The Silver Knight, a Lithuania Timeline
- Thread starter Augenis
- Start date
Well the target could be a large military industrial complex ,a particularly vital oil refinery, or maybe even a concentration of forces .
No, for I have no wish to be torn apart by an angry mob of Robert fans especially now that a Rhaegar expy is the future Huangdi of Great Shun.
Lucknow is going to be an unlucky place soon.Lucknow is slowly running out of... luck.
IIRC, the Germans called the EDC members to arms after the US was formed.
I wonder if India would nuke/or worse in Indian territory. If their belief in Unitarianism is stronger than their national/cultural identity, we could see some real awful stuff happen. Biological, Chemical, Atomic Warfare.
If India weren't at the time, they are now playing for all the marbles. If their leaders are fanatics then we could see the War to End All Wars.
On that note, it would be interesting to see who the upper echelons of the Indian Government and how they are reacting.
If India weren't at the time, they are now playing for all the marbles. If their leaders are fanatics then we could see the War to End All Wars.
On that note, it would be interesting to see who the upper echelons of the Indian Government and how they are reacting.
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It was mentioned a while back that a clique of government officials had grown overconfident in the power of the nuclear bomb and directed conditions toward war. I expect that many of them have been discredited by now, so we may soon be introduced to their former opponents :^)
Generally, the fanaticism of a totalitarian government is directly proportional to how close their are to destruction. OTL Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan are fairly good examples. The same will apply for India.
Sorry for slacking off on the next update. Much like everyone in this time of year, I have exams to worry about, not to mention various national science olympiads (I'm my school's Olympic hope, and I fail much like one ;_; ). It should arrive sometime during the following week.
Chapter 107: Firestorm
Part 107: Firestorm (Nov 1958-Feb 1959)
It was no surprise to anyone on this planet that the division of Turkey into East and West was completely artificial and born out of the complicated nature of the end of the War of the Danube. Even international observers noted that this division of the nation would bring more harm than good, so could you imagine what the Turks themselves felt? To be defeated and humiliated in a war and leave it as a dismantled nation... After the War of the Danube, the two went down different, though eerily parallel paths. The West was more populous and held Constantinople, formerly Kubilay, the largest city in Anatolia by far, but the East had more strategic depth and arguably had more of a legitimate claim to all of Turkey. East Turkey became a "Functionalist republic", a nation which, while holding trappings of a democracy, but are dominated by a powerful government set on executing some sort of "function", or "duty". West Turkey, on the other hand, was officially a traditional democracy, but it felt the presence of the Germans at all times - their "liberators" saw no reason to not interfere in Constantinople's politics, tell any dangerous political parties to stuff it, and orchestrate an extensive "deunitarianization" of the country to eradicate the ideology's holdouts among the populace. So, in a way, what the two states had in common was a farce of a democracy.
Relations between the two states were... far from great. Everyone still remembered the Eskisehir Crisis of 1949, one which nearly resulted in a conflict between the two nations over the control of the split town of Eskisehir. Thankfully, the diplomatic delegations of both nations diffused the tensions before they devolved into an outright war, leaving the Balkans and the Middle East only wonder about who might have won the conflict had it evolved into an actual war. Well... less of a "who might have won" question and more of a "how long would the Yenilemists survive" one. After all, no matter how hard the East might attempt to catch up to the West through oil exports and economic development, the West had the unbeatable factor of being a part of the European Defense Commission, which included the continent's primary military power. And that's when we get to the Great Asian War. Alongside the United States, Germania and the rest of the Commission was busy fighting a war in the far east, which meant that they had less resources to spend on a potential war in Anatolia. In fact, the threat of a war there was one of the many factors why Germania was somewhat reluctant to commit so much to a war in the East, at least at first.
The plan for the invasion of the West was approved by Sefa Armagan on October of 1958. As the plan went, the fight would consist of a single offensive across the West, sweeping away the enemy forces and the few German units there before the Commission would have a chance to react. After Thrace is seized, the offensive would stop, and the Turks would contact Germany for a peace, offering an end in hostilities in exchange for a recognition of Yenilemist control over both Turkeys. As the plan posited, Germania would be unwilling to continue the fight or invite the rest of the United States to the conflict, lest they risk Turkey joining the Commonwealth and Anatolia becoming a front of the Great Asian War. Though definitely very ambitious, the plan at the very least had some logic behind it, and on November 14th, three days after the fall of Nijasure, while the eyes of the world were focused on the Deccan, the war began with the East Turkish shelling of Eskisehir. The Two Weeks War began.
The German response to the news was angry, but not surprised. It would only make sense for the East Turks, who had always held designs on all of Anatolia, to use the opportunity of the largest war in humankind to their advantage. And it's hard to hide large scale military maneuvers in response for an invasion, too. Nor were the Germans unaware of what the Turkish plan would likely be in this war - neither side was completely stupid. In response to West Turkish border units ending up blown back, surrounded and destroyed during the first few days of the war, Germania mobilized its reserve divisions, air wings and especially their air infantry, inherited from the War of the Danube. German mobile divisions flowed into West Turkey by air and soon by sea.
One thing the Turks predicted correctly was the German unwillingness to escalate the conflict by inviting the rest of the United States into the conflict - only Commission members ended up involved. So, in this regard, Germania was playing by the Turkish rules - and won by them. What the Yenilemist state predicted inaccurately was the German capabilities of bringing large numbers of troops to Anatolia in a matter of days - on November 19th, the East Turks suffered their first defeat near the city of Bursa, followed by a string of other defeats across the whole front at the hands of German, Greek and West Turkish soldiers. By the end of the first week, the East Turkish military had lost all of their momentum and began a wide, disorganized retreat. One unbeatable advantage the Germans and their allies held was aerial supremacy - their jet fighters easily tore through the 1940s fighters of their opposition and established complete control of the Anatolian skies, freely bombing the attacking and retreating Yenilemist soldiers. On the 27th of November, the front line returned back to the pre-war demarcation line, and Armagan's regime, having chipped away its teeth somewhat, began to sue for armistice.
Germania, unwilling to fight a protracted war in Anatolia while other matters were on their mind, agreed, putting the end to the Two Weeks War. A surprisingly peaceful conflict when compared to the Great Asian War at large - only about 30 thousand losses for both sides and one Turkish pride as casualties.
German and West Turkish forces advancing during the Two Weeks War
Now obviously, the Indian government did not take this well - however, during the last... year or so, things had turned pretty enigmatic in Lucknow. US espionage found it hard to uncover what was exactly going in within Amrit Ahuya's clique and what turns have been taken in Indian politics, so all they had to go with for making guesses were little tidbits of information here and there, various rumors, and the tiny pieces of information uncovered from Indian propagands. The Cult of the Trishula, the informal name for the clique of politicians and officers within the Lucknow government seeking to use the nuclear bomb for geopolitical gain, had been discredited, but not completely removed from power. News from the Netaji himself were brief and scarce, mostly limited to official statements or Sengupta speeches, which was so eerie that for a few weeks, the US believed that he had already been removed from power by an Aankhein coup. That wasn't the case, of course, and Ahuya's official appearance in Hyderabad to rouse up the morale of the soldiers after the fall of Bengaluru on January 1st removed those doubts. As far as the West knew, the Aankhein and the military were firmly loyal to the Netaji - few believed that the war against the US was so unwinnable that they already need to tie the noose, many still bet on a fallout between the West and the Chinese, or even a separate peace offer from one or the other. Or maybe they just believed that the war could be won the old fashion way.
How? Well, January 7th cleared out those doubts.
On a straight line from Panaji from Ongole, in six strategic locations, either important roads or railroads, the Indian army suddenly detonated six nuclear waste bombs, or radioactive "dirty" bombs, creating the situation known as the "Nuclear cage". The Western allies occupied the Deccan south of the line, but then it stopped. With the roads destroyed and most of the passages out of the peninsula contaminated by radiation, advancing north became temporarily impossible logistically. This was exactly what the Indians wanted, immediately beginning a process of reorganization within the entire front and raising additional dozens of divisions in preparation for the cage being "opened". At this point, few people cared that over 300 thousand civilians had to be evacuated from nuclear bombardment sites, and thousands ended up hospitalized for radiation-induced sickness, especially cancer.
The "cage" was not completely shut, of course, which meant that the gaps in between the fallout areas in the Panaji-Ongole line would become the primary sources of conflict in this period. The locations were jungles, farmlands, mountains, valleys and abandoned towns, and in this stage of the war, the Lithuanians excelled above all, especially the Lithuanian glider infantry, whose additional mobility proved to be one of the deciding factors in the skirmishes.
Battle of Bengaluru, December 1958
Outside of all that, the Great Asian War was... surprisingly calm. Both EASA and the Commonwealth were recovering and resting, war exhaustion having finally caught up to both. While the Indian totalitarian machine suppressed any dissent, it was much more open in China and its allies, where the reasoning for the continuation of the war was starting to be questioned. The same staredown and playing cat-and-mouse with rebels in Indochina continued in Southeast Asia. Indians and Acehi were continuing their slow island hopping campaign across Nusantara. Oceanic forces were still struggling in New Guinea.
All quiet on the eastern front, you might say.
The world in February of 1959
I wonder how much of the Indian and Chinese navies are left after the battles of the last three years. Also, how much effort have US occupation forces in India been making to reach out to the peoples of Southern India?
For all this I still think TTL is a better world than OTL. East Asia was spared European colonialism, and has prospered more as a result. Colonialism in Africa is lighter. Really, it's only the natives who got screwed over.
And the Russians, but this TL is one big Russia-screw and Lithuania-wank, so there's that.
The Nuclear Cage eh?
You can play that one as much as you want, no amount of propaganda is going to hide the fact you just used nukes in your own country. Also this is a massive loss agriculture.
The more updates go by, the closer I think we are to seeing an almost total collapse. The nukes were to build breathing room, but for what? Unless they can seize air superiority back, no counter attack can ever mass in a meaningful way. Combine this with the massive loss of agriculture, both to the US invaders and the radiation to crops and livestock, how do they expect to feed the millions that were relying on that food? This demand is only going to get worse as infrastructure continues to be destroyed across the whole country.
EDIT: We are looking at the largest humanitarian crisis in human history about to take place across China and India. The end of this war is going to be a total collapse of the economies for both. The world is going to enter a recession and billions will starve to death, if the US don't have a plan to deal with this.
You can play that one as much as you want, no amount of propaganda is going to hide the fact you just used nukes in your own country. Also this is a massive loss agriculture.
The more updates go by, the closer I think we are to seeing an almost total collapse. The nukes were to build breathing room, but for what? Unless they can seize air superiority back, no counter attack can ever mass in a meaningful way. Combine this with the massive loss of agriculture, both to the US invaders and the radiation to crops and livestock, how do they expect to feed the millions that were relying on that food? This demand is only going to get worse as infrastructure continues to be destroyed across the whole country.
EDIT: We are looking at the largest humanitarian crisis in human history about to take place across China and India. The end of this war is going to be a total collapse of the economies for both. The world is going to enter a recession and billions will starve to death, if the US don't have a plan to deal with this.
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This is a bit of an overdramatization, I think (nuclear waste bombs generally don't spread radioactive material farther than a few dozen kilometers, which is why I specified that the detonations were made in strategic roads and rail lines), but this move is indeed a double-edged sword, especially if repeated without thinking.
To be honest, in OTL, the concept of radioactive "dirty bombs" has been dismissed because they have been proven to be not as effective as originally imagined, but I decided to stretch plausibility here a little bit out of my personal love for the concept of weather-based warfare (also seen in silver iodide bombardment a few updates earlier).
I'm pretty sure I've already answered this question before. Yes, there has been reaching out to nations under Indian rule, but the US has been conservative in handing out promises for national sovereignty.