A Shift in Priorities

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rast

Travailler pour le Roi de Prusse

Elections for the Prussian Landtag were held on Sunday, October 1st, 1922. These were the second elections in Prussia with equal vote. From a total of 402, the SPD won 186 seats and the FVP 31, while the Zentrum arrived at 87, the GDNP at 83 and the National Liberals at 23.
This meant that Prussia would be ruled by a coalition of SPD and FVP led by Otto Braun (SPD) for the next four years.
Braun had – so far – successfully warded off all attempts to reform Prussia. These attempts mainly originated from an association of Rhenish separatists directed by the Lord Mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer (Zentrum). Adenauer argued that Prussia was far too big to fit into the federal structure of the German Empire.
If the Prussian Rhine Province and Catholic Westphalia were allowed to form a Rhenish Republic, the federal structure would become much more balanced.

Braun, a stubborn East Prussian, born at Königsberg, stoically defended Prussia as it had grown historically. Today, after the affiliation of the Catholic Arch Duchies of Tyrolia and Austria, there was an adequate balance between Protestant Prussia and the Catholic South; a Catholic Rhenish Republic would only inverse the equilibrium into a dominance of Catholicism.
In this question, Braun could even count on the support of GDNP and NL.

The vote for the GDNP had grown considerably since the elections of October 1918. The right wing now – including the NL – held more seats than the moderate Zentrum, which – however – in Prussia could only score in the Catholic areas, i.e. Upper Silesia, Westphalia and the Rhine Province – and nowadays also in the Posen Province, where the Catholic Poles had been casting more votes for the Zentrum than for the traditional Polish Parties.

That many Poles were now giving their vote to the Zentrum was certainly due to the abolition of all attempts to germanise them. This had already been implemented under the first Prussian government led by Paul Hirsch. Under Hirsch’s successor Braun, an initiative to implement Polish as first language in the Polish speaking areas had led to vociferous protests – voiced by the Poles.
With low-wage jobs in Germany today going to Southern Italians, Serbs and Romanians, the German Poles had to compete for sophisticated jobs normally held by Germans. This meant that their command of the German language had to be impeccable.
Much to the despair of Polish chauvinists in the Rzeczpospolita Polska, many Poles in Germany were turning away from ardent Polish nationalism and came to regard themselves as normal German citizens of Polish origin. Like the Sorbs in Lusatia (German: Lausitz) had long done, they were beginning to make their peace with Germany.
This was even more pronounced in Westphalia, where the ‘Ruhrpolen’ formed a minority of approximately half a million people. They had contributed to the formation of a special ‘Ruhr-Idiom’, which held some peculiar elements of Polish grammar and pronunciation, but otherwise they considered themselves as Germans – although their names – Szymanski, Czerwinski, Przybylski, etc. – betrayed them as of Polish origin. And it was observed that many Germans were already accepting these names as a speciality of the Ruhr area – and not as something discriminating ‘Polacken’ from Germans.

If there was a racial question that did stir up emotions in Prussia, it was that of the ‘Ostjuden’. Many Jews from Poland and Russia tried to immigrate to Germany. But although speaking Yiddish, an idiom that most Germans could largely understand, these ‘Kaftanjuden’ were considered backward and uncivilised by a majority of Germans and German Jews. However, sending back these people to Poland and Russia, where their lifes might be in danger, was out of question.
Sending all of them on to the USA – as had been the custom before the Great War – did no longer work. Sending them to Palestine in greater numbers was barred by the Ottomans. Limited numbers were accepted by the USA, Australia, Argentina, Canada, the Ottoman Empire and Morocco, but this did not suffice to deal with the whole lot.
While Jews immigrating from France were welcome and usually blended into their new environment without problems, the ‘Ostjuden’ were – like Gypsies – liable to cause protests, riots and even violence when appearing somewhere in greater number inside Germany.
Finally, it were the German Jews of the ‘Jüdischer Reichsbund’ who came up with the proposal to admit ‘Ostjuden’ as settlers to Mittelafrika, Groß Togoland and Deutsch Südwest. This met with approval from the spokesmen of the ‘Ostjuden’ – after all the new environment would be German as well. Thus, starting in mid-1922, increasing numbers of ‘Ostjuden’ were allowed to move to Africa.
 

rast

Kids

Horst Ludwig Wessel, called ‘Horsti’ by his mother and his younger siblings, had been born at Bielefeld, in Eastern Westphalia, in 1907.
In 1913, the family had moved to Berlin, where Horsti’s father, Dr. Wilhelm Ludwig Georg Wessel, had become minister at the Nikolai church, the most ancient church in Berlin.
During the Great War, Dr. Wessel had served voluntarily as a military pastor behind the front line in Belgium and later in Lithuania, while the family remained in Berlin. This had been a hard time for Horsti’s mother Luise, who, all alone, had now been responsible for raising, educating – and feeding – Horsti and his younger brother and sister. But somehow Luise had succeeded and the kids had grown up healthy, although Horsti was a little bit on the frail side, yet very agile.
In May 1922, Dr. Wessel had died unexpectedly after a minor surgery at the age of only 42, leaving behind fourteen year old Horsti as the oldest male of the little family.
Fortunately, the Wessel family was not poor and could afford sending Horsti to expensive grammar school (Gymnasium in German) even after Dr. Wessel’s death.
Dr. Wessel had been a steadfast supporter of the GDNP, and Horsti and his brother Werner had become members of the GDNP’s youth organisation, the Bismarck Youth.
But now, Horsti had made the acquaintance of Julie Petrocini, the fifteen year old daughter of immigrants from France, who lived over the street with her parents and brothers. Father Petrocini was a Socialist and after some months in jail had decided to leave la Patrie in favour of a safer environment. Because Berlin had a long tradition of welcoming and integrating immigrants from France, he had chosen the German capital.
Julie had – at once – enchanted Horsti. After one small conversation – his French was far better than her German – Horsti had fallen in ardent love with her. And – to his utmost joy – Julie was responding in kind.
The families eyed this love affair with great distrust. Mother Luise came from a Protestant clerical family herself and was rather wary of the Petrocinis – Catholic French Socialists! Only Jewish Russian Bolsheviks could be worse... Brother Werner and sister Inge (Ingeborg), both still too young for romantic feelings, only made fun of Horsti’s ‘foolishness’, as they saw it.
On the other side of the Jüdenstraße, Jean Pierre Petrocini and his wife Henriette were very uneasy with their daughter’s relation to the scion of a well known Pan-German orator and authoritarian right-wing Protestant priest.
However, on October 9th, 1922, Horsti celebrated his fifteenth birthday – with Julie as his favourite guest. And in the following night, they secretly met and – on the loft of the rectory in the Jüdenstraße – made love, a first time for both. Lying in each other’s arms afterwards, they swore to stay together eternally. Julie would become a famous physician and Horsti a famous scientist, and together they would work to ease the lot of the wretched of this earth...

Nine year old Menachem Wolfovich Begin was brooding over his German lesson at Kamstigall Camp near Pillau in East Prussia. During the Great War, the Kamstigall estate had been converted into a PoW camp – now it served as compound for ‘Ostjuden’ destined for Mittelafrika.
One had to learn German. – “You will not mess up the High German spoken in Mittelafrika with your Yiddish! Either you learn proper German or you’ll be sent back to Russia!”
Papa Zeev-Dov and Mama Hassia were struggling heavily with the new language, as were Menachem’s two elder brothers, but for little Menachem German was a piece of cake. He had been raised in Jewish Orthodox tradition, learning the Torah and the Jewish religious customs but not much about the world. German now opened up the world for him; there were hundreds – if not thousands – of books (all written in German) in the camp’s library.
Papa was a prominent Zionist, but his application for immigration to Palestine had been turned down by the Emir of Arabia. Another application to go to the USA had been turned down by the US Immigration Office. Going back to Russia, where the Peasants’ Party was ruling seemed like suicide. Finally Papa had agreed to apply for German Mittelafrika, something that the agents of the ‘Jüdischer Reichsbund’ had been propagating in the reception camp near Tilsit. Consequently, the family had been transferred to Kamstigall Camp.
Menachem’s German teacher, Miss Steigerwald, was very proud of him. She thought he once could become a professor for German philology or a famous writer. She had convinced Director Schmidt that Menachem was highly talented.
Thus it happened that little Menachem Begin was offered German citizenship and a scholarship by the Kaiser Wilhelm Scholarship Society for Outstanding Students. – The offer, however, did only apply for him; his family still was destined for Mittelafrika and could only hope to acquire German citizenship after eight years as colonists.
After long debates, the family agreed. Menachem would join a boarding school at Königsberg and later would visit the famous university of the old Prussian capital, while Zeev-Dov, Hassia and the two elder brothers would embark for Daressalam.
 

bm79

Wow. No other word could express how impressed I am with this latest installment. No exclamation points, no smileys, just...wow.
 

rast

Emma Goldman digs up the Hatchet


The old warhorse of American Anarchism, Emma Goldman, had been sentenced to two years in prison in 1917 for ‘conspiracy to induce persons not to register’ (for the military draft). When the Great War had ended for the US in May 1918, Goldman still had been in jail at Missouri State Penitentiary, only to be released on September 27, 1919.
By then, the artificially induced war hysteria and the initial ‘Red Scare’ had been over and the US seemed to stir a course of self-sufficient isolationism. US casualties in the Great War had been light, mainly due to diseases, including the American Flu; hardly any soldiers had been killed or wounded in action, except a number of early war volunteers who had been fighting in French or British units. Thus, the traumatic experience of Europe, the Great War, almost left no trace in US world view.
Consequently, Goldman moved to New York again and re-edited her journal ‘Mother Earth’, a monthly magazine ‘devoted to social science and literature’, soon joined by Alexander Berkman, her fellow Anarchist and ancient co-editor of the journal, who together with Goldman had been sentenced to jail in 1917 and only had been released from Atlanta State Penitentiary on October 1st, 1919.
‘Mother Earth’ continued to publish about the international and domestic labor movement, education, literature and the arts, state and government control, plus women's emancipation, sexual freedom and birth control. The list of its contributors and subscribers again became the ‘Who’s Who’ of the radical left in the US.

Initially friendly to Bolshevik rule in Russia, Goldman – and to a lesser intend Berkman – had finally realised the brutal nature of Bolshevik rule when the devastating effects of ‘The Great March Eastward’ had become known in winter of 1919/1920. Since then, she was a sworn enemy of Lenin and Trotsky, whom she saw as unscrupulous suppressors of liberty and individual rights.
Thus, the Second Mexican Revolution, with Trotsky as the man behind Pancho Villa, had not been received friendly in ‘Mother Earth’. But the subsequent spread of Panchismo, which obviously was not Trotsky’s doing, and the fact that Rosa Luxemburg had joined the revolution had convinced Goldman to support the revolutionary movements in Central and South America.

Therefore, when President Owen had ordered blockade and military intervention in early September 1922, he had found Emma Goldman in the vanguard of his domestic enemies.
Since then, Goldman was restlessly condemning US intervention and stirring up the US left for action. Whatever the people in the south did was obviously their affair – and nothing the US Administration or the US Navy or the US Army had any right to interfere with. Direct action was required in the US to stop interventionism.

In early October 1922, a series of strikes paralysed the East Cost ports and production facilities. And on October 6th, three bombs exploded in New York and another one in Washington D.C.
At noon, a lorry loaded with approximately two metric tons of explosives detonated in front of the J.P. Morgan bank at 23 Wall Street, causing the building – and two others – to collapse and killing more than 600 people, while injuring at least 2,800.
Another, much smaller bomb went off almost simultaneously on Time Square, in a garbage bin, killing 24 people and injuring 148.
The next bomb to explode was the one in Washington, only few minutes of the first two in New York. It didn’t kill much people, but it toppled the Washington Monument when a lorry rammed the base of the monument, triggering the lorry’s charge, one metric ton of dynamite, to blow up.
The third bomb in New York detonated inside the Flat Iron Building at 17:30 hours. While killing nobody and only injuring five, it started a fire, which left one third of the building unuseable after the firemen had finally extinguished it in the early morning of October 7th.

Nobody ever took responsibility for these bombings, and until today historians and disciples of various conspiracy theories debate on who might have behind them.
But with these fanals, the atmosphere in the US grew icy. The advocates of law and order had their field day, and in quick sequence an impressive load of repressive laws was pushed through legislation.
Subsequently, US jails no longer sufficed to accommodate all those arrested or condemned and field prisons had to be errected from concertina wires and tents.

Emma Goldman, however, had dodged being arrested and gone underground. In letters to various newspapers she denied to have had anything to do with the bombings and continued to accuse the US Administration.
Very soon, she became America’s most wanted person and her image stuck on every wall, promising a reward of 100,000 $ for her apprehension – dead or alive.
Quite a number of women were arrested in the hunt, and two even shot by law enforcers, but none of them turned out to be Emma Goldman. Eventually, she turned up in Mexico, appearing in public together with Rosa Luxemburg and calling for a revolution in the US – in order to overthrow the repressive imperialist regime of President Owen, which was stomping on human rights with its police boots.
 
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Expat

Hate to criticize my favorite TL, but I don't think you could knock down the Washington Monument in that way.

It's a solid wall of stone, and most of the force of the explosion is going to dissipate into the air around it.

Plus it's on a hill in the middle of a field. You've got a good 1/4 to 1/2 mile of conspicuous driving in which the truck could be stopped.

But even if you drive into the base, I doubt you'd do the necessary damage to make it topple. You'd need a very heavy amount of additional reinforcement on the truck (basically a 3-sided steel box) to direct the explosion, and that in addition to a ton of dynamite...it's just not likely on a 1920s chassis.

If you're looking for a target in DC in the 20s, the Capitol was actually very approachable until 9/11. The East entrance was auto-accessible.

Most of the Department headquarters are just hanging out in the regular street grid with very little street security (bollards barely existed before 9/11.)

Or there's always Union Station.

(Credit to my demo expert amigo, Jeff)
 
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rast

One metric ton of dynamite will produce a blast wave sufficient to bring the monument to collapse by vibrancy even if it is not flush with the object or concentrated.
Air pressure will rise to above 1000 Gram/cm², considered adequate to destroy any object made from stones.
The blast wave would also be sufficient if the charge was detonating 20-30 metres away from the object.
 

rast

United we Stand, United we…


President Owen’s decisions on blockade and limited intervention had not found universal acceptance in the inner cabinet, especially Vice President Roosevelt had spoken against acting as security warden for UFC, the Vaccaro Brothers or the Standard Oil breakup companies.
“These countries are no democracies to our standards. Small and wealthy oligarchies dominate the masses by limitating and manipulating franchise. When these countries step forward to a true democratic representation, we should not accompany this with military intervention but by helping them to establish truly constitutional systems. – Supporting US enterprises, which all have closely cooperated with these oligarchies, will not further US standing in these countries. When people see us assisting their oppressors, they will turn away from us.”

However, with the October 6th Bombings, the US had come under attack – and no longer could there be any petty debate about minor issues like the presence of a few marines in a near-by tropic country. Although the attackers never could be identified, published and public opinion soon had found the culprits: Socialists, Communists and Anarchists. – And somehow, the general conviction grew that Trotsky and Goldman must have been behind all this…
In great haste, Wilson’s old Sedition Act draft of 1918 was fetched out of the shelf, dedusted, actualised and pushed through legislation, quickly followed by the Foreigner Registration Act (mostly called the Logan Act, after Congressman W. Turner Logan of South Carolina, who had proposed it), the Immigration Act of 1922 (known as the Kitchin-Raker Act after its proponents), which effectively shut down immigration from Russia, Poland, Southern and South-Eastern Europe and most of Asia, and the Federal Security Act, which formally established the Federal Security Office as foreign intelligence agency of the US government.
At the same time, the Department of Justice’s Federal Secrete Service was made the primary domestic intelligence and counterintelligence agency, in clear demarcation from the Attorney General’s Bureau of Investigation, which now became the Federal Crime Fighting Agency, under the Domestic Security Act (or McSwain Act).
The Second Anarchist Exclusion Act and other minor laws and ammendments rounded up this impressive package.

The invasion of Mexico was the next logical step in this effort of defending the US. When Trotsky and Goldman were scheming and plotting in Mexico City, one had to go there an apprehend them.
Unfortunately, the US Army of 1922 was smaller than the Romanian Army. Thus, any quick move was out of question, National Guard units had to be mobilised and equipped; logistic preparation had to be made, armaments to be purchased.
A plan for all this had been prepared dilligently, and on October 8th, 1922, the military machinery was set in motion. General Pershing thought that the invasion force could be ready for action by December 1st.

In Mexico, these events did not go unnoticed. Neither Pancho Villa nor Trotsky thought that the Mexican Army would be a match for the US forces, once the latter were fully mobilised and armed. They assumed that the US were going to attack out of Southern Texas along the littoral towards Ciudad de México, an advance of perhaps 500 miles, which could be backed and supported by seaborne logistics.
If offering open field battle was out of question, all preparations had to go into guerrilla warfare. Wearing down the Gringos would be the game. – For this end, it was important that the population did not flee, but stayed put – to suffer from Gringo arbitrariness and cruelty as well as to provide the environment in which the guerrillas could successfully operate.
With great care, weapon and ammunition caches were prepared, ‘sleepers’ positioned and key infrastructure prepared for destruction.
In parallel, Rosa Luxemburg and Emma Goldman were preparing an international press campaign against the US imperialists. If the international community had – until now – supported the US embargo, this was to change. Mexico was a peaceful country that had attacked or offended nobody. If now the US capitalists and imperialists attacked this peaceful country and undertook to destroy the benedictory social change, which had liberated and emancipated the poor masses, international opinion should soon swing against the interventionists.

In the Mexican population, the threat of a Gringo invasion led to an unprecedented solidarisation with ‘El Guardián del Pueblo’ and his helpers. Many volunteered to fight against ‘los Americanos’, and training camps for guerrilla warfare sprung up all over the country. – There was abundant expertise in this kind of war in country, one would prepare a ‘hot’ welcome for the Gringos.
And once the US invasion was a fact, when the international community clearly could identify the US as aggressor, there was no reason not to spread the fight northwards, into the USA. Especially California, Arizona and New Mexico appeared to present attractive targets for raiding parties on horseback.
 
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glowjack

Banned
I like this, definitely from real life experience plausible since the united states was politically white supremacists until the end of WW2 in RTL.
 

rast

Triumphal March


On October 15th, 1922, detachments of the victorious Russian troops marched through St. Petersburg. The weather was fair, although it had rained in the early morning. Huge crowds had gathered to cheer the victors of the Transbaikal War. Prime Minister Matutin and Tsar Kyrill I. were there to greet the troops in front of the Winter Palace.
Russia had won an important victory and Russian pride was soaring. After the humilating defeat in the Great War and the catastrophe of the Civil War, Russia was back as a great nation, having decisively beaten one of the world’s major powers.

Yet, behind closed doors, there wasn’t much cheering. The war had been a political victory, but the costs had been extreme. General Tukhachevsky had bled the Russian Army white. It would require several years to rebuild the forces. Any attack on Manchukuo was out of question for the next three to four years.
About fifty percent of the active officers had been killed or disabled, among those seven Generals. The losses in NCOs were of an equal magnitude, but good and reliable NCOs never had been abundant in the Russian army; thus this was felt to be even more crippling.
The ammunition supply was completely depleted, the gun barrels worn out to the extreme, the tank force lost, the air force only operative still with mercenary pilots (most of which now were leaving Russia again, after their contracts had ended).

Whether Matutin wanted it – or not – Russia was bound to execute a very peaceful and temperate foreign policy in the next few years, if only in order to attract the funds needed to rebuild the army and continue with the upgrading of the infrastructure.
Russian economy was already developing well, the growth rate was stupefying; however, the base from which this growth was departing was as low as could be imagined.
One sore point in Matutin’s deliberations was the use of land. While being a prisonner of war and working on a Pomeranian estate he had seen how productive this private estate was – despite the lack of workers, horses and fertiliser. In comparison to this, the traditional Russian peasant villages with their communal land were gross examples of mismanagement and unproductiveness.
Yet, it was just this communal cultivation that the Russian peasants wanted. In their mind, the land did not belong to anybody (except perhaps God), but every peasant family must have the right to farm as much land as it needed. During the period of Revolution and Civil War, all aristocratic and bourgeois large land owners had been ousted, many of them being killed, and their land had become communal ‘property’ (while their mansions had been looted and burnt down). Even the small private peasanty, developed under pre-war reform attempts, had been forced back into the communal usage.
Thus, the largest part of the Russian economy and population was living under conditions which enabled them to cultivate just as much as they needed for their private consumption.
But, being the candiate of the KP, Matutin had absolutely no chance to change anything in this respect. The Russian peasants wanted as little state interference and as much self-administation as possible. They were happy to regulate every day life in the village assembly and the district Semstvo, more was not wanted.

How could he develop Russia under these conditions? That was the main problem plaguing Matutin. He was not the man to sit back and stoically contemplate things as they were. He wanted change, change to the positive – more production, more income for the people, more growth, a splendid economical and political rise of Russia.
He had joined the Peasants’ Party because in the other parties he never would have had a chance to rise to the top, not because he shared the backward values of the peasants.
Despite the image of being a drunkard, prominent in the western countries as well as in Russia, Matutin was sober most of the time – when not forced to attend some of the frequent social Vodka orgies so common in Russia. And he was comtemplating how to bring forward social and economic change all the time.
Russia had had enough of revolution and civil war, there was no merit in scheming for another revolution. But somehow, one had to force these under-developed Russians forward.
Perhaps Lenin had been right in forcing the Russians to a change. But Lenin’s change had been one that had brought the brutality and backwardness of the masses to rule, the Bolsheviks being only the riders atop of the unleashed Russian monster.
This was not the splendid Russia Matutin wanted. There must be another way…
Tukhachevsky’s ruthlessness had deeply impressed Matutin. Here was a man who knew how to get what he wanted…
 

Bmao

Awesome update rast, as always. I don't know if it was mentioned in one of your previous posts, but what are roughly the final numbers in terms of casualties for both sides? For the Japanese, I see this as an opportunity to reform their military, and not go the path of having fanaticism trump more flexible tactics, a more cutting edge battle doctrine and higher quality weapons. You mention how during the Transbaikal war, Zhukov emerged as a promising commander in the field, as one could expect, but any surprises from the Japanese side? Maybe somebody from OTL or another who in OTL lived in complete obscurity would become Japan's Zhukov?

Speaking of Asia, how are things going in China? Is it still basically a warlord chaos at this point (I don't see any reason why not), but more importantly, how would the Transbaikal war affect Japanese ambitions in China?

I also liked how things in North America are escalating, though I did find that attack on the Washington monument as bordering on the implausible, but then again nobody thought that 9/11 could ever happen. If the US invades Mexico, the dominoes are gonna fall all over Latin America and it may well mean the end of the Monroe Doctrine...

Keep it up, as always.
 

rast

I'll post the losses in the chapter dealing with Japan after the defeat. The Japanese got their fingers badly burnt, they'll have to re-consider many things. (And they are fully constitutional now.)

Matters in China are still warlord dominated, but quite peaceful - with a lot of mainly US investment in all of China (and some German one in the south).
Sun Yat-sen is still slowly rotting away in Shanghai, because in Guangzhou he's not welcome (this was an American-German condition for investment and training).

Manchukuo is an open question, the state is very attractive for many northern Chinese - but what about the Russian threat?

The terrorists in the USA certainly showed a good perception for symbols, the fall of the Washington Monument did more to stir up the Americans for revenge than the hundreds of dead bodies in the Wall Street.
 

rast

No Parade


The Japanese forces returning home did not receive a grand reception. They had been decisively beaten and lost the war. – Even if the Russians might have been incapable of continuing the war the other day, the Japanese had been about to be annihilated already on September 20th, 1922. The armistice had just prevented that.
General Yamanashi had – of course – conducted Seppuku after signing the armistice at Chita. Not in presence of these terrible Russians, but after returning to his own HQ and conducting a dignified tea ceremony.
Japanese losses were enormous: The total amounted to 2,321,400 men, counting all casualties since the initial invasion of Sakhalin and the Russian Far East District in 1919. Of these, 552,000 had been killed, and 38,900 were still missing. The number of permanently disabled cripples was estimated to exceed 430,000, although medical treatment was still ongoing. Here, the maiming effects of shell fragments clearly told.
The only consolation was that the Japanese medical service had been able to absorb and treat these mass casualties in an acceptable way, only about one third of the killed had died after being delivered to a medical treatment facility.

The Imperial Japanese Army had lost its nimbus of always being victorious. After the Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and the Great War, all of which had seen Japanese victories and successes, the Transbaikal War had ended in a shattering defeat.
Japanese War Minister General Tanaka also had had the decency to commit Seppuku, providing Prime Minister Hara with the opportunity the put a civilian in charge of the army for the first time in modern Japanese history. Count Katō Takaaki took over the position, who had been the Foreign Minister of Nippon in 1914 and was known for his distance to the extremists and his believe that Japan was a great power and should act accordingly.
A reform of the army was the logical consequence of the débâcle of Chita.
Quite a trainload of old Generals was sent into retirement, younger men of more modern education taking their positions. A commission was set up to study the Transbaikal War, the Russian Civil War and the Great War in Europe – in order to come up with proposals how to reform doctrine and training of the army.
Nippon had become too proud to ask for foreign instructors, one felt capable of managing the necessary changes alone. Mechanisation of the battlefield was one of the obvious answer to the horrendous losses of men. Consequently, the Mitsubishi and Mitsui Zaibatsus were tasked to develop armoured fighting vehicles similar to the German Kanobil-Stuwa designs.
Again following the German example, an independent air force was to be set up. The manpower establishment of the Army Air Service had proven insufficient, a much broader base was required in order to train an adequate number of pilots and technicians. This had also some repercussions on the Naval Air Service, but the Imperial Japanese Navy, under the tutelage of Naval Minister Admiral Katō Tomosaburō, was able to preserve its core functions of longe range patrol aircraft, carrier borne and floating aeroplanes plus the necessary training facilities. Technically, the Japanese designs (copies of French models) had stood their ground against the German types used by the Russians, thus the Nakajima and Kawasaki companies were asked to proceed in the development of more modern types.

However, with the chronic Japanese lack of funds, all these changes and reforms were estimated to take well into the 1930ies.
As consequence, military representation and presence now shifted to the Imperial Japanese Navy. The navy’s reputation was still untarnished – and she was seen very well capable of defending the homeland and controlling the wider arch from Vietnam to Kamchatka.
Unfortunately, this didn’t mean extra funding either. One had to carry on with the meager resources available. The Transbaikal War had not only cost lifes, it also had emptied the state coffers. Basically, Nippon was broke. Only Indian and US credits kept the administration running.

The Japanese practise of awarding ‘befriended’ nations with the bargain to sell their agricultural products and natural resources taxfree on the Japanese market, if in return they bought Japanse industrial products only, now fired back: The process didn’t flush currency into the public purse.
Japan was a great but poor country – and bound to remain so. Fortunately, one still had the Sakhalin oil and the oil from Persia and the revenues thereof, preventing the economy from collapse for lack of cheap fuel.
Nippon today was the worlds greatest producer of bicycles, perhaps one could work in the area of more advanced techniques – like automobiles and airplanes, and thus earn more money?

In all, the Japan after the Battle of Chita was bound to become a much more serene country. For the next ten to fifteen years, the nation was about to steer a course of slow advance and improvement.
The extremists and chauvinists had been taught a costly lesson. Prime Minister Hara was now free to advance on a peaceful course blending Nippon into the international community without sabre ratting. He was determined to methodically extend suffrage – in a way that should conserve the rule of his Rikken Seiyukai Party and keep both Socialists and Jingoists from power.
 
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rast

Puszta Farming

With slight amusement Countess Kiss Enikõ watched the applicant step closer and bow formally. She maintained her relaxed seat and did not extent her hand for a kiss on the hand.
“Please, have a seat.”
This one looked frail and rather shy, his spectacles giving him the air of an intellectual. His face and his hands were soft. – He’s never worked physically, thought Countess Kiss and sipped at her liqueur.
The young man seemed irritated.
“Do you have a problem with alcohol?” asked the countess.
“No, Madam, but...” The young man seemed embarrassed. “I personally do not drink alcoholic beverages.” he finally uttered.
“Really? How unusual for a Bavarian.” But she thought that in reality he was disapproving that a woman was drinking alcohol in public. This appeared to be a rather goody-goody applicant. “Do you smoke?”
She offered him one of her Egyptian cigarettes.
“No, Madam, thank you, but I do not smoke either.”
Countess Kiss lit her ciggy and took another sip of liqueur.
“You seem to be a rather virtuous young man. – Have you served in the army?”
He became animated. “Yes. I’m a Lieutenant of the Reserve in the Bavarian Army. Eleventh Infantry Regiment ‘Von der Tann’.”
“Did you serve in the Great War?”
“No, regrettably, I was too young. – I took part in the intervention in Czechia in 1920, but that – of course – was no real combat. I was a platoon leader then, called up for duty from my studies.”
“You studied agriculture here in Munich – or at Weihenstephan?”
“Here in Munich, at the Technical University. – Weihenstephan only is an academy.”
“But it does have a very good reputation in Hungary. – But anyway, you just finished your studies, didn’t you?”
“Yes, Madam, my exam was rated ‘very good’.”
“You are Catholic?”
“Yes, of course, I’m a good Christian.”
“Are you married?”
He looked embarrassed again.
“No, Madam.”
His lips had gone small, she noticed. He doesn’t like to be questioned about this, she thought, and her interest rose.
“Engaged?”
“No, Madam.”
“But you surely do have a girl friend, don’t you?”
“No, Madam.”
“Do you prefer boys?”
Now he really looked offended.
“No!” he snapped.
Countess Kiss made a soothing hand gesture. “No abuse intended. – But my estate in the Puszta is a lonely place, and I have already made strange experiences with estate managers, I can tell you. – There are many Gypsies working as daytallers. They have beautiful daughters. And they have the idea that sexual intercourse...” Kiss noticed how the young man was wriggling. “... should only occur between married people. – One of my managers was found with cut throat and amputated manhood. It was said that he had abused a Gypsy girl... – Another one went there together with his wife, but she couldn’t stand the loneliness, went completely mad, poisoned her husband and hung herself. – That’s why I’m looking for a young man, who is neither bound to a wife nor intend on grabbing at each pretty girl that gets before his eyes.”
Kiss noticed that the young man looked up – and smiled for the first time. His smile gave him an unexpected charm; suddenly he appeared like an eager boy.
“I can promise you that I will never touch a Gypsy girl. – And there will also be no wife to poison me. I will dedicate my whole creativeness to my work.”
Somehow she believed him. Her impression was that he was a male virgin, had never had a girl until now, - and had rather peculiar ideas about women. – But that was his problem. For her purposes, he seemed qualified. At least much more than the other applicants – a brute alcoholic Bavarian farmer, a gay Jew from Vienna, and a married Protestant from Schleswig-Holstein.
“You have seen the financial conditions?”
“Madam, to be honest, otherwise I would not be here. Yes, I agree to the financial conditions. – And I agree to all the other conditions.”
“Fine, Mister Himmler, or dare I call you Heinrich? – I think I’ll give you a chance. Be my headman at the Nyírfa Estate and bring it to economic benefit. – Here, my hand on it.”
Both rose and shook hands.
 

Bmao

Yet another OTL Nazi relegated to a life of comfortable obscurity. First, an Armenian Hitler, then Horst Wessel doing it with that French girl. As always, looking forward to more.
 

rast

Girlies

Sixteen year old Crown Prince Wilhelm Friedrich Franz Joseph Christian Olaf von Preußen really had enjoyed the vacation in the Netherlands. That had been far better than school: Riding, sailing, hiking, fresh air – and that Dutch girl, Juliana.
A real devil that little one, riding on her pony like a bandit, quite a jolly companion. – But, boy, wasn’t she ugly...

Wilhelm judged girls in comparison to his mother, Cecilie, who was an outright natural beauty. With her part-Russian ancestry, Cecilie made a really striking appearance. Any ordinary pretty girl would already have had problems to surpass her in Wilhelm’s mind, but for unsightly little Juliana there was not the slightest hope.
Wilhelm knew of course that his future marriage would have nothing to do with good looks or romantic feelings. He was the heir to the throne of one of the mightiest countries on this globe, and his future wife would be selected for political – and perhaps also dynastic – reasons.
Nevertheless, he preferred good looking girls.

The ladies, which his father had had selected for introducing him to love-making, Marzena, the Polish witch, and Csilla, the hurricane from Budapest, had both been real bombshells...
Unfortunately, his mother had found out after only too few ‘sessions’, and the ladies had disappeared into limbo.
Not that Cecilie entirely disapproved the procedure, but she didn’t want her eldest son to ‘fete orgies’ – when he was supposed to do his homework for school.
His father hadn’t argued, Cecilie was the boss in the family. One might stage a side-show by-passing her, but once she noticed, she would assume control.

Wilhelm knew that his mother favoured a liaison with Giovanna, Princess of Savoy, the third daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III. of Italy. He had met her during the Italy vacations last year. A little bit on the skinny side, but rather pretty and pleasant. She was one year his junior, quite matching, although Catholic...
His father, however, had joined Chancellor Erzberger and Foreign Minister Stresemann in the plot to make Juliana Crown Princess of Germany.

Wilhelm was frustrated that his opinion didn’t matter. But, on the other hand, perhaps it was better that this was so... – Right at the moment, he was only interested in Brigitte, the red haired cookmaid from the Neue Palais. Quite a bed bunny, this voluminous daughter of Berlin. And certainly not without second thoughts. If she managed to become pregnant from him, she would be set for life. As mother of an illegitimate offspring of the future Kaiser, she would be nobilised to baroness or countess, be given a nice estate and a splendid appanage. No wonder that she always was so eager to get out of her clothes...

It was time for his fencing lesson. Wilhelm snatched his gear out of the locker and went down to the gymnasium. His teacher, Oberleutnant von Herwig was already waiting.
“You are three minutes late, Royal Highness. I will report this to your military governor. – All right, put down your stuff and start running, just follow me! Got to get you soft and pliable.”

One hour later, an exhausted and sweaty Wilhelm slowly hobbled back to his rooms. Herwig was a bastard, but he was the best fencing teacher to be had.
What was that?
A giggling girl in his brother’s rooms? – Louis Ferdinand was one year and a half younger than Wilhelm, he was not yet supposed to deal with girls or women.
Wilhelm became curious. Cautiously, he opened the door and peered into Lou’s room. – Unbelievable! There was Lou, in close contact with a blonde, which Wilhelm had never seen before. His brother was becoming adult!
Carefully, he closed the door again and proceeded to his rooms, whistling cheerfully.
 

rast

Operation Capstone

The US invasion of Mexiko had received the code name ‘Operation Capstone’. It started on Monday, December 3rd, 1922. Simultaneous with the main force’s border crossing between McAllen and Brownsville, an amphibious operation to secure Tampico was launched in order to prevent that the lake district west of Tampico became a seriously defended obstacle.
But there was no open resistance. No field battle ever occurred. For eight days, the US troops were advancing uncontested, and the Tampico bridge head was relieved on December 11th.
Yet, even with supplies now coming in through Tampico, US advance slowed down considerably due to overextended lines of communication and the necessity to prepare the ascent to the central highland.

In the US occupied zone, tensions were rising rapidly. Minor guerrilla attacks resulted in major US responses, which in turn led to cusualties in the civilian population, which in turn led to increased guerrilla activities.
There were no big coups. A sentry was shot here, a messenger intercepted there, a bomb exploded somewhere else. It was a constant series of small but very often lethal stiches.
Very soon, the use of private quarters for accommodation had to be stopped. The US troops now used military camps, well guarded and protected by barbed wire.
There were no large guerrilla bands to be intercepted, small activist cells blended into the surrounding civilian population – and were only detectable when caught in the act.
That – in the wake of the invasion troops – fromer owners of land and utilities showed up and reclaimed their property was a major mistake. If this had been avoided, the US might have been able to create as safe and secure environment after some time. But with the results of the Second Revolution in peril, the indigene population quickly shifted to active support of the guerrillas.

General Robert Lee Howze, a Texan, was in charge of the III. Army Corps, the pricipal large unit responsible for Capstone. Two thirds of his forces were National Guard units.
In his mind, the frictional losses between his various units did more to slow down operations than enemy action. This was not merely caused by incompetence of certain reservists and active soldiers, but much more by the fact that the compenents never had exercised together before. Some units did not receive food for several days because the field kitchens hadn’t followed their advance but still were in place north of the border. Another unit got completely missing for almost a week, only to turn up somewhere west of the occupation zone, completely alone between Mexicans.

What – so far – could have been termed a normal military operation, became an ordeal after the Las Lavaderos massacre. A company of the Alabama National Guard was ambushed near this village and lost its company commander and seven men. The company sergeant major, himself wounded and suffering tremendous pain, took charge, led the company into the village and ordered them to round up and shoot all males above the age of twelve. 46 Mexicans were thus killed, no of which had had anything to do with the ambush.
This was just what the Mexican leaders had been waiting for.
Within few hours, the massacre was covered in the newspapers all around the world – and the press campaign against the US invasion really got started.

As could be expected, some individual US soldiers also committed crimes – rape, robbery and theft being the most numerous offenses. These acts were also immediately taken up in the press campaign, due to a well organised reporting system of the Mexican side, - and inflated beyond proportion.
What had happened to the Germans when they had stomped into Belgium in 1914, was now happening to the US. Within shortest time, an all out press campaign was raging against them, cleverly mixing facts and fiction.
 

Amit

Just caught up on a weeks worth of updates, Great job Rast, I feel my words are not enough...please keep it comin!
 
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