Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree: A Nineteen Eighty-Four Timeline
- Thread starter Roberto El Rey
- Start date
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- Tags
- 1984 book derivative dystopia orwell
Will Rupert Murdoch and other people who were Oceanian leaders in "Images of 1984" be prominent figures in Airstrip One's Inner Party, I may ask?
Indeed you may. Given the fact that this TL involves the entire world going psycho and "Images" did not, I will have Murdoch stay in his native Australia to influence events there. A couple of the other figures featured in "Images" will have a part to play in Britain, though I haven't yet determined the specific role of each figure.
falsification of past records: Goldstein's shop
Permanent warfare and Military-first policies: USSR
Any other examples?
Here's a few:
- Three-sided war: Axis/Coalition/North Sea
- Ingsoc incorporating the worst of different socialistic ideologies: Mosley/Blair's tour of the continent during which they are exposed to Soviet Bolshevism, Italian Fascism, Swedish National Socialism and Catalonian Anarcho-socialism
- Oceania: The "Oceanic Sphere"
- English Socialism: Goldstein's and Mosley's envisioned "British Socialism", which will take its ultimate name due to conflict between the English and Scottish strains of the ideology
So, how would you reconcile the fact the Oceanian ideology is apparently "IngSoc" with the fact the (former) US is the center of Oceania? Personally, I'd go with the idea they call it different names in different parts of Oceania.
Aside from all the OTL Nazi habits that served to partially inspire Ingsoc, one bit of foreshadowing I was going for was that after the November Putsch, the Völkisher Beobachter became the most reliable source of news in the minds of the German people, showing how the Nazis essentially gained control of the truth even before they were in power, allowing them to impose their ideas on the German people even without controlling the state organs.
Even in real life, a dead guy is technically the leader of North Korea (Kim il-Sung is the Eternal President of North Korea).
And these variations would form independently of each other..
For all I know, this TL might be similar to that given what's going on around Eurasia, albeit in a more plausible manner.
49
I'm glad this TL is surging in activity at this particular moment--It's good timing for me to finally get this post up after two weeks of nothing.
Funny you should mention that, this post involves the birth of another central tenet of societal organization in 1984. It should get pretty obvious by the end.
April 10, 1940
Henry Wallace put down his glass. "Look, Fiorello, I sympathize. You know I do. But what can we do? What can any of us do?" he asked, indicating the whole group. "You and I are the only ones who have cabinet posts; you three aren't even in the cabinet". The three Socialists across the table nodded in acknowledgement. "And our departments are hardly the most important ones. How do you expect Thomas to listen to the Secretary of Commerce and the Secretary of Agriculture when everyone else in his cabinet is telling him what he wants to hear?"
"Earl, Bill and I may not be cabinet members," James P. Cannon interjected, "but we have the President's ear. He's always concerned about maintaining support from all ends of our party, and I can tell you with confidence that our faction is firmly in support of the war." Earl Browder and William Z. Foster winced imperceptibly at Cannon's mention of "our faction". Not noticing, Cannon took a brief reprieve to swallow in a mouthful of ale, then continued. "One of the President's main reservations about entering the war is that the Party might not renominate him for a second term. If we can convince our Party of the need for war, there won't be much standing in the way of a declaration."
"Your party's big," LaGuardia pointed out, "and it's getting bigger. What is it, a thousand new members a day? How do you figure to convince that many people to change their minds?"
Bill Foster spoke up. "That's our prime concern. With so many differing points of view entering our Party it becomes near-impossible to lead it effectively, or establish a coherent program. But if we gain a firm, central control over the Party ideology, it'll become much easier to convince the rank-and-file to support the war." Now it was Cannon's turn to wince. A single central authority deciding the platform of a party that housed everyone from social democrats to militant Marxists? That wasn't the Socialist Party he'd joined when he was eighteen. Still, there had to be some way to turn Socialist sympathies toward war.
"Even if you do manage to get a handle on the Party," opined the skeptical Wallace, "it will take years to shift the views of the electorate in such a disparate direction. By then, I hope, the war will be over and the issue will be moot." Earl Browder rested his gin and tonic on the rickety wooden table as he pondered an answer. "If we increased our power within the cabinet, we would have a more direct influence on the President's decisions. As you said, there's not much chance of swaying him when everyone in his cabinet is an isolationist; but if more of his advisors have a more sensible point of view, he'll be more likely to listen to them."
LaGuardia leaned forward. "And how do you suppose we'll increase our power in the cabinet? We don't control the appointments, and we can hardly create new cabinet positions." Browder wanted to glance at Foster, but the latter was too busy responding. "We'll convince the President to sack his secretaries and install some more sensible men to take their place". LaGuardia's lips were blocked by a glass of Belgian stout, but his eyes asked the question as clearly as they could: And how in the hell do we do that?
Foster words left a hole in the air as they dissipated, and for several seconds it seemed that the near-deserted bar had become a vacuum--no one spoke, no one moved, and, it seemed, no one thought. Finally a sentence threaded through the empty the space from James Cannon's mouth: "The important thing for now is that we stay united. We don't have a hope of shifting the balance in the cabinet unless we work as one man. And we all agree that we need to work together to get this country to war, don't we?" The silence that followed was nothing like the previous one: this one, though it only lasted a few seconds, hung dense and heavy like a humid cloud, churning in silent thunder.
"Yes, we do." The three words from Wallace were a bolt of lightning, slicing the silent cloud apart and bringing an instant's light to the deep suspicions in the heart of each man.
Then, suddenly, the cloud disappeared. Browder opened his mouth. "I'm glad we're in agreement," he announced as he stood up from his seat. "I should be getting home. My wife's in New York and I've got to get the boys to bed". It was an unconvincing lie, but it hardly mattered. No one was particularly interested in allowing this discussion to drone on. Foster, Browder and Cannon made for the door while Wallace and LaGuardia drained their glasses. As the three piled into Browder's dark-green Dodge they watched as the two moderates were carried off in a White House limousine--even the lesser cabinet members were entitled to a few official amenities.
As the sedan rolled cautiously down the road, the bar disappeared behind the corner of a brick edifice. Cannon spoke up to his comrades in the front: "I hope we all agree that we can't allow those two reactionaries or anyone like them to continue to influence the President." Foster and Browder gave subdued nods. "For all their posturing about labor empowerment they've got nothing but contempt for the working man. If Thomas ever finds his balls and decides to really go after the hogs on Wall Street, those two will be the first to try and goad him back to defending capitalism. They're capitalists to the core, and once the people wise up to the tyranny of the banks and the marketeers and start rising up in arms, that pair of con men will sidle right up with their cronies and stand in the way of the progress of history."
Foster replied: "We can't get rid of them just yet. They're the only cabinet members who favor the war--"
"For bourgeois reasons," Cannon butted in.
"Reasons aside, without them we have no chance of getting close to the rest of the cabinet. We'll probably have to leave them for last." Cannon grumbled in disappointment. "Well, I suppose I don't care who we start with, so long as we get 'em all--Norris, Wheeler, Lewis, La Follette, and those two stooges, of course. Come to think of it, who exactly are we going to have replacing the cronies we dispose of?"
"Well, Socialists, obviously," said Browder behind the wheel.
"Ones who want war?"
"Naturally."
"What about us?" asked Cannon.
A pause. "I'm sure a few opportunities will present themselves as we shift the balance of the executive. Seeing as we represent such prominent facti--such a prominent faction of the Party, I'd say it's only natural we have some official representation in the executive branch."
"Unquestionably," answered the well satisfied James Cannon, just before the car slowed to a halt in front of a familiar domicile.
"Thanks, Earl," Cannon said as he yanked the door latch and climbed out of the car. As he retreated inside his abode, the green Dodge rolled on.
"I suppose we'll have to wait a while before we kick him from the Party," opined a disappointed Browder once they had cleared a suitable distance.
"What LaGuardia said in the bar was correct, pains me though it does to say it," replied Foster. "Even after we gain control of the Party, it'll take time to subdue all of the counterrevolutionary factions. They'll kick us out of the leadership if we don't give at least the outward appearance of tolerating pluralist viewpoints."
"And for that," Browder admitted, "we've got to keep sods like Cannon at least thinking they're in charge of policy."
"It certainly doesn't mean we'd have to give them any real say in deciding the Party platform," reassured Foster.
"I should hope not. If it were up to him and his ilk," complained Browder, "they'd have us shipping guns and cash to wild gangs of fanatical mountain men in the Congo twice a month in blind hopes we'd gain a bankrupt ally on the other side of the planet--all the while standing by as the revolution at home is highjacked by bourgeois opportunists, with no arm of people's enforcement to safeguard it." The surprise of nearly colliding with an oncoming Buick snapped Browder straight out of the spell he was falling into; as he jerked the wheel to the right he scolded himself for getting lost in another web of frustrated dogmatism.
"Not to mention his preposterous fear of bureaucracy," Browder mocked in a near-gossipy tone after he had righted the car. "I really would like to see him try and act out his fantasies of administering a socialist state without using the state."
"That could be useful for us, though," opined Foster. "If he's so afraid of letting the state outgrow its boots, we might manage to persuade him not take up a portfolio in Thomas's cabinet. We might even find a way discourage him from getting too involved in the Party's organizational structure--that'll make it a lot easier to slam the doors on him and his friends when the time comes."
"If we can get close enough to the President before the convention in June, that time might come sooner than we expected. Perhaps," Browder hoped optimistically, a few poorly-timed speeches by a few poorly-placed individuals could go a long way toward fostering long-term unity, cohesion and accord within the Socialist Party--and it could be the beginning of the end for counterrevolutionary factionalism within the Party of popular revolution."
Foster had little interest in entertaining such notions. "Don't kid yourself, Earl, that's wishful thinking. You heard what LaGuardia said--the Party's being flooded with uneducated simpletons who don't have the slightest grasp of Marxist theory, nor a hint of foresight of revolutionary struggle. A factional war within our Party is the only way to save the Revolution from devolving into a disordered, degenerated disaster--and if it came tonight, we'd be ripped to shreds. Cannon, Lovestone and their Menshevites would mobilize the unwashed hordes against us, tell them we're undemocratic or counterrevolutionary. They wouldn't have a clue what it meant, of course, but it wouldn't matter--we'd be wiped out in an instant, and Cannon would be free to ravage the Party platform with his bullshit ideas of permanent revolution."
Browder's brow wrinkled. Was Bill saying that there was no hope, that Cannon and his ignorant rabble were forever doomed to win out in the end? Surely he couldn't be saying that. Could he?
Browder had to make sure. He kept his eyes on the road, but the convergent brow, the downturned lips--the expression of imminent despair was clear from any angle. He turned his head ever so slightly to glance at his passenger, the tendons in his neck tightening with creeping unsureness. Finally he asked the question. "How do we win?"
Foster leaned in kind, and in a scarce voice he answered. "We need an inner circle." He emphasized those last two words as though they defined his entire viewpoint. "We build a clique of Party members who will be absolutely loyal to the revolution. They will allow themselves no sympathy whatsoever for the leeching bourgeoisie. They will support us without question." He enunciated every word, knowing that this message was far too important for his ally not to comprehend. "We build this inner circle, and we put its members in every high-ranking position we can. When every Secretary is one of ours, when the National Committee, the Youth League, the Newspapers and the Membership Office are all under our control, the control of our inner circle, then we go to war against the outer fringes of the Party. And when every leadership office in the Party is ours, it doesn't matter how many ignorant sheep Cannon finds to follow him--we can't lose." Browder nodded slowly. The idea was bold--a decisive, central executive dominant over a disorganized fringe.
"Tomorrow," Browder proposed, "we begin."
At that moment, a conspiracy was born.
Note: OTL, James P. Cannon was a prominent Trotskyist, and Earl Browder and William Z. Foster were well-known Stalinists in the Communist Party, but ATL, with the Socialist Party far, far more successful than it ever was OTL, the Communist Party USA has essentially merged with the Socialists, making the Socialist Party's radical wing all the stronger.
Funny you should mention that, this post involves the birth of another central tenet of societal organization in 1984. It should get pretty obvious by the end.
April 10, 1940
Henry Wallace put down his glass. "Look, Fiorello, I sympathize. You know I do. But what can we do? What can any of us do?" he asked, indicating the whole group. "You and I are the only ones who have cabinet posts; you three aren't even in the cabinet". The three Socialists across the table nodded in acknowledgement. "And our departments are hardly the most important ones. How do you expect Thomas to listen to the Secretary of Commerce and the Secretary of Agriculture when everyone else in his cabinet is telling him what he wants to hear?"
"Earl, Bill and I may not be cabinet members," James P. Cannon interjected, "but we have the President's ear. He's always concerned about maintaining support from all ends of our party, and I can tell you with confidence that our faction is firmly in support of the war." Earl Browder and William Z. Foster winced imperceptibly at Cannon's mention of "our faction". Not noticing, Cannon took a brief reprieve to swallow in a mouthful of ale, then continued. "One of the President's main reservations about entering the war is that the Party might not renominate him for a second term. If we can convince our Party of the need for war, there won't be much standing in the way of a declaration."
"Your party's big," LaGuardia pointed out, "and it's getting bigger. What is it, a thousand new members a day? How do you figure to convince that many people to change their minds?"
Bill Foster spoke up. "That's our prime concern. With so many differing points of view entering our Party it becomes near-impossible to lead it effectively, or establish a coherent program. But if we gain a firm, central control over the Party ideology, it'll become much easier to convince the rank-and-file to support the war." Now it was Cannon's turn to wince. A single central authority deciding the platform of a party that housed everyone from social democrats to militant Marxists? That wasn't the Socialist Party he'd joined when he was eighteen. Still, there had to be some way to turn Socialist sympathies toward war.
"Even if you do manage to get a handle on the Party," opined the skeptical Wallace, "it will take years to shift the views of the electorate in such a disparate direction. By then, I hope, the war will be over and the issue will be moot." Earl Browder rested his gin and tonic on the rickety wooden table as he pondered an answer. "If we increased our power within the cabinet, we would have a more direct influence on the President's decisions. As you said, there's not much chance of swaying him when everyone in his cabinet is an isolationist; but if more of his advisors have a more sensible point of view, he'll be more likely to listen to them."
LaGuardia leaned forward. "And how do you suppose we'll increase our power in the cabinet? We don't control the appointments, and we can hardly create new cabinet positions." Browder wanted to glance at Foster, but the latter was too busy responding. "We'll convince the President to sack his secretaries and install some more sensible men to take their place". LaGuardia's lips were blocked by a glass of Belgian stout, but his eyes asked the question as clearly as they could: And how in the hell do we do that?
Foster words left a hole in the air as they dissipated, and for several seconds it seemed that the near-deserted bar had become a vacuum--no one spoke, no one moved, and, it seemed, no one thought. Finally a sentence threaded through the empty the space from James Cannon's mouth: "The important thing for now is that we stay united. We don't have a hope of shifting the balance in the cabinet unless we work as one man. And we all agree that we need to work together to get this country to war, don't we?" The silence that followed was nothing like the previous one: this one, though it only lasted a few seconds, hung dense and heavy like a humid cloud, churning in silent thunder.
"Yes, we do." The three words from Wallace were a bolt of lightning, slicing the silent cloud apart and bringing an instant's light to the deep suspicions in the heart of each man.
Then, suddenly, the cloud disappeared. Browder opened his mouth. "I'm glad we're in agreement," he announced as he stood up from his seat. "I should be getting home. My wife's in New York and I've got to get the boys to bed". It was an unconvincing lie, but it hardly mattered. No one was particularly interested in allowing this discussion to drone on. Foster, Browder and Cannon made for the door while Wallace and LaGuardia drained their glasses. As the three piled into Browder's dark-green Dodge they watched as the two moderates were carried off in a White House limousine--even the lesser cabinet members were entitled to a few official amenities.
As the sedan rolled cautiously down the road, the bar disappeared behind the corner of a brick edifice. Cannon spoke up to his comrades in the front: "I hope we all agree that we can't allow those two reactionaries or anyone like them to continue to influence the President." Foster and Browder gave subdued nods. "For all their posturing about labor empowerment they've got nothing but contempt for the working man. If Thomas ever finds his balls and decides to really go after the hogs on Wall Street, those two will be the first to try and goad him back to defending capitalism. They're capitalists to the core, and once the people wise up to the tyranny of the banks and the marketeers and start rising up in arms, that pair of con men will sidle right up with their cronies and stand in the way of the progress of history."
Foster replied: "We can't get rid of them just yet. They're the only cabinet members who favor the war--"
"For bourgeois reasons," Cannon butted in.
"Reasons aside, without them we have no chance of getting close to the rest of the cabinet. We'll probably have to leave them for last." Cannon grumbled in disappointment. "Well, I suppose I don't care who we start with, so long as we get 'em all--Norris, Wheeler, Lewis, La Follette, and those two stooges, of course. Come to think of it, who exactly are we going to have replacing the cronies we dispose of?"
"Well, Socialists, obviously," said Browder behind the wheel.
"Ones who want war?"
"Naturally."
"What about us?" asked Cannon.
A pause. "I'm sure a few opportunities will present themselves as we shift the balance of the executive. Seeing as we represent such prominent facti--such a prominent faction of the Party, I'd say it's only natural we have some official representation in the executive branch."
"Unquestionably," answered the well satisfied James Cannon, just before the car slowed to a halt in front of a familiar domicile.
"Thanks, Earl," Cannon said as he yanked the door latch and climbed out of the car. As he retreated inside his abode, the green Dodge rolled on.
"I suppose we'll have to wait a while before we kick him from the Party," opined a disappointed Browder once they had cleared a suitable distance.
"What LaGuardia said in the bar was correct, pains me though it does to say it," replied Foster. "Even after we gain control of the Party, it'll take time to subdue all of the counterrevolutionary factions. They'll kick us out of the leadership if we don't give at least the outward appearance of tolerating pluralist viewpoints."
"And for that," Browder admitted, "we've got to keep sods like Cannon at least thinking they're in charge of policy."
"It certainly doesn't mean we'd have to give them any real say in deciding the Party platform," reassured Foster.
"I should hope not. If it were up to him and his ilk," complained Browder, "they'd have us shipping guns and cash to wild gangs of fanatical mountain men in the Congo twice a month in blind hopes we'd gain a bankrupt ally on the other side of the planet--all the while standing by as the revolution at home is highjacked by bourgeois opportunists, with no arm of people's enforcement to safeguard it." The surprise of nearly colliding with an oncoming Buick snapped Browder straight out of the spell he was falling into; as he jerked the wheel to the right he scolded himself for getting lost in another web of frustrated dogmatism.
"Not to mention his preposterous fear of bureaucracy," Browder mocked in a near-gossipy tone after he had righted the car. "I really would like to see him try and act out his fantasies of administering a socialist state without using the state."
"That could be useful for us, though," opined Foster. "If he's so afraid of letting the state outgrow its boots, we might manage to persuade him not take up a portfolio in Thomas's cabinet. We might even find a way discourage him from getting too involved in the Party's organizational structure--that'll make it a lot easier to slam the doors on him and his friends when the time comes."
"If we can get close enough to the President before the convention in June, that time might come sooner than we expected. Perhaps," Browder hoped optimistically, a few poorly-timed speeches by a few poorly-placed individuals could go a long way toward fostering long-term unity, cohesion and accord within the Socialist Party--and it could be the beginning of the end for counterrevolutionary factionalism within the Party of popular revolution."
Foster had little interest in entertaining such notions. "Don't kid yourself, Earl, that's wishful thinking. You heard what LaGuardia said--the Party's being flooded with uneducated simpletons who don't have the slightest grasp of Marxist theory, nor a hint of foresight of revolutionary struggle. A factional war within our Party is the only way to save the Revolution from devolving into a disordered, degenerated disaster--and if it came tonight, we'd be ripped to shreds. Cannon, Lovestone and their Menshevites would mobilize the unwashed hordes against us, tell them we're undemocratic or counterrevolutionary. They wouldn't have a clue what it meant, of course, but it wouldn't matter--we'd be wiped out in an instant, and Cannon would be free to ravage the Party platform with his bullshit ideas of permanent revolution."
Browder's brow wrinkled. Was Bill saying that there was no hope, that Cannon and his ignorant rabble were forever doomed to win out in the end? Surely he couldn't be saying that. Could he?
Browder had to make sure. He kept his eyes on the road, but the convergent brow, the downturned lips--the expression of imminent despair was clear from any angle. He turned his head ever so slightly to glance at his passenger, the tendons in his neck tightening with creeping unsureness. Finally he asked the question. "How do we win?"
Foster leaned in kind, and in a scarce voice he answered. "We need an inner circle." He emphasized those last two words as though they defined his entire viewpoint. "We build a clique of Party members who will be absolutely loyal to the revolution. They will allow themselves no sympathy whatsoever for the leeching bourgeoisie. They will support us without question." He enunciated every word, knowing that this message was far too important for his ally not to comprehend. "We build this inner circle, and we put its members in every high-ranking position we can. When every Secretary is one of ours, when the National Committee, the Youth League, the Newspapers and the Membership Office are all under our control, the control of our inner circle, then we go to war against the outer fringes of the Party. And when every leadership office in the Party is ours, it doesn't matter how many ignorant sheep Cannon finds to follow him--we can't lose." Browder nodded slowly. The idea was bold--a decisive, central executive dominant over a disorganized fringe.
"Tomorrow," Browder proposed, "we begin."
At that moment, a conspiracy was born.
Note: OTL, James P. Cannon was a prominent Trotskyist, and Earl Browder and William Z. Foster were well-known Stalinists in the Communist Party, but ATL, with the Socialist Party far, far more successful than it ever was OTL, the Communist Party USA has essentially merged with the Socialists, making the Socialist Party's radical wing all the stronger.
I remember coming across that a few months ago. I didn't finish it then, but I probably will now.
50
From The Second Great War: A Picture History, Houghton Mifflin, 1954
While the Czechoslovaks toiled to make a lost battle as torturous as possible for the victors, the Romanians could do little else but fall back as the Red Army poured in from the North. By the time of the second Soviet invasion, eighteen months of war with an enemy many times their size had worn down Romanian morale, materiel and manpower. As the Red Army encircled Bucharest and continued to advance southward, the fascist government of Iron Guard leader Corneliu Codreanu begrudgingly made the decision to pull the rest of the exhausted Romanian Army behind the Carpathian mountains, abandoning the petroleum-rich southern and eastern portions of the country to Soviet conquest. As the military struggled to regroup while deprived of most of its bounteous oil resources, strategists focused their plans around heavily fortifying the mountain passes, hoping to bog down an expected mountain invasion until the Germans could exert enough pressure on the Russians to force them to withdraw. Accustomed to an iron respect of the neutrality of their North Sea neighbors Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, they focused relatively little of their manpower on the borders.
When the Russians came pouring in unexpectedly through the Slovak corridor on March 14, the Romanians had less than a day's warning. The General Command scrambled to move troops to the sparsely-defended border, but an underdeveloped rail network, combined with fears of leaving the mountain passes undefended, significantly slowed efforts at remobilization. The Soviets quickly advanced southward down the exposed belly of the country, inflicting heavy casualties as the Romanians repeatedly tried and failed to confront them with hastily-organized and poorly-led groups of men, losing and retreating every time. Cluj-Napoca, the largest city in what the Iron Guard dubbed "Free Romania", was captured on March 30 after only a few days of fighting, while a sizable percentage of Romanian defense forces were tied down in their Carpathian strongholds by diversionary attacks on the over-fortified mountain passes; the decisive defeat of General Petre Dumitrescu in the Battle of Deva on April 20 sealed the defeat of fascist Romania. The country was overrun by mid-May, and the government--captured after the fall of Brasov on May 9--surrendered the same day. Fearing that the country would be retaken by the Germans, the Red Army summarily executed Codreanu and the other Iron Guard leaders to prevent the government from ever being reinstated.
Romanian troops waiting to ambush an advancing Soviet column in Tinutul Prut in early April 1940.
After the near-simultaneous collapse of both Romania and Czechoslovakia in May of 1940, the violent but repetitive pattern of the war resumed for several months. The Ersatz War continued quietly and uneasily in the west, and while the eastern front continued to rage on bloodily as ever, devastating what was left of Poland, this theater of the war was lacking in distinct, large-scale battles that can be specifically analyzed and studied today. Though some substance is made of the particularly large and destructive standoffs at Slonim in September and at Lublin in August (the third battle to take place in that city), both of which were won by the Germans, much of the fighting on the eastern front still consisted of constant skirmishes between German and Soviet troops that provided gradual advances while slowly whittling away at the strength of each combating power. The unvarying nature of the theater, combined with a surprising series of successes for the Germans, caused an increasingly impatient Hitler to look for ways to achieve a decisive victory that would prove beyond doubt the vast gulf of superiority of the Wehrmacht over its enemies.
While the Czechoslovaks toiled to make a lost battle as torturous as possible for the victors, the Romanians could do little else but fall back as the Red Army poured in from the North. By the time of the second Soviet invasion, eighteen months of war with an enemy many times their size had worn down Romanian morale, materiel and manpower. As the Red Army encircled Bucharest and continued to advance southward, the fascist government of Iron Guard leader Corneliu Codreanu begrudgingly made the decision to pull the rest of the exhausted Romanian Army behind the Carpathian mountains, abandoning the petroleum-rich southern and eastern portions of the country to Soviet conquest. As the military struggled to regroup while deprived of most of its bounteous oil resources, strategists focused their plans around heavily fortifying the mountain passes, hoping to bog down an expected mountain invasion until the Germans could exert enough pressure on the Russians to force them to withdraw. Accustomed to an iron respect of the neutrality of their North Sea neighbors Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, they focused relatively little of their manpower on the borders.
When the Russians came pouring in unexpectedly through the Slovak corridor on March 14, the Romanians had less than a day's warning. The General Command scrambled to move troops to the sparsely-defended border, but an underdeveloped rail network, combined with fears of leaving the mountain passes undefended, significantly slowed efforts at remobilization. The Soviets quickly advanced southward down the exposed belly of the country, inflicting heavy casualties as the Romanians repeatedly tried and failed to confront them with hastily-organized and poorly-led groups of men, losing and retreating every time. Cluj-Napoca, the largest city in what the Iron Guard dubbed "Free Romania", was captured on March 30 after only a few days of fighting, while a sizable percentage of Romanian defense forces were tied down in their Carpathian strongholds by diversionary attacks on the over-fortified mountain passes; the decisive defeat of General Petre Dumitrescu in the Battle of Deva on April 20 sealed the defeat of fascist Romania. The country was overrun by mid-May, and the government--captured after the fall of Brasov on May 9--surrendered the same day. Fearing that the country would be retaken by the Germans, the Red Army summarily executed Codreanu and the other Iron Guard leaders to prevent the government from ever being reinstated.
Romanian troops waiting to ambush an advancing Soviet column in Tinutul Prut in early April 1940.
After the near-simultaneous collapse of both Romania and Czechoslovakia in May of 1940, the violent but repetitive pattern of the war resumed for several months. The Ersatz War continued quietly and uneasily in the west, and while the eastern front continued to rage on bloodily as ever, devastating what was left of Poland, this theater of the war was lacking in distinct, large-scale battles that can be specifically analyzed and studied today. Though some substance is made of the particularly large and destructive standoffs at Slonim in September and at Lublin in August (the third battle to take place in that city), both of which were won by the Germans, much of the fighting on the eastern front still consisted of constant skirmishes between German and Soviet troops that provided gradual advances while slowly whittling away at the strength of each combating power. The unvarying nature of the theater, combined with a surprising series of successes for the Germans, caused an increasingly impatient Hitler to look for ways to achieve a decisive victory that would prove beyond doubt the vast gulf of superiority of the Wehrmacht over its enemies.
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