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Chapter 107: Firestorm
Part 107: Firestorm (Nov 1958-Feb 1959)
Operation Spring Thaw was a relief to some and terror to some others, but to one nation, it marked a chance. That nation was Yenilemist East Turkey.
It was no surprise to anyone on this planet that the division of Turkey into East and West was completely artificial and born out of the complicated nature of the end of the War of the Danube. Even international observers noted that this division of the nation would bring more harm than good, so could you imagine what the Turks themselves felt? To be defeated and humiliated in a war and leave it as a dismantled nation... After the War of the Danube, the two went down different, though eerily parallel paths. The West was more populous and held Constantinople, formerly Kubilay, the largest city in Anatolia by far, but the East had more strategic depth and arguably had more of a legitimate claim to all of Turkey. East Turkey became a "Functionalist republic", a nation which, while holding trappings of a democracy, but are dominated by a powerful government set on executing some sort of "function", or "duty". West Turkey, on the other hand, was officially a traditional democracy, but it felt the presence of the Germans at all times - their "liberators" saw no reason to not interfere in Constantinople's politics, tell any dangerous political parties to stuff it, and orchestrate an extensive "deunitarianization" of the country to eradicate the ideology's holdouts among the populace. So, in a way, what the two states had in common was a farce of a democracy.
Relations between the two states were... far from great. Everyone still remembered the Eskisehir Crisis of 1949, one which nearly resulted in a conflict between the two nations over the control of the split town of Eskisehir. Thankfully, the diplomatic delegations of both nations diffused the tensions before they devolved into an outright war, leaving the Balkans and the Middle East only wonder about who might have won the conflict had it evolved into an actual war. Well... less of a "who might have won" question and more of a "how long would the Yenilemists survive" one. After all, no matter how hard the East might attempt to catch up to the West through oil exports and economic development, the West had the unbeatable factor of being a part of the European Defense Commission, which included the continent's primary military power. And that's when we get to the Great Asian War. Alongside the United States, Germania and the rest of the Commission was busy fighting a war in the far east, which meant that they had less resources to spend on a potential war in Anatolia. In fact, the threat of a war there was one of the many factors why Germania was somewhat reluctant to commit so much to a war in the East, at least at first.
The plan for the invasion of the West was approved by Sefa Armagan on October of 1958. As the plan went, the fight would consist of a single offensive across the West, sweeping away the enemy forces and the few German units there before the Commission would have a chance to react. After Thrace is seized, the offensive would stop, and the Turks would contact Germany for a peace, offering an end in hostilities in exchange for a recognition of Yenilemist control over both Turkeys. As the plan posited, Germania would be unwilling to continue the fight or invite the rest of the United States to the conflict, lest they risk Turkey joining the Commonwealth and Anatolia becoming a front of the Great Asian War. Though definitely very ambitious, the plan at the very least had some logic behind it, and on November 14th, three days after the fall of Nijasure, while the eyes of the world were focused on the Deccan, the war began with the East Turkish shelling of Eskisehir. The Two Weeks War began.
The German response to the news was angry, but not surprised. It would only make sense for the East Turks, who had always held designs on all of Anatolia, to use the opportunity of the largest war in humankind to their advantage. And it's hard to hide large scale military maneuvers in response for an invasion, too. Nor were the Germans unaware of what the Turkish plan would likely be in this war - neither side was completely stupid. In response to West Turkish border units ending up blown back, surrounded and destroyed during the first few days of the war, Germania mobilized its reserve divisions, air wings and especially their air infantry, inherited from the War of the Danube. German mobile divisions flowed into West Turkey by air and soon by sea.
One thing the Turks predicted correctly was the German unwillingness to escalate the conflict by inviting the rest of the United States into the conflict - only Commission members ended up involved. So, in this regard, Germania was playing by the Turkish rules - and won by them. What the Yenilemist state predicted inaccurately was the German capabilities of bringing large numbers of troops to Anatolia in a matter of days - on November 19th, the East Turks suffered their first defeat near the city of Bursa, followed by a string of other defeats across the whole front at the hands of German, Greek and West Turkish soldiers. By the end of the first week, the East Turkish military had lost all of their momentum and began a wide, disorganized retreat. One unbeatable advantage the Germans and their allies held was aerial supremacy - their jet fighters easily tore through the 1940s fighters of their opposition and established complete control of the Anatolian skies, freely bombing the attacking and retreating Yenilemist soldiers. On the 27th of November, the front line returned back to the pre-war demarcation line, and Armagan's regime, having chipped away its teeth somewhat, began to sue for armistice.
Germania, unwilling to fight a protracted war in Anatolia while other matters were on their mind, agreed, putting the end to the Two Weeks War. A surprisingly peaceful conflict when compared to the Great Asian War at large - only about 30 thousand losses for both sides and one Turkish pride as casualties.
German and West Turkish forces advancing during the Two Weeks War
After the capture of Nijasure, the US forces continued to advance forward, crossing the Western Ghats to attack the territory of the former kingdom of Travancore, now the state of Kerala. A number of ports had already been seized and the airport of Nijasure, which survived the invasion, could be used for the transfer of troops and equipment to the subcontinent. Within one and a half months, the size of the Allied forces in Deccan swelled up to one million soldiers - if not for the Two Weeks War, perhaps that number would have been even higher. Though the allies had faced only light and disorganized resistance first, the Indian lines soon got stiff as well, and the December offensive towards Bengaluru and Chennai, two of the most important cities in the southern Deccan, turned into a bloodbath for both sides. However, eventually, the US advantage in aerial superiority and the unpredictability factor they held (the Indian generals and officers were mainly experienced in the horde-on-horde combat of Southeast Asia) prevailed, and both cities fell by January.
Now obviously, the Indian government did not take this well - however, during the last... year or so, things had turned pretty enigmatic in Lucknow. US espionage found it hard to uncover what was exactly going in within Amrit Ahuya's clique and what turns have been taken in Indian politics, so all they had to go with for making guesses were little tidbits of information here and there, various rumors, and the tiny pieces of information uncovered from Indian propagands. The Cult of the Trishula, the informal name for the clique of politicians and officers within the Lucknow government seeking to use the nuclear bomb for geopolitical gain, had been discredited, but not completely removed from power. News from the Netaji himself were brief and scarce, mostly limited to official statements or Sengupta speeches, which was so eerie that for a few weeks, the US believed that he had already been removed from power by an Aankhein coup. That wasn't the case, of course, and Ahuya's official appearance in Hyderabad to rouse up the morale of the soldiers after the fall of Bengaluru on January 1st removed those doubts. As far as the West knew, the Aankhein and the military were firmly loyal to the Netaji - few believed that the war against the US was so unwinnable that they already need to tie the noose, many still bet on a fallout between the West and the Chinese, or even a separate peace offer from one or the other. Or maybe they just believed that the war could be won the old fashion way.
How? Well, January 7th cleared out those doubts.
On a straight line from Panaji from Ongole, in six strategic locations, either important roads or railroads, the Indian army suddenly detonated six nuclear waste bombs, or radioactive "dirty" bombs, creating the situation known as the "Nuclear cage". The Western allies occupied the Deccan south of the line, but then it stopped. With the roads destroyed and most of the passages out of the peninsula contaminated by radiation, advancing north became temporarily impossible logistically. This was exactly what the Indians wanted, immediately beginning a process of reorganization within the entire front and raising additional dozens of divisions in preparation for the cage being "opened". At this point, few people cared that over 300 thousand civilians had to be evacuated from nuclear bombardment sites, and thousands ended up hospitalized for radiation-induced sickness, especially cancer.
The "cage" was not completely shut, of course, which meant that the gaps in between the fallout areas in the Panaji-Ongole line would become the primary sources of conflict in this period. The locations were jungles, farmlands, mountains, valleys and abandoned towns, and in this stage of the war, the Lithuanians excelled above all, especially the Lithuanian glider infantry, whose additional mobility proved to be one of the deciding factors in the skirmishes.
Battle of Bengaluru, December 1958
By 1959, through a combination of successful diplomacy and a constant, looming Indian threat, the US were joined by Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden and Mejico. Of course, all of them brought problems of their own to the table. For one, the Netherlands and Mejico were hardly democratic, and the former even held revanchist designs on German-controlled Friesland (only French pressure eventually forced them to look past that and join the alliance). Spain and Sweden, on the other hand, didn't have much of an army prepared to travel to East Asia. However, the importance of Spanish and Dutch naval bases on the Indian Ocean coast for allied shipping could not be underestimated, while Mejico's somewhat surprising entry into the war finally gave the US reasonable power projection in the Pacific Ocean.
Outside of all that, the Great Asian War was... surprisingly calm. Both EASA and the Commonwealth were recovering and resting, war exhaustion having finally caught up to both. While the Indian totalitarian machine suppressed any dissent, it was much more open in China and its allies, where the reasoning for the continuation of the war was starting to be questioned. The same staredown and playing cat-and-mouse with rebels in Indochina continued in Southeast Asia. Indians and Acehi were continuing their slow island hopping campaign across Nusantara. Oceanic forces were still struggling in New Guinea.
All quiet on the eastern front, you might say.
Part 107: Firestorm (Nov 1958-Feb 1959)
It was no surprise to anyone on this planet that the division of Turkey into East and West was completely artificial and born out of the complicated nature of the end of the War of the Danube. Even international observers noted that this division of the nation would bring more harm than good, so could you imagine what the Turks themselves felt? To be defeated and humiliated in a war and leave it as a dismantled nation... After the War of the Danube, the two went down different, though eerily parallel paths. The West was more populous and held Constantinople, formerly Kubilay, the largest city in Anatolia by far, but the East had more strategic depth and arguably had more of a legitimate claim to all of Turkey. East Turkey became a "Functionalist republic", a nation which, while holding trappings of a democracy, but are dominated by a powerful government set on executing some sort of "function", or "duty". West Turkey, on the other hand, was officially a traditional democracy, but it felt the presence of the Germans at all times - their "liberators" saw no reason to not interfere in Constantinople's politics, tell any dangerous political parties to stuff it, and orchestrate an extensive "deunitarianization" of the country to eradicate the ideology's holdouts among the populace. So, in a way, what the two states had in common was a farce of a democracy.
Relations between the two states were... far from great. Everyone still remembered the Eskisehir Crisis of 1949, one which nearly resulted in a conflict between the two nations over the control of the split town of Eskisehir. Thankfully, the diplomatic delegations of both nations diffused the tensions before they devolved into an outright war, leaving the Balkans and the Middle East only wonder about who might have won the conflict had it evolved into an actual war. Well... less of a "who might have won" question and more of a "how long would the Yenilemists survive" one. After all, no matter how hard the East might attempt to catch up to the West through oil exports and economic development, the West had the unbeatable factor of being a part of the European Defense Commission, which included the continent's primary military power. And that's when we get to the Great Asian War. Alongside the United States, Germania and the rest of the Commission was busy fighting a war in the far east, which meant that they had less resources to spend on a potential war in Anatolia. In fact, the threat of a war there was one of the many factors why Germania was somewhat reluctant to commit so much to a war in the East, at least at first.
The plan for the invasion of the West was approved by Sefa Armagan on October of 1958. As the plan went, the fight would consist of a single offensive across the West, sweeping away the enemy forces and the few German units there before the Commission would have a chance to react. After Thrace is seized, the offensive would stop, and the Turks would contact Germany for a peace, offering an end in hostilities in exchange for a recognition of Yenilemist control over both Turkeys. As the plan posited, Germania would be unwilling to continue the fight or invite the rest of the United States to the conflict, lest they risk Turkey joining the Commonwealth and Anatolia becoming a front of the Great Asian War. Though definitely very ambitious, the plan at the very least had some logic behind it, and on November 14th, three days after the fall of Nijasure, while the eyes of the world were focused on the Deccan, the war began with the East Turkish shelling of Eskisehir. The Two Weeks War began.
The German response to the news was angry, but not surprised. It would only make sense for the East Turks, who had always held designs on all of Anatolia, to use the opportunity of the largest war in humankind to their advantage. And it's hard to hide large scale military maneuvers in response for an invasion, too. Nor were the Germans unaware of what the Turkish plan would likely be in this war - neither side was completely stupid. In response to West Turkish border units ending up blown back, surrounded and destroyed during the first few days of the war, Germania mobilized its reserve divisions, air wings and especially their air infantry, inherited from the War of the Danube. German mobile divisions flowed into West Turkey by air and soon by sea.
One thing the Turks predicted correctly was the German unwillingness to escalate the conflict by inviting the rest of the United States into the conflict - only Commission members ended up involved. So, in this regard, Germania was playing by the Turkish rules - and won by them. What the Yenilemist state predicted inaccurately was the German capabilities of bringing large numbers of troops to Anatolia in a matter of days - on November 19th, the East Turks suffered their first defeat near the city of Bursa, followed by a string of other defeats across the whole front at the hands of German, Greek and West Turkish soldiers. By the end of the first week, the East Turkish military had lost all of their momentum and began a wide, disorganized retreat. One unbeatable advantage the Germans and their allies held was aerial supremacy - their jet fighters easily tore through the 1940s fighters of their opposition and established complete control of the Anatolian skies, freely bombing the attacking and retreating Yenilemist soldiers. On the 27th of November, the front line returned back to the pre-war demarcation line, and Armagan's regime, having chipped away its teeth somewhat, began to sue for armistice.
Germania, unwilling to fight a protracted war in Anatolia while other matters were on their mind, agreed, putting the end to the Two Weeks War. A surprisingly peaceful conflict when compared to the Great Asian War at large - only about 30 thousand losses for both sides and one Turkish pride as casualties.
German and West Turkish forces advancing during the Two Weeks War
Now obviously, the Indian government did not take this well - however, during the last... year or so, things had turned pretty enigmatic in Lucknow. US espionage found it hard to uncover what was exactly going in within Amrit Ahuya's clique and what turns have been taken in Indian politics, so all they had to go with for making guesses were little tidbits of information here and there, various rumors, and the tiny pieces of information uncovered from Indian propagands. The Cult of the Trishula, the informal name for the clique of politicians and officers within the Lucknow government seeking to use the nuclear bomb for geopolitical gain, had been discredited, but not completely removed from power. News from the Netaji himself were brief and scarce, mostly limited to official statements or Sengupta speeches, which was so eerie that for a few weeks, the US believed that he had already been removed from power by an Aankhein coup. That wasn't the case, of course, and Ahuya's official appearance in Hyderabad to rouse up the morale of the soldiers after the fall of Bengaluru on January 1st removed those doubts. As far as the West knew, the Aankhein and the military were firmly loyal to the Netaji - few believed that the war against the US was so unwinnable that they already need to tie the noose, many still bet on a fallout between the West and the Chinese, or even a separate peace offer from one or the other. Or maybe they just believed that the war could be won the old fashion way.
How? Well, January 7th cleared out those doubts.
On a straight line from Panaji from Ongole, in six strategic locations, either important roads or railroads, the Indian army suddenly detonated six nuclear waste bombs, or radioactive "dirty" bombs, creating the situation known as the "Nuclear cage". The Western allies occupied the Deccan south of the line, but then it stopped. With the roads destroyed and most of the passages out of the peninsula contaminated by radiation, advancing north became temporarily impossible logistically. This was exactly what the Indians wanted, immediately beginning a process of reorganization within the entire front and raising additional dozens of divisions in preparation for the cage being "opened". At this point, few people cared that over 300 thousand civilians had to be evacuated from nuclear bombardment sites, and thousands ended up hospitalized for radiation-induced sickness, especially cancer.
The "cage" was not completely shut, of course, which meant that the gaps in between the fallout areas in the Panaji-Ongole line would become the primary sources of conflict in this period. The locations were jungles, farmlands, mountains, valleys and abandoned towns, and in this stage of the war, the Lithuanians excelled above all, especially the Lithuanian glider infantry, whose additional mobility proved to be one of the deciding factors in the skirmishes.
Battle of Bengaluru, December 1958
Outside of all that, the Great Asian War was... surprisingly calm. Both EASA and the Commonwealth were recovering and resting, war exhaustion having finally caught up to both. While the Indian totalitarian machine suppressed any dissent, it was much more open in China and its allies, where the reasoning for the continuation of the war was starting to be questioned. The same staredown and playing cat-and-mouse with rebels in Indochina continued in Southeast Asia. Indians and Acehi were continuing their slow island hopping campaign across Nusantara. Oceanic forces were still struggling in New Guinea.
All quiet on the eastern front, you might say.
- Augenis
- Word Count: 2k