alternatehistory.com
WhiteDragon25's Pre-Made Country Backstories
Thailand during WWII was coerced by Japan into an alliance wherein they would be promised the return of land taken from them by French and British imperialism, and after Japan lost at the end of the war, Thailand was punished by the British for their alliance with Japan by being stripped of their territory along the Kra Isthmus and Malay Peninsula, with said territory being given to British Malaya in its place.
Japan placed both Malaysian and Dutch Borneo under a single occupation administration during the war, and that administration system carried onto Indonesia when they declared independence from the Dutch upon Japan's surrender at the end of the war. The Federation of Indonesia would later incorporate Papua New Guinea when the latter achieved independence from Australia.
When Vietnam invaded Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge in 1975, Thailand saw a chance to reclaim lost territory and invaded Cambodia itself as well, eventually clashing with the Vietnamese when the two sides ended up meeting in the middle; an accidental incursion by Thailand into into Laos dragged them into the conflict as well, causing Vietnam to come to their defense. Thailand quickly capitulated Laos easily upon invading and capturing Laos's capital of Vientiane, causing their weak government to collapse; despite that, though, Thailand was unable to do the same to Vietnam and the war ground into a stalemate with Thailand suing for a white peace and a partitioning of the captured territories between the two combatants. With the Khmer Rouge destroyed and Cambodia now split between Thailand and Vietnam, and Laos effectively collapsed and under Vietnamese administration, both Cambodia and Laos were incorporated into Vietnam to form a new Indochinese Union.
Japan placed both Malaysian and Dutch Borneo under a single occupation administration during the war, and that administration system carried onto Indonesia when they declared independence from the Dutch upon Japan's surrender at the end of the war. The Federation of Indonesia would later incorporate Papua New Guinea when the latter achieved independence from Australia.
When Vietnam invaded Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge in 1975, Thailand saw a chance to reclaim lost territory and invaded Cambodia itself as well, eventually clashing with the Vietnamese when the two sides ended up meeting in the middle; an accidental incursion by Thailand into into Laos dragged them into the conflict as well, causing Vietnam to come to their defense. Thailand quickly capitulated Laos easily upon invading and capturing Laos's capital of Vientiane, causing their weak government to collapse; despite that, though, Thailand was unable to do the same to Vietnam and the war ground into a stalemate with Thailand suing for a white peace and a partitioning of the captured territories between the two combatants. With the Khmer Rouge destroyed and Cambodia now split between Thailand and Vietnam, and Laos effectively collapsed and under Vietnamese administration, both Cambodia and Laos were incorporated into Vietnam to form a new Indochinese Union.
That would be the Danubian Federation, the result of a series of convoluted events starting with Admiral Miklós Horthy deciding to invite Otto von Hapsburg to Hungary to end the regency on the condition of Otto gain a majority of public support. Otto spends much of the 1930's touring Hungary to rehabilitate the Hapsburg family's name in the eyes of the Hungarian people.
Horthy continues his regency trying to balance Hungary's precarious position between the two great powers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. An avowed anti-communist, Horthy nonetheless dislikes and distrusts Hitler, believing that despite Germany being Hungary's only chance of revising the Treaty of Trianon, if Germany attempts to challenge the British Navy, Germany will almost certainly lose and drag Hungary down with it. Horthy therefore tries to leverage Germany's power as much to his advantage while avoiding being inextricably tied to it - and his best chance of doing so being exploiting Hitler's hatred of the Hapsburgs.
Hitler's diplomatic coups such as the Anschluss of Austria and the Munich Agreement go off as OTL (the Anschluss especially thanks to the Austrians enraged with Hungary welcoming back a Hapsburg), but Horthy avoids openly entangling himself in the partition of Czechoslovakia and earning the ire of Britain and France. When WWII rolls around and the opportunity to nab Transylvania from Romania, Horthy jumps at the chance with the assistance of the Germans, but when the time comes for Hitler demanding that Hungary assist in the invasion of the Soviet Union, Horthy tries his best to decline without enraging the Fuhrer... this doesn't work out as well as Horthy hoped, as Hitler takes it as the last straw and has Hungary occupied and orders for Otto von Hapsburg to be executed. However, Otto escapes thanks to his good-will tours earning the loyalty of the Hungarian populace and makes it to the USA, where he lobbies for support for Hungarian - and Austrian - independence from Nazi tyranny.
When the war ends with Germany's defeat, Horthy and Otto manage to gain Winston Churchill's support for a "Danubian Federation" during negotiations to partition Germany among the victorious Allies (despite Stalin's objections): eastern Austria is ceded to Hungary while Tyrol is split between Italy and West Germany, while Slovakia is split between Poland and Hungary, and Hungary retains some of the land gained from Romania as a result of the First & Second Vienna Awards. Stalin is not happy about this arrangement, however, and demands that Otto's claim to the Hungarian throne be revoked and that a communist government be installed in (now Austria-)Hungary. After extensive (and very ugly) negotiations, an unorthodox compromise is reached: the newly-reformed Austria-Hungary will have a communist government placed into power, but Otto von Habsburg retains his throne in a strictly-ceremonial position, while Horthy is expelled from the country altogether; additionally, the country will be entirely demilitarized, being forbidden to have a standing army, in exchange for neither Western nor Soviet military forces being allowed into the country (with SFR Yugoslavia under Josef Broz Tito being a neutral observer to enforce compliance).
Absolutely no-one is happy about the final agreement, but in the end, the Danubian People's Federation of Austria-Hungary was born. So from a landlocked kingdom-without-a-king led by an admiral, to a communist state with a Hapsburg king and no military (and still no navy). Bizarre doesn't even begin to cover it.
Horthy continues his regency trying to balance Hungary's precarious position between the two great powers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. An avowed anti-communist, Horthy nonetheless dislikes and distrusts Hitler, believing that despite Germany being Hungary's only chance of revising the Treaty of Trianon, if Germany attempts to challenge the British Navy, Germany will almost certainly lose and drag Hungary down with it. Horthy therefore tries to leverage Germany's power as much to his advantage while avoiding being inextricably tied to it - and his best chance of doing so being exploiting Hitler's hatred of the Hapsburgs.
Hitler's diplomatic coups such as the Anschluss of Austria and the Munich Agreement go off as OTL (the Anschluss especially thanks to the Austrians enraged with Hungary welcoming back a Hapsburg), but Horthy avoids openly entangling himself in the partition of Czechoslovakia and earning the ire of Britain and France. When WWII rolls around and the opportunity to nab Transylvania from Romania, Horthy jumps at the chance with the assistance of the Germans, but when the time comes for Hitler demanding that Hungary assist in the invasion of the Soviet Union, Horthy tries his best to decline without enraging the Fuhrer... this doesn't work out as well as Horthy hoped, as Hitler takes it as the last straw and has Hungary occupied and orders for Otto von Hapsburg to be executed. However, Otto escapes thanks to his good-will tours earning the loyalty of the Hungarian populace and makes it to the USA, where he lobbies for support for Hungarian - and Austrian - independence from Nazi tyranny.
When the war ends with Germany's defeat, Horthy and Otto manage to gain Winston Churchill's support for a "Danubian Federation" during negotiations to partition Germany among the victorious Allies (despite Stalin's objections): eastern Austria is ceded to Hungary while Tyrol is split between Italy and West Germany, while Slovakia is split between Poland and Hungary, and Hungary retains some of the land gained from Romania as a result of the First & Second Vienna Awards. Stalin is not happy about this arrangement, however, and demands that Otto's claim to the Hungarian throne be revoked and that a communist government be installed in (now Austria-)Hungary. After extensive (and very ugly) negotiations, an unorthodox compromise is reached: the newly-reformed Austria-Hungary will have a communist government placed into power, but Otto von Habsburg retains his throne in a strictly-ceremonial position, while Horthy is expelled from the country altogether; additionally, the country will be entirely demilitarized, being forbidden to have a standing army, in exchange for neither Western nor Soviet military forces being allowed into the country (with SFR Yugoslavia under Josef Broz Tito being a neutral observer to enforce compliance).
Absolutely no-one is happy about the final agreement, but in the end, the Danubian People's Federation of Austria-Hungary was born. So from a landlocked kingdom-without-a-king led by an admiral, to a communist state with a Hapsburg king and no military (and still no navy). Bizarre doesn't even begin to cover it.
A unification war was fought between Haiti and the Dominican Republic during the 1930's in which Haiti was the victor.
The Caribbean Federation is a loose federation of all the Caribbean islands excluding Cuba and Hispaniola, having its roots in the Caribbean Community; Puerto Rico became its nominal leader after a referendum to finally gain independence from the United States was successful.
The Caribbean Federation is a loose federation of all the Caribbean islands excluding Cuba and Hispaniola, having its roots in the Caribbean Community; Puerto Rico became its nominal leader after a referendum to finally gain independence from the United States was successful.
After the Republicans were defeated by the Nationalists under Franco in the Spanish Civil War, many Spanish anarchists and other leftist elements flee Spain altogether and migrate to Latin America, primarily Colombia and its neighbors, and the Central American nations. Merging together with the local socialist factions there, the Colombian revolutionary movement starts developing a Bolivarian revivalist ideology centered around reuniting Gran Colombia into a socialist republic. With extensive contacts between its fellow revolutionary groups in Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama, the foundation is laid for an impending multinational revolution.
When Hitler orders the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941: believing the time is right to ignite the revolution, the Pan-Bolivarian socialist movement triggers its revolts all across Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama; simultaneously, Central American revolutionaries begin their own revolts against the US-installed banana-republics the peoples of Central America so detested. The chaos of the entire situation forces American intervention to protect the vitally-important Panama Canal - still under American control - but the intervention is short-lived when in December of 1941, the Japanese Empire attacks Pearl Harbor and brings the USA into the wider Second World War. The socialist revolutions in Latin America have to be ignored for the time-being while America has to deal with the Axis Powers in Europe and the Pacific; as a result, the Gran-Colombian and Centroamerican Socialist Republics are formed after the success of the revolutions.
When Hitler orders the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941: believing the time is right to ignite the revolution, the Pan-Bolivarian socialist movement triggers its revolts all across Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama; simultaneously, Central American revolutionaries begin their own revolts against the US-installed banana-republics the peoples of Central America so detested. The chaos of the entire situation forces American intervention to protect the vitally-important Panama Canal - still under American control - but the intervention is short-lived when in December of 1941, the Japanese Empire attacks Pearl Harbor and brings the USA into the wider Second World War. The socialist revolutions in Latin America have to be ignored for the time-being while America has to deal with the Axis Powers in Europe and the Pacific; as a result, the Gran-Colombian and Centroamerican Socialist Republics are formed after the success of the revolutions.
Paraguay, seeing the success of the revolutions up north, decides to go for round three and starts shit with Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia. This predictably ends badly for them, as Paraguay is curbstomped by the three defending nations, resulting in Paraguay being erased off the map once and for all, Bolivia taking back the Chaco region, with the rest split between Argentina and Brazil. Bolivia also managed nab a small slice of Peru during the chaos of the Gran Colombian Revolution, netting them coastal access finally (Bolivia's coastal aspirations will soon get expanded upon later on when it manages to obtain Chilean territory as well, under the excuse of "protecting" Chile from socialist infiltration by becoming a "buffer").
The Pan-Bolivarian revolutions and the third Paraguayan war cause a massive amount of unrest in Brazil, with the Estado Novo regime under President Getúlio Dornelles Vargas having to crack down on both a regurgent PC-SBIC (the Brazilian Communist party) and AIB (the Brazilian Integralist party), complicated further by António de Oliveira Salazar's arrival after his flight from Spanish-conquered Portugal (which is a separate story to tell altogether), resulting in a four-way power struggle between the Communists, Integralists, Vargas, and Salazar.
Argentina then decides join in on the fun, and exploits the confusion in Brazil to invade Uruguay and Rio Grande do Sul, which Brazil could do nothing about thanks to the political chaos preventing them from mobilizing a full military response; Argentina renames itself the Republic of La Plata in pride of the accomplishment, and is hated by Brazil ever since.
Eventually the four-way power struggle collapses as Vargas is overthrown and Salazar is killed, and both the AIB and the PC-SBIC tear into each other so much as to weaken them enough for a fifth faction of democratic revolutionaries to fill the power vacuum left by Vargas's death, restoring order and bringing and end to the Estado Novo, forming the Second Brazilian Republic in its place.
The Pan-Bolivarian revolutions and the third Paraguayan war cause a massive amount of unrest in Brazil, with the Estado Novo regime under President Getúlio Dornelles Vargas having to crack down on both a regurgent PC-SBIC (the Brazilian Communist party) and AIB (the Brazilian Integralist party), complicated further by António de Oliveira Salazar's arrival after his flight from Spanish-conquered Portugal (which is a separate story to tell altogether), resulting in a four-way power struggle between the Communists, Integralists, Vargas, and Salazar.
Argentina then decides join in on the fun, and exploits the confusion in Brazil to invade Uruguay and Rio Grande do Sul, which Brazil could do nothing about thanks to the political chaos preventing them from mobilizing a full military response; Argentina renames itself the Republic of La Plata in pride of the accomplishment, and is hated by Brazil ever since.
Eventually the four-way power struggle collapses as Vargas is overthrown and Salazar is killed, and both the AIB and the PC-SBIC tear into each other so much as to weaken them enough for a fifth faction of democratic revolutionaries to fill the power vacuum left by Vargas's death, restoring order and bringing and end to the Estado Novo, forming the Second Brazilian Republic in its place.
The Iberian peninsula comes out of the war united thanks to a series of comical misunderstandings: Meeting at Hendaye between Hitler and Franco in 1940 goes about as well as it did in OTL (not very), but slight changes in the wording in the dialogue results in British Intelligence (having somehow managed to bug the meeting) becoming worried about the prospect of Nationalist Spain entering the war on the Axis side and threatening Gibraltar. These concerns brought to the attention of Churchill and Parliament, Churchill hits upon the idea to invoke Britain's 1373 alliance treaty with Portugal in case of hostile Spanish activity towards Gibraltar. Portugal's dictator, António de Oliveira Salazar, though already implicitly supporting the Allies, was reluctant to fully commit to the Allied cause, and so only gave a vague reassurance that he would honor the alliance in the case of its dire necessity. After his own spies report back to him with this information, however, Franco becomes worried that the British might've been able to convince Salazar to assist in an invasion of Spain; Franco therefore mobilizes his forces around Gibraltar and the Portuguese border to defend in case of British attack. This, of course, convinces Salazar that Franco might be planning to invade him, and so mobilizes hisforces to the Spanish border while also calling in the British for the worst-case scenario.
Of course, this back-and-forth of escalation-telephone eventually triggers both sides' alliance agreements, Franco throwing in his lot with Hitler and invading Gibraltar and Portugal, and Salazar and Churchill both invoking the 1373 Alliance and subsequently causing Portugal to join the Allies and invade Spain. Needless to say, it became a rather confusing mess. Nationalist Spain manages to conquer Portugal, with Salazar fleeing to Brazil, but Franco ends up being defeated and captured by the British in the end anyways thanks to Free French forces assisting from Algeria; the entire miscommunication isn't cleared up until after the war. The mess is only further complicated when the CNT-FAI reemerge from hiding underground upon Franco's capture and take control of the country for the remainder of the war... this results in a rather awkward peace conference when the British, Franco, and the CNT-FAI leadership meet to resolve the question of who is the legitimate ruler of Iberia (Salazar doesn't get a say in matters, having abandoned Portugal firstly, and secondly having ended up embroiled in Brazil's ownconfusing power struggles, which would come to be the cause of his own unfortunate demise).
Of course, this back-and-forth of escalation-telephone eventually triggers both sides' alliance agreements, Franco throwing in his lot with Hitler and invading Gibraltar and Portugal, and Salazar and Churchill both invoking the 1373 Alliance and subsequently causing Portugal to join the Allies and invade Spain. Needless to say, it became a rather confusing mess. Nationalist Spain manages to conquer Portugal, with Salazar fleeing to Brazil, but Franco ends up being defeated and captured by the British in the end anyways thanks to Free French forces assisting from Algeria; the entire miscommunication isn't cleared up until after the war. The mess is only further complicated when the CNT-FAI reemerge from hiding underground upon Franco's capture and take control of the country for the remainder of the war... this results in a rather awkward peace conference when the British, Franco, and the CNT-FAI leadership meet to resolve the question of who is the legitimate ruler of Iberia (Salazar doesn't get a say in matters, having abandoned Portugal firstly, and secondly having ended up embroiled in Brazil's ownconfusing power struggles, which would come to be the cause of his own unfortunate demise).
Soviet Red Army commander Mikhail Frunze survives his illness in 1925, and later becomes a key member of the Bolshevik Central Committee as the Stalin-Trotsky power struggle begins; Frunze is ultimately forced to side with Stalin in the end, but manages to avoid burning his bridges with Trotsky, who is expelled from the Communist Party and exiled from the USSR. Trotsky, for his part, instead of moving first to Turkey, emigrates directly to France, before moving south to Barcelona in Spain, and then finally to Mexico during the Spanish Republican exodus after the end of the Spanish Civil War.
The Spanish Civil War progresses slightly differently, with Frunze managing to convince Stalin to send him as a volunteer force to Catalonia to support the CNT-FAI, arguing that having them indebted to the USSR after the war would give the Soviet Union a non-capitalist trading partner to work with. Stalin allows it, on the condition that Frunze brings along a NKVD attachment as well so Stalin can bring the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) in line with Moscow as an alternative to the CNT-FAI if the latter is defeated; in truth, Stalin's real goal behind deploying the NKVD is so he can rid himself of his long-time rival: Trotsky.
Frunze's volunteer forces work well together with the CNT-FAI and the Republican Popular Front, holding back the Nationalist forces for a time, before the NKVD's behind-the-scenes scheming rears its ugly head - an assassination attempt is made on Trotsky as he is assisting the CNT-FAI in Barcelona in organizing and training the anarchist militias, and while the attempt fails, it causes a rupture between the anarchists and the communists, forcing Frunze to withdraw his volunteer forces as the Popular Front collapses into infighting. The NKVD is also withdrawn by Frunze to prevent them from making the situation any worse - incidentally also preventing them from carrying out Stalin's purging orders - which leaves the Spanish leftist factions (though now splintered against each other) to retain their organizational cohesion, allowing them to go underground when the Republican faction is finally crushed by the Nationalists led by Francisco Franco, laying the groundwork for a future revolt.
Trotsky, for his part, flees to Mexico, and along with him come many of the leftist elements of the Spanish Republicans as they flee to Latin America. Those very same leftist elements would later become the basis for the Gran Colombian Revolutions, with its members owing their revolutionary strategy to Trotsky's work during his time alongside them in the CNT-FAI... as well as their virulent anti-Stalin sentiment, given the fiasco that was Stalin's assassination attempt on Trotsky in Barcelona, and later Stalin's more successful assassination of Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940, the year before the Gran Colombian Revolutions.
Frunze would return home to the Soviet Union just in time to get caught up in the Great Purge, as Stalin begins to rip into the Red Army's officer corps to snuff out any potential threat to his position; Frunze would become one of his biggest targets after the debacle in Spain. This inadvertently ends up saving Nikolai Bukharin, as Frunze's popularity takes up a lot more of the heat that would've hit Bukharin, and Stalin merely throws Bukharin into the Gulag rather than outright executing him. Bukharin survives the Purge and his stint in the Gulag, laying low and keeping his mouth shut for the remainder of Stalin's reign until the latter's death in 1953.
Upon Stalin's death in 1953, the ensuing power struggle in the Politburo would eventually settle into a troika between Nikita Khrushchev (as General Secretary of the Communist Party), Georgy Zhukov (as Minister of Defense and Marshall of the Soviet Union), and Nikolai Bukharin (as Premier of the Soviet Union). Khrushchev and Bukharin's leadership as General Secretary and Premier, respectively, lead to a period of economic reform and stabilization that would continue to have an effect on the Soviet Union long after Bukharin's death at the age of 75 in 1964 and Khrushchev's ousting as General Secretary that same year.
The late-1970's and early 1980's would see another major shakeup in the Soviet Union's economy as a result of events on the other side of the world:
The 1973 coup against Salvador Allende, President of Chile, ends in failure, as the Presidential Palace successfully repels the military coup forces with the support of the Gran Colombian Socialist Republic, whom President Allende had been building friendly relations with since his election in 1970. In addition to the coup's ringleader General Pinochet being killed in the attempt to arrest him for treason, the Chilean and Colombian governments also discover indirect evidence of the CIA's involvement in the coup affair; the entire incident becomes an embarrassment to the US government, which has been extremely hostile to the left-leaning Chilean government for the last 3 years and American-Chilean relations simply amounted to the former attempting to sabotage the latter's economy. The public outcry and international embarrassment forces the USA to back off on interfering in South American politics, and to gain a begrudging respect for the Gran Colombian Socialist Republic, which it also has been hostile to ever since its birth in 1940's.
The survival of the Allende government also allowed Project Cybersyn to continue development, reaching the end of the advanced prototype phase and preparing for a limited field-trial by the end of Allende's first term in 1974. The first field test proved to be a moderate but promising success, playing a large part in Allende's reelection which paved the way for further development; the Gran Colombian Socialist Republic picked up interest in the project by mid-1975 and wished to explore its potential for its own economic management, a request that Allende granted and by the beginning of 1976 the two countries began cooperating on the project as a joint venture.
The Soviet Union, meanwhile, had its own similar program in 1962 named OGAS, which was the brainchild of pioneer cyberneticist Victor Glushkov, but the project died in 1970 when it was denied further funding, as it was seen as a threat to the Communist Party's central control over the economy. However, the surprising success of Project Cybersyn in Chile and Gran Colombia reignited interest in OGAS in the Politburo, which now saw the computer network experiment as vital for the Soviet Union to stay competitive with its South American rival, which it has been in a strained relationship with ever since Leon Trotsky's assassination in 1940 (the year before Gran Colombia's founding revolution). The USSR attempted to approach the GCSR with an olive-branch and a cordial request to join and share in the Cybersyn program, but the GCSR coolly rebuffed them and refused to exchange the technology. The Soviet Union had to resort to industrial espionage and reaching out to their Cuban ally (which had much better relations with Gran Colombia than the Soviets did directly), and the Cubans eventually managed to convince the Colombians to share the technology with them - which the Cubans in turn shared with their Soviet seniors.
The Soviet Union was still extremely behind in their computer networking sciences compared to both the Chilean-Colombian Cybersyn program and the USA's ARPANET program, but that didn't stop US intelligence services from ringing alarm bells at the Soviets catching up with the United States; after persistent pestering from the intelligence community, the US Department of Defense accelerated development of the ARPANET program and lobbied Congress for more funding for the research effort. By 1985, the three cybernetics experiments - Cybersyn, OGAS, and ARPANET - were all virtually (no pun intended) in a breakneck competition with each other; the effects of the 1973 Mansfield Amendment on DARPA however still persisted, which the inadvertent 'brain drain' that came as a result of it being credited with boosting development of the fledgling personal computer industry of the 1970's & 1980's.
The Politburo's heavy investment into the OGAS program inadvertently ends up saving the Soviet Union from collapse, revitalizing its economy and keeping it chugging long enough to outlast Mikhail Gorbachev's disastrous tenure as leader of the USSR throughout the late-1980's and early-1990's. Gorbachev is replaced by Gennady Zyugenov in 1991 after the former is nearly assassinated during a coup attempt that same year, and Gorbachev's downfall effectively signaled the end of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, as Zyugenov served as little more than a conservative seat-warmer throughout the 1990's, holding together the Soviet Union as it withdrew into isolation as the Warsaw Pact collapses and the USSR goes into a lukewarm economic malaise. Aside from some minor structural reforms (such as the formation of the Baltic SFSR from the Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian SSRs, and the Transcaucasian SFSR from the Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijan SSRs), the Soviet Union remained uninvolved in international affairs until the advent of KGB director Vladimir Putin as President of the USSR in 2000.
The Spanish Civil War progresses slightly differently, with Frunze managing to convince Stalin to send him as a volunteer force to Catalonia to support the CNT-FAI, arguing that having them indebted to the USSR after the war would give the Soviet Union a non-capitalist trading partner to work with. Stalin allows it, on the condition that Frunze brings along a NKVD attachment as well so Stalin can bring the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) in line with Moscow as an alternative to the CNT-FAI if the latter is defeated; in truth, Stalin's real goal behind deploying the NKVD is so he can rid himself of his long-time rival: Trotsky.
Frunze's volunteer forces work well together with the CNT-FAI and the Republican Popular Front, holding back the Nationalist forces for a time, before the NKVD's behind-the-scenes scheming rears its ugly head - an assassination attempt is made on Trotsky as he is assisting the CNT-FAI in Barcelona in organizing and training the anarchist militias, and while the attempt fails, it causes a rupture between the anarchists and the communists, forcing Frunze to withdraw his volunteer forces as the Popular Front collapses into infighting. The NKVD is also withdrawn by Frunze to prevent them from making the situation any worse - incidentally also preventing them from carrying out Stalin's purging orders - which leaves the Spanish leftist factions (though now splintered against each other) to retain their organizational cohesion, allowing them to go underground when the Republican faction is finally crushed by the Nationalists led by Francisco Franco, laying the groundwork for a future revolt.
Trotsky, for his part, flees to Mexico, and along with him come many of the leftist elements of the Spanish Republicans as they flee to Latin America. Those very same leftist elements would later become the basis for the Gran Colombian Revolutions, with its members owing their revolutionary strategy to Trotsky's work during his time alongside them in the CNT-FAI... as well as their virulent anti-Stalin sentiment, given the fiasco that was Stalin's assassination attempt on Trotsky in Barcelona, and later Stalin's more successful assassination of Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940, the year before the Gran Colombian Revolutions.
Frunze would return home to the Soviet Union just in time to get caught up in the Great Purge, as Stalin begins to rip into the Red Army's officer corps to snuff out any potential threat to his position; Frunze would become one of his biggest targets after the debacle in Spain. This inadvertently ends up saving Nikolai Bukharin, as Frunze's popularity takes up a lot more of the heat that would've hit Bukharin, and Stalin merely throws Bukharin into the Gulag rather than outright executing him. Bukharin survives the Purge and his stint in the Gulag, laying low and keeping his mouth shut for the remainder of Stalin's reign until the latter's death in 1953.
Upon Stalin's death in 1953, the ensuing power struggle in the Politburo would eventually settle into a troika between Nikita Khrushchev (as General Secretary of the Communist Party), Georgy Zhukov (as Minister of Defense and Marshall of the Soviet Union), and Nikolai Bukharin (as Premier of the Soviet Union). Khrushchev and Bukharin's leadership as General Secretary and Premier, respectively, lead to a period of economic reform and stabilization that would continue to have an effect on the Soviet Union long after Bukharin's death at the age of 75 in 1964 and Khrushchev's ousting as General Secretary that same year.
The late-1970's and early 1980's would see another major shakeup in the Soviet Union's economy as a result of events on the other side of the world:
The 1973 coup against Salvador Allende, President of Chile, ends in failure, as the Presidential Palace successfully repels the military coup forces with the support of the Gran Colombian Socialist Republic, whom President Allende had been building friendly relations with since his election in 1970. In addition to the coup's ringleader General Pinochet being killed in the attempt to arrest him for treason, the Chilean and Colombian governments also discover indirect evidence of the CIA's involvement in the coup affair; the entire incident becomes an embarrassment to the US government, which has been extremely hostile to the left-leaning Chilean government for the last 3 years and American-Chilean relations simply amounted to the former attempting to sabotage the latter's economy. The public outcry and international embarrassment forces the USA to back off on interfering in South American politics, and to gain a begrudging respect for the Gran Colombian Socialist Republic, which it also has been hostile to ever since its birth in 1940's.
The survival of the Allende government also allowed Project Cybersyn to continue development, reaching the end of the advanced prototype phase and preparing for a limited field-trial by the end of Allende's first term in 1974. The first field test proved to be a moderate but promising success, playing a large part in Allende's reelection which paved the way for further development; the Gran Colombian Socialist Republic picked up interest in the project by mid-1975 and wished to explore its potential for its own economic management, a request that Allende granted and by the beginning of 1976 the two countries began cooperating on the project as a joint venture.
The Soviet Union, meanwhile, had its own similar program in 1962 named OGAS, which was the brainchild of pioneer cyberneticist Victor Glushkov, but the project died in 1970 when it was denied further funding, as it was seen as a threat to the Communist Party's central control over the economy. However, the surprising success of Project Cybersyn in Chile and Gran Colombia reignited interest in OGAS in the Politburo, which now saw the computer network experiment as vital for the Soviet Union to stay competitive with its South American rival, which it has been in a strained relationship with ever since Leon Trotsky's assassination in 1940 (the year before Gran Colombia's founding revolution). The USSR attempted to approach the GCSR with an olive-branch and a cordial request to join and share in the Cybersyn program, but the GCSR coolly rebuffed them and refused to exchange the technology. The Soviet Union had to resort to industrial espionage and reaching out to their Cuban ally (which had much better relations with Gran Colombia than the Soviets did directly), and the Cubans eventually managed to convince the Colombians to share the technology with them - which the Cubans in turn shared with their Soviet seniors.
The Soviet Union was still extremely behind in their computer networking sciences compared to both the Chilean-Colombian Cybersyn program and the USA's ARPANET program, but that didn't stop US intelligence services from ringing alarm bells at the Soviets catching up with the United States; after persistent pestering from the intelligence community, the US Department of Defense accelerated development of the ARPANET program and lobbied Congress for more funding for the research effort. By 1985, the three cybernetics experiments - Cybersyn, OGAS, and ARPANET - were all virtually (no pun intended) in a breakneck competition with each other; the effects of the 1973 Mansfield Amendment on DARPA however still persisted, which the inadvertent 'brain drain' that came as a result of it being credited with boosting development of the fledgling personal computer industry of the 1970's & 1980's.
The Politburo's heavy investment into the OGAS program inadvertently ends up saving the Soviet Union from collapse, revitalizing its economy and keeping it chugging long enough to outlast Mikhail Gorbachev's disastrous tenure as leader of the USSR throughout the late-1980's and early-1990's. Gorbachev is replaced by Gennady Zyugenov in 1991 after the former is nearly assassinated during a coup attempt that same year, and Gorbachev's downfall effectively signaled the end of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, as Zyugenov served as little more than a conservative seat-warmer throughout the 1990's, holding together the Soviet Union as it withdrew into isolation as the Warsaw Pact collapses and the USSR goes into a lukewarm economic malaise. Aside from some minor structural reforms (such as the formation of the Baltic SFSR from the Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian SSRs, and the Transcaucasian SFSR from the Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijan SSRs), the Soviet Union remained uninvolved in international affairs until the advent of KGB director Vladimir Putin as President of the USSR in 2000.
The Ethiopian Empire - aka Abyssinia - managed to acquire Italy's Eritrean and Somalian colonies in the peace treaty negotiations after Italy was defeated in the Second World War; they would later buy Djibouti and Somaliland from the French and British during the post-war decolonization period. The communist Derg coup d'etat against Emperor Selassie would fail to kill him, and their People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia would barely last a month of civil war before they were crushed and Selassie is returned to power and order is restored. The kingdom would continue on to evolve into a modern constitutional monarchy with parliamentary democracy, and would be one of the most developed countries in Africa.
When the Germans invaded Belgium in May 1940, instead of remaining in control of the Belgian government-in-exile and therefore on the side of the Allies, the Belgian Congo instead fell under the control of the German Reich, who promptly began setting up their own colonial administration in the form of the Reichskommissariat Mittelafrika, later incorporating neighboring territories of French Equatorial Africa and French Cameroon after the Fall of France and the Compiegne Armistice that would form the puppet Vichy government.
This new colonial administration was premature, however, given that Nazi Germany had yet to defeat the British Empire - who also had colonial territories in Africa bordering the newly-formed Mittelafrika; as such, the African Campaign had to be split into two fronts: Italian North Africa, covered by the Erste-Afrikakorps (First African Corps) led by Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, and the Congo Basin, covered by the Zweite-Afrikakorps (Second African Corps). The 1st African Corps held strategic priority over the 2nd, due to the importance of keeping North Africa in Italian hands and seizing the Suez Canal from the British in Egypt, hence the 2nd African Corps was limited to a shoestring budget to keep the territory under German control. This lack of resources and support forced the German commanders in charge of occupying the region to be creative in maintaining control, building extensive fortifications in strategic areas, conscripting the native population in order to bolster their limited manpower, and engaging in piracy and smuggling along the coast in order to remain supplied with weapons and equipment.
When the 1st African Corps was defeated and pushed out of North Africa in spring of 1943, however, the commanders of the 2nd saw the writing on the wall for them: the British and Free French forces in Africa were pushing their way through the 2nd's meager defenses, and all available routes of retreat through Vichy French or Italian territories have been cut off, and the Atlantic was under total Allied control, leaving them stranded from the Fatherland and unable to return home. Deciding surrender to be unpalatable, the Germans instead opted to scatter and melt into the countryside, abandoning their arsenals in hidden caches across the Kibara Mountains while their men faded into hiding in the European colonial population to avoid capture; the Reichskommissariat administration was then foisted off onto prominent members of the native Congolese communities, effectively making Mittelafrika a de facto independent state. Upon the British finally arriving and capturing the colonial administrative capital, the Germans nowhere to be found; the British brushed this detail aside in favor of welcoming the newly-independent Zaire into the Allies, leaving the question of where the 2nd African Corps went to the post-war situation.
Much later, after a long and turbulent period of internal unrest and stabilization (and several other details which I'll cover later), the country of Zaire would reorganize itself into the United Republic of the Congo.
This new colonial administration was premature, however, given that Nazi Germany had yet to defeat the British Empire - who also had colonial territories in Africa bordering the newly-formed Mittelafrika; as such, the African Campaign had to be split into two fronts: Italian North Africa, covered by the Erste-Afrikakorps (First African Corps) led by Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, and the Congo Basin, covered by the Zweite-Afrikakorps (Second African Corps). The 1st African Corps held strategic priority over the 2nd, due to the importance of keeping North Africa in Italian hands and seizing the Suez Canal from the British in Egypt, hence the 2nd African Corps was limited to a shoestring budget to keep the territory under German control. This lack of resources and support forced the German commanders in charge of occupying the region to be creative in maintaining control, building extensive fortifications in strategic areas, conscripting the native population in order to bolster their limited manpower, and engaging in piracy and smuggling along the coast in order to remain supplied with weapons and equipment.
When the 1st African Corps was defeated and pushed out of North Africa in spring of 1943, however, the commanders of the 2nd saw the writing on the wall for them: the British and Free French forces in Africa were pushing their way through the 2nd's meager defenses, and all available routes of retreat through Vichy French or Italian territories have been cut off, and the Atlantic was under total Allied control, leaving them stranded from the Fatherland and unable to return home. Deciding surrender to be unpalatable, the Germans instead opted to scatter and melt into the countryside, abandoning their arsenals in hidden caches across the Kibara Mountains while their men faded into hiding in the European colonial population to avoid capture; the Reichskommissariat administration was then foisted off onto prominent members of the native Congolese communities, effectively making Mittelafrika a de facto independent state. Upon the British finally arriving and capturing the colonial administrative capital, the Germans nowhere to be found; the British brushed this detail aside in favor of welcoming the newly-independent Zaire into the Allies, leaving the question of where the 2nd African Corps went to the post-war situation.
Much later, after a long and turbulent period of internal unrest and stabilization (and several other details which I'll cover later), the country of Zaire would reorganize itself into the United Republic of the Congo.
Post-war Zaire was, suffice to say, not exactly stable given its unusual origins. While the Germans foisted off the administration structure of the former Reichskommissariat Mittelafrika onto the various native tribal leaders, giving some semblance of a functional government, that didn't mean all of its problems just went away: on the contrary, the young country's government was inexperienced, extremely fractured along tribal divides, and out of its depth in governing such a large amount of territory; its leadership was composed of elders and chieftains who previously only led their local communities, alongside Western-educated African intellectuals who nonetheless only had theory to work off of. Combined with the unpleasantness of over a century of colonial occupations (most infamously being the Belgian Congo under King Leopold II), and you have a fragile country that could collapse into violent anarchy and inter-ethnic conflicts at any moment. Needless to say, the British had their hands full holding the region together and preparing it to stand on its own as an independent nation.
The British had no intentions of keeping the entire region for themselves, as their colonial empire was already stretched thin as it is, and with the war having been ruinously expensive to Britain, adding another colony to its collection was just not worth the expense in maintaining alongside its other commitments; and they certainly weren't going to return these territories to Belgium and France - especially not the latter, given how hard of a time they were having trying stubbornly hold on to what they have left already. Thus, decolonization was the only viable option.
Of course, decolonization meant more than just handing off sovereignty to the local populace: it also meant making their new nation economically viable and politically stable, so it won't just fly apart into an orgy of violence the moment the British leave. So for the British, that meant a few more years of occupation that the local populace would have to put up with... and said populace, full of diversity in unique cultures and ethnic groups, was running increasingly short on patience with their colonial overlords. If the British wanted to avoid complete catastrophe, they would have to work fast to build up the necessary capital to invest in industrializing Zaire.
Enter Ayn Rand. After suffering from a depressive funk due to dismal sales of her book Atlas Shrugged in 1957, notorious author Ayn Rand threw herself into developing her newly-founded 'philosophy' of Objectivism; a chance encounter with one Ron Hubbard (hack sci-fi author and founder of Scientology) led her to decide making Atlas Shrugged a reality - by setting up her own country in the Autonomous Region of Katanga. Convincing a number of economists and corporate millionaires to sign on as investors, she managed to convince the British transitional authorities in Zaire to allow her project to go through - the British happily accepting just for the prospects of investments coming in at all. The British would come to regret this decision years later.
By the 1960's, Rand's Objectivist experiment of Galtville, Katanga managed to prove surprisingly profitable so far for the Zaire government, the money that was coming in serving to stabilize the country's economy and fund the government's extensive infrastructure programs. Rand's ambitions for an independent Objectivist Katanga, however, would put an end to that brief period of prosperity...
This is where three other players enter the scene: the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the Boer Afrikaners of South Africa, and the remnants of the 2nd African Corps.
Starting with the 2nd African Corps: after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the 2nd African Corps was left trapped in the Congo Basin with nowhere to go; after hiding what was left of their weapons and equipment in the Kibara Mountains, the Corps melted into the European colonial population throughout southern Africa - primarily the Katanga region and Northern & Southern Rhodesia. Staying in contact with one another, the former Nazi soldiers wormed their way into the political spheres of the colonial communities, settling themselves in to a comfortable lifestyle with steady incomes from corrupt officials. The arrival of Ayn Rand in Katanga, however, changed things: her secret buildup of a private mercenary army lent itself well to the strengths of the ex-Wehrmacht officers, and several of the Nazi exiles found themselves new jobs within Rand's mercenary forces; one of them decided to provide Rand the location of the forgotten weapons caches in the Kibara Mountains. While heavily outdated and neglected for years, the huge arsenal was free-of-charge, and so was a great boon for Rand's demented ambitions for Katanga. The weapons cache proving to buy them immense favor within Rand's inner circle, the ex-Nazis of the 2nd African Corps began to trickle in en-mass to Galtville, their presence having a growing influence on its internal politics.
Next to be involved was the Federation of Rhodesia: a longtime British colony, Rhodesia's leaders had spent the last few years preparing to wriggle their way out from Britain's leash and declare independence from the British Empire, allowing them to establish their own personal white-nationalist ethno-state without interference. Among those Rhodesians pushing to bring that dream into reality was Ian Smith, a veteran bureaucrat and administrator in the Rhodesian government, as well as a virulent racist and white-nationalist; Smith had connections with various members of the exiled 2nd African Corps as a result, and it was those connections that gave him an opportunity to build inroads with Ayn Rand in neighboring Katanga. Rand's mad ambitions had ended up instigating a proxy war between her, the Congolese government, the United Nations, and the Soviets: as the conflict dragged on, Rand steadily grew more and more deranged, becoming a totalitarian dictator engaging in various atrocities to maintain her rule; what she needed most, however, were more weapons and mercenaries to keep her independence war going... which Smith was more than happy to provide, funneling war materiel into Rand's hands and making her more and more dependent on Rhodesia's support to survive.
As Galtville met its demise under UN aerial bombings, Cuban-led Communist partisans, and Congolese army troops, with Rand herself meeting her end locked in a bunker ranting against the inferior 'mundanes' of the world and the collectivist-internationalist conspiracy, the Republic of Rhodesia declared its independence from the British Empire, and Ian Smith came to power as its Prime Minister; among his first acts was to send a 'peacekeeping force' into Katanga to seize control of Galtville. What little remained of the Objectivist society welcomed the newcomers, weary of several brutal years of war that had devastated the region. The United Republic of the Congo protested against this intervention, declaring it an invasion of their territory, but the UN had enough of the war in Katanga, and Rhodesia's intervention had near-immediately restored order to the area (earning them brownie points with the UN), so the subsequent peace-deal negotiations led to the Katanga province being annexed by the Republic of Rhodesia, which also earned itself international recognition... in spite of protests from the United Kingdom. This recognition of Rhodesia would prove ill-advised in hindsight, however, given that Ian Smith and his regime would reveal its true colors soon enough...
Lastly, we get to the Boer Afrikaners: in 1948, the National Party came into power in South Africa, marking the first time an all-Afrikaner cabinet controlled the government since 1910; the Afrikaners - notorious for their resentment against Britain and their racism against native Africans - soon got to work in implementing their racial segregation policy known as Apartheid, beginning a dark chapter in the history of southern Africa. The Boers had a history of pro-German sympathies spanning decades - the most recent examples being their opposition of South Africa's participation in WWII alongside Britain against Nazi Germany, personified by the Ossebrandwag, a pseudo-Nazi paramilitary group - and this pro-German sympathy didn't end with the conclusion of the war: groups like the OB had developed ties with the 2nd African Corps during the war, after the war ended, those ties continued to exist into the 1960's, right around Ayn Rand's dream of an Objectivist Katanga finally collapsed and was absorbed into Rhodesia. As both South Africa and Rhodesia were connected by their ties with the 2nd African Corps, that association made the two nations natural allies, which made Rhodesia an attractive location to migrate to for Boer Afrikaners.
Thus it is with the amalgamation of Objectivist ideologues, exiled Nazi remnants, and Boer Afrikaner migrants, that we get the Independent State of Rhodesia, an abhorrent fascist state that blends together some of the worst ideologies of the 20th century - one that persists into the modern day against all odds.
The British had no intentions of keeping the entire region for themselves, as their colonial empire was already stretched thin as it is, and with the war having been ruinously expensive to Britain, adding another colony to its collection was just not worth the expense in maintaining alongside its other commitments; and they certainly weren't going to return these territories to Belgium and France - especially not the latter, given how hard of a time they were having trying stubbornly hold on to what they have left already. Thus, decolonization was the only viable option.
Of course, decolonization meant more than just handing off sovereignty to the local populace: it also meant making their new nation economically viable and politically stable, so it won't just fly apart into an orgy of violence the moment the British leave. So for the British, that meant a few more years of occupation that the local populace would have to put up with... and said populace, full of diversity in unique cultures and ethnic groups, was running increasingly short on patience with their colonial overlords. If the British wanted to avoid complete catastrophe, they would have to work fast to build up the necessary capital to invest in industrializing Zaire.
Enter Ayn Rand. After suffering from a depressive funk due to dismal sales of her book Atlas Shrugged in 1957, notorious author Ayn Rand threw herself into developing her newly-founded 'philosophy' of Objectivism; a chance encounter with one Ron Hubbard (hack sci-fi author and founder of Scientology) led her to decide making Atlas Shrugged a reality - by setting up her own country in the Autonomous Region of Katanga. Convincing a number of economists and corporate millionaires to sign on as investors, she managed to convince the British transitional authorities in Zaire to allow her project to go through - the British happily accepting just for the prospects of investments coming in at all. The British would come to regret this decision years later.
By the 1960's, Rand's Objectivist experiment of Galtville, Katanga managed to prove surprisingly profitable so far for the Zaire government, the money that was coming in serving to stabilize the country's economy and fund the government's extensive infrastructure programs. Rand's ambitions for an independent Objectivist Katanga, however, would put an end to that brief period of prosperity...
This is where three other players enter the scene: the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the Boer Afrikaners of South Africa, and the remnants of the 2nd African Corps.
Starting with the 2nd African Corps: after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the 2nd African Corps was left trapped in the Congo Basin with nowhere to go; after hiding what was left of their weapons and equipment in the Kibara Mountains, the Corps melted into the European colonial population throughout southern Africa - primarily the Katanga region and Northern & Southern Rhodesia. Staying in contact with one another, the former Nazi soldiers wormed their way into the political spheres of the colonial communities, settling themselves in to a comfortable lifestyle with steady incomes from corrupt officials. The arrival of Ayn Rand in Katanga, however, changed things: her secret buildup of a private mercenary army lent itself well to the strengths of the ex-Wehrmacht officers, and several of the Nazi exiles found themselves new jobs within Rand's mercenary forces; one of them decided to provide Rand the location of the forgotten weapons caches in the Kibara Mountains. While heavily outdated and neglected for years, the huge arsenal was free-of-charge, and so was a great boon for Rand's demented ambitions for Katanga. The weapons cache proving to buy them immense favor within Rand's inner circle, the ex-Nazis of the 2nd African Corps began to trickle in en-mass to Galtville, their presence having a growing influence on its internal politics.
Next to be involved was the Federation of Rhodesia: a longtime British colony, Rhodesia's leaders had spent the last few years preparing to wriggle their way out from Britain's leash and declare independence from the British Empire, allowing them to establish their own personal white-nationalist ethno-state without interference. Among those Rhodesians pushing to bring that dream into reality was Ian Smith, a veteran bureaucrat and administrator in the Rhodesian government, as well as a virulent racist and white-nationalist; Smith had connections with various members of the exiled 2nd African Corps as a result, and it was those connections that gave him an opportunity to build inroads with Ayn Rand in neighboring Katanga. Rand's mad ambitions had ended up instigating a proxy war between her, the Congolese government, the United Nations, and the Soviets: as the conflict dragged on, Rand steadily grew more and more deranged, becoming a totalitarian dictator engaging in various atrocities to maintain her rule; what she needed most, however, were more weapons and mercenaries to keep her independence war going... which Smith was more than happy to provide, funneling war materiel into Rand's hands and making her more and more dependent on Rhodesia's support to survive.
As Galtville met its demise under UN aerial bombings, Cuban-led Communist partisans, and Congolese army troops, with Rand herself meeting her end locked in a bunker ranting against the inferior 'mundanes' of the world and the collectivist-internationalist conspiracy, the Republic of Rhodesia declared its independence from the British Empire, and Ian Smith came to power as its Prime Minister; among his first acts was to send a 'peacekeeping force' into Katanga to seize control of Galtville. What little remained of the Objectivist society welcomed the newcomers, weary of several brutal years of war that had devastated the region. The United Republic of the Congo protested against this intervention, declaring it an invasion of their territory, but the UN had enough of the war in Katanga, and Rhodesia's intervention had near-immediately restored order to the area (earning them brownie points with the UN), so the subsequent peace-deal negotiations led to the Katanga province being annexed by the Republic of Rhodesia, which also earned itself international recognition... in spite of protests from the United Kingdom. This recognition of Rhodesia would prove ill-advised in hindsight, however, given that Ian Smith and his regime would reveal its true colors soon enough...
Lastly, we get to the Boer Afrikaners: in 1948, the National Party came into power in South Africa, marking the first time an all-Afrikaner cabinet controlled the government since 1910; the Afrikaners - notorious for their resentment against Britain and their racism against native Africans - soon got to work in implementing their racial segregation policy known as Apartheid, beginning a dark chapter in the history of southern Africa. The Boers had a history of pro-German sympathies spanning decades - the most recent examples being their opposition of South Africa's participation in WWII alongside Britain against Nazi Germany, personified by the Ossebrandwag, a pseudo-Nazi paramilitary group - and this pro-German sympathy didn't end with the conclusion of the war: groups like the OB had developed ties with the 2nd African Corps during the war, after the war ended, those ties continued to exist into the 1960's, right around Ayn Rand's dream of an Objectivist Katanga finally collapsed and was absorbed into Rhodesia. As both South Africa and Rhodesia were connected by their ties with the 2nd African Corps, that association made the two nations natural allies, which made Rhodesia an attractive location to migrate to for Boer Afrikaners.
Thus it is with the amalgamation of Objectivist ideologues, exiled Nazi remnants, and Boer Afrikaner migrants, that we get the Independent State of Rhodesia, an abhorrent fascist state that blends together some of the worst ideologies of the 20th century - one that persists into the modern day against all odds.
A little under two decades after Argentina's conquests of Uruguay and Rio Grande do Sul in the Great South American War, and Argentina's subsequent renaming as the Republic of La Plata, the victory high would come to an end in 1955 when the two annexed provinces joined together in revolt and declared independence as the Piratini Republic; the Platine military would be unable to quell the rebellion, thanks to foreign interventions from Gran Colombia, Brazil, and the United States, who all provided material support for the Piratini Republic (and in the case of the United States, a full guarantee of Piratini sovereignty), allowing them to force La Plata into a stalemate and peace settlement. The Revolución Libertadora (or The Liberating Revolution) would spell the end of La Plata's seeming rising stardom, as the once-more Republic of Argentina was now left bloodied and humiliated. This defeat would result in a military coup d'etat overthrowing President Juan Perón, with the military blaming him for La Plata's defeat and demise: the new military dictatorship would soon be called the Argentine League, an ultra-nationalistic totalitarian state that swore revenge against Piratini and its backers, a threat that it never would carry out before the end of the 20th century.
After the British and French divide up the Ottoman Empire after WW1 as per their secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, in spite of British promises to the Arabs for a unified nation-state, the British would later decide to support the Hashemite Kingdom of Hejaz over the Saudi Sultanate of Nejd in their efforts to unify the Arabian peninsula, which would eventually lead to the defeat of the Saudis and the unification of the two kingdoms in 1932 as the Kingdom of Hashemite Arabia. The Kingdom would eventually also absorb Yemen, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates to finally fully unify the peninsula under a single Arab state.
The Annan Plan for Cyprus, after some more adjustments to address issues that have come up during negotiations, manages to pass the 2004 referendums among both Greek and Turkish Cypriots, finally uniting the island of Cyprus into one United Republic of Cyprus, which would gradually come to heal the divides between its two ethnic populations.
The partition of the British Raj in 1947 prior to Indian Independence went down a different path of progression as it was decided to place India's western border up to the Indus river, with the remaining territory west of the Indus being ceded to the Emirate of Afghanistan, while the majority of East Bengal remained within India, with almost everything to the east of that going to Burma; the region of Arunachal Pradesh, which was disputed by the Chinese, was given to the Kingdom of Bhutan as a way to sidestep the issue. Lastly, the Kashmir region was split evenly between India, Afghanistan, and China.
The border disputes between the Republic of India and the People's Republic of China, however, would continue to persist until 1962, with the eruption of the Sino-Indian War with the PRC invading Bhutan to reclaim Arunachal Pradesh, with India declaring war in retaliation and forcibly dragging the Kingdom of Nepal in on their side; the war ended in a decisive Chinese victory, with all of Bhutan annexed by China, while the Kingdom of Nepal was split down the middle between China and India after Nepal crumpled under Chinese assault. The Union of Burma in a separate border conflict also lost territory to the Chinese, which led to the Burmese military overthrowing the government and establishing the Free State of Myanmar under a military dictatorship.
The border disputes between the Republic of India and the People's Republic of China, however, would continue to persist until 1962, with the eruption of the Sino-Indian War with the PRC invading Bhutan to reclaim Arunachal Pradesh, with India declaring war in retaliation and forcibly dragging the Kingdom of Nepal in on their side; the war ended in a decisive Chinese victory, with all of Bhutan annexed by China, while the Kingdom of Nepal was split down the middle between China and India after Nepal crumpled under Chinese assault. The Union of Burma in a separate border conflict also lost territory to the Chinese, which led to the Burmese military overthrowing the government and establishing the Free State of Myanmar under a military dictatorship.
- WhiteDragon25
- Word Count: 1