Part 102: Into the Fire (Jan-Jul 1957)
On January of 1957, a third nuclear strike landed, striking the port city of
Haikou, the largest population center on Hainan Island, with 200 kilotons of TNT worth of force. This nuclear attack signified a notable development in the war - nuclear bombardment no longer had the same level of shock value which it held last year. Sure, over 50 thousand people died that day, but the impact on the Chinese military industry was minimal, as by now, the effort to move industry from Southern China to the North was in full swing. Entire industrial complexes were being rapidly moved to the basins of Huanghe and Yangtze, or, in some cases, even to Xiboliya. Even Indian aerial superiority was being assaulted in the form of swiftly constructed anti-air complexes and mobile guns. By the summer of 1957, all Chinese divisions were equipped with anti-air capability. At the same time, an international program composed of Chinese, German, French and Italian nuclear scientists were working as hard as possible to replicate Indian nuclear weapon technology, headed by scientist
Yang Duxiu and based in Tianjin, from where it got its name "
Tianjin Project". With the practical possibility of a nuclear weapon now accepted as an axiom, work in the field went much more smoothly, although many barriers still had to be defeated and a number of entirely new concepts of physics had to be introduced in an extremely short timespan. Among other reasons, this ended up as the reason why modern physics to this day has a number of duplicate formulas, constants and especially units of measurement - after all, work in this field had been done by two distinctly separate teams of scientists with little to no connection.
In February of 1957, Indian troops captured the abandoned city of
Kunming, immediately noting just how horrid the city looked after being destroyed by a nuclear bomb. If the ruins were not standing right in front of them, they definitely would have imagined the sight as something from a science fiction novel, maybe from one of Žygimantas Gediminaitis's works. The next few weeks would see sporadic fighting across the outskirts of the city, where the Indians pushed back repeated Chinese counterattacks, and within the city itself, where they fought underground cells of enemy soldiers. In both cases, the fighting was limited and often stopped by the need to take away soldiers who had caught radiation-induced sicknesses. The hold over Kunming gave India the upper hand in the fight over Vietnam and the rest of Yunnan, both turned into EASA salients - however, the offensive into both of the territories was not easy. Yunnan and Vietnam were both mountainous and forested, quite defensible and extremely useful for resistance behind lines. Even the smallest skirmishes often took weeks, slowed down by poor weather, enemy delaying action and various insurgents causing trouble to supply lines. To negate this terrain advantage China and its allies held, the Unitarians began to employ mass
napalm bombardment - a flammable mix of gelling agents and gasoline. Throughout the spring and summer of 1957, entire forests in Southeast Asia and Yunnan were burned to a crisp by aerial napalm strikes, and this support soon allowed the Indian army to advance through the region, the governments of Dai Viet and Assam fleeing to China through April and May of 1957 - however, it came at a high cost. A high civilian cost - as napalm, much like any type of strategic bombardment, lacked accuracy, the Indian Air Force opted for a mass burn approach, covering entire fields with the material and not specifically aiming for any enemy soldier or base. As should be expected, any local who got in the way of these aerial strikes would soon find themselves in the middle of Hell. And "Hell" was quite an accurate name for what veterans of the war would later describe witnessing napalm burning all around them as.
The war across the Nusantara Archipelago was slowly turning towards the side of the Commonwealth, too. The Battle of the South China Sea was still inconclusive and resulted in high losses for both sides - by summer of 1957, the Indians had lost three of their five super-Magentas to mines and underwater torpedoes, while the Chinese had swiftly burned through their submarine carriers and standard Magentas, both of which couldn't fare against the sheer bulk and power of the Indian warships. Still, while the sea itself was still a tug of war, the Indians had naval superiority where it mattered, this being the southern part of the region, necessary to supply their landings on the Nusantara islands. Despite heavy resistance from the local military and a small Chinese expeditionary corps, the Indians were pushing though Borneo, capturing the capital of the island, Bandar Seri Begawan, and seizing the developed northern parts of the island. The forested, barely populated center and south held on, but the Nusantaran troops here were facing massive logistical and supply problems, which turned their fight into a token resistance at best. The Great Asian War, only a few months ago having been a uniting force in the Confederation, was starting to turn into a centrifugal force, as the loosely united Confederation was starting to get overtaken by defeatism. Smaller sultanates were already considering laying down arms and hoping for Indian mercy, and, even when they were not considering betrayal, they were stirring up trouble by blaming others for the defeats in the front.
The only front which was going in EASA's favor at this point in time was the front between Lusang and Oceania - the Unitarians here were faced with a nigh-insurmountable logistical nightmare, and even when they managed to push into enemy territory, they found themselves met with destroyed roads and jungle insurgents.
Indian soldier walking through the ruins of Kunming, February 1957
Broken down Chinese "Improved Battlemaster" landship in Nanning, alongside Chinese soldiers
The first half of 1957 also saw elections being held in Germania and Lithuania. German politics during the Great Asian War, interestingly enough, mirrored the situation which had unfolded in France during the 1910s - almost all political forces in the country joined one of two loose coalitions, united over the issue of whether or not to continue participating in the Great Asian War and risk a potential open conflict with the Commonwealth. The
Pro-War coalition was headed by the Centralist Party and incumbent Prime Minister Volker Braun, and joined by a number of centrists and center-red political parties, like the Free Market Alliance, Social Protectionists and others. The
Anti-War coalition was a brainchild of the blue wing and the deep red, influenced by Dutch Protectionism, which was quite an unholy alliance in the eyes of many. It was headed by the flamboyant Democratic Unitarian personality
Alois von Tirpitz, labor union leader turned into a loud-mouthed, vulgar, but popular politician. Alois was a fierce supporter of two things - fighting against "oligarchic capitalism", and fighting against war. In the first month of the campaign, von Tirpitz's raw charisma placed his coalition ahead in the polls, but gaffe after gaffe followed, in addition to the escalation of the war in Asia and the Haikou nuclear strike. That's not to mention the support the aging, 91 year old King
Otto III of Germania gave to Braun in his speech on February 21 - an almost unprecedented event of the Royal family's intervention in national politics. The March election sealed the fate of his seemingly insurmountable advantage against the less charismatic, but certainly more tactful Prime Minister - with a popular vote result of 55% to 39% (the rest of the share partitioned between a number of fringe parties), Volker Braun secured a second term and a majority in the Congress of Vienna.
Similarly, the 1957 Lithuanian election was won by supporters of continued interventionism, except in this case, it was hardly even a fight. The possibility of conflict on the eastern border and the controversial temporary ban of the Party of Lithuanian Revenge on September of 1956 (sure, it was after the leader of the party Taunius Storkus publicly endorsed the Unitarian side in the war, but eliminating your political rivals that way will still raise eyebrows) meant that a near absolute majority of the electorate gathered around Telesforas Geležius, granting him a second term without much fanfare and almost 70 percent of the vote. Foreign political experts were quick to note the unique democratic situation in Lithuania ever since the Russo-Lithuanian War - it was undoubtedly a democracy with the rights of the citizen upheld like normal, but the country's politics were near-absolutely dominated by the White Shroud party, the successors of Antanas Garšva.
Alois von Tirpitz, chairman of the German Anti-War Coalition
Democrat Telesforas Gelažius's second inaugural speech, April 1957
The war continues. So far, if some wicked madmen were playing a bet on who wins a nuclear war, India's chances to win appeared to be higher. But with only one year passed in the war, who knows what could change the tide of the conflict. Maybe an overconfident pilot. A misguided torpedo. Or maybe, much like always in Earth's history, a manmade failure.
The world in July of 1957
