The Iron Eagle - The History of the Cold War

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
INTRODUCTION

​

DISCLAIMER: I do not endorse in any form the crimes and atrocities committed by the criminal regime of the Third Reich, this scenario has been made with the intent of exploring the possibility of a highly improbable success of the German military campaigns in WWII that secured it's hegemony over mainland Europe. Due to the circumstances of this scenario, in order to make it possible, certain liberties will be taken during the writing. The nature of the battles per see won't be explored in depth to avoid a break of immersion due to the inherently unrealistic nature of this Timeline: The Nazi policies and several military factors made the victory during the war to be practically impossible. Although there are some Points of Divergence (PoDs) that could've increased their chances that will be added in this timeline, such as:

1. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, former adjutant secretary of the Navy under Wilson's Administration, dies due to Polio complications in August 1921 as a relatively minor figure in American History.
2. The Crimes of D. C. Stevenson and the Indiana Klan are never discovered, preventing the collapse of the second Klan in the 1920s, keeping a powerful force endorsing xenophobia and isolationism inside American Politics during the Depression.
3. On the 30th of October, 1939, the U-56's three torpedoes explode on impact against the HMS Nelson, while the Battleship survives, it's VIP guest, Sir Winston Churchill, is killed by the explosion while traveling on the deck, hitting his head and suffering an hemorrhage by the shockwave, while he was relatively unimportant at the time, his death would result in a crucial absence of a moralizing figure in Britain.
4. The Luftwaffe does not fight the Battle of Britain, with the Germans restricting themselves to an U-Boat blockade, which begins to starve the British Islands due to the lack of the Lend-Lease Program.
5. The US government does not declare an Oil embargo in 1941, which delays the start of the Pacific War.
6. Franz Halder, Chief of Staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), is killed by a bombing raid in August 1941, as a result, he is replaced by Heinz Guderian and Operation Typhoon is never executed, with the German efforts in 1941 continuing Hitler's original focus on advancing towards the Caucasus, leading to a far more successful southern advance to secure the needed Oil and Grain resources of the region.

These are just some of the changes, others being included by Butterfly Effect and the dark magic of handwavium. In this V-E day be thankful that this reality is not ours, the Nazis were one of, if not the, most evil regimes in history and it is important that their atrocities are never forgotten, this is one of the most bleak scenarios in Alternative History, and being a known popular one, I wish to give my own input on how the world would change in the eventual years by the German Endsieg (Final Victory) over it's enemies. But that doesn't mean the Nazis will continue their stroke of luck as their stock of handwavium runs out and the realities of managing a Continent sets in.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
ENDSIEG

Ten years, in just ten years the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) to turn a broken State in Central Europe into the Hegemon of a continent. Such a rise of a nation wasn't seen since the days of Napoleon and a new Eagle spread it's wings over Europe, led by their Führer Adolf Hitler, it's legions conquered from Brest to Arkhangelsk, from Narvik to Athens, and the Swastika cross shadowed an entire continent. While contrary to the modern German Historiography, Western Historians from Britain and America agree that the cause of this victory was not the inevitable destiny of the Aryan race, but a mix of incompetence by it's enemies, innovative tactics, and sheer pure luck.

The Celebrations for the "Tag des Sieges" (Victory Day) were planned since before the war, and it was a chance for the Reich Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, and Hitler's chief Architect Albert Speer to show the grandeur of the victorious Reich to the world, in the Memoirs of Goebbels, it is said that the German Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, stalled the end of the negotiations with the Allied delegations in order to make the day fall on the 20th of April, Hitler's birthday. On this day in Berlin, thousands of troops from the SS-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, the Führer's personal division, paraded across the Unter den Linden stopping under the Brandenburg Gate, where the main figures of the Reich were seated on a platform, and the main protagonists of this New Order overlooked the troops: Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the Greater Germanic Reich; Rudolf Hess, his Deputy; Hermann Göring, Reichsmarshall and President of the Reichstag; Martin Bormann, Hess' Secretary; Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and head of the German Police; Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of the German Intelligence Services; Walther Funk, Minister of the Economy; Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda; Joachim von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister; Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments and Chief Architect; Heinz Guderian, head of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht; Karl Dönitz, head of the Oberkommando der Marine (OKM); Amongst several other figures.

The parade was a grandiose affair unlike any since the days of Rome, a grand triumph as black-clad troopers marched in perfect discipline across the center of Berlin, the flag of the Swastika covering the way while a hundred thousand Berliners watched in ecstasy waving their flags in a show of fanaticism. After almost four years of war against some of the greatest powers of the world with a death toll reaching over a million men, by far most dying in the Eastern Front, the German people finally avenged the Treaty of Versailles. At the sound of the military band playing the SS Teufelsleid march, along with other military songs, until finally the troops arrived at the end of the parade for inspection by the Führer. Hitler would then begin the famous "Endsieg" speech emphasizing the triumph of the will of the German race against the "Judeo-Bolshevism" and "Bourgeoise Degeneracy", with the Thousand-Year Reich emerging triumphant to fulfill it's destination to the world. He would also announce the newest Führer Decree: The renaming of Berlin to Welthauptstadt (World Capital) Germania, or Germania for shorts, and the start of the construction of several structures of the project under the direction of Speer. The parade ended with a show of force by the German Luftwaffe (Air Force), which demonstrated the new Me-262 Jet plane model, launched in 1942 as a fighter jet which was one of the determinant factors in the Mediterranean campaign, although more due to the impact left on British morale than the plane per se, along with the first flight of the Ar 234, the world's first Jet-powered bomber. There would also be a parade of tanks such as the Panzer V "Panther", which would later become the mainstream medium tank of the Wehrmacht until the development of the E-50 that became the standard German Tank, along with the Panzer VI "Tiger".

The "Endsieg Parade" was both a celebration and a show of force, as demonstrated by the unveiling of the new "Wunderwaffe" (Wonder Weapons), to demonstrate to the world the power of the victorious Reich and cower it's enemies in fear, especially the ones across the channel. The British Empire was humiliated by the Second World War, with the loss of mainland Europe, Gibraltar, and Malta. But the continuation of the war was simply unpractical as Britain stood alone against the Reich: With the Germans possessing over 150 divisions spread over the continent, and without the Soviet Union to tie down it's troops, an invasion of mainland Europe would lead to an inevitable disaster, the British Isles have been starved by the U-Boat blockade for three years, while also losing much of it's experienced troops and equipment at the Dunkirk Disaster and the Fall of France. Even the African front resulted in defeat as the German Mediterranean campaign after the fall of the USSR and the entry of Spain into the war brought a series of pushbacks, with the fall of Gibraltar during Operation Felix and the fall of Malta to Italo-German forces isolating the British forces in the area. Prime Minister Edward Wood, the Viscount of Halifax, has stubbornly continued the war despite the hesitation of the War Cabinet following the Dunkirk disaster in the belief that a surrender would spell the collapse of the British Empire, yet he would finally be pressured to enter negotiations in February. The Treaty of Lisbon would be signed at midnight from the 19th to the 20th of April, with Ribbentrop deliberately stalling the final signing of the treaty as previously mentioned, with the Germans returning finally returning the prisoners of war held on it's POW camps for three years. Yet, while the British POWs were treated decently according to the Geneva Convention, the Soviet POWs would continue toiling on the east, where the Germans would finally have a free hand to enact it's wicked plans.

On the other side of the world, the war was very far from over and the Pacific continued ablaze. The Japanese Empire's war of conquest has dominated from Burma to the Solomon Islands, with large tracts of land in China under the occupation of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), and now that the war in Europe was over, the British Empire would focus it's strength at fighting the Nipponic aggressors. Meanwhile, the United States continued it's efforts against the Japanese after the recent loss in the Battle of Midway, but despite the disastrous loss of two Aircraft Carriers, the USS Yorktown and USS Hornet, the Americans continued determined to avenge the loss at Pearl Harbor on the last year, with the full resources of the Military-Industrial power of the nation being mobilized after a decade of economic depression and stagnation, the dockyards pumping out several ships every month and with four new carriers in the ending stages of construction, the Japanese needed to deliver a decisive blow while the American navy was weakened by the recent loss, which would lead to the desperate gamble on Hawaii in May when the Kido Butai set sail to the islands and the IJA launched the infamous Hawaiian campaign. President Wheeler made a speech following the Tag des Sieges, denouncing the Nazi aggression and declaring that the "Iron Eagle of Tyranny has spread it's wings over Europe", it is still a point of contention for historians as to when the Nazi-American Cold War started, with Wheeler's speech on the 21st of April being considered the earliest start date for it, while others consider the end of the Pacific War to be the real start of the Cold War as the American focus switched back to the Atlantic.

The Germans stood victorious, yet while the war was over, their reign of terror was just starting.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
REMEMBER OAHU

​

While the Pacific War had a massive scale and impact on the cultural lives of those involved, there are very few that compare to the psychological impact of the Hawaiian campaign to the United States. In 1943, following the devastating loss of two carriers and several of it's escorts during the Battle of Midway, the Americans were on the retreat from the Aleutian to the Solomon islands, and the Japanese planned to seize on the initiative and planned to strike the main American base remaining in the pacific, which would secure the perimeter and allow for long-range bombers to strike the American West Coast, not only it would be a disastrous logistical loss for America with the facilities of Pearl Harbor being seized, but it would also be a morale loss. Between the end of the Battle of Midway on the 12th of April and the invasion on the 15th of May, the Japanese gathered forces with Midway as a forward base, while launching a renewed wave of offensive operations in the Solomon Islands and a large-scale Air Raid over Darwin to distract the Allied forces, the Battle of Fiji, started on the 9th of May, was believed to be the main Japanese offensive while the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) struggled to break the Japanese cypher.

The Invasion force was spearheaded by the Kido Butai, the main Japanese Carrier Fleet that has remained invincible since the beginning of the conflict, led by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto and Vice-Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, composed of six Aircraft Carriers, although two of them were diverted to the Solomon Islands, Two Battleships, Four Cruisers, Seven Destroyers, and Sixteen submarines. Yamamoto, following the Japanese Naval Doctrine of Kantai Kessen (Decisive Battle) desired to repeat his victory in Midway in a large scale, with the invasion being used to draw in the US Navy for a single battle, while also desiring to seize the naval facilities of Oahu especially the oil reserves. The Amphibious landing force was composed by around 70,000 men led by general Tomoyuki Yamashita, "the Tiger of Malaya", formed up by the 2nd, 7th, and 57th divisions including an Armored regiment, the Japanese expected to possess the Aerial superiority around the island, striking at the Airport facilities in Honolulu to cripple the American Air Fleet, alongside the radar stations and stationed ships at Pearl Harbor in a repeat of the attack on the 2nd of November that crippled the US facilities on Pearl Harbor and put the Pacific Fleet out of operation.

The American defenses on the Island have been preparing for a Japanese land invasion since that ill-fated Sunday, with General Lesley J. McNair as the leading commander of the Garrison, while several forces were diverted to Australia and Fiji to defend the region against a possible Japanese aggression, the General expected a coming invasion of the Hawaiian islands following the defeat at Midway, especially due to the increased reconnaissance flights made by Japanese planes in the weeks before the invasion. McNair commanded a force of around 90,000 men spread around the islands but with most of the garrison in Oahu, despite outnumbering the Japanese, the troops in Hawaii were nowhere as experienced as their counterparts, the Wheeler Administration was elected on an strictly isolationist focus, on internal affairs after successive failures in dealing with the depression by the previous Presidents, with the military budget being slashed in favor of the Wheeler's "Fair Deal" programs, which meant the American industry would have to make a complete switch to a war economy in the middle of an economical recession, and although that proved an easy task with the outrage provoked by the Pearl Harbor sneak attack, the American forces had to be built from ground zero after years of abandonment since WWI, which meant most of the troops stationed at Hawaii were Green recruits who never went into a battle, and now would face the veteran fanatical Japanese invasion force that conquered most of the Pacific islands.

The Invasion started with an attack by over 300 planes from the Aircraft Carriers and bombers from the Midway Island, striking early in the morning after a Japanese spy sabotaged the Opana radar site the night before, committing sepukku shortly afterwards to avoid capture, while the radar was under repairs, the planes appeared on the distance striking the facilities of Oahu, from radars to Airfields, while American fighters were under alarm after the events of Pearl Harbor which allowed several squadrons to takeoff before the bases were struck, starting a fierce dogfight over the island. The American fleet under Admiral Halsey would be alarmed by the attack and begin to evacuate the ships from Pearl Harbor, bottling up the exit of the natural harbor and becoming an easy prey for submarines and torpedo bombers, yet it was nowhere as successful as the previous attack, with airplanes from the USS Enterprise taking flight to meet the Nipponic attackers, the Kido Butai would send in the Twin Yamato-Class Battleships, the Yamato and Mushashi, along with three cruisers and five destroyers to attack Oahu, bombarding the bottled up American ships and bombarding the city of Honolulu. The USS Enterprise would be sunk after one of the Yamato's shells struck the aircraft fuel depot, exploding the Aircraft Carrier and sinking it on the entry of the bay, which further closed up the traffic of ships, although many would be able to escape and fire back on the Japanese ships, the battle between the two fleets would last for hours and while the Mushashi would be heavily damaged and forced to retreat, while one of the cruisers was scuttled, the Americans took in the brunt of the casualties with most of the fleet being trapped inside the bay and being under constant harassment of Japanese airplanes. The Japanese had successfully established Air and Naval superiority for the moment, although with the casualties being greater than expected with 87 planes shot down.

The Land Invasion started as the Japanese landing craft were spotted at the Northwest of Oahu by an American plane during the Air Battle, with Yamashita's forces landing under heavy fire at Waialua Bay, establishing a landing ground by taking the town after over an hour of intense fighting before breaking the American troops and giving a taste of what was to come. Japanese troops invaded house to house, farm by farm, killing livestock and seizing food and water from the inhabitants, revealing the factor that would constantly loom at the Japanese forces in Oahu: Logistics. Supplying an invasion force of thousands of men across thousands of miles of sea while under the risk of being intercepted by an American submarine was a logistical nightmare that dwarfed even Operation Barbarossa in it's difficulty, the few supplies coming from the outside had to be delivered by airlift from the Air base of Midway or by the few supply ships who were constantly at risk of being attacked by American aircraft along the way. Japanese troops would be ordered to use the resources of the island to supply themselves which led to brutal exploitation against the citizens, along with a constant pressure to keep advance to literally "starve off their doom". Yamashita was given a nightmare far worse than the Malay operation, he was supposed to take Oahu while fighting an enemy who had superior weaponry, numbers, and fought in fierce determination to defend a home soil they have spent months expecting an invasion, all due to Yamamoto and Nagumo's obsession to draw in American ships, using the IJA as a bait.

The campaign on Oahu would be one of the most gruesome confrontations American forces had faced up to this point, while the campaign on the Phillipines in 1942-43 gave a tasting of what was to come, this would be the first time that most of those troops fought the Japanese, and at the first moments their morale could be easily shattered by the fanaticism of the Imperial troops. Yamashita knew that speed was the key, an attritional battle would spell nothing but doom for the Japanese, and so the invaders began their push southwards towards their next target: The Wheeler AFB, if taken it would provide them with a key asset to the campaign, a landing ground for the aircraft that would no longer need to fly from Midway and give the bombers a base from where they could strike all the way to the West Coast. Yet, along the way the Japanese fought increasingly stronger defenses, the Americans had prepared for an invasion and Waialua Bay was one of the most likely locations from where it could come from, not just the Japanese had to break the lines, but were constantly harassed by artillery and sniper fire from Mount Kaala, it had to be taken to neuter the American artillery positions and yet the Japanese did not possess enough troops to attack both Wheeler and Kaaba at the same time. Yamashita decided that Wheeler was of far greater importance to ease the logistical burden, and so began one of the battles that would be remembered by the Americans for generations.

The Invaders would go south through the Kaukonahua road, heading south towards Wahiawa, the plan was to envelop the Americans at the AFB by taking the town and the barracks, and the Japanese were met by determined fire from every building inside the city, streets being barricaded and broken through Banzai charges while troopers fired from the windows. The Japanese advance was bogged down in the east but far more successful in the "scythe" move westwards, cutting off Wheeler and Waihawa from Melina and slowly pushing back troops from the town across the water reservoir and surrounding thousands of troops at the Airforce Base, when given an order of surrender, the commander, a certain Major Joseph McCarthy, replied with "Come and get us, Japs!".

Major Joseph McCarthy​

From the 21st of May to the 1st of June, the Japanese launched four different attacks at Adams, none of them succeeded and despite heavy losses the Marines held their ground. General Lesley McNair expressed his admiration on the effort of the Marines in holding back the Japanese, which gave his forces a crucial time to organize a counterattack, Brigadier General George S. Patton would be put in charge of the operation by gathering the first American offensive spearheaded by tanks in WWII, with the use of a single tank brigade stationed on the Island, Patton would make use of the M3 models, although also incorporating new experimental ones such as the M4 "Sherman" in low quantities. Despite that, the American tanks proved themselves superior to it's Japanese counterparts, which were designed for anti-infantry roles with the more modern models being kept in reserve in the Home Islands, and on the 2nd of June a breakthrough finally came from Mililani through the Kamehameha highway, relinking the American forces of the Airforce Base, relieving the encirclement and forcing the Japanese to retreat. It would be the first American victory against the Japanese at land, bringing in a much needed morale boost, with Patton showing admiration to the Marines and their commander that would go beyond the battlefield.

After the defeat at Wheeler (Which coincidentally had the same name as the President), the Japanese momentum was lost, and Yamashita knew the battle was a near impossible task to win, and yet he did not order a retreat, it was a part of the Japanese war mythos, retreat would bring nothing but dishonor and shame to one's house, a fate worse than death, and he feared his personal prestige would be at risk. The Americans attacked Wahiawa and fought against the Japanese as the attackers for the first time, proving once again the resilience and fanaticism of their enemy, with only a dozen prisoners being taken, and yet Patton did not waste time in continuing his offensive, this time to cut off the defenders of Wahiawa from their Headquarters at Waialua, the tanks being the ones to push westwards in a scythe move this time, taking the village of Whitmore after a brutal confrontation against it's defenders. Yet, tragedy struck while the encirclement was underway: General McNair, while inspecting the battlefield would be ambushed by a Japanese trooper who faked his own death, as the General was passing by, troops just assumed he was already dead, yet he pulled the pin of a grenade and blew himself, the General, and his bodyguard away, only the bodyguard would survive although losing an arm, the General was struck by the shrapnel and didn't resist the injuries, dying of an internal bleeding. With the death of McNair, President Wheeler reluctantly recalled General Douglas MacArthur from Australia after it was obvious that Hawaii was the Japanese target, with the "Big Chief" finally being given the chance to get revenge on the Japanese, his plane landed on Honolulu after almost being shot down by a Japanese Zero, on the 6th of June of 1943, Douglas MacArthur took command in the Hawaiian campaign right when it was beginning to turn.

General Douglas MacArthur
​

While the Americans began their pushback inland, in the sea, Admiral Nimitz (Who replaced Halsey after the recent loss of three carriers) would organize the strike at the Kido Butai, and that is when the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) came into play, after months gathering intelligence and numerous decryption efforts, finally a breakthrough was achieved in the Japanese cypher, and that would give away their position a hundred miles West of the Hawaiian islands. The US Fleet would go for an all-or-nothing strike, the decisive battle Yamamoto desired, but they needed to launch it undetected to maximize the effectiveness of the surprise, avoiding the Japanese reconnaissance flights while sneaking a fleet across the sea was not an easy task, but the developments at land helped with that: Yamamoto hoped that Yamashita would be able to take the Opana Radar Station and use it to detect incoming American aircraft, but the American forces were able to halt the offensive at Pupukea, preventing the capture of the Radar and keeping it under American control, enabling them to detect incoming Japanese waves and scramble the few aircraft on the island into their heroic daily effort to shoot down their incoming enemies. And that was a decisive advantage for the Americans, which allowed them to detect when the Kido Butai was under air protection and when it wasn't, giving them the perfect moment to strike.

On the 14th of June, almost a month since the invasion began, Three American carriers, pulled from the Atlantic and South Pacific, gathered for a last shot, if they were sunk then the Americans would lose their Carrier fleet until the 4 new Essex-Class Carriers were completed later on that year, accompanied by Five Cruisers, Six Destroyers, Ten Submarines, and One Battleship, the Americans were outnumbered by the number of planes, and their only chance was to strike at their enemy while the planes were conducting a strike at Oahu. Luckily, that day General Yamashita called for Air Support during an ill-fated attempt to relieve Wahiawa, and while the majority of the Japanese planes went Eastwards to Oahu, the Kido Butai was left vulnerable to the American bombers, and while they expected the Americans to come from the North, from the West Coast, they would be surprised when a cluster of hundreds of fighters and Dive Bombers came from the south, the Battle of Hawaii had started.

In less than an hour, the Japanese lost the cream of their navy: Akagi, Soryu, Kaga and Hiryu, Four Fleet Carriers that were amongst the most modern ships in the world, would go under the waves, not just that but Admiral Yamamoto himself would die onboard the Yamato when the bridge of the ship was hit by a bomber, despite taking over seven torpedoes, the Yamato would not sink. Yet the damage was done, and once the Japanese aircraft returned from Oahu, they found the Kido Butai sinking beneath the waves with the waters in flames with the survivors desperately attempting to stay afloat while damaged destroyers picked them up, some of the planes flew to Midway which overcrowded the Airport, others would go to back to Oahu, either attempting to land on a flat terrain to join the fight at land, or launching furious revenge attacks until fuel ran out. It was a shock received all the way to Tokyo and spread around the world: The Invincible fleet was gone and the Americans took back control of the Seas and Air, cutting off Yamashita's force made up from some of the best Japan had to offer from any chance of evacuating.

On the 15th, a retaliatory strike came to America, a trio of bombers of the new Long-Range P1Y bombers, would go on a suicidal one-way trip to get their revenge. While it was expected that the Japanese forces at Midway would attempt to strike back the Carrier group, an strike at San Francisco was the last thing Admiral Nimitz expected. As the bombers did not have the fuel range to come back, the three planes would manage to slip through the American radar, reaching towards the bay of San Francisco with their full deathly payload and only too late would the Airforce realize their mistake, scrambling to put the fighter squadrons in the air, one of the planes immediately headed to the obvious target: The recently-finished Golden Gate bridge, dropping 2.000lbs of bombs on the bridge before being shot down, the plane crashed in one of the Bridge's towers, and while it was in serious danger of doing so, being interdicted for months for repairs, the bridge managed to hold the strike, becoming another symbol of an America that was hurt, and yet didn't fall. The other Two bombers would strike the city itself, leaving a trail of burning buildings and streets, although they would also be shot down, the pilots guiding their planes to crash on buildings to collapse them, luckily the planes were already low on fuel and the fires were quickly contained. The San Francisco Air Raid was the first time a foreign nation bombarded American territory, and while at least 18 people died with many more injured (Not including the Japanese Pilots), the attempt at breaking the American morale by showing the American people what war on home soil looked like only filled them with a vengeful resolve, one that Japan would pay dearly for.

The Americans were on the offensive at Oahu, continuing to push back the Japanese at a slow pace each day, after an strike at the overcrowded Midway Airport by US Bombers, the Japanese would lose the majority of their stationed planes, and the control of the skies was safely on American hands, General Yamashita was now cut off, outnumbered, and at such low supply level that some troops reached level of starvation and ran out of ammunition. He still attempted to turn the battle around, now that Adams AFB was irrelevant to the Japanese plans, he launched an attack at mount Kaaba, attempting to seize the American artillery or at least silence it, and while the attack caught the Americans by surprise, it would be repealed with the Japanese pushed back on the next day. On the first of July, President Wheeler sent MacArthur the demand that the Japanese surrender on the Fourth of July, a symbolic date of victory for the American People, and the Cornpipe-smoking General was happy to oblige, with the Japanese already pushed all the way back to the surroundings of Waialua, with only a fourth of their original force left trapped and starved. General Yamashita knew when he was defeated, yet that did not mean he would surrender or go down quietly, the Japanese proved to be the most fanatical enemy American troops have faced, with only a few hundred prisoners being taken over this whole campaign, the Japanese used guerrilla tactics, such as booby traps, foxholes, suicidal bombers, faking death, and now the Americans would know their last trick: The Banzai Charge.

​

On the night of the 3rd of July, the Japanese left their trenches after midnight, at the shouting of "Tenno Heika, Banzai!" (Long Live his Majesty the Emperor), thousands of troops possessed by a fanatical spirit, fixed bayonets and attacked the Americans at once, the surprise of the attack of what the Americans expected to be a beaten foe would catch them off-guard, showing that Japan was not a common adversary, it was one that would fight to the death. Yet, despite the initial success in breaking the first American line, once the Japanese finally lost their last ammunition reserves and the American reinforcements went to the frontlines, the enemy was beaten back and pushed towards the sea, some surrendering, most taking their own lives. General Yamashita and his staff would commit Sepukku on their Headquarters shortly before the American troops arrived. In the Morning of the Fourth of July of 1943, the Japanese flag was lowered over Waialua, with the Stars and Stripes raised in it's place. It was finally over, with spontaneous celebrations erupting all over not just the Island, but on the United States and even Commonwealth nations as finally an Axis Power suffered a major defeat: The Kido Butai, Japan's strongest weapon to enforce it's power over the Pacific, was sunk beneath the waves, some of the most experienced veterans of the Japanese army were destroyed, along with hundreds of planes, the Americans finally achieved a victory and the momentum of the Nipponic Empire was shattered, turning the tide of the Pacific War. The Germans did not comment on the affairs of the pacific, concentrating instead on their own victory in the Continent, but they watched as across the sea their future rival rose from decades of depression and isolation, with the Bald Eagle starting to spread it's wings to challenge it's Iron enemy, and yet there was still a long and bloody way to go before the Americans could claim their victory, and millions more would perish before the Rising Sun sets.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
THE VULTURES

​

It is undeniable that the Greater Germanic Reich during it's initial years was completely centered on the almost-mythological figure of Adolf Hitler, with a powerful propaganda machine raising a generation of Germans that considered him a second founding father of Germany, to the levels of figures like Otto von Bismarck, Karl the Great, Frederick II, and others. But while his figure is responsible for the rise of Nazism from a minor political group in the Munich Beer Halls to the Masters of Europe, no man can ever rule by itself, and surrounding him was a powerful group of figures, manipulative sycophants who grew increasingly in power as the Führer's health began to decline in the late 1940s, and the only thing greater than their ambitions was the jealously against one another. Some of them were aristocrats, others came from humble backgrounds, and yet they all had a meeting with their destiny spearheaded by one man who made them rulers over the fate of millions, powerful figures, both fanatical and pragmatic, seeking to increase their own power at the expense of millions of lives. Not just was the rivalry between the members of the "Inner Circle" tolerated, but it was encouraged by Hitler himself based on his Social Darwinian beliefs, which caused several efficiency issues in the Third Reich as offices overlapped one another, the regime's legal system did not clearly define the authority of the "titles" given by it's Master, who controlled the railroads? The Minister of Armaments or the Minister of Economy? Or the Plenipotentiary of the Four-Year Plan (which should have technically expired in 1940 but the office received such power that it was extended indefinitely)? Who directed anti-partisan intelligence? The Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office/RSHA) or the Abwehr (Military Intelligence Service)? The overlapping responsibilities was made not just due to the Social Darwinism of it's maker, but to foster disputes where only the Führer could act as mediator, keeping the members of the inner circle unable to collaborate with one another against their leader.

Just as easily as one could enter the inner circle, one could find themselves out of it, figures like Rudolf Hess would be eclipsed, others like Röhm would find themselves with a bullet to the head after losing the Führer's favor, while others like Speer would rise out of nowhere to become powerful men ruling over the fate of millions. Some like Göring, Goebbels, Hess, and Himmler were "Traditional" strong party members, while Heydrich, Bormann, and Speer would rise into their power positions after the takeover in 1933, rivalries would begin to form with different blocks of power, while some were more fanatical such as Goebbels and Himmler, others were pragmatists such as Göring and Speer, Himmler and Göring disputed over the control of the Police, Heydrich, first introduced by Himmler, would eventually become a power of his own upon taking control of the RSHA and a rival of his former mentor for the control of the powerful SS. Another late addition to the "Inner Circle" would be Hitler's wife Eva Braun, despite being not apt for politics and never a dedicated member of the Political game of the Reich, Eva would be used by other members of the circle as an access to Hitler's ear, with him always keeping one reserved for his partner. While the German leader was never a romantic one, his marriage was symbolic, as he already lived with her as a partner for years, and as he was the incarnation of Germany, it would symbolize the post-war sentiment of the "Victory Era", a period of settlement, of changes inside the Reich as the War engines were put on slow march at least and the focus would be driven inwards to reshape the Continent.

The First of these figures is no doubt the one that was one of the Führer's main contenders to succession: Hermann Wilhelm Göring. Born on the 11th of January 1893, Hermann Göring was a member of the Bavarian Aristocracy of the German Reich, son of Heinrich Ernst Göring, first Governor-General of German Southwest Africa, he was interested in the military from an early age, graduating with distinction at the Military Academy. He joined the army in the 112th Infantry regiment being hospitalized during the First World War, later he would request transfer for the Air Force where he became a member of the famous "Flying Circus" led by German Ace Manfred von Richthofen, later becoming the final commander of the Squadron following the death of the Red Baron and his successor Wilhelm Reinhard, and although his arrogance made him unpopular in the squadron, he would be known as a War Hero following the war. After flying private flights in the immediate post-war years in a Swedish Airline, Göring would be introduced to the Nazi Party after listening to one of Hitler's speeches, with his military background he was chosen as the first leader of the NSDAP's Sturmabteilung (SA), being capable of impressive organizational skills accordingly to Hitler himself "I liked him. I made him the head of my SA. He is the only one of its heads that ran the SA properly. I gave him a dishevelled rabble. In a very short time he had organised a division of 11,000 men.". Following the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Göring went into exile in Austria, where he became addicted to Morphine due to his treatment to the wounds sustained during the Putsch, although he would eventually recover from it following his return to Germany following an amnesty in 1927, his Morphine addiction would eventually come back to haunt him. Göring went back to the NSDAP and used his Aristocratic connections to connect Hitler with powerful Junkers and Industrials of Germany, which greatly helped him in getting from the image of Rabble Populist to a respectable politician. In 1932, as the NSDAP became the largest party in the Reichstag, Hermann Göring was appointed it's presidents, which made him an instrumental figure in the negotiations with Papen and Hidenburg to place Hitler as Chancellor in 1933. Göring would also be appointed as Minister-President of Prussia, the largest German State where he solidified his power base, including the creation of Gestapo, a powerful Secret Police force under direct command of Göring at the time, and although he wasn't as powerful in the Party Hierarchy as Himmler or Hess, Göring began to accumulate several offices to himself such as Reichsmarshall, Plenipotentiary of the Four-Year Plan, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe (Air Force), and Founder of the Reichsweke Hermann Göring. He became known as a flamboyant figure, always using extravagant uniforms, but was still seen as one of the most Popular figures in the Inner circle: A decorated War Hero who led Germany in the skies during two wars, while acting almost as a caring uncle figure (As no one was the Father of Germany other than Hitler himself). With several powerful positions, firm control over the Air Force, and popular appeal, Hermann Göring was no doubt a favorite in piloting the soaring German Eagle to the Skies.

​

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler, no doubt one of the most powerful and feared men in the Reich, would probably have never achieved the level of power he had if not for the NSDAP and the specific circumstances of Post-War Germany. Born on the 7th of October 1900 in Munich, Himmler was an awkward, sickly, yet studious child, who was greatly interested, if not obsessed, about the military. He joined the reserve battalion of the 11th Bavarian Regiment, but was greatly frustrated as the war ended before he finished his training, frustrating his martial dreams as he returned back to Agronomics, while in university he entered first in contact with the SA in 1922, and at the same time his antisemitism began to radicalize in the environment of early Weimar Germany, while he began to drift more into the paramilitarism of the time. In 1923, after the Hyperinflation crisis left his parents unable to further pay for his education, Himmler left the University and was involved during the Beer Hall putsch, joining the NSDAP in September, after the failed coup, he was released by the police due to the lack of evidence of his direct involvement, losing his job as Agronomist and forced to live with his parents. Himmler began to delve further into antisemitism, racial theories, and occultism, abandoning his Catholic faith and becoming increasingly obsessed with German mythology, starting to work as a party secretary under Gregor Strasser, and with his readings of Hitler he came to adore him as an almost Mythological figure, a perfect savior of Germany and the Aryan Race. He joined the SS shortly after Hitler's re-inauguration of the Party in 1925, at the time the division was merely an elite bodyguard unit within the larger SA to protect the Führer during his speeches, and quickly rose through it's ranks in lower Bavaria, and after a meeting with Hitler in 1927, where he envisioned the SS as an Elite, disciplined group of Aryan Warriors, and he became Deputy Reichsführer-SS, taking control of the organization after Erhard Heiden's resignation in January 1929. The SS began to expand it's membership, growing Himmler's power as he was authorized to run it as an independent group, although subservient to the SA, yet after the takeover in 1933, Hitler became increasingly fearful of the influence of Ernst Röhm and the SA, which now consisted of over 3 million members and began to advocate for far more radical and populistic policies, and Himmler would use the opportunity to approach Hitler with a plan to neuter the SA developed together with Hermann Göring and Reinhard Heydrich. The following "Night of the Long Knives" resulted in the neutralization of the SA leadership and the rise of the SS as the new paramilitary force of the Party. Since then, Himmler has grown more in power, with the control of the German police (except the Prussian police) and the Gestapo he would use this power to crush any dissidents in and out of the Party, while creating the system of concentration camps around the Reich. The SS would grow further during and after the war, as Himmler began to envision it as a Pan-European racial force against Judeo-Bolshevism, creating the Waffen-SS as military divisions formed by volunteers from many nations, such as the "Charlemagne" division from France, or the "Wiking" formed mainly by Nordic volunteers. From a failed Agronomist to the spearhead of the infamous "General Plan Ost", Himmler is no doubt one of the most powerful men in the Reich and a favorite by many to continue Hitler's legacy in the future, being known as one of the most fanatical members of the NSDAP.

​

Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, born on the 19th of March 1905 in Mannheim, Baden, was perhaps one of the most intellectually advantaged men in the Inner Circle if only by his curriculum, following the footsteps of his father and grandfather, he studied to become architect, graduating at the young age of 22 at the prestigious Technical University of Berlin, he was taken in as assistant of the famous architect Heinrich Tessenow. Speer grew up in a troubled household, suffering bullying by his siblings in his youth, and yet he had a seemingly promising future, but none expected just how much it would be in 1931 when he joined the NSDAP, especially through his friendship with Adolf Hitler. His chance of growing in power was given to him in 1933, when he was recommended to Goebbels to help organize the yearly Nuremberg Rally, Goebbels decided to send the young Architect to Hitler's Munich residence where he first met the Führer and a shared friendship really blossomed out of their artistic interests. Nowadays it would be hard to see Hitler as anything but a politician, yet his dream during his youth was to become an artist in Vienna, after being rejected twice and in order to escape the government mandatory draft, the young failed artist went to Munich and started becoming increasingly interested in architecture, before the Great War began and changed his destiny. Speer was a man that represented several similarities to the Führer, especially their taste on grandioise neo-classical architecture, in a certain way it reminded him to his younger years, which might have been a factor to Hitler's sponsorship to Speer and, after seeing his work in the construction of the new Reich Chancellery, giving him the position of Chief Architect of the Party in 1934 after the death of Paul Troost. Speer was the member of the Inner Circle with the closest personal relatioship with the Fürher, the young architect showed his prowess in impressing Hitler time and time again through projects like the Zepellinfeld Stadium (The Cathedral of Light) and the Olympic games of 1936, but nothing ever came close to the shared vision that both held for the heart of Germany: The World Capital "Germania". The entire city of Berlin would be not just renamed but reformed, with the clearing of buildings for new large avenues, a new government quarters, but the greatest achievement was no doubt the planned "Volkshalle", the Great Hall would be built to become the largest building in Europe, with a copola large enough to fit in the St. Peter's Cathedral inside with ease, and although the plan would have to be revised afterwards due to Berlin's marshy ground, the construction of Germania would soon begin with Speer at it's mastermind. While the planned architecture projects were starting before the war, the conflict put a halt on them, and Speer would receive a new task: Minister of Armaments of the Reich. On the 8th of February of 1942, Fritz Todt, his predecessor, died in a plane crash on the same flight he was supposed to go, and Hitler appointed Speer as Minister of Armaments during the last year of the war, as well as giving him control of the Todt Organization, the largest construction company in the Reich. Speer would truly begin to show his ambition after receiving this position of power, using Hitler's favor to centralize the Armaments production under his ministry, wrestling control over industries with Göring, taking from his authority as Plenipontentiary of the Four-Year plan, and later taking control over the production of not just the army but the entire armed forces, including the Air Force and Navy, until the end of the war, he further entered in conflict with Göring over the Air production during the last year of the war when the fight against the RAF in the Mediterranean intensified. While he is generally given more credit than deserved for the so called "Miracle of 1942", Speer's efficiency in rationalizing and streamlining armament's production was a crucial factor, especially after the German industries started to be fueled by the oil and mineral resources needed after the Soviet defeat, which allowed the Luftwaffe to eventually overcome the RAF and proved decisive in pushing the British to peace over the fears of a bombing campaign of the Home Islands that have been constantly looming since the fall of France in 1940 (Despite the Luftwaffe not launching any large-scale air raids at the British islands during the war due to Hitler's admiration of the British Empire). After the War, Speer would now continue to grow his power, now with the full intention of bringing the vision him and Hitler dreamed since the early days to construct an new Europe no matter the cost.

​

Paul Joseph Goebbels was born in Rheydt, near Düsseldorf, on the 29th of October 1897, the man who would shape the minds of generations and lay the groundwork for the modern system of political indoctrination ironically was not the model man the NSDAP's standards expected. Goebbels was born with a genetic deformity, with his right foot turning inwards and forcing him to limp during his life, with him being rejected from joining the military due to this anomaly, he was also known to be short and a womanizer, the latter partially being suspected to be caused by a need to compensate his foot deformity. The future chief propagandist considered to become a Catholic priest in his younger years, graduating at the top of his class in the Gymnasium, being given the honor of speaking for his class in 1917, and later studying history and literature, earning his PhD at the Heidelberg University, earning his title of Doctor, with him authoring several books throughout his life, despite that, he was beginning to suffer economical hardship by the time he first had contact with the NSDAP in 1924. Upon accompanying Hitler's trial, he became increasingly fascinated by the man's charisma and convictions, joining the NSDAP shortly after his release, working under Gregor Strasser and being increasingly aligned to his more populist rhetoric, rather than Hitler's vision in Munich, this division of the Party would be challenged by Hitler in the Bamberg conference in 1926, where at first Goebbels would be disillusioned with Hitler's rejection of Völkist ideals, but later he would not only reconcile with him, but became one of his most ardent supporters, writing in his diary that "Such a sparkling mind can be my leader. I bow to the greater one, the political genius.". Goebbels began to work as a propagandist in the Rhineland, later becoming the party leader in Berlin, his inflamatory speeches, with the masterful, inovative use of tactics such as car speakers, grand parades and spectacles, and the incitement of political violence to achieve the shock value put Goebbels as one of the most charismatic figures in the Reich. He became one of the first party members elected to the Reichstag, giving him immunity from persecution, while he would use the Great Depression to rally the people behind the NSDAP, promoting Hitler's image as Savior of Germany, very few members of the party were as significant as Goebbels to achieve the takeover, with his mastery over propaganda being used to turn the Nazi Party from a mere 2.8% of the vote in 1928 to become the largest party of the Reichstag in 1932. It is no surprise he would be put into Hitler's Ministry as "Reichsminister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda" in 1933, and from there he would seize control of all the Press in the Reich, while inciting political violence against the enemies of the Party, such as the Communists and the Jewish population of Germany, Goebbels was no doubt one of the smartest men working in the Inner Circle, now using of new technologies such as the radio and cinema to massify the image of Hitler, with the government distributing radio sets to every home in Germany, not just as a symbol of prosperity but also as a tool for the voice of the Führer to reach every home in in the Reich. Goebbels' use of violence was a powerful tool in the inner circle, as shown during the Kristallnacht when the German people was led to mass boycot and ransack Jewish businesses, in the spontaneous shows of euphoria when Hitler visited a city, in the mass rallies and events such as the book burnings. While Goebbels was not exactly seen as a favorite for succession due to his lower political control compared to his rivals, he was a powerful ally to any potential successor candidate.

​

Rudolf Walther Richard Hess was a rather unique member of the Inner Circle from his origins, he was born in Alexandria, Egypt, on the 26th of April 1894, from a wealthy German family from Bohemia that latter settled in Franconia. Hess' childhood in Egypt was something that greatly affected his worldview, with a contempt for Arab and Black races, while greatly admiring the British Empire as a civilizatory force in the world, he believed that "White Races such as those of Northwestern Europe" (The Germans and British in specific) were destined to rule the world and should cooperate for such goal. After graduating in the merchant school of Neuchâtel, he moved to Hamburg for an apprenticeship when WWI erupted becoming Corporal and later Platoon leader, receiving the Iron Cross second class, Hess would be injured by shrapnel by the end of the war and transferred to a military hospital, being decomissioned from the military after the war was over. Rudolf would continue his studies in the University of Munich in Hitory and Economics, being introduced by his teacher to the concept of Lebensraum (Vital Space) which he would later introduce to Hitler, that pillar of the National Socialist ideology brought in by Hess would eventually lead to the direct death of tens of millions during the Second World War. Hess first became a member of the Thule society, a radical anti-semitic nationalist group that preceded the NSDAP, while also serving in one of the Freikorp units of Post-War Germany, until he first came into contact with Hitler in 1920 and was immediately captivated by his rhetoric, becoming one of his first and most loyal followers ever since. Hess grew inside the party always standing besides Hitler as a right-hand man in the early days, so much so that when the Putsch failed in 1923, he would be arrested and sent to the same Jail cell as his Führer, working to type the famous "Mein Kampf", with the book dedicated to him and Hitler's driver Emil Maurice, and when released in 1925, he would be named Hitler's Private Secretary and later becoming Head of the Party Liaison Staff and Chairman of the Central Political Comission. Yet, his greatest power was in his legitimacy in 1933 as he was appointed Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler, making him theoretically the first in the line of succession of the Reich, he would also be in charge of the NSDAP's relationship with German communities around the world, due to the fact he was born outside of Germany, and his actions as the founder of the Volksdeutscher Rat (Council of Ethnic Germans) would prove decisive in spreading the NSDAP's influence outside of Germany, especially in Austria and the Sudetenland. Hess was different from the other members of the Inner Circle as he saw his office as a duty rather than a platform for further ambition, his greatest desire was to continue to serve Hitler and the Reich, not gathering followers of his own like others, and that led to him becoming increasingly sidelined as the years went on, avoiding to enter in the power disputes of the Reich and instead he enjoyed his private hobby of Flying in his personal plane, including in air races, and continued serving Hitler to the best of his ability. But despite that, his legitimacy made him a figure of the Inner Circle, respected as one of the first members of the party and his loyalty, while also helping the Führer in his anti-semitic agenda, helping to ellaborate the Nuremberg laws and considering the League of Nations as puppets of the international Zionism. The Deputy, despite refusing to partake in the political games, would be used in it by his former Secretary Martin Bormann, as a way from where he could use the less politically-bright Hess as a tool to reach power.

​

Martin Ludwig Bormann, born on the 17th of June 1900 in Wegeleben, was the son of a Postal employee, born into a Lutheran family. Bormann began his studies in Agricultural trade, but left High School in 1918 to join the military during the final year of the Great War serving in the Garrison until 1919, upon returning to Germany he would become the manager of an agricultural Estate in Mecklenburg, later joining a local anti-semitic union of landowners and the Freikorps as a treasurer, serving a short time in prison after participating in an assassination of a teenager along his friend, the future Auschwitz-Birkenau Kommandant Rudolf Höss and being released after 11 months. Bormann joined the NSDAP in 1927 as regional press officer in Thuringia, yet his lack of public-speaking skills led to him being reassigned to Lower Bavaria as a worker in the SA insurance office where his organizational skills were noted, he also created an auxiliary fund of the Party as an insurance for members who were injured on party duties. Bormann's initial years as a lowly bureaucrat of the Party would soon change after the seizure of power in 1933, as he became Chief of Staff of Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess and his personal secretary, and from there on his greatest talent began to finally blossom: Bureaucratic Intrigue. As the office of Hess was used to settle matters between Party members, Bormann started to grow his own influence, and later was appointed by Hitler as Reichsleiter (National Leader) of the NSDAP in October 1933, another office Bormann would begin to use to grow his own power base and install his own supporters, he began to slowly collect files of blackmail, favors, and allies to himself. He began to get closer to the Führer himself after 1935 when he was assigned to oversee the renovation of the Berghof, Hitler's alpine residence, gifting him the famous "Eagle's nest" as a birthday gift on the 20th of April 1939, although he seldom used it, and from there he became the Führer's personal secretary, and began to form his own power base. He was always the "Brown Eminence" by the Führer's side wherever he went, and as Hitler generally avoided written orders, he instead communicated them through Bormann, allowing him to control the access to the Führer and even controlling his personal finances, Bormann was responsible for giving the final say in the appointments of political positions through his role as Chief of Staff of the office of Deputy Führer, allowing him to place his own favorites in several power positions and have an ammount of control far greater than expected from his office, as an example the appointment of his friend Rudolf Höss as Kommandant of the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp. Yet, despite the great ammount of de facto control, Bormann was still lacking both the charisma and legitimacy to place himself as a potential successor to Hitler, which is why he began to increasingly turn to his theoretical superior Rudolf Hess as Hitler's death declined, seeing him as a potential puppet to place in the office while he would keep doing what he did best: Rule from behind the shadows.

​

Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich, born in Halle an der Saale on the 7th of March 1904, son of the composer Richard Bruno Heydrich, the life of the most feared man in the Reich began very differently from what one would expect, surrounded by music and art, having a passion for violin that impressed his peers in the future, growing in an strict household where he learned fencing and latter excelled in sports at the Gymnasium. After the war, his town was caught by the fighting between communist and anti-communist paramilitaries, with Heydrich, at the young age of 15, joining a group of Freikorps who took control of his town, the event serving as a political awakening for the young teenager, due to the post-war crisis, Richard Bruno's conservatory entered a decline and Heydrich joined the Navy in 1922. He rose through the navy ranks with some comfort until he was discharged after a scandal, being engaged with Lina von Osten when he had engaged with another woman six months earlier, influenced by his wife, Lina, he would join the NSDAP in 1931 a day after being discharged, joining the SS right when Himmler planned to set up a new counter intelligence unit, upon meeting up with Himmler, the Reichsführer was impressed by his ideas and appointed him as head of the counter intelligence division of the SS, later renamed as Sicherheitsdienst (SD). The SD quickly grew to become a terror organization within the Party, acting against the enemies in and out of the NSDAP, and Heydrich's power would only grow after the takeover in 1933, as Göring transferred the Gestapo to Himmler, Heydrich was put in charge of the Secret Police, planning with Himmler, Göring and Hitler to neuter the SA during the "Night of the Long Knives" where Heydrich played an important role in silently eliminating the leadership of the SA and placing the SS as the armed wing of the Party. Once Himmler became head of the German Police in 1936, Heydrich was placed as his deputy and used of his control of the security apparatus to suppress political dissidents in Germany, the SD would also play a key role in organizing the takeover of Austria in 1938 by the local NSDAP and it's integration into the Reich. In 1939, the Reich's main intelligence and security services would be merged, with the SD, Orpo (Order Police), Gestapo, and Kripo (Criminal police) all put under the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office/RSHA), Heydrich would not only become the head of this powerful office tasked to destroy the enemies "Inside and Outside of the Reich", he would also become the head of the International Police (Interpol) in 1940. Reinhard would be given his first Governamental office as Reichsprotektor of Bohemia-Moravia in 1941, quickly starting his work by applying "Carrot and stick" methods to pacify and germanize the local Czech population after the failures of his predecessor Konstantin von Neurath's "soft approach" in the eyes of Hitler. On one hand, Heydrich increased rations, pensions, introduced free sartudays, unemployment insurance, and organizing the workers around the German Labor Front, and on the other he would declare Martial Law, brutally supress rebel cells, conduct harsh reprisal attacks, and essentially pacified the region against the great majority of it's dissidents, while also repressing Czech culture, earning him the nickname of "Butcher of Prague". After he was recalled back to Berlin, Hitler was impressed by his efficiency, and began to consider the "Man with the Iron Heart" as a model Aryan man (Although rumors were spread of a supposed Jewish ancestry at his maternal line), Heydrich and Himmler's old partnership was slowly turning into a rivalry as the latter saw the meteoric rise of the former with increasing aprehension, seeing him as a possible threat to his own power within the SS. It is suspected Göring and Bormann both began to plant the suspicions in Himmler's mind that Heydrich could become his replacement, as a way to breakup the powerful duo, while Heydrich himself began to grow his own leadership ambitions after the appraisal received by Hitler in dealing with the Czech insurgency, and with the control over the German police, Reinhard slowly began to build up his own power base, installing loyalists in power positions. The "Man with the Iron Heart" on the outside was known as a charming, highly cultured, intelligent individual, but behind the curtains he was responsible for keeping the Reich's terror machine working, and following the Tag des Sieges in 1943, Reinhard Heydrich, Otto Hofmann, and Adolf Eichmann would organize a conference at the villa of Wannsee on the 27th of April, in order to achieve a "Final Solution to the Jewish Question".

The Inner Circle of Adolf Hitler was made up by seven individuals from very different backgrounds, all gathered together by the call of Adolf Hitler to bring a new Germany since the 1920s, these men would be ruling over the lives of millions, and without Hitler its likely they would have never met or achieved the power that allowed them to enact their genocidal politics on Europe. And as the Führer began to grow old and sickly following the war, they would soon begin to prepare for his eventual demise, gathering up their power bases for the inevitable power struggle that would come, but until then, that would not stop them from helping their leader in enforcing his agenda, which would lead to the deaths of tens of millions of people by enforcing one of the most infamous and brutal systems that the world has ever seen upon the Continent. From Brest to Astrakhan, from Narvik to Baku, all of Europe was now under the rule of this Iron Eagle that would begin to devour the carcass of it's millions of "undesirable" victims to feed and sustain itself, and these men took this eagle while still a baby and let it grow to become the fearsome beast that would bring humanity to the brink of anihilation.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
OPERATION SUNSET

"Before we're through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell."
-Admiral William F. Halsey Jr. after the attack on Pearl Harbor​

The United States of America has never fought an enemy as fierce and tenacious as the Japanese Empire, between 1942 and 1947, the Pacific Ocean would be set ablaze by the flames of war, sometimes literally so as ships sunk beneath the waves with massive oil leaks setting the sea around it in flames and killing those unfortunate enough to not have died in the sinking. The Commonwealth would send veteran forces from Egypt to India, Australian troops giving support in the Solomon Islands and New Guinean campaigns, the IJA would begin to be pushed from Southeast Asia by 1943 once the war in Europe ended, while the United States would organize it's forces with the lust for revenge for Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Oahu, and San Francisco (Despite the last being a more moral attack than causing effective real damage). The campaigns of the Pacific would push the Japanese island by island, cutting their Air bases and supply lines, with the Marines taking more and more casualties as they approached the Japanese Home Islands, this phase of the war ending in late 1945 with the fall of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the Japanese inflicting massive casualty rates on the invading forces through a fanatical resistance based on the "Bushido" code, the Japanese military code did not have a word for Surrender as it was deemed the greatest dishonor one could have as a warrior, with death in the name of the Emperor being exalted as an honor instead, with American forces only managing to capture a small fraction of their enemy. The Allies knew that an invasion of the Japanese Home Islands would be met with an even more fierce resistance, not just the Japanese had stockpiled weapons and supplies for years in preparation of such eventuality, but the fanaticism extended to the population, with the line between soldiers and civilians being murky at best and non-existant at the worst, the Islands also possessed a terrain perfect for resistance, only a few locations of the mountainous Japan being able to properly sustain an Amphibious operation, locations the Japanese knew with precision. The second phase of the war between 1945 and 1947, ending with the final surrender of the Emperor, would be the bloodiest campaign in American History, being above even the US Civil War in terms of casualties, while Japan itself would never properly recover from the losses in the so-called "Operation Sunset", the invasion of the Land of the Rising Sun.

Following the victory at Oahu, the American forces would receive a much needed morale boost, with many of the forces in the Island being reorganized into the core of the First "Island Hopping" phase of the war, the first obvious target for a counter attack was the island of Midway. Not only the Air force continued to be a threat, operating out of the island for suicidal "retribution" missions by attacking civilian targets in Honolulu and other islands of the archipelago, but it could still serve as a springboard for future invasions. The first offensive of the American forces in the Pacific would be the invasion of Midway, a relatively quick endeavor as the Island was left undersupplied and isolated following the destruction of the Kido Butai, the Naval-Air forces would bombard the airfield of the two main islands, with Carrier strikes destroying the majority of the planes still on the ground. On the 17th of July, an invasion force of 4,000 Marines would storm the island, and after a short fierce fight against the local garrison, with pilots exploding their planes as booby traps and preventing the Americans from seizing them, Midway would be retaken after 3 months of Japanese occupation in less than 48 hours, the number of Japanese prisoners didn't go over two digits. The Victory at Midway brought a sign of relief to the citizens of Hawaii and to the American people as a whole, yet it would only be a taste of what was to come, and many of the forces sent to the Pacific would never come back from the horrors that these next 4 years were awaiting for them.

The baptism of fire of the Marine corps was in Oahu, yet Guadalcanal would be the first time they went on a major offensive against an entrenched determined enemy, the battle for Guadalcanal was a part of the Solomon islands campaign, with the Japanese forces on the offensive seeking to cut off Australia and New Zealand from the United States, and in August 1943, the Allied forces would launch a counter attack to break the Japanese, seeking to advance towards the Island of New Britain to cut Japanese attacks on Australia and New Guinea. For Four months, the Allied forces fought a brutal battle for the island, and only after the defeat of the Japanese Naval forces would the Nipponic troops retreat, both sides suffering a large number of casualties, especially due to tropical diseases such as Malaria. The Japanese Combined Fleet, which was now under the command of Vice-Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa (Following the death of Admiral Yamamoto at Leyte), planned to launch a future counter attack, yet the losses at Midway forced them to be on the defensive until the construction of new Carriers was ready in 1944, Jisaburo planned to prepare another decisive battle, and for that the American offensives had to be delayed, Operation I-Go would be launched by Three Carriers, along Land-Based aircraft from Rabaul, a massive air counter attack across the Solomon islands against the Allied fleet following the Battle of Guadalcanal, the Operation would be largely inconclusive, while the Americans suffered relatively high losses, none of the Carriers would be sunk, with the operation being cancelled following the loss of over 50 Japanese planes, most of the ships sunk being tankers, destroyers, and landing craft for future operations.

Yet, following the victory in the Hawaiian campaign, the United States was finally putting it's war industry at full potential, following over a decade of depression and stagnation that only began to finally recover from the 1939 recession with the beginning of Wheeler's "Fair Deal" programs, the beginning of the war finally shock the nation into the world stage. Unemployment plummeted as the powerful military-industrial complex was put on full power, shipyards began to pump ships at record speed, weapons, planes, ammunition, medical supplies, the "Sleeping Tiger" had awakened, realizing the greatest fear of the Japanese predicted by Admiral Yamamoto shortly before Pearl Harbor. The American military resources were fully mobilized towards the pacific, with the construction of new carriers surpassing even the most pessimistic Japanese estimates, and to make matters worse, the United States began to research new projects for planes and weaponry, such as the B-29 bomber, the Napalm bombs, the new Essex-Class Carriers, the P-47 and 51 fighters, TBF-1 "Avenger" torpedo bombers, Chemical weapons, and the Secret "Manhattan Project", finally approved by Wheeler after being first rejected by him in 1940 due to his budget program. In January 1944, the United States would begin it's offensive in the central pacific , launching an attack at the island of Tarawa, and despite the overwhelming number advantage (45,000-4,600), the Americans would take gruesome losses especially during the landing as it would be the first time the Japanese resisted an amphibious assault (Guadalcanal being mostly unopposed), with the great majority of the Japanese defenders preferring death than surrender, very few prisoners were made, and this would set the standard for the Pacific campaign: Naval and Air forces dominated the Seas and Skies, bombarding the island to soften up the attack, followed by an amphibious landing, with the Japanese tenaciously defending the island through guerrilla attacks, underground tunnels, fox holes, "Banzai Charges", and a fanatical defense to the last man, while the Americans planned to control the local Airfields and cut the Japanese supply lines island by island.

1944 began with losses of land troops for Japan while the Americans continued the campaigns at the Solomon and Marshal islands, The Allied East Asian command, now bolstered by reinforcements from Europe and Africa, launched a decisive counter-attack on Burma, while Japan still showed the capacity of successfully conducting large-scale offensives during operation Ichi-Go, which broke the years-long stalemate in China by connecting the Japanese units in the Northern and Southern fronts of the Sino-Japanese war. In 1943, the Japanese organized the Government of "Azad Hindi" with the Burma campaign being propagandized by Tokyo as a "Pan-Asian war against Western Imperialism", collaborators in Burma and India flocked to the Japanese banner, the most notable of them being Subhas Chandra Bose, a prominent figure of the Indian independence movement. The Indian offensive would be launched in early 1943 during the intensification of the European Mediterranean Campaign, after the defeat of the 8th Army in Montgomery's failed offensive on Libya, the fall of Gibraltar and Malta, alongside the counter offensive by Rommel's Afrika Korps, the IJA believed the British Empire to be near a collapse, and under the pleas of Bose, with intelligence that several British troops were transferred to Egypt, the IJA launched an invasion of India nicknamed "U-Go". Yet, despite several divisions being transferred to hold Egypt, the Japanese underestimated the number of troops still left and their determination to keep the fight going, Claude Auchinleck's forces in India, despite the furious Japanese assault, still outnumbered IJA forces at least 2-1, and were able to hold the Japanese at Kohima and Imphal until May, when troops from Egypt were transferred to Southeast Asia following the signature of the Treaty of Lisbon and the end of the war in Europe and Africa, once the offensive stalled, the British began to redouble it's efforts in improving the infrastructure of Eastern Bengal. In 1944, those efforts finally came to fruit during the Burma offensive, when Commonwealth, American, and Chinese forces, numbering over a million men, finally broke the stalemate kept since 1942 and defeated the 200,000 Japanese defenders, with intelligence agencies managing to disorganize and fragment the collaborationist forces. The fall of Rangoon, nicknamed "Operation Dracula", would lead to the fall of the Japanese forces in Burma. The collapse of the Japanese armed forces in Burma would lead to shockwaves in Thailand, where a conspiracy by pro-allied movements (Namely the Seri Thai) opposed to the war, led in secret by Regent Pridi, launched a coup against the increasingly unpopular Prime Minister Phibun and the local Japanese Garrison, yet Phibun would be able to escape from Bangkhok towards Phetchabun in the North, still garissoned by Japanese troops. The Thai Civil War began as now the Japanese had to fight their previous ally.

In Central Pacific, the American forces would launch a series of campaigns to take the islands of Central Pacific, while the Japanese were pushed from the Solomon Islands, keeping only the fortress island of Rubaul and northern parts of Papua New Guinea. The American planning, first elaborated by "War Plan Orange" before the war and later adapted to the circumstances of the Pacific War, called for an attack on the Central Pacific, which reached it's conclusion in the brutal battle for Peleliu, where Japanese forces retreated to an inland defense, adapting to American bombers through underground tunnels, denying much of the effect of the two days of naval and aerial bombardment of the Island and inflicting heavy losses to the US Marine Corps. Following the victorious "Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign", the war would become further intensified as the next target became the Mariana Islands of Guam and Saipan, breaking into Japan's inner defense perimeter and putting the Home Islands under the range of the new B-29 "Superfortress" bomber. The Battle of Saipan was an especially fierce one, the 32,000 defenders under General Saito fought the invasion force commanded by Admiral Raymond Spruance in October 1944, the Japanese held out fiercely against the Americans, slowing down their advance while the commander of the Combined Fleet, Jisaburo, saw this as the opportunity to apply the Kantai Kesei doctrine, with over 9 Carriers, the majority of the Japanese fleet, setting sail southwards for one of the largest naval battles in History: The Battle of the Philippine Sea. On the 31st of October, which is the reason why the Americans called it "The Halloween Turkey Shot", Jisaburo sent in a large Air Force strike against the American fleet, yet half of the planes would never return, only managing to damage a few ships, while the American counter attack sunk two carriers and forced the Japanese fleet to retreat to Okinawa. Saipan would be isolated afterwards, yet General Saito would refuse to surrender, instead launching a massive banzai charge, similar to the one made by General Yamashita in Oahu, causing heavy losses on the American forces before being repealed. Now, with Saigon under American control, the bombing campaign of the Home Islands would begin, and for the next 3 years most of Japanese cities would be destroyed by bombers.

The Japanese were now being cut off from the Southeast Asian Resource Area, with American submarines sinking over 70% of the Merchant fleet and constant air raids in the China Sea, the forces in Indochina, Indonesia, Malaya, and Thailand suffered with a cut in the communication and supply lines to Tokyo, the Imperial Army would attempt to remedy this by connecting the Mainland Asian front with a major offensive in China nicknamed "Operation Ichi-Go". The unexpected attack of the IJA against the forces of the Republic of China would be devastating as the 4-year long stalemate was broken, Changsa fell along with Loyang, Hengyang, Guilin, and Liuzhou, by the end of the campaign, the Nationalist Army would suffer around 600,000 losses, and peasants began to actively resist the orders of the military to use scorched land tactics in Hunan, while the Japanese successfully linked Indochina and Manchuria, although the control of the countryside was tenuous at best. The Operation showed the Japanese army was still a powerful force to be reckoned with, and the lines of communication between Tokyo and Southeast Asia were relinked... for now.

What followed next was a dispute between General Douglas MacArthur and a group of Admirals led by Admiral King, MacArthur wished to command the US Army to strike at the Philippines, in order to neutralize the Largest Japanese base still left in the area, securing the flanks for the attack on Japan, while King proposed to instead target Taipei in order to fully cut off the Japanese supplies from Southeast Asia. President Wheeler, who decided to follow the Washington precedent and not run for a third term, would take this as one of his final major war decisions in January, by allowing MacArthur to go along with his plan after being convinced by Nimitz to do so. Once Wheeler stepped out of his office on the 21st of January 1945, the new President, Cordell Hull, former Secretary of State during Wheeler's second term and his chosen successor, would step in to take command over the American ship as it's new captain during the bloodiest period in US military history. While MacArthur had argued about the strategic value of the Philippines, the Commander had a personal matter to settle, as he was the original defender of the Islands when the Japanese invasion came in 1942 following the Pearl Harbor attack, and after being forced to evacuate to Australia, he made a promise to the local inhabitants that he "shall return" in the future. The result was the invasion of the Philippines in a campaign that would extend until July, starting with the landing at Leyte, where the IJN launched a desperate gamble to strike the landing force, the Battle of Leyte Gulf would become the largest Naval Battle in History, surpassing even Saipan, Jutland, Trafalgar, Hawaii, Actium, and Salamis, all the remaining assets of the IJN sailed in a last attempt to force a decisive battle, and indeed it would become one, although not on Japan's favor. Over 400 ships were involved in the Battle, with the numerically and technologically superior Allied forces sunk the Majority of the Imperial Armada including it's last Aircraft Carriers, with the battle essentially turning the crippled IJN into a non-factor for the rest of the war. No longer possessing experienced pilots or the range for large-scale missions, the Japanese would switch tactics to it's most infamous one: The Kamikazi attacks.

​

The Battle of the Philippines would continue to rage on, but on the other side, the Marines did not remain inactive and launched it's two most deadly campaigns in the last phase of the "Island Hopping" campaigns: The Volcano and Ryukyu islands. The islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa were critical for the American war effort, as it's capture would allow Medium-range bombers to attack Japan itself, and for that reason they would be the most heavily defended islands the Allies had faced so far. Iwo Jima would be the first one to be attacked in April, the campaign for the island would take longer than the 5 days expected by the Marine corps, the tenacious Japanese resistance turned what seemed to be a relatively standard takeover into a brutal slog, with troops using tunnels to travel under the island and strike the American rear, the defenses on the south of the island in special, held at Mt. Suribachi, took several days to be neutralized, the capture of Mount Suribachi was immortalized by a photography of American marines raising the flag on the top of Iwo Jima. The capture of the island would be a taste of what was to come, being the first time the American troops suffering several thousand casualties, with just a small number of prisoners being taken, while in Okinawa the Marines would face a 40% casualty rate, the US Navy would face the first major attack by the "Kamikaze", as several waves launched a mass suicidal attack on the Allied fleet, sinking over 20 vessels and damaging a number ten times greater. After a costly campaign, Okinawa fell in August and, after the brutal fall of Manila, so would the Philippines, now there was only one target left to strike: The Invasion of Japan itself.

​

A task considered the hardest of the war within good reason, during the last 3 years, the Japanese only grew in ferocious resistance as the Allies went closer and closer from the Home Islands, the Battles of Okinawa and Iwo Jima showed that the Imperial forces learned with time on how to best counter the American attacks, while the Battle of Manila showed that they were willingly to sacrifice entire cities and civilians to halt enemy attacks. Between August and November of 1945, as the Allies built up their forces and awaited the end of typhoon season, the intensification of the bombing campaign of the Japanese Home Islands began with almost daily raids on Japanese cities. The US Bomber Command under General Curtis LeMay would use the newly developed "Napalm" ammunition to bombard the majority-wooden Japanese cities with Incendiary weapons, Tokyo was subject to mass raids that destroyed the majority of the city area until November, yet, despite the sinking of it's navy, the destruction of it's infrastructure, the blockade of the Home Islands, and stacking death rates, the Empire refused to even consider a surrender on American Terms. A joint allied declaration in San Francisco, the same city that was subject to an air raid in 1943, enacted a policy of "Complete Unconditional Surrender" of Japan. The Japanese government of Prime Minister Suzuki would announce that it would only accept peace if allowed to keep it's Pre-War territory, a limited presence of American troops in Tokyo, and for Japan to judge it's own War Crimes, something completely unacceptable by the Allies who prepared the invasion of the Land of the Rising Sun, nicknamed: Operation Sunset.

Sunset would be composed by two operations: Olympic and Coronet. With General MacArthur and his staff elaborating the strategy, Sunset would be by far the largest and most ambitious amphibious assault ever attempted in human history up to that moment. Japan was the perfect terrain for defensive: Most of the Islands were mountainous, with the Japanese people knowing the land for thousands of years, the IJA was able to perfectly predict the landing points of the American invasions despite diversionary efforts by the Office of Strategic Services, with the island of Kyushu, the southernmost island, being the first target as part of Operation Olympic in 3 dinstinct landing areas. Coronet would follow after a successful takeover of southern Kyushu, where the air bases would be used to support an invasion of the Tokyo plain itself, something also predicted by the Japanese, and MacArthur hoped that the fall of their Capital and Industrial center would finally force Japan into a truce. Meanwhile, Allied forces would finish Japan in Indochina and send in over a million men along with the full might of the "Arsenal of Democracy" to arm the Chinese Forces to attack the IJA and the Kwantung Army in the mainland. Over a million men were prepared for the landings on the day nicknamed "X-Day", which was expected to happen on the 2nd of November 1945: Exactly 3 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Yet, Japan was more than prepared to meet the invasion, Operation "Ketsu-Go" became the guideline for the defense of Kyushu, where the Second Phase of the War was expected to begin, Japanese forces were being trained and armed in mass, with army units from the continent being transferred to the Home Islands, the number of defenders had increased from 60,000 in June to 900,000 by the time X-Day came. The people themselves were being armed and prepared, following the fanatical devotion to the Emperor, the line between Civilian and Soldier was abolished in Japan, with the people being armed into "Voluntary Defense Brigades", armed from rifles to even bamboo spears, being given guidelines on guerrilla warfare and trained by Army instructors, the Japanese planned to create their own version of the phrase "A Rifle behind every blade of grass", and American forces would meet a fanatical resistance of a completely hostile civilian population of millions. The Japanese had planned accordingly to intercept the landings, amassing thousands of planes to be used as Kamikazi and target the transport and supply ships, with hundreds coming in every hour in deadly waves, planes being made specifically for such purpose, such as the Ki-115, a plane made mostly of wood capable of being mass produced with "non-strategic material" at mass quantities, and the deadly missile-plane MXY-7 "Okha". Alongside midget submarines such as the Kairyu "Sea Dragon" class, and Kamikazi divers that would dive underwater and strike the landing craft as they approached the beaches. The supplies were spread around hidden caches, with undeground caves being used to shelter troops from Air and Artillery strikes, the Home Islands would be turning into fortresses unlike any other seen in humankind, and the largest invasion force ever assembled: Operation Sunset would become the answer to the question of what happens when an unstoppable Force meets an immovable object.

​

The invasion would suffer a costly delay in October when a Typhoon struck the Island of Okinawa (Which only increased the determination of the Japanese as the Government Propaganda emphasized the comparison to the Typhoon that struck the Mongolian Fleet twice in the middle ages), and the idealist dream of invading in November was disrupted, instead the invasion was set for the 7th of December 1945, under the Overall Command of Douglas MacArthur, with commanders such as Patton, Bradley, and Marine commander Alexander Vandergrift, X-Day would soon begin. Hundreds of Thousands of troops of the US Army would sail from Okinawa, Iwo Jima, the Philippines, Saipan, and other Pacific bases. 600,000 men in the initial invasion force would be supported by over 2,000 planes and 4,000 naval craft, a task that was never tried in such scale before, from Washington to London and even Germania, all watched to see the developments in Japan, which will become the testing ground of new weapons and tactics never attempted before, the US forces would bleed unlike any other moment in history, and Japan would fight against a foreign invader for the first time in centuries in home soil. The Clash of civilizations and Ideologies that would decide the fate of Asia was about to begin.

"There is no American who has not known defeat and humiliation at Pearl Harbor, from the Bengal Plains to the West Coast, there is no man, woman, or child that has not seen the ferocity of our enemy. Today, in the name of all those that fell to the blades of the Japanese, we shall embark in the Greatest Crusade in the History of Mankind, the eyes of the world are upon you, our enemy is fierce and will not give you quarter, so you must not give them any! The Stars and Stripes shall bring justice in the name of the millions who perished against the Rising Sun, and today shall mark the Sunset of Japan. We shall not take a step back, or all those we have lost will have died in vain, for Pearl Harbor, Corregidor, Midway, Oahu, Nanking, Rangoon, and for all humankind, we shall cut the blade of the Samurai! Good Luck, and God bless you all.
-General Douglas MacArthur, December 7th 1945.
​

The invasion would be hitting the beaches of Fukiage, Shibushi, and Miyazaki, as soon as the American armada was sighted, the Allied forces would see hundreds of dots in the sky at the distance, the first wave of Kamikazis would come down at the hundreds against the invaders, with carrier launched planes and escorts clashing in the largest Air battle in Human History, thousands of aircraft clashed in that morning, the American planes including the newly developed Jet-Fighter, the P-80, would fire against waves of enemies that threw themselves against the American ships, from medical supplies, ammunition caches, armor, and troop transports, even if only 1 in 7 Kamikazis found a target, it would prove more than enough to deal terrible casualties for the attacking forces. Once the amphibious landing craft left the ships and began to sail towards the coast, the first sight (and the last for many of them) of the soldiers would be as if they stormed the gates of hell: Planes crashing down left and right, ships sinking and bursting into flames, one of the blood transport ships would be sunk by the strike of an Okha and leak into the ocean, the Japanese prepared bunkers, trenches, barbed wire, anti-tank hedgehogs, minefields, and artillery hidden inside mountain caves would begin to shell the landing craft. Many would perish before coming even close to the beaches, and those that got close would be caught by a new surprise as divers with explosive rods and vests would explode themselves at the Landing craft, while sniper fire began to mount casualties even inside the boats. Still, the Allies pressed on and reached the beaches, and once the steel doors opened up, they would be greeted by concentrated machinegun fire from behind treelines, trenches and foxholes hidden underground, a few desperate Kamikazes would throw themselves with the explosive payloads at the troops on the beaches, although the damage was greatly reduced thanks to the sand. Despite all of this, US troops continued to push, dashing towards the treeline to take any kind of cover, sometimes behind the wreckage of tanks and planes on the beaches, and once they reached the trenches they would fight a brutal close-quarters combat against fanatical troops armed with bayonets, many not shying away from blowing themselves up with grenades while throwing themselves at their enemies. Eventually the first line would fall, and without even any second of rest, the screams of "Tenno Heika, Banzai!" emerged from the lines behind, as the second line charged forwards against the invader like an endless horde, airplanes and naval artillery proved unable to offer support due to the Japanese tactics of seeking close-quarters combat, with the times it was attempted ending up with repeated friendly fire incidents. At Fukiage and Shibushi, the Americans, including the more experienced Marine Units, would take the first line of defense, and once the Japanese launched their counter attacks, the troops managed to hold their ground, defending against the enemy attacks and pushing inwards to secure the beaches and silence the artillery positions. Japanese soldiers would sabotage their own artillery pieces and retreat through tunnels to the next line of defense, collapsing the tunnel sections behind them.

At Miyazaki beach, American troops would fail to hold the first line against the continued enemy fire, unable to establish a bridgehead and hold back against the attackers, the invasion of the beach was considered a disaster, with the Army units involved being forced to retreat, Miyazaki was no doubt the most strongly resisted beach, with General Kuribayashi leading the defenses of the beach and being a military ataché to Washington in the Pre-War years, his sector did not comit to a Banzai charge, and yet was able to hold out against the landing forces. This ended up throwing a wrench at the American plans, as MacArthur did not expect one of the three beaches to hold against the Invasion Force, this failure would end up delaying the progress of the operation and only would make the invasion bloodier. But other than Miazaki, the Allied forces managed to successfully establish bridgeheads, despite suffering horrific casualties (At the failed Myazaki landing alone, where the most fierce Japanese defense was located, the Allied casualties were compared to the entirety of the losses at Iwo Jima), the Japanese forces would fall back to the second line of defense and prepared for a counter attack to drive the Invaders from the beaches once and for all, during the night of the 7th of December, dozens of thousands of Japanese forces would launch the largest Banzai Charge in the war so far, but this time the Americans would be able to establish a perimeter of defense expecting a counter attack to come, thousands would be cut down from aerial and naval bombardment before getting close to the US lines, and now with more prepared defenses, the superior technology and weaponry of the americans would clash against the Japanese giving them a decisive advantage, the M1 Garand, BAR, and Thompson guns proved once more superior to the Arisaka and the Type 100 guns, along with better training, and tactics. Once the charge was defeated and the Japanese fell back to their lines, to the horrors of the newer soldiers, it was discovered that many of the dead bodies were young men, some no older than 16, conscripted and given old dirty rifles with bayonets, some without having more than a couple clips of ammunition, others were old enough to be the grandfather of the young privates, probably veterans from World War I dragged out of their nurseries to once again fight for the Empire. With over a hundred thousand casualties on both sides, most being wounded in the American side and dead on the Japanese one, X-Day would be a shock of reality of what it would cost to bring the Sunset of the Land of the Rising Sun. Only now had the land war truly started, and the only way to win the war for the Allies was to keep pressing on while an entire generation would be forever scarred by the conflict, and others would return back home in ships filled with coffins and Purple Hearts.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
DEFIANCE AND DECEIT

​

In 1877, the last of the Samurai led by Saigo Takamori, fighting a hopeless rebellion against the modernization of Japan in defense of their traditional lifestyle, launched their final act of defiance at Kagoshima, going down Mount Shiroyama with 500 men to face the Imperial Army with no prospect of victory. Only 40 would remain by the dawn when Takamori led his men in a cavalry charge, none of them surviving the encounter, yet the "Bushido" spirit of defiance would be invoked once again, this time by the Imperial Army itself as the defenders of Kagoshima fought a bloody attrition battle against the Multi-National, mostly American, invasion force of the Allied powers in 1946 during Operation Sunset, the last and bloodiest phase of the Pacific War. On the 3rd of January 1946, in the final phase of the Allied assault over Kagoshima, a Japanese lieutenant, coincidently also named Saigo, had his troops surrounded in Mount Shiroyama in a similar situation, but differently from his predecessor, he did not have seasoned warriors, but most of his troops were members of the Volunteer Fighting Corps, militias hastily trained by the IJA for Operation Ketsu-Go, the defense of Kyushu. Despite the Japanese nominally outnumbering the Allied invaders, the majority of the defense forces never truly faced the realities of the conflicts in the Pacific, with the VFCs conscripting males from the ages of 16-60 and Unmarried Women between 17-40, although even those requirements were discarded as the fight became increasingly desperate and girls as young as 9 were being used as cannon fodder, incidents of PTSD of Allied War veterans described the guilt of the soldiers of gunning down mass attacks of children young enough to be their sons and daughters. Back to Saigo, after running out of ammunition, the Commander would gather his "troops" into a hopeless charge in the middle of the night despite the prohibition of Banzai Charges by General Kuribayashi. In the night of the 3rd to the 4th of January, hundreds of Japanese forces charged down Mount Shiroyama towards the sleeping American troops, by the sunrise none of them would remain, and only afterwards, as the troops were marching through the piles of bodies, did the soldiers face the horror that they weren't fighting an army, they were fighting civilians, with the surviving officers from the charge committing Seppuku, while others faked their own deaths until troops came to inspect the corpses and blew themselves up with Grenades. Incidents such as the "Second Battle of Shiroyama" were used by the Japanese government in a propaganda machine to keep the fanaticism and defiance alive, but the gruesome truth is that Japan was doing something never seen before in the Modern age: A Nation committing suicide.

President Hull promised the American people that the final surrender of Japan would come before the 4th of July, many considered that as the 4th of July of 1946, but the conflict extended itself for a year longer than the estimated. None of the American estimates could quite match what was to come, it was expected that Olympic and Coronet would be enough to force a Japanese surrender, but it followed the antique mentality that taking the Capital of the enemy nation was enough to force it's surrender, a logic that did not apply to Japan. It was a Total War, every resource in Japan was mobilized for National Defense, while American factories switched to war production, Automobile industries such as Ford rarely produced consumer cars between 1942-1947, and instead they produced Military vehicles. This phase of the war would also be marked by the last Japanese strike on the American West Coast in March 1946, with the first use of Biological weapons by a foreign power in American soil during the 20th Century as Operation "Cherry Blossoms at Night" carried a deadly varient of the Bubonic Plague to San Diego, and while the Japanese vastly overestimated the lethality of the weapon, it underestimated the retaliation of the American forces, all while the German Intelligence under Reinhard Heydrich would begin a plot that indirectly caused the end of a Presidency, a break of trust of the American people to it's government, and set the stage for the coming "Brown Scare" and the beginning of the Cold War.

The Aftermath of the landings was a moment where the extensive planning by the Allied Forces had to be completely adapted to the failure at the Myazaki operation, which cancelled the immediate attack on Myakonojo that would've linked the two forces, the main target of Olympic was now to take Kagoshima, capturing the largest Harbor of Southern Kyushu was crucial from a logistical perspective, as well as a moral one after the shock of the landings. Meanwhile, on the Japanese side, Kuribayashi would be Promoted as the General responsible for the defense of Kyushu, despite the hesitancy of the Japanese General Staff over his unorthodox methods, his popularity soared after successfully holding the Allies in his sector, the first time that American landing forces were pushed back from the beaches, the Emperor saw the potential propaganda that Kuribayashi could provide, and both intimately shared what the majority of the commanders knew: The War was lost. Being many times considered a defeatist, if not an American sympathizer, by more radical IJA elements, the General had unorthodox doctrines acquired after his experience as a Military representative to Washington in the 1920s, making him the best Army commander to fight an American invasion, knowing how to best hit the morale of the Allied forces while conserving the few resources and advantages he had. The Japanese did have advantages against it's opponent, mainly the terrain of Kyushu being very well suited for defensive warfare, the months of preparation against a foreign invasion, digging out trenches and a complex system of tunnels and traps with chokepoints, fox holes, and an (at least initially) fierce civilian population in total support of the war effort. Kuribayashi hoped that by inflicting the maximum amount of casualties possible on the American forces, in order to weaken the American resolve to continue the conflict at the Home Front and motivate President Hull to offer more acceptable peace terms.

Following the day of the landings, on the 8th of December, Hull would issue a joint declaration with other allied leaders to Japan with the peace terms: Unconditional Surrender. As expected, it was completely rejected the Japanese Government who demanded several assurances such as judging it's own War Crimes and keeping the Emperor's position secured, some even suggested keeping the Korean and Manchurian territories which were completely rejected by the Chinese. Following the refusal of the "San Francisco Declaration", the Allied forces began the long and grueling campaign of resuming Operation Olympic, with the incident at the start of this chapter being one of the last actions before the fall of Kagoshima on the 5th of January, General MacArthur's forces would fight a series of battles to secure the southern part of Kyushu behind the expected timestamp. The intention was never to fully capture Kyushu as that was known to be a far taller order with little gain, instead the capture of the Southern Third of the island was the objective, in order to create the structure necessary to launch Operation Coronet on the following month of May. Kuribayashi would also have a certain amount of success in his task, Operation Olympic was the most costly single Operation in the History of the US Army up to that moment, with hundreds of thousands of casualties, most of them injured soldiers that would bear the scars for the rest of their lives, while the Japanese faced casualties sometimes thrice as big as the Allies, but Japan was more psychologically capable of dealing with ships full of caskets returning home than the Americans could. Once Hyuga was taken on the 20th of March, Operation Olympic was declared successful and the Americans dug in their positions while fighting Japanese attacks by guerrillas and tunnel invasions behind their lines, it is possible that a continuation of Kuribayashi's strategy would've eventually resulted in a less harsh peace agreement, with Japanese archives recovered after the war revealing backroom peace feelers being sent between both sides that could've led to a negotiation. But the Imperial Japanese Navy, specifically it's more radical elements, launched a drastic plan created by Shiro Ishii, the feared commander of Unit 731, would launch an attack that destroyed the bridges and brought back the wrath of the American people on Japan.

The Japanese Army and Navy had probably the worst case of Interservice rivalry of the Modern Age, except maybe for the SS and Wehrmacht in Europe, but ironically it took the invasion of the Japanese Mainland for both to cooperate into "Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night". On the night of the 27th of March 1946, a group of 5 Japanese submarines I-400 class would travel a long distance towards the American West Coast, narrowly avoiding patrols until it arrived near the beaches of San Diego, the I-400 was a class of hybrid vessels, being both submarines and carriers, and carrying with them a force of 15 A6M Serian naval bombers, the Submarines launched their attack on the City. Due to the highened level of the Air Defenses following the San Francisco Air Raid, the US Air Force would identify the approaching aircraft, although the surprise was lost, the planes would manage to reach the City of San Diego and drop it's cargo on the civilian centers while an air battle began on American skies once again. None of the Japanese planes would return, and a counter attack by Naval-Air forces destroyed the five I-400 Submarines, but the damage was done: Some of the bombs were explosives, in order to leave the impression of a regular suicidal air raid motivated by vengeance, but some of the bombs had a quite different cargo: Fleas, carrying a modified pathogen of the Bubonic Plague, which were now released on San Diego. Ishii expected this attack to be a moral weapon as well as a Biological one, causing mass death and devastation on American soil while spreading around a wave of panic and breaking the home morale of the American people, but the pathogen was tested mostly on starved Chinese prisoners which was quite contrastive to the more biologically-resistant American that possessed a good caloric intake and sanitation system, the medicine of Mainland America was far more available than war-torn China. Hull's dilema was rather about what to do with the information that the Japanese attempted to attack America with Biological weapons.

The Outbreak was contained quite easily, but Hull knew that the information that the Japanese planned to spread a deathly virus on the American homeland would destroy any attempts of reaching a peace agreement with the Japanese, as contacts with the so-called "Peace Faction" became increasingly promising since the landfall on the 7th of December. Very few members of the government apparatus knew of the fleas, and following a meeting between FBI Director Hoover and President Hull, both had agreed it would be of the best interests that the war is dealt with first before any information about the motives of the attack was declassified. However, this would prove to be a costly mistake an FBI Agent would uncover a copy of the files in April (Which were kept intact despite Hull's orders that the documents were to be burned), and had personally suffered the loss of his girlfriend due the "Local Outbreak" of San Diego, the agent took the files home and had described in his journal to have been on the edge of betraying the agency by leaking the files to the public. That is where the RSHA under Reinhard Heydrich came in, where an infiltrated agent inside the FBI would contact the one responsible for recovering the documents, encouraging him to "Let the truth set the people free", but after the agent's initial dismissal over breaking his oath of loyalty, the German agent would steal the files herself and leak them to the press, using the testemony of two doctors in San Diego to back up the files. Despite the Wartime Press Censorship, the "Black File Conspiracy" (Named after the Black Death, the most common nickname of the Bubonic Plague) would spread like a wildfire across America and the world right before the launching of Operation Coronet, being known as one of the FBI's greatest failures (Although many suspect Hoover had planned for the files to be leaked in order to discredit the Hull Presidency) and one of the greatest strikes of the RSHA. Heydrich desired to extend the war in the Pacific in order to provide a distraction to the incoming Operation Tannenbaum and provide a propaganda coup as the American People would be "Shown the true deceit of their Judeo-Bolshevik Masters", although it wasn't known that the leaking of the "Black File" was caused by the RSHA, it's discovery would provoke the start of the paranoia against Germans in the United States during the "Brown Scare". In it's immediate effects, the scandal would provoke the deaths of millions, with any chances of a negotiated peace destroyed, the incoming retaliation against Japan involving the first mass use of Strategic Bombardment with Chemical Weapons as General LeMay presented MacArthur with his plans for "Operation Gomorrah", and the effects of the Scandal to the health of the elderly President Hull.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
FIRE AND FURY

"Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens;
Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land."
-Genesis 19:24-25​

Revenge, for four years that would be a feeling that took over American society, the war against Japan began with a perceived coward surprise attack on the 2nd of November 1942, and as ships carrying coffins of dead American soldiers back home, a sense of hatred would come over to the American people just as the economy was beginning it's recovery from a wave of depression and stagnation, Japanese-Americans were lynched on the streets on the day the news of Pearl Harbor came over, the powerful Ku Klux Klan would form groups that harassed and attacked Asian-looking Americans by considering them as "Dirty Japs", many times with the police abstaining from intervention. Just as society began to settle into a more controlled state, the Japanese attack on Hawaii in 1943 with news of the massacres against the local population would provoke a new wave of violence against Japan, effigies of Hirohito and Tojo, alongside Japanese flags would be burned, with reports of Japanese-American businesses being attacked by mobs while others were marked to be boycotted in scenes frighteningly similar to the German "Kristallnacht" years earlier. On the fourth of July of 1943, when the Japanese forces were expelled from Hawaii, there were spontaneous celebrations across not just America but also the Commonwealth nations, reports being sent in America of "Slap a Jap" campaigns promoted, even a slot machine of Uncle Sam slapping stereotypical figures of Tojo being created at the time. President Wheeler had received suggestions such as the internment of Hundreds of Thousands of Japanese-Americans in internment camps in order to "Protect them from Lynchings", which were explicitly refused by Wheeler in order to not draw to himself comparisons with the German Concentration camps, which at the time weren't known for it's true purpose by the population at large. In 1946, the Spirit of Hatred and Vengeance seemed to be replaced by an exhaustion from the war mobilization, and eventually so many bodies began to return that there were calls for peace in the American people, and this all came to an end with the Japanese attack on San Diego, another raid on the West Coast was already enough to strike a nerve in the "Yankee" Society, but the leaking of the Black Case files and the discovery that the raid was the first Japanese attack with biological weapons on American soil that caused a local outbreak of Bubonic plague in the city would once more bring the thirst for revenge to a level not seen since Pearl Harbor, not only at the Japanese but at the Government that was perceived to have "Attempted to hide information to protect the Japanese". It is believed nowadays that Hull had good intentions, seeking to prevent the mass lynchings that happened during Wheeler's government, but the scandal of the files, the stress caused by the war, and his already advanced age would prove too much for the elderly President. Cordell Hull, the eldest President elected in American history up to that moment, died after suffering a stroke at the age of 74 on the 17th of April 1946, with his Vice-President, former congressman and War Veteran Strom Thurmond would be sworn in as the second youngest POTUS behind Theodore Roosevelt at the age of 43, and now it would be his task to bring the Fire and Fury of the American People on Japan.

​

Thurmond's career was one marked by a meteoric rise facilitated by local politics and the war, starting as a Judge and later Democratic congressman in a safe Democrat district of South Carolina. Thurmond was a member of the new generation of Dixiecrats, coming in to replace powerful Democratic figures such as Richard Russell Jr. and Byrd, and despite the low standards, he was considered a moderate in the civil rights issue, being known for criticizing a biased lynching trial, even earning a commendation by the NAACP for it. In 1942, the Congressman would give up his seat to sign up to the Military as a member of the United States Marine Corps, serving a short, yet intense, period of the war in 1943, being one of the Marines fighting at the Wheeler AFB defense in Oahu and later going back home following the campaign at Guadalcanal where he would be hit by a Japanese boobytrap, his right leg being injured forcing him to walk with a cane for the rest of his life. Yet, 1944 would be the decisive year of his life where the South Carolina war hero had the interest of the local Party apparatus in the incoming 1944 election. The Democratic Party governed during the Wheeler administration in a... contentious platform, despite the Dixiecrats and the Klan-alligned Democrats of the South and Midwest being rivals with the Northern Progressives, both sides were forced to cooperate in a ticket after their division caused the victory of Herbet Hoover's Second Term in 1932 in what was supposed to be an easily winnable election against an unpopular President. The Result was a strange mixture in 1936 between a Progressive President and a Dixiecrat Vice-President (The Wheeler-Russell ticket), united around a common platform of Isolationism, Agrarian-friendly policies, and Populism (With the exception of Labor movements which were a common contention point in the White House), which carried them to victory against the ineffective Alf Landon. However, this partnership "made in hell" was put into question by 1944, many Dixiecrats including Russell believed Wheeler was not going far enough against Japan while his rhetoric was becoming increasingly aggressive towards Germany, which many still saw as an "European Matter", Richard Russell believed that he should succeed Wheeler, or at least another Dixiecrat, however such a move would likely alienate Northerners and risk giving the election to the Republicans (Although they were still suffering the stigma of Hoover's term, seen as they still suffered a large margin of defeat in 1940 despite Wheeler going through a recession). Thurmond's name came into play as he returned from the war and planned to run to Senate, going to meet the then-VPOTUS and figurehead of the Dixiecrats, Richard Russell Jr. during the meeting the Vice-President would spend hours talking with Thurmond about his war experience and his desire for politics, with him seeing the young man as a future of the Dixiecrats: He was relatively Progressive by southern standards, desiring to enact several populist ideas that endeared him in his local district years before, and his profile as a moderate judge could raise him as someone palatable to the Northern Party Wing, after several other meetings, Thurmond was promised support for a national campaign as Vice-President, going as an "honorable guest" in many of Wheeler's visits, telling war stories and leaving a good enough impression to the POTUS, especially in his determination towards victory and previous support for many of his policies, alongside his anti-communist stance. In 1944 at the Democratic Convention, the experienced Cordell Hull was hesitant at first to choose Thurmond as his Vice-President pick, however pressure from Party leaders led to him choosing the young "New Dixiecrat" for sake of Party Unity. No one expected Hull to die before the half of his term, and nobody expected such a Young man from the south to ascend to the Presidency of the United States of America in the middle of it's bloodiest military campaign.

President Thurmond would be approached on the day following his inauguration by General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Pacific Forces, and General Curtis LeMay, commander of the United States Bomber Corps, the two men would spend hours speaking with their new Commander-in-Chief about their plan for revenge: Operation Gomorrah. The plan was to launch an air campaign unlike any the world has ever seen before, mobilizing thousands of aircraft to strike at all Japanese settlements considered "Major" or "Strategic" with a bombing campaign, including the authorization to use Chemical weapons such as Chlorine and Phosgene Gas, alongside the mass production and deployment of the "Napalm" bombs, firebombing the mostly-wooden Japanese cities. According to MacArthur's memoirs, Thurmond showed a coldness that was respected by the General, who saw that the man had no love for the Japanese that crippled his leg, being said to be constantly tapping it with his finger during their meeting, in that same meeting, Operation Gomorrah would be authorized to be launched on the 1st of May, Labor day, and to continue for three days of uninterrupted bombardment, which would preceed the launching of the second and most deadly phase of Operation Sunset: Operation Coronet, the invasion of Tokyo itself. For the next weeks, all contacts the American government made in Japan over peace feelers would be ended, while Thurmond distanced himself from Hull and claim to have no knowledge over the Black Case files (Something debated by historians to this day), a symbolic offensive would be launched as a retaliation in Kyushu, although mostly used as a distraction to the Japanese for the upcoming Operations in May, Kuribayashi's men held firmly against the offensives by the allied forces with the gains being quite meaningless in the grand scheme and just a pile of dead bodies being exchanged by both sides, the offensive halted on the 30th of April, and on the next day, from bases out of China, Iwo Jima, Ryuku, Jeju, and southern Kyushu, the largest air fleet ever assembled would take flight with only one objective: Rain down the fires of Revenge on Japan.

Early in the morning of the 1st, still the night of the 30th in the West, Japanese forces would spot the massive airfleet heading towards major settlements from Nagasaki to Hakodate, and for the next hours, wave after wave of bombers would come down over Japanese cities in a scale never seen before by the Nippon people, the campaign of Carpet bombing would be so devastating, that by the time the last waves came on the 3rd, they were dropping their bombs over ashes without any remaining targets left standing, instead attacking smaller, unmarked settlements before returning home. The Japanese Air Forces were being kept in reserve in preparation for future American attacks, but at this point most of the planes would be destroyed on ground, the City of Kyoto would burn for a week before the flames were put out, while in Hiroshima, the attack by Chlorine gas would result in mass deaths in the civilian and military population (The division between them being extremely dim at this point of the war), the shortage of food and medicine in the Home Islands would further aggravate the situation as victims began to die due to the Chemical attacks thanks to frail bodies and lack of medical personnel, most of which was directed to the frontlines in Kyushu. The destruction of the Japanese infrastructure would worsen the logistical situation, disease outbreaks would begin at cities due to worsened sanitation conditions, however, despite all the damage and over a million dead over the course of the air campaign, Japan refused to break, the Kempetai, the Imperial Secret Police, only became strengthened during Operation Sunset to control the home front, forcefully drafting civilians while executing deserters publicly as examples of betrayal and dishonor to the Emperor and the Japanese Nation, any talk of dissent and defeatism was shut down with a bullet to the head, yet more and more it was coming to the realization of the people that the war was over, and all the Americans needed now was to knock down the door and let the burning structure fall apart: They were wrong, and the war would still last up until 1947 before the guns finally went silent, the tenacity and fanaticism of the Japanese people were still underestimated as millions still preferred Death before Dishonor, and the New American Government would be sure to deliver both.

Operation Coronet would be launched on the 10th of May at Tokyo Bay, which would see the most intense house to house (Or, more accurately, rubble to rubble) fighting in the Pacific War, despite the great majority of the city and it's surroundings being destroyed, several government buildings including the Imperial Palace would be kept standing, with the battle for the Imperial Palace in special being the most iconic confrontation of the war. The landings would come in the morning at two beaches: Chigasaki in the South and Kujukuri in the East, the plan being devised to cut off Tokyo bay and strike the Capital from West and East, the main objective being the capture of the Government buildings and officers, Emperor Hirohito and the Royal Family would also be a priority as it was correctly estimated by MacArthur that the Emperor kept a powerful position to the Army and People of Japan, being capable of calling the forces to stand down. The Objectives were set and when the "Y" Day came, over 25 US Army divisions, alongside 5 Commonwealth divisions, a forcer larger than even Olympic, would launch their attack, this time the experience of Olympic ensured a successful landing in both beaches, with the terrain being more favorable to an attack than Southern Kyushu. The War Minister of Japan, Korechika Anami, would be taking personal command over the defense of Tokyo, and after the initial landing, the Imperial Family would be escorted out of Tokyo towards the underground bunker at Matsushiro (Nagamo Prefecture) in the middle of the night in order to prevent the capture of the Emperor by American forces. Resources began to be immediately diverted from Kyushu, with General Kuribayashi receiving the expected news, he has warned Anami repeated times that the Americans would not push towards Northern Kyushu after the heavy losses, that was further proven by the lack of major offensives since March despite several openings and opportunities to do so, the General plead the War Minister, said to be the second most powerful man in Japan after the Emperor himself, to leave Kyushu and lead the defenses of Tokyo, his request would be refused, mostly out of the personal resentment that Anami and other IJA officers had over Kuribayashi. The American forces on land would fight over a rubbled wasteland, some areas still having the water supply poisoned by the bombers and small fires breaking out from time to time despite Operation Gomorrah being finished a week earlier, the IJA was fierce, especially with many elite divisions and the few tank forces left being gathered for the defense of Tokyo, however the Americans would still possess the overwhelming advantage against the Imperial forces, and on the 24th, Tokyo itself would come under attack.

​

The Battle for the Imperial Palace would be considered by many as the symbolic climax of the Pacific War, for the first time, the Capital of Japan would be struck by a foreign invasion force (With the exception of Matthew Perry's Gunboat Diplomacy in the 1850s), and the Allies would push to capture the building held by the 1st and 3rd Guards Division led by General Shizuichi Tanaka, the palace would be stormed by US Army forces under Major General Matthew B. Ridgway, who was famous for the deployment of paratroopers in order to capture the bridges over the canals of Tokyo. Despite the majority of Tokyo's 1 million defenders being "Voluntary" militias, the defenders of the Palace were the Imperial Guard, recruited from veterans of the war to protect the Emperor's home, the fighting at close quarters would become a fierce struggle against it's fanatical defenders, Major Kenji Hatanaka, one of the commanders in the defense of the Palace, ordered his soldiers to "Get close enough to feel their breath" and, if necessary, blow themselves up with grenades to bring their enemies with them as a last resort, traps and tunnels of the Palace would be used by army troops to ambush the Americans, while the Allied troops would have to fight an underground battle in the tunnels of the Palace. Japanese forces blew up the tunnels, flooding them with the cold waters of the canal, drowning themselves alongside their enemies, the fighting for the Imperial palace would last 16 hours before a group of Marines, coincidentally under the command of the defender of Wheeler AFB, Eugene McCarthy, would take the Center of the complex, raising the American flag over the ruins as the fire and smoke of the city enlightening it on the background. The picture taken would be a representative of the Pacific War in all it's destruction, overshadowing it's Iwo Jima predecessor, after the battle ended, the Americans stood triumphant over the symbol of the old Japan on the 6th of June 1946, a date that would be remembered for generations as the day the Imperial Palace was taken, the greatest Symbol of the American victory over Japan in the Pacific War. However, one mistake would ensure that there was still a long way to go before the war was finally over, as one death would lead to the deaths of millions more.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
NEU ORDNUNG

While the Allied forces, mostly the Americans, faced enormous difficulties in pushing back the Japanese forces, only the most extreme hawks in the House of Commons and Congress would dare talk of an invasion of Mainland Europe, without the majority of the German forces tied in the East and with the "Atlantic Wall" project creating formidable defences facing the West, the Mastery of the Reich over the Old Continent was ensured against allied invasion. Military analysts believed that the allied superiority in industry and resources would, in hindsight, be eventually capable of breaking the hold of the Reich, however most ignore the realities of such invasion and the context of the era, with their analyses being mostly used to justify the arguments of War Hawks. The Western World, especially following Operation Sunset, had seen first hand how a naval invasion against a nation fiercely united and dedicated to it's defense following a fanatical mindset was a gruesome task, and the United States did not declare war on the Germans immediately following the fall of Japan due to a generational trauma caused by the bloodiest war America has ever fought, a campaign from the beaches of Normandy to the Volga was not a prospect the great majority of the Americans wished to face. And thanks to this War exhaustion, the Reich would be able to completely consolidate it's hold over Europe, tying up the nations from Lisbon to Helsinki into it's sphere, using the resources plundered by years of war to reshape the Old World in it's image, from the destruction of famous landmarks and entire cities to the breakthroughs in military technology in the fields of Tank warfare with the E-50, the world's first Main Battle Tank (MBT), and Rocket engineering with the V-2 Rocket and the ME-262 Jet Fighter. However, no doubt the main immediate impact of the Reich during the Neuordnung (Reorganization/New Order) period wad the Demography, with the war no longer threatening it's conquests, Hitler could fully enact his vision, and in the east that would come with the concepts of "Lebensraum" and "Drag Nach Osten", the Colonization of the East by German settlers, and to open up the new "living space", the SS and the new Reichskommissariats would enact the dreaded "Generalplan Ost".

The first question to ask when one begins to study German, and overall European, History after 1933 is to ask if the term "National Socialist Revolution" would be accurate in order to describe the changes that Germany went through with the rise of Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP. While the Historiography in the more Marxist groups refuse this nomenclature by arguing that the economical and social structures did not suffer a complete breakdown of the established order similar to the French and Russian revolutions, but a majority of the academia considers the "Hitler Era" to be exactly a Revolution, or covering most of it's aspects, with the complete reshaping of the German Society, the Demographics and Geopolitics of Europe. The leadership of the NSDAP had long dreamed and planned such occasion since the time they were agitators in the Munich Beer Halls, with radical plans for the complete reshaping of the hearts and minds of the people, the landscape of the land itself, the cities, the mark they would leave on the continent would be immortalized as a part of the "Thousand-year Reich". Yet those were dreams that had to conform to reality, from the construction of Germania to the plans to destroy Moscow, many of these ideas had to be changed in several levels or scrapped completely, however many others were implemented, and not just these plans shaped the newly inaugurated "Greater Germanic Reich" but the entirety of the Continent.

During the war, the NSDAP was prioritizing the pragmatic alliance of different regimes in Europe to fight the Soviet Union, however, there was a change of tactics following the Tag das Sieges. In Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria the established regimes of Horthy, Antonescu, and Boris III were kept in place while local National Socialist parties, such as the Arrow Cross, the Iron Guard, and the SBNL were suppressed by said regimes, or at most tolerated. However, in the coming years, Hitler began to turn his attention in ensuring the compliance of the European nations under the Reichsadler, especially during the ongoing "Final Solution" as the leadership of the "Balkan Axis" were resistant in turning over the Jewish populations in their homelands to the Reich. The first regime to be changed would be the Bulgarian Government as Tsar Boris III would die on the 28th of August 1943 after returning from a trip to Germania, the death of the Tsar is one shrouded by mystery, with him dying in a similar circumstance of former Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas two years earlier, his death placed the 6-year old Tsar on the throne with Prime Minister Bogdan Filov, Prince Kiril, and General Nikola Mihov initially being considered for the Regency, however, the German attaché Adolf-Heinz Beckerle would receive new orders from Germania. On the 1st of September, in a much convenient plane crash, Prime Minister Filov would die and throw the country in a complicated period as he was both Regent and Prime Minister, in order to fill in his seat, Kiril and Mihov would be "encouraged" by the German Diplomat to appoint Hristo Lukov, Minister of War and leader of the Union of Bulgarian National Legions (SBNL), under the subtle threat of further German intervention. With Wehrmacht units stationed in the neighboring occupation zones in Serbia and Greece, the Regents saw no choice but to appoint Lukov. The New Prime Minister, backed by his German benefactors, began to sideline the other two regents, placing loyalists in his cabinet and in the armed forces, effectively becoming the sole dictator of Bulgaria, now much more eager to work with Germania, one of his first acts being the deportation of over 50,000 Bulgarian Jews, formerly protected by Tsar Boris and the Orthodox Church, further solidifying the commitment of Bulgaria to the German Sphere.

The Romanian situation required a more direct German involvement in 1944 and brought in tensions between the Wehrmacht and the SS, in 1940, the Antonescu regime and the Iron Guard had been forced to cooperating in installing the "National Legionary State" in Romania, however both began to clash as Antonescu began to sideline his allies in taking full control, which provoked the Legionary Rebellion in 1941. In Germany, Hitler was more worried with the stability of Romania, which would be crucial to stage the invasion in the Soviet Union, than the ideological compatibility with Antonescu, with the Wehrmacht supporting Antonescu and the SS supplying the Legion for the coup, the Army and Party both called for Hitler's blessing, with the Führer supporting Antonescu's regime while receiving the exiled legionaries as refugees. However, with Antonescu's reluctance in implementing the Final Solution across Romania and the Soviet threat eliminated, Hitler would go back on his decision with the change in priorities, recruiting the exiled Horia Sima, leader of the Iron Guard, to overthrow Antonescu, however the Marshal was not the only obstacle to Hitler's plan, as King Michael I was suspected to possess sympathy for the British, which could result in another scenario similar to Yugoslavia where the King rallied pro-allied loyalists and overthrew the axis-friendly regime of Prince Paul, however, Heydrich and the RSHA would give the solution for that. If Michael was assassinated, that would alarm the Marshal and allow him to crack down on any opportunity of creating a power vacuum, and if Antonescu was assassinated, the King would be able to use the opportunity to place his own loyalists in power to distance himself from the Reich, which would provoke a military response much like in 1940. Otto Skorzeny, Lieutenant Colonel of the Waffen-SS and Commando Operative of the RSHA would launch a risky operation, planning to deal a crippling blow on the leadership of Romania by eliminating both Heads of State and creating a power vacuum for the legion to seize power. In 1943, following pressure from Germania, Antonescu was forced to legalize the Iron Guard and give Amnesty to Horia Sima and it's leaders, allowing the Guard to return and reestablish contacts with the armed forces and paramilitary groups. On the 23rd of August 1944, little less than a year since the takeover of Lukov in Bulgaria, both Antonescu and Mihail would be assassinated during a meeting in the city of Ploiesti to inspect the Oil Fields, in their way to meet a German Attaché to negotiate a renewal of purchasing contracts of Romanian Oil, the convoy being ambushed by partisans, leaving no survivors as the prisoners were executed. Many suspect that the ambush was set up by the Germans as the "Partisans" were far better trained and equipped than most resistance organizations. Before the news even reached Bucharest, Iron Guard loyalists would seize government buildings, while Waffen-SS units at the border would enter the nation from all sides, disarming Romanian border troops while the national cohesion fell apart, Luftwaffe forces would fly over the nation with thousands of planes loaded with bombs and even the Kriegsmarine would blockade the port of Constanza. Paratroopers secured the Ploesti oilfields and the 1st Marine infantry division would seize the coastline. With the drawing on the wall, the majority of Romanian commanders would capitulate to the new Conducator Horia Sima, while the Germans proud themselves of "Ensuring the Unity and Stability of Romania during a time of crisis caused by treacherous Jewish elements seeking to deestabilize the New Order". While it was clear to anyone that it was the de facto end of Romanian Independence, resistance to the coup was quickly crushed through hundreds of executions, including of generals supportive of Antonescu's regime and protegees of the King, the Royal Family fled first to Istanbul before heading over to Egypt in a cargo ship and to London, Hitler further using that as proof of their cooperation with the "Plutocratic forces of the West" and Horia abolishing the decades-old monarchy, placing himself as the new Totalitarian dictator of Romania.

In Hungary, the Germans used the family ties of the Horthy family to allow the takeover of the more friendly "Arrow Cross" party in 1945. The Regent of the "Kingdom without a King" Miklós Horthy, was a hesitant ally of the German Order, and while he benefitted of the "Reversing Trianon" propaganda thanks to the Vienna Awards and the fall of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, he was stubborn in refusing to deport over 550,000 Hungarian Jews to Germany. Horthy's regime would be the next target of "Operation Margerethe", the plan was for the occupation of Hungary by military units while commandos would capture the family of Horthy and the country's leadership under Prime Minister Mikós Kállay while Hitler summoned Horthy to a meeting in Germania to discuss the "Transylvanian Question". Horthy was already suspicious of the Germans following the incident in Romania months earlier, however he reluctantly boarded the train to Germania on the 14th of February 1945 following assurances of his security by his own guards, while his train departed to Germania, SS divisions would cross the border in a similar fashion to the crisis in Romania, while Horthy was completely unaware of the invasion and was further stalled while awaiting for the Führer to arrive from the Berghof on the 15th, by the time Hitler arrived, Horthy would enter a period of long negotiations that ended up being not about Transylvania but instead over the status of Hungarian Jews, with Horthy continuing his reluctance to hand them over to the Reich. In the end he would return on the 19th following a frustrant series of negotiations only to be met by German soldiers in Budapest and a document demanding him to abdicate all political offices, dissolving the Government and handing the regency of the Kingdom to Ferenc Szálasi, leader of the Arrow Cross Party, with his family being held hostage by Skorzeny's commandos and Kallay's letter of resignation being handed to Horthy, the Regent saw no option but to accept the demands, being kept in House arrest with his family in Bavaria. Szálasi would declare the end of the Kingdom of Hungary following his ascension on the 20th (Although he was de facto ruling the nation since the 18th), instead declaring himself the Leader of the Hungarian State and banning all political parties with the exception of the Arrow Cross and the National Socialist Movement.

The Three Balkan nations would have their loyalties secured, with hundreds of thousands of Jews being deported towards the Reich's extermination camps, Hitler's dreams of a Jewish-Free Europe were becoming more real every day, however the hard power diplomacy of intimidation, coups, and invasions had to be handled differently in Italy and France. Italy was ruled by Benito Mussolini, and despite the overall disappointing performance of it's armed forces, especially in Greece, Mussolini was not a pushover dictator of a small nation such as Horthy or Antonescu, instead he considered himself an equal to Hitler, and despite Hitler's personal disdain of the "Mediterranean Race", Mussolini was a source of admiration to him as far back as the 1920s when he was inspired by the March on Rome to launch the failed Beer Hall Putsch. In the 1940s, Mussolini was focusing inward to consolidate his conquests, however the German string of coups between 1943 and 1945 would raise a feeling of distrust on Mussolini, with him remaining as Europe's only leader capable of standing up to Hitler and negotiate as "equals", although Italy and Germany were becoming increasingly distant due to the end of the war, Mussolini's fears of a British comeback kept him aligned with Germania, while Hitler considered him more of a liability than an asset militarily, as the Reich had no interest in protecting his African conquests, Italy's markets and influence over other Mediterranean nations remained useful to the Reich, especially the influence Mussolini had over the Vatican in order to keep the fragile Reichskoncordat intact.

As for France, Hitler finally made an official Peace Treaty to end the occupation in 1943 as the Treaty of Lisbon ended the immediate threat of an Allied invasion, the Treaty would be signed on the 28th of June 1943, at the 24-year anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, in the very same halls where the Treaty the Germans blamed for humiliating their nation was signed, Hitler and Petain would sign the "Final Peace settlement between the French State and The Greater Germanic Reich", an elaborate ceremony of humiliation which included German troops parading in the front of the Palace, a Luftwaffe overflight of the Palace, and a speech by Hitler on the balcony of the Palace to members of the 1st SS-Leibstandarte, planned by Joseph Goebbels and televised across the entire Continent with even foreign reporters invited to cover the events. The treaty recognized "In perpetuity" the German ownership of Elass-Lothringen, as well as giving Tunisia, Nice, Savoy, Djbouti, and other minor colonial possessions to Italy, and Pas de Calais would be given to the Germans under the Reichskomissariat Belgien, the German companies gained access to extract minerals in French border regions in Lorraine, the border between France and Germany would be demilitarized on the French side across at least 50 miles (80km), the City of Verdun would be under the administration of the Reich (Which served as personal insult to the "Lion of Verdun", this one being one of the clauses he was the most irate in signing), Himmler's proposal to detatch much of Northeastern France and Belgium into a new state for the SS was rejected by Hitler and not even brought up to the Treaty drafts. The Atlantic Wall fortifications would be kept under the manning of the Wehrmacht in cooperation with the French Armed forces, which practically left the French Atlantic coast under continued threat of German occupation, and the port of St. Nazarie would be leased to the Reich for an undetermined amount of time "Until the threat of Jewish Capitalist powers is over". Finally, the Versailles reparations were instead placed on France, while it's armed forces would be limited to 100,000 men in Europe, while no stipulation was made on the colonial garrisons, and the French airforce would be disbanded with it's aircraft handed over to the Reich (Most of these being sabotaged by pilots or flying towards either Britain or Equatorial Africa to defect), while the fleet was forbidden of having ships over 30,000 tons, Submarines, and Aircraft Carriers, the existing ones being handed over to the Reich. As if it wasn't enough, the France would deport French Jews to the Reich, the German companies would gain a "Special Clause" to receive acess to the French markets free of any tariffs or taxation, and the infamous "Article 87" would place the blame for the start of the war on "Franco-British aggression", a payback for the "Guilt Clause" in 1919. Seeing no other option other than a potential invasion, Petain would be forced to accept the Treaty of Versailles, in return of France receiving back it's 2 million prisoners of war and the end of German occupation over most of Northern France, although the German Embassy in Paris did receive an "expansion" alongside a reinforcement in "security personnel", with troops remaining in the Embassy as a reminder that if the French ever stepped out of line again, the consequences would lead to another invasion, and next time Hitler wouldn't be so merciful. The Ceremony ended with Hitler calling for a new age in Franco-German relations, in the spirit of unity of the "Northern" races, with the Waffen SS "Charlemagne" division, formed by French recruits of the SS, marching on Paris as a symbol of the New Order.

With the continent secured, the consolidation of the Neuordnung would be officialized in 1945 on the 20th of April, the 2nd anniversary of the Tag das Sieges and the 56th anniversary of Adolf Hitler, at the city of Linz. In the place where Hitler once spent his youth, Albert Speer began the transformation of the relatively small city into what was supposed to become the Jewel of the Danube, overshadowing Vienna itself, with the Führermuseum inaugurated to be the largest art collection in Europe, product of the plunder of relics across the continent during the war, the city would be expected to grow over four times it's size in the future years, while Hitler himself began to move into the city, spending far more time between Linz and the Berghof, his alpine residence, than Germania itself in his later years. With representatives of all continental Europe invited, foreign minister Ribbentrop would lay down his call for European unity, and although Hitler was less enthusiastic over the idea, not believing a genuine unity should ever be able to exist between Aryans and lesser races, he still saw the growing United States and the British Empire as potential enemies, and saw the ideas of a German-led "Pan-Europe" as a way to counterbalance the weight of the American industrial power. The "Treaty for Mutual Defense and Unity", also called the "Linz Pakt" would be signed by the Greater Germanic Reich, the Italian Empire, the French State, the Hungarian State, the National Legionary State of Romania, the Kingdom of Bulgaria, the Independent State of Croatia, the Protectorate of Norway, the Protectorate of Denmark, and with the Governments of Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Finland, and Portugal retaining an Observer Status. The agreement of mutual defense, on paper, seemed to emphasize a certain amount of equality between it's members, however it was obvious the Germans would be the dominant force of the Pakt due to it's economical and military weight overshadowing the other participants combined, with agreements in place to give trade priority to member states, German companies would be able to use the market to it's full extent, although Italy kept certain exceptions in order to join in the Pakt to avoid Italian companies from being crushed by the Reich's conglomerates. One side of the stage was set up for the incoming Kalterkrieg, the Cold War.

One of the major events during the mid 1940s is no doubt the death of Hermann Göring, the Reichsmarshal, Hitler's supposed heir, commander of one of the most powerful air fleets in the world, plenipotentiary of the 4-year plan, President of the Reichstag, Master of the Hunt, among other many titles that Hitler's right-hand flamboyantly displayed at every social gathering with his exquisite uniforms filled with medals, was a shock that led to the direct death of thousands. On the 9th of May 1945, shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Linz, Göring was going towards the Berghof on his car for a gathering with Hitler and other members of the Inner circle, as he was headed towards the airport in Poznan, his car was attacked and riddled with bullets by Polish partisans, crashing on a tree with the 52-year old Head of the Luftwaffe dead on it's back, shot with a bullet through the head. While the blame is given to Polish partisans, there are many theories of who was more likely behind the assassination, such as Göring's long-standing rivals in the inner circle, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich who still kept a partnership, albeit a declining one, at the time, that could've masterminded the death of Hitler's most likely successor, with the theory that his driving plan was leaked by third parties to members of the Polish Home Army. Upon receiving the news that his "Iron Marshal" and old friend was assassinated, a frustrated Hitler reportedly went on a furious rant blaming the Untermenschen of Poland for trying to sabotage the Reich by taking from it one of it's most competent commanders (Although the Luftwaffe's successes are more considered to have happened despite Göring instead of because of him), after his tirade he ordered the other Ministers to leave him, where he was said to have cried in his room out of grief with Eva Braun, his wife, inside to console him. Hitler declared Hermann Göring as a hero of the Reich, giving him a funeral with full military honors, attended by thousands in Germania, until his body was buried in his propriety at the Carinhall, declared as a Masoleum (With it's large art collection being taken by Albert Speer to the Führermuseum). While the Reich entered a 3-day period of mourn, the retaliation was made quickly once it was discovered by the RSHA that elements of the Polish Home Army were behind the attack, with SS and Luftwaffe divisions moved to the surroundings of Warsaw and the German authorities and garrison evacuating the quarentined city, the communications lines being cut off alongside water and food supplies. On the 12th of May 1945, thousands of guns echoed uninterruptedly as the city would be shelled once again, while hundreds of planes began an ammassed bombardment unlike any Europe has seen before, the target was not any resistance or military uprising, although the German propaganda machine declared Warsaw as a city in rebellion, the target were the civilians and the city itself. For three days, the city was shelled until the buildings were completely leveled, while the 36th Waffen SS Division, the Black Guards led by Oskar Dirlewanger, entered Warsaw and subjected the city to four days of raid, pillaging, massacres, and the complete destruction of surviving buildings. Finally, on the 19th, the week of terror would end as nothing but rubble remained of the centuries-old city that was once the center of Poland, it would take weeks to remove all the rubble of the buildings, and where once the "Paris of the East" stood, was instead created "Hermannstadt", a "city" built in homage to the dead Air Marshal, with colonists coming over the years, the city would become a German logistical center standing over the ruins of Warsaw, with other reprisals enacted across the General government and the local Jewish inhabitants transported towards Concentration camps. The Death of Hermann Göring not only threw a wrench at the Führer's succession plan, but slowly fed the paranoia of Hitler as he showed off less in public occasions, and led to the death of millions across Poland in the coming years, his role as chief of the Luftwaffe was replaced by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, which would actually considerably improve it's performance in coming years.

​

The death of Göring would also be felt in two nations in specific: Sweden and Switzerland. In Sweden's case, the nation was supposed to have been invaded for it's valuable iron deposits in 1940, alongside it's neighboring Norway and Denmark, however it stood as the only Scandinavian neutral state thanks in no small part due to the Marshal's intervention, as he possessed a personal care for the country, as he worked for a Swedish company in the 1920s as a pilot and had a Swedish woman as a much beloved wife, he intermediated for Sweden to cooperate with the Reich, preserving the nation's independence. Hitler hated Switzerland, despising it's system and considering it necessary that the Swiss Germans are returned to the Reich, however the nation remained independent in the first post-war years as it was pragmatically seen as a cooperative country where many members of the NSDAP, including specially Göring himself, would store away billions in bank reserves. The death of Göring not only made Hitler more paranoid, but eliminated one of the more pragmatic members of the Inner Circle, without the second most powerful man in the Reich (And by consequence Europe) protecting the two nations, the more jingoistic elements of the Reich began to stroke the Führer's ego and ambition once again, and the plans for Operation Tannenbaum and Operation Weserübung were taken out of the archives once again, being given to the OKW to be revised and Prepared. It is believed that Himmler helped in stroking those sentiments, being resentful over Sweden's harboring of Danish Jews and considering the Swiss leadership as a "Spine of Jewish bankers in the center of the Aryan Reich", while Heydrich's RSHA used supposed reports of Jews and resistance leaders using both nations to continue operating as safe heavens in Europe, Goebbels declared that "The enemies of the Reich shall not hide in Europe, they will not be allowed to spread their lies on the Aryan Volk", while the Wehrmacht saw the challenge in defeating the Swiss due to the mountainous terrain. Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb was assigned to command Operation Tannenbaum, while the Reich contacted France and Italy in order to plan a joint invasion and partition of what Hitler considered "The abomination of Europe", while Fedor von Bock would lead the invasion of Sweden, both set to start on the 1st of May 1946. As part of the efforts to divert attention to the incoming invasions, the RSHA would leak the "Black Case" files, to further stroke the American rage towards Japan and prevent a possible armistice from being achieved in the Pacific.

On the 1st of May, the German army was on the march again, with units coming from Norway alongside the shelling of Stockholm and a naval crossing into the Sund, the invasion of Sweden would begin, while Wehrmacht troops would cross from the German and French borders, Mussolini's alpine divisions would come in from the south. Sweden, with a mostly plain terrain that contrasted with the Norwegian mountains, would be overwhelmed by the sudden invasion, with the Government abandoning the capital alongside the royal family, an ironical fate after the Swedish had once rejected the exile of the Norwegian Royal Family 6 years earlier. By the end of the month, Sweden had fallen under the Wehrmacht, a collaborationist government under the NSAP/SSS, the Swedish National Socialist Party, with Sven Lindholm leading a Swedish government similar to Quisling's in Norway, while a Reichskommissariat was set up under the leadership of Curt von Gottberg. The Swiss invasion proved to be a much harder task, General Henri Guisan knew that his country did not possess the capacity of defeating the Germans on the borders, instead he adopted the National Redoubt strategy by evacuating the major cities and plains of Switzerland while settling for an attritional defense of the mountainous Southeast, however much of this plan depended on a successful evacuation of the lower lands by having the troops at the borders hold the Wehrmacht's efforts as much as possible. The German attack ended up proving too much for the Swiss forces, as they lacked modern war equipment and experience to the extent the Germans did, the Luftwaffe immediately dominated the skies, while the 3rd Panzer Army under General Hermann Balck managed to achieve a breakthrough before Guisan's expectations at the Battle of Eglisau Bridge, with the support by Kesselring's Fallschirmjägers capturing the bridge over the Rhine before it was blown up, while Wehrmacht units took Geneva and the Italians launched their attack on Lugano. Eventually, much of the Swiss low lands, including Zürich and Bern, would be captured with the government fleeing to the National Redoubt, however the Germans did not attack the mountains, instead Hitler would listen to the advice of the Chief of Staff of the OKW Heinz Guderian, as the Swiss would not be able to keep their supplies up for long, and as their pleas for help are ignored, the government would have to surrender to avoid starvation. It would take until July, but eventually, as the Germans captured the majority of the Swiss population centers and farmlands, with the mountains starved and encircled from all sides, General Guisan and the Swiss Federal government eventually were forced to capitulate as soldiers began to desert in droves, hunger and disease ravaging the camps while most of the action was contained around Lugano as the Italians eventually took the city with heavy casualties. The Principality of Liechestein would also be swiftly occupied with minimal resistance, despite the heroic propaganda as the Swiss fighting a Last stand for Democracy in Europe, they would instead be sniffed out, beaten by hunger and low morale following a bloody, yet swift campaign over the Low Lands. on the 25th of July 1946, Switzerland ceased to exist, partitioned between the French State, the Italian Empire, and the Greater Germanic Reich.

By the time the United States was bogged down in a bloody campaign on the other side of the world, the Reich had managed to completely secure it's dominance over Continental Europe, partisans and resistance movements slowly began to lose any hope of an allied liberation of the continent, while the Iron Eagle played with the smaller nations, dominating them, changing leaders and borders at will, with Hitler achieving something not seen since the days of Charlemagne and Rome: The Hegemony of Europe. However, it isn't just about geopolitics and the military, in Europe, the daily life of civilians changed, hundreds of millions would have lives much different from the ones before the war, it is no wonder the period was called "New Order", the daily life, jobs, cultures, values, politics, ideologies, and morals of all those living under the rule of the Reich and around it had began to change, sometimes fast and sometimes slowly. The Germans themselves would see a golden age of prosperity and growth unlike any seen before, new cities emerged, great spectacles, new products and dreams, however all of that being paid by the blood and toil of million others, as in the East the Reich's most evil aspects, indeed humankind's worst, would be put into practice in an industrial scale unmatched in History. As the people lived in country homes, seeing smoke rising on the distance, that smoke was not from the burning of coal or wood to fuel industry, and the snow falling on the fields nearby places such as Treblinka and Auschwitz was not a natural phenomenom, but instead it was the cost, it was the consequence, the German people put in power a Totalitarian regime that gave them victory and prosperity, but for million others across the continent, the Iron Eagle represented their worst nightmares.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
INVEJADO PELO MUNDO NOVO

The 25th of April 1933 was a stormy night on the road from the Capital towards Petrópolis, the Chief of the Provisional Government, Getúlio Dornelles Vargas, his wife Darcy, his son Getúlio Jr. his driver and an aide were driving back towards the Presidential vacation house, the Rio Negro Palace, after a visit of the Head of State to the dentist in Rio, the night was foggy with a strong hail as the Euclides Fernandes, the driver, slowed down to avoid obstacles. In a Lincoln Presidential Car, at the Kilometer 53 of the first asphalted road of Brazil, there was a loud rumbling sound as if a bomb had blown up the car, disoriented by the sudden disturbance, Euclides attempted to control the vehicle to no avail, the car drifted and fell down the cliffs of Petrópolis, and when found a day later, the 15-year old Vargas Jr. would be found in the wreckage, miraculously saved by his mother's decision to not let him seat in her place, the other four members would be found dead including Getúlio Vargas. This single death caused by a crashing rock and Getúlio's dental negligence would lead to the rise of one of the first disputes between the Reich and the United States, helping to ignite the Kalterkrieg and turning a tropical giant, named as the "Envy of the New World" into the gateway of the Reich into Latin America, alongside the deaths of many others who opposed the regime first imposed by Generalissimo Monteiro that turned Brazil into an Authoritarian State.

The death of Vargas could not come at a worse time, in the 1920s following the Great War, Brazil was plagued by economical woos and political radicalization, starting with the 1917 General Strike, followed by the rebellion of the "Tenentes" in 1922 and 1924, the political movement of Tenentismo was a fruit of the dissatisfaction of the status quo by large sectors of society and would eventually burst in the 1930 election. Vargas, governor of Rio Grande do Sul, would form an anti-establishment political alliance with other oligarchs against the sitting President Washington Luís and his candidate Júlio Prestes called "Aliança Liberal" (Liberal Alliance), however the powerful political machine of the State of São Paulo with other regional oligarchs would emerge triumphant against the largely urban movement. Ever since the fall of the Empire in 1889, more so after the end of the "Sword Republic" of the Iron Marshal Floriano Peixoto in 1894, the Republic worked in a largely fraudulent voting system held together by the alliance of the "Café com Leite" (Coffee with Milk, with São Paulo, the largest coffee producer, and Minas Gerais, famous for it's production of milk) oligarchies to take turns at the Presidency through it's influential links to state governments and large farm owners to control the voting process through disenfranchisement, ballot stuffing, and voter manipulation. The Tenentistas, named from the fact most of them were led by Lieutenants of the Army, were one of the main voices of the political dissatisfaction in Brazil, from Communists to Fascists to Liberals, several sectors allied against the ruling regime in two coup attempts in Rio (1922) and São Paulo (1924), with President Artur Bernardes declaring a national emergency and suppressing brutally both uprisings, while surviving Tenentes came to the south of Brazil and for 3 years would march across thousands of miles in the Brazilian countryside between 1924 and 1927, under constant harassment of government forces while living off the land and unsuccessfully attempting to spark a peasant uprising. The movement came largely under the symbolic leadership of Luis Carlos Prestes, who would become known as the "Knight of Hope" and becoming a famous figure across the nation, while the "Prestes Column" would come to inspire, amongst others, the Chinese Long March in 1934 and served as an example to General Douglas MacArthur in his campaign of the Pacific, using the example of how to "live off the land" during the Phillipino campaign.

Vargas was a fruit of the instability of this period in Rio Grande do Sul, a frontier State in southern Brazil that possessed, as consequence of it's historical conflicts in the Platinean Basin, a much well armed and experienced State Guard compared to other States, while also having a past history of great violence in political disputes with tales of brutality such as the mass "degolas" (beheadings) during the Federalista war in 1893. When the Republic was declared, Júlio de Castilhos would emerge as the first Governor of Rio Grande do Sul, forming a government inspired in the Positivist ideals, while also solidifying his own power under a powerful governorship without a reelection limit, making the State essentially a one-party dictatorship under the Partido Republicano Riograndense, after his death in 1903, the Governorship was kept by the influential Borges de Mendeiros for several terms. Eventually in the 1923 election, Borges failed to receive a sufficient number of votes to be reelected, with the ballots coming under fraud (Vargas being a "Borgista" and a member of the electoral commission) and the defeated candidate Assis Brasil restarting the war between the "Maragatos" (Liberals) and "Ximangos" (Positivists). Eventually the war would come to an end in 1924 after Bernardes threatened to intervene with Federal troops and formed a compromise, with Borges keeping his mandate but unable to be reelected, with him choosing the Brazilian Minister of Finance and his Political Protegé Getúlio Vargas to be elected Governor in 1928, in the decisive moment where Washington Luis, who was initially a friend of Vargas during his time as Minister, was seeking his next successor. According to the Café com Leite politics, the next President should've been Antonio Carlos Andrada, Governor of Minas Gerais, however the stubborn Washington Luís refused to give him his support, initially promising it to Vargas, only to later go behind his back and supported Júlio Prestes, the Governor of São Paulo, and with the 1929 crash bringing down coffee prices, Washington expected that it was important for a Paulista to be on the Presidency in order to support the São Paulo coffee farmers.

Vargas, irate by the betrayal of Washington Luis, would be approached by Andrada, alongside dissatisfied oligarchs from São Paulo who were rivals of Washington Luis, Tenentistas, and the Governor of Paraiba João Pessoa, and the unholy alliance of Borges de Mendeiros and Assis Brasil, forming the Liberal Alliance with Getúlio as Presidential Candidate and Pessoa as Vice-President. However, despite the large coalition and new campaigning methods, the Liberal Alliance would be defeated by the sitting Oligarchs in the election. While the story could've ended right there for the defeated Vargas, something extraordinary happened as João Pessoa was assassinated in Recife on the 26th of July over a regional rivalry, causing a general commotion, with the defeated candidate being approached by Tenentista officers, the general dissatisfaction with the electoral results, the economical fallout of the 1929 crisis and possessing a powerful alliance that included the State militia of Rio Grande do Sul, there was no better opportunity to overthrow the Oligarchical Republic. In October 1930, the Revolution began as military units rose up in rebellion against President Washington Luis before Júlio Prestes could be inaugurated as President, with military units from both sides entering in conflict, Vargas and his forces began the march north towards Rio de Janeiro, while the Federal troops gathered in Itararé, at the border of São Paulo, in order to stop the march of the Varguists. The stage was set to what could be one of the bloodiest Battles of Brazilian history, which would turn the 1930 Revolution into a Civil War, however the Battle of Itararé became known as a battle that never happened, as Washington was ousted by a Military Junta shortly before the confrontation between both sides, with the Junta declaring Vargas as the winner of the election and denouncing the fraudulent process, ordering the troops at Itararé to stand down and opening the way for Vargas to take the Capital, declaring himself the Chief of the Provisional Government, dissolving the 1891 Constitution, and removing the State governors, appointing Federal interventors, largely Tenentista military officers.

​

On the next two years, Vargas proceeded to alienate all of his former liberal allies, the oligarch dissidents, and especially the state of São Paulo, aligning himself more with the military Tenentistas. The dilema of the Provisional Government was between the formation of a Liberal Republic, defended by the liberals, and the formation of an authoritarian regime defended by most of the Military, with Vargas trying to keep a balancing game, with one of the major events during this period was the visit of Italo Balbo, Mussolini's Flamboyant poster boy and famed pilot, with a cross-atlantic trip as a show of power of the Italian air force and his recognition of Vargas' Government, an event which began to increase the fears of many liberals that Vargas betrayed the Revolution. In 1932, a protest in São Paulo would end up with the death of four (later revealed to be five) students, creating the MMDC (named after the initials of the "four martyrs") Movement, with dissident Tenentes, old oligarchs, and even Vargas' old allies Borges de Mendeiros, Antonio Carlos de Andrada, Assis Brasil, began to plot against him. Finally, on the 9th of July, the uprising began in São Paulo, the State declared an open rebellion against the government, expecting Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul to support them in overthrowing Vargas, however the leaders of the movement greatly overestimated their support in the Military and underestimated Vargas' support with the people. In the end, the expected support never came as the local uprisings were brutally crushed by Vargas' Tenentista interventors, who firmly controlled the State militias of their areas, with São Paulo standing alone against the rest of Brazil. The 1932 Constitucionalista War was a short, yet bloody, affair ending on the 2nd of October with Federal troops marching on São Paulo after the city was bombed by the Air Force, the short civil war being Brazil's first test with modern weapons such as Tanks and Aircraft, with most of the leadership exiled or imprisoned, however in a conciliatory gesture, Vargas would follow one of the main demands of the rebels by calling a Constitutional convention, only for him to die in the Petropolis accident shortly before the elections without a successor (As he governed by Decree and the Legislative assembly was dissolved, the 1891 Constitution no longer existed with a clear succession line, and the most legitimate successor died 2 years earlier), throwing the nation in a period of uncertainty with a Power Vacuum.

The immediate aftermath once the news of Vargas' death arrived at the Catete, the Presidential Palace, was one of panic and confusion, nobody knew who was in charge, Vargas' family would be notified of the death of the Chief of the Provisional Government and an atmosphere of mourning and fear would come over, with the fears that Vargas and his wife were assassinated spreading around like wildfire. It didn't take long for the power vacuum to be filled in by the security forces, the recently-appointed Chief of Police of the Federal District of the Capital, Filinto Müller, would send in the military police in a State of Emergency, locking down the streets to the confusion of the inhabitants, many believing that a coup was ongoing, while a decisive telephone call was made by Müller to General Pedro Aurélio de Góis Monteiro, the commander of the Brazilian army during the war months earlier and the closest high-ranking military officer to Rio de Janeiro, following a call that lasted over an hour, Monteiro would summon his Lieutenants and began barking out orders after breaking the news that Vargas was assassinated by a likely communist conspiracy, troops of the Brazilian army would march on the streets and secure communication posts and strategic points, while ordering several arrests at suspected "Conspirators", the death of Vargas was announced over a radio address by General Monteiro, who announced the temporary suspension of the elections for the Constitutional Assembly and declared himself as Temporary head of the Provisional Government after making a number of phone calls to other military commanders, with the support of General Dutra and several interventors including Juaréz Tavora, who was the head of several different states in Northern Brazil, preventing the fears that Brazil would fall into another civil war between military commanders, for now.

Goes knew the "Provisional" character of the government has been lasting for almost three years, the delay in creating a new constitution already caused a civil war and the lack of a proper line of succession left him vulnerable to other opportunist officers with ideas different from his', cancelling an already announced Constitutional Convention would generate a possibly catastrophic backlash to his shaky government, however delaying one over "National Security concerns" was perfectly reasonable after a supposed assassination of the Head of State. The date of the elections was set back from May to August, which would allow Monteiro to consolidate his power base and shape the Assembly as he desired, the Funeral of Getúlio Vargas would cause a national commotion, the man promised to save Brazil was slain alongside his wife by "Occult Forces" behind the shadows, with Monteiro accusing Communists and other "subversive elements of society". The General would launch a crackdown, going back on several amnesties given by Vargas to Liberal politicians and commanders of the 1932 rebellion, while launching a crackdown on previously tolerated elements of the Brazilian left, however Monteiro's greatest efforts during the provisional government went towards the careful manipulation of the constitutional assembly, as it would be the first election with secret voting and including women, the General would align with more authoritarian elements of the former Tenentista movement linked to the "October 3rd" group, including the Federal interventors to make sure the "secret" part of the voting process was "secured", with military officers overseeing the ballots, many fraudulent schemes were discovered, most of them from the former Republic similarly to the previous elections, with many arriving on the ballot to discover their names already signed on filled papers, the female vote was restricted to widows, women who produced their own earnings, and those authorized by their husbands, interestingly it was discovered that many widows received their deceased husband's ballots already filled up. In the end, with the control over the press ensured, the news of fraud were minimized, and what was the "Most democratic election in Brazilian History" would elect an assembly mostly composed by government-aligned puppets.

The 1934 Constitution established the legal basis for the Brazilian regime, the Presidency was made an essentially ceremonial position, but the Legislature was not strenghtened either as a compensation, instead an old Imperial institution would return, with a much more powerful role, the Council of State would be recreated, but while it once only served an advisory role to the Emperor, the Council now essentially governed the nation, the Ministers of the Council were appointed by the Head of the Council, rather than the President, and the Head of the Council was elected by the Council itself, which allowed for an unelected oligarchy to govern the nation behind the shadow of the elected President who lost most of his powers. The Minister of War also had it's importance was expanded to the oversight over "Interests pertaining to the National security, stability, order, and unity" a vague enough term to allow the Ministry to intervene over the matters of governance, also adding up that the Minister of War was the only position that could not be chosen or removed by the Head of the Council, but rather that he was chosen by the three heads of the Military High Command by an election, centered around the "Vila Militar", the quarters of the Brazilian military in Rio de Janeiro, where the building of the Minister of War was also located, the Minister, and not the President, was also to be the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. The Council was also allowed to "Advise" the President in some of the few roles it still possessed, namely over Diplomacy and the choice of the "Puppet Senators" as they would be called, the right of the President to choose a third of the Senate seats according to a "Democratic" list made by the Council, and if a President ever decided to ignore the list, Monteiro made sure to add that the President could be considered "Inept" to govern by the Council of State, allowing for his temporary removal for a period of 180 days that could be renewed by the Council until the Head of State was declared "capable of sensitive governance". The Constitution still attended many of the demands of former Tenentista and Varguista supporters, expanding the welfare system and establishing a large degree of government intervention over the economy and a system for corporative representation on congress, however while it was on the outside a democratic republic more liberal than the previous one, it was obvious the Council of State held much greater power as it was allowed to enact "Institutional Acts" without Congressional consent, which could only be nullified either by the council itself or the Supreme Court, as expected, the Council also elaborated the list of Supreme Court candidates for Presidential approval, using "Tecnical criteria" for it. The Assembly would also elect the First President Osvaldo Aranha, a lawyer and former Minister of Finance of Vargas' government, one of the main responsible for the creation of the Liberal Alliance and a popular man that could rally the support of Varguistas. As no Ministry was created yet, the first Minister of War, Goes Monteiro, who took the name of Generalissimo upon becoming Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, would serve as the first head of the Council, symbolically elected by his own vote

​

The New government led by Osvaldo Aranha, but de facto being a military junta led by Generalissimo Monteiro would begin the first acts of Governance following the "October 3rd Movement" proposals, an alliance of revolutionaries of the 1930 revolution who named it after the day it began, mostly compromised by Tenentistas and other allies. While Monteiro would personally not be a member of a political party as he was still an active member of the armed forces, the movement quickly would grow into the first major party of the new Republic born from the previous club with the same name. The Movement called for a Centralized, Authoritarian Republic under a strong State that decisively intervened on the economy to propel the national development, nationalizing several companies and fighting against large plantations that served as the backbone of the old Oligarchy either by seizing of it's assets or by enacting a land tax, however the movement would grow to become more authoritarian with time, especially with the growth of another political organization that became increasingly aligned with the military, the Brazilian Integralist Action (AIB). Led by writer Plínio Salgado and inspired by Portuguese and French Integralism, as well as becoming an adopter of Mussolini's methodology, the AIB defended an strong Authoritarian State, Christian Moralism, Nationalism, and Hierarchy, while opposing Communism, "Cosmopolitanism" (Foreign influence on Brazilian Culture), Materialism, and Liberalism, however a major difference of the AIB and European Fascist movements, specifically National Socialism, was it's racial instance, as Salgado instead defended Racial unity and mixing as a strength, however many of it's members were known Anti-Semites, which would only grow during the 1940s following the success of the Reich in Europe. The AIB would become one of the most formidable forces in Brazilian politics during the 1930s due to it's organization and appeal to the middle classes and the military, with the tolerance of the Generalissimo, who saw them as a positive force in society due to it's combat against "subversive elements" such as the Communist Party, the "Greenshirt" militias of the Integralists would fight many street battles against supporters of socialist ideologies, including the "Battle of Praça da Sé" in 1934, where Integralist militias routed leftist paramilitaries in São Paulo, with the suspicion that they were supported by the local military police.

The threat of communism in Brazil was not exactly just paranoia by the armed forces, Luís Carlos Prestes, the "Knight of Hope", converted to the Communist cause during his exile in Buenos Aires, refusing to join the 1930 Revolution as he considered it far too moderate than Brazil needed, later he would go to the Soviet Union to further study the theory while gathering the support of the International for a revolution in Brazil. Prestes believed that his name and prestige still would carry a great weight on the armed forces, specifically the low-patent officers and privates who would join him in a Revolution against the ruling Military regime led by the Generalissimo, and while Stalin was not particularly interested in a Revolution in South America, he would allow Prestes to recruit supporters for his cause, including a Jewish-German communist agent called as Olga Benário, who would use the fake identification as Prestes' wife in Brazil. While the Regime did not allow for his return, Prestes would be smuggled into the country with the help of supporters in January 1935, beginning his plans to organize a military coup with the help of dissatisfied Tenentes and left-wing political leaders frustrated by the fraudulent Republic, however the military intelligence service would "discover" Prestes' plans as Major Olimpio Mourão Filho, head of the intelligence service of the AIB, approached Monteiro with the "Cohen Plan", which was supposedly produced by Prestes, detailing how Communist agents were supposed to spread dissent and call for civilian action through a General Strike, conducting terrorist attacks and sabotaging logistical centers in order for a military coup to be launched against the Republic, alongside plans for mass executions and assassinations of the leadership of the nation, with a list of supporters of the plan, the list included several leftist members of the armed forces and civilians, and although it did align with many of the planned putschists of Prestes' real plan, it coincidentialy included several opposition figures of the AIB and the 3rd of October Movement. With the discovery of this plan, Monteiro would have all justification needed to further increase the grip of the regime in Brazil and launch a preemptive strike on much of his opposition, on the 31st of April, a day before the "planned coup", shots were heard on military barracks, with artillery strikes against the barracks of the 2nd and 3rd infantry regiments, the government's actions led to an early coup being started by Prestes, however most of the units were suppressed before it was even started, with Prestes fleeing from Brazil following the failed coup attempt, leaving behind his "wife", who was discovered to be a German citizen and deported to Hitler's regime, never being heard from again. The "Intentona (Attempt) Comunista" would be heavily suppressed, and on the Labor day of 1935, Monteiro would enact the first Ato Institucional, suspending many of the liberties given by the Constitution, including public assembly and habeas corpus, while also banning several labor organizations and left-wing groups, shutting down newspapers, many of them being regime critics, and even congressmen who were outspoken critics of the government. Essentially the little democracy Brazil still had would be shut down, with many leaders of the political left losing their political rights. It would also lead to the approval of the "National Security Law" in June, which essentially officialized the Government actions in the name of the "Order and Security of the State", and the Ato Institucional III which disarmed the State Militias of it's heavy equipment, forbidding the use of tanks and aircraft, alongside artillery and heavy caliber guns that were turned over to the National Army, neutering the risk of another State rebellion similar to the same one that began the Revolution in the first place and the Constitucionalista War.

​

A 3-Party system existed in Brazil, with the 3rd of October movement having the large majority of the seats following the 1935 election, called by the Generalissimo's Ato Institucional II, to the right the AIB would be the second largest Party, with over a million registered members by 1937, and to the left there would be a controlled opposition movement, mainly kept in order to provide an illusion of representation and be used as scapegoats, the "National Democratic Union" (UDN) who officially supported a more liberal version of the 3rd of October Movement, which included Federalism and Private Propriety rights, sometimes even aligning with the AIB in the defense of Private Propriety and Municipal autonomy. The Government would intervene decisively on the economy to counter the effects of the 1929 crisis, while initiating the first "Plano de METAS", which worked similarly to the German 4-year plan or the Soviet 5-year plan by announcing directives and goals for the Government intervention of the economy, each plan lasted 6 years, the first METAS plan would begin to lay the foundations for industrial growth of Brazil while seizing the assets of several farmers, enacting a limited Land Reform program proposed by the old Tenentista program. Politically, the Presidency of Osvaldo Aranha was a frustrating matter to the President, and while he was popular and provided a friendly face to the regime, his power was much more limited by Monteiro's regime, limited mostly to symbolic roles such as the declaration of Vargas as the "Father of new Brazil", a cult of personality began to grow around the martyrized Head of State, as shown in 1937 with the creation of the "Getúlio Vargas Labor Organization", a State-led Union inspired by the Italian General Confederation of Labor as an alternative to the Socialist Unions, many other organizations and even universities would be created with Vargas' name, all while Monteiro's association as the "Revolutionary General" was emphasized more and more as the years passed. Aranha's limitations caused several conflicts with the Generalissimo, sometimes with the President going over Monteiro's "recommendations", especially during State visits as he was still the Head of State, his visits to President Wheeler's America were frequent between 1938 and 1939, where Aranha's American leanings was shown more and more with agreements being made to bring in much-needed foreign investments to Brazil, alongside other visits of Aranha to London and Paris, showing clear preference of allying with the Democratic west while Monteiro repeatedly showed admiration towards the Wehrmacht, even inviting German instructors to the Brazilian Army and making exceptions to the German immigrant communities in Brazil over the new Nationalist laws enforcing the exclusive use of Portuguese, alongside his visits to Italy in 1937 and 1939, the latter occouring shortly before Aranha's visit to Washington.

As the Second World War began, it became obvious the relationship between the two men would be unable to survive, Aranha planned for the 1940 elections to be a statement of the Brazilian people against the regime, as his relationship with the Generalissimo collapsed, Aranha would call for the help of Juarez Távora, the two former revolutionaries came from very distinct backgrounds, however the President knew that a man of his military background and Prestige would be the only one capable of standing against Monteiro inside the Government, the UDN would support the campaign of Távora while the October Movement would come to call in General Dutra, Góes companion and one of the commanders of the Revolution and the Constitucionalista War, although he was a man who greatly lacked the popular charisma to be President, he represented Monteiro's influence inside the Brazilian politics at the time. The 1940 election would be essentially decided as the Integralists came to back Dutra's campaign in return of several concessions by the Government, which included the Ministry of Education, being given to Plínio Salgado, as well as protections to Integralist groups from police reprisals, Monteiro would accept it, essentially giving the integralist movement a blank check to shape the minds of the next generation of Brazilians. The results, even with the widespread fraud, were close, with around 43% of the votes going for Dutra, 39% to Távora, 18% voting for other candidates, Dutra would be elected the President for the 1941-1946 period, with Aranha's gambit failing, the former President would be increasingly warry of Brazil's approachment towards the Axis powers, and was said to have called President Wheeler following the electoral defeat to "No longer consider Brazil a friend of Democracy", apologizing to Wheeler for letting Brazil fall to "Fascist Forces", unfortunately for Aranha, the call was being recorded by Monteiro's office, who is said to have been keeping the President's calls recorded, using that to spy on his campaign, after the President stepped down on the 1st of January, he would be be given an arrest order shortly afterwards for "Conspiring with foreign powers to turn over Brazilian independence to foreign interests", a news that shocked much of the nation including Távora as parts of the call would be played on radio as a form to further discredit Aranha's legacy as an American agent. Osvaldo would manage to escape into exile thanks to friendly police contacts, living the rest of his life in the United States while Brazil descended into Darkness.

During the Second World War, Generalissimo Monteiro, who now was essentially holding the three most powerful offices in the country (Ministry of War, President of the Council of State, and the Presidency through a puppet), attempted to keep a balancing act, although he has shown more and more inclinations towards Germania as the war showed more and more successes to the Axis, even calling up German investors and technicians from the Krupp industries for the construction of the CSN (National Steel Company), Brazil's first heavy Steel industry and propagandized as a national triumph of the first METAS plan in 1940. Meanwhile, Monteiro was careful not to alienate the Americans, showing support for the "Crusade against the Asian Horde" in 1942, giving solidarity to the victims of a coward attack in Pearl Harbor, using the Pacific War as an excuse to suppress the large Japanese-Brazilian population, both in the name of Nationalism and to win over the more Japanophobic elements of American society, as shown by Monteiro's use of Concentration camps to "Subversive elements". The "National Department of Internal Security" (DNSI) would be created in 1941 in order to locate and neutralize subversive elements of the State, with the Chief of Police of the Federal District and one of the key figures of the 1933 coup, Filinto Müller, becoming the head of the new agency, and soon Müller would begin to fight a powerful terrorist group inside the Nipo-Brazilian communities, the feared Shindo Renmei (Path of the Servants) organization. Formed by Japanese radicals in Brazil, further radicalized by the increased supression of the local communities by the government, the group considered themselves servants of Hirohito in Brazil, dreaming with the Japanese triumph over the Pacific and either a return to their homeland or, in more extreme examples, a Japanese conquest of Brazil, which did not look a far fetched dream by the time of the Japanese victories in Midway and the invasion of Hawaii, which many expected to be the final step before a Nipponic invasion of America. Led by Junji Kikawa, the organization grew more as the time went on, as the Japanese language was forbidden from being spoken or used in public, the group would launch terrorist attacks, especially in the States of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, while assassinating major government figures, becoming famous for the murder of even Japanese-Brazilians who were accused of having "Dirty Hearts" for being considered defeatists, many Japanese-Brazilians would come under the Harassment of Greenshirt militias, while the attacks only served to further increase support for the Integralists as "Knights of the Nation", Japanophobia began to spread, specially in São Paulo. While Brazil was not officially at war with Japan, the Government did side with the Americans, helping to provide supplies and even volunteer forces being sent towards the Pacific, a Brazilian brigade of 3,000 men served in Kyushu during Operation Sunset, nicknamed as the "Smoking Snakes", as many considered easier for a Snake to smoke than a Brazilian to go to War. However, despite the attacks by the Shindo Renmei having caused the deaths of over a thousand Brazilians between 1943-1946, none of them came close to the infamy as the Assassination attempt on the Generalissimo himself as he went to São Paulo in order to inspect the arrival of a group of Panzer IV tanks recently purchased from the Germans as part of the efforts to modernize the Brazilian army in 1945, he would be shot during his visit to the port city of Santos, being hit on the chest, the bullet grazed on his ribs, missing his lugs and heart by mere inches, the assassin being revealed to be associated to the Shindo Renmei, a young Japanese immigrant using an smuggled Arisaka rifle. The attempt on the life of the Generalissimo would lead to an intensification of the crackdown over the Japanese-Brazilian community, with the Shido Renmei eventually being hunted down into irrelevance by 1946, eventually the last members of the terrorist group would commit suicide in 1947 following the news of the Japanese surrender.

As 1946 came along, the Dutra Government was what many expected, the President served as nothing more than a puppet to the Generalissimo, while Brazil became more authoritarian and the influence of the AIB grew more to the point it occupied over 30% of the Congress in the 1944 elections, showing the increased growth of the influence of the Axis powers in Brazil, the elections would come with the victory of the October Movement candidate, Francisco Campos, Minister of Justice and author of the text of the majority of the Institutional Acts, and one of the more authoritarian representatives of the movement, defeating his rival, the Liberal Milton Campos of the UDN with a 58-33 margin. Despite the increased authoritarianism, the majority of the Brazilians did not show hostility to the commanding regime, with a large period of economical growth brought by the first two METAS plans, the nation seemed completely different from what it once was in 1930, with a growing industrial sector, rapid urbanization, a return of relative political stability, and the welfare programs and labor rights, alongside new education programs expanding the access of the common brazilian to a standard of living far greater than the previous governments, as well as the crackdown on crime, especially on rural banditry (Cangaço) and the rural oligarchs being a symbol of the modernization of the country during the time. Roads and railroads were built to connect the cities of Brazil by land route, connecting the islands of the "Brazilian Archipelago", including the expansion of access to radio given by the Department of Press and Propaganda (DIP) allowing for the Government propaganda to reach the homes of millions of Brazilians, even those who were iliterate now could hear of all the great things the Government has achieved, with Nationalist propaganda rallying the people. However, the AIB, once considered just an useful group of fools to attack Communists in the streets by the Government, ended up becoming more and more of a threat to the Establishment, now with over two million members across Brazil, creating the curriculum and indoctrinating a new generation of Brazilians, with an organized group of supporters and a strong paramilitary wing with contact with friendly groups deeply intrenched in the military, the Integralists were becoming more ambitious, especially following the victories of the Axis powers in Europe, with Salgado making a visit to Rome in 1944 in order to "Study new methods of educating the Brazilian Youth on Catholic values", many speculate that his visit had other, more sinister, reasons, a secret plot to create a base for Fascism in the tropics, a Fascism in Green and Yellow.

​

And so, by the time the war was ending in the Pacific, the Axis powers had a potential gateway: The largest and wealthiest State of Latin America now had a door for the entry of the Linz Pakt into the American backyard, all they needed was to find a way to fully open it. Monteiro, despite his open sympathy for Germania and Rome, was not a fool, knowing that directly antagonizing the United States could very well end with the collapse of his Regime, instead the Generalissimo attempted to keep playing with both sides, however he was not alone in Latin America, with the potential of a "Latin Axis" being a real possibility as many other nations flirted with the Fascist states of Europe, especially Italy. Meanwhile the Third METAS plan would begin, with Brazil continuing to build up it's strength, pursuing a policy of Import Substitution and Nationalism, with the Oil Industry being put under State control in the form of the Petrobrás company. The Titan of South America would begin to show the world it's new face after decades of instability, corrupt oligarchies, civil wars, coups, even the supposed assassination of a Head of State, now as a nation stronger and more united than ever before, with a powerful army, growing economy, and a much more nationalistic policy, with the European war validating Authoritarian mindsets, a regime that borrowed several of it's aspects from it would now begin to place it's mark on it's region. Brazil no longer would be the "Country of the Future", but it would be the country of Today, or at least that's what the Government propaganda said.

​

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

Another clarification I must add is in regards to the policy over Original Characters "OCs", it is understandable that many of the viewers of the forum frown upon the idea of completely unknown people taking prominent part in History, however is far more unrealistic to believe that the same people who were able to achieve positions of relevance in our Timeline would do so in a completely different setting. For instance, the demographic changes brought by the German victory and policies on Eastern Europe alone would prevent most of the modern figures we associate with that region from ever achieving power, parents of famous figures could never meet. On the other hand, still regarding Germany as an example, what are the chances that the same set of politicians who rose to power in a post-WWII Germany would rise to power in this one? As much as we all would love to see Führer Merkel or SS-Obergruppenführer Arnold Schwarzenegger, it is a rather unrealistic notion to believe they would exist, never mind achieve such level of success, in this world. On the other hand, just from the casualties of German soldiers that were avoided, as well as the division of Germany being prevented from separating potential families, an entire generation would've been born and it is possible that leaders would arise from this post-war boom, while figures who never came to be known in history books would have plenty of opportunities to actually become a part of this whole new world of politics, economics, and culture.

Another reason to allow OCs, especially as the timeline advances to a more modern age, is to avoid controversies caused by the butterfly effect. Is it possible that a figure such as Ronald Reagan could've become a communist? It is unlikely, yet still possible, just as we could see George W. Bush and Bill Clinton sharing a membership in the Klan under leadership of Grand Wizard Mel Gibson. While it is fun to see such scenarios and crack a few jokes about them, they can also create rather inconvenient political controversies as people put into question the personalities of these characters based on what they know of them from our timeline when the shockwaves of a German victory could spread around butterflies that we cannot fully comprehend. So original characters are an idea that can solve these controversies, which is not to say that historical figures will be eliminated as a whole, these changes would not be perceptive in the early stages of the timeline, but as old generations die off, there is the rise of a new one with new and interesting figures. Rather than believing these characters to have come to existence completely out of the blue, it is always better to imagine that it is a figure that actually existed amongst the millions in real life who live and die every day without even a mention in a History book.

And now a question, should the submission of potential OCs for the History in this timeline be opened up to you, the public? Would you like to create your own character capable of making a change and a name of their own in this rather different world? What kind of character would you create? Would you be interested in creating one?

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
GNADENLOS!

"I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly.
It should be discussed amongst us, and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public
I am talking about the "Jewish evacuation": the extermination of the Jewish people."
-Heinrich Himmler, 1942
​

Anti-Semitism in Europe has two distinct phases according to the motivation for the hatred of the Jewish people, the first being the religious phase and, after the late 19th century and the introduction of Social Darwinism, of the racial phase embraced by Adolf Hitler and the New Order. The Religious hatred on Judaism came from the accusation of "Deicide", used several times first by the Medieval Catholic Church and latter adopted by Protestants and Orthodox churches, claiming that the Jews committed the highest crime by condemning Jesus Christ to crucifixion, many times that violence came in the form of popular riots nicknamed as "Pogroms", where the blame for great tragedies such as the Black Death, the 30-years war, and Natural Disasters was pinned on European Jews. In other ways, the religious antisemitism was used by monarchs in order to seize the wealth of Jews, such as the Iberian monarchs in the late 15th Century following the end of the Reconquista, accusing them of usury and other "sinful acts", the fact that the possession of land being forbidden to Jews for most of the period led many to pursue the means of survival in merchant and financial networks, creating some of the oldest banking institutions in the world, which led to a clash with many monarchs who used antisemitism as an excuse to not pay their debts. However, as the enlightenment reduced the influence of religion on national policies, especially in the age of nationalism following the French Revolution, it seemed as if hatred was beginning to dissipate, with nations such as Prussia providing equal rights to Jewish citizens in the mid-19th century, and by the turn of the Century, specifically in German society, the Jewish population was far more integrated into the German culture than it ever was, with marriage rates between Jewish and German citizens reaching higher levels every year, alongside conversions to Christianity, if someone was to point a nation in 1900 that would become the center of Antisemitism, countries such as the Russian Empire and the French Republic could be easily appointed, yet nobody could predict that Germany would spring the most brutal and violent form of hatred in History. The Racial hatred is believed to have started in 1879 when Champlain and Politician Adolf Stoecker blamed the Jewish people for the ills of the Second Reich, this time not emphasizing their religion, but their race, using of Social Darwinism and Eugenic ideas, comparing them as insidious parasites in the German society. And from there on, racial hatred would begin to grow in German society, but it did not remain more than a fringe element in conservative and radical circles until the defeat in the Great War, when Adolf Hitler, a man raised in an antisemitic background in Austria that only became more radical during the war, turned those fringe elements into a centerpiece of the NSDAP, and eventually of German Society as a whole.

In 1942, following the Tag das Sieges, Adolf Hitler would go to the Wannsee villa, where several high-ranking officials of the SS were summoned by the head of the RSHA, Reinhard Heydrich, for a new policy protocol. The Führer's visit came as a surprise, in fact not even Goebbels and the Press were told of his presence, only being registered by members of the Schutzstaffel, coming in merely as a solemn visit to the heads of the "Reich's Next War", Heydrich, Eichmann and Himmler, to congratulate them for the war effort of the SS during the "Crusade against Bolshevism", not even making a speech as he met the SS leaders behind closed doors for around half an hour before leaving back to Germania. It is unknown of what was the true purpose of Hitler's visit, especially as he was always reluctant in discussing the "Jewish Question" in previous occasions, perhaps the hubris brought by the end of the war turned his gaze against the ones he perceived as the Reich's main threat, above even the United States and Great Britain, Hitler's presence in Wannsee would've never be even known if not for the description of the day given in the diary of his chauffeur, Emil Maurice. However, what is undisputable is the fact that the conference would mark a turning point in Jewish history as not even the pogroms such as the Kristallnacht, or the randomness of the executions by the commanders of the Einstatzgruppen, would reach the level of terror and death decided that day by the SS, the "Removal" of the Jewish people was given green light, and what was already an ongoing campaign of increased misery and death would escalate into history's first Industrial Genocide, the Endlosung, the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.

There was perhaps only one people who could rival the Jews in the level of hatred and destruction received by the Third Reich, the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe. Hitler, from his youth, was an admirer of Western stories, of tales of brave sheriffs and delegates, alongside cavalry officers such as General Custer, decimating endless hordes of "inferior and barbaric" tribals to bring civilization into a wild land, and in 1920 he would meet someone who introduced him the idea of bringing such concept to Europe: Rudolf Hess. The idea of "Lebensraum", or Vital Space, was a romantic ideal of many Germans, including geographic determinists and professors such as the ones who introduced the concept to Hess, inspired in the history of the fight between the Slavic and Germanic peoples, especially the Baltic Crusades, which brought along the settlement of Prussia by the Teutonic Knights. Hitler believed that such a German version of the "Wild West" could be introduced through the concept of Drang Nach Osten, the March to the East, where a new order of Knights, which represented the United States Cavalry, would be the harbinger of civilization by driving away the Slavs and settling the land with German colonists, using the vast resources of Eastern Europe in order to fuel the growth of the Aryan race, securing it's hold over Europe and allowing it to launch itself into the world stage. The Schutzstaffel (SS) would be this modern order of Aryan knights, and the defeat of the Soviet Union represented the defeat of the Natives, now the task was given to Himmler to open up Eastern Europe to the settlement of the Aryan Race, and from 1943 onwards, intensifying after the death of Hermann Göring and the crackdown on Warsaw, the policy of Generalplan Ost, the "General Plan East", would be put into it's devastating effect, resulting in the destruction of Eastern Europe and the deaths of tens of millions, alongside the mass exodus towards the East that brought in disastrous consequences to the remnants of the Soviet Union beyond the A-A line.

However, the original Generalplan Ost was not without it's controversies, the idea of massively depopulating Eastern Europe was certainly appealing to radicals such as Himmler and Goebbels, however there were dissenting voices in powerful positions of the Reich, not out of goodwill but for sake of pragmatism. Albert Speer and Walther Funk, the Ministers of Armaments and Economy respectively, alongside representatives of several industrial titans such as IG Fabien, Siemens, and Krupp would approach Hitler in late 1943 as the policies of the plan were being fully implemented and instead appealed for a revision of the plan based around the economic projections of the Reich and the manpower potential of the Slavic population. Late during the war, which showed decisive in the air war and the winter campaign, Speer employed millions of concentration camp prisoners to the factories of the Reich as a measure to bolster the war economy, with the industrial production levels reaching record numbers (Although arguably most of that result was not result of Speer's entrance in the Ministry), with many seeing the potential of a large workforce in the coming years, the group argued that the majority of the slavs, rather than being removed, should be used to fuel the Reich's industry and serve as workers in order to pay off their "Racial debt to the Reich" and support the German economy in a future confrontation against the United States and Great Britain. Hitler was reluctant, however the support of Göring, who at the time wished to expand the workforce of the Reichswerke and weaken Himmler's influence, proved quite decisive in order to sway the Führer to call for a revision of the plan. While the Majority of the Polish, Lithuanian, Latgalians, and Belarusians would still be subjected to the plan, a certain level of leniency was given to Ukrainians and Czechs, mostly being targeted towards Germanization, while the Russians would be employed as "Labor Units" to be distributed around the Reich, separated into small groups towards different industries. It was a harsh blow towards Himmler, one that just increased his animosity towards Göring in the months before his eventual death in 1945, however the SS still retained authority over Eastern matters, with the control of the concentration camps and the policies of Generalplan Ost.

The first phase of the plan was the so-called "Hunger Plan", which was already enacted with the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Axis powers in 1941, entailing the plan to create a massive artificial hunger in Eastern Europe by seizing food supplies from the countryside and transporting those back to Germany, in order to reduce the "exceeding" population of Eastern Europe. Large cities such as Kiev, Minsk, Rostov, Sevastopol, Stalingrad, Moscow, Leningrad, Smolensk etc, would be cut off from receiving supplies deemed necessary for the war effort between 1941 and 1943, later the plan being extended until 1945, considered finished following the destruction of Warsaw. The plan would lead to the mass starvation and emigration of tens of millions over the course of four years, as shown for instance at the census of Kiev in 1944, from around 800,000 inhabitants in 1941 at the onset of the invasion, the population of Kiev had fallen to 210,000, with the majority of the inhabitants being either deported, emigrating, or starved, with entire cities turned into ghost towns, the Destruction of Warsaw in 1945 was merely the nail of the coffin, with the ghettos being "evacuated" in 1944, most of the city was already abandoned by the time it was shelled by the Wehrmacht. The Death plan would cause the death, emigration, or eviction of at least 25 million civilians during it's existence, most of them emigrating into the Soviet Union, further bolstered by forced deportations enacted by the SS, centuries-old cities which stood against invaders for hundreds of years would be finally wiped out of the map by the destructive force of the Reich in less than a decade. One of the plans, which was the destruction of Moscow and the creation of an Artificial Lake were abandoned as cooler heads prevailed, instead the city would be kept mostly as a living museum of the Soviet Era, with many symbols completely disturbed in order to praise the National Socialist ideology, with the Swastika over the Red Square, the Kremlin being kept as a symbol of humiliation to the Soviets and a triumph of the Reich, and if that wasn't enough, the city itself was renamed to "Wesselstadt", in a homage to Horst Wessel, the SA Martyr of the NSDAP in 1931 killed by Communist paramilitaries, with his name being even given to the unofficial anthem of the party. Other cities would be renamed, with Kiev renamed as "Olegsburg", the name of the Nordic conqueror of the city, Stalingrad was renamed as "Adolfsburg", named after the Führer himself (For personal reasons), and Leningrad was renamed as "Haldersburg", in homage to the Chief of Staff Franz Halder, killed during Barbarossa.

One of the tactics of the SS preferred by Himmler was the division and the fostering of rivalries between the conquered peoples, knowing of the historical rivalries between the slavs, the SS was instructed to use collaborators as overseers or guards of several camps, Ukrainians watching over Russians, Russians watching over Balts, Poles being watched by Belarusians, while a climate of hatred and fear was created by the German Masters. Heydrich applied many of his methods used in Czechia by offering rewards such as extra rations and break days for prisoners who volunteered to watch over other ethnic groups, while billinguism was quickly "removed", except for the German language, in order to prevent communication between guards and prisoners, guards who were discovered to be helping prisoners quickly lost their privileged and were deemed "untrustworthy", which generally put them in front of the death row, while more enthusiastic collaborators were allowed to rise into certain power positions within the administration. That would create a terrifying situation where two "subhuman" races, considered equally worthless by the Party, would be turning against one another, sabotaging any attempts of forming a joint resistance against their real overlords while their numbers and strength were reduced on a daily basis. On the Russians, the Germans would use of another similar strategy, yet seeing as they were the largest ethnic group by a fair margin, Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg would approach Hitler with an new directive proposal for the "Russian Question" in 1945 shortly after Göring's death, the plan was an extension of his "Divide and Conquer" tactic but by implementing it on Russia by splitting the Russians between several groups from Pre-Muscovite Unification, such as Moscovians, Novgorodians, Smolenskians, Vologdans, in order to shatter the Russian national identity in what Himmler expected to be a process to finish by two or three generations, not just that but the Russian language would also cease to exist, with regional dialects being raised to the status of "languages" of their own, with minor grammatical and accent changes being sharply encouraged with new dictionaries. Hitler would approve of such plan, adding the fact that millions of Russians would be spread as laborers in the Reich, he expected that these changes would cause the extinction of Russian identity and permanently ensure the Reich's hold over Eastern Europe for a thousand years, educational reforms would begin in Moscowien, and soon a new generation would start to be introduced into this new cultural environment, "Russian" history being taught only as a perspective of emphasizing the role of the "Jewish enemy" in attempting to unite natural enemies as an artificial nation of slaves before being driven to the east and liberated by the German force of civilization, when in fact it was the Germans who were dividing the Russians into artificial groups to keep as slaves.

By the late 1940s, the Majority of the European Jewish population was dead, and the ones left were the ones who made a choice: Fight or Flee, and while many did flee Europe, mostly through Italy and Iberia towards Britain and the Levant, others remained to fight. Abba Kovner, a Jew who identified the Final Solution plans and fled the Vilnius Ghetto before it's "Removal", would be one of those, forming the radical terrorist group named "Nakam", or Revenge, made up by escaped Jews in the Baltic States, began a campaign of resistance and terror against the German authorities and settlers, planning to kill one German for every Jewish civilian executed, with the group joining with other guerrillas such as the Forest Brothers and Red Army remnants, Kovner would orchestrate terrorist attacks, kidnappings, and massacres of settler colonies across the Baltic States, evading the grip of the local SS authorities in the Reichskomissariat under Frederick Jeckeln. On the 5th of November 1947, the Nakam group would launch it's greatest attack, by assassinating Reichskommissar Hinrich Lohse and at least 7 civilians in Riga with a bomb attack, the death of Lohse would prove to be an event of large effects in the Baltics and Germania. In the aftermath of the attack, the RSHA would have it's attention turned towards the group, with Gestapo agents eventually managing to track down Abba Kovner and the Nakam leadership in July 1948 as they planned for an assassination against Collaborationist commander Michal Vituska, agents under Otto Skorzeny would be able to surround and ambush the group, none of them would be taken prisoner as Kovner spared the last bullet to himself alongside his closest men, inspired by the Jewish resistance against the Romans in Massada, they would prefer to die as free men than live through the horrors that the Germans planned to put them through.

It is suspected that there were failings in the security check up, leading to the hypothesis, similar to the one of Göring's death two years earlier, that there was a deliberate sabotage by the SS to secure the grip of the organization over the Baltic States. Lohse, as Rosenberg's deputy and Reichskommissar, was one of the main authorities in implementing the Generalplan Ost in the Baltics, however Himmler considered him to be far too lenient on the job, following his assassination, Himmler would propose Jeckeln to be made Reichskommissar of Ostland, showing by a terrorist attack how it was necessary a stronger hand to secure the Baltics, similarly to what happened in Poland two years earlier. But to Himmler's surprise, Jeckeln's promotion was refused and instead Hitler would appoint Alfred Rosenberg to be Reichskommissar of Ostland, much to the shock of the Reichsführer-SS, however that is where the machinations of Germania came into play due to the intervention of two men in specific: Goebbels and Bormann. Goebbels and Rosenberg despised one another as rivals, the first representing the more "Volkish" aspects of National-Socialism while the latter was called as a "Reactionary", one was an orator and the other a theoretician, two figures that just could never see eye to eye, which is why Goebbels arranged for Rosenberg to be "Promoted" far from the center of power in Germania, reaching out to Martin Bormann who was getting increasingly worried by the rise of the influence of Himmler in the Reich and so was Hitler, with the death of Göring, no one in the Inner Circle could quite match Himmler's power individually. Goebbels and Bormann would even get the attention of Speer, who saw this as an opportunity to prevent the Slaves from Ostland from being under firm grip of Himmler, with a more moderate figure with contacts of powerful Corporative groups such as Rosenberg seen as a far more palatable leader for the several industrial interests he came to represent. He was also a relatively harmless figure, being considered as the second worst orator in the Reich besides Bormann, as a joke, Hitler even named him Party leader in the 1920s while he was imprisoned because he knew Rosenberg would not be a threat to him, in the end even Hitler feared that keeping "Loyal Heinrich" with an unrestrained power over half of a continent could make him lose the "Loyal" part of his nickname. Himmler would end up being defeated... for now.

​

When Heinrich Himmler first gave the orders in his speech to the SS in Poznan, setting up the main goals to the "War against the Jewish enemy" for the next years, he would give the order of Gnadenlos, no mercy would be given, no quarter or break, and his subordinates would obey, millions would be killed in cruel gas chambers in Death camps for the next years, millions more were worked and starved to death, even more would be expelled, the greatest cities of Eastern Europe would be depopulated and in large part demolished to the size of mere towns to serve as a logistical hub. Partisan movements would grow weaker and weaker as time passed, with no hope of a foreign intervention and supplies no longer coming in from Russia, the groups would be hunted down one by one by the Intelligence agencies and the police of the Reich, and while resistance would always be present in the Eastern territories, it would not be an existencial threat to the Reich. Millions of Germans, from Wehrmacht veterans to young ideologues and unemployed, would migrate to the East in the following years in order to settle down the land, and one of it's main examples was the land of Gothenland, once called Crimea, which was turned into a model colony for propaganda and a naval base for German control of the Black Sea, with the local tartar population expelled, the land was considered "Virgin land" for settlement, with the SS directly administering the territory and, with the vast investments in infrastructure brought in by Speer's "Eastern Development Plan", connecting the city of "Gothia" to Hamburg in 1946 with the inauguration of the new U-Bahn road network, Crimea would be a mixture of tourists and naval officers living under an SS playground under the command of Alfred Frauenfeld, Comissioner of Gothenland. In many ways, Gothia would come to represent the German rule over Europe: An almost Utopia for the Germans (Loyal ones of course), built over the bodies of hundreds of thousands of innocents. However, the Holocaust would not be the end of the Jewish people, and neither of it's persecutions, hundreds of miles away in the Middle East, the Jews would attempt to reestablish the State of Israel, however, like the Pharaoh of the Exodus, Hitler would pursue them into the desert to finish them once and for all, would God save his chosen again?

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
THE LAST DAY OF THE RED ARMY

There is perhaps no way more dramatic for a Great Power to fall than collapsing on itself, when a war for the national survival of a people is lost with it's wealthiest and most populous territories taken, it takes a man of great skill to be able to hold the structure together, and Iosef Jughashvili "Stalin", known also as Joseph Stalin, was not that man. The Soviet "Man of Steel", born in Georgia in 1878, was one that would never have risen to the top if it wasn't for the Russian defeat in WWI, so nothing more fitting that his own downfall would come through a similar defeat at the hands of the Reich. The tale of the Soviet fall could fill in entire books on it's own, and indeed many were written on the topic, from military analysis such as Mikhail Dombrowski's "Anatomy of a Disaster: The Eastern Front" to others watching it as a personal failure of Stalin such as Roland Stern's "Stalin's War". While giving the due credit to the writers of these books, it is simplistic to solely blame the defeat on Stalin's policies, as the later Red Army generals did in their memoirs, while not taking into account structural aspects of the Soviet Union itself and how millions initially welcomed the Germans as liberators from Communist rule in the Baltics, Ruthenia, Ukraine, and the Caucasus before the true intentions of the Reich were revealed. The Russian tragedy during the so-called "Decade of Darkness", extending from the signature of the Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact in 1939 to the end of the Second Civil war in 1949, was the deathliest and most catastrophic period in Russian History since the "Time of Troubles" in the 1600s, and at the very least an examination of the era is necessary to comprehend the full extension of the Reich's victory in the Tag das Sieges. Many wonder if things could've been different, if Stalin had not signed the pact, or believed the reports of an incoming German attack in June 1941, or if the disastrous winter counter-offensives in 1941 and especially 1942 had been handled differently. It is no surprise that this fascinating topic has been subjected to many fiction books on counter-factual history, such as Konstantin Karimov's "Red World", where Trotsky came to power in the Soviet Union instead of Stalin after Lenin's death and launched an attack in 1940 during the German attack on France, eventually ending the book where the "Communist International", a a superstate extending from Lisbon to Beijing declares war on the Anglo-American "Democratic Coalition" at the 1950s with the invasion of Britain. However, exercising such a fantasy as "Alternative History" is ultimately an exercise of pure imagination, sometimes used by propagandists such as Karimov who argued in favor of the benefits of the Communist system under Trotsky as a benevolent worker's utopia against an alliance of Capitalist Oligarchies, or just by those who like to speculate a world that never happened to reassure themselves that, ultimately, their own "reality" is not as bleak, and everything could've always been worse.

Is it wrong to start in 1942? The war itself, with the full extent of the almost-miraculous successes of the German army in 1941, from the capture of Leningrad to the great siege of Kiev and the Caucasian campaign, has already been greatly covered by many other military historians, this is instead an analysis on the Soviet collapse itself, and the Winter offensive of 1942 is no doubt the starting point. After the fall of cities like Kiev, Minsk, Leningrad, Moscow, Rostov, Astrakhan, Stalingrad, and Baku between 1941 and 1942, the logistical and military capacity of the Union was crippled, the loss of it's largest population and industrial centers, including the oilfields of the Caucasus were the greatest concern of the Red Army as the first snowflakes began to fall in November 1942. While manpower was certainly in no shortage, everything else seemed to be, with the German advance capturing most of the Soviet Industrial capacity even after Stalin ordered the evacuation of industries to the East, which proved to be too late in many cases, ammunition, food, medical supplies, fuel, armor, and even rifles were at terrible levels in 1942, with the lack of support from the allied powers, many considered that the Soviet Union was abandoned in it's struggle. However, even after the capture of Moscow, the Red Army refused to quit the fight, with the cream of it's most experienced forces, alongside most of it's remaining armored reserves and troops transferred from the East, preparing for one last attempt to turn back the invader. Stalin, now sitting with the Soviet Presidium and the Union apparatus in Perm, at the foot of the Ural Mountains, clashed with the Red Army Marshals, such as Zhukov, Vasilevsky, and Bagramyan arguing towards a Southern offensive to recapture the crucial oilfields of the Caucasus to fuel the armored divisions, while Stalin and loyalist Marshals such as Budyonny and Voroshilov argued for a central offensive to retake Moscow and it's logistical center, serving as a morale boost. Ultimately, Stalin would side with the Moscow offensive, claiming that the Soviet Union could not win the war as long as it's heart was poisoned by the German occupiers, and while he also flirted with the idea of attacking Stalingrad as a matter of personal pride, something Zhukov argued in favor of, the arguments of Marshal Konev would direct Stalin to the Moscow offensive, which would prove to be an ill-advised attack.

In November, after the long buildup at Nizhny Novgorod, detected by German intelligence, the Red Army prepared the attack with the newly formed "Special Moscow Military Front" being propagandized as a feared force to demoralize the enemy. However, the Abwehr would detect the incoming signals of an offensive, with Admiral Canaris first attempting to hide the information before being discovered by RSHA commander Reinhard Heydrich, which only didn't report Canaris for his "Anti-German sympathies" due to their previous friendship. After the OKW, headed by Wilhelm Keitel and his Chief of Staff Heinz Guderian, came to discover the Soviet plans due to an "accidental" leak by one of the Red Army aides, General Erich von Manstein and other members of the Wehrmacht would prepare to lay a trap on the Soviet forces, with Manstein, the planner of the previous Ardennes offensive and considered one of the most capable commanders of the Wehr, prepared the Panzer armies for a deathly strategy. On the 14th of November, the Soviet forces launched their attack, with over 1.2 million soldiers and the majority of the Soviet armored reserves being mobilized for the action, an impressive force on paper, but that in practice would prove disappointing as many of the tanks quickly began to run out of fuel, sometimes two soldiers would have to share one rifle, and the Air fleet was decimated by the Luftwaffe against Soviet expectations. That didn't stop the Red Army from achieving a decisive initial breakthrough, with the plan following the strategy first theorized by Marshal Tukhachevsky of "Deep Battle", which in many ways seemed an evolution of the German Bewegungskrieg, with thousands of German forces being routed and the initial line being broken in the first hours of the attack. Enthusiastic with the initial reports, Stalin, acting as the People's Commissar of Defense, would give the infamous "Order 227", called as the "No halting" order, demanding that the Soviet forces must give no break in their offensive, Moscow was to be liberated at all costs and retreating from the battle would be considered an act of desertion and treason. The growing influence of the NKVD, the Soviet Secret Police, could be seen during this period of the war, especially with the STAVKA, the Soviet high command, being more and more staffed by political loyalists and commissars being present at the front to oversee the "political loyalty" of the generals. However, the initial decisive breakthrough was exactly what the OKW expected and desired.

The plan of "Operation Uranus", the counter offensive to retake Moscow, was to push two pincers from Niznhy Novgorod and Yaroslavl towards the capital and encircle it, however, by the end of November, the offensive began to stall as the Soviets lost the Air Superiority before expected, with the arrival of newly designed fighters such as the experimental ME-262 winning decisive air confrontations while the Soviet Air forces began to suffer fuel problems, losing any hopes of capturing the German fuel depots when it was revealed many were relocated west of Moscow. Zhukov and other commanders would be cautious about the advance, the successes of the Red Army such as the capture of Vladimir seemed to be more optimistic than many expected, Stalin was approached by the STAVKA to request a halt on the drive towards Moscow to consolidate the flanks as partisans reported a buildup of German forces to the southeast of Moscow, however the Premier denied and the relentless drive onwards would continue. On the 29th of November, after the fall of Vladimir, Manstein sprung the trap by launching "Operation Edelweiss", with the German Panzer armies, protected by air superiority and the cover of the snow, struck against the overextended flanks of the southern pincer in a tactic nicknamed by the Field Marshal as "Backhand Blow", a tactic of elastic defense that was controversial to say the least, a risky gamble that paid off as the Soviet forces were forced to overextend themselves at the gates of Moscow. The devastating counter attack struck at Vatutin's southern spearhead at Murom, shattering the momentum of the Red Army's attack and pushing northwards to cut them off from Niznhy Novgorod, Zhukov pleas to Stalin would be ignored as he believed it to be a diversionary attack, on the 3rd of December, after the capture of Vyazniki, the Southern pincer was cut off it's main supply line, with Vatutin forced to stop the push towards Moscow.

The Northern pincer was now reaching the city outskirts at the northeast of Moscow, Stalin continued to insist that the capture of the city should be the first priority of the attack, while the generals called for the attack on the city to cease in order to relieve the surrounded Southern pincer, trapped in the so-called "Sobinka pocket". Field Marshal von Bock's "Army Group Center" would finally execute it's counter attack to stop Konev's pincer and prevent a relief of Vatutin's. On the 5th of December, the second phase of Operation Edelweiss would begin with a brutal counter attack by the German reserves, taking back the initiative from the Red forces and essentially halting Operation Uranus, 900,000 men of the German Wehrmacht launched a series of attacks at the flanks and front of the Soviet pincers, the troops were able to see the Kremlin at the distance, something they would never be able to reach again. Stalin's stroke on the 6th was even more compromising, many fearing that the Premier would never wake up, or worse, that he would wake up, this led to a period of indecisiveness in the midst of the German counter attack, with Zhukov eventually disobeying order 227, ordering the end of Operation Uranus, instead Konev was ordered to push southeast to link back the Sobinka pocket, while the "Pereslav salient" held against the German attacks. On the 13th of December, the Sobinka pocket would be relinked and Zhukov ordered a general evacuation, which ended up turning into a rout, with discipline breaking down and NKVD officers openly entering in conflict with Red army officers from the disobedience of Stalin's orders, Minister Beria ordered NKVD units to remain in position and obey the orders of the People's Commissar of Defense, many shooting incidents happening as the Commissars and Officers argued over the retreat. Eventually, by January the Red Army was forced to retreat to it's starting positions and lost the majority of it's heavy equipment, many tanks being abandoned due to the lack of fuel, and a German counter offensive would push the Soviets from Yaroslav and Kostroma, taking Nizhny Novgorod and digging down across the Volga river. Similar attacks by the Germans would take Samara and Archangelsk, reaching the gates of Kazan and finally settling down the Reich's war machine at the Astrakhan-Archangelsk line, with the Werhmacht beginning to fortify it's positions and the Red Army spending the majority of it's remaining reserves in an ill-advised offensive, the war would finally grind down to a halt, on the following months it would be reduced to border incidents at most, a peace treaty was never signed but in the minds of both nations, the war, for now, was over.

On the 17th of March 1943, Stalin finally would wake up from his stroke, receiving grave news from his doctors as most of the sensitivity from his right leg was numbed and he would have to walk with a cane for the rest of his life, his reaction was to blame the doctors for an incompetent treatment and order their execution for attempting against his life. His stroke caused an intensification of Stalin's paranoia and is believed to have caused him to develop a schizophrenic mind, believing even more that there was an enemy behind every shadow, his aides now would have to discuss on who was the unfortunate soul to bring him up to date with the recent military events. It is said that in a fit of rage, Stalin ordered Beria to execute the entire STAVKA, and the Minister would have to try to talk him down, which in Stalin's paranoid mind made him think Beria was conspiring against him, keeping information from him while he was in ill health just as he did to Lenin in his final years. Stalin summoned the remaining Party apparatus for a meeting of the Supreme Soviet, where he would accuse insidious counter-revolutionary elements and fifth columns for sabotaging the war effort and collaborating with the invader, while indirectly attacking the army for "the showcase of cowardice, if not treason by many in the leadership of the Red Army", from the moment of Stalin's "Traitor's Speech" onwards, the Soviet Union would begin to tear itself apart under the paranoia of a mad tyrant. The State of the Union was catastrophic to say the least, the loss of it's core territories was no doubt the single greatest Russian defeat in the modern era, the economy was in a calamitous situation and millions of refugees would soon begin to pour into the soviet territory as part of the Generalplan Ost, and even if the war ended de facto, the mobilization of the Soviet army remained, keeping millions away from work while the agrarian heartland of the USSR was lost. The immediate result is that the already low rations of the stockpiles began to dwindle, the strict wartime rationing was tightened and hunger would come to the Soviet Union in 1943, and with it would come a natural reduction of the people's natural immunity that would bring in diseases along, and with the war far from over, the four knights of the apocalypse would bring their wrath upon Russia.

In April, Stalin would approach a man named Ivan Serov, Beria's feared deputy in the NKVD. Born in the Vologda District in 1905, Serov was an ambitious cold-hearted sociopath, sometimes being said that if Beria was Stalin's Himmler, Serov was the equivalent of Reinhard Heydrich, which would be further proven by the ambition that he possessed. On the 8th of April, Beria would be arrested under charges of counter-revolutionary conspiracy with foreign powers to bring the Soviet defeat, alongside several cases of rape that were actually proven true (differently from most of the Stalinist show trials), he plead for his life desperately, crying every moment until a bullet to the head finally silenced the feared Minister of Internal Affairs. The NKVD was dissolved, instead the new "Ministry of State Security" (MGB) would be created with Serov at it's head, and on the aftermath of Beria's death, Stalin planned to begin a second great purge in order to eradicate the threat of "Counter-revolutionaries and foreign collaborators" within the Union, rallying it's people under a unified leadership and retake the Western territories, and Stalin's first priority was to rid the Red Army of it's perceived conspirators. However, one of Beria's old loyalists in the MGB would leak the plans to Marshal Zhukov, who became a figurehead of the Red Army and became increasingly disillusioned with Stalin, and while he was mostly apolitical, seeing the list of people to be condemned as enemies of the State including not just his name but the ones of several high-ranking officers, the Marshal would be forced to act preemptively. Several Red Army officers would come to a meeting in Izhevsk on the 16th of April, where Zhukov, Konev, and several other commanders finally decided to act, ellaborating a manifesto to the Soviet people, however the meeting would be discovered by the MGB, and as soon as agents of MGB units attempted to arrest the officers on conspiracy charges, local army units would stop them, a heated argument began during the night between the 16th and 17th of April, and once the first shot was fired, the second Russian Civil War began.

The plans of the army commanders had to be rushed into action, a confusing exchange of orders being given to frontline units to disarm and apprehend Commissars and former NKVD divisions while the opposite side was ordered to arrest the officers of the Red Army instead. The night of the coup would begin the first battle of the war between MGB units and the Red army garrison in Izhevsk, with the Security forces routed back to Perm, the conspirators had to act decisively, mobilizing local units to immediately march to Perm and arrest Stalin, all while the frontlines collapsed into chaos with Army and Security units openly shooting at one another, much to the confusion of the Germans across the Volga. Stalin and the Soviet Apparatus would be evacuated eastwards just hours before the Red Army forces took Perm, escorted by loyalist army units and the MGB to the city of Yekaterinburg across the Urals, later moving to Novosibirsk in Central Siberia. On the morning of the 17th, Zhukov would announce the "Perm Manifesto", accusing Stalin's decisions for sabotaging the Soviet War effort and guiding it into defeat while ignoring the advice of his commanders, while Stalin made a speech in Yekaterinburg accusing Zhukov of "Bonapartism" and for placing his personal ambitions above the welfare of the Soviet people. Units from the Far East, which remained mostly loyal to Stalin, were transferred Westwards while the MGB mobilized new units, promising gulag prisoners freedom if they redeemed themselves by crushing the treasonous elements attacking the Union. On the west of the Urals, Zhukov vowed to continue the fight, while MGB units were overwhelmed and arrested by army units, with the majority of the troops being transferred Eastwards following the Tag das Sieges, occupying the remainder of European Russia and several key Ural crossings. Millions would begin to be called to arms, refugees joining on both sides in return of rations and shelter, the military forces reorganized themselves as a temporary military Junta, still acting officially as Soviet officers and members of the Communist Party, Zhukov did not recognize Stalin's leadership as he was considered to be incapacitated by his stroke. Any attempts at compromising would fail and soon, the fate of the Soviet Union would be decided in the battlefields once more.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
HOMECOMING

​

On the 7th of February 1920, a chapter in Russian History seemed to be over as the self-proclaimed Regent, Admiral Alexander Kolchak, was executed after being taken by the forces of the Red Army. Japanese forces retreated from the Far East, and alongside them would come thousands of Russian exiles that later settled in the city of Harbin, Manchuria with the remaining army forces of Ataman Grigory Semyonov and his Cossacks, who became a shadow of the proud Russian army from years earlier. The years of exile were not easy, with Harbin being put into the middle of the chaotic Sino-Japanese conflict and the high tensions from the northern border where the Red army could sweep in and finish what they started twenty years earlier. Many organizations of White refugees were formed, from the Russian Fascist Party to relatively democratic elements, all united in the hatred of the Soviets, all united in the hope that one day things would change and they would have their chance of revenge. While not having irrelevant numbers, the Whites lacked the professionalism, equipment, and resources to come close to matching the Far Eastern Army of the Soviet Union, always looming and sometimes threatening to spark a conflict with the IJA, such as Khalkin Gol. Bitter remnants that were only alive at the "graceful mercy" of a dying Empire, attacked by the greatest powers on earth, it seemed like they would fade into being footnotes on history books, that the Soviets were there to stay.

But sometimes, a second chance comes, in the form of the largest conflict the world has ever seen. After the German invasion in 1941 struck even the most pessimistic minds in Harbin, many saw that as their opportunity, years of serving as either mercenaries to Japan or conducting small acts of sabotage would pay off at last. Once the disastrous Winter counter-offensive in 1942 destroyed the offensive capabilities of the Red Army and the war reached a de facto ceasefire, the Russian people began to lose their faith in the system. It was only fitting that a regime that was only able to seize power in a war-torn, unstable society caused by a German invasion would begin to crumble under the same circumstances. Even the Red Army itself lost faith in Stalin and the Soviet leadership, and once the Second Russian Civil War began in April 1943, the Far Eastern Army that long threatened the Harbin exiles and the IJA, that threatened to one day capture them to suffer the same fate as those left behind, left the border. In a matter of weeks, as Zhukov's advance crossed the Ural mountains, Stalin ordered the Far Eastern troops, the last remaining intact and well-equipped Soviet force, to march westwards towards Sverdlovsk as the Premier fled to Novosibirsk, to halt the advance of the traitorous generals. There was no better time to strike back than 1943, exactly 20 years after the fall of the last White Forces in Russia, and soon the Japanese government, still led by General Hideki Tojo, approached Semyonov, Rodzaevsky, Kislitsyn, and other local warlords with an offer they could not refuse.

The "Harbin Agreements" signed in June were the result of negotiations between the Exiles and their "Benefactors". The Japanese doctrine of Hokushin-ron, the Northern Expansion, was an old idea that guided the Japanese expansion into mainland Asia and directly led to the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, especially supported by members of the IJA. The doctrine supported a Japanese expansion headed towards the north, rather than striking the Pacific and Southeast Asia for resources, which resulted amongst others into the Sino-Japanese wars. The doctrine was eventually set aside in 1939 following the disastrous battle of Khalkin Gol showcasing the fact that the Red Army outmatched it's Yamato opponents, with the Southern Expansion being embraced and causing the expansion in 1941-42, being seen less successfully to say the least as the American forces came closer and closer to the Home islands. The Soviet defeat and vulnerability gave a golden opportunity for the IJA to reassert the Northern Expansion, desiring to use the Siberian resources to fuel the war machine against the Americans, while proving the superiority of the Army plans over the Navy's, another demonstration of the often petty dispute between the IJA and IJN. With the Army mostly tied down in China, the Harbin exiles were finally given their opportunity to serve as cannon fodder and return home. The agreements signed up reformed the Bureau of Russian Emigrants into the Союз спасения России, the "Union of Russian Salvation" (With the ironic acronym of SSR), an exiled government which issued the "Harbin Manifesto" on June 23rd 1943, listing 20 different reasons on why the Soviets failed Russia, from the disastrous policies, condemnations to Communism, Stalin, and Lenin, the decay of the Russian people, and the suppression of the Holy church. The Union called for "One Russia, free from Bolshevism, united by Faith, Nation, and Leader", although it did not specify on who exactly would be the leader of Russia, the Emigrants were led nominally by the head of the Far Eastern Military Alliance Vladimir Kislitsyn, with Ataman Semyonov being given the command of the Armed Forces, and Konstantin Rodzaevsky's Fascist Party would have it's Blackshirt militias militarized with Japanese equipment and the promise of heading a future government of All-Russias. Naturally this would all come at the minor concession of allowing Japanese industries to explore Siberian resources, the permission of the Japanese military to use infrastructure such as the Vladivostok harbor, a "preferred nation" status to Japan, a Japanese embassy, and the promise to pay back the weapons and supplies provided by the IJA during the reconquest campaign. All quite minor details for sake of a second chance.

The invasion came in August 15th 1943, as the Far Eastern forces were stalling Zhukov's advance at the gates of Omsk, a hundred thousand men of the URS would cross the border into the Far East. The remaining garrison left at the border initially believed it to be a Japanese attack, especially as Japanese plane models were used by the exiles with just a Russian tricolor painted over to identify it differently. With the Asano Brigade launching several sabotage attacks to cut communications, the Initial border invasion was a success for the White Army, with many soldiers surrendering once it was discovered the attackers were Russians. Japanese forces occupied North Sakhalin, while the White exiles entered Vladivostok on the 21st of August, bringing back memories of the Siberian intervention 25 years earlier, declaring the creation of the "Far-Eastern Provisional Government" with the city as capital. The news of the surprise attack at the border enraged Stalin, who for a moment had called for the Far Eastern Army to march back eastwards, being dissuaded of the idea later on after a long phone talk with his chief of the Secret Police and de-facto second man in the Government. Local units would be mobilized to stop the advance of the White Army as it captured most of Primorski by September, most of them being NKVD units and local conscripts as the main army units were fighting at the Omsk front. Meanwhile, a second force, mostly composed by members of the RFP would strike further north at the city of Khabarovsk, where a local Red Army division managed to hold off the attackers until the Kwantung Army provided support to prevent the failure of the plan, the city would become the center of the Russian Fascist Party and with it's fall, the White Army captured most of the territory south of the Amur river by October, establishing a foothold into Russia.

Naturally when it comes to the White Army, internal divisions began to show up immediately, with the matter of the Provisional Assembly in Vladivostok already being marked by infighting. The Ataman threatened to send in Cossacks to block the voting stations as the warlord believed any resemblance of democracy in such critical times would only foster the same divisions of the white movement as before, calling back the precedent of Kolchak's dissolution of the Omsk assembly. There were also the concern that locals would vote in favor of Bolsheviks after years of propaganda. The RFP claimed that the Assembly, and the political control as a consequence, should be appointed by it's members according to the Harbin agreements, threatening to march Blackshirts into the assembly. Kislitsyn, himself a Monarchist, instead supported to call Grand Duke Vladimir from exile to lead the new government, which immediately put him at odds with Rodzaevsky. The argument threatened to fracture the government until ships of the rising sun flag docked in the Vladivostok harbor, with a compromise between the triumvirs being forced at the threat of cutting of supplies and support from the Empire. A provisional assembly would be created with a third of the seats being given to Rodzaevsky's men, the question of the Monarchy would be settled once there was no longer an "imminent danger" to the Government, and there would be a vetting of political candidates, with former Soviets being arrested, which led to a loss of a large number of bureaucrats. As this crisis was settled, the White Army continued it's march north, with the capture of Rodzaevsky's home city of Blagoveshchensk by November bringing the initial offensive to a halt as winter set in. Plans would begin to be drawn to launch an offensive westwards and capture Chita, reaching even Irkutsk before Autumn. However, events across the west would curb the optimism of the White Forces.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
GYOKUSAI

"The way of the Warrior is resolute acceptance of death."
-Myamoto Mushashi
​

Gyokusai, or Apocalypse, is a Japanese expression used during the war years to describe an all too familiar situation for the Japanese armed forces, and eventually people. Japanese troops, cut off from their homeland in small islands, would be determined to fight to the bitter end against the endless swarm of enemies. Yet, this would also describe the situation the Home Islands themselves faced between 1945-1947, where millions would perish against a kind of total war that never reached Japanese soil before, with no distinction existing between civilians and military. And yet, despite the already millions dead during Operations Olympic and Coronet, the war could've been prevented from reaching it's bloodiest phase, all depending on the word of one man, and the death of this man would lead to the death of millions more, not just in Japan but across all of Eastern Asia. One man's rage, the moment one soldier lost his nerve seeing that man who he blamed for so much suffering to himself and others, would kill Asia's last hope of peace in that summer of 1946. After the fall of the Imperial Palace on the 6th of June, Emperor Hirohito is reported by his brother Nobuhito, the Prince Takamatsu, to tell him in private the war was over. The Emperor had long known that there were nothing but slim hopes of Japan pushing for a peace on it's terms, and while he was reluctant to surrender at first, his doubts were taken out as an American flag was raised in the city of Tokyo. The Emperor summoned a meeting of the Supreme War Council in Nagano, resolved to a call for peace, and as the ministers were heading towards the Imperial bunker, Hirohito made the deathly mistake of going outside for a walk, going against the recommendations of his aides, he desired to reassure the people of Nagano, leaving the safety of the Matsushiro bunker. While in the visit, the sirens were sounded, a bombing raid was launched against Nagano, with the remaining Japanese planes rising up to the skies to protect the city, specifically the Emperor, from the incoming American bombers. As the air battle began, with Hirohito being rushed towards the bunker, a bomb hit the side of the truck he was in, while a P-51 fighter was shot down by AA fire nearby. The pilot, a man named John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who joined the USAAF as a volunteer before the attack on Pearl Harbor despite his spine problems, bailed out of the plane before it crashed. History is made up of coincidences, all it needs is the right man at the right time, and Kennedy was the right man to be a murderer. After his brother Robert's death by a Kamikaze attack during Operation Olympic, tragedy struck the family, and a still-grieving John was allowed to continue his flying missions despite his mental state, being assigned as an escort to the Nagano bombing raid of June 20th 1946. While chaos was spreading all around, with Japanese soldiers rushing towards a certain downed truck, Kennedy hid behind the rubble of a building with nothing but his service pistol, two grenades, and the Arisaka rifle from a dead Japanese soldier, he was in the perfect position to see who was the one man being dragged out of the plane: The Emperor himself. He did not have to think twice, or didn't bother to think twice, using the rifle, he aimed for the head, firing two shots, the first hitting a bodyguard, the second successfully hit Hirohito, killing the enemy head of State. Immediately, the Emperor's guards rushed to try to bring their Emperor back to the bunker while others stayed behind to avenge the death of their god, it would be the famous "Kennedy luck" that saved the young pilot as a B-29 dropped it's cargo nearby, giving him just enough cover to slip away. The pilot would write one of the most popular post-war memoirs of America, even being later adapted into a movie named "Behind the lines", narrating the deathly assassination and his daring escape from Nagano, back to American lines in Saitama in July, showcasing the state of chaos and destruction in Japan during the summer of 1946.

Hirohito's death, blamed on a cowardly assassination by the foreign invaders, shock Japan to it's core, never before was an Emperor assassinated by a foreigner, and the first effect of it was a vengeful rage spreading from the people to the generals. The retaliation came through the massacre of the remaining PoWs in Japanese camps, at this point reduced to the thousands due to the habit of not accepting an enemy surrender, while in the mainland, mass attacks were launched against civilians as an outlet of the collective fury of the nation of the rising sun. Akihito, the son of Hirohito, was proclaimed as Emperor, however he was still a mere child, at the age of 12 a regency was proclaimed with the Emperor's eldest brother, Prince Yasuhito, being declared as Regent of Japan. Furthermore, this would also mark the end of what little remained of a civilian government in Japan, with Minister of War Korechika Anami, aligning with a clique of young officers to launch a coup against Prime Minister Suzuki's government over his perceived failure in leading the defense of Japan and the protection of the Emperor. Martial Law was declared across all Japanese territories, with the Kempetai police being given even greater powers in order to ensure a crackdown on dissenting elements of the military and having it's powers extended over the civilian sphere. Prime Minister Anami was appointed by the regent, being authorized to use all necessary measures to continue the war to the bitter end and avenge his brother's death, on the night of the 22nd to 23rd of 1946, the "Peace Faction" suffered with the mass arrests and execution of many of it's members, with General Kuribayashi just barely avoiding a fatal destiny thanks to his popular image and closeness to Hirohito during the last year of the war. After the purge by Anami's coup during what was nicknamed the "Japanese Night of the Long Knives", the mere uttering of the word "peace" was considered a capital offense, an act of treason.

​

In the mainland, between 1946 and 1947, the Allies, mostly led by the Commonwealth and China, were fighting a slow, gruesome fight in a front that extended from Cambodia to Inner Mongolia. Indonesia, Malaya, Taiwan and many others were still held by the Japanese Empire by 1945, with the IJA becoming more and more desperate to keep control of it's territories after being cut off from the Home Islands. This was only worsened after the allied campaign which began following the fall of Okinawa, the Commonwealth forces under Mountbatten pushed into Thailand, provoking a coup by pro-allied forces and a civil war against the Japanese-supported Prime Minister Phibun's regime. There was a temporary stalemate in mid 1945 due to the coming of the Monsoon season, with just a low-level warfare similar to the one fought in Burma being fought before the renewed allied offensive in November, this time with a drive south towards Malaya. The recapture of Singapore was vital for the war in Southeast Asia, in order to disrupt the Japanese supply routes between Saigon and Jakarta, where Indonesian rubber and oil continued to serve as a lifeline to Japanese forces in the Continent even with the sinking of the majority of the Japanese merchant fleet. The local IJA forces in Malaya have been fighting against local resistance movements for almost 5 years, such as the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army, a communist guerrilla which used the harsh environment of the jungles to fight back the Japanese invaders for an Independent Malaya. It was an awkward cooperation that only a world war could forge when the British launched their campaign between November and February 1945-46 to retake the Peninsula, and it wasn't uncommon for incidents to happen between both forces, however the cooperation of the guerrillas was vital to disrupt Japanese supply lines and intelligence on Japanese positions. In an ironical twist of fate, Japanese forces were pushed into Singapore as the British took the Malay Peninsula by February, and so began Operation Mailfist, the invasion of Singapore. The Island was turned into a fortress by the IJA, General Tanabe retreated most of his remaining troops and supplies in the continent for a "Decisive Battle" strategy, knowing that it was a matter of political pride for the British government to retake the island they so embarrassingly lost in 1942.

Singapore would follow the standard of battles such as Manila, while also serving as a glimpse of the horrors unleashed during the last years of the dying sun. The Japanese were expecting the Commonwealth to launch a similar strategy to their own, striking at the northwest of the island instead of the harbor. By coincidence, the British believed the Japanese to be further reinforcing the harbor, instead opting for a similar strategy to the Japanese invasion years before, which led to a bloodbath in what was called "The British X-Day", the invasion of the Commonwealth in the rough terrain of Singapore on the 28th of February 1946. Mountbatten's forces eventually managed to push the defenders from the beaches through sheer perseverance, as well as the application of many lessons taught by the X-Day landings in December. The Battle for Singapore would last through the month of march, with thousands of dead, few prisoners being made, and the stubborn guerrilla defenses shown in battles such as Okinawa and Iwo Jima being demonstrated by the defenders once again. Eventually, the water reservoirs, main target of the British offensive alongside the harbor, would be captured, and yet the Japanese forces of General Tanabe were not prepared to surrender the city, with no hope of relief or escape after the Battle of the Phillipines Sea sunk the main force with the Home islands, the local forces confiscated all water and food supplies from the population, while the water reservoirs were poisoned during the retreat. Singapore was now under siege, starved of any healthy supplies of water while the rations were reserved for army service, locals being forced into conscription groups to receive basic water rations by fortifying the streets and serving as essentially meatshields. Once the British forces settled in for a siege, the rations began to be tightened more and more towards the military, while artillery shells reduced much of the city into ruins, the desperation eventually forced the locals into action, conscription brigades turning on the occupiers, seizing the armouries and using the armaments against the Japanese. The result were two days of rioting during the so-called "Singaporean uprising" against General Tanabe, prisoners being released while the IJA turned their weapons against the civilians, considering anyone wandering the streets as a traitor to Pan-Asianism and "Imperialist collaborators". Finally, as the news of the massacre reached General Mountbatten's Headquarters, a general offensive at Singapore in order to support the uprising began, pressing the Japanese forces between the locals and the Commonwealth. General Tanabe capitulated on the 26th of March, committing suicide shortly afterwards before being taken into custody, although pockets of resistance would take until April to be cleared. The result was a loss of over 12,000 soldiers for the Commonwealth and 30,000 for the Japanese, with a third of the population of the island dying during the brutal Operation Mailfist.

Back to the Home Islands, the soldiers had to choose between two ways to die: Either an American bullet or a Kempetai Sword. There was a climate of general distrust in the population brought in by the fear of being labeled a traitor, especially after Anami's coup made the mere mention of the word "peace" be forbidden, leading to either death, or worse, being conscripted in the "Volunteer" Fighting Corps and being thrown into the meatgrinder. Neighbors and families began to distrust one another while the military police was granted powers beyond any it previously possessed, the IJA-IJN infighting was finally settled during the bloody coup as several admirals, including Suzuki and Admiral Yonai, prominent members of the "Peace Faction", were accused of treason and killed by beheading, thanks to the end of Hirohito's protection with his death. Anyone could be a spy for the Kempetai as a climate of paranoia ran through Japan, civilians who remained in the occupied lands were ordered to "resist until the very end", failure to do so was considered a desertion of duty. The only prominent proponent of peace left alive was General Kuribayashi, who was considered a War hero by the locals, controlling the fierce loyalty of the Japanese forces in Kyushu, the General was distraught by the loss of his friend, yet he continued to fight out of duty to his nation. The Japanese situation was desperate, yet fear and fanaticism still held the strongest sway over the Army, with the death of the Showa Emperor serving as a morale boost, one that the Army intended to use as a part of the "Decisive Battle" doctrine, the largest Armored engagement of the war would be prepared as part of a deathly Japanese counter-attack against the American forces in Kanto, with the objective of recapturing Tokyo. General Anami organized the main force of the Japanese armored corps for the attack, with the majority of the heavy tanks being relocated to the Home Islands, as well as new models such as the Type 4 "Chi-To", the Type 3 "Chi-Nu", and mostly older and lighter tank models being mobilized in secrecy. The USAAF bombers failed to spot the majority of such forces due to Japanese methods of camouflage, as well as a disbelief in intelligence reports that the Japanese forces were still capable of launching a large-scale offensive.

In the American camp, the sense of victory came after the death of Hirohito, MacArthur himself phoning President Thurmond to announce the Emperor's death, claiming the Japanese collapse was a matter of "knocking down an old wooden door with a sledgehammer". However, within the High command there were several conflicts on where such blow was to be delivered between different Commanders. Bradley, Eisenhower, Nimitz, Patton, MacArthur, Ridgway, and other commanders would have essentially shouting matches at a time over different plans. While some men such as Eisenhower showed willingness to finding compromises between the different factions, he lacked the authority of men such as MacArthur, whose ego was only matched by the commander of the Armored Corps George S. Patton, with allegations that once when both men were in the same room, they were involved into a wrestling that had to be separated by their assistants. Patton argued for a bold drive northwards into the valleys to capture Nagano, the Imperial Capital, while MacArthur agreed with a push northwards in principle, he did not wish to divide the spotlights with the "Old Blood and Guts" general across the desk. Instead MacArthur began to argue in favor of launching secondary landings at Sendai and Osaka in order to further disperse Japanese forces, capture the old capital of Kyoto, and the largest Japanese industrial centers left standing. Mac also desired to launch an offensive at Kyushu to press against Kuribayashi's forces, including a landing at Nagasaki, mostly as a matter of personal pride after the Army's embrassment against the Japanese general at Myasaki beach. The dispute over which offensive to launch led to a critical period of stagnation between June and August 1946 when the Japanese were still reeling from the loss of Tokyo, allowing the enemy to reorganize while American forces settled down for a bombing campaign in a fruitless effort to force a surrender of the Nipponic forces. Finally the cost of this inaction would lead to the bloodiest battle of the invasion of the Home Islands and of American Military history once the midnight of the 31st of August 1946 came, the largest tank battle in the Pacific front began.

Spearheaded by Lieutenant General Toyosaku Shimada, the Japanese forces launched a daring night attack with amassed tank forces, a bold plan of using tanks as the main attack force instead of infantry, inspired by the surprise attack at the Battle of Slim River. General Anami planned to launch an spearhead from Kumagaya, following the Arakawa river south towards Tokyo Bay and separate the American forces into two, retaking the Tokyo harbor to hamper the allied supply lines and recapture the Imperial Palace as a morale blow. He expected that such bold attack would lead to a rallying of the nation towards national defense, with a show of force being enough to force the American government to accept a conditional surrender of Japan. Over 1.700 tanks would be mobilized for such attack, although most of them were light tanks clearly outmatched by the American Sherman, the Army hoped that the surprise and the few capable heavy tanks they possessed would be enough. The Air war was another factor, with the offensive being launched in September to match the Cyclone season, as the Japanese air power was reduced to scattered planes and the occasional Kamikaze attacks, it was hoped that the heavy rains in September would be enough to close the sky to enemy planes while reducing visibility, although that would also hamper the advance of the armored forces due to the terrain. Most of the fuel supplies in Honshu were to be used in this attack, which was considered audacious considering the Japanese lack of experience in massed armored engagements since the defeat in Khalkin Gol 7 years earlier. The secret of the offensive was vital, helped by the skepticism and infighting between American generals, many commanders only being told of the attack hours before it happened. Finally, the so-called "Operation Sho-Go II" would be launched, known in America as "Battle of Saitama".

The Night attack would catch the American forces by surprise, with General Alan W. Jones' division being pushed back, the commander made the catastrophic mistake of ordering a general retreat before his forces could properly reorganize due to a moment of panic, causing a rout that opened a hole in the allied lines. By the sunrise of September 1st, phones were overloading the American headquarters in Tokyo, General MacArthur was inspecting his troops in Kyushu when the attack came, and in the crucial first hours of the offensive, General Mark W. Clark, the most senior officer in the Kanto HQ, took up the command. The young General believed the Japanese attack to be a diversion to a large scale attack in Kyushu, believing the Japanese forces in Honshu would not be capable of mounting a large-scale offensive, he phoned General MacArthur and discussed the attack for a crucial one hour until he managed to convince the Supreme Commander of the Pacific that an imminent attack would come to Kyushu. The first day of battle saw two fatal decisions that costed the lives of tens of thousands of Americans. Once the Japanese attack took the city of Ageo, advancing several miles in just two days, did the General understand it was no diversion, but a full blown offensive at Kanto, and yet he continued to insist that the American forces in Kyushu were the main targets of a dual offensive, when the front in Kyushu has been stagnated for months. Finally on the 6th of September did MacArthur finally fly to Tokyo under heavy rain from the storm season and relieved Clark of his duties, and by that point the Japanese forces reached Saitama, close to entering the great Tokyo area, the inaction of the American forces, the heavy storms preventing the use of the full support of the USAAF, the confusion and incompetence of General Clark, all allowed the Japanese to push back the American forces for a week and reach the gates of Tokyo, while over a million soldiers began to clash on Kanto through the frontlines and Japanese secondary attacks pushed at Hachioji and Kashiwa to keep the local forces pinned down, several forces transferred to Kyushu had to be returned towards Kanto. However, the Japanese last hurrah proved to be more ambitious than expected, as the American resistance in Saitama began to slow down the IJA, and the rain would also serve to slow down the Japanese advance, with tanks breaking or getting bogged down along the way. The Japanese push would reach it's climax at the Battle of Kawaguchi, with over 170,000 Japanese troops attempting to cross the Arawaka River into the city center of Tokyo against a force of 240,000 American defenders, an initial river crossing would succeed despite the heavy losses from crossing the waters during a night storm, the battle would last through four days until Amani finally ordered the retreat of the Japanese forces to the north of the river to dig down, many being trapped in the opposite bank as the bridges were blown up to prevent an American pursuit.

​

At last, the infighting was over in the American ranks, or at least a truce was made between MacArthur and Patton when the latter was given a blank cheque to use the US Armored forces in Kanto to his full discretion. Patton began to plan his attack, however the heavy rains and visibility continued to prevent the full potential of the USAAF from being used, and instead he opted to await a favorable weather as the Anti-Cyclone season approached with the end of September in Tokyo, a dry weather with good visibility. Between the 14th and 21st of September, American forces fully halted the Japanese attackers, and on the 22nd, after the rains stopped, Patton finally started his bold attack, nicknamed "Operation Iron Storm". The largest amassing of armored troops, with over 3.500 tanks, mostly composed by Shermans, began it's attack against the core of the weakened Japanese tank corps in the Battle of Sugito, although calling it a battle was being generous. What actually could be acurately described would be a massacre, with the far superior American armored, artillery, and air power decimating the IJA forces, including the essential destruction of the Japanese Tank Corps in Honshu, the Japanese losing over 900 tanks while the Americans lost 87. From this point on, the Japanese forces were pushed back slowly and costly, with the Army forbidding any withdraw and the Kempetai executing officers accused of "Treason by Retreat", eventually by the start of October, the American forces were back at the starting lines and a temporary halt order was given for reorganization, despite Patton's protests, as MacArthur still denied the Old Blood and Guts General the glory of his kill. The total tally of the "September Offensive" was of at least 670,000 Japanese losses, with over 70,000 captured, the destruction of over 1.200 tanks, the majority of the remaining Japanese armored vehicles, and over 3,000 artillery pieces being lost or captured. The Americans lost 210,000 troops, most of the captured being killed until the end of the war, 230 tanks, 170 planes, 400 artillery pieces, and 500 trucks being captured or lost. The Battle proved to be a final blow to the Japanese hopes, while the losses were far higher than acceptable by American standards back home, both sides were tired of the conflict, but only one side was going to win, and ultimately the American forces were superior in every aspect to their Japanese counterparts, the last three months of the war would be some of the bloodiest and yet pointless in Operation Sunset.

It would be an exaggeration, in fact it would be disrespectful to the lives lost following the Battle of Saitama, to claim that the war had ended with this climax north of Tokyo in the Kanto Plain. Over the year of 1946, millions more perished across East Asia, while the Japanese Empire began to be deserted by it's allies and collaborators, with nothing else left to lose, the Army turned to unleash it's frustrations on the locals, on the average, over 600,000 people died in Japanese occupied territories during the last year of the Pacific War each month. One of such events, which pitted the Japanese against their former allies in Europe, would be the Macau incident. In July 1946, during a pursuit of several Chinese guerrillas in south Guangzhou, an IJA division ended up reaching the gates of Macau, a city that increased it's population five times over the war due to the refugees coming in from China, surviving thanks to it's cooperation with the Japanese Empire by selling Oil and sheltering the IJN from pursuits. Portugal, due to the lack of choices and the obvious threat from Germania that neutrality was unaceptable following the invasion of Sweden and Switzerland, was an observer member of the Linz Pakt, which prevented the USN from intervening on the operations of Macau, which served as a fortress peninsula to German interests in Asia. However, once thousands of Chinese refugees entered the city, the local governor detained them, and after the Japanese commander ordered them to be turned over, the governor Teixeira refused, knowing fully well that this would essentially give away tens of thousands into certain death, he also did not believe the IJA would force the issue. To his surprise, the Japanese army bombarded the city following the refusal and launched it's attack, managing to capture Macau. During the fighting, the oil deposits and armory would be hit by artillery, causing an explosion and a fire to engulf the overcrowded city as the Japanese stormed in. The result was a massacre against locals, with accusations of mass rape and beheading similar to the ones which happened in Nanking, Manila, and Singapore before. The Macau Massacre shocked the world, especially in Europe as President Carmona decried the attack and spread the reports of Japanese savagery, something that received sympathy both from Britain and Germany. Upon hearing the news that an European nation was attacked in such savagery by the Japanese, and already being advised to do so by his inner circle and Minister Ribbentrop, Hitler made a speech in the Sportspalatz, claiming that Japan descended into it's "Asian savagery", while claiming the string of defeats as the "fate of a nation that became barbarous and decadent ruled by feeble men who stain the idea of honor". Due to this betrayal, the Reich cut relations with the Japanese Empire, with the "Honorary Aryanship of the Yamato race" being retracted, although the actions did not lead to war as Portugal was merely an observer member of the Linz Pakt, and Hitler was uninterested in being involved in a land war in Asia as the Reich consolidated it's hold in Europe. It is said that even Prime Minister Atlee didn't know if it was worse to "praise Hitler" or "praise the Japs", instead opting to announce a continuation of the fight and using the war as an example of the Japanese aggression in Asia, symbolically he promised the return of Macau to the Portuguese after the war. Over 300,000 civilians would die in the Macau Massacre alone, as the IJA used the occasion to eliminate several Chinese refugees that once escaped the Imperial forces.

In Indochina, following the capture of Singapore, the Japanese began to prepare the defenses against an incoming Allied offensive. However, due to the Indonesian uprising following the betrayal of Sukarno, the Allied forces had to divert attention in securing the oilfields of Sumatra and the Capital City of Jakarta, with a transition government being installed and the Indonesian independence being recognized, despite the protests of the Dutch government in exile. The offensive would only come in August, made to coincide with the Chinese Autumn offensive further north, with over 700,000 allied troops facing around 450,000 Japanese troops, including 100,000 soldiers of the "Empire of Vietnam". The end of Colonialism officially came to Vietnam after the Nazi-Japanese split in July 7th, when the administration of Vichy France in Indochina was officially dissolved by the Japanese occupiers and instead a puppet Vietnamese government centered in Hue under Emperor Bao Dai would be established, although in practice it changed little. Vietnam continued to suffer the effects of a disastrous famine, only made far worse by the occupation, which has resulted in 4 million deaths between 1944 and 1946, only throwing more fuel into the unrest as the Vietnamese people engaged in a brutal guerrilla war led by Ho Chi Minh, against the occupiers and the French alike, making little distinction between the Japanese and the local puppet regime. The Viet Minh contacted the Allied High Command, planning to launch a combined offensive in August to overthrow the Japanese forces, which immediately drew protests from Free French forces under General de Gaulle, claiming Indochina to be a French colonial territory, President Thurmond was also hesitant to support the Communist-alligned Viet Minh, however Atlee agreed to the proposal and the offensive began on August 4th 1946, starting the Vietnamese Revolution. The acts of sabotage behind the enemy lines, the hostile terrain, and the intelligence provided to the Allies proved to be a deathly combination to the Japanese. General Yuitsu Tsuchiashi, who became greatly disillusioned on the chances of victory, especially after the capture of Jarkata and the death of Hirohito, eventually agreed to surrenger Indochina to the allies in September, especially as the news came of the Chinese advances further north and the failure of Operation Sho-Go II. Ultimately, Vietnam proved to be one of the smoother cases of a Japanese surrender, with Tsuchiashi agreeing to turn over his territory and retreating his forces into China to support the southern front against the Chinese offensives towards Canton. On September 30th, Viet Minh and allied troops both had marched on Saigon and Hanoi, with the three Japanese puppet kingdoms being dissolved and a transitional government being installed with local Viet Minh nationalists being placed into power, one controversial incident was when members of the Viet Minh youth marched with a salute in Hanoi, something that left many Allied commanders uneasy.

​

However, the majority of the deaths in the final year of the World War happened in China, as the Japanese, who spent almost a decade in control over the east, refused to give up territory, some of the commanders still believing in a victory. Meanwhile, in the Chinese camp, Generalissimo Chiang entered into more and more controversies with the western allies, in some cases even outright refusing to allow Western commanders to be placed into the direction of battles on the southern front. All while Mao Tse-Tung and the Communists looked in the long-term end of the war, planning to allow the National Revolutionary Army to keep bearing the majority of the losses to weaken them in the inevitable continuation of the Civil War once the Japanese invaders were out of scene. Ever since Operation Ichi-Go, the Chinese army has been recovering from the catastrophic losses in men and equipment, something that wasn't made any easier since Chiang expelled General Stiwell and his advisors once he refused to handle the command of the NRA to the Allied High Command, something which made many, including Atlee, to see Mao as a lesser evil compared to the stubborn and arrogant Generalissimo. At last in 1946, the plans were drawn for the "Three Rivers Offensive", an ambitious plan to advance following the Yellow, Yangtze, and Pearl rivers, with the objective of taking the cities of Kaifeng, Wuhan, and Nanning, with later pushes planned to capture Changsha and separate the Japanese forces once again. Over four million soldiers mobilized against at least a million Japanese troops and the same number of Collaborators, mostly from Wang Jigwei's regime in Nanjing, with the first offensive being launched towards Wuhan on April 1946. The offensive at Wuhan would be one of the largest battles in the Second Sino-Japanese War, with around 3 million soldiers being involved in the fighting around the city, the Japanese proved tenacious defenders, however things had changed since Ichi-Go extended the Japanese front and much of the heavy equipment was moved to the Home Islands, morale was lower this time, collaborators began to see the writing on the wall, and yet the battle would last until June, with the Japanese commander, General Naozaburo Okabe, ordering a retreat after the heavy losses in both Wuhan and Kaifeng and upon receiving the news of Hirohito's death. The offensive at Kaifeng happened between April and June, involving over a million soldiers on both sides until the Japanese retreat which happened at the same time as the fall of Wuhan. Nanning was different due to the local infighting between the Allied forces and the Chinese, with Chiang refusing to cooperate the plans of offensive, which to him was to let Mountbatten and Brook to dictate the offensive and use the Chinese troops as cannon fodder for the Western triumph. The Generalissimo demanded that only Chinese troops could liberate a chinese city, as a matter of personal pride to the Chinese nation, believing that allowing westerners to raise their flag on Nanning was a reminiscing of the "Century of Humiliation" that could not be tolerated. Eventually, Mountbatten adquiesced to Chiang's demands of allowing Chinese troops only to parade in Nanning, but the lack of coordination in the offensive between both forces allowed the Japanese troops to extract a heavy toll from it's enemies.

During the retreats, General Yasuji Okamura, Supreme commander of the Chinese Expeditionary Army, fully applied the "3 Alls" policy, "Kill all, Burn all, Loot all", applying the most radical implementation of scorched land policies that the 20th century had seen. When Chinese and allied troops entered villages and cities, they were shocked with the horrors seen: Piles of corpses beheaded on the streets, rivers filled with bodies and blood, cities razed by flames, citizens left to starve, begging the troops for food and water, poisoned water wells and burnt plantations. The IJA would scar China to a level unseen before, and while Japanese troops would begin to retreat towards the coastline, they left nothing but senseless destruction in their wake, driven by desperation, hatred, and vengefulness, many hearing propaganda stories of how allied troops did similar things in Kyushu (Which were proven greatly exxggerated or completely false) or about the horrors of Operation Gomorrah (Which in turn rarely were more ridiculous than the actual operation). After the death of Hirohito, many reprisal killings were enacted across occupied China, especially on the countryside, but the worst was yet to come as the Chinese forces pushed towards the coastline, where the largest Chinese cities were located and Japanese troops were trapped between the sea and the incoming attackers. The scale of the killings would only increase as the 3 rivers campaign began to be more successful, while the defense became more tenacious, the NRA suffering heavier losses by the day and the collaborationist regime beginning to panic.

The Guangdong campaign would be the first operation where the allies moved to liberate major cities in the Chinese coastline. With the full support of the combined Naval and Air forces of the allies, the three cities of the Pearl River: Canton, Macau, and Hong Kong, already were being blockaded for months, and since the Macau incident, the Japanese situation became even more tenuous. Between January and March 1946, American forces invaded the island of Taiwan/Formosa, establishing a powerful air base for American bombers to strike Japanese positions in China and provide further support, the remaining aircraft of the Empire would continue to fight a hopeless fight until January 1947 when the final surrender came. Okamura ordered the three cities to be held to the last man, and with the fall of the Changsa railroad in July, there was no hope of reinforcing the local forces of General Hisakazu Tanaka. In September 1946, the offensive against the three cities began, showcasing a brutal urban combat house by house, civilians being caught in the crossfire of the IJA and NRA, allied forces entered Macau and Hong Kong, but were not allowed entrance in Canton, where Chiang threw more and more troops against the meatgrinder, bombers turning the city into rubble while millions of desperate inhabitants attempted to flee the devastation. It would take until October 15th for the fall of Canton and the end of the war in Southern China. Fuzhou would be the next target, the isolated city would actually be more of an exception, the local IJA command, cut off and abandoned, with the USAAF flying above the city from Taipei and news of the disaster in Saitama finally breaking the morale, despite the attempt of young fanatical officers to execute their commander, the bodyguards were able to stop the attack. The City was surrendered to the NRA in October 13th, and most of the soldiers were spared from heavy reprisals. As the situation showed by the start of November, the war was lost, between 1945 and 1946, Japan lost most of it's occupied territory, from Indonesia to Wuhan, only a few diehard holdouts being left and the local troops becoming essentially uniformized bandits. The Home Islands themselves would be lost, American troops under orders from MacArthur would capture the City of Osaka with a naval landing with relatively few casualties, and for the first time, massed units began to surrender, spirit broken after the failure of Saitama. Despite the government reprisals and propaganda, the war did not develop at Japan's favor in the end. And between November and January 1946-1947, the dying sun would unleash it's last remaining rage on those most defenseless, the elderly, the young, the weak and strong, all those would suffer while millenia-old cities such as Beiing and Nanjing would become some of the last victims of Japan.

The Battle of Nanjing was long awaited for almost 10 years, the Chinese Army began to close into the city, Okamura himself evacuated his headquarters northwards to Beijing, abandoning the collaborationists to their fate. Wang Jigwei, one of the original revolutionaries who became known as a traitor to all of China, still attempted to find a way out for himself. Reaching in contact with the American government through an American intelligence agent, he negotiated to dissolve the Reorganized government in return of asylum, ordering his troops to stand down and collaborate with the Allied forces. The negotiations continued while around 800,000 soldiers from both the IJA and the Collaborators were attempting to hold off 2.5 million Chinese troops from the NRA, and in the end the Kempetai would discover Wang's intrigue, approaching him with two options: Either commit suicide by Seppuku or his treachery would be revealed, with him and his family being branded as traitors. A defeated and sickly Wang, still suffering the consequences of an assassination attempt, admitted that he was already a traitor, yet preferred to take his own life to spare his family, commiting suicide on November 5th 1946, Chen Gongbo would become the President of the moribond republic as the city began to be shelled during his innauguration. His first act being to flee northwards with Okamura with as much loot as he could take, while the IJA implemented the 3 alls policy in Nanjing once again, the Second Nanking Massacre was less intense in the scale of death than the first, but the city would be completely razed to the ground, historical buildings which stood for centuries came crumbling down, prisoners were executed alongside all those who attempted to desert, including their families which were essentially held as hostages by remandier IJA units so that they continued the fight until the evacuation from Shangai was completed, a similar pattern happening to the port city. When the NRA took back it's capital on the 28th of November, it resembled more a ghost city in some aspects, the triumphant tone of the victory parade was a sharp contrast to the depressive tone of the razed cities of Nanjing and Shanghai.

The IJA retreated northwards, now centered around Beijing and pulling back through the Yellow river, Chiang obviously rejecting an offer of the Japanese Prime Minister to restore the Pre-1937 borders. The Chinese Red Army and the NRA began to plan their moves in December, the guerrilla campaign intensifying as the Japanese lost the little control they had over the countryside to the Communists, Okamura was certainly not optimistic on his chances of victory, but he believed his defenses in the Yellow river would be able to hold off a Chinese attack indefinitely until a later strategy could be prepared. However, thanks to the allied Air Supremacy, the Chinese offensive started on December 3rd, breaking the weakened, unnequipped, and demoralized IJA troops, with the morale wavering as they retreated from the lands conquered almost ten years earlier, and rumors from the disasters in the Home islands coming despite the censorship. Once the Yellow river line was broken at Jinan, there was little that could be done, millions of troops flooded into the Hebei, many Japanese troops beginning to surrender, however news of massacres against prisoners as reprisal of the years of destruction would cause most to fight to the last man, many fleeing northwards into Manchuria, Mongolia, and Russia. When the NRA approached Beijing, the IJA turned it's weapons against the city, Okamura fleeing northwards with the remnants of his forces. The Forbbiden City would be destroyed, most of the city being razed to the ground similarly to Nanjing, the collaborators fleeing towards Mukden with the broken remnants of the IJA, soldiers deserting along the way until the Chinese experditionary Army was left just a shadow of it's former self. Beijing would be taken not by the NRA but by Mao's Red Army, who got the honor of waving their banner over the city and announcing that the Japanese forces were expelled behind the 1937 line, both sides already began plans for a push into Manchuria of their own, however they would not need to execute these plans.

In the Home Islands, Patton got his wish, after his forces recovered from the Battle of Saitama, a push northwards by the US Army was ordered to take Nagano, while essentially splitting Japan into two halves. With the fall of Maebashi on November 28th after a brutal, yet short, street battle that lasted 72 hours, the American forces were launching a lightning warfare through the Japanese valleys, and after the fall of Osaka it was Kyoto's turn. Many of the Japanese cities, reduced to ashes and rubble by two years of bombardment, fell quickly as the Kempetai was no longer enough to mantain order, local civilians were tired of the war, factories had 80% less workers in December 1946 than December 1945. With the nation falling apart, the dying sun began to get dimmer and dimmer, despite the continued government propaganda on a final victory, of loyalty to the Emperor Akihito and seeking revenge for Emperor Hirohito's death, the balance was broken, and the national spirit for a continued war fell apart. There is no better demonstration than the Christmas Armistice, Kuribayashi's forces in Kyushu were a national symbol, of resistance and perseverance, the General himself had a growing cult of personality around him as representative of Japan's fighting spirit and honor, even General Anami could not touch him, with the Island of Kyushu fighting a war separated from the mainland. After a routine inspection of his troops, despite their loyalty, the General could see the situation of the supplies, he could see the morale wavering, the impossibility of victory, and that a continued fight would only prolong Japanese suffering. Reaching to General MacArthur in secret, under the guise of a prisoner exchange, he negotiated the handover of Kyushu and the surrender of over 600,000 soldiers, alongside millions of civilians. The Armistice was signed on the Christmas of 1946 at Kumamoto, where the frontlines were last held, the weapons finally stopping, very few soldiers resisted, although Anami's government branded Kuribayashi as a traitor and ordered his execution under charges of treason, even the local Kempetai commander agreed with the armistice. The largest and most successful defense force still intact in Japan, alongside it's national resistance symbol, had just surrendered, and although none admitted in public, all agreed that the war war over in their minds.

In Manchuria, the Empire of Manchuko and the Russian Provisional Government, both nations essentially Japanese puppets, had long seen the writing on the wall. While the Russian government's negotiations with Washington will be seen in a later chapter, the Manchurian betrayal was the act of one man in particular. Aisin Gioro Puyi, the last Qing Emperor of China and Emperor of Manchuko, was held as a puppet his whole life, either by regents, warlords, and most recently by the Japanese. As soon as he saw the fall of Nanjing, and later beijing, with the torching of his former home in the Forbidden City, he knew that there was only one way to spare him and his people from the incoming catastrophy, as Chinese forces mobilized at the border. Puyi approached like-minded IJA officers, local Manchurian troops, garrison commanders, and was able to form an inner circle around him that only became bigger and stronger as losses mounted in China, and once the news of Kuribayashi's surrender came to Mainland Asia, it would come the time to act. On the 22nd of January 1947, as the Chinese New Year began, the Manchus and Puyi's allies sprung into action, a coup was launched against the Kwantung army, seizing officer barracks and arresting army officers, the Chinese collaborators were arrested, and Japanese troops were disarmed, preferring to surrender to a fellow "Pan-Asian partner" than the vengeful Chinese. Once news reached General Kita, commander of the army in Manchuria, he ordered the troops to stand down and surrender themselves to the Manchu, while General Okamura opened his own chest with a sword upon receiving the news of the New Year's coup. And with that, the Empire of Manchuko announced it's surrender to the Supreme Command of the Allied powers, Japanese resistance fleeing hopelessly to Korea where they received shocking news.

Between December and January, Japan would undergo another change of Government, as Patton arrived in Nagano on the 27th of December, the Japanese Imperial Family and Anami's government planned to retreat North towards Sendai and Fukushima, the original plans of heading to Kyoto being scrapped due to the capture of the city. The Regent Yasuhito, already plagued by tuberculosis, only had his disease greatly worsened by the smoke and stress of the last year of the war. As the family was being evacuated, Yasuhito refused to flee Nagano, knowing he would not be able to survive his illness and still faithful to the Bushido code, wrongfully believing he was honoring his brother's last wishes to fight to the very end, entrusting the regency of Akihito to his younger brother Nobuhito. The Royal Family was accompanied by Anami as they fled towards Sendai, all while Yasuhito and his Imperial Guard stayed behind in the Imperial Shelter. By January 5th, the American forces finally would find the shelter as the stars and stripes were raised on the ruins of Nagano, only for the troops to sense only the smell of corpses, Yasuhito and his guards had comitted Seppuku shortly before their arrival, leaving even the toughened soldiers of Patton to be traumatized. As the Royal Family reached the city of Sendai, rumors of an incoming naval invasion motivated them to leave southwards to Fukushima, curiously the city of Sendai was spared from the bombing campaigns so far, and the reason was a nefarious purpose made in America, tested in New Mexico, and ready for deliver.

"Now I have become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds"​

January 25th, 1947, 9:15 AM, the citizens of Sendai would receive the warning of a bombing raid, and yet, there was only one plane high in the sky, an American B-29 traveling high in the clouds at a level no plane could reach. It was believed that was just a scout plane, flying by the city for reconissance pictures of the rumored naval invasion to come, which led to the people coming out of their shelters to resume their normal lives. But they were wrong, a single bomb was dropped from that plane, the B-29 immediately entering emergency maneuvering to flee away from the blast radius, the bomb began to fall more and more, practically invisible to the naked eye although many still looked at the plane. And soon, as it reached a determined atitude, pressure sensors activated, and at 9:23 AM, an new era began in World History, which was sensed in Sendai, Washington, London, Nanjing, Rome, and Germania. The bomb, activated by nuclear fission of Uranium, detonated with a blinding flash, forming a mushroom cloud in the sky reaching thousands of feet high, the radius of the explosion and the shockwave incinerating everything and everyone unfortunate enough to be in it's path. 90,000 people would be vaporized instantly at the center of Sendai, thousands more would die in the fire and the radiation poisoning on the next years, the first Nuclear Bomb, fruit of years of research by some of the most brilliant minds in the world, was detonated as the world's deathliest weapon. Something even Hitler ignored as "mere Jewish pseudo-science of Atomicism" now was suddenly proven to work with devastating effects, now one bomber could deal the damage that an entire Fleet of hundreds could do into a city, the "Fat Man" bomb device began a new Era on the fields of sciences, military, and geopolitics.

But the immediate consequence was to break the last straw, Nobuhito, already having his mind conflicted between continuing the war to honor his brothers' supposed wishes, or ending the war to spare further suffering to Japan and it's people, was in Fukushima at the Mayor's house with Prime Minister Anami, an old General that visibly aged even further over these last two years, when he received the news. Anami was the first one to receive the report, visibly in shock and sighing, sinking further on the chair as he lost the stomach to drink more tea, giving the letter to the Regent. Nobuhito, the younger and less experienced man, almost passed out, exclaiming "This is it, now the Americans can turn each city into dust with one plane", further reports only confirmed the letter of the observers. There was nothing else to be done, Nobuhito consulted Anami about the surrender, and for the first time the elder said nothing to oppose it, already dealing with so many losses in a month and with news of American troops preparing an offensive from the south, Regent Nobuhito communicated his decision to the teenager Emperor Akihito, who was still recovering from losing his father and uncle, he did not oppose it either, accompanying the Prince-Regent to a radio station where he communicated a message to all of Japan, the first time the people heard on radio the voice of their Emperor. MacArthur was in his Headquarters in Tokyo when he heard the radio come to life in the Japanese frequence, finally no more propaganda broadcasts, instead they received the news they spent almost 5 years fighting for. Emperor Akihito called for all Japanese troops to stand down and accepted the terms of Unconditional surrender imposed by the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers. Upon returning to the house, Nobuhito would see Anami dead on the table, killing himself through Seppuku and leaving a last order for the Japanese troops to stand down, to surrender and collaborate with the allied powers. Poetically, the transmission happened as the sun was setting over Fukushima, with spontaneous celebrations breaking out all across the allied world, from China to New York, the Victory day of January 25th 1947 came, and the bloodiest conflict in Human history, claiming the lives of a range between 50 and 70 million people, including almost million American troops, over 13 million Japanese, 25-35 million Chinese, alongside countless others in Europe and Asia, the Second World War, was over.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

Greetings everyone, I hope you have been enjoying the journey so far (Although happiness is not something to expect when reading on a German Victory). I have come to offer a pastime: Movies!

After all, the Golden age of Hollywood is right around the corner, there is already great potential for stories and actors that did not exist in our universe. I come here to propose a little pastime, create and describe a movie that could be created within this TL so far. From the war in Asia to the Generalplan Ost, from the Russian Civil War to Europe under the Reich, even America during the war. You are now the writer and director of this story, how would you do it? As the events go by, you can add your own ideas into it, showing how the cinema industry would be completely transformed, how the Reich impacted European cinema? How the trauma of the war changed the industry?

Here is a format if you want some help, some of the details can be optional.

Title:
Genre:
Runtime:
Release date:
Country of origin:
Studio:
Main actors:
Plot:
Critical reception:
Public reception:

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
TRIUMPH DES WILLENS

​

On January 30th, 1947, as the world celebrated peace, one nation under one man prepared to end it. Fredrich Hoffman, a 39-year old veteran of the Wehrmacht, specifically the 16th Panzer division attached to the 6th army, was at his home in the city of Halberstadt, Lower Saxony. The man lived with his wife Sophie, two boys and a girl, aged 17, 14, and 9 respectively. Today was a day of national celebration, the Machtergreifung, the "seizure of power" by the NSDAP 14 years earlier, a day where he was more busy celebrating the birth of his second son, Ludwig Hoffman, to see the ceremony of the SA in Berlin. It was not a day as celebrated as the 20th of April, which was practically the main German national holiday, and yet people were at a good mood. While sometimes in the past, the neighborhood watcher of the NSDAP had to go in a few houses which did not hang up the flag, one time leading to a man receiving the visit of two SA goons in 1934, who were probably after him due to his previous membership to the SPD, today was not the case. People were more enthusiastic ever since the victory, and what German would dare to oppose Hitler? The man who, in 14 years, turned Germany from a poverty-ridden nation falling apart from internal divisions, economic collapse, and falling governments, into the sole power of Europe. It was a miracle not even Hoffman could explain, he just followed the orders as they were given, from Paris to Stalingrad, somehow it all went well. And today, as the birthday of Ludwig was being set up for the night once he and the others back from the Youth Center, it would be a historical day for Germany. Fredrich was at the living room, helping his wife by carrying over a table on where they would place the cake, and once he set it down there was a knock on the door. He walked over towards the wooden door and opened it, to his endless joy, it was the neighborhood watcher, SA-Sturmführer Hermann Wagner.

"Herr Hoffman, Heil Hitler." The officer said and raised his arm in a disciplined salute that Hoffman returned almost mechanically. "Have you set up the government channel?" The officer asked him, although technically Hoffman outranked him, he was a decommissioned officer, retiring following the Tag das Sieges, Hoffman answered him truthfully. "I have been preparing for the birthday of my son, I did not have the time to do so, is the speech important today?" The younger counterpart to Hoffman seemed to be almost insulted at the veteran's sloppiness. He did not doubt the man's patriotism or devotion of course, although he always found the Wehrmacht men to be almost like relics, distant from the public life and engagement that the Party demanded of the members of the Volk. "Indeed it is Herr, it is the inauguration of the Volkshalle in Germania, one of the greatest feats of National Socialist Architecture. The Führer will also address the future of the Reich, you cannot lose such a historical moment. I would've gone there myself if I did not have a duty here." Wagner was young enough to be Hoffman's son, the veteran did not want to argue over this condescending tone. Instead he nodded and acquiesced to the SA's demand. "Indeed, I must've been misinformed, thank you Herr Wagner, Heil Hitler." Hoffman gave his salute to the Sturmführer and closed the door as the man left for the next house. He could've just left it that way and go back to his business, but his wife Sophie was standing right behind him, watching the entire conversation. He knew she was a true-blooded National Socialist ever since they were engaged, being a part of the National Socialist Women's League meant that she had a duty in her house. Hoffman sighed and went to turn on the TV, which was already playing the "Horst-Wessel Lied" and was followed by the German anthem as the images of the massive Volkshalle were transmitted in black and white.

In Germania, there were tens of thousands inside the massive domed building. Although Speer, main architect of the project, initially was ordered to build a 300-meter tall building, testings uncovered that the sheer weight of that construction would sink it under the mashed grounds of Germania. A less ambitious project of 120 meters was approved instead, and even then, draining systems had to be installed into the Volkshalle. The construction took three years between 1943 and 1946, with the inauguration scheduled to 1947, despite the reductions, the massive domed building was still taller than the largest competitors, such as the St. Peter's basilica, being the largest building in the world of it's kind. Today was a momentous occasion, the highest levels of the NSDAP were reunited under Speer's dome, which was said to be a Cathedral of National Socialism, and that would not be an understatement. It was all symbolized by the top of the dome, where the Reichsadler, the German "Iron Eagle" stood over a globe. Speer, who sat alongside other ministers, was quite proud of his achievement, and nobody could do anything but applaud him, knowing that this project was one of Hitler's favorites, it would not be wise for any of the Gauleiters, Reichsministers, or Members of the Inner Circle to go against the Führer's ego. The Architect of the Reich did not speak openly of course, but the project was a personal victory of his own, ever since Göring's death, all were seeking the position left by the aviator. Not the government of Prussia, as the same was dissolved with the death of the Reichsmarshall despite protest of some Wehr Generals, but to be Hitler's successor. Naturally the position fell on Hess' shoulders, as the Deputy Führer of the NSDAP, the esoteric sycophant was the official successor, but it was very well known that the man did not have the spine, capability, ambition, or influence to hold the most powerful office in the Continent.

Today, the Führer stepped into the podium to address the country, despite the age of 57, he still had the voice and charisma to address the Nation, the Continent, and the World. For six days, ever since that fateful day in the Berghof, the leader had isolated himself, from the moment he discovered that the Americans went ahead of the Germans in their own "Wunderwaffen" and created a city-destroyer bomb that he himself dismissed years earlier as pure "Jewish Physics", he went on a furious rant against his inner circle and dismissed them. Some even wondered if he would still deliver the annual speech, which he did, only arriving at the Chancellery a day before the grand ceremony. Across the ocean, President Thurmond watched the television to see the live news broadcast, the Reich did not deliver any official statements on the end of the war in the Pacific, and now he believed that today would be a turning point, summoning his cabinet at the White House to watch what the madman in Germania would speak to his minions. Erich Kempka, the Führer's Chafeur, drove his car, the Mercedes-Benz 770, to the Chancellery to pick up his boss, who entered the vehicle as they drove towards the Volkshalle past a massive crowd of onlookers from all over the Reich, security of the event being greatly tightened ever since the Iron Marshal's assassination, provided mostly by the SS-Leibstandarte "Adolf Hitler" Division. After greeting his ministers, who surrounded him like vultures, awaiting to take the first bite of the body of their leader once he died. Speer would take the stage first as being credited for projecting the building, officially delivering the Volkshalle to Hitler as a monument to National Socialism and the "Triumph of the German Volk". After Speer's short words, it was time for the main attraction, and the eyes of the world were upon the words that would officialize something President Wheeler predicted years earlier.

"My German countrymen, members of the German People's Community. Today is a day of triumph, the triumph of a people against it's enemy. 14 years ago, President Hidenburg summoned me, and by the will of the people and nation, by the will of all those who hoped for better days, who desired to bring the honor that the nation truly deserved, I was made Reich Chancellor within the framework of Democracy. For years I have worked into reorganizing the country, the criminals of November tried to stop the march of National Socialism in vain, conspiracies within were defeated by brave heroes in our frontlines that safeguarded the future of the nascent Reich. I extended my hand in peace to the nations of Europe, especially towards Britain, and yet the hand that you give to such perfidious snakes are bitten. The French were approached as friends, but all we received was a slap to the face, the stubbornness of the Entente politicians, controlled by the same Judeo-Capitalist cabal that controlled Britain, led us to war, a war where our enemies seeked to dismantle the Reich in a thousand pieces, but all that they did was ensure that the Reich will stand for a thousand years!

The Jew is the eternal enemy of the Reich, of National Socialism, for the fact that we are the only ones capable of seeing through their lies, the Revolution we did was one to correct the course of the Reich, we directed it away from evolving into a degenerate beast into what we are today, the greatest Empire the world has ever seen. As the Judeo-Bolsheviks crumble in the east, and the Judeo-Capitalists cower in the west, the prophecy I have given to the Reichstag was fulfilled, as the Jew brought war to Europe, I can say that Europe shall now become free of Jews!

But we remain vigilant as we always have, our triumph must not blind us to the scheming of our enemies, across the Channel, the Perfidious Albion still remains. I still offer them to turn from their path and join our European Brotherhood in peace, and their politicians still reject the offer under the orders of Zion's elders. But across the seas, I once more say that our greatest enemy is, the American land, which once grew thanks to the vigor of the Anglo-Germanic man, has long lost it's strength, ruled instead by internationalist forces, by the Jewish bankers of New York, the corrupt politicians in Washington, and the hypocrites that preach peace while creating weapons of untold destruction, who preach self-determination but continuously deny the right of the European peoples, of the Germanic people, to rule itself. I tell you children of Germany, that the only self-determination that Mr. Atlee and Mr. Thurmond seek to impose is the determination of their own nations to dictate the others, and if we were to rest on our deserved laurels and lower our weapons today, tomorrow the German nation would be no more, and the sacrifices of our heroic countrymen would be in vain as we would be fragmented and weakened in a far worse way than even Versailles.

Coexistence with America, Friendship with America, that can only be given the moment their threats cease, otherwise the Reich will continue to strengthen itself. I do not want a war any more than I wanted in 1939, but if forced upon us, with the same vigor that led us to Paris and Moscow, that shattered the Old Order and placed a New Order, that liberated millions from the bonds of Zionism, we shall stand proud until the Final Victory! Germany has never been stronger, prouder, richer, or united as it is now, and I am certain that a thousand years of Glory awaits for us. Our will has Triumphed, triumphed against the Bolsheviks, against the Jews, against the criminals who betrayed our nation, and shall triumph every challenge that comes in our way, for no people in the world can compare to ours. Glory to Germany, Glory to the Reich, Glory to the New Order. And may the Divine Providence continue to guide our people. Deutschland! Sieg Heil!" [1]

[1] The speech as a whole was longer, lasting about an hour, but the main parts of this sermon were included in this chapter.​

The crowds from all across the Reich erupted in cheers, with millions of arms raising the salute, from children to the elderly. Hitler achieved what he wanted, making a grand show of strength against the United States and Great Britain, although most of the realistic minds were skeptical over the chance of coexistence no matter what. He did not mention the Atomic bomb directly, although there was the mention of "weapons of untold destruction" and claiming that Reich would "strengthen itself". The reactions to the speech were of wariness, the celebrations over Victory day, the initial euphoria brought by Japan's defeat, suffered a shocking reminder that a much greater and dangerous enemy still held control over "The old continent". In Washington, President Thurmond knew there was still much to be done, already calling for a Press Conference and to draft an answer to the Reich, with Atlee already preparing his speech to the House of Commons next session. And from his home, Friedrich Hoffman watched the speech with some uneasiness, while his wife seemed thrilled by the Führer's words, he faked a look of satisfaction while a sense of dread built inside of him. He saw first hand the horrors of the war, especially in the East, they were unbelievably lucky although nobody in the Wehrmacht would admit that, and he feared that if war restarted, his sons would hold the rifle this time, and this time he might have to bury their corpses.

​

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
TRAHISON

​

There is just a thin line that separates a traitor and a liberator, a criminal and a revolutionary, that line is history and who gets to write it. If Pompey defeated Caesar at Pharsalus, history would regard him as the greatest Roman to ever live, a savior of the Republic, and Caesar would be the traitorous arrogant general who waged an illegal genocidal war in Gaul and tried to make himself King. If Christianity was suppressed in it's early days, instead of the Savior of Humankind, the Messiah, Jesus would be merely regarded as a common criminal who tried to create a new sect of Judaism, another one lost in the list of criminals executed by crucifixion. Even in French history that is shown in 1815, when Napoleon Bonaparte, widely regarded as the greatest french to ever live, came back from his exile in Elba, newspapers called him a Monster, a traitor, a despicable being that would be quickly crushed by the Royal Army. Later on, the same newspapers would call him "Imperial Majesty" and welcome him to Paris with open arms, pretending they never once opposed him and all they did was follow the King's commands to avoid being shut down. In the 1940s, after the Armistice of June, the French nation would live that same dilema of treason with two new heads: The old "Lion of Verdun", the most prestigious Marshal in France and regarded as the greatest military leader since Napoleon, Henri Phillipe Pétain, opposing the renegade General and his former Protégée, Charles Marie de Gaulle.

It was a surprise to even the Wehrmacht just how quickly France fell in those six weeks in 1940, the nation which possessed what was widely regarded as the most powerful land army in the world would crumble against a surprise attack and the internal division within the government would result in the most humiliating affair in modern French history, surpassing even the Battle of Sedan. Initially the allies expected a repeat of the First World War, a German invasion of the Benelux nations and indeed that was the idea for the German High Command, however, General Manstein's bold "Ardennes Plan" won the favor of Hitler, which resulted in a change of plans. On the 10th of May, the German Bewegungskrieg "Maneuver Warfare" would be unleashed, with the invasion of the Benelux underway, the allied forces advanced northwards to halt the German advance, however, unsuspecting of them, the main attack was not the drive at the Benelux. The German Armored divisions under Manstein, Guderian, and Rommel driving across the thick woods of the forest, would crash against General Huntzinger's forces in Sedan, and once more the German troops would seal the defeat of France in that battlefield, the Maginot line, much weaker near the Belgian border, was broken, and within a few days, over two million allied soldiers were cut off in Belgium. The disaster was only made worse as the German forces captured Dunkirk, trapping the allied troops, including almost half a million soldiers of the BEF in the continent, soon to be made Prisoners of war for the next 3 years.

The French government during the Third Republic was hardly a stable one, just two months before the German offensive, Prime Minister Édouard Daladier resigned over his previous support towards appeasement and the failure to support Finland in the Winter War against the Soviet Union. Paul Reynaud, a decisive man who was determined to hold on until victory, tried to rally the nation to the war, an unpopular conflict that many saw as a repeat of the dreaded First World War. Daladier, who was made Minister of Defense as part of his resignation agreement, resented Reynaud, and the conflict between the two was crucial in keeping the hesitant and indecisive General Gamelin still in charge of the French forces during the Sedan breakthrough. Only after the disastrous attack did Weygand become General, and even then it was too little too late to save France from becoming a battlefield, something that scared the war-exhausted French people more than even the humiliation of defeat. It did not come as a surprise that the French cabinet began to be more inclined towards an Armistice, especially as the government was forced to evacuate Paris, which fell to the German advance without a fight in June. Marshal Pétain, who has been watching the fall of France from the sidelines, approached Reynaud on the proposal of an armistice, which the Prime Minister refused, instead entering in contact with Halifax, advising him to continue the fight by relocating the government to Algiers. Former Prime Minister Pierre Laval, a former socialist whose government fell after his failure in the Abyssinian crisis, secretly approached Petain on his intentions of forming a government, and to his surprise he already received a list of Ministers to be a part of the Marshal's new government.

What followed was a dramatic scene at Bordeaux, the new seat of government during those dark days of June 1940. As the German unrelenting advance broke and surrounded the Maginot line, with armored forces and the Luftwaffe striking during another British evacuation at Le Havre as part of Operation Cycle and most of it's heavy equipment being captured, alongside millions of refugees from the north flooding into the roads and straining the allied logistics. Reynaud began to feel increasingly isolated from his cabinet, and yet many hoped that a fair peace could be negotiated using Mussolini as a neutral mediator between the Reich and the allies. Those hopes would come down on June 18th when Italian troops crossed the Alps, with Paratroopers launched against the Island of Malta in a surprise attack against the allied forces. There was suspicion that Italy could opportunistically join the war in those final days, especially as Mussolini ordered the Italian merchant fleet recalled following the Dunkirk disaster in May, however the deceitful attitude of the Fascist government, which was welcoming French peace propositions and offering to act as a mediator during those decisive weeks, made the invasion become the final shocking blow to the Reynaud government. The Prime Minister, finally broken from the internal and external pressures, would resign, and Marshal Petain would step in to form a new government, contacting the Germans for an armistice signed on June 22nd 1940, at Compiègne, in the same train wagon as the Germans signed it's armistice on November 11th 1918 as a form of humiliation on the French Government.

Not everyone accepted the surrender, while most of France was relieved that the war for them was over, a recently-promoted General Charles de Gaulle, who commanded the armored corps and was made the Under-Secretary of National Defense and War in June following his success at the Battle of Montcornet, vowed to continue the fight. Fleeing towards London during the Fall of France, de Gaulle immediately became a target of the Petain government as he became the highest ranking French officer who refused to abide by the armistice. After his continued refusal to return to France, he was declared a traitor by the so-called "Vichy Government" (As it was now centered around the city of Vichy in Southern France) and condemned to death for treason, while the General declared himself as leader of the Free French forces in London. However, despite many servicemen of the French Armed forces opposing the armistice, very few of them were actually willingly to side with what many saw as a "rebellious government", others seeing it as nothing but a puppet of the British Government. The public opinion in France began to turn more and more against Britain after an attack against the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir in July 1940, which Petain used as an excuse to approve several laws during the month, ending the Third Republic and installing the "French State", an Authoritarian regime which was now collaborating with the Reich. However, the Free French would get a base of Operations in Equatorial Africa as Governor Félix Éboué swore his loyalty to the Free French forces, bringing alongside him Colonel Leclercq, the man who would eventually become de Gaulle's right-hand, who fought to take control of Gabon. Several governors in Equatorial Africa either joined willingly or were overthrown by Gaullist forces, except for Governor Masson in Gabon, who initially supported de Gaulle but was forced to rescind his pledge due to pressure from the French citizens of Libreville. In response, General Leclercq and Major Koenig led the Free French forces into an invasion, the first major fight between Gaullists and Vichy Loyalists resulting in a victory of the former and the suicide of Governor Masson. Now centered in Brazzaville, de Gaulle and the Free French had a legitimate power base in the large French colonial territory, protected by the Royal Navy. However, an attempted capture of West Africa at Dakar in September resulted in disaster for the Gaullists.

For the remainder of the war, the Gaullist "Brazzaville Government" would partake in the fighting on the side of the Allies, especially during the North African campaign, supporting the capture of new territories such as Madagascar, alongside the invasion of Spanish Equatorial Guinea, in retaliation for Operation Felix and the fall of Gibraltar. De Gaulle had hopes of returning to the French mainland, that the French people would rise against it's occupiers and collaborators once the tide of the war began to turn. On November 2nd 1942, despite repeated seatbacks in the Mediterranean front and the news coming from the Soviet Union, the General was optimistic when the news of the Pearl Harbor attack came, expecting that the United States would fully back the Free French forces and join the war in Europe. However, President Wheeler had other plans, opposing the idea of joining in the European war, with Hitler having his attention fully diverted on the Moscow front, and as such the United States remained outside of the European Theater of the Second World War, despite the hopes of Halifax and de Gaulle. Instead, Wheeler dismissed de Gaulle as a "British colonialist warlord in Africa", and that the United States had no reason to send their soldiers to die in Europe when they were attacked by a nation on an entirely opposite part of the world, there are suspicions amongst some historians that he believed the Germans would inevitably fail to achieve it's victory and an intervention was unnecessary, although such claims were mostly made years later by Wheeler's adversaries to criticize his lack of intervention in Europe. Personally, Wheeler later confessed in his memoirs that it would be impossible to persuade the mostly isolationist Congress to declare war against the Reich, something that he got by probing Vice-President Russell the night of the 2nd, although many suspect that could be an attempt of the former President to clean his name later on his life.

But April 20th, 1943, would be described as "the worst day of my life" in the General's memoirs. The idea of peace began all the way in 1940, the failures in the Mediterranean, especially at Gazala, only made it more appealing to the public, and with the collapse of the Soviet front following the disastrous winter counter-offensive, without the prospect of an US entry in Europe after the string of defeats in the Pacific, eventually Halifax would need to seek terms with Hitler. De Gaulle was not invited to the negotiations, as it was one of the main demands of the French State, and the Gaullists lacked the recognition of being the legitimate French Government that Petain possessed. The irate General was forced to watch from the sidelines with the British returning the occupied possessions of Syria and Madagascar to the French State, however he still made a speech on the day the Tag das Sieges was celebrated in the Reich, claiming that the fight for the soul of France was not yet lost, and if necessary he would continue the struggle alone. Free French forces refused to leave Madagascar and Syria, and clashed with the Vichy garrisons that arrived to reoccupy the territories, managing to keep control of Madagascar, while the Syrian question will be discussed later on as it would later result in the rise of the SSNP and the First Levantine War, the first of many proxy conflicts between the United States and the German Reich.

Meanwhile, while the Gaullists were trapped in Africa, Petain began to feel more trapped in his own humiliation. One side painted him as a traitorous opportunist who backstabbed France in it's darkest hour for his own personal ambition, and the other showed him as the elder hero who stepped back once again to save his nation from war. By the end of the war, the view of the Vichy government was vindicated, as France now had a place within the New European Order forged by blood and iron, however, Petain realized still in 1940 that his rule was not what it seemed, and the French independence was an illusion. The Vichy government, while on the outside seemed like a monolith centered around Marshal Petain, the President with a power not seen in France since Napoleon, the truth is that the government was divided on the inside, mostly between supporters of a more independent path, such as Pierre-Étienne Flandin, and others aligned closer towards European cooperation and collaboration with the Reich, chief of them being the Vice-President of the Council of Ministers, Pierre Laval. Laval was the ideal collaborator and there is no doubt on why he was favored by the Führer during the succession of Pétain, in July he intimidated the French assembly into dissolving itself and giving all powers to the Marechal, later he became Minister of State, working in order to fit France into the New European Order by modeling it's government on Italy and the Reich. However, by the end of 1940 he began to call for a war against Britain, something the Ministers and most of the population did not desire, and Pétain acted on December 13th when he called for all Ministers to give him resignation letters. Unexpectedly, the Chief of State accepted Laval's resignation and he was arrested shortly afterwards, a news that completely infuriated the German Ambassador Otto Abetz, and that night on the 16th of December, any illusion of French independence was shattered when the ambassador crossed the border escorted by the SS. Laval was freed and put back in the government, however away from the same powerful offices he once held, the former President openly called Pétain as just a "puppet", puffing a cigar on his face during their meetings. Darlan, who was Petain's chosen favorite, was forced to give explanations to the Führer, spending 20 minutes of the meeting just hearing the Führer's angry outburst over the whole affair, but once he returned, he was made the de facto head of the French government, as Vice-President of the Council, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of National Defense, and Minister of the Interior.

The French State was truly modeled following the layouts of Mussolini and Hitler, a Totalitarian State centered around Nationalism, Traditionalism, and a cult to the figure of the leader. Indeed the collaborationist government was quite eager in participating during the Final Solution, being one of the few European nations to willingly deport Jews to the Reich's camps, either out of the historical French antisemitism or Collaboration seeking better terms in the final peace. Petain, already in his mid 80s as the eldest head of State in Europe, knew that his time was short, and as such he clarified his succession through the Institutional Act N4 in 1940, however the same would be declared null after the schism between Laval and Petain in December. Darlan, as commander of the formidable French Fleet, the largest one in Continental Europe settled at Toulon, was a military man favored by Pétain, who became increasingly anti-British following Operation Catapult in Mers-el-Kebir, and desired to seek a better Quid Pro Quo with the Germans, something that would not truly be retributed. He was the natural successor to Petain, however the German influence began to grow more and more as the successes in the East and the non-intervention of the United States seemed to make the prospect of an allied return become more and more difficult to imagine. Flandin himself was hardly a non-collaborator, his leadership of the supposed "Neutralistes" mostly came from the fact that his short weeks in the government was market by a secret agreement with Britain, where the blockade of Europe was eased for French ships in return of no further acts of provocation against the British government, his government fell after the agreement was made public and yet he retained certain political relevance in Vichy.

Things changed in 1943 once the Treaty of Lisbon was ratified, the long-awaited day of peace came and Petain approached the Germans to ensure a final peace settlement. He, alongside many of the French, hoped that the collaboration of the previous years had eased the German desire for revenge, however those hopes would be cruelly destroyed once the treaty was dictated to the French. It already started with a humiliating affair, where the French met in the same halls of Versailles where the German fate was decided decades earlier. The humiliating Second Treaty of Versailles was not just a humiliation for France but for Petain himself, as could be seen from the "Verdun Clause" which gave the control of the city to the Germans. Darlan was another one to be hit, as the limitations of the French navy forced him to turn over several ships to the Reich, however that was a prize the Admiral was not ready to give up, instead the Head of Government gave an order for the ship Captains, ordering several ships at the port of Toulon to be scuttled, including over half the French submarine fleet, the remainder either sailed towards Libreville, Norfolk, or Scappa Flow to avoid being turned in, or willingly joined the Kriegsmarine. The order of Darlan was a last act of defiance of the French against the German government, and Darlan would pay for it with his life. De Gaulle, in Brazzaville, actually praised Darlan's order by calling it "a last attempt of redemption by a soul that realized that had sold itself to the devil", many of the scuttled ships would later be recovered by French efforts throughout the years, a project was instead made to convert them into "Museum ships", removing it's artillery cannons and ammunition, and yet keeping them ready to be mobilized in wartime if necessary. Darlan ordered the scuttling on the 1st of July, on the 3rd he would be forced to give his resignation to Pétain, and on the 6th he would be found dead in his bedroom, hanged, apparently a suicide although many suspect he was killed by the Germans in retaliation for the Toulon Scuttling. The Marechal was now forced to invite back his old rival Pierre Laval to form a Government, becoming the Vice-Chairman of the Council and the second most powerful man in France, with the blessings of Germania, he was now vindicated for his previous "Europeanist" positions, and Petain would remain essentially as a puppet for the remandier of his life.

The Old Lion of Verdun could no longer roar, after Darlan's death, it seemed like the energy still left in the octagenarian's heart had faded, becoming increasingly secluded with his speeches becoming less and less frequent. His life was filled with regrets, of imagination, what if he had not signed the armistice? What if he had gotten rid of Laval when he could? What if he did not sell his soul for power that, in the end, meant nothing? Between 1943 and 1946, the French State was reforged in the image of the National State ideology. The French Revolution and it's achievements were thrown into the trash, Marianne was torn down and replaced by Joan D'Arc, the German enemy was now a friend and the British friend was an enemy as it was for many centuries earlier. The Milicé Nacional, led by Joseph Danard, became the French SS, militarized as a loophole on the Treaty of Versailles to create the semblance of a strong force in France, while suppressing internal dissidents. The BBC broadcasts of de Gaulle became rarer and rarer as Atlee's British government diverted it's focus towards the Asian campaign and the belief that de Gaulle could recover France became dimer by the day. The two men, the Traitor and the Hero, were now both hopeless, tired, at their lowest points. One was made a puppet by the government himself created, only coming to realize it when nothing else could be done, all of his remaining pride taken from him. The other was exiled from his own nation for not wanting to ally with the ones who rampaged through it's soil, now forced to stay at a hot colonial holding hundreds of miles from home, leading a meaningless "Imperial Council" that spent more time discussing daydreams than doing anything at all, which really was nothing. So long as the Festung Europa held, as long as the Reich controlled firmly the Continent, nothing could change. Perhaps the little prestige the French could get was in being the right or left hand of the Reich in enforcing it's rule over Europe, with Petain signing into the Linz Pakt in 1945, later with French Alpine troops being mobilized when the Reich temporarily suspended the military limitations, later allowing the French to possess an army of 250,000 troops and a relatively small air force, as well as the territory of Romandie, due to it's efforts in the Swiss campaign of 1946. One of Petain's last actions was to watch as the French troops marched alongside the Wehrmacht and the Air Force roamed the skies with the Luftwaffe to crush one of the few nations who did not submit to the Reich as he did.

To the average Frenchman, the years were not kind in the 40s, the majority of the population still saw collaboration with the Germans with skepticism, and the economic effects began to appear. Perhaps one of the main factors to why the "Neutralistes" under Flandin were not "Neutralized" by the Germans and Laval, was because of it's popular support, with many of the Resistance coming to accept the Status Quo by joining this movement as a passive resistance against the Reich's "United Europe", alongside Danard's personal Germanophobia protecting them from the Milicé's retaliation. And yet, the politics of Vichy France were not so simple, with characters such as Marcél Déat and Jacques Doirot leading more radical Fascist, if not National-Socialist groups calling for a deeper cooperation with the Reich and a mass party movement that lacked in the Petain Regime. Meanwhile, Flandin was not the only politician calling for a more independent path, the Action Française of Charles Maurras has opposed the collaboration with the Germans as far back as 1940, while François de la Rocque, leader of the French Social Progress Movement (PSF), was still leading what was previously the largest right-wing mass movement in France during the 1930s. The Economy of France began to both grow and suffer during this period as the flood of the German industrial conglomerates into France, especially Northern France, began to replace local industries, greatly harming small business in the country due to it's use of essentially slave labor from the Generalplan Ost program. On the other hand, the arrival of said industries helped in reducing unemployment, mostly on the services sector as slaves were mostly used for industrial labor, and the end of the wartime blockade allowed for the resume of trade between France and the western powers, many times with the French acting as a middle way for the entrance of products into the Reich and vice-versa. Overall, the economy did not reach pre-war levels, remaining at a stable rate, with the growth being sustained by the German industries as the French economy was more and more tied up with the Reich, while insatisfaction began to rise as national businesses were being pushed away by the "German Industrial Invasion".

However, those would not be Pétain's problem to tackle, as on the 18th of October 1946, at the age of 90, Phillipe Pétain would peacefully die in his sleep, a movement that brought mourn to the nation. Except for members of the Resistance, the majority of the French Nation still deeply respected the old Marshal who twice saved France from the brink of death. At the sound of "Marechal Nous Voila", which became the French anthem of the Petain era during the 1940s after La Marseillaise was removed due to it's deep connection to the French revolution, the funeral procession would bury Petain with full military honors. But with his home town now under German control, the burial was made at Les Invalides, the same place where Napoleon's tomb was put to rest. The cult of personality around the Marshal remained after his death, as none of the leading French figures could quite match his charisma, except for the exiled General de Gaulle. On the matter of succession, there was nothing more than just a formalization of Laval's position after Darlan's death, with the new Chef of the French State being the former President that once tried to align with Mussolini in the 1930s and led the effort to "Europeanize" France during the Petain era. It was clear from the start that Laval would never achieve the same level of popularity of Pétain, remaining in his position by the graces of the Führer who was the first to congratulate him on the new office, a letter that was supposedly prepared before de Marechal's death. But while the new leader came to power officially, de Gaulle made a speech in London to the BBC that would later reveal to be prophetic.

"The ones who sold the soul of France never once asked the French people if they wanted to be subjected to their enemies. Hitler, Laval, and all those involved in both Paris and Germania do not understand that the French people, in it's darkest moments, always shines the brightest. Their illusion of strenght one day will shatter, their control through fear one day will fail, and when that day comes, when the monoliths finally show how frail they truly are, then the people will once more show that our spirit shines bright against their darkness."

​

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
HATIKVAH

With cunning they conspire against your people;
they plot against those you cherish.
“Come,” they say, “let us destroy them as a nation,
so that Israel’s name is remembered no more.”
Psalms 83:3-4
​

The journey was not an easy one, it was months of planning and hiding that led them as far as they managed to go, and once the coastline was seen they knew they arrived home. Once the peace was made, once the world abandoned them to their fate, every Jew in Europe knew what was to come, that there was no use in hiding for a relief that will likely never come. Those who could, ran away, and Anne Frank's family was one of those fortunate enough to have escaped the so-called "Neuordnung", and in 1944 they arrived at the port of Jaffa alongside hundreds of others in the RMS Queen Elizabeth coming from Lisbon through the dangerous Italian-dominated Mediterranean waters where there was always the fear of an RSHA agent tracking their moves. But once they arrived in that strange land, which still felt so very familiar despite never setting foot there, Otto Frank led his family to establish themselves further north at the city of Haifa, and from there they hoped the nightmare was finally going to be over, the fear of prosecution, of disappearing like so many others, would be gone. Those were the hopes of the thousands of Jews that arrived from all corners of the world coming in to the one place they were free to call a home, as the British relaxed immigration restrictions after the war and the chaos in the former Soviet east caused even more migrants to come. However, the book of Exodus tells the story all over again, of the Jews fleeing from enslavement and massacres and heading to their promised land, but did the Pharaoh let them go easily? Just as the chariots of the God-King of Egypt pursued the people to exterminate them, so would the armies of the Führer prepare, and on the north, at the lands of the former Jewish enemy of Assyria, so did they prepare to once again march south. Hitler would never let his mortal enemies to be free, and the fight for survival was far from over, as from the very beginning, Israel was surrounded by enemies, with the armies that conquered a continent and defeated the greatest powers in the world standing at the ready to finish their job. Less than four years after the Franks and so many other families arrived at Haifa, again would the Reich and it's "Pact of Steel" march to put an end to the dream, but this time they would not allow themselves to be transported like cattle into carts to death camps as those who remained.

​

However, first it is necessary to understand what was happening in the North between 1943 and 1947, as while tensions increased in Palestine, Syria would seize it's chance of independence and begin to build up to achiever their own dreams. Antoun Saadeh, born on the 1st of March 1904, in a small village of the Ottoman Vilayet of Beirut, grew in a lucky environment, a gifted child, fluent in seven different languages, son of a scholar during the so-called "Syrian renaissance". As his father, Saadeh became a Syrian nationalist, rejecting Lebanese nationalism as a french-created artificial nationality and instead arguing for a different thesis of Nationalism. Saadeh believed in Territorial nationalism, rather than ethnic, where cultures were forged according to their surroundings, geography determined that Syria should expand to it's natural borders: The Taurus mountains in the North, the Zaros mountains in the East, the Arabian desert in the south, and the Suez Canal in the west. At first he created the "Natural Syria" society which was disbanded within a year, but in November 1932 he would create the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), a movement against the authorities of the French dominion, opposing the peaceful approach of the ruling National Bloc. The movement would begin to grow with time, coming under watch of French authorities, Saadeh himself being arrested repeatedly during the 1930s, but it was not destroyed, and 1939 would change the fortunes of the SSNP. The province of Hatay was detached from Syria, later being given to the Republic of Turkey, much to the wrath of the Syrian people, especially after the 1936 General strike and the increasing French repression since the Syrian rebellion in the 1920s. The outrage provoked both by these factors caused President Hashim Al-Atassi to resign, his trust on the French being broken as the Independence treaty of 1936 was yet to be ratified, with France dismembering a part of the so-called "Greater Syria" to be given to a foreign nation. In 1940, with the fall of France, the Petain regime only showed itself even less willing to compromise on the Colonial situation, instead the French continued to benefit from the Syrian concessions of the treaty, namely the use of Air bases.

It all came to a boiling point in 1941 when General Rashid Ali Al-Gaylani and the Golden Square launched a coup in Iraq, installing a German-friendly State in the crucial Fertile crescent was a conflict of interest between the Reich and the British. Hitler ordered Luftwaffen Squadrons to be sent to support Al-Gaylani and the only nearby air bases were in French Syria, still following the collaborationist policy, Petain and Darlan agreed in hosting the German Air force in Syria, something which the British saw as a breach in the supposed Vichy "Neutrality". British forces in the Middle East, alongside the Free French, attacked Syria and swiftly expelled the Garrison, yet a deathly event happened in Homs where a Free French MB. 170 bomber destroyed the house of the still-popular former President Al-Atassi, killing him in the strike. Charles de Gaulle promised Syrian independence by the end of the war once France was liberated, but his visit to Beirut was famously interrupted when the crowd began to jeer and hurl stones at the General, with the bodyguards retaliating by firing into the sky, the "Beirut incident" would later spark a series of protests in the region, while the National Bloc lost one of it's most important leaders. Bahij al-Khatib, the deeply unpopular Head of State installed after Al-Atassi's resignation was removed by de Gaulle with Taj al-Din al-Hasani, a puppet leader, being placed in charge and tasked with responding to the increasing demands of the allied powers for resources as the Axis powers pushed more into the Mediterranean. The fall of Malta and later Gibraltar lead to a growing isolation of the Mediterranean front and increasing pressure over the Suez Canal. The German Afrika Korps led by General Erwin Rommel continued to make advances, eventually breaking the lines of General Auchinleck's 8th Army at El-Alamein, with Egypt vulnerable to invasion, the Soviet war effort falling apart, and the United States continuously refusing to join the war in Europe, it was no surprise the allies would sue for peace, and the promises of de Gaulle to the increasingly unpopular al-Hasani were the final nail in the coffin, literally.

Saadeh, who was exiled in Argentina since 1937, saw the end of the war as the perfect opportunity, after boarding a trade ship he would arrive at the port of Beirut as the British forces began their withdraw. While the terms of the Treaty of Lisbon dictated that Allied troops should immediately cease occupation of Syria, the Free French, who were never a part of the Treaty, remained with a much reduced garrison, while Petain prepared to reassert control over the nation. Syria, betrayed, mutilated, dragged into a foreign war by European powers, would now become the battlefield of Free French and the French State's forces, but the underground resistance movements, emboldened more and more by the day, finally said enough. Petain's forces arrived in May at Beirut, greeted with pelts and jeers from the crowd similarly to de Gaulle, but they were far less bothered about the wishes of the locals, and the rocks received bullets in return, a massacre in Beirut resulted in the deaths of 11 civilians with one French soldier injured by a rock. If there was ever any intention by the increasingly imperialistic regime to keep the locals on their side, those were frustrated upon arrival. Free French forces resisted the advance of the Vichy regime, with supplies coming through the Hedjaz railway from the British in the southern mandate, the fighting began to wear down both sides, especially as the local Syrians fought an asymetrical warfare against both. The Gaullists were eventually forced to retreat while Al-Hasani died of a heart attack. As the Treaty of Versailles was signed, the French image was tarnished, and it's prestige was dependent solely on it's vast Empire. Petain nullified the Treaty of Independence, now with Laval as the de facto Head of Government to push a more Imperialistic agenda, General Louis Koeltz was placed as the French High Commissioner of Syria, tasked with repressing the unruly population, the Republic of Syria was placed under French Martial Law and the independence was cancelled. Perhaps there was no better way of making sure the fire burned than by throwing a gallon of gasoline on it.

The radicalization from that point on was inevitable, Saadeh entered in contact with members of the National Bloc, many disillusioned at the French arbitrariness and harshness of the new regime with no peaceful path towards independence in sight. At a secret meeting in Al-Raqqa, on the 27th of July 1943, Saadeh was able to position himself as leading figure of the upcoming struggle for Syrian independence around the principles of the SSNP, namely of a United, Secular, Strong Greater Syria to oppose sectarianism, colonialism, and Zionism. Koeltz's forces began to suffer increasing harassment from the growing rebellion as the control of the countryside was reduced to a mere nominal formality, the General requested forces from Europe, and Petain began to send in reinforcements to Syria where a shooting war was starting. The SSNP engaged through a growing paramilitary wing called "Eagles of the Whirlwind", launching fast strikes, capturing equipment leftover by the allies and even receiving support from contacts in the British Mandate of Palestine in order to weaken the French presence. The new Prime Minister of Britain, Atlee of the Labour Party, believed that the anti-colonialist cause of the SSNP could be manipulated against the French, not considering that it could terribly backfire in the long-term and instead trusting that such a movement could be properly "tamed" after independence. Ironically, the Germans also showed interest in the SSNP, Hitler commented to his inner circle that, while the European Empires were a powerful civilizing tool to the world, the French were squandering their own Empire, attempting to show strength only to be miserably beaten repeatedly by a group that they claimed to just be "uncivilized camel jockeys". The weakening of the French effort would only make it more dependent to the German sphere of influence, still rather informal before the creation of the Linz Pakt in 1945. Besides, Hitler held a strong admiration of Islam, although not of the Arabs per se, specifically of it's strong discipline and ethics that he considered superior to the "Jewified" Christianity. While the Reich naturally could not send direct support to an enemy of their supposed "friendly European nation", that did not stop the first contacts between the NSDAP and SSNP from being established in that time.

The French control over Syria was unsustainable, while a rebellion such as the Great Syrian revolt could've been crushed by force of arms, divisions and compromise such as happened before, that was not to be this time. The War-exhausted French society, with a nation attempting to recover from it's terrible economic disaster between 1940-1943, could not sustain a conflict over Syria. While General Koeltz and Chef Petain both desired to continue the fight, Laval began to work behind the scenes to salvage what was possible, the drains in the national reserves brought by a colonial conflict was something France couldn't afford, and the Germans instead desired the French economical effort directed towards paying the Versailles reparations in an ironical twist of History. General Koeltz was assassinated on the 17th of October 1943, killing one of the major proponents of the Syrian war, shortly afterwards, Saadeh made his move in Homs, once one of the major centers of the Syrian revolt. The Syrian forces formed a column in the city, with Saadeh declaring the independence of the "Syrian National Republic" and proclaiming an end both to the French dominion and the Syrian Republic, the march headed south gathering support from towns and headed towards Damascus. Saadeh was inspired by Mussolini's March on Rome, but was also careful to avoid Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch, the forces following Saadeh were made by a core of Arab veterans, including even some volunteers from the Free Arabian Legion, soldiers of the Afrika Korps. The French, disorganized from Koeltz's assassination a day earlier, attempted to mount a resistance, but a General strike was made in Damascus, with protesters closing down the streets and demanding the retreat of the Garrison. Laval met with Ribbentrop on the 19th at the German Embassy in Paris, and after several hours, he returned to meet with the aging Marshal. On the 20th of October 1943, Saadeh's column reached Damascus and the French forces were given a general order of withdraw. The Syrian war of Independence ended in a matter of months, Saadeh declaring Damascus as the capital of Greater Syria and later marching on Beirut, defeating the forces of the Lebanese Phalange, the nationalist rival of the SSNP, and incorporating the Republic into Syria. The French were forced to seek terms and recognize the Syrian independence, which was immediately followed by a recognition from London, Germania, and Washington.

Antoun Saadeh, the "Al-Zaim" (The Leader) as his followers named him, was never a man of National Socialist convictions, his doctrine radically opposed ethnic nationalism as "sectarian" and many times he had to go into Party meetings to remember, especially to the young wing, that Social Nationalism was not National Socialism. While he remained as such for the rest of his life, neither him or anyone else in the SSNP could deny that the Germans did provide a quite necessary technical and military help if they were willing to attach themselves to the principles of the nations of the Linz Pakt. Just as the French had adapted themselves to the new world, the SSNP began to embrace more overtly authoritarian policies, but Saadeh had an obstacle: The Syrian aristocracy, many hailing from the Ottoman times, still possessed great influence and that included the SSNP coalition partners of the National Bloc. Without a common enemy in the French, the unified movement that engaged in the assymetric warfare and marched on Damascus and Beirut was fragmenting itself, many not agreeing with the SSNP's dominance and calling for a General Election of the National Assembly, as well as for the office of President that was temporarily occupied by Saadeh. In 1944, the Syrian elections were called to February, being delayed until April 15th. With resources coming in from Germania and Rome, it was easy for the SSNP to achieve a plurality of seats, and Saadeh was elected President with 47% of the votes. It was a good result and yet not enough for Saadeh to push for a Social Nationalist Constitution without compromises, and so he had two options: Either compromise with the establishment like Mussolini or push stubbornly at any cost to implement his agenda like Hitler.

On the 10th of May, the Whirlwind struck against Saadeh's most fierce opposition: The Communists and Ba'athists, leaders of the movement were arrested on charges of conspiracy and treason, being executed almost on spot in show trials in Beirut. The land possessions of many of the more foreign-alligned and oppositionist leaders in Syria were seized by the State, to be used as communal lands. However, subtly many lands were instead turned over to other groups, in return of membership into the SSNP, many landowners and politicians were bribed and switched loyalties overnight, being assured of the Party's good intentions to Syria as a whole, or so they were told. With the political class either purged or tamed, Saadeh called for a Constitutional convention that led to the 1944 Constitution, based around the principles of the SSNP. All Executive and Legislative powers were given to the President of Syria, who would lead Syria as a Secular, Nationalist, Totalitarian State centered around the principles of Social Nationalism, the SSNP was enshrined as the sole legal party and representative of the National Democracy, it is clear how this System received the influence of the German and Italian "observers" during the process. With a total control of the Press, Saadeh was free to organize Syria as he wished, while the British only now realized the deathly mistake they had done. The Wehrmacht began to send their first "advisors", mainly veterans of the Afrika Korps, to organizing the Syrian army as it began it's creation, German-styled uniforms, German surplus weaponry from WWII, officers sent to train in the Reich. It was no surprise that by 1947 the Syrian army was nicknamed "The little Wehrmacht", placed under the command of General Adib Shishakli, one of Saadeh's loyalists and member of the SSNP youth wing who studied in the Reich between 1943 and 1946.

To the south, the situation in Palestine had apparently settled down since the Arab uprising was quelled in 1939, however tensions were beginning to rise again after 1943. Inspired by the Syrians, many in the Arab side were calling for independence as promised by the British in return of their support to the war effort. Jews, who were escaping Festung Europa at the thousands, also called louder than ever for a national home for the Jews, while militias from both sides clashed on the streets for territorial control. Atlee realized more than his predecessor that the Imperial dream was severely weakened by the World War, and some parts of the Empire were just far too costly in terms of manpower and maintenance to keep, especially one where the population of both sides demanded their exit. However, before leaving, the matter to settle was of the division of the territory and the mere mention of it was enough to provoke shootouts in Jerusalem. The Woodhead commission in 1939 proposed three different plans that were all rejected, different proposals were being presented by all sides from radical Zionists calling for all the Mandate to be a Jewish State to Arabs wanting to send the Jews into the sea, and obviously one side could not have complete leverage over the other. The atitude on Zionism in the west has been changing much ever since the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Kristallnacht, while the full picture of the horrors unleashed by the Reich was not seen in the west, the tales of refugees continued to feed into the public sympathy for the plight of the Jews. Ever since the aftermath of the 1939 revolt, the British attempted to appease the Arabs by limiting Jewish migration into the Mandate, with the Halifax government continuing such policy despite the growing public pressure during the war. In the Post-War, however, with the rise of the United States and the considerable Zionist sympathies in the Wheeler administration thanks to Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. A Jewish-American who made many efforts to convince Wheeler to give his support to the Jewish cause. However, there was a complete reversal of Wheeler's tacit support towards a Jewish state when Cordell Hull became President, known for instructing American consulates to deny Jewish visas to America during WWII.

Between 1943 and 1946, Thousands of Jews would arrive both legally and illegally into the Dominion, which was further sparking the tensions in the area, something the Germans began to use to stroke the fires of Antisemitism in the Middle East. Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and spokesman of the Arab cause had established contact with the Hitlerite regime, especially during the campaign of the Middle East while he was in exile in Italy. Husseini called for the alignment between Arabs and the Linz Pakt in the struggle against Anti-British colonialism, while also opposing Saadeh's regime due to it's secularism, claiming that a Christian should not lead a Muslim people, reffering to the fact Saadeh was an Orthodox Christian from Lebanon. Husseini's broadcasts, added with the increased immigration of Jews into the Mandate slowly boiled over the tensions, and inspired many Muslims to become volunteers in the Waffen-SS, especially in Bosnia against the Yugoslav Partisans. During the War, the Dominion contributed towards the defense of Egypt and the invasions of Syria and Iraq, something that many of the fighters expected to see was the promised compensation of the White Papers of 1939: The Promise of Independence.

The British expected to return the Mandate to the League of Nations, but the entity no longer held any moral authority to decide such matters ever since it failed it's primary goal of preventing the outbreak of the Second World War, furthermore, the German invasion of Switzerland saw the Linz Pakt destroy it's headquarters in Geneva. The Archives of the League were captured by the Reich, with Hitler boastingly declaring that the institution created by the "Zionist-Capitalists of London and New York" was dissolved, although by that time very few of it's member states still paid more than a formal recognition to it's efforts. Ultimately, the decisive change for the establishment of Israel came with the death of Cordell Hull and the rise of President Thurmond. While the young Dixiecrat was not a particular enthusiast of the Zionist cause, he presided over the decisive moment when Hitler made his Volkshalle Speech, considered one of the inaugural moments of the Cold War, and if there is one group of people that the Anglo-Americans could count on to oppose the Reich unconditionally, it was the Jewish settlers who fled from the Reich-dominated Europe. And besides, there was also the influence of Jewish Lobbysts in the American policies, as Thurmond did not wish to run for another term, many potential candidates were approaching the rich funds of such group, and it added up perfectly with the American ideal of self-determination. General MacArthur would make a speech during the Ceremony of the Japanese surrender on the 29th of January, calling for a better world to emerge out of "Peace, Tolerance, and Justice for all Free peoples", later openly giving his support for the Zionist cause, something his counterpart General Patton, refused to do, instead claiming that America should not be involving itself in the "Matters of Zion", unsurprising considering his track of antisemitic declarations.

An International Conference would be called in Philadephia held on January 1st 1946, attended by all nations, except for the Linz Pakt members who obviously denounced the conference as an Internationalist Conspiracy, the Japanese and it's satellite States who were at war with it's members, and the Russians due to the conflicting nature on who was the legitimate government. The Philadelphia Declaration would see the plan for the successor of the League of Nations, an organization headed the United States, China, Canada and the United Kingdom, The United Nations, brainchild of Cordell Hull. The city was chosen due to it's historical significance as the birthplace of Modern Democracy and Human Rights, at least according to Hull, as the Declaration of Independence and American Constitution were both written in there. The United Nations would be called to mediate the Palestinean Partition, and that's where the end of the Hull administration would prove decisive with the American delegation sent in February arguing in favor of a Jewish State, conflicting with the British as the later was attempting to keep friendly relations with the arabs after the Syrian fiasco, seeing as the Eastern Mediterranean was the only area of British interest still able to strike Southern Europe. The compromise was drafted by the General-Secretary and exiled Swedish Red Cross leader, Count Bernadotte, and it did not please either side: Bersheeba and the Jewish settlements in Negev would be given to the Arabs, while the Arabs would have to accept the existance of an independent Jewish State, while the Arab territory was given to the Hashemites of Transjordan as a British attempt to keep them a friendly State in the region. An Independent City-State of Jerusalem was established under International Mandate, with both Jews and Arabs allowed to send in one delegate to the executive council of the City. Naturally Husseini denounced the act as a ploy of Zionists, Saadeh denounced it as Jewish Imperialism, Hitler called it "A base for the enemies of the Reich and Free Europe to conspire to put them back into chains", and even the Jewish radicals of the Lehi group would attempt an assassination of Bernadotte. Ultimately, the plan would end up approved by the United Nations despite the Arab delegations walking out of the Assembly, but to most of the Jews, the plan was a God-sent gift: After 2 thousand years, an Independent Jewish State would be established in Israel, but the UN could only recommend such partition, the real implementation would take the cost of blood, and an unlikely alliance would emerge out of this bloodshed.

​

On the 18th of April 1947, just a day before the Mandate was set to expire as British troops were leaving, riots and open conflict between Jews and Arabs already started with the Haganah and Irgun militias fighting off the Arab ones, the intensification of these conflicts only had one inevitable end. Antecipating it, David Ben-Gurion, head of the Jewish Agency, declared the Independence of the State of Israel, and less than an hour later he would receive recognition from the United States, with British recognition in the following day. Ironically, the Reich was the first nation to "recognize" Israel by immediately condemning the creation of the "Nest of the Zionist Viper", and the Arab states did a similar "recognition" by shelling Jewish settlements, with Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia declaring an State of War. Al-Husseini, from his radio waves in Germania, called for a Jihadist War against Israel, calling for all Muslim faithful to "Gather under one cause, so that Israel will cease to exist and there shall be no memory of Israel". Curiously, Saadeh, despite condemning Israel, did not declare War, as he had a different plan for this situation. After barely surviving their greatest persecution, the Jewish people were now facing one last trial before finally achieving it's desired home. Anne Frank wrote in her diary that in Haifa, the climate was of both celebration and aprehension, for the final test had come, at the end of the page of the 18th of April, Anne wrote a biblical verse from the book of Isaiah 41:8-10.

“But you, Israel, my servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
you descendants of Abraham my friend,
I took you from the ends of the earth,
from its farthest corners I called you.
I said, ‘You are my servant’;
I have chosen you and have not rejected you.
So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

​

The Arab forces did not fully commit in the start of the conflict, and yet they still outnumbered the Jewish militias at least 3-2, with the core of the troops being formed by 4,000 soldiers of the elite Arab Legion of King Abdullah Hussein of Jordan, veterans of the African Front. The first strike came at the isolated Jewish communities in the Negev around Bersheba, cut off from the main Israeli settlements, it was instrumental to ensure the Jordanian access to the Mediterranean sea in Gaza. The Arabs possessed the Air Superiority, thanks mostly to the Egyptians who possessed a surplus from the African front and due to it's frontier with Italian Libya, however, many of these assets remained static at the Italo-Egyptian border as a garrison. On the 24th of April, the Lehi, Haganah, and Irgun militias were formally forged into one, the "Israeli Protection Force" (IPF), with political differences being set aside, the Egyptians launched an attack at the City of Ashkelon, taken by the Jewish militias at the outbreak of the war, managing to push back the IPF forces despite the fierce resistance. It was something Arab forces came to notice during the conflict, the Jewish forces fought unlike any before, they were not as professional as the Axis or Allied troops during the previous war, but the fierce fanaticism and spirit of resistance was at a level not expected before. Hebrew troops fought surrounded by their families, with the families taking up arms alongside, from teenagers to elders, men and women, all knew that if this war was lost then there would have no more hope for the Jewish people, and that was shown when Arab militias massacred the citizens of Barnea, forcing around 80 civilians to march towards the beaches and swim into the sea while being shot at by the militiamen, made that way to fulfill the call of Al-Husseini to "drive them into the sea". It is no surprise that the troops in Bersheeba refused to surrender, many committing suicide instead when surrounded, or by bringing as many enemies as they could, inspired in the siege of Massada during the Jewish revolt of 70.

After the fall of Ascalon and with Bersheeba cut off, the Arab troops launched an attack towards Ashdod, headed towards Tel-Aviv, however disagreements between the Arab leaders on coordination showed, indeed many Egyptian troops were questioning why they should be fighting a war for the King of Jordan. That was the moment the greater cohesion of Israeli troops showed, with the arrival of a shipment of weapons coming from the United States in Tel Aviv, the defenders of Asdote would struggle to hold the city. A squadron of 7 American P-51s and 3 B-17s, some with the scars made by Japanese Anti-Air fire from Operation Sunset, launched an attack on the Arab forces, the shock of the attack hit the morale of the mostly Egyptian troops that halted their advance. Jordanian troops did not advance towards Netanya, which could have divided the Israeli State in two during that vulnerable month of June 1948, as King Abdullah did not have an interest in destroying the Israeli State, in fact he was known as a moderate leader who agreed in principle with the partition, having secured the Negev, Cisjordan, and an exit to the Mediterranean in Gaza. The King reached a secret agreement with the Jewish agency, where Jordanian troops would only stand on the defensive and not attack the State of Israel, and the fact he was made Supreme Commander of the Arab war efforts was a great boon to the Jewish campaign. An Iraqi force, nevertheless, attempted to attack Netanya, only to be repelled by the IPF. At this rate, both sides were exhausted by the conflict with a temporary truce mediated by the UN being called, and at that decisive hour, the Israeli forces were able to build up their strength, from roughly 30,000 troops to over 117,000 in a matter of months. The Arab forces would also use the opportunity to build up their forces, numbering around 68,000 in total. However, Jerusalem's neutrality was a sham, the city was a battleground between Jewish and Arab militias with the UN failing to establish order, the City council of Jerusalem was falling apart and soon, the City was divided into a Jewish and an Arab zone, in October, as the truce negotiations broke down, the Jordanian troops entered the Jewish zone under the pretext of "Securing the order of the city", the short-lived International City ended that same day, and soon IPF forces would launch a massive counter attack against Arab forces called "Operation Danny", capturing the Cities of Lydia and Ramla, pushing towards Jerusalem in an effort to rescue the surrounded Jewish population. Meanwhile another attack pushed the Egyptian troops to the south, retaking Ashkelon, and the territory of Northern Gallilee was taken from the local Arab militias by the better-armed Israeli forces. However, as soon as West Jerusalem was taken on the 20th of October, news came from the north that shock both the Arabs and Israelis.

Saadeh watched the conflict with great interest, for a moment he even considered joining the Arab coalition and secure Northern Israel during the critical first two months of the war. However, he preferred to await his perfect chance to launch a general strike at the levant, the capture of both Israel and Jordan could almost double the size of Syria, and taking the City of Jerusalem while overthrowing the Hashemites would not only strengthen his claim on Greater Syria, but also the destruction of Israel in what he believed to be a show of strength could perhaps achieve a better position for Syria to negotiate it's relationship with the Reich. The Syrian army was, by a far amount, the most well-trained and disciplined force in the region, with around 200,000 soldiers centered around the Syrian Legion, a force of 12,000 Wehrmacht-trained veterans, with several officers trained in Germania and Rome. However, Saadeh was as surprised as the Arab leaders in how the IPF was able to bounce back from it's initial defeats, and as it seemed as the Israeli forces were on the brink of victory, the plans could no longer be delayed. On the 20th of October, the day of celebration of when Syrian troops expelled the French from Damascus, artillery shells fired from the Golan Heights and 80,000 Syrian troops would cross into Israel and Jordan, with the initial objective being the capture of Haifa, Nazareth, and the Jordanian city of Irbid. German-manufactured Fw190 and Ju-87s flew over Israeli Cities, and a campaign of air bombing began, causing an initial wave of panic as Stuka syrens were heard, in the eyes of hundreds of thousands who had just escaped the horrors of the Reich, the Syrian Army was like the chariots of the Pharaoh: Their former tormentors pursued them as they fought to take their home, as if Hitler himself had arrived with his ever-victorious Legions to finish his work. But they would face this challenge, a Ceasefire made with the Arab League to keep the immediate frontlines as borders as they fought a common enemy. Iraqi, Saudi, and Egyptian troops began their retreat as they did not desire to face Syrian troops. Operation "Sennacherib", named after the Assyrian King who subdued the Levantine kingdoms after the death of Sargon, began the First Levantine War.

​

The initial Syrian attack was an enormous success, implementing German-styled "Bewegungskrieg" tactics, the local garrisons of the IPF and the Royal Jordanian Army were overwhelmed by the Syrian forces, but pockets of resistance, especially Israeli ones, managed to secure Naharya for long enough for the evacuation of Haifa to be called. The City's population was in an state of panic, as told by Anne's diary, the people fled south towards Netanya and Tel Aviv, many believing it to be the end while refugee columns were bombarded by Heinkel bombers, with the IPF's air force bravely fighting back against the Syrian overwhelming numbers. Others, on the other hand, remained to fight more determined than ever, taking up arms and rushing towards IPF conscription stations, elderly men she had barely seen walk were now holding American-made M1 Rifles to defend their homes, knowing that determination is what made Anne certain they would win the war. Her father, Otto, her mother Edith, and her sister Margot all joined with the IPF, which encouraged Anne herself to join, lying about her own age in a moment where nobody cared how old you were so long as you held a rifle. On the 29th of October, the Syrian Army of 27,000 troops approached the city after the fall of Naharya, with the news coming that Waffen-SS troops had joined up as volunteers, massacring all prisoners in the city and viciously striking down civilians who attempted to flee. The Whirlwind and the Swastika were working side by side as the Battle of Haifa began, with Moshe Dayam, commander of the Jerusalem front, being transferred to the Northern front to lead the defense. During the battle Margot Frank would die, with Otto receiving a leg injury from shrapnel, he refused to retreat and had to be dragged away by his unit, he would walk with a cane for the rest of his life. In the end, Haifa was not able to hold, but it gave the Syrians their first bloody nose, and in retaliation, the first to enter the city were the Waffen-SS volunteers, which formed the so-called "Crescent Brigade", made up mostly by Syrian volunteers. The City's population continued to fight an assymetrical warfare, but that would eventually be a doomed effort if the war was not won. Nazareth would fall on the 31st, and the capture of Irbid would weaken the Jordanian efforts in the war. However, Jordan began to fully mobilize it's effort, spinning the conflict as a war for Independence, a general mobilization was called while Israeli forces retreated south, the IPF attempting to hold off the Syrian attacks as long as possible for refugees to escape, many were already purchasing boat trips to New York at Tel Aviv and Jaffa, preparing for the inevitable arrival of the "Little Wehrmacht".

Israel and Jordan were not alone however, with the threat of a German-aligned State reaching near the gates of the Suez canal and the potential fall of Jordan further weakening British interests in Egypt, a meeting of the United Nations was called over the Levantine War. With the news of the Naharya and Haifa massacres arriving, the public perception of the conflict began to be mobilized. Many theorized a supposed "Domino Theory", if the British and Americans failed to oppose the German advances, eventually the nations of the Middle East, such as Turkey, Iraq and Iran, which already possessed sympathies towards the Reich, would lean to join the Linz Pakt, and a reignition of the war would lead to the fall of Egypt and the Suez canal, with even the possibility of an "Muslim Axis" invading India and declaring a Jihad on Africa. While some of these theories were a wild strech, it shows the panic that was beginning to grip The Democratic nations in the post-war years. However, many in America were still hesitant about a foreign adventure less than a year since the traumatic and destructive Operation Sunset, the memories of the Purple medals and graves being ingrained in American memory for at least a Generation. However, the Thurmond Administration saw that as a Test, the first challenge towards the Reich, and what better way to do so than protecting Hitler's greatest enemies? On the 6th of November1947, the United Nations approved an Intervention force to secure the peacekeeping of the former mandate, led by American General Omar Bradley, a force of 40,000 troops would be sent to Israel, however it would take time to ensure the logistics and the landing of the UN forces, especially as the control of the Linz Pakt at Djbouti and Gibraltar meant that these troops would have to be transported through Iraq or by land through Egypt and Sudan. However, the intervention meant that Saadeh's time was running short, and so he doubled the deploment of Syrian troops, planning to launch two main assaults: One going through the coast towards Tel Aviv and one through the Jordan River valley to capture the strategic and morally important city of Jerusalem. Operation "Whirlwind" was launched on the 10th of September, and for both Israel and Jordan there was only one thing both former enemies could do: Hold their ground.

The strike towards Tel-Aviv, led by Syrian General Fawzi Selu, followed alongside the coast towards Netanya. Selu was a man who was not fighting in his comfort zone, while he fought for Syria, he was less particularly enthusiastic to follow the Anti-Semitic dogma of the SSNP, being disgusted by the actions of the Waffen-SS and the Syrian Legion during the war, he instead desired for peace with Israel. Obviously he did not voice his opinions, fealing to fallout with Saadeh and the SSNP like his Predecessor General Za'im and end up executed for Treason as he did in 1945, but his hesitation is what gave the IPF the chance to organize the defense of Tel Aviv. General Yagael Yadin narrates how things were on the 14th of Novemberin his headquarters, seeing the civilian population in a chaotic race to the ports, refugees telling the stories of the horror unleashed by the Syrian Legion, the panic was beginning to take hold and waver the morale of his troops. However, they would receive the visit of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, which alongside Yadin would call for a fierce battle of resistance to save the Jewish people. The IPF possessed little more than 100,000 troops, with around 50,000 volunteer militiamen, while the Syrian column towards Tel Aviv, headed by the feared Waffen-SS and the Syrian Legion, possessed 80,000 troops. Meanwhile, the first volunteers from Britain and America would begin arriving, with ships carrying much needed ammunition and heavy equipment, from M4 Sherman tanks, to the first British "Centurion" MBTs, going against the German-built Panzer IVs and Panthers, with the Syrians also possessing a few E-50 MBTs, one of the newer additions to the Wehrmacht arsenals, attached to the Waffen-SS brigade to be tested in battle. Between the 17th and 20th of November, Tel Aviv would be under the relentless assault of the Syrian army, however, trained in Wehrmacht tactics, the terrain soon proved a hindrance to the Syrian army, as soon General Selu and Saadeh would realize that said tactics were not adequate to urban warfare, with an attempt to encircle the city by cutting it off from Jerusalem failing at the Battle of Lydia. The Air War began to change as the American planes began to arrive, the P-51 proving a superior fighter to the Fw 190 and the Me 262 losing it's dominance against the P-80. Soon the offensive stagnated, all while the Syrian fortunes met it's decisive turn at the gates of Jerusalem.

“Therefore this is what the Lord says concerning the king of Assyria:
“He will not enter this city
or shoot an arrow here.
He will not come before it with shield
or build a siege ramp against it.
By the way that he came he will return;
he will not enter this city,”
declares the Lord.
“I will defend this city and save it,
for my sake and for the sake of David my servant!”
Isaiah 37:33-35

Ever since it was founded, Jerusalem has been a battlefield, probably no other city in the world has been so central to history, religion and culture than "King David's City". Between the 15th of November and the 1st of December 1947, the Syrians once more descended upon the city to take it when a curious event happened: Both Israelis and Jordanian Arabs fought alongside one another to protect the City. When the Syrian army entered, many of the Palestineans rejoiced an alternative to both Hashemite and Zionist rule, but once Saadeh began to implement the Syrian policies, from the secret police, the secularization, the seizing of farmlands, and the devastation caused especially by SS troops, many preferred to remain loyal to Abdullah and Jordan. There were thousands of defections to the Syrian side, less out of belief in a "Greater Syria" than out of an anger directed at the Jordanian "moderation" towards the Israelites, but many more stayed loyal. Led by General Adib Shishakli, Chief of Staff of the Syrian Army, around 85,000 troops of the Syrian army would approach the city from the East, and although the initial plan expected a quick victory in Tel Aviv with a push coming in from the West by General Selu's troops, that was quickly frustrated by the stubborn defense of Tel Aviv, General Shishakli settled down his troops for a siege, attacking Moshe Dayam's lifeline in West Jerusalem, which kept the city supplied in the so-called "Road to Life". Despite three different attempts to dislodge the troops, the three times the IPF just barely held out, 45,000 troops were allowing the supplies of the of the most important cities in the world to go through the Syrian lines, while the Jordanians supported the IPF's efforts to keep the road to life open, while defeating a secondary Syrian attack towards Amman, the Jordanian capital and harassing the Syrian supply lines at the Jordan river valley. Meanwhile, the first International forces began to arrive, with the defense of Tel Aviv held, supplies were flowing into the Holy Land through American airlift from Egyptian Air bases and the port cities of Jaffa and Gaza. Troops began to gather from Iraq to Amman in order to prepare for the offensive, and as intelligence began to notice the buildup of UN forces, General Shishakli attempted to gamble in an all out attack at Jerusalem on the 28th, resulting in four days of intense urban combat between troops of the Syrian Legion against the IPF and the Arab Legion. Eventually the Jordan Valley offensive forced the Syrian army to retreat, saving the Holy City of it's imminent invaders.

The failure of Operation Whirlwind resulted in the Syrian defeat, and the counter-offensive named "Operation Firestorm", as soon as the UN forces began gathering in strength, a massive counter attack was ordered on the 20th of December, the exhausted Syrian army stood no chance against the combined UN, IPF, and Jordanian forces, sent back to retreat northwards, abandoning the valley of the Jordan and headed back towards the Haifa-Nazareth-Irbid line. For the first time, American and German troops would fight one another during the push towards Haifa, while the USAAF and RAF dominated the skies, launching a bombing campaign of Syria that resembled the fights of WWII, including the use of Napalm, although the military was more restrained from the total war setting in Japan. On the 10th of January, the Syrian defensive line would be broken, with Haifa being liberated by American and IPF troops, the locals who underwent the brutal months of occupation would welcome them as liberators. During the occupation Anne would lose her mother, killed as part of an execution in retaliation to the killing of a Syrian soldier, but both her and her father survived, coming to greet the American troops in Sherman tanks headed north, as well as the IPF's troops that her father was a part of, despite his injuries, he trailed behind with the troops back to his home. Israel, like the Frank family, suffered terrible losses, with devastation across it's northern land, but like them, it survived it's darkest hour, the Whirlwind and the Swastika would go to the North, where many awaited for a final battle to end Saadeh's regime and secure the safety of Israel from the immediate northern danger, but that would not happen.

Fearing that the fall of Syria would embolden the allies, with the Reich still focused on the reorganization of Europe, the Linz Pakt mobilized, sending an Ultimatum that the crossing of any of the UN troops into Syrian territory will be considered an attack on the Pakt itself. Gibraltar was closed off, the Regia Marina mobilized it's assets on the Eastern Mediterranean, German troops and supplies began to arrive at the ports of Beirut and Latakia, Luftwaffe plans were put on high alert and troops in Libya began to be partially mobilized. The message was clear: The United Nations had it's victory, they defended Israel for now, but go further north would mean the restart of the Second World War. General Bradley's troops were ordered to halt at the foot of the Golan Heights as the intense debate began in the Pentagon, Warhawks such as General Patton and Governor-General of Japan MacArthur called for a push "All the way to Hitler's Summer House", cooler heads thought of the enormous human cost that such war would entail, although MacArthur claimed that "With 50 nuclear bombs I can deliver Europe before this Christmas". Atlee and the British, especially, were worried over the fact the invasion of Festung Europa meant Britain would be in the frontlines, with thousands of German missiles ready to fire at London before any interceptation, the Wasserfall Project and the Atlantik Wall meant that an invasion of the mainland would cost perhaps more than even Operation Sunset. While the allies of the Reich in France and Italy meant that the war would reach Africa and the Middle East, with unrest growing in Arab territories and India, the last thing London needed was a restart of hostilities, but the final word would come from President Thurmond, who ordered the troops to stand down at the border. A Ceasefire was made between Israel and Jordan with Syria, restoring the Status Quo borders.

On the 14th of January 1948, the First Levantine War would end, a Status Quo was declared, being a strategic Israeli victory, the first time the Allied forces defeated an "Axis" power. Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan, with Israel managing to expand it's territory beyond the original Bernadotte Plan, an agreement being made with Abdullah to protect the Jewish settlements in Bersheba by making it an Autonomous Zone. The Arab-Israeli tensions were far from over, but for once both sides could breathe in relief. Saadeh was bloodied but not beaten, instead he would be pushed to taking more authoritarian actions in retaliation to the supposed "treason" of commanders such as General Fawzi Selu, whose cautiousness was considered a decisive factor in the defeat at Tel Aviv, which in certain way saved the lives of hundreds of thousands from the fury of his own troops. The relations between the Reich and the Allies became even colder, with the conflict being considered one of the beginnings of the Cold War and the American Grey Scare. As for the Israelis, Ben-Gurion would proudly declare that "The Jewish people, with the support and compassion of the Free world, dealt the first defeat of it's greatest persecutor. Israel shall forever be an enemy of Hitler and his vile regime, he will find nothing but the determination of a people that has learned to fight back."

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
MARE NOSTRUM

"Why do we call the whole world's attention to the fact that we have no past? It isn't enough that the Romans were erecting great buildings when our forefathers were still living in mud huts; now Himmler is starting to dig up these villages of mud huts and enthusing over every potsherd and stone axe he finds. All we prove by that is that we were still throwing stone hatchets and crouching around open fires when Greece and Rome had already reached the highest stage of culture. We really should do our best to keep quiet about this past. Instead Himmler makes a great fuss about it all. The present-day Romans must be having a laugh at these relegations."

-Adolf Hitler​

The Italian nation was one with a long and proud history, one that even someone as German-centric as Hitler once admitted when asked about the ancestry of his nation's people. However, the times after the Unification in 1861 were not as kind as the Roman era, the initial wave of optimism in Italy faced a mixed reality, with millions migrating to America, especially from Southern Italy, from the lack of prospects in their own nation. In Sicily, the government's abandonment led to the rise of private criminal organizations that formed the Italian Mafia, one of the most feared and powerful in the world. In the industrial north, the constant conflict between the workers and factory owners led to the rise of powerful unions and syndicates that constantly paralyzed the economy in strikes, many of them being put down by local police. The liberal order in Italy showed some success in modernizing the nation, but Italy's natural lack of resources would lead them into seeking expansion in the so-called "Spazio Vitale", a concept similar to the German Lebensraum. The failed invasion of Ethiopia, one of the few times an African nation successfully fought back an European invader, was a national humiliation, while the Invasion of Libya on the other hand would show more success by capturing a mostly deserted land from a failing Empire, although such investment would prove quite fruitful later. The Italian government signed up a pact with the German and Austro-Hungarian governments to form a defensive alliance named "Tripartite Pact" or "Central Powers", directed mostly against France where Italy had ambitions over colonies such as Tunisia and Alpine territories. However, the greatest source of ambition for the Italian people was the concept of "Irredentismo", the desire to "finish" the unification of Italy by conquering the Austro-Hungarian territories of Southern Tyrol, Trentino, Istria, Trieste, and Dalmatia, to make the Adriatic sea a modern version of the "Mare Nostrum". That ambition, alongside the initial concept of the Tripartite pact being a defensive arrangement, led to Italy declaring neutrality at the start of the First World War, however that wouldn't last long as Italy joined the war in 1915... against the Central Powers.

The Irredentist ideals were used by the Entente, especially Britain and France, to stroke the war fervor in Italy and motivate it's entrance in the war. The Treaty of London, a secret agreement made between the three governments, formally recognized Italy's claims on Austro-Hungarian territory in a post-war victory, and under this promise the nation went into the most destructive conflict in Europe with a mixed enthusiasm in the population. An expected easy victory never came, instead over a million Italians were killed or missing, another million being captured or injured, with three years of brutal attrition warfare in the Alpine mountains and the Isonzo river. In 1917, anti-war socialists inspired in the Russian February revolution attempted to spark their own uprising in Turin and Milan, brutally crushed by Italian troops, yet it showed the exhaustion of the nation that suffered a catastrophic defeat at Caporetto that same year that threatened Venice itself. The fortunes of the war reversed in 1918 as the Italian army, under new leadership, managed to break the Austro-Hungarian lines at Vittorio Veneto, with the Habsburg army collapsing at last, the army returned in triumph as the people awaited the promised territories. Yet, at the peace negotiations, with the influence of President Woodrow Wilson and his principle of self-determination, the Treaty of London's promises were not delivered, with several territories promised to Italy being given instead to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The outrage in Italy created the expression "Vittoria Mutilata", Mutilated victory, many feeling that the sacrifice was about feeding Italian troops for sake of the Anglo-French lies, the nation felt a collective sense of betrayal that destroyed the Orlando government and brought an era of instability and economic chaos between 1919 and 1922, which would be used by Benito Mussolini, a former socialist and army corporal, to take power for himself.

After the Second World War, the feeling was not as intense, yet there were some that believed the soul of Italy was sold for victory, especially after the Italian entry into the Linz Pakt in 1945. Mussolini gambled the fate of his nation by allying with Adolf Hitler in 1939 and joining the war in June 1940 during the fall of France, and while publicly the victory was celebrated as the Kingdom of Italy expanded it's Spazio Vitale to the Alps and Corsica, keeping Greece and Croatia as protectorates, and expanding it's colonial holdings, it came with a cost. Italy was a nation that on one hand was trying to emphasize it's Autarky, Independence, and Pride, and on the other keep Germania satisfied and becoming more and more dependent on the New Order to sustain itself. Britain has continued it's embargo on members of the Linz Pakt after the war, and the continued British control of the Suez always put at risk that one of the lifelines of the Italian Empire could be cut the moment the Treaty of Lisbon was threatened. Somaliland, Djibouti and Tunisia brought in new subjects under the Italian banner, and alongside it brought colonial unrest, from French pied-noirs to Bedouin tribes. Greece proved to be more of a burden than a boon as the years went by, Croatia, while legally under the rule of the Duke of Aosta, Tomislav II, was ruled by the radical Ustache, a group with such atrocious actions that Hitler and the SS desired to distance themselves from, keeping only a subtle support for it's operations.

Fascism was always a movement of contrasts and paradoxes in Italy, sometimes jokingly described as "Whatever Il Duce said to his lovers in the bed". It isn't a far way of describing how the system worked, Nationalism, Anti-Communist, Anti-Liberalism, and Authoritarianism were the basics of the system since it's beginning, however the rest was still to be "in construction". Mussolini claimed that the strength of Fascism was exactly this, the fact that it was "pragmatic" and capable of adapting through times, different from "static" ideologies such as Marxism, that showed the influence of Futurism in Fascism, but also gave a blank cheque for Mussolini to Il Duce to change the rules of his own movement as he saw fit. While he once described Fascism as a movement exclusively Italian, he began to call it as an ideology that could be imitated in 1929, while before he described race as just a "feeling", now he made antisemitic laws shortly after breaking up his affair with his Jewish lover Margheritta Sarfatti. Differently to his German counterpart, Mussolini also did not possess total power in Italy, being limited by the power of the King Victor Emmanuel III, and his compromises with the church and the Italian conservative elite. That is shown how in the 1920s he greatly restricted the power of local Fascist leaders (Ras), keeping them subservient to the City Mayors, and how he relied on career bureaucrats such as Cesare Moro, over Fascist leaders in how to get things done. In 1936, after the Victory in Ethiopia, Mussolini attempted to "Rejuvenate" Fascism, bringing it back to it's more revolutionary roots, a process that was interrupted once war broke out.

The Italian foreign policy was also quite divergent, switching between London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin many times in the 1920-1930s. Other than the desire of expansionism into the Balkans and Africa, the only consistency was that Mussolini attempted to use the tactics that won him the power in Italy to win power in the world. He did not possess the same level of expansionistic ambitions as Hitler did, but there was the constant desire of making Italy a nation recognized as a Great Power, leading a bloc of Latin-Catholic nations from Lisbon to Vienna. In 1934, Mussolini opposed the Germans' first attempt of annexing Austria, supporting the local Austrofascists under Engelbert Dollfuss and the Fatherland Front against the local NSDAP, forging an alliance with Britain and France against German expansionism. That was a blow on Hitler, who admired Mussolini as a predecessor of himself, who taught many examples, the Beer Hall Putsch being made as an attempt to emulate the March on Rome, that the Führer would follow. However, everything changed in 1935 when Mussolini invaded Abyssinia, seeking to avenge the Italian defeat in 1896 and conquer one of the last independent African nations. Unexpectedly to Il Duce, his "allies" would condemn him in the League of Nations, with Pierre Laval having to resign for his attempt of allying with Rome at the time. That caused Italy to completely switch it's allegiances towards the Führer, basically giving a green light to the annexation of Austria in 1938, with Mussolini signing into the Anti-Commintern pact, breaking it's ironically good relations with the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s, and even creating antisemitic laws as a way to win over Hitler's favor. In the end, Italy sold it's soul to the devil in 1939 when signing the Rome-Berlin, and later Rome-Berlin-Tokyo "Pact of Steel", and from the moment Italy entered in June 1940, there was no turning back.

The performance of the Regio Esercito during the war, if one were to publicly ask any of the Generals or Fascists, was of a triumphant army that bravely captured Malta, a powerful navy that kept the British fleet in Alexandria, fought bravely from Albania to Somaliland. However, contrary to what many in the government wished, the people had two working eyes. The Invasion of Malta was one of the few successes of the war, only due to it's treacherous surprise and the support of the Luftwaffe, and the Italian troops bravely managed to defeat the understrength and outnumbered garrisons of Djibouti and Somaliland. But the Invasion of Greece and Egypt were mediocre to be generous, with the Italian army unable to push south of the Epirote mountains and forced back from Cyrenaica by the British forces despite the local advantage. Ultimately, it took the German intervention to save the Italian army in both stances, in fact the Italian East Africa was still under British occupation when the Treaty of Lisbon was signed, and the Italian ambitions for Egypt were given up in return for the territory. By the end of the war, Mussolini had hoped to make a massive triumph in the streets of Rome as a show of Italian strength, and indeed it happened but as a reminder, the Afrika Korps under General Rommel was also allowed to participate in the Triumphal parade in April. It was quite a sight to see Germans marching down the streets of Rome in a Roman-styled triumph, to many, especially to the men standing behind Mussolini in the parade, that sent a message they all knew but refused to admit: Italy was the junior party.

Ettore Bastico, Emilio de Bono, Ugo Cavallero, Cesare de Vecchi, Italo Balbo, Enzo Garibalti, Carlo Scorza, Galeazzo Ciano, Alessandro Pavolini, and Roberto Farinacci were some of the main figures of the Italian Fascist Government, and they were quite a distinct group of individuals all seeking power around Il Duce and/or his future position after his death. Basticowas one of the leading military figures of the war, besides of course the First Marshall of the Empire Benito Mussolini. Although he did not have the prestige and power of the elderly Emilio de Bono who was one of the original Quadrumvirs and Minister of the State. Ugo Cavallero, chief of the Supreme Military Command, lacked the prestige of the other two, and yet he was second only to Il Duce himself in the leadership of the Military. Vecchi and Balbo were both Governors and members of the Quadrumvirate, but only Balbo truly had popular appeal amongst the Italian people, sometimes nicknamed as the "Italian Göring" due to his leading status within the movement, serving as a blackshirt leader, as well as Airforce commander and one of it's leading pilots. Enzo Garibalti was the second man in charge of the Italian blackshirts besides Mussolini, who mostly left the task or micromanaging it for Enzo. Carlo Scorza was the Chief Secretary of the Party, being second only to Mussolini himself in the Fascist Hierarchy. Galeazzo Ciano was a special case, being Minister of Foreign affairs mostly thanks to his marriage with Mussolini's daughter, initially a man groomed to be the successor of Il Duce, however, their disputes during the war, which included a much diminished opinion of one another, alongside the fact Ciano was hated by much of the PNF's establishment left that succession much more ambiguous after the war. Alessandro Pavolini, Ciano's rival and Minister of Popular Culture, the Ministry of Propaganda in Italy, was one of the leading figures of the party, many times considering Mussolini as far too moderate in his compromises, calling for a strengthening of the Fascist movement in Italy. Roberto Farinacci was the most hardliner of the Party figures, known as an admirer of Adolf Hitler and being practically the only potential successor who supported the alliance with the Reich, Farinacci was a brutal leader of the Blackshirts and being largely responsible for implementing the Antisemitic laws in Italy since 1938.

The Italian economy was in no better shape than it was before the war, the gold reserves were at very low levels as spending skyrocketed in the pre-war years, just made worse by the sanctions enacted by the League of Nations in 1936. The economy in Italy was organized around Corporativism, with large Industrial conglomerates and a general reduction in the rights of workers despite the government promises of protecting said rights by mediating agreements between the Industrials and the State-owned Worker's Corporations. The Lira, the Italian currency, devalued greatly in the Pre-War years and it was all made worse by the war as the costs meant an increase in debt and inflation. The terrible situation of the Italian military armaments was being remedied during the conflict by the purchase of German weaponry, with growing weapons requests being made during the conflict to be diverted towards Greece and Northern Africa. All of that not counting the costly conflicts in Ethiopia and Spain in the 1930s, with the former proving to be a great drain in Italian resources due to the local resistance. But the death blow came with the Embargo, with the British and later the Americans declaring a cessation of trade with all members of the Linz Pakt, as the Italians lacked several necessary natural resources for it's industry, especially Coal, Steel, and Petroleum, it began to rely further on the Reich's resources, which only undermined the Italian independence that the regime declared so proudly.

Mussolini saw with apprehension how Hitler treated his allies, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Sweden and even Switzerland which served as an important banking gateway to the outside of "Festung Europa" suffered the wrath of the Führer. However, Italy was a different beast, being one of the few European Nations that could stand up to the German demands from time to time. Hitler still possessed great personal admiration for Mussolini, and the Duce's occasional visits were described as some of the few times Hitler was able to laugh. Besides, the Italian army and naturally defensible terrain would make sure any invasion would end up becoming the kind of attrition warfare the Wehrmacht spent the entire war avoiding, alienating Mussolini would also risk the Reich's influence in the Mediterranean sea. Token concessions to Italian companies were given in the Linz Pakt meeting, protectionist measures to avoid the German industrial invasion as the Reich's conglomerates continued to expand their own version of "Lebensraum" in Europe. But overall the Italian economy continued to suffer from it's Pre-War stagnation as they lose access to most of the World's markets, although there were growing ventures of the Italian companies towards Latin America, in both Brazil and Argentina. However, a great boon would come to the Italian economy in 1948 when the first oil fields in Libya were discovered in Zelten, a surveying expedition ordered by the Governor-General Italo Balbo and led by Geologist Ardito Desio discovered that the Regime was sitting on top of the largest oil reserves in Africa, far larger than the Romanian and Caspian fields combined. The expedition, which also discovered large aquifer networks under the Fezzan desert, had been temporarily halted by the beginning of the war, and now with it's continuation, Mussolini's discovery of the black gold would not just change the fate of Libya, but gave Italy the much-needed economical boom to revitalize it's economy and regime. Most importantly, the Reich's companies ended up prevented from engaging in the oil boom due to the Linz Pakt restrictions, which instructed that only Italian companies could exploit the Italian colonial resources. What was supposed to be just a token concession, proved to be a disastrous error in the long term, and Italy now possessed a powerful bargaining chip.

The Italians were also not willing to completely serve the wills of the Pakt, and that was shown in the Levantine War and the treatment of Jews. The Italian control of Djbouti was a Sword of Damocles aiming at the heart of the Allies' only connection towards the Mediterranean sea. As it could potentially close down the Gulf of Aden to hostile ships, or at the very least threaten incoming armaments ships, as well as the Italian control over much of the Eastern Mediterranean such as Crete. However, Mussolini not just did allow the free passage of Allied munitions ships but there were even Italian weapons being delivered to Israel and Jordan in secret, while he publicly declared support for Saadeh's crusade alongside the rest of the Linz Pakt. Truth is that Mussolini feared Saadeh's planned expansionism into the Suez Canal, which would leave an ally of the Reich threatening one of the two passages outside of the Mediterranean and the Italian access to it's Eastern African colonies and the Indian Ocean. The matter of Antisemitism was another point of divergence between the Reich and the Impero: While antisemitic laws were enacted in 1938, there was a lack of enthusiasm by many, excluding Farinacci and his Germanophile clique, to actually pursue them. Balbo, for instance, condemned the Antisemitic laws and allowed Jewish settlements in Italian North Africa, even offering refugees a safe heaven in case Tel Aviv fell to Saadeh's troops. Ciano used his connections as Foreign minister to facilitate the emission of visas to those seeking to escape Festung Europa, and Italy was one of the few nations that did not turn in it's Jewish population to the Reich. It was a constant source of frustration to the SS that thousands of Jewish refugees fled towards Il Duce's dominion, which was still outside their jurisdiction, although Heydrich did use his office as head of the Interpol to arrest many who escaped into Italy and other Mediterranean nations. To Mussolini, this wasn't something he did out of love for the Jews, but as a demonstration of Italian independence, which both Portugal and Spain followed by shielding their local Jewish populations against the Reich. There was an informal "Bloc" between these three nations, and the relationship between Italy and France began to be repaired after the rise of Laval, the man who previously tried to ally with Mussolini in 1936.

Mussolini was getting older by the late 1940s, reaching the age of 66 by the end of the decade, yet he was still relatively healthy, and many expected him to continue leading Italy. However, the de jure leader of Italy continued to be the King of the "Italian Empire", a contradictory title as Victor Emmanuel III never took the Title of Emperor, and that was a different case. At the age of 79 on the 10th of November, a day before his 80th birthday, the King of Italy died of a Pulmonary Congestion, a grand state funeral was made with a procession attended by foreign leaders and royalty, it was one of the rare instances where the tensions between the nations were calmed down. King Edward VIII of Britain was caught in the awkward ceremony standing near the aging Führer Adolf Hitler in one of his last visits outside of the Reich, to make matters worse, the American Vice-President was at the ceremony, alongside the young Tsar Simeon II, the elderly Christian X of Denmark who would die just a few months afterwards, President Carmona of Portugal, Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain and others. As soon as the funeral ended, the visitors quickly left to their home nations, although Edward spent some time discussing with the new Italian leader Umberto II and Hitler met with Mussolini in the Palazzo Venezia. Umberto meet with Mussolini, and in a short meeting confirmed him once again as Prime Minister of Italy, taking in the Title of Emperor of the Italian Empire. Il Duce expected that the new King would be a figure as malleable as his father, however, the younger Monarch had his own ambitions, and while he played into Mussolini's game for now, he was certainly not the same beast as his father.

​

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

THE IRON EAGLE
TYOMNAYA NOCH

​

Russia has been known as a cold, harsh, cruel land long before it's modern State came to exist, from the Mongol Invasion, the Time of Troubles, The Civil War, times of turbulence usually resulted in the deaths of millions. The 1940s were no different, starting with a costly conflict in Finland, right after the nation emerged from the Great Stalinist Purges and the Holodomor famine. A year later, the largest invasion force ever assembled would invade from the west, in two years reaching the gates of Kazan, Gorky, and Kuybyshev, before finally halting it's war machine at the west margin of the Volga, capturing what was by far the heartland of Russia itself, it's origin center with centuries of history hailing back to the days of Kievan Rus. What was left of the Union after such catastrophic defeat could simply not survive such a blow, the ideology and government failed to protect Russia from it's most ruthless enemy, and the Legitimacy of the government was at stake. While Iosef Stalin saw this weakness and understood the need to prove his rule over Russia again, he did so in the most violent way he knew by offering a scapegoat in the "Traitors, Collaborators, Reactionaries" in the Union, starting off with the death of his own head of Secret Police, reorganizing it into the feared MGB. The attempted strike at the Generals, in what threatened to be a repeat of the 1936-39 show trials, caused the leaders who survived the first purge to commit drastic actions. Avoiding the execution by a supposed "treason" by committing a real act of treason, rallying much of what remained of the Red Army in Western Russia to march against Stalin, blaming his decisions for the collapse of the Soviet war effort, with the STAVKA central control and rigidity causing stagnation against the more innovative Wehrmacht commanders. The Red Army experienced great initial success, capturing the Ural crossings and reaching Omsk, near the gates of the Soviet capital of Novosibirsk, before the arrival of the Soviet Far Eastern Army, the largest intact core of the Red Army still loyal to Stalin, which defeated the mostly overextended troops of Zhukov in the Battle of Omsk in June. However, the transfer of troops of the Far East left the region garrisoned only by the less professionalized NKVD border divisions, later reorganized as MGB divisions, allowing for the White forces to come from the East, taking Vladivostok and reaching Chita by 1944. With the Far Eastern forces being sent east to defend against the Whites in a front extending from Lake Baikal to Yakutia and Magadan, the Red Army failed to capitalize on the opening as the Reich played it's card.

The extent upon men like Vlasov, Kaminsky, Bunyachenko, Malynhkin and so many others were traitors is debatable and variable, many did so out of hatred for the Union, with men like Malyhkin being once pursued by the NKVD, others being former GULAG prisoners seeking revenge, others being anti-communists such as White Army volunteers from Europe. But for the Majority it was simply a matter of surviving, when approached by a camp guard and being given the chance to avoid a slow death in slave labor and starvation with the opportunity to carve your own realm in the east, it is simply hard to say no. Hitler did not wish to ever see a strong and united Russia emerging from the East, and while a Ural frontier was strategically unfeasible while it's current territories weren't properly "pacified and settled", it did not mean that they were unable to strike the Soviets while weakened, with Goebbels declaring in a speech that the "Slavs shall revert to their nomad roots" by the end of the decade. Göring, and later Kesselring, commanded the Luftwaffe to use the Russian territory between the A-A line and the Urals as a test ground for bombers, with bombing raids being launched towards major industrial and urban centers, specifically targeting railroad capabilities of the Soviets. Meanwhile, Himmler's SS was tasked with organizing a force to drop the "excessive labor" from the camps, and the Wehrmacht began to train these Russian volunteers and collaborators, many already starting in anti-partisan units. On the 22nd of June 1943, the "Committee for the Liberation of the People's of Russia" (KONR) was formed, under the nominal leadership of former Soviet General Andrey Vlasov, and by using the manpower of refugees, former POWs, slaves, and camp inmates, all desperate for a chance of avoiding the growing brutality of the Generalplan Ost, an Army was formed, the "Russian Liberation Army" (ROA). With the stated goal of liberating the remainder of Russia from the "Bolshevik vipers", it officially denied it's proximity and agreements with the Reich, something even those blinded by the war were able to see.

The Reich, like it's leader, took some enjoyment in putting their enemies against one another. Minority groups that were rivals for centuries had these rivalries exploited to the most, Ukrainians were favored in some camps to oversee Russians, in the Baltics the Estonians were raised from other "Untermenschen" to generate resentment, such divisions were made so that a combined rebel effort was difficult to achieve, especially thanks to the language differences. In the case of Russia, it would be Hitler's play of throwing Russians against one another by arming the ROA, giving them a base to operate in Saratov to launch it's attack. He never desired for them to emerge victorious, and at times, when after a major victory that could result in making them the winning faction, the steady flow of supplies given by the Germans could suffer "delays" and "sabotage". The desire of the Führer was that an eternal war destroyed the very concept of a Russian nation, and the KONR was the main weapon of the Reich to do so, keeping the forces of the Red Army pinned in the west and unable to put an end to the Stalinists in Novosibirsk, while the Japanese-backed White Army was locked in a brutal stalemate in the East, keeping all the four factions in a deathly balance that only became more and more destructive with time as all groups seeked a way to break it. In December 1943, the unexpected winter offensive began, with over 300,000 troops invading the Soviet Union, aiming to capture the city of Kyubyshev as a base for a northern strike towards Kazan and Izhevsk. The attack came unexpectedly to Zhukov and his Red Army, cancelling the planned counter offensive at the Eastern Urals to retake Tyumen, with the City's defenses being overrun in what many initially expected to be a German attack, only to be surprised by the arrival of a Russian-speaking army from the West.

There were many who deserted at the first opportunity, something the Germans expected, Hitler calling it "the treacherous nature of the Slav, Bolsheviks hiding and waiting for the opportunity to strike back against the Reich", or could also be the basic human psychology that one is not particularly thrilled to fight for it's captors. However, that is where the Red Army committed it's deathliest mistake, when General Vasily Badanov's Tank corps meet with a large column of deserters requesting to surrender, the "Nurlat" incident happened. Upon spotting one of the soldiers with a swastika armband, one of the troops lost discipline and fired at him, causing a chain reaction that led to a battle, many of the deserters grabbing weapons to defend themselves, all while the General himself was sickly from an infected wound. The Nurlat incident news spread to both sides, with other incidents happening where the ROA troops were greeted by bullets for their "Treason of the Motherland", the distrust, further fed by the interference of German intelligence and propaganda, drastically reduced the rate of desertions as the "Collabs" saw that victory may be their only chance of survival, while Red Army Units now were being led to believe that every deserter could be a potential spy for the Reich's puppet regime. After establishing Kuybyshev (Now renamed as Samara) as a temporary base of operations, the ROA launched it's northern offensive, capturing the City of Kazan in January thanks to the not-so-subtle support of German bombers and artillery from across the Volga. A drive south would capture the cities of Orenburg and Uralsk, until the ROA advance was halted by incoming Red Army troops in Ufa.

Between 1944 and 1946, the conflict entered in a phase of stagnant fluidity, as paradoxal as the term might sound. Large offensives captured territories only for those to be cancelled in order to defend against another. But generally speaking, the ROA controlled most of the Southwest Russian territory between Gorky and West Kazakh SSR. The Red Army controlled from Ust-Sysolsk in the North, down to it's capital Perm, parts of the Kazakh SSR and as Far East as Petropavlovsk and Tyumen, a rich Industrial territory that benefited from the relocation of factories in the Great Patriotic War. Stalin and the Soviet Union controlled the largest territory, from most of Central Asia to the Siberian Wastes, with the capital in Novosibirsky, in Russia itself it controlled from Omsk to Irkutsk. Finally, the White forces controlled from the eastern shore of the Baikal in Buryatia, up to Yakutsk and Magadan, having a mostly static conflict with the Stalinist forces. By the end of 1944, however, the exhausted resources of Russia forced a Stalemate that only began to raise the desperation of the combatants, while smaller groups began to grow more and more restless at the stagnation of the War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, seeking either personal gain, independence, or to form their own small radical factions. Peasants would begin to organize, with the resurgence of the so-called "Green Armies", including agrarian anarchists inspired by Nestor Makhno and past Russian peasant rebellions, such uprisings being common across all the non-occupied Soviet Territory. Another phenomenon was seen as the authority of the governments began to decline, with the breaking of communication lines leading to large amounts of territory being de facto autonomous from any faction, with local towns and villages forming collective alliances for mutual protection. The study of Russia during the "Second Civil War", "Siberian War", "Second Time of Troubles", "The Great Collapse" among many other names, is also a study of how humanity could behave at it's most desperate hours.

​

Famine was a natural consequence of the war, the harsh Siberian winters with an underdeveloped infrastructure, with millions of farmers having lost their lives in the war or conscripted by the factions, all added to the despair already being felt in Russia by 1942. MGB, ROA, Cossacks, Army troops, Bandits, Green armies, all began to grow more desperate with the military rations dwindling, the Soviet stocks were already at critical levels by the time the war ended, and in 1943 all sides fought for the scraps left. The average caloric intake of the Russian soldier was of 1000 calories per day in 1945, and the famine would reach it's height in the winter between 1945-46. The KONR was kept alive by the bare minimum thanks to German supplies that were more and more unreliable, almost as if the Reich wanted to deliberately leave the Russians starving, something that was only added up by the occasional bombing of farmlands and the use of chemical weapons by Luftwaffe bombers in a few occasions, such as an "accidental" bombing of a grain storage facility near Uralsk. The White Army was surviving better than most, with the port of Vladivostok allowing for continued trade with the outside world and the border with Japan allowing for the purchase of Manchurian grain, although it became rarer and rarer as Japan lost the war, especially at the start of Operation Sunset in 1945 and the blockade of the Home Islands. Stalinist forces would lose the port of Magadan in 1944, which led to the cutting of the only connection to the Pacific trade routes, now the Red Vozhd began to listen more and more to Lysenko's advice as the "Great genius of Soviet Agriculture", calling for the mass plantation of Central Siberia, which ended up causing more problems than it solved, with millions of seeds proving unable to survive in the unprepared Siberian soil. Zhukov's forces were forced to increase the harshness of farm raids, while launching strategic attacks more directed to capture the enemies' supplies than territory or cities. The Famine would continue during this period leading to the spread of diseases, alongside deaths over the lack of proper nutrition, while farmers organized militias to defend their farms from foraging groups, which led to violent confrontations and massacres, the MGB carrying out reprisal attacks over entire villages. All of this was worsened as millions of refugees fled from the Reich's territories into Russia, preferring to try their own luck in surviving the wastes than stay in the certainly doomed conditions of the Festung Europa. It is estimated that between 10 and 15 million would die of famine during the 1942-1948 period, a number greater than even the victims of the Great Patriotic War itself.

Cavalry ended up coming back as one of the backbones of the Russian armies, although it's relevance has dwindled with the rise of the armored forces since the Civil War, the lack of petrol and the collapse of infrastructure and industry led to Cavalry units becoming more and more common. The White Army in special had been used to such kind of warfare, where the Cossacks most of times excelled against it's enemies, while Timoshenko revived the Red Cavalry in the Stalinist territories, leading to large confrontations between massed cavalry forces more reminiscent to the 17th century, or even the First Civil War than a modern war. It created a complex warfare scenario where new and old planes, cavalry and tanks, bolt-action rifles and machine guns, all shared the same battlefields in the Russian tundra. Old weapon caches were cracked open, even jammed and broken weapons were to be used in melee, a brutal situation where three soldiers had to share the same combat rifle was seen during the 3rd Battle of Irkutsk. The Japanese supplies to the White Army were essentially cut off after the fall of the Philippines as the IJA transferred all of it's reserve assets to the defense of the Home Islands, the Germans purposefully kept the ROA underequipped, without access to the newer German armaments such as the E-Type tanks, Jet fighters, and the STG-44. Petrol supplies were rationed, pilots only being able to spend about an hour in the skies before coming back to base, while Tanks were more often used as glorified bunkers than capable of offensive operations. However, this also resulted in the prospection of Siberian resources unlike any other time in Russian History as new lands were being cleared for military purposes, oil extraction operations opened up, especially along the Volga-Ural region (Although much of it's construction was lost from the German bombings) and in Central Siberia. The Soviet industries were a giant that needed resources to work, and the collapsed infrastructure network led to most of the factories not working even up to half it's capacity even with the state of Total War between the main factions, and the constant acts of sabotage by infiltrated groups from other sides, mainly the MGB, did not improve the situation.

By 1946, tactics had to change, after the brutal winter famine, all sides began to grow more bold, if not desperate, to break it's enemies. The social order was falling apart, in Central Asia, the local SSRs became de facto independent after being cut off from Novosibirsk, while most of it's forces were pinned down to fight local warlords and bandits that began to take advantage of the chaos. GULAG prisoners overpowered their guards in Northern Siberia, with the prisoners capturing the city of Norilsk after another cut in the rations was announced by the MGB guards. The desertions in the ROA grew more and more, with the control of the countryside being reduced as it was taken over by Red Army partisans or bandits, the collaborators wondering more and more why they should fight for the sake of the ones who destroyed their homeland and even occasionally bombarded their "allies". The Red Army grew more radicalized in the "War Communism" measures that reached levels unseen since 1919, while even the city of Perm itself was reduced to ruins, with Zhukov relocating his base to Chelyabinsk, while bandits were taking over small villages, forcing the grip to be tightened. Stalin had confined himself to his new Dacha in the outskirts of Novosibirsk near the city of Tomsk, the Presidium led de facto by the Minister of State Security, Ivan Serov, who approved new lists to be signed up by Stalin to purge his enemies day by day, tightening the grip of the MGB and essentially overtaking the Army as the main military force of the Soviet Union. The White Army, already a tenuously united force, began to see the writing on the wall as their benefactors lost their grip on Asia, with General Kislitsin, the most level-headed between the Japanese puppet Rodzaevsky and the bandit Cossack Semyonov, began to plot for the survival of Russia.

Vladimir Alexandrovich Kislitsin, one of the old White Generals that once served under Kolchak in 1920, was by many considered a drunk figurehead for the White Russians, a puppet of the Japanese like so many others, and yet that may not be his most accurate description. A loyal monarchist, Kislitsin was one of the members of the "Troika" formed in the Harbin Manifesto and the "Theoretical" leader of the Provisional Government, many expected him to be little more than a placeholder from an eventual dispute between the Ataman's Cossacks and the Vozhd's Blackshirts. But he would soon prove them wrong, ever since the capture of Vladivostok, thousands of White Emigrées came back from exile, joining with the Far Eastern Provisional Government, including many important contacts and resources, and as the Japanese fell apart, Kislitsin approached a group of Emigrées, establishing contact with Admiral Chester Nimitz, a risky move as the forces of the Admiral blockaded the Japanese home islands and could result in a quick bullet to the head if discovered. But from the moment the American troops landed in Kyushu, the General realized the fate of Japan was sealed, and Russia should not go down with the sinking ship. Cordell Hull was hesitant in supporting a reactionary Russian Warlord at first, but after he suffered a mild case of death, President Thurmond was quite elated to see a friendly government emerge in Russia and gave Kislitsin his full support, smuggling in weapons towards Vladivostok where a group named "Order of Saint Nicholas", named after the dead Tsar who was ascended to Sainthood by the Orthodox Church in Vladivostok, prepared it's blow.

On the 1st of October 1946, Ataman Semyonov would be killed in Chita, apparently by a Soviet Partisan, although coincidentially it would also be the day the coup, nicknamed "Day of National Reclamation". Army units stormed the RFP headquarters in Khabarovsk, resulting in a brutal fight against the Fascist Stronghold, eventually ending with the assault on the city and the capture of Rodzaevsky after a failed suicide attempt. The leader of the Russian Fascists would be executed in front of a firing squad after a quick show trial on the next day, with Kislitsin declaring Martial Law and dissolving the Provisional assembly, arresting several politicians considered "Traitors" and "Japanese spies". Japanese citizens in Vladivistok would be targeted by mass lynching mobs, rallied by the government with Orthodox support, Kempetai agents being imprisoned while Japanese factories were seized. Despite the wrathful protests of Japan and the empty threats of invasion, the collapse of the IJA in the mainland ensured the survival of the government. While the first American weapon shipments began to arrive in Vladivostok en masse, with millions of rounds of ammunition, modern weapons, engineers, technicians, advisors, and the first members of the "American Expeditionary Force", the fragile balance between the exhausted Russian factions was broken, with the full comitment and resources of the largest industrial power on earth rallying behind Kislitsin and the White Army.

Andrei Alexandrovich Romanov, born in 1898, was exiled in London, his wife having died of cancer mere two years earlier, was hesitant to take up the offer of the so-called "Regent Kislitsin". There were many in the Royal Family who escaped and spread around the world, many with a better claim than him such as Grand Duke Vladimir. However he was also the ideal candidate, being relatively young, connected with the British, a capable artist, and fiercely anti-German, differently from many others who ended up trapped inside the "Festung Europa", where the Führer made sure to keep all the Romanovs in tight guard across the continent. Apparently due to the encouragement of his mother, Grand Duchess Xenia, sister of the former Tsar Nicholas II, he came to accept the offer, arriving in Vladivostok on the 7th of November, at the anniversary of the October Revolution, the Romanovs returned to Russia where the Grand Duke was quickly overwhelmed by the attention, the people either praising him as a savior or secretly planning to execute him like his uncle. After a meeting with Kislitsin, the Regent announced the return of the Russian Empire, although still under an autocratic emergency rule that greatly empowered the military warlord that remained de facto in charge of the governance. However, Tsar Andrei I Romanov would be crowned in an Orthodox Ceremony in Vladivostok, giving a boost of legitimacy to the White Movement, while the Provisional assembly was reopened, the members of the Assembly had completely changed, now filled with supporters of the ruling regime, elections being delayed until the "Order was restored in the Motherland".

​

The return of the Tsardom caused an uproar in the Soviet territories, Stalin immediately summoning Marshal Timoshenko to order an offensive, one that was ill-prepared and ill-advised, however, fear of retaliation caused the Red Cavalry commander and leader of what was left of the Stalinist Red Army to launch the attack nevertheless. On the 18th of November, an attack was launched in the East using the majority of the remaining Soviet reserves, which initially pushed back the exhausted and outgunned White Forces, with the threat of capture of Chita becoming more real than ever before. The first Russian P-80 Jet fighters soared through the sky, the first Jet planes to be used in large numbers during the War, greatly demoralizing the advancing troops as they were harassed by the planes and even a group of 12 B-24s. The Battle of Chita was one of the turning points of the war, where 270,000 Soviet troops were defeated by 180,000 White Army troops, including a 30,000-men American force, with the White Army now achieving air superiority and beginning to employ en masse the use of American weapons arriving every day at the Vladivostok harbor, Kislitsin prepared his forces for a push westwards. With relief coming from the American Red Cross and farming technicians arriving, the Famine effects were alliviated, it became common for enemy forces to defect to the White Army just for sake of a daily food ration, while the Cavalry began to be modernized with the arrival of trucks and half-tracks, engineers repairing the decayed railroads and roads, expanding airfields and ports while more and more exiles returned with optimism to the new Russia rising from the east.

The "Siberian March" would be launched on the 3rd of April 1947, beginning the long and gruelling final phase of the Russian Civil War, with the White Army carving it's way westwards against the exhausted remnants of the Red Army. The American Expedition, with it's numbers boosted to up to 115,000 after the end of Operation Sunset, was led by General George S. Patton at the man's insistence, known for his hatred for communism, once the opening was given he was reported to have practically barged into the White House to "request" the position to President Thurmond, barely able to contain his enthusiasm once he arrived, calling for immediate offensives across the Lake Baikal and proudly declaring that he would be pleased to "kick Joe Stalin in the nuts for Uncle Sam". Kislitsin and his men, experienced after years of fighting, had to restrain the American General many times about his speed, and Patton realized that there were many differences between Japan and Russia, namely the vast distances and poor infrastructure, although he argued that the partisans were quite similar to the Japanese guerrillas. The American troops have recorded their experiences, many finding it much like Japan, partisans hiding in the taiga, destroyed villages, and the starving population. But while the Japanese people only experienced war in home soil for little more than a year, the Russians have been in constant fighting for almost a decade, and an entire generation was lost in this fight, children-soldiers were becoming more common to find the more they marched westwards, and many of them looked much older than they were. First would come the fall of Irkutsk that same month, and as the march followed westwards, mainly along the tracks of the Transiberian railway, Stalin began to panic, growing more and more desperate, while his right-hand Ivan Serov already began to prepare for the eventual downfall.

In June, Novosibirsk was encircled, and unlike in Moscow, Stalin did not escape from this siege, preferring to remain in the city to boost the morale of the troops, only to realize that Serov deserted him, heading west towards the Zhukovite territories. The Man of Steel watched as his last stand was the burning city that was once one of the largest in Russia, now reduced to rubble by American bombers. MGB units fought fanatically both against the invader and against anyone in the city that tried to show a hint of disloyalty. Stalin believed that Timoshenko would launch a push North from Tomsk towards Kemerovo in order to cut the enemy supply lines and allow for the war to be turned, while also offering a pardon to Zhukov and the traitorous generals if they once more fought under him, the clearly delusional man would be shocked as Timoshenko marched west with his forces instead, surrendering to the Red Army while executing the MGB comissar in his headquarters. Ivan Serov himself would flee west in an attempt to deffect to Zhukov, only to end up captured by Green army partisans and shot for the crimes of the MGB. The paranoid man who once held total power of the Soviet Union accused them all of treason, barking at his officers in an underground bunker, which resulted in said officers being taken by the MGB and shot, Stalin made a last decision of dissolving the STAVKA and naming himself both Generalissimo and Minister of State Security, ordering the city to be held to the end. On the 28th of June, with the Whites approaching his bunker, Stalin attempted suicide, however, he failed in his aim and only ended up injured, an ironical twist as he once criticized his son for being unable to "shoot straight" when he tried to do the same years earlier. As a result, the Soviet Premier was captured by the White troops under Colonel Ivan Orel, an Ukrainian refugee that fled from the German invasion, joining with the White Army after it's capture of Vladivostok, he would be brought to Vladivostok, exposed to a show trial where he was accused of such a long list of crimes it took almost an hour to be read, many false, most real charges, charged all the way back to his illegal activities in his youth as a thug. He was declared guilty and executed in a firing squad, in the same way he sent so many others to their deaths.

The death of Stalin brought the unification of the Red forces as the Presidium remnants, the MGB, the Red Army, all came to the west, submitting to Marshal Zhukov's dominion with the leaders of the Central Asian SSR swearing their loyalty to the Grand Marshal of the Soviet Union. Facing the more professionalized Red Army, even if it was a mere shadow of it's glory days, was a much greater challenge than the MGB units of the Stalinists, the White Army and the American expedition fought it's first major tank battle at the Battle of Yarkovo, east of Tyumen, where the Soviet tanks were defeated, although the T-34s proved a model much better than the Japanese tanks the Americans used to face. While Patton compared fighting Japanese tanks as shooting ducks, he did show a greater respect for the Soviet tank commanders. Yet, by October, the White Army finally crossed the Urals, after a long and sluggish year of fighting across Siberia, they were finally in Europe, at the gates of Perm. Zhukov knew there was little he could do, summoning other Marshals, he announced his intention to cease the fighting for sake of Russia, approaching the Whites with an offer for a common front against the ROA. As the Germans saw the US-backed White Russians marching West, Hitler finally began to increase the supplies given to the KONR, with a redoubled offensive against the Reds finally capturing Izhevsk, he hoped to install a collaboration government west of the Urals, and Zhukov would prefer to have the Tsar return rather than allow German collaborators to capture Perm. The Red Army forces were pulled from the east, leaving the Ural passages wide open, while the Marshal addressed the nation through radio to call for a united front against "The German invader and the traitors who work for them". "Operation Bagration" would be the last Huzzah of the Red Army, with the Marshal wearing his cap one last time, abandoning Perm to leave it as an open city, launching all assets of the Red Army into a massive offensive operation which caught the ROA unprepared, the blitz was launched in a complete fury, while American fighters took to the skies and supported the Red Army's sacrifice, shooting down the Luftwaffe bombers as Patton for once claimed to have "Admired the bravery of the damned reds against the twice damned Nazis". The Operation recaptured Izhevsk, Ufa, pushing closer and closer to Samara before it finally came to a halt on the 10th of December as the last Soviet energy was spent. The Soviet Marshals turned back to Perm where they offered their surrender to the Tsar Andrei during a visit of his to the frontlines, the Tsar claimed that they deserved death for their crimes in supporting the Bolshevik regime, but they redeemed themselves in the fight against the Germans. In what was considered mostly as a propaganda strike, although there was a certain respect to be held, the Tsar stripped the Marshals of their ranks but pardoned them from death penalty, instead they were to be held in house arrest with varying sentences from 5 to 15 years.

​

As 1948 came, the war would come to an end, but it would not come as the Russians expected. After tense negotiations, many in the ROA desired to join the Whites, now with Bolshevism defeated, there was no longer a common cause that could rally most of the Committee, indeed most of the White Army organizations already had defected during the winter pause between December and January. The Russian Liberation Army was collapsing, and the Reich's objective of an eternal war between Russians was a humiliating failure, however, Hitler refused to leave this conflict empty-handed. On the 4th of February, a week before the planned offensive of the White Army, the Wehrmacht went on the move and backstabbed it's ally, launching an offensive across the front, scattering the exhausted ROA and capturing the critical three cities of Kazan, Samara (Kuybyshev), and Nizny Novgorod (Gorky) and solidifying a German beachhead across the Volga, while capturing archives and equipment given by the Germans to avoid it from falling into Russo-American hands. Kaminsky would return to Moscowien alongside many other collaborators to continue their work, the KONR was dissolved, Vlasov was captured by partisans and delivered to the White Army, and Sergei Bunyachenko was never found. The White army raced ahead and captured most of the remaining ROA territory, and the Civil War ended not through Russian guns, but by the same way it began, with the Germans backstabbing the Russians and attacking with the Wehrmacht. That would also be the first time American troops faced down German troops from across the Volga, with Patton hoping that one day he would have the chance to cross that river all the way to Germania.

In Yekaterinburg, former Sverdlovsk, the Tsar visited Ipatiev House, although damaged by the fighting for the city, it still stood there as the "Last Palace of the Romanovs". After a couple of hours inside, Andrei stepped out, announcing the construction of an Orthodox church by the side of the house, while the building itself would be preserved as a historical monument. Yekaterinburg was made the new Capital of Russia, the Tsar and Kislitsin celebrating the victory with a week of celebrations, and although most of Russia was indifferent at best to a Tsarist return, the majority just breathed a collective sigh of relief as the war ended at last. As parades erupted all through Russia, American relief finally coming to the starving population, soldiers and farmers returning home after almost ten years in battlefields from Finland to Siberia, the Tsar made a speech, calling for a New beginning to Russia, a new nation that has learned from the mistakes of the past, that would emerge from a national catastrophy that costed the lives of tens of millions, more strong and united than ever before, ending with the last part of the "March of the Siberian Riflemen".

"By the burning of our Faith,
Free Russia will rise again,
And let this song be heard,
To the walls of the Ancient Kremlin"

​