1944 - July-December - Asian Front:
Japanese Battleship Yamato on a "Revenge Raid" on Chinese coastal cities.
1944 - July-December - Asian Front:
Asia was already a bloody, brutal front - but it descended even further into madness and barbarism with the Tokyo Firebombing. Using a fleet of high altitude zeppelins, the NRA unleashed the new synthetic “NAPALM” weapons that Sino-German scientists had uncovered a few months before. Using a delayed timing device, the Napalm bombs exploded just a few meters above ground - showing the rooftops with burning liquid. Combined with an unseasonal heat wave and drought - the firebombing started a conflagration that would kill nearly 100,000 Japanese and leave a million displaced. Adding insult to injury, the crown Princess Shigeko was badly burnt.
After this - all bets were off in the war between Japan and China. Previously dettered by her partners in Britain and France, Japan now resorted to unleashing biological horrors - attempting to bomb chinese cities with the black death bombs. Japan now used her vast battlefleets to pummel Chinese coastal shipping.
And the Chinese responded in turn - Chinese airships would continue to bomb Japanese cities with effective firebombs and attempt to drop incendiaries on Japanese agriculture and burn down the forests with the Napalm bombs.
In this swirling maelstorm of madness and brutality, the American conscience finally woke up. The 1944 election would be fought on a lot of issues - but one of them was President Wallace’s ‘moral foreign policy’ agenda. If re-elected, Wallace pledged to halt all trade with the warring powers and organize a peace conference. His opponent - Dewey wanted to keep business going and America right out of the quagmire.
Perhaps if it had been 4 years earlier, Dewey could’ve made the case that continued trade with all powers were essential to the American recovery. But by 1944, the Great Depression was well behind America and while the Midwest industrial states that relied on American trucks from Ford and others to be sold to Germany and the Soviet Union and American Tanks to be sold to China responded to Dewey’s message. As did the oil states of California and Texas that relied on American oil to be sold to Japan, France, China, Germany - and after the Chinese advance on the caucuses - the Soviet Union.
But it was not enough. President Henry A Wallace and his running mate Truman would defeat Dewey in a closely fought election. America was sickened - sickened by the Franco-British massacres of their colonial peoples and of the Bengal famine. Sickened by Soviet atrocities in Poland. Sickened by the German occupation of the Scandinavias and of the ‘scouring of Sofia.’ Sickened by the Japanese rape of Nanning, the biological weapons, the shelling of cities and - she was even sickened by the Chinese atrocities in Japan with the firebombings and forest burnings. Most Americans were sick of the steady diet of misery and conflict and hated what their country had become - mere merchants of death with their prosperity built on the backs of misery and destruction across the world. Merely two weeks after his election, President Wallace would issue an executive order halting all trade to the warring parties and announced that America would host peace talks in San Francisco.
The Central Asian Front:
Impressed by General Tukachevsky’s performance in Mongolia, he was promoted to Field Marshal and sent to command the Central Asian Front. The hapless Kulik was demoted and sent to command Mongolia. Although Tukachevsky was unable to prevent the Axis liberation of Iran, he beat Marshall Bufeng twice - encircling two armies. At Baku in August, capturing 200,000 Chinese and Persian troops and then again at Nukus in December, capturing 250,000 Chinese troops and other soldiers from the newly created independent republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikstan.
Republic of India troops advancing West towards the People's Republic of India.
The Indian Front:
The Indian theater continued to stagnate. The People’s Republic of India, although seemingly cut off from Soviet assistance by the Axis liberation of Iran, was easily supplied from the sea. Their troops and their soviet allies dug in, holding firm against the offensives by Bose’s Republic in the East and against Afghani-Chinese troops in the West.
Bose’s Republic of India focussed most of its’ efforts against the People’s Republic of India, believing that the troops would find themselves out of supply but they later realized that boats were an actual thing and stopped offensive operations by August, consolidating their position.
The Dominion of India held the line, declining Japanese troops as they did not want this conflict which was surprisingly civil for a civil war to escalate into a Sino-Japanese style grudgematch.
The Indochinese Front:
As the only front with Japanese and Chinese ground troops fighting, the Indochinese front was home to brutal combat between the NRA and the IJA where no quarter was taken or given. Despite all the storm and fury, the front had not actually substantially changed by December from where it was.
The Mongolian Front:
The arrival of the hapless Kulik gave the Chinese troops a much needed reprieve. Tukachevsky had taken the LRDG’s with him and their equipment and used them to great effect. In the meantime, General Kulik was content to stare at the equally disgraced General Tang Enbo (who had been in command of the Xian Army District at the time of the Xian Incident) across the long strech of barbed wire and mines.
The Manchurian Front:
The Manchurian Front went quiet. A welcome retrieve for Marshal Du’s troops that were struggling with compromised supply lines and having to aid the flood refugees. The BIS’ interrogation of captured Soviet troops revealed that the bulk of them were being transferred West, but they didn’t know why or where or what for - only that a large portion of Soviet troops were being transferred to the West in June and July. Where the hammer blow would fall in the West was unknown in Berlin and Nanking - but not in Moscow or London.
