Man-Made Hell: The History of the Great War and Beyond

Is this a good timeline?

  • Yes, it's great!

    Votes: 196 56.6%
  • Yes, it has a few flaws but is still good.

    Votes: 111 32.1%
  • No, it's very implausible.

    Votes: 28 8.1%
  • No, it's boring.

    Votes: 11 3.2%

  • Total voters
    346
Great to hear of a cold war and to answer your question of what I mean by ww2 I mean irl to a degree maybe smaller or a little bigger but I doubt that as people will remember the first for generations
A lot of this could be getting deep into spoiler territory, but what I can say is that a conflict on the scale of WWII in OTL won’t be impossible ITTL (again, a Cold War was mentioned so I don’t think this is too shocking to anyone). That’s not to say it would happen though. However, such a conflict would be so much more small than the Great War ITTL that a comparison wouldn’t even be fair to make. There won’t be a “Second Great War” because nothing could ever really compare to the size of the first.
 
On with the fight for the cause of humanity!

I wonder what will be of the communist states that will fight in the third and fourth phases.
 
On with the fight for the cause of humanity!
Another awesome song! I think it’s pretty obvious this one would be perfect for the Workers’ Commonwealth and could even be chosen as their national anthem, assuming they don’t just go with “The Internationale” instead! Thanks for posting this!

I wonder what will be of the communist states that will fight in the third and fourth phases.
That sails strictly into spoiler territory, so I’d say just wait and see. ;)
 
A lot of this could be getting deep into spoiler territory, but what I can say is that a conflict on the scale of WWII in OTL won’t be impossible ITTL (again, a Cold War was mentioned so I don’t think this is too shocking to anyone). That’s not to say it would happen though. However, such a conflict would be so much more small than the Great War ITTL that a comparison wouldn’t even be fair to make. There won’t be a “Second Great War” because nothing could ever really compare to the size of the first.

Well wouldnt there be nuclear bombs in the second or are those used in the first? And I understand what you mean by saying nothing could compare to the first.
 
Yeah, nukes will come around eventually, but saying when and where is a big ol’ spoiler.
I'm actually quite curious how the development of the atomic bomb goes in TTL. By this time in OTL nukes as we know them were not even thought of. The discovery of nuclear fission in any form was ten-plus years away, and that was the product of decades of peacetime development in physics. In TTL all of Europe is in flames during that time, which will I imagine severely hamper theoretical work.

America for the time being is neutral and thus might become research hubs for physicists trying to conduct their work free from the shadows of war, but some major strife in the USA has been foreshadowed. Perhaps shortly before America goes to hell some physicists publish the theoretical basics for the idea, at which point some warring powers with far more industry than remaining manpower start to pursue the idea vigorously in desperation?
 
While you've already talked about battleships with WW2-sized guns, I am curious on the development of destroyers and cruisers.

Can we at least see the German Navy field larger destroyers (or cruisers emphasizing maneuverability) fielding larger guns?
 
While you've already talked about battleships with WW2-sized guns, I am curious on the development of destroyers and cruisers.

Can we at least see the German Navy field larger destroyers (or cruisers emphasizing maneuverability) fielding larger guns?
Oh yeah, Germany’s naval power is already much larger ITTL due to an access to more resources and more of an incentive to have a larger navy. I don’t know a ton about naval technology, but it’s suffice to say that military technology as of 1925 ITTL is roughly on par with OTL technology from the 1930s. Germany also currently had the largest navy in the world, which should give you an idea of what its arsenal is like.
 
Hey everyone! Just for an update on the latest chapter, it is well underway. Between final exams, a state debate meet, and a Model UN conference, the last two months have been hectic, hence why progress has been slow. Obviously RL stuff takes priority, but MMH is coming along well IMO nonetheless.

In the meantime, I thought it would be a good idea to start a MMH discord server. Here you can discuss the TL, offer suggestions, and find teasers for upcoming stuff if you’re okay with spoilers. Hopefully this will be a good way to hold everyone over in regards to MMH content in between updates.:extremelyhappy:

 
Chapter Eight: The Tendrils of War
Chapter VIII: The Tendrils of War

“As communist revolution plagues Russia and horrors of brutally modern conflict continue to ravage the European continent, it is more important than ever before for Brazil to preserve its declaration of neutrality in the Great War. But let it be known to the great powers of Europe: Brazilian neutrality does not equate to passive nature. If any force dares to attack the Brazilian nation, such an aggressive force would make a grave mistake.”

-President Venceslau Bras of the First Brazilian Republic, circa April 1917.


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Flag of the First Brazilian Republic.

Unlike the United States, Italy, or Japan, all of which were powerful states that would be neutral during the Great War around at least some point or another, Brazil was not regarded as a sleeping giant. When the Great War broke out, what was then called the Republic of the United States of Brazil (now often referred to as the First Brazilian Republic) was a large state with an undeniably vast access to natural resources as a consequence and therefore absolutely had the potential to become a major power, however, due to the agrarian and aristocratic economic structure of the Empire of Brazil, which had fallen in 1889, the new Brazilian oligarchic democracy was barely industrialized and had little authority on the world stage.

As a South American nation whose only connection to European affairs was selling agricultural products, Brazil had no need or interest in sending soldiers across the Atlantic Ocean to the fight in the battlefields of the Great War. Instead, a policy of neutrality was pursued by presidents Hermes da Fonseca and Venceslau Bras as the Brazilian government carried on as it had since the fall of the Empire and prioritized domestic interests over foreign entanglements. As the European titans fought a war between nations, Brazil fought a war against its own people, with the Bras administration completing the Contestado War against rebels in southern Brazil in 1916.

There were still advocates for Brazilian entry into the Great War, many of which argued that entry into the war would be a good way to spur patriotism, however, these voices were nonetheless unable to win over the Brazilian government. While the entry of Brazil into the Great War looked more likely after the RMS Lusitania was sunk in May 1915 by a German submarine, thus temporarily spurring anti-German sentiment within the United States, the most influential power in the New World, however, efforts by the German Empire to not awaken the sleeping giant that was the United States of America succeeded and the potential for a naval attack to inadvertently pull in any American nations or their allies dissipated.

As blood spilled on the fields of France and the crimson flags of revolution were flown through the streets of Russia, the First Brazilian Republic would remain an agrarian oligarchy under the reign of Venceslau Bras, with the labor union movement in Brazil being brutally suppressed. As a consequence, the interests of the ruling agrarian elite were kept in place, and the Brazilian working class was choked by a boot of conservatism. These brutalities would, however, keep down the social change that threatened Brazil’s oligarchy and were therefore supported by those who ruled over the First Brazilian Republic. Bras’ successor, Delfim Moreira, who assumed power in 1918 and left the presidency in 1919 would continue the legacy of his predecessor by forcing anarchists into exile, and Moreira’s successor, Epitacio Pessoa, would continue the legacy of his predecessor by imprisoning numerous leftists.

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President Epitacio Pessoa of the First Brazilian Republic.

The Pessoa administration would continue to enforce Brazilian neutrality on the international stage as Phase Two began over in Europe, however, the thirst for a crimson revolution would make its way across the Atlantic to Brazil as the already suppressed Brazilian socialist and labor movements were bolstered by the uprisings in the rotting corpses of the Entente. For the first time in years, general strikes became common throughout Brazil despite the best attempts of Pessoa and his cronies to retaliate. The revolutions in France and Great Britain were especially mobilizing for Brazilian leftists due to the democratic and pro-labor union elements of these movements, elements that were absent from the revolution of Vladimir Lenin.

By the fall of 1922, the General Strike of 1922 that had swept the United Kingdom prior to the Second Glorious Revolution had been mimicked in Brazil as leaders of labor and socialism alike coordinated worker resistance to the oppressive plutocracy that reigned over the so-called Brazilian Republic. As streets were flooded with workers swept up in the rushing currents of international revolution, the Brazilian Strike of 1922 grew to be so large that law enforcement alone could not suppress the masses, and so military forces were called on to drive back what Epitacio Pessoa saw as an attempt to spread Bolshevism to Brazil.

Acts of violence against the proletariat only fueled the flames of revolution in Brazil, and to many it appeared as though the fledgling First Brazilian Republic would soon succumb to the same revolutions that had infected Russia, France, and the United Kingdom. Even as military forces occupied the streets of Brazilian cities, many soldiers, who were often as disgruntled by Pessoa’s oligarchy as the protesters they were supposed to suppress, would either refuse to carry out any oppressive orders or would straight out cross picket lines to join strikes. For many Brazilian conservatives and authoritarians, especially military officers, the growth of radicalism amongst the Brazilian people was due to the failure of Brazilian republicanism. In the eyes of these autocratic strongmen, Brazil needed to be led by a centralized regime that could efficiently root out traitors to the state in a way respect for human rights simply did not permit.

Convinced that it was their duty to seize control of the Brazilian apparatus of state, a league of military authorities, monarchists, and conservatives convened in Manaus, a city tucked away in the Amazon Rainforest outside of the eye of national authorities, in November 1922 to discuss the overthrow of the First Brazilian Republic and the establishment of a Brazilian autocracy in its place. Prominent figures present at this convention included the military officer and former President Hermes da Fonseca, aviation pioneer and monarchist Alberto Santos-Dumont, and famous lawyer Borges de Medeiros, not to mention much of the leadership of the Militar Club. After numerous meetings spanning throughout a week, what became known as the Manaus Convention not only conceived of a plot to overthrow Epitacio Pessoa but also laid down the framework of their replacement state.

After much debate, it was decided that Brazilian republicanism could not persist. The monarchists present at the Manaus Convention insisted that, while a military junta could serve as the ruling government, the return of a Brazilian monarch to the throne would be able to garner public support by serving as a unifying figurehead in a time of great instability while also generating nostalgia for the days of the Empire of Brazil and therefore a rejection of the government of the First Brazilian Republic. Despite the monarchists at the Manaus Convention being a minority, they were undoubtedly a vocal minority and ultimately a persuasive one, with military autocrat wannabes agreeing that a constitutional monarch would make for a good propaganda stunt. In the end, hardline opponents to the re-establishment of the Brazilian monarchy were overshadowed and it was agreed that the Manaus Convention would overthrow the First Brazilian Republic in the name of the House of Orleans-Braganza.

The December Putsch was a quick and mostly painless coup. The majority of high-ranking Brazilian military officers supported the putschists, led by Hermes da Fonseca, which left President Epitacio Pessoa essentially powerless to stop his own government’s destruction. On December 11th, 1922 the streets of Rio de Janeiro were occupied by military forces proclaiming their loyalty to General Fonseca and Prince Pedro Henrique, with soldiers waving flags covered with the old symbols of the Empire of Brazil. Within a little over an hour, Rio de Janeiro was blockaded by putschist forces, and as Fonseca and his army convened upon the location of Epitacio Pessoa and the Brazilian legislative assembly, the clocked ticked down until the end of the First Brazilian Republic. Within a handful of hours, the entirety of the Brazilian government had been arrested and Hermes da Fonseca would address a crowd of startled citizens by declaring the restoration of the Brazilian monarchy and the destruction of the incompetent republican government in favor of a “military state that shall uphold and defend the crown of Brazil.”

The Second Empire of Brazil had been born.

Flag of the Second Empire of Brazil MMH.png

Flag of the Second Empire of Brazil.


The Empire of the West

“The placid shores of the Ipiranga heard
the resounding shout of a heroic folk
And the sun of Liberty in shining beams
shone in the homeland's sky at that instant

If the pledge of this equality
we managed to conquer with strong arm
In thy bosom, O Freedom,
our chest defies death itself!

O beloved,
idolized homeland,
Hail, hail!

-Beginning of the Brazilian National Anthem.


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Prime Minister Hermes da Fonseca of the Second Empire of Brazil.

Much of Brazil’s modern history is that of a tragedy. Upon the downfall of the First Empire of Brazil and the establishment of the First Republic, the fledgling state slid from obsolete monarchism into the hands of an oligarchy ruling under the pretext of being a democracy. This oligarchy, the First Brazilian Republic, was plagued by instability throughout its entire history. Of course, this instability would spell the end of the First Brazilian Republic, but rather than resulting in the overthrow of the Brazilian oligarchy in favor of a democratic system, the December Putsch overthrew the First Brazilian Republic’s ruling class and simply replaced it with a new one that fused both the aristocratic and military leadership of Brazil.

The government of the Second Empire of Brazil was an odd conglomerate of Brazilian autocrats and conservatives. Officially, the head of state was Prince Pedro Henrique, who was crowned Emperor Pedro III shortly after the December Putsch, however, the Manaus Convention made it clear that the Brazilian monarchy was to be a symbolic one that stepped aside from controlling the apparatus of state in favor of the military junta and reserved its authority to only a handful of tasks. And for the time being, Pedro had no political responsibilities anyway, for upon the declaration of the Second Empire of Brazil, the new emperor was merely thirteen years old and relinquished any duties to his regent, the aviation pioneer and avid monarchist Alberto Santos-Dumont.

Santos-Dumont was appointed by and answered to the true leader of the Second Empire of Brazil, Prime Minister Hermes da Fonseca. The leader of the December Putsch and former president of the First Brazilian Republic, Hermes da Fonseca was an odd choice for the leader of the restored Brazilian monarchy, considering that he had not only been the leader of the preceding republic but was also the nephew of the founder of said republic, Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca, and had supported his uncle’s revolution back in 1889. Fonseca was therefore a supporter of republicanism and, despite being present at the Manaus Convention, had advocated for the temporary establishment of a military junta within the framework of the First Brazilian Republic and had fought strongly against calls for the restoration of the Brazilian monarchy, only conceding when his opponents ultimately won out.

It was, ironically enough, Hermes da Fonseca’s history of supporting Brazilian republicanism that resulted in him being chosen as the leader of a monarchist coup. The individuals present at the Manaus Convention had numerous reasons for why they supported the creation of the Second Empire of Brazil. Some were simply avid monarchists, some believed that a constitutional monarchy could be manipulated into an effective propaganda tool, and some couldn’t care less about monarchism and just wanted to win support from monarchists for the sake of gaining power. But this reasoning was obviously not shared with the majority of Brazil’s population. The total recreation of the old Brazilian monarchy with solely monarchists at the helm would not have the public backing necessary to survive. But a Brazilian monarchy governed by a hero of the Republic, who was supporting the restoration of the House of Orleans-Braganza because, even to such a hardline republican, the failure of the First Brazilian Republic was apparent and called for a return to the days of Brazilian might? That was certainly effective propaganda.

In the end, installing a republican as the leader of the Second Empire of Brazil paid off. Not all Brazilians, obviously, would ever support either a military junta or a return to the days of the Empire, however, in general the public would either wind up supporting Fonseca’s regime or would simply shut up and carry on with their lives as an age of authoritarianism began. To the workers fighting for liberation in the Brazilian Strike of 1922, the call for an end to capitalist exploitation continued to ring into the age of the Second Empire of Brazil, however, Hermes da Fonseca would not respond kindly to these strikes. The strikers were deemed traitors to the Empire and the military was to treat them as such, with the general strike being violently suppressed with tactics that belonged on battlefields. This, in turn, led to a violent retaliation by strikers in numerous occasions, however, the working class of Brazil was no match to Fonseca’s tyranny, and by the end of January 1923 the Brazilian Strike of 1922 had come to an end only due to soldiers spilling the blood of the innocent in the streets.

With the Brazilian Strike of 1922 over, Hermes da Fonseca turned to new priorities. Any other opposition to his iron first would be crushed by local military and police forces carrying out his bidding, so Fonseca directed attention towards the industrialization of the Second Empire of Brazil, a nation that began its existence with less than ten percent of the total national capital directed towards industry. Reasoning for Brazilian industrialization varied, with a handful of monarchists simply wanting to return to the days of surging Brazilian industrialization during the very end of the First Empire, but the primary motivation was economic. Historically, Brazil’s economic relations with foreign markets had been built off of trading agricultural commodities with markets abroad whereas any Brazilian industrial interests were satisfied by imports.

But by the 1920s, this economic system was no longer sustainable. Even for neutral nations, the entire global economy revolved around the Great War. This was most prominent within the United States of America, where Wall Street tycoons invested heavily in the stocks of the booming military industrial complex both domestically and abroad, but such orbit around the Great War was an international economic trend that no state was safe from. In Brazil, the effect of the Great War was not the opening of new markets but rather the closing of historical ones. Longstanding trading partners closed their doors to exporting industrial equipment when every single resource had to be diverted to the war effort, and while the United States continued to trade with Brazil, by the 1920s American corporations had come to the realization that European markets were willing to buy much less for much more than Brazil was willing to offer.

Therefore, if the Second Empire of Brazil was to economically survive the clash of the titans, industrialization was a necessity. On February 3rd, 1923 Hermes da Fonseca and his junta’s oligarchs approved of the Great Leap Forward, a national industrialization effort that was, ironically enough, more or less a copy of the Three Year Plan of the Russian Soviet Republic, a nation despised by the Second Empire of Brazil. For the next three years, the Brazilian people would be forced to build up national industry, with thousands of civilians being forced into what has since been condemned as slavery under the guise of military conscription, only for said civilians to be sent off to work in the development of factories.

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A Brazilian child factory worker, circa March 1923.

Unlike its Marxist-Leninist counterpart, however, the Great Leap Forward did not build up nationalized infrastructure, for the Second Empire of Brazil was avidly committed to capitalism and shunned nationalization, and instead industrialized Brazil via a web of corporatist kleptocracy. The top corporate leadership of Brazilian industry were assigned sums of workers to utilize to meet industrialization quotas, all of which were determined between the military junta and wealthy industrialists behind closed doors in Rio de Janiero.

The Great Leap Forward was undeniably brutal. In only three years, nearly one million Brazilian workers had perished at the hands of grotesque working conditions and millions more continued to languish away in the emerging factories of Brazil. With only slightly less casualties than the Three Year Plan of the Russian Soviet Republic, the Great Leap Forward truly was a sick parody of its crimson counterpart. In the East, the people were wiped out by the brutal cold of the Russian winter; in the West, the people were wiped out by the brutal heat of the Brazilian summer. In the East, factories built off of the backs of authoritarianism emerged from the desolate warzones of the Great War; in the West, factories built off of the backs of authoritarianism emerged from lush jungles that, for the time being, were as disconnected from the Great War as possible.

To the military junta of the Second Empire of Brazil, the wretchedness of the Great Leap Forward was irrelevant. All that mattered in the eyes of Brazil’s new oppressors was that the Empire had been successfully industrialized. By 1926, Brazil was the new industrial center of Latin America and, despite still not being at the same level as many European nations or the United States, the Second Empire of Brazil had achieved breaking away from reliance on an economic system killed by the Great War. Ironically enough, however, Hermes da Fonseca did not live to see the end of the Great Leap Forward and died in September 1923. His position as both prime minister and field marshal of the Second Empire of Brazil was filled by Minister of War Pedro Aurelio de Gois Monteiro, a thirty-three year-old military officer who had fought in the December Putsch under the command of Fonseca.

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Prime Minister Pedro Aurelio de Gois Monteiro of the Second Empire of Brazil.

Gois Monteiro was a young man who had never anticipated that he would become the leader of a military junta. His strengthening relationship with Hermes da Fonseca before, during, and after the December Putsch simply turned him into an automatic minister within the Fonseca regime, not to mention his appeal to younger soldiers was an appreciated resource for the fledgling junta. Upon becoming the Brazilian minister of war, Gois Monteiro was well aware that he would succeed Hermes da Fonseca in accordance to the constitution of the Second Empire of Brazil, however, it was anticipated that if Gois Monteiro were to ever become prime minister, it would be years down the line. But this was not the case, and in less than a year after the establishment of the Second Empire of Brazil the young Gois Monteiro had become its new head of government.

Pedro de Gois Monteiro was apathetic to the Brazilian monarchy and had dedicated himself to the ideals of the December Putsch due to his belief that military autocracy was the only way to successfully govern a powerful Brazilian state. Therefore, his rule saw little change policy-wise from that of his predecessor, with the priority of Gois Monteiro being the continuation of the Great Leap Forward. It would be Gois Monteiro who would preside over and enforce the worst horrors of the Great Leap Forward, not the program’s instigator.

But Pedro de Gois Monteiro’s reign over the Second Empire of Brazil would not be defined by the Great Leap Forward and would instead be defined by his role in the war raging on across the Atlantic Ocean. Throughout the fall of the First Brazilian Republic and the rise of the Second Empire of Brazil, European policy regarding Latin America had more or less remained the same. Focus on the task at hand instead of wasting resources and potentially risk war with neutral states by scouting the southern Atlantic. But Brazilian policy, however, would change with the new regime.

The Second Empire had been forged via a counter-revolution against what Brazilian conservatives had misinterpreted as a communist rebellion and Gois Monteiro was especially open to the idea of resisting the Third International abroad, which translated into the state-sponsored lease of Brazilian agricultural products to the Entente starting in August 1925. In the eyes of the Gois Monteiro ministry, the Entente was the ideal alliance for Brazil to back in the war against the Red Menace due to the shared 19th Century-esque conservatism of the Entente and Brazil. Private investment in the Central Powers was tolerated in this time period, however, it became increasingly discouraged despite the ideological similarities of the Brazilian military junta and fascism.

Brazilian leasing to the British Empire and later the Empire of America was due to both nations being on the same side of the Atlantic, however, the distribution of resources to the Entente’s lesser member states, such as Portugal and Greece, was a different story. Brazilian ships would have to traverse the waters of war, where the naval forces Entente, Third International, and Central Powers set the sea aflame throughout the vicious Atlantic Front. Of course, no faction dared to risk war with Brazil, especially as the nation industrialized, and Germany especially made sure to uphold its 1915 commitment to avoiding U-boat attacks on the vessels of neutral states. But as American merchants had already learned years ago, such attacks were inevitable. At first, no one paid much attention to Brazilian leasing, however, soon enough the Third International and Central Powers both wanted Brazilian ships out of their sight, and this ultimately resulted in a ship carrying the banner of the Second Empire of Brazil being caught in the crossfire of a clash between Italian and Portuguese forces off the coast of the Iberian Peninsula.

On March 13th, 1926 the Rio Branco was sunk by the Kingdom of Italy.

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The sinking of the Rio Branco, circa March 1926.

Unlike the Lusitania, whose sinking had caused in outburst in anti-German sentiment across the United States over a decade prior, the Rio Branco was not a passenger ship simply trying to make its way across a warzone. It was a mercantile ship delivering resources to one of the belligerents in the Great War, and would therefore seem to be inherently subject to an attack. But to the militant and nationalist government of Brazil, especially to Gois Monteiro and his lackeys, the sinking of the Rio Branco could only be interpreted as an act of war by the Central Powers. Thus, on March 18th, 1926 the Second Empire of Brazil would declared war on the Kingdom of Italy and her allies and Prime Minister Pedro de Gois Monteiro announced his support for the Entente cause, resulting in a declaration of war on the Third International two days later.

Brazil had entered the arena of the Great War.


Over There

“The West is united against Radicals!”

-Subtext from an Imperial propaganda poster, circa April 1926.


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Brazilian soldiers from Phase Two of the Great War.

When the Second Empire of Brazil entered the Great War on behalf of the Entente, the full involvement of Brazilian military forces abroad was still months away. The casus belli to go to war had been unexpected by even those who declared it, so the initial weeks of Brazilian involvement in the Great War was characterized more by the mobilization of Brazil’s armed forces than it was by actual combat. Furthermore, even if there were military forces ready for deployment, it would take time for Brazilian naval infrastructure to effectively transport soldiers across the Atlantic Ocean.

Nonetheless, the Brazilian declaration of war was a great morale booster for the Entente. Out of the three factions of the Great War, the Entente was the one that had suffered by far the most since the beginning of Phase Two, at least from a militaristic perspective. The Russian Empire was a distant memory, hiding in the shadow of the mighty Russian Soviet Republic, whilst the Entente’s two other strongest member states, the French Third Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, had been kicked off of the European continent and were fighting a war of reclamation. Only Greece and Portugal still held out on the European mainland, with the former just barely surviving against the Austro-Hungarian onslaught.

For an industrialized state across the Atlantic Ocean to not only lease resources to the Entente but to also join the Great War on the pact’s behalf at its weakest moment was a cause for celebration across the Entente. For many, it symbolized that the Entente was not yet dead and its cause was still worth fighting for. To the military high command of the Entente, it meant that the tides of many battles could maybe, just maybe, be turned in their favor and a glimmer of hope for a victory once thought to be long gone emerged.

By the beginning of May 1926, the first convoys of Brazilian warships began to arrive in Canada to prepare for the brutality of the Atlantic Front. These forces were not those of the old agrarian Brazil that had fought in numerous local and chaotic conflicts throughout the 19th Century, but rather the forces that represented the ascendant industrial power of the south. The Brazilian cruisers docked in Canadian harbors alongside the ships of the once-invincible Royal Navy were fearsome metal monuments to the regime that had constructed them; atop each ship was a legion of Brazilian flags waving in the name of the Second Empire and any individual educated enough in foreign affairs who walked by these vessels could feel the discomfort creeping up from knowing that the majority of the ships were likely constructed at the expense of labor of the Great Leap Forward.

Soon enough, the harbors of Canada became populated by a constant flow of Brazilian warships stopping in preparation for the war that was being waged beyond the horizon before leaving to clash within the Atlantic arena. Out on the bitter waves of the northern Atlantic, the Imperial Brazilian Navy became a critical fighting force in what had been a war of attrition for over a year. The vastness of the Atlantic Ocean made specific advancements difficult to calculate, however, in a matter of months Entente forces had progressed substantially further east and decimated much of the naval capabilities of the Workers’ Commonwealth. Across the Commonwealth, newspapers awkwardly shrugged off these defeats upon the waves, but in the Empire of America propaganda and newspapers alike vocally touted the victories as the beginning of the end of Inkpin’s revolutionary state.

Of course, the Workers’ Commonwealth would not sit idly by as the Loyalists crept back across the Atlantic Ocean. As the summer of 1926 set in, the priority of the United People’s Congress had become how to retaliate on the Atlantic Front, with a slew of bills being passed increasing warship production. These bills would help increase the size of the Commonwealth’s naval force, however, the UPC would ultimately have to work with a decentralized league of privateers rather than a legitimate navy, with the “navy” of the Commonwealth being a confederation of shipbuilding unions and soldiers’ councils deemed the Workers’ Naval Federation (WNF). This was not unlike the decentralized systems previously utilized for the military and aerial forces of the Workers’ Commonwealth prior to centralization via UPC intervention.

Throughout the Second Glorious Revolution, the WNF had actually been a decent fighting force that punched quick and small holes into the Royal Navy’s blockade and served as a defense of the Commonwealth whenever necessary. But this was back during a civil war waged on land, where naval forces simply served as assistance to land forces. For the WNF, this meant that councils would often negotiate tactics with their land counterparts and then carry out actions that ensured that the plight of the Workers’ Model Army would not be disrupted in any way by the Royal Navy. In 1926, the clash between the Commonwealth and the Loyalists had shifted from land to water and it was no longer the WMA, which had made its way across the English Channel to France to fight on the Western Front, that was the bulk of this clash but rather the WNF.

And of course, as all of Europe sooner or later learned, war is inherently authoritarian. To wage war means that basic ethics and rights are to be forfeited, and in the Workers’ Commonwealth this meant that the cherished workplace democracy that had been established in the Second Glorious Revolution would not apply to the armed forces that spearheaded the rebellion of the working class. In July 1926, the Naval Reorganization Act was introduced to the United People’s Congress, with the bill’s sole purpose being to replace the Workers’ Naval Federation with a centralized navy called the Workers’ Revolutionary Navy (WRN). Despite being strongly opposed by a handful of libertarian socialists and being fiercely debated both within the Commonwealth government and amongst its people, the Naval Reorganization Act was ultimately endorsed by Comrade Protector Albert Inkpin and the Communist Party of Great Britain, thus causing the bill to pass with ease on August 7th, 1926.

The establishment of the Workers’ Revolutionary Navy was controversial, but by the end of August the new fighting force had proven its success. The broad coordinated attacks of the WRN had slowed down the Entente’s push east and a war of attrition between the Third Internationale and the Entente had resumed as the status quo of the Atlantic Front. Alongside the WRN, the Workers’ Democratic Air Force would fight in the Atlantic Front from the air, with planes being utilized as both scouts and bombers that aided the war effort of the WRN down below. The command structure of the WDAF was more or less identical to that of the WRN, and therefore the two bodies meshed very well together and were truly a force to be reckoned with on the Atlantic Front. The remnants of the RAF, once the dominant aerial force in the Second Glorious Revolution, was now no match for the might of the air force of the proletariat, which demolished numerous Entente warships and planes alike.

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A WDAF Bristol Bulldog fighter plane flying by the crew of the WCS Indefatigable, circa September 1926.

The Great War constantly demanded the production of new equipment and the WRN would satisfy this demand by creating the first original warship designs of the Workers’ Commonwealth. During the days of the PNF, all Commonwealth battleships had either been the property of revolutionary privateers or had been seized from the Loyalists one way or another. This was understandable, considering that the Commonwealth did not have the infrastructure, incentive, or time necessary to build its own ships during the Second Glorious Revolution, however, as the Atlantic Front raged on the Workers’ Commonwealth was not only in a position where it was able to construct new vessels but was in a position where it had to. Simply put, wartime technology was always advancing and the Workers’ Commonwealth could not afford to be outpaced in a field as critical as naval infrastructure.

Due to the heavy role of the WDAF within the arsenal of the Commonwealth on the Atlantic Front, new designs would often focus on complimenting aircraft. One of the first original Commonwealth designs for a warship was an aircraft carrier converted from the two Courageous-class battlecruisers captured in the Second Glorious Revolution. This type of aircraft carrier, called the Marx-class aircraft carrier, finished conversion in June 1927 and subsequently saw action immediately afterwards. Marx-class battleships proved to be valued of the WRN, for they were as effective in combating the Entente as they were effective as a symbol of the ingenuity and innovation of the Workers’ Commonwealth. After the completion of the first two Marx-class aircraft carriers, the WDS Engels and the WDS Cromwell, the UPC would vote for the production of more Marx-class ships as they proved their success, bringing the total fury of the WDAF to the heart of the Atlantic Front.

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The WDS Engels and the WDS Cromwell, circa July 1927.

As the conversion of Courageous-class ships to Marx-class aircraft carriers concluded, the Workers’ Commonwealth continued production on new models for ships, but despite the Great War incentivizing rapid shipbuilding, it would take at least many months for conversions to be completed and it would take years for the first completely original models of the WRN to be introduced to the fury of the Atlantic Front. For now, the Commonwealth’s arms race with the Empire of America and the Second Empire of Brazil was more or less restricted to the conversion and modification of already existing warship models, a strategy also employed by the Empire of America.

As a war of both air and water raged on across the Atlantic Ocean, the Second Empire of Brazil was not exclusively focused on the plight of the fallen ruins of the British Empire in the northern waters, even if it was a priority of Gois Monteiro. Brazil would prove itself to be a vanguard for the entirety of the Entente and would fight on behalf of the Empire of America on other fronts. In India, the Imperial Brazilian Army would deploy thousands of ground force in both the war against the Indian Union and her allies in the east and the Russian Soviet Republic and her puppet regimes in the west. The Indian frontlines of the Great War were unlike anything the armed forces of Brazil had ever faced before, with the clash with the All-Indian Liberation Army being the first time the vast majority of Brazilian soldiers had ever experienced the brutalities of guerrilla war, let alone a guerrilla war in the name of the horrors of colonialism.

Nonetheless, under the leadership of General Augusto Tasso Fragoso, an avid supporter of the military junta and former participant in the Manaus Convention, the Imperial Brazilian Army served as a primary fighting force in Indian. Personally appointed by Gois Monteiro to head off to the subcontinent shortly after the Brazilian entry into the Entente, Fragoso broadly presided over all Brazilian military forces within the British Raj and therefore oversaw a war effort on two fronts.The general would reside on the Himalayan Front against the Red Army and therefore focused most of his direct tactics on the war against the Soviet Republic, however, he would nonetheless play a heavy hand in Brazilian involvement in the Indian War of Independence.

Many had deemed the preservation of the British Raj an impossible task. The region was simply a powder keg waiting to explode, one that the British Empire would have had a difficult time containing even before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Nonetheless, the Entente would effectively make its best attempts to fight an uphill battle. And the Entente’s ability to hold out for as long as it did was in no small part thanks to the involvement of Brazil in India. General Tukhachevsky’s push for the Indus River had long before the sinking of the Rio Branco, however, the next major Soviet target, the city of Lahore, would not be so easily reached. As the summer of 1926 set in and the first Brazilian regiments arrived in the British Raj, Mikhail Tukhachevsky had recently emerged victorious at the First Battle of Sargodha on May 22nd, 1926, a hard-fought win for the Red Army. Tukhachevsky anticipated his offensive towards Chenab Nagar in the south to have similar results, but as the flag of the Second Empire of Brazil began to wave along the Chenab River, this seemed to not be the case.

It was at the Battle of Chenab Negar that Augusto Tasso Fragoso got his first taste of combat in the Great War. The relentless bombing of Chenab Negar began on May 26th, 1926, which was accompanied by a rapid and large offensive by the Red Army in the tactics of Tukhachevsky that had become infamous across western Asia. Fragoso was not necessarily an extremely skilled tactician, especially when compared to Tukhachevsky, and had never fought in a conflict even close to the scale of anything the Great War had to offer, but the numbers of his forces and the equipment imported from Brazil would ultimately save Chenab Negar from the fate of Sargodha. The Battle of Chenab Negar was a decisive victory for the Entente and as the Red Army retreated back to the northwest, it would be immediately followed by a counter-offensive of both Brazilian and Imperial forces alike led by Fragoso towards Sargodha. This resulted in the Second Battle of Sargodha, starting just hours after the Battle of Chenab Negar, in which Fragoso commanded a quick and brutal attack on Red Army positions in Sargodha. Eventually, however, the Soviets wore down the Entente attack, which turned the Second Battle of Sargodha into a war of attrition that the Entente eventually retreated from on May 30th, 1926.

Augusto Tasso Fragoso could not stop Mikhail Tukhachevsky. His army was, of course, a welcome addition to the Himalayan Front for the Entente, however, the Red Army was simply too large, too well-equipped, and too well-commanded to be defeated on this frontline. When the push towards Chenab Negar failed, Tukhachevsky simply turned his attention northwards and attacked Gujrat, where the Soviets managed to cross the Chenab River on June 11th, 1926. The unexpected Soviet offensive to the north of Chenab Negar forced a general retreat in which the Entente focused on the defense of Gujranwala and Faisalabad from the artillery fire of the Red Army.

In the end, the banner of the Russian Soviet Republic waved over both of these cities, and it would also eventually be raised above Lahore. With that being said, the Red Army’s capture of these cities took much longer than anticipated because of the increasingly large presence of the Imperial Brazilian Army on the Himalayan Front. Fragoso would utilize large quantities of machine guns and armored vehicles to clash against Tukhachevsky in the greatest fight the Soviets ever really faced in India. The fall of Gujranwala on June 29th, 1926 required almost a month of brutal combat, as did the fall of Faisalabad on July 8th, 1926. The push for Lahore, in which the Red Army took on the combined defenses of what remained of Brazilian and British forces on the Himalayan Front lasted even longer, with the Battle of Lahore coming to an end on August 3rd, 1926 after weeks of mechanical and industrialized trench warfare ripped from the nightmares of the Western Front.

The Himalayan Front after the Battle of Lahore was a very different conflict. Gone were the days of a ceaseless Soviet advance, unstoppable by the forces of the Entente. The Military and resources of the Second Empire of Brazil had turned the front into a slow and grueling clash of titans reminiscent of the frontlines of Europe. Battles lasted days and securing even a few meters of land was considered a victory. Trenches were dug into the desert of the western reaches of the Subcontinent while the relentless warfare scorched entire regions of human settlement. And of course, much like on both the Western and Eastern fronts, the Himalayan Front demanded the constant upgrade of weapons from both belligerents.

With the already lacking infrastructure of the Empire of America being almost completely dedicated to the Atlantic Front and the British Raj being in a simultaneous state of revolution and conquest that made it increasingly difficult to be exploited by the Empire, the arms race on the Himalayan Front was predominantly Brazil’s responsibility. Ammunition, guns, and armored vehicles were all produced by Brazilian industrialists to be exported to India while the industries of the Empire of America would negotiate agreements with the kleptocracy of the Second Empire of Brazil to pay Brazilian corporations to construct the weapons of the Loyalists. With the exiled governments of the Entente financing the buildup of Brazilian wartime industry, the Second Empire of Brazil became regarded as the “Factory of the Entente,” and in only a handful of years approximately three fourths of all Entente weapons, regardless of the nations utilizing this equipment, would be produced by Brazilian sweatshops.

The Factory of the Entente would make sure that Mikhail Tukhachevsky would have to fight a slow and brutal war if he were to ever paint all of India crimson, however, the Indian War of Independence was a different story. The Indian Union was waging a fierce guerrilla war that cut deeper and deeper into the British Raj while the People’s Republic of Madras solidified the revolution in southern India. Thanks to the forces of Madras, the Kingdom of Travancore was brought into the fold of socialism following its defeat at the Battle of Trivandrum on January 23rd, 1926 and the People’s Republic of Travancore was subsequently established as a puppet regime of Madras. All the while, the All-Indian Liberation Army made the slow push towards New Delhi whilst integrating much of northern India into Subhas Chandra Bose’s republic.

By the time the Imperial Brazilian Army arrived in the British Raj, the AILA had made its way its way as far as Lukcnow, which fell on May 19th, 1926. Augusto Tasso Fragoso, who focused primarily on the Himalayan Front, could not stop the advance of the Indian Union, however, he could throw a handful of Brazilian regiments out east to slow down the Indian War of Independence. Furthermore, on top of attempts to grind down the Indian War of Independence into a war of attrition, it would be Fragoso who, in collaboration with Imperial colonial and military forces, would order the first ever aerial bombing campaign against the Indian Union in the October of 1926.

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Warplanes of the Imperial Brazilian Air Force preparing for takeoff nearby Farrukhabad. circa October 1926.

In the end, the bombing campaign against the Indian Union, which Fragoso had deemed Operation Ddraig, failed to turn the tides of a war clearly not in the Entente’s favor, however, it certainly gave Bose a hard fight to win. Neither the Indian Union nor the People’s Republic of Madras had any sort of airforce and instead had to rely on anti-aircraft equipment, which was often imported from the Soviet Republic. For the first time since the beginning of the Indian War of Independence, many regions liberated by the AILA faced the horrors of war as constant bombing raids made the Bay of Bengal burn and the supply lines of the Indian Union were often devastated, which substantially disrupted its war effort.

Nonetheless, the Indian Union would persist against the machines churned out by the Factory of the Entente. The oppressed masses of the Indian Subcontinent gradually turned on their colonial tyrants and the flames of revolution could not be put out by the bombs of the twin empires of America and Brazil. The push towards New Delhi would be long, but it was ultimately a push that succeeded, even if the push carried on for many years. The liberation of northern India was a fierce war of attrition between oppressors and the oppressed, one that was not only fought on battlefields but in the streets of the British Raj as guerrilla movements behind enemy lines waved the flag of the Indian Union across much of the burning Subcontinent.

As the Workers’ Commonwealth introduced some of its mightiest ships to the Atlantic Front and the summer of 1927 began, the War of Indian Independence was still raging on and New Delhi was still a British colony. But the war in India was coming to an end, for the Battle of Aligarh ended in a victory for the AILA on June 1st, 1927. As guerrilla warfare raged on, the regiments of the AILA could just barely see the outskirts of New Delhi on the horizon. Soon, the day would come when the beating heart of the British Raj would be in the hands of the Indian proletariat and banners of crimson would wave across all of the Subcontinent. But for now, the struggle of the Indian worker would carry on in a fight for independence against the hydra that was the forces of the British and Brazilian empires.

One day, New Delhi would be painted red.


Nostalgia

“I had always hoped that I would never have to see the godforsaken battlefields of France again, but if that is to be my fate, then I am proud that this time I have arrived bearing the uniform of our most glorious revolution.”

-Field Marshal Clement Attlee of the Workers’ Model Army in a speech to the United People’s Congress, circa January 1926.


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Soldiers of the Workers’ Model Army marching through Lumiere, circa February 1926.

The socialist revolutions that had swept across Europe during the Great War were ironic in that despite often being spurred by opposition to the war, the revolutionary men and women who had lost so much the fires of Phase One found themselves fighting on the frontlines of Phase Two. The primary members of the Third International, the Russian Soviet Republic, the French Commune, and the Workers’ Commonwealth, were among the predominant belligerents of Phase Two of the Great War and the soldiers of their armies were often veterans of the earlier years of the Great War who had taken up arms against oppressive wartime policies, only to return to the Great War under a crimson flag.

This irony was not lost on the people of the Entente, many of whom maintained staunchly anti-war stances even as the Third International beat the drums of war. While such anti-war stances were not very profound in the Soviet Republic, for the Eastern Front was going very well for the Red Army and Leon Trotsky could simply purge prominent dissenters, these views were much stronger within the Workers’ Commonwealth. As the United People’s Congress approved of the redistribution of the WMA to the Western Front following the conclusion of the Second Glorious Revolution, the British pacifist movement made itself heard, especially once the UPC voted to end centralize the Commonwealth’s military institutions, such as its navy.

British pacifism ultimately culminated in the formation of the Socialist-Pacifist Party (SPP) in August 1925. Led by Arthur MacManus, a former member of the De Leonist Socialist Labour Party (SLP) and opponent of British involvement in the Great War (so much so that MacManus had been arrested in 1915 for speaking out against conscription), the SPP obviously focused on its opposition to warfare of any kind, arguing that war was inherently contradictory to the democratic and egalitarian views of libertarian socialism. With that being said, however, the SPP did have positions on other issues, such as branding itself as a strongly anti-centralization party by claiming that warfare inevitably led to increased hierarchy and authoritarianism within governing bodies and branding itself as anarcho-syndicalist by promoting a revolutionary unionist approach to achieving libertarian socialism non-violently.

The rise of the SPP conveniently aligned with the call for the first ever general election within the Workers’ Commonwealth. Following the Battle of Edinburgh, the Inkpin ministry sought to stabilize Great Britain in order for an election to be held that would allow for MPs representing recently liberated regions, primarily Scotland, to be within the United People’s Congress. The 1925 Workers’ Commonwealth general election was held on October 2nd, 1925 and after two months of campaigning the new British legislative branch came to power on October 20th, 1925. The CPGB of Albert Inkpin controlled a plurality of seats in the UPC and formed a coalition with numerous other parties, such as the SLP and the Labour Party of the Workers’ Commonwealth (LPWC), called the British Workers’ Coalition of Communism, Syndicalism, and Labour (BWC-CSL) that formed a strong majority in the UPC.

While the pro-Great War BWC-CSL controlled the Commonwealth government, the People’s Opposition would be led by the Socialist-Pacifist Party, with Arthur MacManus becoming the People’s Opposition Leader. To contrast the BWC-CSL, MacManus formed the Democratic Workers’ Committee (DWC) coalition, which consisted of the SPP, Workers’ Socialist Federation, the recently-formed Home Rule Party of Scotland, alongside a handful of minor parties, independents, and even some CPGB and LPWC MPs. In vocal opposition to the staunchly interventionist and pro-Great War policy of the BWC-CSL, the DWC advocated for calling for an immediate end to all hostilities of the Great War while also often promoting social progressivism, decentralization, revolutionary unionism, and libertarian socialism, all of which were usually better received by the BWC-CSL-dominated UPC.

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Founder of the Socialist-Pacifist Party and People’s Opposition Leader Arthur MacManus.

Regardless of the vocality of the SPP, opposition to British involvement in the Great War was overall a position not supported by the majority of the Workers’ Commonwealth’s population. Considering that it had been the Central Powers that had attacked the Third International first rather than the other way around many saw the Commonwealth as a victim of warfare that had no other option other than to stand with its allies against the tyranny of fascism. Furthermore, numerous British revolutionaries saw it as their moral duty to defend their comrades abroad and kill the twin fascist demons that terrorized Europe from Berlin and Rome. Therefore, Albert Inkpin had no trouble with mobilizing the Workers’ Model Army to return to the battlefields of France in yet another clash between Great Britain and Germany.

In the French Commune, there was barely a trace of any anti-war movement similar to the Socialist-Pacifist Party of the Workers’ Commonwealth. The people of France were sick and tired of a war that had ravaged their homes for over a decade and of course wanted the man-made hell to end, however, for the French Commune, peace was not an option. The moment Alfred Hugenburg had ordered an offensive into the territory of the Commune all those years ago and had condemned Europe to another decade of the bloodiest war in human history made it obvious to the whole world that the Heilsreich would not accept peace until socialism was crushed in France. Thus, the French Commune could not escape the Great War. For there to be peace in France, either Lumiere or Berlin would have to fall.

Fortunately for the LGPF, the Western Front had been spared the worst of Phase Two. The might of the Red Army meant that Germany had bigger concerns than what was, at least at the beginning of Phase Two, little more than a glorified mutiny and adopted a strategy of holding off the French Commune until the Russian Soviet Republic no longer posed as much of a threat. As the German Empire and its vile successor, the Heilsreich, waged war against the Red Napoleon, the LGPF merely faced a line of German trenches left over from the war against the French Third Republic whose soldiers were ordered to deter, not to invade. This German strategy would ultimately fail, for as the puppet regimes forged at Brest-Litovsk fell to the Soviet onslaught, the French Commune emerged victorious over the Republic and built itself into a fully fledged nation that could hold an admittedly dim candle to the Heilsreich.

In the immediate aftermath of the Second French Revolution, Boris Souvarine, who was dealing with the fighting force of a state that had already lost over a third of its male population many years ago, sought to preserve the deterrence between the French Commune and the German Heilsreich on the Western Front, instead urging the Communard presidium to focus offensive action on the French Fourth Republic as the Commune rebuilt military infrastructure in the north. But the success of the revolutions in Great Britain and Ireland meant that the frail Commune would not stand alone against tyranny. Field Marshal Clement Attlee of the Workers’ Model Army himself arrived in France to command the Workers’ Expeditionary Force and the Crimson Clydesider made sure that he would be leading the proletariat to victory against the fascist imperialists.

By the spring of 1926, the Western Front was a parody of itself from a decade prior. The same states from Phase One were still present, however, the war of imperialism had been replaced by a war of ideology. Trenches once thought to be long forgotten from a war in the past were refilled with regiments from across Europe, and soon enough British, French, and Irish military commanders were meeting behind closed doors to design plans for an offensive against German forces. The first of these plans to be put into effect was Operation Lockhart, an offensive planned to retake Dunkirk and the surrounding French coast from German military occupation. Starting on March 27th, 1926, Operation Lockhart caught German military forces in the region, who were still fighting under the assumption that offensives on the Western Front were being deterred, completely off guard. The Anglo-French-Irish coalition of Third International forces led by John Maclean quickly overran German trenches, and in a handful of weeks the Third International had reached Dunkirk.

The First Battle of Dunkirk would begin on April 22nd, 1926 as Third International forces pierced the city from the south. As German regiments guarding the outskirts of the city were sieged by the army of the revolution, nearby British and Irish aerial forces in the English Channel were given the go-ahead to start an extensive bombing run over Dunkirk in order to annihilate German military infrastructure in the city and distract regiments throughout the interior of Dunkirk. This strategy was surprisingly effective and within a matter of hours General Maclean had emerged victorious at the First Battle of Dunkirk and the remaining German forces under the command of General Walther von Luttwitz evacuated across the border into the Kingdom of Flanders.

Operation Lockhart was a great success for the Third International, but it marked the end of the period of deterrence that had existed since the Soviet declaration of war on the German Empire. Suddenly, the Heilsreich would have to mobilize forces on the Western Front to a rate that had not been seen in years and new offensive strategies would have to be developed. This was difficult, given that the German Heilsreich would suddenly have to partition strong military forces between the Western and Eastern frontlines, however, by accelerating military technology infrastructure within the Rhineland the German military sought to overwhelm the enemy with technology that had previously only been used against the Red Army.

In retaliation against Operation Lockhart, General Luttwitz would lead an offensive from Reims in which the Heilsreich would attack with a slew of tanks, aircraft, and chemical weapons that had proven to be successful on the Eastern Front but had never before been used on the Western Front. The initial result was a fast push towards Lumiere that made many German soldiers naively assume that victory over the Commune was within reach, however, the Third International would swiftly retaliate against Luttwitz’s offensive and would unleash a barrage of military forces and aerial attacks upon the German army. Luttwitz was flanked and defeated yet again at the Battle of Beuvardes on May 12th, 1926 and was forced to retreat back to Reims and prepare for trench warfare as the Third International introduced new weapons to the frontlines, such as upgraded Robespierre R24 tanks.

Due to both the Third International and Central Powers being low on manpower on the Western Front, the belligerents of the frontlines turned to new tactics revolving around technology rather than heavy manpower to win the decade-old war. The French Commune would focus on the stockpiling of Robespierre R242 model tanks within its arsenal while the production of Soviet model LT tanks was an effort conducted in all Third International states, especially the Socialist Republic of Ireland, which did not have to worry about any homeland or secondary frontline like France and Great Britain and was therefore able to focus wartime efforts on buildup for the war effort on the Western Front. Just as they had been in the Second French Revolution, Robespierre R242 tanks were a useful tool for the LGPF, as were the numerous LT model tanks, however, General Commander Souvarine was keen on continuing the advancement of Communard tank technology, believing that armored vehicles would make for a very effective backbone for the French war effort.

By working with designs that had been tossed around by Communard military officers since the beginning of the Second French Revolution, General Commander Souvarine would begin the development of a new line of light tanks, the first of which was ultimately completed near the very end of 1926. This new type of light tank was designed to primarily fight against infantry rather than armored targets and was initially less advanced than Soviet models, however, it was nonetheless an upgrade from Robespierre R24s and was a welcome addition to the Proletarian Tank Corps. First introduced to the Western Front nearby the still German-occupied Reims, this new type of light tank would eventually become the predominant armored vehicle in the entire LGPF and was named the Armure series, which is literally French for “armor.”

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An Armure I model tank in northern France, circa January 1927.

Just as Boris Souvarine had expected, the Armure tanks would prove to be effective against German infantry and their utilization on the Western Front would, alongside LT-7s and Robespierre R242s, lead to the liberation of Reims on January 12th, 1927 and the subsequent pushback of German forces from the surrounding region after years of German occupation over the city. From Reims, Souvarine would lead his mechanized revolutionary army to victory at Caurel, Warmeriville, and Tagnon, all by the end of the February of 1927. To the shock of the entire world, the Great War was not yet lost for France, and despite still suffering from a critical depletion of manpower that was just barely being bandaged by the conscription of women into the LGPF and the arrival of military forces from Great Britain and Ireland, the Commune was not only holding its own against the Heilsreich but was, in many ways, winning.

As more and more tanks were produced by the Third International and the CCP grew into one of the largest sects of the entire Communard armed forces, Boris Souvarine began to experiment with an original warfare tactic that took advantage of the French Commune’s increasingly extensive arsenal of armored infantry in order to compensate for low manpower. This new strategy would revolve around the idea of annihilating enemy defenses by spearheading an offensive with a quick and surprising attack led by armored infantry and followed by soldiers to clean up what remained of the severely weakened enemy. Souvarine was fascinated by the idea, which he estimated would efficiently and rapidly overrun German defenses while also ensuring that substantial manpower would not be wasted, and would test his new tactic on the Western Front as soon as it had been finalized and approved by his fellow commanders.

Foudreguerre had been born.

Souvarine’s new tactic of foudreguerre was indeed a massive success and resulted in much of the German military on the Western Front being rapidly overrun. The tactic was first utilized against the bulk of Luttwitz’s forces at the Battle of Rethel on March 3rd, 1927, and would send the Heilsreich on the run up north towards Flanders. Thanks to punching severe wounds into German defenses via foudreguerre, the French Commune managed to approach the border of Wallonia by the end of March 1927, a task that many would have considered impossible only a year ago. Foudreguerre tactics were adopted by WMA Field Marshal Clement Attlee, who had been assigned to leading Third International forces in an offensive to liberate the territory surrounding Alsace-Lorraine, and continued to be extremely effective at defeating the Germans and liberating France.

Due to being closer to the German border than the occupied territory to the west that was south of Belgium, the region of France between the Meuse River and Alsace-Lorraine was more heavily defended than other parts of the Western Front. Nonetheless, Field Marshal Attlee would push through one of the most well-defended regions in Europe thanks to foudreguerre completely catching the German forces in the territory off guard, forcing the Heilsreich to retreat back against an army of what had only a few years ago been little more than a coalition of disgruntled British union workers. Throughout the beginning of 1927, Clement Attlee would dig deeper and deeper into territory that had not known freedom from Germany in many years.

As the WMA liberated Nancy, Luneville, and Flin from the wrath of the Heilsreich, it became increasingly possible in the eyes of the German high command that the Central Powers could lose the Great War, not because the war of attrition on the Eastern Front would overrun the Heilsreich into oblivion but because the German military had underestimated the capabilities of the Third International on the Western Front and had underprepared for what was clearly becoming a brutal war waged with strategies the likes of which had never before been seen. General Walther von Luttwitz, who was frantically presiding over the Western Front from southern Wallonia, clearly was not winning the Great War for Germany and was therefore relieved from his duties on May 1st, 1927 by Alfred Hugenberg himself and was replaced by Walther von Brauchitsch as the head German officer on the Western Front.

Eventually, the advance instigated by foudreguerre was slowed down by the increased introduction of armored infantry to the Western Front by General Brauchitsch and a massive buildup of German aerial attacks on France, however, at this point the damage had been done. The last year had been catastrophic for the Heilsreich and fantastic for the Third International. In Germany, fear of losing a war that had for so long apparently been in favor of the Central Powers began to creep up amongst the elite of Berlin whereas in Lumiere, the people rejoiced, for the glimmer of hope that had been put out by the cruel cynicism of Phase One had been reignited, this time burning brightly in the name of the proletariat. Regardless of whose side you were on, by the summer of 1927, one thing was certain.

The war on the Western Front was not over. It had only just begun.


The Powder Keg of Europe

“It is the duty of the Empire of America, all domains loyal to His Majesty, and our allies in the Entente to save Greece, the birthplace of Western Civilization, from destruction at the hands of the Central Powers.”

-General Winston Churchill in a speech to the House of Commons of the Empire of America, circa February 1926.


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Soldiers of the Kingdom of Greece during Phase One of the Great War, circa 1917.

When one thinks of the Great War, the war in the Balkans is usually not what first comes to mind, and for good reason. In a clash between giants, who would choose to focus on the fight between the dwarves on the sides of these giants? But anyone who has researched the origins of the War to End All Wars would realize that the horrors of the Great War did not begin because of a great international crisis in Germany, Great Britain, Russia, or France, but instead began all because of two bullets. These two bullets were fired in Sarajevo, then little more than a de facto colony of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, by a Serbian nationalist all in fierce opposition to the reign of Vienna over Bosnia. It had been said for many decades prior that the Balkans were the powder keg of Europe, and this prophecy would be fulfilled with the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war on Serbia that ignited the flames of war that would burn for the next three decades.

But the war in the Balkans went by fast. While Serbia held its own for awhile against Austria-Hungary, no nation in the region was a great power, and one of the strongest Balkan states, Bulgaria, happened to align with the Central Powers, thus accelerating the fall of Serbia and her allies. Even if the Austro-Hungarian Empire was often an incompetent mess on the Eastern Front against Russia, it successfully crushed the Kingdom of Serbia and the Serbian Campaign came to an end in the December of 1915, a little over a year following the start of the Great War, with a decisive Central Powers victory. Serbia and Montenegro were subsequently partitioned between military occupation by Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, with the latter annexing its territory in southern Serbia in early 1919.

However, as the rest of the Balkan states were overrun by the combined might of Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, one member of the Entente continued to hold off the onslaught. This nation was none other than the Kingdom of Greece, a nation that sat at the bottom of the Balkan region. Greece credited is survival in the Great War to a handful of factors, such as the nation’s relatively late entry into Phase One. While the Greek prime minister had been supportive of the Entente, King Constantine of Greece was a supporter of neutrality in the Great War, thus perpetuating a period called the National Schism in which the Kingdom of Greece awkwardly maintained neutrality as war raged on in the north. It would not be until the Bulgarian invasion of Macedonia in 1917 that Greece officially joined the Great War on behalf of Entente war effort.

Even after the Kingdom of Greece officially entered the inferno of the Great War, it still has not crushed like a pulp in a manner copying the defeat of Serbia and Montenegro two years prior. As the Hellenic Army went to war, revolution broke out across the Russian Empire, which spread strong anti-war sentiments throughout Greece’s primary opponent, the Tsardom of Bulgaria. Opposition to the Great War became so severe that Prime Minister Vasil Radoslavov was pressured into resignation and anti-Great War sentiment evolved into anti-monarchist sentiment. Greece was therefore confronting an unenthusiastic state whose army was plagued with consistent mutinies, which meant that Greece could hold its own with ease during its first few years participating in the Great War, even occasionally managing to advance into Bulgarian territory.

By the beginning of Phase Two, the Hellenic Army had conquered Prilep while the Bulgarian government was still going through a period of instability. Furthermore, the two Central Powers states that could pose a threat to the Greek war effort on the Macedonian Front, Italy and Austria-Hungary, were more concerned with other frontlines, with the former pushing through the Alpine Mountains into France while the former’s military was being directed by Germany to fight the Red Army. But even as the Macedonian Front was going relatively smoothly for Greece, after five years of persistent warfare cracks were beginning to form. Opposition to the Great War was subtly emerging, even if the government of Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos’ pro-Great War government sustained popularity, and the remnants of the movement for neutrality from the National Schism began to make calls for signing a white peace agreement with the Central Powers.

Regardless of these calls, Venizelos carried on leading Greece into the meat grinder. Greek propaganda made strong work of depicting the Entente as the guardians of Western Civilization in the face of revolutionaries and reactionaries and even as the Second Glorious Revolution broke out, the British Empire ensured its commitment to provide Greece with aid on the Macedonian Front, primarily by sending naval and military forces from Egypt and British puppet regimes across the Middle East across the Mediterranean Sea. Assistance from the Royal Navy was especially useful in the face of attempts by the Kingdom of Italy to establish a blockade around Greece and assert authority in the Aegean Sea, with Mussolini concluding for the time being that establishing a foothold on Greece was more trouble than it was worth.

But as the Entente’s remaining great powers were deteriorated by revolutions inspired by their Russian comrades, Greece found itself increasingly isolated in a time period when the Central Powers were becoming ascendant. Just as the Royal Navy began to gradually pull back from the Mediterranean to defend Great Britain, the Tsardom of Bulgaria underwent a harsh change in government that spelled a subsequent restructuring in military policy. Prime Minister Vasil Radoslavov continued to hold onto power in the Bulgarian government as Phase Two began due to strong support from the pro-war elite, the Bulgarian monarchy, and the other Central Powers, however, this didn’t stop growing anti-war support, led by the liberal Aleksandar Malinov. The declaration of war by the Soviet Republic on the Central Powers on February 8th, 1923 ultimately ignited the flames of the anti-war movement of Bulgaria, thus triggering an election only a few days later that resulted in Aleksandar Malinov and the Democratic Party forming the new Bulgarian government.

To the conservative allies of the Central Powers, Malinov’s victory was infuriating. To General Ivan Valkov, it was treason. The Tsardom of Bulgaria would not succumb to a pacifist regime that would surely sign a peace treaty with the Kingdom of Greece, one in which Greece would hold the upper hand in negotiations. As Aleksandar Malinov began to assemble his cabinet, Valkov would assemble a collection of Bulgarian military and conservative elite to plot a coup. Soon enough, General Valkov would lead a militia alongside his fellow military officers on February 25th, 1923 into Sofia and forced the Malinov government to resign. In Malinov’s place, a military junta led by Ivan Valkov as both the prime minister and minister of war of Bulgaria would reign, with the fellow instigators of the coup forming the Military Union as a coalition of oligarchs managing the government of Bulgaria in the name of Tsar Ferdinand I.

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Prime Minister Ivan Valkov of the Tsardom of Bulgaria.

The reign of Valkov was that of great repression, with the Democratic Party, leftist organizations, and any other accused traitors to the Bulgarian war effort being swiftly purged by the pawns of the Military Union. But, at least when it came to the Great War, it was also an effective reign. Mutinies were quickly suppressed, incompetent officers were ousted, and national resources were directed towards the war effort at an unprecedented rate. As the Valkov ministry settled in and Bulgaria reaffirmed its loyalties to the Central Powers, the Bulgarian military began to see its first victories in ages against Greece. The Skopje Offensive, which started in 1923, would retake Bulgarian Macedonia from Greece, with Notia falling to the Tsardom on April 18th, 1923. Meanwhile, the forces of Bulgaria would begin to lead successful offensives into southern Macedonia within Greece, however, Greek trenches prevented the Bulgarians from getting too far.

To the people of Greece, this was obviously demoralizing. To go from grasping victory to facing the bulk of the Bulgarian onslaught that had consumed Serbia many years prior was understandably shocking to the Greek population and a new logistic nightmare for Entente officers. Nonetheless, the Hellenic war effort was not deterred. The Macedonian Front was far from lost and the policy of the other Central Powers, which were nations that could really spell defeat for Greece, was to focus on other, more urgent frontlines, such as the Eastern Front and the Alpine Front. The Kingdom of Greece simply carried on, serving as a beacon for an alliance that was thought to soon be extinguished from the European continent.

But sooner or later, destruction would ravage Greece. Two years after the beginning of Phase Two in 1923, the Kingdom of Greece was still holding out against the rage of Ivan Valkov’s Bulgaria, however, it was at this point that the misery of a seemingly endless war had infected the Greek populous. Thousands of Hellenic lives, both of soldiers and the innocent, had been lost to the flames of the Great War and it had become apparent that what was supposed to be a relatively quick and painless victory for Greece could very well result in the nation’s conquest by far-right militarist juntas. But even as morale began to dissipate, the Greek government remained committed to the war effort against Bulgaria by reinforcing trench defenses while Greek diplomats operated backchannels to British colonies and puppet regimes in the Middle East to ensure naval support in the western Mediterranean, even if a major commitment of forces was less plausible following the fall of Great Britain.

However, as the Kingdom of Greece continued to hold out against the torrents of the Great War’s horrors versus Bulgaria, the Kingdom of Italy began to divert forces towards the eastern Mediterranean to fight against the Greeks. Ever since the intervention of Italy in the Great War and the subsequent beginning of Phase Two, the primary focus of Italy had been the conquest of southern France in accordance to both the strategic policies of the Central Powers and Benito Mussolini’s own personal ambitions. Alongside Austria-Hungary, the Italian navy maintained a presence in the Adriatic Sea and the neighboring bodies of water, but the larger navy of the French Third Republic, which more or less remained in tact alongside France’s southern coastline regardless of the seizure of many naval forces in the north by the French Commune, meant that the Regia Marina ultimately dedicated the majority of its resources to the naval clashes of the Western Front.

Once the war on the French mainland came to an end in late 1923 and the French Third Republic fled to northern Africa, Italian naval authority in the western Mediterranean became less and less necessary. After all, the Second French Revolution had transitioned into a clash upon the waters between two already weakened naval forces and the Marine Nationale was obviously far more concerned about the war against the makeshift Communard navy than it was about the war against the Italian navy. The Italian armed forces still maintained a presence on the French mainland, however, these forces were trapped in the Alpine Mountains. In the peaks of these mountains, a relentless war of attrition raged on between the forces of Italy and the Commune. Despite their superior size of the Italian military, the chaotic terrain of the Alps erased any logistical inequalities between the combatants of these peaks as a complex guerrilla war was fought within the mountain ranges, with regiments of both the Commune and Italy sneaking around and alluding their enemy and laying critical blows upon rival forces.

As the bulk of the Italian navy and much of its military was withdrawn from the western Mediterranean Sea, these forces were allocated to the war against Greece in the east. Starting in October 1924, an Italian naval blockade began to encapsulate the Kingdom of Greece in an attempt to isolate and starve off the Hellenic state from the external aid of what remained of the Entente. British naval forces from the Middle East would fight tooth and nail to resist this attempt to forge a blockade, but in the end the forces of the tyrannical Mussolini prevailed and by April 1925 no ship could enter or escape the reaches of Greece without first witnessing the wrath of the Regia Marina.

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Warships of the Regia Marina during the Blockade of Greece, circa May 1925.

As Greece was gradually cut off from its only allies, a coalition of Italian and Austro-Hungarian forces would begin to assert their authority upon the Adriatic Sea and the surrounding territory by crushing whatever remained of the Entente in a region that had been dominated by the Central Powers for years while regiments were pushed through the Balkans towards the Macedonian Front. The Kingdom of Italy in particular would send a large quantity of military forces to the Kingdom of Albania, which had been more or less spared the horrors of warfare as Greece focused on Bulgaria and Italy focused on France. Now, however, as Italy became more and more keen on ensuring the fall of Greece, the fragile Italian protectorate was soon to be condemned to the same fate of the rest of the Balkans; relentless, cruel, and vicious warfare in in the name oppressive powers seeking to dominate the region in an increasingly meaningless and old game of imperialist expansion of influence.

Throughout 1925, Greece would continue to just barely hold out against the Central Powers. Trench warfare would keep both the Italian and Bulgarian invasions at bay while Entente aircraft patrolling the sky above the Mediterranean would keep Greece on life support with supplies that bypassed the blockade below. Nonetheless, Greece was beginning to obviously fall to the Central Powers. Initial incompetent logisitcal and offensive tactics on behalf of the Italians was ended when Ugo Cavallero was put in charge of Italian military forces on the Macedonian Front in November 1925. The war for the Balkans was no longer a war of attrition but instead began to move much quicker. In only a matter of weeks, General Cavallero had pushed the Italian army from near the Greco-Albanian border into the city of Ioannina, which fell to Italy on December 21st, 1925.

This successful offensive by the Central Powers would carry on throughout the subsequent winter as city after city fell to the Italo-Bulgarian onslaught. All the while, Entente aerial forces within the region were gradually defeated as the Regia Marina was equipped with better anti-aircraft weapons. The German Heilsreich was extremely reluctant to cede any portion of its infamous air force to any frontline besides the Eastern Front, but German aircraft production plutocrats were always eager to increase their wealth and happily signed contracts with the Italian government to construct airplane models for the Italian armed forces for utilization in the war against Greece. By January 1926, the last bastion of the Entente in the Balkans was slowly being cut off from its allies and was to be condemned to the fate that had haunted Serbia, Montenegro, and Belgium before it.

To the people of Greece, the beginning of 1926 marked the beginning of the end for their independence from the tyranny of fascism. The Blockade of Greece began to close in and tighten its grip upon the Hellenic kingdom, and a series of naval attacks in January and February 1926 led to the conquest of the Ionian Islands by the Kingdom of Italy. From here, the Italians utilized their new foothold just adjacent to the Greek mainland to launch relentless attacks upon the Greek coastline. In two instances, these attacks gave way to securing beacheads in southern Greece, with Italian forces launched from the Ionian Islands securing Nikolaos and Vigklafia on February 23rd and February 27th, 1926 respectively.

These pushes into southern Greece from the sea were accompanied by Ugo Cavallero’s continued offensive from Albania towards Athens and the Tsardom of Bulgaria’s push through southern Macedonia. As February came to a close, Cavallero linked up with Italian forces invading from Nikolaos at the Battle of Prousos on March 5th, 1926 while whatever Greek defenses existed upon the Peloponnese disintegrated against the much more well-equipped and numerous forces of Italy, with Sparta falling to the wrath of Italy on March 13th, 1926. As the Greek armed forces were annihilated and the remaining forces of the fledgling Entente, once committed to the defense of the birthplace of Western Civilization, evacuated to more critical frontlines that could still be won, it became apparent to the people of Greece and the Hellenic government that defeat was inevitable. Therefore, two days after General Cavallero’s decisive victory at the Battle of Ano Chora, the Kingdom of Greece would unconditionally surrender to the Central Powers.

Shortly after the capitulation of Greece, the belligerents of the Macedonian Front would meet in Patras to sign a peace treaty that would redraw the conquered nation to suit the ambitions of the Central Powers. In regards to direct territorial annexations, the Kingdom of Italy acquired the Ionian Islands and Crete, the Tsardom of Bulgaria acquired the entirety of the region of Macedonia, thus annexing the majority of land first annexed by Greece from the dying Ottoman Empire in the Balkan War of 1913, and the Greek islands of the Aegean Sea were partitioned between Italy and Bulgaria. Furthermore, the region of Epirus was to be given independence as the Republic of Epirus, however, the small state was to become a protectorate of Italy akin to Albania, which meant that Epirus was de facto just another addition to the growing collection of parts of the Mediterranean oppressed by Benito Mussolini.

As for what remained of the rump Kingdom of Greece, it was agreed upon that the nation would continue to exist, however, it was to suffer the same fate as that of Albania by becoming an Italian protectorate. King George II of Greece was to abdicate the throne of his kingdom to King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, while the old democratic government of the Kingdom of Greece was replaced by a one-party totalitarian fascist dictatorship led by the former military officer, Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas. Little more than a pawn of the autocracy of Rome, Metaxas would also have to work alongside a governor-general appointed directly by the Italian government, with none other than General Ugo Cavallero being selected by Mussolini to rule over Greece. Cavallero, who was fascinated by the challenge of rebuilding the Kingdom of Greece into a fascist proxy and utilizing its resources to wage war against what remained of the Entente in the Mediterranean Sea, eagerly accepted the demands of the prime minister of Italy.

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Governor-General Ugo Cavallero of the Kingdom of Greece.

With the ratification of the Treaty of Patras on March 30th, 1926 an era of horror and oppression overcame Greece. Now little more than a colony of the Kingdom of Italy, Greece witnessed the worst of fascism firsthand as Governor-General Cavallero waged vicious purges of political opponents in the middle of the night and instituted a cruel racial and religious hierarchy more or less copied from that of Italy. As the banner of the Kingdom of Italy was raised above Athens, Entente airplanes no longer flew over Greece bearing gifts for the Hellenic people, and would instead retreat back to northern Africa and the Middle East as the Regia Marina turned its guns towards the southern Mediterranean. After over a decade of combat, the Entente had been expelled from the Balkans and the Central Powers had emerged victorious in the region.

Despite the best efforts of the British, French, Portuguese, and even the Brazilians, the cradle of Western Civilization had fallen into the hands of fascism.

But the rule of the Central Powers over the Balkan Peninsula was not set in stone. It would never return to the Entente, but it must be remembered that the Entente was not the only opponent of the Central Powers in the Great War. As reports of the victories of the Red Army from the east and stories of the liberation of the masses from imperialistic tyranny from the west arrived in Central Europe, a yearning for revolution began to grow in territory that was once thought to be firmly within the hands of the Central Powers. And sooner or later, this yearning would turn into action by the people.

Soon, the crimson banner would be hoisted above Budapest and the powder keg of Europe would explode yet again.

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Map of the World circa May 1927.
 
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WOOHOO! It's been a long wait, but it's worth it. I think you post some of the longest individual updates on this site!

One thing to address right away that really seems weird:
. One of the first original Commonwealth designs for a battleship was an aircraft carrier converted from the two Courageous-class battlecruisers captured in the Second Glorious Revolution. This type of aircraft carrier, called the Marx-class aircraft carrier, finished conversion in June 1927 and subsequently saw action immediately afterwards. Marx-class battleships proved to be valued of the WRN, for they were as effective in combating the Entente as they were effective as a symbol of the ingenuity and innovation of the Workers’ Commonwealth.
Are you sure you are not confusing the terms 'battleship' and 'warships'? Because aircraft carriers are most certainly NOT a type of battleship. And it was very confusing when you mention the commonwealth coming up with an "original battleship' design and then describe what is obviously an aircraft carrier. It is very jarring. And it is also confusing because it means when you see the term 'battleship' without qualification the reader can't tell whether it refers to an actual Battleship or some other class of warship.

The old economic order is indeed unsustainable. Seems that, if you're not the arms-dealing USA, turning to autarky is the order of the day.

Good to see Britain slowly realize why centralized military commands are a good thing. Seems they are also going to be pioneers in naval aviation as well. Question: Are Britain's ships mainly powered by coal or oil? Oil-fired boilers are more modern, but coal is MUCH more readily available on the British isles.

I would guess that many Brazilian conscripts are not at all happy to be forced into a doomed-to-disaster English guerilla war on the other side of the world. Just how many divisions did Brazil send there, anyway?

Peace really isn't an option for the Internationale. But that brings up another question: is there any pacifist movement in Germany, even if it's probably forced underground? They've also been fighting for a very long time. I really worry about France in the long run, they're set to end up like Paraguay even if they win, or WORSE. On that note, what percentage of the Russian and German male population is dead?

Seems the Commonwealth has been using it's air power very effectively, would it be fair to tank them among the best air forces in the war at this point? Also, where is Arthur "Bomber" Harris?

The image you use to represent the Armure 1 is an OTL Panzer I. I really hope the actual Armure is much better armed than that! What sort of gun is it meant to have?

There's a dark irony about it being Germany who has to play catch-up on using tanks. With their manpower situation though I worry France will soon be unable to properly exploit their armored breakthroughs, and in any case they'll be in trouble when Germany learns how to counter them.

By the way, what is France-in-Africa and Germany-in-Africa up to while all this is going on? Just desperately trying to develop some sort, any sort, of 'domestic' industry, or any sort of economy with which to buy Brazil's stuff?

Sad to see Greece go. But THAT position was absolutely untenable. With this, the Entente is pushed out of Europe, and soon to be pushed out of India. I suspect that soon the people of the (former) British dominions will get very tired of the war themselves. By the way, how many indigenous African troops are France and Britain/America employing?

Sounds like powder keg that is Austria-Hungary is about to be set alight. Any Czech or even Hungarian revolution will likely meet the wrath of the Heilsreich, but that'll be yet another front to divert troops to. And something else: That is a very ominous bulge in the CP line in Ukraine. If Hungary and Galicia to up in revolution and Russia times an attack right, a huge chunk of the CP's army could be cut off there!

Much of Brazil’s modern history is that of a tragedy.
Yikes. I'm guessing TTL's brazil will play a role similar to OTL Stalinist Russia, a minor power turned into a great power on the backs of horrific oppression.

Speaking of tragedy, some of the biggest villains of this war are the glory hounds in Brazil, Bulgaria, and Elsewhere who are so desperate to protect their power and ego that they plunged their countries into the worst war ever, or prolonged its stay there at the cost of hundreds of thousands of people.
The Second Empire had been forged via a counter-revolution against what Brazilian conservatives had misinterpreted as a communist rebellion
Misinterpreted? It seemed like a real communist revolution to me.
 
Goddamn I love this timeline.

The manpower situation in the Heilsreich has to be getting desperate, probably as much as in France, and they've got to be getting very creative with just getting basic calories to the people they have available. Sure, there isn't the US to prop up their enemies and assist the blockade, but how much food, fuel, and fodder can Germany really import with the enlarged Entente and the International on the offensive at sea, and after a decade, how many men are actually left to fight? Unless there's been a crash agricultural modernization program throughout the Central Powers, they must be at OTL Turnip Winter levels of nutrition year-round by this point for even soldiers and critical workers, and cutting the flour with sawdust for everyone else, while throwing every warm body over the age of six into a factory, farm, or the front. Even with the (increasingly lost and overrun) conquests in the East, and a more stable (for now) Austria-Hungary to continue sucking resources from, I'm not sure how much longer they can plausibly keep going after over a decade of nonstop multi-front war. When the Central Powers fall, I predict it's going to be from within, it's going to be fast, and it's going to be hard. Same goes for the Russians, I suppose, but at least they had a much larger population and potential for industrial and agricultural advancement at the start of all this. Germany's got to be close to maxed out at this point just to stay in the game.

Also, nothing but respect for the balls on the Brazilians for deciding to abolish their republic in order to throw in with the last remnant factions still fighting the same fight they started in 1914. It's a whole new level of autocratic not-giving-a-shit I wasn't quite expecting. Don't get me wrong, you've done an excellent job making their motivations rational and everything makes sense in the context of the TL up to now (and as a narrative way to keep the Entente in the fight and the war as long and complex as possible), but it's got to be a huge shot in the arm (and head, when the secret police find out) for any socialist or democratic dissident movements to hear that your country's just chosen to throw hundreds of thousands of men away on the far side of the world in service to a losing war of naked colonialist aggression, while you suffer at home for want of basic rights and needs.

Take all the time you need to knock out the next chapter, this is one of my favorite TLs going right now.
 
Awesome update
How is the the commonwealth doing on resources and food. I can't imagine they can grow enough food to sustain the island and need to import foodstuff. But with Brazil in the war now and with that regime in charge is any neutral countries willingly to trade?

Also how much manpower is left in the French commune and socialist Britain by now. Even with women toss in, there bound to be a breaking point soon, at this point in the war an entire generation likely gone and another one is on its way too?
 
WOOHOO! It's been a long wait, but it's worth it. I think you post some of the longest individual updates on this site!
Thanks! I’m really sorry to everyone that this chapter took so long, but the last few months have consisted of finals and extracurricular competitions, so I haven’t had the most free time. I hope the next chapter gets out quicker.

Besides, in case anyone hasn’t noticed, I’m a sucker for throwing in a lot of pretty meaningless details into my TLs.:p


One thing to address right away that really seems weird:

Are you sure you are not confusing the terms 'battleship' and 'warships'? Because aircraft carriers are most certainly NOT a type of battleship. And it was very confusing when you mention the commonwealth coming up with an "original battleship' design and then describe what is obviously an aircraft carrier. It is very jarring. And it is also confusing because it means when you see the term 'battleship' without qualification the reader can't tell whether it refers to an actual Battleship or some other class of warship.
Thanks for pointing that out! The explanation for that is basically that I don’t know a lot about naval terminology, so I was genuinely unaware of the differentiation between battleships and warships while writing this.


The old economic order is indeed unsustainable. Seems that, if you're not the arms-dealing USA, turning to autarky is the order of the day.
Yeah, for most neutral states, the options are basically to become an autarky (something that a lot of nations can’t afford), to become arms dealers that adopt an economic policy that is more or less neo-mercantilism, or to economically coalesce around the United States or Japan, the two major neutral powers.


Good to see Britain slowly realize why centralized military commands are a good thing. Seems they are also going to be pioneers in naval aviation as well. Question: Are Britain's ships mainly powered by coal or oil? Oil-fired boilers are more modern, but coal is MUCH more readily available on the British isles.
Yeah, the Commonwealth does utilize a lot of coal power, however, oil power isn’t that uncommon either. The Third International does ultimately have access to a decent amount of oil and neutral states, despite mostly being opposed to socialism, let private industries trade with the Third International for profit.


I would guess that many Brazilian conscripts are not at all happy to be forced into a doomed-to-disaster English guerilla war on the other side of the world. Just how many divisions did Brazil send there, anyway?
Eh, war’s profitable, the Second Empire’s good at making socialists look scary, and the war’s pretty far away, so this isn’t like a homeland invasion for Brazil. Sure, a lot of people aren’t enthusiastic, but it’s not like the regime cares all that much anyway.

As for your question, I’m not really sure how many regiments have been deployed by Brazil, but it’s suffice to say that the bulk of their military force is currently fighting abroad.


Peace really isn't an option for the Internationale. But that brings up another question: is there any pacifist movement in Germany, even if it's probably forced underground? They've also been fighting for a very long time. I really worry about France in the long run, they're set to end up like Paraguay even if they win, or WORSE. On that note, what percentage of the Russian and German male population is dead?
A lot of groups (such as former political parties) forced underground by the Heilsreich support ending the Great War for various reasons, ranging from moral arguments to frustration with the fact that Hugenberg more or less single-handedly started Phase Two because he didn’t like the idea of negotiating with French communist rebels. In the end though, there are no mainstream pacifist movements; any opposition to the war effort is basically purged by the German Fatherland Party the moment they get word of it.

Yeah, messy demographics are going to be a problem for the Commune for a really long time. Souvarine is trying to find ways to get around this, such as female conscription, a stronger emphasis on mechanized warfare, and limiting emigration from France, but these are all ultimately short term solutions.


Seems the Commonwealth has been using it's air power very effectively, would it be fair to tank them among the best air forces in the war at this point? Also, where is Arthur "Bomber" Harris?
Actually, yeah, calling the WDAF one of the best air forces is pretty valid. The strongest one is by far that of Germany, but British and German airplanes aren’t really engaging with each other at this point. As for Harris, he is currently fighting on behalf of the Empire of America on the Atlantic Front as a pilot, but depending on what I do with South Africa, he may wind up elsewhere.


The image you use to represent the Armure 1 is an OTL Panzer I. I really hope the actual Armure is much better armed than that! What sort of gun is it meant to have?
Armure Is are basically just Panzer Is built by the French, with their successors also being parallel Panzers as a sort of irony. Basically, the French Commune uses Panzers and Blitzkrieg against the Germans ITTL.


There's a dark irony about it being Germany who has to play catch-up on using tanks. With their manpower situation though I worry France will soon be unable to properly exploit their armored breakthroughs, and in any case they'll be in trouble when Germany learns how to counter them.
Yeah, as of now Germany is focusing on aircraft when it comes to mechanized warfare. The Germans obviously still have tanks, but the Third International is definitely ahead of the Central Powers on this front.


By the way, what is France-in-Africa and Germany-in-Africa up to while all this is going on? Just desperately trying to develop some sort, any sort, of 'domestic' industry, or any sort of economy with which to buy Brazil's stuff?
The French Fourth Republic is developing some industry, but this obviously takes time and buying from Brazil, the Loyalists, and the United States is better in the short term. Germany-in-Exile is just trying to hold on and is building up industry, but isn’t facing any potential invasion so it doesn’t have to build up any wartime infrastructure.

Sad to see Greece go. But THAT position was absolutely untenable. With this, the Entente is pushed out of Europe, and soon to be pushed out of India. I suspect that soon the people of the (former) British dominions will get very tired of the war themselves. By the way, how many indigenous African troops are France and Britain/America employing?
A lot of African colonies maintain an awkward neutrality in the Great War. Aside from most French colonies and Egypt, the British and French colonial empires are basically staying out of the Great War. There are definitely African colonial forces fighting in the Great War, but especially for the French, making a sizable portion of your military a group you consistently oppress isn’t necessarily the best idea.


Sounds like powder keg that is Austria-Hungary is about to be set alight. Any Czech or even Hungarian revolution will likely meet the wrath of the Heilsreich, but that'll be yet another front to divert troops to. And something else: That is a very ominous bulge in the CP line in Ukraine. If Hungary and Galicia to up in revolution and Russia times an attack right, a huge chunk of the CP's army could be cut off there!
Yup, things are not going to be pretty for the Central Powers on the Eastern Front very soon. I don’t want to give away too much, but let’s just say that the beginning of the end for Phase Two is coming soon.


Yikes. I'm guessing TTL's brazil will play a role similar to OTL Stalinist Russia, a minor power turned into a great power on the backs of horrific oppression.
Yup, that’s basically what I was going for in regards to the industrialization of Brazil in this chapter. With that being said, the role of Brazil to the Entente is more of a United States than a Soviet Union. The Brazilians are basically exporting large swaths of their armed forces and resources abroad to sustain the war effort of an entire faction.


Speaking of tragedy, some of the biggest villains of this war are the glory hounds in Brazil, Bulgaria, and Elsewhere who are so desperate to protect their power and ego that they plunged their countries into the worst war ever, or prolonged its stay there at the cost of hundreds of thousands of people.
This is a really good point. As I previously said, Phase Two was basically singlehandedly started by Hugenberg’s pride, and the fact of the matter is that there have been numerous opportunities thus far ITTL for peace to be made.


Misinterpreted? It seemed like a real communist revolution to me.
Not really. Some of the strikers may have adhered to more revolutionary ideologies, but the overall goal of this Brazilian Strike of 1922 was never to overthrow the government akin to what had happened in France or Russia around the same time.
 
Thanks for pointing that out! The explanation for that is basically that I don’t know a lot about naval terminology, so I was genuinely unaware of the differentiation between battleships and warships while writing this.
I see. A couple of recommendations for you as a writer then: Firstly, please correct the error itself in the chapter. Having something that is usually considered a very rookie mistake is rather unsightly, and jarring compared to the quality of the rest of the TL. Secondly, I recommend you familiarize yourself with the major classes of ship in this era and what they are used for. The naval theater will grow increasingly important as this war goes global.
Armure Is are basically just Panzer Is built by the French, with their successors also being parallel Panzers as a sort of irony. Basically, the French Commune uses Panzers and Blitzkrieg against the Germans ITTL.
I like the irony too, but the French desperately need to figure out something with a bigger gun. especially since Russia is fielding BT-5 equivalents with a proper cannon.

By the way, another question for you as a writer: How do you decide what people become the major figures in the various ATL revolutionary regimes and fascist juntas? One reason I don't write timelines myself is because I have no idea how to find people to take roles which didn't exist in OTL.
 
It is a good story, but for me it is still hard to believe that the war still continues after ten years, France must be worse than the First World War to carry out effective attacks, its people must be starving, just like Russia That only had a maximum of one year of peace before entering the war again, I don't know how the riots have not yet begun.
 
Goddamn I love this timeline.
Thank you so much! :extremelyhappy:


The manpower situation in the Heilsreich has to be getting desperate, probably as much as in France, and they've got to be getting very creative with just getting basic calories to the people they have available. Sure, there isn't the US to prop up their enemies and assist the blockade, but how much food, fuel, and fodder can Germany really import with the enlarged Entente and the International on the offensive at sea, and after a decade, how many men are actually left to fight? Unless there's been a crash agricultural modernization program throughout the Central Powers, they must be at OTL Turnip Winter levels of nutrition year-round by this point for even soldiers and critical workers, and cutting the flour with sawdust for everyone else, while throwing every warm body over the age of six into a factory, farm, or the front. Even with the (increasingly lost and overrun) conquests in the East, and a more stable (for now) Austria-Hungary to continue sucking resources from, I'm not sure how much longer they can plausibly keep going after over a decade of nonstop multi-front war. When the Central Powers fall, I predict it's going to be from within, it's going to be fast, and it's going to be hard. Same goes for the Russians, I suppose, but at least they had a much larger population and potential for industrial and agricultural advancement at the start of all this. Germany's got to be close to maxed out at this point just to stay in the game.
Yup, Germany is basically a war machine at this point. It helps that the German military is highly mechanized by now and isn’t as reliant on pure manpower alone, but things aren’t as peachy as they were for the German war effort only a few years ago back when resources from their now-extinct puppet states in Eastern Europe were rolling in. With that, being said, however, Germany’s opponents aren’t exactly in a better position manpower-wise, so it isn’t like the Germans can be overrun by a state with larger manpower anytime soon.


Also, nothing but respect for the balls on the Brazilians for deciding to abolish their republic in order to throw in with the last remnant factions still fighting the same fight they started in 1914. It's a whole new level of autocratic not-giving-a-shit I wasn't quite expecting. Don't get me wrong, you've done an excellent job making their motivations rational and everything makes sense in the context of the TL up to now (and as a narrative way to keep the Entente in the fight and the war as long and complex as possible), but it's got to be a huge shot in the arm (and head, when the secret police find out) for any socialist or democratic dissident movements to hear that your country's just chosen to throw hundreds of thousands of men away on the far side of the world in service to a losing war of naked colonialist aggression, while you suffer at home for want of basic rights and needs.
Who needs human rights when the New Western Civilization needs upholding? :p

Seriously though, this comment gave me a smirk. The Brazilians, while a totalitarian nightmare, are not the cartoonishly evil villains of this TL, but that doesn’t change the fact that perpetuating the bloodiest war in human history over really petty and imperialistic reasons will cause historians in the future ITTL to seethe with frustration.


Take all the time you need to knock out the next chapter, this is one of my favorite TLs going right now.
Well thanks! I really appreciate this! I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep, but I expect the next chapter to take a bit shorter. The last few months have just been filled with a lot of personal work and activities, so returning to this every now and then has been a nice way to just have a fun side project.
 
Awesome update
Thanks!


How is the the commonwealth doing on resources and food. I can't imagine they can grow enough food to sustain the island and need to import foodstuff. But with Brazil in the war now and with that regime in charge is any neutral countries willingly to trade?
AFAIK, there are some interesting articles on how Great Britain could become self-sustained in regards to food production. Putting that aside, neutral states are mostly willing to trade with the Third International, because hey, you can sell stuff to desperate nations clinging on for dear life for a pretty good payment. I’ll delve into this system more in the next chapter, but the right now United States basically has a bunch of corporations that are profiteering solely off of selling to all factions of the Great War and these industries play such a strong roll in the economy that Wall Street stock brokers are spending their free time reading up on the latest developments in Europe to see who’s worth investing in.


Also how much manpower is left in the French commune and socialist Britain by now. Even with women toss in, there bound to be a breaking point soon, at this point in the war an entire generation likely gone and another one is on its way too?
While this isn’t as bad for the Commonwealth (historically, WWI messed up French demographics more than it did Great Britain), both states are still running around with not a ton of manpower. With that being said, however, so are all of their enemies, so they’re not necessarily doomed at this point. But you’re absolutely right that a breaking point is on the horizon. The short-term solution is basically mechanization and tapping into parts of the population previously not conscripted, but this doesn’t work forever.
 
It is a good story, but for me it is still hard to believe that the war still continues after ten years, France must be worse than the First World War to carry out effective attacks, its people must be starving, just like Russia That only had a maximum of one year of peace before entering the war again, I don't know how the riots have not yet begun.
I mean, there was a riot in France. That riot became the French Commune. The reason that France is stable now basically comes down to the fact that the Commune is fighting a defensive war against an enemy that won’t stop until France is wiped out, and the people of France know this. A peace agreement with the Central Powers literally isn’t an option at this point, so France’s only option is to keep on fighting and hope for the best. No one in France wants a war, but it’s not really their choice.

As for Russia, the war on the Eastern Front is actually going pretty well for the Red Army right now. There isn’t much of a reason for the general public to oppose the Great War, and anyone who does can be easily purged.
 
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