Chapter XXXI: Slowly, then Suddenly
The Northern Isles and Second Portuguese Campaigns: June 1945 – December 1945
Most of the Union of Britain ground forces were still concentrated on the continent when Mosely’s order for the full-scale preparation of Britain and Ireland for invasion came through. There were British units in France, Italy, the Balkans and Portugal but the majority were in the Low Countries making up the backbone of the Northern Forces Grouping there. This was the traditional stationing point for British armies on the continent throughout history, from the Hundred Years War to War of Spanish Succession to the Napoleonic Wars down to the Weltkrieg, all due to the importance of the Channel ports.
The Union’s leadership had counted on the defense of northern France to be a prolonged struggle, allowing them to covertly pull out as many forces as possible, but the rapid collapse of the flanks abutting the Northern and Central Forces Grouping between May and July 1945 left the former besieged on three sides with their backs to the ocean. The remaining Channel Ports were in grave danger of falling into German hands while the Channel itself was a No Man’s Land torn between German sea power and British airpower. In August, British priorities were forced to shift from island fortification to rapid escape from most continental deployments; without the personnel to man them, defensive installations were meaningless.
Those forces occupying Portugal were deemed of immediate importance to the defense of Britain and were thus hastily evacuated in June and July. The French, desperate for manpower, followed suit in August, leaving the small country with a weak, tottering puppet government. In September, part of the National French / Portuguese force built up in preparation for the invasion of the Metropol, would land unopposed in Porto. This would secure a closer base of operations for the landings on the Metropol’s west coast, though first Portugal would have to be cleared of opposition. This would not take long. Only the thinly manned Red Portuguese militia and two remaining French divisions would put up resistance. By October, most of the country had fallen to a combination of Entente forces and local uprisings, holding the syndicalist remnant into a small cordon in the Algarve.
In December, looking to save his own skin, the Chairman of the short-lived Popular Republic of Portugal, José Carlos Rates, would seek terms. Those offered to him were the same as those agreed to be dictated to all syndicalist countries at the Port Said Convention: unconditional surrender. Rates, along with his entire cabinet, fled to neutral Spain seeking political asylum. This was granted by Prime Minister José María Gil-Robles y Quiñones despite his government’s moderately conservative attitudes – he would attempt to use Rates as a piece in future negotiations with the Entente. Extradition to Portugal was eventually granted but Rates and his compatriots would flee on charter flights to India where they would continue to claim to be the ‘legitimate’ government of Portugal – a phenomenon that was to be repeated by members of the governments of other conquered syndicalist countries.
The Second Portuguese Campaign had lasted only four months and cost only 18,000 lives in total as opposed to the brutal confrontation of the First. Peace had come to the Portuguese countryside for the first time in years. The nation’s infrastructure and ecology had been devastated by the four-year trench stalemate along the Tagus. Over three million civilians from Portugal, Italy, France and other nations had fled into Spain these last several years, creating a refugee crisis unseen in the nation’s history. While most would return to their homelands after the war, over a million elected to remain in Spain. This influx of individuals seeking to better their lots along with no war debts or damage helped lead to the rise of Spain as the first of the ‘Latin Lion’ economies.
Over the course of April to September 1945, the Battle of the Shetlands would be prosecuted by Dominion of Canada forces. The island of Northmavine was attacked first, with the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Airborne Brigades being dropped along the A970 road to cut enemy logistics support to their strongholds on Ronas Hill in half. Ronas Hill, the highest point on the Shetlands, had been emplaced with heavy shore batteries with the range to hit ships ten miles or more away. Simultaneous to the airdrop, Australasian and Canadian troops landed on the islands of Yell and Unst. Using the islands as cover from the Ronas Hill guns, the shipborne invasion was able to approach from the east despite a peppering of air attacks. Heavy fighting occurred on the south of both islands but after five days the last resistance was eliminated. The parachutist brigades, operating on an airborne logistical tether, were now able to be relieved as artillery set up on Yell was able to begin knocking out the Ronas Hill batteries. On the 10th of May, a large attack was conducted across the Yell Sound. After six more days of intense fighting, the remainder of the troops garrisoned on Northmavine surrendered.
Paratroopers landing in Northmavine
Now, Entente forces could utilize their seaborne mobility to attack the island of Mainland, where most syndicalist forces were stationed, from multiple directions. These unfolded over the course of the next month, nibbling away at the coastline, and slowly pushing inland. The most important landing was the one that took place on the 27th of May, which seized Sumburgh Airport. The defenders were now fully cut off. Over the course of the next three weeks some would surrender in drips and drabs but a hardcore of resistors would fight on along the spine of hills on Mainland. Only on June 29th did the final holdouts surrender. The spirited defense of the Shetlands had cost the Imperial Commonwealth over 26,000 casualties, many of which had been inflicted on the airborne brigades, who by now were no longer fit to partake in the campaign to seize the Orkneys.
The Battle for the Orkneys
The Battle for the Orkneys would open on the 6th of August with landings on the outlying islands which were heavily opposed by British airpower, though no ground troops. The defense of the Orkneys was centered around yet another island called Mainland, and two more, Hoy and Rousay, where the dominating heights allowed for yet more coastal guns to bombard approaching vessels. One ship, the cruiser HMCS Secord, had its rudder disabled by a shore gun. It was then pounced upon by dive bombers. At 08:01, it received a hit to the ammunition magazine which detonated, sinking the ship in less than a minute. All but four of its 681 sailors would perish. Another vessel, the Royal Canadian Navy’s most recently launched battlecruiser, HMCS Frontenac, struck a mine and began sinking at 09:31. Only through the intercession of fuel shortages was the dominating British airpower dissipated, allowing Canadian forces to land on Rousay and Mainland.
Battles would rage on the islands for weeks despite Red British forces being hopelessly outnumbered. With Hoy’s eventual fall, victory was achieved. Periodic waves of British fighter bombers would continue to wreak havoc on the Austro-Canadian soldiers and sailors, who dubbed their situation the ‘Orkney Basting’ but in the end the Union of Britain was simply unable to put enough men onto the islands to hold them nor fuel in their aircraft tanks to drive off the enemy’s navy. Altogether, Entente casualties for taking the archipelago topped 20,000, which, together with the fights on Iceland, the Faroes and the Shetlands, had heavily blooded the Austro-Canadian island hopping force. Time would be needed before undertaking the final step in the long-dreamed of goal of the reconquest of Britain.
Fracturing Foundations
Though British operations in the Southern Forces Grouping in Italy and the Balkans had been scaled down in the last year, there was still a full field army, the 8th, stationed around Udine, Italy along with almost ten more divisions scattered across northern France. The loss of the Channel ports and the abandonment of Portugal effectively trapped British forces on the continent, with only those in the Antwerp Pocket being prioritized for precarious air and sea evacuation due to their proximity to the Isles. Despite heavy propaganda and media censoring, this rapidly deteriorating situation was apparent to the populace. Many would secretively listen to low frequency band German wireless stations while many others simply pieced together what was happening by what was not reported on the BBC, which was wholly controlled by the Ministry of Information.
In August, coinciding with the fall of Paris, the first mass anti-war demonstrations would take place on the streets of London, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Mothers, sisters, and daughters would make up many of the protestors. They demanded the return of their men from seven years of futile and bloody conflict. At this stage the protestors did not demand a change in leadership, but there was a strong undertone of disgust at the totalitarian nature of the regime as seen in the calls on placards and chants for de-censoring, a restoration of civil rights that the populace had once enjoyed under the Union’s pre-Mosely governments and most of all, food.
Anti-war demonstrations in Hyde Park, London – the marchers would throw ‘mud bombs’ at the police in anger at their attempts to disperse protestors
Most striking of all at the photos taken of these demonstrations was the gaunt appearance of the protestors. Partially blockaded since 1941-42, the Union had struggled to provide foodstuffs for its peoples. Britain had never been fully self-sufficient in food production since the Industrial Revolution, and thus the loss of trade greatly impact the caloric intake of the population. Most of this was ‘taken on the chin’ in the ‘stiff upper lip tradition’ of the British people, but the strengthening of the German Bombing Campaign and its targeting of known food storage locations had caused mass starvation. Between malnutrition and the increased chance of disease, some 200,000 Britons and Irish civilians would perish that winter and spring, leading to a wide-spread loss of faith in the government.
With most intelligence resources focused on external affairs, the authorities were taken off guard by the initial protests. After August, Mosely ordered the beefing up the police presence in the cities and institute the most complete domestic surveillance campaign in modern history. The next major protest, the ‘Hyde Park March for Peace’, organized by the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL), was met with a heavy police presence that attempted to disperse the event before it even got off the ground. Clashes between the protestors and police would escalate into a full-blown street battle that would see the death of eighteen protestors and a policeman and the injury of over three hundred others. After this, military units were called into the cities to lock them down. This did not stop widescale organization of resistance in the countryside however, where cells of anti-government forces had begun making contact with Canadian agents. These groups, mostly in northern England and Scotland, had begun to be armed by Canadian airdrops conducted under the cover of darkness in anticipation of the long-awaited invasion.
The increasingly oppressive methods used to quell social unrest disturbed many in the military, who saw their occupation of Britain’s cities as anathema to the Revolution that had brought the Union of Britain into existence. Over 1944-45, this growing rift between pro and anti-Moselyites in the military was noticed and taken advantage of by spies and agitators loyal to the Imperial Commonwealth. Most anti-Moselyites could not contemplate a return to the pre-1925 government, but some, seeing the Union as constitutionally weak enough to allow for the rise of a dictator, began seeking a path that might combine the best of the pre- and post-Revolutionary governments.
Breakthroughs and Follow-ups: France and the Low Countries from July 1945 to December 1945
Retreat under fire while being pressed by an enemy is often cited as one of the most difficult military maneuvers even in the best of circumstances. For syndicalist forces severely short on ammunition, fuel, fodder, and luck, and having to coordinate between multiple field armies that spoke different languages, it would prove impossible. Over the next several months the Internationale’s worst fears would be realized as many of its formations were pursued, isolated, and destroyed across France.
Planned Internationale ‘Barricades’ drawn up but Premier Valois and the CMC – these defensive lines were mostly flights of fancy, along with many of the formations set to man them
It would begin on the 14th of August. After the rapid abandonment of Paris, the divisions of the Central Forces Grouping were supposed to move into new positions around the Loire River. Under intense pressure and suffering breakdowns in organization, a gap developed between the 9ème and 7ème Armées. Scouts of the 4. Panzerdivision under Dietrich von Saucken would notice this gap and begin a deep probing operation which identified columns of enemy troops moving south behind a rearguard still defending Troyes and Orléans. Von Saucken would request permission for his Panzerdivision forward seeing to overtake the fleeing enemy and capture the Yonne River bridges before they reached them. Rommel, upon hearing Saucken’s report, heartily endorsed the move.
At first the panzers were met with roads clogged full of refugees fleeing before the syndicalist retreat. After a morning of delay, von Sauken would venture to the fore of his column and mercilessly order his men to “
churn anything in their path.” The tanks would crush women, children and the elderly in their charge forward. Not wishing to risk being added to the red mash, the rest of the refugees cleared the roads. Within a day, the panzers reached the Yonne virtually unopposed.
With no sign of the enemy, von Saucken took the initiative to continue the advance. His tanks would break free of their logistical tether and push deep into enemy territory. Only an improvised group of National Guardsmen met the tanks but were broken in minutes, opening the road to the Loire, who’s bridges von Sauken was now eyeing. The panzers were forced to stop overnight but resumed their drive before sunrise the next day. By 08:00 the head vehicles had reached the river. In only two days the Germans had covered 90 kilometers. Knowing Rommel was sending infantry divisions in the rear, von Saucken decided to drive onward parallel to the river, threatening the encirclement of the entire French rearguard before von Manstein’s forces. Within another day 4. Panzerdivision had moved another 50 kilometers, stopping only as their supplies ran out.
Threatened by the advance and its follow-up, the syndicalists would abandon Troyes and flee in a confused mass, mixing in with the hordes of refugees. 8,000 were captured just outside of Troyes, unable to escape the jaws of the German advance. With their air forces mostly concentrated further north, the retreating troops were consistently strafed and bombed by vengeful Reichspakt planes. The Reichspakt and their Entente allies would advance south. Faced with only periodic resistance, they were able to march move the frontline over a hundred kilometers further south over the next four weeks.
Up north, nearly the entirely of the Northern Forces Grouping (NFG), made up of three armies of totaling over 360,000 souls, had been essentially surrounded with the July 1st capture of Dunkerque. The High Seas Fleet had made its return to the scene soon thereafter, establishing a blockade to prevent the NFG’s transport to Britain or behind the frontlines. This was a wasted effort though, as even had the syndicalists intended to escape, on July 3rd Premier Valois had gone over the heads of the CMC to order the commander on the scene, Marshal André Boris, to hold his ground. He would attempt to manipulate Boris by tugging on his pride through awarding the commander in-absentia with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Legion of Honor, France’s highest military decoration.
Marshal André Boris, last commander of the Northern Forces Grouping, a storied formation which had once stood on the banks of the Elbe besieging Hamburg and Berlin
The Premier’s reasoning was that the NFG could act as a force that threatened the enemy’s rear – a fanciful notion, given the dire state of the NFG on the ground. Valois ordered the combined syndicalist air forces to assemble an airbridge to deliver supplies to the beleaguered men of the Antwerp Pocket. Over a thousand military and civilian transport planes and over two thousand fighter craft were duly assembled and added to the contingent the British had attached to the NFG. It would prove the death knell of the Internationale’s air power, with high-altitude German and Republican French fighters pouncing on the heavily laden transports and their escorts.
Between this time and the fall of Paris, on the 23rd, the German-controlled corridor severing connection between the NFG and the Central Forces Grouping (CFG) was only 34 kilometers wide at its narrowest point. Cut off from the sea, demoralized from the news about Paris and receiving less than a quarter of the promised air supply drops, Boris’s position rapidly deteriorated into August. Desertion became an issue for the NFG after the fall of Paris, with groups of men ranging from individuals to several dozen strong constantly slipping away in the dark to risk the German corridor to escape the encirclement. This was stopped at first by the posting of ‘perimeter companies’ which shot the deserters, but soon groups as large as regiments were surrendering to the Germans or attempting their own escapes. Some forces would operate in the region behind enemy lines, bringing what supplies they could or at least hitting the Germans where it hurt most. The largest of these special forces groups was the ‘Springfield Avengers’, a brigade-sized force of American socialists who had fled their homeland after the fall of the Combined Syndicates of America. Led by the Illinoian, Ronald Reagan, they would conduct an epic hit-and-run trek of hundreds of kilometers through enemy territory, inspiring the plot for the 1963 war film ‘The Magnificent Escapade’ starring Reagan himself. By the time of the filming of the Escapade, Reagan had renounced syndicalism, voluntarily undergone the ‘Alaskan Reform Program’, to become an actor and outspoken critic of leftist ideologies
[1] [2].
The ‘leakage’ of soldiers, breakdown of equipment, and expenditure of ammunition stocks forced the NFG to give ground slowly. On the first of the month, the combined forces of Army Groups Burgundy and Teal would launch Operation von Galen
[3] to reduce the ‘kessel’. By August 3rd, Leuven would fall. On the 10th, the exiles of the Flanders-Wallonian Legion were marching through Brussels. On the 18th, Charleroi was abandoned to shore up the margin of the NFG’s defensive area. On the 22nd, German motorized troops entered Bruges with hardly a shot fired at them. With each mile yielded the German corridor expanded and the NFG’s hopes dimmed. On the 17th of September, King Adalbert I von Hohenzollern returned to the Palais Royale, which since the Dutch Revolution had begun, had been turned first into a museum then into an arsenal (knowing that the Reichspakt would purposefully avoid destroying symbols of monarchism).
In the central region of the theater, the syndicalist lines managed to not buckle and put up a stout defense of Orléans and Rouen. In mid-July, Henri Adeline’s 7ème Armée de Reserve had been moved to the northern extremity of the Central Forces Grouping’s positions to reinforce the thin coastal cordon the syndicalists still held. Adeline would launch counterattacks on the German corridor on July 18th and August 15th. Though repulsed, the moves notified Gerd von Rundstedt’s OKW office that the enemy still had the strength to mount offensives in the sector. To ensure the NFG was not re-connected with the CFG, a new movement was devised.
On August 26th, part of Franz von Bayern’s command, Panzergruppe 5 under Walther Nehring would push from Amiens through Boulogne countryside. They would smash into the undermanned 2e Corps which guarded Adeline’s southern flank and ground lines of communication, reaching the Channel on the 27th. The 7ème Armée de Reserve had been encircled.
With its strongest body neutralized, the position of the CFG now began to crumble as well. German and National French troops would push past the Parisian suburbs and beyond the Calais encirclement to take Rouen on the 5th of September. Still, the syndicalists refused to surrender. The CMC pulled yet more reserves out of Italy. Added to this was the fruits of a slapdash effort to raise yet more National Guard units comprised of child soldiers and the elderly.
After the pocketing of Adeline’s army, Mosely had ordered the covert exfiltration of all British forces from the rapidly shrinking Antwerp Pocket to escalate to immediate evacuation. The result was the planning of a series of ‘aero-convoys’. The Chairman would contact the CMC and inform them that he would be evacuating his troops from the pocket to reform them south of the frontlines, while having absolutely no intention of doing anything other than bringing them home. The incident caused a diplomatic firestorm between the Internationale nations, with Valois denouncing Mosely’s “
cowardly little ploy”. It fell to Italian Chairman Gaetano Salvermini to attempt to defuse the situation by reminding all parties on a phone conference that “
while events are bleak, they may yet be rescued, but only if we hold true to one another.” The first wave of aero-convoys, launched without consultation to the CMC, arrived at Ghent airfield after suffering horrid casualty rates over the Channel. André Boris would order some of his last operable tanks onto the runways to prevent the British from leaving but before his forces even arrived hordes of anguished civilians appeared, knocking down fences, mobbing the airfield, attempting to climb onto the planes and even toppling one over. The aero-convoy was trapped. Days of bickering ensued, wasting time that could have been used to rescue as much of the NFG as possible.
As events played out and news percolated, it would cause further divisions in the Internationale. Not only had trust in the British evaporated, but the Republican Army’s high command itself was riven between ‘seeking the honorable course’ of fighting to the end against ‘abandoning the sinking ship to save our own’. In the meantime, the Germans would push further along the coast, taking advantage of the increasingly poor quality of syndicalist forces. By September 21st they were approaching La Havre in Normandy.
With the situation growing critical, Marshal Boris would continue to contract his perimeter. Heavy street-to-street fighting would leave Antwerp in flames.
Last days of the Antwerp Pocket
With thousands surrendering every day, the British evacuation planes grounded, and food having long run out, Marshal Boris would order the white flag raised above the wreckage of Antwerp Central Train Station. It would be the largest single syndicalist surrender of the war, with over 278,000 men passing into Reichspakt prisoner of war camps. Fighting would continue for several more days with holdouts in the Westerscheldt islands, but in the end, these too would surrender, adding an additional 44,000 men to the surrender rolls. The campaign for the Low Countries had ended. A week later, the 52,000 men trapped in Calais would follow suit.
Mixed nationality POWs in the Low Countries
French Theater frontlines as of October 1st
The Reichspakt and Entente had advanced beyond Versailles to the gates of Orléans, past the Loire to the approaches to Lyon and Annecy and captured the rump of the Batavian Commune
[4]. These gains, all secured in under two months, had secured 85,242 square kilometers for the allied forces.
On October 2nd, Oberkommando West would move its headquarters to Paris alongside those of the Entente Expeditionary Force, now under the consolidated leadership of General François de La Rocque. With the fighting now well past Paris, a victory parade was held to the dismay of the Parisians. Leading the parade would be de La Rocque’s troops, soon followed by columns of Germans in feldgrau. It had been 2,771 days since 27,000 Germans captured in the ‘Black Month of the German Army’ had been marched under the Arc de Triomphe.
General de la Rocque during the belated ‘Capture of Paris’ celebrations
German troops during the celebrations (colorized)
Parisians were ‘persuaded’ to attend the celebration. Many wore mourning blacks while others openly wept. While conservative and anti-syndicalist sentiments could be found in some quarters of the country, including Brittany and much of the countryside, Paris had been the beating heart of the ideology for 26 years. Its de-syndicalization would take years.
Cruelly marched at the head of the German procession was Charles Delestraint. The former Marshal of the Commune had been found languishing in a subterranean cellar in the Parisian Catacombs. Having survived two years of imprisonment, Delestraint was in no condition to be paraded about, von Rundstedt insisted on playing Caesar to Delestraint’s Vercingetorix. Despite a badly infected foot and a life-threatening bout of pneumonia, Delestraint would survive and live on after the war.
Charles Delestraint’s mugshots, taken before his 15-year sentence in Spandau Prison (the sentence was later reduced to 8 years)
Gerd von Rundstedt would report to Supreme Headquarters in Potsdam that it seemed the enemy had ‘totally collapsed’ and that the war in France would be wrapped up by Christmas. Wanting to do his part to help finish the war as soon as possible, he recommended the dispatch of two of his army groups (46 divisions) to fronts in more need: one to the east to support the defense of Bulgaria against the Russian tide now reaching up from Ottoman territory and one to the Italian theater. This was hastily accepted. Reichspakt strength in France had now reached near parity with that of the Entente, some 62 to 57 divisions.
At this stage it was Army Group Ivory’s objective to reach for Marseilles while Army Group Teal aimed for Nantes. The Algiers Regime’s amphibious invasion force was now ready to depart from Portugal and would head for the beaches outside La Rochelle and Bordeaux. With the fall of these cities the only remaining major industrial center left to France would be Toulouse. The Marseilles path would also open the ‘backdoor’ to Italy, after which a pincer with von Bayern’s Army Group Green, now allocated to Südtirol, could capture the Po Valley and knock the SRI out of the war.
After a pause to adjust to the reduction in troop strength, active operations would resume on October 18th. The dilution of strength with the departure of von Manteuffel and von Bayern’s troops, not to mention the time given for the Internationale to reorganize, was immediately felt. The enemy had would cling to a series of ‘stronghold cities’
such as Clermont-Ferrand, Lyon and Orléans, all of which would take over a month to fall.
Push on Nantes, November 25th
Push on Marseilles, November 25th
By the end of November only modest gains were recorded by Rommel’s troops, though a promising protrusion nearing Grenoble had been won by Manstein’s men. The slugfest’s apogee would near as this, the bloodiest year of the war, began to end.
French theater frontlines as of December 10th
After lobbying the Algiers Regime incessantly for its long-awaited amphibious invasion for months, and having to suffer the delay of the Second Portuguese Campaign, the OKK could at last sigh with relief as the final nail in the coffin of the Commune of France was driven in on December 15th when troops under Charles de Gaulle would land in a combined air-sea-land operation around Bordeaux. A smaller, follow-up attack would appear at La Rochelle the next day.
The Entente lands near Bordeaux, December 15th
Despite the poor seasonal weather, the Entente force would manage to build a bridgehead in western France
National French soldiers, along with Canadian, Australasian, Portuguese and South African contingents assemble in western France for a push inland
The attacks in the west would be a mixed bag. Though they would manage to hold onto Bordeaux, La Rochelle was nearly retaken in a stunning counterattack led by the Red émigré Mikhail Tukhachevsky. Having run out of tanks, Tukhachevsky would requisition the horses in the countryside and lead what would turn out to be the last great (and successful) cavalry charge in history. As the 3e Corps (constituting the majority of the La Rochelle force) moved on Poitiers, Tukhachevsky led 10,000 mounted horsemen against them in a surprise attack that appeared out of a rare, driving snowstorm. The National French would break and flee back to the coast, being pursued, and cut up by syndicalist sabers the entire way.
Tukhachevsky and his ‘Red Horsemen’
Tukhachevsky’s success was isolated. Not only this, but it would be the final notable Communard victory of the war. With Bordeaux lost, the French leadership would flee to Marseilles. Though he still refused to surrender, central command and control between the increasingly overstretched organs of the syndicalist armies in France would prove impossible. The Central Forces Grouping was now almost entirely out on a limb, receiving only patchy and periodic orders to ‘hold fast’ and ‘counterattack’ with divisions that existed only on paper. Even within the CFG, army and corps commanders were beginning to have to take independent action, further opening up holes for the Reichspakt and Entente to exploit.
Gerd von Rundstedt had been correct in October: France was now but a mopping up operation. Still, his subsequent actions would be judged harshly by history. The premature reallocation of troops had prolonged the war. Given the lack of crisis elsewhere in the war at this stage, it had proven a costly and unnecessary action. As 1946 dawned, all could see that this would be the final year of the war. The sense of an undeniable endgame had settled over western Europe. Now, it was only a question of how much blood would be shed for a doomed cause.
French theatre as of December 20th
Change in territory between July and December 1945
Victory in the Cone
Buenos Aires had been besieged in August of 1944 and still held one year later. Brazilian troops, lacking the kind of siege artillery necessary to reduce the entrenchments established around the city, had relied on the employment of a combined sea-land strangulation. The Brazilian navy had decisively met and defeated remnants of the Argentinian one in the Battle of the Río de la Plata, stripping the city of all but one narrow landward corridor of escape
. As Buenos Aires starved, the rest of the South American front was undergoing a slow-motion collapse.
Argentinian return fire missing the Brazilian dreadnaught Minas Geraes
The expanses of the Pampas would see Brazilian and Peru-Bolivia Confederation forces spread out over vast, untamed landscapes, chasing an enemy that was equally deprived. Only occasionally would syndicalist forces turn to face their pursuers, but for the most part it was a cat-and-mouse game. More vicious combat would occur in the east where the syndicalists were being slowly forced up against the coastline.
Two major actions in May, 1945 and July, 1945, would see the capture of the city of La Plata and subsequently (combined with a naval landing) the fall of Bahia Blanca. The conquest of these cities completed the encirclement of Buenos Aires and cut off most supply to the remaining Argentinian forces. On the 28th of August, with the fall of Bahia Blanca, syndicalist government of the Argentinian Free Territory would surrender on the condition of their safe conduct from Buenos Aires to Santiago where resistance was continuing. Buenos Aires had fallen, and with it, Argentina.
Able to shift most forces toward the Chileans, the end in South America was now swift. As Brazilian forces flooded west while the Confederation concentrated to push south, the Chilean government (and with it the former Argentinian government) would flee Santiago via the Commune of Hawaii to Bhartiya. On the 20th of October, the provisional leadership of Chile, essentially a series of upjumped trade unionist ministers, would offer the political surrender of their nation.
Some guerilla action would continue for years in the harsh terrain of the far Southern Cone, but for all intents and purposes the war had ended in South America. It was the second major theater of the war after the Pacific to conclude
[5], bringing peace to a wide and uncertain swathe of the world.
Argentina, Chile and the Confederation had suffered hugely. Having entered the war only in 1943, Brazil had escaped destruction on its own lands, been the deciding competitor in South America, and had also a major source of loans, food, and raw resources for the Reichspakt. The victory heralded the emergence of Brazil onto the world stage as the undisputed, self-confident titan of the southern hemisphere. Though already engaged in Europe to some extent, now Brazil would further flex its power by devoting its now humming war industry and muscular army to helping end the war across the ocean.
[1] The Magnificent Escapade: Aired in 1963, the Magnificent Escapade was part of the ‘Reconciliation Campaign’ sanctioned by the American military government. The theme of the film was on American ingenuity, brotherhood, and anti-socialism. Its lead actor, Ronald Reagan, who played a fictionalized version of himself, portrayed a rugged but brainwashed captain of the Springfield Avengers, exiles who bitterly missed the America of their youth. Over its 172-minute runtime, Reagan’s character would undergo an ideological transformation while leading his band of troops in a fight for survival through the war-torn French countryside for 82 days, climaxing with his monologue renouncing syndicalism. The slight smile on his face as he sees free enterprise businesses lining the rebuilt streets of Frankfurt during his bus trip to a prisoner of war camp serves as the film’s denouement.
[2] The Reform Program: Many tens of thousands of post-war Americans would be sent to camps in Alaska where they would be forced to undertake hard labor and re-education. Prisoners were often subjected to intense strains, including hard labor in the frigid wilderness, pervasive beatings, starvation, lack of sanitation, solitary confinement, mental tortures of all kinds and the dreaded ‘pop quizzes’, where prisoners unable to provide the politically correct answers to unprompted batteries of rapid-fire questions would be shot on the spot. Sentences usually lasted around five years for the ‘disloyal inactives’, those who hadn’t held political power in the rebellious states. ‘Diplomas’ were awarded to ‘graduates’ upon the completion of their terms, usually to men so thoroughly broken they would cower in fear at the mere hint of something disloyal to the MacArthur government
[3] Operation Von Galen: Named for Cristoph Bernhard von Galen, a bishop who fought alongside the Emperor Ferdinand III during the Thirty Years War. Inspired by J_Master’s suggestion!
[4] The Fall of the Batavian Commune: David Wijnkoop and the civil government of the had long since relocated to the Union of Britain, thus, while the territory of the Commune was fully occupied its political apparatus refused to surrender
[5] Major Theaters: Depending on the historiography of different countries, the South American theater was the fourth major theater to end, with the Second American Civil War being the first, the Pacific the second, and the war in Africa the third
