Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread III

The German Gunboat whose crew called the Little Greyhound was cruising on a parallel course to the Greek Flotilla. Her Captain had been unable to hide his disgust over how events had played out, the German Prince had gone on and on about unforeseen consequences. As if the Germans had any room to complain about the actions of those who lived in the Balkans. Anthypaspistis Fotios Papadopoulos was certain that it had not been a coincidence that many leaders of revanchist political parties throughout Europe had ended up dead back in the 30’s, particularly in France and Italy. It was an action that Fotios completely understood. They had known that they were going to be fighting for their lives against the Soviets and couldn’t afford to have an enemy at their back. The Greek situation was no different and like with the Soviets, Fotios knew damn well that if the other side had been the victors, they would have been far less merciful.

Fotios looked at the rust covered hull of the freighter as it slowly passed the ships of the Greek Navy, just one of the hodgepodge of old freighters he had seen over the prior days. It was a sign of the resounding victory that the Hellenic Empire had achieved and Fotios wasn’t finding nearly as satisfying as he had thought it would be. The Turks had started this war at a time when the Greeks and their Allies had been prepared to end it. The terms of the ceasefire that the Greeks had imposed involved the Turks taking the refugees from territories formerly known as Albania and Bosnia. Anyone from those people who wished to remain were more than welcome to, they just did it with the understanding that no one would stop the various other people they had been at war with for centuries from killing them.

It was a brutal but necessary action. The Croatians might be the wrong sort of Christians for example, at least they weren’t heathens like the Turks and those who were allied with them. There was simply no living with them.
What territorial changes are happening here? Are Bosnia and Albania losing their independence entirely? Bosnia is being partitioned between Croatia and Serbia, while Albania is being partitioned between Serbia and Greece, correct?
 
This timeline really are harsh toward muslim's majority country, the only somewhat prosperous said country probably only Turkey with deep revanischm toward greece which probably tanked their economy, OTL north african countries, indian subcontinent, southeast asia are still under european colonization. Meanwhile other muslim's majority countries in middle east are locked in tribal and city state warfare between each other.
 
Without TTL's WWII that basically put the final nail in the coffin of the British Empire, India will not have the cliff edge independence and partition it went through OTL. Likewise, we don't know too much about Africa beyond South Africa which appears to be heading into the German sphere of influence as Asutralia did in the first thread.

There's hardly been a mention of the middle east, so we can't really level that accusation at this timeline or it's writer.

As for Turkey, we're only 7 years from the OTL time of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, so its not too much of a reach for a Russian backed* Turkey to harbour revanchist tendancies against a successful** Greece, (although we don't know a huge amount about Greek politics ITTL, but they seem to be just as dickish as you feel the Turks are being portrayed, in enabling the ethnic cleansing of the Balkans of Muslims).

* backed enough to get adventurous and look at Greece, and therefore not being a threat to Russia.

** For a given value of successful, which doesn’t seem very successful now it has the Balkans tar baby to wrestle with.
 
There has been so many butterflies in this timeline that it is impossible for anyone especially the author to keep track of.
With no Nazis, Great Britain,France, and the Netherlands don't go broke and are able to divest rises from their colonies at their own pace and terms.
I have learned from other threads that the leaders of Indonesian independence worked with the Japanese IOTL WW II and afterwards the United States supported them against the Dutch.
The leading supporter of decolonization was the United States and ITTL they are nowhere as rich and powerful as they were IOTL and the other countries can just ignore them.
No North African campaign coupled with no Mussolilni means that Italy still has Libya and maybe there is a kind of homesteading program that encourages Italians to move there and maybe oil is discovered earlier.
No Holocaust IOTL means that the driving force to create Israel is not there but there should be a more steady growth of Jews moving in to the Palestinian Mandate but nowhere near the OTL levels
Other factors are the Ibn Said does not gain control of Mecca and Medina and that blunts the Wahhabism influence on Islam.
With the defeat of the Soviet Union the world does not become divided in to a Two Superpowers conflict.
This timeline has been a wild ride through the Twentieth Century and that means sometimes things are leff unsaid.
 
Ejpsan sorry for bringing that up but I fully agree you came out better. And btw it had been a cheap Christmas present.
Don't be sorry the cliche of a father taking his son to a brothel for his first time is actually real and cuts along generations and cultures and for a further background to this story my father was raised in a household full of women where he was the only male.
In 1946 he joined the USN when he was seventeen and he was sent to Guam for his first duty assignment where the Master Chief as part of the unofficial orientation would take the young sailor to the local brothel, pay for the night entertainment and then tell the young sailor to go to this place instead of bothering the local girls, so for my father the first real role model of what father does for his son was formed by that Master Chief, what my father didn't know was that he raised me to be better then that.
 
Part 110, Chapter 1814
Chapter One Thousand Eight Hundred Fourteen



4th September 1967

Mitte, Berlin

Meeting with Louis Ferdinand regarding the latest awfulness out of the Balkans was not Kat’s idea of fun. It seemed like every effort to prevent that conflict had ultimately proven futile as all sides had wanted war. From Kat’s perspective, the effort to contain the conflict had only succeeded in choosing the victor. At the League of Nations, the Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian delegations had been thoroughly unrepentant over what had happened, sneering at the allegations of engaging in what was now being termed as ethnic cleansing. They had smugly pointed out that what they had done and would continue to do was no different than the French removing undesirables from their country back in the Twenties, completely ignoring the detail that even if what the French had done was right, the French hadn’t invaded France and then spent months killing everyone in sight. The Greek Ambassador had even gone so far as to say that all that was happening was the righting of a wrong committed in the Fifteenth Century by the Ottomans. The new worry was that the Greeks might be setting their sights on the remaining islands in the Eastern Mediterranean that they had historic claims to. Not even they would be insane enough to pick a fight with a nuclear power like the British Empire, or at least that was the hope.

The entire conversation had been corrosive and like everyone else, Louis had concluded that they were left with few good options in this situation. So, it was hardly a surprise that Louis had changed the subject to the return of Nella and Nan. How they had started the new school term and their Teacher being a bit skeptical after hearing their extremely fanciful version of where they had been over the Summer Holiday. He had then asked how Kat’s children were and that had been an entirely different conversation.

Kat sending her children off to another school term had been a reminder of the passage of time. Both Tatiana and Malcolm were sixteen, which meant that they could hardly be considered children anymore. Tatiana seemed intent on being contrary to Kat. While her rebelliousness didn’t seem to extend to academics, every time she had a choice to make, no matter how minor, it felt like she made decisions with an eye on what would aggravate her mother the most. Malcolm had spent a long time struggling academically due to his dyslexia and while he was unlikely to develop a love of literature his younger sister had, he had overcome many of his early difficulties. High level Mathematics were where Malcolm had discovered that he shined.

Finally, there was Marie, who Kat had a hard time not thinking of her as a small child was eleven and had grown noticeably taller over the summer. That had been clear when Kat had gone to speak with Kiki regarding the medical emergency that she had been forced to deal with back in July. There were still questions being asked about the ethics involved and this had provided an opening for her critics. Kat had been asked to help her formulate the public response. Kat had been in the middle of that conversation with Kiki when Marie had walked into the Great Hall at Hohenzollern Castle and the poised young woman that she was becoming was completely at odds with Kat’s image of her. Kat had realized that Marie was reaching an age when that poise along with her equilibrium and confidence were going to be taking a real beating. All Kat could do was hope that the often-painful process of growing up wouldn’t radically change who Marie was as a person.

The thing that Kat didn’t discuss with Louis was Suse’s longstanding fear that she would become her mother. This had been brought to a head by her getting back together with Kat’s nephew Manfred. It seemed that someone had made a few suggestions of what they could do to minimize risk involved and Manfred had apparently taken them to heart. He had grown up around his mother, Helene, as well as Kat herself, and what would happen to him if he failed to be properly respectful to women had been drilled into his head from the time he was a child. While it would be foolish to assume that Manfred had not been involved with a few girls before Suse and so far, he had handled things with her with a great deal of understanding. What he had done though… And Suse’s reaction. To her complete mortification, she had enjoyed it.

The situation wasn’t like Gerta’s tendency to give someone too much information because it amused to her. Instead Kat had told Suse that her experience was actually normal, and she had asked how Kat knew that. Kat had told Suse the truth. That when Gerta had been pregnant with her, Kat had a scare after a condom had broken which had resulted in her and Doug having to be creative for a while until she got past it. That entire talk with Suse had reminded Kat as to how big a mess she had been two decades earlier. She also had refrained from mentioning that it had been Gerta who had made several suggestions as to what Kat and Doug could be doing as opposed to what she referred to as Kat’s boring, vanilla personal life. She figured that Suse really didn’t want to know that part.
 
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I have bad feelings about what is going on in the Balkans.
With Greece and Serbia being aligned with Russia this may have been a test of the resolve of the LoN to intervene in such crisis and the LoN failed.

My nightmare scenario is that Russia is pressuring the former parts of the Russian Empire\Soviet Union to rejoin Russia in one form or another.
We still don't have any details of any peace treaty that happened after the ITTL WW II and that could mean that Russia and Finland could still technically be at war with each other and St, Petersburg could be in artillery range of the Finnish Army.
So far ITTL there hasn't been the use of nuclear weapons in combat and they may still be regarded as just bigger versions of the bombs that was used on Kure.
We also don't know if Russia has a nuclear weapons program and their space program could have been a ruse to develop ballistic missiles that carry nuclear warheads.
So the questions become will Germany sacrifice Hamburg for Helsinki, will Great Britain sacrifice Edinburgh for Nicosia?
 
Part 110, Chapter 1815
Chapter One Thousand Eight Hundred Fifteen



7th September 1967

Reinickendorf, Berlin

Spending the summer in the Hohenzollern Castle, Sophie’s return to her normal life had not been easy. There, all the girls had worn the same clothes and gone about the same daily routine, so they had all seen themselves as equals. Now she was back to being the strange little girl in the old, ill-fitting clothes who no one liked. The clothes had been her mother’s from when she had attended school twenty years earlier and Sophie had been told that she ought to be grateful that they had been provided to her.

The sun was setting which meant that Sophie was out of excuses, she needed to go home. It had gotten especially bad since she had returned from the Summer Holiday which was why she had taken to spending her afternoons just walking wherever her feet would take her. Before she had left for the castle her family had been gleeful at the prospect of having her being gone for a month. What she hadn’t expected was the icy reception she got upon returning. Her mother had been especially livid, and Sophie didn’t understand why. The first day back she tried to tell her the story about the lightning storm, how the wind had blown open the window and that had even startled Marie who was very brave… Her mother had looked at her with rage in her eyes and told that no one cared, so she needed to forget about it.

Walking up the stairs of her building, Sophie looked at the door of the apartment which her grandparents had lived in for decades. It was where Sophie and her mother lived as well, though she had struggled to call it home when she had described it to Nan and Nella. Using her key to unlock the door, Sophie eased the door open just enough to slip through. The blue glow meant that the television was on in the parlor and she could hear her grandfather grumbling about the day’s events. The smell of the cheap cigarettes her grandfather smoked hung in the air. How Jews and Communists, or whatever they were calling themselves these days, were ruining the world. When Sophie had described it to Marie, her friend had said that it sounded like her grandfather blamed everyone but himself for things. That had been when she had realized that her grandfather was an embarrassment. Her grandmother never said a word these days and probably couldn’t even if she wanted to. Sophie had once heard her mother say that she had suffered a stroke, whatever that meant.

Making sure that she was silent, Sophie moved slowly down the hallway careful to make sure she wouldn’t be seen from the parlor. The door to her bedroom was only a few paces away, just get inside unnoticed, close the door and she would be as free as she ever was here in this place. She could see that the light was on in the kitchen but couldn’t hear movement. Darting past the door to the kitchen, Sophie closed her hand around the doorknob…

Only to get grabbed by the ear and dragged into the kitchen. Sophie’s attempt to get her mother to let go caused her mother to twist her ear causing her to howl in pain. Sophie was roughly shoved onto one of the kitchen chairs.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done!” Sophie’s mother yelled at her while waving a letter around. “You’re a goddamned wrecking ball destroying everyone cursed enough to have you!”

Sophie had no idea what her mother was talking about.

“What did you tell them?” Sophie’s mother demanded, “And don’t you dare lie to me!”

Sophie didn’t dare say a word, she knew from painful experience that once she was accused of lying then nothing she said would be believed.

“A routine medical examination on your daughter revealed that she was malnourished and her reactions in certain situations causes us to suspect abuse!” Sophie’s mother read aloud from the letter before giving her a venomous look.

“I don’t know when…” Sophie started to say, only to get slapped hard across the face, she didn’t want to but the pain and shock of that caused her to start crying. She had no idea what her mother was talking about. There had been the time that she had cut herself helping the Cooks in the castle’s kitchens and she had been brought to Princess Kristina to see if she needed stitches, she hadn’t. After that Kristina had given her a carton of chocolate milk and told her to go join the other girls. But that didn’t sound like a medical exam. Sophie had seen those on television, and they involved going into a Doctor’s office. Didn’t they?

“My God” Sophie’s mother snapped, “We give you food, but you don’t eat it. Now you see fit to lie to Doctors about your family.”

One of Sophie’s bitterest lessons revolved around food. She had eaten something without permission and had been severely punished for it. Since then she had rarely taken anything from the pantry or refrigerator. And because what passed family meals with her family were absolutely excruciating Sophie took as little as possible so that she wouldn’t have to hear about how she was a drag on them, another mouth to feed.

“You have been ruining my life since before you were born” Sophie’s mother said, “One thing after another, now this? You’re pathetic!”

Her mother punctuated that last part by hitting Sophie on the side of her head hard enough to send her sprawling out of the chair.

“Will you keep it down in there!” Sophie’s grandfather bellowed from the parlor, which caused one of the neighbors to start pounding on the wall.

“Where are your little friends now?” Sophie’s mother asked coldly to her as she lay on the kitchen floor crying, before walking out of the room.
 
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“A routine medical examination on your daughter revealed that she was malnourished and her reactions in certain situations causes us to suspect abuse!” Sophie’s mother read aloud from the letter before giving her a venomous look.
When the fuck are social & child protective services ANYWHERE going to get a fucking clue on how to interact with abusive families like this? Because they are STILL acting this way in OTL 2020. Sure, they mean well & have good intentions and all that, but sending a letter like that to an abusive family is an absurdly stupid thing to do when the child is still in parental custody. II know that these letters are intended to be a warning shot across the bows, possibly to be followed up by a future visit, to get the family to "mend its ways". And sometimes, that might even work. More likely, it just causes the family to close ranks and lie their arses off to keep the interfering busybodies out of their business. Then there is the increased risk to the child ( or children), more neglect and/or increasing levels of violence for "lying" to the government people and drawing the attention of those same authorities.

As illustrated above, this letter has put Sophie in greater danger. She is now even less likely to speak out to people in any type of authority, at school or during a social worker visit, due to fear of her parents. She is also at greater risk of running away because she has now had a taste of life outside of her family. If she does run, she is at greater risk of falling into the hands of a predator. Although, if she is really lucky, the predator in question will be a certain Tiger.

Hopefully, Sophie has the contact information of her "little friends" and does reach out to them. Kids in her position need a tremendous amount of the good type stupid luck & happenstance, because they sure as hell have had more than enough of the bad type.
 
This timeline really are harsh toward muslim's majority country, the only somewhat prosperous said country probably only Turkey with deep revanischm toward greece which probably tanked their economy, OTL north african countries, indian subcontinent, southeast asia are still under european colonization. Meanwhile other muslim's majority countries in middle east are locked in tribal and city state warfare between each other.
Turkey is, and has been, in pretty bad state since the Ottoman collapse, having lost all of its Black Sea and Aegean coastline to Greece and (probably) Russia. I vaguely remember an update about Turks attempting to flee across the Aegean to Greece. I would argue that it's no better than whatever TTL Syria or Lebanon is like, possibly even worse.

Persia/Iran seems to be okay.
 
Turkey is, and has been, in pretty bad state since the Ottoman collapse, having lost all of its Black Sea and Aegean coastline to Greece and (probably) Russia. I vaguely remember an update about Turks attempting to flee across the Aegean to Greece. I would argue that it's no better than whatever TTL Syria or Lebanon is like, possibly even worse.

Persia/Iran seems to be okay.
If i'm not wrong persian is semi independent but still controlled by british. The last i read about british colonial empire was news article about unrest in india being read by Kat as part of briefing toward kiki's late mother. The mid 50s bit lost to me.
 
There is so much so more that is going on with Sophie then we are being told, that said when we get the next updates we are going to be shocked over the reason for it.
i have my own theory that it has something to do with whoever Sophie's father is but for once I am,going to keep it to myself.
 
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