organization dedicated to the deportation of all non-English people from Great Britain. They were a fringe party, but were able to win several seats in the House of Commons in the late 30's. In the 1940's, the NEWP, experienced a makeover. The party was taken over by famed orator and Labour MP from Smethwick, Oswald Mosely, who shifted the party from a fringe, xenophobic, English nationalist party, to a populist, nationalist, xenophobic British Party. Once Winston Churchill took the Ministership in 1940, the people of Great Britain began to experience a malaise. The Empire was at a standstill, culturally, people were growing restless, and many feared that the wounds of the Great War were not yet healed and about to be reopened in a painful second chapter. The Danzig War and the Third Balkans War were both seen as catalysts, but the position of the Conservatives and the Croix de Feu to remain neutral until attacked became the saving grace for Europe.

 However, increasing tension between France and Great Britain, would be cause for worry amongst the British community. Taking advantage of those fears was the newly christened National British Workers Party, whose new platform attracted more people to its banner, gaining the approval of the Conservatives as a more likeminded secondary power. The party to be most affected by the rise of the NBWP was Labour, who lost many voters to its populist and Nationalist stance, including a vibrant anti-semitic strain, while the descendants of the Jews who had arrived thanks to the MacDonald were firm in their support of Labour. As a result a divide occurred, wherein the British workers shifted their support to the NBWP, breaking much of Labours power in England. However, the dominance of the Tories in Great Britain, ensured the NBWP a long time before it could challenge for power. Their chance came in 1951, when Winston Churchill was replaced by Conservative whip, Douglas Dodds-Parker, Churchill's protege. Dodds-Parker was considered to have done a good job and would remain popular in Britain as a result of his leadership in the Franco-British War. However, Dodds-Parker was left in charge of the Indian War, which would last until 1965, bringing the highest casualties worldwide in 1960, more then all of the fronts of the World War. In 1963, the Conservatives lost the Ministership for the first time in 32 years, to a NBWP-Labour coalition. The coalition government was less then successful, with Labour and the NBWP having major issues working together. Mosely gained the Ministership and attempted to broker a peace that would retain parts of India within a British dominion. All hope was lost, and in 1964, British troops evacuated India. This "retreat" would enact the dominoes that would lead to the British Civil War.

[enigmajones]

Alas, Yugoslavia, we hardy knew ye


In the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, in the year of 1928, the Croatian Peasants Party (HSS), the largest party of opposition in to the government held by the ethnically Serbian Peoples Radical Party (NRS), were railing against the Serbian domination of the Kingdom and were looking for greater autonomy for Croatia as itself. In 1928, one particular member of the NRS, Punina Racic, a Macedonian Serb who was angered by the HSS’s refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the Nettuno Convention, which would allow Italy to interfere in Slavic politics whenever it suited them. In one session of parliament, Racic got into an argument with Ivan Pernar, a member of the HSS, and drew a revolver on the assembled politicians. one of the politicians in the room was Stjepan Radic. Racic attempted to shoot Pernar only to have the gun misfire and give the NRS politician an eyepatch. After this incident, Radic and the HSS were able to push through a compromise resulting in the creation of the semi-autonomous Banovina of Croatia, of which Stjepan Radic was unanimously chosen to be the first Ban.

 After the creation of the Banovina of Croatia, politicians pushed for the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, of which the Serbs began to retain even larger control. Thanks to the creation of the Banovina, the NRS was able to retain political dominance over Yugoslavia for the next 15 years. In Croatia, Radic would serve as Ban until 1941 when he was assassinated by members of the Ustasa, the Croatian Revolutionary Movement, an Italian supported irredentist group in favor of complete independence and the annexation of all “rightfully Croatian” territory, including all of Bosnia. The Ustasa were known for their cooperation with the IMRO, a group dedicated to the independence of Macedonia from Yugoslavia, who received funding from the Bulgarians. This was followed by Ustasa attacks on Yugoslavian official buildings throughout Croatia, as well as leaders in the HSS.  The IMRO also launched a bombing campaign in Serbia attacking Yugoslavian military installations. It was during this time that a group of officers of the Royal Yugoslavian Army, led by Draza Mihailovic, threw a coup taking power as the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, suspending elections and the occupation of Croatia and Macedonia. In 1943, the Banovina of Croatia was suspended and it was fully reintegrated into the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The reign of Mihailovic, entailed the division of the Royal Yugoslavian Army along ethnic lines, and the creation of Chetnik units to patrol the border of Yugoslavia. Mihailovic also was responsible for the extremely harsh treatment of the Croatians and Macedonians. In 1945, Yugoslav troops exited Croatia, after sufficiently crushing the Ustasa’s presence in Croatia. Mihailovic and his cronies would go on to establish a hegemony under Serbia. The Serbian dominance of Croatia and Macedonia would be remembered as relations between the three “equal partners of Yugoslavia” began to sour. Mihailovic would retain his hold on power until 1961, when the Croatian portion of the Royal Yugoslav Army rebelled against their Serbian officers in what became known as the Mostar Mutiny. This mutiny, although unsuccessful caused the Croatian people to march in the streets of Zagreb demanding independence. The Yugoslav Army was quickly dispatched to disperse the protestors, but when they did they were met with stones and even bullets in response, as the Ustasa had received a boost after the death of Ante Pavelic, and the treatment of the Croatian people by the Mihailovic regime. The Croatian Rising was also met by the Bulgarian invasion of Macedonia, with a Bulgarian force besting the Royal Yugolsav force present.

 In Greece, which had just been badly defeated in the World War, referred to as the Anatolian War in Greece, was faced with a huge wave of refugees who once again chose to relocate to Western Thrace, an area home to an ethnic Macedonian minority known as Thracians. The native Thracians, under a revitalized ITRO, began a bombing campaign against the refugees. The Greeks, under specific orders from the Soviet government not to remilitarize, were helpless and asked for the help of the Bulgarian government. The Bulgarians, detecting the time was right, merely marched into Western Thrace and annexed the region. When the Third Hellenic Republic attempted to raise a force to stop the Bulgarians, a Russo-Turkish force based in the Aegean Islands swiftly occupied Greece. With the Royal Yugoslavian Army busy with the state of affairs in Macedonia, Austria, a nation which had remained the quiet stronghold of Engelbert Dollfuss, the leader referred to by his own people as Millimetternich. Dollfuss, after biding his time, had kept his nation from entering the World War when Italy, Austria’s key ally, chose to remain neutral. However, in the aftermath of the Soviet defeat of the Greeks, Italy, lead by Il Duce Italo Balbo, was not prepared to let another nation fall to Communism.

 So on August 3rd, 1961, Austrian forces marched across the border with Slovenia, occupying and defeating the regional force within a month. They were assisted by the Italian entry into the war, which began with a bombing raid on Dubrovnik and other Yugoslavian naval installations, followed by the invasion of Yugoslavia. Balbo, in what was considered a master stroke, installed Vjekoslav Luburic as the head of the newly independent Republic of Croatia. Although many in Italy saw this as an opportunity to claim land coveted by Italian irredentists for years, Balbo saw no reason to add to the instability of Italy by adding another province that would be rebellious inside of a year. With this in mind, the Italian Army and the Croatian Army pushed into Bosnia, facing heavy resistance from the Serbian population already present. The land was claimed by the Republic of Croatia and the Italians were firm in their stance to gain control of the territory. As the year turned to 1962, the Italians had moved on from Bosnia, leaving the bulk of the occupation duty to the Croatians. The Italians, then, from Montenegro and Croatia made a push towards the capital of Belgrade, capturing the capital in March of 1962. The Italians then organized a treaty recognizing the independence of the Republic of Croatia and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). Balbo also formed the Republic of Albania from Italian Albania and the Kosovo region of Yugoslavia, and finally bound the three states in an alliance with Italy. Italy then extended their alliance to Bulgaria, creating the Southern European Treaty Organization or the Rome Pact, founded to keep the threat of Communism at bay.

[enigmajones]

Wars of Liberty


 The Rome Pact would soon become clear as the Americans closest allies in Europe, with President Johnson visiting with Italo Balbo in the summer of 1963. The United States, bouncing back after years of isolation, began to sell arms to nations across the world, beginning to “flex its muscles” militarily. After the election of Dewey in 1945, the United States began to reinstate the dominance of the United States throughout the Western Hemisphere. Under Wilson, the United States had invaded and occupied Haiti, overthrowing its government and establishing military rule. When Blaine was elected, he officially ended American involvement in Haiti upon reaching the Oval Office in 1933. Due to the American withdrawal in September of 1933, Stenio Vincent had been able to establish his rule with the assistance of the Garde, a military lead by American trained officers, standing as President from 1930 to 1947, when the United States invaded and occupied the nation, with the intention of establishing a democracy. Dewey used the “War of Freedom” as he referred to it, to rile American patriotism and gain support for intense interventionism in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Dewey also began what would be referred to as the Second Red Scare. Under the Republican administrations of France and Landon, the US had pushed for positive relations with the USSR. Under Dewey, relations grew cold between the Americans and the Soviets, with America attacking hotspots of Communism throughout the Western Hemisphere.

In Haiti, Dewey pushed for support of the mulatto Elie Lescot. Lescot was fervently anti-communist and jailed Marxist writers present in Haiti. The Lescot regime pushed for closer relations with Trujillo’s regime in the Dominican Republic, sponsoring the use of Haitian laborers as slave labor paid a pittance by the Lescot government, who would travel to the Dominican Republic and return home when they had finished working. This oppressive rule, sponsored by the United States, lead to a failed Coup d’etat in 1950, by members of the Garde, whose failure resulted in the gutting of the Haitian military, and the transfer of all military powers to the United States. With this, all notions of Haitian sovereignty went out the window, with Trujillo deporting massive numbers of Haitians living within the Dominican Republic to Haiti, as well as the deportation of any dark skinned Dominican citizens. Haiti, already unstable was rife with unrest between the newly arrived “Refugees” and the native Haitian population. In 1954, under the Warren administration, a riot broke out in Hinche, when Dominican refugees living in the shanty town that had grown around the city, were assaulted by American troops who were investigating the theft of a native Haitians bicycle. The troops, arriving at the shanty, saw a child riding a bicycle and asked him how he got the bike in Creole. The child, being Spanish, didn’t understand and went to his father to get help. The troops, following the child, shot the boys father, causing the locals assembled to begin pelting the small group of American soldiers, who were forced to flee to the garrison in Hinche to get reinforcements. However, the refugees, began to chase the soldiers rioting in the small city near the Dominican border, demanding to be returned to their homes. The refugees were then caught in a full on brawl with the native Haitian residents, who were unhappy about the immigrants as well. In the ensuing chaos, American troops began to attack all those in the crowd, not being able to distinguish the refugees from the Haitians. This lead to the Hinche Massacre, which would cause a state of open revolt within Haiti. Port-au-Prince was mobbed by people attempting to dislodge Lescot from power and expel the Americans. In an attempt to gain a handle on the situation, President Warren orchestrated the entry of Dominican troops into Haiti. With the entry of Dominican troops, the situation in Port-au-Prince became untennable, with the native Haitian Police, turning their weapons on the American troops, attacking the Presidential Palace and lynching the President in the streets of Port-au-Prince. This new development caused President Warren to transfer full control of the military duties to the Dominican Republic, withdrawing the majority of American personnel by 1956.

[enigmajones]

 Australian-Japanese Relations in the Former Indochina

 In 1952, the last French forces had surrendered to the Australian-Japanese force that had captured the far off colony in a pincer move. Australian ships had begun a bombardment of Cambodia and Cochinchina, coinciding with the invasion from the West from Thailand. The Japanese, attacking from Taiwan, blockaded the coasts of Tonkin and Annam, landing an invasion force the next month and capturing the two provinces in a matter of 3 months, rallying support around the puppet Republic of Viet Nam, which was lead by a coalition of Communists and Republicans. In the south, the Australians reestablished the Kingdom of Cambodia as a Australian Protectorate. By 1951, the French had moved the majority of the force to Laos, completely surrendering to Japanese and Australian forces in Cocinchina and Cambodia. It was at this stage in the war that the Thai had gained the agreed upon cessions for Thailand, which included all Indochinese territory assumed by France in 1904 and 1907. The Thai, held territorial ambitions over Laos and attempted to take the territory along the Mekong River Delta and capturing Luang Prabang, the city from which the French were operating, thanks to the Thai capture of Vientiane in July of 1951. The attack by the Thai was a failure, with French trained Lao units effectively stopping the Thai attack.

 The Thai were beaten to the punch by a joint Japanese-Vietnamese force, capturing Luang Prabang in February of 1952. The French forces were detained by the Japanese and detained on the Chinese island of Hainan until their release in 1955. After the Japanese defeat of the French in Laos, and the annexation of Laos to the fledgling Republic of Vietnam, the Thai were expected to capitulate. However, the Thai continued their attempts to annex Laos, and began to fight a war against the Japanese and Vietnamese. The Australians, in Cambodia and Cocinchina, had made a formal peace with the Thai, and refused to dedicate Australian forces to the conflict in Laos. As a result the Laos War, began, with Japanese troops picking apart the Thai force and forcing them out of Laos by September of 1953, excluding the failure of the Japanese-Vietnamese force to capture Vientiane, in which the Thai were firmly entrenched. The war was ended with a peace treaty in December of 1953 and the Franco-British war would end soon after. At the treaty of Vientiane, the regions version of the Treaty of Orleans, the creation of Cambodia and Cochinchina as unitary state was agreed upon by the present nations, France, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Australia and Japan. The Republic of Viet Nam's borders were agreed to and the French were forced to resign all claims to Indochinese territory. Vientiane was also annexed to the Kingdom of Thailand, although there was much anger in Thailand over the surrender of rightfully Thai land to the Japanese.

 After the Treaty of Vientiane, the situation in Indochina grew ever more tenuous. The Japanese, with the assistance of the Chinese, finally squashed the Yunnan Blue Shirts, but faced new opposition from the Yi Liberation Army, who had grown under the reign of Zhonghan, and were opposed to rule by anyone not Yi, adding a new ethnic tinge to the Chinese political spectrum. The Republic of China occupied the territory, but the Yi Liberation Army were not squashed, and continued to make raids on the Chinese and Japanese garrisons within the Yunnan. In Vietnam, the newly established Republic, was placed under the control of Bao Dai, the former King of Annam, who ruled as the President while political parties lead by the Viet Minh, vied for control of the puppet parliament. Ho Chi Minh, while upset at the concept of putting the former King in the position of power, he decided to play the long game, going with the government until such a time when he could take power. A major point of contention in the Republic of Vietnam, was the Cambodian annexation of Cochinchina, considered an integral part of the Viet nation. The people of Cochinchina opposed being a part of the Cambodian Kingdom and in 1956, with support from the Viet Minh in Vietnam, rose up against the Cambodians, only to be defeated by the Australian force placed within Cambodia. The Japanese, while officially allied with Australia, secretly supported the Viet Minh in Cochinchina in an effort to keep the Viet Minh in line with the Republicans. As a result a pro Vietnam insurgency became a very large presence within Cochinchina and the province was ready to begin an open revolt at the drop of a hat. That drop of the hat came in 1960. With Japan's humiliating defeat in the World War, the Japanese government voted to withdraw its troops stationed in Vietnam to deal with the burgeoning situation on the home front. With this move, the situation in Indochina quickly spiraled out of control. In early 1961, Ho Chi Minh seized power in Hanoi, and launched an invasion of Cochinchina, coinciding with a popular revolt in the province. The response to the invasion was quick with the Australians ordering the deployment of new troops to defend Cambodia, while the Thai took this chance to capture both Laos and Cambodia. The Great Indochinese War had begun.

[enigmajones]

 Down with the Devil In Cochinchina
 
In 1956, Prime Minister James Dodds-Parker had issued a message to all of its Commonwealth members, asking for their complete support militarily in the Indian Revolt. The Australians had applied in the affirmative, along with most of the Commonwealth, with the lone exception of South Africa, who refused to send troops to India. As a result, occupation duty in Cambodia had been a largely conscript force, with the majority of the veterans being sent to India, to assist the British assault on Pondicherry, which began shortly after the end of major hostilities in Cochinchina and Cambodia. As a result, when Vietnamese forces launched their attack on Cochinchina in February of 1961, the Australian Command in Cambodia, was caught with a small force of battle ready troops, and a slightly larger force prepared to fight. As a result of demands of the Indian Front, the Australian presence in Cambodia had been drastically reduced from 700,000 in 1951, to 162,500 in 1961. The Vietnamese force had been raised from the veterans of the Laos War, and had grown under Japanese supervision, into a highly competent force. Vietnam, after its independence in 1951, came under the influence of Japan, and quickly developed a mutually beneficial trade relationship. Japanese forces were present in Vietnam, with major naval bases in Tonkin and Annam, and a much larger force on the border with Thailand, keeping the Thai from acting against the Vietnamese. With the withdrawal of Japanese forces, the Vietnamese took complete control of border duty with Laos, while the Japanese maintained their naval bases.
 
The Vietnamese, in their first strike across the border with Cambodia, met minor resistance from the Australians and the Royal Cambodian Army, while receiving major support from the local population. By April of 1961, Saigon was under attack from the Vietnamese, when the first wave of Australian arrived to salvage the situation in Cambodia. The Thai, while attacking Laos, also attacked Cambodia, hoping to conquer all of Indochina, now that the Japanese couldn't interfere. The Thai, facing a small Cambodian force, were able to capture Phnom Penh in late March of 1961, declaring the Kingdom of Cambodia a Thai protectorate. The Australians responded by blockading Thai ports, which did little to stop the flow of funding from France and the United States, both of whom supported the Thai over Vietnam and Cambodia. Australia also gained the support of the Malayan and Sarawakan armies, who jointly launched an invasion of Thailand, in February of 1961. The Australians assisted the invasion by launching an attack on Chumphon Province, locking the Thai forces into an inescapable position. By the New Year, the entire Malayan Peninsula was under Commonwealth occupation.
 
As the war raged on in Indochina, it served as a background to the greater East Asian chaos that followed the defeat of Japan in 1960. In Japan, the Shouhei government was facing major opposition from the people about entering any more foreign conflicts. This came from the heavy Japanese involvement in the burdgeoning Chinese conflict, in which the Japanese allied Republic of China, was badly losing a war of attrition to the National Peoples Republic of China. The National Liberation Army fought against the Beiyang Army in several major battles, including the NLA's capture of Nanjing in the fall of 1960. The overthrow of the Chinese governor in the Yunnan, and their alliance with the NPRC, pushed what little remains of the ROC to the Northeast of China, where the government was facing massive casualties and desertion. The Soviets, fresh off their success in recent conflicts, joined the war effort by invading Manchuria, in an effort to pull the NPSRC into their growing circle of allies. With Soviet help, a general Japanese withdrawl, the ROC fell in May of 1961, with Zhang Xueliang being lynched, shot, lynched a second time and then mutilated through the streets of Beijing. The Soviets, with the assistance of the National Liberation Army then moved into Korea, where the Japanese government was facing massive unrest, with Japanese troops firing on crowds daily. The Sino-Soviet force moved quickly and by the end of 1961, Korea was under Soviet occupation, and Japan had been forced to sign a treaty recognizing, among other things, Soviet influence over China, Korea and Vietnam. As a result of this treaty*, the Soviets assumed control of the Japanese naval bases in Vietnam, a move that would usher into play the establishment of the Peoples Republic of Vietnam and the entrance of Soviet forces into the Indochinese War.