quite the problematic typeI wonder if Nazim Hikmet will do a cameo
it seems it's all crazy over there!
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quite the problematic type
Time to admit that America just doesn't work. The Ottoman state seems much preferable by comparison, even with the recent troubles.
At the point where I just have this year’s updates to go. Fantastic stuff and what a journey for the Ottomans. Very well played on a game level, but also good job weaving it all together as an AAR.
Truly, the US being carved up by foreign powers and their oil fields fought over is one of the most delicious ironies I have ever seen Vicky throw up.
Truly, the US being carved up by foreign powers and their oil fields fought over is one of the most delicious ironies I have ever seen Vicky throw up.
All caught up. Excellent business on the Ottoman end, but news from America is nothing short of stomach-churning. Always entertaining to see MacArthur bobbing about as a general force for chaos, mind.
Chapter Sixty: The Bulldog Imperilled (1939-1943)
The late 1939 collapse of one of the titans of the global economy into civil war was unsurprisingly met with dismay across the world, but the fall of President Bilbo and his replacement by President MacArthur was met with a more measured response. The new presidency certainly did not enjoy any more popular legitimacy than its predecessor, but it did open the door to an end of the federal race war that the Southern Democrats had prosecuted during their decade in power. And where people had expected the outright military government to only further reduce freedom in the states it retained control of, President MacArthur instead moved in the opposite direction in winter 1939; with some freedoms - including the right to gather in public - restored for the first time in over a decade. And there were soon even rumours that the ban on political parties would be lifted prior to the next scheduled election, which President MacArthur hoped would ensure that the Great Powers of the world would refrain from officially recognising any of the breakaway American republics: A strategy which would succeed in 1940.
By making these moves toward liberalisation, President MacArthur also successfully headed off the possibility of significant numbers of northern states joining the Illinois-led “New American Alliance”; with only Minnesota and Wisconsin successfully seceding by the turn of the New Year, and attempts by state officials in the states of Washington, Indiana, and Michigan to join the alliance all failing in the state legislatures. The northern states were further divided by the Colorado Republic’s refusal to join the Chicago-led Alliance, as Denver decided full independence was preferable to an attempt to overthrow the union government – Which left the Alliance in very precarious territory. The only thing it did have going in its favour was direct support from the Kingdom of Canada, which had seized upon the opportunity provided by the American disarray to forge strong ties with the Alliance, and provided direct funding and supplies to the Chicago government, with a steady supply of goods soon flowing over the border with Minnesota. The Canadians also used the opportunity to further enhance its ties with the independent Republic of New England, where initial hopes of reunification with America after its enforced secession at the end of the Second Great War twenty years had rapidly faded amid the American descent into chaos, and a new movement to instead join Canada was now beginning to gain traction.
The North American Borders amidst the various secession movements of the Second American Civil War (Summer 1940)
For the Confederacy, however, the MacArthan reforms only succeeded in further antagonising Southern states. Whilst Mississippi, Nebraska, and Virginia had been the only states to secede prior to the coup, MacArthur’s ascension to power had provided the impetus for the states of Florida and North Carolina to also leave the union, and border skirmishes between the union and the confederacy soon broke out, after the US Military succeeded in crushing an attempt by Alabama to leave the union by arresting most of the local legislators. Hopes that President MacArthur would be able to bring all the southern states in line were soon to be dashed however, as the Confederacy found its own ally in the fascist dictatorship of Mexico, despite their racist governance being extremely unwelcoming for hispanics, too. Much like with Canada arming the Alliance, Mexican supplies soon began arriving by sea in Confederate ports, which the new Confederate Militias rapidly fortified to ensure these vital lifelines could not be cut by union forces. The Confederacy therefore used the ports to try to make up for its failure to form a contiguous bloc; after the Union government had ensured the defeat of the secessionists in the other former Confederate states by legal or military means.
After the Confederate attempts to take Alabama by force were repulsed in 1940, an uneasy truce therefore broke out between all factions… And in a shocking twist of fate, the leaders of the Alliance and the Confederacy soon announced a defensive alliance between them, with their vastly opposing domestic agendas countered by a fear of a successful intervention by the Washington government. The Alliance also agreed to stand by as Confederate forces in Nebraska launched an invasion of the quasi-independent Colorado Republic, with the Nebraskans attempted to secure their own border with Mexico to remove the exclave's obvious vulnerability, as long as the Confederacy agreed to continue to recognise the independence of the nation of Cherokee. Whether such agreements could last in the long term were another matter altogether, though.
Global economic instability caused by the American Crisis triggers the collapse of an Ottoman bank (February 1st 1940)
For the rest of the world, the initial shock of the American collapse had triggered instability across the global banking sector, as the New York Stock Exchange collapsed and many others soon followed; reviving memories of the Great Depression of the early 1900s. The Ottoman Empire was soon hit by the collapse of a major bank, and this triggered a new economic agenda for the Sublime Porte as it looked to head off any deeper recession early on. Grand Vizier Mehmet Recep Pasha therefore instituted a series of banking reforms aimed at tightening control over the rogue sector despite the opposition of his liberal coalition partners; with the opposition socialist Osmanli Ahali Firkasi helping the measures pass through the Ottoman parliament. This culminated with the May 1940 Ottoman National Banking Act, which monopolised the issuing of the Ottoman lira to the central bank amid significant liberal protestations at this fundamental breach of freedom of trade, and strong opposition by the chambers of commerce in a number of the vilayets.
The passing of the Ottoman National Banking Act finally monopolises the printing of money in the Empire (May 8th 1940)
Opposition to the National Banking Act sparked uproar in liberal-controlled Ottoman vilayets (Summer 1940)
With the continued American economic collapse in 1940 even despite President MacArthur’s lifting of the ban on the Republican Party and the return of the Northern Democrats to the Democratic party ahead of the upcoming election, the United Kingdom hosted an international conference of Great Powers to plan a unified international response and path forward for solving the so-called "American Question". Conservative Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had hoped to wrest back some international prestige to Britain after its clear surpassing by the Kingdom of France in recent decades, and had the conference gone how he had envisioned perhaps he could have succeeded in bringing some glory back to Westminster. Instead the London Conference soon collapsed into disagreements, with the French support of the Canadian position and therefore the New American Alliance (and the French position naturally being backed by the Sublime Porte), an intractable block to any solution or even a basic roadmap soon appeared. Worse still for Chamberlain, the conference was the first meeting between Chamberlain and the recently returned Russian Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky, and the two men rapidly grew to detest each other. With this discord noted and discreetly encouraged by French and Ottoman diplomats, the only noteworthy diplomatic outcome of the 1940 London Conference was the destruction of the forty year old Anglo-Russian Alliance, as British Isolation was made obvious to the world.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's failed London Conference of 1940 was a disaster for British Prestige
This in turn encouraged the new Chinese government to make a move of their own, and Chamberlain’s reputation took a further battering when the Hongxian Emperor officially demanded the return of Hong Kong to Chinese control in September 1940 – A position soon backed by Mehmet Recep Pasha and French Prime Minister Pierre-Etienne Flandin. Under pressure from his own party, amid rumours of a potential party coup seeing him displaced as leader by firebrand Winston Churchill, Chamberlain vehemently defended British rule of Hong Kong and pledged that Britain would hold by the terms of the treaties that had given it control of the territory. Initial proposals to shorten the "lease" that Britain held Hong Kong under were therefore rejected by the London government, but the British did accept that the agreement would expire in 1997 and no further extensions would ever occur. With neither the Elysee Palace nor the Sublime Porte being remotely tempted to take the matter beyond diplomatic protestations, this was expected to be the end of the Hong Kong discussion, with the blow to British prestige a seemingly satisfactory conclusion for all parties. Believing the matter to be put to bed was to prove a huge miscalculation by Chamberlain later.
Still, for Mehmet Recep Pasha, the rest of the year passed in an uneventful manner, and the start of 1941 continued a quiet period in Ottoman politics. The American situation continued to bubble with tension even after Republican candidate Robert A. Taft had shocked the world by defeating President MacArthur in the 1940 Election despite widespread reports and claims of voter suppression. President MacArthur had peacefully accepted the transition of power; although the US Military remained in a shadowy role behind the scenes, and the US remained a long way away from the free democracy it had been in the past – with the Socialist and Communist Parties still banned, and numerous “Independent” senators and congressmen who were still openly controlled by the Military. President Taft’s attempts to reintegrate the Alliance were therefore doomed from the start, and his new administration consequently did little to restore American sovereignty over either the Alliance or the Confederacy – Even after the latter’s Nebraskan Expedition suffered a humiliating defeat in Colorado in autumn 1941.
Republican Robert A. Taft surprisingly defeated incumbent President MacArthur despite widespread voter irregularities in the 1940 American Election
By then however, international attention had moved on to a new crisis. Unsatisfied by the British response to his demands for the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule, the Ming Empire had spent the rest of 1940 and the first half of 1941 rapidly modernising its forces, and in June 1941 the Hongxian Emperor shocked the world by declaring war on the United Kingdom without even bothering with asking his Ottoman and French allies for support he knew would not be forthcoming. The Emperor hoped the so-called “National Liberation War” would put the memories of the huge Chinese losses suffered during the Caucasian War to bed and prove that the new regime was much better equipped than the Beiyang Republic that had preceded the restoration. And as the war began, it looked like a stroke of genius: The defence of Hong Kong lasted less than six weeks before it surrendered to the Chinese attackers, and British Prime Minister Chamberlain’s scrambled attempts to outfit an expeditionary force from British Malaya were also repulsed with heavy British casualties. The Royal Navy was however quickly able to assume naval supremacy over the extremely outdated Ming Navy, but the Chinese coastline was far too large for a total blockade to be viable. The British therefore settled for blockading the Yellow Sea and thus the major coastal cities of Northern China & Manchuria in force, as well as intercepting shipping around other coastal Chinese cities and the island of Hainan.
For Chamberlain however this was the final straw, and his Conservative colleagues soon removed him from power. Whilst elderly firebrand Winston Churchill had been touted as the obvious candidate to replace him due to his long history of opposing defence cuts that had left Hong Kong in such a precarious state in the first place, Churchill’s lack of popularity amongst his own colleagues saw him passed over for leadership, and Viscount Halifax instead took on the premiership. Halifax immediately ordered the preparation of a new, stronger expeditionary force led by crack troops from the home islands and bolstered by colonial troops, whilst British Indian troops were rushed to Burma to repulse the ongoing Chinese invasions in the jungles there. Any British hopes that this would stabilise the situation soon faltered when Chinese troops marched into Rangoon in January 1942, with the new expeditionary force forced to divert to southern Burma and painstakingly begin driving the Ming forces back through Spring – with the Chinese taking cataclysmic losses but their superior numbers still able to inflict a harsh toll on the British troops.
Viscount Halifax succeeded Chamberlain as British Prime Minister, but was no better equipped to deal with a catastrophic period for the British Empire (June 9th 1941)
Hopes that Viscount Halifax would be able to shore up British support on the global stage would prove horrendously off-the-mark, however. British relations with almost every other Great Power had been poor for many years; with Anglo-French relations remaining extremely bitter ever since the Third Great War, and Anglo-Ottoman relations had never truly recovered after that either. The end of the Anglo-Russian Alliance had seen the Russian government, itself reeling from its defeat in the Caucasian War (where the Brits hadn’t lifted a finger to help the Russians), fall into its old pattern of hostility to Britain, and Russian eyes had in fact turned to the great vacuum of post-British India, where a myriad of states (some of which still pledged allegiance to Britain, particularly in the south) were beginning to look very tantalising to the Russian regime. British relations with Germany and the United States were also still very cool in the decades after the First & Second Great Wars… Which left only Austria-Hungary. Vienna also had pretty poor relations with London since the Franco-Habsburg invasion of Portuguese Mozambique had defeated the Anglo-Portuguese alliance there in the late 1920s, and attempts to promote a rapprochement between the Habsburg and London empires had failed to secure any huge restoration in British support there – The Habsburg’s were simply far keener to prioritise their relations with Paris even after the Franco-Ottoman Alliance had so clearly come to global pre-eminence in recent years.
These cool relations with other powers now came back to haunt the British government, as the international stage took another shocking twist in February 1942. The Kingdom of Spain had spent the three decades since its devastating occupation during the First Great War rebuilding its shattered nation, and had retained neutrality throughout every single global conflict since then. The Spanish had however retained friendly ties with their defeated allies from the First Great War – And most notably had recently signed new alliances with the Republic of Germany and the Kingdom of Italy. The Spanish had also retained a lasting hatred of the British, and with the outbreak of the Anglo-Chinese War, had begun plotting their own revenge… Which took the form of the February 1942 invasion of British West Africa, as Spain claimed the Hausaland for its own. The Spanish invasion was soon supported by the German and Italian governments, whilst support for Britain remained notably absent amongst other Great Powers – With the British network of allies now only consisting of the various dominions of the British Empire plus the Republic of New England, the Sultanate of Oman, the Kingdoms of Denmark and Portugal, Peru, and Luang Prabang.
Spanish and British forces fighting in West Africa (Summer 1942)
German U-Boats terrified the Royal Navy in the early 1940s and destroyed any British attempt to blockade enemy ports
The Spanish invasion of the Hausaland took the British completely by surprise, as Spanish troops poured out of Spanish Africa and into the British colonial holdings there, which had been stripped of men for the fighting in Asia. The decision of liberal German Chancellor Theodor Huss to join the war despite the apparent absence of any geopolitical motive for the Germans to put themselves on the line for Spanish colonial goals further stunned the Westminster government – As did the decision of socialist Italian Prime Minister Pietro Nenni to follow the Germans into the conflict. In reality, it reflected how far the Royal Navy had fallen – With the German, Italian, and Spanish governments believing their combined navies (plus the need for the Royal Navy to remain active in the Far East even after they abandoned the Yellow Sea Blockade) would prove a match for what was left of the once world-beating force. And they were right – With the German U-Boats in particular devastating the early attempts by the British to inflict another blockade on Germany, and by the end of 1942 the Royal Navy had essentially been confined to its harbours in Europe by the combined threats of the Regia Marina, the Kriegsmarine, and the Armada Real. Any British hopes of blockading them out of the war were thus dashed, and the Portuguese and Danish were then also rapidly forced out of the war by the Spanish and German armies, with both nations agreeing white peace terms in August 1942 to leave the Brits even more isolated.
For the Sublime Porte, the continued American and British humiliations were a golden opportunity for Ottoman industry to break into the top echelons of the global economy, and an exports boom thus began as Ottoman armaments were sold en masse to the Spanish, Italian, and German military machines… And to those of the British, too. With the French naturally reluctant to directly supply any of the nations which surrounded them; all of whom had fought the French in brutal wars since the turn of the century, all the warring nations were increasingly reliant on imports from Austria-Hungary and from the Ottoman Empire as 1942 went on. Both economies went from strength to strength as the global war provided opportunities galore, with the Porte supremely satisfied by its ability to stay above the fray whilst its rivals had been tearing themselves apart. And this satisfaction only rose further in February 1943, when Moscow ended its own rearming program after the humiliation of the Caucasian War. Russia knew it was no match for the Ottoman Empire now – But there were other routes to reclaiming its military pride that were now wide open…
The Russian vulture joins the international pummelling of the British Empire (Spring 1943)
By making these moves toward liberalisation, President MacArthur also successfully headed off the possibility of significant numbers of northern states joining the Illinois-led “New American Alliance”; with only Minnesota and Wisconsin successfully seceding by the turn of the New Year, and attempts by state officials in the states of Washington, Indiana, and Michigan to join the alliance all failing in the state legislatures. The northern states were further divided by the Colorado Republic’s refusal to join the Chicago-led Alliance, as Denver decided full independence was preferable to an attempt to overthrow the union government – Which left the Alliance in very precarious territory. The only thing it did have going in its favour was direct support from the Kingdom of Canada, which had seized upon the opportunity provided by the American disarray to forge strong ties with the Alliance, and provided direct funding and supplies to the Chicago government, with a steady supply of goods soon flowing over the border with Minnesota. The Canadians also used the opportunity to further enhance its ties with the independent Republic of New England, where initial hopes of reunification with America after its enforced secession at the end of the Second Great War twenty years had rapidly faded amid the American descent into chaos, and a new movement to instead join Canada was now beginning to gain traction.
The North American Borders amidst the various secession movements of the Second American Civil War (Summer 1940)
For the Confederacy, however, the MacArthan reforms only succeeded in further antagonising Southern states. Whilst Mississippi, Nebraska, and Virginia had been the only states to secede prior to the coup, MacArthur’s ascension to power had provided the impetus for the states of Florida and North Carolina to also leave the union, and border skirmishes between the union and the confederacy soon broke out, after the US Military succeeded in crushing an attempt by Alabama to leave the union by arresting most of the local legislators. Hopes that President MacArthur would be able to bring all the southern states in line were soon to be dashed however, as the Confederacy found its own ally in the fascist dictatorship of Mexico, despite their racist governance being extremely unwelcoming for hispanics, too. Much like with Canada arming the Alliance, Mexican supplies soon began arriving by sea in Confederate ports, which the new Confederate Militias rapidly fortified to ensure these vital lifelines could not be cut by union forces. The Confederacy therefore used the ports to try to make up for its failure to form a contiguous bloc; after the Union government had ensured the defeat of the secessionists in the other former Confederate states by legal or military means.
After the Confederate attempts to take Alabama by force were repulsed in 1940, an uneasy truce therefore broke out between all factions… And in a shocking twist of fate, the leaders of the Alliance and the Confederacy soon announced a defensive alliance between them, with their vastly opposing domestic agendas countered by a fear of a successful intervention by the Washington government. The Alliance also agreed to stand by as Confederate forces in Nebraska launched an invasion of the quasi-independent Colorado Republic, with the Nebraskans attempted to secure their own border with Mexico to remove the exclave's obvious vulnerability, as long as the Confederacy agreed to continue to recognise the independence of the nation of Cherokee. Whether such agreements could last in the long term were another matter altogether, though.
Global economic instability caused by the American Crisis triggers the collapse of an Ottoman bank (February 1st 1940)
For the rest of the world, the initial shock of the American collapse had triggered instability across the global banking sector, as the New York Stock Exchange collapsed and many others soon followed; reviving memories of the Great Depression of the early 1900s. The Ottoman Empire was soon hit by the collapse of a major bank, and this triggered a new economic agenda for the Sublime Porte as it looked to head off any deeper recession early on. Grand Vizier Mehmet Recep Pasha therefore instituted a series of banking reforms aimed at tightening control over the rogue sector despite the opposition of his liberal coalition partners; with the opposition socialist Osmanli Ahali Firkasi helping the measures pass through the Ottoman parliament. This culminated with the May 1940 Ottoman National Banking Act, which monopolised the issuing of the Ottoman lira to the central bank amid significant liberal protestations at this fundamental breach of freedom of trade, and strong opposition by the chambers of commerce in a number of the vilayets.
The passing of the Ottoman National Banking Act finally monopolises the printing of money in the Empire (May 8th 1940)
Opposition to the National Banking Act sparked uproar in liberal-controlled Ottoman vilayets (Summer 1940)
With the continued American economic collapse in 1940 even despite President MacArthur’s lifting of the ban on the Republican Party and the return of the Northern Democrats to the Democratic party ahead of the upcoming election, the United Kingdom hosted an international conference of Great Powers to plan a unified international response and path forward for solving the so-called "American Question". Conservative Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had hoped to wrest back some international prestige to Britain after its clear surpassing by the Kingdom of France in recent decades, and had the conference gone how he had envisioned perhaps he could have succeeded in bringing some glory back to Westminster. Instead the London Conference soon collapsed into disagreements, with the French support of the Canadian position and therefore the New American Alliance (and the French position naturally being backed by the Sublime Porte), an intractable block to any solution or even a basic roadmap soon appeared. Worse still for Chamberlain, the conference was the first meeting between Chamberlain and the recently returned Russian Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky, and the two men rapidly grew to detest each other. With this discord noted and discreetly encouraged by French and Ottoman diplomats, the only noteworthy diplomatic outcome of the 1940 London Conference was the destruction of the forty year old Anglo-Russian Alliance, as British Isolation was made obvious to the world.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's failed London Conference of 1940 was a disaster for British Prestige
This in turn encouraged the new Chinese government to make a move of their own, and Chamberlain’s reputation took a further battering when the Hongxian Emperor officially demanded the return of Hong Kong to Chinese control in September 1940 – A position soon backed by Mehmet Recep Pasha and French Prime Minister Pierre-Etienne Flandin. Under pressure from his own party, amid rumours of a potential party coup seeing him displaced as leader by firebrand Winston Churchill, Chamberlain vehemently defended British rule of Hong Kong and pledged that Britain would hold by the terms of the treaties that had given it control of the territory. Initial proposals to shorten the "lease" that Britain held Hong Kong under were therefore rejected by the London government, but the British did accept that the agreement would expire in 1997 and no further extensions would ever occur. With neither the Elysee Palace nor the Sublime Porte being remotely tempted to take the matter beyond diplomatic protestations, this was expected to be the end of the Hong Kong discussion, with the blow to British prestige a seemingly satisfactory conclusion for all parties. Believing the matter to be put to bed was to prove a huge miscalculation by Chamberlain later.
Still, for Mehmet Recep Pasha, the rest of the year passed in an uneventful manner, and the start of 1941 continued a quiet period in Ottoman politics. The American situation continued to bubble with tension even after Republican candidate Robert A. Taft had shocked the world by defeating President MacArthur in the 1940 Election despite widespread reports and claims of voter suppression. President MacArthur had peacefully accepted the transition of power; although the US Military remained in a shadowy role behind the scenes, and the US remained a long way away from the free democracy it had been in the past – with the Socialist and Communist Parties still banned, and numerous “Independent” senators and congressmen who were still openly controlled by the Military. President Taft’s attempts to reintegrate the Alliance were therefore doomed from the start, and his new administration consequently did little to restore American sovereignty over either the Alliance or the Confederacy – Even after the latter’s Nebraskan Expedition suffered a humiliating defeat in Colorado in autumn 1941.
Republican Robert A. Taft surprisingly defeated incumbent President MacArthur despite widespread voter irregularities in the 1940 American Election
By then however, international attention had moved on to a new crisis. Unsatisfied by the British response to his demands for the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule, the Ming Empire had spent the rest of 1940 and the first half of 1941 rapidly modernising its forces, and in June 1941 the Hongxian Emperor shocked the world by declaring war on the United Kingdom without even bothering with asking his Ottoman and French allies for support he knew would not be forthcoming. The Emperor hoped the so-called “National Liberation War” would put the memories of the huge Chinese losses suffered during the Caucasian War to bed and prove that the new regime was much better equipped than the Beiyang Republic that had preceded the restoration. And as the war began, it looked like a stroke of genius: The defence of Hong Kong lasted less than six weeks before it surrendered to the Chinese attackers, and British Prime Minister Chamberlain’s scrambled attempts to outfit an expeditionary force from British Malaya were also repulsed with heavy British casualties. The Royal Navy was however quickly able to assume naval supremacy over the extremely outdated Ming Navy, but the Chinese coastline was far too large for a total blockade to be viable. The British therefore settled for blockading the Yellow Sea and thus the major coastal cities of Northern China & Manchuria in force, as well as intercepting shipping around other coastal Chinese cities and the island of Hainan.
For Chamberlain however this was the final straw, and his Conservative colleagues soon removed him from power. Whilst elderly firebrand Winston Churchill had been touted as the obvious candidate to replace him due to his long history of opposing defence cuts that had left Hong Kong in such a precarious state in the first place, Churchill’s lack of popularity amongst his own colleagues saw him passed over for leadership, and Viscount Halifax instead took on the premiership. Halifax immediately ordered the preparation of a new, stronger expeditionary force led by crack troops from the home islands and bolstered by colonial troops, whilst British Indian troops were rushed to Burma to repulse the ongoing Chinese invasions in the jungles there. Any British hopes that this would stabilise the situation soon faltered when Chinese troops marched into Rangoon in January 1942, with the new expeditionary force forced to divert to southern Burma and painstakingly begin driving the Ming forces back through Spring – with the Chinese taking cataclysmic losses but their superior numbers still able to inflict a harsh toll on the British troops.
Viscount Halifax succeeded Chamberlain as British Prime Minister, but was no better equipped to deal with a catastrophic period for the British Empire (June 9th 1941)
Hopes that Viscount Halifax would be able to shore up British support on the global stage would prove horrendously off-the-mark, however. British relations with almost every other Great Power had been poor for many years; with Anglo-French relations remaining extremely bitter ever since the Third Great War, and Anglo-Ottoman relations had never truly recovered after that either. The end of the Anglo-Russian Alliance had seen the Russian government, itself reeling from its defeat in the Caucasian War (where the Brits hadn’t lifted a finger to help the Russians), fall into its old pattern of hostility to Britain, and Russian eyes had in fact turned to the great vacuum of post-British India, where a myriad of states (some of which still pledged allegiance to Britain, particularly in the south) were beginning to look very tantalising to the Russian regime. British relations with Germany and the United States were also still very cool in the decades after the First & Second Great Wars… Which left only Austria-Hungary. Vienna also had pretty poor relations with London since the Franco-Habsburg invasion of Portuguese Mozambique had defeated the Anglo-Portuguese alliance there in the late 1920s, and attempts to promote a rapprochement between the Habsburg and London empires had failed to secure any huge restoration in British support there – The Habsburg’s were simply far keener to prioritise their relations with Paris even after the Franco-Ottoman Alliance had so clearly come to global pre-eminence in recent years.
These cool relations with other powers now came back to haunt the British government, as the international stage took another shocking twist in February 1942. The Kingdom of Spain had spent the three decades since its devastating occupation during the First Great War rebuilding its shattered nation, and had retained neutrality throughout every single global conflict since then. The Spanish had however retained friendly ties with their defeated allies from the First Great War – And most notably had recently signed new alliances with the Republic of Germany and the Kingdom of Italy. The Spanish had also retained a lasting hatred of the British, and with the outbreak of the Anglo-Chinese War, had begun plotting their own revenge… Which took the form of the February 1942 invasion of British West Africa, as Spain claimed the Hausaland for its own. The Spanish invasion was soon supported by the German and Italian governments, whilst support for Britain remained notably absent amongst other Great Powers – With the British network of allies now only consisting of the various dominions of the British Empire plus the Republic of New England, the Sultanate of Oman, the Kingdoms of Denmark and Portugal, Peru, and Luang Prabang.
Spanish and British forces fighting in West Africa (Summer 1942)
German U-Boats terrified the Royal Navy in the early 1940s and destroyed any British attempt to blockade enemy ports
The Spanish invasion of the Hausaland took the British completely by surprise, as Spanish troops poured out of Spanish Africa and into the British colonial holdings there, which had been stripped of men for the fighting in Asia. The decision of liberal German Chancellor Theodor Huss to join the war despite the apparent absence of any geopolitical motive for the Germans to put themselves on the line for Spanish colonial goals further stunned the Westminster government – As did the decision of socialist Italian Prime Minister Pietro Nenni to follow the Germans into the conflict. In reality, it reflected how far the Royal Navy had fallen – With the German, Italian, and Spanish governments believing their combined navies (plus the need for the Royal Navy to remain active in the Far East even after they abandoned the Yellow Sea Blockade) would prove a match for what was left of the once world-beating force. And they were right – With the German U-Boats in particular devastating the early attempts by the British to inflict another blockade on Germany, and by the end of 1942 the Royal Navy had essentially been confined to its harbours in Europe by the combined threats of the Regia Marina, the Kriegsmarine, and the Armada Real. Any British hopes of blockading them out of the war were thus dashed, and the Portuguese and Danish were then also rapidly forced out of the war by the Spanish and German armies, with both nations agreeing white peace terms in August 1942 to leave the Brits even more isolated.
For the Sublime Porte, the continued American and British humiliations were a golden opportunity for Ottoman industry to break into the top echelons of the global economy, and an exports boom thus began as Ottoman armaments were sold en masse to the Spanish, Italian, and German military machines… And to those of the British, too. With the French naturally reluctant to directly supply any of the nations which surrounded them; all of whom had fought the French in brutal wars since the turn of the century, all the warring nations were increasingly reliant on imports from Austria-Hungary and from the Ottoman Empire as 1942 went on. Both economies went from strength to strength as the global war provided opportunities galore, with the Porte supremely satisfied by its ability to stay above the fray whilst its rivals had been tearing themselves apart. And this satisfaction only rose further in February 1943, when Moscow ended its own rearming program after the humiliation of the Caucasian War. Russia knew it was no match for the Ottoman Empire now – But there were other routes to reclaiming its military pride that were now wide open…
The Russian vulture joins the international pummelling of the British Empire (Spring 1943)
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I've got to say I'm not entirely sure why basically the entire world decided it hated Britain at the same time, though the fact that they're all separate wars (and Britain has no GP ally) means that none of them are technically going to get classed as a Great War... But it's certainly been quite entertaining to watch the implosion of British power!
Whether that will provide an opportunity of our own for us to take advantage of, we shall soon find out.
I don't know what you mean...
Whether that will provide an opportunity of our own for us to take advantage of, we shall soon find out.
It's possible, but the communists will have to make a significant improvement in fortunes in the last years of the game for that to happen
I wonder if Nazim Hikmet will do a cameo
it seems it's all crazy over there!
And now America has inflicted horrible borders upon the world, too!
I don't know what you mean...Yeah, it's quite unusual for America to have a poor campaign in Vicky at the best of times, but for it to happen with essentially zero player involvement is certainly a treat that I do not often come across!
America ending the dictatorship midway through the outbreaks of the second civil war meant I had to find a way to put that across; and a military transition seemed like the best way to do it... And who can resist using MacArthur for something like that?
I don't know what it is, but it's just really satisfying to see the UK getting the tar beat out of it.
The dynamic in America really seems impossible for the central government in Washington, and it's hard to see how they pull out of it.
Meanwhile, it is a delight to see the British Empire get dogpiled by the nations of the world. The Clausewitz Engine is churning out nothing but schadenfreude against the great English-speaking powers of the world.
Meanwhile, it is a delight to see the British Empire get dogpiled by the nations of the world. The Clausewitz Engine is churning out nothing but schadenfreude against the great English-speaking powers of the world.
With the US and UK imploding, the Ottomans now have a genuine shot at topping rhe power list. As does every other great power, it must be said.
The next war is therefore going to be quite large...
The next war is therefore going to be quite large...
All the storylines around the world are going great, and it hurts me to know the end of the game is drawing nearer and nearer. One uneasy peace after another, and it seems the currents wars will leave the world with more tension than they started with as well.
At least we're filling the coffers selling to every side
At least we're filling the coffers selling to every side
I was going to comment on how bizarre the situation in America is, what with all of the back and forth between the Alliance and the Confederacy, but frankly news from Britain far eclipses it in oddness. Chamberlain gone over a Chinese invasion, Halifax of all people taking over and then getting dog piled by the rest of the world powers is… well, it’s strange. I suppose it does at least go to show that Neville Chamberlain is capable of tripping up on a flat surface.
I think I have a hypothesis. I call it 'everything Britain has ever done in the timeframe of this game'.
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God grey Mexico is ugly!
A very interesting update as always. I have to admit I feel a twinge of sympathy for the Brits...
A very interesting update as always. I have to admit I feel a twinge of sympathy for the Brits...
Just finished catching up and I must say, excellent work! This was a good read and I look forward to new updates.
This reversal of roles is quite fitting. At the beginning of the game, it was the Sublime Porte which was fighting for its very life while Britain just looked to make a quick profit. Now its Britain's turn to feel the heat. Very interested to see how these wars go. No matter what happens, new opportunities are sure to be open for the Empire.
Wow, What a ride. I have spent the last week reading this AAR and enjoying every part of it. I cannot wait to see where the Ottomans go next.
Chapter Sixty-One: Troublesome Greeks (1943-1945)
Ottoman archaeological success in the Mayan ruins of Central America began a positive year for the Sublime Porte (February 8th 1943)
The industrial boom that Ottoman industries were enjoying courtesy of the international pummelling of the British Empire in the early 1940s, which coincided with further Ottoman archaeological successes in the Mayan jungles of Central America, combined to great boost the popularity of Grand Vizier Mehmet Recep Pasha and his government going into the 1943 electoral campaign season. The economy had quickly bounced back from the recession triggered by the American economic collapse and consequent losses in the banking sector after the National Banking Act had stabilised the situation, and the Sublime Porte was therefore feeling confident going into the campaign. This confidence was further supported by a renewal of reports into the trade union corruption scandal which continued to dog the opposition socialist Osmanli Ahali Firkasi in spring 1943, further damaging their support levels.
The Osmanli Ahali Firkasi continued to struggle to remove the taint of scandal and corruption from within its ranks (March 24th 1943)
The electoral campaign also coincided with the 1943 Ottoman Census, which took place in June 1943 and illustrated another significant rise in the headline adult literacy rate to an impressive 95.3%, with full literacy now the standard across almost the entire Empire, save for a few tribal backwaters in Africa and Arabia. The proportion of ethnic Turks had also increased to almost a third of the Empire, as colonisation programs undertaken in the past decades had begun to significantly change the character of the African vilayets of the Empire. Where once the colonies had contained only a small trapping of upper class Turkish aristocrats and bureaucrats ruling over native tribesmen, the steady stream of Turkish, Balkan, and Arabian migrants who had left urban centres of the Empire in the early 20th century for a chance of a new life in the vilayets of Ethiopia, Somalia, and the Sahel had not only seen these vilayets develop a distinctly multicultural flavouring, but had also helped increase development and literacy in these outer provinces, with the Sublime Porte standing out from other Great Powers by not only permitting marriage between colonists & locals, but outright encouraging it. By 1943, almost all of the vilayets of the Empire had been granted full voting rights, and the Sublime Porte was supremely aware that the multi-ethnic character of the Empire would only be sustainable should it succeed in avoiding the appearance of a Turkish ‘first class’ of citizenry in these outer vilayets.
Headline figures from the 1943 Ottoman Census
That steady increase in voting rights across the Empire had also proven a formidable bastion in preventing the Ottoman Right from returning to power in the 20th century, as even in times of strong patriotic fervour such as the victory in the Caucasian War, the far right Ittihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti unsurprisingly struggled to achieve any significant vote share amongst the many minorities of the Empire; and whilst the conservative Osmanli Demokrat Firkasi had seen more success - particularly amongst the Arabic speaking ethnicities of the Empire – It too struggled to come up with a stronger message than the equality and integration preached by the socialists, liberals, and social democrats. Prior to the Census Affair, the African vilayets had often been loyal bastions of the liberal Hürriyet ve Itilâf Firkasi. After that scandal had broken, it was the transition of their former loyal voters in Africa away to the Osmanli Ahali Firkasi and the Sosyal Demokrat Firkasi which had caused the further heavy liberal losses in the 1939 Ottoman Election. And the continued struggles of the socialists to throw off the disgrace of their own scandals had now further eroded their support not only in their industrial heartlands, but also in the vital constituencies in Africa that provided most of the non-urban socialist MP’s.
As a result, opinion polling that coincided with the 1943 Ottoman census had forecast huge Sosyal Demokrat gains across Africa and the Middle East, and the possibility of an electoral majority being achieved for the first time since the abolition of the First Past the Post System was once more being widely discussed in Ottoman academic and political circles, as well as in the Ottoman media. The Ottoman parliament was also once again being increased in size due to the extension of suffrage to a string of additional African vilayets – This time up 50 seats to 900 in total; and Mehmet Recep Pasha had eschewed traditional Ottoman political strategies of campaigning mainly in the European, Anatolian, and Near Eastern provinces to instead launch an aggressive campaign across Ottoman Africa. With his liberal deputy Mahmut Celal Pasha following a more standard course primarily focusing on liberal heartland seats, and with the socialists still in disarray amid rumours of potential party splits and constant leadership crises, the 1943 election appeared to be a straight fight between the Sosyal Demokrat Firkasi and the Hürriyet ve Itilâf Firkasi – Or rather, a question of whether the liberals could prevent the social democrats from achieving a full majority.
The 1939 election had surprised many observers with the resurgence of the Ottoman Right, and Kazim Pasha of the Osmanli Demokrat Firkasi and Nihal Bey of the Ittihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti were naturally both hoping that that had signalled the start of a wider shift back toward the right for Ottoman politics, but with this election lacking the patriotic fervour of a successful military victory contemporary observers doubted that they would be able to build upon that success to make further gains; particularly following the extension of suffrage in the African vilayets they most struggled to make headway in. Opinion polling had suggested that both parties were heavily on the defensive prior to Election Day, and even the young firebrand Nihal Bey had accepted that this election was unlikely to see the Young Turks overtake one of the three main parties – Although maintaining its position as the largest party of the Right was still an achievable target.
Charismatic poet Nazim Hikmet Bey transformed the communists into a true force in Ottoman politics in 1943
But as results came in on July 2nd 1943, an utterly unforeseen political earthquake still managed to shake up what many had expected to be a very predictable election. The communist Ihtilalci Avam Firkasi had never previously held more than the 27 seats they achieved at the 1934 election, and which had proven a false dawn after they lost over half of those in 1939. Whilst they had held onto strongholds in industrial cities such as Salonika and Smyrna for decades now, they had never threatened to become the major force that communist parties in other countries were rapidly growing into. But under their new leader, the celebrated poet Nazim Hikmet Bey, an effective media campaign had been undertaken with their own newspaper vastly increasing its circulation – Something which had been achieved due to the a significant injection of trade union funds following the continued disarray in the Osmanli Ahali Firkasi. The communists had consequently gained a massive 54 seats for a total of 64, and the party transformed overnight into a serious political player for the first time in Ottoman history.
The 1943 Ottoman general election results (July 2nd 1943)
Of course, this was of little concern to Grand Vizier Mehmet Recep Pasha, though. The Grand Vizier had achieved what many people had believed to be impossible; and won a majority under the so-called D’Hondt Method of Ottoman electoral politics. Something which had eluded even his much more personally popular and celebrated predecessors Pertev Pasha, Mustafa Kemal Pasha, and Rauf Bey had now been won by a man fighting his very first election as leader. The Sosyal Demokrat Firkasi had gained an astonishing 149 seats – Including almost the entirety of the African constituencies within the Empire – For a total of 452 seats. Whilst the wafer-thin majority of 2 suggested that the Grand Vizier would still need to deal proactively with other parties to ensure that the party program would pass through parliament, it was nonetheless a momentous achievement for both the Grand Vizier and for his party. The Sosyal Demorkat landslide had crushed everything it is wake, and aside from the communists every single other party had lost seats.
Indeed, even the question of who the leader of the opposition would be was thrown into disarray by the election results. The liberal Hürriyet ve Itilâf Firkasi, previously in coalition with the Sosyal Demokrat’s, had already lost most of their African seats in 1938 and were therefore mostly insulated from the ‘Orange Tide’ that had spread across the continent; but the ‘Red Dawn’ in the traditional heartland of the Empire was another matter altogether. The liberals lost 37 seats - of which more than half were directly lost to the communists - for a total of 118… And this was exactly the same amount of seats as the socialist Osmanli Ahali Firkasi had managed to win. The socialists had taken even heavier losses; as they had still held a significant percentage of African seats prior to the election which had now defected en masse to the Sosyal Demokrat Firkasi, and their own industrial heartlands had also seen significant losses to both the ruling party and to the communists. Indeed, had the socialists not been able to salvage some minor gains at the expense of the Right, the result could have been even worse for the Osmanli Ahali Firkasi: But as it was, their 49 seat loss was the heaviest suffered by any party in the election.
Elsewhere the conservatives and the far right Young Turks both suffered disappointing results; with each party losing 19 seats for a total of 53 and 73 respectively. That this put the Osmanli Demokrat Firkasi below the communists was the final straw for the once proud and dominant conservative party; and Kazim Pasha was forced out of the leadership within days as a new period of conservative infighting followed their latest electoral nadir. The ultra-religious Teceddüt Firkasi was also brought back down to earth after its surprising 1939 resurgence as it lost 26 seats to hold just 12, although this kept it just above the now smallest party in the Ottoman Parliament: The libertarian Ahrar Firkasi, which had lost 3 seats and now held just 10.
That such a crushing defeat for so many opposition parties would only lead to the departure of Kazim Pasha as a party leader was a surprising outcome to many, although the socialist blood-letting prior to the election had already seen that post held by a caretaker. Mahmut Celal Pasha was able to cling on to the leadership of the Hürriyet ve Itilâf Firkasi after successfully lobbying the Ottoman courts to declare him the official leader of the opposition courtesy of the fact that his party had achieved a marginally larger vote share than the socialists, but the liberals underwent a serious regeneration in the months that followed as many of the old guard were pushed out of the leadership circles. The socialists had meanwhile turned in desperation to retired former leader Mustafa Ismet Pasha and offered him a return to politics; but even he rejected their overtures and chose to remain in retirement, with leadership instead being taken by Mustafa Ismet’s protégé, and a rising star of the Ottoman military after successful command in the Caucasian War: General Celaleddin Bey - One of the few socialist generals in the Ottoman military.
The 1943 Ottoman Healthcare Reform Act was the first major legislation passed by the new governing majority (July 27th 1943)
An Ottoman expedition to defend the Sultanate of Atjeh from a rebellion passed without note in autumn 1943
Health and Safety Regulations are further strengthened in the Ottoman Empire following a spate of high profile industrial accidents (December 10th 1943)
The Sosyal Demokrat Firkasi’s celebration of its first governing majority in summer 1943 saw the Grand Vizier embark on an ambitious healthcare reform program with significant funding increases – Something which would never have been passed in a coalition with the liberals, as Recep Pasha looked to illustrate the new power his party now possessed. The vastly increased healthcare expenditure saw the construction of a series of hospitals across Ottoman Africa and the Middle East, where healthcare still seriously lagged behind the European, Anatolian, and Egyptian heartlands of the Empire. But beyond the healthcare reforms, a strengthening of health & safety regulations, and a minor autumn expedition to defend the Sultanate of Atjeh from a left wing nationalist insurgency, the rest of the 1943 passed by peacefully for the Sublime Porte, and the small governing majority was never threatened in parliament.
This peace was soon to prove the calm before the storm, however. The Fascist Dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas in Greece had held power for 31 years, with its virulently anti-Ottoman rhetoric having all but ended trade between the two countries. Greek nationalist fantasies of the so-called “Megali Idea” involving an implausible conquest of huge swathes of Ottoman land in Albania, Makedonia, Thrace, the Aegean Islands, and Asia Minor fuelled the ultranationalism of the Metaxas regime, and Greece openly claimed many of these regions as being "rightful" Greek clay. The Sublime Porte had clashed with Metaxas many times over the following decades, but aside from minor skirmishing there had been no real fighting between the nations since the Greek invasion of Thessaly had been defeated in the First Great War prior to Metaxas taking power. But in the years since he first seized power Metaxas had cultivated extremely strong trade & political links with the Austro-Hungarian Empire in order to protect himself from any Ottoman backlash to his policies, and the Porte had consequently never avenged that Greek invasion nor been able to remove Metaxas from power and develop relations with a friendlier government in Athens. But on Christmas Day 1943, Metaxas finally overstepped the mark.
The Christmas Day Uprising signalled the start of a months-long Greek nationalist insurrection (December 25th 1943)
A Greek nationalist rebellion in Thessaly and Makedonia suddenly flared up with a series of bombings and shootings, and Ottoman military and government positions were attacked across three vilayets by well-armed insurgents. Fortunately, Ferid Pasha’s 7th Army was stationed in Larissa and in the following months was able to successfully crack down upon and defeat the insurgency, with there being little loss of life for the Ottoman military after the initial wave of attacks. The Ottoman public was outraged however, and a public inquiry launched to discover how the Greek Nationalists had been able to form such large and well-equipped units without being detected by the Ottoman military or security services. The fact that seized equipment was often Austro-Hungarian in origin fuelled suspicions that the Greek military had been directly funding the rebels, but it was the capture of a rebel commander who testified in court that the support & supplies had come from the very top of the Fascist Dictatorship that truly altered the diplomatic situation. The Young Turks immediately took to the streets to demand military action against the Greeks and the Habsburg’s and anyone else who dared to impugn Ottoman sovereignty, with a serious of riots in spring 1944 requiring a military crackdown of their own. Public support was wholeheartedly behind punishing the Greek state, and Grand Vizier Recep Pasha was also determined to use the crisis as an opportunity to see the Metaxan threat removed once and for all.
Anti-Greek riots led by the Young Turks sprang up in response to the Greek nationalist insurrection (February 9th 1944)
French conservative Prime Minister Pierre-Etienne Flandin oversaw the dissolution of the Franco-Habsburg Alliance during the Greek Crisis of 1944
The complication, of course, was the political & military alliance existing between Greece and Austria-Hungary: And the Habsburg Empire’s own continued alliance with the Kingdom of France. Numerous meetings took place in 1944 between the Grand Vizier and his French counterpart Pierre-Etienne Flandin, as the Grand Vizier attempted to win French support for a military intervention against Greece, even if the Habsburg’s defended it. The French were quick to denounce Metaxas and his regime, and called upon all the other Great Powers to do so. When the Habsburg Chancellor Karl Seitz vacillated; believing that the French were merely posturing and would rather brush the whole thing under the carpet, Flandin and Recep Pasha met once more, and the announcement that the Sublime Porte had been waiting almost forty years for finally occurred: The alliance between the Kingdom of France & the Austro-Hungarian Empire was over. Whilst alarmed Habsburg diplomats scrambled to recover the situation, the French position was resolute - Now that the alliance had been dissolved, it would not easily be renewed.
Discussions therefore turned to the question of war with the Habsburg Empire, as both Flandin and Recep Pasha believed that Austria-Hungary would have no choice but to support Greece in the coming war. With the Franco-Habsburg Alliance dead, Flandin agreed that it would support the Sublime Porte in the war, but that they would mostly provide support via a bombing campaign with the French air force, and a potential French Expeditionary Force would augment the predominantly Ottoman invaders. With the Grand Vizier considering the renewal of the old Ottoman claims to the vilayet of Croatia that had been briefly held at the turn of the century, France was unwilling to provide further support than this; and it remained opposed to any wholesale destruction of the Habsburg Empire. Flandin did however promise a diplomatic ‘blank cheque’ for the Sublime Porte to overthrow the Greek regime, and for the Ottomans to exact reparations from the Greeks for the insurgency in the previous winter. All the while the Ottoman public was prepared for war by a virulently anti-Greek and anti-Habsburg media campaign, frequently depicting the Habsburg’s as the true power behind Metaxas and his fascist regime.
With these discussions concluding at the end of October 1944, the Ottoman military had had almost a year of preparation for war with the Habsburg forces. And on November 14th 1944, an ultimatum was sent to the Greek government. According to the ultimatum; Metaxas would stand down and come to Constantinople to face trial for his crimes, free elections would be held in Athens within 3 months, Metaxas’ party would not be permitted to stand in these elections, and the Greek government would end all its claims to Ottoman territory as well as paying reparations for the damages caused by the insurgents. Such an ultimatum was never going to be accepted by the Greek regime, but very clearly stated what the Ottomans would seek to achieve in the war. Twenty-four hours later; the Sublime Porte declared war.
Socialist Imperial Chancellor Karl Seitz proved himself a wily operator upon the Ottoman declaration of war on Greece (November 14th 1944)
With five armies plus the Romanian army stationed on the border with Austria-Hungary, the Porte was ready to instantly march against the Habsburg’s when they in turn accepted the Greek Call to Arms and made their own expected declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire. But the Habsburg government was aware of this, and Chancellor Seitz confounded the French and Ottoman governments by instead refusing the call to arms and leaving Greece to its fate. The stunned and infuriated Porte was caught completely flat-footed: Deprived of an internationally accepted casus belli to invade Austria-Hungary, a year of diplomatic & military planning was thrown in the air, and Seitz’s decision to cut ties with the fascist regime had significantly boosted the Habsburg position internationally. The Ottoman parliamentary session the following day descended into pandemonium, as political leaders from across the spectrum took the opportunity to attack Recep Pasha for his failure to attack Metaxas sooner given the fact that the Habsburg’s were not actually opposed to this, and claiming the pro-war media campaign had clearly been full of lies. And with the Ottoman public having been repeatedly informed for months in 1944 that the Austro-Hungarians were supporting the Greeks and that this was why Metaxas had not yet been punished for the insurgency, Recep Pasha’s reputation took a battering.
The Fall of Athens marked the beginning of the end of Greek resistance in the brief Ottoman-Greek War of 1944-1945 (January 8th 1945)
Mehmet Recep Pasha was unable to survive the political humiliation he received after the refusal of the Habsburg's to join his promised war (December 14th 1944)
Mehmet Şükrü Pasha succeeded Mehmet Recep Pasha as Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire (December 14th 1944)
In the end, it all spelt the end for him. Even the rapid drive of Ferid Pasha’s 7th Army to begin attacking Athens in December 1944 wasn’t enough to save his political career, and Recep Pasha resigned as Grand Vizier on December 14th 1944 – Less than two years since the electoral landslide that had seen his party win its first majority, he’d lost the support of his colleagues in the Sosyal Demokrat Firkasi. Former Health Minister Mehmet Şükrü Pasha succeeded him as Grand Vizier and leader of the party, as the government looked to restore public confidence in the leadership of the Porte. The Fall of Athens on January 8th 1945 provided some welcome early success for the new Porte, and after the Greek army was defeated at the Battle of Corinth in February the writing was on the wall for the Metaxan Regime. On April 1st 1945 the Greek government (or what remained of it) capitulated. The Fascist Dictatorship was overthrown and free elections would be held in the coming months, whilst the Sublime Porte also annexed the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea, which had been captured by Ottoman marines during the war. Calls for a total annexation of Greece by the Young Turks were ignored, as the Sublime Porte instead looked to ensure a friendly government existed on the peninsula. But then two weeks later, Mehmet Şükrü Pasha decided to make a much bigger statement; and prove that he was a much stronger leader than his predecessor. Croatia had not been forgotten. There would be a major war after all.
The Metaxan Regime capitulates to the Ottoman Empire (April 1st 1945)
New Grand Vizier Mehmet Şükrü Pasha declares war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire (April 18th 1945)
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