Comrade Harps timeline
Flag of the Provisional Government of New Guinea (1914-1919), later renamed New Guinea Republic (1919-1949) - Based on the most neutral colors excluding the white colors.
The German New Guinea colony in the Pacific was practically defenceless when WW1 broke out in July 1914. By prior arrangement, Britain’s Pacific allies, Australia and Japan, proceeded to carve up Germany’s Pacific protectorates between themselves. The naval German East Asia Squadron was small and mostly at sea north of the equator and was quickly rounded up by Japanese intervention; the Imperial Japanese Navy then proceeded to occupy the numerous German Pacific island possessions north of the equator. South the equator, the Governor of German New Guinea responded to an Australian demand to surrender with a statement of independence and “neutral cooperation.” This didn’t prevent an Australian occupation of German territories below the equator but did allow that to be done peacefully. The Australian government recognised the newly formed Provisional Government of New Guinea as a domestic administration, allowing it a great deal of autonomy and encouraged its development of trade deals which were favourable to Britain. This backfired on the Australians at Versaille. While the Australian’s framed their demands for a League of Nations Mandate to administer the former German possessions south of the equator as being essential to its national interests, the American, British and Japanese delegations lobbied to recognise the New Guinea Republic (NGR) as a sovereign nation, the Japanese delegation adding that it should be demilitarized. The 1919 Treaty of Versaille resolved that all of Germany’s former Pacific possessions be demilitarised, with those north of the equator to be Mandated to Japan, and, with the exception of German Samoa (which was mandated to New Zealand) those south of the equator to be governed as the sovereign territory of the New Guinea Republic. Australia was left with little option other than to recognise the new nation and establish “hegemonic guidance” over its otherwise independent political and economic governance.
During the late 1930s, the Japanese government quietly militarised it’s former German colonies and was in a good position to invade the New Guinea Republic following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Australian air, land and naval forces put up a heroic but hopeless defence of the NGR at its request. By June 1942 the entirety of the NGR was occupied by Japanese troops, but not before the Australian government (as per its racist White Australia Policy) evacuated most of its white population. From these, the Australian recruited NGR refugees for Armed Forces, in which:
- the Army formed a full NGR company inside the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles, before been disbanded and formed as the NG Battalion
- the Navy form enough sailors to complement a Bathurst-class corvette
- the RAAF formed the No.121 (NG) RAAF Squadron with US-built Spitfires.
As NGR and Australian officials took stock of the NGR in the wake of the Japanese May 1946 surrender, it became clear that the nation had been devastated. Estimates put NGR’s population loss from 1941 to 1945 at between 25 to 40%, with little in the way of civilian infrastructure left and insufficient NGR citizens able to fill professional government and business positions. Australians soon dominated the country’s public service and its post-war recovery was dependent on Australian assistance. In 1949 the NGR voluntarily entered into the Australian administered Territory of Papua and New Guinea trusteeship and ceased to exist.
Flag of the Zakarpattia Republic (1919-1945) - Based on former Ukrainian land, they flag is based on the French tricolor, but taking the Ukrainian colors, but puting on the diagonal to diferenciate from their hungry-expanding neighbours.
Zakarpattia emerged as an independent nation in the aftermath of WW1. Occupied by the defeated Austro-Hungarian Empire, it was part of the short-lived nationalist West Ukrainian National Republic and was then occupied by Romania before being invaded by the Hungarian Soviet Republic in the summer of 1919. Claimed as the Ukrainian Zakarpattia Oblast by the Bolsheviks, the region was also subject to significant or total territorial claims by Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania. To resolve these conflicting claims it was the French who, at the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference, successfully pushed to create an independent nation. The small nation sovereignty was guaranteed in part by the 1919 Paris Treaty and by its membership of the Little Entente and treaties with Poland and Romania. Proposed names included Carpatho-Ukraine, Subcarpathia and Transcarpathia, but to appease the belligerent governments in Kiev and Moscow and their claim on the region as "the rebel Zakarpattia Oblast", the official name became the Zakarpattia Republic. It survived the claims made on it during the periods of the Munich Agreement and the First Vienna Award thanks largely to the servile efforts of a pro-German government installed as the result of an August 1938 military coup.
Although a junior partner in the series of Polish-Romanian alliance treaties signed in the 1920s and 30s, Zakarpattia refused to support Poland when it was invaded by Germany in September 1939. One consequence of this was that the Poles, who had expected to exercise their pre-existing transit rights through Zakarpattia as part of the Romanian Bridgehead Plan, instead had to make urgent arrangements with the Nordic countries to maintain logistic routes the West. Having served Nazi interests well, Zakarpattia joined the Tri-Partite Pact (Axis) in July 1940 and survived intact despite the Hungarian territorial claims associated with Second Vienna Awards of November.
It joined the war on the 23 June 1941 (when three bombers (claimed to be Socialist Unions, but resembling a Luftwaffe He-111) bombed the village of Uzhok) and contributed with the Zakarpattia Expeditionary Army (ZEA - single division of 20,000 men, plus units of the Army Air Corps, which brought observation, fighter, bomber and transport aircraft) on the Ukrainian front alongeside Hungarian and Slovak troops. Although they mostly participated in garrison duties during the advance, some units saw action during the battles of Uman and Kiev under the command of the German 17th Army.
With it's entry in the war, Zakarpattia became one of the Western Allies targets (that were in range of their heavy bombers), alongeside the others junior members of the Axis like Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria and Greece (outside of the bombers range were the Baltic States).
Zakarpattia was invaded by the Red Army in August 1944 and soon became part of the fluid battleline that characterised the post-Nazi German revival on the Eastern Front. However, Zakarpattian forces were exhausted and played a negligible part in the ongoing war, finally succumbing to total Red Army occupation and annexation by Ukraine by the end of October 1945.
Flag of Macaronesia Federation (1975-current) - Based on the most common colors of the Macaronesias archipelagos (also similar to the flag used by the monarchy, excluding the yellow shield)
The collapse of the Portuguese overseas territories ended with the last two nations gaining independence on July 1975 (Macaronesia Federation of the 1 of July and Cape Verde on the 5 of July) and the Second Portuguese Republic (aka Estado Novo) ceased to exist. As they are not imperialists, the government of the Portuguese Socialist Republic has never claimed sovereignty over Portugal’s overseas possessions.
The Macaronesia Federation territories are based on the archipelagos of Azores and Madeira. Due to it's small size, they weren't requested to much by the UN against the Socialist forces apart for the Macaronesia Air Defence Identification Zone. Besides that, they were among the most supportive member of the United Nations.