Is this a good timeline?

  • Yes, it's great!

    Votes: 7 31.8%
  • Yes, it has a few flaws but is still good

    Votes: 11 50.0%
  • No, it's very implausible

    Votes: 4 18.2%
  • No, it's just boring

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    22
  • Poll closed .
I've started to lose interest in this timeline (looking back on it it's pretty implausible) and I kind of want to start a new project that I've been playing around with for awhile so I'm planning to write a few epilogues that will skim over the next century until the present day. That way I get to move onto a new (and better) project and DER will get its ending. Does anyone have any opposition to this?
 
Chapter XIII: The Adriatic Empire


Ever since the Franco-German War Austria had become the dominant power in Europe and was only rivaled by Spain, Prussia, and Russia. The Austrian Empire had not only spent the early 19th Century building a strong colonial empire but had also strengthened its authority over the Holy Roman Empire and Europe in general. Austria had become the ruler of the Mediterranean Sea and the only nation stopping the Austrians from becoming the unquestioned master of the HRE was Prussia. Just south of Austria was the numerous independent kingdoms that made up the Italian Peninsula, which had never been united since the days of Rome. Just like the German states that built the HRE the Italian nations had their own leaders. The largest nation of the Italian Peninsula in the 1820s was the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies which encompassed the southern portion of the region. Sicily seemed as though it was on the path to continue becoming one of the strongest nations in Italy, however, in 1825 King Ferdinand I of Sicily died and his son would succeed him as King Francesco I. The new king’s reign would be cut short on November 8th, 1830 when he suddenly died as well. The king’s son was supposed to become the next ruler of Sicily, however, tragedy would strike the Sicilian monarchy once again when a group of terrorists bombed Francesco I’s funeral killing the majority of the king's children, including the heir to the Sicilian throne. It was discovered that the terrorists belonged to a group called the Italian National Republicans (Repubblicani Nazionali Italiani; RNI), an organization that followed the ideology of the French Jacobins that wanted to unite all of Italy into a single radical republican nation. Sicily was not only thrown into a state of shock and mourning but also had to find a new monarch. At this point the Austrian Empire stepped to assert its will over Italy. Emperor Francis I of Austria had actually been married to the daughter of Ferdinand I before her early death and the heir to the Austrian throne was her son meaning that the future Austrian emperor was the grandson of Ferdinand I. Francis I proposed that Sicily and Austria unite into a single nation that would be a dual monarchy (the first of its kind) where two equal kingdoms would make up a single empire where foreign affairs, the military, and economy would be controlled by the national government while everything else would be under the authority of the local kingdoms‍‍‍‍. The Sicilians were reluctant to unite with the Austrians, however, the hypothetical nation did seem promising and the Austrians had promised to combat the RNI. Besides, Sicily would have plenty of autonomy and would be on par with Austria anyway. And so on December 4th, 1830 Austria and Sicily united into the Austro-Italian Empire.


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Flag of the Austro-Italian Empire.


Maria Leopoldina would become the first queen of the Kingdom of Austria while Franz Karl became the king of Sicily. Their father, Francis I became the emperor of Austria-Italy (also just referred to as Austria).


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Queen Maria I of Austria.


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King Franz Karl I of Sicily.


After the unification of Austria and Sicily a new great power had been born. Within the first years of its existence the Austro-Italian Empire prospered and would even expand a bit into the interior of Africa. However, the unification would startle Sardinia, the other great nation of the Italian Peninsula. Still, the new nation was celebrated and it seemed as though a great destiny lied ahead of it.

I am sorry if i am late do this story,although I am enjoying it very much, I would like to point out that you not only stripped Brazil of it's first empress but also the most influential and important woman in Brazilian history,forget about a united Brazil! Poor and unlucky Brazil
 
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I am sorry if i am late do this story,although I am enjoying it very much, I would like to point out that you not only stripped Brazil of it's first empress but also the most influential and important woman in Brazilian history,forget about a u tied Brazil! Poor and unlucky Brazil
Well, this timeline is nearing its end and everything, but I'm still glad you like it!

Brazil's still a colony in the TL, but that's not going to last for much longer.
 
Epilogue One: Calm Before the Storm
Epilogue I: Calm Before the Storm


The era of Pax Austria-Italy was predetermined to end the second the Treaty of Vaduz was put into effect. The treaty itself was more or less a compromise between the the Austro-Italian Empire and the other great powers of Europe who had each bidded for a chunk of the former communist realm and as a consequence the post-Red War peace was doomed to one day conclude.


While Austria-Italy managed to prevent a direct conflict between the great powers gambles for territorial and political expansion by targeting smaller nations was not avoidable. On November 17th, 1881 the Russian Empire declared war on Tibet in an effort to further expand its western territory in the face of recent aggression from China and their far more intimidating ally thus starting the Himalayan War, a brief conflict that put the Russian air navy to the test yet again and inevitably ended on March 7th, 1882 with the absolute victory of Russia, the complete annexation of Tibet as a Russian colony, and the relocation of the Dalai Lama to the neighboring Kingdom of Bhutan.


The Himalayan War and Red War were not the only successes of Tsar Alexander II, who was regarded as the Liberator in the Russian Empire up until the establishment of the Russian Republic military junta. The Tsar also implemented several liberal reforms, such as the abolition of serfdom, a practice that was in many ways equivalent to slavery, in 1861, however, is arguably most well known for his changes to the very system of Russia’s government. After the Red War the Russian Empire found itself in possession of the core of Poland, a region that had been occupied by foreign empires since the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and therefore was home to many resistant people, something that Prussia had to learn during the Red War the hard way.


In order to quell nationalist uprisings in Poland the Tsar first attempted to decorate Russia with the title of “Guardian of All Slavs,” however, this did little to calm down the Poles, who saw the Russians as not their defenders from the so-called “Roman Pretenders” to their west but rather yet another occupier. As riots in the name of freedom grew not just in Poland but in other pro-independence territories under the control of Saint Petersburg as well Alexander II knew that he could no longer just pacify his empire by claiming to defend the Slavs but would actually have to initiate some reforms. Therefore, on July 29th, 1883 the Tsar as well as several other government officials (including representatives of local demands) signed a new constitution for the Russian Empire that organized it into a loose union of autonomous local kingdoms, much like the Austro-Italian Empire.


The new Empire was divided into the grand principalities of Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Finland, White Ruthenia, Ukraine, Turkey, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Courland, Livonia, Estonia, Cossackia, Kazakhstan, Turkestan, Chechnya, Armenia, and Gruziya, each of which were ruled by a member of the House of Romanov (the Grand Principality of Russia was led by the Tsar, who also took up the title Grand Prince of Russia). The economy, military, and foreign policy of the Russian Empire were all under the authority of the Tsar and the national government, however, nearly everything else was under the control of the local Grand Principalities. Under pressure from local revolutionaries the 1883 Russian Constitution also implemented democratically elected legislative houses for each of the Grand Principalities whose names ranged from region to region, however, were collectively referred to as the Dumas. Said Dumas could propose laws, however, none of their suggested legislation could go into effect without the approval of their Grand Prince thus subjecting all democracy in Russia to a position inferior to the House of Romanov.


The Russian Empire was not the only nation to undergo change in the 19th Century. On January 21st, 1883 the king of the United States of America, King Charles I, who had ruled since the American Civil War died, partially due to a fracture in his left thigh bone that had occurred months prior to his demise. A few days later Charles was succeeded by his eldest son, the Duke of Pennsylvania, who was crowned King Benjamin I in front of a cheering crowd on January 25th, 1883.


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King Benjamin I of the United States of America.


Benjamin’s reign was surprisingly short due to his death on June 15th, 1885, just a little more than two years after his coronation, however, he was a notable monarch nonetheless Several Americans came to regard him as the “First True American King” because Benjamin, unlike his Prussian father, was born and raised in the United States. While Charles I had a noticeable German accent regardless of his attempts to alter his voice King Benjamin I had a Mid-Atlantic American accent and flawlessly spoke English as a first language alongside German, which had been his father’s native tongue. Even if his reign was short Benjamin I’s American origin earned him popularity amongst the people, especially in a time when tensions between the United States and Prussia were escalating.


After Benjamin I’s ultimate demise he was succeeded by his only son (and youngest child), Charles Washington Hohenzollern, who was crowned King Charles II just a few days after his father’s death. Unbeknownst to Charles II he would the United States through some of the most turbulent years, not just in his kingdom’s history but in global history. Near the beginning of King Charles II’s reign the US already underwent a shift in society through the presidency. Near the end of King Benjamin I’s reign the Democrat Matthew Sherman was inaugurated president following the end of the popular Franklin Von Zepplin’s second term in office. While many had high hopes for President Sherman he failed to adapt to the increasingly progressive American society and also did not accomplish the major upgrades to the US military that he had promised and as a consequence lost the 1888 election to the Liberalist Party’s candidate, Representative Quentin Wilmot Blyden of Liberia, who was also the first ever African-American president.


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President Quentin Wilmot Blyden of the United States of America.


Blyden’s election was a great victory for social progress in the United States and was celebrated across the nation, including by King Charles II, who personally met the new president shortly after his inauguration in the White House. After his entrance into the presidency in the March of 1889 President Blyden would implement several policies that introduced fresh equipment to the American armed forces and also invested some money in research in a new technology in its primitive stages of development that Blyden’s administration saw potential in, the airmobile.


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An American airmobile circa 1909.


While Blyden’s investments would no doubt give the United States a head start in the airmobile industry when the time would come he is far more important for the implementation of the 18th Amendment to the US constitution on April 25th, 1890, which granted all American women equal suffrage to men, a great step for democracy and egalitarianism across the globe. The action saw a sudden outburst of female intervention in politics as women across the United States voted in the remaining 1890 local primaries and a few women were even elected to office, such as the Liberalist Veronica Woodhull, who became a senator from Wisconsin and later became the senate majority leader in 1892.


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Senator Veronica Woodhull of Wisconsin.


President Blyden won the 1892 presidential election in a landslide and most likely could have won in 1896 had he chosen to not run for a third term. While Quentin W Blyden’s second term as president of the United States was no doubt populated with achievements, such as several visits to the Imperial Federation (which some argue led to Spain giving women the vote in 1897) and even a tour across the Russian Empire, there was one notable revolution across the globe unrelated to his presidency, the invention of the automobile.


Throughout the 1880s several inventors developed different motors for vehicles, however, they weren’t popularized until the Austro-Italian Samuel Marcus, who is today credited as the inventor of the gasoline-powered automobile, opened up the automobile company Marcus Automobil in 1883, which proved to be a massive success in not just the Austro-Italian Empire but all member states of the Roman Empire. Samuel Marcus’ invention would even catch the eye of Austro-Italian Emperor Francis III, who would eventually research utilizing the automobile for war, which resulted with the invention of the panzerwagen around the same time the First Great War began.


The popularity of the automobile would travel across the Atlantic Ocean into the United States in 1896 when William Ford II opened up the car manufacturing company, the William Ford Motor Company (more commonly called WF Motors). While the corporation was at first small, especially when compared to Marcus Automobil, it would rapidly grow to dominate the American market for automobiles and held a monopoly over the industry in the US by the time the United States entered the First Great War in 1909.


Many historians would regard the presidency of Quentin Wilmot Blyden as the start of American peace and economic and social growth thanks to the successful two terms of his successor, Gerald Pershing, a Unionist senator from Kentucky whose presidency is most well-known for its welfare programs and the legalization of labor unions, whose policies were later advocated for by President Pershing.


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President Gerald Pershing of the United States of America.


Despite the successful presidency of Pershing he failed to stop tensions between the Roman and Russian empires from spiraling out of control thanks to the sudden shift in leadership of Russia. The Great Liberator himself, Tsar Alexander II, died on June 17th, 1890 at the age of 72 and was immediately succeeded by his son Alexander III only for the new Tsar to fall ill and die in the February of 1895. He was succeeded by his sole son, Grand Prince Michael of Ukraine, who became Tsar Michael II of the Russian Empire on February 23rd, 1895.


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Tsar Michael II of the Russian Empire.


Upon his coronation the new tsar was only sixteen years old yet there were those within the Russian Empire and across the globe who expected great things of Michael II. For the first time in Russian history the coronation of a tsar was witnessed by the King of America, something that many members of the House of Romanov had insisted on in order to ease tensions with the Pacific Alliance even if Michael preferred not to invite King Charles II. Despite hopes from the world, Michael would not be the bringer of peace in a time of growing tensions between the Russian Empire and Austria-Italy but rather be the bringer of war. The Tsar had no interest in befriending the Austro-Italian Empire and instead doubled down on the mindset that Russia was the guardian of all Slavs, including those within Austria-Italy. Tsar Michael II would even go as far to insist that the 20th Century was to be the Russian Century in a speech on January 1st, 1901 and claimed that the sun would soon set upon Pax Austria-Italia.


Tsar Michael II would finally push the world into a great conflict by starting a naval arms race with the Austro-Italian Empire that caused the Russian Empire to assert a sudden presence within not only the Mediterranean Sea but the Adriatic Sea as well. In the July of 1907 many of these Russian ships came too close to the coast of Austria-Italy for Emperor Francis II’s liking and issued an ultimatum to Saint Petersburg that claimed that all Russian ships must be no less than thirty miles of the Austro-Italian coast at all times or else face retaliation by Austro-Italian defenses. Not wanting to seem weak to his people (many of whom viewed him as an angry child), Tsar Michael II simply ignored Francis II’s demands, citing that there was no way the Austro-Italian Empire would dare go to war with the mighty Russian Empire.


However, Michael’s assumptions were proven wrong when a fleet of Russian ships barely twelve miles off of the coast of Venice were fired upon by Austro-Italian defenses on September 7th, 1907. Outraged that Russian lives had been lost at the hands of Austria-Italy, the Tsar considered the attack at Venice an act of war and would order a full mobilization against the Austro-Italian Empire a day later. The leaders of Europe would scramble to try and convince Michael II to call off the mobilization in the few precious moments before the greatest empires on Earth would dive into war, however, there was no convincing the angry and stubborn Tsar. Just two days after Russian mobilization the Russian Empire would declare war on the Austro-Italian Empire on September 2nd, 1907 and Russian military personnel stationed in western Ukraine were ordered to cross the border into Austria-Italy. Within the following days the rest of Europe would join the war on their respective side, thus initiating one of the bloodiest conflicts the world has ever seen.


The First Great War had begun.
 
Hey everyone.

I'm sorry to say that for some reason my document for Das Ewige Reich isn't saving when I write off of my laptop so until I figure that out DER is going to be on hiatus. In the meantime I may post a sneak peak of Epilogue II and my other timeline, Dreams of Liberty, will be my priority.

For anyone who is a fan of DER I'm sorry for the inconvenience and hopefully the problem will be fixed soon. :)
 
Hey everyone.

I'm sorry to say that for some reason my document for Das Ewige Reich isn't saving when I write off of my laptop so until I figure that out DER is going to be on hiatus. In the meantime I may post a sneak peak of Epilogue II and my other timeline, Dreams of Liberty, will be my priority.

For anyone who is a fan of DER I'm sorry for the inconvenience and hopefully the problem will be fixed soon. :)
And never mind, everything has been fixed and therefore things are back on track.

That has to be the world's shortest hiatus. XD
 
Epilogue Two: The First Great War
Epilogue II: The First Great War


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Soldiers of the Russian Empire heading off to fight in Galicia circa 1907.


When Austria-Italy and Russia, two of the greatest empires the world had ever seen, went to war it was inevitable that their allies would be dragged into the conflict as well due to the numerous treaties that assured that the nations of Europe would defend their allies in their time of need. First, the entire Roman Empire declared war on the Russian Empire just a day after the First Great War (FGW) began to defend the head of the New Rome, Austria-Italy. Next, Russia’s allies in the Quadruple Alliance, Byzantium, Occitania, and of course, the Imperial Federation, all declared war on the Roman Empire a few days after the start of the FGW.


Within less than a week the great European empires, empires that had fought alongside each other as allies just a few decades prior in the Red War were at war with one another.


Pax Austria-Italia was truly over, for a man-made Hell had taken its place.


The first offensive of the FGW was conducted by General Aleksei Brusilov of the Russian Empire into Galicia, a fight across one of the most heavily militarized borders on Earth. Tsar Michael II, as well as pretty much every single commander in the Russian military, knew very well that the war in Galicia would be an absolute nightmare and to get a head start there was a complete necessity, thus Brusilov, one of the most competent commanders in the entire Russian armed forces was put in charge of commanding soldiers pushing into Galicia.


Aleksei Brusilov’s offensive into Galicia started just hours after news of the declaration of war on Austria-Italy arrived at the Russian border defenses at Galicia and Austro-Italian regiments, regiments that were still attempting to organize their defenses, were caught completely off guard by the hundreds of men charging across the border. By the time the clock struck midnight and the first day of the FGW was over Russian artillery was bombarding Lviv, which was overrun by Brusilov’s units just two days later.


In the eyes of the Austro-Italians the war in Galicia was a complete disaster and utter humiliation and the blame rested on the shoulders of General Conrad von Hotzendorf, the commander of the Austro-Italian military in the east. Hotzendorf was relieved of duty in Galicia on September 8th, 1907 and was replaced by Ivan Boroevic. As commander of Austria-Italy’s eastern forces Boroevic quickly cleaned up the disorganized mess that was the retreating regiments of Hotzendorf. Trenches were dug up at Sambir and MacMahons were propped up to mow down any advancing Russian units. Boroevic’s defense wonders and the Battle of Sambir on September 13th, 1907 was a much-needed decisive victory for the Austro-Italian Empire and for awhile it was the Russians who were in retreat. Brusilov’s retreat wasn’t enough for Boroevic to retake Lviv and by September 20th the war in Galicia had devolved into a stalemate, however, he came terrifyingly close.


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General Ivan Boroevic of the Austro-Italian Empire.



General Boroevic could not, however, stop the encirclement of Malopolska, the Austro-Italian chunk of Poland that stuck up like a sore thumb on the map and was almost completely surrounded by Russian regiments. By the end of September 1907 Nikolay Dukhonin had severed off Malopolska from the rest of Austria-Italy while Boroevic was focusing on fighting General Brusilov to his south, thus completely surrounding Malopolska and cutting it off from any fresh supplies. Over the next few months the Malopolskans would be subject to countless aerial bombardments morale plummeted. On January 28th, 1908 the local government of Malopolska finally capitulated to the Russian Empire, yet another humiliating defeat for Austria-Italy.


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An American political cartoon depicting the situation on the First Great War’s eastern front, published a day after the capitulation of Malopolska.


The Russian campaign against the other member states of the Roman Empire went even better. Up north of the Austro-Italian Empire the main defense against Russia was Prussia, a nation that had yet to recover from the Red War. Prussia, once the great rival of the Austrians within the Holy Roman Empire, was simply a shadow of its former self and everything, from its economy to its military, had gone downhill in the decades since Marx’s rampage across Germany. The Russians, on the other hand, had grown into the titan of the east and could easily crush the Kingdom of Prussia.


Leading the Russian invasion of Prussia was General Klemens Pilsudski, a gifted Polish military commander who saw himself as not just fighting for the Russians, but for all people who resided in Russia, a nation that had put a stop to its Russification policies, in the face of German imperialism. General Pilsudski saw the potential in automobiles and ordered for the latest models to be utilized by his men. Not only did automobiles serve as an excellent form of transportation for both supplies and units alike, but Pilsudski believed that they could become a replacement to cavalry and armed automobiles with artillery. The first time an automobile charge was conducted in warfare was the Battle of Frankfurt an der Oder on September 12th, 1907, a decisive Russian victory that proved the competence of both automobiles in warfare and Pilsudski’s strategies. Following the Russian victory at Frankfurt an der Oder Pilsudski would continue to advance before being pushed back by a coalition of Roman forces at Gosen-Neu Zittau on November 17th, 1907 and settling into trench warfare at the Spree River a few days later.


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General Klemens Pilsudski following his victory at Frankfurt an der Oder.


South of Russia the First Great War was actually going better for the Roman Empire than it was for the Allies. The Kingdom of Byzantium failed to hold back the mighty Austro-Italian Empire and by New Years Day 1908 the Byzantines had been pushed all the way to the outskirts of Nis, the gateway between East and West. General Vladimir Putnik defended the city from the Austro-Italians, however, he could not hold back the shear strength of the invaders, who not only had a large fleet of brownships but also utilized airmobiles for one of the first times in modern warfare as both scouts and bombers.


The victory at Nis proved that, regardless of the strength of its allies, Byzantium was weak and an easy target for the Austro-Italians to wipe out, and a critical target at that. After all, to open up a frontline on the Black Sea would prove to be devastating for the Russians and what could be more demoralizing in Russia than seeing the Austro-Italian flag waving over Constantinople, the gateway to the east and historical center of the Orthodox Church? By March 1908 the Byzantines had fled from mainland Greece onto the Peloponnese Peninsula and as radios across the Kingdom of Byzantium reported Austro-Italian regiments marching through Athens whilst admiring the ancient monuments to Western Civilization itself morale plummeted. President Dimitrios Rallis of the Romanov Party narrowly averted an assassination attempt in Constantinople on March 28th, 1908 and agreed to resign in favor of a military junta under the leadership of his secretary of war, Nikola Zhekov, a few days later on April 5th, 1908.


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President Nikolva Zhekov of the Kingdom of Byzantium.


Despite being regarded as an autocrat by the Modernist Party, whose more left-wing members faced crackdowns by the military junta (although no one dare rebelled for fear of sabotaging the war effort), Zhekov was undeniably more competent at leading Byzantium during wartime than his predecessor and oversaw the construction of long and well-equipped trench line defenses and even invited members of the Russian high command to help assist the war effort with their allies to the south. By the start of May 1908 nearly all Austro-Italian advances into Byzantium had grinded to a halt and stagnant trench warfare, now an infamous sight across eastern Europe, set in.


In the west the First Great War was far less bloody. Sure, there was the mighty Spanish fighting the ultimate titan of Europe itself, Austria-Italy, however, neither nation shared a border with each other and therefore fighting was reserved to combat in the Mediterranean and a quick campaign against the small Spanish Viceroyalty of Guinea, which ended by 1908 thanks to an extremely small concentration of defenses in the colony as opposed to the large quantity of units from Austro-Italian West Africa. Of course, both the West Mediterranean front and Guinean campaign were deadly, as is any conflict in modern warfare, however, they simply did not compare to the bloodshed in the east.


The only front in the west that experienced heavy fighting in the early years of the FGW was France, which had been a unified force fighting Europe half a century ago. As a member of the Quadruple Alliance, Occitania was inclined to fight is Roman neighbors to the north upon the outbreak of war in the east and was therefore faced a larger invasion force that consisted of regiments from all across western Europe. The only thing that kept Occitania from completely capitualting by the end of 1907 was aid from the Spanish who had plenty of units to spare. By the spring of 1908 air raids by the enemy were routine in Bordeaux and the collapse of defenses to the north seemed inevitable, although pressure by the Spanish government kept the Occitans in the First Great War for the time being.


The First Great War did not stop at Europe, for there were more great powers eager to potentially emerge victorious and consume the spoils of war from the world’s largest empires. Japan and China, two nations who had developed a chaotic relationship with Russia since the aftermath of the Chinese Imperialist War, were the first non-Europeans to join the FGW on behalf of the Roman Empire on April 12th, 1908 (afterwards the alliance became referred to as the Imperial Alliance, or the Imperials, while the Quadruple Alliance and their allies were referred to as the Allies) in accordance with a secret treaty between Japan, China, and Austria-Italy that was negotiated only a few days earlier. The Japanese focused on invading Siberia and Mongolia while the Chinese initially focused on advancing into Tibet. The Sino-Japanese declaration of war completely caught the Russian Empire, which had deployed the vast majority of divisions in eastern Europe and therefore simply could not defend its holdings in Asia. Once the Russians had successfully reinforced Siberia in July 1908 much of Russian Mongolia had fallen to the Japanese and on August 3rd, 1908 the Khanate of Mongolia, a Japanese puppet state, was established.


Advances into Siberia were also going well and the Japanese consequently won over oil fields to fuel their growing industrialized military and armed forces. The invasion of Tibet was less successful due to the terrain of the Himalayas as well as reinforcements from the Kingdom of India, a Spanish dominion and therefore a Russian ally, however, China still held out well and even pushed forward, albeit at a far slower rate than its allies to the north. The Pacific Ocean was especially unsafe from the Japanese, who’s navy was feared from Australia to Kamchatka and easily triumphed over the puny Russian Pacific navy, which didn’t even compare to Russian naval forces in Europe.


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Japanese soldiers carrying the flag of the Imperial Japanese Navy circa August 1908.


While the majority of Russian units remained in Europe even after the significant Japanese victories in Asia there was still a noticeable reduction of soldiers that General Boroevic exploited by uncovering a slight opening in Russian defenses. Lviv, which had been exchanged between the Austro-Italians and the Russians so many times within the last year that it was little more than a pile of rubble, was occupied by Austria-Italy yet again, however, unlike multiple occasions before trench warfare did not just resume beyond the city. Instead Boroevic just kept on pushing and Brusilov kept on retreating. The incredible sudden advancement of the Austro-Italians eventually stopped near the end of August 1908, however, just a few kilometers away from Boroevic’s freshly dug trenches was Ukraine. For the first time in the FGW Austria-Italy was not preparing for a Russian invasion, instead Russia was preparing for an Austro-Italian invasion.


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Austro-Italian soldiers in the outskirts of Horokhiv circa August 1908.


Yet Austria-Italy could not celebrate its victory in Galicia for long. Another nation joined the First Great War in September 1908, this time on the side of the Allies. On September 19th, 1908 a fleet of Egyptian naval vessels under the command of pro-Allies Admiral Nureddin Ibrahim pursued a small fleet of Austro-Italian ships patrolling the waters around Byzantium. The Egyptians managed to sink their opponents and got out of the situation alive, and Admiral Ibrahim returned to Cairo a few days later.


The Austro-Italian government was outraged that a high-ranking Egyptian officer dared to hinder the Imperial war effort, even though Ibrahim was operating as a volunteer on behalf of the Allies and did not take command from the Caliph. Austria-Italy demanded that Egypt prohibited Allied volunteers from using Egyptian equipment and also ordered Caliph Abbas II to issue an official apology on behalf of the Egyptian Caliphate. However, Abbas II, like the majority of Egypt, was in favor of the Allies due to Austria-Italy controlling a vast colonial empire right next door that subjugated its Islamic colonies (although Muslims living in metropolitan Austria-Italy were treated much better) and the Caliph regarded volunteering to fight in foreign conflicts, including the First Great War, a right of the Egyptian people and therefore did not give into the Austro-Italian Empire’s largest demand. There was an apology from Caliph Abbas II, however, in the same speech he claimed that he would not obey the demands of Vienna and regarded pushing Egypt around in such a way a complete violation of Egyptian sovereignty and neutrality in the First Great War.


While the Austro-Italians did not necessarily want to pursue war with Egypt they weren’t really given much of choice. Following the September Crisis public opinion of the Allies skyrocketed amongst the Egyptian people and several military officials, including naval commanders, announced that they would fight the Austro-Italians in the footsteps of Admiral Nureddin Ibrahim. A threat was emerging from the Egyptian Caliphate and the only way to really take it down was to go to war with Egypt. Therefore, the Austro-Italian Empire declared war on the Egyptian Caliphate on October 7th, 1908 as mobilized units in Tripoli crossed the border heading for Cairo to hopefully subdue the Caliphate before it could pose a significant threat. However, Egypt was ready for war against Austria-Italy and the Caliph had already ordered partial mobilization against Austria-Italy in the chaotic days leading up to the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war. And so, within a few days Egyptian and Austro-Hungarian officers were ordering their men to dig trenches in the sand of the Sahara and the gruesome combat that had claimed Galicia, Occitania, and so many other regions of the world had reached Africa.


And yet the First Great War continued to expand. Shortly after Egypt entered the war on behalf of the Allies their rival to the east, the Emirate of Diriyah, joined the FGW on behalf of the Imperials and opened up a new frontline, although the Diriyans were technologically behind Egypt and were therefore subject to trench warfare and barely any advances even if the Egyptian military primarily focused on Austria-Italy.


And not even that was the end of the expansion of the First Great War, for the powers of the west had yet to step into one of the bloodiest conflicts mankind has ever dared to torture itself with. The United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves (usually either referred to as Portugal or the United Kingdom) had been a quiet power on the world stage throughout the 19th Century. As its neighbor was invaded by the radical French Republic in the Franco-German War and as communism ravaged Europe in the Red War the Portuguese tended to their vast empire instead, choosing to become isolationist in the face of the chaos that had swept so much of the world. The United Kingdom had become forgotten in the world stage, excluding its strong economy thanks to resources from Brazil and Portuguese colonies in Africa, and discontent was common amongst the masses (especially recently liberated slaves in Brazil) who opposed the autocratic absolute monarchy led by King Pedro VI as well as the rigid class structure utilized across the Empire.


Even so, Portugal was a force to be reckoned with, boasting a large military and grand navy, with plenty of resources and industrial centers to fuel the Empire. The Imperial Federation, and Kingdom of Spain before it, had always kept a wary eye on Portugal during Lisbon’s era of “Splendid Isolation,” although relations had never been negative between the two. That was, until the assassination of King Pedro VI on November 24th, 1908 by a republican gunman named Manuel de Costa who, upon being apprehended by authorities, made it very clear that he had deep admiration for the Imperial Federation and her democratic allies in North America and claimed that his goal was to bring the democratic revolution to Portugal by murdering the very man who represented the conservative Portuguese autocracy, King Pedro VI himself. In His Majesty’s place was Pedro VII, the former King’s eldest son, despite only barely being nineteen upon his ascension to the head of one of the largest empires on Earth.


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King Pedro VII of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves.


Pedro VII assumed leadership of his nation in a tumultuous era. Many republicans and other radicals viewed the assassination of Pedro VI as the beginning of the end for the United Kingdom and began to riot or, at the very least, spread revolutionary talk amongst the populous. And Pedro VII was most certainly not the man to lead Portugal in one of its darkest hours. He was viewed as little more than a boy by the people and was swollen with hate at liberalism following the death of his father at the hands of a radical. Perhaps from a combination of pressure within the military and conservative circles to take action with a desire for revenge led King Pedro VII to make the fatal decision to declare war on the Imperial Federation of Spain on December 17th, 1908, thus bringing Portugal out of Splendid Isolation and into the First Great War.


The Spanish were caught completely off guard by the Portuguese declaration of war and with the majority of units focusing on keeping Occitania alive few men could be spared to fight against Portugal. The invasion of Spain went surprisingly well and it gave the Imperials fighting Occitania plenty of openings to exploit as the Spanish were sent west, although the well-built Occitan defenses prevented any detrimental attacks from being unleashed upon Occitania. Desperate to hold back the Portuguese advancement, Spain made one of the most controversial decisions in the First Great War. With approval from Russia, Byzantium, and Occitania the Spanish military went through with deploying chemical weapons on the Iberian front as well as distributing chemical weapons to units in Spanish South America. At first, only tear gas was used, an irritant, but not poisonous. However, tear gas alone could not stop Portuguese advancements. Just west of the city of Salamanca the Spanish military spewed chlorine, a deadly (and experimental) irritant that could inflict damage to several organs, upon the oncoming Portuguese onslaught on January 8th, 1909. The Portuguese dropped like flies and the Spanish would push back the United Kingdom throughout January until it was Portugal which feared invasion, not Spain. The First Great War was now infamous for another horror, chemical warfare.


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Portuguese soldiers wearing gas masks on the Iberian Front circa March 1909.


In North America the United States and Mexico watched the First Great War in eerie silence. While the greatest empires the world had ever known brutally clashed in the Old World the American people awaited a presidential election. Just before the FGW had begun the Americans elected the Democratic President Arthur MacArthur in 1905 following the successful two terms of Gerald Pershing. MacArthur was elected following years of left-wing presidents and had just barely won due to his agrarian populism and centre-right views, being seen as a return to normalcy. However, the increasingly progressive and urbanized population of the United States of America was not satisfied with the conservative policies of President MacArthur, who mostly focused on taxation laws that benefited agricultural communities, and a Liberalist representative from Massachusetts named Alexander Ulyanov took advantage of this.


At the 1908 Liberalist National Convention the thirty-eight year-old Representative Ulyanov won over his party due to his ultra-progressive views, being the first US presidential nominee for a major party to refer to themself as a socialist. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party reluctantly nominated Arthur MacArthur for a second term, the Centrist Party nominated the conservative Edgar Alton Parker, and the Unionist Party nominated the far-left Theodore Wood. However, Wood did not stay in the presidential campaign for long as many longtime Unionists grew fond of the views of Representative Ulyanov. As it became increasingly unlikely that Wood, who wasn’t left-wing enough to appeal to half of his party but not moderate enough to appeal to the other, would ever be able to win the 1908 election the Unionist Party negotiated a coalition with the Liberalists and it was agreed that Wood would become Ulyanov’s running mate.


A handful of Unionist moderates opposed the alliance with the Liberalist Party and therefore left to form the Neo-Federalist Party, a small force, but still big enough to hold a decent amount of power in government. When the American people went to the polls in the November of 1908 reports of the growing First Great War across the Atlantic was put on hold as Ulyanov, MacArthur, and Parker clashed for the presidency. Arthur MacArthur was popular in the west, however, his bland presidency easily put him in third place. Senator Parker managed to win over much of the south and even a few Canadian states, however, Ulyanov’s ultra-progressivism and charisma, as well as the Liberalist alliance with the Unionist Party, allowed him to win the election with a solid majority and in the March of 1909 Alexander Ulyanov became the president of the United States of America.


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President Alexander Ulyanov of the United States of America.


On the campaign trail Ulyanov had never hidden his sympathies for the Allies over in Europe, although his views on the autocratic Russian Empire were less than ideal and expressed his disappointment over the utilization of chemical weapons by the Imperial Federation. Still, if the United States was going to join the First Great War it was obvious which side they would join and as President Ulyanov continuously denounced the authoritarianism in the United Kingdom and the practices of maintaining colonies in Austria-Italy American intervention didn’t seem all that unlikely.


Hoping to push the USA out of neutrality, which would surely also mean that the Mexican Empire would join the FGW on behalf of the US, the Spanish government would send ambassadors to meet with President Ulyanov himself in the May of 1909. Other than assurance that trade between Spain and the US would continue as usual during wartime no significant agreement was reached and the meeting was done more as a display of Spanish-American relations and such meetings between the two allies had been common throughout the 19th Century. Even so, the Imperials were frightened by Ulyanov’s diplomatic cooperation with the Spanish and Portugal, which had large holdings in the New World, was especially nervous regarding the American eagle. As fighting was brought to the Americas via combat between the Imperial Federation and United Kingdom the First Great War came even closer to the United States.


However, perhaps most unsettling about Portuguese and Spanish combat in the FGW amongst Americans was fighting in the Atlantic Ocean. American ships travelling to Europe would have to watch out for Portuguese submarines in the depths below, an uncomfortable thought for anyone whose job required them to sail across the Atlantic. Things only got worse when the Portuguese designated a blockade zone around Spain in July 1909 to possibly starve the Spanish into submission. After all, every other frontline Spain faced off in was dominated by the Imperials, the only location in Spain that had yet to be blockaded by war was its coast.


At first, the blockade went well for Portugal. Morale across the Imperial Federation dropped and foreign investors cautiously pulled out of Spanish markets as trading in Spain became increasingly impractical. However, two nations that did not just give up on trading with Spain were Mexico and the United States, two crucial Spanish economic allies who simply couldn’t just give up on trading with the Imperial Federation. As American merchants were forced to risk their lives by traversing the Bay of Biscay the people of the United States viewed Portugal as an antagonist against the US, a view even held by President Alexander Ulyanov himself.


While the Americans were no doubt aggravated by the Portuguese naval blockade loopholes were found, such as sailing to Spanish South America, which was technically also blockaded, just not to the extent of metropolitan Spain. The blockade was no doubt an annoyance regardless of what loopholes merchants found, however, it was simply regarded as yet another change in American lifestyle caused by the First Great War. However, just as the blockade was beginning to leave the minds of Americans and the Ulyanov administration started to focus on healthcare and other projects attempting to raise the standard of living disaster struck. On August 18th, 1909 a cruiser called the USS Pax Americana carrying Prince Elias, the heir to the throne of the United States of America, to Wales for a tour of the Irish Empire was forced to sail into the war zone after a storm developed off the coast of France. The large ship was spotted by a Portuguese submarine, whose crew members were not aware who was onboard and simply followed the order to shoot any ship potentially delivering supplies to Spain, and within minutes the Pax Americana was pulled down into Davy Jones’ Locker and Prince Elias was yet another victim of the First Great War.


Once the news of the heir to the American throne reached the United States panic set in. The Portuguese quickly apologized and offered their condolences to the grieving King Charles II, however, it was made clear the blockade of Spain would not end and unrestricted submarine warfare would continue. Both Congress and the president were outraged. First the Portuguese go to war with an American ally in retaliation to democracy itself, next they cut off the US from one of its most important trading partners, and now they dare to murder the son of His Majesty and only offer lip service in return? For President Ulyanov, he couldn’t stand by and watch Europe burn any longer. Democracy itself was under attack by the United Kingdom and America felt the pain of the FGW. Therefore, after ordering a partial mobilization against Portugal and receiving assurance from Empress Maria I that Mexico would stand by her American allies in the case of war Alexander Ulyanov announced that he was for going to war with the Portuguese to Congress. After a majority both houses approved, the United States of America declared war on the United Kingdom on September 7th, 1909, followed by a declaration of war on the Imperials by Mexico two days later.


The United States of America had joined the First Great War.


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American soldiers parading through New York City before being sent off to fight in Spain circa September 1909.


Within days of the American declaration of war propaganda appeared from Washington DC to Sunset City. For the most part the entrance into the FGW was popular, plenty of Americans volunteered to join the armed forces and the war in Spain was seen as a war for democracy in the face of the authoritarian and oppressive Portuguese. As the Royal Navy of these United States punched through the blockade in the Bay of Biscay and soldiers from both the US and Mexico were deployed in Spain the Imperial Federation rejoiced. With extra reinforcements Portuguese defenses broke and on October 10th, 1909 the Battle of Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo resulted with an Allied victory, the first major victory for the Allies fought on Portuguese soil. While the victory was celebrated throughout the Allied nations, especially the US, Mexico, and Spain, Americans quickly turned attention to King Charles II, who officially seceded from the Prussian House of Hohenzollern on October 24th, 1909 by declaring the House of Columbia in order to not appear as though he originated from an enemy of the United States.


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King Charles II of the United States of America, founder of the House of Columbia.


As Portuguese defenses in Europe collapsed and the Atlantic Ocean began to slip into Allied hands chaos emerged across the United Kingdom. As morale across the Portuguese Empire dropped and more soldiers were sent off to fight republicans and other revolutionaries saw an opportunity to finally rise up. At first revolution began in the January of 1910 in Mozambique as secessionists rose up and faced little resistance, even as regiments were sent to fight in Africa. Supplies and volunteers from the Allies, especially the United States, arrived in guerrilla-occupied coastal cities to support the loose alliance of secessionists. In the April of 1910 the secessionist groups met together to form a singular organization called the Mozambique Republican Army (MRA), although the MRA was more of a confederation of rebellions than an actual unified government.


As news of the fight in Mozambique spread across the United Kingdom (despite attempts by King Pedro VII’s lackies to keep the public’s attention on the war in Europe) morale collapsed even further and Pedro VII was viewed in an increasingly negative light. In both agrarian and urban communities across Brazil an evolved form of a movement thought to be dead by the great powers began to grow amongst the masses. Founded by Hermes Moreira in 1905, the Partido Comunista Nacional (generally shortened to the Partido Comunacion), or the National Communist Party in English, advocated for an ideology called national communism, or comunacionism as it is now known, which infused Marxist teachings with ultranationalism. Moreira considered democracy an obstacle to his revolution and advocated for one-party dictatorship consisting of the elite of the proletariat with the goal of enforcing the revolution instead.


Moreira was highly religious and also adhered to racial pseudo-science, believing that a utopian state would only have one culture and one religion while groups considered to be inferior would be segregated and condemned to the lowest positions in society. In Hermes Moreira’s eyes communism was a way to establish a world in control of white man where all other cultures would be eradicated and Christianity reigned supreme.


To the people of Brazil (or at least the people of Brazil descended from Europeans) the PCN’s message of a unitary state without aristocracy where their culture was absolute throughout society seemed appealing and before long comunacionist rallies were packed with supporters to the point that the Portuguese authorities could not attempt to shut down the movement. Not even metropolitan Portugal was safe from the tyrannical claws of comunacionism and before long the PCN was holding rallies in Lisbon itself. As bodies continued to return from the trenches the words of the PCN became harsher and more violent, for it was obvious that a bloody revolution was underway. On March 9th, 1910 the Portuguese Civil War began when Hermes Moreira ordered the Vanguarda Vermelha, a militia operating on behalf of the PCN, to occupy several key cities in Brazil and metropolitan Portugal. Hours later Hermes Moreira declared the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation (PUPN) in the burning city of Rio de Janeiro as his comrades fought across the dying United Kingdom.


Following the start of the Portuguese Civil War the United Kingdom didn’t stay in the First Great War for much longer. On March 19th, 1910 he military forced King Pedro VII to step down from his position as head of the Portuguese government (although he remained the head of state) and a junta led by General Cesar Ferreira Gil took over the crumbling empire in his place. On March 26th negotiations with the Spanish ended Portuguese involvement in the First Great War at the expense of losing territory to the Imperial Federation and recognizing the independence of Mozambique which drafted its constitution later in April 1910 become the Federation of Mozambique, a federal presidential republic modeled after the United States.


The majority of fighting in the Portuguese Civil War was relegated to Brazil, by far the largest and most populated region of the United Kingdom. Within the first months the numerous Vermelha regiments occupying Brazilian coastal cities had connected together and the Monarchists lost all ports to deploy resources and reinforcements in, having to rely naval landings instead, which became increasingly impossible as the Proletarian Union pushed further west and reinforced coastal settlements. Simply put, Brazil was a lost cause and had become the secure base of Moreira and his lackeys.


In the Pacific Ocean the Japanese were no longer the masters of the waves. However big of a navy Japan could muster the fleet of Mexico was bigger and stronger. At first the Japanese could repel Mexican incursions and hold back any invasion, however, day by day the Imperial Japanese Navy grew smaller and smaller, until there was finally barely anyone defending the island of Formosa. On March 12th, 1910 Mexican soldiers landed on Formosa and within little over a week the Japanese had been pushed off Formosa while the Mexican Imperial banner waved in the sky above Taipei instead of the Rising Sun.


From Formosa the Mexican Empire invaded Greater Guangdong, a Japanese colony on mainland Asia to the west, where fighting was without a doubt more brutal than anything on Formosa thanks to more units as well as Chinese reinforcements, but by June 1910 the Japanese had lost their greatest foothold in southeastern Asia to Mexico. As the Imperial Japanese Navy was crushed by the Mexican Empire regiments were called back from Siberia and Outer Mongolia to prepare for a potential invasion of the Japanese Archipelago itself, something that the Russians attempted to take advantage of, although with very few units in Siberia the Tsar’s men could only go so far before being bogged down yet again by trench warfare.


It was China, now facing an invasion by one of the most powerful empires on Earth, which cracked under pressure. Units that had been advancing into Tibet were relocated to the east even before Greater Guangdong fell. Russian and Indian regiments alike took advantage of the sudden gaps in Chinese defenses throughout the Himalayas and by the end of June 1910 the Qing Dynasty had been kicked out of Tibet once and for all. As Chinese defenses in the west collapsed it became the Russians who were invading China yet again, just as it had been in the days of the Chinese Imperialist War. The Mexican Expeditionary Force began its push north for Shanghai, the capital of the Qing Dynasty itself, a few days after Greater Guangdong had collapsed and armed with chemical weapons and even automobiles the forces of General Anastasio Arambula easily pushed through Chinese barracks.


It was the Battle of Hangzhou that finally broke the Chinese war machine. On July 7th, 1910 General Arambula’s men arrived on the outskirts of the city and ordered brownships above him to lead the advance with a bombing campaign. As Hangzhou burned and all defenses of the city fell apart the MEF advanced whilst valiantly waving the flag of the Mexican Empire. Within a little over an hour the Mexicans had traversed across the Qiantang River, which was a death sentence for the remaining Chinese forces defending the city. Within another hour the Chinese military had retreated and Mexican soldiers were celebrating their victory in the ruins of Hangzhou.


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Mexican soldiers in Hangzhou following their conquest of the city.


After the fall of Hangzhou the Qing Guangxu Emperor saw no use in continuing a war China was doomed to lose, especially when the enemy was so close to Shanghai and entered peace talks with the Allies three days after the Battle of Hangzhou, officially signing the Treaty of Shanghai on July 12th, 1910. According to the treaty China had to cede territory to the Russian Empire in the west and hand over Hangzhou to Mexico as a port as well as pay war reparations to the Allies to rebuild Allied-occupied Asia. The Japanese were infuriated that China dared to surrender to the Allies, however, it was only a few more months until the Empire of Japan itself left the First Great War as well. Without an ally in the east it was inevitable that Japan would collapse and after island-hopping through Ryukyu to Kyushu the Mexican Empire conducted a successful naval landing in the city of Kagoshima, an act that proved to the Japanese people that the war was lost and proved to Emperor Meiji that he must offer a conditional surrender before Arambula was parading through Edo. Therefore, on August 2nd, 1910 Japan officially accepted defeat at the hands of the Allies and recognized the partition of its empire to the point that only Inner Mongolia still knelt to the Rising Sun. In its place was a far larger Russian Empire and an assortment of vassals all pledging loyalty to Mexico City.


The capitulation of Japan was not necessarily the end of the East Asian Front of the First Great War, for the remnants of the Japanese puppet regime in Mongolia fought on with guerilla tactics and Austro-Italian battleships occasionally patrolled the Pacific Ocean, however, it was the beginning of the end of western involvement in the FGW. In Mexico the war in Asia had captivated the people for months and with Japan and China out of the First Great War investment in the war effort declined, especially within the Magellanist Party. Still, the mindset that the First Great War was a war in the name of democracy kept both Mexico and the United States in the FGW for now as units were deployed in Spain to fight the Imperial onslaught.


However, not even the Spanish would stay fighting forever. As units from the extinct frontline against Portugal were relocated to Occitania the Imperials rethought their strategy. With the combined forces of Spain, Mexico, and America all fighting against the weakest member states of the Roman Empire it was potentially only a matter of time until of France was in the hands of the Allies. The western strategy had to be rethought. In the August of 1910 the Austro-Italian Empire agreed to donate airmobiles and brownships to Burgundy and Francia and the Imperial navy’s presence was reinforced in the western Mediterranean, shifting naval attention away from the crumbling Kingdom of Byzantium towards the mighty Imperial Federation.


As Austro-Italian cruisers rushed into the warm summer waters of the western Mediterranean hoping to overwhelm the Spanish before American and Mexican reinforcements from the Atlantic and Pacific respectively could arrive airmobiles swarmed the Occitan sky, viciously bombarding the cities below. In the sea the Austro-Italian strategy had worked, before the grandest ships of Mexico’s fleet arrived in Europe Sardinia had been blockaded and conquered by Austria-Italy.


In Occitania morale hit new lows. Even with fresh reinforcements the people still lived in constant fear of invasion and bombardment. The Occitans had become soldiers in a war fought in their own backyards, but a war fought for naught but the ambitions of foreign empires. It only took one new invention before Occitania had enough, the panzerwagen. On the eastern front of the First Great War automobiles had gone a popular replacement to cavalry to a critical tool for the clashing empires, and upgrades were constantly being made. The panzerwagen started out as an experiment by the Austro-Italian military in an attempt to introduce heavy armor to automobiles, although initial designs were rejected due to their slow speed. However, as new designs were conceived due to increased desperation within the Austro-Italian high command the panzerwagens became more durable and even quicker. General Boroevic offered to utilize a panzerwagen prototypes at the Battle of Lavriv on September 19th, 1910 and they proved to be an incredible success. While they were by no means agile vehicles the panzerwagens could withstand the gunfire of No Man’s Land, travel over rough terrain, and break through barbed wire with ease.


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An Austro-Italian panzerwagen after the Battle of Kiversti circa October 1910.


After seeing the tremendous success of the panzerwagens on the eastern front the new technology not only began production across Austria-Italy, but also made its way to Francian and Burgundian factories and from there they were shipped to the trenches in Occitania. There was little the fragile defenses in the Occitan countryside could do about the metal beasts lumbering towards them and for countless days the Allied coalition retreated further and further south. Caussade fell, then Albias, and then Montauban. With Imperial soldiers, French soldiers no less, over the Tarn and moving for Toulouse capitulation was the only viable option in the eyes of the Occitan high command. Why continue fighting a war that cannot be won?


The Occitan government ordered a ceasefire on October 11th, 1910, a ceasefire that the Spanish, Mexicans, and Americans all had to heed to. It was clear that the fight for Occitania was lost and the leaders of what remained of the western Allies met in Madrid to decide what course of action should be taken once Occitania was out of the picture. Once the Duchy of Occitania completely surrendered to the Imperials (joining the Roman Empire temporarily without representation in the Imperial government and under Austro-Italian military occupation) the three great western democracies concluded that there was no use shedding blood for a lost cause and entered peace talks with the Imperials instead. It was agreed that the peace between the Imperials and western Allies would be a peace with honor where neither side necessarily won or lost, although it was clear that negotiations went in favor of the Imperials.


The United States annexed Austro-Italian colonies in the New World and it was agreed that all signatories would enter a non-aggression pact for ten years and would not impose sanctions on each other, however, negotiations otherwise benefited Austria-Italy at the expense of the Spanish. The establishment of an Austro-Italian puppet regime in Sardinia was recognized, as was the direct annexation of Malta and Spanish Guinea into the Austro-Italian Empire and any alliance Spain had with the Papal States was eradicated in order for Austria-Italy to be recognized as the “sole great power on the Italian Peninsula.” The Treaty of Naples was put into effect on October 18th, 1910 officially ending hostilities in the west. In the United States and Mexico the First Great War was celebrated as a victory for democracy and their empires as the greatest adversaries to the Western Hemisphere had been vanquished, however, in the eyes of the Imperial Federation the FGW was a national embarrassment and within the next years the cries for revenge would echo through the streets of Madrid. For the time being, however, the Roman Empire turned its head east and thousands of experienced soldiers marched against the Tsar’s men.


The end of the bloodshed was in sight.


The first of the eastern powers to fall was the Egyptian Caliphate. It was truly a miracle that the Egyptians had been able to hold off the mighty Austro-Italian Empire for as long as they did, however, with the end of the war in the west the collapse of Egypt became an inevitability. It took little over a month for the Caliph to surrender when panzerwagens charged into Cairo on November 30th, 1910. To see the fall of the Egyptian capital made Caliph Abbas II accept that the war was over in Africa and on December 2nd Egypt unconditionally surrendered to the Imperials, falling under the joint occupation of Austria-Italy and Diriyah until the end of the First Great War.


Next, Byzantium finally fell, although President Zhekov would hold out until Constantinople itself was conquered and the Byzantines had been kicked out of Europe. It was King Michael II, who was little more than Byzantium’s ambassador to the world, that organized a coup against Zhekov on New Year’s Day 1911 itself and proclaimed himself the temporary president of Byzantium. As president, Michael II surrendered to the Imperials and faced a fate akin to Egypt, falling under military occupation until the First Great War came to an end. All of a sudden, the Russian Empire was alone in the world as its enemies closed in. From the very start of 1911 Tsar Michael slept uneasy, for he knew that Russia was doomed.


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King and President Michael Mecklenburg II of the Kingdom of Byzantium.


As the Roman Empire advanced into Russia the war-weary Russian Empire lost hope in the war effort. Even General Klemens Pilsudski had to admit that there was no use fighting the Roman Empire in its entirety and begged Tsar Michael II to enter peace talks with the Imperials. However, the stubborn Tsar refused to acknowledge defeat and prayed for an opening to exploit instead. This did not sit well with the Russian masses, especially the ethnic groups in western Russia that had been treated as little more than colonial subjects of Saint Petersburg for much of history and were now fighting a war for Russia in their backyards. Anti-war protests emerged across western Russia, however, Michael II did not listen to his people and cracked down on protests instead.


Fear did not subdue the protesters, instead resentment against the Tsar and the First Great War grew in their communities and protests became riots, and many of these riots became secessionist, not just anti-FGW. As the Austro-Italian Empire dug further into Ukraine and reclaimed land in Galicia that had been occupied since the earliest months of the First Great War riots became larger, their voices stronger and as famine hit the isolated Russian Empire in the February of 1911 the anti-war movement spread to the streets of Saint Petersburg and Moscow as well.


It was a dramatic demand for the First Great War’s from Aleksei Brusilov that finally killed the Russian war effort. Brusilov resigned from his duties in late February 1911 and arrived in Saint Petersburg where he organized anti-war protests. In early March Brusilov, who knew that the Tsar would not listen to the masses, concluded that a coup was necessary and in collaboration with Russian republicans and anti-war military officers forced Tsar Michael II to abdicate, ending the Russian Empire and establishing the Russian Republic with Aleksei Brusilov as its prime minister in place of the fallen empire.


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Flag of the Russian Republic.


After successfully consolidating power Prime Minister Brusilov officially surrendered to the Imperials on March 14th, 1911. The Austro-Italian Empire was finally triumphant. Across eastern Europe trenches fell silent and soldiers rejoiced in No Man’s Land. After over three years of gruesome combat the First Great War, the bloodiest conflict mankind had ever fought, was at long last over.


The belligerents would meet in Vienna to sign what would hopefully be an everlasting peace, although fate proved otherwise. The Egyptian Caliphate was partitioned into an Austro-Italian colonial regime in the west and some southern land went to Prussian Ostafrika while all Egyptian land on the Arabian Peninsula was ceded to Diriyah. What remained of Egypt was forced to rename to the Egyptian Sultanate and pay war reparations to the Imperials while also reducing the size of its military and navy. The Kingdom of Byzantium was destroyed altogether, with Serbia, Moldavia, Wallachia, Montenegro, became puppet regimes of Austria-Italy within the Roman Empire and a Muslim-majority state named Albania was also established as an Austro-Italian puppet regime, however, was kept out of Rome. What remained of Byzantium renamed to the Kingdom of Hellas-Bulgaria, essentially the same government, but a humiliated and crushed one.


The Russian Republic was forced to grant what had once been Prussian Poland independence as the Kingdom of Poland, a Prussian puppet state while Lithuania, Ukraine, Courland, and Georgia were all granted independence as Roman Imperial member states. A Turkish state in Anatolia called the Republic of Turkey was also established from Russian Anatolia and parts of Byzantine Anatolia with its capital in Ankara and the Austro-Italian Empire created a puppet state in Crimea. In the east Russia face far less cessions and was allowed to keep most of its Asian colonial empire, however, the previously Japanese puppet regime in Mongolia had to be recognized as an independent nation.


Territorial changes aside, the Russian Republic had to pay heavy war reparations to the Imperials and a demilitarized zone along the border with the Roman Empire was created. The Russian military and navy was also significantly reduced and it was agreed that all signatories could not go to war with each other for fifteen years.


As the ink dried on the Treaty of Vienna a new era in human history had begun. Shell-shocked men returned from the trenches, horrified by the hell that they had witnessed. In the Roman Empire this horror became a desire to prevent another terrible conflict from ever ravaging the European continent while in the former eastern Allies the horror turned into a burning hatred and a desire for revenge. The future was uncertain and bleak, however, the past was clearly gone. The world would truly never be the same again.


And yet the worst of nightmares laid ahead, not behind.


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Map of the World circa 1911 following the Treaty of Vienna.
 
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And I just realized that Das Ewige Reich is over one year old! It's "birthday" was Friday, but I had a long week and didn't notice. :p

Anyway, thank you so much to everyone who has read through DER, especially those who have been around since the very first post. I know DER definitely isn't the best timeline out there, and the fact that this was one of my first timelines definitely shows, but that just makes me all the more thankful for the followers of this timeline!

We're almost to the end of Das Ewige Reich, so here's to a great epilogue! :extremelyhappy:
 
Epilogue Three: The Interwar Years
Epilogue III: The Interwar Years


The First Great War completely changed the geopolitical situation of the world. The mighty Russian Empire was no more, and in its place was the large yet crippled Russian Republic under the leadership of Aleksei Brusilov, however, perhaps the most dramatic consequence of the entire First Great War was the collapse of the United Kingdom of Portugal and Brazil into a civil war against comunacionist Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation. The comunacionists had mostly been ignored by the world during the First Great War due to a prioritization of the war effort, and as a consequence the PUPN secured several major urban centers, especially in Brazil.


While the situation for the United Kingdom appeared bleak, King Pedro VII did manage to secure Portuguese land in Iberia by fighting off comunacionist uprisings in the south, which fell under the leadership of Antonio Carmona, the de facto leader of the armed forces of the Proletarian Union in Europe. As the monarchist “White Army” pushed deeper into territory led by Carmona’s Red Army (the predecessor to the infamous Army of the Proletarian Vanguard of the Proletarian Union) the PUPN would secure the coastal city of Lagos, where preparations were made to evacuate Europe. While Antonio Carmona anticipated that the White Army would not reach Lagos until the September of 1911, however, the monarchists arrived much earlier. On August 7th, 1911 the Battle of Lagos began and the Red Army prepared for a brutal siege.


The Proletarian forces in Brazil, on the other hand, had nearly conquered entirety of the vast Brazilian territory and by the time news of the Battle of Lagos reached Brazil the PUPN was directing efforts towards invading the Amazon Rainforest and consolidating comunacionist control over Brazil. Therefore, Hermes Moreira was capable of sparing several regiments to aid Carmona. There was, however, a challenge that was present when conducting such an operation. While the Proletarian Union has certainly secured a substantial portion of the monarchist navy there was technically no Proletarian navy, with privateers and naval militias fending off the Brazilian coast instead. And soon enough, after the conclusion of the First Great War several nations pledged to support the White Army. Austria-Italy has always sympathized with the United Kingdom, their former ally, and on July 5th, 1911 the Roman Empire declared its support of the Portuguese monarchy by delivering supplies and volunteer regiments. By August 1911 the Atlantic was patrolled by Austro-Italian vessels that endorsed the monarchists and shot down any comunacionist ships.


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An Austro-Italian naval ship and brownship off the coast of Sahelia, circa August 1911.


While the Proletarian Union managed to send a decent amount of supplies to Europe, Antonio Carmona was more or less by himself in the Battle of Lagos. The city would undergo a siege for countless days while the PUPN attempted to establish a navy and pierce through Monarchist defenses. For nearly a month General Carmona would hold out against an endless siege as Lagos was reduced to rubble. Eventually, however, a Proletarian navy was established and set off to deliver reinforcements to Carmona’s stronghold in southern Portugal. As thousands of Red soldiers arrived in the ports of Lagos in late August 1911 it appeared as though the Battle of Lagos would shift in favor of the comunacionists. On August 29th, 1911 the battle finally ended when an offensive led by General Carmona quickly pushed the White Army to Odiaxere, ending the Battle of Lagos in a completely unexpected victory for the Red Army.


From that point on, the United Kingdom was doomed to collapse. With all major pockets of White forces in Brazil eliminated, the war effort completely turned towards Europe and every single day new reinforcements were dispatched in southern Portugal. The Austro-Italian Empire was well aware that Roman assistance alone would not preserve the United Kingdom, and therefore Emperor Francis II of Austria-Italy called upon a delegation consisting of Austro-Italian, Prussian, Irish, Mexican, American, Spanish, and Russian representatives to meet in Venice to negotiate providing aid to the United Kingdom of Portugal and Brazil. While Francis II hoped that such a meeting would establish the basis for post-war international cooperation between the great empires of Earth, the nations of the world were still bitter over the First Great War. The Imperial Federation and Russian Republic refused to send representatives altogether, while the Kingdom of Prussia insisted that inviting the former leaders of the Allies to an equal playing field with the victors of the First Great War would would undo the Roman Empire’s establishment of global hegemony at the Treaty of Vienna. The United States, while opposed to comuncacionism, was not about to preserve the very empire that had killed its heir to the American throne and therefore would leave the negotiation table after a few days.


The Mexican Empire would, however, be much more willing to cooperate with Austria-Italy. Mexico was obviously not an ally of the United Kingdom, however, viewed the comunacionist menace as a much greater threat, with Mexican President Francisco Madero declaring that “not since the Red War has there ever been as great of a threat to Western Civilization as comunacionism.” The Venice Pact was formed on October 5th, 1911 as an agreement between Mexico and Austria-Italy to stand united against comunacionism and fund the White Army’s war effort against the Proletarian Union. Within a few days after the declaration of the Venice Pact, the Mexican and Austro-Italian navies were conducting joint campaigns in the Atlantic Ocean while a handful of regiments were deployed in Iberia, which would set up a prelude to further cooperation between Mexico City and Vienna.


The Venice Pact would not, however, be able to prevent the victory of the Red Army, and could only deter the inevitable. General Carmona’s invasion north was accelerating, while Hermes Moreira was already implementing industrialization efforts in Brazil to support the war effort. Within a few more weeks the Red Army had arrived just south of Lisbon in preparation for the invasion that would hopefully capture King Pedro VII.


After building up his supplies and numbers in infantrymen, Antonio Carmona ordered his men to push forward for Lisbon on November 12th, 1911 in what would become the last fight of the Portuguese Civil War. From Carregado, Carmona rapidly pushed south while another regiment of soldiers on the opposite side of Tagus River simultaneously pushed up from the north, which would encircle Lisbon. Starting at night, General Carmona would fight into the morning of November 13th, 1911 and would finally break through the disorganized defenses of Lisbon and capture Pedro VII, who was attempting to reach a port and escape up north on a ship (and most likely would have succeeded if it weren’t for rubble from the bombardment of Lisbon blocking the road to the Atlantic Ocean). A few days later King Pedro VII and his family were executed by the Red Army, therefore eliminating the leadership of the United Kingdom. Without any centralized leadership, the White Army collapsed shortly after the Battle of Lisbon and on November 27th, 1911 General Norton de Matos of the White Army surrendered what remained of the former armed forces of the United Kingdom, therefore ending the Portuguese Civil War.


The Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation had become the sole government of Portugal and comunacionism had become a legitimate ideology for a nation.


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Flag of the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation.


Following the end of the Portuguese Civil War, Hermes Moreira would oversee the construction of the government of the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation, with himself as its head of state. A new capital was constructed in Brazil, named Cidade da Pureza (City of Purity), along the Riacho Tucunduba. As the general secretary of the PUPN, Moreira would dictate the cruel racial segregation policies that the Proletarian Union would become infamous for and designated certain territory in Portugal for different ethnicities. All coastal territory, which more or less contained all major Portuguese urban centers, was designated for “Latins,” or Catholics of western European descent, such as Iberians and Italians. The Amazon Rainforest and interior of Angola, on the other hand, was designated for those Moreira and the Partido Comunacion deemed inferior. This territory was poorly developed and overseen by brutal PCN officials and would continue to be an ugly backwater of the PUPN for the rest of the regime’s history, which was the exact intent of General Secretary Hermes Moreira.


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General Secretary Hermes Moreira of the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation.


Moreira would lead the Proletarian Union until his death in 1920 and, unlike his predecessors, would remain isolated from global affairs, choosing to preside over the reconstruction of Portugal and the “Great Purification,” in which Portuguese minorities were deported to the outreaches of the Proletarian Union. The Great Purification was not only a terrible atrocity in which thousands died due to suppression and man-made famines that were the work of Moreira himself, but a monumental task to complete. Millions of people were forcibly relocated and Hermes Moreira never saw the completion of the Great Purification. Instead, his successor, Antonio Carmona, would preside over the completion of one of the human race’s worst atrocities.


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General Secretary Antonio Carmona of the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation.


Initially a veteran of the Portuguese Civil War, Carmona was regarded as the man who had defeated the Portuguese monarchy and had consequently risen through the ranks of Hermes Moreira’s regime, becoming the senior officer of the Army of the Proletarian Vanguard in 1911. Without any belligerent to fight, Carmona would order the APV to shift attentions to carrying out the Great Purification, and as a consequence Antonio Carmona had gained a reputation of being a brutal commander who posed a threat to any individual who dared to oppose him. Upon ascending to the position of general secretary of the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation in 1920, Carmona would enact purges against commanders within the PCN and APV who Carmona had either deemed too incompetent and would get in the way of his vision of centralization or were simply men Antonio Carmona held a petty grudge against.


Regardless, Carmona’s purges put him in total control of both the Partido Comunacion and the Army of the Proletarian Vanguard. In fact, General Secretary Antonio Carmona never replaced his former position as the senior officer of the APV, opting to simultaneously be general secretary and senior officer. Similarly, Antonio Carmona served as the commander of his secret police force, called the Counter-Revolutionary Resistance Committee (CRCR), which would continue to carry out purges against opponents and dissidents when General Secretary Carmona deemed necessary. However, once the Great Purification officially ended in 1924, Antonio Carmona had a new priority. Ever since the Portuguese Civil War had began over a decade prior, comunacionist movements had been sprouting up across the increasingly unstable world and Antonio Carmona sought to spread the ideals of Hermes Moreira across the world, through force if necessary.


For the rest of the world, the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation was terrifying. Not only had an aggressive anti-monarchist regime seized power in one of the world’s largest nations, but this new regime was horrifically racist and ultra-totalitarian, and to top it all off, was inspired by Marxist teachings. While the PCN had originally participated in the International Socialist Congress (ISC), an international organization in which the world’s most prominent socialist political movements would gather (typically in the left-leaning and democratic United States of America), it had always been the black sheep of the bunch and once the Great Purification began the ISC voted to ban all comunacionist parties from their organization in 1912, while also delivering a statement that the ideology of comunacionism would no longer be regarded as a form of socialism by the ISC. Therefore, the Proletarian Union was more or less isolated from political prominence on the global stage and would have to build up its own sphere of influence in the shadows for the time being.


Back in the United States of America, President Alexander Ulyanov continued to remain popular amongst the American people. While the Roman Empire, considered itself the victorious party in the First Great War, from the point of view of the United States and Mexico it was the Allies, or at least the western Allies, who had emerged victorious. After all, the Mexican Empire had defeated Japan and became the new dominant force across the Pacific Ocean, while the United States had kicked the Roman Empire out of the New World. Throughout the rest of his third term, President Ulyanov would continuously push for his progressive platform, passing the Workplace Democracy Act on April 7th, 1912, which guaranteed that workers were ensured the right to collective bargaining with their employers. New regulations were also established for workplaces, with child labor being an especially high priority for the Ulyanov administration.


One of President Ulyanov’s greatest accomplishments was the unification of the Unionist and Liberalist parties. Once the dominant force in American politics, the Unionist Party, which had existed for over one hundred years by that point, had been gradually shrinking as members were increasingly attracted to the more radical proposals of the Liberalists. After the formation of the Neo-Federalist Party in 1908, the Unionist Party was more or less just a small group of slightly more moderate Liberalists, and after abysmal results for the Unionists in the 1910 midterms, the Unionist leadership concluded that total unification with the Liberalist Party was necessary. Therefore, on November 15th, 1911 the Liberalist and Unionist parties merged into one organization, the Liberal Union Party.


The Liberal Unionists were automatically the dominant force in American politics upon their creation, and it was essentially guaranteed that President Alexander Ulyanov would win a second term in 1912. The elderly Governor Randolph Lee of Virginia was nominated by the Democratic Party running on a platform of a return to the simpler and more conservative time before the First Great War, while the Centrist Party nominated Senator John D Rockefeller of New York on a platform that supported the social progress of the Ulyanov administration, but not the socialist and pro-labor union policies of President Ulyanov. Ultimately, Alexander Ulyanov would win a second term by a landslide. Governor Lee only appealed to agrarian communities, the majority of which could care less over Ulyanov’s socialist policies that mostly affected urbanized regions while John D Rockefeller failed to overcome Ulyanov’s popularity in predominantly urban states and failed to overcome Lee’s popularity in predominantly agrarian states. Therefore, Alexander Ulyanov would continue to lead the United States well after the end of the First Great War, while Theodore Wood continued to be the vice president of the United States.


President Ulyanov’s second term was predominantly focused on domestic interests in contrast to his first term, when the First Great War was everyone’s greatest concern. Ulyanov would oversee the integration of previously Austro-Italian colonies into the Union, culminating with East Guiana becoming a state in 1917. Ulyanov also pushed for more socialist policies, with universal healthcare coming into existence after the American Healthcare Act (AHCA) was passed on November 20th, 1913. While workers had been guaranteed the right to form a labor union regardless of the wishes of their employers early in the Ulyanov administration in the April of 1909, Alexander Ulyanov took the rights of workers yet another step forward by passing the 19th Amendment on June 18th, 1913, which stated that workers were not only ensured the right to organize a labor union, but also reserved the right to demand negotiations with their employer and collectively bargain. President Alexander Ulyanov would also target powerful and economically unhealthy monopolies by dissolving trusts, although such activities played second fiddle to the more radical activities of the Ulyanov administration.


While Alexander Ulyanov was immensely popular after his eight years in office, he did not seek a third presidential term and announced that he would step down from the presidency following the 1916 presidential election. As a replacement, Ulyanov endorsed his vice president and former Unionist Party member, Theodore Wood, as the 1916 candidate for the Liberal Union Party. The popular policies of Alexander Ulyanov would allow Wood to already start off as the most popular candidate in 1916, however, the Democratic Party nominated Riley Thomas Marshall, a senator from Indiana who endorsed the typical pro-agrarian platform of the Democrats while also offering solutions to urban regions, promoting industrialization while still maintaining “traditional American values.” The Centrist Party hoped that a conservative and staunchly capitalist urban candidate would be able to beat both Wood and Marshall, or at the very least deter their chances at victory, and went with Ohioan Governor William Howard Taft.


Theodore Wood made sure to win support in the Northwest and Midwest, with the former generally being a Democratic stronghold while the Midwest switched between all of the parties, and with both the Democratic and Centrist nominees originating from the Midwest, it appeared as though winning over the region would be an uphill battle for Wood. Nonetheless, the 1916 presidential election went in favor of Theodore Wood and the Liberal Union Party through securing most of the eastern coast, as well as a few vital states in the Northwest and Midwest. Alongside his vice president, Zebulon Debs, Theodore Wood was inaugurated in the March of 1917, succeeding Alexander Ulyanov as the president of the United States of America.


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President Theodore Wood of the United States of America.


President Wood quickly earned the reputation of being a more moderate Alexander Ulyanov, continuing the trust busting and pro-unionization efforts championed by Ulyanov while rejecting many of the more radical ideologies of the furthest left Liberal Unionists, such as abolishing all private ownership of natural resources. Theodore Wood did pass the National Conservation Act on July 25th, 1917, which established the American Royal Parks Service, as well as the American Royal Parks, as a way to preserve some of the most unique environments in the United States. To this day the American Royal Parks Service still exists, and is often regarded as President Wood’s greatest accomplishment.


In the darkest depths of American society, however, a new and vile ideology was emerging, one that would not only influence all of world history, but make conunacionism seem relatively tame in comparison. For nearly a century, movements endorsing the American Republic had been condemned by the vast majority of Americans, especially when it came to the vicious reign of Andrew Jackson. However, this did not necessarily mean that anti-monarchism ceased to exist. It was an obviously small movement, however, had managed to survive throughout the years nonetheless.


One particular American republican was a prominent veteran of the First Great War, named Smith Patton, who was a resident of Georgia. While Patton had initially not been a supporter of Andrew Jackson and the American Republic, he was a hardline opponent of all Marxist ideologies, including comuncaionism, and was notoriously racist. After the First Great War ended, Smith Patton left the frontlines in Occitania for Portugal, where he became the commander of a regiment of American volunteer forces for the White Army. Whilst Patton was in Portugal, he participated in the defense against Antonio Carmona and gained an appreciation for the socially conservative aspects of society in the United Kingdom. Classes, Patton argued, were necessary to suppress mobs of radicals and a strict regime would have to suppress the masses of a nation.


After the White Army lost the Portuguese Civil War and the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation ascended, Smith Patton returned back to his home in Georgia and sought to consolidate his beliefs in classes into a legitimate ideology. In the upcoming months, Patton also became a supporter of Andrew Jackson, whose ideology he viewed as the ideal alternative to monarchism that would be capable of the suppression of the lower classes. By 1918, Smith Patton had established a new ideology, one that would infect megalomaniacs around the world in the upcoming decades. Patton had created none other than stratosism, an ideology in which the military of a nation would govern its people through an ultra-totalitarian junta that would maintain a strict class hierarchy via a system of class collaboration. Smith Patton also ensured that there would be a racial hierarchy within a stratosist state, with Patton placing Protestant Anglo-Saxons above all others. Internationalism was also rejected, with Patton believing that nations should not cooperate and be exclusively self-concerned.


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Smith Patton, the founder of stratosism.


Smith Patton would publish the values of stratosism in a manifesto named The Answer to National Preservation, which managed to be distributed across the world. In the United States of America, The Answer to National Preservation as well as stratosism itself fell under absolute criticism. For a nation as multicultural and progressive as the United States, stratosism was a hideous atrocity of an ideology. As Smith Patton managed to receive more public attention, even President Theodore Wood would come around to revealing his views on The Answer to National Preservation, deeming it “an embarrassment, and is proof that we, the people of all nations, have a long way to go before we achieve total recovery from the Great War.”


Smith Patton may have been rejected by his home nation, however, others around the world would become much more supportive of stratosism. In the Russian Republic, a fragile state that had barely held itself together following the humiliating Treaty of Vienna, the lethal ideology of stratosism, found a large audience amongst the disgruntled population of Russia, which sought to unleash a revenge on the Austro-Italian Empire and their allies. Aleksei Brusilov managed to hold Russia together in its first years as a democratic nation by forming the United Democratic Party (YDP), a generally liberal party that still managed to be moderate enough to win the support of Russian conservatives, including what remained of monarchists. Klemens Pilsudski, the Russian war hero who had managed to fend of the combined forces of the Austro-Italian and Prussian onslaught in Poland, would becoming a prominent member of the Bolshevik Party, which adhered to more left-wing policies, such as labor union rights and welfare ideologies.


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Prime Minister Aleksei Brusilov of the Russian Republic.


While most of the Russian government remained united behind Prime Minister Aleksei Brusilov in the earliest days of the Russian Republic, it was inevitable that the YDP and the Bolsheviks became powerful rivals within a short amount of time. By 1922, Aleksei Brusilov had been leading Russia for over a decade, and announced that he would resign from the position of prime minister, causing an election with the Duma of the Russian Republic to be called upon. Prime Minister Brusilov was a popular man, however, the Bolshevik Party managed to campaign well enough to win a majority of seats in the Duma and on October 20th, 1922 Klemens Pilsudski became the second prime minister of the Russian Republic.


This was the Russia that stratosism entered. The future appeared uncertain, and war reparations had pushed the Russian economy downwards into a position where Russia, once one of the world’s greatest powers on a path to possibly overcome the Austro-Italian Empire itself, was amongst the weakest economies in Europe. It was said that Russian war reparations were what payed for the reconstruction of Europe, with cities destroyed by both Imperial and Allied weapons being rebuilt thanks to rubles. Klemens Pilsudski assured that his administration would seek out solutions to the economic crisis and turned to the United States and Mexico, Russia’s former allies, for assistance. For the time being, all Russia could do was recieve loans from the two titans of the Americas, while American and Mexican ambassadors, particularly the Mexicans, vouched for a renegotiation of the Treaty of Vienna.


This, however, did little to relieve the Russian Republic of its economic burdens. Austria-Italy was insistent that the Russians were to blame for the First Great War and that they should therefore pay for the mess that they made. The best the Mexicans got was an agreement by the Roman Empire to barely decrease sanctions on the Russian Republic, which did very little in regards to the economic recovery of Russia. Klemens Pilsudski ended his time as the prime minister of the Russian Republic on December 4th, 1927 by resigning with a decent approval rating. Russia was still the broken state of Europe, however, at least the economy hadn’t become even worse. His successor was Ivan Vladimirovich Kerensky, another Bolshevik who would ultimately oversee the initial waning days of the Russian Republic.


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Prime Minister Ivan Vladimirovich Kerensky of the Russian Republic.



Throughout both the reign of Brusilov and Pilsudski, stratosism has been growing in the shadows of Russian politics. The Party of National Preservation (PNNS), otherwise nicknamed the Nasok Party, was formed under the command of Boris Rasputin, a religious man from Siberia who had participated in the fight against the Japanese in the First Great War. While Rasputin had at first been a monarchist he, like many Russians, had become disgruntled with Tsar Michael I. That being said, Boris Rasputin was no supporter of the liberal democratic system adopted by the Russian Republic, which he viewed as incapable of fending off radicalism. Rasputin’s fears were, from his perspective, confirmed when the Bolshevik Party secured a majority of seats in the Duma in 1922, which caused the disgruntled Boris Rasputin to turn to stratosism, which was little more than the bizarre manifesto of some soldier at the time.


At first, the Nasok Party was a small movement hidden beneath the greater Russian political movements, however, by the time Ivan V Karensky assumed power the PNNS was a decently sized movement that had even won the support of the famed Russian naval commander Lavr Kolchak. Once the economy of Russia began to slightly sink into a recession under the Kerensky administration, the Duma called for an election in which the United Democratic Party overcame the Bolsheviks and on August 2nd, 1928 Pyotr Vrangel became the prime minister of the Russian Republic, while the Nasok Party had actually secured a few seats in the Duma for the first time in history.


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Prime Minister Pyotr Vrangel of the Russian Republic.

While many were optimistic that Prime Minister Pyotr Vrangel would prove to be a competent leader who would, at the very least, stabilize the Russian economy, however, fate had other plans. On May 8th, 1929 the stock exchange in Venice, one of the largest economic hubs in Austria-Italy, as well as the rest of the world, suddenly collapsed after years of inflation following the First Great War and within just a few days after what has become known as Schwarzer Mittwoch, or Black Wednesday, the global economy was shattered. For the already unstable Russian Republic, Schwarzer Mittwoch was a deathblow. The approval rating of Prime Minister Vrangel plummeted seemingly overnight, and riots across Russia emerged. Boris Rasputin saw an opportunity in the chaos and, in collaboration with Lavr Kolchak and other sympathizers within the Russian military, plotted to stage a coup on Russian democracy.


On May 15th, 1929 Admiral Lavr Kolchak made his way to Petrograd with a legion of Nasok Party members behind him. Without warning, they occupied the Duma, where Pyotr Vrangel was addressing the legislators of Russia, and within minutes the Russian government was captive of Kolchak and his cronies. One day later, Pyotr Vrangel announced his resignation as the prime minister of Russia, and was succeeded by a military junta led by Lavr Kolchak operating in the name of the Nasok Party. By May 21st, 1929, Prime Minister Kolchak had consolidated enough power in Russia and announced that he would cede his power to Boris Rasputin. With Rasputin in charge, the days of the Russian Republic were numbered. On May 27th, 1929 a new constitution was adopted, and Russia had become a totalitarian stratosist dictatorship called Union of Greater Rus, under the leadership of Grand Patriarch Boris Rasputin.


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Flag of the Union of Greater Rus.


As the unquestioned dictator of Russia, Boris Rasputin quickly purged his political opponents. The June of 1929 became notorious in international press for not only the aftermath of Schwarzer Mittwoch, but for the constant disappearance of political opponents of Rasputin as well, who were later proven to have been executed by the Committee for State Security (KGB), the Nasok secret police force. The bold and vicious tactics of Grand Patriarch Boris Rasputin grabbed the attention of the entire world, and shifted international interests away from Antonio Carmona and the Proletarian Union. Suddenly, Russia had absolutely rejected the Treaty of Vienna and the remilitarization of eastern Europe seemed inevitable.


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Grand Patriarch Boris Rasputin of the Union of Greater Rus.


However, the world did not stop to deal with the startling crisis in Russia. Instead, each and every nation on Earth would have to prioritize recovering from the aftermath of Schwarzer Mittwoch. In the Austro-Italian Empire, the economy was especially unstable, which Rasputin took advantage of by militarizing when his greatest opposition was at its weakest point. Under the leadership of Emperor Francis III, Austria-Italy suddenly began to seclude itself from international affairs and deal with domestic issues.


The people of the Austro-Italian Empire, who had no notable democratic representation in their government, became especially discontent with the financial crisis. As unemployment rates across Europe skyrocketed to numbers never before seen, populism under the leadership of the Imperial Socialist Party (KSP), an organization that adhered to policies akin to those of Alexander Ulyanov and the Liberal Union Party in the United States, rose and pressured for a new Austro-Italian constitution. The leader of the KSP, a man by the name of Italo Mussolini, an Italian man from Florence, campaigned for Austro-Italian democratization throughout the early 1930s and encouraged the election of numerous Imperial Socialists in whatever representative bodies existed within Austria-Italy. Mussolini’s proposals, both economic and political, made him incredibly popular amongst the masses of the Austro-Italian Empire, who had waited decades for democracy, and his charisma made him a celebrity around the world as well, especially in the United States of America.


Eventually, Italo Mussolini and the KSP got what they wanted. In 1932, Emperor Francis III announced that if the dominant legislative bodies in both the kingdoms of Austria and Italy voted to pursue a democratic constitution, he would support their efforts. Within the next few months, excited populists across the Austro-Italian Empire flocked to previously ignored elections and by the dawn of 1933 both Austrians and Italians and alike had made it clear that they demanded a constitution for the people of the most powerful empire to ever exist on Earth.


The Convention of Rome would be where the Austro-Italian constitution was written. In the March of 1933, representatives of the masses of Austria-Italy met the nobles hailing from the Habsburgs and other aristocratic families of the Austro-Italian Empire. After several days of debate and proposals, a constitution was finally written up. Modeled after both the United States of America and ancient Roman Republic, Austria-Italy’s monarchy would capitulate nearly all of its powers to the new democratic administration. The unified legislative assembly of the Austro-Italian Empire was the senate, with one senator existing for every four hundred fifty thousand citizens of Austria-Italy, meaning that there were initially two hundred senators in the Imperial Senate. Positions within the executive branch of the Austro-Italian Empire, which was presided over by two simultaneous consuls, would be overseen by ministers, who were elected by the Senate, as were the consuls.


The constitution of the Austro-Italian Empire was adopted on April 7th, 1933 and changed the government of the world’s ultimate superpower overnight. The highly autonomous kingdoms of Austria and Italy were no more, instead there was an assortment of provinces akin to the American states. Within the next few days, the Imperial Senate was filled with elected representatives, and it became clear that the KSP, the pioneer of Austro-Italian democracy, would emerge as the dominant party in the new legislative body. On April 20th, 1933 a fully assembled Imperial Senate elected the first two Imperial Consuls, both of whom were Imperial Socialists. These two men were Karl Renner and, of course, Italo Mussolini.


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Consul Italy Mussolini of the Austro-Italian Empire.


While the establishment of an Austro-Italian democracy was celebrated around the world, the new government in Vienna immediately sought out how to enter a period of recovery for the economy of Austria-Italy. Consul Mussolini proposed several economic programs that would employ countless men and women who had lost their jobs following Schwarzer Mittwoch as public employees. Trusts were also broken down in an assortment of activities reminiscent of the presidency of Alexander Ulyanov in the United States.


Other European nations did not react well to Schwarzer Mittwoch. The Imperial Federation, which had in many ways won the First Great War, had been infested by ultranationalist irredentists for awhile. Stratosism had existed in Spain since Smith Patton became known to the world, and the establishment of the Union of Greater Rus only boosted support of the Stratosist Party of the Imperial Vanguard (PVI). The Vanguardists blamed the collapse of the Spanish economy after Schwarzer Mittwoch on the democratic administration of the Imperial Federation and would, ironically enough, assume power in 1931 after Vanguardist Juan Blanco won the presidential election, quickly suspending the Imperial democratic government and forming a totalitarian junta afterwards.


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President Juan Blanco of the Imperial Federation of Spain.


Juan Blanco would startle the world by cutting off relations with the United States and Mexico, Spain’s historical allies for over a century, by claiming that they were socialist puppets. This further diminished the already unpopular President Alfred Smith, a moderate Democrat who earned the blame for the aftermath of Schwarzer Mittwoch in the United States of America. It was no surprise when he was ousted of office in 1933 and replaced by the radical Henry Sinclair of the Liberal Union Party.


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President Henry Sinclair of the United States of America.


Sinclair would quietly recover the American economy by establishing communes out of failed businesses, and his administration is credited for re-employing thousands. However, his role in the international community was small, to say the least. President Sinclair ensured that the United States of America would remain neutral on the world stage for the time being and, while certainly being disgusted by stratosism and comunacionism, did not pursue containing either the Union of Greater Rus or the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation.


In such a chaotic, there were plenty of opportunities for the extreme and violent ideologies of the 20th Century to extend their influence around the unstable world, which was further incentivized due to the rivalry between stratosism and comunacionism. Russia would begin to test out its military by forcefully annexing the Khanate of Mongolia in a swift and merciless invasion in the July of 1935 known as the Gobi War. Afterwards, Mongolia was reorganized into the Dzhekson Komissariat, which was named after Andrew Jackson, the so-called precursor of stratosism. Grand Patriarch Boris Rasputin believed that the Mongolian people were naturally inferior to Russians, and sought to eliminate their culture due to this misconception. Dzhekson was a brutal penal in which any local cultures became a criminal offense. Villages became prison camps, and throughout the next few years thousands of dissidents were sent east to Dzhekson. Numerous other komissariats were established out of Russian territory in Asia, however, none ever became as infamous as the deadly Dzekson Komissariat.


In the Kingdom of Hellas-Bulgaria, stratosism would rise after the death of King Michael I in 1934. His successor, Queen Helene I, was substantially more progressive than her predecessor and promised to restore democracy to Hellas-Bulgaria after any democratic representation in the region had collapsed with Byzantium. The reactionary military of Hellas-Bulgaria shuttered at the very idea of a return to democracy and, under the leadership of Georgios Tsolakoglou, would overthrow Helene I on January 30th, 1935, establishing the stratosist Macedonian State as a replacement for the Kingdom of Hellas-Bulgaria. In retaliation to the establishment of Tsoakoglou’s aggressive Macedonian State, the young Republic of Turkey succumbed to comunacionism and became the Turkish People’s Republic following a coup by the National Marxist Party (UMP) on September 25th, 1935.


In the Japanese Empire, once a great power that was humiliated by the First Great War, comunacionism also became prominent following Schwarzer Mittwoch. The imperial aristocrats were viewed as incompetent leaders who had doomed Japanese imperialism by daring to ally with the Chinese, and on July 28th, 1936 the comunacionist masses of Edo rose up and kicked Emperor Taisho out of the city, and the Edo Commune was declared throughout the metropolis. Within the next few days the disgruntled masses of Japan rose up, each establishing their own comunacionist commune, while the Emperor and the loyalists evacuated for what remained of Japan’s holdings in China and established an exiled regime in Beijing. Back in Japan, the numerous communes united under a single banner, establishing the Federation of Japanese Communes, a confederation of comunacionist states that desired to rebuild the Japanese Empire, this time for the Proletariat of the Japanese Race.


And so, the world found itself in a dangerous situation. Two violent ideologies were clashing for global domination and building up their militaristic capabilities in a risky arms race and what remained of the world’s democratic powers were caught in the middle. In order to better consolidate power, General Secretary Antonio Carmona met with diplomats from Turkey and Japan in Ciudad de Moreria (previously named Faro) to negotiate the establishment of a mutual defense pact consisting of all comunacionist states, which would be named the Association of National Communist Nations (ANCN), and was formed in the August of 1937. In retaliation, Russia, the Imperial Federation, Macedonia, and, surprisingly enough, Egypt, which had deeply desired revenge against the Austro-Italians since the conclusion of the First Great War, declared the Cairo Alliance in the September of 1937.


The stage was set for a conflict the likes of which had never before been seen. Even as the cooler heads of the world begged the ANCN and Alliance to maintain international peace, the two factions only became more and more aggressive. By 1938, more regiments of soldiers would arrive on the the Russo-Ukrainian border every single day. Boris Rasputin was obviously planning something, and Italo Mussolini would not let the Madman of Petrograd accomplish his goals. Even so, it was apparent that a storm was brewing and there was nothing that could be done to push away the storm clouds.


Finally, the spark that ignited the gunpowder beneath international peace flew through the air when on December 2nd, 1938 the Austro-Italian Empire intercepted a message from Petrogard. In front of the whole world, Grand Patriarch Boris Rasputin ordered Austria-Italy to recognize that all of Ukraine, an Austro-Italian ally, was rightfully territory of the Union of Greater Rus. If Austria-Italy refused this ultimatum, Russia would initiate an invasion of the Kingdom of Ukraine ten days later, which world surely start a war between the Cairo Alliance and the Roman Empire. Of course, no one within the Roman Empire could accept Russia’s ultimatum, regardless of the terrible consequences. For the next ten days the world anxiously awaited the inevitable. Soldiers from across Europe arrived at the Russo-Ukrainian border and were ordered to dig a complex system of trenches that had not been seen by the world in over two decades. And one day, the inevitable happened.


On December 14th, 1938 the Second Great War began.


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Map of the World circa December 1938.
 
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Epilogue Four: The Second Great War
Epilogue IV: The Second Great War


“December 14th, 1938- A date which will live in infamy.”


-Consul Italo Mussolini of the Austro-Italian Empire



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Russian soldiers parading in eastern Ukraine, circa May 1938.


When the Union of Greater Rus ordered its soldiers to invade Ukraine on that fateful day in the December of 1938, the world was well aware that this conflict would be bloody, but no one had any idea just how brutal what would become known as the Second Great War would truly be. Two of the largest military forces in the world would face off in eastern Ukraine, and Europe was plunged back into the abyss yet again.


The Austro-Italian Empire had anticipated that in the end the Roman Empire would come out on top over the Russians. After all, regardless of how much the Union of Greater Rus had been remilitarizing, Austria-Italy still possessed the larger military and had the majority of Europe on its side. However, the Austro-Italians had underestimated the capabilities of Rasputin’s Union. The war against the Kingdom of Ukraine was led by General Grigory Semyonov, a Cossack from Siberia who was amongst Boris Rasputin’s earliest allies. At first, General Semyonov presided over trench warfare that resembled that of the First Great War, however, Semyonov had always been fascinated with panzerwagens, and developed a new military tactic that would utilize these vehicles never before seen. Panzerwagens would rapidly lead an offensive and overrun enemy regiments, whilst being followed by foot soldiers who would finish off what remained of the enemy’s forces.


Molniyenosnaya Warfare had been born.


Semyonov’s new tactic was definitely a risk, however, resulted with immense success. At the Battle of Brovary on December 22nd, 1938, Russian tanks pierced through Ukrainian defenses and would continue advancing for many days. On Christmas day 1938, Grigory Semyonov would occupy Kiev, forcing the Ukrainian government to flee their former capital for Vinnytsia. Even with Austro-Italian aid, the Kingdom of Ukraine was doomed, especially after the Cairo Alliance declared war on the Roman Empire on December 27th, 1938, thus forcing Central Europe to partition its resources between multiple frontlines. On January 8th, 1939 Vinnytsia was conquered by Russian panzerwagens and the Ukrainian government would capitulate a day later. Grand Patriarch Boris Rasputin would celebrate the victory as the integration of the rightful capital of Russia (Rasputin believed that Kiev, the capital of the Kievan Rus, was supposed to be the capital of his Union of Greater Rus, which idolized the Kievan Rus) back into the hands of the Russian Race, and would declare Kiev, which was scattered with rubble from the vicious battle weeks earlier, to be the capital of the Union of Greater Rus just a few days later.


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Russian B-24 panzerwagens, more commonly known by the nickname “Peruns,” moving through the occupied countryside surrounding Kiev, not long after the Battle of Kiev.


With the Kingdom of Ukraine defeated, General Grigory Semyonov was tasked with invading the Austro-Italian Empire itself, and would move his legion of Peruns west for the Carpathian Mountains not long after Kiev was declared the new capital of the Union of Greater Rus. As General Semyonov left Ukraine behind, a terrible atrocity would begin within Russian-occupied Ukraine. Nasok racial and religious policies were implemented across the fallen nation, with non-Christians and Catholics being banned from owning property almost immediately. Jews and Muslims (although the latter were already uncommon in Ukraine to begin with) especially got the short end of the stick, and were exported east to the komissariats in Asia in the middle of the night by the KGB, and many were never heard from again.


While the outside world was well-aware of Nasok racial policies, no nation, including Russian allies within the Cairo Alliance, were truly aware of the magnitiude of Rasputin’s sick ideology. For the time being, Roman propaganda emphasized the brutal oppression of the average Ukrainian behind enemy lines, who were forced to submit to the ultra-totalitarian Nasoks or else face terror itself. Propaganda films depicting Ukrainian freedom fighters would become popular forms of entertainment Austria-Italy and many schools would display photographs of ravaged Ukrainian warzones to educate children on the horrors of the Union of Greater Rus.


While General Semyonov’s victory in Ukraine had made him confident that Molniyenosnaya Warfare could bring down the Austro-Italian Empire, however, this proved not to be the case. Peruns pushed through Galicia before being stopped at the fierce Battle of Stryi from the 22nd to 24th of February 1939. Colonel Josip Broz of the Austro-Italian Empire would defend Stryi day and night for two whole days and would utilize what few panzerwagens and brownships he had to fend off Russian Peruns on the ground and supply guerrilla forces from above respectively. From the rubble of Styri, Josip Broz became a national hero and was promoted to the general of the Galician Front of the Second Great War due to his ability to finally stop Semyonov by fighting fire with fire and using panzerwagens against Molniyenosnaya Warfare.


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Austro-Italian soldiers near the end of the Battle of Styri.


To the north of Austria-Italy, the Second Great War was going far worse for the Roman Empire. None of the nations that bordered the Union of Greater Rus were very powerful, and had only been established after the Treaty of Vienna. Lithuania was overrun by the Russians within a few vicious weeks in the February of 1939 and then panzerwagens invaded the Prussian puppet state of Poland. Ever since the Red War, the Kingdom of Prussia had gained the reputation of being a militaristically weak nation reliant on the Austro-Italian Empire, and would stay true to this particular stereotype during the Second Great War. Even with reinforcements from nearly every other German member state of the Roman Empire, the Prussians, who barely possessed any panzerwagens at all, were no match to the Union of Greater Rus.


After Poland was overrun by the end of the February of 1939, the trench lines of eastern Prussia were shattered by Molniyenosnaya Warfare and Berlin was left defenseless. On March 15th, 1939 Berlin was occupied by the Union of Greater Rus, and a day later King Frederick IV of Prussia would capitulate and the Prussian government go into exile in Ostafrika. Back in Europe, the Russians would establish a puppet regime in Berlin to more or less operate as a meat shield against the Roman Empire. Obviously, the new state would be stratosist, and the obscure militant Fatherland Party was put in control of the Prussian Wehrstaat, with Heinrich Himmler as its chancellor.


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Flag of the Prussian Wehrstaat.


The Western Front of the Second Great War was not going much better for the Roman Empire. The Imperial Federation would quickly overrun Occitania and place the territory under a harsh military occupation, while the rest of France was left defenseless against the Cairo Alliance, due to the rest of the Roman Empire focusing on Russia and the Eastern Front more than the comparatively weaker Imperial Federation. By the March of 1939, the Duchy of Francia was the weak shield against Spain and was anticipated to fall within the next few months, just as Occitania had before.


However, not all was lost far the Roman Empire. For an unexpected ally would emerge in Iberia when, on June 5th, 1939, the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation suddenly declared war on the Imperial Federation, therefore bringing the entire ANCN into the Second Great War against the Cairo Alliance within the next handful of days. The Proletarian Union’s declaration of war was entirely unexpected, and had originated from General Secretary Antonio Carmona’s deep hatred of stratosism and desire to wipe out Blanco’s regime in Madrid, with increased Spanish naval presence across the Atlantic Ocean being used as a casus belli for the entry of the Proletarian Union into the Second Great War.


The Imperial Federation had not anticipated a Portuguese declaration of war, and were therefore completely caught off guard when the Red Army attacked Lumbrales. While the Imperial Federation still had more than enough soldiers to go on the offensive in France, the war against the Proletarian Union on the so-called Atlantic Front would cost the Spanish their quick victory at Paris, as soldiers had to be relocated to not only defend Iberia, but also Spanish holdings in South America, where the Red Army easily had the advantage. Brazilian industry would fuel the invasion of Rio de la Plata, and after a deadly siege the city of Montevideo would fall and bore the flag of the Proletarian Union on July 2nd, 1939.


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Victorious Red Army soldiers in Montevideo, circa July 1939.


Back in Europe, the Red Army began to grind down as a war of attrition began on the Iberian Peninsula. While President Juan Blanco’s declaration that Galicia would not fall into the hands of the Portuguese was proven to be an empty promise when Lugo fell on August 1st, 1939, the push east was halted at the Battle of Bejar from the 21st to 29th of August 1939. The conflict was initially anticipated to be yet another Portuguese victory, however, Spanish defenses commanded by General Francisco Franco would just barely keep the ruins of the obliterated Bejar in the hands of the Imperial Federation. The Red Army would flee only a handful of miles west, where a system of trenches would be dug to defend against the advancing Spanish forces.


The comunacionists would become critical on other frontlines of the Second Great War as well. The Macedonian State was already one of the weakest members of the Cairo Alliance to begin with, and fighting against the might Austro-Italian Empire was a Herculean task for Georgios Tsolakoglou’s regime, so when the Turkish People’s Republic started to move for Constantinople, Macedonia’s days appeared to be numbered. Turkey did have to partition its attention between the Balkans and Spanish Mesopotamia, however, neither had a very large military presence relative to that of the Turkish People’s Republic, so the push for Constantinople was easy.


The Battle of Constantinople, however, was a far different story. By this point, the Macedonian State had been able to mobilize a large enough military presence in Anatolia and when Macedonian and Turkish soldiers engaged in the outskirts of Constantinople on June 22nd, 1939 it became apparent that these regiments would be fighting in Constantinople for a while. Day after day, streets would become gruesome battlefields as brownships dropped bombs from above where panzerwagens patrolled The ruined city below. Every day that passed, more Macedonian reinforcements would arrive, typically from the Eastern Front against Austria-Italy and its puppet regimes, and the Battle of Constantinople became a slow and brutal fight.


Macedonian soldiers were capable of being deployed by crossing bridges and small boats over the Bosphorus Strait, the former of which the Turks did not dare bombard due to the hopes that the bridges could eventually be conquered and utilized as a way to easily cross into Europe. Besides, the Bosphorus was encircled in air defense, which made airmobile bombing runs difficult and brownship bombing runs were almost impossible. However, as the Battle of Constantinople entered its fifth day and there was still no end in sight, the Turkish military would decide that reaching the Bosphorus was better than wasting thousands of lives to capture a few bridges, and on June 27th, 1939 Turkish airmobiles would manage to destroy all bridges that covered the Bosphorus.


This meant that small boats were the only way to cross the Bosphorus Strait, which allowed Macedonian soldiers to still enter Anatolia, however, the arrival of reinforcements would be much more limited and take longer than just crossing a bridge. Within the next three days, the Turkish People’s Republic would reach the eastern shore of the Bosphorus, therefore dividing Constantinople in half. Advancing any further would become impossible as defenses were established on both sides of Constantinople, and in every single minute heavy gunfire would reduce buildings alongside the coast of the Bosphorus Strait to piles of rubble.


In eastern Asia, the Federation of Japanese Communes would open up a completely new frontline against the Union of Greater Rus. With the vast majority of Boris Rasputin’s military focusing on the invasion of the Roman Empire, the coastline of Siberia was more or less left completely undefended. Northern Sakhalin was overrun by the People’s Japanese Army (PJA) within a matter of days, and the People’s Japanese Navy (PJN) would conquer the Kuril Islands with ease and bombard the major coastal cities in Siberia to oblivion. General Hideki Tojo would command the invasion of Manchuria after successfully landing on the Asian mainland on June 19th, 1939 and conquering the city of Vladivostok.


The exiled government of the Japanese Empire would see an opportunity when the FJC and its fellow comunacionist allies declared war on the Cairo Alliance, and would declare war on the Federation of Japanese Communes on June 22nd, 1939, following days of mobilization. Two days later, the Japanese Empire would officially join the Cairo Alliance, therefore officially bringing the Japanese monarchist government into the Second Great War against the Roman Empire and Alliance of National Communist Nations, whose cooperation had earned them the nickname of “the Coalition.”


Back over in Europe, the Austro-Italian Empire would continue to hold back the vicious might of Russia by developing more and more tanks under the supervision of the increasingly prominent General Broz, who had continued to slowly liberate ground in Galicia. However, there was only so much that panzerwagens could do against other panzerwagens, especially Peruns. By the August of 1939, Austria-Italy and Russia had come to a standstill within the outskirts of Vyspa, which has become the new headquarters of General Grigory Semyonov.


As the Union of Great Rus continued to pierce defenses wherever they possibly could, the Austro-Italian high command would have to find a new way to defeat their enemy. Eventually, the Austro-Italian armed forces concluded that funding airmobile development would potentially pay off on the frontlines. While airmobiles has seen little action in the First Great War due to how new such technology was, technological developments for airmobiles had substantially advanced in recent decades, to the point that commercial airmobile transportation was becoming a popular alternative to the historically popular brownships. A large air fleet could potentially obliterate supplies behind enemy lines, as opposed to the far more reserved and limited collection of airmobiles and brownships that Austria-Italy had when the Second Great War began.


With approval from the Imperial Senate, both Consul Mussolini and Consul Renner would take away the responsibilities of aerial combat from the Imperial Navy and cede them to a new institution, the Imperial Air Force, on September 10th, 1939. Under the leadership of Minister Alexander Novikov, the Air Force would receive a decent amount of funding and would quickly rise into a valuable asset of the Austro-Italian armed forces. Within a few days, numerous Austro-Italian factories were producing new airmobiles, which would soar above Russian supply lines and annihilate them through extensive bombardments. While the Union of Greater Rus had been capable of shooting down slow brownships and older airmobile models, the new aircraft of the Austro-Italian Empire was swift and had a long flight time, and could fly for plenty of miles before having to return for refueling. Thus, Russian anti-air weapons would soon become obsolete and Austria-Italy would dominate the air.


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Austro-Italian bombers over Galicia, circa November 1939.


Boris Rasputin would not allow his enemy to reign supreme over the sky for long. By the end of September 1939, the Union of Greater Rus would have its own air force, although it was not as impressive as Austria-Italy’s. At best, the Nebesnyy Flot was only a shield against Austro-Italian airmobiles, and intense funding towards the Russian military would hold back much growth. Rasputin viewed ground forces as the absolute priority of the armed forces of war effort, and thus the Nebesnyy Flot was a relatively weak force. Even so, the Russian minister of the air force, Ioseb Jughashvili, would at least slow down the Austro-Italians and give Novikov a moderate challenge.


As the Russians were pushed back by Austro-Italian airmobiles, the Eastern Front would slowly turn in favor of Austria-Italy. Josip Broz was presented with the opportunity to quickly advance as Semyonov’s men were depleted of resources and feared for constant air strikes. General Broz would be able to push into Russian-occupied Ukraine and by the dawn of 1940, Austria-Italy had advanced as far as Shepetivka, therefore liberating a good amount of western Ukraine from the Nasoks. Such activity would only embolden the underground Ukrainian resistance behind enemy lines, which would begin vicious guerrilla campaigns, and occasionally conduct questionable acts of terrorism.


Ukraine was not, however, the only region of Europe to be liberated as winter began. Himmler’s Wehrstaat would prove to be incredibly unstable and was an easy target for the Austro-Italian Empire. The puppet regime was overrun by legions of panzerwagens that charged for Berlin. After Saxony, which had been invaded alongside Prussia, was liberated in the February of 1940, the Wehrstaat would shift its attention away from the invasion of the German kingdoms and would turn its guns on the Austro-Italian Empire. It would become obvious that the Prussian Wehrstaat could never beat Austria-Italy by itself, and Chancellor Himmler would implore Boris Rasputin to send reinforcements to Prussia with the hopes of opening up a new frontline against Austria-Italy. Rasputin, who was beginning to see that the Eastern Front was not going in his favor, agreed to risk an invasion of Bohemia and would send General Nikita Khrushchev to Berlin to oversee this new frontline.


The Austro-Italian Empire had not anticipated the large quantity of Russian reinforcements on behalf of the Wehrstaat, let alone one of the most skilled generals from the Eastern Front, Khrushchev, in Prussia. Starting in the February of 1940, General Nikita Khrushchev would push into Bohemia with a legion of Peruns, Prussians, and Russians. Saxony fell back into the hands of the Wehrstaat by the end of the month, and by this point Austro-Italian defenses of Bohemia were shattered.


The conquest of Bohemia was a challenge, to say the very least. The region had been in the hands of the Habsburgs for centuries, and Prague was amongst the greatest cities in the Austro-Italian Empire. Under no circumstances would Mussolini and Renner let such a vital part of Austria-Italy fall to Russian panzerwagens with ease, and after reports came in about the Russian occupation of Teplice, Prague would become one of the most well-defended cities on Earth, and bomb drills were a daily routine. As the invasion of Bohemia began, the Austro-Italian armed forces became more and more merciless the further General Khrushchev moved along for Prague. In retaliation, Rasputin supplied more reinforcements to the Bohemian Front every now and then, realizing that if Khrushchev turned back now then Prussia would surely return to the Coalition.


Russian panzerwagens would technologically advance very rapidly in this time period. In order to counter Austro-Italian tactics, several new designs were created to ensure that no force would ever stop Molniyenosnaya Warfare. With this new support, Khrushchev could finally pick up the pace in Bohemia and reached the outskirts of Prague on March 8th, 1940. Both forces in the city were well aware that they would be here for numerous vicious days, and that a battle worse than Constantinople was about to begin. By the end of the first day of combat alone, the Battle of Prague had cost thousands of lives for both of the belligerents, and after an entire week of combat the Russians had just barely advanced further into the city. It was along the Vltava River where the two of the most powerful armed forces on Earth found themselves stuck, constantly exchanging brutal gunfire.


On March 20th, 1940 General Nikita Khrushchev would order an invasion from the less defended to distract the Austro-Italians and weaken defenses near the Vltava. This strategy worked, and by the end of the day the interior of Prague was occupied by Peruns. The Austro-Italians would attempt to reorganize their defenses, however, all attempts would fail and by March 23rd, 1940 the city of Prague had fallen into the hands of the Union of Greater Rus. The forces of Austria-Italy were ordered to flee one of their empire’s most treasured cities and made their way to Benesov, demoralized as newspapers around the world reported on their shocking loss.


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A statue in the middle of Prague following the Russian victory over the city, circa March 1940.


As Italo Mussolini got word of the defeat at Prague, the famous leader of the Austro-Italian Empire would call for an emergency session of the Imperial Senate, where he would announce that the Union of Greater Rus had conquered one of the most populated and critical cities of Austria-Italy and that hopes of victory were appearing more and more unlikely. However, Consul Mussolini would declare that the “light of freedom and democracy had not been snuffed out,” but rather the “fate of mankind now hangs in the balance between light and dark.” This speech, nicknamed the “Prague Address,” would become a celebrated message of the Austro-Italian crusade to preserve democracy, an institution that had barely existed within the nation for a decade, in the face of stratosist tyranny.


However, it would take more than a powerful speech to turn the tides of the Second Great War. While the Proletarian Union was easily invading Spanish South America, the Iberian Front had become stagnant trench warfare, which was beginning to turn in favor of the Imperial Federation. The invasion of Francia had begun to turn in favor of the Spanish yet again, and after a long and bloody fight, Paris fell into the hands of the Cairo Alliance on June 25th, 1940. Even the African Front was not looking good for the Coalition, as the Egyptian Caliphate began to accelerate its invasion of poorly defended colonial holdings of Austria-Italy and obliterated any defenses of the exiled Kingdom of Prussia. After the capitulation of the Duchy of Francia on July 8th, 1940, the Roman Empire issued the Iron Declaration, which was an agreement ensuring that no Roman member states would ever surrender to the Cairo Alliance and instead fight until the bitter end, however, this alone could not stop the Cairo Alliance from potentially conquering all of Europe.


It was in these uncertain times that the sleeping giants of the Western Hemisphere could become potential valuable belligerents in the Second Great War. The United States of America would not be declaring war on any faction anytime soon, especially after President-Elect Arthur Vandenberg of the Democratic Party announced that preserving American neutrality in European affairs was among his top priorities, despite his public criticism of the Union of Greater Rus and stratosism in general. The Mexican Empire, on the other hand, was a different story. In 1936, Mexico had elected Hector Long of the Libertario Party, an organization formed by Long after Schwarzer Mittwoch that advocated for social welfare, Diaz-esque technocracy, and increased labor rights, to the presidency.


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President Hector Long of the Mexican Empire.


Nicknamed “Senor Long,” the new Mexican president was elected in retaliation to the conservatism and incompetence of his two predecessors and would soon implement populist welfare programs to help rebuild the economy of Mexico. In many ways, President Hector Long could be considered the Mexican equivalent to Alexander Ulyanov, at least when it came to their policies in regards to labor unions, with Long implementing laws mandating collective bargaining and strengthening workers’ rights. However, history would mostly remember Hector Long not for his role in domestic Mexican affairs, but rather his involvement on the global stage.


When the Second Great War began in 1938, President Long would be quick to condemn the Grand Patriarch, and alongside the United States of America, would embargo the Union of Greater Rus. However, like both Henry Sinclair and Arthur Vandenberg, Long would declare the neutrality of his nation, and would only begin to increase militaristic presence when the Proletarian Union declared war on the Imperial Federation in 1939. In fact, the Mexican Empire would actually fund anti-Proletarian forces when Carmona decided to attack the neutral Venezuela and New Granada in the November of 1940, with President Long permitting the deployment of volunteer forces in South America.


However, opposition to Portuguese aggression in South America would not in fact preserve Mexican neutrality. Continuous trade embargoes on the Cairo Alliance would begin to harm the stratosist war effort in the Pacific Ocean, especially after the Mexican Empire closed the Nicaragua Canal to Allied ships in the September of 1940. Boris Rasputin and Juan Blanco both felt especially betrayed that their former ally in the First Great War had dared to force them out of nearly all trading agreements, and Rasputin would go as far as to label the Mexicans as “allies of the Comunacionist Plot to destroy the Slavic Race.”


President Long would not, however, back down against the Cairo Alliance, which would cause Rasputin and Blanco to plan a revenge. It was decided that the Imperial Federation would launch a surprise invasion of the Philippines by first attacking Manila, and then work down to Australia and kick Mexico out of the eastern Pacific. The plan, deemed Operation Draco, was definitely a large gamble, but so was the Second Great War itself. Therefore, on January 27th, 1941, the Imperial Federation would launch a pre-emptive strike on the city of Manila, and through completely catching the Mexican Empire off guard would successfully occupy the city by the end of the day.


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Burning wreckage following the Battle of Manila.


And with one brutal attack, the Mexican Empire had joined the Second Great War and history was forever changed.


While Hector Long had anticipated that the United States would declare war on the Cairo Alliance and defend their historical ally, this would not be the case. President Vandenberg was especially cautious about going to war, and had not only campaigned on the promise of American neutrality, but had also campaigned in condemnation of both the Cairo Alliance and ANCN, and argued that it would be hypocritical of himself to fight in the Great War alongside the ANCN. Therefore, it was apparent to the whole world that the United States of America would be sitting out the Second Great War.


After the Battle of Manila, there was hope that Luzon would quickly fall into the hands of the Imperial Federation, however, this was not the case. Mexican naval forces would be quick to blockade the Philippines, thus preventing the arrival of reinforcements, while the arrival of Mexican reinforcements would defeat the Spanish at Silang on February 18th, 1941. It was apparent to the Cairo Alliance that Operation Draco was a complete failure, as all that had occurred was the entry of Mexico into the Second Great War as a strong belligerent with a vengeance against the stratosists.


For the Federation of Japanese Communes, the entry of the Mexican Empire into the Second Great War was a blessing. The Pacific Front became an inevitable victory for the Coalition, and the FJC could shift attention away from the war against Spanish Vietnam and focus on the war against the Japanese Empire instead. Shanghai would fall on March 12th, 1941, and Beijing, the capital of the Japanese Empire, would fall on March 30th. The Japanese monarchy would flee north and continue to fight on in Manchuria, however, with the FJC already controlling the majority of Russian Manchuria, the Japanese Empire’s days were clearly numbered, and the monarchy would surrender to its comunacionist counterpart on April 29th, 1941.


Over in Europe, the entry of Mexico into the Second Great War would arguably save the Coalition. By this point, Russian military production had stopped General Josip Broz at Zhytomyr, Bohemia was nearly under the complete control of the Nasoks, and France was occupied by the Imperial Federation. The only frontline that was going in favor of the Coalition was the relatively insignificant war in the Balkans against the Macedonian State, and even then the situation had become a war of attrition. However, the arrival of Mexican reinforcements to Europe would give many of the weaker and more vulnerable Coalition member states the resources necessary to survive the Second Great War. Assisting the Austro-Italian Empire, which was capable of holding its own against the Cairo Alliance, was unnecessary, so Mexican regiments would wind up fighting in Hanover against the Prussian Wehrstaat, which saved the comparatively weak and fragile nation.


In Germany, General Ruben Zaldivar of the Mexican Empire would preside over the Mexican Expeditionary Force (MEF) against the Union of Greater Rus and their allies. The MEF would become a valuable force on the Eastern Front (specifically German Front) of the Second Great War, and would liberate all of Russian-occupied Hanover within just a handful of days after Zaldivar arrived in Europe. After the Russians were pushed back into Prussia, General Zaldivar would go on an intense offensive for Berlin, and encourage the utilization of airmobiles in a war similar to how such devices were being used by Austria-Italy. For the first time in awhile, the Eastern Front was shifting in favor of the Coalition and the destruction of Himmler’s Wehrstaat was near.


Surely enough, Berlin was liberated by Mexican panzerwagens after a vicious offensive on July 9th, 1941. The government of the Wehrstaat would flee east, however, King Frederick IV would return to the rubble of Berlin a few days later and end the exile of the Kingdom of Prussia, although the Kingdom was under martial law as reconstruction began and Mexican panzerwagens would be commonplace in the streets of Berlin for awhile. However, the Battle of Berlin had demolished much of the strength the Union of Greater Rus had in Central Europe, and on August 27th, 1941 Prague was liberated from Nasok tyranny and by the end of the following September Bohemia had returned to the Austro-Italian Empire.


On the Iberian Front, the Proletarian Union had begun to increase its capabilities, especially after the last forces of the Imperial Federation in the New World were defeated in the November of 1941. Thousands of experienced soldiers from South America would arrive, as would much-needed supplies, that would allow the Portuguese to go on the offensive for Madrid. The push for Madrid began, and it became apparent to Juan Blanco that he would be losing against Carmona’s Red Army. After a long and vicious campaign, the city of Madrid would be conquered after a brutal battle on February 24th, 1941 that ended in Portuguese victory over central Iberia. President Blanco fled to Zaragoza, however, such an evacuation would only delay the inevitable. The Iberian Peninsula had become the domain of the Red Army and the center of comunacionism.


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General Secretary Antonio Carmona in Madrid, circa February 1942.


Back in Asia, the Federation of Japanese Communes would begin to push into the Dzekson Komissariat and uncovered a terrible secret, hidden from the rest of the world, including Russian allies within the Cairo Alliance. As the PJA pushed west, deserted ghost towns, once belonging to the local Mongolian people, were discovered. This was suspicious, not only because these towns were completely deserted, but nearly all local culture had been destroyed and not a single prisoner of war was of Mongolian heritage. Then, on March 1st, 1942, the unimaginable was discovered. After a long battle over what was initially believed to be a Nasok military base deep within the Gobi Desert, the Federation of Japanese Communes uncovered a true crime against humanity, one that even the comunacionists found repugnant. A vast forced labor camp, mostly populated by innocent Mongolians, was discovered. But this camp’s ultimate purpose was not to produce supplies for the Russian war effort.


Its purpose was to kill.


By just capturing one camp, the entire world was exposed to one of the worst atrocities in human history. The Istrebleniye, which is literally the Russian word for “extermination,” was Boris Rasputin’s ultimate goal, and was a plan to wipe out all deemed “inferior” by the Nasok ideology by forcing said groups into slavery in Russian penal colonies where they would be worked to death. Only a few select groups were qualified as “tolerable inferiors” by the Nasok Party, and were supposed to be kept alive as slave labor. By the time this terror was discovered in early 1942, millions had already been killed by the Istrebleniye.


The discovery of the Istrebleniye shocked the international community, including other members of the Cairo Alliance. Juan Blanco, who also adhered to the racist and ultra-totalitarian ideology of stratosism, never really condemned Rasputin, and the Macedonian State was in the same situation, however, the Egyptian Sultanate was disgusted. Publically, the Egyptian government made no condemnation of the Union of Greater Rus, for such an action could potentially sabotage Egypt’s survival against Austria-Italy, however, the leadership of Egypt would privately discuss how cruel their Russian allies were, and Sultan Farouk I would write, “Curse this terrible war! Curse me! How could I have been foolish enough to make a deal with the devil himself?” in a private journal not long after Istrebleniye was revealed to the world.


The Coalition would use the terrors of the Nasok regime as a form of propaganda. The Coalition was no longer fighting exclusively against violent aggressors, but was also fighting against genocidal monsters who denied human beings of their basic right to live. “Remember Mongolia!” became an often-heard chant on European battlefields, while the ANCN painted itself as the liberators of the Mongolian people.


The discovery of Isrebleniye was no turning point in the Second Great War, however, it occurred in a period in which the war effort against the Cairo Alliance was beginning to turn in favor of the Coalition, considering that the PJA had to invade the Dzekson Komissariat in order to discover a Russian labor camp to begin with. But in Europe, the Second Great War was going great for the Coalition. The Imperial Federation was on its last legs, General Broz was advancing further and further into Ukraine day by day, and the Wehrstaat was merely a shadow of its former power. The Turkish People’s Republic would finally cross the Bosphorus Strait on April 22nd, 1942, and the days of the Macedonian State became numbered, especially as Austro-Italian panzerwagens began to push forward yet again. Surely enough, Macedonia would capitulate to the Coalition after Thessaloniki was captured by Turkey on May 8th, 1942, and the former nation was divided between Austro-Italian and Turkish occupation zones.


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Austro-Italian panzerwagens patrolling Athens, circa May 1942.


Shortly after the Macedonian State’s surrender, the Imperial Federation of Spain would also surrender to the Coalition. After Madrid fell, Blanco had decided to evacuate France to consolidate defenses around Zaragoza, and within just a few months all French nations, including Occitania had been liberated from the tyranny of Juan Blanco’s Imperial Federation. Just as Roman soldiers began to enter Iberia, the Proletarian Union’s Red Army would conquer Zaragoza after a fierce battle against the last forces of the Imperial Federation on May 30th, 1942. Juan Blanco had hoped that he could escape to the Bay of Biscay and go into exile following an inevitable capitulation, however, as Blanco attempted to escape Zaragoza, Red Army soldiers would catch up with the vile president, and the Imperial Federation was ultimately no more. By the end of the next day, the Iberian Peninsula was under the complete military occupation of the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation.


Next, the Egyptian Sultanate would have be dealt with. Morale had plummeted in Egypt following the reveal of Istrebleniye to the whole world, and many Egyptian soldiers would consequently desert their posts in protest of Egypt’s pact with a genocidal maniac. The African colonial military forces of Austria-Italy and Prussia would also undergo significant improvements as the Second Great War in Europe turned in favor for the Coalition, and soon enough the Egyptian Sultanate was pushed back east towards the Nile. After the Macedonian State surrendered to the Coalition, the Turkish People’s Republic would begin to focus on the Egyptian Sultanate, and the fear of a potential comunacionist conquest would cause Sultan Farouk I to sit down with the Austro-Italian Empire on June 9th, 1942.


The Treaty of Alexandria would ultimately see the end of Egyptian involvement within the Second Great War, and would also see the end of the Egyptian Sultanate itself. Austria-Italy would force the end of the Egyptian absolute monarchy and Sultan Farouk I would abdicate. In his place, the Egyptian Republic was declared, as a democratic state under the temporary military occupation of Austria-Italy. As the Second Great War began to end, the Egyptian Republic, under the leadership of President Mohamed Naguib, would remain neutral in the war effort against its former stratosist Russian ally and would rebuild its post-Second Great War infrastructure instead, although Austria-Italy would build military bases in the Egyptian Republic, which were vital during the Great Game.


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Flag of the Egyptian Republic.


With the capitulation of the Egyptian Sultanate, the Union of Greater Rus was the sole remaining member of the Cairo Alliance, which dissolved following the capitulation anyway, however, Boris Rasputin refused to surrender to the Coalition. And while a Russian victory over nearly the entire world was impossible, the vast size of the Union of Greater Rus would mean that the Second Great War could potentially last for, at the very least, another year. Even so, victory was inevitable, and the race for Rasputin was on.


Day after day, the Union of Greater Rus would become smaller and smaller. Siberia was extremely poorly defended, and would easily fall to the FJC, while western Russia was a brutal war zone between the forces of democracy and the forces of stratosism. The Prussian Wehrstaat would collapse after Danzig was invaded on July 20th, 1942, and Heinrich Himmler was charged for treason against the Kingdom of Prussia and was also found guilty of being an accomplice in war crimes. Once the Wehrstaat fell apart, Poland was liberated a day later and the German minor states would, alongside the military of the Mexican Empire, begin invading into Russian territory.


Ukraine was freed from Russian oppression next, and on September 30th, 1942 General Josip Broz liberate Kiev, thus leading to the declaration of the Kingdom of Ukraine in collaboration with underground resistance groups that had been fighting against the iron fist of Rasputin ever since Ukraine had fallen back in 1939. The Caucasus region would become occupied via collaboration between both the Roman Empire and the Alliance of National Communist Nations, which cut off the Union of Greater Rus from valuable resources. As the Coalition continued to extend its territory deeper and deeper into Russia, airmobile bombing runs would be able to attack more and more major Russian cities, including Moscow. Boris Rasputin would start to spend the majority of time within a bunker beneath the Kremlin, while Mexican and Austro-Italian bombers obliterated the city above.


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Mexican Z-19 bombers, better known by the nickname “Caracara,” over Moscow, circa November 1942.


Every passing day, the Union of Greater Rus would become smaller and smaller. Meanwhile, the Coalition approached Moscow from the west and absorbed Siberia in the east. By the December of 1942, all komissariats of the Union of Greater Rus were no more, and the Sintszyan Komissariat (the territory of present-day East Turkestan) would become the last komissariat to capitulate on December 28th, 1942. This was not, however, the end of Istrebleniye. As the Union of Greater Rus was broken apart, Boris Rasputin would make it clear to the world that which genocide would continue, and millions of Russian slaves were moved west for Turkestan and western Siberia, where clearly rushed labor camps were set up, with Rasputin deciding that the “inferiors” would die before his empire.


As Russian slaves were sent west, the Coalition would only become more determined to see the Union of Greater Rus fall. Even the harsh winter climate of Russia would be unable to stop the ever-advancing Coalition, and after new supplies to cope with the fierce weather was distributed to Coalition soldiers, the war would start to move towards Moscow yet again. After many gruesome and deadly months of warfare, the fateful day arrived. A vast legion of Coalition soldiers, from Austro-Italian to Mexican to Prussian, would arrive upon the gates of Moscow on February 19th, 1943. Josip Broz and Ruben Zaldivar would both preside over the Battle of Moscow, which was guaranteed to become one of the bloodiest fights in human history. And so, on that cold February day, a breeze blew through Moscow as panzerwagens began to move east for the Kremlin and airmobiles soared above, bombing any Russian soldiers who dared to stand in the way of the unified forces of global democracy and liberty.


The Battle of Moscow lasted numerous days, however, street by street the Coalition managed to overcome the Peruns of the Union of Greater Rus and pushed through the rubble of a once mighty city for Boris Rasputin, who cowered in a bunker whilst his empire literally crumbled. In order to ensure that the Grand Patriarch would not escape the Battle of Moscow, the city was quickly surrounded by Coalition forces, thus turning Moscow into a prison for what remained of the Nasok high command. The culmination of over four years of combat would become an inescapable siege, where the Coalition would emerge victorious over one of history’s most horrific foes.


Surely enough, the Battle of Moscow finally ended on March 9th, 1943, when what remained of the forces of General Grigory Semyonov raised a white flag in the center of the ruins of Moscow. Rasputin was unaware that the battle above had ended, and was discovered a day later once his officers on the surface finally cooperated with the regiments of the Coalition and revealed Boris Rasputin’s bunker. The Grand Patriarch was found beneath Moscow, extremely drunk after attempting to kill himself through alcohol poisoning and was put into Coalition custody. Two days later, Boris Rasputin and his military commanders were forced to sign an unconditional surrender, thus bringing an end to the most bloody conflict humanity has ever fought.


On March 12th, 1943 weapons fell silent and Earth would cheer. The Second Great War had finally ended.


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Coalition-occupied Moscow, circa March 1943.


In Munich, the new borders of the world were drawn. Obviously, none of the members of the Cairo Alliance were permitted to exist any longer, however, what new governments would exist in the aftermath of the chaos of the Second Great War was far more debatable. The Roman Empire and Alliance of National Communist Nations had conflicting ideas on what the new map of the world would look like, and in the end it was agreed that the two alliances would divide the world by their occupation zones. South America was partitioned into several Portuguese puppet regimes, as was Iberia, while the Proletarian Union would engulf itself in the spoils of war by annexing some territory for itself. In a similar fashion, the Federation of Japanese Communes would annex Manchuria, the Japanese Empire, and much of the Russian Far East. The territory that had fallen into the control of the PJA would become independent comunacionist regimes, under the joint military occupation of the FJC and the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation.


The Roman Empire was slightly more merciful. Puppet states were not established, and numerous ethnicities, especially those oppressed by the Nasok Party, would gain their own independent nations, free of Russia. What remained of Russia would become a Roman-Mexican occupation zone under the leadership of Josip Broz, named the Ryazan Government (due to the absolute destruction of Moscow, Ryazan was chosen to become the capital of Coalition-occupied Russia). The Coalition would continue to occupy Russia until the nation was completely rebuilt from years within the iron fist of the Nasoks, not to mention the destruction from the Second Great War. However, the partition of Russia would not be the only border change ensured by the Roman Empire at the Treaty of Munich. Italo Mussolini, along with numerous other European leaders had become sick of the war caused by European political division, and believed that Europe was stronger united than divided. Therefore, the time had ultimately come for the Roman Empire to unite into one nation, but one with a new name. As the ink dried on the Treaty of Munich, Europeans would come to the realization that they had become citizens of a completely new nation, led by Emperor Maximilian I.


The Commonwealth of Europa was born.


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Flag of the Commonwealth of Europa.


With the Treaty of Munich ultimately set in stone, the world had been completely changed forever. Stratosism had died, and in its place the world was divided between democracy and comunacionism. A new superpower had been born, and the new Commonwealth of Europa was completely opposed to the oppressive and racist ideological system of the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation and its allies.


History was not over, for the Great Game had only just begun.


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Map of the World circa 1943.
 
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Aaand with Epilogue Four out, we just have one more epilogue to go before Das Ewige Reich is completed!

Thank you so much to everyone who has stuck around to read this (sub-par) timeline. In just a handful of months, one of my first timelines on AlternateHistory.com will end, so I will see you all when we get there. :extremelyhappy:
 
Epilogue Five: The Arisen Phoenix
Epilogue V: The Arisen Phoenix


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Europan soldiers parading through Vienna following the ratification of the Treaty of Munich, circa March 1943.


The end of the Second Great War marked the beginning of a new period in human history, the one that we find ourselves within to this day. Gone were the days of the petty squabbles of European empires that had dominated history since the discovery of the New World. The horrors of the Second Great War has caused the great powers of the world to detest large-scale warfare, and the discontent of the war-weary masses of the world made waging a Third Great War impossible for the time being as the world rebuilt itself. If the new superpowers of the world sought to extend their influence, they would have to resort to subtle and cautious games of international intrigue, diplomacy, and proxy warfare.


The world did not know it, but as Europe was being rebuilt, the Great Game was beginning.


The tensions of the post-Second Great War world primarily coalesced around two superpowers and their sphere of influence. The Treaty of Munich had ceded an impressive amount of authority to the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation, which had become the unquestioned authority in Iberia and South America. The totalitarianism and violence (especially towards monarchism) of comunacionism had terrified the powerful constitutional monarchies of the world since the Portuguese Civil War, which fell primarily into a sphere of influence around the Commonwealth of Europa, and to an extent the Mexican Empire, both of which had become close allies following the Second Great War. The Europan-Mexican alliance was only further solidified when, in 1944, Emperor Maximilian I of Europa married Princess Rosemary, the heir to the Mexican throne, at the surprisingly old age of forty-one. The two had met during the numerous meetings between their governments during the Second Great War and had grown to have a strong connection, particularly following the death of Macimilian’s wife in 1941. Therefore, the two were the best candidates for securing a Europan-Mexican personal union, an opportunity which may not be presented for many more years.


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Emperor Maximilian I of the Commonwealth of Europa.


While the union of Maximilian and Rosemary was celebrated as the beginning of a new era of peace amongst the great monarchies of Earth, this was a peace secured in retaliation against the rising forces of comunacionism. The numerous ethnic cleansings conducted in territory occupied by the ANCN following the Treaty of Munich was condemned by international newspapers, which declared comunacionism the post-war threat to peace. The border Europa shared with the recently-established Portuguese puppet states of Aragon, Castille, and Basque began to witness military buildup from both Europan and Portuguese military forces alike, while the waters encircling Iberia were ruled by warships, prepared to attack at a moment’s notice.


For the next handful of years, this was the situation the world found itself within. Rival global superpowers built up their military stockpiles, choosing to keep their large forces from the Second Great War, while simultaneously funding international reconstruction efforts. For the majority of the world, however, the so-called “End of History” era that had emerged from the chaos of the Great Wars was a period of economic prosperity. New technological developments turned the ruins of Europe into beacons of industry and commerce of the Commonwealth of Europa, and reconstruction efforts would create millions of new jobs. Even the United States of America, which had not participated in the Second Great War, felt the beneficial effects of the End of History as new wealth and innovation poured in from across the Earth. As the American economy flourished, President Arthur Vandenberg easily secured a second term in 1944 in a campaign against the fiery Liberal Unionist John Llewellyn Lewis on the promise of “the beginning of the end for poverty.”


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President Arthur Vandenberg of the United States of America.


This prosperity would not, however, last for long. In August 15th, 1946, the Xuantong Emperor of China was assassinated by a man by the name of Hua Guofeng, and the Qing Dynasty was left without a head of state. The Xuantong Emperor had ascended to the throne of China shortly after the First Great War had ended, and had managed to preserve the dying Chinese monarchy in a humiliated and increasingly unstable state by providing progressive policies, such as welfare, to his people. However, the Qing Dynasty could never reclaim its lost glory, and under the Xuantong Emperor even the days within the Japanese sphere of influence seemed to be a lost age of better times for China. In the Interwar Period, discontent with the status quo began to build up within the Chinese masses, who started to turn to populist alternatives, such as republicanism and comunacionism. The National Workers’ Party (QGD), the largest comunacionist political party in China, thrived in the early 1920s, however, the rise of the Federation of Japanese Communes caused the QGD to lose popularity due to the new Japanese government’s hostility to the Qing Dynasty, and for that matter the independence of China from the Japanese sphere of influence.


By the time the Xuantong Emperor was assassinated, however, the QGD was on the rise yet again. The terrors of stratosism in eastern Asia had caused the Federation of Japanese Communes to be depicted as, at the very least, the lesser of two evils, which was interpreted by the QGD as a justification for the support of comunacionism. Therefore, when the news of the Emperor’s assassination (by a comunacionist, no less) arrived in the newspapers of China the eyes of an unstable empire turned to the National Workers’ Party and its chairman, Lin Yurong, a prominent military commander who had assumed control of the QGD during the Second Great War. Yurong had since both centralized the Chinese comunacionist movement and had established a strict militia for the QGD, called the Eastern Vanguard (DXD), in order to defend the QGD from the suppression of comunacionists, although in reality the DXD would often operate as a questionable vigilante force that attacked ethnic groups deemed “inferior” by the QGD.


Many QGD members argued that the time for revolution had arrived as the Chinese monarchy fell apart, and their cries for war were further fueled by the anti-comunacionist public reaction to the reveal of Hua Guofeng’s political views. Yurong, would not, however, openly declare revolution against the Qing Dynasty yet, opting to encourage numerical and resource buildup of the DXD instead. However, soon enough more chaos would emerge. The younger brother of the Xuantong Emperor, Pujie, was coronated as the Guang Emperor only a few days after the assassination of his brother, hoping to restore order. However, the rise of the the Guang Emperor was met with the simultaneous rise of General Jiang Jieshi, who would take advantage of the apparent incompetence of the Guang Emperor by manipulating the Emperor, eventually becoming the leader of the entire Chinese military. For the next handful of months, the Emperor and Jiang Jieshi would jockey for power within the Chinese government, with the moderates of the reign of the Xuantong Emperor aligning with their monarch while militant reactionaries, primarily within provincial and militaristic bases of power, would become the pawns of Jieshi. By the January of 1947, the Emperor and General Jieshi had become obvious rivals, however, by this point Jiang Jieshi was by far the stronger force, with the last pocket of provincial resistance residing within the south, where cultural and political differences guaranteed local opposition against the authoritarian and centralized policies of Jieshi.


Ultimately, the unimaginable would occur in the January of 1947 as a quick collection of events shook both China and the world. First, on January 10th, 1947 General Jieshi would order that the National Workers’ Party be banned. This news was retaliated against only a few hours later, when Lin Yurong declared that the QGD would enter a state of rebellion against the Qing Dynasty, and soon enough the DXD had taken up arms against the Guang Emperor. Believing that a strong executive was necessary for the comunacionist rebellion to be repressed, General Jiang Jieshi would arrest the Guang Emperor and his followers, and the emperor was forced to abdicate in favor of Jieshi, who became the Shengli Emperor of the Jiang Dynasty on January 15th, 1947.


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Jiang Jieshi, the Shengli Emperor of the Jiang Dynasty.


While the declaration of the Jiang Dynasty was celebrated within northern China, where General Jiang Jieshi was popular and viewed as the last defender of China from comunacionism, southern China rejected the new dynasty. As the Jiang Dynasty began to stabilize, the provinces of Yunnan, Guangxi, Guizhou, and Sichuan all seceded from the grip of the Shengli Emperor to confederate into the League of Free Provinces (LFP), which was a de facto coalition of warlords, many of which held republican sympathies and sought to establish a Chinese Federation from both the destruction of the Jiang Dynasty and the National Workers’ Party. After many months of subtle buildup, the world turned in shock as Chinese soldiers turned their weapons upon each other, for the Chinese Civil War had begun.


Almost immediately, the National Workers’ Party took over the area surrounding Shanghai, the capital of China, which forced the Jiang Dynasty out west. With the utilization of complex and fierce guerrilla tactics, Lin Yurong would swiftly conquer the Chinese coastline, therefore bringing the mouth of the Yangtze River under the occupation of the DXD by the start of the April of 1947. The success of the QGD in the Chinese Civil War would prompt the Federation of Japanese Communes to support the QGD by announcing official intervention within the Chinese Civil War on May 8th, 1947. The arrival of Japanese reinforcements was celebrated by the QGD, as the PJA veterans of the Second Great War moved south from Japanese China and landed in Chinese ports as the PJN patrolled the coast of China. A few days after the entry of Japan into the Chinese Civil War, the Japanese puppet states formed from eastern Russia following the Second Great War would also declare their support for the QGD, and the ANCN would officially announce that all member states would be supplying the QGD in some form, typically through the deployment of weapons. However, the Proletarian Union would take intervention further by sending military forces to China, and by the July of 1947 thousands of Portuguese soldiers were following the Yangtze River.


As the Jiang Dynasty fell in the east, it simultaneously faced an invasion from the south via the League of Free Provinces, which would push into the Shaanxi Province. The success of the Shaanxi Campaign, which captured Xi’an on September 5th, 1947, attracted the attention of the Europan-Mexican sphere, which had been keeping a close eye on China ever since the declaration of the Jiang Dynasty. The support of democracy within the League of Free Provinces had made the LFP the preferred faction amongst the constitutional monarchies in the west, however, the Europans, Mexicans, and their allies had chosen to remain outside of the Chinese Civil War for the time being, in part due to China not really being relevant to the west, and in part due to a fear a risking a war with the ANCN by funding an entity in direct opposition with a comunacionist organization.


But politics were changing in Europe. Ever since the establishment of the Commonwealth of Europa, the head of government of the new global superpower had been Italo Mussolini, who was elected as the first chancellor of Europa in 1943 by Parliament (the Austro-Italian system of two heads of government had been scrapped by Europa in favor of a deputy chancellor and a stronger democratically elected judicial branch). As the leader of the Populist-Royalist Party (PRP), Mussolini had easily managed to keep control over the Commonwealth of Europa upon its first four years of existence, however, as the ANCN began to assert more and more power around the world, the Europan opinion on the role of the Commonwealth in post-war international affairs was up for debate. In fact, support for a more harsh stance towards the ANCN prompted the second parliamentary election in Europan history on September 12th, 1947, in which a coalition of liberals and centrists secured a substantial amount of seats within Parliament (just barely under the amount needed to usurp the PRP and secure a majority), although Italo Mussolini remained chancellor for the time being and the executive branch barely underwent any change after the 1947 parliamentary election.


The biggest effect of the success of the Centrist Coalition, led primarily by the Liberal Party, was a shift in foreign policy towards comunacionism. Under the leadership of MP Pierre de Gaulle, the Centrists argued in favor of supporting the League of Free Provinces, and by winning over a select few allies within the PRP, who voted for a new Minister of Foreign Affairs, with the Liberal Konrad Adenauer becoming the new leader in Europan foreign policy. With his new position of power, Adenauer organized meetings between the League of Free Provinces to negotiate potential Europan intervention, and also met President Hector Long of Mexico due to a belief that Mexican support would be paramount to aiding the LFP, which bordered a few Mexican puppet states established once China capitulated in the First Great War. In the October of 1947, Konrad Adenauer proposed a bill to Parliament that would guarantee Europan military support for the LFP, which passed by a majority and was later ratified by Italo Mussolini, therefore meaning that Europan soldiers would soon be arriving in southern China alongside Mexican forces, due to Hector Long passing a similar resolution a few days later.


The first proxy war of the Great Game had begun.


The Chinese Civil War would continue for many more months as the three factions clashed for control of the decaying China. While the QGD and LFP proved to be competent against their opponents, the Jiang Dynasty was much worse off. Without foreign aid, the already weaker empire of the Shengli Emperor, which lacked access to any coasts and had few competent military commanders, was conducting a guerrilla war down to the very last man out in western China by the time 1948 began. It was at the Battle of Shangluo on January 19th, 1948 where the Jiang Dynasty made its last stand against the League of Free Provinces under the leadership of the Shengli Emperor himself, who commanded trench defenses encasing the western border of Shangluo against the onslaught of the LFP and her allies. After many hours of combat, the LFP found an opening in Jiang defenses, therefore storming Shangluo and forcing the Shengli Emperor to capitulate by the end of the day.


With the Jiang Dynasty defeated, the Chinese Civil War became a clash exclusively between the League of Free Provinces and the National Workers’ Party for control of China. After Jiang Jieshi was defeated, the tides appeared to turn in favor of Yurong’s QGD, which rapidly advanced into southwestern China via the March Campaign, in which the DXD made it as far as Bijie before slowing down by the end of the March of 1948. Following the March Campaign, General Du Yuming was forced to step down from his position as the supreme commander of the military of the League of Free Provinces and was succeeded by Chen Cheng, who quickly amassed a large coalition of forces from the LFP and her allies.


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General Chen Cheng of the League of Free Provinces.


With a vast army under his command, General Chen led a retaliatory offensive against the DXD, and by brutally striking the war-weary army, the LFP soon found itself leading its own offensive, known as the April Campaign. Under the leadership of Chen Cheng, the League of Free Provinces and her allies would make rapid gains in a way that mimicked the success of the DXD only a month earlier. However, the League of Free Provinces could not fight on forever, even if it did have two of the most powerful nations on Earth for allies, for resources were dwindling day by day, as was manpower. Therefore, the LFP and her allies concluded that a ceasefire with the QGD was necessary to ensure the survival of Chinese democracy, even if it meant that half of China would remain within the iron first of comunacionism.


On May 28th, 1948 the Treaty of Guangzhou was signed, thus securing an end to hostilities in China. The League of Free Provinces was to remain in control of its original four provinces, while also annexing Hunan, Chuanbian, and all of Hubei south of the Yangtze River, while the rest of China became territory of the Chinese People’s State (CPS), an ultra-totalitarian comunacionist regime led by the QGD and Lin Yurong, who became the first Premier of the Chinese People’s State following the conception of the new government.


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Premier Lin Yurong of the Chinese People’s State.


Not long after the Treaty of Guangzhou ended, the League of Free Provinces would centralizing itself by forming a new government, the Federal Republic of China (FRC), or South China (The CPS would go on to be known as North China). In accordance to an agreement with the Mexican Empire, referendums would also be held in its puppet states on whether or not they would want to join the Federal Republic of China as a response to growing nationalism in the puppet regimes since the Chinese Civil War, with Hector Long arguing that “one strong democratic China, united in freedom with like-minded nations abroad, is much better than many weak subservient Chinese puppets.” All Mexican puppet states in China would vote to join South China, with the exception of Guangdong, which just barely voted to become an independent republic instead.


The Chinese Civil War was significant in that not only was it the first time since the Portuguese Civil War that western democratic powers were engaged in fighting comunacionism, but that it was also the first time since the Second Great War that western powers were militaristically collaborating. And with comunacionism expanding into every corner of the globe it could squeeze into, the democratic nations of the world decided that the Proletarian Union and the Alliance of National Communist Nations had to be countered with a new coalition. Thus, in the June of 1948, representatives of Europa, Mexico, Sweden, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine, Belarus, Livonia, Estonia, Karelia, the Don Republic, the Kuban Republic, Georgia, and South China would arrive in Brussels to negotiate the founding of a mutual defense alliance called the Global Defense Organization (GDO), a pact that would counter the ANCN and sought to protect global democracy. In the following years Denmark-Norway, Greece, Egypt, Guangdong, and Korea would also become members by the end of the 1940s, therefore turning the GDO into a true force to be reckoned with.


One of the most apparent nations not within the GDO was the United States of America, a nation that appeared to be endorsing neutrality ever since the end of the First Great War, and especially during the Second Great War and the Vandenberg administration. As the international clash of ideologies and influence known as the Great Game became apparent to the entire world, Arthur Vandenberg insisted that American isolation was necessary for the preservation of American international sovereignty in the face of the growing power of Europa and Mexico. Near the end of his presidency, President Vandenberg would enact perhaps one of his most influential policies, the Vandenberg Doctrine, in which the United States officially became a neutral power within the Great Game and encouraged other nations to declare their neutrality in the face of a possible Third Great War. The Vandenberg Doctrine was celebrated by the American government, which wanted nothing to do with the squabbles of the GDO and ANCN, and even after the Liberal Unionist senator Henry Wallace was elected president in 1948, beating the Democratic nominee Arthur MacArthur III, the Vandenberg Doctrine stayed in place.


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President Henry Wallace of the United States of America.


In fact, President Wallace would take the Vandenberg Doctrine a step further by forming a league of neutral nations, named the League of Non-Aligned Nations (LNAN), in the March of 1949, with the founding members being the United States, India, Madagascar, and Mozambique. The LNAN was not a mutual defense bloc like the GDO or ANCN, however, if a member was at war a simple majority of members would be able to guarantee LNAN support to said nation. Instead, LNAN primarily focused on economic cooperation and promoting the “right to international neutrality abroad,” which ranged from resolutions condemning proxies of the Great Game to signing non-aggression pacts with nations whose sovereignty was threatened by the Great Game.


It was in these early years of the LNAN’s existence that the world became even more dangerous and the Great Game became all the more risky. Ever since the Second Great War, both Mexico and Austria-Italy (later Europa) had been looking into a theoretical weapon as a way to potentially end the bloodiest conflict in human history relatively quickly by harnessing the hypothetical power of nuclear fission, however, such projects were shelved after the Battle of Moscow and consequential end of the Second Great War. The Mexican and Europan governments hoped that their respective projects on nuclear fission would remain classified from the world for decades, however, with the start of the Great Game it became obvious to the world that warfare was far from over in the 20th Century.


Thus, scientists from Europa and Mexico would come together to work on an international project that could very well turn the tide of the Great Game in what became known as the Havana Project. After a few years of testing, the Havana Project had constructed a working atomic bomb prototype, which was tested in the Australian desert on July 9th, 1951. A few days later, news reports that revealed suspicious tremors in the ground originating from a Mexican military base began to circulate across the world, which caught the attention of the entire planet. Therefore, the Europan and Mexican governments, under intense public pressure, had to reveal what they had been working on since 1948. In the July of 1951, the people of the world woke up to joint Europan-Mexican statements on a new type of weapon, accompanied by photographs of a large cloud shaped like a mushroom emerging from the desert of Australia.


The Atomic Era had begun.


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First atomic bomb test, nicknamed the “Izzie Bomb,” circa July 1951.


The development of the A-Bomb shocked the entire planet, which would become aware of its destructive power as more reports were released to the public in the upcoming years. The GDO would begin stockpiling its militaries with A-Bombs while the Proletarian Union would develop its own secretive nuclear fission project, which bore fruit with the first Portuguese nuclear weapon test in 1954. Even the United States would reluctantly develop its own nuclear arsenal, however, this occurred a decade later than the other global superpowers due to hesitation from the Wallace administration, therefore meaning that the Phoenix Project began in the late 1950s, and the first American nuclear bomb was tested in 1962.


A-Bombs, and for that matter the technological potential of nuclear fission would permanently alter society, for better or for worse. On one hand, a great excitement emerged due to the possibilities opened by nuclear fission in regards to energy sources. Scientific magazines would begin to promote nuclear fission as a source of vast clean energy and science fiction would perpetuate the idea of a nuclear-powered future. But on the other hand, the governments and scientists of the world would warn of the destructive potential of A-Bombs, which would mean that bomb shelters were soon being constructed potential targets of a Third Great War and public service announcements describing what to do in the case of nuclear war became commonplace in schools.


In the meantime, the reconstruction of Russia began to end not long after the Chinese Civil War. Upon announcing his resignation following the Treaty of Guangshou’s ratification, Italo Mussolini declared that he hoped that his successors would ensure that a peaceful, stable, and democratic Russia would be established in the near future, although his successor, the Liberal Amedeo Gasperi, who assumed office on September 3rd, 1948 prioritized continental economic development and militarization in the face of comunacionist aggression over the establishment of a new Russian Republic. However, Gasperi’s reign as the chancellor of Europa was not as long as one might expect, and on December 2nd, 1951 Amedo Gasperi resigned due to health issues and was succeeded by Pierre de Gaulle as the chancellor of the Commonwealth of Europa.


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Chancellor Pierre de Gaulle of the Commonwealth of Europa.


Even though Gaulle had once been the leading force of the Liberal Party in Parliament, therefore once being regarded as a nuisance for Italo Mussolini and the Populist-Royalist Party, Pierre de Gaulle entered the chancellery as a supporter for the formation of a democratic Russia after over seven years of Europan-Mexican military occupation. In the January of 1951, Chancellor Gaulle announced a budget plan that would increase spending on the reconstruction of Russia, named the January Plan, which ended two years later when he and President Hector Long of Mexico, who had recently been re-elected in a controversial fifth term in 1952, announced that the reconstruction of Russia had ended and it was time for a Russian government to be established. On May 8th, 1953 the politically independent Alexandra Pregel assumed the leadership of the recently formed Russian duma that elected her as the prime minister of a new Russian government, the Federation of Russia.


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Flag of the Federation of Russia.


Not long after the declaration of the Federation of Russia, the new Russia government would join the Global Defense Organization, therefore solidifying a unified European continent in the face of comunacionism. In the upcoming years, Russia grew into one of Europe’s strongest economies, and by the 1970s had overtaken nearly all of its neighbors economically, with the exception of Europa and Sweden. But even with its growth into a booming industrial center, the Federation of Russia put very little money into its military, just barely meeting the minimum requirement for a military budget to be a member of the GDO, and even then the Russian constitution ensured that the military could only be used for defensive combat. This was done in order to reject the horrors of the Union of Greater Rus and the Nasok Party, which had become despised by the people of Russia, who had grown to regret and be ashamed of the atrocities of the Nasok Party.


As Russia had finally been rebuilt, the western world continued to undergo many changes. In 1954, President Hector Long suffered a heart attack, resulting in his death after leading Mexico for eighteen years. President Long was succeeded by his vice president, Miguel Valdez, who became an easy target for the Eterian Party in the 1956 presidential election. Valdez would ultimately serve as the president of Mexico for a maximum of two economically prosperous, yet otherwise insignificant, years and would be succeeded by Gustavo Ruiz Cortines, the Eterian governor of Veracruz, on May 2nd, 1956. President Cortines would continue to implement the popular welfare policies of the Long administration, however, the state-sponsored pushes towards socialism of Hector Long’s years in office came to an end. The success of Cortines earned him a second term in 1960, although in a much more contentious race than 1956.


In the Commonwealth of Europa, the late 1950s were also a time of social and political change. After spending nearly half a decade fighting the bloodiest war in history in the name of democracy and liberty, the people of Europa’s vast colonial territory in Africa had become frustrated with the apparent hypocrisy of the Europan government, which claimed to defend freedom and equality abroad, but domestically had not even ensured equal rights for a large portion of its people. Of course, colonial discontent against European oppression had existed ever since Europe had decided to claim Africa for itself, but with the rise in egalitarianism within Europa itself calls for liberation grew, and with media outlets becoming increasingly available to the public, these movements suddenly gained a much wider audience than they ever could have even a few decades ago. By the end of the 1950s, Native Africans were calling for liberation, with demands ranging from equality within the European government and the abolition of the colonial structure to calls for colonial secession.


Regardless of the demands of these movements, their tactics of protest were almost always peaceful. Boycotts and civil disobedience became some of the most common forms of protest, and violent responses from law enforcement would make protesters seem sympathetic to Europans across the Mediterranean Sea. In fact, many members of Parliament, especially within the Populist-Royalist Party, would become supporters of the abolition of colonialism in favor of an egalitarian Commonwealth of Europa. This movement would culminate in the March of 1957, when Parliament voted to approve of a bill that would partition the colony of Algiers into provinces fully integrated within the Commonwealth of Europa in which all citizens were guaranteed the same rights as Europan citizens back in Europe.


This proved to protestors in Africa that the most realistic way to achieve their rights was, for the time, to campaign for equality within Europa. As a consequence, the campaign for the abolition of the colonies in favor of provincial status gained traction, even after Pierre de Gaulle stepped down from the chancellery in the December of 1959 and was succeeded by the Populist-Royalist Renato Zangheri, who championed colonial integration. Next, Sahelia would integrate, and then the Gold Coast, and so on until all Europan colonies had been replaced with democratic provinces with representation within Parliament back in Vienna, with the colonial integration ultimately ending in 1964.


At long last, the Commonwealth of Europa could legitimately call itself a democracy.


By the time colonial integration did conclude, the world had dramatically changed. The socialist Liberal Unionist Alexandria Gurley Flynn had been elected as the first female president of the United States in 1957 and would implement radical policies, such as the Worker Representation Act, which guaranteed that all workplaces would have elected representatives of their employees within the leadership. Flynn also presided over the dawn of the Phoenix Project, and by the end of her administration the first confidential American nuclear power plants were being constructed in the Northwest away from the eyes of the public. The advancement of American nuclear power was fueled by the establishment of the Royal Atomic Energy Administration (RAEA), which would oversee American nuclear weapons and public nuclear infrastructure projects, and would strongly benefit the United States of America within upcoming years.


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President Alexandria Gurley Flynn of the United States of America.


Surprisingly enough, the popular Alexandria Gurley Flynn would not run for a second term due to declining health (if Flynn had run and won in 1960 she would have died near the end of her second term in 1964), and her secretary of treasury, Gerald Baines Johnson, was nominated in 1960 instead on a surprisingly moderate platform that had won a plurality of support in the Liberal Unionist primaries. The Democratic Party would nominate Governor Harold Stassen of Superior, who campaigned on a moderate liberal platform that especially appealed to agrarian Northwesterners. In the November of 1964, Stassen just barely won a majority of electoral votes in one of the most unexpected victories in American electoral history. Thus, in the March of 1965 Harold Stassen was inaugurated in Washington DC and became the next president of the United States of America, succeeding the very popular Alexandria Gurley Flynn.


Stassen’s administration often found itself incapable to pass much legislation due to the House of Representatives and the Senate both being controlled by the Liberal Union Party, which refused to pass anything too conservative proposed by Harold Stassen. Aside from increased military budget spending and a major tax cut in 1967, the Stassen administration was not very significant and the relatively conservative Harold Stassen was considered both incompetent and a relic of a more conservative time in American history. Therefore, when 1970 came around it appeared unlikely that President Harold Stassen would win a second term against the socialist Senator Nelson Rockefeller, one of the most far-left mainstream members of the Liberal Union Party. Surely enough, Rockefeller would win the presidency in 1970, and was inaugurated a few months later.


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President Nelson Rockefeller of the United States of America.


The Rockefeller administration was defined by socially progressive policies, such as the 20th Amendment, which was passed on February 12th, 1972 and granted homosexual couples the same marriage rights as heterosexual Americans, as well as ensuring the protection of all orientations of members of the LGBTQ community within the United States constitution. President Rockefeller would also advance the American clean energy surplus by passing the Energy Welfare Act in the January of 1973, which established numerous public works programs to build American renewable energy sources, later either put under the control of the Royal Energy Department (RED), a public energy supplier, or new cooperatives formed from the employees of the Energy Welfare Act’s respective public works departments.


By 1974, President Nelson Rockefeller was boasting large approval ratings and easily won a second term in that year. Afterall, President Rockefeller was credited with preserving the American economy thanks to the Energy Welfare Act, even as a natural gas crisis caused by an emerging proxy war of the Great Game crippled the international economy. In the years since the Chinese Civil War, the GDO and the ANCN had not fought each other in another large proxy war, opting instead to quietly build up their nuclear arsenals. However, times were changing in the Proletarian Union. After the death of Antonio Carmona in 1951, Antonio Salazar, Carmona’s minister of war, took over as the general-secretary of the Proletarian Union and reigned with an iron, yet internationally quiet, fist until his death in 1970. Salazar was succeeded by Americo Tomas, the Portuguese Minister of Navy and outspoken supporter of the expansion of the ANCN.


The reign of Americo Tomas marked the immediate rise of comunacionism in every accessible corner of Asia, with ANCN-backed comunacionist coups being staged in Nepal and Bhutan in 1971 and 1972 respectively. As the Red Army moved into the southern Himalayas, the Global Defense Organization panicked. A new slew of trade embargoes on the ANCN were released under the advision of Europan Chancellor Helmut Kohl of the Liberal Party, who had been elected in 1970, around the same time that Americo Tomas assumed leadership of the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation. Kohl would eventually get a chance to send forces off to fight the armies of comunacionism when the Turkish People’s Republic invaded the Emirate of Diriyah on September 27th, 1972 after an ultimatum demanding the cession of Hejaz had been refused. Within a matter of days following the Turkish invasion of Hejaz, the GDO had entered negotiations with Diriyah permitting the deployment of an army of forces on the Arabian Peninsula, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the 1940s.


The Arabian War had begun.


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Turkish soldiers evacuating Europan aerial bombardment in Tabuk, circa September 1974.



The retaliation by both the GDO and ANCN in the Arabian War was vicious. Within just a few days, the Europan Imperial Navy was sinking ships in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and Mexican aeromobiles were bombing Turkish military bases to rubble while Portuguese panzerwagens were racing for the Red Sea. After numerous failures in 1973, in which the ANCN had reached Tabuk, Helmut Kohl instituted a controversial draft in which thousands of young men were sent off to Hejaz. This proved to be an unpopular, yet somewhat successful, move. As anti-war protesters took to the streets of Vienna, the GDO coalition led an offensive in the Levant from naval landings nearby Egypt in the December of 1973 which proved successful, however, Turkish soldiers in northern Hejaz refused to fall back and all land north of Tabuk remained in the hands of comunacionism for the foreseeable future.


However, as the invasion of the Levant raged on, Turkish and Proletarian bombers would annihilate infrastructure across Diriyah, especially oil refineries. After over a year of fierce combat, the infrastructure of the Emirate of Diriyah, the world’s largest natural gas producer, was in ruins and became incapable of selling oil at the demanded rate by much of the world. By the spring of 1974, a global recession that had already been anticipated by a handful of economists for awhile (hence the approval of the Energy Welfare Act in the United States) had set in, and without a stable source of fossil fuels the international economy plummeted, especially within the GDO.


This therefore made the Arabian War even less popular, and a successful Turkish offensive for Medina in the October of 1974 was the straw that broke the camel’s back. After Helmut Kohl was usurped from the chancellery on November 4th, 1974 in a parliamentary election, the PRP Chancellor Josip Broz, the famed veteran general of the Second Great War, entered peace negotiations with the Turkish People’s Republic to conclude the Arabian War. The Treaty of Damascus would ensure that Turkey would annex Hejaz and all occupied Levantine territory, as well as a sect of northern land from the Emirate of Diriyah, however, both the GDO and ANCN would have to pay war reparations to rebuild destroyed infrastructure in Diriyah, particularly oil refineries.


By the account of most historians, the Arabian War was a failure for the GDO and a victory for the ANCN. Not only had the Emirate of Diriyah lost territory to Turkey, but the economies of the Free World taken a bullet as well, and with Diriyah opting for neutrality following the Arabian War (The Emirate of Diriyah would join LNAN in 1978) alternative sources of energy would have be found. Before resigning from the chancellery in 1979, Josip Broz would implement a Europan equivalent to the Energy Welfare Act called the Energy Independence Movement, which would develop Europan public renewable energy sources, albeit on a much smaller scale than Nelson Rockefeller’s project. Similarly, the Mexican Empire would also implement its own renewable energy public works program called the New Deal under the leadership of President Cesar Chavez, a trade unionist who had been elected in 1976 on the basis of workplace democracy and populism. In fact, within the Chavez administration, Mexico would pass its own Workplace Representation Act, called the Workers’ Democracy Act, in 1978.


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President Cesar Chavez of the Mexican Empire.


The Tito and Chavez administrations were also defined by the Siamese Civil War, in which a comunacionist military junta seized control of Bangkok in the December of 1975, declaring the National Union of Siam, while the Siamese monarch fled north to Phitsanulok. Through a brutal three year campaign, the junta of the National Union of Siam was defeated on December 23rd, 1978, therefore restoring the Kingdom of Siam, which would join the Global Defense Organization in 1979.


In the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation, chaos was brewing beneath the reign of General Secretary Americo Tomas, who more or less ruled unopposed over the great comunacionist superpower of the world. Upon the end of the Siamese Civil War, General Secretary Tomas appeared healthy, and therefore he had not taken any steps towards declaring a successor. Instead, the factions beneath the authority of Americo Tomas jockeyed for influence in order to eventually seize power the day the general secretary did die. However, this day came much closer than anticipated when on February 27th, 1984 the bullet of a disgruntled worker pierced the chest of General Secretary Tomas at a rally in Rio de Janeiro at a rally.


With the general secretary dead, the Proletarian Union was thrown into pure chaos.


Suddenly, the two primary factions that had been assembled under the years of Americo Tomas lurched for each other’s throats. These two factions were the Ultranacionalistas, under the leadership of the Counter-Revolutionary Resistance Committee Executive Levy Fidelix, who sought a reinforcement of Portuguese totalitarianism, racism, and militarism, and the Modernistas, a group led by the relatively moderate Francisco Dornelles who argued in favor of more economically liberal policies to aid the stalling centrally-planned Portuguese economy and was opposed to the segregation of the PUPN along ethnic lines geographically, however, not because he was morally opposed to the practice, but because he believed that local slums of “inferiors” would serve as a better source of cheap labor (obviously, Dornelles was still a disturbing man, however, for the Proletarian Union high command he was considered a progressive). In the end, Fidelix came out on top by killing numerous prominent Modernistas through the use of the CRCR, and would become the next general secretary of the Proletarian Union on March 24th, 1984.


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General Secretary Levy Fidelix of the Proletarian Union of the Portuguese Nation.


The reign of Fidelix was doomed to extreme tyranny. Almost immediately, Modernistas were purged by the CRCR, either being forced into exile (as was the case with Francisco Dornelles), or bring straight-out killed. Within the first few months of the Fidelix regime, hundreds had been killed by the CRCR and hundreds more had lost their reputations and positions of power. However, the people that were by far the worst off were the “inferiors,” who faced increasingly brutal and deadly conditions. Food, shelter, and other basic necessities in the Inferior Zones were substantially decreased, and as a consequence thousands would die. This would cause a riot to break out in the Inner Angola Inferior Zone, which grew into a full-out guerrilla war against the Proletarian Union after the Red Army failed to retaliate fast enough. By the January of 1985, Inner Angola had descended into a full-blown rebellion.


The Inner Angola Rebellion, coupled with a declining economy, caused Levy Fidelix to become increasingly disliked amongst his people, including high-ranking members of the Partido Comunacion and the Red Army. The situation got so bad that riots began breaking out across the PUPN, riots that called for the dissolution of the Proletarian Union and the establishment of a free market replacement. Eventually, one of these riots overran Cidade de Pureza, the capital of the Proletarian Union, on March 27th, 1985 and as the streets of Pureza became violent, the rioters demanded the overthrowal of Fidelix. Levy Fidelix ordered the CRCR and Red Army to suppress the riot, however, this backfired as many soldiers and police officers defected to the riot. The most prominent of these defecters was the regiment under the command of Antonio de Spinola, which upon being ordered to to attack rioters turned its weapons upon Fidelix’s mansion and arrested the general secretary.


Without any centralized government, the Proletarian Union fell within a matter of days. Local governments would either capitulate to the rebels occupying Pureza under the leadership of Spinola or they would succumb to their own rebellions. The guerrilla forces in Angola, named the Angolan Liberation Army (ALA), occupied both all of the Inner Angola Inferior Zone and Outer Angola within a handful of days, declaring the Republic of Angola on April 8th, 1985, while similar guerrillas would rise up in the Amazon Inferior Zone and proclaim the Amazon Federation on April 11th, 1985. As for the rest of the Proletarian Union, a group of delegates would write up a new constitution, proclaiming the Christian Republic of Lusitania on April 22nd, 1985.


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Flag of the Christian Republic of Lusitania.


While Lusitania called itself a republic, it was more oligarchic than democratic. Antonio de Spinola became the president of a de facto corporatist military junta in which only Christians had complete rights. The Christian Republic of Lusitania was definitely less totalitarian than the Proletarian Union and the disgusting atrocities conducted towards “inferiors” had ended, however, it was still not a free nation and racism, both institutional and social, was rampant throughout Lusitania upon its inception.


With the PUPN gone, the rest of the ANCN crumbled within a matter of days. First, the Basque National Republic was overthrown and the Free Basque Republic was established in its place as a liberal democracy on April 14th, 1985. Then Aragon succumbed to democracy, and then Castile, at which point Iberia has been liberated. As Portuguese panzewagens left puppet regimes in South America, liberal movements took to the streets of South America, thus leading to democratic revolutions across said continent. Even a handful of puppet regimes in Asia would be liberated, leaving only Turkey, Japan, and their limited spheres of influence as the remaining comunacionist regimes on Earth by the June of 1985. The ultimate nail in the coffin was the dissolution of the ANCN on June 2nd, 1985.


After nearly half a century of combat, the Great Game was over.


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Siberian citizens celebrating the collapse of the Siberian People’s Commune, circa May 1985.


With the Great Game over, the world of the present day would begin. Resources within the uncontested GDO would become less directed towards containing comunacionism militaristically, and as a consequence emerging technology would flourish. The Imperial Ministry of Space and Aerodynamics (IMSA) of the Commonwealth of Europa, which was established under the Broz administration in 1978, especially prospered from increased funding, and sent cosmonaut Ulf Merbold to the surface of the Moon and back on May 16th, 1986. Progress on an emerging invention in Mexico, called the computer, would also occur in this time period, and as large bulky computers began to wind up in public markets, the 1990s became defined by the advent of the interweb, an online server accessible to anyone who owned a computer.


With a stronger globalized economy, the 1990s and early 2000s were dominated by an economic boom that especially fueled new GDO member states, such as Catalonia and the Free Basque Republic. The growth in the economy spurred the election of Senator John McCain of the Democratic Party in 1996, whose policies of expanding the LNAN proved successful as New Granada, Venezuela, and Angola all became member states by the end of his eight-year administration in 2005. For the Free World, the early 2000s were a time of economic growth and prosperity, especially once the reign of Emperor Augustus I of Europa and Mexico began in 2001, therefore securing a personal union between the two global superpowers. After decades of Europan-Mexican cooperation, the two most powerful nations on Earth were united under one head of state.


While the Free World flourished in the post-Great Game era, the remnants of comunacionism struggled to survive. The Federation of Japanese Communes and its allies, such as North China, would form an alliance called the Edo Pact in 2003, however, even the Edo Pact did not rise up the comunacionist economies of the Far East back to their position of power from before the collapse of the PUPN. The Turkish People’s Republic experienced by far the worst effects after the fall of the Proletarian Union, and the Turkish regime found itself surrounded by capitalist powers on all sides, many of which were GDO members. As economic sanctions fell upon Turkey from around the world, the grip of the National Marxist Party would start slipping, and in the June of 2004 a riot within a Kurdish ghetto would escalate into complete revolution within a matter of days. Soon enough, secessionist guerrilla armies would sprout up alongside the Kurdish Freedom Coalition (KFC), and in the August of 2004 the KFC would form the Arab Liberation Alliance (ALA) with the Shia Army of Iraq, the Free Hejazi Army, and the Federation of Syrian Liberation as a a coalition of Arab liberation forces.


But the Turkish Civil War would not stop with the uprisings in Arabia. In Anatolia, a group of underground Turkish democratic movements, with typically left-wing leanings, would rise up in the March of 2005 and form the Turkish Republican Army (TRA). The TRA would quickly seize many western Turkish cities, primarily the area surrounding Constantinople, and the strategic importance of the Strait of Bosphorus alone made the TRA a threat not to be taken lightly by the Turkish People’s Republic. The weakness of Turkey caused the comunacionist Bulgarian puppet regime to be overthrown in the August of 2005, which led to the establishment of the Republic of Bulgaria, the most recent GDO member following entry in 2013. Things got even worse for Turkey when a reactionary group seeking to re-establish the Ottoman Empire, called the Order of Osman, rose up in the July of 2010 and quickly seized significant cities in southeastern Anatolia, such as Adana.


As of 2019, the Turkish Civil War has been raging on for over fourteen years. Alongside news of Japanese economic growth and a potential recession, the war in Turkey has been under much scrutiny in the eyes of international media, even if no foreign powers have joined the Turkish Civil War outside of GDO humanitarian aid to the TRA. The world has also been focusing on the numerous new leaders of nations around the world, including the United States. After the McCain administration, the upstart Democratic representative from Georgia, Robert Wells, became president in 2005, however, failed to win a second term following a slight economic recession in 2008, which the conservative Wells failed to respond to. His successor was Liberal Unionist Al Gore, who campaigned on combating the ever-looming threat of climate change. Throughout his two terms as president, Gore would increase funding in the RED, and the United States is currently on track to become the first nation to completely run on clean energy by 2030. In 2017, President Gore was succeeded by Suzanne Baldwin, a Liberal Unionist senator from Wisconsin who has campaigned for continued social welfare and has even announced support for a universal basic income, which was implemented with the American Income Act in the January of 2018.


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President Suzanne Baldwin of the United States of America.


In Europa, the declining global economy of the 2010s has recently led to a return of power from the Populist-Royalist Party, which replaced Chancellor Angela Merkel in a 2012 parliamentary with a new progressive from the province of Quacentina named Abdel Sellal on July 2nd, 2012. The election of Sellal marks a historic event in Europan history, as Abdel Sellal is the first Europan chancellor to originate from Africa. In the years since the beginning of the Sellal administration, the current chancellor has grown in popularity due to numerous welfare programs to recover from recent economic decline, as well as populist reformations that have given workers more representation within the Europan workplace. As of 2019, Abdel Sellal is boasting high approval ratings, and has begun to shift Europa’s attention towards the looming crisis presented by climate change.


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Chancellor Abdel Sellal of the Commonwealth of Europa.


And so, our story has reached the present day. As of 2019, the world is beginning to change and our future is uncertain. War rages on in the Middle East, comunacionism still reigns over eastern Asia, and climate change threatens the well-being of each and every single human being alive. But for all the threats presented in the face of the Free World, we know that we can overcome whatever terrors will dominate the headlines of the 21st Century. We know this because we have overcome these terrors in past. In the American Civil War, equality and democracy overcame slavery and oppression. In the Second Great War, the rights of all human beings overcame stratosism. And in the Great Game, the support of these rights overcame totalitarianism and racism.


Even though the world of the present day is less than ideal, from the exclusion of non-Christians from equality in Lusitania to the continued oppression of millions under the boot of Japan, there is and always has been hope that democracy will overcome all of these tyrannies. The future is, without a doubt, uncertain, and the story history has to tell is not yet complete, but as long as we advance and cherish the rights of all humans, history will continuously progress down a better and better path.


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Map of the World circa 2019.


Das Ende
 
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Hey everyone! So with Epilogue Five finally published, Das Ewige Reich has reached its end. I know that this is definitely not that great of a timeline, and even I got really frustrated with DER at times, but to everyone who ever read Das Ewige Reich, I just want to thank you for giving my crazy timeline a chance. And for everyone who has been here since the beginning, I simply cannot thank you enough. Without your support, I probably would have quit DER pretty quickly, and to be honest I doubt Dreams of Liberty and Man-Made Hell would have ever existed. I know that the ending of Das Ewige Reich was a tad bit rushed, but hopefully these epilogues were worth reading, as was Das Ewige Reich in its entirety. Thank you so much everyone.

And after over a year of writing, here's the official ending of Das Ewige Reich. :)
 
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