When Decade-Old Alliances Were Not Broken, A CP Italy TL.

Moreover, such a solution feeds my own geopolitical goals (and bias) better.

However, I would remark that America would have to swing *a lot* to the left in order to make an internationalist alliance with Soviet Russia against European democratic constitutional monarchies preferable to neutrality (not to mention the political and cultural links with Britain, Germany, and Italy). If I were you, I'd mostly emphasize the anticolonial angle in order to justify such a swing, this is an issue where mainstream America may find plausible common ground with Soviet Russia and Japan, rather than definite political sympathy for godless Bolsheviks, near-ASB short of a far-left revolution.

Yes, that's probably the main difference between our geopolitical goals. I agree with you when things concern Germany and Italy and their rise to power, as well as removing states like Belgium from existence. The USA, however, is always an annoyance to me for their republican government and the fact that they robbed the Europeans from their rightful place as supplying at least one of the two superpowers in 1945 (well, Russia is also European, but it's part Asian as well... it doesn't quite fit my idea). However, this TL will unfortunately see it rise and see Canada fall down from her proud monarchist status.

I agree with you on the reasons for the swing. It would take some persuasion to get the US to join the Soviets, but they sided with the commies IOTL as well so they can get along in this world. Their main goal is indeed anticolonialism, and the Soviet rejoice when the USA joins the war will soon be smashed as the Americans aren't planning to send an expeditionary force to Europe until the Alliance presence is removed from the America's, and that could take some time.

BTW, any comments on the French transition to the Alliance camp?
 
Why not give the British portions of northern Borneo to the Dutch? Malaya to Germany, Indochina to Japan... and Malaya would frankly be a bigger prize than some of the African territory.

The Dutch get British and French Guiana, and also the other half of Sint-Maarten in the Caribbean. With the Dutch in the war on the CP side, you might even see Belgium dismantled; Flanders goes to the Dutch, the rest becomes a German puppet.

Also, Sudan might be divided between the Italians and Ottomans; the Ottomans take the north, the Italians the south.

Um... a question... did you read the TL? Did you look at the maps? The latter idea is a possibility, but I decided to take Italian interests over those of the Ottomans. As for the second paragraph, that's already in the TL. The Dutch already get Borneo, and Germany gets Malay (minus Singapore). Italy gets Indochina because it gets less in Africa and the Japanese aren't as important. They get a lot of Russian property anyway.
 
Here, an update...

Chapter V: The Second Great War Part One, 1939-1943
War had been declared and the Soviet Republic immediately struck with amazing force. In a hopeless attempt to save their capital, the Lithuanian Army was wiped out on the first day of the war and Vilnius fell. The Polish didn’t suffer the same fate, but of the four Polish armies, two were all but destroyed before the New Year, either taken prisoner or dead, and the Red Army continued her unstoppable advance to Warsaw. The city put up a fierce fight, but fell within two days on January 5th, 1940. Farther north, Lithuania and most of East-Prussia were overrun, cutting off the Baltic Duchy. The little nation was destroyed in days as well and after two weeks of warfare, the Soviet Republic controlled the Baltics and most of Poland, and the Baltic Duke Eitel Friedrich was a Soviet Russian prisoner.

The Ukraine also got a heavy blow dealt to it as the Red Army attacked them and crushed any and all resistance. The Soviet advance swept through the nation westwards, ignoring only the Crimea for now. Kiev fell to Soviet hands on January 12th and the Autonomous Ukrainian Soviet Republic was proclaimed as part of the SSR. Imperial Russia was also attacked and was no match for the stronger Soviet armies. Tsar Vladimir fled to the Ottoman Empire as Astrakhan and Volgograd burned. The Soviets attacked the Caucasus mountains where they were slowed down significantly by the Ottoman resistance and had to stop before reaching Baku. Georgia and Daghestan fell, but the Ottoman Empire remained safe for now.

The SSR also invaded the Balkans. After crushing the Ukraine, Romania came under attack. The proud little Balkan country had a strong army and mobilized a higher percentage of it’s population than any other country. Nevertheless, the speed and strength of the Soviet armies were too strong for even Romania. The poor nation was overrun in two weeks, which caused Serbia and Greece to see a chance for revenge against their old enemies. Serbia declared war on the Allies on January 29th, followed by Greece three days later. Together, the three Axis countries invaded Bulgaria which was helpless against the onslaught and went down in six days. The hammer and sickle were risen above Sofia which was the ultimate humiliation as it was accompanied by the Serbian and Greek flags. Serbia and Greece had their revenge.

In Poland and German Prussia, the Red Army continued her advance as well. By now, however, more and more reinforcements were sent in from France and Britain. Also, the SSR began to suffer from serious overstretch. They took Poznan on February 1st and Danzig the day after but their advance was much slower than it could’ve been thanks to serious German and Polish resistance. The Red Army now advanced towards the Oder where the French and British reinforcements halted them near Breslau. The city became the scene of street-for-street fighting and the Red Army was slowed down and came to a halt. They just couldn’t advance any farther anymore because their losses were rising. Even the Russian bear couldn’t take any and all losses it was faced with. The offensive was stopped.

Soviet advance also stopped on other places like in the east where the Khanate of Central Asia had all but fallen but British aid prevented Afghanistan and Persia from being captured. In Hungary Bratislava or Pressburg as it is called in Germany also fell thanks to the treacherous commander of the area, one colonel Adolf Hitler. He had been deployed to the area to defend Slovakia (local name for north-Hungary) from falling into Soviet hands but gave Pressburg up without a fight which allowed the SSR to penetrate into German territory here as well and nearly reach Vienna. Hitler was arrested for treason and executed on his birthday, April 20th 1940. It was obvious that he was a Soviet spy who had deliberately helped the Red Army advance although his own declaration about his actions was that he ‘didn’t want to give German lives for the defense of the subhuman Slovak Slavs’. Of course the judges saw that this was a lie and Hitler was executed for the betrayal of Germany to the communist invaders.

In the south the SSR was also stopped in her advance along with her Greek and Serb allies. They managed to conquer Sarajevo and Belgrade but only after a very long struggle and the frontlines solidified here as well. The frontline now ran from the Baltic coast along the Oder river, then following the German-Hungarian border in the regions known as Bohemia and North-Hungary, then diving slightly into Germany again before leaving it, following the Danube river in Hungary until Mohacs where it went southwards until reaching the Bosna and Neretva rivers and reaching the coast of the Adriatic in Italian Dalmatia. In the north, where the SSR had invaded Finland, they had conquered most of the country but Finland still existed and was holding out at a frontline running from Murmansk to Oulu.

Trench warfare ensued in all parts of Europe as neither side could break the stalemate. The battle of Breslau was becoming a brutal war which cost the lives of thousands and thousands of Russians and Alliance soldiers. The Alliance had air supremacy and bombed the Soviet positions without mercy. Diplomatically the Soviet situation also went down as all Alliance members declared that the Empire of all Russia’s would be restored as the sole Russian government post-war and ceased recognizing the SSR as an independent nation, just as a group of organized rebels trying to resist against the legitimate Russian government and attacking the Alliance countries while at it. In the Far East, similar declarations were issued about the Empire of China which was to be restored as the sole Chinese government post-war. This was a big diplomatic stunt but it made the SSR and the PRC even more determined to win.

Being formally at war with a communist power, France now took the opportunity to declare support for the Spanish government should it join the Central Powers, which they did on May 12th with their declaration of war upon the Soviet Republic. While Spain had their dreams of gaining French lands back which they had just lost they didn’t have much of a chance to win a three-way-war between themselves, the communist rebels and the Alliance, and thus they sided with their natural allies against communism. For the moment this meant surprisingly little as the civil war went on in Spain with the Alliance being too busy to help the Spanish efforts to keep communism away from them. They had their own things to do.

With the current positions of the fronts, one nation was highly threatened: the Ottoman Empire. The Balkan nations had gone down and Greco-Soviet forces were now invading Eastern Thrace from the west while Soviet tanks bombed Baku and attempted to attack in the Caucasus. Trotsky had fired several important generals and strategists whom he blamed for the failure of the invasion and replaced them by others, among whom the famous general Zhukov who deduced that the mistake had been in attacking too many countries at once. Instead the new Soviet offensive would only target two regions, namely Finland and the Ottoman Empire. Both areas were already highly under Soviet threat and their fall would undermine Soviet morale. Most of the forces were sent to the south as the Ottoman offensive had more chances of succeeding.

On May 11th the Soviet Republic started her offensive in Finland and attacked Swedish and Finnish positions. The armies orderly retreated to the Swedish pre-war borders and a massive guerilla war ensued. In the south, the offensive started on May 15th and had more success. Thrace was taken and Baku also fell which cut off the Ottoman main oil source. Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani communist republics were proclaimed and soon the Soviets stood on the pre-war border. In this offensive the Crimea also fell which the Ottoman Empire had been protecting since the collapse of the Ukraine. Only Sevastopol held and would hold for now. The Greeks had in the meanwhile launched an attack on the Italian Dodecanese islands which were surrendered without much of a fight as Italy hadn’t got a real good position there. They also invaded the Ottoman mainland near Smyrna which fell to Greek troops. Constantinople, the ancient Greek capital, was besieged and the Greeks and Soviets were very close to realizing the old Russian dream of taking the old city and liberating it from Muslim rule which had lasted for 484 years by now as it had been 1453 when the city fell to Ottoman offensives and the old Roman Empire was destroyed. Constantinople wouldn’t fall though as every Turk man was called to defend the empire and do his duty. The Greeks and Soviets did take several important buildings in the city but didn’t manage to destroy resistance all together or even cross the Bosporus. That remained out of reach for them. The vicious battle of Constantinople did cause Ottoman troops to be withdrawn from Cyprus where they had been close to defeating Greece. Instead Greek forces counterattacked and ‘liberated’ the island which was annexed into Greece on the first of June.

In the Middle East, things had taken an unexpected turn. With clear Soviet successes everywhere, Persia had risen up in revolt against British rule and had pushed out their British overlords. They declared war on the Alliance which caused the Soviets to come to their aid as they could never fight the British Empire alone. In a series of decisive summer battles, the British Empire had to give up Persia which became a republic as the People’s Republic of Iran, which would be the new name for the country. Backed by their new allies, the SSR also invaded Afghanistan but got stuck in trench warfare in Kabul by the end of August.

Once again, the SSR attempted a try to push the Ottomans so far that they would surrender. The Red Army linked up with the Persian People’s Army in Greater Azerbaijan, thus bringing the Caspian Sea under Russian sovereignty once more. An invasion of Eastern Anatolia was launched that took Erzurum, along with a Persian offensive that almost took Baghdad. However, the Ottoman Empire prevailed and Baghdad turned into another trench warfare city and suffered the same fate it had suffered during the First World War when it had been highly disputed between the Ottoman government and the British invaders. Now the invaders were Persian and Soviet Russian instead but the basic idea remained the same. Baghdad wouldn’t fall however. The Ottoman Empire had become too strong for that. It could fight a two-front-war and even managed to fight a third front as the Arabs had risen up in revolt again. Mecca was taken and an independent Arabia proclaimed. The Arabians openly allied with Soviet Russia which caused the Alliance to officially proclaim that Arabia would be destroyed after the war. The Ottomans managed to halt Arab offensives towards Mesopotamia which might’ve caused a Soviet-Arabian link-up. Instead the Ottoman Empire held out and Arab control was limited over the Arabian peninsula minus the oil fields in the east which were fiercely protected by an Ottoman garrison and refused to fall.

Italy was dealing with some problems of her own in Ethiopia where the Ethiopian independence ideal was no longer an unrealistic hope. Most of the old Ethiopian Empire had been retaken and a new emperor was proclaimed in Addis Abeba. Thanks to the war in Europe and Asia Italy could not afford to spare troops to conquer the region, but they were confident that one day Ethiopia would return to Italian sovereignty as it should be. Therefore, they simply let the Ethiopians be.

In Baluchistan and Afghanistan the Soviet Republic then made their final offensive in late November which was a great success and eliminated Afghan resistance. The British and Indians orderly retreated to the Indus river which was reinforced with Indian armies. India had been mobilized to fight their enemy and, fearing that the enemy would attempt to force Soviet atheism upon them, the Hindu Indians were willing to fight for the Empire of India. King-Emperor Edward VIII/I personally traveled to India to boost the morale of the Indian soldiers and promised them even more rights after the war. As such the Soviet position on the Indus was becoming a line they could not hold. Already their opponents had achieved numerical equality and better techniques. It was just a matter of time when the Soviets would be pushed back.

For now however the SSR had reached the ultimate extent of her conquests. She controlled Central Asia, Persia, Afghanistan, the Balkans, parts of eastern Anatolia and eastern Mesopotamia, Finland, eastern Hungary, Poland, the Baltic States, the Ukraine, half of China and Germany up to the Danube. The land that the SSR controlled was more than the land the Mongols had controlled under Djenghis Khan. The Soviet Republic appeared to stand victorious but was suffering from overstretch and exhaustion. They had crossed the limits of what they could possibly hold and would suffer the consequences soon enough. That was the situation when 1940 ended and 1941 began.

In the far east the situation was grave. Whereas Soviet advances in the 1930s had strengthened the position of the SSR’s vassal, the People’s Republic of China, their authority was beginning to weaken due to the full Alliance backing that Japan now had and the Japanese advances in the region. With most of the Soviet troops being in Western Europe, Japan was unstoppable and pushed the SSR out of Jiangsu, Anhui and Hubei. Japanese possession of Inner Manchuria was consolidated and strengthened. More and more, the Chinese themselves began to side with Japan. The communist rule was a hard life and at least Japan had some morals and was in favor of a united China, while the Soviet Republic had carved off Mongolia and Ughyurstan already and wanted to do the same with Manchuria as an independent People’s Republic of Manchukuo if the area was ever conquered. As such, the Chinese decided that siding with Japan was for their own good, and so they did so and started supporting Japan from then on.

In the west the Alliance had strengthened from the defeats that the SSR had brought upon them the previous year. On January 17th, they attacked with all the strength they had in the direction of Belgrade. The German and Hungarian forces broke through Russian lines and took out Soviet holdings in Hungary. Next, they struck towards Romania which caused the Soviets to abandon their Greek allies as they knew perfectly well what was coming here. After harsh fighting, the Alliance managed to reach the coast of Constanza by early February and cut off all Soviet troops in Wallachia, Bulgaria and Thrace, as well as their Serb and Greek allies. Having done so, the Alliance conquered Moldavia and solidified their frontline in the east at the Boeg and the Vistula rivers. Turning southwards, they also ejected the Soviet armies from Wallachia and restored Romania as an independent nation with the conquest of Bucharest on March 5th, where the Romanian king entered his capital again three days later, dressed as a victor.
 
What followed next was the death struggle of the remaining Axis members south of the Danube, Greece and Serbia. Croatia had already taken Sarajevo back and advanced through Bosnia along with Hungarian forces. They attacked into Serbia proper, taking Belgrade after a one-week-battle on March 27th. German armies attacked south into Bulgaria where Sofia was liberated a day after the fall of Belgrade. The liberators found the old Bulgarian capital in ruins. Serb commanders had ordered to ruin Sofia, much like they had already ruined the old memorial sites of Bulgarian losses in the First World War. And ruined it was. The Bulgarian Tsar, who had intended to enter his old city in triumph, now entered in misery, a broken figure, but at last rose his head and proclaimed: “In the name of the Bulgarian people and our proud nation, may revenge be taken for this injustice!”

And revenge was taken. Under enormous pressure, the Serb army withdrew from Bulgaria to support the northern front, where Croatian and Hungarian forces were still advancing. After another crushing defeat, Serbia’s prime minister attempted to negotiate a conditional surrender. With total victory being so near, these attempts were ignored by both the rest of the Serbian government which wanted to fight on and the Alliance which wanted to make Serbia fall and Germany continued her offensives, as did Italian forces in Croatia and the Hungarian armies coming from the north. Poor little Serbia fought to her death with King Alexander II being unwilling to budge. He had ordered the prime minister executed for suggesting surrender and fought on in the new capital of Nis. It was here that the final battle started on April 22nd. It lasted almost two weeks. On the fifth of May, king Alexander committed suicide. The new king, the young Peter II, immediately surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. The Bulgarian, Hungarian, Croatian and German flags were risen above Nis. Serbia was defeated.

Greece now remained as an European axis member and it would be the task of the Alliance to crush her. Offensives were made southwards as Greece adjusted politically to the new situation, formally annexing North-Epirus, Bulgarian Thrace, Ottoman Thrace, the Dodecanese and the Smyrna region. They also annexed more of Macedonia and turned Albania into a puppet. Attempts at surrenders based on these borders were of course rejected and when the Greeks, after a couple of defeats that drove them out of Macedonia and Albania, offered a status quo ante bellum peace, it was rejected as well. Bulgaria, Albania and the Ottomans were eager for a piece of the Greek nation and would get it. Cyprus was liberated in early June, around the same time that the main Alliance thrust liberated Thessalonica. The invasion of Thessaly followed, as Italian forces liberated the Dodecanese and Crete. When Italy invaded the Peloponnesus region from Crete on June 24th, it was clearly the end for Greece as they didn’t have the abilities to fight a two-front war. On July 21st the government in Athens finally surrendered as by then Greece had been reduced to the capital itself and nothing more. The war in the Balkans was over.

Whereas the war news brought good tidings, at one of the European courts, the news was not all too good. On March 2nd, 1941, Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany died of old age after nearly 82 years of life. He had been the one to guide Germany through an age of prosperity and had leaded the Germans through World War One which they had won despite Wilhelm’s alienation of Britain. While he’d been hesitant to ally with his ancient enemy France at first, Wilhelm had come to respect the French as allies and was overjoyed at the enthusiasm with which they fought the SSR, proclaiming that he wished that only his armies were this good. In his later years his health hadn’t been all too well but he remained sharp until the end. After Wilhelm’s death, the Imperial Court in Berlin immediately received condolences of king Edward VIII of Britain, Tsar-in-exile Vladimir III of all Russia’s (who was in Berlin at the time) and emperors Napoleon IV of France, Victor Emanuel of Italy, Xuantong of China and Hirohito of Japan. The old Emperor was succeeded by his oldest son, Crown Prince Wilhelm, who was already 59 years old and nearing a normal man’s retirement age. His ‘job’ was only just beginning though. He was crowned king Wilhelm III of Prussia on March 19th and as emperor Wilhelm III of Germany three days later. He immediately went to work as the war required it. Celebrating would have to wait.

The tide turning also meant that Spain was in a position to be helped again which was about time as the communist armies, which were mostly in the former kingdom of Aragon, the Basque region and Portugal, had launched an offensive from the northeast and were about to take Madrid. France sent forces to her southern border where they opened up a two-front war for the communists and also sent armies towards Madrid to help it against the onslaught of the ‘People’s Republic of Spain’. The Portuguese and Aragonese link-up was prevented and Madrid remained safe. Spain wouldn’t be free of the revolts yet though as France had more things to do than just help the Spanish government. In the midst of it all, the monarchists got another blow with king Alfonso XIII dying. His oldest son had renounced his rights in 1931 and his second son in 1933, so the third son, prince Juan, succeeded him as king Juan III of Spain and was crowned as such in Madrid. Much like Emperor Wilhelm III he wouldn’t have time to mourn over his father or celebrate over getting the throne. Spain was at war after all.

In the Caucasus and in Eastern Europe, the war against the SSR continued as the republic was forced to concede more and more territory. By August Poland and Germany had fully been liberated and in September the last Soviet soldier fled Bessarabia. The Ottoman Empire mostly restored pre-war borders as well even though her puppets remained Russian for now and a tiny Soviet remnant remained around Baku and would take some time to defeat. However, the tide had definitely turned against the Axis and it was generally expected that the next year would bring victory and peace for the Alliance.

However, it turned out that this was not the case. The cause of this is commonly placed in Japan, however most of the overconfident Alliance members fully agreed with their cause and stood behind it. The cause concerned the United States of America, which had been neutral up until now, but was clearly pro-Soviet and any incident would be used as a pretext for war. The Japanese were clearly winning in China, and thus had troops to spare. Wouldn’t it be smart, the Japanese command reasoned, to strike first and destroy the U.S. fleet before they can destroy ours?

Of course, the Alliance didn’t really agree with this scheme, but plans were drafted for it anyway and Japan seriously considered attacking. They greatly feared the American build-up and figured that it was about time to remove the Philippines from existence as an American possession and bring them under Tokyo’s control. This plan had not been approved yet though but a spiraling of events would force Japan to implement the strategy. On October 23rd, 1941, a squadron of the Japanese navy spotted a group of American ships moving towards the Soviet coast. What happened next would always be disputed but in short, it was summarized as follows: a Japanese soldier was bringing coffee to his superiors, stumbled and fell upon his commander, who in turn fell on a button that would launch a torpedo. The torpedo was launched and was a direct hit: the American ship at front was destroyed. Horrified, the other ships turned and as outrage prevailed by the commander of the American squadron, who happened to be a relative of the now dead captain of the other ship and a devoted nationalist, American cannons opened fire on the Japanese which was followed by retaliation. The Japanese fleet outnumbered the Americans and destroyed it but some ships managed to reach the SSR coast and contact the USA which was enraged. Tokyo attempted to apologize but Washington was too mad and the United States declared war on Japan. Britain, which had initially attempted to mediate, was angry with the US for declaring war on their ally. Despite this they maintained neutrality until a German declaration of war on the US sent things spiraling out of control and Washington declared war on London to ‘remove the imperialist threat on our borders for once and for all’. The war in the Pacific and on the American continent had begun.

Following the attack on the ships, Japan attacked the Philippines which were still an American possession and in the progress of being integrated as a state. With British, Dutch and Italian help, they crushed most resistance within a week or two, however some Americans remained resisting on the Bataan peninsula even until January. Japan stood victorious in the Philippines and moved on, capturing Wake Island and Guam. By then, however, the American navy had recovered (slightly) and started a fierce campaign in the Pacific against Japan. They wouldn’t get beaten so soon.

In Latin America, declarations of war also flew. Brazil declared war on the US and joined the Allies. Cuba, Mexico, Bolivia and Peru did the same, whereas Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Paraguay and the remaining nations joined America in their quest against imperialism. Warfare also broke out soon, the start being the Mexican invasion of the U.S. which even crossed the old border and went into New Mexico and Arizona. American forces beat the invasion back and pushed Mexico back. By the end of the year, the frontline had neared pre-war borders again and the Third American-Mexican War seemed to turn out in the former’s favor like her predecessors. Mexico wouldn’t give up without a fight though as like in the other wars she was backed by strong allies in Brazil and Britain. Cuba was also a Mexican ally which was much closer too but the Cubans were under constant threat from the U.S.A., a threat that only increased when Cuba declared itself a British dominion on December 17th and accepted king Edward VIII as sovereign. America countered this act of defiance with one of her own as they officially annexed the Dominican Republic which had been an American proxy for a long time now. Protest came to this move from the Allies and also at home some protested against America’s ‘war on liberalism’ as they called it and a neo-Confederate uprising appeared in Virginia although it was disorganized and never controlled more than a few districts which were also under very loose control. It was more of a fringe group of extreme southern nationalists instead of a strong uprising. This concluded 1941 and started the new year.

1942 had began and the whole world except Denmark was at war. In Europe, the Soviet Union had seen a glimmer of hope when the Americans declared war but for now America couldn’t do anything for them besides providing as many supplies as they could which was mostly done through Alaska as many passageways were guarded by the still-powerful Royal Navy. The Germans weren’t discouraged by America declaring war on them and launched a new offensive eastwards into the Ukraine. On March 11th they captured Kiev to which the Ukrainian government returned a few days later. They soon reached the Dnepr river where the SSR held for now. They were also fighting the Ottomans in the Caucasus where their Baku pocket was still holding out despite all odds and lacks of supplies even though it would soon fall. In Central Asia, the British weren’t making much gains for now but they had liberated Baluchistan and were attacking the Afghani and Iranian People’s Republics in which the SSR had by now created loyal puppets. Farther east, in China, Japan was continuing their advance even despite the fact that they were also fighting the US in the pacific now. They advanced through Liaoning where they threatened to cut the Chinese off from the coast. The PRC was fighting a desperate struggle for survival by now even though they knew they couldn’t hold out. The SSR was by now beginning to realize that they had attacked the west slightly too early as if they had waited a year, they could’ve probably beaten Japan and made it a neutral in the current war. Nevertheless China had become a sideshow and the Soviet Socialist Republic made it a point not to dwell too much over China. The PRC was lost to them but they simply refused to see it or send troops. Europe was more important now. This allowed Japan, which had taken out the Bataan pocket some time ago, to strike into the heart of the People’s Republic of China and eventually destroy it. It wasn’t that time yet though.

In Africa war had also come back. There were just two theatres there, both of which were sideshows to the main theatres in America and Europe. One had been going on for some time now and was the Ethiopian uprising in Italian East-Africa. Italy was fighting back with brute force there and Rome had decided by now that they would flood the region with settlers after the war was over to decrease it’s restiveness. Ethiopia had sided with the Axis powers and was receiving as much help as the Axis could spare, even though not all airplanes reached their destination as the territory the rebels controlled was still landlocked and so one would have to fly over Italian territory first to get there. The other war was in the west, in Liberia, where the Liberian republic had joined her natural masters, the United States of America, in declaring war on the Alliance, which meant bad news to her as the U.S.A was busy and couldn’t prevent France’s invasion which crushed the tiny country in early 1943, taking just a few weeks to destroy the Liberian army and navy. Whatever remained of the air force and navy fled to Argentina or America, while the army applied guerilla tactics in the forests where they would keep up resistance. Nevertheless Liberia had been beaten and a puppet government was installed under close guard by the Emperor in Paris even though this wouldn’t last as France was determined to annex the region one day and didn’t want to leave it independent, not even nominally, much like how Italy had thought about Ethiopia in the previous war.

The America’s were also the scene of vicious fighting as Mexican forces had to withdraw for the U.S. and despite all resistance the United States Army advanced unstoppable. In April they reached Mexico City and all but destroyed it, marking the end of an era. By May it was all over for Mexico though as with other nations some Mexican refugees fled to other Alliance countries where they continued the war. America had also invaded Cuba in March and conquered half the island. The Cubans retreated into the forests and though forces freed up from Mexico caused the fall of Havana, the Cuban Dominion wasn’t giving up yet and would continue their struggle for survival. It would take until late July to clear the island of enemy forces. Cuba was formally annexed into the U.S.A the day after as a punishment for their uprising. Cuban independence would never be restored and within America Cuba would be one of the regions that was granted statehood the latest, which makes it obvious how much America felt that Cuba should be punished.

In South-America the Alliance was making gains as Peru crushed Ecuador and Brazil did the same with Paraguay. Also northern Chile was conquered by a Peruvian-Bolivian force which restored Bolivian access to the sea once more. On the other hand, Venezuela was making gains in Guyana despite tough Dutch resistance and American aid would come soon. America itself was distracted in the north where they invaded Canada, liberating parts of Maine which the Canadians had taken in the past months. American forces conquered New Brunswick and Montreal and had started the siege of Ottawa by the end of the year. Canadian resistance was tough but the British Royal Navy was spread thin and the British had other fronts to fight at too. Luckily for the Alliance the Soviet Navy didn’t mean much which meant that most naval battles occurred in the America’s.

The Pacific saw a Japanese attack at Midway by June which was supported by British and Italian naval squadrons. America couldn’t fight this incredible might and lost the battle, boosting Japanese morale. Japan then proceeded to invade Hawaii in September although they soon got bogged down as neither of the islands went down without a fight. At the end of the year most of Hawaii still held and Japan couldn’t enforce a surrender. They couldn’t do that in China either where the communist Chinese managed to hold on against the incredible Japanese might. However by the end of the year the Japanese had finally reached Beijing from the east and would soon reach it from the west as well. One of the bloodiest battles in history was about to start.
In Europe, the combined armies of the Alliance were advancing slowly but steadily to the east. The Soviet morale was dropping but had received a boost from the US entry into the war. On August 20th the German army finally crossed the Dnepr and advanced eastwards, in the direction of Volgograd, and, behind that, Astrakhan. Tsar Vladimir III left Berlin and went to Kiev, awaiting his return to Imperial Russia which was nearing now. The Soviet army halted their enemies at Volgograd however but they couldn’t hold for long as the Germans were pounding at the city and more and more forces were coming in. By early December the city finally fell after vicious street-to-street fighting with high German casualties. They had strong allies though and were unwilling to give up and that was why the city finally fell. The Soviet armies were exhausted and most withdrew from the now endangered Caucasus area even though a small number of forces remained, desperate to make a last stand. The German armies pushed on towards Astrakhan, aided by French and Italian armies as well as forces from their puppet states, and started beleaguering the city. After a week, however, the population committed a drastic act as they were generally loyal to the Tsar who had ruled from Astrakhan before the Soviet invasion and wanted the communist armies out. They took over in the ‘bloody night’ of December 29th/December 30th 1942 and invited German forces into the city which definitely cut off the territories of the former Russian empire from Moscow. Trotsky flew into a rage when he heard about this and his blood pressure rose to incredible heights. As he was about to kill a present general single-handed, he collapsed of a stroke as the tension had been too much for him. Within three days, he died and on January 8th, 1943, Mikhail Tukhachevsky succeeded him as leader of the Soviet Republic. Tukhachevsky was an experienced military leader who had gotten the nickname of the ‘Red Napoleon’. Some of his colleagues disliked him but Trotsky had always favored him for his tactics and put him in charge of the Red Army in 1939. Whereas the Soviet strike into Europe hadn’t been a success, Trotsky realized that this wasn’t his favorite’s fault and had continued to promote him until his death, after which Tukhachevsky immediately removed all competitors and seized power. Within days, he was the undisputed ruler of the Soviet nation and was ready for a war on life or death which would decide whether the Allies or Axis would win the war in Europe.

The Ottoman Empire struck immediately towards the now stuck Soviet forces in the Caucasus. They were determined to finish the Reds off soon here to be able to strike eastwards along with their British allies to liberate the Middle East from Red control for good. The Germans reluctantly went along with this as they had preferred to be able to move forces north towards Lithuania where the war had been a stalemate for quite some time now as neither side had been interested in pouring in more troops and thus the battle of Vilnius still hadn’t been decided in either side’s favor. Germany attacked southwards and the Ottomans went north, and they met up after two months, removing all Soviet resistance in another. By late March 1943 Emperor Vladimir could safely return to his capital of Astrakhan as his old property had been restored and, with German pushes towards the north coming up, more waited for him to take it. The war against the Axis had become a life-or-death-struggle now for the Alliance but the opposite was also true for the Axis and more and more it was becoming apparent that a ‘normal’ peace with one clear victor would not happen. There would have to be compromises or the war would never end. The several powers didn’t want to recognize that though and so the war carried on as usual.
 
Chapter VI: The Second Great War Part Two, 1943-1946

On the Canadian front, the war was definitely turning in favor of the Axis Powers as the siege of Ottawa was ending and America was definitely winning it. On May 2nd 1943 Ottawa finally surrendered which left Canada in chaos and more and more voices went up about leaving the Brits to their fight and sign a separate peace. Already Vancouver island had fallen and more was yet to come. However, the presence of British forces prevented them from doing so as well as the fact that the war was going better for the Allies in Europe. On the battlefront, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland had been under severe threat in the past months too and they fell within weeks after Ottawa. In the west Alaska had been fully liberated and a connection with the mainland had been set up. American forces then started a full offensive westwards which broke Canadian resistance and took Quebec on the tenth of June. The great lakes region fell which caused provinces to start offering surrenders as they wanted to save their own existence. Britain once again prevented this by making the governments fall. Canada wasn’t savable anymore though and in the wake of defeat, London withdrew her armies from the Canadian mainland, leaving just a few stationed in the islands in the north. Canada fell to American armies by August along with Victoria and Baffin land. The other islands were left to their own good as they weren’t that important and would be gained in the peace treaty anyway. For now the war in Canada was over.

In South-America, the war had been a stalemate for a long time but was truly making progress now. Venezuela had managed to break through Dutch lines in Guyana and conquer most of the colony. The Caribbean had already fallen a long time ago which meant that the Dutch couldn’t withdraw to the Antilles and had to go to Brazil instead. The Brazilians had finally broken through in Buenos Aires and had advanced rapidly much like the Americans in Canada after Ottawa fell until Argentina managed to stop them for now at the Colorado river. Part of that came from the threat that was facing in the north, where Ecuador had finally been liberated and a joint American/Ecuadorian/Colombian army was heading towards Trujillo, truly threatening the other main Alliance member in the America’s that was left besides Brazil. Brazil had to forsake her chance to conquer Argentina to fight Colombia which is today seen as a mistake as Argentina was very close to falling and might not have lasted in case of another Brazilian blow, and while such a situation would’ve put the frontlines in Peru at Lima or even farther south, it would at least have put Brazil in a stronger position. However, this did not happen and thus it is useless to speculate about it. Brazil did stop the advance of her enemies in Peru, which turned the Peruvian remnant into a puppet of Rio all but in name. Brazil waited for Japanese-British help to come as promised (Japan had troops to spare now that Hawaii had fallen) and hoped that it would come before American armies would destroy the country.

On a wholly other matter, German and American scientists had been working on a way to end the war. They were developing a so-called ‘atomic bomb’, a giant powerful bomb that would be able to destroy a whole city at once and would thus end the war for the power that got the bomb first. It had been proven possible by the Italian Enrico Fermi in the 1930s and scientists were wildly researching it in Berlin and Rome. The German and Italian projects had been merged in March 1940 already. In April 1943 the British joined with their project as they didn’t really want to see their enemies get nuclear weapons first. Whereas the war in Europe was still making progress, they didn’t want a nuclear weapon detonated over Berlin or London to ruin it and cause them to definitely lose their colonies. The Germans shared these sentiments as they feared having to return Soviet Russia to her 1914 borders and then some in such a case, which would undoubtedly lead to revolts in the homeland, much like in the early 1920s with France and Britain. They accepted to merge their projects and suggested the same to France which politely denied as they wanted to achieve nuclear weapons on their own (even if it would take a long while then) and had no interests in sharing them with their old German enemies. The three cooperating members shrugged it off and went on with their project which would soon create promising results.

In Spain, the war was beginning to favor the monarchist government which was taking more and more of her country back. The People’s Republic of Aragon, however, still had some fight in it which they demonstrated with a large counter-strike in April 1943. The Aragonese defeated the Spanish forces and took Alicante and Murcia, advancing towards Almeria which appeared to turn the tide in favor of the communists once again. The government of Aragon decided to exploit this victory and do the same Japan did after nearly defeating China in 1941, opening another front. The other front was located in the Baleares where an army landed in June, easily defeating the Italian garrison which had not expected this attack. Aragon celebrated as victory seemed to be near after all. They had now finally seized the chance to liberate another part of the Aragonese heartland and already voices were going up about carving Castile up into joint Aragonese/Portuguese puppet states when the war would be over. They had awoken a sleeping giant however and would soon be crushed worse than the monarchists could dream.

Ireland didn’t see the foolishness of Aragon and figured that this might be the time to strike at the Alliance themselves. They had coveted the remains of Ulster for a long time but Britain had refused to give it to them. Now the time had come as they expelled British forces and declared war on Britain on July 3rd 1943, giving the British Empire another front to worry about. They were doomed from the start but would contribute significantly to the Brazilian front as the uprising tied up British forces from there and from India. Within three weeks the Irish conquered eastern Ulster and annexed it, proclaiming the Irish republic as an independent nation. Britain largely ignored it for now as they were busy with other fronts.

In the east, India was also fighting the Soviet Republic viciously. In March, they had finally launched an offensive to the west along with the Ottoman Empire which was a complete success as the SSR was beginning to run out of men to fight the war. They couldn’t resist any longer and by the start of August most of Persia and Afghanistan had fallen in British/Ottoman hands. Teheran fell on August 13th after a long drawn-out battle and the Ottomans and Brits continued their advance into Central Asia where they inflicted several harsh defeats upon the Soviet Republic which was now seriously running on it’s last legs.

In China, the war also continued to go in the favor of the Allied powers. The battle of Beijing finally ended in June after six months and was a decisive Japanese victory to the scale of the battle of Ottawa. Japanese/Chinese armies now had it easy as most of the PRC was cut off from the sea and after a few weeks the last corridor was taken south of Beijing which meant that the PRC was now truly landlocked. With no help from the SSR coming communist China was dying. Japan now also managed to retake Manchuria from Axis forces which was also a matter of weeks as the present SSR forces weren’t protesting. Japan took the whole of Manchuria which included Outer Manchuria which had formerly been part of the Far Eastern Republic. However, the FER had signed a separate peace with the SSR on November 11th 1939 which had angered the Japanese and lead to them taking over Vladivostok before it could fall into Soviet hands. Japan was thus not pleased with her former puppet and was unwilling to restore it. Instead they were thinking of keeping parts themselves and possibly giving some to China as well. They weren’t entirely sure what to do though. Anyway Greater Manchuria fell up to the Amur river and a new offensive was launched into the inland. It took Baotau and made the People’s Republic of China collapse as a British offensive was also launched from Tibet with whatever forces Britain had to spare. Communist Mongolia managed to prevent most of Inner Mongolia from falling into Japanese hands and annexed it with Soviet approval. The other parts of China did fall though and to symbolize it the Xuantong Emperor was formally crowned in Beijing on September 27th, 1943. The war for China was over – the war for Mongolia and Ughyurstan about to begin. As a prelude, Japan invaded Kamchatka which fielded little resistance and was terminated by the middle of October.

In Europe the Germans had started their offensive in Lithuania. The small country fell within a few weeks to stronger German forces who also advanced towards Riga. Riga fell on July 11th 1943 which saw prince Adalbert return to his capital and take the crown of the Baltic Duchy as the former duke, Eitel Friedrich, had been dead. Duke Adalbert ordered an offensive northwards and eastwards to take out Soviet resistance and establish a free Baltic Duchy. The Soviet Republic was still strong though as they didn’t want Petrograd, the main Soviet port in the region, to fall. They stopped the German advance who instead attacked eastwards to Belarus. This bulge in the frontline was heavily defended and offered as much resistance as it could. On October 2nd Minsk had fallen though and Belarusian independence had been restored. By the end of the year the German armies were engaged in the battle of Smolensk which would take a while yet as it was the main entrance road to Moscow. Help was on the way though as Germany convinced Sweden to start a counter-offensive in Finland which brought the front back to the Oulu-Murmansk line by the end of the year.

Japan was in the meantime busy preparing an invasion of the Aleutian islands and Alaska which would be easier once the Siberian coast would be theirs. With China fallen all frontlines were quite far away from the Japanese mainland which meant that the navy could start some operations again. They had been quiet since the fall of Hawaii but now kept skirmishing with the American navy. The latter was superior but had to divert forces to other fronts too so a stalemate remained.

In Spain, the Italians had come to the aid of their Spanish ally as they had realized just how much of a threat Aragon was. The Baleares were retaken by September and a landing was staged on Aragonese soil near Valencia. The weak country was fighting a two-front-war and divided in their ranks so they posed little resistance for the superior Italian armies. Italy took Valencia with ease and Cartagena as well, pushing the socialists back to the Ebro river by January. A French invasion from the north sealed Aragon’s fate and Barcelona finally fell to Spanish-Italian-French armies on April 29th 1944. Communism was over in eastern Spain but in the west it was advancing. Italian and French armies largely withdrew from Spanish soil as they had other things to do, and left Spain to her fate in the west where it would fight a fierce struggle with Portugal.

In the America’s, U.S. help was arriving for Colombia which allowed it to push through in Peru by early December. Within weeks, Peruvian/Brazilian forces suffered defeat after defeat and had to leave Lima, which fell on January 7th after a fierce struggle. Argentina also started a counter-offensive which broke through Brazilian lines as they’d had a long time to prepare for it. By mid-February they retook Buenos Aires and advanced into Paraguay and northern Chile. In early April the American and Argentinean armies linked up in Bolivia where they took out La Paz. By the end of the month, Brazil had been largely reduced to pre-war borders and it was time for the Americans and their allies to deal the final blow. The American-Argentinean success was also demonstrated by the fall of the Falkland Islands in March after years of Brazilian protection. Indeed the tide was turning in Latin America.

In Arabia, the Ottomans finally started a huge offensive into the peninsula. Arab forces were destroyed as the Ottoman Empire had taken the time to gather a large amount of forces. The Arabs called for help from the Soviet Republic and the Americans but they were busy at their own fronts and couldn’t give it to them. Instead the Arabs had to deal with the offensive on their own which didn’t work too well. With Italian help, landings were staged on the coasts and by the end of the offensive Arabia was landlocked again and the Ottomans were rapidly advancing inland. It wouldn’t be until early August though that Arabia would finally surrender, giving up all hopes for an independent Arab nation.

War also continued in the British puppet state of Central Asia where a new offensive broke the stalemate there. Britain broke through towards the north and conquered a third of the country before their offensive stalled at Tashkent. They also advanced towards Ughyurstan in conjunction with the Japanese Empire which had decided to finally break the resistance of Russia’s remaining puppet states. The offensive succeeded as Inner Mongolia was conquered and British/Japanese armies conquered Ughyurstan but only after a fierce struggle lasting throughout the entire spring and part of the summer. By July victory was finally secure here and with Mongolia having gotten a decisive beating, Japan didn’t consider it necessary to advance any further. The war in China had been won and more and more Japanese armies started to leave Chinese soil and withdraw to fight the war against Soviet Russia on the coast. China started to unify and regain independence even if the southern coastal provinces and Manchuria remained under Japanese influence. Japan attacked the eastern coast of the SSR which wasn’t well defended and unified it under Japanese rule by October. At that point the Soviet soldiers retreated into the deserts and the front fell silent.

In Europe, Britain had since long felt that the Irish menace at their borders was intolerable but when Ireland tried to bring the war to British soil by attempting an invasion of Scotland (which was naturally doomed to fail) Britain responded with an invasion of her own in April and with so much men that Ireland couldn’t resist it. Belfast returned to British control and by the end of the year British armies had conquered Dublin and owned half the country, with the remains mostly being in the south and in the inland. Ireland resisted as heavy as they could as they were hoping for American or Soviet intervention in their favor but the SSR was busy enough on their own and couldn’t hold out even that, and the Americans saw that they had no chance in getting to Ireland, let alone invading it. Irish forces would have to do for themselves now which wasn’t enough. Irish independence became more and more of a dream as British armies continued to advance. Finally the last Irish army was defeated in April even though guerilla resistance continued to simmer until the end of the war and a few months beyond until freed up British armies suppressed it and brought Ireland to peace once again.

Germany started their offensive eastwards in March after the fall of Smolensk. They continued to push on towards Moscow, defeating as many Soviet troops as they could. The SSR was beginning to feel the strain of German pressure exerted on it and was breaking down rapidly. Nevertheless it would take half a year before German armies arrived at Moscow itself in August, even though the outskirts of the city were reached a month before. A battle started which would cause hundreds of thousands to millions of casualties on both sides and was called ‘the Moscow war’ in popular opinion long after the initial battle. Emperor Wilhelm III and his Russian colleague Vladimir III called for their soldiers to push on as hard as they could. The Soviet armies were outnumbered as the German army was truly huge. It contained Germans, French, Helvetians, Italians, Hungarians, Russians in exile, and even some British forces though they weren’t numerous as Britain was fighting on a lot of other fronts, unlike France or Italy who had troops to spare. Farther east, British forces did fight the SSR in Central Asia, as did Chinese and Japanese on the Pacific coast. American help was there and went through the Poles by now as the British islands in northern Canada had been conquered and America supplied so-called ‘Lend-Lease’ from there. It wasn’t enough though and the SSR was doomed to fall, or so it seemed.

Unfortunately for Berlin, Rome, London and Paris, an Alliance country was doomed as well: the Empire of Brazil. They had been fighting as hard as they could against the American eagle but would be destroyed eventually as they were no match on land or sea. The U.S. had chosen for a coastal advance as they didn’t want to be drawn into the vast Brazilian inland with it’s jungles and rivers. They advanced southwards along the northern coast as did their Argentinean allies advance in the opposite direction through Uruguay, with both forces eventually meeting in Rio de Janeiro. It wasn’t that time just yet though as every city resisted as harsh as it could and Belem, Sao Luis and Fortaleza put up fierce resistance and so did Montevideo, Pelotas and Porto Alegre. Brazil was beginning to get more and more cut off from the Atlantic however and by the end of the year American forces had reached Recife and taken it while the Argentineans were fighting in Curitiba. The fall of Brazil would come soon but still surrender wasn’t seen as an option by either the emperor or the de facto rulers which were quite democratic at first but had become more and more dictatorial as time passed. They were still hoping for Alliance help but that wouldn’t come as Britain and Japan kept having other fronts (Ireland, China) that derailed it. 1944 ended with Brazil in very dire straits.

Europe continued to see harsh warfare even in 1945 as the battle of Moscow was in full swing. Also Spain was retaking her stubborn Portuguese puppet which wouldn’t surrender until May 8th though which would be known as Victory Day in Spain. Portugal remained occupied for now until the final peace treaty would decide what was to happen. Successes for the Central Powers or the Alliance or whatever they were called at the moment would also happen in Central Asia where the British attempted a final offensive that reached the Aral and Balkash lakes before petering out. The SSR now continued her collapse at an even greater speed and wouldn’t last long anymore. Her Chinese and Ughyur puppets were all but defeated and new defeats would come as Imperial China invaded Mongolia which had to withdraw towards the west. Two-thirds of the nation ended up in Chinese hands after the offensive including the capital of Ulaanbaatar which practically ended Mongolia’s existence. China then struck towards Lake Baikal which they reached in early July.

By that time Moscow had finally surrendered to the Alliance which happened on June 23rd. The battle had taken ten months and exhausted the SSR. The old Russian flag was risen above the city again and the SSR retreated from Moscow in disorder and chaos. This also sealed the fate of Finland where the Swedes broke through and the Baltic Duchy where the Germans did the same. They advanced on Petrograd which fell on August 2nd. Still Tuchachevsky refused to surrender which made him relatively unpopular in Soviet Russia but many people also realized what would happen if the SSR would surrender: annexation into the Russian Empire. This they didn’t want so they decided to fight on.

In the west, specifically in Brazil, fierce fighting continued as American and Argentinean forces crept along the coast. While the guns had mostly fallen silent in Europe as the Soviets couldn’t push the Germans back, but the Germans couldn’t push the Soviets back either, the Brazilian front continued since Germany refused to send any forces, knowing all too well they would arrive too late to be of use. America finally reached Rio de Janeiro in early May and started fighting a fierce battle, which they would eventually win as on July 30th Rio surrendered to the Americans. Three days later the small corridor to the Atlantic was cut off which meant that there was no way out. By now Brazilian emperor Pedro IV, who had withdrawn to the inland with the government began to see the writing on the wall and plotted a coup which went into effect on August 9th and killed the main leaders of the Brazilian government. Pedro took power for the first time in his life and requested an armistice based on Brazil’s pre-war borders minus Uruguay. America refused and replied that only an unconditional surrender would be accepted. After a lot of negotiating with the various coup-plotters, Pedro realized that there was no other option but to accept the American terms. On August 15th, Brazil surrendered unconditionally to the United States, ending the war in the America’s.

In Europe, the Alliance had gotten desperate after seeing that victory wasn’t achievable for either side. They knew that they had one chance at regaining the lost territory in the America’s much like the SSR had one chance at regaining her old territory: the atomic bomb. Scientist and research facilities were funded more and more as this was the only way possible to break the stalemate. Throughout the entire autumn of 1945 the American and German-British-Italian teams built their nuclear weapon. Besides this there were three minor projects in Japan, France and the Ottoman Empire. The SSR had lost all pretences of being a great power and had given up all their nuclear knowledge to the USA in January. This was a boost to the American project and the two projects came close together, working rapidly towards the ultimate weapon which was now definitely within sight.

In the end, the race for the first nuclear weapon would be won by the USA. On December 23rd 1945 an atomic bomb with a strength of 19.3 kilotons was detonated at the research facility in Nevada. Another bomb was immediately produced as the president rejoiced. On January 12th, 1946, the nuclear weapon was carried over the Pacific Ocean in an undetected airplane towards Tokyo even though it was detected before it got there above Hokkaido. Unwilling to give up their mission, the airplane released the atomic bomb above Sapporo which was destroyed in an enormous blast.

The peoples of the Allied nations were terrified and shocked at this news as they hadn’t realized the Americans were this close to developing a nuclear weapon. They pressed on for a surrender to the U.S. Of course the Allies had a nuclear project as well but the people didn’t know that and thus they wanted to end the fighting and the government couldn’t resist their cries for peace as it would mean a possible national revolution or at least an uprising. In the end Emperor Wilhelm III partly caved in and asked for form’s sake what a surrender would contain. He bluntly refused when he heard that it would include the recognition of the America’s as the American sphere of influence, the return of the SSR to 1914 borders + South-Sakhalin and restoration of the PRC, this time in control of the entirety of China + Formosa and puppet Korea, along with restoration of the Philippines and Hawaii to the U.S. and bringing Malaysia, the East Indies, Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea into American influence spheres while the same would happen for Burma, Siam, Nepal and Bhutan to the PRC and Persia, Afghanistan and Baluchistan to the SSR, along with recognition of Liberian, Arab, Portuguese and Ethiopian independence. In short, the terms were over-confident under the pressure of the American population who didn’t know how far along the Alliance bomb project was and thought they had won the war.

The Alliance didn’t surrender though and a second bomb, this one reaching Dublin and being detonated on the 17th of January, didn’t change their minds although the British were scared for a moment. The Alliance did have a bomb project of their own after all which was finished on January 21st 1946 with a 25 kilotons test. The victorious leaders of Germany, Italy and Britain approved of its launch and it destroyed Nizhny Novgorod on January 24th.

As February started, the war turned into a nuclear war as neither side was willing to give up and do concessions. American bombers were transported to the SSR and destroyed Astrakhan, Lodz, Riga, Delhi and Shanghai, while German and British bombers responded alike and crushed Omsk, Sverdlovsk, Perm and Novosibirsk. A US bomber destroying Stettin on April 3rd was revenged by the destruction of Ottawa on the eighth, a detonation which, despite the fact that it was meant to destroy New York and couldn’t reach it, shook the American ideas of invincibility thoroughly. They wanted to get a safer position, and the American military proposed to invade the Danish possessions of Iceland and Greenland. From there, they could threaten the Alliance better, and it would remove the last annoying neutral from the scene.

Germany, however, had good intelligence and found out what the Americans were planning. Germany immediately set up plans of their own to invade Danish possessions, and both sides stopped their nuclear weapon-throwing game for a while to prepare. On May 10th, 1946, German armies crossed the German-Danish border, invading the poor country meeting with little resistance. Within 30 hours, Denmark itself had been captured. British forces invaded Iceland and attempted to land in Greenland. Normally Britain would have protested against brutally violating a nation’s neutrality, but war weariness had overcome them as well and they didn’t care. Iceland was overrun but American forces landed in Greenland first and secured the capital of Nuuk or Godthab as it was also called. Britain managed to get a foothold on the continent of Greenland and refused to surrender, upon which America attacked and easily defeated British forces within a two-week campaign. What ensued was a naval clash in the Danish Strait and a couple of attempts to invade Iceland, which ultimately ensued in American forces on the small northwestern peninsula, but trench warfare being created as a result so that the Americans remained confined in a pocket.

Angered for the American attack on Iceland, Germany decided to show off her power for once and for all. On July 17th, three bombers were launched towards the SSR, each carrying one of the strongest atomic bombs that Germany could create. They destroyed several Soviet cities west of Omsk, killing tens of thousands of citizens again. Finally, the Soviets realized that they stood helpless and that continuing the war was only going to destroy them and the territory they had once stood a realistic chance of gaining. Tukhachevsky didn’t like it, but he had to face defeat. On July 21st, the SSR requested an armistice. Alone but victorious in her own area, the USA knew that they could better step out now and get to keep her gains, rather than to fight the European continent and get crushed under it’s might. They requested an armistice as well, doing so on July 27th, 1946. The war was over.
 
Well, here's some maps. This is the world in 1940:

CP Italy 1940.PNG
 
Look, finally an update!


Chapter VII: Peace and what happened next, 1946-2010

The war to end all wars had ended and now, after six-and-a-half years of constant warfare, peace would have to be made between the two great sides that still ruled their respective landmasses. In the Peace of Reykjavik which was signed in January 1947, the American and Soviet diplomats arrived along with representatives of the dead PRC, Mongolia and Ughyurstan. On the other side, Russian, German, Italian, British and French diplomats were arranged along with some representatives of their lost Latin American allies. It was clear to everyone that neither power was defeated and that all could go on, except perhaps the SSR which put the Americans in a slightly worse position than the rest. The SSR was still standing though and it’s internal unrest was being put down by the armies so to the outside it appeared stronger than it really was. Soviet communism was ill by now and only a good American social-democrat medicine could revive it and make it remain standing.

Immediately into the conference, America demanded that the Alliance would recognize her dominance over North-America and the expulsion of any powers there. The Alliance was willing to do that in trade for recognition of the fall of Africa and Europe to their forces which America was hesitant to do as the SSR still existed. In the end the Americans agreed to recognition of their enemies’ strongholds in Europe, Africa and Oceania which were declared sacrosanct for now for the Alliance and the same occurred to North- and South-America for the Axis. With the SSR collapsing on itself, the Alliance demanded the end of her existence and annexation into the Russian Empire. After a lot of negotiating, the Alliance gave this up in trade for recognition by the Americans that Brazil, though in the American influence sphere, would retain it’s monarchy, that the American foothold in Iceland would be given up and that the SSR would be cut down in size drastically to satisfy the appetites of the various powers involved.

As this agreement was reached the other powers didn’t have a choice and had to go along. In the America’s, the USA annexed Canada, Mexico, Belize, Greenland and the Caribbean islands directly as they were very unsatisfied with Canada remaining loyal to the British to the end. Canada was however treated more lenient than the other regions which were forced to be under military rule. Canada was given an autonomous status which was nearly equal to the dominion-status it had enjoyed before under Britain but de jure control was in US hands as the Americans didn’t want to let the Canadian territories slip again. In the south the Cubans were very unwilling to join the US while American hatred for the Cubans was high too. Indeed Cuba would be one of the last admitted American states. Along with this the USA retook the Aleutian Islands which Japan had conquered in a late stage at the war and annexed Bermuda which had remained British to the end due to the slight Royal Navy supremacy on the seas and they also took Dutch Guyana or Greater Surinam as it was also called with the exception of the entirety of formerly British Guyana which went to the Venezuelans as they finally settled their territorial claims. The Venezuelans also annexed the Brazilian bulge in their border that was now created. Uruguay was restored as an independent nation under Argentinean protection and Brazil was made an American puppet state even if it retained emperor Pedro IV. He however became just a figurehead and had no real power anymore. As for the Falkland Islands, they went to Argentina which happily incorporated their long-standing irredentist claim and removed all British presence from the America’s.

In Europe, things would have to be dealt with as well. Spain had taken Portugal back and annexed it into their nation. However, military presence was removed from Portugal and Lisbon became a joint capital along with Madrid. Also the union was highly federalized. Portugal wasn’t all too happy with it but they were defeated and given a relatively lenient deal. They thus accepted and became the Kingdom of Iberia together with Spain in federal union. As for Britain, they gave Ireland a similar deal following the Spanish example. Though the island-nation had been crushed new revolts could imerge and Britain thought it was time for a change. Ireland remained a kingdom but got Ulster and greater independence from Britain. They became a British dominion which some Irish nationalists weren’t all too happy with but they had no other option so most of them grudgingly accepted the British offer. King Edward was also formally crowned in Dublin on March 3rd 1947 which solidified the union. Iceland also became a British dominion and was integrated into the British Empire.

Denmark was broken with the loss of her colonies and accepted integration into the Empire of Germany as a member state with a huge amount of autonomy. To sweeten the deal they were given North-Schleswig which made them more willing to join. Sweden wasn’t all too happy with this as they had desired Denmark as well to unify Scandinavia. They accepted this though and were even more okay with it when they got the island of Bornholm.

The defeated Axis members of Greece and Serbia were punished heavily. Serbia had to limit her armed forces to a third of Bulgaria’s, cede several border areas to her neighbors and accept heavy war reparations and occupation of part of her territory. As for Greece, they had to cede South-Epirus to Albania, split the Aegean islands between Italy and the Ottomans, cede Western Thrace up until Salonika to Bulgaria, Crete to Italy and Cyprus to the Ottomans, and pay heavy war reparations as well. They weren’t punished as heavy financially as Serbia was though as Serbia was an old enemy of the Balkan Alliance powers. Greece was just an upstart that had to be put in her right place. Nevertheless the punishments were heavy. Also what remained of both nations were returned to Italian sovereignty as puppet states.

The SSR was old and broken and would need some serious territorial revisions which the Alliance powers could freely do. Central Asia was restored to pre-war borders and even took some border corrections in the east. Imperial Russia expanded to the Ural mountains and became a great power again although it couldn’t compete with the existing great powers of Italy and France, let alone Germany and Britain. They were the true equals of the SSR now though, especially as the Soviets lost even more territory. Belarus was restored and brought to pre-war borders. So was Finland and they annexed the Kanin peninsula as well to compensate a little for their Swedish masters not getting Denmark. In Asia, Ughyurstan and Mongolia were destroyed and annexed into China as was Russian territory up to lake Baikal and the whole of Manchuria minus Vladivostok which remained a Japanese port. Britain, Japan and Italy renounced their spheres of influence in China in trade for keeping the actual possessions they had and having China as an ally. Japan took the Russian Far East including Kamchatka up until the Lena and Witiem rivers and also the island of Sakhalin. From America, they took the Philippines, Guam and Wake island whereas Britain took Hawaii and Midway and several other islands as well. Hawaii became a British dominion which partitioned the remaining American Pacific islands with Japan. As for Africa, America didn’t get a say here and Liberia was annexed into French West-Africa.

This all was concluded in the Treaty of Reykjavik and finally settled the borders of the world. The Alliance and Axis powers were exhausted but hostility lingered and both sides continued to build nuclear weapons. For now most of the money went to rebuilding the economy however as it had received a tough blow from the war. It wouldn’t be until 1954 when the real Cold War started between America and her puppets on one side and the Alliance on the other. This occurred thanks to the detonation of an American H-bomb which was the most powerful weapon on earth and went off on January 27th 1954. Germany followed with their bomb going off two weeks later and a true arms race started. Two notable Alliance politicians wouldn’t see this however. Emperor Wilhelm III had died in 1951 and Emperor Victor Emanuel before that in 1949. They were succeeded by their respective sons Wilhelm IV and Umberto I who were both in their forties and thus represented a younger generation and would lead Germany and Italy to a new age.

The signs of the new age were also noticeable in Asia where America provoked uprisings against the Alliance powers. For years Asia had been dominated by the colonial powers but now things were starting to change as the Dutch East Indies, Italian Indochina, German Malay and even the Japanese possessions called for independence from their respective overlords. Already a few uprisings had happened during the war, of which the most notable was lead by one Sukarno from the Dutch East Indies. He had died in 1943 at Dutch hands however and thus was no longer a threat. The ideas remained alive though and in the late 1950s true uprisings broke out. Germany especially had no interest in a colonial war in their only Asian possession and granted German Malay independence in 1959. Italy had a stronger base here and refused to give up her possessions. They fought a vicious colonial war from 1958-1963 for Indochina before finally granting the nation her independence as a kingdom with Umberto as king. Safety measures were taken to ensure that Indochina wouldn’t slip out of Italy’s sphere of influence but not too much as America was far away after all. Indonesia and Ceylon were given independence on a similar scale shortly afterwards as Dutch dominions. As for the Japanese possessions, they got more autonomy and that was all they got as Japan was closer to her ‘colonies’ than the other powers and could exert much more influence on them.

In 1964, another thing happened that would change the world. France detonated an atomic bomb to the great surprise of the other Alliance powers as they had kept the progress of their nuclear program secret very well. The Ottomans followed a year later with a slightly stronger test which shocked the Americans and the Ottoman neighbor of Persia. Persia had regained her de facto independence in 1961 and had been planning a war with the Ottoman Empire to regain some lost glory but now they knew they couldn’t do it. The Ottoman Empire remained as it was and so did France as her southern neighbor of Spain now cowered before them. Napoleon IV felt triumphant and was supported in this by Wilhelm IV and Umberto I.

The 1960s were the decade of the so-called space race, a race to reach the moon first. It was America that launched the first satellite in 1964 but the Germans launched the first manned satellite and on March 15th 1973, the German project set the first man on the moon. The Alliance cheered while America was angered. They didn’t go to war over the issue of course as by now silly war reasons were definitely a thing of the past. War would not occur anymore as both sides could easily destroy each other and then have half of their nuclear arsenal left. As a result neither power wanted a war on their hands. Also the Americans knew that their weak ally the SSR would get overrun within weeks in case of a war and that a nuclear stalemate would then result. The Soviet Republic was close to being an American puppet now and was declining only further.

In the east, a new power was emerging. China and Japan had been close during the war but relationships had strained a bit in the decades thereafter with China becoming an Alliance proxy against Soviet Russia and Japan bonding with their old enemy of America which had for them the benefit that the uprisings in the Philippines decreased. Now they bonded again though in the ‘60s as China slowly began to modernize. Japan had already tested a nuclear weapon and China detonated their first bomb in 1971, a H-bomb quickly following in 1972 as a result of a joint project with Japan. More and more H-bombs were built. By the start of the 1980s the Sino-Japanese block had become a world power in her own right and a third block against the overconfident Alliance and the proud Americans. Indochina, Malay, Siam and Burma which had received independence in 1963 were convinced to join the Asian Pact as the Chinese and Japanese themselves called their alliance. They were quickly reduced to being puppets. Japan also set its sights on Indonesia which was loosened from the Dutch overlords sooner than expected. India and Australia weren’t gained so easy though as they were still safely British dominions who by now had real loose ties to the motherland but still weren’t planning to let themselves be overrun by Japan and China. India had become a great power in her own right and detonated an atomic bomb separate from Britain in 1977. Their stay in the Alliance benefited them enormously and the Alliance was now truly stronger than every other block with the American-Soviet block falling and the Sino-Japanese block rising but not being as strong as the Alliance yet. The decade between 1977 and 1987 is often called ‘the decade of Alliance hegemony’ as it was the only time that the Alliance could be sure that in case of war, they would not be destroyed and would rule the world.

In Africa, independence movements remained on the rise during the 1960s and exploded in the 1970s. They were sometimes solved by colonial wars and sometimes by autonomy. By now Ethiopia and parts of Libya and Tunisia had been heavily Italianized as Italy hadn’t wanted the first to revolt again and the second to become independent and form a threat to the Italian mainland. These territories remained within the Italian Empire as basic colonies but Chad and Sudan got independence as a federation of Greater Sudan which soon split up in the two main countries. Germany allowed independence to Ubangi-Shari and Cameroon as well as Tanganyika and Angola but kept the Congo and Togo which were given huge autonomy in trade for them not protesting. This was done to keep an eye on Germany’s former possessions. Britain got involved in colonial wars and so got France as they didn’t want to lose their possessions. In the end France kept Algeria and Morocco as separate colonies and Britain kept Madagascar, Sierra Leone and Nigeria but they had to give Gold Coast, Kenya, Mozambique, North-Rhodesia and Malawi full independence and both France and Britain kept West-Africa and South-Rhodesia respectively in personal union. South-Rhodesia was incorporated into South-Africa which was already a dominion and West-Africa became a highly federalized kingdom in personal union with France. De facto it became a French puppet state as it was weak and divided and the Emperor (and thus France) could still exert a lot of influence. As an additional benefit for France, the young independent nations of Gold Coast and the German corridor in northern Nigeria proved not sustainable and joined the WAF. That ended decolonization as most of the population was now satisfied.

In the Americas, statehood was granted over the decades to various areas. American Columbia went the first in 1957, along with Alaska. Over the 1960s, the other Canadian states got that right too and even Quebec became an American state. In Mexico, various reorganizations were done and gradually Mexican states were admitted over the 1970s and 1980s and some even remain territories up to the present day. The English-speaking minority in Mexico was increased as the English speakers, especially those from the original 48 states, were encouraged to have as much children as they could. Nevertheless Spanish became the second language of the former US, followed by French and a couple of native languages. Roughly forty years after the end of the war, American control over the newly acquired possessions had been set for good and peace returned to the United States.

Finally, the world would be changed once more in a major way with the events of the early 1990s. In late 1989, China and Japan felt strong enough to provoke the SSR. They were very uncomfortable with the Soviet state on their border which still had some border fortresses in the border region with American nuclear weapons in it. The Asian Pact demanded that they would be dismantled and didn’t back down. The SSR knew well what internal troubles it was in and gave in. Unfortunately, that display of weakness was only the start of their troubles.

Angered at the fact that their puppet state had caved in for the demands of an upstart superpower block like China and Japan, America demanded of the Soviet leader, the reactionary Mikhail Gorbachev, that he would restore Soviet power and glory by reforming his government among American lines. The SSR had reformed after the Second Great War but hadn’t gone too far then and had even turned some measures back but now they had no choice as their nation was collapsing and the need for reform was high. Gorbachev was initially unwilling, but pressure from the victorious Sino-Japanese block and the Alliance was enough to make him reconsider. The SSR was made more democratic, and (slightly) democratic elections were organized in 1991 which destroyed the communist party as by now even the most convinced communist citizen was sick of the SSR. Gorbachev came under more pressure and abdicated. His successor saw that the SSR was in turmoil and falling. On January 2nd 1992 he appealed to the Americans for aid. The United States refused to help the SSR as they knew very well that their ally couldn’t be saved anymore and president Lewis knew that American forces crushing rebels who were demanding democracy and thus aiding an autocratic regime would not go very well with the population and would doom his chances for re-election. Instead American forces were withdrawn from Soviet soil. The Soviet ruler decided to invite Alliance armies instead on April 11th 1992 under enormous pressure. Imperial Russian tanks rolled over the Urals and into Omsk. Emperor Vladimir entered Omsk a few days later and was received enthusiastically. He declared the start of a new united Russia which would become a great power once again. On April 17th 1992 the Soviet Socialist Republic officially ceased to exist as it was annexed into the Russian Empire. Axis power had been removed from Asia. From now on, the conflicts in Asia would be between the Alliance and the Pact.

Whereas initial tensions had existed between the Axis and Pact powers, now the Alliance was getting to deal with the strength of the Sino-Japanese pact too. In an act of revenge against the Alliance for not inviting them to share in the collapse of the SSR, the Pact contacted Persia and ceded Turkmenistan to them, which had until then be part of the Central Asian Khanate. With promises of old land that the Ottomans had taken restored to them along with this region if war would broke out, Persia gladly joined the Pact and recognized Beijing’s sovereignty in August 1992. Afghanistan was a much closer proxy for India but they too would see Pact rule over them as a revolution in early March 1994 cleaned the way for a pro-Pact government. Indian-Chinese tensions heightened as India was now surrounded by the Asian Pact. The only way to get out of this intact was a closer relation with the Alliance which was exactly what the Indians did.

Normally, America would’ve grown closer to the Pact thanks to this. However, with the Chinese and Japanese also threatening the Americans, they did not grow closer and instead American-Alliance conflicts faded into the background as China and Japan were correctly seen as the greater threat. After a lot of conflict Britain finally renounced her claims on American Canada and the USA and the Alliance formed the new Atlantic Community in 1996 with the non-Atlantic members of the former Alliance as honorary members. The Pact on the other hand also strengthened her internal ties and was ready for the Second Cold War. By 2000 these new alliances had solidified and a new race for space had began. China and Japan put a man on the moon in 1994 and then started working on a project to bring a man on Mars. Finally the Community launched a manned mission to Mars on May 2nd 2010 which shows that the old Community is still strong despite the growth of the pact. New rulers of the various empires went along with these changes. They were for the Community Emperor Michael I of Germany, Emperor Victor II Emanuel of Italy, King-Emperor Henry IX of Britain and India, Emperor Napoleon V of France and king Juan IV Carlos of Spain and for the Pact Emperor Akihito of Japan and Emperor Fu Yin for China. A new age has started and the world is more and more advancing. However, with the tensions around India, a third World War has become a possibility again for the first time in many years. However the general consensus is that the governments will be able to contain themselves and stop a war, this is by no means granted. It is yet uncertain what the future will bring.
 
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