Vive l'Empereur, Vive la France, Vive l'Empire - a Frenchwank TL

Are you being sarcastic or serious? I can't tell. Slightly autistic :eek:.

Anyway, for my readers, I slightly edited Chapter 4 so the Philippines were sold to Japan.

@Zach: I found out what you meant, I think. I went through the history of the threads you started and found out a Napoleonic Victory TL already existed by your hand. I assure you I didn't read that one since I've been trying to avoid reading other people's Napoleonic victory TLs since it might contaminate my own ideas for the TL. I took a quick peak just now and I think that you think I'm plagiarizing right? Well, the war does start in 1900 like yours, but the casus belli is one I've used in several TLs already so nothing new there and it's inspired by Franz Ferdinand's assassination.

Balkan casus belli: original? No. Easy and convenient to use? Yes, for obvious reasons (the Porte and Russia not standing the sight of each other for instance). I'm not original in my casus bellis, I keep using the Balkans for convenience just like many AH authors do :eek:.

Anyway, I apologize if I made you think I was stealing your ideas :(:eek:. Wasn't my intention I shall edited the last chapter, alright? (although I'm not changing Nappy III, it's a little unrealistic to have Nappy II live into his nineties IMHO). Also, before accusing me of anything :mad:, I suggest you look at the differences between your TL and mine (I suspect they will be quite significant).

Oh, Onkel Willie, forgive me! I was not hinting at anything, merely enjoying our mutual similarities. I should have put a smiley face to lighten my post. No worries at all, no apologies necessary. I look forward to reading your TL since, as I've said, I am pretty partial to French-wanks! :)
 
I figured Russia would crack, considering it still had serfdom, or something close to it.

How much of New Spain did the United States grab? It looks like they got the OTL United States, but I'm wondering if they're going to grab anymore.

Digesting these gains will be pretty dicey. Has the California gold been discovered yet? That'll be a good way of Americanizing the territories by attracting outsiders.
 
Update time. Also, we are in want of a map :D.



Chapter VI: The Treaty of Orléans, The Economic Malaise, the Russian Civil War, the Asian Tigers, and the Interbellum Years, 1908 – 1935.


The War of the Sixth Coalition was over and the previously warring powers had to make a settlement and those defeated had to be handed a peace deal. The great powers decided on the city of Orléans, France, to negotiate a peace treaty. Delegates from the venerable Habsburg Empire, the Russian Empire in turmoil, powerful and grand Great Britain, the old Spanish Empire and the powerful French Empire but also from younger, weaker powers such as the United States, Japan, Brazil and the Republic of China travelled great distances and arrived to start the peace conference in October 1908. The conference dealt first and foremost with Europe where the French delegation was prepared to hand Russia and Austria very harsh peace deals not in part due to the untimely death of Napoleon III for which the war was blamed. Emperor Napoleon III had been a shy, timid and curt personality, but his inner circle remembered him as a sentimental person and the death and suffering of so many young Frenchmen and the utter destruction wrought by a modern war not to mention the personal loss of several noblemen who served in the army, friends of his, affected him deeply. In such a modern war not even aristocrats were spared, let alone the low soldier. The French irrationally blamed the Russians and Austrians for the death of their Emperor; whether or not it was true was left aside. The Russians had also engaged the Ottoman Empire in a war for the fourth time in under a century and the Sublime Porte was planning on punishing Russia harshly as well and Austria hadn’t made any friends with the Porte either by contributing to Russia’s effort and planning on carving off the Balkan nationalities and setting them up as puppet states. Britain could count on a lot less hard feelings, also partially out of pragmatic reasons since Britain had not been defeated. On the conference Britain couldn’t prevent a more or less unilateral Franco-Ottoman peace imposed on Russia and Austria. Austria was carved up with the remainder of Bohemia, a strongly industrialized region, going to North Germany and the remainder of the German speaking parts of Austria – an area made up of Burgenland, Lower Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Upper Austria and Salzburg – being annexed by South Germany which left a rump Kingdom of Hungary that also included Slovakia, Ruthenia and Transylvania, an unstable ethnic mix and the Habsburgs would spend most of their time on keeping it together. Russia lost less territory, relatively that is. The Russian Empire which was slowly sinking into chaos ceded West Prussia to the Duchy of Warsaw as well as Lithuania and the Duchy was also elevated to the status of kingdom, thereby founding the Kingdom of Poland-Lithuania. Wallachia and Moldavia were returned to the Ottoman Empire and in the Caucasus Armenia, Georgia, Abkhazia, Chechnya and Azerbaijan were set up as puppet states of the Porte. Lastly, a ten billion gold franc war indemnity was imposed on the Kingdom of Hungary and the Russian Empire.

Britain was dealt a mild peace which included ceding Eritrea to the Ottomans (thereby giving it full control over one entrance to the Red Sea, the other being the French Suez Canal), Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei to Japan and their sphere of influence in China to the Republic of China. The Ottomans managed to take over from Russia as an influential power in Persia and annex Khuzestan while they were at it. Japan also clearly defined its sphere of influence in Manchuria in the hopes of reaching an acceptable compromise with their newfound ally China. Japan annexed those provinces along the border with Korea, Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang into Japan while the remainder of Manchuria was returned to the Republic of China. Japan also annexed the Khabarovsk, Magadan, Kamchatka and Chukotka oblasts which comprised the Russian Pacific coast. China annexed everything up to and south of Lake Baikal’s northern tip (Siberia was considered useless) that the Japanese hadn’t already taken and in Russia’s Central Asian territories they took everything up to Lake Balkhash. Japan annexed a number of Aleutian island as well which they divided more or less equally with Britain as Britain had quickly bought Alaska from Russia and added it to Canada to put a stop to any Japanese ideas about establishing it as a colony. Canada also gained Ellesmere Island and Greenland while Iceland was ceded to Britain as Commonwealth forces had occupied them by sending five to ten battalion strong ‘invasion forces’ to occupy these areas. In the Americas the Alliance would lose the most territory because American, British and Brazilian forces had occupied large swathes of Spanish American territory. The Captaincy-General of Venezuela was suffering from independence movements and so it was established by Britain as a Dominion with complete autonomy in internal affairs with foreign affairs and defence under British jurisdiction, giving Venezuela the prospect of future independence. The Emperor in Rio de Janeiro was a little more blunt and annexed what remained of the Viceroyalty of New Granada. The US demanded the recognition of its possession of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Cuba, Puerto Rico and any other French and Spanish islands in the Caribbean area. It was not like France and Spain could do anything to force the Americans and British to give up their gains because it was too far away for them and too close to the US’s centre of power. Besides these gains, the US also annexed Mexico north of the Tropic of Cancer and set the remainder of New Spain up as a federal puppet republic and bought land in Panama and Nicaragua to build transoceanic canals. In total, the US was doubled in size. The Viceroyalties of Peru, Chile and Rio de la Plata were left to Spain for now since this swath of land was considered too big or distant to swallow and Britain, the US and Brazil were still digesting their gains. They were, however awarded an autonomous status in the Spanish Empire on the insistence of the Anglo powers and Brazil who intended to take care of them later. With this the Treaty of Orléans was concluded on December 25th 1908 and peace could begin.

The war was over, but peace did not reign over the battlefields of Europe as the old and formerly so formidable Russian Empire had collapsed into a civil war which forced old the bordering states to keep their forces on alert to prevent conflict from spilling over the border. The surrender had come too late to prevent widespread discontent from reaching the boiling point because Alliance navies maintained the blockade of west Russian ports for the duration of the negotiations which prevent much needed fuel and food to reach a Russia that was experiencing an exceptionally cold winter even by Russian standards. Many poorer people who couldn’t afford fuel and food due to the scarcity and rising inflation were dying from exposure to the cold or starvation. Many factory workers were restless since in many cases their wages were too low and pay was overdue and strikes erupted with large support from Collectivist revolutionaries. Several peasant revolts broke out in the countryside to join the strikers and revolutionaries in the cities and by December 1908 large parts of Russia were open in open revolt against Tsarist rule and some of the Tsar’s soldiers were also supporting the revolution. In Chelyabinsk, an industrial city in the Ural mountains, Collectivists from the Chelyabinsk Soviet, a people’s committee of workers, peasants and soldiers, declared the Democratic People’s Republic of Russia and the local military commander decided to defect to them since he and his men were very unhappy with the lack of pay, the bad rations and the corruption and favouritism in the Russian army and this was the start of the Red Army. Various Collectivist militias joined the Red Army which was only regiment size at the moment although volunteers made sure it rapidly swelled as the inept Russian army struggled to mount a response with the revolts breaking out everywhere, but fortunately the revolution would eat its own children like revolutions before it had done. Initially, the Collectivist regime was very popular as they confiscated property from the aristocracy and bourgeoisie and had them executed by guillotine much like in the French Revolution for oppression of the working classes. The confiscated ground was redistributed to the poorer peasants. The many factory owners were also disowned and the means of production ended up in the ends of the local Soviets who collectively decided on what and how much produced and oversaw the distribution of the profits. The world’s first and only Collectivist government had been established, but it wouldn’t last. Tsar Alexander III offered large concessions to many of the more moderate political leaders in Russia such as the establishment of a parliament, a written liberal constitution modelled on the French example, cutting down the privileges of the aristocracy, a ten hour workday, compulsory education and other measures to pull Russia into the twentieth century. Furthermore, the Collectivist government was a government that consisted largely of idealists and elitist intellectuals who hardly had a notion of what the populace really wanted and most of them had never been allowed to fulfil an administrative task and so they didn’t have to slightest clue on how to bring about the classless society they had preached so much and which had earned them support from the bulk of the small, but strong working classes and part of the peasantry and army. They quickly resorted to the same tactics as the Tsarist regime to maintain power such as the possession of an army which also had many formerly Tsarist officers in it, but mostly the use of a secret police known as the People’s Commissariat to Fight Counterrevolutionaries which arrested and executed whoever was suspected of anti-revolutionary sentiments which included most of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. The Collectivists formed a People’s Committee or Presidium which was ruled by a certain Ukrainian known as Vladimir Vladikarpov, a revolutionary firebrand and an extremely power hungry figure. He was proclaimed secretary-general of the Collectivist Party of Russia, Chairman of the Presidium and People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, the three most powerful positions in the party and government which gave him nearly unlimited power over his territory which by now encompassed the whole Ural region. Instead of putting economic recovery ahead of ideological goals like the moderates advocated, he started immediately with the implementation his ideas on how to form a classless society since he combined his desire for power with a staunch adherence to his ideology.

After the redistribution of the land and a period of relative freedom for his subjects he started to collectivize the land into enormous farming communes to raise efficiency and all factories were taken from the working committees and made state property since the state was considered the representative of the proletariat. Any resistance was violently put down by the secret police and the Red Army, but the Collectivist regime was not to last. White militias fought against the Red Army and by now Tsar Alexander III had managed to put down the uproar in the major western cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg by means of loyalist forces, anti-revolutionary rightwing militias and the Imperial Guard. Many disgruntled officers blamed the collapse of the home front and above all Collectivist sedition for the defeat of the Russian Army, claiming it hadn’t been defeated in the field even if that was far from the truth. Yet, despite this, the idea got hold of some that betrayal by the home front had led to Russia’s defeat. With order in the major western cities restored, Tsar Alexander III sent out an expeditionary force to squash the nascent Collectivist entity known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Russia which was a threat to the empire. Three corps were deployed to central Russia to restore order and they were almost sure of victory since the Red Army was still was only a small force of some 25.000 men with the core being mostly defected soldiers. More soldiers were being trained and weapons from several captured armouries had been confiscated with more being made or procured, in some cases from shady organizations such as American and Sicilian crime syndicates. General Sergei Ivanov, a defected Tsarist officer who had become disenfranchised with the old regime due to its utter ineptitude under Michael II, was given the terrible responsibility of leading his tiny force into battle. He chose to mobilize his recruits who had not completed training yet to complement his forces, but he recognised the hopelessness of the situation. He retreated his forces to Chelyabinsk, the capital, since he believed the numbers of his enemy would be less effective in urban warfare. He was right as every building was transformed by means of sandbags and barbed wire into fortifications, making Imperial forces fight a street-to-street battle. The capital of the DPRR was cut off and although equipment was more or less equal, supplies of ammunition and food weren’t since the attackers had supplies coming in through the railroad net. In June 1909 the Collectivist regime was squashed after a six month existence and Tsarist laws and rules were restored which was a breather for many since these were an improvement over totalitarian Collectivist rule. The leaders were hanged, or court-martialled for treason and executed by firing squad in the case of general Ivanov. Others were dealt generous amounts of floggings and/or lengthy prison sentences in labour camps in Siberia and most wouldn’t return. Tsar Alexander III was left to deal with a country with an economy down the drain and most of the country in ruin due to a half year of Collectivist insurrection and civil war.
 
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While Tsar Alexander III was left to pick up the pieces of his country, Japan and to a lesser extent China, were establishing themselves as dominant powers in Asia and the Sino-Japanese Alliance was made official in the Treaty of Kobe which entailed a lot mutual economic investment, military aid and common policies on certain fields although Japan’s policies dominated the alliance for now since Japan was the dominant partner. The Republican Chinese regime, in reality a pseudo-militaristic dictatorship that used revolutionary propaganda to appeal to the people, looked to the Japanese Empire as a role model and example of a successful Asian great power. Japan had a strong navy and army which had defeated a European power, a modern industrial economy and a modern, effective bureaucratic state apparatus. Japan was respected in the international community due to its westernization and modernization and China wanted to do that too and Japan could assist in that goal. Moreover, Japan and China shared the ideology of Asian nationalism and in the long term both Beijing and Tokyo wanted to remove European influence from the Asian continent and establish it as their sphere of influence and close its markets to everyone but themselves. Japan and their French allies started to invest in China. France was considered a colonial power too, but Britain still held the largest colonial empire in Asia and Japan’s and China’s efforts were therefore directed toward the British in the first place. With the suffocating and reactionary Imperial government gone in China, modernization could begin. One of the goals was to industrialize China through commerce and capitalism with state guidance. French and Japanese companies started to build roads, railroads telephone lines and telegraph lines which automatically led to much improved governance. Japanese and French entrepreneurs signed lucrative business contracts to develop China’s infrastructure and industrial base which was so far nonexistent. Japanese military experts were sent to train Chinese soldiers in modern tactics and teach them to work with new, European weapons such as France’s rapid fire 77 mm gun and new rifles and machine guns with 7.69x54 mm cartridges that had lethal effects. Coal mines and a steel industry were under development by 1920. China turned out to have the world’s largest supply of coal, but also supplies of iron ore, copper, tungsten and manganese and China started to build up a massive mining industry with steel industry and heavy industry being other important sectors.

With state devised Four Year Plans and foreign credit (mostly Japanese long term loans) the Chinese government guided what they considered the key sectors, cornerstones of a modern economy. Between 1908 and 1920 coal production tripled and steel production doubled. China started to export machinery, textiles and raw materials, replacing rice as its main export product. The Chinese government also abolished sinecures – functions which provided income for little work – and made education up to the age of fourteen compulsory. The education system itself was reformed to teach mathematics, physics, history, geography and spelling instead of Confucian teachings. Reading and writing used to be occupations that were considered noble, but now they were taught to all. The regime also adopted the metric system and in 1918 the State University of Beijing was founded, a large building that was clearly not in Chinese style, but in a solemn, imposing neoclassic style. China still had major problems such as a lot of underdevelopment in the countryside where the reforms caught on slower, but they were getting better. The rights of the old landed elites were largely abolished and the land redistributed and resistance against the reform was brutally stamped out. China would achieve Japan’s GDP by 1935 and exceeded it a year later due to the enormous investments in industrialization and rising heavy industrial, mining and steel industry sectors, but not in the least investment into a modern educational system. China remained inferior to great empires like Britain and France, but came up to Japan, Spain and Russia in terms of economic power. It was also at this time that the Sino-Japanese Alliance saw a clear division of tasks in the military field: Japan was to concentrate primarily on building a naval force while China would concern itself with developing a massive army from its manpower pool. They thereby complemented each other quite nicely and they also built up an integrated economic structure which gave Japan’s industry the resources it needed at a reduced price.

In Europe, quite the opposite was happening as an economic malaise had erupted post-war. Many European powers found it difficult to transition from a war economy back to a peacetime economy. Many soldiers were returning from the front to find their jobs taken and went into a mass of unemployed veterans who had nothing else to do but hang around. An economic slump followed in Europe which was compounded by ethnic strife in Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. A mild inflation hit Europe although nowhere near as high as the hyperinflation the Russians were experiencing, but it was enough to set off an economic depression which entailed quite some unemployment and led to resurfacing of old tensions. In the Ottoman Empire, Selim IV solved his ethnic problems by a decentralization as opposed to his father’s centralization policy. He gave his mostly Christian minorities equal rights to the Muslim majority of the empire . The many ethnic minorities received the right to teach in their own languages as long as they taught Turkish, the lingua franca of the empire, as well, administration in these regions became bilingual, the post of governor was opened up to non-Turks and a relatively large degree of autonomy was given to these governors even if Constantinople held the last word. Hungary, however, violently put down any Slovak or Romanian independence movements and maintained a relatively large army to do so. This period saw a reinvigoration of the Collectivist movement although fear of it due to its short-lived success in Russia also led to a rise in militant nationalist movements made up of veterans. Leftwing and rightwing violence was limited to the most politicized of the lower classes and assumed nothing nowhere near the scale of the upheaval the Russian Empire was undergoing. Western Europe’s social structure, political tradition and good response to the economic problems prevented worse from occurring as the message of Collectivism and militant nationalism seemed outdated, unnecessary. The regular police was therefore able to deal with any unrest caused by what they considered delinquents, small timers. Russia, at this time, was experiencing a severe economic crisis, much worse than the relatively mild one in Europe of which it would recover a few years later. Russia, however, had been ruined due to the civil war with a lot of infrastructure and industry destroyed and a lot of farmland left uncultivated due to the casualties of the war. Hyperinflation gripped Russia and Collectivist unrest remained after the end of the brief civil war and veteran militias rose against it, forming a smattering of rightwing splinter parties. In Moscow, St. Petersburg, Minsk and Kiev street battles between Red militias and veterans were daily occurrences and the bloodshed didn’t cease, it increased as the economic crisis deepened and Russian society became more polarized: rich versus poor, worker versus peasant, left versus right.

At this time the extreme rightwing nationalist movement in Russia was disunited because it was made up of hundreds of splinter parties with more or less similar ideological positions. St. Petersburg alone had seventy of such parties in late 1908 and early 1909. Political violence had gripped the newly democratic Russian Empire with its elections and subsequent campaigns that consisted of beating up opponents. The Duma, Russia’s parliament, was a chaotic mess because no stabile government coalition could be formed because there were at least three dozen parties in the Duma which prevented clear majorities. The coalitions that did form were highly unstable and fell apart due to squabbling. Russia’s peoples had demanded democracy, but Russia had totally no experience with it whatsoever after centuries of autocracy. Out of the ashes of the Russian Civil War rose one man whose goal was to restore Russia’s pride and power. His name was Boris Vladimirovich Antonov. His ideas were not unusual for the time and certainly not original: he combined Russian ultra nationalism with a broader Trans-Slavic nationalism, militarism, xenophobia, valuing of traditions, support for Russian Orthodox Christianity, superiority of the Slavic race and some popular ideas about eugenics. Anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim tinges were also part of his ideology and this was in line with widespread anti-Semitism in Russia as expressed in large pogroms. They were seen as non-Russian, as traitors and coincidently many Collectivist leaders had been of Jewish descent which was oil on the fire for the extreme right movement. Antonov founded the Russian Fatherland Party, at first seemingly an extreme rightwing splinter party like any other. He was an extremely gifted orator or demagogue if you will and propagated how Russia had to retake its position as protector of the Slavic peoples and unite them under the Tsar’s rule. His antics were directed against liberals, collectivist-democrats, Collectivists and Jews (mostly used as a synonym for Collectivist) who he blamed for Russia’s many problems. He united with a number of parties in St. Petersburg and started with small speeches for a few dozen people on town squares and streets, but his crowds grew to hundreds and even thousands as he managed to strike a chord. He also founded a militia of his own which would quickly become infamous for their political violence against any ideological opponent: they were known as the Blue Shirts for their dark blue uniforms. The RFP became (in)famous for its charismatic leader, but also its street battles and soon disgruntled elements from all over society found their way to Antonov. Membership numbers grew from seventy in the summer of 1909 to two thousand in 1910 and 60.000 by 1915, which made it a major contender in regional politics with most of St. Petersburg’s rightwing nationalist parties having merged with the RFP or having ended up marginalized. The city elites came to support it as a counterweight against the Collectivists since they were pro-preservation of traditional values (and therefore against women emancipation for example), preserving the power of the Church and old elites while also providing an alternative for Collectivism to the ordinary Russian with its hardcore xenophobic, anti-Semitic nationalism which provided solidarity and appealed to existing sentiments. The city government started to use the Blue Shirts as strike breakers against Collectivist organized strikes. For example, they broke up the 1917 railway workers strike effectively and swiftly. Their ideology became popular, partly thanks to Antonov who was seen as a messiah-like figure by many of his supporters who came to call him ‘Vozhd’ which means Leader.

By 1923, the RFP had 500.000 members and the Blue Shirt militia numbered 100.000 men. There was another upsurge in Red activity and the electoral way was going to slow for Antonov and so he decided to act. In October 1923 he marched on St. Petersburg, declared the government disbanded and announced his New Order. Propaganda exalted his struggle for Russian freedom and the ‘battle’ he had to fight to ‘liberate’ St. Petersburg and the Tsar from the Collectivists although the coup had been bloodless in reality and with cooperation from many of the elites and the army. He took power and set about to industrialize Russia forcefully by nationalizing key industries, outlawing strikes and trade unions (except for the RFP’s own trade union of course), and instituting long workdays and almost unattainably high quotas. A series of Plans, much like in China, guided a crash industrialization program which was pressed through regardless of the costs. Antonov radically reformed the military based on his own experiences as a sergeant, introducing promotion by merit instead of by seniority or birth, introducing trucks for transportation and modern armoured cars as breakthrough weapons and also modern planes to support the ground forces. He forcefully industrialized Russia often by use of forced labour for major construction projects and he was adored for it because he put Russia ‘back on track’. He would undo the shame of Orléans and unite the Slavic peoples under the rule of the Tsar and Russia. He proclaimed Russia a ‘Trans-Slavic Empire’.

America, in the meantime, was busy digesting its gains by flooding them with American settlers. Gold had been discovered in California and northern Mexico was being flooded too because it had silver deposits. America was growing into a superpower in its own right with a high population, lots of natural resources and an enormous industrial base and the US were also separated from both Europe and Asia by thousands of miles of ocean. The US had seen military success which had confirmed America’s ascension to great power status and had silenced the isolationists. America started a massive naval construction program to build battleships and the new battlecruisers to defend its long coasts although it also was seen as a threat by the European powers and Japan. The best example of American industrial might, however, are the two transoceanic canals built in Nicaragua and Panama. Both were massive undertakings for the US, but it did give them control over a major trade route, made it easier to transfer naval assets to the Pacific and was good for US prestige. The Nicaragua Canal was built by dredging the San Juan and San Juan del Norte rivers and building a short canal across the Rivas Isthmus to connect them. The Panama Canal was not at sea level since that would have been more difficult. A dam created an artificial lake and digging started from both sides to connect with the lake which made for much less digging time. Locks were the means of entrance for this canal.

France, Spain and Britain started their own naval construction programs as an extension of their prestige and national pride although it also cost a lot of money. Japan started to build a bigger navy too with cheap Chinese-bought steel. In 1928 Ottoman geologists discovered oil in the Trucial States and the oil revenue which would become enormous would fund an Ottoman fleet construction program and thus the Ottoman Empire joined the naval race too. The only notable absent power was Russia since Antonov decided to focus on the army and air force primarily with the navy being considered only necessary for coastal defence duties and close-to-shore operations. The Russian army saw a remarkable development due to Russia’s forced industrialization since many new modern industrial complexes had arisen to produce armoured cars, modern artillery and aircraft such as bombers, fighters and the first ground attack planes. The Russian army grew to 500 divisions with modern equipment, a high level of mechanization, good training and discipline with a good, new infrastructure to go with it. Despite increasing European militarization and the rise of China and Japan, however, the US had managed to establish itself as a great power and the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere with Brazil as a junior partner and the British a good ally, an alliance and partnership which became solid over the years since it was mutually beneficial.

By the mid 1930s, the world was once again ready for war. Russia was actively preparing for war and had already renewed its alliance with Britain. The Brazilians still had scores to settle with Spain and China and Japan were looking forward to expand their spheres of influence in Asia at the expense of both Russia, but also Great Britain. Napoleon IV was still alive at this point and had not reneged on his goal of keeping Europe armed at an equal level with Russia and Britain and his rearmament, fleet building programs and modernizations of the armed forces had pulled the economy out of the malaise. Western Europe’s culture had been thoroughly affected by the war since a gloomy attitude had taken root which was to be seen in many dark and post-apocalyptic movies and art. By the end of the 20s the era of gloom and doom in Western European culture was finally turning back to the frivolity of the 1890s as the new post-war generation had achieved adulthood. This was taking place under rulers like Emperor Napoleon IV of the French, King William V of the United Kingdom, Tsar Alexander III of Russia and Ferdinand IX of Spain who would see all they knew and held for granted end in the most enormous war the world had ever seen. Russia had considered none of the territorial losses stipulated in the Treaty of Orléans valid or just. They demanded the return of West Prussia and the liberation of the Slavic peoples who Antonov claimed were being horribly oppressed and he used ‘photographic evidence’ falsified by his own ministry of propaganda to prove it and sweep up a patriotic fervour. Russia reached a war fever due to the ultranationalist propaganda against the Turks and Poles who were seen as holding territory that rightfully belonged to Mother Russia. Russia ignited a territorial crisis when they demanded the return of the Caucasus states, which were Ottoman puppets, as well as West Prussia which had been awarded to them rightfully in the Treaty of Tilsit which France had already violated by unifying the German states which disregarded the interests of the Tsar’s German relatives. France under Napoleon IV followed a hard line stance against the Russians and the Hungarians who had chosen to become Russian allies rather than become part of the Continental Alliance. Before Napoleon IV could do anything rash he passed away of a heart attack at the age of 75 as a celebrated leader and he would miss the onset of the war. What he had done was change the succession laws and the result was that France got its first female monarch: the now forty year old but still youthful and beautiful Empress Hélène I who was a vigorous fighter as much as her father and she couldn’t care less about court protocols about these kind of things and studied a great deal about modern warfare by herself by reading books of prominent military theoreticians. Empress Hélène continued her father’s course and called Antonov a buffoon for thinking he could intimidate the French Empire and mobilized the army in response to Russia doing the same. She would see herself forced to lead a country through a war and with all the prejudices against women that still existed she would find it hard to do so with an exclusively male military hierarchy and an aristocratic and bourgeois elite which was also led by men. Antonov, by now, considered Russia ready to fight another war and so he took the final step and declared war. Britain, the US, Brazil and Hungary all believed they stood to gain from fighting the Continental Alliance again and so declared war on the flimsy excuse of supporting their Russian ally. The Continental Alliance’s Chinese and Japanese associates then declared war on what was known as the Seventh Coalition, yet another challenge for France to overcome and its greatest so far. The War of the Seventh Coalition had begun.
 
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All right, all right, a map(Good work BTW)...

World at the end of the war, with occupations and all... the white in Venezuela is the independence movement.

Vive l'Empereur, Vive la France, Vive l'Empire1909.PNG
 
Post war map. I annexed Montenegro to the OE because I thought that it was becoming less and less useful on the map. If you have complaints, I can move it back in. Also added dominion-like colours for Canada, Venezuela, South-Africa, India, the BEI, Australia and New Zealand (although the latter might be included in Australia ITTL). I also ceded the British concessions in China to China itself, leaving behind only the French concession. You should've mentioned something about that, like China formally joining the Triple Alliance in trade for the concession, or France giving up the concession in the mainland in trade for directly annexing Hainan and/or Formosa.

Also, since they occupied it, I made Siam be a French puppet. Once again, if you complain, I'll remove it, if you do not, it will stay.

EDIT: I should've outlined Persia again. I did not because in the war it was an occupied nation, no longer a puppet (what's the difference anyway) but on the pace treaty, it should've been restored. Maybe giving a sphere of influence to the OE as well...

Vive l'Empereur, Vive la France, Vive l'Empire1910.PNG
 
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The war has come.



Chapter VII: The War of the Seventh Coalition, 1935 – 1941.



The War of the Seventh Coalition had finally begun and many of the technologies that had only been embryonic in the previous war would come to full fruition in this one. The aircraft, the airship, field telephones and radios, chemical weapons, armoured cars and so on would all be used in a war that was even more rationalized and aimed at maximum efficiency than the last one. Weapons would come off the assembly lines in a total war effort in which all the means of an entire country were focused on waging war, something unseen in human history. Killing would become an industrial effort from this point onward and the world would never be quite the same again.

The Russians knew they were surrounded and therefore decided to make the opening move a massive blow. Russian armies swarmed over the western border into Poland and the Balkans. Russia had mobilized 500 divisions to retake what rightfully belonged to the Russian Empire. The strategy was to deal a quick knockout blow and then ask for terms which would likely be advantageous since Russia was negotiating from a superior position. The plan was also to attack primarily in Europe since these areas were much more valuable and because they were either historically part of Russia or filled with Slavs. Russian forces in the Russian Far East would hold their ground to the best of their ability. Russian forces invaded Poland-Lithuania from the northeast into Lithuania and East Prussia while Hungarian forces attack the Poles from the south. A large part of the Russian attack was dedicated to taking the Ploiesti oilfields and the Caucasus region. The armies of the Caucasus states were all quite small when compared to the Russian behemoth, but even so they fought valiantly to avoid ending up under Russian rule again and they used the mountainous landscape to the best of their abilities. Abkhazia, which had become a resort to the Ottoman elites, fell after three days after sheer weight of numbers had squashed their armed forces. The Russian surprise attack was preceded by aerial bombardment which destroyed the air forces of the Caucasus stated on the ground which gave the Russians air superiority. The Poles were only slightly more lucky because they received air support from the Germans, Danes and Swedes since their air force too was largely bombed into oblivion before seeing actual combat. Russian armoured divisions followed by the main body of the invasion force battered and broke unprepared enemy lines and so large numbers of enemy units were caught in pockets and annihilated in cauldron battles. As Russian armies swarmed out over the Balkans, Poland and the Caucasus, the French and Ottomans desperately struggled to mount a response since this wasn’t what they had expected from the Russian army which they had perceived as being a weak police force adept only at squashing peasant uprisings. Warsaw fell again after ten days of combat and was razed to the ground by the Russian army out of vengeance for the previous war and numerous war crimes were committed in this region by Russian troops. Hungarian forces also launched spoiling attacks into Italy, the Ottoman Empire and a larger thrust into Bohemia and other formerly Austrian territory and proclaimed the resurrected Austrian Empire although its success would be short-lived. By July, after three weeks of war, Russian forces had crossed the Danube and were in Bulgaria again while also having squashed the Caucasus states and taken the Baku oil fields although unfortunately for them the retreating Ottomans had destroyed all the equipment and set the oil wells ablaze in the first time use of ecological warfare, rendering the Baku oil fields useless to Russia. Poland had by now been reduced to West Prussia and Poznan in spite of vigorous resistance. Russian air superiority and its huge quantity of armoured cars had overwhelmed the Poles in spite of recent militarization. In August, Russian forces reached Adrianople in Bulgaria where they fought the Ottomans who had entrenched themselves for lack of a better option. Russia had larger numbers, but the Ottomans had built a powerful defence in depth with minefields, barbed wire, machine gun nests, trenches and ample artillery support. Russian forces attacked head-on with massed armour and infantry with air support. Regardless of this, the Ottomans managed to create a bloodbath as wave upon wave of attackers was beaten back by the defenders who grew more weary by the day and demoralized by seeing hordes upon hordes of Russians attack no matter how many times they fended them off. In October, the Russian army broke Ottoman defences at Adrianople although they had suffered casualties in the order of 200.000 men to do so. A feeling of unease was gripping the Russian high command even if everything seemed to be going according to plan.

They crossed the Oder into Germany which they had failed to do in the previous war which caused quite some panic among the ranks of the German army. By now French forces, including African colonial troops, had arrived in sufficient numbers on the battlefield and they were of quite a different category than the armed forces of Poland. Danish and Swedish troops also arrived to shore up the central European front as it was called. Russian forces rampaged across the North German countryside between Lübeck and Rostov and launched offensives into Brandenburg in the hopes of taking Berlin and establishing a new Prussia under the Hohenzollerns as their puppet. Russia, however, was fighting on multiple fronts whereas the French weren’t. The Imperial French Army deployed the bulk of the grand total of 300 divisions it could mobilize into Germany with the remainder being shipped off to Greece to assist the crumbling Porte or to Africa to guard the border with the British Empire which had so far not seen much action. The Russian army which was by now operating on a very long supply line tried to take Berlin. They came close as they reached Potsdam and Oranienburg in an effort to surround the city, but timely French counteroffensives across the breadth of the front pushed the Russians back. Italian and South German forces attacked into Bohemia although they met with fierce Hungarian resistance. The Coalition offensives in Europe had grinded to a screeching halt by the end of the year with a frontline that ran from Stettin to Dresden, then through the Sudetenland, from there to Salzburg and Carinthia on to the city of Trieste in the Illyrian Provinces belonging to the French Empire. In the Balkans, the Russians stopped in Thrace and Greek Macedonia where the Ottomans once again held them back with their modernized army funded with the by now large oil revenues from the Trucial States and Iraq. Ottoman forces in the Caucasus also held thanks to strong defensive lines in the mountains which had been constructed pre-war. Antonov now set out to consolidate and open up negotiations since he had mostly conquered the territories he wanted. He, however, to his astonishment and outrage, was rebuffed by Empress Hélène I and her ally the Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed VI. Russian and Hungarian forces entrenched themselves along the entire length of the front in anticipation of a war of attrition which Antonov felt confident Russia would win due its manpower pool and recent industrialization. The Russian gambit to win the war in a single large strategic operation had failed and Europe settled in for what would become a long war which would make the bloodshed that already been seen seem little in comparison. Subsequently, due to the stalemate, the mobile warfare element that Russia and many other powers had invested in would disappear from Europe until much later in the war.

In Asia, the reverse was happening with Japan and China launching a large scale surprise attack. China, at this time, had the world’s largest standing army with 700 divisions while Japan had an enormous navy which was easily comparable to the navy of any European power. Chinese forces attacked Burma and a Sino-French offensive attacked into Malaya. The massive weight of numbers overwhelmed British defenders. The Chinese managed to attain air superiority pretty early on because they also fielded an enormous air force. In the meantime, Japanese forces invaded the British East Indies. Significant British forces were displaced overseas in Europe because by now the French Navy was only slightly smaller than the Royal Navy which led to a fear of invasion. The size and ferocity of the Sino-Japanese-French attack gave the British headaches because they had to get their priorities straight which they couldn’t. Instead of defending one area, British and Commonwealth troops were spread out over India, Burma, Malaya, the British East Indies and Australia. The Imperial Japanese Navy, accompanied by the French Far Eastern Squadron, sought the confrontation with the Royal Navy which had become comparatively weaker even if they still had the largest navy. The Japanese had invested increasingly in naval aviation because aircraft carriers were cheaper than battleships. In the Battle of the Sulu Sea, the Japanese and French managed to inflict a crippling defeat on the Royal Navy’s Southeast Asian assets. In a series of further naval engagements the British were forced to retreat all the way back to Ceylon. Failure to concentrate led to the fall of Singapore by July and by October Japanese, French and Chinese armies had defeated the colonial garrisons in the British East Indies after only four months of fighting and a large number of amphibious landings. They had largely been overrun by superior and numerically greater forces. The number and size of the attacks made it difficult to stop them since many landings took place simultaneously such as those against Borneo, Sulawesi, the Moluccas and New Guinea because they were part of one campaign dedicated to taking British colonies in one fell swoop, one single massive campaign. If one had been stopped, the landings one or another alternative landing site had succeeded and so the attacks were almost impossible to stop. British commanders were not equipped to deal with an invasion of this scale. Only India, Australia and New Zealand remained of Britain’s Asian empire. By this time, Chinese forces had overrun Burma and had gotten stuck in Bengal where British-Indian forces had regained their composure. Japanese forces launched raids at northern Australian which led to a fear of invasion although that didn’t happen since it was too much of a logistical headache to invade and occupy Australia.

On the American front, Brazilian forces attacked the remainder of the Spanish Empire with American assistance. Brazil had become a junior partner to America’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The Americans wished to complete their hegemony by totally removing Spanish rule. Brazil advanced in all directions and took Uruguay in three weeks and stood on the Rio de la Plata, poised to take Buenos Aires. They did so in August by sea. They succeeded in overrunning most of the Viceroyalty of Buenos Aires, but Spanish forces in the Viceroyalties of Peru and Chile held out in bastions in the mountains and defended against the Brazilians who failed to storm Spanish mountain defences and so Alpine warfare ensued. US marines occupied Easter Island and the US sent reinforcements to Australia and India to assist their British allies. And so 1935 ended.
 
1936 started with a number of counteroffensives in Europe, but would prove to be a year with little progress for either side. Italian troops launched the First Battle of the Isonzo as they attempted to penetrate into Slovenia. Simultaneously, an Ottoman counteroffensive was launched into Epirus. French offensives into Poland ran into fierce opposition from the Russian army. The French tried to break through, but got themselves into a quagmire of trench warfare again, fighting for metres instead of kilometres of ground. Russian defence in depth was hard to penetrate. The Battle for Stettin at first seemed to turn into a French victory, but they made the mistake of not acting decisively enough. Russian forces counterattacked and a meat grinder ensued. The Isonzo and Epirus offensives also didn’t get very far. A number of large scale offensives would be conducted by both sides, but none of them would force a decisive breakthrough and make the war mobile again. For now each offensive ran into enemy trenches and was met with a hail of bullets, mortar grenades and shells. The Battle of Stettin alone would last for most of winter and spring of 1936 as neither side gave up and soon this campaign degraded into a number of smaller offensives and counteroffensives. The entire battle would lead to a total of 500.000 casualties, numbers unseen up until this war. Chinese forces tried to enforce a victory in Bengal, but numerically inferior although better equipped British-Indian forces held the line. Japanese amphibious forces attacked the Andaman Islands in a lightning campaign as well as the Solomon Islands and Marshall Islands, but none of these offensives were crippling losses for Britain although it did greatly extend Japan’s strategic perimeter. Japan and China proceeded to make their dream of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere come true. The British East Indies proclaimed their independence under the name Republic of Indonesia. Burma and Malaya did the same and they were set up as puppet republics to Japan and China. The French were hardly pleased, but since the Sino-Japanese alliance was the main power in this theatre, the French could do nothing but accept this. The South American front hardly changed with Spain’s troops continuing to hold out in the Andes. The Japanese were kind enough to send a 10.000 strong expeditionary force to assist the beleaguered Spanish garrison.

Because there was little left to conquer in Southeast Asia and because Japan and China had largely consolidated their gains, they decided to turn north on French and Ottoman request the following year. Russia’s large army had so gar managed to hold back counteroffensives and Antonov, the Russian Vozhd, had made repeated efforts to negotiate a peace based on the status quo. Now it looked like Europe might have to accept it even if neither the Empress nor the Sultan wanted to concede defeat. Sino-Japanese forces attacked into Siberia with some measure of success. They were hindered by the cold as well as the inadequate infrastructure, but Antonov was nonetheless forced to divert some forces to this theatre. France, the Ottoman Empire and their Italian and German allies acted in cooperation with their Asian allies. Ottoman forces attacked in the Balkans and the Caucasus, the French and their allies into Poland, Bohemia and Austria. This wasn’t easy in spite of the diversion created by China and Japan. Russian forces resisted with fanaticism, refusing to surrender and Russian defence in depth caused severe death tolls. They, were however successful and the Russians saw themselves forced to establish new lines further east on the San and Vistula rivers and along the Danube in Hungary, thereby putting Budapest in danger. Vienna and Prague were retaken in autumn of 1937 after weeks of combat against the Hungarians. The Ottoman army managed to push into Bulgaria, Kosovo and Albania at around this time. In the meantime, the Americans landed in the Marshall Islands in an effort to help Britain although they got bogged down against Japanese defences and found themselves opposed by the Imperial Japanese Navy which could concentrate most of its forces wherever they wanted since they had defeated the Royal Navy and received fuel from the Daqing oilfield in Manchuria. The smaller Chinese navy and Chinese expeditionary forces came to Japan’s aid too. It is, however, safe to say that the US didn’t throw their full weight into the Pacific theatre because they hardly had any interests to defend there. With these campaigns, yet another year had ended and 1938 would begin.

As the tide of war turned against Russia, Russia radicalized. Their oppression of the Poles grew worse and they started to deport large numbers of them to central Russia for forced labour in the arms industry. Antonov radically ramped up arms production although the combined industrial potential of Europe, China and Japan was too large to overcome in the end. Europe followed Russia in switching to total war production and mobilized all of its production capacity. Japanese and Chinese forces were slowed down by the lacking infrastructure in eastern Russia and thus they got bogged down although they kept trying. In early 1938 France and its allies continued with their offensives. They liberated Warsaw in March, but not before the Russian army had destroyed the entire city as part of their new scorched earth policy. At around the same time, French and German forces crossed the Danube river and took the Hungarian capital of Budapest. The Habsburgs fled east to Transylvania and the now thoroughly defeated Hungarian army kept on resisting until early May when they were finally defeated in Transylvania in spite of Russian assistance. French forces were greeted by crowds of cheering Romanians who were happy to finally be rid of the oppressive Hungarians who had consistently tried to Magyarize them. The Habsburgs capitulated on May 7th 1938 and the smallest of the Coalition’s members had thus been knocked out of the war which freed up troops to be deployed in the Balkans. The Italians succeeded in getting into the Illyrian Provinces after the Fourth Battle of the Isonzo while Ottoman forces attacked the Russians and marched north along the Adriatic coast. By August 1938 Ottoman forces were standing on the Danube once again and they linked up with the French army which was located in Transylvania. Poland was fully cleared of Russian forces by September. Russia was crumbling, but Antonov called upon the Russian population again to defend the Motherland from the barbaric invaders. Russia’s production was once again increased by means of longer workdays, but that did only so much. With the counteroffensives in the Caucasus complete after a long and bloody struggle in the mountains, Russia had been pushed back to pre-war borders by October 1938. The Europeans stood poised to bring the war to Russian soil which they hoped would be enough to defeat Russia, but they failed to see how fanatical and indoctrinated the Russian populace was by government propaganda. As enemy forces crossed the western and southern borders of Mother Russia, the Russian army resisted fanatically. In the meantime on the American front, Brazilian forces managed to finally defeat the Spanish with great difficulty and create independent vassal states out of the Viceroyalties of Buenos Aires, Chile and Peru.

The war against Russia went into a higher gear as the French and their allies invaded Russia. France also started increasing its navy in size in preparation to deal Britain a knockout blow once Russia was defeated. Russian troops, in the meantime, fought well and even launched local counteroffensives with some success as part of an elastic defence. Ottoman forces, however were coming up from the Caucasus, threatening Russia’s southern flank. Therefore they had to divert troops to this theatre too. By summer 1939, Alliance forces had established a frontline running from Tallinn to the Sea of Azov. Antonov was now preparing for the Battle of St. Petersburg by building three concentric belts of defences. The French army reached the outskirts of the Russian capital in October 1939. Their first offensive was fended off by the Russian army which inflicted some serious losses with its powerful defences and this would prove to be the start of a long battle. Several more offensives followed which all ended in massacres against Russian machine guns and artillery, but in November the first ring was broken. The second one was even more powerful and so France and its allies massed some 1.000.000 men and also utilized their naval superiority in the Baltic Sea to land a twelve division strong invasion force in the Finnish Gulf. The Russian navy was neutralized since it lacked the numbers to oppose the invasion force. The imperial court left St. Petersburg in December to Moscow which led to a decrease in morale. Antonov and Tsar Alexander III continued the war from Moscow and kept St. Petersburg supplied, first by road and railroad and then by using the frozen Ladoga Lake to drive in more supplies. After a bloody struggle in the freezing cold winter and 700.000 casualties, Alliance armies took St. Petersburg and Imperial French troops hoisted the tricolour over the Tsar’s palace. At the same time, Chinese and Japanese forces advanced further into the Russian Far East.

Still Antonov refused to surrender and started to fuel a guerrilla war in the occupied areas. With the fall of the capital a new front was established that ran from St. Petersburg to Rostov and although Russia was still capable of resisting, its massive loss in men, territory and, subsequently, production capacity had ended its status as a great power and major combatant. Fortunately for Russia, its enemies couldn’t advance much further because the scorched earth attacks had destroyed much of the transport infrastructure, making resupply difficult to say the least. The Alliance, however, was determined to defeat and neutralize Russia for good and agreed to demand nothing less than unconditional surrender, thus rendering Russia’s current strategy of waging a war of attrition to exhaust its enemies into a negotiated peace useless. China invaded into Central Asia and reached the Caspian Sea by summer 1940. At around this period, the French air force started bombing raids against Western and Central Russian cities like Moscow, Tsarytsin, Yekaterinburg, Perm and Orenburg. These one thousand plane raids levelled Russian cities and brought the war to the civilians. With Antonov’s refusal to concede defeat, the French high command authorized a gas attack against Moscow. Mustard gas and chlorine gas were used, killing tens of thousands of civilians in one blow. When this wasn’t enough, Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan were also attacked in this manner. At this point, the aging Russian Tsar Alexander III could no longer bear to see his people suffer and launched a palace coup with his loyal Imperial Guard against Antonov who unfortunately escaped. Large parts of the army, in spite of years of indoctrination, sided with the Tsar although not all. The Blue Shirt paramilitary arm of the Party and several army units sided with the Vozhd, thus leading Russia into anarchy. The Russian front collapsed as the entire Russian army got involved in a civil war. On top of this, pro-war and anti-war protests erupted in several Russian cities with people demanding peace and bread. With the collapse of the front, Alliance forces could do as they pleased and they temporarily supported the Tsarist faction against Antonov who was defeated and imprisoned in December 1940. Support for the Tsarist regime, however, ebbed since it was blamed by the pro-war faction for Russia’s defeat and by the anti-war group for starting the entire unnecessary misery of war in the first place. Alexander III abdicated as revolution and civil war made him do so. His successor Nicholas II abdicated too because he had not support base for his regime. The old regime had fallen and the Russian Republic had been founded. The interim government then announced Russia’s unconditional surrender on January 16th 1941.

This left Britain, the US and Brazil to deal with although France was especially bent on neutralizing the first because this was the seventh time it had fought against France’s hegemony over the continent. Japanese naval forces picked up the pace of the war in Southeast Asia again by increased raids against northern Australia and the Japanese navy swarming out into the Indian Ocean. The British were forced to send reinforcements to prevent an invasion of Ceylon and then southern India. The French Navy, realizing that British coastal defences and air superiority were too strong to launch an invasion, instead launched a smaller operation intended to intimidate the British in May 1941. The French air force attacked with all it had, including large numbers of planes and veteran pilots returning from Russia, and established temporary air superiority over southern England by destroying air fields, enemy detection installations, communications and other infrastructure. It would require time to rebuild this and in the small window of opportunity they had, the French Navy and air force attacked the Isle of Wight. Paratroopers landed to seize vital crossroads and take enemy bases by surprise. A 30.000 strong assault division then landed on the island. French commandos also launched a raid against Portsmouth, damaging its port facilities. The opposition issued a vote of no confidence, forcing the Prime Minister out. Britain, not knowing France’s superiority was only for the moment, conceded defeat and requested an armistice. With the war practically over and America and Brazil having what they wanted, the latter two also asked for an armistice on June 18th 1941. After six years of war and 45 million casualties the War of the Seventh Coalition was over and peace reigned over the battlefields of Europe.
 
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Chapter VIII: Peace, the Treaty of Versailles, Cold War and the Dawn of the New Century, 1941 – 2010.



The war was once again over and peace needed to be made with the powers of the Seventh Coalition. Once again delegates from all the combatants met, this time in Versailles where the palace of Louis XIV, now an imperial residence, stood. The delegates of Hungary and Russia, however, could have spared themselves the trouble of coming since they would get little say in the harsh peace they would receive. Both the Romanovs and the Habsburgs had challenged French authority and dominance over the European continent for the last time and France’s major ally in Europe, the Ottoman Empire, perfectly agreed. The Russians and Hungarians would menace neither France nor the Porte anymore and would be thoroughly cut down to size territorially and see military limitations imposed on them so they wouldn’t be able to form an ‘Eighth Coalition’ against France which many Coalition leaders were already fomenting. The newly founded democratic Russian Republic was forced to cede the Baltic states and the Ukraine, including the Don, Rostov and Kuban regions to Poland because France wanted to establish it as a powerful buffer state between Central Europe and rump-Russia. With this, the Federal Kingdom of Poland-Lithuania-Ukraine was founded. Ukrainian nationalists were not particularly happy, but they were comforted by a large degree of autonomy in internal matters. Warsaw only controlled foreign policy, trade and economy, defence and the fiscal system. A consensus-based system between the separate regional parliaments was worked out for matters that concerned the entire country and the King was given limited veto powers and these vetoes could only be overturned by a two thirds majority in either one of the three regional parliaments or the national parliament or Sejm in Warsaw, depending who the veto was aimed at. Secondly, Ukrainian, Polish and Lithuanian were all established as official languages. The Ottomans took over Russia’s sphere of influence in Persia and managed to get a one hundred kilometre deep demilitarized zone on Russia’s borders in the treaty. Also, Japan claimed the Sakha region, also known as Yakutia and annexed it with French approval. The Chinese were awarded the remainder of Russia’s central Asian territories, thereby giving them access to the Caspian Sea and allowing them to link with the Alliance’s sphere of influence. Russia’s armed forces were from now on limited to 1.25 million men, thereby ending their numerical superiority and Russia was not allowed to posses chemical weapons. Furthermore, the leaders of the old regime were to be tried for war crimes in what would become known as the Moscow Trails in which Antonov was sentenced to death and hanged in 1942 for genocide and war crimes among other things (for example the pogroms against Polish Jews, using Polish POWs as forced labour and mass reprisal executions to quell resistance). Lastly, the revolting Finns were granted independence as the Republic of Finland and given the entirety of Karelia. Most of the Russian populace living there was largely evicted. Russia’s days as a major power were over.

Its Hungarian allies weren’t fortunate either since the French were not pleased with the fact that they had opposed France for the seventh time now. Slovakia was stripped from Hungary and set up as the Duchy of Slovakia under a German prince while the revolting Romanians were given their due with the establishment of the Archduchy of Transylvania under the younger of Empress Hélène’s two brothers, Charles, who became Archduke Karol I of Transylvania. The Ottoman principalities of Wallachia and Moldova with its many Romanians already had a measure of autonomy, but the Ottomans didn’t want to merger them with Transylvania because that would cause the other minorities in the empire to demand independence as well. Subsequently, many Romanians emigrated from the Ottoman Empire to their new home. The remaining rump-Hungary was allowed to keep its Habsburg kings who were now checked by two not so friendly states on their border, ensuring their compliance in the future with the Continental Alliance, and its army was limited to a mere 60.000 men, not nearly enough to do anything rash with. The Kingdom of Hungary and the broken off Slovakian and Transylvanian states were absorbed into the Continental Alliance.

In Asia, the Alliance also made major gains. Japan and China annexed the aforementioned territories in Russia, but also gained pieces of Britain’s colonial empire and they also divided their spheres of influence. The Republic of Indonesia was recognised and became part of Japan’s sphere of influence. The republics of Burma and Malaya were also recognised and ended up in China’s sphere of influence as did Nepal and Bhutan, the two mountain states between China and British India. Japan gave Korea and the Philippines an autonomous states within the Japanese Empire with self-rule in internal affairs. Japan maintained full authority over defence, foreign trade, fiscal matters and so on and had the right to veto any decisions made by the regional parliaments. This adhered to their Asian nationalist idea of an Asian federation. Indonesia soon applied for membership. They’d lose foreign policy and defence, but they would retain self-rule where it mattered and see the same rapid development, modernization and industrialization that Japan’s Philippine and Korean members had seen with lots of investment that would ensure rapid economic growth which the Indonesians couldn’t hope to achieve on their own in decades. Moreover, Japan could assist in setting up a state bureaucracy and help and give advice in the first years of self-rule since none of the Indonesian revolutionary leaders had ever filled an administrative function. The relatively well functioning Japanese government system with its rigid hierarchy and efficient, clear-cut decision making ability were greatly admired and therefore the Indonesians wanted to copy from their role model. Over time, this federation would become much looser although Japan would remain dominant. Only French Indochina remained as a European colony (besides India of course) although France did give up its sphere of influence in China as recognition for Chinese services. Japan and China’s spheres of influence were then united into the Asia Pact or AP of which they were the dominant members. At this time, India, Australia and New Zealand were left to the British Empire. Britain was also forced to give away its African colonies except for the Dominion of South Africa to Spain as a compensation for the loss of its South American empire, but in exchange they didn’t get occupation, military limitations and war reparations and were also awarded a place in France’s Continental Alliance which opened up European markets to their products. Britain was not, however, given any kind of dominant role since they were effectively a middle power now with India becoming an independent state in 1950 and member of the British Commonwealth. America would rise to take its place since with the establishment and recognition of the independent states of Peru, Argentina and Chile, they dominated the Western Hemisphere together with their Brazilian partners. And so the Treaty of Versailles was concluded in November 1941.

The world could now begin the slow process of rebuilding. The Continental Alliance did so by installing stiff tariffs against any foreign imports to protect their own markets. Internally, trade barriers were lifted and free flow of goods, services and capital was allowed between members which strongly stimulated the European economy. The Ottomans also assisted because with their oil revenues they were becoming the major player on the economic field. Petrol was now the base for modern economies all over the world and oil export made the Porte ridiculously rich to the point that the Ottoman Sultans were the richest monarchs in the world. They agreed to assist their European allies by means of long term loans. The economic benefits as well as getting European markets was one of the reasons Britain joined and because most now understood the reality that Britain was not ever going to able to defeat France militarily. These reasons also applied to the weakened Russian Republic which was still in chaos after the end of the war. Although initially wary of Russia, the French allowed them into their fold in 1948 because they realized that renewed hardship for the Russian people could bring about a new hostile totalitarian regime. They’d rather have a prosperous and cooperative regime in Russia which would eventually settle into its new status of subdued middle power and be rehabilitated as a member of the international community just like Britain. At the same time that Europe was busy rebuilding, the US entered a full economic boom as they formed an alliance with an integrated economic structure, but also a mutual aid clause in the event of war. This was known as the American Union or AU which included all states in the Americas with the US and the Empire of Brazil acting as an unofficial directorate in the AU parliament and the biannual meetings of heads of state and foreign ministers in Lima, Peru. American investors went all over South America and US products were soon available everywhere. This economic protectionism, however, also fuelled the Cold War that started between the three power blocs (Europe, Asia and the Americas). No war erupted since it wasn’t in the interest of any side, but a high level of militarization was kept and the Americans started fuelling independence movements in Europe’s colonies in Africa, much to the chagrin of the latter.

As the economies of Europe recovered, new discoveries were made in the scientific field such as nuclear energy. France adopted a nuclear energy program for peaceful purposes and opened the first reactor, that provided electricity for large parts of northern France, in 1955. It functioned by the fission reaction in the reactor’s uranium nuclear fuel which caused heat, enough heat to evaporate water into steam in order to propel turbines and generate power much more efficiently and much more friendly to the environment than coal fired plants. The implications, however, were wider than just this because many nuclear physicists realized that nuclear power could be made into a weapon of unfathomable destructive power. Some research had been done in the 1930s and the idea of atomic bombs had been suggested, but nothing substantial had come of it at the time, partially due to the industrial effort the war required which left little to spare for any kind of program which many at the time still dismissed as bogus and unfeasible for at least another three decades or more if it was at all possible. These criticisms had made sure that political leaders had vested little hope in a wonder weapon which might not even work and might not be finished before the end of the war. The recent successes and breakthroughs, however, made sure that the governments of major powers started to serious look into these super weapons just in case a future war did break out. Research facilities were built in the French alps with centrifuges to obtain the necessary fissile material (uranium-235) and reactors to create plutonium. It was France, one of the leading powers in the scientific field if not the leading power, which detonated the world’s first nuclear weapon in 1962. It was a successful test in the Algerian desert with a yield of about 20 kilotons. The US followed as did the Ottoman Empire, China, Japan (China and Japan had a joint project), Spain, Brazil and India in the 1960s and 70s. The next logical step, fusion weapons, was soon made as well and their destructive power wa even more massive, threatening the world with the spectre of nuclear holocaust. Another leap forward was missile technology which had largely been ignored after its first mention in the 1920s because aircraft and airships had so far done their job excellently in the military field and other fields. With the Cold War, however, came a sense of competition and so the French launched the world’s first satellite into Earth orbit in 1971. Again, the US would follow and would go further by putting a man on the moon in 1980, beating France to the punch. China and Japan – both economies that were growing enormously, becoming the world’s suppliers of cars, consumer electronics and manufactured goods – formed a joint space agency although they were slower because they considered economic growth and military applications more important than prestige projects. By the 1960s the world economies were booming like never before, but Europe was about to get entangled in fierce colonial problems.

Revolts sprang up across the African continent in the 1950s and 60s which the French army managed to suppress for now although the Empress and her advisors knew it wouldn’t last. Unrest and discontent simmered and would frequently explode into short but violent outbursts. These people wanted independence from a weakened Europe which could no longer claim to hold the higher moral ground after two unimaginably barbaric wars. Empress Hélène I decided to more or less consciously ape the British Empire, but also the federal empire the Japanese had set up with the Philippines, Korea and Indonesia (Japanese Russia by now as flooded with Japanese attracted by recently discovered supplies of Siberian natural resources so it didn’t require an autonomous status). France’s colonies were given an autonomous status as part of a French Commonwealth with self-rule in both internal affairs as well as foreign policy, trade and economy. The French monarch kept veto power and defence was maintained by France and the French franc was kept as the Commonwealth’s currency (although Indochina also accepted Chinese and Japanese currency as they drifted closer to their sphere of influence and eventually joined the Asian Pact, like Thailand did, a sign of diminishing French power in Asia). Only heavily Europeanized Algeria, Puntland and the Suez Canal zone were directly administered by Paris. France thus retained its glory instead of descending into a violent, bloody quagmire like its Spanish ally. Spain refused to let its African empire slip from it like its South American empire had and resorted to violent methods such as genocide, chemical weapons and mass deportations to concentration camps, methods upon which even their longstanding French allies frowned. Spain would get embroiled in a massive guerrilla campaign, bloodbath which would last until the early 1980s, by which time they only controlled the major cities with the countryside in rebel hands. The last Spanish troops would leave in 1983 and most of sub-Saharan Africa became independent although the new nations quickly fell into conflict among each other or civil war. France maintained Rio de Oro as a shred of lost glory and it was an especially painful defeat because they had forfeited their empire because of their own obstinacy. Brazil did the same although they succeeded due to their much larger manpower pool to draw from and because they suppressed any manifestation of the youth counterculture unlike much more democratic Spain. Angola and Mozambique were integrated into Brazil and became equal to any other Brazilian province which was a slight improvement even if the Empire of Brazil was a highly centralized state.

The youth counterculture that rose after the war in the period of economic affluence of the 60s condemned war as the cause of the world’s many problems and was very leftwing oriented. They, however, never formed a threat because most groups operated within the legal framework, because they were largely pacifistic or because they were anarchistic and quickly fell apart or any combination of the three. This movement was against the enduring militarism and high level of militarization as part of the Cold War, fearing that the next war would destroy the world in nuclear fire as nuclear weapon stockpiles grew. As part of this, new frivolous music and art preaching peace, equality, freedom and free love arose against traditional values although it failed in replacing these traditional views fully, resulting in a left-right divide in society, also because part of the youths swayed back to a more rational view.

With an economy booming, increasing freedom in the world, technological advances in all fields, the world advanced into the 21st century under new rulers. Empress Hélène I died in 1976 at the age of 81 after having seen two world wars and having guided France through one of them, space exploration, the discovery of nuclear power and other enormous progresses in technology, the rise and fall of Russia and the greatest level of affluence the world had ever seen (after the war). She was succeeded by her son who was crowned Emperor Napoleon V who rules until this day with his son Eugene Napoleon as his heir apparent to be crowned Napoleon VI in the still undetermined future. Napoleon V and other rulers would be faced with completely new problems such as environmental problems caused by the world’s affluence and level of industrialization. These would be solved and the world could confidently and peacefully enter the dawning information age sparked by the rise of computers and the increasing availability of information, transforming modern society once again. The 21st century, the new age, had come.
 
Trust me Onkel Willie the lack of comments may not stem from lack of interest, you're timelines always manage to make me happy :D

Excellent update as always! :cool:
 
I think that you are letting the US and Brazil getting away
with to much, they were after all on the loosing side in both
wars yet they managed to aquire wast territories.
 
I think that you are letting the US and Brazil getting away
with to much, they were after all on the loosing side in both
wars yet they managed to aquire wast territories.

Well, the reason is that South America is a couple thousand miles away from Europe. Neither France nor Spain can effectively project power there. For the US and Brazil OTOH it's like right next door, very close to their centres of power and Alliance powers were abundantly compensated in Asia and Africa ITTL.
 
Post war map. I gave Brazil border corrections with her puppets and gave Finland to Sweden as a puppet as I thought it was too bad that they were deprived of getting Finland back. I gave Poland her own colour again as it's now a much bigger state and won't be bossed around as much by France anymore. Oh, and there's not really a reason why I gave the Falkland Isles to America. When thinking about it, they are more likely to be Brazilian. Imagine they are.

Vive l'Empereur, Vive la France, Vive l'Empire1943.PNG
 
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