Ok this sounds intriguing.
Thanks!
Alright! The Ironheart Universe is back!
Can't wait to see the map!
Yup, glad to be back. This war is going to be a lot harder than the first though haha.
It's happening!
GOTT MIT UNS!!!
Oooh yes. This is gonna be good!
Question:
Does fascist Britain retain the Monarchy?
Is the India split the same as in Kaiserreich but with the British loyalists being fascist?
How dissolved is A-H? Completely or Kaiserriech style loose collection of puppets?
-Britain retains a completely symbolic and powerless monarchy.
--India is split as the same however with a twist, Delhi is under fascist domination, the Princes in the south are Japanese Allies, and the Bengali Commune are with the Internationale.
---Completely dissolved, as you will soon see.
Prologue I of II: The Twenty-Years Armistice
"This is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years..." Erich von Ludendorff, after he determined the Treaty of Versailles was not harsh enough
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August 8th, 1917 - September 1st, 1939
A new war was approaching, the Second War of Nations. Passed away were the brutal days of the First Weltkrieg, when the future of not only Europe, but the entire world, hanged in the balance. Through either superior tactics or sheer luck, the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Switzerland, and the Ottoman Empire triumphed against their shared Entente foes. First Russia, then France, finally Britain. These nations were all subdued and defeated by the Kaiserreich, however, they were not destroyed. Left to their own devices, nearly all of Western Europe has fallen to Marxism, while the Russians and British were engulfed in a sea of hatred and vengeance. All of Europe is now once again at arms, but how did this all exactly happen? How could victory bite Germany in the arse, and condemn all of the world back into global chaos? Well, as for all things, one need only go to the beginning.
The Weltkrieg (1914-1917)
German Soldiers during the Seventh Battle of Lugano, Switzerland, Autumn 1915.
Undoubtedly one of the bloodiest disasters to befall Humanity was the outbreak and fighting of the First Weltkrieg (World War). Although, the term 'Weltkrieg' is misleading, seeing as majority of the war was decided in Europe. Regardless, it was a net minus for every nation involved. The industrial slaughter of 8.5 Million Men costed all nations dearly, Russia, Switzerland, Germany, and France suffering the worst of the carnage. Alas, the war had a victor, that of the Central Powers. After such a conflict, understandably the victorious nations were eager to strip the losers of their wealth, pride, and status. Russia was turned into an unstable democratic republic, France and Italy fell into civil war in the early 20s, and Great Britain reeled from being violated by Germany. The Treaties of Versailles, Alexander Palace, Grenoble, and Balmoral Castle sealed the fate of the former Entente Powers, unintentionally launching them on the road to another war.
Not all was disastrous after the war, unlike Western Europe, Germany and most of it's allies/puppets prospered through the following decade. Historians call it the 'Roaring Twenties', a time when prices were good and the Imperial Economy grew. However, it was only
most of the victors. In Switzerland, damage caused throughout the country made it dependent on German bailouts to rebuild it's intentionally destroyed infrastructure, but even the Swiss had it better than their eastern neighbor.
The Collapse of an Ally (1927-1929)
Arrow Cross Members celebrate the removal of Habsburg Power in Budapest, Hungary, February 1927.
In 1918, reigning emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria finally died, thus ending seventy years of the old-school's rule. The next emperor, Karl I ruled the Habsburg Empire with an inexperienced hand, he died only four years into his reign. Thus, the mere ten-year old Otto von Habsburg ascended to the throne, but of course with all underage monarchs, held almost no influence and a regent took power. The first cracks in the empire began to widen when in 1923, spearheaded by the Hungarian half of the empire, the various kingdoms within Austria-Hungary gained a tremendous amount of autonomy, being loyal to Vienna only in name. While the Austrians were focused inward, steadily, but surely, Hungary planned to revolt once more, even going so far to make nefarious deals with former enemy Serbia and its puppet in Zagreb. A new party, formed after the war ended, had been the mastermind behind this plan. The Arrow Cross Party. Allying with the Hungarian Elite and turning the Hungarian Population against Austria set the stage for conflict in the Ausgleich negotiations of 1927, conflict that would spell the end of Austria-Hungary.
February 12th, 1927, the Ausgleich negotiations turned south when the Hungarian, Croatian, and Galician representatives in the Habsburg Empire rejected Austrian proposals for the empire to be united once more, however under different leadership. The Austrians, as well as the Bohemians, wanted a democratic federation, where each ethnic group in the empire received equal rights and roles as Austria and Hungary enjoyed decades before. This was flat out rejected by every Hungarian Delegation, the Hungarians set up an ultimatum: renewed dualism (with Hungary gaining control over Bosnia) or secession. The Austrian reply the following morning was that of an insult more than a resolution, the Habsburgs replacing Hungary with Bohemia as the duelist partner (however both Austria and Bohemia wished for their original proposal). Thus, a Crisis in the Danube broke out, starting the Danubian War.
The outbreak of hostilities internally within the largest nation in Europe sparked German attention. While many Bavarians and Swabians campaigned for German Intervention on the side of Austria, the ruling government and the Kaiser disagreed. Germany was already engaged in a military conflict in the Orient, a mainland conflict this soon would be detrimental to German Interests. More so, removing the Habsburg Empire would stop Austria's meddling in Eastern European affairs. Perhaps the biggest reason why Germany didn't intervene in the Danubian War was the mere fact that Austria was planning on transitioning it's empire into a vibrant fully democratic republic, perhaps even with the removal of the monarchy. Meanwhile, a Hungarian victory would provide Germany with a status quo (in terms of government) in Central Europe while also gaining smaller allies dependent on Berlin and Berlin alone.
The Danubian War was bloody to say the least, a total of 1.9 Million Men on both sides died in the conflict, the war finally ending when the Siege of Vienna was won and little Otto captured by the nationalist armies. The war ended in the complete destruction of the empire. Hungary became independent and with Serbian aid controlled Croatia (while Serbia gained Montenegro and Bosnia), the Polish provinces joined Poland, Bohemia turned into the republic it envisioned, and Austria became a rump state. It was no surprise that just months after the death and destruction had passed, Austria, along with it's Italian Provinces, joined the German Empire.
The Fall of the West (1920-1923)
Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts touring through England, January 1923.
To say that the losers of the First Weltkrieg were to go as they were before is nothing short of a lie. Following the war's end, just three years later, terror erupted in the French Metropolis. Coinciding with the Bolshevik Uprising in the Tomsk Republic (Russia), the French Marxists fought a bloody civil war. This was not the first time France came under attack from the Far Left, as seen after the Franco-Prussian War and the brief Paris Commune. The French Civil War wasn't nearly as bloody when compared to other wars that took place in the Interwar Years, however the result was perhaps the most defining of the collapse of Western Democracy. The French Military, hampered by the Treaty of Versailles and the lack of aid from any of their neighbors caused the Third French Republic to end the way it began - Defeated by German Arms and Plundered by the Far-Left. By the end of 1921, all of Metropolitan France had come under the direct control of the new Commune of France, the rest of the French Republicans fled to North Africa. A truce developed between both sides, however, the French both at home and abroad fell to Authoritarianism. The same fate was shared with the Italians, however unlike the French, the country split in two. The remaining Kingdom of Italy in the North, the Socialist Republic of Italy int he South.
In Britain, things were far less bloody on the outside, but just as in France, the implications of the rise of a new ideology within Europe would be enormous. Fascism, that is what the British Dictator Oswald Mosley called it. The antithesis of Communism, this new ideology combined both economical and national policies from both sides of the political spectrum, however in hindsight, it was just another side of the same coin of radicalism. But how did Britain, champion of Western Democracy, fall so low that their hated enemy, Germany, was more democratic than them? Well, it all really started during the Weltkrieg.
The German Reich, assisted by a captured French Navy combined with their own, coupled with the invention of Paratroopers and it having Aerial Supremacy, invaded the British Isles in the spring of 1917. The last battlefield of the war, Britain was unprepared and the British Army was utterly decimated. London was torn to shreds in the only battle Britain could claim to have fought hard for, the rest of England and Wales were also fully occupied. The Irish were set free from their chains, and an entire 120,000 British Soldiers were captured in a vain attempt to smite the Ottoman Empire into oblivion. After all this though, the destruction and carnage, the British Situation only further deteriorated. Workers and Communists inside Britain rose up against the ruling British Government after an incident in Wales. This uprising could've seen the complete abolition of the British Empire had it been successful, but through Fascist aid did the United Kingdom survive. This is where the descent into Fascism took a free fall.
Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists Party, founded said party right after the Coal Uprising had been quelled. He had seen firsthand the lack of support for one's country decimated his homeland, how wrong he was for supporting the Far Left. Mosley remarked this:
"The nation has not disappeared. We used to believe that the concept was totally without substance. Instead we see the nation arise as a palpitating reality before us! ... Class cannot destroy the nation. Class reveals itself as a collection of interests, but the nation is a history of sentiments, traditions, language, culture, and race. Class can become an integral part of the nation, but the one cannot eclipse the other. The class struggle is a vain formula, without effect and consequence wherever one finds a people that has not integrated itself into its proper linguistic and racial confines, where the national problem has not been definitely resolved. In such circumstances the class movement finds itself impaired by an inauspicious historic climate."
Shortly thereafter, Mosley formed a new movement and party, the British Union of Fascists. He felt that socialism as a movement failed, and that now, something greater was to take it's place. His movement found it's support into the darkened hearts of British men, men who had served for nothing, only to see one's home crushed. Britain gained nothing from entering the Weltkrieg except dead bodies. Everything from the Suez Canal to large portions of British Africa were taken, India split into three, and most terrible of all, Germany took Britain's place in the sun. Mosley's Union of Fascists continued to grow, gaining widespread support in England (especially London), Wales, and parts of Scotland. This all culminated in the infamous March on London, when 30,000 British Blackshirts (Fascist Henchmen of the BUF) demanded the resignation of the ruling government. At first, the government tried to remedy the situation by asking the British Monarch to declare martial law, King George V refused. He had developed an unshakable hatred for both Communism and Germany - his own blood. The King refused, and in response, the Prime Minister threatened to resign. The British Monarch was unfazed, and in a surprising act of defiance, he used his royal right to dissolve parliament. The British were left without a government, and there was only one man and his party who George V had his mind on, Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. Mosley secured power in the Home Islands thanks to Windsors, crushing all opposition and turning the British Isle into a totalitarian state. The following year forcing Fascist Governments on Canada, Australasia (Australia and New Zealand combined), British India, South Africa, and the Caribbean. The British Empire was reborn in a sea of blind hate and revenge. In just the span of six years after victory in the Weltkrieg, the German Empire had three new enemies, all rearming for a second go at destroying it.
The Birth of Evil (1917-1933)
Boris Savinkov, Vozhd of Russia, during the 1933 General Elections, March 1933.
Russia. Former land of the Tsars, now the land of ultimate evil. The word evil sometimes has a joking connotation attached to it, lessening the value of the word itself. Here however, there are no petty games. There is only an out-of-control country hellbent on destroying the very foundation of European Society. Russia was obliterated in the Weltkrieg, not only did they fail in capturing East Prussia and Galicia, but nearly everything west of the Ural Mountains were occupied by the Central Powers. Tannenberg, Sarny, and Fours. These battles annihilated the Russian Army before it even had time to fully mobilize. The Tsar failed to protect Poland, the Baltics, Ukraine, Belarus, Finland, even his home was captured. Germany occupied Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tsaristyn...everything. It was only thanks to the ousting of the Tsar Nicholas II did the carnage end (briefly), but the German Invader did not leave. Germany stripped Russia of the Baltic, Poland, Finland, the Caucuses, Ukraine, Central Asia, ninety-percent of all it's coal producing provinces, its prestige, and even after that, the Kaiser felt the need to burden the Russian Motherland with unthinkable amounts of war reparations causing widespread poverty and economic decimation to Russia. The Treaty of Alexander Palace. That treaty created this evil that has hijacked the Rus, creating the monster itching to raze Berlin. Germany should've seen it coming, all the appeasement, the aid, nothing would stop what was to come.
In November 1920, calamity struck the new and weak Tomsk Republic as well as the French and Italians. Red October, that is what the Communist Disaster was called all across Europe. France, Italy, and Russia came under the attack of a violent revolutionary movement determined to bring down the capitalist elements within those countries. Germany was appalled by the grand-scale of the revolutions, and it needed to make a choice. Germany had demobilized, the people were not in favor of another European War, but the German Reich had to do something. The Prussian Generalstab finally decided to send a small elite force of German Troops to Russia in order for Russia not to become a Red State. France and Italy could be dealt with on their own, but Russia falling to Communism could have dangerous effects. Germany did not want to be surrounded once more, and the Tomsk Republic wanted to remain in power, thus both sides began to work together.
The Russian Civil War was eventually won by the Anti-Communist Forces, but the war also dragged on longer than anyone previously would've imagined. The war decimated an already desolate land. Children and Mothers were starving in the streets, wounded veterans received no treatment, and the Tomsk Republic was forced to concede more to Berlin because of their intervention. There is a theory that states that there is a breaking point for all peoples on this Earth. If you beat them to a bloody pulp, if you force them up against the wall, if you make them the lowest of the low, they will bite back a thousand times stronger. That is what, in essence, transformed Russia.
In 1924, after the hard-fought Russian Civil War had been won, a simple soldier returned to his hometown in Volgograd, formerly Tsaristyn. He had fought both the Germans and the vile Communists, but at the end of the day, everything was for naught. Russia may have been saved from the Far Left, but it was not saved from foreign extortion and itself. A nation was in despair, weakened by war, defeated. Lost of pride in a Tsar's Palace. This man, a former soldier and prisoner, with a vision or a grand delusion, would rise to power in the Motherland. His name, Boris Savinkov, Vozhd of 'Greater Russia', Leader of the NSPRP (National Socialist People's Republican Party).
Boris Savinkov was born in Ukraine but moved to Russia early in his life. Boris was a troublemaker in his youth, going so far to participate in student riots in Petrograd, resulting in his expulsion from his university. Ironically, he continued his studies in Berlin and Heidelberg. Once he returned home, Savinkov became a prominent socialist in his community. Eventually his fanatical words were deemed to be 'damaging to the state' by Imperial Russian Authorities, and he was exiled to Vologda in 1901. During his stay he developed an anti-socialist mindset, similar to Mosley. Once the Weltkrieg started, he was allowed to join the Imperial Russian Army. Boris was attached to a small rifle platoon in late 1914, later taking part in the Battle of Sarny. During the battle, he was wounded by an Austrian Sniper. He was saved by his fellow men, but he was out of commission for nearly all of spring 1915. After he recovered he was immediately sent out to protect the capital in July. Again he was wounded, this time by a German Rifleman. Savinkov and his platoon were defending the White Palace, but it was a pointless effort. The war had already been lost, however Savinkov still thought the war was going to end not with German Troops in Petrograd, but Russian Soldiers in Berlin. As Boris tried to flee from the palace and the city itself, he noticed a lone German Soldier aiming his rifle at him. The German was Heinrich Tandie, a highly decorated warrior of the Reich. He could've killed Boris right there and then, but he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger on a wounded man. Savinkov was allowed to escape, where he was treated in a hospital at Tomsk. Tomsk was where he would remain for the rest of Russia's participation in the war, Savinkov reminiscing that the day he found out that Russia had become a republic and surrendered was the most dreadful of his entire life.
Savinkov would go on to fight in the Russian Civil War, and also helped him the war himself. He founded the Society for Defense of the Motherland and the Nation-State, helping liberate the cities of Yaroslav, Rybinsk, and Murom from Bolshevik Occupation. He was seen as a national war hero by the people because of his actions against both the Germans and the Bolsheviks. This was when Savinkov decided to go into politics, founding a new political party: The National Socialist People's Republican Party. The party's main platform was a planned economy mixed in with elements of capitalism, in addition to Russian Ultranationalism Pan-East Slavism. His party went largely unnoticed within the larger Tomsk Republic, that all changed however when in 1932, the Berlin Stock Market crashed. The Russian Economy, already torn to shreds by German War Reparations, was incinerated. Unemployment was at a record high, food was scarce, the politicians did nothing, and only the radical right and left had a solution. The NSPRP or 'Nazi' Party found major support from the peasantry and common folk after this. Savinkov promised the Russian People a new golden era for their civilization, a new dawn. He preached to them that they had not lost the Weltkrieg, but rather the bankers and communists colluded to bring down Russia. That the Teutonic Race need be put down once and for all so that Russia could be ascendant, that the bastard nations of Ukraine, Poland, White Ruthenia, Lithuania, and Finland need reminding of who their true master is. It was to no one's surprise then that the Nazi Party grew to have fifty-percent of the voter base, and in 1933, Savinkov and his Party were elected into the Duma. From there an evil would rise, but that is a story for another time.
Germany finds itself on the brink, surrounded once more by historical enemies, hampered by economic decline and depression, and threatened by foreign arms from different continents. This new Weltkrieg will not be won as easy as the first. Germany is no longer locked to one continent nor is it fighting the same strength its enemies had before. A Red Plague in the West, a Black Death in the East. Things do not look good for the German Empire, but it did not win the First Weltkrieg so that twenty years later the Fatherland could be torn apart. No, the odds may be stacked against the Kaiserreich, however with an Ironheart, anything is possible.
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Next: Prologue II of II: The World's Road to Another War
