World at War – March 1940 – June 1940
Having been inching forward through the desolate and ruined streets of the capital city for days, on 10 March the Federalists’ resistance in Washington DC finally broke and General MacArthur ordered a retreat back from the city, having held it for more than three years. By its final conquest, the city itself was almost totally destroyed – its iconic monuments left in ruins after years of bombing and shelling, its population largely fled to the north and its avenues converted into networks of trenches and defensive lines.
With MacArthur and his government relocating the relative safety of Boston, his battered, exhausted and demoralised army fell back to the city of Baltimore. The loss of Washington was a final straw for the Federalist military. Over the preceding months it had sustained very heavy losses while also seeing its Entente allies shift their troops to the Canadian campaigns in the Mid West. This left it vulnerable and thinly spread, but the fatal blow to its fighting ability was the psychological effect of losing the capital and the legitimacy and resilience that it represented. Nonetheless, the war was not over just yet.
Over the next five weeks, the Longists, energised by their great triumph, would push relentless along the densely populated corridor between Washington DC and New York City – the most urbanised area in the America. Facing continued resistance from the dispirited Federalists, who benefitted from the defensive advantages of fighting in a serious of major urban areas and existing fortifications in south eastern Pennsylvania that had been constructed during the long struggle against the syndicalists in the area, the Longists incrementally moved forward through Baltimore and Philadelphia – with the city of brotherly love only being abandoned by Federalist troops on 16 April.
While the Longists celebrated their momentous successes in the North East, fighting across the Mid West intensified through March and April with the Canadians pushing strongly in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan against entrenched positions. Their armies would achieve a string of successes in these weeks – capturing the key cities of Detroit, Madison and Minneapolis, before the pace of their progress ground to a half, their troops exhausted by their exertions.
On other fronts, the Canadians and their allies were far less successful. To the west, the Longists pushed deeply into the lightly defended prairie states, safely occupying the main population centres of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Meanwhile, on the Pacific coast in British Columbia, a mixed Canadian-Australasian force held fast in Vancouver against a wave of assaults from Longist troops moving on from their success at the Battle of Seattle.
Yet the most spectacular victory by either side on this front came with the Longist breakthrough into southern Ontario. Having left the Niagra border undermanned, Ottawa watched in horror as Longist troops crossed over from Buffalo and plunged into the very heartland of the Canadian nation. These American troops would push deeply into the province, occupying Toronto itself on 19 April, just days after the fall of Philadelphia.
Despite the great troubles of their comrades in the North East, the Federalist troops in the enclave far to the south secured an impressive breakthrough during March as they split open the Longist line near the port of Savannah, Georgia, before pouring into South Carolina and overwhelming the state. Longist counterattacks at the end of the month recaptured Savannah, cutting the forces in South Carolina off from Florida, and pushed the Federalists out of southern Georgia entirely, even retaking Tallahassee in neighbouring Florida once again. However, despite this, the Federalists were able to dig in – securing their position in both South Carolina and Florida.
The events in North America would soon be overshadowed by news from the Old World. On 13 April, after years of mounting hostilities and proxy conflicts, a crisis relating to the mistreatment of the French minorities in Germany’s western borderlands – annexed at the end of the Great War – led to the outbreak of the much anticipated general European war. Seeing conflict as unavoidable, the Commune of France struck first with an aggressive armour-led strike into the Low Countries. Within days all the nations of the Third Internationale – the Union of Britain, Italy, Spain and their Latin American partners were united in the syndicalist crusade against the Reichspakt. As the two mighty armed camps met swords, they brought the weight of millions of men and industrialised war machines on a scale that the world had never seen before crashing down on one another.
Yet soon, a third player entered the fray. Under Baron Wrangel, Russia had been aggressively re-militarising since the mid-1930s. At the same time, the Imperial Regent – nominally serving in the stead of an absent Tsar but de-facto supreme ruler of all Russia – had been rattling his sabre for the revanchist restoration of Russia’s lost lands for some time. Now, with his great German enemy locked in conflict in the west, his moment had come and on 26 April, the Russian Empire, alongside its trusted Norwegian ally, launched its invasion of the German-aligned Ukrainian, Belarusian and Baltic states.
The outbreak of a general war in Europe met the Entente at a terrible moment. In both India and North America, they had locked themselves into participation in continent-spanning civil war that both appeared lost, at enormous cost. Nonetheless, for the exiled British and French regimes in Ottawa and Algiers, this moment could not simply be tossed aside. The French in particular, for whom the American conflict was naturally a far less existential concern, were eager to pull their forces back to North Africa and ready themselves for battle in the struggle to liberate their homeland.
With the scale of the challenge facing the Kaiserreich becoming clear, the Germans had sent their emissaries to meet with the Canadians and French at the Nova Scotian city of Halifax shortly after the Russian entry into the war and at a time when the Japanese were openly sharpening their swords in the east. There, the Canadians were especially nervous to commit themselves given the perilous nature of their situation, with their government divided between doveish native Canadians more focussed on the American struggle and the deafening voice of the British exiles demanding their war of return. Nonetheless, the German offer ultimately proved too enticing to reject, especially with the French indicating that they might sever their ties with the British world entirely if they did not join them. The Entente would enter the war against the Third Internationale, although importantly not its fight against Moscow, in close partnership with Berlin and in exchange would receive much needed access to German finance and assurances on the full restoration of the exiled governments upon victory. As such, on 3 May the Entente powers declared war.
Even after Halifax, there was one last major building block to the emerging World War – Asia. Of all the greatest powers in the world, Japan appeared to be the youngest and hungriest. Within the space of a generation it had established itself as the premier power of the Far East and won respect through force of arms from the western powers. Although its efforts to stretch its tentacles to the other side of the Pacific Ocean had ended in failure with the collapse of the Pacific States of America in late 1939, closer to home its star was still rising. Indeed, the Weltkrieg had gotten underway in the Far East earlier than in Europe after long running tensions between the Japanese-backed Fengtein Clique of Manchuria and the rump-Qing state based in Beijing had led to war. Although the Japanese would stop short of directly entering the war themselves, they be the clear puppet masters behind their Manchu surrogates, providing them with arms, leadership and air support in their campaign. Fearing Japanese imperial ambitions, in the coming months China’s cabal of squabbling warlords would rally around the flag to face down the invaders. Despite these new commitments on the continent, Japanese policy makers were intently interested in developments in Europe – which had seen their premier imperial rival in the Far East, the German Empire, strip its colonial defences in an effort to bolster its forces in the West. With the Imperial Navy itching for an opportunity to prove its worth, on 1 June Japan declared war against Germany and began an invasion of its Asian empire. The war was now truly global.
The outbreak of a new World War was a tense and discombobulating time for Huey Long’s American government in Baton Rouge. Their Entente enemies was now at war with the hated syndicalists and allied to the German Empire, the greatest power in the world; meanwhile their long-time Russian backers had also thrown their lot into the conflict with Berlin; while equally another key international antagonist in the form of Japan was engaged in a fight against German and Entente interests in the Far East. Baton Rouge’s first step was to sever all diplomatic relations with the Germans, a nation that did not recognise them as the sole legal government of the United States regardless but had previously developed less formal ties, and condemn Berlin’s domination of Eastern Europe. Yet beyond this, the situation was far from clear.
President Long was personally frustrated that Wrangel had failed to give him any warning of his plans for war, and was deeply fearful of expanding the conflict in North America yet further – just as an end to the fighting appeared in sight. This threat of expanding the conflict came from both the prospect of German intervention in some form, and the possibility of the war spilling over the border into syndicalist Mexico. This uncertainty was accompanied by heavy pressure from Moscow, with the Russians seeking to call in their debts to push Longist America to provide the greatest possible support to their war efforts, including totally destroying the Canadian regime and even joining the coalition against the Kaiser – something a devastated United States could hardly contemplate at this point.
Although the world’s eyes were now turned far away from North America at the emerging frontlines of the World War, the American Civil War was still not yet over. In May, the Longists embarked on a counterattack in Michigan that achieved significant success – recapturing the cities of Michigan, Lansing and Flint and leading to the capture of almost 28,000 Canadian soldiers. After having been on the defensive in the face of Canadian advances in the Mid West since the start of the year, this was a tremendous victory that forced the enemy to abandon all offensive plans in the region.
In the North East, following the conquest of Philadelphia in mid-April, the progress of Longist forces slowed. While their troops moved through to mop up resistance in New Jersey and Delaware, the City of New York appeared to be a fortress blocking further progress. Then, in the final week of April the Federalists pulled off their last great operation of the conflict, one few would have believed they still had the capacity to accomplish at this late stage of the Civil War. With the Longists seeking to bypass the strong point of New York City by pushing into New England by the inland route east of Albany, Federalist troops moved rapidly up the east bank of the Hudson River to cut no fewer than 70,000 Longists in Vermont and the north eastern corner of New York state. With the Federalists exerting heavy pressure on this large pocket, by the middle of May the Longists trapped in New England were struggling to hold out.
The formation of the New England pocket was to be a last hurrah rather than the moment when the momentum of the war shifted. By this stage the Federalist government was falling apart, all faith in the great Generalissimo MacArthur long since lost. Perhaps most importantly, the final battle for New York City was already well under way. Despite having been pushed back in their initial attacks, the Longists had returned to making slow incremental progress through the urban sprawl west of Manhattan since late April – despite the Federalists augmenting their defence of the city by shelling indiscriminately towards the Longist formations in New Jersey. On 16 May, the Longists would cross the Hudson north of Manhattan near Yonkers and proceed to largely cut the city and Long Island off from the rest of New England. At the same time, the city’s Federalist garrison would see the outbreak of anti-government rioting across Queens and Brooklyn, areas that had seen strong America First support before the war, further degrading their ability to fight on. On 18 May, with no realistic alternative, the Federalist garrison of New York surrendered the city to Baton Rouge. From this moment, events would move very fast.
With New York lost, it was clear, if it hadn’t been already for some time, that all was lost for the Federalist cause. MacArthur had to go, and New England had to give in. After frantic activity through the night, a gang of conspirators led by General Omar Bradley and Governor of Massachusetts Charles Hurley formed with the intention of confronting MacArthur and forcing him to resign and surrender to Baton Rouge. However, just hours before an emergency cabinet meeting scheduled for the morning of 19 May, ostensibly organised to address the fall of New York, MacArthur caught win of the plot. Fearing he lacked the authority to resist Bradley’s coup, he instead looked towards his loyal allies in the navy and fled Boston for Halifax alongside a sizeable naval squadron, issuing a famous radio address from the waters of the Gulf of Maine in which he promised the people of New England “I will return”. He would never step foot on American soil again in his life.
With MacArthur gone, the conspirators moved to formally impeach the General in absentia from the office of President that he had occupied, officially on a temporary basis, since 1937. In his stead, they nominated former President and one-time confidant of America’s failed Caesar Herbert Hoover to take over the role of Acting President and bring about an end to the war. Accepting this position, Hoover was sworn in during the dead of night on 19 May, and then the next morning offered the total and unconditional surrender of Federalist forces to Baton Rouge, announced the disbanding of the Federalist government and offering his recognition of Huey Long as the rightful President of the United States. America had a single government once more.
MacArthur’s downfall would bring down a political colossus in the north. Mackenzie King had dominated Canadian politics throughout the 1920s and 1930s, handling the collapse of the motherland into syndicalism and the arrival of the monarchy and British exile community into Canada before the collapse of their southern neighbour into civil war. King had gambled heavily in bringing Canada into the American Civil War the previous year, and his throw of the dice had failed spectacularly. At the same time, the British exiles and their domestic Conservative allies had been emboldened by the outbreak of the Weltkrieg and by their success in strong arming the Prime Minister into joining the struggle. With the Federalist cause lost, the Anglo-Canadian right were desperate to be shot of King and the end the fighting with Huey Long’s America before it was too late.
On 29 May, feeling heavy pressure from the exile community, not least the military leadership, King George VI dismissed King from office and invited the leader of the Conservative Party Arthur Meighen, despite the Tories possessing barely half the strength of the Liberals in Parliament, to form a new government. Meighen would dutifully do so later that day, stacking his cabinet with prominent exiles including Stanley Baldwin and Winston Churchill. The new government’s sole purpose was to extricate Canada from its ruinous war against Baton Rouge.
The military situation had not waited to accommodate the outcome of Canada’s internal political struggle. Hoover’s decision to offer a blanket surrender to Baton Rouge, calling for all Federalist troops to lay down their arms and offer no obstruction to the Longists was a catastrophic death knell for Canada. Longist were able to rush to the New England-Canadian frontier in the space of days, faster than Ottawa could move to adequately garrison the border, and push from there into the St Lawrence Valley and new Brunswick with very little impediment. By the time that Meighen’s government came to office, the Americans were all ready deep into Canadian territory.
Ironically, General MacArthur’s small band of loyalists who had joined him in withdrawing to Canada played a key role in holding the Longists back from overwhelming the Royal Navy’s key bases at Halifax by fighting the invaders to a standstill alongside Canadian and French troops at Moncton. However, more important engagements were taking place in Ontario and Quebec.
On 31 May, the national capital of Ottawa fell, the Canadian government scurrying deeper into the interior, before two days later Quebec City fell. By 4 June fighting had commenced in the outskirts of Montreal. The heart of the Canadian nation was being occupied far more quickly than it could be reinforced.
The Meighen administration had been attempting to open back channel negotiations with Baton Rouge from its inception one week before. However, on 5 June a Canadian delegation led by Winston Churchill was finally able to arrange a meeting with the Longists at the town of Kingston, south of Ottawa in American-occupied Canada. There, Churchill and his associates were paraded in front of the flags of the American army in an act of domination before the came to the manor house in which negotiations would be held. The now once more genuinely United States of America had its foot on the neck of her northern neighbour, the only choice remaining was whether to step back or clamp down.
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