In early 1956, English and Scottish forces began to make headway into Ireland. King Dominic's men were finally starting to lose hope on victory and were getting closer and closer to being pushed into the Atlantic. However, an apocalyptic event was about to occur which would all but stop the fighting in Ireland. Ireland's gigantic biological and chemical weapons facility in Killorglan was accidentally bombed by the English Aeroforce. This was a mistake of unprecedented magnitude. A anthrax-type weapon escaped, spreading rapidly among civilians and soldiers alike. It covered the countryside in days, killing thousands and sending the opposing armies into panic. Along with the anthrax, several other weapons were unwittingly released, including a cloud of mustard gas over five miles wide which blanketed Killarney and killed half of its citizens. Civilization broke down as people murdered each other over gas masks and canned food.
But the worst was yet to come. A fairly obscure 19th century illness was apparently making a comeback. Known simply as the "Scottish Influenza," the disease caused 500 Scottish soldiers in Glasgow to become deathly sick. In weeks, it was ravaging the British Isles. Wagons roamed the streets of every town to collect the bodies of the plague's victims. Ireland, already on the verge of breaking down into total lawlessness, was at last pushed over the edge. Dominic fled by boat to Normandy, and Churchill halted the invasion. A week later, on July 2nd, while the Battle of Gettysburg was raging in America, Churchill himself came down with the illness. Over the next several months, he battled the illness while still trying to control the war effort, but on November 5th, 1956, just days after the passing of Joseph Steele, Winston Churchill passed away in Oxford at the age of 82. As his followers and opponents began to turn violent in their attempts to take his place, the Third English Civil War was about to begin.
FALL OF THE RHEINBUND:
Only known photo of "Prussian Polly"
In the first three-quarters of 1956, the Confederation of the Rhine was still seemingly invincible to Prussian advances. Sweden was now trying to hold onto captured Denmark and could not help Kaiser Helmut Wilhelm I very much. But finally, in October, the Rheinbund's army was finally on the breaking point. The Prussian Army received orders for a general advance. Kaiser Karl II fled Frankfurt to Paris with his family and government ministers to manage the government-in-exile. In Berlin, celebrations erupted as the Kaiser proclaimed from the balcony of his palace, "Germania is on the path to being united for the first time in its history! Now, onto Austria and Holland!"
"Prussian Polly," a voluptuous-voiced, anonymous, radio girl from Berlin, started broadcasting around this time. She delivered messages of hopelessness to Napoleon's men who were still trying to retake the Confederation. As the 23 year-old Kronprinz Helmut Wilhelm von Hohenzollern-Wettin, sof the Prussian Kaiser, proved himself to be a military genius and routed several of Napoleon's finest regiments (some of which had never seen defeat since the Rise of Napoleon I in the late 1700s), the men began to believe the radio girl. As 1957 dawned, the Tripartite Imperial Army was a weeping mess, barely able to march back onto French soil. Over the past two years, over 6
million Bonapartist soldiers had been killed, wounded, or captured trying to keep the Rheinbund out of Prussian hands. Now, as Kronprinz Helmut Wilhelm marched his troops through Frankfurt in a massive victory parade, the sacrifice seemed to be in vain.
Kronprinz Helmut Wilhelm von Hohenzollern-Wettin
THE BALKANS:
Bulgarian troops fire mortars at Serbian forces, circa August, 1956
Going into mid-1956, Serbia had held its own. The late Josef Kovac's nephew and successor, Supreme Chancellor Anton Kovac, was fairly good at fighting off the massive attacks on his country. However, like the Confederation of the Rhine, Serbia was about to fall to Grand Alliance forces. Tsarina Ivanka's Bulgarian Imperial Army and troops from her ally Romania marched on Serbia in October, taking it out of the war. The Romanian had to turn to face the attacking Hungarians and Austrians from the north, but the Tsarina swiftly announced total annexation of Serbia into the Bulgarian Empire.
Meanwhile, the Kingdom of the Two Italies were engaged in heavy fighting against fascist Greece. In June of 1956, the Italians signed a treaty with the Egyptian Empire, which secretly began supporting Italian efforts in Africa. Arab volunteer legions participated in the taking of Greek Cyrenaica. A new wealth of Cyrenaican oil was sent back to mainland Italy. Fueling its war machine on this, the Italian Army and Navy attacked Greece itself. Huge naval battles raged for months, with hundreds of ships lost. Finally, in November, the Greeks could continue no longer, and as Italian marines landed on Crete and the Peloponnese Peninsula, and as the Italian Royal Aeroforce strafed Athens, the Greek government surrendered unconditionally. King Massimiliano IV proclaimed that Italy would soon liberate Serbia. Instead, a brutal front opened up along the Greco-Bulgarian border. Massimiliano threw everything he could at Ivanka, and as 1957 approached, it didn't appear that Italian troops would be marching on Sofia any time soon.
Bulgarian troops prepare to ambush Italian soldiers in southern Serbia, circa Christmas, 1956
All the while, the man single-handedly keeping Austria-Hungary and the surrounding Tripartite regions from falling to Prussia, Bulgaria, and Romania was the no-nonsense Austrian Field Marshal Adolf von Branau. While not exceptionally brilliant as a general, his men would have followed him through Hell. Many said that von Branau was holding Austria-Hungary from falling to occupation through sheer force of his iron will. He was determined to fight to the last man for God, Caesar, and Empire. As the Romanian Army made desperate attempts to achieve breakthroughs on the border, the Austro-Hungarian forces fought them off again and again. At last, Romania seemed to give up. Now it became a defensive war. Unless Prussian Kronprinz and Field Marshal Helmut Wilhelm could attack Austria from the north, Romania feared von Branau would come and occupy them. Von Branau and his generals had a new offensive planned for 1957. He was going to bet everything on it. Von Branau said to Napoleon VI January 1st, 1957, "If my plans work out, we may well just win this war after all."
We need to look into that sometime...
