Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree: A Nineteen Eighty-Four Timeline
- Thread starter Roberto El Rey
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- 1984 book derivative dystopia orwell
Soon. I'm on vacation right now and haven't had reliable internet access. The next post will be about the Soviet invasion of Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
63
From The Second Great War: A Picture History, Houghton Mifflin, 1954
Up until 1941, the Kingdom of Hungary's policy toward the war had been one of uneasy neutrality. An authoritarian regency dominated by extreme nationalist elements, Hungary's government and populace were far more sympathetic to the Germans than to the Russians, but a fear of open warfare with either power had up to this point discouraged the country's monarchical leader, Regent Miklos Horthy, from formally picking a side. This hesitation was reinforced in mid-1940 after two of Hungary's neighbors, Czechoslovakia and Romania, fell respectively to the Russians and Germans. Horthy's wariness of an alliance with Germany did not fade until the Fall of France, after which Germany appeared unassailable.
Now assured of a German victory, Horthy gladly reached out to German Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath. Clandestine negotiations had nearly concluded for an official declaration of war against the Anti-Fascist Coalition when the Russians launched the Dniepr-Wisla Offensive, driving the Germans back hundreds of miles in a matter of three months; within days of the initial attack, Hungary withdrew from the negotiations, and by the time the Offensive concluded, eastern Poland was solidly in Russian hands, and Horthy sought to erase all evidence that he had ever seriously considered an alliance with Nazi Germany. Therefore, when Russian Foreign Commissar Alexandra Kollontai delivered an ultimatum—submit to an occupation by the Red Army, or face a full-scale invasion—the Regent reluctantly accepted, and ordered his military to yield to Russian forces.
Miklos Horthy, Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary.
Alas, the brave resistance was not to last. Enraged that Horthy would betray Germany in such a way (and overlooking both the fact that no formal alliance with Hungary had been finalized, and that the Wehrmacht, still reeling from its crushing defeat in Poland, was in no position to invade yet another country), Hitler ordered an invasion of Hungary from eastern Austria, Operation Albatross, that commenced on July 8. This was a dismal failure: Austria, surrounded by heretofore unthreatening territories, had not been heavily militarized, and the already-weakened Germany had just finished transferring most of its free units from France to the Vistula, leaving few with which to conduct an invasion. German planners seemed to assume that the Hungarian military would welcome the invaders as allies against the Communist threat; however, they evidently failed to realize that to a significant portion of the Hungarian Army, a German invasion was barely, if at all, preferable to a Russian one.
General Geza Lakatos, leader of the contingent of the army that had remained loyal to Horthy, managed to attract more than a quarter of the rebellious units to defect from the anti-Horthy faction and travel to the western border to engage with the encroaching Germans, led by General Wilhelm Willemer. Though they took early losses, including the cities of Sopron on July 11 and Gyor three days later, their situation improved by the end of the month, when the Germans reached the country's eastern mountains and their momentum petered out. Meanwhile, the loss of so many units weakened resistance to the Russians as their tanks swept across the country's western plain; approximately 62,000 resisting troops under General Dome Sztojay were rounded up and defeated on a plateau near Debrecen on July 21, and when Russian troops approached the capital of Budapest, Horthy and his loyalists unenthusiastically let them enter the city unmolested, allowing them to proceed westward across the mountain passes (still held by Lakatos and his men) to push the Germans back to their own borders. By mid-August, the whole of the country was under Russian occupation, the Germans had been forced into retreat over yet another new front, and the Russians were poised to invade the former Czechoslovakia.
The push into eastern Slovakia was perhaps slightly more difficult than the Russian General Command anticipated. Anxious to remove any salient through which the Germans might attack east of the Vistula, Russian control over Hungary had not yet been fully consolidated when Zhukov's men in Gyor and Akhromeyev's men in Krakow embarked at the start of August to strangle the puppet “Slovak State”.
As it turned out, there was little need for such urgency. Slovakia had had a sizable German troop presence at the start of 1941, but most of the units had been sent to the Polish front in the spring, and after Hungary was occupied and Albatross was unceremoniously repulsed, the German High Command decided that the region was as good as lost and recalled most of their remaining troops to Bohemia. Therefore, there were few Germans left to oppose the invasion when it commenced, and the only real source of resistance came from the moribund security forces of the client state itself (whose authority and strength had been negligible even before the evacuating Germans stripped the land of most anything of military or strategic utility). The “Slovak Militia” was dealt with in short order, with many poorly-armed units simply surrendering immediately upon encountering Soviet troops. By the start of September, the Russian presence had fanned out through the region, the only serious opposition being nationalist partisans whose activities were little more than a recurring nuisance to the new occupiers.
Up until 1941, the Kingdom of Hungary's policy toward the war had been one of uneasy neutrality. An authoritarian regency dominated by extreme nationalist elements, Hungary's government and populace were far more sympathetic to the Germans than to the Russians, but a fear of open warfare with either power had up to this point discouraged the country's monarchical leader, Regent Miklos Horthy, from formally picking a side. This hesitation was reinforced in mid-1940 after two of Hungary's neighbors, Czechoslovakia and Romania, fell respectively to the Russians and Germans. Horthy's wariness of an alliance with Germany did not fade until the Fall of France, after which Germany appeared unassailable.
Now assured of a German victory, Horthy gladly reached out to German Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath. Clandestine negotiations had nearly concluded for an official declaration of war against the Anti-Fascist Coalition when the Russians launched the Dniepr-Wisla Offensive, driving the Germans back hundreds of miles in a matter of three months; within days of the initial attack, Hungary withdrew from the negotiations, and by the time the Offensive concluded, eastern Poland was solidly in Russian hands, and Horthy sought to erase all evidence that he had ever seriously considered an alliance with Nazi Germany. Therefore, when Russian Foreign Commissar Alexandra Kollontai delivered an ultimatum—submit to an occupation by the Red Army, or face a full-scale invasion—the Regent reluctantly accepted, and ordered his military to yield to Russian forces.
Miklos Horthy, Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary.
While part of Hungary's military obeyed the edict out of loyalty to the Regent, most of the Army promptly ignored Horthy's edict. When Russian troops under Colonel-General Georgy Zhukov came pouring through the Romanian border on June 27, they resisted fiercely, mounting a surprising defeat of Russian forces outside the city of Szeged on July 6 and yielding Brettenbach to the invaders the same week after inflicting heavy casualties.
Alas, the brave resistance was not to last. Enraged that Horthy would betray Germany in such a way (and overlooking both the fact that no formal alliance with Hungary had been finalized, and that the Wehrmacht, still reeling from its crushing defeat in Poland, was in no position to invade yet another country), Hitler ordered an invasion of Hungary from eastern Austria, Operation Albatross, that commenced on July 8. This was a dismal failure: Austria, surrounded by heretofore unthreatening territories, had not been heavily militarized, and the already-weakened Germany had just finished transferring most of its free units from France to the Vistula, leaving few with which to conduct an invasion. German planners seemed to assume that the Hungarian military would welcome the invaders as allies against the Communist threat; however, they evidently failed to realize that to a significant portion of the Hungarian Army, a German invasion was barely, if at all, preferable to a Russian one.
General Geza Lakatos, leader of the contingent of the army that had remained loyal to Horthy, managed to attract more than a quarter of the rebellious units to defect from the anti-Horthy faction and travel to the western border to engage with the encroaching Germans, led by General Wilhelm Willemer. Though they took early losses, including the cities of Sopron on July 11 and Gyor three days later, their situation improved by the end of the month, when the Germans reached the country's eastern mountains and their momentum petered out. Meanwhile, the loss of so many units weakened resistance to the Russians as their tanks swept across the country's western plain; approximately 62,000 resisting troops under General Dome Sztojay were rounded up and defeated on a plateau near Debrecen on July 21, and when Russian troops approached the capital of Budapest, Horthy and his loyalists unenthusiastically let them enter the city unmolested, allowing them to proceed westward across the mountain passes (still held by Lakatos and his men) to push the Germans back to their own borders. By mid-August, the whole of the country was under Russian occupation, the Germans had been forced into retreat over yet another new front, and the Russians were poised to invade the former Czechoslovakia.
The push into eastern Slovakia was perhaps slightly more difficult than the Russian General Command anticipated. Anxious to remove any salient through which the Germans might attack east of the Vistula, Russian control over Hungary had not yet been fully consolidated when Zhukov's men in Gyor and Akhromeyev's men in Krakow embarked at the start of August to strangle the puppet “Slovak State”.
As it turned out, there was little need for such urgency. Slovakia had had a sizable German troop presence at the start of 1941, but most of the units had been sent to the Polish front in the spring, and after Hungary was occupied and Albatross was unceremoniously repulsed, the German High Command decided that the region was as good as lost and recalled most of their remaining troops to Bohemia. Therefore, there were few Germans left to oppose the invasion when it commenced, and the only real source of resistance came from the moribund security forces of the client state itself (whose authority and strength had been negligible even before the evacuating Germans stripped the land of most anything of military or strategic utility). The “Slovak Militia” was dealt with in short order, with many poorly-armed units simply surrendering immediately upon encountering Soviet troops. By the start of September, the Russian presence had fanned out through the region, the only serious opposition being nationalist partisans whose activities were little more than a recurring nuisance to the new occupiers.
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I think the party will make use of Hungarian ideology as well as German and Soviet
Lottery for the financing of defense, was a pet project of the young horthy. Also, female youth group members wore green shashes.
64
From World History in the Early Twentieth Century by H.W. van Loon, 1954
The Red Army spent the late summer of 1941 consolidating the gains it had made in Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. Russian planners, Trotsky included, were anxious about allowing the Germans enough time to regroup and mount a counteroffensive, and did not want to wait for very long before renewing their attacks. Before pressing further west into German territory, however, the General Command made a weeks-long hesitation to attend to a country that had seen no action thus far in the war: the Kingdom of Bulgaria.
If you forgot that Russia was nominally allied to Greece, don't fret; so little cooperation, military or otherwise, came of the partnership that even Trotsky seemed to have forgotten about the pact his emissaries had signed in 1938. If it had indeed slipped his mind, however, he was soon reminded—not by the Greeks themselves, but by a secret cable intercepted in mid-August on its way from Berlin to Sofia. The message was simple, and several like it had been sent in the preceding three years to no tangible effect: it was a German attempt to entice the Bulgarians to declare war on the Greeks (and, by extension, the Russians) in return for promises of Greek territory after war's end. At first glance, this resembles a desperate, pointless attempt by the Germans to gain an ally at a point when the winds of war were very clearly not blowing in their favor. However, there was a clear logic behind the proposal, as the Russians would soon realize.
Even after the secret telegram was shared with him, Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas was hesitant to ask the Russians for assistance. Firstly, there was no reason to expect that the Bulgarians would actually declare war on a Russian ally, due to the clear threat of Russian conquest (as shown by the examples of Hungary and Slovakia). Secondly, the failure of the Italian Army to defeat Greece had convinced Metaxas that his country would be able to repulse a Bulgarian invasion without any outside help.* Thirdly, Metaxas was justifiably apprehensive about allowing the Red Army to come anywhere near the borders of Greece itself; even then, Trotsky's designs on the Russian-occupied territories were obvious to the fiercely anti-communist Prime Minister, and he had no desire for his homeland to be invaded and converted into a communist puppet state.
Nevertheless, despite no indication that the Bulgarians would acquiesce to German demands, the Russian General Command seized upon the opportunity to absorb yet another new territory. After publishing the telegram and kicking up a fuss about “maintaining security on [their] own borders and supporting a vital ally”, the General Command delivered an ultimatum to Bulgarian Prime Minister Pencho Zlatev on August 17: submit to occupation by the Red Army or face an invasion. It was quite similar to the ultimatum levied against Horthy in Hungary the previous month, but Zlatev, a military man through and through, refused to heed its example. He refused the Russian demands on August 19 and prepared his forces for invasion from occupied Romania, which came two days later and predictably resulted in the routing of the small and poorly-equipped Bulgarian Army. Two weeks later, Russian units were besieging the capital of Sofia and rolling through the surrounding countryside when the General Command realized that they had marched headlong into a German trap.
On 5 September 1941, two German divisions slammed into the Russian-occupied port city of Danzig, captured it the following day with high casualties for the Russians, crossed the Vistula with little difficulty, and proceeded southward to ensnare Russian garrisons further south along the river's eastern bank. With most of the Red Army's units outside Poland busy in Hungary, Slovakia or Bulgaria, it seemed in the first few days of the renewed offensive that there were no spare units to confront the resurgent Germans; were it not for the army that was already being amassed outside Warsaw, all of the Russians' summer gains may well have been reversed.
As it happened, the German thrust was blunted near Marienburg on September 17, though it took until November for the Russians to beat back the determined Germans and restore their pre-offensive position. Once again, the Wehrmacht had been repulsed and losses recouped, and more German reserves had been wasted on a fruitless offensive. However, the winter was setting in, and Operation Concomitant—the planned Russian drive toward the River Oder—was delayed by several months. The General Command had learned its lesson: no more engaging troops in uninvolved countries until Germany and its armies had been well and truly dealt with.
*This was a rather unrealistic expectation on Metaxas' part. While the Greek Army under his' authoritarian hand had indeed managed to fend off the Italian Army for over a year, this was largely due to the incompetent leadership of Mussolini and his generals, and Greece had been bled white by the arduous defense. If the Army had had to face an invasion alone in 1941, even from as negligible a military power as Bulgaria, its armies likely would have crumbled from lack of morale, manpower and supply.
The Red Army spent the late summer of 1941 consolidating the gains it had made in Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. Russian planners, Trotsky included, were anxious about allowing the Germans enough time to regroup and mount a counteroffensive, and did not want to wait for very long before renewing their attacks. Before pressing further west into German territory, however, the General Command made a weeks-long hesitation to attend to a country that had seen no action thus far in the war: the Kingdom of Bulgaria.
If you forgot that Russia was nominally allied to Greece, don't fret; so little cooperation, military or otherwise, came of the partnership that even Trotsky seemed to have forgotten about the pact his emissaries had signed in 1938. If it had indeed slipped his mind, however, he was soon reminded—not by the Greeks themselves, but by a secret cable intercepted in mid-August on its way from Berlin to Sofia. The message was simple, and several like it had been sent in the preceding three years to no tangible effect: it was a German attempt to entice the Bulgarians to declare war on the Greeks (and, by extension, the Russians) in return for promises of Greek territory after war's end. At first glance, this resembles a desperate, pointless attempt by the Germans to gain an ally at a point when the winds of war were very clearly not blowing in their favor. However, there was a clear logic behind the proposal, as the Russians would soon realize.
Even after the secret telegram was shared with him, Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas was hesitant to ask the Russians for assistance. Firstly, there was no reason to expect that the Bulgarians would actually declare war on a Russian ally, due to the clear threat of Russian conquest (as shown by the examples of Hungary and Slovakia). Secondly, the failure of the Italian Army to defeat Greece had convinced Metaxas that his country would be able to repulse a Bulgarian invasion without any outside help.* Thirdly, Metaxas was justifiably apprehensive about allowing the Red Army to come anywhere near the borders of Greece itself; even then, Trotsky's designs on the Russian-occupied territories were obvious to the fiercely anti-communist Prime Minister, and he had no desire for his homeland to be invaded and converted into a communist puppet state.
Nevertheless, despite no indication that the Bulgarians would acquiesce to German demands, the Russian General Command seized upon the opportunity to absorb yet another new territory. After publishing the telegram and kicking up a fuss about “maintaining security on [their] own borders and supporting a vital ally”, the General Command delivered an ultimatum to Bulgarian Prime Minister Pencho Zlatev on August 17: submit to occupation by the Red Army or face an invasion. It was quite similar to the ultimatum levied against Horthy in Hungary the previous month, but Zlatev, a military man through and through, refused to heed its example. He refused the Russian demands on August 19 and prepared his forces for invasion from occupied Romania, which came two days later and predictably resulted in the routing of the small and poorly-equipped Bulgarian Army. Two weeks later, Russian units were besieging the capital of Sofia and rolling through the surrounding countryside when the General Command realized that they had marched headlong into a German trap.
On 5 September 1941, two German divisions slammed into the Russian-occupied port city of Danzig, captured it the following day with high casualties for the Russians, crossed the Vistula with little difficulty, and proceeded southward to ensnare Russian garrisons further south along the river's eastern bank. With most of the Red Army's units outside Poland busy in Hungary, Slovakia or Bulgaria, it seemed in the first few days of the renewed offensive that there were no spare units to confront the resurgent Germans; were it not for the army that was already being amassed outside Warsaw, all of the Russians' summer gains may well have been reversed.
As it happened, the German thrust was blunted near Marienburg on September 17, though it took until November for the Russians to beat back the determined Germans and restore their pre-offensive position. Once again, the Wehrmacht had been repulsed and losses recouped, and more German reserves had been wasted on a fruitless offensive. However, the winter was setting in, and Operation Concomitant—the planned Russian drive toward the River Oder—was delayed by several months. The General Command had learned its lesson: no more engaging troops in uninvolved countries until Germany and its armies had been well and truly dealt with.
*This was a rather unrealistic expectation on Metaxas' part. While the Greek Army under his' authoritarian hand had indeed managed to fend off the Italian Army for over a year, this was largely due to the incompetent leadership of Mussolini and his generals, and Greece had been bled white by the arduous defense. If the Army had had to face an invasion alone in 1941, even from as negligible a military power as Bulgaria, its armies likely would have crumbled from lack of morale, manpower and supply.
I opened up AH to see if anyone had noticed my new post and I found that I had 53 alerts—way more than I’d ever seen at once. I’m not only impressed at how fast you can read, I’m extremely happy that you like my TL. I can’t wait to read your feedback on my future posts!
I didn’t mean I was getting upset—I meant that your positive feedback is flattering me so much that I might cry tears of joy!
Maybe someday! I’d have to edit parts of it and trim it down (not to mention finish it in the first place), but my ultimate ambition is to publish this story in some form.
I profoundly appreciate the positive feedback I’m getting, but please feel absolutely free to point out implausibility if you spot it, so I can get rid of it to increase the credibility (but don’t be too picky about it—I had the Socialist Party of America ascend to power after only about four years of profound change in American history, something which I think would have been highly unlikely in real life but I felt was necessary to carry the story forward).
So, do we know who won the 1940 Presidential Elections? Anyways, what's Imperial Japan like? Are they under the Toseiha clique as per OTL or did the nutjobs in the Kodoha clique take over under the banner of a Showa Restoration? As this is a 1984 prequel, I'm thinking it's the latter.
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