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Chapter Eleven
June 11, 1965: Operation Double Thunder is launched by the Chinese, consisting of an advance down the Korean Peninsula into Kim Il-sung's country. The Korean army has been expecting this, but is unable to put up serious pressure and begins a long, slow retreat southward. Pyongyang falls within a week, and Seoul four days afterwards. By the end of the month, all of Korea is under Chinese occupation. Kim Il-sung and his family are killed in Pyongyang.

June 16, 1965: The Treaty of Kabul is signed in neutral Afghanistan between India and the Allies. The points are as follows:

  • India is to cede Uttaranchal, Arunachal Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh to China
  • Jammu and Kashmir are to be ceded to Pakistan
  • India is to hand over Kansidpal Vispoot and other key Communist figures for trial
  • A demilitarised zone along the Indo-Pakistani border is to be manned by UN peacekeeping troops until June 16, 1985
  • India is forbidden from researching nuclear weapons
The Indian government accepts these terms, grateful for having escaped the comparatively harsher fate which befell the Soviet Union.

June 22, 1965: The Warsaw Trials begin. Widely seen as a successor to the Nuremberg Trials of two decades before, these see Brezhnev, Vispoot, Zhu De, Deng Xiaoping , the leaders of the various Warsaw Pact states, and several other Communist officials in the dock. The United States, Britain, Germany, and China each supply two judges to the prosecution. The defendants have access to legal representation, and the whole trials are filmed and televised.

The defendants do not go quietly, however. Brezhnev heavily criticises the US on grounds of hypocrisy, pointing out that they had no compulsions about destroying five Soviet cities or Jena, and effectively stating that use of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons does not constitute a war crime. The debate thus created will foster decades of discussion amongst academics.

July 1965: The Chinese begin a programme of deportation and resettlement in former Mongolia, Second East Turkestan Republic, and Russian Far East. Vladivostok is renamed Zhudong, while Ulanbataar becomes Wuerjia and Urumqi becomes Xicao. (1) Ethnic Russians and Mongols are deported to the Soviet Union. As of July, this process is fairly limited, but Chiang will not stop until total sinicisation has been achieved.

July 16, 1965: The sentences are handed down: Leonid Brezhnev, Kandispal Vispoot, Walter Ulbricht, Nicolae Ceacaseau, Władysław Gomułka, Alexander Dubcek, Todor Zhvikov, and István Dobi are sentenced to death, along with Wang Ming in absentia. The other defendants receive prison sentences ranging from five years to life.

July 5, 1965: President Humphrey signs into law the United States Cancer Research Act, providing $10 million per year for the next ten years towards cancer research and treatment, both through the UN and through multilateral channels with foreign nations.

July 30, 1965: Leonid Brezhnev, Kandispal Vispoot, Walter Ulbricht, Nicolae Ceacaseau, Władysław Gomułka, Alexander Dubcek, Todor Zhvikov, and István Dobi are executed by hanging in Warsaw's Mokotow Prison

Their deaths are celebrated with clinking glasses all over the Western world

August 1965: In the new Republic of Czechoslovakia, tension increases between the Czech and Slovak subjects, with the latter demanding more autonomy. Social issues and pressures kept silent by the presence of Soviet troops begin to come to light, and several protests break out in Slovak cities, along with calls for a general election.

Czechoslovak president Janas Svobak (2) promises a general election in two months, on October 1, but refuses to grant any immediate concessions. Privately, he converses with American ambassador Malcolm Toon, requesting American military aid should it be needed to combat an insurgency in Slovakia...

August 12, 1965: After over a month of naked Chinese military occupation, the Republic of Korea is created, with Chung Hoo-lin as president. Chung rules as a dictator backed by the Chinese army and is in every way Nanjing's puppet. Under his rule, Communism is outlawed and anything pertaining to Kim Il-sung is destroyed.

September 3, 1965: The "Wuerjia Massacre". Seven hundred Mongolians about to be deported to the USSR riot and Chinese troops open fire. One hundred and four are killed, including three Chinese troops, and seventy are injured. Chiang has the whole thing hushed up, but nonetheless, word leaks out about the harsh nature of the Chinese military regime in Mongolia (as well as in the ex-Soviet Far East, for that matter). The Mongolian communities in the United States and elsewhere condemn the Chinese government, but no-one is too interested in crossing Chiang.

September 1965: More and more violence breaks out in Slovakia, including a riot which leaves ten dead in Bratislava. President Svobak redoubles his calls for foreign military aid, and openly considers instituting martial law in Slovakia.

The turmoil in Czechoslovakia also sets off minor discontent in Albania, newly annexed into Yugoslavia. Marshal Tito, to the concern of other NATO members, sends in the military to quell any and all discontent

October 1, 1965: The Czechoslovak general election occurs. It's effectively a referendum on the success of President Svobak, and a test of the strength of the union under democratic conditions. However, the election is clearly rigged, with innumerable cases of Slovak voter suppression. When Svobak's conservative Democratic Unity Party wins a nine-tenths majority in Parliament, the Slovaks decide that enough is enough.

October 5, 1965: A general strike commences in Bratislava, Kosice, and other major Slovak cities. More violent demonstrations also occur but are suppressed by the police. The protestors demand a fair rerun of the election, but Svobak refuses to even consider the notion.

October 26, 1965: Newly elected Polish president Stefan Brominski announces plans to deport the Russians living in the province of Miastokrolka (3) to the USSR. Although he does not say it openly, his goal is clearly to Polonise the province in the same way that Chiang is doing in Mongolia and Siberia.

November 2, 1965: After a month of chaos in Slovakia, labour leader Tomas Tichy declares the Democratic Republic of Slovakia, starting the Czechoslovak Civil War.

The response from bordering nations is generally one of strict neutrality- no-one is in any mood for fighting to spill over into their territory so soon after WWIII. The USA and Great Britain offer to mediate but are rebuked.

November 11, 1965: In the Moldovan general election, the Liberal Nationalist Party defeats the Conservatives. Over the course of the month, petitions start to flood the new president, Ivan Postan, for the possibility of federation with Romania. Although many within the Moldovan government are hesitant to take such a measure, they recognise that a significant portion of the population is in favour of such a measure...

December 5, 1965: The US Congress passes the Reconstruction Aid to Europe and Asia Act, colloquially known as the "Humphrey Plan" or "Marshall 2.0", for obvious reasons. It provides for over $25 billion dollars to be dispatched to the former Allied nations, especially to Germany and China. Controversially, the act also earmarks 2.5 billion to go towards the Soviet Union, a move which only barely passes Congress and is deeply unpopular with the people...

November 29, 1965: After several months of failing to do anything, and facing a vote of no confidence- or worse, a coup d'etat- Janus Svobak decides to throw in the towel and recognise Slovak independence, a move which the rest of the world quickly follows. Svobak himself will resign on Christmas Day and be replaced by a more liberal successor. Slovakia, meanwhile, is quickly admitted into NATO.

January 1, 1966: In the Indian general election, Indira Gandhi wins the presidency on a platform of "peace and reconstruction, and hope for a bright future." She is the first woman ever to win the Indian presidency, and international observers hope that she will move India in a more liberal direction.

January 2, 1966: Moldovan and Romanian citizens go to the polls for the question of federation. In the end, the two countries vote to unite by a slim margin: the actual union date will not be until January 1, 1971, so as to give both countries adequate time to prepare.

Comments?

(1) These are all based off of the Mandarin translations of the names of these cities from their native languages
(2) Janas Svobak, Chung Hoo-lin, Stefan Brominski, and Tomas Tichy are all fictitious characters
(3) "Kaliningrad" means "king's city" in Russian, and "Miastokrolka" means approximately that in Polish

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