La Triplice - Or Italy in the Central Powers

[Filo]

Wasn't OTL Puyi kind of like the real life version of King Joffrey? He would whip his servants for killing rats but also whip them if there were any rats in the food. How could he be a decent leader ITTL?

For what i read about him, he was not mad, only a spoiled child, and when communist China deprived him of the throne he become a gardener and (seems) was quite happy.
I suppose that the crushing defeat by German-Chinese army and the humiliations of leaving his "empire" behind changed him as much as confinement in OTL.

 

[Filo]

When Pu-Yi fled to Taiwan, he was installed as emperor of China in exile.
The new imperial flag was desined to unify the japanese and qing flag.
The flag was inaugurate september 1952 and in use still now in late 2000s.

 

[Filo]

Taipei Imperial Palace: Seat of the heavens
Taipei was naturally selected as capital of the third empire being the capital of japanese administration on Taiwan Island.
Here, Puyi went to settle his new court when fled from Manchuria. Altought not very differentrly from Manchuria, where Puyi was surrounded by japanese "advisers", in Taipei the situation become worse than ever. Infact, if the in Manchiura japaneses let him some manouver margins, in Taiwan(that Japan considered as its private property) Puyi was pratically simply a placeholder for japanese governor. Ofen he had to ask permission of military governor not only to rewiew the Imperial Chinese Army(Called Imperial Banner Army), but sometimes also to leave the palace.

 

[Filo]

The defeat against China(and Germany) was the first true defeat Japan suffered from one century. Altrought not disastrous as the one suffered in the HL(OTL) still left a mark in Japanese militarist culture
The faith in the army was shoked and also the emperor suffered in popularty and prestige. This situation exploded in late '50s and early '60s in a very tense political and civil conflittuality.

Japanese Communist Party supporters, hoping to dethrone the emperor and to proclamate a socialist repubòic like in Usa or in France riotted in many Japanese towns.

Right-wing groups reciprocated, a manifestation of soldiers and esxponents of the right in front of Imperial palce, Tokyo, to protest the surrender of Korea and Manchuria and asking to continue the war.

The situation was so tense, and a risk of true civil war was so real that Emperor Showa ordered the instution of a new military command lead by gen. Haishy Keizo.
He forced a new constituion, very rigid and somewhat anti-democratic. This semi-dicattorship(reminescent of the Tojos one) endured ultil the Cherry Blossom Revolution of late '70s

 

[Filo]

Kim Jon Un motivational poster, based on one of his must successuful commedies.
Kim Jon Un's "Live, Love, Laught" is one of the most beloved movies of the korean director. Distant from his common rowdy action-commedies, this one is centered about a young man living with depression. With enormous and exagerated, but coherent, stream of caualities and double-senses, he meets persons with situations worse than him. At the end of the movie, the protagonist, still struggling with depression, sees another way to live his life.
Kim's work is also full of magic and supernatural involvement, remaining always in the background, but being able to instillate in the viewers the suspect that supernatual entities saw in the movie may, or may not, be real.

Yeo Jin Goo - Main protagonist of the movie.
Thanks to this movies he won some notable prizes of Korean Cinema Industries and recived a nomination to Gold Bear to Berlin Film Festival

 

[Bookmark1995]

The idea of dictators being filmmakers in alt-history stories make sense.

Like filmmakers do, dictators try and make fantasy reality.

In my own Nazi victory TL, Mobutu is a Belgian comic book writer.

 

[Bookmark1995]

Kim Jon Un motivational poster, based on one of his must successuful commedies.
Kim Jon Un's "Live, Love, Laught" is one of the most beloved movies of the korean director. Distant from his common rowdy action-commedies, this one is centered about a young man living with depression. With enormous and exagerated, but coherent, stream of caualities and double-senses, he meets persons with situations worse than him. At the end of the movie, the protagonist, still struggling with depression, sees another way to live his life.
Kim's work is also full of magic and supernatural involvement, remaining always in the background, but being able to instillate in the viewers the suspect that supernatual entities saw in the movie may, or may not, be real.

Yeo Jin Goo - Main protagonist of the movie.
Thanks to this movies he won some notable prizes of Korean Cinema Industries and recived a nomination to Gold Bear to Berlin Film Festival

The idea of dictators being filmmakers in alt-history stories make sense.

Like filmmakers do, dictators try and make fantasy reality.

In my own Nazi victory TL, Mobutu is a Belgian comic book writer.

 

[Filo]

In 1994, SEK Studio released the animated film 'All Quiet on the Western Front'. The film will be a success with audiences and critics.
Filmed by the famous Korean filmmaker, Kim Jong-Il. the work faithfully retraces the work of Erich Maria Remarque.

When the film was presented at the Berlin Film Festival in 1995, it came as a shock to German audiences.
In the 1940s and 1950s, although Emperor Willhelm III had been quite liberal, the war against Russia and the politics of the military had prevented the book's circulation among the general public.
This was not the case in Korea. Liberated from the Japanese with the help of the Germans, Korea experienced, and to some extent still experiences, a strong Germanophilia that led to Korean universities studying everything German. Including Remarque's book.

For audiences, especially younger audiences, being brutally confronted with the horrors of the World War (in this world, the conflict with Russia is harsh, but not comparable to the Welt Krieg of '14-'18) is a culture shock.
Accustomed to Prussian militarist culture, the young Germans had been brought up on patriotism and unconditional loyalty to Vaterland. Seeing, albeit through an animated film (which, foolishly, Europeans considered stuff for kids) the brutality and futility of war was an eye-opener.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung headlined 'Through the eyes of others', while the Berliner Zeitung wrote 'It's like looking in a mirror and not recognising ourselves, sometimes the truth about ourselves comes from the mouths of our friends'.

The film won the Golden Bear (by far the most important film prize in this TL) and the David di Donatello. In America it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Animated Film.

The subsequent changes in the 2000s in Germany and the allied states cannot be ascribed to the viewing of this film, but it was undoubtedly the fuse that ignited the powders.

 

[Filo]

Keiser Ludwig I and the his wife the day of the coronation, 20 October 1951. Berlin
Ludwig I Ferdinand of Germany with his wife on the day of his coronation as Keiser of Germany.
He succeeded his older brother Wilhelm, who fell in battle during the Russo-German War of the 1940s.

This young ruler's accession to the throne was well liked by the population, and he gained great support among the youth.
The early years were in continuity with those of his father. But slowly he began to take some steps in the direction of reforms, hoping to conform to more modern models of monarchy, along the lines of the Scandinavian countries or Holland.

Although constantly fighting against the military, who felt themselves to be the true holders of power, Ludwig managed to bring about some reforms, both in society and in foreign policy.

Of great importance was the Treaty of Antwerp, by which German troops evacuated eastern Belgium and returned it to Brussels, again assuring Britain that it would be a neutral country.
More difficult to solve were the Polish and Bohemian problems, where the non-German population was clamouring for independence.

Ludwig always tried to transform the German court from a monolithic militarist bastion into a 'Republic with a King'. It is no coincidence that in Germany, unlike in Italy, the student movements of the 1960s and 1970s were less violent and more easily managed by the court and the state.

 

[Filo]

Protesters in Corso Kossuth to ask for the abolition of the dictatorship to the death of Horthy
The news of Horthy's death, despite an attempt to keep it hidden by the military and political apparatus of the Kingdom of Hungary, leaked to the people.

The students of the University of Budapest, also led by elements of the radical left, took control of the university and, via radio, broke the news of the Admiral Regent's death to the entire nation.
Together with the news they gave the government a list of 16 points including liberalisation of the university, free elections and freedom of the press.

As soon as the radio announcement was broadcast, riots and protests broke out in every corner of the great kingdom. In the capital itself, a spontaneous demonstration erupted through the avenues of the centre. The military did not know what to do. Whether to repress the rebels or

Ferenc Szálasi enters the government palace in Budapest

Ferenc Szálasi the new regent according to the wishes of Horthy and the military took up residence in the Prime Minister's Palace three days after Horthy's death, and although he was determined to punish the rioters with violence, he received a telegram from Berlin, the famous 'Abwarten und sehen', in which the German imperial chancellery ordered Hungary to wait to use force.

Otto of Habsburg in uniform of the Hungarian army. The sovereign became the reference point of opposition to the military regime of Horthy and successors

Meanwhile, numerous supporters of the rightful monarch gathered around Otto. Son of King Charles and designated successor to the throne of Hungary (and technically of the archduchy of Austria, although under German pressure Charles had renounced it in 1920, to cede it to his cousins Lorraine).
A strong parliamentary group, formed by the socialist left and centre, opposed the military and called on the sovereign to take power himself and initiate reforms.

For the streets of Alba Iulia the Romanian subjects of the crown of Santo Stefano protest in favor of the independence of Transylvania and its union with Romania.

But if the situation was tense in Budapest, in the rest of the country it was about to erupt completely.
In Transylvania many people poured into the squares of the major cities, shouting 'Long Live Free Transylvania, Long Live United Romania', and in some cases the Hungarian armed forces opened fire on the demonstrators.

Croatian soldiers in Slavonia. The order given by Ante Pavelic is to defend national borders, if the royal army decides to cross the Drava river.

The biggest act of defiance came from the Ban of Croatia, Ante Palevic, who had practically turned Croatia into a personal fiefdom during the Horthy years.
Through the radio, he announced that Croatia not only did not recognise the students' appeal, but proclaimed Croatia's independence as a sovereign state under a national ruler. Palevic had identified the sovereign with Aimon of Aosta, but the latter was prevented from assuming the crown either by the national government, which had yet to recover from the War of the Alps, and from the German imperial government and did not want further chaos in Europe.

...to be continued.

 

[Filo]

I resumed this old TL, let's see how much I go on.
I am correcting and changing some things. When some posts are disappeared and others will be modified.

 

[Pax_Nihil]

Well I am going to be waiting for the new maps

 

[Filo]

Im working a new and better definite European map, but im going slowly. Sorry.

 

[Filo]

Giovanni Gronchi nell'Aula di Montecitorio:
Italy, after the Franco-Italian war of the 1940s, although it managed to keep intact the empire it had acquired in 1918 at the San Remo conference, had not recovered very well from the conflict.
Despite German aid, quantified in billions of Marks, Italian industry was struggling to recover, partly due to anti-industrial rhetoric of D'Annunzian origin and reproposed by successive PNF prime ministers.
Giovanni Gronchi, although elected in the ranks of the PNF, tried to bring about a sort of compromise between the nationalist rhetoric of the PNF, which threatened to take up arms again against Hungary or Croatia (which was getting rid of the Magyar Yoke in those years) and that of the Christian Socialist Party led by Fanfani who was more interested in laying the foundations for an economic recovery of the country and the conclusion of post-war reconstruction.

The poor conditions of a peasant family in 1950s Calabria.
It was above all the agrarian south that was in serious economic difficulty, far worse than Syria-Palestine (a perfect example of the economic backwardness of the south was the so-called, in derogatory terms, 'Calabia Saudita').

Milovan Đilas the new premier of Montenegro signs the request for autonomy to be sent to the Italian government as requested by the country's parliament.

Scratch also gave the Italian Balkan empire. If Albania was so loyalist that it was integrated among the Italian regions, Dalmatia and Montenegro were no longer in tune with Rome. The crisis in Budapest was also putting Italy in trouble, as the Slavic peoples of the Adriatic coast were beginning to clamour for independence.
Milovan đilas had been elected Montenegro Prime Minister in 1954. The small Balkan town was formally independent, even if totally linked to Rome by a series of treaties that made it a protectorate.
Đilas had been elected to a large majority with the aim of terminating at least the most hateful treaties. That is, the quartering of Italian troops, the occupation of Cattaro and Antibari as the bases of the Italian Navy, and above all the possibility for the police to act in Montenegro as on Italian soil.

The military police clashes with students of the University of Split.

In Dalmatia the situation was even more explosive. In large cities, such as Zara or Split, the population was Italian or Italian enough that it was not impressed by the nationalist rhetoric of the new Ban of Croatia, but in the countryside the situation was decidedly worse and in many parts of the province of Dalmatia had passed through the passive resistance to direct attacks on the police and military authorities.

 

[Filo]

A mass-manifestation of the Italian Workers' Communist Party (PCIL) in Bologna.
Emilia-Romagna, along with Tuscany and Lombardy was the central political hub of the italian communism.

Alcide de Gasperi, here in his seat of leader of Cristian-Socialist party (PSC), was the only Italian politician to foresee the explosive situation of the proletarians and the farmers in Italy.
Crushed by D'Annunziana's repression and the subsequent policy of control during the war against France, the Italian Communist Party seemed destined to disappear.
However, the severe economic and infrastructural crisis of the Italian state quickly brought it back to life.

The National Fascist Party without D'Annunzio was too busy fighting and dividing the spoils to lead the country, while the Liberals were incapable of taking Italian politics seriously.

The only exception was Alcide De Gasperi who had been a member of the Reichstag in Vienna and had become an Italian subject after the war in the 1920s.
He was the only politician capable of seeing a little further than his nose.
He was the only one who realised that the situation in Italy was untenable and that the Communist Party was not only not dead, but that the policy of economic restrictions to conduct police operations in Dalmatia and the Balkans was strengthening it.

Wreckage of a train along the Jerusalem-Anthioch railways.

Adib al-Shishakli, first non italian governor General of Syria in 1952.

Jewish protesters in Rome after the arrest of Raffaele Cantoni, one of the most visible jews in Italy.
If the Balkans were in flames, the Middle East was not at peace either.
The Arabs, all things considered, had accepted Italian rule. Both the Bedouins of the desert and the city elites of Jerusalem and Damascus had fitted in quite well with the Italian administration, which, although brutal in its repression of rebellion, left some room for manoeuvre to enrich themselves and exploit the country's resources even to the natives.
Not of the same opinion was the Jewish community. Not only the small but very active Palestinian one, but also the Italian one.
During the Great War, the British government had issued the so-called Balfour Declaration, in which the British suggested that Palestine could become a land of Jewish immigration and possibly an independent state.
After the peace of San Remo, the Italians had turned a deaf ear to the demands of the Italian Jews to apply the declaration in the territories gained by Italy in the conference.
This had unleashed first the wrath, and then after the arrest of some prominent Italian Israelites, including Raffaele Cantoni, real violence.