Chapter 289: Left and Right
"I don't understand why they're trying to shut down soup kitchens that are promoting their ideas. Maybe they're not doing it well enough? In any case it's amusing."
-Foreign Minister Franz von Papen
"The Reich is superior at everything, especially football."
-Vice Chancellor Markos Angelos
As the summer began, Chandra Gupta continued consolidating his power over Indian society. However, for some reason he chose to target soup kitchens that were already pro-Rasa. These soup kitchens had been instrumental in securing his victory over Nehru, but now he claimed that they had "been corrupted by Muslims and their halal products" and had to go. The ensuing spectacle was amusing, to say the least.
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In the Reich, Amalie Earhardt's record flight from Neu Brandenburg to Berlin was broken by another woman pilot, Amy Johannson, who made a solo nonstop flight from New Prague, in Mittagsland, to Berlin. Baghdad was slightly damaged by an earthquake, which was easily handled by local authorities.
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In the Eimericas, the troops of the Vinlandic Republican Army overran Cree, which had foolishly decided to help out Huron, and Cree's leadership was forced to surrender just before their collective public executions. Meanwhile, the first World Cup was organized in Neu Rhomania, with the Reich decisively defeating Tawantinsuyu in the finals 7-1, showing that it was superior not only on the battlefield but also in sports. Pachacutec claimed that the results were invalid, because most of his country's best players had been killed or conscripted by his army or by Inca Roca Yupanqui's Nationalist Party.
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Meanwhile, Chandra Gupta realized the drawbacks of his "war on kitchens" strategy and quickly withdrew it, replacing it with dozens of rallies all over the country. The first of these unity-boosting rallies took place in Jodhpur, where locals eagerly signed up for party membership.
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In the Reich, public anger continued to rise, and the threat of an equalist rebellion reached its highest level since 1910. After a police officer accidentally shot and killed a Balinese boy, the Balinese rioted, within days taking control of the island of Bali and declaring an independent Socialist Republic of Bali. Ferdinand Foch, whose legion was stationed on a nearby island, was promptly sent in to deal with them. His legion killed all of them within ten days.
In late July, the Union of Seven Republics declared war on the Cherokee Republic over the region of South Rhotinonsionni, whose working class the USR leadership claimed were being exploited by "evil capitalists and reactionaries."
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In August, a new book appeared in Indian stores. It was called the "Protocols of the Elders of Mecca" and was immediately denounced by all literary critics as being completely filled with conspiracy theories and a blatant attempt to demonize Muslims without any evidence at all. The book was promptly banned from every country except India, where it became a national bestseller, required reading in elementary schools, and Gupta's official "favorite book," as he told cheering crowds in Hyderabad three weeks later. Coincidentally, violence and incidents of discrimination against Muslims shot up a week after the book was published.
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To increase national unity, in September Hindenburg decided to organize a trade fair the next month. A hurricane struck Mayapan's capital, New Peten, a week before the fair was set to open, causing extensive damage and crippling the government for several weeks afterwards. Attempts to relieve the regions hardest hit were poorly organized, causing riots on various Mayan islands, especially those dominated by Nahua majorities.
At the end of the month, the Cherokee Republic surrendered to the USR, agreeing to cede South Rhotinonsionni in exchange for the USR promising not to wage any further wars against it. In an ironic move for an equalist regime, the USR's politburo immediately ordered the population of the region enslaved and sent off to gulags along the Vinlandic border.
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In November, the Socialist Republic of Huron surrendered to the Union of Vinland, which imposed a ruthless military administration, executed all military and political leaders, and sent several thousand civilians off to gulags on the Arctic Circle. Thus Vinland came close to restoring the borders of the former Kingdom of Kanata. All that remained was the Commune of Old Vinland along the Atlantic Coast, whose independence Chairman Trotsky had personally guaranteed. Seeing as further military expansion was not an option, Chairman Erikson and the People's Allthing decided to wage a shadow war against Vinland's non-equalist neighbors. The first target was the weakened Mayapan. Vinlandic agents infiltrated the islands that were hardest hit by the hurricane and most likely to be swayed by Erikson's promises of a workers' paradise in the Caribbean.
The equalists weren't the only ideological faction that had went on the offensive. In Asia, Reza Khan decided to follow in Vinland's footsteps. He declared that it was necessary for Iran to achieve its natural borders. However, his cabinet was divided on what constituted Iran's "natural borders." The official stance was to retake what the government under Golpari I had claimed, namely land in Turkestan, Zunbilstan, and Paksthana, as well as the coastal territories ceded to the Reich. A few ministers wanted to expand Iran to the borders it had established under the reign of Shahanshah Yunus I "the Saoshyant" in the 12th century, while a handful wanted to restore the borders of the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great and Xerxes. Until the government came to an agreement on how much to expand, Reza could not actually do anything and focused on building up a military capable of carrying out such wars of conquest.
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As 1930 ended, the stock markets of both the CSA and Abyssinia crashed again, taking with them the global economy. The Great Depression intensified yet again, driving up unemployment in the Reich as companies found themselves unable to sell goods and services because foreign manufacturers had run out of materials. These events were brought up at the 1931 Hyderabad rally, where Gupta denounced the "incompetent capitalists" in charge of the world economy for driving once great nations into the ground. In that speech, he also announced plans to nationalize most of India's factories and place them under firm state control. Fearing that they would lose their investments in India, Finnish and Afghan investors sold their stocks so rapidly that they destabilized their countries' stock markets.
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In March, the IOC began preparations for the 1932 Olympics, but for some reason they awarded the games to the Commune of Michigan, which immediately rejected it as a "tool of the capitalist scum." As the IOC had not expected Michigan to reject the award, they did not have anybody else to award the games to. Fear that the Olympics might just have been ended for good inexplicably caused the Abyssinian stock market to crash a second time, worsening the Great Depression even more. It was only a week after Abyssinia's stock market crashed that the IOC announced it would attempt to find another host nation later on in the year, assuring investors that the Olympics would continue.
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In April, the Council of Nations formally revoked Tawantinsuyu's seat on the Executive Council, arguing that a country that was suffering such an intense civil war was not able to fulfill its responsibilities as a member of the Executive Council. The logical choice, in terms of industrial base and military strength, to replace Tawantinsuyu was Michigan, but since the equalist government in Michigan City was both equalist and not internationally recognized the Council refused to give Michigan the seat and instead gave it to Noregr as an "honorary seat."
Meanwhile in Asia, Chancellor Wang Jingwei started following through on his promise to restore the Sinocentric world order.
Chinese economic presence and political interest in Nepal had been growing ever since the establishment of the country's independence. The Treaty of Samarkand that ended the war in Asia had granted China the lease of the South Himalayas Railway branch of the China Far East Railway.
In Nanjing in April 1931, a national leadership conference of the Chinese Empire was held between Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei. They agreed to assert China's influence in Nepal strongly, as India had been subverting China's control over the country ever since Chandra Gupta rose to power.
Believing that a conflict in Nepal would be in the best interests of China, Guangdong Army Colonel Song Jiating and Lieutenant Colonel Kai Yiwen independently devised a plan to prompt Japan to invade Manchuria by provoking an incident from Chinese forces stationed nearby. However, after the Chinese Minister of War Chiang Kai-Shek dispatched Major General Yan Shinan to Tibet for the specific purpose of curbing the insubordination and militarist behavior of the Guangdong Army, Song and Kai knew that they no longer had the luxury of waiting for the Nepalese to respond to provocations but had to stage their own.
Song and Kai chose to sabotage the rail section in an area near Kathmandu. The area had no official name and was not militarily important to either the Nepalese or the Chinese, but it was only eight hundred metres away from a nearby Chinese garrison, where troops under the command of the "Young Marshal" Zhang Xueliang were stationed. The alleged Chinese plan was to attract Nepalese troops by an explosion and then blame them for having caused the disturbance in order to provide a pretext for a formal Chinese invasion. In addition, they intended to make the sabotage appear more convincing as a calculated Indian-supported Nepalese attack on an essential target, thereby making the expected Chinese reaction appear as a legitimate measure to protect a vital railway of industrial and economic importance. The choice to place the explosives at this site was to preclude the extensive rebuilding that would have been necessitated had the site actually been a railway bridge.
The plan was executed when 1st Lieutenant Xu Keliang of the Independent Garrison Unit (独立守備隊) of the 29th Infantry Regiment, which guarded the East Nepal Railway, placed explosives near the tracks, but far enough away to do no real damage. At around 10:20 PM, April 8, the explosives were detonated. However, the explosion was minor and only a 1.5-meter section on one side of the rail was damaged. In fact, a train from Kathmandu passed by the site on this damaged track without difficulty and arrived at Myitkyina at 10:30 PM.
On the morning of the following day (April 9), two artillery pieces installed at the Kathmandu officers' club opened fire on the Nepalese garrison nearby, in response to the alleged Nepalese attack on the railway. Nepal's small air force was destroyed, and Nepalese soldiers fled their destroyed barracks, as five hundred Chinese troops attacked the Nepalese garrison of around seven thousand. The Nepalese troops were no match for the experienced Chinese troops. By the evening, the fighting was over, and the Chinese had occupied Kathmandu at the cost of five hundred Nepalese lives and only two Chinese lives.
Commander-in-Chief of the Guangdong Army General Shu Huanjing was at first appalled that the invasion plan was enacted without his permission, but he was eventually convinced by Kai to give his approval after the fact. Shu moved the temporary Guangdong Army headquarters from Guangzhou to Lhasa and ordered reinforcements sent in. At 04:00 on 14 April, Kathmandu was declared secure.
The commander in chief of the Nepalese armies, on recommendation of his Indian advisers, had already urged his men not to put up a fight and to store away any weapons in case the Chinese invaded (a piece of information that the Chinese advisers to the Nepalese army knew ahead of time, hence facilitating the planning). Therefore, the Chinese soldiers proceeded to occupy and garrison major Nepalese cities and their surrounding areas with minimal difficulty. Despite some local resistance, within five days of the incident, the Imperial Chinese Army had overrun all major towns and cities in Nepal.
Because most of the military had been immobilized by the rapid Chinese offensive, the central government turned to the international community for a peaceful resolution. The Nepalese Foreign Ministry issued a strong protest to the Chinese government and called for the immediate stop to Chinese military operations in Nepal, and appealed to the Council of Nations, on April 19. On April 24, the Council of Nations's Assembly passed a resolution mandating the withdrawal of Chinese troops, to be completed by May 16. However, China rejected the League of Nations resolution and insisted on direct negotiations with the Nepalese government. Negotiations went on intermittently without much result.
Meanwhile, Wang Jingwei was caught off-guard by the Guangdong Army's actions, which had not been cleared by the government. He had not planned on lauching any offensive operations against Nepal, but he decided to run with the army's actions for now, hoping that the generals would come to their senses and withdraw to Tibet soon enough. When the SS
Nanjing exploded off the coast of Bengal ten days later in an apparent false flag operation against India (meeting the same fate as its namesake, ironically), he realized that the army would not back down. To stop them from invading India, on the 26th of April he instead ordered the reorganization of the Nepalese government into a pro-Chinese one and tasked the army with helping set up the new government. The king of Nepal would remain in power, but the elected government would be filled with pro-Chinese politicians and the military and economy would be placed under Chinese control. In short, Nepal was turned into a Chinese puppet, firmly pushing it into the Chinese sphere of influence.
On May 2, the Luneburg Report was published and rejected the Chinese claim that the Nepalese invasion and occupation was an act of self-defense, although it did not assert that the Japanese had perpetrated the initial bombing of the railroad. The report ascertained that the new Nepalese government was the product of Chinese military aggression in the Himalayas, while recognizing that China had legitimate concerns in Nepal because of its economic ties there. The Council of Nations refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the pro-Chinese Nepalese government, which ultimately led China to withdraw from the Council of Nations two years later.
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The two days between the explosion of the
Nanjing and the establishment of the new Nepalese government caused chaos in the world market yet again, inexplicably resulting in Danmark's stock market crashing and worsening the effects of the Great Depression on the Reich. It seemed like the world economy would continue to plummet for a long time, with no end in sight.
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You'll have plenty of time for that once their pon farr comes around.
While you're at it, add Henry VIII, Richard III, Sykes, Picot, and Enrico Dandolo. They're all infinitely worse than King John.
I bet he's even a vile republican! PURGE THE HERETIC SCUM!
But at least respect the rights of superstitious individuals like us. And atheism is an official heresy as declared by the Church, punishable by
immediate purging a visit and chat from your local neighborhood Inquisitor.
He also condemned the Austro-Hungarian Empire to death by Mingsplosion, preaching "self-determination of nations" of white Eastern Europeans while denying it to Africans and Asians.
Or even a--gasp--REPUBLICAN?! HERETIC TRAITOR SCUM! BURN!!!!
(Yeah, I'm also acting as well, I actually respect all religious beliefs including atheism. Though as an extremely moderate monarchist I can't say the same about republicans...
)
