Status
Not open for further replies.
Personally, I'm a bit surprised by the RZ's whiplash embrace of Societism and complete reversal on their previous Geoist ideology. Not in the sense that it wouldn't be obvious to them that a change is necessary (especially with a pragmatist like Antonovich at the helm), but how would this change affect most people's everyday lives in the country?

Different kind of propaganda, I guess. Still a Vanguard elite at the top, they just have a new justification for their power of their perceived lessers.
 
Personally, I'm a bit surprised by the RZ's whiplash embrace of Societism and complete reversal on their previous Geoist ideology. Not in the sense that it wouldn't be obvious to them that a change is necessary (especially with a pragmatist like Antonovich at the helm), but how would this change affect most people's everyday lives in the country?

You've got it. Antonovich's announcement that the RZ is now the Russian Empire has resulted in virtually no practical changes to the lives of everyday people or the structure of government (beyond the replacement of the ruling committee with a a single dictator) other than the rhetoric and the ideological justification for government actions. There's been a small purge of civilian officials who were too loyal to Geoism and the old government, but the Russian Empire hasn't even fully swapped out the old flags and unit insignia for its military, and many Russian soldiers are still fighting under green Geoist symbols. The primary purpose of switching from Geoism to Societism was to persuade Drakia to intervene in the war.

---
So I'm sorry about the delay on the next chapter- work has been a little intense lately and the next chapter is fighting me a little. I know where I want the war to end, it's getting there that's the challenge.
 
This is a really minor point but I'm honestly surprised New South Wales hasn't been broken into more chunks yet considering that they would dominate politics in Australia to an absurd degree
 
You've got it. Antonovich's announcement that the RZ is now the Russian Empire has resulted in virtually no practical changes to the lives of everyday people or the structure of government (beyond the replacement of the ruling committee with a a single dictator) other than the rhetoric and the ideological justification for government actions. There's been a small purge of civilian officials who were too loyal to Geoism and the old government, but the Russian Empire hasn't even fully swapped out the old flags and unit insignia for its military, and many Russian soldiers are still fighting under green Geoist symbols. The primary purpose of switching from Geoism to Societism was to persuade Drakia to intervene in the war.

---
So I'm sorry about the delay on the next chapter- work has been a little intense lately and the next chapter is fighting me a little. I know where I want the war to end, it's getting there that's the challenge.
No worries on the update time! You've been putting out updates of amazing quality for this whole timeline, I think we can all wait a little bit.

I'd love to try and contribute something to this timeline, would you be open to that? That Turkey one was awesome and it's kind of inspired me.
 
This is a really minor point but I'm honestly surprised New South Wales hasn't been broken into more chunks yet considering that they would dominate politics in Australia to an absurd degree

That's a good point and something that I totally missed. Erm, would you buy that New South Wales doesn't want to be broken up and because it dominate Australian politics so much its managed to keep that from happening?

No worries on the update time! You've been putting out updates of amazing quality for this whole timeline, I think we can all wait a little bit.

I'd love to try and contribute something to this timeline, would you be open to that? That Turkey one was awesome and it's kind of inspired me.

Thank you. :)

Please, I welcome contributions! Just run it by me first so we can make sure that it's cannon.

How are the relations between Drakia and Britain now that both are societists?

Well each one thinks that it's better than the other one, but they need each other too much to have any real problems. Close friends and allies.
 
That's a good point and something that I totally missed. Erm, would you buy that New South Wales doesn't want to be broken up and because it dominate Australian politics so much its managed to keep that from happening?

I would think that the terms involved with this alt-Australian Federation would involve NSW at least breaking itself up into 2 or more chunks to avoid it dominating the other states, plus there's always the issue of local sentiment in breaking off from Sydney * and with backing from the other states they just might get it to stick
 
I would think that the terms involved with this alt-Australian Federation would involve NSW at least breaking itself up into 2 or more chunks to avoid it dominating the other states, plus there's always the issue of local sentiment in breaking off from Sydney * and with backing from the other states they just might get it to stick

Yeah, NSW with the whole east coast is a good 75+% of the entire population. NSW isn't dominating Australia so much as being Australia. No chance of it staying one thing, and very little of just two. Sydney wouldn't particular want to run the whole country itself either, unless federalism is a lot less popular ITTL.

Great story though! Really enjoying this and the casual style works well, in particular given how... pulpy the source material is. Love me some Draka.
 
Interlude: Same as the Old Boss
Hello all! I was given permission by EBR to post this little interlude, a little snapshot of the regime changes in Russia. I hope you enjoy it!

Same As The Old Boss…

December 27th, 1939
Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka, The New Russian Empire

Chief Inspector Pyotr Rashkovsky took a drag on his Drakian cigarette as the professor was dragged from the University’s main building, the bespectacled intellectual shrieking as he was pulled by his hair down the stone stairs leading up to the shattered front doors. Much like his predecessor, during the last revolution.

Don’t you know who I am, you fools? I-” His bleating was silenced by a rifle butt smashing him in the face, dropping him like a sack of rocks. The two men, members of the new Domestic Intelligence Service put in place by the Vozhd, stepped back as the Chief Inspector approached the now kneeling man. The professor looked up at Pyotr through shattered glasses, cradling his equally broken nose.

I don’t… I don’t understand, I was given this position by the Homeland Education Minister himself, it,” The rat faced intellectual gulped as Pytor removed the battered old handgun from the inside of his battered old greatcoat, cigarette falling to the ground and crushed without a second thought. “…It doesn’t make sense, please…”

By this point, a crowd of students and faculty had gathered around, or been gathered by the DIS men accompanying their Chief Inspector. Pyotr cleared his throat, and spoke in that monotone, rasping voice.

Subjects of the New Russian Empire!” A small wave of shock washed through the crowd at that; this was a University meant to educate the next line of officials and commissars for the Rodina Zemlya, so the party line was law here. “I am the Chief Inspector for the D.I.S. in this province. During this time of transition, my word is law. Now, your Head Professor here…” He punctuated that with a kick to the gut of the professor. “…Has been found to reject the new laws put in place by His Excellency the Vozhd-” The professor grabbed at Pyotr's foot, sniveling and pleading, before getting another boot for his trouble. Pyotr gestured to his men with his free hand, who grabbed the man by the shoulders and hauled him to his knees.

As I was saying. His mental failings cannot be allowed to spread, and any found on this campus to share his views must be removed, if the aims of the Vozhd are to be achieved and this war won! And so, he and all like him must be removed from our new Society.” He punctuated this by turning, deftly raising the handgun, and pulling the trigger.

The professor went limp, his brains splattering on the steps, and was let fall by the stone faced DIS men. The crowd was shocked, murmurs spreading before silencing themselves as the Chief Inspector turned back to them. “Now, should any of you find evidence of your peers disagreeing with the aims of the Vozhd, please report them to the Campus Inspector. In the meantime, we ask for your patience as a revised curriculum will be distributed soon. Now… please, disperse.”

Pyotr relaxed as all the students quickly dispersed, motivated by the soldiers pushing and shoving them; he doubted they’d see the "updated" curriculum, most of them would probably be sent to the front soon. As he walked across the stone steps towards his state issued automobile, he found himself ruminating on how easy that speech had been. He’d given a similar one, with different talking points, during the first revolution, on this very campus, when he’d shot the last Head Professor as a fresh faced young commissar.

He chuckled to himself as he slipped into the back seat, his driver pulling away. Funny how it worked out like that.
 
Chapter 27
Separated at Birth I Pic CLIII.jpg

Chapter 27

Buoyant from his victory over Spain, Lindsey Stoker signed off on Drakian intervention into the Great Patriotic War.

Fortunately for him the Empire’s armed forces had been building up in the Near East for a while by that point- just in case- and its naval and air forces were well-positioned in North Africa and Sardinia for a fight over the Mediterranean. The tricky bit was going to be Rhomania, which hosted a small Drakian military presence but that presence would need to be substantially reinforced if the Empire was going to keep the Pan-Europeans from occupying the smaller Societist country, let alone use it as a springboard to invade Central Europe. Bringing in reinforcements however, risked tipping off Berlin that Drakia was about to make its move, and could result in the Pact striking first.

Drakia did what it could to quietly beef-up its presence in Rhomania (with the knowledge and co-operation of the Rhomanian government)…

Separated at Birth Dice XIII.PNG


… while the Pan-European kept a weather eye out in case of the Societist bloc, despite being distracted in Russia…

Separated at Birth Dice VII.PNG


…and caught what was going on only after two full legions of the Noble Race with over 30,000 men had been disembarked from their ships and were moving into position. The Pan-Europeans had maintained second-line forces in the west that they calculated were sufficient to hold defensive positions if Drakia attacked, but not enough to spearhead an invasion. Instead the Pact diverted every plane it could from the Eastern Front for a massive chemical and biological attack against Rhomania and Drakia. If they could just delay the Societists long enough to muster the forces needed for a real offensive, then the liberation of the Balkans might be at hand. Drakia replied with incendiary, chemical, and biological attacks of its own, flying planes out of Sardinia, the Balearic Islands, Spain, Rhomania, and North Africa, as conventional forces confronted each other along the Rhomanian frontier.

It was the first mass use of biological weapons in the Great Patriotic War. The Russian bioweapons program was crude, and the Pan-Europeans hadn’t wanted to use biological warfare in areas where their goal was to cultivate friendly civilian populations. But Drakia led the world in creating biological weapons and Germany’s own arsenal was nothing to dismiss. Both countries had good public health systems and extensive programs in place to protect their populations in case of outbreaks.

Separated at Birth I Pic CLIV.jpg

Drakian soldiers in the Balkans prepare to deploy for combat in protective gear.

The Battle of the Mediterranean was a massive fight for control over the water and air of the Mediterranean Sea. Most of the Pan-European Pact was within range of Drakian bombers, while the Drakian Near East and the northern third of Africa was within range of European ones. Dozens of new agents were released on cities, on water sources, on agricultural lands, and on military and civilian populations.

It was a battle for supremacy that would last for over a year.

In the meantime, the conventional war continued. The Drakian Army forced the German army group that had broken into Georgia to retreat back to the Greater Caucasus Mountains where the two armies fought each other tooth and nail over control of the mountain passes. In Russia the city of Perm fell to the Pan-Europeans, but the Pact’s offensive largely ground to a halt otherwise as it redistributed its forces to the fight against Drakia and Rhomania. The new Russian Empire focused on a war of raids and skirmishes, little battles that bled men and resources from the Rex invaders, while also fighting to put down rebels in Central Asia. The Pan-Europeans crossed into the Balkans as reinforcements trickled in from the east, but Societist reinforcements trickled in as well to help Byzantium Reborn hold the line. Slavic civilians in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Croatia welcomed the Pan-Europeans as liberators, but their homelands were now the front line for a devastating modern war.

In Great Britain Lancelot Susan and the British Societists completed an auto-coup in early 1940 that removed the remaining non-Societist figures from government and ended the last checks on their power. King Edward VII was forced to flee to the Bahamas when the conventionally conservative monarch opposed the Societist dictator, Susan left the throne empty and dropped the title of “Prime Minister” in favor of “High Chancellor”. The United Kingdom of Great Britain entered the Great Patriotic War, opening another front for the confrontation at sea, and making the fight for the air that much bloodier.

In Italy Arthur Klein penned his “Cassandra Letter” to the President of Italy.

Separated at Birth I Pic CLII.png

British military police secure political dissidents in Scotland during Susan's autocoup.

Meanwhile, the Great Pacific War ground on.

South America was now fully involved in prosecuting the war for the Grand Alliance- particularly La Plata and Brazil who had begun the decade with respectable navies to build off of. On the other hand India shifted from being the junior partner in the Asia-Pacific League of Friendship to carrying much of the burden of the war in place of a Japan that suffered increasingly at the hands of America biological and chemical attacks. It was the massive Indian Army that smashed its way through Persian defensive lines, and as the Americans redirected their resources to the Pacific, it was the Indian Navy that opened the way for the final occupation and annexation of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. In September of 1940 Persian resistance began to collapse and the Shah sued for peace, dropping out of the Grand Alliance and submitting to Indian occupation.

At that point Japan had finished occupying Insulindia and was going ahead with its landings in northern Australia and New Guinea.

The attacks were meant as bait- Japanese intelligence had an asset in the US Navy, a Korean-American junior officer alienated by TTL’s higher degree of anti-Asian racism in the United States, who was able to feed them information about American fleet locations when a joint US-Australian-Platinean force sailed in to crush the Japanese landing at Stokes (OTL Darwin). The Grand Alliance fleet found far more in the way of Japanese forces awaiting them than they had expected, including a large chunk of the IJN diverted from the Central Pacific. The ensuing Battle of the Arafura Sea came as a shockingly one-sided Japanese victory and ended with Japan capturing both the city of Stokes (the only part of Australia proper to be occupied during the war) and the Bird’s Head Peninsula. While the Battle of the Arafura Sea was far from the last naval battle of the war it was the last truly major battle with its outcome in question, battles fought with long-range airpower would predominate for the rest of the Great Pacific War, with land and naval forces moving to engage enemy units that had been devastated by aerial attacks.

Separated at Birth I Pic CV.jpg

Jets dogfighting during the Battle of the Arafura Sea.

Instead the rest of 1940 and the start of 1941 was characterized by larger and larger air battles, waged from the Australian Outback to the Hawaiian Islands, to the Japanese Home Islands, to the Alaskan Panhandle and the Golden Gate Bay. Often the fight for control of the air occurred over nothing more than a random bit of ocean, scattering the Pacific with broken flying machines and the dead bodies of brave Japanese and American young men and women (really it was just America putting female pilots in combat positions, Japan permitted women in non-combat flying roles but kept the “mothers of the next generation” out of harm’s way when possible). Both sides dumped different types of poisons on each other’s soldiers, both conducted general strategic bombings whenever they could.

There were no breakthroughs in the Pacific, no sudden shifts in the balance of power. Just America trying to overcome Japan with superior industry and Japan and India trying to beat America with superior numbers. No one held a technological advantage, no one had noticeably better commanders.

The USA had already begun interning Japanese-Americans at the start of the war, the revelation at the end of 1940 that a handful of non-Japanese Asian-Americans had been working for Kyoto prompted mass internment of Asian-Americans from other ethnicities. In Central America Federal policies towards Centroamérican resistance grew harsher in face of wartime exigency.

At least the Grand Alliance could claim a few victories- in Stokes (OTL Darwin) was liberated in December- and an attempt by the Japanese to expand their control of New Guinea from the Bird’s Head to the rest of the island was bloodily repulsed.

The war remained a stalemate, but surely thought President Vincent Connolly newly elected on a platform of prosecuting the war until victory was won, surely if they just held on long enough then American industry would turn the tide.

Separated at Birth Z I.jpg

An apartment block burning during the firebombing of Honolulu.
 
Last edited:
The Draka and British need to put Germany and the Rex bloc on full blockade.
Rex trade through the Med is now cut off. And the RN can threaten the Rex trade through Atlantic.

However, Italy and France (especially France who is both Rex-leaning and an US ally) are acting as neutral trade gateways for Germany.
And with that, the Rex can hold on and stop any Societist invasion indefinitely.

Moreover, it's likely that France will join the Rex in war if it looks like Central Europe is going to be overrun, and the Grand Alliance (from Italy and Turkey) might decide to intervene and NOT let Europe fall.
But at the very least, France won't want to be isolated among a Societist Europe.

As a result, the Draka and British need to invade France and Italy, or at least extend the blockade to them. Both to cut off Rex trade and to remove the French and Alliance risk of intervention on their flanks.

And since doing that will involve the US and Grand Alliance into the war, they also need to preemptively invade Ireland and Turkey. (Which also fits with British revanchism).

Fortunately for the Societists, the USA and Grand Alliance are busy (and getting hammered) in Asia and Oceania. So it's the best possible time to invade Turkey, Italy, Ireland and France, to remove those US-aligned daggers pointed at the Societist bloc.
 
Last edited:
Seems like by the end of this, India is going to be in better shape than Japan! But then, they are far closer to the Drakians. Perhaps the conflict shall merge together, with an unspoken alliance of convenience between America and Drakia?

After the latter has secured its position in Europe, I could see them invading Persia, since it’s obviously in turmoil with an Indian invasion.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top