I see that force-draft modernization and central planning are doing wonders for economic growth in India (at the ezpense of the people and environment).
The Silver Knight, a Lithuania Timeline
- Thread starter Augenis
- Start date
I'm curious, in terms of military strength, roughly how powerful would you rate Britannia+Allies/Dominions/Colonies either in terms of the world or in the most important rating of compared to France?
Britannia is firmly a secondary power when compared to the rest of the world. They're no Commonwealth, France or Germania tier, but they are certainly no pushover either. Probably at a rank similar to countries such as Lithuania, Russia or Spain.
Oh boy, it's almost time for more Kaledosposting!
Damn, can't believe it's already been a year...
Damn, can't believe it's already been a year...
Except that it will be not '1940', but '23rd year of the Jiaqing era'. Even if the Shun China might have adopted TTL's version of the Gregorian calendar for the practical purposes, I bet they are still using the traditional date system in the official papers and governmental proclamations.
Chapter 91: Turning the Tide
It's a Christmas special!
...on Christmas Eve. Close enough.
Part 91: Turning the Tide (Jul-Dec 1940)
The Unitarian experiment in Visegrad was under siege.
The CUS was formed out of bloodshed and was in bloodshed for all of it's existence - and whatever you want to say, it's hard to disagree that being in constant war is not a good state of affairs for anyone. After ten years of economic and political hardship, the lands of Visegrad were immediately thrown into a bloody civil war, one which had already claimed many hundreds of thousands of casualties. In this state, economy did not and could not thrive - the nation was on the brink of famine, only food requisitions and high taxes were able to sustain the bloated army (not even talking about the countryside), while the industry lacked even the most basic equipment - much of the work in factories had to be done by hand. German air bomber raids destroyed much of the vital infrastructure in the country, destroying important roads and railways and thus utterly neutering transport capacity. Radical factions within the Unitarian Congress and underground anti-Unitarian organizations were eroding the morale of the populace and the army.
And they were up against Germania, the supreme land military power in Europe.
Gyorgy Koves and the far-blue Titanium Guards sensed this desperation across the Confederation and knew that this was their time to act. Gregor Samsa's government in Buda stood on feet of clay. During a particularly calm day at the front, August 11th, 1940, thus referred to as the August 11th Affair, the Titanium Guards in Buda were suddenly mobilized and activated. Armed thugs and youth surrounded the Chamber of the Unitarian Congress, formerly the Luxemburg Royal Palace, and presented a demand of surrender to Samsa and the deputies locked inside. However, Samsa was no idiot and moderately aware of the likelihood of this event earlier, so instead of giving a definite answer, he requested Koves and the Titanium Guards two hours to make his choice. Almost immediately during those two hours, the chairman phoned the garrison in Visegrad, and soon enough, a bloody street battle commenced between the loyalists and the paramilitary. Military units from the surroundings of the city were brought in as reinforcement, and the Titanium Guards soon found themselves overwhelmed. Koves fled the city and arrived to Cluj, a city in the east of the country whose population was loyal to his movement. The uneasy peace he and Samsa had was now gone.
Civil war between Samsa's loyalists and Koves's extremists instantly broke out, erupting across the entire nation and threatening it's existence on a fundamental level.
This is where a region mostly ignored by everyone up until now suddenly came to light...
One problem which the recently founded CUS had to solve was the Romani minority. The Romani, called everything from Gypsies to Tzigane, were an insular itinerant minority hailing from the 14th-15th centuries and dispersed all over Europe - however, they were the most visible in Visegrad. Here, somewhere from one to two million Romani lived, and they constantly resisted any attempts at integration or assimilation. Unlike the Litvaks in Lithuania, who largely ended up favored by the regime and became it's allies, the Romani were always viewed by the Visegradians with contempt. Even during the largely liberal democratic era, they were forcefully settled, denied the right to travel and suffered mass anti-ziganism. Once the revolution arrived, however, the problem of dealing with this independent and hardly integratable minority fell on the shoulders of the Unitarians - and Gregor Samsa opted for the painful solution. Szekely Land was designated as the Romani Autonomous Unitarian Republic (RAUR), a part of the Hungarian Unitarian Republic. all Romani living in the CUS instantly gained a warrant for deportation to the region (they were soon joined by deportees from Turkey, occupied Wallachia-Moldavia, Bulgaria and Slavonia, bumping up the total population of the autonomous region up to three million total), while the Hungarians and Romanians there were moved out.
This act was completely loathed by both Hungarian nationalists and by the Kovesians, and with the civil war ongoing, the Titanium Guards aimed to destroy the RAUR and cleanse this artificial territory of all Romani to bring it back to Hungary's fold. From September to October 1940, after the light defending forces in the mountainous overcrowded region were defeated by the paramilitaries and the rebel military units, a bloody period known as the Pharrajimos - destruction. Mass acts of violence and numerous atrocities were committed across the Autonomous Republic, forcing the Romani to flee the dense cities in mass and spread across the mountainous region of Transylvania. At least a hundred thousand people were hanged, shot into ditches and thrown into mass graves in this period of time - and it sparked a harsh response by the locals. Under the command of a rising ambitious leader, a former colonel in Wallachia-Moldavia of Romani ethnicity - Ion Voicu - the Romani began a guerilla campaign against the Titanium Guards. And not just them, but also the rest of the Commonwealth - the CUS and Turkey had only brought suffering, but now that the Romani nation was in one place, it was ready to fight back and claim it's independence.
Gyorgy Koves, commander of the Titanium Guards
Execution of Romani by the Titanium Guards during the Pharrajimos, late 1940
That was not the only way the Romani fought the harsh measures inflicted on their people.
News about the atrocities in Visegrad were quick to spread, disseminating through the underground and reachine the moderately large Romani minority in Germania, which immediately took the matter to the public and the government. News of the Pharrajimos and many other acts of violence, especially including the bloody denationalization process in the Balkans, took the German public by storm, causing a massive uproar in the press. The people of Europe were shocked - not as much shocked at the actual events, but more at the idea that the peoples of Visegrad, once inhabitants of a free, democratic, inclusive federation, have descended into such chaos, evil and slaughter of each other... Where did all of this pent up hatred come from?
The news of this massacre reached not just the public, but also the government of the kingdom of Germania, and after a mass leaflet and letter campaign and intense public pressure, Prime Minister Sternberg was forced to act. On October 21st, 1940, the German government released the Schönbrunn Charter, named after the royal palace where the document was signed - it declared that upon the liberation of the former Visegrad, all the nations and ethnicities living within it shall have a right to democratic self-determination and be guaranteed German protection and assurance that the events of the War of the Danube will never happen again. This was big - while Germania had flirted a little with the nationalist forces fighting the Unitarians before, the Charter was the final nail which solidified the German nation's new goal of liberating Central Europe, not refounding the multinational kingdom of the past. In follow-up treaties, Sternberg extended a hand of cooperation to the Republic of Poland, the most advanced of the nationalist rebellions, and Lolek and Bolek could not say no to such support. At the same time, the German government reached out to the Romani, the Bohemians, the Hungarians and the myriads of Slavic nations, both to them and their diaspora in Germania.
Meanwhile, Operation Schwarzburg continued, and with the CUS fighting among themselves and their economy in shambles, it was turning more and more into a walk in the park. An advance into the Hungarian Plain and Slovakia in August and September saw the fall of Buda and Pest, the two largest cities in the Confederation, as well as the German troops crossing the Danube with little resistance. In a number of cases, the Unitarian soldiers would throw down their arms and raise their hands upon the mere sight of the enemy landships. The Polish nationalists, although definitely not as well armed as the German army, were making their own offensives, too, and while the bulk of the CUS forces were busy dealing with Germania or each other, they liberated much of Galicia from enemy occupation. A historical event happened in late October - upon the fall of Debrecen, a temporary capital of the loyalist CUS after Buda's fall, the Reichsheer reported that among the many captives and prisoners of war, one is a particular individual known as Gregor Samsa. He, along with much of the loyalist Congress, failed to escape the city in time, before it was encircled, and thus fell in the grasp of the Germans. With the leadership of the CUS decapitated and held in Prague for the time being, and the Unitarians pretty much limited to Transylvania, the nation became even more of a chaotic mess than it was before, leaving Turkey pretty much alone on this front.
German landships advancing through the outskirts of Debrecen, November 1940
The Commonwealth, or at least one of their former members, were suffering losses in East Asia, too. Every single day, the Union of Japan would regret the attack on Okinawa more and more - as it turns out, the damage the Japanese fleet sustained made it unable to even protect it's home waters against the mighty Chinese armada, and within a matter of months, it got reduced to a few destroyers, frigates and submarines locked to the port of Edo. Meanwhile, the industrial base of the Shun Dynasty was mobilized to it's fullest to repair and replace the losses in Okinawa, more than making up for them in half a years' time. However, even with complete aerial and naval superiority, the Chinese hesitated to make a naval landing on the Home Islands - partially because it was seen as too costly of an endeavor, partially because the commanders of the Chinese army and navy were arguing over which side gets to plant the metaphorical flag and organize the invasion. Instead, China opted to erode the Japanese morale through economical warfare - a complete naval blockade was placed on the Home Islands, all convoys or merchant ships heading there were to be immediately turned back on sight, while the moderately sized air force, placed in bases in Korea, began a bombing campaign across the nation, targeting industry, ports and infrastructure.
Japan, a mountainous nation reliant on food imports, was immediately pushed to the brink of starvation and forced to enter harsh rationing, but despite that, the morale of the nation did not erode. That's what a long period of indoctrination and a "rally around the flag" effects does to one.
Africa was perhaps the only region where the Commonwealth had successes. Combined with a Turkish landing in Somalia, the Union of East Africa was sweeping across the region, uniting tribe after tribe under their wing and their King. A lot of that came to the lack of preparation by the French forces - while Ethiopia was a nation under their sphere in the past, the French colonial government paid little attention to the happenings and domestic situation there. As such, is it really a surprise that the colonial units whom the Ethiopians had to fight were understrength, equipped with outdated equipment and manned by local men who were not all that eager to serve a white overlord? However, the government in Paris was getting ready to fix this mistake - in late November, 1940, Director Theophile Clerisseau approved the formation of an expeditionary "Africa Corps", a motorized land force of 80 000 men, to be shipped to East Africa the next year to deal with the rebellion, one which was already resonating across the French colonial empire and causing unwelcome rumbles.
However, by far the fiercest battles of the year took place in Eastern Europe, where the culmination of Operation Pacas, the Battle of Nizhny Novgorod, took place. The Lithuanian Army through the entirety of the 2nd Army, up to 80 000 men, for this three months long offensive from early August to late October, facing off against, once again, hastily erected fortifications and a large Russian garrisoned contingent. While the battle started out with the Lithuanians having the upper hand, pressing into the suburbs of the 250 000 inhabitant large city, their offensive was lacking steam, while the Russian military learned from their mistakes of the past. Aircraft acquired from the Volgaks was preventing the Lithuanians from acquiring air superiority, while the heavily forested terrain and high levels of anti-air defenses turned back any attempts at glider assault. By the time September arrived, the first Volgak reinforcements arrived. The Communities of the Volga did not waste any time preparing for conflict - mere days after the Lithuanian declaration of war, Gennady Zinoviev pushed through the Conscription Act through the Council of Vostovsk, laying down the first concrete steps on creating a large standing Volgak military. This military saw it's baptism by blood at Nizhny-Novgorod, where, by the end of October, up to 40 000 soldiers from the Volga fought.
And when the first snow started falling in November, the supreme commander of the Lithuanian General Staff, Stasys Dirmantas, ordered to call the rest of the offensive off. With Nizhny-Novgorod standing strong and the Russians still in the shape to fight, it can safely be said that Operation Pacas was a failure. And the Vadas was furious - now, with winter approaching, the war shall have to be extended to 1942. Lithuania's capacity to wage war was waning, while the Slavs were still holding strong. Troops sent to occupy the Don Region were defeated by local militia and the regular Volgak militarY and, much like in the North, the front went to a standstill.
The blame was put on Stasys Dirmantas, and despite the general being one of the earliest allies of the Revival Front and perhaps the reason why they were even in power at all, he soon found himself in a ditch with a bullet in the back of his head. Since it was clearly obvious that the failures in the front came from a lack of loyalty and sabotage from the commanders, Petras Cvirka was moved to replace Dirmantas as the chief of staff - and Cvirka, who long since hoped to elevate the Green Berets to replace what he saw as the reactionary and "dangerous" Imperial military, couldn't have possibly been happier. The same could not be said about the officer corps itself - no, they were outright furious. It was probably at that moment - Dirmantas's execution and Cvirka's appointment - that the leaders of the military realized that no, the Revivalists were never going to "save" Lithuania, they are merely a gang of lucky madmen who will drag it to the ground.
But that is secondary. What the Lithuanians truly had to worry about was the horde of furious and vengeful Slavs to the east. Slavs who had finally managed to turn the tide of the War.
...on Christmas Eve. Close enough.
Part 91: Turning the Tide (Jul-Dec 1940)
The CUS was formed out of bloodshed and was in bloodshed for all of it's existence - and whatever you want to say, it's hard to disagree that being in constant war is not a good state of affairs for anyone. After ten years of economic and political hardship, the lands of Visegrad were immediately thrown into a bloody civil war, one which had already claimed many hundreds of thousands of casualties. In this state, economy did not and could not thrive - the nation was on the brink of famine, only food requisitions and high taxes were able to sustain the bloated army (not even talking about the countryside), while the industry lacked even the most basic equipment - much of the work in factories had to be done by hand. German air bomber raids destroyed much of the vital infrastructure in the country, destroying important roads and railways and thus utterly neutering transport capacity. Radical factions within the Unitarian Congress and underground anti-Unitarian organizations were eroding the morale of the populace and the army.
And they were up against Germania, the supreme land military power in Europe.
Gyorgy Koves and the far-blue Titanium Guards sensed this desperation across the Confederation and knew that this was their time to act. Gregor Samsa's government in Buda stood on feet of clay. During a particularly calm day at the front, August 11th, 1940, thus referred to as the August 11th Affair, the Titanium Guards in Buda were suddenly mobilized and activated. Armed thugs and youth surrounded the Chamber of the Unitarian Congress, formerly the Luxemburg Royal Palace, and presented a demand of surrender to Samsa and the deputies locked inside. However, Samsa was no idiot and moderately aware of the likelihood of this event earlier, so instead of giving a definite answer, he requested Koves and the Titanium Guards two hours to make his choice. Almost immediately during those two hours, the chairman phoned the garrison in Visegrad, and soon enough, a bloody street battle commenced between the loyalists and the paramilitary. Military units from the surroundings of the city were brought in as reinforcement, and the Titanium Guards soon found themselves overwhelmed. Koves fled the city and arrived to Cluj, a city in the east of the country whose population was loyal to his movement. The uneasy peace he and Samsa had was now gone.
Civil war between Samsa's loyalists and Koves's extremists instantly broke out, erupting across the entire nation and threatening it's existence on a fundamental level.
This is where a region mostly ignored by everyone up until now suddenly came to light...
One problem which the recently founded CUS had to solve was the Romani minority. The Romani, called everything from Gypsies to Tzigane, were an insular itinerant minority hailing from the 14th-15th centuries and dispersed all over Europe - however, they were the most visible in Visegrad. Here, somewhere from one to two million Romani lived, and they constantly resisted any attempts at integration or assimilation. Unlike the Litvaks in Lithuania, who largely ended up favored by the regime and became it's allies, the Romani were always viewed by the Visegradians with contempt. Even during the largely liberal democratic era, they were forcefully settled, denied the right to travel and suffered mass anti-ziganism. Once the revolution arrived, however, the problem of dealing with this independent and hardly integratable minority fell on the shoulders of the Unitarians - and Gregor Samsa opted for the painful solution. Szekely Land was designated as the Romani Autonomous Unitarian Republic (RAUR), a part of the Hungarian Unitarian Republic. all Romani living in the CUS instantly gained a warrant for deportation to the region (they were soon joined by deportees from Turkey, occupied Wallachia-Moldavia, Bulgaria and Slavonia, bumping up the total population of the autonomous region up to three million total), while the Hungarians and Romanians there were moved out.
This act was completely loathed by both Hungarian nationalists and by the Kovesians, and with the civil war ongoing, the Titanium Guards aimed to destroy the RAUR and cleanse this artificial territory of all Romani to bring it back to Hungary's fold. From September to October 1940, after the light defending forces in the mountainous overcrowded region were defeated by the paramilitaries and the rebel military units, a bloody period known as the Pharrajimos - destruction. Mass acts of violence and numerous atrocities were committed across the Autonomous Republic, forcing the Romani to flee the dense cities in mass and spread across the mountainous region of Transylvania. At least a hundred thousand people were hanged, shot into ditches and thrown into mass graves in this period of time - and it sparked a harsh response by the locals. Under the command of a rising ambitious leader, a former colonel in Wallachia-Moldavia of Romani ethnicity - Ion Voicu - the Romani began a guerilla campaign against the Titanium Guards. And not just them, but also the rest of the Commonwealth - the CUS and Turkey had only brought suffering, but now that the Romani nation was in one place, it was ready to fight back and claim it's independence.
Gyorgy Koves, commander of the Titanium Guards
Execution of Romani by the Titanium Guards during the Pharrajimos, late 1940
That was not the only way the Romani fought the harsh measures inflicted on their people.
News about the atrocities in Visegrad were quick to spread, disseminating through the underground and reachine the moderately large Romani minority in Germania, which immediately took the matter to the public and the government. News of the Pharrajimos and many other acts of violence, especially including the bloody denationalization process in the Balkans, took the German public by storm, causing a massive uproar in the press. The people of Europe were shocked - not as much shocked at the actual events, but more at the idea that the peoples of Visegrad, once inhabitants of a free, democratic, inclusive federation, have descended into such chaos, evil and slaughter of each other... Where did all of this pent up hatred come from?
The news of this massacre reached not just the public, but also the government of the kingdom of Germania, and after a mass leaflet and letter campaign and intense public pressure, Prime Minister Sternberg was forced to act. On October 21st, 1940, the German government released the Schönbrunn Charter, named after the royal palace where the document was signed - it declared that upon the liberation of the former Visegrad, all the nations and ethnicities living within it shall have a right to democratic self-determination and be guaranteed German protection and assurance that the events of the War of the Danube will never happen again. This was big - while Germania had flirted a little with the nationalist forces fighting the Unitarians before, the Charter was the final nail which solidified the German nation's new goal of liberating Central Europe, not refounding the multinational kingdom of the past. In follow-up treaties, Sternberg extended a hand of cooperation to the Republic of Poland, the most advanced of the nationalist rebellions, and Lolek and Bolek could not say no to such support. At the same time, the German government reached out to the Romani, the Bohemians, the Hungarians and the myriads of Slavic nations, both to them and their diaspora in Germania.
Meanwhile, Operation Schwarzburg continued, and with the CUS fighting among themselves and their economy in shambles, it was turning more and more into a walk in the park. An advance into the Hungarian Plain and Slovakia in August and September saw the fall of Buda and Pest, the two largest cities in the Confederation, as well as the German troops crossing the Danube with little resistance. In a number of cases, the Unitarian soldiers would throw down their arms and raise their hands upon the mere sight of the enemy landships. The Polish nationalists, although definitely not as well armed as the German army, were making their own offensives, too, and while the bulk of the CUS forces were busy dealing with Germania or each other, they liberated much of Galicia from enemy occupation. A historical event happened in late October - upon the fall of Debrecen, a temporary capital of the loyalist CUS after Buda's fall, the Reichsheer reported that among the many captives and prisoners of war, one is a particular individual known as Gregor Samsa. He, along with much of the loyalist Congress, failed to escape the city in time, before it was encircled, and thus fell in the grasp of the Germans. With the leadership of the CUS decapitated and held in Prague for the time being, and the Unitarians pretty much limited to Transylvania, the nation became even more of a chaotic mess than it was before, leaving Turkey pretty much alone on this front.
German landships advancing through the outskirts of Debrecen, November 1940
The Commonwealth, or at least one of their former members, were suffering losses in East Asia, too. Every single day, the Union of Japan would regret the attack on Okinawa more and more - as it turns out, the damage the Japanese fleet sustained made it unable to even protect it's home waters against the mighty Chinese armada, and within a matter of months, it got reduced to a few destroyers, frigates and submarines locked to the port of Edo. Meanwhile, the industrial base of the Shun Dynasty was mobilized to it's fullest to repair and replace the losses in Okinawa, more than making up for them in half a years' time. However, even with complete aerial and naval superiority, the Chinese hesitated to make a naval landing on the Home Islands - partially because it was seen as too costly of an endeavor, partially because the commanders of the Chinese army and navy were arguing over which side gets to plant the metaphorical flag and organize the invasion. Instead, China opted to erode the Japanese morale through economical warfare - a complete naval blockade was placed on the Home Islands, all convoys or merchant ships heading there were to be immediately turned back on sight, while the moderately sized air force, placed in bases in Korea, began a bombing campaign across the nation, targeting industry, ports and infrastructure.
Japan, a mountainous nation reliant on food imports, was immediately pushed to the brink of starvation and forced to enter harsh rationing, but despite that, the morale of the nation did not erode. That's what a long period of indoctrination and a "rally around the flag" effects does to one.
Africa was perhaps the only region where the Commonwealth had successes. Combined with a Turkish landing in Somalia, the Union of East Africa was sweeping across the region, uniting tribe after tribe under their wing and their King. A lot of that came to the lack of preparation by the French forces - while Ethiopia was a nation under their sphere in the past, the French colonial government paid little attention to the happenings and domestic situation there. As such, is it really a surprise that the colonial units whom the Ethiopians had to fight were understrength, equipped with outdated equipment and manned by local men who were not all that eager to serve a white overlord? However, the government in Paris was getting ready to fix this mistake - in late November, 1940, Director Theophile Clerisseau approved the formation of an expeditionary "Africa Corps", a motorized land force of 80 000 men, to be shipped to East Africa the next year to deal with the rebellion, one which was already resonating across the French colonial empire and causing unwelcome rumbles.
However, by far the fiercest battles of the year took place in Eastern Europe, where the culmination of Operation Pacas, the Battle of Nizhny Novgorod, took place. The Lithuanian Army through the entirety of the 2nd Army, up to 80 000 men, for this three months long offensive from early August to late October, facing off against, once again, hastily erected fortifications and a large Russian garrisoned contingent. While the battle started out with the Lithuanians having the upper hand, pressing into the suburbs of the 250 000 inhabitant large city, their offensive was lacking steam, while the Russian military learned from their mistakes of the past. Aircraft acquired from the Volgaks was preventing the Lithuanians from acquiring air superiority, while the heavily forested terrain and high levels of anti-air defenses turned back any attempts at glider assault. By the time September arrived, the first Volgak reinforcements arrived. The Communities of the Volga did not waste any time preparing for conflict - mere days after the Lithuanian declaration of war, Gennady Zinoviev pushed through the Conscription Act through the Council of Vostovsk, laying down the first concrete steps on creating a large standing Volgak military. This military saw it's baptism by blood at Nizhny-Novgorod, where, by the end of October, up to 40 000 soldiers from the Volga fought.
And when the first snow started falling in November, the supreme commander of the Lithuanian General Staff, Stasys Dirmantas, ordered to call the rest of the offensive off. With Nizhny-Novgorod standing strong and the Russians still in the shape to fight, it can safely be said that Operation Pacas was a failure. And the Vadas was furious - now, with winter approaching, the war shall have to be extended to 1942. Lithuania's capacity to wage war was waning, while the Slavs were still holding strong. Troops sent to occupy the Don Region were defeated by local militia and the regular Volgak militarY and, much like in the North, the front went to a standstill.
The blame was put on Stasys Dirmantas, and despite the general being one of the earliest allies of the Revival Front and perhaps the reason why they were even in power at all, he soon found himself in a ditch with a bullet in the back of his head. Since it was clearly obvious that the failures in the front came from a lack of loyalty and sabotage from the commanders, Petras Cvirka was moved to replace Dirmantas as the chief of staff - and Cvirka, who long since hoped to elevate the Green Berets to replace what he saw as the reactionary and "dangerous" Imperial military, couldn't have possibly been happier. The same could not be said about the officer corps itself - no, they were outright furious. It was probably at that moment - Dirmantas's execution and Cvirka's appointment - that the leaders of the military realized that no, the Revivalists were never going to "save" Lithuania, they are merely a gang of lucky madmen who will drag it to the ground.
But that is secondary. What the Lithuanians truly had to worry about was the horde of furious and vengeful Slavs to the east. Slavs who had finally managed to turn the tide of the War.
Lyrics from the song "Reign of Terror" by the Russian-Vespucian Second Avantgarde group "Knyaz Vorskloy"
The sky is on fire, burning our homes,
Eyes of the west turn to east!
Driven by greed and an urge to destroy,
Merciless, killing your own...
A slave to the power, a slave to your goal,
Ruthlessly ruling the east...
Your reign of terror must come to an end!
Fighting your unholy war!
Now you will pay, we'll charge you our way!
Sooner or later we'll get you!
Don't try to hide in your holes underground:
Just like an insect, we'll smoke you right out!
Night time, prime time!
Ancient legacy of crime!
One day we will make you pay for...
Night time, prime time!
Law and order pays the fine!
Genocide you cannot justify!..
The sky is on fire, burning our homes,
Eyes of the west turn to east!
Driven by greed and an urge to destroy,
Merciless, killing your own...
A slave to the power, a slave to your goal,
Ruthlessly ruling the east...
Your reign of terror must come to an end!
Fighting your unholy war!
Now you will pay, we'll charge you our way!
Sooner or later we'll get you!
Don't try to hide in your holes underground:
Just like an insect, we'll smoke you right out!
Night time, prime time!
Ancient legacy of crime!
One day we will make you pay for...
Night time, prime time!
Law and order pays the fine!
Genocide you cannot justify!..
How can Nagai invade Korea when his navy has practically ceased to exist outside of a few destroyers and subs holed up in Edo, Chinese planes are bombing Japan 24/7, and China is starving out the Japanese.
Aside from General Dirmantas, have any Lithuanian generals been purged by the Revivalist regime for getting defeated?
Republicanism in Africa
Republicanism in Africa (1940)
French West Africa
Dakar was a city well-accustomed to the spotlight. Though Benin City lay outside of its orbit, and indeed had an orbit of its own— Bangui, the lynchpin of French control in Central Africa, was supplied from Benin City and had a community of Beninese traders— and other ports like Libreville [1] prospered in their own quiet way, Dakar was king in the lands once known as the Guinea Coast. The city contained contingents from all the surrounding regions: Cote-de-Poivre, the Mande lands of the south, the western Toucouleur. Mosques and cathedrals sprouted from the fertile soil of newly-built neighborhoods. Railroads snaked around the land, while coaling stations and port facilities abutted the sea. Construction materials for roads and rails came in, which enabled more cash-crops like peanuts to be transported to the ports, which gave the French authorities purchasing power to improve the port facilities and bring in more cotton clothes, alcohol, machinery, and weapons. All this commerce was, of course, taxed by the increasingly wealthy administration.
The Dakar Post Office.
Dakar was a prosperous city, even if more of that wealth was spent on building new playgrounds for the French community instead of improving the welfare of the city as a whole— but this injustice became an impetus for the development of politics. The French government, in a spirit of democratic magnanimity, had allowed the formation of African organizations even before the Great European War. At the war’s end, the signing of the Charter of Dakar in 1921, which allowed the limited election of African deputies who served in an advisory role to the Estates-General and helped the sub-committees on colonial rule to create political and economic policy, led to a veritable explosion of politics. Reformist Muslim imams, Christian preachers, secular activists for autonomy, and more all vied for the minds of the limited electorate and, anticipating a future expansion of the electorate, the hearts of the population at large. The Unitarians, separatists, and other parties viewed apprehensively by the French campaigned more quietly, in esoteric meetings at cafes and underground rallies. And so it came to be that, even as walls, ditches, and forts sprang up around Bangui in expectation of a Unitarian incursion from the east, the attention of the French and later the world would land squarely on Dakar.
A public water well in Dakar.
The December Riots began with a “demonstration of solidarity” with the peoples of East Africa. The local Unitarian parties led a march through the poorer neighborhoods of the city, the ones that never recovered from the French Flu and associated disasters. This was, naturally, an incredibly provocative move— almost designed to engender violence— and the French police was on high alert. Before they could do anything, though, another party had already entered the fray. Republican counter-protesters met the Unitarians, shouting anti-authoritarian slogans and holding signs with photographs from the East African front with depictions of Ethiopian and Turkish crimes against the Somalis. The Republicans drew from poor neighborhoods as well, but on average tended to have higher hopes for the future and greater contact with the cosmopolitan middle class. The rank-and-file Republicans tended to be Wolof natives of the land and lived closer to the coast, while the Unitarians were immigrants from other areas who lived on the periphery of the city. In other words, the antagonism between the two groups transcended politics. A thrown stone or fist kicked off a day of pugilism in the streets of Dakar. In the confusion, young boys settled scores with their bullies and the “fraternités du travail”— once a kind of proto-labor union, these organizations were quickly evolving into their modern-day roles as cartels and gangs— balanced their accounts. The French police were at a loss. Though they could not condone the Unitarians, they could not support the Republicans— who were, if not separatist, at least desired autonomy— and separating the criminal element from either would be a task indeed. After two days, the police finally intervened, with explicit orders from the higher-ups to leave the Republicans alone and on crushing the Unitarians. Two days and several charred houses later, the riots were over. Unitarian leaders were charged with political crimes and sentenced accordingly. Republican leaders were publicly censured and fined, and privately told to stop turning their parties into private militias or face stricter punishment. The events of the month proved that Republicanism was the more effective vehicle for change even from a purely pragmatic point of view. As Somali refugees filtered in by sea and land and the extent of the world’s knowledge of Unitarian crimes in East Africa grew, Republican organizations would even extend their reach into formerly Unitarian neighborhoods on the periphery of the city. But the Unitarians were not gone. Embittered by their losses in the riots and the uneven hand of French “legal justice”, they retreated and, in the decades to come, prepared to be a very sharp thorn in the Republicans’ side.
[1] OTL: Monrovia.
Portuguese South Africa
The outlawing of slavery across the Portuguese Empire in the 1840s was of earthshaking importance for the dominions of Southern Africa. Without slavery, neither Portuguese Angola, the Cape Colony, nor any of the lands in between would have developed as they did.
The Portuguese arrived in the lands of the Kongo Kingdom in the 1400s, while on their way to India. Though relations were initially quite cordial, the growth of Manuela changed things. The great colony in the New World had an insatiable appetite for slaves, and the people of Portugal generally preferred emigration to Manuela over Africa. After the missionaries successfully completed their goal of converting the Manikongo, the ruler of the kingdom, to Catholicism, newer Portuguese immigrants to Africa in the 1500s and 1600s were disproportionately poor peasants or exiled convicts called degredados. Once they landed in the environs of Kongo, they took up the ignoble calling of the slave trade. Kongolese attempts to stop the slave trade by expelling the Portuguese were initially successful, but an expeditionary force from Manuela broke the Kongolese army’s back. Kongo survived into the 1700s, but royal authority ranged from shaky to nonexistent and Portuguese influence seemed unstoppable. The kingdom of Ndongo to Kongo’s south, however, was even less lucky. The Portuguese colony of Angola, headquartered at the fortified port of Luanda, steadily encroached on Ndongo territory until even titular independence was lost, though a collection of Ndongo nobles escaped eastward and took over the inland kingdom of Matamba. By 1700, the Angola Colony stretched far to the south, with secondary centers at Benguela and Baleias [1] that grew into slave ports rivaling the older settlement of Luanda. Changes in the 1800s, including Manuelan independence (and, well, Manuelization [2]), the abolition of the slave trade, and inland migrations, forced Angola to restructure. Ivory, wax, copal, and oil were gathered inland and fetched a profit on the coast. Enterprising Portuguese settlers built coffee plantations, capitalizing on growing European appetites for the drink. Africans played a part in this restructuring as well— the Ovimbundu peoples, who migrated to the hinterlands of Benguela between the 1500s and 1700s, had strong contacts with the inland Lunda and Chokwe. They were the middlemen in the transport of ivory, wax, and other products of the inland gathering economy. In return, the Ovimbundu kept Portuguese gun manufacturers in business by buying weapons and selling them at a markup to the Chokwe, who used them to subjugate the Lunda in the late 1800s. Southeast of the Ovimbundu lands, the Ovambo set up the kingdom of Kwanyama in areas outside the direct control of the Portuguese. Ovimbundu arrived in the new state as immigrants and captives, helping the Kwanyama state improve its agricultural capabilities on the edge of the Namib Desert. Baleias was perhaps the best example of the prospects Africans had under an administration that, while still hostile to them, no longer sought to enslave them and ship them to another continent. In Baleias, Portuguese control existed alongside Ovimbundu traders with contacts in the north, Ovambo farmers, and Herero pastoralists that sold their cattle in the markets. The creole of Baleias, an odd mix of Standard Portuguese, Ovimbundu, and Herero, became a prestige dialect of sorts, steadily pushing aside the competing creoles of Benguela and Cabo do Destino [3].
Further to the south, the Portuguese Cape Colony developed along a parallel but unmistakably different track. The beginnings of permanent Portuguese settlement in the areas and contact with the local Khoikhoi peoples dated to the 1500s. Relations were initially quite good, with the Khoikhoi proving amenable to trade. The chief of some larger Khoikhoi clans permitted the establishment of trade fairs in their territories. These fairs were initially seasonal settlements, but developed into permanent establishments of mixed populations. Each trade fair was ruled by a captain, who was elected by the Portuguese population and whose appointment was confirmed by the Khoikhoi chief who permitted the fair’s continued existence. The captains were expected to preside over the fairs’ proceedings, ensure justice for Portuguese and Africans, and deliver tribute and gifts to the Khoikhoi chiefs. As time passed and the captains grew confident in their power, they did none of the above. Instead, they started to intervene in the 1600s’ and 1700s’ internecine struggles of the Khoikhoi clans. A captain might offer to call the population under his charge to fight on behalf of one clan in exchange for a land grant, and then offer to switch sides in exchange for slaves. In this way, the lands beyond Cabo de Destino came to be dominated by massive landholdings called prazos, ruled by large clans of Portuguese conquistadores. The owners of the prazos ruled as the successors of the Khoikhoi chiefs. They exacted tribute from the minor clans under their rule, and decided which pastoralists would graze on which pastures. All this depended on the judicious use of force, which the prazo owners could bring to bear using retinues of slaves. Many of the conquistadorespurchased slaves from Angola, and trained them into soldiers of private armies. These armies grew during the Khoikhoi clan wars, where the losing clan might find some or all of its members added to the retinues of the conquistadores who aided the winning clan. While most of the Bantu slaves of Angola were used to begin placing the land under cultivation, and the free Khoikhoi were allowed to continue their pastoral lifestyle as long as they gave up part of their herds and gathered gold as tribute, most Khoikhoi and some Bantu slaves saw service as soldiers or were taught new trades as household workers, boatmen, carpenters, and metalsmiths.
The Portuguese government disapproved of the prazo owners’ near-feudal control of the African population and the unforgivably high autonomy that these dynasts, encamped in their kraals and guarded by their slave retinues, enjoyed from the official administration in Cabo de Destino. But there wasn’t much that they could do. The prazo owners were very effective at defending and expanding the zone of Portuguese control in the Cape, and their forces could be called upon to defend the Cape from other Europeans or Africans. The prazo owners’ response to the migrations of the Nguni people from the 1700s to the 1800s proved this point. The southward movement of the Nguni, a collection of Bantu agricultural tribes from Zambezia, disrupted the Khoikhoi society of the Eastern Cape. Aspiring conquistadores rushed in, and new prazos sprung up in the hinterland of Porto de Natal [4]. The Nguni migration and the subsequent splitting of the Nguni into the Xhosa, Zulu, and other groups had not been stopped entirely, but the new arrivals had learned from experience that the Portuguese ruled the land. The smaller prazos, unable to defend against the migrating Nguni or the slave armies of the larger prazos, were quickly gobbled up, and the society of the Eastern Cape grew to resemble a less pastoral, more agricultural version of the West.
The abolition of slavery came alongside the reorganization of the Cape settlements into municipalities with town councils. Though the prazo owners would have to give up the practice of slavery, they managed to get away with keeping their farm workers by paying them in small amounts of Cape currency (Portugal had no minimum wage). The slave-soldiers were retained as hired guards for the farms and pastures that had become vital to the Cape’s economy. Society grew more open in some ways— even if most former slaves chose to stay where they were, some of them saved up their Cape currency and took it to new towns and older cities like Cabo de Destino and Porto de Natal. Monetization of the economy proved to be a great boon. But the prazo owners still retained a kind of feudal control over the inland areas’ economy, society, and politics. An employer might not be your master, but he is still your boss.
A Republica, one of Sao Martinho’s first newspapers.
Republicanism came to the attention of Portuguese South Africa [5] in the late 1800s, with the successful example of the Sao Martinho Democracy. This Afro-Manuelan democracy, established in the 1820s after the dissolution of Sequeira’s Manuelan state, initially had an uncertain future. Though this neighbor to the south, the liberal republic of Manuela-Pernambuco, shared an ideological affinity with Sao Martinho, there was much justified fear that Pernambuco might, after failing to conquer the Empire of Manuela-Rio Grande, re-establish white supremacy in the north instead. This failed to happen because Pernambuco, sensing its isolation in a continent filled with monarchies like the Inca and Rio Grande, decided to establish diplomatic relations with Sao Martinho, which would have proved very difficult to conquer in any case. In return, Sao Martinho gave up its claims on inland Manuelan territory to Pernambuco. Sao Martinho also strengthened links with the Dominion of New France, and kept itself economically afloat with the sale of timber, livestock, and coffee to the French. Sugar would have required the reintroduction of slavery, and was allowed to fall by the wayside as logging and herding, seen as the vocations of free men, came to dominate the rural economy. In the urban centers of Belem and Sao Luis and the capital of Fortaleza, literacy spread beyond the mestiço population as Catholic schools (which the initial slave rebels had been lukewarm towards) spread and created a new electorate that could at least conceptualize the republic form of government and their role in it. The nation was poor and its government was weak outside the cities, but it was functional and, with the immigration of skilled Africans from other New World states like the VFS, steadily growing. However, Sao Martinho did not forget its roots. Most of the ancestral population of Sao Martinho was composed of Angolan slaves, and despite Portuguese controls on immigration and emigration it was not uncommon for Martinians to visit Angola and vice versa. It was not long until Republican books, printed in the Portuguese of Fortaleza or translated from the Dutch of New Amsterdam, were spotted by the Portuguese authorities in soon-to-be-alarming numbers.
Lourenco Marques. His impact on South African history would not be fully apparent until later.
The Congress of Portuguese Africans, organized in 1933 by a wealthy mestiço named Lourenco Marques, was jokingly said to have doubled the population of Baleias. However, it certainly did bring it a massive number of teachers, civil servants, priests, farmers, and more from across South Africa. Though Marques got the permit for the meeting from Portuguese authorities by arguing that the Congress was a meeting of quiet reformers, who would draw up a list of gentle recommendations that the Portuguese governors in Luanda and Cabo could accept or refuse, the Congress quickly developed on a more interesting path. Republicanism was, far and away, the most organized of the modern ideologies in South Africa— a reflection of Sao Martinho’s influence. However, no one could quite agree on how to implement it.
Lourenco Marques seems to have envisioned a Republican federation of all South Africa, with its capital at Baleias instead of the more traditional centers of power at Luanda and Cabo. However, Angola and the Cape Colony developed in very different ways, and one of the first things the delegates realized at the Congress was how different the peoples of the two colonies were in culture, language, appearance, and perhaps even destiny. Some important parts of the Portuguese dominions, like the gold boomtown of Nova Lisboa [6] with its peculiar resistance to the prazo owners' encroachments, were entirely unrepresented. To this was added the additional layer of complexity in the opinion of the native kingdoms’ delegates. The Kongo Kingdom— which might have been annexed by Portugal, had the Spanish government not forced Portugal to keep it as an internally independent protectorate and keep the mouth of the Congo River, which ran through Kongo, open to trade— mostly desired to be left alone. The Bakongo people had their own identity, and felt little need to take on a South African or Angolan one. The Kingdom of Matamba, ruled by descendants of the old Ndongo royal family, was similar but for one thing. The Mbundu people, who were the majority of the Kingdom’s people, had irredentist tendencies. Unlike the more isolationist Kongo, Matamba desired active expansion. The King of Matamba, Francisco III, had plans of reuniting the Mbundu lands by conquering the old lands of Ndongo from Portuguese Angola, and leaving the rest of Angola to its fate. The old lands of Ndongo included the Angolan capital of Luanda, and the idea of integrating the cosmopolitan city into a new pan-Mbundu state gave some of Francisco’s advisors pause. Nevertheless, Matamba’s course was set against that of the nascent Angolan nationalists. Whether Luanda would be Matamban, Angolan, South African, or Portuguese remained to be seen.
[1] OTL: Walvis Bay. “Baleias” means “whales” in Portuguese.
[2] In OTL, we’d call it Balkanization.
[3] OTL: Cape Town.
[4] OTL: Durban.
[5] The term “South Africa” has come to represent a much larger area than in OTL— in theory, it encompasses the entire Portuguese zone of control.
[6] OTL: Johannesburg.
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There were a bunch of lieutenant officers close to Dirmantas who ended up dismissed, but no figure as important as Dirmantas has gotten the ditch yet.