Every Man a King
A world map cover of
@Whiteshore's
EEUSG entry,
Every Man a King. Many thanks to him for providing almost all of this material, including much of the map borders and all of the text below.
---
This is set in a scenario of Kaiserreich where Germany (led by Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and the NLP) and the Entente won the Second Weltkrieg (or at least the part against a Totalist Third International) but disagreements between the two (especially after Kurt Schumacher became Chancellor of Germany) led to the latter aligning themselves with Savinkov’s Russia (and their friends in a Qing Empire which underwent a Manchu Restoration and a Belgrade Pact which defeated Bulgaria) who had beaten Germany to a stalemate.
In response to this, Germany aligned itself with a United States of America where Huey Long won the 1936 Elections and the Second Civil War which followed (the Pacific States of America voluntarily rejoined Long’s government after tense negotiations owing to Huey Long being the legitimate winner of the 1936 elections) but never regained Alaska and New England from Canada with the former being annexed into Canada and the latter spun off into a Canadian puppet state. Despite Long being fairly authoritarian, a “one-party democracy” was set up by Sid McMath after Huey Long’s death where intra-party democracy thrives within the framework of the America First Party.
In addition to the United States of America, Germany and the Danubian Federation reach out to the United Provinces of China (or South China) and the Republic of India formed from the Azad Hind which defeated the remnants of the British Raj. While both had little love for German imperialism, shared opposition to the Entente-Russia alliance would lead to them aligning to Germany in the aftermath of the Second Weltkrieg (which was less of a single conflict and more of a series of interconnected conflicts).
This, along with the formation of the Republic of Great Britain (South Britain) and the coronation of Victoria Louise as the Queen of North France, would set the stage for the Silent War or the Kalterkrieg, which continues to shape world politics to this day with the liberal-democratic Alliance of Free Nations and the right-wing authoritarian Grand Alliance continuing to face each other for 70 years and while the Grand Alliance has seen the rise of the Qing Empire (North China) and the Empire of Brazil while the Republic of India and the United Provinces of China (South China) would become “rising powers” amongst the Alliance of Free Nations.
In Europe, the German Empire and the Danubian Federation stand as the leaders of the Europabund, an organization founded by Germany and its allies in the aftermath of the Second Weltkrieg and comprising most of Europe. German politics are split between a Zentrum-NLP coalition and the SPD with the ruling government being a Zentrum-NLP coalition government as Chancellor Nicholas Muller has just been reelected as Chancellor. Germany also maintains a sizable remnant of their colonial empire, controlling many small islands in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, Singapore, and Sudwestafrika and maintaining strong influence in many of their former colonies, even if the Congo, Ghana, and Nigeria were failures with the former two falling to socialist rebellions and the latter seeing Biafra break of.
In addition, Germany is considered by many to be the world’s main superpower with Germany having the world’s most advanced military and has a military presence of some sort on all seven continents of the world. The Kaiserliche Marine still rules the waves and while not as large as the Russian State’s Army, the Heer makes up for this with quality.
Danubia, Germany’s number 2 in maintaining peace and order in the Europabund, is a diverse federation forged by Emperor Karl I (the Blessed or the Great) after the defeat of the Hungarian rebellion in 1937 with their idea of National Personal Autonomy being a system which has been applied by many post-colonial federations to some degree or another. While clearly Germany’s number 2, it maintains a small sphere of influence with the Italian Republic/North Italy and Albania, despite their membership of the Europabund, being clearly closer to Vienna than to Berlin.
North France and South Britain have largely gotten over their Syndicalist past and are thriving democracies with Queen Victoria Louise I and her descendants having largely gotten past the initial mistrust over a German puppet monarchy and helping supervise the reconstruction of North France. Republican Britain (South Britain), led by the politicians who were part of the Provincial Parliament before the crackdown in 1932 by the Syndicalist Party of Great Britain, was able to reconstruct itself in an effective manner. While both countries have problems with their past with many in the country insisting that the average soldier was not guilty of war crimes and it was all the fault of some paramilitaries connected to the ruling party, both countries have become major linchpins in the German strategy against the Entente.
Meanwhile in Asia, the United Provinces of China (South China), forged in the fires of the Great Asian War (as the Asian portion of the Second Weltkrieg is called in China) as the Kuomintang was forced to reconcile with Chen Jiongming’s Public Interest Party, has become a major power in Asia with most of AFN-aligned Asia, including the Kingdom of Indonesia (a Dominion-esque dealie formed by the Dutch in the late 1940s), being looking to the Guangzhou-based United Provinces for leadership. Chen Jiongming’s federalist model, which had been successfully applied in China and has helped propel its economic growth since the 1950s and 60s, has proven to be a major inspiration for many postcolonial countries with Egypt, Iran, Thailand, and Ostafrika being major countries which have adopted the Federalist model along Chinese lines.
South Chinese politics are dominated by the Public Interest Party, the Kuomintang, China Democratic League, and Democratic Constitutionalist Party with President Melody Lam Tsam-yui of the Public Interest Party having just won elections as President of the United Provinces, defeating Luqiu Tianqiao (the candidate of the Kuomintang), Jiang Yingyue (the standard-bearer of the Democratic League), and Fang Fang (head of the Democratic Constitutionalists). President Lam has promised to continue the “Chinese Dream” that Chen Jiongming had to its full continuation as part of her policies as President of China and continue South China’s rise to become a superpower.
Meanwhile, the Republic of India, derived from the Azad Hind government under Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1930s and 40s, continues having a “friendly rivalry” with the United Provinces of China, even as they stare at the remnant of the British Raj in Ceylon, with Vietnam and Burma being the main segments of the Republic of India’s sphere of influence. While not as dramatic as South China, India has still grown fairly quickly in recent decades and is amongst the largest economies in the world, even if wealth inequality and a concentration of wealth and political power in the areas of the former Azad Hind prior to the Indian Unification War persist.
Japan was initially fairly isolationist in the aftermath of their defeat in the Great Asian War until the 1980s when Prime Minister So Hidemitsu led the push for closer ties with the Asian continent. While his outreach was unpopular to many right-wing elements in Japanese society, it paved the way for a Japanese alignment with the Alliance of Free Nations and has led to Japanese reconciliation with Federalist South China.
Meanwhile, the Grand Alliance was formed from the Entente and the Russian State forming an alliance with one another as the Entente, radicalized by being driven out of their home countries by socialist revolutions, turned increasingly right-wing and authoritarian. However, what drove the alliance between the two blocs would be how post-war negotiations over Britain and France would break down with an alliance between the Entente and Russia following after the breakdown of negotiations between the two blocs.
The Grand Alliance (or informally, the Saratov Pact) is clearly led by the Russian State, forged by Boris Savinkov (named the “Horseman of the Apocalypse” by his cult of personality) and the National People’s Republican Party under Savinkov’s ideology of “National Populism”, based out of Savinkov’s personal beliefs of an authoritarian “peasants’ republic”. It was steered after his death in 1952 by a triumvirate of Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky, hero of the Reclamation War, Viktor Abakumov, and Mikhail Levitov. These three, with Levitov being the Vozhd of the Russian State after the three triumphed in a power struggle against Pavel Gorgulov, would steer Russia until their deaths. Despite Levitov becoming Vozhd, he was more of a “first amongst equals” than an absolute leader as the Supreme Privy Council gained more power at the expense of the Vozhd as he grew older. However, after their deaths, the next major leader of the Russian State would not be a strongman, but a strongwoman.
Tatiana Antonova was born to an aristocratic family dating back to the days of Peter the Great with her father, Mikhail Antonov, being an early supporter of Boris Savinkov and Foreign Minister of the Russian State during the 1940s. Following in her father’s footsteps, a young Tatiana Antonova would become a prominent diplomat and stateswoman, eventually rising to the position of Foreign Minister in the 1970s. After Mikhail Levitov’s death in 1982, a power struggle for the position of Vozhd would arise, a power struggle which Tatiana Antonova would come up on top.
While Tatiana would be Vozhd for only seven years, her policies would be pivotal in strengthening the Russian State with her policies of technocratic authoritarianism, a degree of economic liberalization, and some measure of detente with the AFN being pivotal in securing the Russian State’s position in the world. However, these policies, while certainly beneficial to the Russian State’s long-term survival, were opposed by hardliners who rallied around Ivan Wrangel and Peter Vasilevsky, who forced Tatiana Antonova out of power in the “Ides of March” in 1990.
Wrangel’s government would see an escalation of tensions with the AFN and would see a ratcheting up of oppression against dissidents, albeit not without repudiating the economic reforms that Tatiana Antonova had enacted. However, he would retire in 2000, becoming an elder statesman and anointing Marina Savitskaya, a woman he knew would continue his policies, as his successor.
While Savitskaya would undoubtedly do just that, her mishandling of the 2006 Italian Crisis and the reports that she was a notorious drug addict would lead to her being forced out by a palace coup. The palace coup would name Lana Dyomina-Antonova, daughter of Tatiana Antonova, as the Vozhd of the Russian State, a position she holds to this day with Cassandra Chilkevich and Pyotr Kamanenko as her main deputies as leaders of the Russian State, even as Lana plans to groom her daughter Svetlana, already involved heavily in the propaganda ministry of the Russian State, as her successor.
Under Lana Dyomina-Antonova’s rule, she has continued the reformist policies of her mother of technocratic authoritarianism, economic liberalization of some degree, and limited detente. However, while eschewing the brute force authoritarianism of previous leaders of the Russian State, she has focused on adopting a “social credit system”, a system where people would be judged based on their “social credit score” and treated accordingly.
While the Russian model has been applied in Romania, Serbia, and Greece and aspects of it have been adopted to some degree in the other members of the Russian bloc, most of Russia’s allies are more conventional right-wing authoritarians, particularly the former Entente powers.
While formally, Canada, North Britain, the West Indies, South Africa, and Australasia are Westminster-style constitutional monarchies, the reality is far different. Radicalization brought about by the revolutions and the vigilance for “crypto-Syndicalists” had resulted in them becoming right-wing authoritarian regimes ruling under a facade of democracy. Permanent coalitions of the right-wing political parties, electoral suppression, ballot-stuffing, opposition politicians being disqualified based on technicalities, and control of the media has resulted in them becoming essentially authoritarian one-party states, if more “authoritarian conservative” than the totalitarian dictatorship present in Russia.
In addition, civil liberties, despite being notionally still present and protected by law, have been disregarded for decades under what the government says are “emergency measures”. Anyone who complains loudly that the emergency has gone on for decades will get a quick knock from the police while the armed forces in these countries have strong political sway over the government and can bring down any government they don’t like.
Meanwhile, the Third French Empire, under the Bonapartes, despite being notionally a democracy, is essentially a military dictatorship, even if they, like the Canadians, are “merely” authoritarian conservatives. South France is amongst the most militarized countries in the world with not only trying to reclaim the north of the country on the minds of the South French leadership in Marseilles but also the fact that the government has not considered decolonization. This has resulted in a brutal colonial conflict against anti-colonial rebels which has been raging for decades and consumes a sizable portion of the South French economy.
However, the “rising stars” of the Grand Alliance are the Empire of Brazil and the Empire of the Great Qing. Both of these blocs are economically powerful and have seen rapid growth in recent decades with many seeing them as potential “superpowers of tomorrow”
The Empire of Brazil is under the ideology of Integralism, which pushes for a nation under an organic unity and defends social hierarchy and differentiation, instead pushing for class collaboration and corporatism. The Integralists argue that all nations have their own traditions which are to be protected and that their systems are to be protected by a government in line with these traditions. Under Integralist policies, the Empire of Brazil has pursued rural development and is surprisingly non-racialist, even if fiercely nationalistic.
Brazil leads an assortment of Integralist powers within the Grand Alliance with Portugal, the Two Sicilies, and Spain, along with friendly/sympathetic regimes within South America, being the major components of this Integralist sub-bloc.
The Empire of the Great Qing (North China) is guided by Yan Xishan Thought, the ideology of Yan Xishan, who supported the Manchu Restoration which overthrew the Zhili Clique and put in the “national coalition” of the Young China Party, representing the military, business interests, and nationalists, the Manchu Party, representing the traditional Manchu aristocrats, and the New China Empire Reform Association, which represents both the urban middle-class and rural farmers. These parties rotate power with the current leader of North China being from the Young China Party. The ideology of Yan Xishan Thought is considered to be highly syncretic, incorporating aspects of various ideologies into a single whole. However, the flexibility and syncretism of Yan Xishan Thought has allowed it to remain the ruling ideology of the Empire of the Great Qing even after Yan Xishan’s death with the three major parties all adopting Yan Xishan Thought and the main political disagreements being basically detailing how to best enact Yan Xishan Thought.
While North China is behind their Southern peers, the North Chinese are still fairly prosperous and wealthy with a sizable military and wealth and a friendly regime in Korea at their beck and call.
However, there are two prominent powers outside of the grasp of the Kalterkrieg. These are the Cairo Pact and the Santiago Accords.
The Cairo Pact was formed by the Kingdom of Egypt, which remains its leader to this day with Persia, Arabia, Kurdistan, Yemen, Oman, and Cyreanica as its other members. Despite their initial alignment with the Grand Alliance, the Cairo Pact has become a neutral bloc starting in the 1960s with the Cairo Pact being largely composed of shaky democracies.
Meanwhile, the Santiago Accord is Syndicalism’s last stand and is led by the Socialist Republic of Chile with the Balderomoists in Argentina and the socialist regime in Mexico being the other main components of this alliance. Despite this, the Santiago Accords largely keeps to itself outside of its support for the socialist regimes in the Congo and Ghana.
Technology in this world is far more advanced with technology being 15-20 years ahead of OTL owing to Germany remaining a world leader in the field of the sciences and China and India having their economic miracles earlier than OTL. In this world, Mars landings have been carried out, life-like virtual reality has been developed, and wearable gadgets are everywhere. In this world, the American Wayland Tech, Germany's Schneider Group (led by Helena Schneider) the Russian Nabatova Group (led by Stella Nabatova, a close ally of Vozhd Antonova), and South China's Bao Group led by Xun Liuxian being amongst the main tech companies in the world.
View attachment 564125
