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A Brief History of the 20th Century: An Alternate timeline


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Chapter 9


Le Chute


France at the beginning of 1942 was in a very, very bad way. Its army was essentially destroyed after the Manstien offensive in 1941, and it was faced with a two front war against Germany and America. However, De Gualle knew that if France fell here it would forever lose its status as a great power. He was determined to make sure that the enemy would not find taking out France easy. On January 1, he gave a fiery speech over the radio from the new French capitol of Orleans, declaring his intention to “make the Huns and the godless reds bleed for every inch of our sacred soil.” He called on the people of France to rise to the occasion.


Rise they did. Old men and children, even women, rushed to join the new “Guard Nationale” units. De Gualle drew parallels to the Coalition’s invasion of Napoleonic France, and how France was returned to the Bourbons afterwords. “Bourbons” might have been the devil himself to the French people, infused with Napoleonic revolutionary propaganda as they were. German troops advancing through France often found themselves forced to kill children as young as ten who were shooting at them. None of this was enough, however. By February 3, the inexorable German advance had reached the prewar borders of France. A final recruitment drive of child soldiers began, as De Gualle stepped up his rhetoric. France was entering its twilight.


Meanwhile, on March 1, the Americans began their own offensive into France. American People’s army divisions crossed the Pyrenees, encountering resistance only from scattered militia divisions. However, a major Catholic uprising in Spain and Portugal mandated that half of the American forces were pulled back to deal with the rising. Meanwhile, in Bordeaux, De Gualle had sent the entire professional French Army, not including the Guard Nationale, to launch a counterattack.


Under veteran general Phillipe Petain, the French launched their offensive against American positions. Operation Charles Martel, the last victorious French offensive of the war, was the last hurrah for mobile warfare. It was aptly named after the French General who saved France from Islam in the 700s. French heavy Renault tanks faced American Shermans, in one of the most lopsided battles in the history of tanks. The American forces were also disorganized from the rapidness of their initial advance, and supply over the Pyrenean mountains was extremely problematic. By April 20, the Americans had been pushed over the Pyrenees. Southern France, against the odds, had been saved from Communism.


As France won one of its greatest victories in the south, its swan song was playing out in the north. German forces took what was left of Paris in mid March, causing a Cancer problem from radiation in the army. The British Expeditionary force under Sir Edmund Ironside surrendered to the Germans in Normandy on April 21. To the South, de Gualle rallied the Guard National at Lyon, the new capitol of France. Elsewhere, German forces advanced across France unopposed except for the odd town/city militia. They reached the French army in the south by May, and that army surrendered to the Germans and allowed them to fully occupy France. When de Gualle heard about the surrender, he flew into a rage, in a moment that has been immortalize din thousands of internet parodies of varying quality.


De Gualle was not the only one unhappy in the final days of the war. Huey Long was furious about the defeat of his armies in France. Declaring Omar Bradley, the American general in charge of the offensive, a traitor, he ordered the general executed. Long then set about establishing his new order in Iberia, establishing the People’s Republic of Iberia on April 25. Iberia’s dictator, Juan Negrin, immediately launched a ruthless program to liquidate the Catholic Church, which only served to further alienate his people. It didn't help when J. Edgar Hoover, the famous chief of the American secret police, was seen in Madrid with Carranza, or when Carranza travelled with American bodyguards. Still, Long consoled himself, a puppet was a puppet.


German troops surrounded Lyon completely on May 4. De Gualle, holed up with his most fanatic soldiers, vowed to fight to the end, after executing anyone who showed any sign of defeatism. The battle lasted for a week, with German troops slowly but surely taking the now ruined city.


On May 11, Charles de Gualle stepped out of his bunker to come face to face with a German Tiger tank. Its turret swiveled around towards him, and a voice yelled in French, “surrender peacefully or we shoot!” De Gualle, according to the soldiers in the tank, merely replied, “shoot, cowards, you are only going to kill a man!” before drawing his personal pistol, and firing all six shots at the tank. It was the last thing he ever did. The tank fired its main gun at the dictator, and he was vaporized. With him died France as a great power.


The next day, the final French holdouts surrendered. On the orders of acting Chancellor von Rundstedt, Germany set up an occupation authority for France under the authority of Erwin Rommel. Meanwhile, Henri, Duke of Guise and Bourbon pretender to the French throne, was married to Princess Cecile, daughter of Kaiser Wilhelm III. He arrived in France as its restored king the following month. For the people of France, the signs were clear: they only existed by Germany’s good graces, and when Germany said jump, France was to say how high. The semi public dominance of Queen Cecile over her husband did not enamor the monarchy to the people, either. Almost before the ashes from the body of Charles de Gualle settled, the infamous French Liberation Army was formed. Their exploits, however, will be the subject of another chapter.


Britain reacted to the defeat of France with a mixture of anger and panic. King Edward VIII, most likely in an attempt to save his throne, demanded the dismissal of Fascist Prime Minister Oswald Mosley. Mosley, however, refused, declaring that “We shall fight on the beaches, on the seas, and…”


Mosley never finished, because he was shot dead where he stood by British soldiers under the command of General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery. Montgomery, upon taking power, immediately sued for peace with both the Allies and the Comintern. Long and von Rundstedt accepted. The latter, upon hearing the news, immediately travelled to the Imperial Palace and handed his letter of resignation to Kaiser Wilhelm III. Thus, the war for Germany was over.


If Edward VIII thought he could keep his throne he was sorely mistaken. Montgomery ordered the king to abdicate, and invited his brother Albert, in exile, to take the throne as George VI. George reigned over what had gone from being the worlds policeman to a nation in economic ruin, strictly neutral. Edward VIII, meanwhile, disembarked in the only country in the world that still recognized him as King: South Africa. Hendrik Voerward, South Africa’s dictator, had use for the exiled king.


And so the most devastating European war in history came to an end. It ended with France reduced to a third world country, with Germany devastated, with Italy divided, and with the USSA looking hungrily across the Pyrenees mountains. And, for the third major power of the big three, Russia, it wasn't over yet. China still stood.


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Is Apartheid in South Africa more or less the same as per real life? I know Hendrik Voerward would eventually become Prime Minister of South Africa in the real life's 1950s-60s.

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Its going to be far worse. Not to give much away, but South Africa, with the Capitalist world opposed to it as well (think of it as Argentina in terms of Fascist exiles) becomes a police state for whites as well, and they decide to abolish all the independent Black states.

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  • 2 months later...

Sorry for the obscene amount of time it took me to get off my arse and write this. I had a bunch of RL stuff to sort out (the Projectile Motion Investigation can get a chainsaw up the ass) but in compensation, have a special edition mega update!


Chapter 10


Beijing, Nanjing, and the end of the war


China entered 1939 firmly on the back foot. It had failed to break the joint Japanese-Korean defense of the Korean peninsula had repelled every attempt the Chinese made to break it, and the front was tying up more and more Chinese soldiers. Meanwhile, Zhukov had put the Chinese into full retreat in Siberia, and they were being beaten in Southeast Asia by India and Japan. It was with this in mind that Wang Jingwei ordered for the first time a draft to take place in China. Standing before a massive delegation of the Sinocentric Party, Wang demanded “Do you want total war?” to thunderous applause.


China would certainly need total war. On the Siberian Front, January, February, and March would be referred to as “The Long March.” It was an apt name. The Chinese army, defeated at Novosibirsk, marched forlornly across Siberia. The length of the Chinese supply lines meant that there was no city for hundreds of miles that the Chinese army could have resupplied in, so they were forced to march for hundreds of miles. Along the way, they were repeatedly attacked from the air by Russian dive bombers, which took a massive toll on their numbers. Of the 3,000,000 Chinese forces originally assaulting Novosibirsk, only 500,000 limped back into Chinese Mongolia. China had been dealt a terrible blow.


Unfortunately, Wang Jingwei was both able and willing to trade territory for time. He still occupied large portions of Siberia, and it would take Russian troops 6 months to fully reassert control of occupied Siberia. That would be more than enough time for Wang to raise a new, conscripted, Chinese army. He planned to withdraw from East Turkestan, Manchuria, Mongolia, and Vietnam, fortifying only the core territories of China. By the time the Allies had fully occupied those areas, in February of 1940, Wang had at his disposal a force of 15,000,000 men. He was ready for China’s total war. “Not since the invasion of Genghis Khan,” Jingwei declared, “has China been in such danger. The mongrel Russians are merely the inferior Europeans and the vile Tatar’s bastard child! They are the most barbarous of Europeans, and that is saying something! The Japanese and Koreans have been led astray by the Europeans. Their rightful status is that of tributaries of the Master Race. They shall pay dearly for their treason! Finally, the Indians! They are the only Asians who are inferior to Europeans! They were colonized twice: first by the British, and then by the Americans, who gave them the disease of Marxism! They are worse than Europeans, they are traitors to their fellow Asians! They will be dealt with accordingly!” Yes, Jingwei was that batshit insane.


The Allies, namely Russia, India, and Japan, had not been idle. Facing Jingwei’s force of 15,000,000 was an Allied force of 20,000,000 (10,000,000 Indians, 7,000,000 Russians, and 3,000,000 Japanese) had prepared a joint invasion of China. Following the Chinese withdrawal from Manchuria, Korea had been fully liberated by Japan, and the Japanese army in Korea had been freed up. The Allied strategy against China was a simple envelopment plan, with the Russians and Japanese advancing from Manchuria to the Yalu River, the Indians pushing into Yunnan and Guangxi, and the Japanese forces in Vietnam launching an offensive north to take Nanjing. This was to take place in the space of a year. These expectations would quickly prove to be unrealistic. The Allied invasion of China, Operation Overthrow, would be the bloodiest campaign in the history of the world.


The Allies had also drawn up plans for the postwar in Asia. The Indian leader, Subhas Bose, demanded an Indian sphere of influence in Southeast Asia. The Japanese also demanded their sphere of influence, largely to satisfy the pet project of Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, that being the East Asian Trade And Mutual Defense Organization (EATAMDO). Korea had already eagerly signed on to the treaty, and Yoshida wanted Japan’s conquest from the Chinese sphere of influence to be included. Thus, the signatories of EATAMDO were the Empire of Japan, thee Kingdom of Korea, the Republic of the Philippines, the Kingdom of Malaysia, the Kingdom of Cambodia, and the Empire of Vietnam. At the urging of Yoshida, Gerd von Rundstedt convinced the Dutch Queen WIlhelmina, in exile in Berlin at the time, to agree to grant the Dutch East Indies independence as the Indonesian Royal Federation, which was also included in the pact.


This left Bose with Burma, Thailand, and Laos. He also wanted a cut of China. The Allies, however, could not justify arbitrarily carving up China based on purely ideological lines, so it was agreed that China would be a fully neutral power. In practice, this arrangement was not to last more than a 2 years.


In March of 1940, Operation Overthrow commenced. Immediatly, it did not go as planned. Baron Wrangel himself travelled to the front to take command of the assault on Beijing, but the Chinese had turned it into a fortress city. Chinese soldiers, some of them as young as twelve, fought for each and every room of every floor of every building. After a month, the Russians had only made slight inroads into the city proper. Wrangel’s brutal tactics of firebombing seemed to confirm Wang’s rhetoric that the Russians were barbarians.


Meanwhile, in the South, the Indians were not having much more luck. General Mohan Singh, commander of the Indian end of Operation Overthrow, was finding out that supplying an army of 10,000,000 in Yunnan was something of a chore. Progress was extremely slow, and the Chinese guerrilla war in the area was met with great success. The Indians were firmly bogged down in Yunnan.


After six months of the Battle of Beijing, with very little progress being made, the Japanese Field Marshal Tomoyuki Yamashita suggested a new strategy. The Japanese army would land at the city of Tianjin, just to the southeast of Beijing, and encircle the city. Yamashita was very much successful in this endeavor. On September 13, 1940, the landings began, and by October 21 Beijing was fully encircled. It was then that the event that would change the course of the Chinese campaign and enable victory took place.


Wang Jingwei and his Sinocentric Party henchmen had long since fled the city to Nanjing, which had been the de facto Chinese capitol ever since the beginning of Operation Overthrow. The Xuantong Emperor, however, despite being nothing more than a puppet for most of his reign, had elected to stay in the city. After the encirclement of Beijing, however, the Emperor decided to finally rule, not just reign. He ordered the city and its defenders to surrender to the Russians.


Unfortunately for Xuantong, it would be one of the last things he ever did. Wang, when he found out, was furious. He ordered his most oral men in the city to murder the Xuantong Emperor and his family. As Wrangel’s men marched through the city, the entirety of the Qing Dynasty was murdered to a man. Wang immediately claimed that it had been the Russians and Japanese who had committed the deed. Unfortunately, the people of Chine believed him.


Despite these setbacks, by February of 1941 the Russians had advanced to the Yellow River, just south of Beijing. Wang ordered the next phase of his defensive plan to begin. He had kept half of his troops in reserve, to keep them fresh. Now, he planned on using them to destroy the Russian army, negotiate a peace with Russia, and turn south to face the Indians. It was a plan conceived by a delusional mind, but it had the potential to inflict serious damage on the Russian army. The attack began on March 29.


The Battle of the Bulge was and is the largest engagement in human history. On one side was 1/4 of what remained of the Chinese army, three million men. Facing them was a combined Russo-Japanese force of 2 million men. They were commanded by Georgi Zhukov, the hero of Siberia. Wang had not pulled any punches with his commander selection, either. He had placed the brilliant Li Zongren in command. Zongren was also a celebrated commander, and had every intention of doing whatever he could to save China. The Battle of the Bulge was a clash of the titans.


Zongren began his attack with a simple human wave. Hundreds of thousands of elite Chinese troops forded the Yellow River, all along its mouth. The Chinese navy, meanwhile, sailed into the river, and bombarded Russian positions on the other side. The Russians held out as best as they could, but but the Chinese had captured several key points on the other side of the river by the end of the day. After a week of fighting, a pair of strong bridgeheads had been established. Zhukov knew that he had to do something fast.


Zhukov made a furious phone call to the office of a Marshal Konstantin Rossokovsky. Rossokovsky was until then relatively unknown. That, however, would soon change when he executed one of the most daring operations of the war. Rossokovsky commanded the other half of the Russian army, the one that was advancing through the Chinese Western Steppes. He had the bulk of Russia’s tanks, and Zhukov knew that this would be great asset. He asked Rossokovsky to come to his aid. Wrangel confirmed these orders. And so, Konstantin Rossokovsky did the action that would lead to dozens of films (all of which, except for the awesome Malkovitch one, are grossly inaccurate) and would also get him Badass of the Week a few weeks ago.


Rossokovsky took a total of ten tank divisions and drove across the Chinese steppes. Deep behind enemy lines, he consistently evaded capture and plowed through any opposition he encountered. He finally reached the battle on May 4. By that time, about half of Zongren’s army had crossed the river. Rossokovsky launched an all out assault on the other half of the Chinese army, while Zhukov launched his own counterattack. The Chinese were caught between a hammer and an anvil. On July 16, Zongren finally surrendered. The Russians turned around, and rested. They had to resupply their exhausted troops, after all.


Meanwhile, in the south, the Indians had finally succeeded in pacifying Yunnan. They advanced into Guanxi, where they met up with the Japanese army in the south. Wang’s army was gathering to the north to defend Nanjing. Within the Chinese cabinet, there was quite a large amount of panic. It had been confirmed by the bombing of Paris that the Germans had the bomb. The question was whether or not Russia had the bomb.


In truth, the Russians did not. However, Wang told his people that they did. “If the mongrel Slavic barbarians are not driven back,” he screamed at a rally in Hong Kong, “they will destroy the Chinese Race with their nuclear weapons!” This had the effect of whipping more and more Chinese into a patriotic frenzy. Every village now became full of soldiers. The Allied advance was slow, almost reminding of the advances during the First World War. They had not reached the final cluster of important Chinese cities in the south (Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and of course Nanjing) until the winter. However, at this point, it was clear to essentially everyone that Wang had lost. Everyone, that is, but Wang himself.


By February of 1942, the Chinese were broken. Indian forces took Shanghai and Guangzhou, and the Japanese took Hong Kong. In all of these cases, the Allies were faced with a lot of resistance, but not resistance of a high quality. In many cases, the Chinese would have no ammunition, and so would charge tanks with bayonets.


Finally, on April 5, 1942 the Russians began their assault on Nanjing. Wang had his highest quality troops (the ones who were not children or old men and who had guns) to defend the city, but the Russians pushed forwards through it all. Finally, the Russians reached Wang’s bunker in the center of the city. He had shot himself dead, along with almost all of his cabinet. The only one left alive in the bunker was his terrified secretary, making her by default the leader of China. Russian troops marched her to the Russian headquarters, where she was compelled to sign the Chinese instrument of surrender before Wrangel. She was then released from captivity.


Wrangel was said to have put his fountain pen down, looked up at Zhukov and said “Well, George, it was a terrible chore, but it appears that we have won.”


WWII was over.


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So, this seems like what would have happened if Germany had not surrendered on 8 May 1945. Berlin would've been nuked, and Japan invaded. Japan would've become like Korea, except worse, and China seems like it might face a similar situation as Japan did. Can't wait for the Postwar of this WWII.

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So, this seems like what would have happened if Germany had not surrendered on 8 May 1945. Berlin would've been nuked, and Japan invaded. Japan would've become like Korea, except worse, and China seems like it might face a similar situation as Japan did. Can't wait for the Postwar of this WWII.

Nothing specific, but China is going to be much worse off than RL Japan. And yeah, I'm excited for the postwar too, because in planning it out this was where I really got creative. Generally speaking everything here has been analogous; Russiais the US, Germany is part US and part Britain, the USSA is the USSR, Sinocentric China is imperial Japan meets Nazi Germany, etc. After the war, though, things get a bit more random. There are not analogues anymore. Some teasing in the form of prominent quotes from the postwar era:

"I have a dream that one day, a man will be free to have his own thoughts, to own his own property, to be free at last!"

"The Isles have fallen to heretics! We are the last true Britons!"

"I swear, by my life and my love of it, at I will not fight for anything less than full equality."

"It is a period of civil war. The benevolent GALACTIC EMPIRE is fighting against a coup from the totalitarian FIRST ORDER."

"Mr. Cerano, build me this wall!"

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  • 2 weeks later...

Part 5


The First Cold War


Chapter 1


Buildup to the First Cold War


Author’s note: This is being retconned: Turkey is no longer Communist. It is a secular military dictatorship with a figurehead Sultan. Also, Kurdistan and Armenia are independent, Russia controls the Holy Land and Lebanon, and Germany rules Iraq, Syria, and Jordan as protectorates. On with the show!


It has commonly been said that, after Pyotr Wrangel signed the Chinese instrument of surrender, he immediately called Tsarina Olga on the phone to inform his liege himself. Olga would then inform the Kaiser, who would then burst into the Reichstag’s first session since the beginning of the war to tell them. Huey Long, much to his chagrin, would only find out after the American ambassador to India told him, after being told himself by Subhas Bose.


For the first time in years, life was normal. That was not to say that everything was good. For example, a British Fascist devoted to Mosley, Colonel Andrew Cornelius, would, with his unit, take a nuclear device to the Isle of Mann and essentially hold it hostage, declaring that the Isle of Mann was the last holdout of the true Britain, while the usurper King George VI whored Britain out to the Kaiser. Cornelius thus proclaimed himself God-Emperor Andrew I of the Imperium of Mann, with the intention to one day dominate the world. He was laughed off at first, but the knowledge that he had a nuclear weapon caused great concern among the international community. For the moment, a standoff ensued.


Long was far too busy to be concerned with the Imperium. Under him, the forces of Communism had conquered all of the Americas, the Iberian peninsula, and North Africa. Long thus consolidated America’s conquests into the Communist International Alliance (CIA) with the stated goal of protecting Communist countries from the counter revolution. Already, the ruling classes in Germany, Russia, and Japan were nervous.


In Germany, the elections brought a victory for the Center Party, led by Heinrich Bruning. Bruning firmly believed that it was crucial to have an international body in place to stave off future conflicts. He called this pet project the International League, and offered every nation the chance to join. The World Assembly would vote on resolutions that would solve conflicts. In practice, the IL would have little to no effect on anything.


The first problem that the IL had to deal with was the problem of Italy. As you remember from the Italy chapter, following the collapse of the Mussolini government a civil war had erupted, with the Royal Army and the Communists in an unholy alliance against Mussolini’s blackshirts. The Royalists at the end of the war controlled the north of the country while the Communists controlled the South; the border was at Rome. Now, the two governments were opposed about who was the rightful government of Italy.


At first, the delegate of the Kingdom of Italy was emphatic that the South should be brought back into the fold. The delegates of Germany and Russia quickly informed him that that was likely not going to be possible as long as the USSA backed the Socialist Republic of Italy. Likewise, the delegate of the USSA told the delegate of South Italy to (paraphrased) shut up and let me do the talking. Eventually, the IL passed Resolution 1, which stated that North and South Italy would have to coexist. Thus, 1942 ended.


Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Germany was finally starting to release its mandates. The Kingdoms of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq were important German allies against the rising threat of Saudi Arabia. United in the aftermath of the fall of the Ottomans by King Abdulaziz, the Saudis followed a violent, fundamentalist form of Islam. Abdulaziz harbored dreams of uniting all Arabs, and to Germany and Russia, this was unacceptable. That was THEIR oil!


To compound the threat of Abdulaziz, Russia chose NOT to release their protectorate in the Holy Land and the Levant. The Kingdom of Jerusalem, with Tsarina Olga as the ceremonial head of state, was nominally to be shared between the Jews, Christians, and Muslims who inhabited the area, in practice the Russians gave preferential treatment to the Christians, especially after they began settling more and more Christians from Europe there. This created an environment where the Holy Land was a land of divisions between Jews, Christians, and Muslims, which Abdulaziz was only too happy to exploit.


In this endeavor he was joined by an unlikely ally for the fundamentalist king: Huey Long. Long was very much eager to gain a foothold in the Middle East, and saw the resentment of the Jews and Muslims as a golden opportunity to wipe Russian influence on the map. Thus, while Abdulaziz began arming Muslim terrorists, the USSA began arming Jewisbh terrorists, particularly the Judean People’s Front. They were opposed not just by the Russians, but also by the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the organization backed by Saudi Arabia. Thus began what history records as the Levantine War, an ugly, brutal conflict that had no clear good side. For now, though, Abdulaziz and Long decided to work together against their mutual enemy, Russia.


The Imperium of Mann was not the only Fascist state to survive the Second World War. South Africa was already a society explicitly based on racism, with a White elite ruling over the Black majority. However, with the end of WWII a massive amount of Fascist refugees from Britain, France, and Italy came in. This gave the Afrikaners of South Africa a new sense of purpose. They were now, argued the leader of the National Party, Hendrik Voerward, faced with a threat to civilization both politically, from the twin degeneracies of Communism and Democracy, and racially, from the “uncivilized” Africans. The influx of Fascists into South Africa not only brought up the ratio of Whites to Blacks to around 35-65, it meant that Voerward’s Nationalists swept the 1944 South African elections. With the population gap being apparently closed, Voerward felt no need to show any mercy to the Blacks. He passed a series of laws called the Apartheid laws, which not only separated the Blacks from the Whites, they also essentially enslaved them, forcing them to work in the diamond mines in the north of the country. Voerward also passed a series of laws making him President for life, and meaning that the National Party was now the only legal party in South Africa. It was clear to anyone that the threat of Fascism had not ended.


To counter this, Germany released its Southwest African colony of Namibia as an independent Kingdom. Namibia had by far the best economy in Africa due to the relatively light German colonization of the area. Immediately, Namibia’s King Hans I (the Namibians were partially Germanised) began arming the opposition to the South Africans. He found this opposition when Voerward tried to fully incorporate the formerly autonomous tribes of South Africa into his country, thus reducing them to the de facto slavery already suffered by the rest of the Black South Africans. The leader of this opposition was a man that would go down in history as the liberator of South Africa: King Rolihlahla Mandela of the Thembu.


Meanwhile, Long found his horse to back in the South African race amongst the Communists, but, in a detail that would mean much for the future of the country, the Communists were mostly White. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, the Whites were generally more educated than the Blacks, and so had better access to the theories of Marx. Secondly, the anti religious rhetoric of Communism did not appeal to a good deal of Africans. These lopsided demographics amongst the Communists had the practical effect of alienating the natives from the Communist cause, as they viewed it as just another kind of Western Colonialism.


In Asia, meanwhile, the battle lines were drawn between the Japanese and their allies and the Indians and their allies. The two primary battlegrounds for this were in Southeast Asia and China. In Southeast Asia, Cambodia and Laos were both beset by Communist revolutionaries funded by the Indians. Vietnam, however, was relatively unaffected, as they had an economic infrastructure in place before ether alliance with Japan. In Laos and Cambodia, meanwhile, the Japanese built the economy in exchange for a cut of the profits, which did not endear them to the people, who were kept in extreme poverty as a result.


In China, meanwhile, the Russians had directly annexed Manchuria Mongolia, and Xinjiang, and the rest of China was split between Japanese and Indian occupation zones. It went without saying that the Indians armed the Chinese Communists, while the Japanese armed the soldiers of their new Ming Dynasty (they had found a pretender named Zhu Rongji to crown). In the end, however, it was not either of these factions that won out, but something much darker.


No one really knows when the I-Kuan Tao faith first rose. It was inspired by the Taiping Rebellion, a Christian revolt in China that is beyond the scope of this book, but the I-Kuan Tao went beyond that. What is certain is that their leader, Zhang Zhulang, began preaching in earnest in 1945. The I-Kuan Tao combined elements of Christianity and Islam, and combined it with the cruelty of the Old Testament and the fundamentalism of Saudi Arabia. They preached that the apocalypse would come, and that China would lead the way after they ruled it. When the Chinese Civil War between the Communists and Imperialists broke out, inevitably, in January of 1946, then the I-Kuan Tao rose in rebellion. The details of that rebellion will be covered in a future chapter, but it started in 1946.


Although the Allies and Communists had not necessarily initially intended for something like the Cold War to happen, it was inevitable, really. They were backing different factions in South Africa, in Italy, in China, and in the Holy Land. When in March of 1946 Long expanded the goals of the CIA to explicitly be to spread Communist revolution as well, the Capitalist world acted. Germany, Russia, and their allies signed the Eurasian Mutual Defense Organization (EMDO) an alliance created explicitly to rival the CIA. The Cold War had begun.


I could end it here. I really could. I won’t, however, because 1946 is also the year that someone very important will be born. He was the man who would take on the world, the man who would earn the name the “American Caesar”. The man who was born on June 14, 1946, in Queens, New York, in the USSA was the man who would either destroy the USSA or save it, depending on who you ask. His name was Donald Trump.

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I love this.

You seem to have taken the idea of changing the past exactly like Stephen King did. Sometimes, the past pushes back. As in the assassination of Kaiser Wilheim by the same man who started WWI in the first place (same year too).

I'm interested to see what happens in the Middle East around the late 40's in your version. Just finished WWI.

EDIT: It is so unnerving to hear you talk about a "good" version of Goebbels and Reifenstahl (especially Reifenstahl). Especially to me since I probably have a lot of unknown family that were indirectly murdered by their propaganda.

And... that question's been answered. I'd love to help you cover the Holy Land Protectorate since the reality is that 1930's/40's Israel was only a stone throw away from being Communist.

Edited by Pharoahe Monch
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I love this.

You seem to have taken the idea of changing the past exactly like Stephen King did. Sometimes, the past pushes back. As in the assassination of Kaiser Wilheim by the same man who started WWI in the first place (same year too).

I'm interested to see what happens in the Middle East around the late 40's in your version. Just finished WWI.

EDIT: It is so unnerving to hear you talk about a "good" version of Goebbels and Reifenstahl (especially Reifenstahl). Especially to me since I probably have a lot of unknown family that were indirectly murdered by their propaganda.

It's not even all that clear that they're good in this case, just that they don't have the environment to act on their evil. Walt Disney, for example, was horribly, casually racist, but we don't remember that about him because he wasn't a propaganda film director or a eager of child soldiers, he essentially launched animation. Similarly, Geobbels and Riefenstahl may still have their racist beliefs, but they aren't nearly as relevant in this version of Germany. Thanks for the compliment, and amusingly enough I just wrote up something involving the Middle East.

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It's not even all that clear that they're good in this case, just that they don't have the environment to act on their evil. Walt Disney, for example, was horribly, casually racist, but we don't remember that about him because he wasn't a propaganda film director or a eager of child soldiers, he essentially launched animation. Similarly, Geobbels and Riefenstahl may still have their racist beliefs, but they aren't nearly as relevant in this version of Germany. Thanks for the compliment, and amusingly enough I just wrote up something involving the Middle East.

I sent you my thoughts of how to play the Middle East based on both past history and sensibility. I demonize my own country but fuck it, it'll be great.

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It's not even all that clear that they're good in this case, just that they don't have the environment to act on their evil. Walt Disney, for example, was horribly, casually racist, but we don't remember that about him because he wasn't a propaganda film director or a eager of child soldiers, he essentially launched animation. Similarly, Geobbels and Riefenstahl may still have their racist beliefs, but they aren't nearly as relevant in this version of Germany. Thanks for the compliment, and amusingly enough I just wrote up something involving the Middle East.

Would this version of Hideki Tojo and Fumimaro Konoe have fascist/imperialistic leanings as well, relevant or not? And perhaps in this case, kept in check by Emperor Hirohito, as you explained earlier in your writing? Also, in comparison to the diplomatic mess RL!Japan and both RL!South and North Koreas have been since RL!WW2, are their alter egos on better terms for this alternate line of events?

Edited by henrymidfields
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Would this version of Hideki Tojo and Fumimaro Konoe have fascist/imperialistic leanings as well, relevant or not? And perhaps in this case, kept in check by Emperor Hirohito, as you explained earlier in your writing? Also, in comparison to the diplomatic mess RL!Japan and both RL!South and North Koreas have been since RL!WW2, are their alter egos on better terms for this alternate line of events?

Tojo, Konoe, and most of the military are plenty Imperialist, but this time they absolutely respect the Japanese Constitution and democracy; the Russo-Japanese War (another thing-I'm retconning that Germany intervened because that would have led to a British intervention, just assume that the Russians had less dissent because of democracy and thus were able to keep fighting into Manchuria) did a lot to control the military's ego. As for relations between Japan and Korea, they were decent before WWII, and very good now, between the fact that the Japanese never colonized Korea, they just had influence over it, and the fact that Japan saved Korea from the Chinese.

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So, if the CIA is the treaty organization, than what is the intelligence bureau? Also, something about the word treaty you don't like? As for Trump filling the role of either Gorbachev, Yeltsin, or Putin has me very interested.

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Tojo, Konoe, and most of the military are plenty Imperialist, but this time they absolutely respect the Japanese Constitution and democracy; the Russo-Japanese War (another thing-I'm retconning that Germany intervened because that would have led to a British intervention, just assume that the Russians had less dissent because of democracy and thus were able to keep fighting into Manchuria) did a lot to control the military's ego. As for relations between Japan and Korea, they were decent before WWII, and very good now, between the fact that the Japanese never colonized Korea, they just had influence over it, and the fact that Japan saved Korea from the Chinese.

Dude, that sounds so much better than the real-life situation my home is in. I shall ask Naga to allow me into this alternate timeline haha.

On a more serious note, I'm making plans to create a fictional history as well - thanks to being inspired by you. A history of the Pokémon version of Japan, featuring Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh. I'll let you know when I actually start writing.

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So, if the CIA is the treaty organization, than what is the intelligence bureau? Also, something about the word treaty you don't like? As for Trump filling the role of either Gorbachev, Yeltsin, or Putin has me very interested.

The intelligence bureau is the PBI, and they are both the secret police and the intelligence agency like the RL KGB. I also didn't want to be too analogous here. Trump will be featuring prominently here, but he won't be fulfilling a similar role to any of these people, except maybe for Putin depending on your opinion of the man. He is called the "American Caesar" for a reason.

Dude, that sounds so much better than the real-life situation my home is in. I shall ask Naga to allow me into this alternate timeline haha.

On a more serious note, I'm making plans to create a fictional history as well - thanks to being inspired by you. A history of the Pokémon version of Japan, featuring Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh. I'll let you know when I actually start writing.

Well, if Japan's better, then China will actually end up worse off, as will the Middle East and the Americas. Europe is probably better off, though. A history of the Pokemon world sounds awesome, too, especially given that it's essentially a de facto military dictatorship under the Champion.

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Chapter 2


Europe to 1950


The Second World War left all of Europe west of Poland a mess. The war had devastated both Germany and France, though France absolutely got the worst of it. Meanwhile, Italy was divided, Iberia was under Communism, Britain was reduced to being neutral, Ireland was liberated but internally divided, and the Imperium of Mann existed as a pariah state.


Fortunately for Western Europe, the newly elected Russian Prime Minister, Count Mikhail Tolstoy, had a plan to fix this. The Russian economy had survived the war relatively stable. Although Russia’s far eastern territories were devastated, the Russian economic heartland in Europe had been untouched by violence from the land, sea, or air. Thus, the new Russian Cadet government resolved to pump money into the European economy, revitalizing it for the future to act as a bulwark against Communism. By 1950, the economies of Germany and North Italy had recovered. France, however, was not so lucky.


If Germany’s economy was harmed by the war, France’s was devastated. King Henri moved out of the destroyed Paris and chose the city of Lyon as the permanent French capitol. It was no coincidence that Lyon was within striking distance of the German Panzers on the border. Germany was not taking any chances.


The infrastructure, industry, and agriculture of France had all been annihilated by the war. With no industry, virtually all of France’s working class were unemployed. Furthermore, the lack of agriculture lead to a famine breaking out across France. The king, ultimately, could do nothing, as he was still trying to establish his government. The new French Prime Minister, Andre Dessault, could do nothing either. German liberal politicians proposed an aid bill for France in 1947, but it was easily defeated in the Reichstag. The Germans, understandably, were not keen to help their old enemy that had just destroyed one of their cities, especially not when they still had to rebuild themselves.


Thus, in 1948, the situation in France finally spiraled out of control. While a low level insurgency had been raging on since the French surrender, more and more unemployed Frenchmen and women flocked to the banner of the French Liberation Front, an organization dedicated to kicking out the German puppet king (no air quotes, because he kind of was). Terror attacks by the FLF got more and more frequent.


Adding to this problem, the CIA began influencing the FLF to become more and more leftist in nature. This influence came from across the Pyrenees mountains, where the Socialist Federation of Iberia, led by Juan Negrin, was cementing its own power. The Negrin government, controlling both Spain and Portugal, were faced with a stridently anticommunist population. Negrin reacted brutally, waging three successive campaigns against his enemies. The first, the “War against Oppression”, initiated in 1945, made every person with a noble title subject to imprisonment, as well as anyone who owned a business. Any noble or businessperson over the age of fifteen was executed. The rest of them were sent to Negrin’s infamous “tolerance camps”, where the children were brainwashed to reject their pasts. Those who did before the age of fifteen were permitted to return to society. Those who did not were promptly sent to the second division of the tolerance camps, where they were used for slave labor. In fact, any political dissident or criminal was used as a slave for life. Negrin considered it to be a massive waste of resources to execute anyone. People who were opposed to the proletariat were enslaved by them.


Negrin’s second campaign, the “War on Superstition”, beginning in 1946, outlawed religion. The clergy of Iberia were sent to the tolerance camps, once again to be worked as slaves. Negrin then unleashed his secret police on anyone who was a member of a church or a synagogue. Members who renounced their faith by burning a Bible or a Torah were allowed to keep their children. If they did not, they were sent to the Tolerance Camps, and their children were sent to Iberia’s infamous orphanages, where they were brainwashed, once again, to be “good Communists”. The conditions in these orphanages were horrific, and pedophilia was rampant. This of course sparked a massive amount of resistance to the Negrin regime, but the brutal Iberian People’s Army was only too happy to retaliate, sometimes going as far as destroying entire villages to discourage rebellion.


The worst, however, was yet to come. By 1950, Negrin has cemented his position as leader of Iberia, had crushed all dissent within and without the party, had committed class genocide against the bourgeoisie and nobility, and had broken the church. His final, most infamous campaign, the “War on Memory”, then began. Negrin believed that the idea of a culture was outdated. Culture, he argued, was an obstacle to Proletarian solidarity. The reason why the USSA had been so successful, he argued, was that it had a homogenous culture. With this in mind, Negrin decided to embark on a campaign of cultural genocide against Iberia’s minorities.


Catalans, Portuguese, Galicians, and Basques were all targeted by the Negrin government. Once again, children were taken from their parents, but this time, never returned. Negrin reasoned that if future generations were never taught culture, that it would disappear on its own. While the Portuguese culture survived the War, the Catalan culture is now, unfortunately, a thing of the past.


Iberia was internationally reviled for these atrocities, even by the USSA, who still grudgingly supported them. At first, Negrin tried to cover this up, but it was quickly revealed to the public by the British reporter Eric Blair. Blair snuck in to Iberia, and visited a tolerance camp and an orphanage. After returning to the UK, he published a report on what he saw, titled “1948”. Its publication led to the entire Capitalist world embargoing Iberia, and led to public opinion in the USSA turning against Iberia. It was nothing, however, that J. Edgar Hoover couldn't handle.


The other Communist state in Europe, South Italy, was a different kind of nightmarish. When the Communist revolts of 1940 broke out, the Italian Communists in the south were greatly aided by the Sicilian Mafia, who had suffered repression under the Mussolini government. This led to the South Italian government being dominated by the Mafia. In addition, the rampant unemployment in South Italy drove many into the mob.


By 1949, the unquestioned leader of the Italian Mafia was Don Vito Corleone. In mid 1949, the remnants of the rival gangs attempted to defeat the Corleones by assassinating Vito, but his son Micheal took over. By 1950, Micheal Corleone had utterly destroyed all opposition to his family in the criminal underground. Corleone, now the de facto leader of South Italy, looked for ways to expand his position further. To do so, he turned to piracy.


South Italy was ideally situated in the Mediterranean for piracy. Any and all shipments coming from Asia were subject to frequent raids by Corleone’s ships. The South Italian government didn't do much to stop the piracy, since Corleone’s gangs would most likely have been able to overthrow the South Italian government if they had to. Eventually, two entire battle fleets, one from the Kaiserliche Marine and one from the Imperial Russian Navy, were deployed to fight Corleone, who the German press began to refer to as the “Pirate King”. Corleone, however, won support for his actions from the USSA. They would pay him to deliver their weapon shipments to the Jewish rebels, and they would advocate for him in the International League. The “Mafia Dictatorship” of Micheal Corleone was obviously here to stay.


This was the state of affairs which Europe found itself in as it entered the 1950s. A great amount of tension was beginning to erupt between the two power blocks, and the First Cold War had well and truly begun. In the USSA, though, opposition had finally begun to surface. It was led from a direction completely unexpected to Long: a black man. That black man was Martin Luther King, Jr.


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I would love to know if he'll be joined by the Kennedys and a young Kissinger.

The Kennedys fled to Europe (Patrick Kennedy supported the Wilson government, so he has to go; being politically active and not Communist was too dangerous) and Kissinger is still in Germany, where he will play a role.

Also, to be clear, I know that the Corleones are not real, I just wanted a shout out to one of the greatest movies ever made.

Edited by blah the Prussian
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  • 2 weeks later...

Chapter 3


Back in the USSA


Huey Long was probably never more loved in the USSA as he was immediately after the Second World War. He had brought his country to the position of a superpower, unquestioned in the New World. He had expanded his influence to Africa, creating the Maghreb Socialist Republic (controlling Morocco, Algeria, and Libya, primarily) and even had a European puppet. His ally (albeit a grudging one) Micheal Corleone gave him an advantage in the Mediterranean. Despite all this, the USSA was still faced with a number of problems that would plague Long as his country entered the Cold War.


Firstly, guerrilla resistance to Long continued throughout Latin America, and Quebec. In South America, opponents of Communism used the Jungle to fight an effective guerrilla war that American forces had a tremendous amount of trouble quelling (more on this in later chapters). In Quebec, meanwhile, the fiercely Catholic population approved of the atheist Communist puppet government no more than they approved of the Protestant Canadians. While the main industrial areas of Quebec were rather easy to secure for the Communists, the government in Montreal never had solid control over the northern regions.


This situation would be mirrored in the USSA itself, in the former provinces of Canada. Guerrilla resistance to the Yankee occupier was fierce. Canada’s provinces were now reduced to mere administrative districts. Even the facade of autonomy Long allowed the other states was denied to the Canadians. By 1948, the situation had deteriorated to the point that Long deployed an entire American army group to Canada. More importantly, he deployed J. Edgar Hoover.


The director of the PBI had by no means lost the brutality that had made him infamous in the 1930s. He now set about completely destroying dissent in Canada. Using the American treasury, Hoover bribed more and more Canadians to spy on their friends and family. While few liked it, many found themselves forced to work as informers for Hoover, especially after the secret police chief convinced Long to artificially create poverty in Canada, to make more and more people willing to throw away their honor for money. By 1950, Canada could easily be mistaken for a massive prison camp.


In the foreign sphere, Long found the USSA beginning more and more to rival the Empire of Japan. Japan, during the Second American Civil War, had liberated Hawaii from the Americans, restoring the independent monarchy. Although America had ruled Hawaii for less than two decades, Long considered Hawaii to be rightfully part of America. Hawaii itself, of course, denied this claim, and Japan backed them up. Faced by another nuclear power (Japan, along with Russia, had started their nuclear arsenals in 1945) Long backed down.


This did not mean he did not harm Japan in other ways. The Australasian People’s Republic had been “liberated” by American troops during WWII, and Long now used it as a base to harass members of Japan’s EATAMDO alliance, specifically Indonesia and the Philippines. Japan would deploy thousands of troops there in the coming years, and the series of conflicts between Communism and Capitalism in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific would later come to be known as the Jungle Wars.


In 1952, though, Long was faced with what he saw as a horrible betrayal. Ever since the American Socialist Party had been established, African-Americans had been one of the demographics most supportive of the Party. The Party had made a great show of liberating Blacks from the Jim Crow laws in place in the old South, which had restricted the freedoms of Black citizens in what many historians consider to be a precursor to Voerward’s Apartheid. Now, though, Long found his most vocal opponent to be a 23 year old Black lawyer: Martin Luther King, Jr.


King was born in 1929, ironically the same year that Long came to power. His father was a preacher, who had initially welcomed the moderate Socialist government of Jack Reed. When Long came to power, however, he passed the rationalization act, which, among other things, banned organized religion. Martin Luther King, Sr.’s congregation was driven underground, and one of his son’s most vivid childhood memories was of hiding from the secret police.


In 1935, when Martin was six, someone betrayed his father’s congregation, and his father was sent to a labor camp in the Midwest, never to be heard from again. Martin was sent from foster family to foster family, eventually becoming a prosecutor at the age of only 23. The government had thought they had made him forget his father’s rebellious sentiment. Then, a single incident would prove them wrong.


In King’s first case, he had to prosecute a man whose only crime was teaching his children that George Washington owned slaves. Washington had been associated with Long in the state propaganda, and was viewed as the original revolutionary hero. To point out his flaws, and indeed that he was in actual fact an aristocrat, was simply unacceptable. And so, he was sent to his show trial, without a defense attorney, without a jury, to spend the rest of his life in a labor camp. There was one problem: the Prosecution had a conscience.


King refused to prosecute a man who had no legal counsel. He was quickly taken off the case, and was placed on the PBI’s watch list. That week, King drafted up an anonymous pamphlet and distributed 1,000 copies around Charleston. In the pamphlet, titled “I have a Dream”, King denounced the totalitarian policies of the Long regime. “I have a dream,” he wrote, “that one day a person will be able to speak their mind without fear of punishment. I have a dream that one day we will be able to have our own opinions, not the opinions that the state wants us to have. I have a dream that one day we will be free!”


In the morning, King had already fled, but the pamphlet galvanized the populace. It would quickly spread across the country, to the shame of J. Edgar Hoover. He couldn't handle both Canada and King. Meanwhile, a boy named Lee Harvey Oswald read the pamphlet, and was inspired to do something that would shake the world. That, of course, was in the future.


King continued his travels, inspiring more and more to question the Communist regime. At first, he advocated for non violence against the authorities. In early 1953, though, a mass strike by workers in Atlanta, Georgia, by both whites and blacks, led to a brutal response by the government. Thousands were shot where they stood, and the rest returned to work. After that, King decided that non violence could not possibly work, not unless it was sufficiently mobilized. With that, he founded the New Sons of Liberty, an organization dedicated to opposing the Longists. While it was mostly active in the South, it extended across the entirety of the USSA. King made it a collaboration between Blacks and Whites. The opposition to their mutual enemy in the form of Long was important in helping the people of the South move beyond the racism that had plagued them since Jamestown. By 1955, the New Sons of Liberty were a well established and quite successful organization.


1955 was also the year that Long and the world were faced with a new threat. The Monarchists and Communists in China, it turned out, were not the only options for who would control the country. This third option, it turned out, was worse than both sides. The Shanqing Tianguo in China would redefine the concept of evil, and they were about to win the Chinese Civil War.


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Talking points

  • The USSA, regardless of making a police state of Canada, still sounds more tolerant than the USSR, because they at least kept a large part of their past intact. However, they are similar enough that "Uncle Joe" would be very proud of "Baby Huey".
  • Makes me wonder what his "Letter From Birmingham Jail" will be like.
  • "Shanqing Tianguo" sounds evil. Will they be like the Khmer Rouge, or like the Nation Socialists? Or like Maoist China?
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Talking points

  • The USSA, regardless of making a police state of Canada, still sounds more tolerant than the USSR, because they at least kept a large part of their past intact. However, they are similar enough that "Uncle Joe" would be very proud of "Baby Huey".
  • Makes me wonder what his "Letter From Birmingham Jail" will be like.
  • "Shanqing Tianguo" sounds evil. Will they be like the Khmer Rouge, or like the Nation Socialists? Or like Maoist China?
They're a mishmash of stuff. Think ISIS meets the Khmer Rouge.
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Is there going to be a Khrushchev equivalent in the USSA? Would there be a similar development to the Denounciation to Stalin?

As for Hawaii, does it have a similar constitutional monarchy to real-life Japan/UK? Or is it a variation of?

Edited by henrymidfields
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Is there going to be a Khrushchev equivalent in the USSA? Would there be a similar development to the Denounciation to Stalin?

As for Hawaii, does it have a similar constitutional monarchy to real-life Japan/UK? Or is it a variation of?

1. Not for a while. I can say with certainty that he will survive into the 70s.

2. Yes, the role of the monarchy is constitutional.

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