So egotistical. You would never see me doing something like that on May 9th.
The Great Crusade (Reds! Part 3)
- Thread starter Aelita
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So egotistical. You would never see me doing something like that on May 9th.
Sorry, it's hard to tell on the internet, especially when there are not any emotioncons on the post.
Anyway, happy birthday E. Burke
So. Australia will I suspect be one of the worse white commonwealth areas in terms of the racial nature of their opposition to communism. But New Zealand I'm going to guess is much worse. In part because New Zealand is always happy go lucky no problems island. A severe conflict between Anglo New Zealanders and Zapata influenced Maori rebels would give the island a needed dose of interest. Especially if Indonesia is as much of a hotbed of conflict as Jello seems to imply.
E. Burke
Banned
What about the Philippines, given that IOTL it is home to one of the longest running communist insurgencies I can't imagine it being peaceful here
As far as native populations go, the Maori are probably one of the best treated in British history. That's not exactly saying much, but whereas Australia was repugnantly and repeatedly awful in every way to its natives, the Maori were to some degree; respected. They're still in many ways not equal to the Anglo-kiwi population, generally being poorer and most not speaking their native language, but generally speaking, the Maori were seen as conquered subjects with citizenship and rights; the Aboriginals were seen as animals.
Plus the Maori only make up what...10% of the population? Zapatan/Maoist insurgencies require popular support to succeed. It'd be fairly hard to get an insurgency to really get anywhere when it's focused around such a small minority; with maybe some local successes here and there but ultimately they'd need a Pan-Kiwi (Perkunas that's such a weird term) support base if they want to actually establish a People's Republic of New Zealand.
Given how the only likely power to liberate the Phillipines ITTL is America id expect it to be a Communist Country from the end of the war on. It's probably actually the Comminterns staging area for much of their attempts at subversion and expansion of the communist sphere.
What I meant is more a situation of the Maori being like the OTL Zapatistas, native rebels fighting mostly for their own autonomy which is part of a larger demand for communist transformation; but which is mostly left to others to fully enact.
The OTL Maoris had a surprisingly enthusiastic turnout for volunteers to serve in both world wars for a native population with many feeling that it was quote "the price of citizenship" unquote. They were one of the least discontented subject peoples of the British Empire and have assimilated pretty well into Kiwi society. Whereas aboriginal culture is basically an after thought in Australia, Maori culture is practically celebrated in tolkienland. I'm having doubts that the Maoris, whom the New Zealand government tended to treat quite well, would have enough discontent people to make a Zapatan movement much more than a flash in the pan. If your popular movement isn't popular, it's soon not going to be a movement.
Like, if the OTL Maoists couldn't make even mild grumblings in the New Zealand islands, I'm not seeing how the Zapatans could find purchase. There are reasons as to why New Zealand's history is so boring. Ones not easily altered by what's happened here. It's not a country that lends itself well to anything of global note happening. It's too far away from anyone hostile to ever be invaded, it's too homogenous to have sectarian violence, and its resource situation and the economy it has built itself around is stable enough to avert most serious crises. It's a very unlikely theater for any conflict, even the cold war beyond the labour and communist parties being more rallied by the greater successes of democratic communism.
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This isn't Warhammer 40,000 where everything must suck forever and the Tyranids are going to eat us all. There's going to be good and bad in every place. Sometimes a lot more of one over the other.
It's more that New Zealand is always pretty uneventful and nice in all other timelines. So something happening ITTL just feels like it'd be bucking a trend. And I've otherwise been in favor of places like the Phillipines getting a better deal than OTL. So really I just like things being different. Not grim dark. I also think China deserves more content given how underdeveloped it is.
China in the Second World War Part 1 by Red Star Rising
If you want to make New Zealand an eventful place you need to take away the thing that let's it be so uneventful, which means putting someone hostile close to it or giving it a rather different 19th century. The reason why the old Warsaw pact joke of accidentally blowing up New Zealand by falling asleep at the nuclear launch panels and then shrugging it off as unimportant resonates so well is because ultimately; New Zealand really is that geopolitically unimportant and remote. It's not even in a particularly strategic location.
Anyway; ask about China and you shall receive. This will be but one part of it, I'll be sure to write more.
Excerpt from China in the Second world war by General (class AAAAA) Leang*
China entered the 20th century as a broken power torn apart by European and Japanese Imperialism. With little confidence in the state following a disastrous defeat at the hands of Imperial Japan in the prior century and continued mismanagement; China's liberal revolution was essentially inevitable. In 1911; Sun Yat-Sen declared a time for no more Emperors and once and for all broke with China's four thousand year long history of royal and Imperial dynasties. Though there was tremendous optimism for this new government; factionalism and internal strife would cause the newfound Republic to break apart. The Beiyang Clique would force him to resign from Presidency and he would spend much of the rest of his life trying to oppose the warlords who seized control over so much of China. When he died, the Chinese Communist party engaged in a split from the Kuomintang that would last for decades before common cause was found again.
For the first period of post Sun-Yat Sen relationships, the Kuomintang and Communist Party of China were bitter enemies just as they were to the various other warlords who helped to turn China into a land where the only metric of authority was the number of armed thugs and riches a warlord could claim to have. A matter not helped by Yuan Shikai's death encouraging the collapse of Chinese governance into a catastrophic period of neo-feudalistic banditry as the assorted members of the armed forces carved out their own fiefdoms in eastern China while the western provinces fell to their own cliques, gangs, and strongmen. Though the first period of warlordism would end with Jiang Jieshi's pronouncement of Chinese reunification in 1928, much of the country remained uncontrolled and a bitter struggle with the CCP and the warlords would continue onwards.
The first seeds of a reunited China would arise with Japan's invasion and occupation of Manchuria. The Japanese forces; under the command of General Shigeru Honjō of the Kwantung army, acted without the wishes of the Japanese civilian government or high command to respond to the Wanpaoshan and Mukden incidents and act in a manner he saw as beneficial to Japan; launched an invasion of Manchuria. The National Revolutionary Army proved to be entirely unsuited to the task as acting Governor General Ma Zhanshan, himself a fierce Muslim Patriot; disregarded orders to allow the Japanese through without resistance; sought to stop the Japanese incursion by any means possible. The Japanese conduct, in contrast to prior conflicts Japan had engaged in; had proven to be quite brutal and merciless with the terror bombing of civilians and shelling already fatigued survivors becoming dishearteningly common place.
The League of Nations' half-hearted rebuke of the action would lead to Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations and help to further Japan's isolation from the international community. This easy victory combined with Japan's rebuke from the west would serve to help make the decision for Japan to further its Imperial ambitions all the easier. After all; at this point Japan had not lost a war since the Meiji restoration and had easily triumphed over the likes of China and Imperial Germany and humiliated Imperial Russia in its own backyard. The increasingly prevailing belief among Japanese officers was that Japan was invincible and and had the winds of fate to guide it to victory upon victory and establish the greatest empire the world had ever seen. And Manchuria would be the crown jewel in this new empire under a puppet state "ruled" by the last of the Qing Emperors; Puyi.
From this puppet, the Kwantung army would one day launch its attack on the rest of China. While the Second Sino-Japanese war is often compared to the war in the Soviet Union that started three years later or the South American theaters of the war, particularly in its massive scale and the depths of the suffering of civilians; the start of the war is rather unique. It was not started due to the orders of the governments of either state, but due to the lack of control Japan and China had over their own armies before escalating into something much worse. Much like the occupation of Manchuria, this actually started from a series of incidents that would result in full scale war being launched. Actions made by a number of actors surprisingly far removed from the heights of command would draw countries that, had history gone differently; may have become unified in an anti-comintern reactionary alliance; into one of history's bloodiest and most savage wars.
At this point Jiang Jieshi was still an ardent anti-communist and had used his reactionary credentials to build a power base by fighting communism, "fighting" communism, and fighting "communism". He had hoped to unite the country by eliminating communism to ease political tensions in his party by eliminating the left of the Kuomintang and crush the CCP and by 1936 seemed to be close to his objective. Furthermore, by putting troops out of his regionally controlled areas and into other provinces to deal with CCP forces; he was frequently able to bully warlords into following his line and supporting his campaigns, and when he was victorious; he would be in a good position to eliminate them as well. He had entrusted one such operation in Ya'nan to Zhang Xueliang.
However, Zhang had personal reasons to mistrust the Japanese, his father once controlled the lands they had under puppet governments and sought to reprioritize China's priorities from its civil war to its focus on Japan, a foe that the Chinese people were eager to engage in a revanchist war with. With the help of American diplomatic pressure and some cloak and dagger, Zhang was able to get the CCP and Kuomintang to negotiate in spite of the Kuomintang's fears that it was not prepared for a war with Japan. In July the seventh of 1937, a Japanese soldier went missing at the Marco Polo bridge; and using this as a pretext, the Kwantung army demanded the right to search the nearby cities. Refusals came with warning shots, and warning shots turned into firefights and despite official apologies traded between the two capitals war had come in a de facto form.
Now that the worst had come, China turned to the outside world for help. Germany, Italy, and Brazil's desire for closer ties with Japan limited the aid they were willing to offer; and China's pleas fell on deaf ears in western Europe as they sought to court Japan as an ally against the red Raven and Bear. It would be from the very communists that Jiang Jieshi feared most that China would get its aid. And China would need all the aid it could receive; Japan's army was far better trained and equipped and had essentially complete dominance of the air and seas, and its armored formations had almost no counter by Chinese forces who were almost entirely lacking in heavy weaponry. However, getting supplies to China was always a difficult operation due to China's lack of infrastructure and Japan's dominance of the coast
(Mostly like OTL but the divergences should come in my next posts)
*Because everything is improved with C&C Generals references.
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I kind of flip flop on it when discussing it in conversation, thanks for catching it.
On the new update, I want you too know I love the updates themselves. But this time I have a valid complaint on the Finance and Foreign Trade HQs. I can see them maybe retaing the Treasury Building(though the People's Treasury is my simple suggestion). However, I cannot see the Rockefeller name being kept on anything especially for what is essentially the financial HQ for the international COMECON. I reiterate brilliant update aside from those points. I especially love the update on Labor(btw the HQ name for it is outstanding).
Drawing attention to the new update was my third motif
but you should subscribe to the revisions.The Rockefellers are actually in Britain, with the most famous among them actually refusing to partake in the Red scare; wanting to visit America one last time before dying.
