“The Crown Atomic”: A Kaiserreich Cold War AAR (Canada and Entente)

[Iohannes de Magna Villa]

Thank you!

It's nothing.

 

[SuperRIDDE5]

Being a fellow long-time lurker, I'd like to say that I find this story intriguing in many aspects, and can't wait for more content! And being Norwegian, I'm curious on what has happened in Scandinavia lately.

 

[Iohannes de Magna Villa]

Being Californian, I'd like to know how the Pacific States are doing.

 

[Dr.Livingstone]

Being Californian, I'd like to know how the Pacific States are doing.

Under an authoritarian democracy that looks as though it's on the edge of total autocracy last we saw.

 

[Maximus101]

Under an authoritarian democracy that looks as though it's on the edge of total autocracy last we saw.

Wasn't it a blatant military dictatorship trying to transition into authoritiarian democracy? It seems to be deciding whether to be a pretend democracy or dictatorship (If the democractic and liberal forces win the election, barring some good politicing by Olson, the military is almost certainly going to coup them or severly restrict them).

 

[sealy300]

So, the Pacific states are effectively Myanmar?

 

[Dr.Livingstone]

So, the Pacific states are effectively Myanmar?

Much more stable, and fewer ethnic groups, but yes.

 

[cookfl]

The Stranger's Banner (Part Two)

Me.109s of the Luftstreitkräfte operating over the Mediterranean, c.1945. The frontline aircraft of the German air forces during the Syndicalist War, budget cuts and colonial needs saw the Me.109 serving in second-tier postings long beyond its projected service-life, a testament to the aircraft's excellence and durability.
​

They were two and a half hours out of Malta on a routine patrol, the dull blue of the Mediterranean stretching out under their left wings and the sandy smear of North Africa on the right. Major Max Schiller glanced in his mirror, checking the arrangement of his squadron. He flipped his radio switch.

"Are you lagging, Kauffman?" he asked, eyes fixed on Blue 3, slightly behind and below the others. He could make out Kauffman's face through the blur of his prop, the rangy Bavarian cramped in the tight cockpit.
There was a note of anxiety in his otherwise relaxed reply. "Oil pressure's playing up."
"Do you want to turn back?"
"Not yet. If there's a problem, I'll shout."
"Roger," Schiller said, glancing at the thin rainbow film of oil developing on his own cockpit. Their Me 109s were old, but every extra month they eked out of them was another street rebuilt in Frankfurt.

The radio crackled in Schiller's ear. Blue 6, Enger, was their squadron wit. "Hey, what's looser? Kauffman's oil hose or his girl in Valetta?"

Kauffman's reply was a an elaborate string of curse words.

Schiller chuckled to himself as he heard the others laughing over the channel, but his smile faded as he noted the brownish streak of haze appearing low over the coast. From above it looked like mud encroaching the water. Desert winds blew out sand, meeting the breezes coming in from the sea and forming long, low banks of cover for Egyptian aircraft. The bomber boys had hit the Egyptian coastal airfields hard, but there'd been warnings they'd moved their more advanced, French-built fighters inland.

"Heads up Blue Leader," Schwartz warned. "Haze at 3 o'clock."
"I see it, Blue 4." He scanned the swirling brown, shot through with glimpses of blue ocean. Something glinted.
"Plane down there!" he heard Kauffman shout.
"Bastards are waiting to ambush our next bomber wave," Schiller deduced, flipping open his gun triggers. "Everyone tighten up and follow me down. We'll drop in from above and behind and get the jump on them. Check your targets with that sand in your face."

He heard a chorus of affirmatives and he opened up his throttle, feeling the mighty V12 engine's familiar shudder through his bones as he titled his wings and angled his nose in a sweeping arc down to the sea. The V12 wailed as streaks of cloud whipped by and then he was in the haze, a disorientating yellow-tinted world where horizon slipped away and only the glare of the sun and occasional flash of ocean told you which way was up and which was down. He tried to glance at his instruments, but suddenly the dark silhouette of an enemy fighter was ahead and he opened up with his guns, each salvo jarring his brain in his skull with the shaking of the airframe.

These Egyptians pilots must have been better than the stories the bomber crews told back on Malta. No sooner had Schiller's first tracer crossed his peripheral than his target wheeled away, pulling a roll that must have near well yanked his wings off, with only a few holes in his tail for Schiller's trouble. Lining up his attack angle cost him speed, and Schiller's wing mates roared by on either side and overhead. Suddenly the sky was a confused mass of wing-tips and contrails as the enemy fighters scattered and Schiller's men dived in after them.

"Counting five...no, six!" someone yelled over the roar of engines and rattle of machine guns.
"Engaging!"
Shadows flashed by his head. Schiller jerked his neck one way and then the other, trying to see anything but the haze. "Anyone see where mine went?"
"Christ, they're fast!"
"On your six, Blue Leader!"

Schiller's brain processed the warning a second before his eyes picked up the tracer whipping past his cockpit, earning him a pivotal moment's advantage in ducking down and right. He almost pitched straight into a hostile coming the other way, and saw the flash of egg-blue underbelly as it roared angrily over his head. Some warning light lit up in his brain. These weren't MB.151s. Too damn big and too damn quick. Suddenly he had a sickly feeling. Oh, Christ. He craned his neck to see a hostile and caught a glimpse of red, white and blue roundel.

"They're Canadian!" he heard Kauffman realize more or less simultaneously.
"Abort! Abort!" Schiller ordered. "Disengage!"
"Jesus, they're Aspirants!"
"Roll out and away, don't let them get behind you!"
"If we disengage they'll shoot us in the ass!"
"Disengage!" Schiller heard himself scream. "That's an order!"

He pulled hard on his stick, spinning out and away, praying the Canadian leader was sharp-eyed and cool-head. The sandy air pinged and cracked against his windshield as he waited for the deathly-dull thud-thud-thud of cannons hitting his tail. The moment stretched for an eternity.

The haze fell away, and the ocean and sky reasserted themselves. Schiller counted his comrades follow him out of the cloud with heart in his mouth. All six accounted for. The radio crackled with resentful silence. There'd be words once they landed, that was sure.

Kauffman spoke up eventually. "My pressure's shot after those acrobatics, Blue Leader," he reported tersely.
"Roger," Schiller replied, pointing his nose toward Malta. "Heading in."
"There they are," one of the others said.

Schiller glanced backward in his mirror, seeing six Aspirants arcing elegantly away toward Cyprus. One trailed a sporadic line of smoke from a superficial wound. Any other day and holing an Aspirant would have been something to brag about in the pilot's mess. The Canadian leader had seen them too, and waggled his wings, but whether in anger or absolution was hard to say.

Schiller turned his eyes back to the horizon and clenched his jaw at what might have been. Crowded skies.
​

An Imperial Avro Aspirant. A development on the famous Imperial Avro Albion of the Syndicalist War and Liberation of Britain, the Aspirant was the last prop-driven fighter mass produced for the RCAF. Despite a variety of innovative features (such as its distinctive double-prop) and outstanding performance attributes, its service life was relatively short due to the arrival of the jet.

===========
​

While Germany dealt with the Suez Crisis, it fell to the new government of Turkey to hold the line against the Syndicalist contagion in the Caucasus. However, as Russia had learned so painfully in 1917, regime change does not necessarily give an unpopular conflict new legitimacy. To the disquiet of the Turkish generals, anti-conscription protests and peace rallies continued across the country into the summer of 1946. To the Turkish public, exhausted by war, the specter of Syndicalism was no longer the rallying cry it had once been. Egypt's collapse only amplified the calls for total peace. The ghost of Brest-Litovsk haunted the Turkish junta.
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Turkish troops marching through snow on the Syndicalist front, spring 1946. Conditions were harsh, public support low, and the mood among the soldiers seditious. ​

Turkey's alarmed German minders reported the wavering mood back to Berlin. Chancellor von Neurath was insistent the Turks must maintain the war effort, and signaled his readiness to force another package of military aid through the Reichstag. Turkish president Mustafa Ismet, a military man above all, was unconvinced. He had a clear perception of the military resources that would be necessary to completely defeat Transcaucasia, and he saw no evidence Germany was willing to make such a commitment. When a further round of anti-conscription protests broke out in the west, Ismet’s sense of honor was outraged by the thinly veiled German suggestion that he should disperse the protesters with force. "The soldiers of Turkey cannot fire on their countrymen for anything less than a Reichsheer battle corps," he wrote to Chancellor Von Neurath. Despite their rhetoric, it was clear it want politically feasible for the Germans to offer this kind of assistance. In defiance of German advice, Ismet instructed his front-line commanders to negotiate an armistice with the Transcaucasians.
​

Beria and colleagues, c.1946. Beria maintained the illusion of a consultative role in the Politburo as 'first among equals', but few survived disagreement with the Chairman. ​

In Tbilisi, the mood among the commissars of the Transcaucasian Socialist Republic was celebratory. The hated Turk had been driven to defeat. After long years of failure, the worldwide revolution had scored a victory against the reactionaries. The question was now whether they could keep it, and if they’d be better served in that ambition by consolidating their power or pressing forward for new gains. In the latter camp was Foreign Minister Budu Mdivani, one of the last independently minded members of the politburo not cowed to Beria’s dictatorship. Mdivani argued that Turkey itself now teetered on the edge of revolution, and that the war should be prolonged to allow the comrades in Turkey to organize and propagate. In an attempt to maintain the falsehood of collective responsibility, Beria feigned consideration of this view. Meanwhile, he let it be known through the proxies of his chief henchmen, Ioseb Dzhugashvili and Georgi Eliava, that he favored a quick and relatively unambitious peace, allowing the TSR time to fortify its new borders and gather its strength to dissuade and resist possible Western reprisal. A cynical predator by nature, Beria felt he had already rolled the dice once in initiating the conflict, and now was the time to look to his gains. Beria’s view won out, under a mask of good-natured consensus. (Beria did not forget the affront of Mdivani’s independent thinking: three years later Midivani was purged and executed)
​

The show-trial of Budu Mdivani, 1949. Mdivani's downfall could be traced back to his break from Beria over the fate of Turkey. ​

With this settled, senior apparatchiks were deployed to the treaty negotiations at the Black Sea port city of Bafra, with instructions to return with a settlement that was advantageous but also defensible. Mostly old revolutionaries and veterans of Russian vintage, the tacit threat of Beria’s wrath and their own socialist zeal spurred them on. Meanwhile, the Turkish negotiators were a weary cabal of conservative military officers, dedicated to reducing the damage as much as possible. The two groups, naturally, had little in common and a deep mutual antipathy. Few knew if they’d be able to come to a workable solution.
​

The division of territory in the East on the announcement of the armistice between Turkey and Transcaucasia. ​

In Germany, the news that Turkey was to seek peace with the Syndicalists sent shockwaves through the political establishment. Since its first eruptions, Syndicalism had always been an existential threat to be destroyed, not something to be negotiated with. Chancellor von Neurath, never entirely comfortable in his role, was now deeply imperiled, squeezed between the twin pressures of his own rebellious conservative party and the realities of Germany’s weak economy and cynical public mood. For his part, von Neurath felt he’d been betrayed by his ambitious foreign minister, Ulrich von Hassell. The doyenne of the Reichstag conservative wing, von Hassell had successfully amplified the credit for his successful initiatives while cunningly shifting the blame for his failures. Much of this blame had naturally found its way to von Neurath himself. The morning after the announcement of Germany’s successful regime change in Egypt, von Neurath had been incensed to hear von Hassell already giving a self-congratulatory radio interview as he sat down for breakfast. A collegiate, cautious figure, von Neurath was a relic of 19th century consensus-style government, and found himself consistently outmaneuvered by a politician of von Hassell’s distinctly modern cutthroat ambition. Much to von Neurath’s chagrin, the conservative establishment he regarded as his natural allies seemed to celebrate von Hassell’s insolence rather than condemn it. After three beleaguered years in power, von Neurath had enough. He tendered his resignation to the Kasier, denouncing von Hassell in the strongest terms to his remaining allies, but few in the conservative caucus saw anything but sour grapes in his statements. Rightly or wrongly, von Neurath would always be the man who ‘lost Caucasia’. Wilhelm III was pleased to install his protégé Ulrich von Hassell as Germany’s 12th Imperial Chancellor. Von Hassell, in a self-congratulatory mood after finally dislodging von Neurath as his obstacle to greatness, assured his colleagues that he would oversee a grand restructuring of the Middle East and a revitalization of German imperial power. Yet beneath the triumphalism dangers lurked. Outside of the self-referential bubble of the conservative establishment, opinion polls showed the German public had long ago tired of the internecine dramas of DKP infighting. In local and state elections, the once-dominant DKP had been losing ground to its rivals, and the general election was only a year away. It would be a matter of irony if all of von Hassell’s maneuvering was undone by the fickle tides of public opinion.
​

Germany's new cabinet faced a rising tide of public cynicism and dissatisfaction with the internal dramas of the ruling DKP.​

While Germany was reshuffling its government, negotiations at Bafra had proceeded unexpectedly smoothly, to the surprise of everyone except perhaps Beria himself. The Red Tsar had pursued a deliberately conservative list of demands, better to allow his socialist state to consolidate its holdings. He avoided laying claim to any large areas of majority-Turk territory, instead satisfying himself with the lands of the Armenians, Kurds and Azerbaijanis. In this, he coyly aligned himself with a sentiment already prevailing among the Turkish leadership that trying to hold onto these restive ethnic minorities was more trouble than it was worth.
​

​

The Persians, in their own negotiations with Beria, had reached a similar conclusion. Persia was the only member of the original Cairo Alliance to have emerged from the war with its reputation intact, if not enhanced. Persia had successfully held back both Turkish and Syndicalist incursions, even if the latter had degenerated into unfruitful guerrilla warfare against the restive Kurds. The Shah could probably have held onto the Kurdish lands still under his possession, but it would be inviting further trouble, especially if Beria succeeded in his aim of uniting the majority of Kurds into his Syndicalist state. Meanwhile, if Beria consolidated his position, it was inevitable that the West would seek rapprochement with Persia. With Turkey in collapse, the Persians were likely to retain control over the portions of Arabic Iraq they occupied. The rich lands of southern Mesopotamia would be more than adequate compensation for the loss of the marginal and recalcitrant regions of Kurdistan and Azerbaijan under Persian administration.
​

Shah Ahmad of Persia. A reluctant and not particularly skilled monarch, Ahmad nonetheless realized the threat posed by the new UTSR and sought rapprochement with Germany and the Western powers. ​

Beria’s offer to the long-oppressed minority ethnicities of Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus was a simple one: freedom - of a kind - and self-determination under a new Union of Transcaucasian Syndicalist Republics. While some in the region regarded Syndicalism as the answer to their problems, and international workers’ solidarity as their bulwark against the imperialists who had long oppressed them, others were less convinced. Ultimately, the point was academic - like most of Beria’s ‘offers’, it wouldn’t be healthy to refuse. Few thought life under Beria could be worse than life under the Ottomans.
​

The constitution of the new UTSR codified Beria's pre-eminent position as 'Supreme Chairman and Preeminent Intellect of the Revolution.'​

On the other side of the Middle East, the civil war burning in Arabia had entered a new phase. Faisal of Arabia had made an ill-advised decision to support his fellow Arabs in their war with the Turks, a conflict for which his undeveloped and disunited country proved ill-prepared. Turkey’s invasion of Arabia, deposing Faisal, had been the high-point of its military campaign against the Arabs, but the worsening conditions on other fronts had led to the withdrawal of Turkish forces and the creation of a dangerous power vacuum. With Faisal exiled, tribal war had broken out between the remnants of his ruling Hashemite house and a variety of tribal challengers. The most potent of these enemies was the House of Saud, with whom the Hashemites had a historical rivalry (the Hashemites had overthrown the Sauds as previous rulers of Arabia in 1891). Many factors fueled the conflict, but one key point of disagreement was the Saud perception that the Hashemites were religiously unorthodox and too close to the imperialist powers and their Western ways. The House of Saud subscribed to a purist, ultra-orthodox branch of ascetic Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism, whereas the Hashemites propagated more mainstream, moderate views. Whereas the Hashemites had their power base in the the cosmopolitan coastal region of Hedjaz, the Sauds were hardened by the harsh desert lands of inner Nejd.
​

By summer of 1946, the powerful Saud family had succeeded in uniting the southern tribes of Arabia against the Hashemites, locking the Arabian Peninsula in stalemate. ​

Despite the exile of King Faisal, it seemed likely that the Hashemites would regain control as they still enjoyed tacit backing of the Western powers despite Faisal’s flirtation with Arab nationalism (Germany, especially, viewed the developing sector of Arabian oil as strategically important). The Sauds were defeated in several key battles, but were able to retreat to their heartlands in the desert south and rebuild their power, forming alliances with the rulers of Oman and Yemen. The Omanis and Yemenis looked northward jealously, dissatisfied with the Hashemites’ economic monopolies and attracted to the Saudi promise of a firm-line against the Western powers that had long victimized them. By the summer of 1946, Arabia was divided between a Saudi-led Wahhabi coalition in the South and the beleaguered Hashemites in the North. Combat had largely ceased, implying the peninsula might be permanently partitioned.
​

Fighters during the Arabian Civil War, c.1946. The war was the result of long simmering religious disagreements as well as ancient tribal rivalries. ​

The fate of Arabia was just one of the urgent geopolitical challenges facing the new German chancellor. Determined to press ahead with his ambitious international plans despite flagging popularity at home, von Hassel saw his legacy as a re-establishment of the international system. After years of global anarchy, he envisioned a return to the great power concerts of the 19th century. The cooperation of other powers, specifically the Entente nations now embroiled in the Middle East conflict in a variety of ways, was crucial to his success. When von Hassel had scoldingly declared the Entente powers irrelevant to his vision of Pax Germanica, they had immediately embarrassed him by making destabilising mischief in North Africa. He was determined not to make this error again: now he was Chancellor, the political consequences would be more damaging. Von Hassel's instinct toward the Entente was still parochial; like petulant children, he regarded them as mostly seeking attention. However, he viewed the common response of German hawks in resisting the reality of Entente revival as wrongheaded. His new strategy was to flatter them, draw them into his plans, and tie them into maintaining and endorsing a world system that was still ordered by Germany. As he had promised at the Mediterranean Navigation talks von Hassel invited Canada and Imperial France to the negotiating table over the future shape of the Middle East.
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The International Triumvirate - Howe of Canada (L), De Gaulle of Imperial France (C), and von Hassell of Germany (R) - during the negotiations of the Treaty of Knossos, Summer 1946. ​

Assembling on Crete, the deliberations over what would eventually become the Treaty of Knossos were the grandest international convocation seen since the end of the Wektkrieg. Almost every European, Middle Eastern and African nation ended up attending in some capacity, but it was clear right from the beginning that the center of gravity lay with what was to be termed the International Triumvirate - the ‘big three’ of Imperial France, Germany and Canada (representing the British Empire.) Independent powers such as Persia and Russia played important supporting roles, while lesser nations such as Turkey and Egypt could only acquiesce meekly to the determination of their fates. Unlike previous negotiations, much of the actual wrangling was carried out face-to-face between the relevant leaders, with von Hassel meeting De Gaulle and Howe for the first time in person.
​

Aides strain to listen to deliberations during the Knossos negotiations. The conference represented the largest diplomatic assemblage since the Peace With Honor.​

As convener of the negotiations, von Hassel largely controlled the agenda and was shrewd enough to recognize that concessions would have to be made to the Entente to win their acquiescence. His priority was therefore to limit the scope of these concessions and maintain the fundamental reality of German power in the region, while at the same time establishing a strong Middle Eastern order. Negotiations also had to be carried out with sensitivity to several fundamental realities: Germany effectively occupied Egypt and controlled Turkey. Meanwhile the French had already seized Libya, and had made generous promises to nationalist rebels in Sudan. Where Entente armies were already, it was unlikely he could make them withdraw. The neo-British, though not officially present on the ground, had established the Jews of Palestine as their proxies, arming them with modern equipment including advanced tanks and aircraft. There was little way this could be undone. Naturally, it displeased the Arabs, but the Canadians had the advantage of not having to indulge their opinion whereas Germany had to balance Jewish constituencies at home and Arab allies abroad. The Canadians did, however, have a problem in Cyprus, which could prove a point of negotiation. Meanwhile, Beria's new Transcaucasian Union, while not invited to the talks, cast a shadow of threat over the proceedings, and incentivised the squabbling Western powers to cooperate.
​

An officer of the Imperial French army leading native troops in North Africa, c.1940s. De Gaulle felt his military dominance in the region gave him a strong hand for negotiations with the Germans. ​

Early indications were not good. Von Hassel and De Gaulle, similarly bombastic nationalists, almost immediately fell out. Von Hassel felt a promise to recognise France's control over Libya and Sudan was a sufficient sop to French interests, but De Gaulle felt this recognition was irrelevant given that France already controlled these territories and demanded further concessions. De Gaulle wanted acknowledgment of France's former interests in Egypt, but von Hassel refused to accept this. He felt France had already shirked the blame for aggravating Arab nationalism with anti-German aims. Meanwhile, De Gaulle demanded Germany take steps to rein in Mittelafrika and further inflamed the Germans by raising the notion of discussions over the future status of North France. Even De Gaulle probably recognized the latter was a political impossibility, and it was the Mittelafrikan question that really alarmed German negotiators. There was a concerning possibility that Germany's putative control over Mittelafrika would crack when put to too strong a test. Eager to shut down any discussion of Mittelafrika, von Hassel instead countered with a vague promise to guarantee the independence of Ethiopia as a buffer zone. As well, he pledged to officially recognize the reality of French control over Morocco - though occupied by Imperial France since defeating an invasion by the Union of Britain in the Syndicalist War, Germany still officially regarded Morocco as its own - and to restore French Somaliland.
​

Canadian PM C.D. Howe (L) inspects a Canadian tank bound for the Jewish Haganah fighters in Palestine, 1946. While Howe enjoyed the material issues of supply and production, he found the rigmaroles of diplomacy tiresome. ​

Meanwhile, the technocratic Canadian Prime Minister, C.D. Howe often found himself caught between the warring bluster of De Gaulle and the grandiloquence of von Hassel. Rarely regarded as a 'people person', Howe attempted to chart a moderate course between solidarity with his French allies and Canada's more modest ambitions. At the same time, now regarding Cyprus as a mistake, Howe was resultant to commit to any outcomes that would commit Canada to propping up German power in the Middle East. Howe and von Hassel opened well, with von Hassel pledging to recognize a putative British protectorate in Palestine and thus give Britain its longed for permanent base in the Mediterranean to replace the Weltkrieg losses of Malta and Gibraltar. Howe, for his part, had been impressed by the German effort to recapture Suez, and believed that the canal was best left in German hands, though this was not a feeling he shared readily with De Gaulle. However, von Hassel irritated Howe with a heavy-handed insistence that Persia be allowed to fall under German influence, making it a prerequisite of German assistance in untangling the Cyprus situation. Howe agreed to the Persian principle, but retaliated by declaring Canada's intention to partition Cyprus, an outcome von Hassel had hoped to avoid as it would inevitably stoke conflict between Germany's Greek and Turkish allies. After this, Howe stuck far closer to De Gaulle, and the rest of the negotiations were conducted with polite distance.
​

​

The Knossos negotiations were not, therefore, the grand display of international good feeling von Hassel had aimed for, but this was a minor setback compared to the success they achieved in establishing an agenda for re-organizing the geopolitical arrangement of the Middle East. The ensuing Treaty of Knossos drew inevitable comparisons to the Peace With Honor in scope and ambition, and resulted in a complete reshaping of the entire region.
​

The borders of the Middle East and North-East Africa after the Treaty of Knossos.

​

In Turkey, the Treaty of Knossos represented the final end of the Ottoman Empire. Already shrunken by the Syndicalists in the East, Turkey was forced to spin-off its remaining Arab lands into a newly formed ‘Turkic Kingdom of Levant’ ruled by a fragile alliance of Turkish-ethnic Syrian Turkmen and pro-Turkish Sunni Arabs concerned by the rising power of Shia Persia. Germany pressed for a modernized Turkish monarchy to be restored as a unifying symbol for the divided and battered country, free from the baggage of the Caliphate. The Turkish junta invited the exiled Ottoman prince Osman Fuad, a dashing general and rare hero of Turkey’s Weltkrieg campaigns, to take the combined throne of Turkey-Levant, no longer as Imperial Sultan but styled as a Western king. The new King returned the capital to royal Istanbul. Northern Cyprus was restored to Turkey (with Southern Cyprus passing to Greece), and the personal union of the Levantine and Turkish thrones maintained an illusion of international power, but overall it was clear the era of independent Turkish influence was largely over. Turkey faced a difficult path ahead, reconciling itself to a post-imperial actuality, while Turkic Levant’s future seemed murkier still.
​

The new borders of Turkey and Levant. Turkey faced a shrunken future the union of the two thrones could barely disguise.

A popular hero of the Weltkrieg, Prince Osman Fuad's exile had been regretted even by some republicans. Restored to the new throne of Turkey, Osman IV faced a difficult task in binding up his countries' wounds. ​

​

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By contrast, Persia, despite officially being on the ‘losing side’ of the Turko-Arab War, found itself favoured by the Treaty of Knossos. With Beria’s UTSR now a common threat, Germany sought to swiftly reconcile itself with the Shah. As expected, Persia was granted control over the portions of Iraq it had successfully won from Turkey, finally realising the 19th century notion of Greater Persia. Germany successfully blocked British overtures to establish itself as Persia’s principle foreign partner, allowing the Reich a solid base from which to assert its influence East of Suez. Persian stature was enhanced; the country’s principles challenges henceforth would be integrating its new Sunni citizens in Iraq and dealing with Beria as an unpleasantly close neighbor. The proximity of Teheran to the Syndicalist border had already resulted in an evacuation of the Persian capital to the more geographically central and defensible position of Shiraz.
​

The Treaty of Knossos created a Greater Persia, stretching across the Tigris to the eastern banks of the Euphrates.

To the South, the Treaty of Knossos recognized that the Jews of the Hagenah had won their independence. A narrow strip of territory was reorganised as the British protectorate of Judaea-Peripalestine, intended as a settler state with an Anglo-Hebrew identity. Jerusalem was accorded international city status under British supervision, and the Canadians already had plans in motion to make Tel Aviv the principal Mediterranean port of the British Empire.
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A Canadian Calgary-tank stands watch in Tel Aviv, Summer 1946. The Canadians had armed the Haganah with the strategic aim of establishing a permanent foothold in the Eastern Mediterranean with the advantage of a Westernized population.

The territory of the new British protectorate of Judea-Peripalestine, designed by the authors of the Treaty of Knossos to form a buffer between Egyptian and Turkish interests.

Unlike the other states created by the Treaty of Knossos, Judea-Peripalestine was an explicitly colonial undertaking, intended to be settled as an 'Anglo-Hebrew' enterprise. ​

 

[cookfl]

In return, the British lent their support to assisting Germany in stabilizing a pro-Western Hashemite kingdom in Arabia, ensuring Germany’s future oil supply. One weakness of the Hashemites had been their inability to unite behind a single new leader after Faisal’s exile. The Western powers ended this squabbling by marshaling their influence behind Prince Abdullah, the former King’s brother. With Abdullah enthroned as the new king, the Hashemite House was able to fall into order. Maligned as Western puppets by the Wahhabi coalition to the South, they nonetheless enjoyed the largesse of Western weapons and developmental aid. Optimistically designating the new kingdom ‘Transarabia’, the Treaty of Knossos granted the Hashemites a broad swathe of Sunni Arab territory and control over the Gulf emirates. Von Hassel had wished to go further and assist the Hashemites in retaking the entire Arabian Peninsula, but the British had resisted the notion of going to war against the Saudis for the sake of German oil. Instead, Arabia, and its oil fields, stayed tensely divided.

The territory of the Kingdom of Transarabia. A somewhat awkward territorial construction, and obvious misnomer, Transarabia nonetheless had powerful friends and hopes to reunite the Arabian peninsula.

​

Meanwhile, across the Suez Canal, the Treaty of Knossos resulted in a shrinking of Egypt. With their previous government overthrown by German invasion, the new Egyptian regime was required to recognise the independence of Sudan. Here the French installed Sayyid Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi as ruler of a new kingdom, as they had promised, but otherwise kept a tight economic and military grip over their new puppet. Libya as well fell under French influence, with the French imposing a colonial administration under the niceties of the puppet-king Hassan of Libya. Both of these new territories were to be subject to Algeria-style ‘Francification’.

The new borders of Egypt, Sudan and Libya.

After their invasion, the Germans imposed a child-king and military junta on Egypt.

The Imperial French imposed puppet monarchs in Libye and Le Soudan, and set about assimilating these territories into the French African Empire.
​

While statesmen were toasting each other’s sagacity, the immediate impact of the Treaty of Knossos in the Middle East was chaos as governments were dissolved and new borders appeared with the stroke of a diplomat’s pen. As word spread of the treaty’s terms, millions began to move, adding to the millions already displaced by years of war. The cascade begun in Iraq, as Shia and Sunni attempted to position themselves on the right side of the new Persian border. Migrations that began organically soon became officialized; unbound by the need to appease public opinion, and with domestic audiences shielded from the scale of the human disaster by sunny censorship of the press, the authoritarian Imperial powers privately regarded ethnic ‘centralization’ as beneficial for the region.

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Refugees cram aboard trains during The Nakba, August 1946. Across the region, millions of people were displaced.
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“We hear of great crushes at the ports and railways, and vast columns of people filling all possible roads,” the German envoy in Baghdad wrote to Chancellor von Hessel. “The situation is unfortunate, but one must recognize the necessity for clean national borders.” In Canada, meanwhile, the dominant story of the summer was King Edward and Queen Barbara’s successful tour of the Western provinces and the Pacific States. Churchill, who had been an observer at Knossos, kept the monarch informed of developments. “Your Imperial Majesty will recognize that the neat division of every man into his own country - the Frenchman in France, the Briton in Britain, the German in Germany - has long been a source of order in the European continent, and doubtless must be so too in the East if it is to achieve beneficial progress.” Rumors circulated in dissident circles of something terrible occurring overseas, but most citizens had long ago understood the dangers of asking inconvenient questions. When Knossos was announced, it was celebrated as a great triumph.

Syrian Alawites flee their homes during The Nakba, heading for Shia Persia. Sectarian violence, general lawlessness and summer heat made the journey extremely dangerous.

Arriving Canadian forces drive past Egyptian troops marching out of Judea-Peripalestine, August 1946.​

While the Western world closed up its ears, still the dusty columns came. Displacement was complete, and universal. Sunnis were expelled from Persia, Shias from Levant, Christians from Egypt, Muslims from Palestine. The great migrations known thereafter as The Nakba (The Catastrophe) were barely noticed by the wider world and are now barely remembered, but the human toll of the exodus was high. The punishing conditions of the high-summer and the breakdown of law and order on the routes resulted in many casualties. In time, the flow ceased, and the new states settled. There may even have been some validity to the claim to the Imperialists’ claim that increased homogeneity helped to stabilize the region after decades of ethnic and sectarian conflict, alongside the deadening hand of Imperial alliances enforcing order. Peace, however, always has its price, and the dead and dying littered the roadsides, the disposable chaff of a brave new world.

A German military bus transports Egyptian Jews and Copts to Judea-Peripalestine, August 1946. The Western powers tacitly regarded the forced deportations as necessary to stabilize the region. Few of the evacuees would ever see their homes again.


======
​

Phew, that was long and complicated. Think it'll be a while before I have the energy to do another big war...

 

[GulMacet]

How does the Protectorate of Judea-Peripalestine handle Jewish immigration, especially from Mitteleuropa? What is its official language? Can European Zionists retain their original citizenship after going 'home'? What is the official German position on Zionism within Germany and Mitteleuropa?

 

[Aquadragon10]

I wonder what the first jet fighter is going to be and who will have it?

Poor Palestinians, pushed out of your homes even in this alternate world. Your lives must suck.

 

[cookfl]

How does the Protectorate of Judea-Peripalestine handle Jewish immigration, especially from Mitteleuropa? What is its official language? Can European Zionists retain their original citizenship after going 'home'? What is the official German position on Zionism within Germany and Mitteleuropa?

I think they'd have a less open-door policy than OTL Israel, as the whole issue is much less urgent in TTL. I agree with what some others have said before that I don't think the majority of Mitteleuropan Jews would necessarily be rushing to live there. Also, they may not want to: it's not a Jewish homeland so much as a British territory with a Jewish character.

Per that, the official language is English.

I'd say no to the citizenship question. Doesn't seem like any government would be pro-dual citizenship in this world.

A variation on the 19th century German position I guess? Pro-assimilation, and therefore see Zionism as unnecessary (or necessary if you're not privileged enough to live in the tolerant and inclusive Reich?) Maybe in Mitteleuropa you'd see a greater prominence to the sorts of views held by the Neturei Karta

I wonder what the first jet fighter is going to be and who will have it?

Poor Palestinians, pushed out of your homes even in this alternate world. Your lives must suck.

I was interested in the idea that the current mess in the Middle East is the solution that democratic powers came up to with at least a lip-service to self-determination and national rights. The irony is they actually cared about not creating a mess, and they did, so what would it be like if you had adjudicators who fundamentally didn't actually give a damn?

 

[sealy300]

Wow, that was some top quality photoshopping, well done.

 

[GulMacet]

It's a great read from an alternate history perspective, but what REALLY hits home is that even how horrible this is, it is probably still better than the current state of the area in the real world...

 

[_Leo]

I wish you could upload the savegame,this is awesome!

 

[strategymad3500]

it sucks for the expelled people ,now will Transcaucasian Socialist Republic be allowed to maintain power or be destroyed by a coalition of western powers?

 

[Baron Jukaga]

Wow, and excellent and long update, very impressive world crafting as usual. Imagine the day when we have strategy games that can come up with dynamic events like this to reflect the current situation. All your work is very appreciated, all KR players know the work you have to put in to make post WK2 gameplay interesting.

 

[Ticket Cookie]

I will join the praises, great update!

If I understood it well, the Christians are going to Judea-Peripalestina? Wouldn't be there a Christian majority then?
Copts are around 10-15% of Egypt's population after all (especially then), and it was really sizable in Syria, Iraq and of course Lebanon.

Seeing that the Jewish population was less important in those countries, and that the Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan communities have no reason to move as they did IRL (without talking of the European ones), won't it be strange too see so many Christians ruled by so few jews?

 

[HIMDogson]

And one of the main bright spots of this world, the nonexistance of Saudi Arabia, is gone. Come on, Hashemites! Crush the Saudis! Abdullah II > Salman any day!

 

[Maximus101]

It's a great read from an alternate history perspective, but what REALLY hits home is that even how horrible this is, it is probably still better than the current state of the area in the real world...

Absolutely not. Given the numbers and how these types of explusions go, especially without the UN or any organization helping, this is absolutely worse than our world.

I was interested in the idea that the current mess in the Middle East is the solution that democratic powers came up to with at least a lip-service to self-determination and national rights. The irony is they actually cared about not creating a mess, and they did, so what would it be like if you had adjudicators who fundamentally didn't actually give a damn?

A final solution to the problem?

Really though this will not solve the regions issues as much as it solved the issues between India and Pakistan, which also had population transfer. They today have nukes pointed at eachother and fought several wars. The only peace there is to be enforced from the barrel of a gun. Given the low estimates of death of that move that had more support, the nations here are a party to mass murder.

I mean the Jews aren't the only people that clamour for their homeland. These people expelled are no different.

I imagine that most of these were moves were forced enforced and the inital moves greatly exaggerated.

That line that it is barely remembered by the world is... just stupid to me. Maybe if by world you mean by wider world but these transfer still leave scars and this one is so massive that I cannot believe it. You think Islamic extremism is bad in our world, just wait for it here.

I can say 100% that this world is causing more suffering, death, and is all around worse than our world, and I mean that with the threat of atomic annihilation.

Given the populations moved in Israel, more than 60% of the country has been abandoned.

I am glad that the war is over. It did seem to slow things down a lot. Also take my reaction as a good sign, as I care about the story.