Scorpions in a Bottle: 'For Want of a Nail' Expanded

[SpanishSpy]

The failure of Operation William

General McIntyre had assumed command of the forces around London in a desperate attempt to guard the city from the Germans with a foothold in Kent and in Sussex; the latter was the site of significant local resistance which nevertheless did not seem completely benign towards the British government.

The rise of the Sussex Workers Army in that county, and its copycat, the Kentish Workers Army, was deeply distressing to the British government and military establishment. Neiderhofferism in its radical form, practiced by the Workers Armies of southern England and the Egalitarian Republic of France, was seen as something frighteningly iconoclastic, and a possible threat to the "civic order" of the United Kingdom.

General McIntyre was not a man noted for particular leniency on the battlefield; his actions in the Pepper Coast and Ndongo after their independence from Britain were known to be of questionable wartime morality (to the most ardent pacifists a contradiction in terms); one incident in the former resulted in the shelling of an entire village of seemingly innocent people. McIntyre was court martialed and found innocent, and therefore was not punished. Despite the government of the Pepper Coast being a British-sympathetic state, the people of the country absolutely despised him; a visit by him to the country was met with effigies of himself being burned by the populace. Hence, his solution to the German problem will be remembered as one whose ethics will be debated as long as humanity remembers it.

This plan involved nuclear weapons, and intended to kill two birds with one stone. In his address to an audience including Prime Minister Gordon Perrow and Minister of Defense George Jaffe, as well as Chancellor of the Exchequer Allan McOuat, McIntyre spoke of the need to "do two things: expel the scourge of the Germans from our lands and eradicate the cancer that is Neiderhofferism. The very ideas of that anarchistic philosophy have no place in Britain, and we must use every weapon at our disposal to remove the cancer."

British spy airmobiles waited for the time when the Workers' Armies were at their highest strengths, and began advancing on Folkestone, Dover, and Ashford, some of the most important German supply depots in the country. By August 1st, there appeared to be a concerted attack by the Workers' Armies of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Hampshire onto those three towns. All of them, armed with captured British and German weaponry, were able to make their way into these important centers, and fierce urban warfare ensued.

And then, on all three towns, landed British nuclear weapons, obliterating both the bulk of the German forces and the majority of the Workers' Armies.

General Theofild Waldfogel, realizing all was lost, surrendered to McIntyre at Guildford. There were not enough leaders of the Workers' Armies to surrender.

As if that was not enough, more nuclear weapons landed in the general area of Calais to destroy whatever remaining port facilities used by the Germans remained. Still more fell on Le Havre and the surrounding area, destroying that city, its port facilities, and perhaps most importantly in the long term, the bulk of the Sons of Fanchon.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Invasion of the Netherlands

The nuclear bombing of the area surrounding the ruins of Calais was absolutely devastating to the German occupational forces. General Vester Kreuse, the commander of German forces in France, had relocated to that city after the fall of Paris to the Republican Army and the Sons of Fanchon, was in the city when the bombs fell. The German forces in the city were obliterated. The only remaining forces were in Strasburg.

But Strasburg, to General Parris, was not intent on taking Strasburg. "No," he said when asked by President Allard, "I have a plan far more daring." This plan was the invasion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, a puppet state of the Germans all but in name.

Initially, the government of the Republic found Parris' ideas to be stupid, but not as stupid as Mathieu Cordonnier's proposal for an invasion of Germany. Cordonnier himself was a supporter of Parris' plan. "If we do not march all the way to Berlin, at least marching into Amsterdam, Rotterdam, the Hague, and Utrecht will give them the idea that we are to be feared."

Historians have often been perplexed by the military strength wielded by the Egalitarian Republic at this time. The truth of their power is rooted in the widespread discontent with the Tremblay government and preceding governments stage managed from Berlin. The outright annexation of the whole country into the Greater German Empire was the final straw for many, but the formidable power of the German army was preventing a popular uprising. The sheer mass of people discontent with the current state of affairs provided the Egalitarian Republic with an army of hundreds of thousands, occasionally the entire male population of small towns joining the Republican Army when it came.

The discontent also lacked a leader, a role that Ruben Allard would take once the rebellion in Bordeaux commenced. Ideas of Niederhofferism were common among intellectuals, and those among the fringe tried to popularize it among the masses. When it allowed independence from the Germans, the entire enterprise was far more meaningful.

On August 24th, 1977, the Republican Army crossed the border into the Netherlands, taking the city of Antwerp in a surprisingly quick amount of time. The Netherlands' defenses were poor as it was in no way expected that the war would enter that country, and so the Germans had to scramble forces to defend them. Nevertheless, in October the Republicans had advanced to Amsterdam, taking it by the end of the month.

By that point, German popular opinion of the war had sunk to its lowest depths. Chancellor Kiermaier, facing a vote of no confidence, called for a peace.

 

[SpanishSpy]

India and Tibet as of 1977

The North American generalship in India by 1977 had decisively repelled the German-backed invasion of the country by the Anatolians and the Persians, and then set out to defeat the remnants of the Indian Liberation Movement. Throughout the war the North Americans and other Coalition forces had been wildly successful as they employed the strategies and tactics innovated by Beauregard Stanton. By 1976, only partisans remained.

However, the invasion of North America itself during that front sent shockwaves through the Indian forces, as did the invasion of Britain. Both Prime Minister Perrow and Governor-General Worden told their generalships to remain in India and protect "the last vestige of the British Empire that may survive this war." This problem was compounded by the Global Association for Peace's member nations dominating naval and air routes back towards North America and Europe.

Governor of India, Cyrus Greenfield, was a major subject of consultation for the Coalition forces. He maintained that Britain was still undoubtedly the "ultimate ruler of India" despite the massive amounts of autonomy granted to the country after the First Global War, to the point that India could be called independent. However, the Crown Jewel of the Empire now had no collection to be a part of; the African territories had been vacated decades beforehand.

At the Coalition headquarters at Pondicherry, members of the Indian Parliament, governors of various areas of the country, and other important figures gathered to create a new government of India that would allow the "continuation of the Empire if Britain and North America can no longer support it." From this, the new government, albeit maintaining most of the old parliament, was the Kingdom of India, ostensibly ruled by the British monarchy but in reality with a significant military element enshrined in the new constitution.

In neighboring Tibet, General Beauregard Stanton had been able to use connections with Kramer-allied Chinese states to suppress Tibetan forces and later insurgent groups. By 1976 Lhasa had in effect become the capital of a country ruled by Stanton himself; as the commander of the invading forces he was able to rule effectively by decree.

The defeat of the North Americans on their home soil left Stanton deeply confused. After their defeat, he consulted with his staff and concluded that a "formal break with Burgoyne" was needed. "The current government in that country is no longer fit to have fighting men of the statue that mine have," said Stanton in a speech to both Coalition and friendly Tibetan forces. "We must find our own path."

On July 14th 1977 the Sovereign Republic of Tibet was proclaimed with Stanton as Marshal.

 

[SpanishSpy]

China as of 1977

The forces of the various Kramer Associates-affiliated states had a significant technological advantage in the Second Global War, having military technology of the caliber and quality of the North Americans and British. This technology was manufactured in the factories of Jiangsu and Manchuria and designed in Kramer Associates laboratories in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

The warlord-stricken landscape of China after the conclusion of the First Global War seemed as if it were well due to be replaced; the military strength of those allied with Kramer Associates seemed to be a harbinger of a new coming Chinese order. State of the art terramobiles and warmobiles, as well as airmobiles and gyromobiles, were being deployed by the Jiangsu armed forces in Sichuan and Hunan. The battles of the Chinese theater of the war were an absolute bloodbath; the warlords of Hunan and Sichuan had armies that were poor and functioned on an almost feudal system, with a form of patronage on a societal scale being in operation after the destruction of the Chinese monarchy after the First Global War, and thusly were not in any way strategically wise.

What they did have was numbers, but Jiangsu had more; by 1976 the name "Jiangsu" itself was a misnomer, for its ruler Wen Pan had established control over the majority of the Chinese coast from Shandong to Fujian as well as coastal Hebei including Tianjin and Beijing, including Hainan (similarly Hunan had control over Guangdong and Guangxi, and Sichuan exerted control over Yunnan, Guizhou, Gansu, and Qinghai). The carnage of the war can be compared to the North American front of the war.

In early 1977 Jiangsu and its allies, after a monthlong siege, took control of the Hunan capital city of Changsha. After a brief trial the leadership of Hunan were executed as "traitors to the Chinese nation." With subordinate commanders given charge of pacifying Guizhou and Yunnan, the main forces under general Shi Han began the march into Sichuan.

Fighting in Sichuan drew on and on; however, relief for Jiangsu came when the Sovereign Republic of Tibet, led by Marshal Beauregard Stanton, entered the war on Kramer's side. "The loss of the CNA as a valued partner for Kramer Associates ought to be compensated with the gain of valuable allies in Tibet, India, Kampuchea, and Siam," said Stanton in a speech as he prepared his forces for his own invasion of Sichuan at a rally in Lhasa.

The two pronged strategy was a success; by August 1977 the Sichuan capital of Chengdu had fallen to the Kramer alliance. China was, for the most part, in Kramer's hands.

 

[SpanishSpy]

Postwar North America

Mexican military and civilian personnel began streaming into the defeated Confederation of North America. Diplomats from the CNA, led by Council President Isaac Whitley, met with Mexican diplomats in the town of Carmichael, Indiana, which formally ended the war on June 14th. The day would become a national holiday in Mexico; the war, dubbed the "War for the Mexican Fatherland," was now etched in the national memory. President Lassiter, in a speech in Mexico City's Jackson Square, said that "the heroes of this generation will be remembered for centuries for their bravery and their heroism in expelling an invasion from their homeland invaders from a foreign land."

Memorials were already being constructed in many Mexican towns, all extolling the bravery, heroism, and sacrifice made by these men, who fought not only in their own country but in foreign lands to end the war decisively. The sheer Mexican casualties led to the generation born in the mid-1950s to the late 1960s to be the 'Greatest Generation" of the Mexican nation.

The Treaty of Carmichael necessitated a Mexican occupation force for the country, or at least for areas deemed "insufficiently pacified." This statement in particular was directed implicitly towards General Justin Harrison, a North American General who had ineffectually commanded the North Americans in Alaska.

Harrison did not accept the Treaty of Carmichael as legitimate, and began moving into the wastes of Manitoba to make his own little fiefdom, from which a 'reconquest' of North America would be ignited. Council President Whitley promised that the North Americans would 'condemn' future warmongering.

However, Whitley was a member of Worden's government and thusly was seen as too hawkish to be a leader of a peacetime North America. To do so, the Mexicans arranged the release of James Volk, the leader of the Peace and Justice Party, from prison. Volk was to be placed in charge of a provisional North American government that would do away with the Britannic Designs, and establish a government free of any loyalty to the British Crown.

This new government was to be a member of the Global Association for Peace, and Worden and other high-ranking members of the government and military, Whitley included, would be tried in a newly formed International Tribunal for ‘crimes against human dignity,’ referring mainly to the invasion of Mexico and the nuclear bombing of Havana (notably the Mexican usage of nuclear weapons on Bogota and Caracas was not considered a war crime). Worden was subsequently moved into Mexican custody, as were many of his generals.

Shortly thereafter there was an announcement by President Lassiter that he would be touring North America to oversee the peace process; his wife, Carmela, would be coming with him to speak at charities and promote “general goodwill.”

 

[SpanishSpy]

Lassiter's Tour of North America

The Mexican President's tour of North America was intended, in his words, to be a "harbinger of goodwill" towards the residents of the now-defeated nation. "The last thing either of us wants is another war of this scale," he maintained, conveniently ignoring the violence still ongoing in Europe and China. It was generally held by the Mexican government that the war in North America was a distinct and separate conflict from the wars in those other areas, tied together only by rhetoric.

There is a case to be made for this point of view; Mexicans had not gone to fight in China or Europe and the North Americans, barring their deployment in India, had not intervened elsewhere. German and British forces remained in their area of the world.

The tour was met with great apprehension within the Mexican armed forces and government; Secretary of State Raymond Portillo was to accompany Lassiter, but was opposed on the principle that there may well be an assassination attempt on his life. Lassiter insisted that he would be safe, but the generalship, particularly General Norris, was opposed to any visit to the occupied country.

Even then the word 'occupied' was a misnomer; General Harrison was still active in Manitoba and large swathes of the Southern Confederation were unaffected by the war, not counting the large quantities of men and materiel that were sent to the Indianan front. The confederation governments that were already in place supported, reluctantly, the peace agreements.

The associated territory of Quebec had not contributed any official forces to the war, as did Nova Scotia, but both had sent volunteer brigades. At the treaty of Carmichael, both regions were given their independence and membership in the Global Association for Peace. Their governments were reorganized into republics and sworn to not antagonize the Mexicans. Both regions would have Lassiter visiting their capitals of Kingston and Quebec City.

The tour first came to Fort Lodge and St Louis, in which he addressed local leaders and oversaw the trials of local government and military officials that had "committed war crimes against Mexican forces," again conveniently ignoring Mexican actions. He continued onto Astoria and Michigan City, as well as many smaller cities on the coasts of the Great Lakes.

He finally proceeded onto Burgoyne by October. There, he saw the occupational soldiers parade the embattled and humiliated Worden around the city in an open freightmobile, and let the various crowds of disheartened North Americans and Mexican veterans jeer at him as they drove around the city. Carmela, his wife, found this distasteful and went out into the city to talk with charity workers for civilian aid after the shelling of the city.

She returned to the compound they were staying in expecting to see her husband once more. She did, but, scandalously, in the arms of a young woman provided to him by the Generalship that was occupying the city (not Recinos, incidentally; he was a devout Catholic); the other generals had similar girls accompanying him.

After a shouting match, she took the pistol she had for self defense and shot her husband, the President, dead.

 

[SpanishSpy]

Mexico after Lassiter's death

Carmela Lassiter had been detained and sentenced to death by a military tribunal in Burgoyne. Her act of passionate anger had doomed the United States of Mexico to political chaos and quite possibly worse; there was great fear of a resumption of hostilities. In Mexico City, a special session of the Congress of the United States saw Raymond Portillo, the Secretary of State, confirmed as the new Mexican president.

Portillo was a leader of a moderate faction that saw the main threat to the United States to be powers on the Eurasian landmass, with a long period of sullen hostility likely between the winner of the war in North America and the winner in Europe (which notably did not take Asia into account). Originally this was held to be Germany, but now it seemed that either Britain or France would become the new continental power in Europe.

Portillo also supported the reconstruction of North American industry and infrastructure, something that put him at odds with those of the general mindset of Julio Recinos, the highest ranking military officer in the Mexican Army. Recinos and his acolytes believed that the CNA should be completely disarmed and turned into "Mexico's breadbasket," to be put under a permanent low-key military occupation to ensure that the country would ever pose a threat to Mexico.

Generals Edgardo Bermudez and Matthew Norris generally supported Portillo's views of the situation, while many of the others in the generalship and government, such as Emilio Galvez, Lisandro Bernardo, and Jose Patecell, were sympathetic to Recino's views. The leader of the Progressive Party in the Senate, Guillermo Vasquez, was another firebrand anti-North American and devout Catholic much like Recinos; he led a caucus of likeminded senators and representatives that wanted a "forever demilitarized North America that could never threaten this country again."

Protests in favor of one side or the other erupted throughout the country; in Jefferson, Recinos' view was dominant. Jeremy Merton, a member of the Jeffersonian assembly and a veteran (who had taken a leave of absence to fight) said the following in an impassioned speech to the state assembly:

"The fighting at Jefferson City and Lafayette and Henrytown and all the other cities in this state is justification in its entirely to keep North America down. Their carnage cannot be allowed to be released again. The wives and siblings and children of this state, and indeed all the nation, are in themselves a testament to that necessity."

 

[SpanishSpy]

Division in the Mexican Government and Military

Perhaps most unsettling to the government in Mexico City was General Recinos' own missile base in Wellston, Alaska, which had been put under his command by President Lassiter himself. Nevertheless it could not be immediately removed from his command due to the presence of members of the Mexican Congress who spoke of removing Portillo from his post. More importantly, an election was coming up in November, and Portillo's faction felt that removing such a base from a war hero's command would be deeply unpopular with the citizenry.

Through the current of factionalism different commanders and formations declared their sympathies with one school of thought or the other. Soon, bases were becoming more and more stratified and entertained only those who shared their views on the reconstruction of North America, if there was to be a reconstruction. Even within bases there were Portillo and Recinos factions that segregated themselves accordingly.

Mexican newspapers, radio, and vitavision all began disputing, quite vigorously, the proper way to deal with North America. A noted vitavision debate between two noted political commentators, Emilio Walsham on the Portillist side and Armando Enriquez on the Recinist side became the catalyst of even further debate in the public life of Mexico; Jeffersonians and those from the Old North tended to take the side of the Recinists while those from Durango, Chiapas, Hawaii, Alaska, and the Mexican Antilles tended to support the Portillists. Arguments for the former were based on the devastation in the Rocky Mountains and in Jefferson while the latter was based on the need for reconstruction and an abstract conception of human rights and liberties.

These differences came to a head in October, when General Norris, operating under orders from Portillo himself, delivered a convoy of military supplies to a North American military base under the command of the provisional government and a general loyal to it, Reginald Crothers. This convoy carried several crates of Mexican-made arms and ammunition for the express purpose of arming North America against the forces of rebels like Justin Harrison as well as the anti-establishment, often Neiderhofferist, insurgent groups in the Southern Confederation.

This convoy was headed for a base in Guernsey, Indiana, a small town on the coast of Lake Michigan. However, on the road to Guernsey at the town of Fulton, south of Michigan City, forces loyal to Recinos blocked the convoy to Guernsey. A dispute between the two field commanders ensued. It is unknown exactly what happened on that road, but it is known that it resulted in a firefight between the two deployments.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Fracturing of the Army and the beginning of the Mexican Civil War

The military confrontation between Norris' and Recinos' forces at Fulton led to a massive row between the Recinists and the Portillists in occupied North America. When informed of the incident, Recinos believed that Norris' forces had fired first (he had been informed by soldiers originally part of the guards on the road to Guernsey) and came to the conclusion that, quoting from a speech to his staff:

"Portillo clearly wants me gone, and he wants to arm the North Americans to do the fighting for him, and will use the traitor Norris as his own tool. I will not let this happen; North America must be punished!"

Recinos returned hastily to Burgoyne and demanded all forces in the city and the surrounding areas declare their allegiance to him; those that did not were imprisoned and publicly executed. Recinos' forces subsequently launched an attack on North American industrial facilities in Pennsylvania, with the intention of taking the remaining steel mills of the North American provisional government that were guarded jointly between the North Americans and the loyalist Mexicans. The initial fighting between the two sides was received in Burgoyne with great emergency.

The vast majority of the North American forces still in operation threw in their lot with the Mexican government. The highest North American general in command, Augustus Fitzwilliam, visited with General Norris and said that:

"no matter how frustrated we are to have a hostile government occupying our lands, we understand it is still permissive of our existence. Recinos is not; the question of who we side with, therefore, is clear."

Similarly, the forces of the various Latin American nations that had been called to the aid of the United States saw Portillo as the rightful president and thusly ordered their soldiers to fight alongside the loyalist armies. The only exception to this was General Raymundo Vivancos, the leader of the New Granadan expeditionary forces who had previously fought the Mexicans in La Guerra Granadina. Holding a grudge against the Mexican government, he fell in with Recinos with a promise that, at the end of the Civil War, he would be installed as the leader of New Granada.

Recinos' forces began their campaign against the small loyalist forces deployed in Indiana; the majority of Norris' forces were deployed in St. Louis, with Michigan City divided almost equally between the two factions. Fighting immediately broke out. A large tank battle between the two sides ensued at the town of Penicuik, Indiana, with a slight loyalist victory until rebel aircraft, based on the coast of Lake Erie, destroyed the majority of the loyalists.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Jefferson Declaration of Martial Fidelity

The assembly of the state of Jefferson had withdrawn to San Antonio during the Second Global War, and many had families and friends lost in the devastation of Jefferson City, the state capital. Hence, Jeffersonian soldiers had been among the most committed to the war against North America, with many distinguished war heroes being made from among that state's population.

When the end of the war came the majority of Jeffersonians, especially their soldiers, became supporters of Julio Recinos and his plan for North America: complete demilitarization, pacification, and subjugation of the country. The incident at the road to Guernsey, which sparked the transformation of the occupation army into a force at war with itself, stoked hard emotions in Jeffersonians. To many in that state, the actions of the federal government in Mexico City had shown themselves to hold the sacrifices of Jeffersonians in contempt; the state was the most damaged of all Mexican states in the war. To arm the North Americans, to work with the North Americans, seemed like treason.

In November 1977, the speaker of the Jefferson House of Representatives, Adrian Mercator, the son of the former president Vincent Mercator, declared that, with the full cooperation of the rest of the assembly, issued the Jefferson Declaration of Martial Fidelity, which made it clear that the state would not be permitting the armies loyal to the government in Mexico City to use its territory as a transit point to North America to go to fight Recinos. The declaration also took all formations of troops from Jefferson and put them under the direct command of the state government, through General Edmund Whitcomb, a veteran of the war who had fought personally in the Battle of Jefferson City.

In doing so, the Jeffersonians hoped, the Mexican military would have to route its forces through Arizona and Mexico del Norte, giving Recinos enough time to take control in North America and end the civil war. The Jeffersonian military forces, deployed under the state flag, began positioning themselves along the Rio Grande. At the border town of Blackburn, Jefferson, the first Mexican convoy sent towards North America was intercepted and captured. Air forces loyal to San Antonio destroyed the Mexican retaliatory force, plunging the state into war once again.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Rocky Mountain Insurgency

The veteran civilians of the Rocky Mountain Front of the Second Global War had proven themselves to be adept at combatting conventional forces. Due to the utter inhumanity of the North American advance into the region, the vast majority of the inhabitants of the far northern reaches of the Old North supported the Recinists, the rebels, in the impending Mexican Civil War. Henry Chatham, a resident of Oldham, Mexico del Norte, had declared himself to be a "follower of Recinos to the end," and pledged the Sons of the Old North, the insurgent organization that had fought the North Americans of whom he was the leader, to the cause of Recinos' rebellion.

The Mexican commander in the region, Kenneth Albright, a native of California, was loyal to General Norris and the Mexican government. In one of the great ironies of history, the Mexicans, in their harnessing of asymmetrical warfare against the North Americans during the Second Global War, had not actually fought against it with any regularity. Thusly, the loyalist forces in the Rocky Mountains had to fight against a foe against which they were woefully unprepared for. The same insurgent tactics used against North America were being used against the Loyalists, with great skill and effectiveness.

When the word of this came to Mexico City, President Portillo was hesitant to the usage of too much force in the region. In a conference with his general staff, he said the following (as recorded in the minutes of the session):

"We do not want to become the invaders that slaughtered so many in the Old North. We are not Wyndham. We are not Ethan. We are not Worden."

Nevertheless formations of the Mexican Air Force were dispatched to the Rocky Mountains with the intention of taking down the rebellion. However, General Reginald Alban, an Air Force General that had defected to Recinos' side and a commander of the Air Force on the Manitoba Front, arrived with a significant force, which intercepted the loyalist air force formations attempting to attack the Sons of the Old North.

Land forces were similarly dispatched; bridges were destroyed, improvised explosive devices were laid among roads, and various other stealthy methods of attack were used. Worden's Whiskey was deployed en masse, destroying several terramobiles as they made their ways along winding mountain passes.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Integration of China

The fall of Chengdu in August 1977 proved that the entirety of China, minus some stragglers, was under the command of Wen Pan, the President of the Republic of Jiangsu, backed by Carl Salazar, the Chief Executive of Kramer Associates. The only remaining stronghold of resistance was Turkestan which, deprived of their German and Mexican support, sued for peace by early 1978.

It was agreed between Wen and Salazar that Turkestan could retain their independence so long as they would not be hostile towards the Kramer-backed alliance of Chinese states; they complied. Jiangsu and other troops of the pro-Kramer coalition entered these countries to maintain order and political loyalty.

However, the division of China was one that was quite inconvenient for Kramer interests; the needs for passports, separate diplomatic staff, et al were a significant drain on the Taiwanese government in Taichung, a virtual mouthpiece of Kramer Associates. What Salazar thought was necessary was the creation of a Chinese federation that would span most of the former Empire (which was dissolved in anarchy following the First Global War) that would serve as the main power backed by Kramer Associates.

This need was created due to the ransacking of the British Empire and the Confederation of North America as pro-Kramer states; the former was industrially devastated and the latter was decapitated due to the invasion by the Germans. The United States of Mexico seemed to be a newly dominant power having overtaken North America, and France, virulently anti-business with its new revolutionary ideology, seemed to be the new power of Europe after breaking free from the Germans. Hence, there seemed to be two powers in the world, Mexico and France, that were hostile to Kramer Associates interests; thusly, the new Chinese federation would have to be the new power affiliated with Kramer.

At Nanjing, the soon-to-be capital city of China, the various governments of China, occupational authorities and the government of Taiwan included, drafted and signed a Declaration of Unification, fusing Jiangsu, Hunan, Sichuan, Manchuria, and Greater Mongolia into the Federation of China. Former civilian governments were made subnational governments, and Wen Pan was inaugurated as the new Chinese President. In his inaugural speech, with Salazar behind him, Wen said that

"China has reached the world stage in power and not in civil war, liberty and not continued strife. Unified, we are strong nation which will bow to no foreign capital."

Cynics noted that Taichung was no longer considered foreign.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Treaty of Eindhoven

German, French, British, and other delegates convened in the Dutch city of Eindhoven, under French occupation, to discuss the end of the current European War. The war in North America appeared to be winding down to the European powers and it increasingly looked like that there would be a stalemate between the Egalitarian Republic of France and the Greater German Empire.

The treaty was attended by the likes of Chancellor Kiermaier, Prime Minister Perrow, and President Allard, all of whom were seeking an end to the war in a manner that could be considered favorable for their respective side. Germany entered negotiations in something less than a desirable position, for its forces in Britain had been defeated and its foothold in the Netherlands shattered. Britain had the advantage in that it had not been defeated and that it had used several nuclear weapons during the course of the war, but was still too damaged to have any real military power on the continent. France, the victorious power and a new revolutionary vanguard state, was clearly the dominant party in the peace talks.

The Treaty of Eindhoven guaranteed French and Dutch independence from the Greater German Empire, and gained for both Britain and France significant reparation payments as a result of the brutality of the Second Global War. Germany, it was feared, would be crippled, but the industrial capacity of the country was left mostly unharmed with the exception of significant parts of the Ruhr valley due to nuclear strikes undertaken by the British.

The most significant reparation payment was under disputed culpability: the nuclear bombing of the Calais area and of Strasburg by the British. The British believed that, since Germany was the aggressor in the war, Berlin should foot the bill. The French believed that since they were British weapons landing on the cities that London should pay France. Perrow was very hesitant in recognizing the Egalitarian Republic; the plight of the various Workers' Armies in the southern part of England had been perceived as already worrisome to the political elite; their equivalents having established complete dominance over all France, as well as the Netherlands was absolutely terrifying.

The eventual agreement was that France and Britain would each pay half the sum total. With those agreements, as well as some minor territorial changes and an assurance of Egalitarian rule in France, the Treaty of Eindhoven was signed, ending the war.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Just wanted to say, this is a really cool project.

 

[SpanishSpy]

Just wanted to say, this is a really cool project.

Thank you.

Anything in particular that stands out?

 

[Kuamong]

Been following this for sometime, and I have to commend you on the work that you've done. It's been a fun ride, and I hope you do more with this.

 

[SpanishSpy]

Been following this for sometime, and I have to commend you on the work that you've done. It's been a fun ride, and I hope you do more with this.

Again, thank you.

I must ask, what in particular interests you? Europe? North America? East Asia?

 

[Kuamong]

Again, thank you.

I must ask, what in particular interests you? Europe? North America? East Asia?

More about the Mexican civil war would be interesting. Maybe see the development of some sort of united North America post MCW. But that's entirely up to you.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Norfolk Riots

Norfolk, Virginia was the site of the largest North American naval base north of Georgia; only the base in Hillsborough, Georgia, was larger in size, and that was a recent development. The Worden government had ordered the expansion of the Hillsborough base in preparation for the war in the Caribbean; it was from an airstrip at the Hillsborough base that the plane carrying the nuclear bomb that was later dropped on Havana was launched. However, before this Norfolk Naval Base had been the man port of the North American navy.

The city of Norfolk was also the capital of the Southern Confederation, the most populous of the various confederations that made up North America, and ranked as high as Philadelphia and New York in terms of population; it was truly one of the greatest cities on the continent. Due to its geographic position far from the Mexican border (and a reasonable distance from Burgoyne) the city, indeed the Confederation, was spared from the worst of the fighting of the Second Global War.

However, many men from the Southern Confederation, Norfolk included, were called up to invade Mexico and later defend from the counter-invasion by General Recinos and General Norris. By war's end at least half of the young male population of the city was dead or missing in the deserts of Jefferson or the coasts of Durango. The loss of the war and their cherished sons without any real effect on their city (besides economically led to more than a token amount of anti-Burgoyne sentiment, as well as heightened anti-Mexican sentiment.

With the Treaty of Carmichael and the occupation, no matter how temporary, of Burgoyne and large swathes of Indiana and Southern Vandalia, resistance groups, inspired by the Workers' Armies of England and the Egalitarian Republic of France, arose in the Norfolk metropolitan area and began first mass rallies, then violent attacks.

One of these attacks was a storming of Norfolk Naval base and the torching of several structures in the walled enclosure. The Southern Confederation's tradition of high rates of armed citizenry, the highest in North America, benefitted the rioters; they were able to fight the loyalist troops on a fairly equal footing. To help them further were veterans of the fighting in Mexico and in Southern Vandalia who had returned home disillusioned.

The rioters were able to destroy a single North American ship, the H.M.N.A.S. Chatham, before being driven out of the base by reinforcements from nearby Newport News. Nevertheless, riots continued, destroying police constabularies and other police infrastructure, local and confederation government buildings, and various other structures. Riot control police were called in; large swathes of the city were burning by the end of November in Norfolk.

Eventually, a group of revolutionaries led by Gerald Tompkins established the Norfolk Worker's Council dedicated exclusively to Neiderhofferist goals, with the aim of forming an independent state that would export the ideology alongside France.

 

[Kuamong]

Interesting to see a another wave of Niederhoffens. Speaking of that, are they similar to OTL communists, or some other group?