The North Star is Red: a Wallace Presidency, KMT Victory, Alternate Cold War TL

Fair enough. But Turkish nationalism seems really, really poisonous.

Turkish politician: Should we tolerate these non-Turkic people and build a multiethnic identity upon the values of inter-ethnic unity?

Turkish general: Nah, lets kill them all, steal their shit, and say they were revolting.

Turkish politician: Well, that's what happens when you don't shower.

General and politician: HA HA HA HA HA HA!

As a minor quibble, historical Turkish nationalism didn't actually care about being Turkic that much. The whole Turkic Turanism Sun Theory stuff was always a fringe ideology (like the Grey Wolves). They're in charge ITL, but they weren't really ever in charge OTL.

The irony is that Kemal, a secularist, defined Turkishness very much by Islam. In the Treaty of Lausanne, most Greek Muslims were deported to Turkey and most Turkish Christians were deported to Greece.

Over time the Kemalists slowly polarized and became more oppressive to minorities, but as a general rule of thumb yeah, Muslim minorities were seen as MUCH more Turkish than Christian minorities. Holds true even today.
 
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As a minor quibble, historical Turkish nationalism didn't actually care about being Turkic that much. The whole Turkic Turanism Sun Theory stuff was always a fringe ideology (like the Grey Wolves). They're in charge ITL, but they weren't really ever in charge OTL.

The irony is that Kemal, a secularist, defined Turkishness very much by Islam. In the Treaty of Lausanne, most Greek Muslims were deported to Turkey and most Turkish Christians were deported to Greece.

Over time the Kemalists slowly polarized and became more oppressive to minorities, but as a general rule of thumb yeah, Muslim minorities were seen as MUCH more Turkish than Christian minorities. Holds true even today.

Turkey going from (relative) tolerance under the Ottomans to the hardcore nationalism under the Young Turks and beyond is just so depressing.
 
I'm not debating the existence of a nation. I am pointing out that Turkey can only do these things because its leaders were never punished for the mass murder of Armenians.

I'm not sure executing the Three Pashas would have changed a national political culture that much, just because I don't think denazification would have failed if there was no Nuremberg. Of course, executing them would prevent them from having any political influence, but I think they all ended up assassinated by vengeance seeking Armenians.

Honestly have made things a lot worse by radicalizing moderate Turks who saw orchestrators of anti-Turkish massacres. I think these things often have deep bloody histories far beyond any one person. In retrospect, I think that's what people concluded in the aftermath of the Bosnian genocide - namely that a LOT of things had been going wrong for a long time to cause this and Milosevic was just one of many causes.
 
Turkey going from (relative) tolerance under the Ottomans to the hardcore nationalism under the Young Turks and beyond is just so depressing.

Well, it also began well before the Young Turks. Sultan Abdulhamid, who took power in the 1870's, made a distinct effort to reorientate Ottoman nationhood around Islam - thus leading to the 1895 massacres of Armenians which killed hundreds of thousands. The Armenian genocide didn't come out of nowhere, the roots had been planted for decades. There's also a distinct sense that Turkish political culture had been greatly radicalized by atrocities against Muslims in the Balkans as Turkish territory shrank (and of course, those atrocities were often preceded by Ottoman brutality against suspected rebel populations). Obviously it's cliche, but these cycle of revenge and grievance things really do go far back.

The Young Turks in practice were pretty split between moderates who wanted to reverse Abdulhamid's agenda and those who were much more radical and wanted a centralized, "modern", ethnonationalist state along the lines of European states. Obviously and unfortunately, the latter group won out.
 
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I'm not sure executing the Three Pashas would have changed a national political culture that much, just because I don't think denazification would have failed if there was no Nuremberg. Of course, executing them would prevent them from having any political influence, but I think they all ended up assassinated by vengeance seeking Armenians.

Their assasination is one of the few times I've ever considered revenge killing ever justified.

Honestly have made things a lot worse by radicalizing moderate Turks who saw orchestrators of anti-Turkish massacres. I think these things often have deep bloody histories far beyond any one person. In retrospect, I think that's what people concluded in the aftermath of the Bosnian genocide - namely that a LOT of things had been going wrong for a long time to cause this and Milosevic was just one of many causes.

I think it is more complicated to say "things have been going wrong." When we say those things, we kind of give people an out. This article from cracked about the Bosnian genocide reminded me of that:


Your Neighbors Try To Murder You: 6 Realities In A Genocide

The Bosnian genocide survivor didn't see "Brotherhood and Unity" as an empty slogan. He had neighbors and friends who were Serbs. Neighbors who quickly turned on him.


Sudbin was one of the only survivors in his family. The Serbs primarily targeted adult men.

"... you had to be not old enough, big enough to be killed. I was 18. It was well-organized planned ethnic cleansing ... We went to the camp, and those camps are in one line -- it was well-organized, connected with train line, with highways, and the whole community took part in this." We really can't emphasize that last part enough. Sudbin's family wasn't massacred by some sinister Serbian government; they were massacred by his neighbors. Familiar faces. Go out and walk around your neighborhood sometime, and try to imagine it.

The point is...those things SHOULDN'T have to happen. Yugoslavia didn't have to become a scar on Europe's history.

Well, it also began well before the Young Turks. Sultan Abdulhamid, who took power in the 1870's, made a distinct effort to reorientate Ottoman nationhood around Islam - thus leading to the 1895 massacres of Armenians which killed hundreds of thousands. The Armenian genocide didn't come out of nowhere, the roots had been planted for decades. There's also a distinct sense that Turkish political culture had been greatly radicalized by atrocities against Muslims in the Balkans as Turkish territory shrank (and of course, those atrocities were often preceded by Ottoman brutality against suspected rebel populations). Obviously it's cliche, but these cycle of revenge and grievance things really do go far back.

The Young Turks in practice were pretty split between moderates who wanted to reverse Abdulhamid's agenda and those who were much more radical and wanted a centralized, "modern", ethnonationalist state along the lines of European states. Obviously and unfortunately, the latter group won out.

I know. But as late as 1908, there were many moderate Greeks and Armenians who merely asked for greater rights within the Europe and not outright independence.
 
Moving on, what is the military of KMT China like? What lessons have China's General Staff taken from the Three Years War.

Honestly, I don't think they needed to learn that many questions. At the end of the day, KMT China's military doctrine is not that different from the United States - most of the military non-success of South China in the Three Years War came down to basically logistical failures - the difficulty of maintaining supplies for an offensive into Northeast China led to some overstretching of logistics.

A lot of that just comes from the fact that South China isn't a very wealthy country and has a military that isn't anywhere as mechanized as they'd prefer (ie, far fewer supply trucks than they'd have liked). That's more or less a problem that will naturally go away as the country becomes wealthier, especially as the ROC Army gets a decent amount of funding (as a proportion of the economy, probably less than the OTL USSR, although about the same as the ITL USSR). The ROC Army in 1956 was a lot better than the ROC Army in 1948 - and the ROC Army of 1962 is probably significantly better as well.
 
Speaking of the ROC military, how is the combat prowess of its fighting men? Also is there a South Chinese special forces? If so what is it’s official name?
 
Speaking of the ROC military, how is the combat prowess of its fighting men? Also is there a South Chinese special forces? If so what is it’s official name?

Ironically as a history buff, I'm rather ignorant about military matters, which is where I think a lot of people are most interested in.

My general impression is that in terms of combat prowess, the ROC Army of 1960 would probably be somewhere comparable to the OTL/ITL prowess of the 1960's Indian Army, which although probably not man-for-man as good as Western European or Warsaw Pact armies (due to being a poorer nation), was still quite competent.

Alternatively, I guess they might be compared to the military prowess (man for man) of Egypt in the Yom Kippur War, which didn't exactly bulldoze Israel, but they put up a pretty damn good fight (my impression was that Egypt did a lot better than Syria OTL).

As for special forces, it's probably the same as OTL.
 
Speaking of the ROC military, how is the combat prowess of its fighting men? Also is there a South Chinese special forces? If so what is it’s official name?

Also speaking of the ROC Military, the military capacity of the PLA is the one that doesn't really map that closely to any OTL nation. Generally has the operational leadership and doctrine of the OTL PLA, but is basically spreading out industrial capacity and Soviet weaponry across a much smaller population. So the ITL PLA is man-for-man better than the OTL PLA, but overall weaker. My guess man-for-man, somewhere around where OTL Yugoslavia was - the only issue is that North China has four times the population of Yugoslavia. So while the Soviet Union is the unchallenged military hegemon of the Socialist world, North China is second (Pakistan is probably third - and East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland are probably in a distant tie for fourth).

Edit: Also, there's probably a reversal of the OTL relationship between conventional arms and nuclear weaponry. OTL, NATO refused to repudiate First Strike capability because of a fear that the conventional arms of the Warsaw Pact surpassed NATO. ITL, the USSR probably refuses to repudiate First Strike capability because it's obvious that the West has outstripped the Socialist bloc in conventional military power. The failure of the USSR to utterly crush Yugoslavia revealed weakness in the Soviet military system - and the second and third most militarily powerful Socialist bloc nations, Pakistan and North China, pretty much come bundled with antagonistic nations with larger amounts of military strength (India having more than Pakistan, South China having more than North China).
 
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Chapter 158 - Mare Nostrum, Electric Boogaloo
Mare Nostrum, Electric Boogaloo
With the remnants of the South Greek Army either fleeing the burnt-out remnants of Athens or trapped on Crete, either surrendering or surrendered to the British Army, the future of the regime looked extremely dark. The British, generally deeming the situation in mainland Greece to be doomed, declared a rival government in Crete headed by the King of Greece, the 23-year old King Constantine II. In theory, the government headquartered in Heraklion realized that it would have to accept hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing persecution either in Thrace or Cyprus, not to mention refugees fleeing Communism in Mainland Greece. However, in practice, the ports of Crete were already completely filled with British supply shipments, both to Greek POWs, British troops, and local residents, significantly lowering the amount of refugees that the island was originally expected to take.

As flames consumed Athens and Communist forces slowly cleared South Greek resistance from the city, often taking revenge for the "White Terror" previously inflicted on social democrats and trade unionists throughout South Greece, anticommunist refugees flooded en masse into Peloponnese, which quickly began suffering serious supply problems as the small, rural region was unable to support the masses of refugees arriving. Whereas the "White Terror" had been incredibly broad in its reach (targeting far more than genuine Communists), the subsequent Red Terror was the same, targeting far more than genuine anticommunists. Moreover, to many, the cause of the refugees fleeing into the Peloponnese all seemed pointless anyways, as North Greek ships were preparing to assault the region from all sides, not merely from the Isthmus of Corinth that connected the peninsula to the rest of Greece. Although North Greece did not have a massive navy, it had one large enough to support an assault across the relatively small Gulf of Corinth, which seemed to doom the hopes of the vastly inferior and devastated South Greek Army. However, one nation in particular had a strong motivation to prevent South Greece from falling. Well, technically two nations - Beria would have preferred to have a bargaining chip to harass the Yugoslavs, but it wasn't really politically possible for the USSR to openly intervene against a Communist reunification of Mainland Greece. Indeed, a coup against Beria for being insufficiently committed to Communist geopolitical expansion was already in the works and would be sprung in August. Instead, a totally different nation had deeply negative relations with Yugoslavia - one that could actually openly intervene to prevent a Communist reunification of Greece.

During the Three Years War, Italian forces had moved into disputed areas of Trieste, annexing the entirety of the former Free Territory of Trieste in exchange for Italian participation in the Three Years War on the side of Yugoslavia. However, when Italian troops pulled out of the Three Years War, essentially breaching their agreement with the Yugoslavs, British, and French, the Italians failed to actually evacuate any of those Croatian and Slovenian territories. As a result, Yugoslavia reasserted its claims to those territories immediately after the war, territories that the Italians were more or less unwilling to negotiate over. The irony was that Prime Minister La Pira was willing to negotiate over the territories - but when he tried to do so in 1961, his own Christian Democracy party revolted against him, forcing him to step down. Having only lasted six years, the desperate DCI-PSI coalition sought a figure that could keep the fractious coalition together - they eventually asked the incredibly popular Enrico Mattei, whose fame had rose in Italy due to his role as the leader of Italy's state-owned oil corporation, in which capacity he had pioneered Italo-Iranian cooperation in the aftermath of the failed anti-Mossadegh coup. The selection of the outsider Mattei was seen as a way to ensure that Italy would remain untouched by the Arab oil embargo, being formulated during the leadership selection process, that had been applied to most of the rest of Western Europe. Avoiding this embargo was seen as absolutely necessary by Christian Democracy party elites, because the Italian economy was severely trailing behind much of the rest of Western Europe (due to being an outcast from the EEC due to its overly independent foreign policy).

Prime Minister Mattei took a hardline approach to Yugoslavia, which further poisoned cross-Adriatic relations. A failed assassination attempt against Mattei in 1962 was widely blamed by the public on both/either Yugoslavia and the United States, further poisoning international relations (modern archival documentation reveals that the assassination plot was actually French, though the Americans were aware of the attempt and did not actively stop it). After some more recriminations by both sides, the two nations ultimately even withdrew their ambassadors from each other. Although it was true that the Kremlin had contacted the Italian government to covertly promise technology transfer from the USSR to Italy (hilariously, much of this technology, albeit not all, was French in origin) and general covert support for the ruling Christian Democracy in exchange for Italian intervention, the Mattei government had already decided beforehand that something was to be done in response to both the Greek War and the genocides in Thrace and Cyprus.

The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately called for a ceasefire in Greece citing "humanitarian disasters facing the Greek people", backing up their words with actual military action. Tens of thousands of Italian troops, with the permission of the remnants of the South Greek junta, landed in the Peloponnese, deploying immediately to the shores and land-bridge of Corinth. Although Italy did not have an incredibly mighty navy, it had a mightier navy than North Greece and Yugoslavia combined. A brief attempt for North Greece forces to probe the land-bridge of Corinth led to minor casualties on both sides before the North Greek government judged that they were not going to dislodge the Italians with force.

A very tense showdown then took place between the Italian and Turkish navies, which regularly shadowed each other for several weeks. International observers generally predicted a war. Indeed, a attempt was made between Italy and the United Kingdom to jointly cooperate in a mission to retake Cyprus. However, the plan was shelved because in reconciliation talks between the Royalist South Greek government in Crete and the Junta South Greek government in the Peloponnese, the two sides were completely unable to agree and stormed out of the talks, jointly condemning the other as traitors, much to the consternation and surprise of both the Italians and British. As a result, the plan fell through and the Italians judged that they did not have sufficient naval power by themselves to actually retake either Cyprus or Thrace. As a result, tensions lessened when the Italian government informed the Turkish government that would "refuse to recognize Turkish aggression", but would not attempt to "change de facto military occupation through force." While the motivation for Italy was largely geopolitical (largely to prevent the expansion of Yugoslav influence), it was sold to the public and the world as a humanitarian mission, forcing the Italians to put their money where their mouth was. Italian ships took the lead in ferrying refugees from Thrace and Cyprus, either to the Peloponnese itself, and when the Peloponnese truly hit capacity, often to Italy itself, where large refugees camps sprung up across the South. While not as charitable in intent as advertised, the move did ultimately save tens of thousands of Greeks from possible starvation, disease, or worse.

Although in paper, South Greece still existed, North Greece would end up containing somewhere around 80-85% of Greece's population. In practice, this did mean that the Yugoslav-aligned government of North Greece dominated Greece. To make the South Greece cause even worse, there were now two-competing South Greek governments, both of whom attacked the other as illegitimate puppets under either Italian or British occupation (depending on the government making the accusation). In public by Western bloc nations unwilling to recognize North Greece and unwilling to pick between the two South Greeces and their patrons, the two governments were generally referred to as Greek Patras and Greek Heraklion, with awkward not-ambassadors sent to each South Greek "provisional capital." On paper, the South Greek regime at Souda achieved one of the most remarkable military victories in modern history - on the other hand, it's hard to find an example of a victory that had gone so badly for its victors.
 
Man, this is one TL where the Western bloc is quite fractious.

Which is why I like it so much. It's not something that you see a lot.

And if you do see it, the messy politics are usually cleaned up by this point.
Here, the mistakes just build up and continue making things messier and messier within their blocs.

It makes you realize how delicate the balance IOTL was. Not that this exact sequence of events could have happened, but the radically different interests between the Imperial Powers, the USA, and the Reconstructed Axis countries could definitely have come into more conflict with each other.

I would even go so far as to call OTL a bit idealistic after reading this TL. In terms of intra-bloc politics if nothing else. (The PLA Appearing out of nowhere will never get old)
It's also incredibly fun to see how much the various security states step on each other's toes. (Like in Germany, for instance)
 

AeroTheZealousOne

Monthly Donor
Ironically as a history buff, I'm rather ignorant about military matters, which is where I think a lot of people are most interested in.

This makes two of us, not necessarily me being ignorant on military matters but caring less to talk about military operations in the realm of alternate history. More into geopolitical relations and pop culture myself, but that's neither here nor there.

Loving these recent updates, by the way!

Would North Greece start referring itself as “the One True Greece” now?

Not sure but internationally thy could be referred to as "Best Greece", akin to "Best Korea" IOTL.
 
I love how Italy's foreign policy seems to be driven by an intense desire to screw over Yugoslavia in any possible way.
Also it is nice to see Italy is probably the most stable nation in Western Europe right now.
 
I imagine the continued chaos in Greece is going to lead to an even larger overseas Greek diaspora - Australia, in particular, is surely going to have an even stronger Greek community.
 
Chapter 159 - Heart of Darkness, Electric Boogaloo
Heart of Darkness, Electric Boogaloo
The protests of 1963 would be difficult to understand outside of the context of the largest major war waged by the Kennedy administration, the Congo War. Whereupon the Kennedy administration was able to largely extricate America out from wars in Venezuela, Oman, and Indonesia, the Congo represented a war that just would not end. The playbook that the administration took towards ending the war was similar to their tack in Oman, Indonesia, and Venezuela - find local anti-colonial leaders who were anti-communist and willing to play with the United States in order to boot out both the Europeans and the Communists. That strategy largely worked in Indonesia in particular, where the United States of Indonesia was run by an uneasy alliance of anticommunist military nationalists and Islamists that was closely allied to the United States.

Indeed, a failed attempt to end the war was nearly brokered in 1961, when the leader of the Dominion of the Congo, Joseph Kasa-Vubu, directly met with his former friend and leader of the Free Republic of the Congo, Patricia Lumumba, met in the neutral city of Geneva in order to hash out compromise constitution that would have the Congo formally declare independence from Belgium as a republic (rather than a dominion) and federalize the nation, but retain "special connections" with the Kingdom of Belgium. However, the agreement was formally opposed by the King of Belgium, Leopold III, who had grown more stubborn after surviving a widespread leftist, anti-monarchy general strike paralyzing the nation in 1951, perhaps Belgium's largest spat of political violence in its history. King Leopold III in fact had only narrowly won a monarchy referendum in 1946 by around 5 points, emboldening a left that only grew stronger.[1] The Three Years War only exacerbated tensions in Belgium - radical leftist French intellectuals, including many radical trade unionists, often fled into Wallonia to escape the French secret police, increasingly radicalizing Wallonia's trade unions. In contrast, Flanders largely received refugees fleeing from Soviet-sparked violence, whether from Poland, Yugoslavia, or Finland, further radicalizing Flemish society in the other direction. With Flanders the center of Belgian monarchism, even the issue of Belgium's system of government became divisive.

The Geneva conventions was only brought to an end not because an agreement was hammered out - but because a bomb in the signing room killed both Kasa-Vubu and Lumumba almost immediately, as well as several other top government leaders on both sides. A furious frenzy was launched to find the culprit, but it was at that moment when Kasa-Vubu's second-in-command, Moishe Tshombe, seized control of the capital with the help of Belgian troops, calling an end to the peace negotiations. Almost at the same time, Antoine Gizenga succeeded his former boss, and vowed vengeance against Belgium, claiming that Belgian special forces or at the very least royalist terrorists had masterminded the plot. The Americans furiously wanted to hunt down who was responsible to scuttling the peace negotiations and much to their surprise, they found out that the culprits were not actually Soviets hoping for a prolonged war. Indeed, the culprits seem to have communicated in French, suggesting that it was Belgium special forces operating under the orders of King Leopold III - a fact that caused outrage among Belgian and Congolese leftists. In reality, modern documentation reveals that the plot was probably actually not run by the Belgians - it was most likely run by French special services fearing that the "fall" of Congo would threaten the French hold on Equatorial Africa. The Belgians seizing control of the Congolese government was just them taking advantage of the situation.

The war quickly exploded in all-out violence, with the United States possibly caught in the middle. On one hand, the United States was furious at the Belgians. On the other hands, Belgian planners successfully understood that with the Congolese Free Republic becoming increasingly Marxist in its orientation, the United States would have no choice but to essentially support them in their war unless they desired to see a socialist powerhouse in Central Africa. As a result, Kennedy massively scaled up the numbers of Americans on the ground in Congo, reaching 200,000 by the end of 1961 and 400,000 by 1962. Conscription began sending all kinds of Americans to the Congo, including black Americans. Interestingly, while most Black Americans were loyal to Kennedy and the Democratic Party, supporting the war in the Congo, an increasing number of young black men, predominantly those that served in the Congo, became increasingly radicalized.

The American military was fully desegregated and most of the civil rights agenda had been implemented - however, many young black soldiers couldn't help but notice the often shocking lack of concern displayed by (almost entirely white) American officers towards Congolese civilian casualties that often dipped into casual racism. One future black radical recited that the moment that set him off on his new political path was hearing a commissioned officer comment, in the aftermath of an unintentional American mortar strike on a refugee column, that "at least there's fewer n*****s to feed now." Embittered returning veterans found a support system for radicalized, angry veterans - indeed, nuclear victims from the Three Years War still had failed to be compensated. The once ramshackle crew of angry veterans led by Socialist Marine Corps officer Robert Bork had developed into a sophisticated political organization, Veterans Against the Wars (VAW), with their supporters described as VAWpers, which welcomed disaffected African-Americans into their ranks.

The Congo War was perhaps one of the most brutal wars in the Cold War - as both sides were so well-supplied. The Congo was simply too geographically large for the Allies to close off the route of supplies running into the region. For example, Marxist rebels in Egypt smuggled in weapons to help the Congolese Reds, causing the United States to respond with Operation Linebacker, a mass bombing of supply lines in Sudan from Anglo-American air force bases in Ethiopia, which became one of the highest recipients of Western military and economic aid due to the wars in both Egypt and the Congo. The results severely damaged the supply situation of the Congolese Reds, but caused mass civilian casualties in Sudan, outraging the local population against the Western powers (Britain had signed onto the bombings). Most of the killed were Christians in South Sudan, which drove even more Christians into the hands of the Communist Party of Egypt.

Meanwhile, the Belgians had created their own problem in neighboring Rwanda and Burundi. In 1960, the Belgian colonial government had abolished the Tutsi monarchy in Rwanda, sparking mass pogroms against Tutsis by Hutu elites who once disfavored by Belgium, now became favored by Belgium. Tutsi elites, despite being favored by Belgium, had agitated for rapid independence in order to cement the Tutsi monarchy as a sovereign entity, which angered the Belgians enough to support Hutu elites instead. The pogroms forced hundreds of thousands of Tutsi refugees to flee to Congo and Burundi, something that then became impossible as the Congo exploded into its own gruesome civil war. Similarly, in order to defeat independence activists, Belgian special forces assassinated Crown Prince Louis Rwagasore, the popular leader of Burundi's only multiethnic political party, which had earlier won Burundi's local elections in a landslide. Most notably, Mwami Mwambutsa IV, the father of Prince Louis, refused to take the throne as the head of a new, Belgium-friendly independent Burundi, being convinced by the earlier assassination of Lumumba and Kasa-Vubu that the Belgians had to be behind his son's death.[2] Calling for vengeance, and radicalized by Hutu pogroms of Tutsis in Rwanda, the King of Burundi (a Tutsi) launched brutal reprisals against the Hutu majority. Casualties were massive - and he quickly became isolated internationally, with only tacit support from the Federation of Kenya as led by President Amin.

Ironically as a result of the Congo War, Belgium ended up becoming the number one recipient of American foreign aid, alongside widespread American intervention in the war. Cognizant that excessive civilian casualties would endanger support for the war, the rebuilt Force Publique largely relied on native African soldiers, generally opting to only use troops from one side of the country to patrol a very different side of the country. Although this weakend the operational efficiency of Belgian troops and increased war crimes against locals, this meant that the Force Publique was largely loyal. The attempt of the Congolese Reds to spawn guerrilla movements in Belgian-controlled territory largely failed due to the fractured, tribal nature of Congolese society. To some Congolese, a distant tribe was just as foreign as the Belgians - and much poorer. As a result, the Congolese Reds quickly restored to conventional warfare, sending armed troops into Burundi and Rwanda to directly combat the Belgians there in hopes of pressuring their withdrawal from all of Congo.

With the Congolese Reds largely in power in Eastern Congo, they weren't able to make any progress in gaining more territory in Congo in the face of overwhelming Belgian-American firepower superiority - moreover, they had to struggle to survive as Belgian gunboats sailed down the Congo River, wrecking havoc. The Congo was simply too large for either side to hold all of the territory, so the war was conducted almost entirely over control of the various rivers and waterways of the Congo. Although the Americans were properly supplied, both the Congolese Reds and the Force Publique lived like the armies of the Thirty Year Wars, plundering from the locals and driving endless villages into starvation. The war for the waterways between the Reds and Force Publique has also been compared to the struggle between the National Revolutionary Army and Imperial Japanese Army in the Second Sino-Japanese War - and indeed, lurid (and true) tales of atrocities from the Congo found their way on newspapers in the West. Immediately, strong parallels were drawn between the Congo War and the Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Indeed, academic interest in the history of the Belgian Congo and Leopold II vastly expanded until Leopold II was actually a figure that most educated Americans had heard of before. All of this hurt public support for the Congo War, as young radicals increasingly sympathized with the cause of Gizenga and the Congolese Reds.

The Belgians were able to hold out in Rwanda and Burundi fairly effective, using superior air-power to decimate scattered bands of Reds, but in 1963, after Idi Amin's rise to power in Kenya, the Amin government increasingly fighting a low-intensity war with the Central African Federation decided to retaliate against the West by cutting off military access to Belgian supplies, a move followed by his tepid allies in the Kingdom of Buganda. Combining that development with Britain's concurrent meltdown in Tanzania, the supply situation of Belgian troops in Rwanda and Burundi quickly deteriorated, forcing the Americans and Belgians on the offense against the Congolese Reds in hopes of relieving those two regions. The 1963/1964 Winter Offensive in the Congo would become by far the bloodiest operation of the entire war...
---
[1] OTL, he won by about 15%.
[2] OTL, he accepted.
 
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Love the chapter but some things don't match up with chapter 106 when American goes into Congo. Firstly in chapter 106 isn't the OAS a French resistance that helped overthrow De Gulle not a Belgium colonial movement and it also says that the OAS launches attacks across Belgium, when I think it's meant to say Congo. Also in chapter 106 it shows that Moishe Tshombe was in charge of a Belgium loyalist Congo not Kasa-Vubu's second in command, who's in charge of his own part of Congo. Maybe I'm completely wrong, but as always keep up the great work.
 
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