Romandy - The Long Game
The nation of Romandy (more accurately the ‘Swiss Republic’ but queer looks are aimed toward those that use it) emerged as a result of the successful prosecution of Operation Tannenbaum by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the late forties in what amounted to spring-cleaning their collective hegemony over Europe and North Africa. With the British thoroughly battered, the USSR in retreat and the US staying on their side of the Atlantic there wasn’t much sense in allowing the ‘misbegotten branch of the Volk’ to continue unmolested. For its part, with a motley of mounting factors including French conquest, American ambivalence towards supporting a minor state in the heart of fascist Europe, and the freeing of German equipment and divisions from the Eastern Front, Switzerland surrendered. This was rather tactical for a plethora of reasons; namely that peaceful partition would lead to the least loss of life and allow some diplomatic clout, resulting in the creation and neutralisation of Romandy rather than the wholesale absorption of the Confederation into Germany. This was, of course, short change for the 100,000 or so Jews in Switzerland that were systematically exterminated.
So began the artificial nation of Romandy, comprising the cantons of Vaud, Geneva, Jura and Neuchâtel, as well as the Francophone halves of the cantons of Valais and Fribourg. The nation incidentally swelled in population quite quickly after its independence as German, Italian and the odd Romansch Swiss with the means and contacts sought refuge in their borders (to this day Fribôrg is decidedly multilingual). Within the ‘Swiss Republic’ the old cantonal system was abolished, Hitler having nothing but hatred for what he considered a historical aberration of a political system, and replaced with a unitary presidential constitutional republic, with a Prime Minister as head of government. This, ironically, was much closer to the inert Weimar Republic than the shallow dictatorship that had replaced it. Despite their initial meddling, the Reich granted Romandy’s government a free hand in their internal governance, albeit with indiscriminate access by the Schutzstaffel and whomever else the Reich desired.
Though all this was also instituted without official protest from the ephemeral Swiss authorities in formerly German-speaking Switzerland, attempts by Reichskommissar Franz Riedweg on behalf of Heinrich Himmler to dilute Swiss cultural heritage lead to an insurgency that would last in some form or another to the present day. These partisans were overwhelmingly from the Swiss military and were galvanised not just by a sense of national pride but because, though the Swiss government had not resisted the German invasion, they also hadn’t assisted it in securing every weapons cache, bunker, ratway, depot, and in particular for such a guerrilla campaign, every piece of trapped infrastructure. Soon, across Switzerland, bridges, tunnels, cliff faces and roads were exploding, Whermacht detachments terrorised and administrative buildings bombed. This would often lead to harsh restitution, with whole villages being slaughtered particularly in the mountainous south where the partisans were strongest. Romandy was certainly responsible for housing a number of partisans, particularly in Lower Valais where they stockpiled weapons and received covert support from Romandy’s people and, as the German government suspected, Geneva itself.
A new invasion of Romandy would’ve been on the cards had it not been for the increasingly radical state to Romandy’s west carved from France, SS Burgundy, protesting that they didn’t want the Wehrmacht breathing down their necks, as well as Rome’s opposition to such an escapade after their amiable partition of the state. This was just part of the escalating internal conflict between Rome and Germania that ultimately resulted in the German invasion of Italy in the early 70s. But overstretched and increasingly dysfunctional as building an economy on millions of corpses isn’t actually very sustainable, this would mark the hightide of German influence and expansion before they began a sometimes slow, sometimes precipitous decline and the file on occupying Romandy was tucked in a backroom and promptly forgotten.
In 2029 Romandy is more or less back on its feet and still serves as a centre of banking for misappropriated Nazi gold, but also Clerical-Fascist Spanish gold, disgruntled authoritarian Franco-Italian gold, and gold from various corrupt socialist cliques as well. With German influence waning after 2008 politics is somewhat funky; as a Francophonic state with a shared history of getting their shins kicked in union with France is not an unpopular notion, Germany is
still right there. But bearing the last torch of true Swissness (the cantonal system was reintroduced in 2012) and particularly due to their Protestantism (as France is not entirely free of angry Catholics who see Protestants as inherently German saboteurs) and with the economy in decent shape others believe that Romandy should soldier on as is. There is also the very real possibility of German Switzerland reemerging considering Germany’s historic and continued decline from the heady heights of stretching from the Arctic to the equator, especially as those partisans have only grown in number in recent years, so Geneva at current is willing to play the long game. There’s also the odd fascist in the Federal Assembly but they’re ignorable enough. In any event Romandy has good relations and a number of mutual agreements with the Franco-Italian Customs Union and an ambivalent relationship with Germania, and things have cooled off enough in Europe that Americans are actually willing to use their ski slopes. The future of Romandy isn’t a sure one, but they’re willing to wait and see.
~
~
This is a cover of
@B_Munro ’s phenomenal ‘
The Shrunken Reich’ map. I really liked the scenario, not because of the Nazis in it but because it had so many unique quirks I’ve not seen before. An actual German Ukraine, a free Romandy, the Pope in Mexico, among other things. It’s just neat.
This is also the last big mapping project I’m going to make. I’ve decided to stop making alternate history and especially maps for an indefinite period. There are a number of reasons for this, which I wrote
a wee journal about on DA, but there are a couple that stick out, as follows:
- I’ve been doing this as a hobby for six years and there are newer mapmakers with better tools that are outpacing me at a rate I can’t hope to match, and I feel I ought to move on. I don’t get the same satisfaction I used to from making a map or really any kind of alternate history, for a plethora of reasons elaborated on in the aforementioned journal.
- I want to focus on my writing. I haven’t finished a story in years, and maybe that speaks to a poor work ethic. But I can’t dedicate time to both this hobby and writing, particularly as I want to monetise the latter in a way that I can’t with this, which I don’t think is an unreasonable request.
I’d like to thank all the people that were good fans, few as they were, particularly
@Tyche who I believe is the only person that engaged with just about every single piece of content I’ve created. And while I’m well aware that I am no Upvoteanthology or even Bruce, I do hope no one is too upset that I’m leaving. I may wean myself off with a couple of disparate little maps hereafter, but those will only be on my DA rather than here on AH, and thereafter I won’t really be here anymore.
Thanks for having me.
~ Isaac.