alternatehistory.com

It's a Christmas special!

...on Christmas Eve. Close enough.
The Unitarian experiment in Visegrad was under siege.

The CUS was formed out of bloodshed and was in bloodshed for all of it's existence - and whatever you want to say, it's hard to disagree that being in constant war is not a good state of affairs for anyone. After ten years of economic and political hardship, the lands of Visegrad were immediately thrown into a bloody civil war, one which had already claimed many hundreds of thousands of casualties. In this state, economy did not and could not thrive - the nation was on the brink of famine, only food requisitions and high taxes were able to sustain the bloated army (not even talking about the countryside), while the industry lacked even the most basic equipment - much of the work in factories had to be done by hand. German air bomber raids destroyed much of the vital infrastructure in the country, destroying important roads and railways and thus utterly neutering transport capacity. Radical factions within the Unitarian Congress and underground anti-Unitarian organizations were eroding the morale of the populace and the army.

And they were up against Germania, the supreme land military power in Europe.

Gyorgy Koves and the far-blue Titanium Guards sensed this desperation across the Confederation and knew that this was their time to act. Gregor Samsa's government in Buda stood on feet of clay. During a particularly calm day at the front, August 11th, 1940, thus referred to as the August 11th Affair, the Titanium Guards in Buda were suddenly mobilized and activated. Armed thugs and youth surrounded the Chamber of the Unitarian Congress, formerly the Luxemburg Royal Palace, and presented a demand of surrender to Samsa and the deputies locked inside. However, Samsa was no idiot and moderately aware of the likelihood of this event earlier, so instead of giving a definite answer, he requested Koves and the Titanium Guards two hours to make his choice. Almost immediately during those two hours, the chairman phoned the garrison in Visegrad, and soon enough, a bloody street battle commenced between the loyalists and the paramilitary. Military units from the surroundings of the city were brought in as reinforcement, and the Titanium Guards soon found themselves overwhelmed. Koves fled the city and arrived to Cluj, a city in the east of the country whose population was loyal to his movement. The uneasy peace he and Samsa had was now gone.

Civil war between Samsa's loyalists and Koves's extremists instantly broke out, erupting across the entire nation and threatening it's existence on a fundamental level.

This is where a region mostly ignored by everyone up until now suddenly came to light...

One problem which the recently founded CUS had to solve was the Romani minority. The Romani, called everything from Gypsies to Tzigane, were an insular itinerant minority hailing from the 14th-15th centuries and dispersed all over Europe - however, they were the most visible in Visegrad. Here, somewhere from one to two million Romani lived, and they constantly resisted any attempts at integration or assimilation. Unlike the Litvaks in Lithuania, who largely ended up favored by the regime and became it's allies, the Romani were always viewed by the Visegradians with contempt. Even during the largely liberal democratic era, they were forcefully settled, denied the right to travel and suffered mass anti-ziganism. Once the revolution arrived, however, the problem of dealing with this independent and hardly integratable minority fell on the shoulders of the Unitarians - and Gregor Samsa opted for the painful solution. Szekely Land was designated as the Romani Autonomous Unitarian Republic (RAUR), a part of the Hungarian Unitarian Republic. all Romani living in the CUS instantly gained a warrant for deportation to the region (they were soon joined by deportees from Turkey, occupied Wallachia-Moldavia, Bulgaria and Slavonia, bumping up the total population of the autonomous region up to three million total), while the Hungarians and Romanians there were moved out.

This act was completely loathed by both Hungarian nationalists and by the Kovesians, and with the civil war ongoing, the Titanium Guards aimed to destroy the RAUR and cleanse this artificial territory of all Romani to bring it back to Hungary's fold. From September to October 1940, after the light defending forces in the mountainous overcrowded region were defeated by the paramilitaries and the rebel military units, a bloody period known as the Pharrajimos - destruction. Mass acts of violence and numerous atrocities were committed across the Autonomous Republic, forcing the Romani to flee the dense cities in mass and spread across the mountainous region of Transylvania. At least a hundred thousand people were hanged, shot into ditches and thrown into mass graves in this period of time - and it sparked a harsh response by the locals. Under the command of a rising ambitious leader, a former colonel in Wallachia-Moldavia of Romani ethnicity - Ion Voicu - the Romani began a guerilla campaign against the Titanium Guards. And not just them, but also the rest of the Commonwealth - the CUS and Turkey had only brought suffering, but now that the Romani nation was in one place, it was ready to fight back and claim it's independence.


That was not the only way the Romani fought the harsh measures inflicted on their people.

News about the atrocities in Visegrad were quick to spread, disseminating through the underground and reachine the moderately large Romani minority in Germania, which immediately took the matter to the public and the government. News of the Pharrajimos and many other acts of violence, especially including the bloody denationalization process in the Balkans, took the German public by storm, causing a massive uproar in the press. The people of Europe were shocked - not as much shocked at the actual events, but more at the idea that the peoples of Visegrad, once inhabitants of a free, democratic, inclusive federation, have descended into such chaos, evil and slaughter of each other... Where did all of this pent up hatred come from?

The news of this massacre reached not just the public, but also the government of the kingdom of Germania, and after a mass leaflet and letter campaign and intense public pressure, Prime Minister Sternberg was forced to act. On October 21st, 1940, the German government released the Schönbrunn Charter, named after the royal palace where the document was signed - it declared that upon the liberation of the former Visegrad, all the nations and ethnicities living within it shall have a right to democratic self-determination and be guaranteed German protection and assurance that the events of the War of the Danube will never happen again. This was big - while Germania had flirted a little with the nationalist forces fighting the Unitarians before, the Charter was the final nail which solidified the German nation's new goal of liberating Central Europe, not refounding the multinational kingdom of the past. In follow-up treaties, Sternberg extended a hand of cooperation to the Republic of Poland, the most advanced of the nationalist rebellions, and Lolek and Bolek could not say no to such support. At the same time, the German government reached out to the Romani, the Bohemians, the Hungarians and the myriads of Slavic nations, both to them and their diaspora in Germania.

Meanwhile, Operation Schwarzburg continued, and with the CUS fighting among themselves and their economy in shambles, it was turning more and more into a walk in the park. An advance into the Hungarian Plain and Slovakia in August and September saw the fall of Buda and Pest, the two largest cities in the Confederation, as well as the German troops crossing the Danube with little resistance. In a number of cases, the Unitarian soldiers would throw down their arms and raise their hands upon the mere sight of the enemy landships. The Polish nationalists, although definitely not as well armed as the German army, were making their own offensives, too, and while the bulk of the CUS forces were busy dealing with Germania or each other, they liberated much of Galicia from enemy occupation. A historical event happened in late October - upon the fall of Debrecen, a temporary capital of the loyalist CUS after Buda's fall, the Reichsheer reported that among the many captives and prisoners of war, one is a particular individual known as Gregor Samsa. He, along with much of the loyalist Congress, failed to escape the city in time, before it was encircled, and thus fell in the grasp of the Germans. With the leadership of the CUS decapitated and held in Prague for the time being, and the Unitarians pretty much limited to Transylvania, the nation became even more of a chaotic mess than it was before, leaving Turkey pretty much alone on this front.


The Commonwealth, or at least one of their former members, were suffering losses in East Asia, too. Every single day, the Union of Japan would regret the attack on Okinawa more and more - as it turns out, the damage the Japanese fleet sustained made it unable to even protect it's home waters against the mighty Chinese armada, and within a matter of months, it got reduced to a few destroyers, frigates and submarines locked to the port of Edo. Meanwhile, the industrial base of the Shun Dynasty was mobilized to it's fullest to repair and replace the losses in Okinawa, more than making up for them in half a years' time. However, even with complete aerial and naval superiority, the Chinese hesitated to make a naval landing on the Home Islands - partially because it was seen as too costly of an endeavor, partially because the commanders of the Chinese army and navy were arguing over which side gets to plant the metaphorical flag and organize the invasion. Instead, China opted to erode the Japanese morale through economical warfare - a complete naval blockade was placed on the Home Islands, all convoys or merchant ships heading there were to be immediately turned back on sight, while the moderately sized air force, placed in bases in Korea, began a bombing campaign across the nation, targeting industry, ports and infrastructure.

Japan, a mountainous nation reliant on food imports, was immediately pushed to the brink of starvation and forced to enter harsh rationing, but despite that, the morale of the nation did not erode. That's what a long period of indoctrination and a "rally around the flag" effects does to one.

Africa was perhaps the only region where the Commonwealth had successes. Combined with a Turkish landing in Somalia, the Union of East Africa was sweeping across the region, uniting tribe after tribe under their wing and their King. A lot of that came to the lack of preparation by the French forces - while Ethiopia was a nation under their sphere in the past, the French colonial government paid little attention to the happenings and domestic situation there. As such, is it really a surprise that the colonial units whom the Ethiopians had to fight were understrength, equipped with outdated equipment and manned by local men who were not all that eager to serve a white overlord? However, the government in Paris was getting ready to fix this mistake - in late November, 1940, Director Theophile Clerisseau approved the formation of an expeditionary "Africa Corps", a motorized land force of 80 000 men, to be shipped to East Africa the next year to deal with the rebellion, one which was already resonating across the French colonial empire and causing unwelcome rumbles.

However, by far the fiercest battles of the year took place in Eastern Europe, where the culmination of Operation Pacas, the Battle of Nizhny Novgorod, took place. The Lithuanian Army through the entirety of the 2nd Army, up to 80 000 men, for this three months long offensive from early August to late October, facing off against, once again, hastily erected fortifications and a large Russian garrisoned contingent. While the battle started out with the Lithuanians having the upper hand, pressing into the suburbs of the 250 000 inhabitant large city, their offensive was lacking steam, while the Russian military learned from their mistakes of the past. Aircraft acquired from the Volgaks was preventing the Lithuanians from acquiring air superiority, while the heavily forested terrain and high levels of anti-air defenses turned back any attempts at glider assault. By the time September arrived, the first Volgak reinforcements arrived. The Communities of the Volga did not waste any time preparing for conflict - mere days after the Lithuanian declaration of war, Gennady Zinoviev pushed through the Conscription Act through the Council of Vostovsk, laying down the first concrete steps on creating a large standing Volgak military. This military saw it's baptism by blood at Nizhny-Novgorod, where, by the end of October, up to 40 000 soldiers from the Volga fought.

And when the first snow started falling in November, the supreme commander of the Lithuanian General Staff, Stasys Dirmantas, ordered to call the rest of the offensive off. With Nizhny-Novgorod standing strong and the Russians still in the shape to fight, it can safely be said that Operation Pacas was a failure. And the Vadas was furious - now, with winter approaching, the war shall have to be extended to 1942. Lithuania's capacity to wage war was waning, while the Slavs were still holding strong. Troops sent to occupy the Don Region were defeated by local militia and the regular Volgak militarY and, much like in the North, the front went to a standstill.

The blame was put on Stasys Dirmantas, and despite the general being one of the earliest allies of the Revival Front and perhaps the reason why they were even in power at all, he soon found himself in a ditch with a bullet in the back of his head. Since it was clearly obvious that the failures in the front came from a lack of loyalty and sabotage from the commanders, Petras Cvirka was moved to replace Dirmantas as the chief of staff - and Cvirka, who long since hoped to elevate the Green Berets to replace what he saw as the reactionary and "dangerous" Imperial military, couldn't have possibly been happier. The same could not be said about the officer corps itself - no, they were outright furious. It was probably at that moment - Dirmantas's execution and Cvirka's appointment - that the leaders of the military realized that no, the Revivalists were never going to "save" Lithuania, they are merely a gang of lucky madmen who will drag it to the ground.

But that is secondary. What the Lithuanians truly had to worry about was the horde of furious and vengeful Slavs to the east. Slavs who had finally managed to turn the tide of the War.